Friedland, Battle of

French victory in the Napoleonic Wars over the combined Prussian and Russian armies 14 June 1807 at Friedland (now Pravdinsk, Russia) 42 km/26 mi southeast of Königsberg (now Kaliningrad). Ten days later, Tsar Alexander I and Napoleon met on a raft in the middle of the Niemen River and signed the Treaty of Tilsit.

Napoleon was marching toward Königsberg, and Marshal Levin Benningsen, the commander of the Allied army, marched out to meet the French. He encountered a French corps under General Jean Lannes at Friedland which pinned him in place until Napoleon's main force came up. Lannes allowed the allies to cross the river so they were trapped with their backs to the river with the bridges of Friedland their only possible route of escape.

The battle finally began late in the day when Marshal Michel Ney attacked Friedland, but he was thrown back by a furious Russian cavalry charge. Artillery was concentrated on the Russians and Marshal Claude Victor's corps thrown in to assist Ney. Combined with a charge of French dragoons, this turned the Russians back and routed them, and Ney chased them through Friedland and across the river. The Allies lost 20,000 killed and wounded, the French slightly over 9,000.