Battle of Friedland in the Napoleonic Wars

Battle of Friedland in the Napoleonic Wars The Battle of Friedland was fought June 14, 1807, during the War of the Fourth Coalition (1806-1807). With the beginning of the War of the Fourth Coalition in 1806, Napoleon advanced against Prussia and won stunning victories at Jena and Auerstadt. Having brought Prussia to heel, the French pushed into Poland with the goal inflicting a similar defeat on the Russians. Following a series of minor actions, Napoleon elected to enter winter quarters to give his men a chance to recover from the campaigning season. Opposing the French were Russian forces led by General Count von Bennigsen. Seeing an opportunity to strike at the French, he began moving against the isolated corps of Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte. Sensing a chance to cripple the Russians, Napoleon ordered Bernadotte to fall back while he moved with the main army to cut off the Russians. Slowly drawing Bennigsen into his trap, Napoleon was foiled when a copy of his plan was captured by the Russians. Pursuing Bennigsen, the French army became spread over the countryside. On February 7, the Russians turned to make a stand near Eylau. In the resulting Battle of Eylau, the French were checked by Bennigsen on February 7-8, 1807. Departing the field, the Russians retreated north and both sides moved into winter quarters. Armies Commanders French Napoleon Bonaparte71,000 men Russians General Levin August, Count von Bennigsen76,000 men Moving to Friedland Renewing the campaign that spring, Napoleon moved against the Russian position at Heilsberg. Having taken a strong defensive stance, Bennigsen repelled several French assaults on June 10, inflicting over 10,000 casualties. Though his lines had held, Bennigsen elected to fall back again, this time towards Friedland. On June 13, Russian cavalry, under General Dmitry Golitsyn, cleared the area around Friedland of French outposts. This done, Bennigsen crossed the Alle River and occupied the town. Situated on the west bank of the Alle, Friedland occupied a finger of land between the river and a mill stream (Map). The Battle of Friedland Begins Pursuing the Russians, Napoleons army advanced over several routes in multiple columns. The first to arrive in the vicinity of Friedland was that Marshal Jean Lannes. Encountering Russian troops west of Friedland a few hours after midnight on June 14, the French deployed and fighting began in the Sortlack Wood and in front of the village of Posthenen. As the engagement grew in scope, both sides began racing to extend their lines north to Heinrichsdorf. This contest was won by the French when cavalry led by the Marquis de Grouchy occupied the village. Pushing men over the river, Bennigsens forces had swollen to around 50,000 by 6:00 AM. While his troops were exerting pressure on Lannes, he deployed his men from the Heinrichsdorf-Friedland Road south to the upper bends of the Alle. Additional troops pushed north as far as Schwonau, while reserve cavalry moved into position to support the growing battle in the Sortlack Wood. As the morning progressed, Lannes struggled to hold his position. He was soon aided by the arrival of Marshal Edouard Mortiers VIII Corps which approached Heinrichsdorf and swept the Russians out of Schwonau (Map). By midday, Napoleon had arrived on the field with reinforcements. Ordering Marshal Michel Neys VI Corps to assume a position south of Lannes, these troops formed between Posthenen and Sortlack Wood. While Mortier and Grouchy formed the French left, Marshal Claude Victor-Perrins I Corps and the Imperial Guard moved into a reserve position west of Posthenen. Covering his movements with artillery, Napoleon finished forming his troops around 5:00 PM. Assessing the confined terrain around Friedland due to the river and Posthenen mill stream, he decided to strike at the Russian left. The Main Attack Moving behind a massive artillery barrage, Neys men advanced on the Sortlack Wood. Quickly overcoming the Russian opposition, they forced the enemy back. On the far left, General Jean Gabriel Marchand succeeded in driving the Russians into the Alle near Sortlack. In an attempt to retrieve the situation, Russian cavalry mounted a determined attack on Marchands left. Surging forward, the Marquis de Latour-Maubourgs dragoon division met and repulsed this attack. Pushing forward, Neys men succeeded in penning the Russians into the bends of the Alle before being halted. Though the sun was setting, Napoleon sought to achieve a decisive victory and was unwilling to let the Russians escape. Ordering forward General Pierre Duponts division from the reserve, he sent it against the mass of Russian troops. It was aided by the French cavalry which pushed back its Russian counterparts. As the battle re-ignited, General Alexandre-Antoine de SÃ ©narmont deployed his artillery at close range and delivered a stunning barrage of case-shot. Tearing through the Russian lines, fire from SÃ ©narmonts guns shattered the enemy position causing them to fall back and flee through the streets of Friedland. With Neys men in pursuit, the fighting at the southern end of the field became a rout. As the assault against the Russian left had moved forward, Lannes and Mortier had endeavored to pin the Russian center and right in place. Spotting smoke rising from a burning Friedland, they both advanced against the enemy. As this attack moved forward, Dupont shifted his attack north, forded the mill stream, and assaulted the flank of the Russian center. Though the Russians offered fierce resistance, they were ultimately compelled to retreat. While the Russian right was able to escape via the Allenburg Road, the remainder struggled back across the Alle with many drowning in the river. Aftermath of Friedland In the fighting at Friedland, the Russians suffered around 30,000 casualties while the French incurred around 10,000. With his primary army in shambles, Tsar Alexander I began suing for peace less than a week after the battle. This effectively ended the War of the Fourth Coalition as Alexander and Napoleon concluded the Treaty of Tilsit on July 7. This agreement ended hostilities and began an alliance between France and Russia. While France agreed to aid Russia against the Ottoman Empire, the latter joined the Continental System against Great Britain. A second Treaty of Tilsit was signed on July 9 between France and Prussia. Eager to weaken and humiliate the Prussians, Napoleon stripped them of half their territory. Selected Sources Battle of Friedland: French Order of BattleNapoleon Guide: Battle of FriedlandHarvey, Robert. (2006) War of Wars: The Epic Struggle Between Britain and France, 1789-1815. New York: Carroll Graf.

Naturalism Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Naturalism - Research Paper Example In trying to understand nature and seek explanations of natural processes, naturalists use science as their main resource. Some people believe that science and religion are very different and irreconcilable as science is based on rationality as opposed to faith which is irrationality. Other people believe that naturalism is the home of reconciliation between science and religion with yet some irreconcilable discrepancies showing conflict between naturalism and science. Evolution is the scientific explanation of the origin of life in nature that was proposed by Charles Darwin and it remains one of the most contentious and hotly debated issues in religious naturalism. This paper will explore naturalism in religion with a bias in evolution as put across by science and scientific theory of evolution and natural selection. First, the paper will have a brief description of naturalism and then have a look at evolution and the controversies surrounding the evolutionary theory. Naturalists ca n be described as pragmats who have their basis of reality in empirical logic and do not consider testimony as a source of truth of reality (Anderson 111). All the conscious differentiations of reality are based on the way that human beings identify the various qualities of world experience and how they think and reason about them. The natural world is the centre of the most significant experience and understanding of nature and thus it is the most valuable thing in the assessment of an individual’s well being. The idea of a supreme being is considered to have no grounds and everything is approached from a rational point of view and the harmony of reason and our understanding of the universe as informed by science (Griffin 56). Naturalism is presumably not a religion as such as it stands but it plays a vital role just like a religion does which is that of giving adherent to a world view. It provides explanations of why thing happen the way they happen, it tells us what fundam entally the world is and what is important in the world and the essence of human life and general life in the world. This is to a great extent what other religions do except for a few differences which might arise from worship and rituals which are not necessarily part of naturalism. There have been concerns whether theology is compatible with naturalism which has often elicited different responses and controversies. Theology and naturalism are compatible but not all forms of naturalism are compatible with theology as it is both the science about God and also the science about the human experience of God’s manifestation in individual life, the society or nature (Francis, Robbins & Astley 95). With science being the underpinnings of naturalism as it provides the explanations for the fundamental structure of the universe, one may think that the theory of evolution is one of the major pillars in naturalism. The theory of evolution which was put forward by Charles Darwin stipulat es that all life in the universe is related and share a common ancestry. It further says that life originated from non life with more complex organisms forming out of more simple organisms and that human beings have an animal descent (Smith 3). The theory puts it that more complex organism evolve from simple organisms over a long period of time and that there are mutations that occur on the genetic makeup of organisms that may favour their survival in a process called natural selection (Smith 4). This

International Business (Globalization) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

International Business (Globalization) - Essay Example International businesses are at present largely restricted to their where they originated from, only if we consider their overall business operations and activity; they stay heavily 'nationally rooted' and carry on to be multinational, to a certain extent than translational ,organizations . (Palmisano 2006) While full globalization in this organizational sense may not have occurred on a large scale, these large multinational corporations still have considerable economic and cultural power. Multinationals can impact upon communities in very diverse places. First, they look to establish or contract operations (production, service and sales) in countries and regions where they can exploit cheaper labour and resources. While this can mean additional wealth flowing into those communities, this form of 'globalization' entails significant inequalities. It can moreover, it may lead to outsized scale job loss in especially for those whose industries were in the past located. The wages paid in the recent settings can be nominal, and worker's privileges and conditions pitiable. For instance, a 1998 study of exceptional economic zones in China showed that manufacturers for organizations such as Ralph Lauren, Adidas and Nike were the ones paying low wages, to the extent of 13 cents per hour Second, multinationals continuously look new or else under-exploited markets. They look to increase sales - often by trying to create new needs among different target groups. One example here has been the activities of tobacco companies in southern countries. Another has been the development of the markets predominantly populated by children and young people. There is increasing evidence that this is having a deep effect; that our view of childhood (especially in northern and 'developed' countries) is increasingly the product of 'consumer-media' culture. Furthermore, that culture is underpinned in the sweated work of the 'mothered' children of the so-called 'Third World'. With the aid of various media, the commodity form has increasingly become central to the life of the young of the West, constructing their identities and relationships, their emotional and social worlds. Adults and schools have been negatively positioned in this matrix to the extent that youthful power and pleasure are constructed as that which happens elsewhere - away from adults and schools and mainly with the aid of commodities. Of course such commodification of everyday life is hardly new. Writers like Erich Fromm were commenting on the phenomenon in the early 1950s. However, there has been a significant acceleration and intensification (and globalization) with the rise of the brand (see below) and a heavier focus on seeking to condition children and young people to construct their identities around brands. Third, and linked to the above, we have seen the erosion of pubic space by corporate activities. Significant areas of leisure, for example, have moved from more associational forms like clubs to privatized, commercialized activity. For example, charts this with

The Values of Minimalism Applied in Architectural Design Essay

The Values of Minimalism Applied in Architectural Design - Essay Example The essay "The Values of Minimalism Applied in Architectural Design" discusses postmodernism and minimalism through the architecture. This paper discovers what values of minimalism applied in architectural design as a process. The grand restructuring optimisms of the 1920s, of Walter Gropius, Le Corbusier, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, had been stranded on the movement of social pragmatism. In the course of actions, the hopes of an architecture that might promote the public good of humanity were interpreted as elitist and minimalist, with an old-fashioned touch of Calvinist belief and frugality. After the filth had receded and the crooked steelwork had been put away, the site was settled for the antidote newbie postmodernism, which provided pluralism in replacement of uniformity, and bliss, happiness and intelligence in place of the washed out white walls of a succeeding reformation. While they paraded their way on to the vacant building location, the champions of postmodernism carri ed with them a shortened history that lessened the genuine complexity and ingenuity of modernism. The revolution in architectural design that had prevailed in the century was represented as the triumph of the square or the box, the flexible case as universal packaging, or as an embodiment of a Protestant Reformation placing confidence in the liberating features of industrialisation and democracy. In criticizing modernism as minimalist, the supporters of postmodernism cited a history that was itself similarly minimalist and ordinary.

Reading critically and interpreting literature Term Paper

Reading critically and interpreting literature - Term Paper Example The Yellow Wallpaper, published in 1892 and written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, charts a young woman's development into deep depression, enabled by her well-intentioned but misguided husband, who is a doctor. The main character, who remains nameless (but may be called Jane, as a reference at the very end of the story, and she will be referred to as such in this essay at times), struggles against the popular contemporary concept of the 'rest cure,' a 'medical' treatment for the â€Å"temporary nervous depression – a slight hysterical tendency† (Perkins Gilman) which nineteenth-century women were frequently diagnosed with. Her gender- and educational-based fight is against the system, represented by her husband, for a cure which is catered to her own wants and needs rather than a blanket treatment which oppresses her and worsens her condition. Yukio Mishima's 1966 Patriotism also focuses on a woman's struggle, although his is a very different perspective. Written in the third person, unlike The Yellow Wallpaper which is from the main character's point of view, Patriotism records the evening of a happily married couple's suicide pact, in grim and gory detail. Reiko and her husband reduce their world to their small house, decrease the world's population to just themselves, and then struggle wordlessly against their own concepts of a peaceful death, both mentally and physically. Their passive acceptance of a frightening situation, a reflection of Mishima's complicated feelings on contemporary Japanese morality, resists the classification of a 'struggle,' and a critic is forced to admit that the story's struggle is deeper than vocalization. It appears that it is a tract against suicide, but the author's deep-seated, somewhat twisted love for his country, and the fact that he also chose to commit seppuku, is difficult to reconcile with the repellent nature of this amazingly-written story. Mishima was also an ardent supporter of the samurai honor code. L ike the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper, Reiko's struggle is both gender- and educationally-based, although her experience is more totally a reflection of Mishima's internal problems rather than a struggle of her own. This essay will show how setting, tone and irony in The Yellow Wallpaper and Patriotism reveal the struggles enacted through their main women characters, and how these stories reflect their author's respective fears. The setting of The Yellow Wallpaper becomes the focus of Jane's struggle against her husband's medical and frankly misogynistic beliefs. It is is the most important motif of the story, in that the narrator believes that the cause of her descent into madness is the wallpaper – its colour, pattern and even its smell. The narrator and her husband have taken â€Å"ancestral halls† (Perkins Gilman) as their summer holiday home; the â€Å"place has been empty for years† (Perkins Gilman) and as such, presumably, is old and run-down. Jane is enclosed in the large room at the top of the house, even though she fervently expressed a desire to stay in one of the rooms downstairs. The old, â€Å"atrocious† (Perkins Gilman) yellow room both entraps her and symbolizes that entrapment: John coerces her to stay alone in the room, on the basis of his educational and emotional authority, against her will. Just as the protagonist cannot overcome him, nor can she fight against the mores of the society which dismisses her

Does diversity of opinion in the press matter any more, now we have Essay

Does diversity of opinion in the press matter any more, now we have access to participatory and social media - Essay Example As more users are turning towards opting new technologies and social media websites, and are showing reluctant behaviour towards reading newspapers. One possible reason for less circulation of newspaper today can be because of the ease that technology has provided. As with the innovations in the technology and the ease it provided for the masses in terms of using electronic gadgets, mobile phones and connecting online, the productivity of newspapers and print media have undergone decreases. More people are relying on internet and social media websites for the purpose of news, with it they are always connected to the internet and can read timely news, as this new medium (internet) is believe to be the fastest source of providing information or serving the purpose of communication. Furthermore, this medium also enhances the concept of diversification of opinion, as users around the world feel connected with each other and can share their views with the masses in no time. Moreover they can read or listen to the views posted by others, which at times gives them new perception to think about the same issue (Van Djick, 2009). Current Situation: Likewise in a recent past majority of newspapers from the United Kingdom and America were forced to follow the downsizing policy (2008). As a result significant numbers of employees who were working for the different newspapers were terminated, many prophesized the reasons behind these terminations were financial crisis, whereas others convicted internet and social media websites for these firings in the print media industry (Compton and Benedetti, 2010). However, there are many who have different perception in this regard, these individuals optimistically analyze these situations and believe that albeit social media websites and blogs have resulted in confining the role of newspapers and magazines but it has also resulted in providing more information and a variety of difference of opinions for the viewers (Compton and Benede tti, 2010). Meanwhile, it took a while in order to confine the long run and monopoly of newspapers and print media, as the relatively new medium (internet) is garnering more importance on the daily basis and conditions are ameliorating (Compton and Benedetti, 2010). At present print media is facing deteriorating conditions, majority of newspapers around the world are devising strategies in order to cope up with the financial turmoil and are also keen on enhancing or increasing their newspaper circulations. For instance, newspaper industry in the United Kingdom and North America reflect the situation of turmoil as many newspapers are facing bankruptcy, or are in a position where it is hard to manage their current expenses because of high cost involved in the system, there are some who ended their journey in this regard and some are knocking the doors or are in the verge of facing a serious collapse. Some prominent names of the newspaper industry of America, which were enlightening an d were sharing difference of opinions over the passage of time, are the best examples of this catastrophe. American newspaper Denver's Rocky Mountain News are history, on the other hand, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Chicago Tribune and The Los Angeles Times are amongst those newspapers which are facing serious financial catastrophe or in other words are

Building conservation Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Building conservation - Essay Example Have a look at the scheme 1. It represents so called heritage cycle and shows the connection between the admiration by the historic sights and their preservation and maintenance for future generations. Further we will dwell more on the particular part of building conservation – on restoration. It should be born in mind that even those object of architecture, which hasn’t acquired the public acknowledgement jet, should also be maintained with the greatest care and with the least interference. Restoration can be taken as the process of returning a heritage object to a known earlier state, without the introduction of new material. This process can be more clearly defined when combined with reconstruction. Reconstruction generally means altering a heritage object by the introduction of new, or old, materials into the fabric, to produce a work which respects the original. The two processes are often interlinked and should be approached with the utmost care. Inappropriate methods of restoration as well as insufficient information can do much harm to the ancient masterpiece. For example, very often the restoration work is undertaken on an old building, with the best of intentions and enthusiasm, which, through lack of information, or by the employment of inappropriate or incorrect methods, causes a great deal of unintentional damage, both aesthetic and technical. As we can see, the history of the conservation movement in Great Britain dates back to the second half of the 19th century. Nowadays the state has elaborated its unique conservation policy and supports reconstruction and restoration of places of historical interest. The process of conservation is worked out according to its main principles: retention and restoration of historical significance, conservation process based on research, minimum physical intervention, and maintenance of visual setting. The sequence and rules of restoration process