Battle of Leipzig
Some 600,000 men fought at Leipzig over four days in October 1813 and the French empire in Germany ended. The situation had been transformed by Russia. The Grande Armée had ceased to exist in the retreat of 1812, Prussia had changed sides in March 1813, and Napoleon had raised a new army of conscripts — short of cavalry, which is what he had lost most of in Russia, and therefore unable to pursue or to scout. He won at Lützen and Bautzen in the spring and could not follow up, and the armistice that summer allowed the allies to bring Austria in and to agree the Trachenberg plan: avoid Napoleon personally, attack his marshals, and converge. They converged at Leipzig. He had about 200,000 men against some 360,000 by the fourth day, in a city surrounded by four allied armies, with his line of retreat over a single causeway and bridge across the Elster. The Saxon and Württemberg contingents changed sides during the battle, in one case turning their guns. The withdrawal on 19 October was orderly until a corporal blew the bridge early with some 20,000 men still on the wrong side, including Poniatowski, who drowned. French losses were around 70,000 and allied about 54,000. The Confederation of the Rhine dissolved within weeks, the allies crossed the Rhine at the end of the year, and Paris fell in March. It is called the Battle of the Nations. The monument raised on the field for the centenary in 1913 is ninety-one metres high, built of concrete faced in granite, and is the largest war memorial in Europe. It commemorates a battle in which more Germans fought against Napoleon than for him, which was not true two years earlier.
- Year: 1813 CE
- Category: Military
