Battle of the Nations: Napoleon lost the decisive battle due to the betrayal of his soldiers

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

For four days, from 16 to 19 October 1813, a grandiose battle unfolded on a field near Leipzig, later called the Battle of the Nations. It was at that moment that the fate of the empire of the great Corsican Napoleon Bonaparte, who had just returned from an unsuccessful Eastern campaign, was being decided.

If the Guinness Book of Records had existed 200 years ago, then the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig would have entered it at once according to four indicators: as the most massive, longest in time, most multinational and most overloaded battle with monarchs. The last three indicators, by the way, have not been beaten so far.

Fateful decision

The disastrous campaign of 1812 did not yet mean the collapse of the Napoleonic empire. Having put the young conscripts under arms early and gathered a new army, Bonaparte in the spring of 1813 inflicted a series of counterattacks on the Russians and their allies, the Prussians, restoring control over most of Germany.

However, having concluded the Plesvitsky truce, he lost time, and after its end, the anti-Napoleonic coalition was replenished with Austria and Sweden. In Germany, Bonaparte's strongest ally remained Saxony, whose king Frederick Augustus I was also the ruler of the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, which was recreated on the ruins of Poland.

To protect the Saxon capital of Dresden, the French emperor allocated the corps of Marshal Saint-Cyr, he sent the corps of Marshal Oudinot to Berlin, and Macdonald's corps moved east to hide from the Prussians. This dispersal of forces was alarming. Marshal Marmont expressed concern that on the day Napoleon wins one major battle, the French will lose two. And I was not mistaken.

On 23 August, the Allied Northern Army defeated Oudinot at Großberen, and on 6 September defeated his successor, Ney, at Dennewitz. On August 26, Blucher's Silesian army defeated MacDonald at Katzbach. True, Napoleon himself on August 27 defeated the main Bohemian army of Prince Schwarzenberg, which inadvertently poked its way to Dresden. But on August 30, the retreating Bohemian army at Kulm smashed Vandam's body that had turned up at its feet. The Allied command decided to refrain from the battle with Napoleon himself, but to smash large formations separated from his main forces. When such a strategy began to give results, Napoleon decided that a general battle should be imposed on the enemy at any cost.

Writing out bizarre pirouettes of maneuvers and counter-maneuvers, Bonaparte and the Allied armies from different directions approached the point where the fate of the campaign was to be decided. And this point was the second largest city in Saxony, Leipzig.

A stone's throw from victory

By concentrating the main forces to the south and east of Dresden, Bonaparte hoped to attack the enemy's right flank. His troops stretched along the Playse River. Bertrand's corps (12 thousand) stood at Lindenau in case the so-called Polish army of Bennigsen appeared from the west. The troops of Marshals Marmont and Ney (50 thousand) were responsible for the defense of Leipzig itself and were supposed to repel Blucher's offensive in the north.

On October 16, at 8 o'clock in the morning, the Russian corps of Eugene of Württemberg attacked the French at Wachau, which crumpled the whole plan of Napoleon. Instead of routing the allies' right flank, the fiercest battles broke out in the center. At the same time, in the northwest, the Austrian corps of Giulai became more active, completely absorbing the attention of Marmont and Ney.

At about 11 o'clock, Napoleon had to throw into battle the entire young guard and one division of the old one. For a moment it seemed that he had managed to turn the tide. A "large battery" of 160 guns unleashed on the center of the Allies "a barrage of artillery fire, unheard of in the history of war in terms of its concentration," as Russian general Ivan Dibich wrote about it.

Then 10 thousand of Murat's horsemen rushed into battle. At Meisdorf, his horsemen rushed to the very foot of the hill, on which the headquarters of the allies was located, including two emperors (Russian and Austrian) and the king of Prussia. But even those still had "trump cards" in their hands.

Alexander I, having calmed down his fellow crowned monarchs, moved the 100-gun battery of Sukhozanet, Raevsky's corps, Kleist's brigade and the Life Cossacks of his personal convoy to the threatened area. Napoleon, in turn, decided to use the entire Old Guard, but his attention was diverted by the attack of the Austrian corps of Murfeld on the right flank. That's where the "old grumblers" went. They rolled out the Austrians and even took Merfeld himself prisoner. But time was lost.

October 17 was a day of meditation for Napoleon, and an unpleasant one at that. In the north, the Silesian army captured two villages and was clearly going to play the role of the "hammer" the next day, which, falling on the French, would flatten them to the "anvil" of the Bohemian army. Even worse, the Northern and Polish armies were to arrive on the battlefield by the 18th. Bonaparte had only to retreat to the seam, leading his troops through Leipzig and then ferrying them across the Elster River. But to organize such a maneuver, he needed another day.

Treason and fatal mistake

On October 18, with all four of their armies, the Allies expected to launch six coordinated attacks and encircle Napoleon in Leipzig itself. It didn’t start out very smoothly. The commander of the Polish units of the Napoleonic army, Jozef Poniatowski, successfully held the line along the Playa River. Blucher was actually marking time, not receiving timely support from Bernadotte, who was on the banks of his Swedes.

Everything changed with the arrival of Bennigsen's Polish army. The 26th division of Paskevich, which was part of it, was initially a reserve, having conceded the right of the first attack to the Austrian corps of Klenau. Paskevich later spoke of the actions of the allies very sarcastically. First, the Austrians marched in straight ranks past his troops, and their officers shouted to the Russians something like: "We will show you how to fight." However, after several grape-shot shots, they turned back and again returned in slender ranks. “We launched an attack,” they said proudly, and no longer wanted to go into the fire.

The appearance of Bernadotte was the final point. Immediately after this, the Saxon division, the Württemberg cavalry and the Baden infantry went over to the side of the Allies. According to the figurative expression of Dmitry Merezhkovsky, "a terrible emptiness gawked in the center of the French army, as if a heart had been ripped out of it." It was said too strongly, since the total number of defectors could hardly exceed 5-7 thousand, but Bonaparte really had nothing to cover the resulting gaps.

In the early morning of October 19, Napoleon's units began to retreat across Leipzig to the only bridge across the Elster. Most of the troops had already crossed when at about one in the afternoon the mined bridge suddenly flew into the air. The 30,000th French rearguard had to either perish or surrender.

The reason for the premature explosion of the bridge was the excessive fearfulness of the French sappers who heard the heroic "hurray!" the soldiers of the same division of Paskevich who burst into Leipzig. Subsequently, he complained: they say, the next night, "the soldiers did not allow us to sleep, dragged the French out of Elster, shouting:" The big sturgeon was caught. " These were the drowned officers, on whom they found money, watches, etc."

Napoleon with the remnants of his troops withdrew to the territory of France in order to continue and finally lose the fight next year, which was no longer possible to win.