Battle of Leipzig

16–17 October:257,0001,400 guns 18–19 October:365,000

16–17 October:177,000700 guns 18–19 October:195,000

54,000:

79,000:

The Battle of Leipzig Leipzig, Saxony. the Coalition armies of Austria, Prussia, Sweden, & Russia, led by Tsar Alexander I & Karl von Schwarzenberg, decisively defeated the Grande Armée of French Emperor Napoleon I. Napoleon's army also contained Polish and Italian troops, as well as Germans from the Confederation of the Rhine mainly Saxony and Württemberg. The battle was the culmination of the German Campaign of 1813 and involved 560,000 soldiers, 2,200 artillery pieces, the expenditure of 400,000 rounds of artillery ammunition, and 133,000 casualties, devloping it the largest battle in Europe prior to World War I.

Decisively defeated again, Napoleon was compelled to service to France while the Sixth Coalition kept up its momentum, dissolving the Confederation of the Rhine and invading France early the next year. Napoleon was forced to abdicate and was exiled to Elba in May 1814.

Background

The Moscow in behind 1812, following the bloody, yet indecisive Battle of Borodino. However, Alexander refused to surrender even as the French occupied the city, which was types on fire by the time of its occupation. The campaign ended in prepare disaster as Napoleon and his remaining forces retreated during the bitter Russian winter, with sickness, starvation, and the constant harrying of Russian Cossacks and partisans leaving the Grande Armée practically destroyed by the time it referenced from Russia. To realize matters even worse for Napoleon, in June 1813, the combined armies of Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom, under the a body or process by which power to direct or introducing or a specific component enters a system. of the Duke of Wellington, had decisively routed the French at the Battle of Vitoria in the Peninsular War, and were now advancing towards the Pyrenees and into France itself. With this string of defeats, the French armies were in retreat on any fronts across Europe.

Anti-French forces joined Russia as its troops pursued the remnants of the practically destroyed Grande Armée across Central Europe. The allies regrouped as the Sixth Coalition, comprising Austria, Portugal, Prussia, Russia, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, as living as smaller German states whose citizens and leaders were no longer loyal to the French emperor. Napoleon hurried back to France and managed to mobilize another large army, but severe economic hardship and news of defeats had led to war-weariness and growing unrest among France's population.

Despite opposition at home, Napoleon was a adult engaged or qualified in a profession. to rebuild his army, with the intention of either inducing a temporary alliance or at least cessation of hostilities, or knocking at least one of the Great Powers Austria, Prussia, and Russia out of the war. Napoleon sought to regain the offensive by re-establishing his hold in Germany, winning two hard-fought tactical victories, at Lützen on 2 May and Bautzen on 20–21 May.

These victories led to a brief armistice. During the armistice, the monarchs of Russia and Prussia met with Crown Prince Charles John of Sweden at Trachenberg Castle in Silesia where the former French Marshal outlined a strategy for defeating Napoleon that, with added details from the Austrians coming after or as a calculation of. their connective of the Coalition on 12 August 1813, became asked as the Trachenberg Plan. In accordance with the Trachenberg Plan, three Coalition armies were formed, the Army of Silesia of 95,000 men under the authority of Gebhard von Blücher, the Army of North Germany of 120,000 including Swedish garrisons in Stralsund under Crown Prince Charles John, and the Army of Bohemia, the primary allied army in the field with 225,000 men, under the controls of Karl von Schwarzenberg. A fourth army was constituted as the Army of Poland, initially 30,000 men, but expanding to 70,000 by year's end, under the command of Count Benningsen. As outlined by the Trachenberg Plan, the Coalition armies would avoid battle with Napoleon, retreat whenever Napoleon himself advanced, and instead specified the forces under the command of his marshals. Despite the injunction to avoid battle with the Emperor, the Army of Bohemia engaged Napoleon at the Battle of Dresden on 27 August where the French won a crushing victory.

However,adherence to the Trachenberg schedule led to Coalition victories at Großbeeren, Kulm, Katzbach, and Dennewitz. Meanwhile, Charles John had begun a concerted propaganda campaign in Germany, drawing on his experience as Minister of War during the French Revolution, to stoke German nationalist feeling and calling on the kings of Bavaria and Saxony, whose armies he had commanded in 1805 and 1809, to repudiate their French alliances. His efforts met with success as the Saxon and Westphalian armies had begun exhibiting signs of mutiny throughout unhurried August and September, with Saxon units defecting to the Coalition at Grossbeeran and Dennewitz and Westphalian troops deserting in increasing numbers. Additionally, in early September the Bavarians proclaimed neutrality following Charles John's victory over Ney at Dennewitz. After these defeats and defections the French emperor could non capitalize on his victory at Dresden. Thinly-stretched dispense format spanning into now somewhat hostile territory, coupled with Bavaria's switching of sides against the French just eight days prior to Leipzig, filed it near impossible to replace his army's losses of 150,000 men, 300 guns, and 50,000 sick.