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The Battle of Leipzig, 1813 (The 11W Military History Series)

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JKH1232's picture
July 25, 2016 at 2:41pm
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(Once again, my apologies for this being rather late.  It's been a busy couple of weeks)

The Battle of Leipzig, is, mostly likely, the largest battle in the history of the world to date.  (This assumes, of course, we can’t take Herodotus at face value, along with some other ancient historians.)  It will also be the largest battle of the 19th Century, only to be surpassed by the Battle of the Frontiers in 1914.  Only Gravelotte will come close to matching this particular battle.  It also marks the first time Napoleon will suffer a decisive defeat on the field.  He won Borodino, he recovered from Aspern-Essling, but he will never recover from Leipzig.

Lepzig is also known as the Battle of the Nations.  Almost every combatant nation had men at the battle- even the British had nearly 1,000 men.  A battle of this size and scope will be tricky to cover in a short essay like this.

The German Campaign after Dresden

As you’ll recall, before Dresden, Napoleon had, effectively, split his army into four parts.  One went north to face Bernadotte and the Allied Army of the North, one east to face Blucher and the Army of Silesia, one to Dresden to hold of Schwarzenberg and the Army of Bohemia, and himself largely in the center.  At first, Napoleon maneuvered towards Blucher, the returned to Dresden to face the Austrians.

While Napoleon won the Battle of Dresden, his subsidiary armies did not fare well.  Oudinont, looking for Bernadotte, found him on August 23 in the midst of days of rain outside Berlin.  Bernadotte held a line of fortifications in the middle of swollen rivers and lakes.  The rain broke up Oudinot’s army, making it hard to coordinate, and the rain limited bombardment.  A series of uncoordinated attacks against Bernadotte unnerved the Saxon and French conscript troops under his command, and the French retreated.  Meanwhile, on August 26th, after days of rain, and in bad weather, MacDonald attacked Blucher.  In spite of the poor weather, MacDonald sent most of his army on a flank march, out of communication, while Blucher pounded his center.  The center broke, the French flank attack never materialized, and MacDonald had to try to cross a flooding river to retreat.  The Battles of Grossberen and Katxbach put the Allies on the offensive everywhere but Bohemia.

Word got to Napoleon quickly of these defeats.  He acted quickly to deal with them.  He dispatched Ney to the north, to take over for Oudinot and reinforce the army there.  He stepped up his pursuit of Schwarzenberg- if he could defeat the Army of Bohemia, he might be able to knock Austria out of the war.  However, his advanced guard, under Vandamme, met the Austrian rearguard (Consisting mostly of Russians) under Benningsen at Kulm.  The French were nearly annihilated, with Vandamme falling prisoner.  Napoleon took long enough to recover that Schwarzenberg crossed the Erz Mountains and held the passes against Napoleon.  While this movement occurred, Ney met the Prussians outside of Dennewitz.  Ney got caught up too much in the fighting, personally, and lost control of the battle.  When Bernadotte appeared on the field, the French broke and fled.

Meanwhile, Blucher marched on Napoleon’s flank, while Napoleon tried to deal with crossing into Bohemia. Blucher’s approach reduced much of the pressure on Schwarzenberg.  Schwarzenberg left his rearguard to face Napoleon, while he marched west to outflank the French.  Upon Blucher’s approach, Napoleon tried to outflank Schwarzenberg, only to find that the Austrian was ahead of him.  After this, Napoleon learned that Macdonald’s men were near munity.  He put his army back in Dresden, put down the munity, them brought everyone back to Dresden… where he just waited.  Meanwhile, Bernadotte began marching to cut off his supplies to the north west, Blucher rotated to Napoleon’s immediate north, and Schwarzenberg crossed into Silesia again to Napoleon’s West. 

Eventually, Napoleon decided that he could no longer hold Dresden, and that it was important to concentrate his army again and prevent Bernadotte and Blucher from uniting.  He abandoned Dresden to Benningsen, and took off after Blucher.  However, he could not keep up with the Prussian, who united with Bernadotte and began marching west, to cut off Napoleon’s further westward retreat.  Meanwhile, Benningsen and Schwarzenberg followed Napoleon to the south.  Eventually, Napoleon turned to his depot at Leipzig, to resupply his men.  Leipzig also lay at several crossroads, allowing his army to concentrate once more.  After surveying the fields around Leipzig, and with time and space running out, Napoleon decided Leipzig would be the place to fight.

October 16th, 1813

While Napoleon was, effectively, trapped between two armies, Schwarzenberg’s and Blucher’s, the area around Leipzig offered a lot of advantaged to the French.  Numerous rivers come together near Leipzig, as do many highways.  This would, effectively, cut the battlefield into zones and sectors.  By controlling the bridges, and by operation on shorter interior lines, Napoleon would be much more able to move troops around as needed than the Allies.  He decided to open the battle by concentrating against the Austrians in the south, while leaving Ney and Marmont to face the Prussian in the north.  By defeating Schwarzenberg, he hoped to win the day before more Allied troops could show up.  Napoleon commanded about 220,000 men, against 380,000 Allies.

The action in the north was spirited, if not the major focus of the fighting on the 16th.  Napoleon hoped that Blucher would largely stay out of the fighting while he made his effort against the Army of Bohemia, but, that rather underestimated the old Prussian.  At about 1000, hearing the roar of cannon to the south, Blucher decided to launch an attack.  At best, he’d crush the French rearguard and attack Napoleon from the rear. Failing that, he hoped to draw forces from the south to relieve pressure on the Austrians.  This battle fell between the towns of Mockern and Weideritzsch.  On the western edge of the battlefield lay a swampy forest, anchoring both armies.  Initial skirmishes lasted through the morning, and at about 1400, Blucher launched coordinated attacks against Mockern and Weideritzsch.  Both villages changed hands several times, with the French left slowly giving way.  However, the village of Mockern held strong,  At 1700, the Prussians made one last assault, first with infantry, then with cavalry against a fortified town.   The Prussian horse, to the surprise of everyone, broke the French position and drove Marmont’s men down to Leipzig itself, leading to a collapse of the French north by dusk.

Directly to the west of the city, Schwarzenberg launched an attack against the villiage of Lindenau.  Needing to hold the route open, Napoleon deployed a full corps to hold the area open, tying down those troops against repeated Austrian attacks all day.

The action in the south opened with an Allied attack on the city of Wachau.  By 0800, the Russians had taken the town, only to be tossed out around 0930.  A redoubled Allied attack retook the city, only, to be driven out again by 1100.  Another Allied attack, to the east of Wachau, aimed at the town of Mark-Kleeberg, met a similar fate, with early success driven back by 1100 that day.  At about 1000, the Austrian flank attacks, under Klenau in the east and Merveldt in the west, attempted to move forward to support the attacks in Wachau.  These attacks also slowed, and then were driven back at about 1100.  The Allies committed their main reserves to prevent a total collapse from local counterattacks.

A lull in the battle followed, as Napoleon gathered his strength to prepare for a counterattack.  He reinforced MacDonald to the east, who began an attack against Klenau at about 1400.  Klenau’s exhausted troops began to buckle under the pressure, and Napoleon unleashed Murat and the Guard against the Austrian center, which began to give way quickly.  A series of Allied cavalry charges flooded the area, trying desperately to slow the French attack.  French cavalry fended off most of these attacks, but it wasn’t until 1700 that the French were prepared to launch a final attack against the Austrian right and center.  By this time, however, the Austrians and Russians were rested, reinforced and dug in.  The final French efforts to win the day failed in the dying light, despite their desperate ferocity.

October 17th was mostly a calm day.  Both sides rested after the sharp fighting, and received reinforcements.  Another French corps, with 14,000 men, came into the city.  However, 140,000 more Allied troops arrived- Benningsen’s Army of Poland and Bernadotte’s Army of the North.  Napoleon would have around 200,000 men for the second day of the battle, against 425,000 Allies.

October 18th.

Low on men, and even lower on ammunition, Napoleon shortened his lines tighter around Leipzig itself.  He called for an armistice, agreeing to retreat out of Silesia, giving up his claim to fortresses in and near Prussia for the right to retreat back to Erfurt.  The Allies refused, intending to end his reign that very day.

Schwarzenberg ordered a general attack.  He formed, effectively, six mini-armies to make the attack.  The first was to attack Connewitz, and consisted of troops that had fought on the 16th.  The second went into Probstheida, and included the troops that had fought the hardest on the 16th.  The third consisted of fresh troops under Benningsen, and would round the flank Napoleon’s southern force.  The fourth, under Bernadotte, would cross the Pathe River and link the two Allied armies.  The Fifth, in the north, under Blucher, would attack down at try to take the city while linking up with Benradotte.  The 6th would attack at Lindenau, and complete the encirclement of Napoleon.

The Allied attacks all kicked off a 0900 in good weather.  In the North, Blucher applied steady pressure against the French arrayed against him, and pushed to the walls of the city itself.  This aided Bernadotte, who arrived a little later into positon, and drove back the covering force that tried to slow him up. Napoleon slowly peeled reserve formations out of the south to these positions, trying to shore up his defenses long enough to stop the Russians and Austrians in the south, but, by the end of the day, Prussians and Swedes would be ready to attack the city itself.

In the south, Napoleon made his main stand.  The second force, under Barclay de Tolly, made an initial attack at 0800, but slowed down to let Benningsen, to the east, catch up.  At about 1000, the two made a series of coordinated attacks.  These were initially successful, taking the town of Probsthedia.  However, the French, under Murat, made a series of efforts to retake the town, including an attack led personally by Napoleon, thoughtout the rest of the morning and afternoon, but, ultimately, to no success.  However, these efforts held up Benningsen, allowing the French to give ground slowly until Bernadotte arrived, and the three armies on the eastern arch advanced throughout the afternoon an evening.

The decisive action ended up forming aroun Connewitz.  The initial Austrian attack went reasonably well, taking villages surrounding the town.  However, Napoleon committed large numbers of troops to stop the attack, leading to a quick French counterattack throughout the mid and late morning.  Even the Austrian commander, Hesse-Homberg, was wounded in the attack  Schwarzenberg then flooded the area  with troops, including the men who were supposed to attack Lindenau.  This led to a renewed series of attacks, which recaptured the outlying manors and villages, but never actually made it to Connewitz.  As the fighting died down in the south, the French held many of the key villages and towns, but as a high cost. 

However, all was not well in the French Army.  At the end of the 18th, the Saxon Army, long stalwarts of the French, decided they would join the Allies.  Other German contingents were beginning to start their own muntinies, too.  Nor was there anything Napoleon could do about the fundamental numbers issue- he had no more men he could call on.  He was out of ammunition, and he was basically out of food, too.  His defense had managed to hold a line of retreat out through Lindenau open, and, during the night of October 18/19, began evacuating the army through that line out of the city. 

At about 0800 on the 19th, the Allies realized Napoleon was trying to get away, and began an assault on the city itself.  Oudinot’s corps, assigned to the rearguard, held off the allies all morning in desperate street to street fighting.  Ney kept the road open to the west against Allied attack.  However, the troops assigned to demolish the one bridge the French used to retreat misjudged the time, and demolished it before Oudinot’s troops could escape, trapping them and forcing their surrender.  Hundreds died trying to swim the river to escape, including Marshal Pontinowski.

While the Allies were too disorganized to pursue immediately, it was largely the end of the French army in Germany.  Napoleon didn’t stop running until he reached the safety of the Rhine, where he wintered for 1813/14.  His German, Polish and Italian allies abandoned him.  Murat fled for Naples, to hold on against Allied attack.  The Confederation of the Rhine broke up, and the principalities began aligning themselves with the Prussians and Austrians. 

As one might expect, the casualties were quite high.  15,000 French died, another 30,000 were wounded and 30,000 taken prisoner.  Most of the wounded were left behind and taken prisoner as well.  The Allies suffered about 18,000 dead and 37,000 wounded, but at least could tend to their own men. 

Meanwhile, Wellington had marched into southern France, and had already taken Bayonne for a supply base.  1814 would lead to war in France itself, and the end, for the first time, of Napoleon’s reign.  

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