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Announcement:
Announcing
a new Greenhill book on the Napoleonic Wars:
Napoleon and the Battle of the Nations
The crucial three-day battle of Leipzig, known to posterity as the Battle
of the Nations, was the biggest battle of the Napoleonic Wars. There
were five hundred and sixty thousand soldiers on the battlefield.
The battle of Leipzig was also one of Napoleon's worst defeats, and
it sealed the fate of his empire. Now in a superbly narrated new account
of the battle, entitled 1813: Leipzig - Napoleon and the Battle of
the Nations, Digby Smith describes the events of 17, 18 and 19 October
1813, and sets down not only the detail and brutality of the fighting,
but tells the significance of the battle.
At the height of the battle Napoleon fielded more than 200,000 men against
an Allied force - which included contingents from Russia, Austria, Prussia
and Sweden - of some 360,000 soldiers. Cornered against the River Elster,
Napoleon, outnumbered and suffering heavily from the fire of 1,400 Allied
guns, was soundly defeated, had to relinquish control of Germany and
was forced back into France.
Digby Smith's evocative account of Leipzig concentrates on the ferocious
fighting, charts the fortunes of the struggle and underlines the incredible
human cost of the battle. Using a wealth of first-hand accounts, many
of them previously unpublished in English, he brings the dramatic struggle
to life and demonstrates just what it was like for the average French,
German, Russian, Prussian, Austrian or Swedish soldier to take part
in the Battle of the Nations.
Digby Smith, also known to Napoleonic enthusiasts as Otto von Pivka,
is a highly respected scholar of this period and author of numerous
books including the major reference works The Greenhill Napoleonic
Wars Data Book and Napoleon's Regiments: Battle Histories of
the Regiments of the French Army, 1792-1815. Figures for casualties
in battles are always contentious. In this extract from the book Digby
Smith presents information on 'the cost of the battle', and says:
"The haul of prisoners and booty that fell into Allied hands was immense.
According to Zelle, the combat of 19 October cost the French 6,000
dead and wounded. III Corps lost 122 officers and 2,742 men dead and
wounded and forty-seven guns; VI Corps lost 500 all ranks including
twenty-four officers, of whom twenty were in Friedrich's division;
XI Corps lost fifty-seven officers and 1,200 men; the Poles 1,000;
Durutte 200; and Lauriston fourteen officers and 200 men. 'On the
Allied side we know only that Borstell's 5th Division of von Bulow's
III (Prussian) Corps, Army of the North, lost twenty-three offices
and 860 men; Hessen Homburg's 3rd Division scarcely fewer; Langeron
at least 2,000; Sacken about the same; and Bennigsen about 1,000.
This brings the Allied loss for the 19th to 7,000.'
Zelle continues:
"As
Napoleon had 308 guns and 120,000 men on 20 October, his total loss
for the period from 14th-19th October (without counting the 20,000
sick and wounded in Leipzig) was 70,000 men - of these 50,000 dead
and wounded - and 400 guns. About 5-6,000 deserted, 14,000 were captured,.
French sources give 19,300 dead and 33,800 wounded.
One marshal (Poniatowski) had been killed, and two others wounded,
as were four commanding generals; five generals of division had been
killed, seven wounded; ten brigadiers killed, thirty wounded; five
adjutant commandants were killed, eight wounded. Colonels - nine killed,
thirty-four wounded; field officers - thirty-five killed, 125 wounded.
The
following generals - some wounded - were captured after the Elster
bridge was destroyed: French: Reynier and Lauriston, Arle, d'Aubry,
d'Augeranville, Bertrand, Bony, Charpentier, Chassot, Harlet, d'Hennin,
Mandeville, Oppeln, Pierot, Valory and Vissot.
Confederation
of the Rhine: Prinz Emil von Hesen, the Markgraf von Baden, the Saxons
von Gersdorf, von Zeschau and von Bose; von Jett, von Rauchhaupt,
von Scheffer and von Stockhorn.
Poles:
Axamitowski, Bronikowski, Grabowski, Kaminiecki, Krasinski, Rautenstrauch
and Uminski.
Croats:
Silvarish.
The
Prussians lost at least 20,000 (Kleist lost 9,500, Bulow certainly
more than 2,000, Yorck 7,400). I thus assess the real Allied loss
from 14th-19th October at 72,000 men (not counting about 4,000 prisoners).
A French source gives 32,509 dead and 45,000 wounded. Ten generals
were dead, nineteen wounded one captured. In all, 120,000 lives must
have been lost at Leipzig either directly or due to wounds (and sickness?).
Official
Allied lists show the following losses from 16-19 October (after the
Austrian Kriegs-Archiv, Quistorp, and Plotho) and speak volumes for
the relative efforts of the nations involved:
Officers
Men
Russians 865 21,740
Prussians 498 15,556
Austrians 419 14,541
Swedes 12 203
_____________
Totals 1,794 52,040
Expressed
by armies, the losses were as shown below:
Officers
Men
Army of Bohemia 1,114 36,469
Army of Silesia 487 9,779
Army of Poland 70 3,000
Army of the North 123 2,792
The
raging flood of the war now ebbed quickly away to the west, leaving
sorely-tried Saxony and its capital - in the centre of a wide belt
of nearly total devastation - to lick its wounds and try to recover
from the trauma. This healing process took years. Firstly there were
the wounded and the sick of the armies that filled the city and every
surrounding village: to these were added, very rapidly, thousands
of civilians sick from weakness and from disease resulting from the
presence of so many corpses, the lack of food and shelter, and the
absence of hygiene, medical facilities, doctors and medicine.'
Digby Smith continues:
The
effects of the Allied victory at Leipzig were truly momentous. It
had smashed Napoleon's stranglehold on Europe for good, opened up
European markets for external international trade for the first time
since the Berlin Decree six years earlier, destroyed the Confederation
of the Rhine, liberated Germany, catapulted Prussia into the ranks
of the Continent's leading powers, and laid the basis for the final
defeat and dethronement of Napoleon and the restoration of the Bourbons.
The
blind faith which thousands had previously placed in the Emperor also
began to fade. On 22 October, Murat, his own brother-in-law, had a
secret meeting with the Austrian General Graf Mier near Erfurt, to
sound out the possibility of changing sides and retaining his crown.
Napoleon learned of this, but only after Murat had left to return
to Naples.
In
his memoirs, written on Elba, Napoleon's account of these momentous
events has little in common with the actual events of October 1813:
'The
armies clashed on the fields of Leipzig on the 16th October. The
French army was victorious. The Austrians were defeated and thrown
out of all their positions. A commander of one of the enemy corps,
the Graf von Meerveldt, was captured.
On
the 18th October, the victory was won by the French, despite the
defeat suffered by the Duke of Ragusa (Marmont) on the 16th. Then
the entire Saxon army, with sixty guns, went over to the enemy at
one of the most vital points in the army's position and turned their
guns on the French. Such base treachery was bound to bring about
the ruin of the French army and to give all the honours of the day
to the Allies. With half my guard I rushed up, defeated the Saxons
and the Swedes and threw them out of their positions.
The day of the 18th came to an end. The enemy fell back along the
entire battlefield, which remained in French hands. During the night,
the French army moved to place itself behind the Elster and to open
up direct communications with Erfurt, from when it awaited the ammunition
resupply which it needed. In the days from the 16th to the 18th
it had fired over 150,000 cannon shots.
The
treachery of various corps of the Confederation of the Rhine, who
had been contaminated by the example of the Saxons on the previous
day, and the accident at the Leipzig bridge, which was demolished
too soon, caused the still-victorious army extremely heavy losses.
The French army crossed the Saale at Weissenfels, where it was to
reorganise itself and await ammunition resupply from Erfurt, which
was available in adequate quantities, when we heard news of the
Austro-Bavarian army. This had made forced marches and had reached
the Main. I had to move against them. On 30th October they made
contact with the French army, and fought a battle in front of Hanau,
on the way to Frankfurt. Although the Austro-Bavarian army was strong
and was in a good position, it was completely defeated and thrown
out of Hanau, which was occupied by Count Bertrand. The French army
continued its withdrawal over the Rhine and crossed this river on
the 2nd November.'
Some
victory!
1813: Leipzig - Napoleon and the Battle of the Nations is the
first full scale and detailed book on this climactic battle for nearly
a century. It is a major new work on Napoleonic history, and will be
the focal book of the International Napoleonic Fair, at which Digby
Smith will be lecturing (and autographing copies of the book)
6 x 9in; 352 pages; 32 illustrations; 8 maps;
Price: £19.95
To be published in February 2001.
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