Result
After 14 hours of continuous battle, there was still no result but enormous loss of life. Authorities differ greatly, but a reasonable estimate of Russian casualties is about 15,000, the French somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 (some sources state as many as 25,000 casualties). The Russians left 3,000 prisoners for the French. The French had gained possession of the battlefield — nothing but a vast expanse of bloodstained snow and frozen corpses — but they had suffered enormous losses and failed to destroy the Russian army.
It was left to Marshal Ney to sum up. Riding over the fields of Eylau the following morning, Ney said, Quel massacre! Et sans résultat – "What a massacre! And all for nothing."
Eylau was not the decisive victory characteristic of Napoleon's earlier campaigns, prolonging the war with Russia, until his decisive victory at the Battle of Friedland forced Tsar Alexander I to the peace table at Tilsit.
Read more about this topic: Battle Of Eylau
Famous quotes containing the word result:
“We shall make mistakes, but they must never be mistakes which result from faintness of heart or abandonment of moral principles. I remember that my old school master Dr. Peabody said in days that seemed to us then to be secure and untroubled, he said things in life will not always run smoothly, sometimes we will be rising toward the heights and all will seem to reverse itself and start downward. The great thing to remember is that the trend of civilization itself is forever upward.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“The innocence of those who grind the faces of the poor, but refrain from pinching the bottoms of their neighbour’s wives! The innocence of Ford, the innocence of Rockefeller! The nineteenth century was the Age of Innocence—that sort of innocence. With the result that we’re now almost ready to say that a man is seldom more innocently employed than when making love.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
“As a result of the feminist revolution, “feminine” becomes an abusive epithet.”
—Percy Wyndham Lewis (1882–1957)