Battle of Lützen (1813)

• 1. Introduction

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  On the 2nd of May 1813, near the town of Lützen in Saxony, Napoleon Bonaparte rode among disordered conscripts on a battlefield that was going badly wrong. His right flank had been hit without warning, his corps commanders were under crushing pressure, and one of his marshals had just been wounded. A man who had conquered most of Europe was now personally leading frightened young soldiers back into the fight, exposing himself to cannon fire again and again. How had the greatest general of his age ended up in this position, rallying raw recruits on a field he nearly lost? And why did the victory he finally scraped together plant the seeds of his eventual ruin?

• 2. A Shattered Empire Rebuilt

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  Prussia signed a secret treaty of alliance with Russia on the 27th of February 1813, barely weeks after the last French soldiers had staggered back from Moscow. On the 6th of March, Berlin dissolved its alliance with Napoleon, and Frederick William III declared war on France one day later. Europe sensed an opening.

  Napoleon understood what was at stake. Through the spring of 1813, Marshal Eugene de Beauharnais was fighting skirmishes across Germany while trying to hold ground with the battered remnants of the Russian campaign. Back in France, Napoleon drove a mass conscription effort, raising a new army of roughly 200,000 men. These were largely untested recruits, nothing like the veterans buried in Russian snow. By late March, they began crossing into Germany to plug the gaps.

  The Allies had their own problems. The Tsar's advisors confidently told him no major French action would come before June. Generals Blücher and Wittgenstein disagreed. They pressed westward toward the Saale River, debating whether to retreat behind the Elbe or attack Napoleon's army as it crossed. Retreat looked dangerous: the French already held the key Elbe bridgeheads at Magdeburg and Wittenberg. The bolder option won. Between the 19th and the 24th of April, Russian reinforcements, including Miloradovich's corps and the Russian Guard, moved to the front near Dresden. The Tsar and the King of Prussia arrived with them. When Marshal Kutuzov fell gravely ill, the Tsar appointed Wittgenstein commander-in-chief. By the time Napoleon crossed the Saale on the 30th of April, the Allies had concentrated 48,000 infantry, 25,000 cavalry, and over 500 guns between Leipzig and Altenburg, aimed squarely at his right flank.

• 3. The Trap at Lützen

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  Napoleon departed Mayence on the 26th of April, stopping at Wurzburg and Fulda before reaching Weimar, where Marshal Ney was already waiting with fresh divisions. The plan was large in ambition: cross back over the Elbe, march on Berlin, pin the Allies between the Elbe and the Saale, and eventually relieve the besieged fortresses on the Vistula at Danzig, Thorn, and Modlin. He could only muster 145,000 men at Weissenfels because the XII Corps and the Württemberg division were still two days' march behind.

  Faulty reconnaissance nearly wrecked everything before a shot was fired. Napoleon believed the Russo-Prussian army was scattered between Dessau and Zwickau, with its main body near Altenburg. He had no idea Wittgenstein's force was concentrating almost on top of his right flank. Ney's III Corps was deployed with three divisions around Lützen and one division in the four villages to the southeast, Kaja, Kleingörschen, Grossgörschen, and Rahna, while another sat a mile to the west at Starsiedel.

  Wittgenstein's own reading of the French position was almost equally flawed. He thought Napoleon's corps were strung out in a long column from Weissenfels to Leipzig and that the right flank was guarded only by a weak detachment at Kaja. His plan was to hit that flank, destroy the detachment, sweep through to Lützen, and drive the leading French columns onto the marshes of the Elster. Orders for the 2nd of May spelled out exactly when each unit should cross which stream. Blücher was to have his right column across the Flossgraben near Werben by six in the morning, his left half an hour before that. The Russian Guard would hold at Pegau and Storkwitz as a reserve. On paper, the timing looked precise. On the ground, it started unraveling almost immediately.

• 4. Fire and Confusion

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  Blücher launched his attack late, leading his corps forward around 11:30. When his men reached Grossgörschen, he found a full French division rather than the light covering force his intelligence had promised. He stopped to call up his artillery and begin a bombardment. That pause handed General Souham just enough time to occupy Grossgörschen, while General Girard gathered his men at Starsiedel to wait for Marmont.

  The general engagement opened shortly after noon. Souham secured Grossgörschen while Girard held at Starsiedel. Then Souham was forced back under heavy artillery fire, and it was Marshal Ney, arriving covered in dust, who steadied the line long enough for Girard to march to Souham's support.

  Napoleon was at Markranstädt with Lauriston's V Corps when the cannon fire told him something had gone badly wrong to the right. He issued a cascade of orders: III Corps would hold at all costs; Marmont would support its right; Bertrand would threaten the Russian left; Macdonald would redirect his XI Corps southward to attack the Russian right; Lauriston would counter-march his remaining forces toward Markranstädt; the Imperial Guard would move at once to the Kaja area. General Kleist was evacuating Leipzig by 13:00.

  Napoleon reached the battlefield at 14:30. Ney's corps was shaken and close to breaking. Bertrand had stopped his advance after spotting Miloradovich moving toward Zeitz. Marmont was under heavy pressure. Napoleon rode directly among the disordered conscripts, personally pulling men back into formation and leading them in charges. Marmont later wrote that this was probably the day of Napoleon's entire career on which he incurred the greatest personal danger in battle, exposing himself repeatedly while leading the defeated men of III Corps back to the charge. Still he refused to release the Guard prematurely, insisting that the battle turned about Kaja.

• 5. Mistakes and the Guard

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  Blücher was wounded during the fighting, and command of the Prussian forces passed to General Yorck. Wittgenstein hesitated to commit Yorck's corps without the Russian reserves, which were slow to come up. Tsar Alexander, convinced the battle was going well, held back Tormasov's Guards and grenadiers, planning to lead them personally in a decisive final stroke. That decision left Wittgenstein increasingly exposed.

  At 16:00 the Russian reserves at last arrived, and Yorck launched a new assault. The Prussians pushed close to Kaja before a counterattack by the Young Guard, backed by III Corps, pushed them back. Fighting for the villages and the ridge resumed its full violence.

  By 17:30, the French flanking movements were almost finished. Macdonald captured Eisdorf on Ney's left; Bertrand linked with Marmont's right. Napoleon now had numerical superiority concentrated in the center. At 18:00 he ordered the grand attack. General Drouot advanced 70 cannons to near point-blank range southwest of Kaja. The Young Guard formed four assault columns of four battalions each, backed by the Old Guard, the Guard Cavalry, and whatever remained of III Corps. The order went out: "La Garde au feu." Rahna, Kleingörschen, and Grossgörschen fell back into French hands. The Allied line dissolved into confusion.

  Nightfall arrived before Napoleon could press his advantage. The French lost 19,655 men, 2,757 killed and 16,898 wounded, including one of Napoleon's marshals. The Prussians lost at least 8,500 killed or wounded. The Russians lost 3,500 killed, wounded, or missing, though the real figure may have been higher. By nightfall, the Tsar and Wittgenstein were not convinced they had actually lost. They retreated only after word reached them that Leipzig had fallen.

• 6. Victory That Backfired

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  Eighteen days after Lützen, Napoleon won again at Bautzen, but lost another 22,000 men, twice the casualties the Russo-Prussian army suffered there. Two bloody victories in less than three weeks convinced him to accept a temporary armistice with the Tsar and Frederick William III on the 4th of June.

  That armistice, intended as breathing space, proved more valuable to the Allies than to France. Britain used the pause to provide Russia and Prussia with war subsidies totalling seven million pounds. The financial support stiffened the Coalition's ability to continue the fight. Austria, watching from the sidelines, took the armistice as its signal to join the Coalition once it expired. That decision shifted the balance of power against Napoleon decisively.

  Napoleon later reflected that the June 4 truce, bought at the cost of Lützen and Bautzen, was the undoing of his power in Germany. The man who directed that final assault at Kaja, Gerhard von Scharnhorst, one of the most capable Prussian generals of his generation, was wounded during the battle while serving as Wittgenstein's Chief of Staff. His wound was minor, but the hasty Allied retreat prevented proper treatment. A fatal infection set in, and Prussia lost one of its finest military minds before the war's end.