Battle of Leipzig

The Battle of Leipzig (Bataille de Leipsick; Völkerschlacht bei Leipzig, ˈfœlkɐˌʃlaxt baɪ̯ ˈlaɪ̯pt͡sɪç; Slaget vid Leipzig), also known as the Battle of the Nations, was fought from 16 to 19 October 1813 at Leipzig, Saxony. The Coalition armies of Austria, Prussia, Sweden, and Russia, led by Tsar Alexander I and Karl von Schwarzenberg, decisively defeated the Grande Armée of French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. 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, making it the largest battle of the Napoleonic Wars, and the largest battle in Europe prior to World War I. Decisively defeated again, Napoleon was compelled to return 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. The French Emperor Napoleon I attempted to force Emperor Alexander I of Russia into rejoining his unpopular Continental System by invading Russia on 24 June 1812 with around 685,000 troops, and eventually entered Moscow in late 1812, following the bloody, yet indecisive Battle of Borodino. However, Alexander refused to surrender even as the French occupied the city, which was set on fire by the time of its occupation. The campaign ended in complete disaster as Napoleon and his remaining forces retreated during the bitter Russian winter, with sickness, starvation, and the constant harrying by Russian Cossacks and partisans, leaving the Grande Armée virtually destroyed by the time it returned from Russia. To make matters even worse for Napoleon, in June 1813, the combined armies of Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom, under the command 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.

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Related concepts (30)

Grande Armée

; ɡʀɑ̃d aʀme) was the main military component of the French Imperial Army commanded by Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte during the Napoleonic Wars. From 1804 to 1808, it won a series of military victories that allowed the French Empire to exercise unprecedented control over most of Europe. Widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest fighting forces ever assembled, it suffered enormous losses during the disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812, after which it never recovered its strategic superiority.

Battle of Leipzig

War of the Sixth Coalition

In the War of the Sixth Coalition (March 1813 – May 1814), sometimes known in Germany as the Wars of Liberation, a coalition of Austria, Prussia, Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Sweden, Sardinia, and a number of German States defeated France and drove Napoleon into exile on Elba. After the disastrous French invasion of Russia of 1812 in which they had been forced to support France, Prussia and Austria joined Russia, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Portugal, and the rebels in Spain who were already at war with France.