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Rh Bennigsen’s guns opened fire on Eylau, and after a fierce but undecided artillery fight the French delivered an infantry attack from Eylau. This was repulsed with heavy losses, and the Russians advanced towards the windmill in force. Thereupon Napoleon ordered his centre, the VII. corps of Augéreau to move forward from the church against the Russian front, the division of St Hilaire on Augéreau’s right participating in the attack. If we conceive of this first stage of the battle as the action of the “general advanced guard,” Augéreau must be held to have overdone his part. The VII. corps advanced in dense masses, but in the fierce snowstorm lost its direction. St Hilaire attacked directly and unsupported; Augéreau’s corps was still less fortunate. Crossing obliquely the front of the Russian line, as if making for Schloditten, it came under a feu d’enfer and was practically annihilated. In the confusion the Russian cavalry charged with the utmost fury downhill and with the wind behind them. Three thousand men only out of about fourteen thousand appeared at the evening parade of the corps. The rest were killed, wounded, prisoners or dispersed. The marshal and every senior officer was amongst the killed and wounded, and one regiment, the 14th of the Line, cut off in the midst of the Russians and refusing to surrender, fell almost to a man. The Russian counterstroke penetrated into Eylau itself and Napoleon himself was in serious danger. With the utmost coolness, however, he judged the pace of the Russian advance and ordered up a battalion of the Guard at the exact moment required. In the streets of Eylau the Guard had the Russians at their mercy, and few escaped. Still the situation for the French was desperate and the battle had to be maintained at all costs. Napoleon now sent forward the cavalry along the whole line. In the centre the charge was led by Murat and Bessières, and the Russian horsemen were swept off the field. The Cuirassiers under D’Hautpoult charged through the Russian guns, broke through the first line of infantry and then through the second, penetrating to the woods of Anklappen.



The shock of a second wave of cavalry broke the lines again, and though in the final retirement the exhausted troopers lost terribly, they had achieved their object. The wreck of Augéreau’s and other divisions had been reformed, the Guard brought up into first line, and, above all, Davout’s leading troops had occupied Serpallen. Thence, with his left in touch with Napoleon’s right (St Hilaire), and his right extending gradually towards Klein Sausgarten, the marshal pressed steadily upon the Russian left, rolling it up before him, until his right had reached Kutschitten and his centre Anklappen. By that time the troops under Napoleon’s immediate command, pivoting their left on Eylau church, had wheeled gradually inward until the general line extended from the church to Kutschitten. The Russian army was being driven westward, when the advance of Lestocq gave them fresh steadiness. The Prussian corps had been fighting a continuous flank-guard action against Marshal Ney to the north-west of Althof, and Lestocq had finally succeeded in disengaging his main body, Ney being held up at Althof by a small rearguard, while the Prussians, gathering as they went the fugitives of the Russian army, hastened to oppose Davout. The impetus of these fresh troops led by Lestocq and his staff-officer Scharnhorst was such as to check even the famous divisions of Davout’s corps which had won the battle of Auerstädt single-handed. The French were now gradually forced back until their right was again at Sausgarten and their centre on the Kreege Berg.

Both sides were now utterly exhausted, for the Prussians also had been marching and fighting all day against Ney. The battle died away at nightfall, Ney’s corps being unable effectively to intervene owing to the steadiness of the Prussian detachment left to oppose him, and the extreme difficulty of the roads. A severe conflict between the Russian extreme right and Ney’s corps which at last appeared on the field at Schloditten ended the battle. Bennigsen retreated during the night through Schmoditten, Lestocq through Kutschitten. The numbers engaged in the first stage of the battle may be taken as—Napoleon, 50,000, Bennigsen, 67,000, to which later were added on the one side Ney and Davout, 29,000, on the other Lestocq, 7000. The losses were roughly, 15,000 men to the French, 18,000 to the Allies, or 21 and 27% respectively of the troops actually engaged. The French lost 5 eagles and 7 other colours, the Russians 16 colours and 24 guns..

EYRA (Felis eyra), a South American wild cat, of weasel-like build, and uniform coloration, varying in different individuals from reddish-yellow to chestnut. It is found in Brazil, Guiana and Paraguay, and extends its range to the Rio del Norte, but is rare north of the isthmus of Panama. Little is known of its habits in a wild state, beyond the fact that it is a forest-dweller, active in movement and fierce in disposition. Several have been exhibited in the London Zoological Gardens, and some have grown gentle in captivity. Don Felix de Azara wrote of one which he kept on a chain that it was “as gentle and playful as any kitten could be.” The name is sometimes applied to the jaguarondi.

EYRE, EDWARD JOHN (1815–1901), British colonial governor, the son of a Yorkshire clergyman, was born on the 5th of August 1815. He was intended for the army, but delays having arisen in producing a commission, he went out to New South Wales, where he engaged in the difficult but very necessary undertaking of transporting stock westward to the new colony of South Australia, then in great distress, and where he became magistrate and protector of the aborigines, whose interests he warmly advocated. Already experienced as an Australian traveller, he undertook the most extensive and difficult journeys in the desert country north and west of Adelaide, and after encountering the greatest hardships, proved the possibility of land communication between South and West Australia. In 1845 he returned to England and published the narrative of his travels. In 1846 he was appointed lieutenant-governor of New Zealand, where he served under Sir George Grey. After successively governing St Vincent and Antigua, he was in 1862 appointed acting-governor of Jamaica and in 1864 governor. In October 1865 a negro insurrection broke out and was repressed with laudable vigour, but the unquestionable severity and alleged illegality of Eyre’s subsequent proceedings raised a storm at home which induced the government to suspend him and to despatch a special commission of investigation, the effect of whose inquiries, declared by his successor, Sir John Peter Grant, to have been “admirably conducted,” was that he should not be reinstated in his office. The government, nevertheless, saw nothing in Eyre’s conduct to justify legal proceedings; indictments preferred by amateur prosecutors at home against him and military officers who had acted under his direction, resulted in failure, and he retired upon the pension of a colonial governor. As an