The Battle of Leipzig

OCT 19 1813 · 12:00

The Battle of Leipzig, 16 to 19 October 1813. Vladimir Moshkov, oil on canvas, 1815. The Battle of the Nations broke Napoleon's hold on Germany. Place: Leipzig, Kingdom of Saxony Figures: Napoleon, fighting his last great continental battle · Karl Philipp Schwarzenberg, allied commander-in-chief · Tsar Alexander I, King Frederick William III of Prussia, Emperor Francis I of Austria, watching from a rise · Crown Prince Bernadotte of Sweden, formerly a French marshal Völkerschlacht After the Russian disaster (see [[invasion-of-russia-1812]]) Napoleon rebuilds a field army of conscripts and veterans in the spring of 1813. He wins at Lützen and Bautzen in May but cannot finish the Russo-Prussian forces. An armistice in summer collapses when Austria joins the Sixth Coalition in August. By October the coalition has converged on Saxony with roughly 350,000 troops against Napoleon's 200,000. The battle opens on 16 October south of Leipzig and ends on 19 October with the French retreat across the Elster. The numbers exceed any previous battle in European history: roughly 600,000 combatants, perhaps 100,000 killed or wounded across the four days. Contemporaries name it the Völkerschlacht, the Battle of Nations, because of the multiplicity of armies engaged (Russians, Prussians, Austrians, Swedes, Saxons who defect mid-battle, Bavarians, Württembergers, Poles fighting for Napoleon, Italians, French). March on Paris The retreat is botched. A French sapper destroys the bridge over the Elster prematurely, stranding 30,000 troops including Marshal Józef Poniatowski (made marshal of France three days earlier, drowned in the retreat). The Confederation of the Rhine dissolves within weeks; Saxony, Bavaria, and the other German states change sides. Napoleon retreats across the Rhine in November with perhaps 70,000 effectives. The coalition follows. The 1814 campaign in France is one of Napoleon's most brilliant defensive efforts, won at small scale and lost at large. The allies enter Paris on 31 March 1814. Napoleon abdicates at Fontainebleau on 6 April and is exiled to Elba. The first phase of the Westphalian restoration begins. Leipzig is the European battle that ends the French revolutionary-imperial expansion; in the size of forces engaged, it will not be exceeded on European soil until the First World War. Video: Animated reconstruction of the four-day Battle of the Nations that broke French Germany.