With Danzig (modern day Gdańsk) secured, Napoleon is now free to turn against Bennigsen's army, yet it is the Russian who had struck first when he ordered his columns to converge on Marshal Michel Ney's exposed VI Corps on June 2.

Outnumbered sixty-three thousand to seventeen thousand, Ney fights a rear guard action at the Battle of Guttstadt-Deppen on June 5 and 6.

Though he loses his baggage train, two guns, and two thousand and forty-two men, Ney manages to escape to the southwest over the Pasłęka (Passarge) River with the bulk of his soldiers, leaving Bennigsen and his officers upset over the missed opportunity.

Within two days, Napoleon orders his one hundred and ninety thousand-man army to close in on the one hundred thousand Russians and fifteen thousand Prussians.

Detecting the approaching avalanche, Bennigsen orders his troops to retreat on Lidzbark Warmiński (Heilsberg).