The German campaign (German: Befreiungskriege, lit. 'Wars of Liberation') was fought in 1813. Members of the Sixth Coalition, including the German states of Austria and Prussia, plus Russia and Sweden, fought a series of battles in Germany against the French Emperor Napoleon, his marshals, and the armies of the Confederation of the Rhine – an alliance of most of the other German states, – which ended the domination of the First French Empire.
After the devastating defeat of Napoleon's Grande Armée in the Russian campaign of 1812, Johann Yorck – the general in command of the Grande Armée's German auxiliaries (Hilfskorps) – declared a ceasefire with the Russians on 30 December 1812 via the Convention of Tauroggen. This was the decisive factor in the outbreak of the German campaign the following year.
The spring campaign between France and the Sixth Coalition ended inconclusively with a summer truce (Truce of Pläswitz). Via the Trachenberg Plan, developed during a period of ceasefire in the summer of 1813, the ministers of Prussia, Russia, and Sweden agreed to pursue a single allied strategy against Napoleon. Following the end of the ceasefire, Austria eventually sided with the coalition, thwarting Napoleon's hopes of reaching separate agreements with Austria and Russia. The coalition now had a clear numerical superiority, which they eventually brought to bear on Napoleon's main forces, however very stubborn fighting by the French greatly slowed coalition efforts, and they launched incursions into Brandenburg, Bohemia, and Silesia. The French armies found initial but costly victories, depleting Napoleon's troops. The high point of allied strategy was the Battle of Nations in October 1813, where the allies succeeded in trapping and encircling Napoleon, and ended in a decisive defeat for Napoleon. The French army experienced a complete collapse and withdrew from all territory west of the Rhine, the Confederation of the Rhine was dissolved following the battle, and many of its former member states joining the Coalition which broke Napoleon's hold over Germany.
After a delay in which a new strategy was agreed upon, on the first day of 1814 the coalition invaded France, Succeeding Duke of Wellington's British army northward from Spain into southern France. Napoleon was forced to abdicate and Louis XVIII assumed the French throne. The war came to a formal end with the Treaty of Paris in May 1814.
Background
Since 1806 writers and intellectuals such as Johann Philipp Palm, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Ernst Moritz Arndt, Friedrich Ludwig Jahn, and Theodor Körner had been criticising the French occupation of much of Germany. They advocated limitations to the dynastic princes of Germany and a joint effort by all Germans, including Prussians and Austrians, to eject the French. From 1810, Arndt and Jahn repeatedly asked high-ranking figures in Prussian society to prepare such an uprising. Jahn himself organised the German League and made a major contribution to the founding of the Lützow Free Corps. These forerunners took part in the outbreak of hostilities in Germany, both by serving in the armed forces and by backing the coalition through their writings.
Even before the German campaign, there had been uprisings against French troops occupying Germany – these had broken out from 1806 onwards in Hesse and in 1809 during the Tyrolean Rebellion. These uprisings intensified in the same year under Wilhelm von Dörnberg, the initiator and commander-in-chief of the Hessian uprising, and Major Ferdinand von Schill.
Course
Following the near-destruction of Napoleon's Grande Armée in Russia in 1812, Johann Yorck – the general in command of the Grande Armée's German auxiliaries (Hilfskorps) from the Confederation of the Rhine – declared a ceasefire with the Russians on 30 December 1812 via the Convention of Tauroggen. This was the decisive factor in the outbreak of the German campaign the following year.
On 17 March 1813 – the day Emperor Alexander I of Russia arrived in the Hoflager of King Frederick William III – Prussia declared war on France. On 20 March 1813, the Schlesische privilegierte Zeitung newspaper published Frederick's speech entitled An Mein Volk, delivered on 17 March and calling for a war of liberation. In addition to newly formed Prussian units such as the Landwehr and Landsturm, the initial fighting was undertaken by volunteers such as German volunteer troops, Jäger units, Free Corps (such as the Lützow Free Corps), and troops from Russia, (from the summer of 1813 onwards) Sweden under Crown Prince Charles John (the former French marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte), and Austria under Field Marshal Karl von Schwarzenberg. Already busy with maintaining naval supremacy and fighting in the Peninsular War, Great Britain did not take any direct part in the German campaign, though it sent subsidies to support it. A single congreave rocket battery commanded by Captain Richard Bogue took part in the 1813 campaign. He was killed at Leipzig.
The War of Liberation
The Convention of Tauroggen is regarded as the starting point of Prussia's national revival. As news of the destruction of the Grande Armée spread, and the arrival of large numbers of stragglers confirmed the scale of the disaster for the Prussian people, resentment built up over years of French domination began to surface openly. King Frederick William III and his ministers faced a difficult situation; aware of France's resources and Napoleon's capacity for recovery, they did not believe their difficulties were over. Publicly disavowing the actions of the Prussian army and the secret defence societies active across northern Germany risked destabilizing the monarchy, while open attack on the retreating remnants of the Grande Armée risked severe retaliation from the new French armies being assembled on the Rhine.
But the Russians and the soldiers were resolved to continue the campaign, and working in collusion they put pressure on the not unwilling representatives of the civil power to facilitate the supply and equipment of such troops as were still in the field; they could not refuse food and shelter to their starving countrymen or their loyal allies, and thus by degrees the French garrisons scattered about the country either found themselves surrounded or were compelled to retire to avoid that fate. Thus it happened that Prince Eugène de Beauharnais, the viceroy of Italy, felt compelled to retreat from the positions that Napoleon ordered him to hold at al costs to his advanced position at Poznań (German: Posen), where about 14,000 men had gradually rallied around him, and to withdraw step by step to Magdeburg, where he met reinforcements and commanded the whole course of the lower Elbe.
Napoleon's preparations
Meanwhile in Paris, Napoleon had been raising and organizing a new army for the reconquest of Prussia. Thanks to his having compelled his allies to fight his battles for him, he had not as yet drawn very heavily on the fighting resources of France, the actual percentage of men taken by the conscriptions during the years since 1806 being actually lower than that in force in continental armies of today. He had also created in 1811–1812 a new National Guard, organized in cohorts to distinguish it from the regular army, and for home defence only, and these by a skillful appeal to their patriotism and judicious pressure applied through the prefects, became a useful reservoir of half-trained men for new battalions of the active army. Levies were also made with rigorous severity in the states of the Rhine Confederation, and even Italy was called on for fresh sacrifices. In this manner by the end of March, 200,000 men were moving towards the Elbe, and in the first fortnight of April, they were duly concentrated in the angle formed by the Elbe and Saale, threatening on the one hand Berlin and on the other, Dresden and the east.
Spring campaign
The coalition, aware of the gradual strengthening of their enemy's forces but themselves as yet unable to put more than 200,000 in the field, had left a small corps of observation opposite Magdeburg and along the Elbe to give timely notice of an advance towards Berlin; and with the bulk of their forces having taken up position near Dresden, whence they had determined to march down the course of the Elbe and roll up the French from right to left. Both armies were very indifferently supplied with information, as both were without any reliable regular cavalry capable of piercing the screen of outposts with which each endeavoured to conceal his disposition, and Napoleon, operating in mostly unfriendly territory, suffered more in this respect than his adversaries.
On 25 April, Napoleon reached Erfurt and assumed command. That same day, his troops stood in the following positions. Eugène, with Marshal Jacques MacDonald's and Generals Jacques Lauriston's and Jean Reynier's corps on the lower Saale, Marshal Michel Ney in front of Weimar, holding the defile of Kösen; the Imperial Guard at Erfurt, Marshal Auguste de Marmont at Gotha, General Henri Bertrand at Saalfeld, and Marshal Nicolas Oudinot at Coburg, and during the next few days the whole were set in motion towards Merseburg and Leipzig, in the now stereotyped Napoleonic order, a strong advanced guard of all arms leading, the remainder—about two-thirds of the whole—following as "masse de manœuvre", this time, owing to the cover afforded by the Elbe on the left, to the right rear of the advanced guard.
Meanwhile, the Prussians and Russians had concentrated all available men and were moving in an almost parallel line, but somewhat to the south of the direction taken by the French. On 1 May, Napoleon and the advance guard entered Lützen. Russian General Peter Wittgenstein, who now commanded the Coalition allies in place of Field Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov, hearing of his approach, had decided to attack the French advance guard, which he mistakenly believed to be their whole force, on its right flank, and during the morning had drawn together the bulk of his forces on his right in the vicinity of Gross-Görschen and Kaya.
Battle of Lützen
At around 09:00 on 2 May, Wittgenstein began his attack on the French advance guard in Lützen, whilst the remainder of his army was directed against Napoleon's right and rear. Just as the latter were moving off the heads of the French main body suddenly appeared, and at 11:00 Napoleon, then standing near the Gustavus Adolphus Monument on the field of Lützen, heard the roar of a heavy cannonade to his right rear. He realized the situation in a moment, galloped to the scene, and at once grouped his forces for a decisive action—the gift in which he was supreme. Leaving the leading troops to repulse as best they might the furious attack of the Prussians and Russians, and caring little whether they lost ground, he rapidly organized for his own control a battle-reserve. At length when both sides were exhausted by their efforts, he sent forward nearly a hundred guns which tore into the enemy's line with caseshot and marched his reserve right through the gap. Had he possessed an adequate cavalry force, the victory would have been decisive. As it was, the coalition retreated in good order and the French were too exhausted for a pursuit.
In the opinion of the military historian Frederic Maude writing in the Encyclopædia Britannica 11th Edition (1911) perhaps no battle better exemplifies the inherent strength of Napoleon's strategy, and in none was his grasp of the battlefield more brilliantly displayed, for, as he fully recognized, "These Prussians have at last learnt something—they are no longer the wooden toys of Frederick the Great", and, on the other hand, the relative inferiority of his own men as compared with his veterans of Austerlitz called for far more individual effort than on any previous day. He was everywhere, encouraging and compelling his men—it is a legend in the French army that the persuasion even of the imperial boot was used upon some of his reluctant conscripts, and in the result his system was fully justified, as it triumphed even against a great tactical surprise.
Battle of Bautzen
As soon as possible the army pressed on in pursuit, Ney being sent across the Elbe to turn the position of the Coalition allies at Dresden. This threat forced the latter to evacuate the town and retire over the Elbe, after blowing up the stone bridge across the river. Napoleon entered the town hard on their heels, but the broken bridge caused a delay of four days, there being no pontoon trains with the army. Ultimately on 18 May the march was renewed, but the Coalition allies had continued their retreat in leisurely fashion, picking up reinforcements by the way. Arrived at the line of the Spree, they took up and fortified a very formidable position about Bautzen. Here, on 20 May, they were attacked, and after a two-day battle dislodged by Napoleon; but the weakness of the French cavalry conditioned both the form of the attack, which was less effective than usual, and the results of the victory, which were extremely meagre.
The Coalition allies broke off the action at their own time and retired in such good order that Napoleon failed to capture a single trophy as proof of his victory. The enemy's escape annoyed him greatly, the absence of captured guns and prisoners reminded him too much of his Russian experiences, and he redoubled his demands on his corps commanders for greater vigour in the pursuit. This led the latter to push on without due regard to tactical precautions, and Blücher took advantage of their carelessness when at the Battle of Haynau (26 May), with some twenty squadrons of Landwehr cavalry, he surprised, rode over and almost destroyed General Nicolas Maison's division. The material loss inflicted on the French was not very great, but its effect in raising the morale of the raw Prussian cavalry and increasing their confidence in their old commander was enormous.