Saxons and Napoleon at the Battle of Leipzig
At the culmination of the 1813 German Campaign, a coalition of armies, led by Russian Tsar Alexander I and Austrian field marshal Karl Philipp, fought Napoleon’s forces at the Battle of Leipzig, from October 16th to 19th of that year, and decisively defeated the French emperor after he was double-crossed, mid-battle, by his Saxon allies.
Following Napoleon’s catastrophic invasion of Russia in 1812, which he entered with 685,000 men, only to come out with 120,000 cold and hungry survivors, France’s dominance of Europe was shattered, as client states and subject nations rushed to shake off French hegemony. Racing back to France, Napoleon managed to raise an army equivalent in size to the one recently lost, but of lower quality and experience than the veteran force destroyed in Russia.
Marching into Germany to reassert French dominance, Napoleon won some victories but was unable to follow them up with a decisive win because his enemies avoided battle with him, falling upon his subordinates instead, whom they defeated as often as not. By October 1813, the allies were confident enough to challenge Napoleon directly, and the showdown took place at Leipzig between Napoleon’s forces of 225,000, and a 380,000 strong coalition of his enemies.
Although outnumbered, Napoleon planned to take the offensive against the allies who sought to envelop him, as he operated along interior lines, allowing him to concentrate against enemy sectors faster than they could be reinforced by his foes, who operated on exterior lines. The battle’s first day, October 16th, ended in a hard-fought stalemate, as allied attacks were defeated, while Napoleon’s outnumbered forces were unable to achieve a breakthrough.
The 17th saw limited actions, and by the 18th, Napoleon was running low on supplies and munitions and prepared to withdraw. An attempt to negotiate an exit was rejected by the coalition, who launched a massive attack all along the line that day, which steadily pushed Napoleon’s forces back into Leipzig, and only fierce resistance prevented a breakthrough.
The bottom fell out, however, when Napoleon’s Saxon allies pulled off a well-timed double-cross on the afternoon of the 18th. With Napoleon’s forces already stretched to their limit, a Saxon corps of about 10,000 men occupying a sector of the French line suddenly abandoned their positions, and deserting Napoleon, marched out to meet the allies.
With a gaping hole now suddenly appearing in their lines, Napoleon’s forces had to abandon that entire sector, and that night, with their positions untenable, began a retreat. It went smoothly at first, but the following day, incompetence led to the premature blowing up of a bridge while it was still crowded with retreating Frenchmen, resulting in a panicked rout in which thousands were killed, while tens of thousands more were stranded on the wrong side of the destroyed bridge and captured, transforming the battle from an arguable tactical draw into a catastrophic French defeat.