The rear-guard action continued when French forces advanced to assault Barclay's forces in the town of Eylau. Historians differ on the reasons. Napoléon later claimed that this was on his orders, that the advance had the dual aims of pinning the Russian force to prevent them retreating yet again and providing his soldiers with at least some shelter against the terrible cold. Other surviving evidence, however, strongly suggests that the advance was unplanned and occurred as the result of an undisciplined skirmish which Marshals Soult and Murat should have acted to quell but did not. Whether or not Napoléon and his generals had considered securing the town in order to provide the soldiers with shelter for the freezing night, the soldiers may have taken action on their own initiative to secure such a shelter. According to Capt. Marbot, the Emperor told Marshal Augereau that he disliked night fighting, that he wanted to wait until the morning so that he could count on Davout's Corps to come up on the right wing and Ney's on the left and that the high ground before Eylau was a good, easily defensible position on which to wait for reinforcements.