In the Leipzig area there are some testimonies to the Battle of Nations from 1813 to explore. These sites are presented here. The Monument to the Battle of the Nations in the south of Leipzig is of course well known.
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The Leipzig area has repeatedly been the scene of great battles, which is due to the importance of the city so rich in resources for the war and its location as a junction of many main roads as well as the nature of the terrain favorable to combat. There are three main battles in particular that have been fought here. Two of them took place in the Thirty Years War, namely that of September 17, 1631 and November 2, 1642, but the last was the so-called Battle of the Nations from October 16 to 19, 1813 against Napoleon I, which ended the war in Germany in favor of the allies.
Procedure and certificates
There are numerous testimonies on the battlefield that recall what happened. This includes a total of 50 Apple stones, Memorial stones marking the positions of the troops. The writer Guido Theodor Apel (1811-1867) had 44 pieces set up at his own expense; six more were added later.
October 14th
The defeats of the French troops in August and September had caused Napoleon to retreat from Dresden and to unite his army on October 14 around Leipzig, against which the armies of the allies were now concentrically moving. The cavalry battle at Liebertwolkwitz on October 14th ushered in the great battles of the next few days, and the Allies saw its happy outcome as a good premonition. Nevertheless, Napoleon's situation was by no means desperate; In addition to the guards, he had 8 corps, 170,000 men plus 14,000 horsemen and 700 artillery pieces at his disposal, and even if the troops were deeply exhausted and partly discouraged, they were still commanded by a Napoleon, who was not only in command of the unity of the supreme command, but also through the speed and precision of his arrangements, was superior by his moral influence. But the illusions that arose from his underestimation of the enemy became fatal for him: he believed neither in the presence of the entire Bohemian and Silesian army nor in the decision of the allies for a great decisive battle.
15th October
On October 15, Napoleon raised his army around Leipzig: the largest part, 100,000 men, on the gently elevated terrain south of Leipzig, from Connewitz and Markkleeberg on the Pleiße via Wachau and Liebertwolkwitz to Holzhausen; Bertrand stood at Lindenau to cover the road to the west, to the north of Leipzig Marmont and Ney. The Allies initially only had 200,000 men, as the corps of Colloredo and Bennigsen were only on the march and the Crown Prince of Sweden was still holding back the Northern Army. The main mass formed the Bohemian army under Schwarzenberg, the Emperor Alexander and King Friedrich Wilhelm III. accompanied 130,000 men who advanced from Schwarzenberg. Schwarzenberg's plan was, while Gyulay set out with 20,000 men against Lindenau and Blücher von Schkeuditz against Leipzig, to advance with the main force in the swampy lowlands between Elster and Pleiße against Connewitz, to bypass the right wing of the enemy and to win Leipzig itself by the shortest route . At Alexander's objection because of the difficulty of the terrain, Schwarzenberg entrusted the execution of his plan only to the 35,000 Austrians under Merveldt and Hesse-Homburg; the corps of Klenau, Wittgenstein, and Kleist, under Barclay's command, were to attack the enemy in the front and throw them against Leipzig. In this way, the Bohemian army was divided into three battlefields separated by rivers and marshes.
October 16, day 1 of the main battle
Before dawn on October 16, the Barclay army set in motion and opened terrible gunfire at around 9 o'clock, whereupon the assault columns advanced against the French position. Kleist snatched from Poniatowski Markkleeberg; four times he was ousted from it, four times he stormed it again and maintained it with difficulty. Wachau, where Napoleon himself commanded, was conquered by Prussians and Russians under Prince Eugene of Württemberg, but had to be left again with the most terrible losses by the superior French artillery. Nor did Gorchakov and Klenau succeed in taking Liebertwolkwitz; yes, they also lost the Kolmberg, and the whole line of the allies was so weakened by the bloody fighting that they could hardly maintain their positions. The Austrian operations on Konnewitz were also unsuccessful, and seeing the fruitlessness of all further fighting, Schwarzenberg finally rushed to Barclay's aid after 12 noon with the Hessen-Homburg corps. Napoleon, encouraged by the course of the battle so far, now decided to attack himself. At 3 o'clock 8,000 French horsemen tried to break through the center of the allies at Wachau. They advanced as far as the hill on which the monarchs and Schwarzenberg were; meanwhile the steadfastness of the Russian infantry and the bravery of the allied cavalry rushing to help frustrated their undertaking. A second attack by the French infantry, the Lauriston Corps, on Güldengossa also failed. Even Napoleon could no longer lead fresh troops into the fire, and the night put an end to the murderous struggle. The Allied attack on the enemy position had failed; but a complete defeat had been averted by the death-defying, competitive bravery of the allies, leaders as well as soldiers, with a loss of 20,000 men dead and wounded.
Gyulay's attack on Lindenau, undertaken hesitantly, had meanwhile been repulsed by Bertrand. The actions of the Silesian army, however, had a decisive success. Without waiting for the Northern Army, Blücher set out on orders to cooperate in the joint attack on Leipzig and met more serious resistance from Wiederitzsch and Möckern. At the first village Dombrowski stood with a weak division, which, however, held Langeron the whole day, at the latter Marmont with 17,000 men, who had just received the order to come to the aid of Wachau, but decided upon the approach of the enemy to attack expect, and Ney asked for his assistance. York directed the attack of his corps, which was about 20,000 men strong, against the village of Möckern, which had been made a natural fortress by its location, which after several unsuccessful attacks was finally stormed with a loss of 7,000 men. Marmont's corps had been destroyed, Ney was on his way to rush to his aid, turned back again, but was too late for Wachau. York's victory at Möckern had not only broken through the French position in the north of Leipzig, but also wrested the hoped-for victory at Wachau from Napoleon by preventing two corps from intervening there with fresh forces against the Bohemian army.
October 17th, day 2 of the main battle
October 17th, a Sunday, was a day of dull silence. There was a pause in the fight, but Blücher did not rest in the north. He took Eutritzsch and Gohlis and advanced as far as Leipzig. The allies held a council of war at 2 o'clock in the village of Sestewitz; it was decided the next morning at 7 o'clock to launch the attack. Since Napoleon had not achieved a decisive victory and could not prevent the allies from renewing the attack after the arrival of 100,000 men reinforcements, while he himself only expected the Reynier corps from Düben, he would have vacated his position near Leipzig, which had become untenable and have to resume battle elsewhere. For political reasons he did not do it; he built on the fact that Emperor Franz was his father-in-law. On October 17th, through General Merveldt, who was imprisoned near Connewitz, he had the monarchs offered an armistice under conditions that would have brought him peace in August. But now the allies did not accept this offer at all and did not even appreciate an answer.
October 18, day 3 of the main battle
At 2 o'clock in the morning on October 18, Napoleon gave up the old position, which could no longer be maintained, and moved about an hour closer to Leipzig. The right wing (Poniatowski) stood on the Pleiße from Connewitz to Dölitz, the center formed a protruding angle at Probstheida, the left wing reached as far as the Parthe and was bent back as far as the confluence with the Pleiße in the north of Leipzig. The new position was occupied for four hours and only by 150,000 men, who were hardly able to cope with the combined attack of the allies, who had increased to 300,000 men with 1,400 guns. The latter were therefore also full of fresh combative spirit. Nevertheless, the battle on October 18th was hot and bloody and not everywhere victorious for the allies, as Napoleon defended his positions from the tobacco mill near Stötteritz more tenaciously and for longer than would have been necessary to merely cover the retreat. The attacking columns of the allies started moving very gradually, sometimes quite late, so that the push did not come all at once with all their might. On the left wing, the Austrians under Hessen-Homburg attacked the French positions on the right of the Pleiße in Dölitz and Lösnig, but they could not be taken. Probstheida was also asserted by the French, under Napoleon's personal leadership, against the admirable bravery attempted to assault the Barclays column. On the other hand, the right wing of the Bohemian army under Bennigsen, which did not intervene until the afternoon, took Zuckelhausen, Holzhausen and Paunsdorf, where the Saxons and 500 Württemberg horsemen under General v. Normann passed over. Bülow and Wintzingerode from the Northern Army were already involved in the storming of Paunsdorf, which had finally come up despite Bernadotte's reluctance. Langeron and Sacken from the Silesian army captured Schoenefeld and Gohlis, and when night fell the French in the east and north of Leipzig had been pushed back to the city for less than a quarter of an hour. Had Gyulay seized the Lindenau pass with sufficient armed forces, the ring around Napoleon would have been closed and his retreat would have been cut off. Meanwhile Schwarzenberg was concerned about forcing the still feared enemy into a desperate battle, and Gyulay was ordered to merely observe the enemy and to avoid an attack on Pegau. This happened, and so Bertrand was able to take the road to Weissenfels unhindered, where from noon he was followed by the convoy, the wagons with the wounded and the artillery park. During the night the army itself began to march, the guards, the cavalry, the corps Victor and Augereau, while Macdonald, Ney and Lauriston were to defend the city and cover the retreat; all points outside Leipzig were evacuated.
October 19th
Since Napoleon had taken inadequate measures for the retreat, hardly renouncing a victory, it was extremely difficult and soon came to a standstill, since only the one road to Weissenfels with several defiles was available. Meanwhile, Emperor Alexander's proposal to cross the Pleiße with part of the army and throw himself on this road, and Blucher’s offer to pursue with 20,000 cavalrymen, were rejected and only a small number of armed forces were commissioned with the same; the disposition for a new battle was issued for October 19th and, when it turned out when the morning mist fell on the 19th that this was no longer necessary, the storming of Leipzig was ordered. While the French army was pushing its way towards the Ranstädter Tor in confused turmoil and Napoleon himself had difficulty reaching the Ranstädter Steinweg, the Russians under Langeron and Sacken had conquered the Hallesche and Bülow the Grimmaische Vorstadt; Here the Konigsberg Landwehr Battalion under Major Friccius succeeded first in penetrating the city; the Peterstor in the south was taken by Bennigsen. The defenders, who initially fought with their usual bravery, finally came to a complete dissolution, and the confusion of the huddle of people huddled together in the city reached the highest degree when the Elsterbrücke in front of the Ranstädter Tor, over which the retreat road went, accidentally entered the town too early Was blown up. Many perished while fleeing, according to Marshal Poniatowski; others had to surrender prisoner of war. At about 1 o'clock the monarchs of Prussia and Russia made their entry into Leipzig to the enthusiastic cheers of the population, which for a time made us forget the terrible misery which the immense number of wounded and sick caused in the city.
Monument to the Battle of the Nations
- Viewing platform - accessible via 500 steps
- Hall in the monument (?)
- Exhibition Forum 1813 (?)
The 4 hectare facility can easily be explored on foot. Arrival: Take the S-Bahn S1, S2 and S4 from the main train station to the “Völkerschlachtdenkmal” stop.
opening hours
- April to October daily 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
- November to March daily 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Entry: Adults € 8, reduced € 6, families: € 16
Contact: Förderverein Völkerschlachtdenkmal e.V., Prager Str., Tel .: 0341 241 6870, Fax: 0341 241687137
Russian Memorial Church
The Russian St. Alexis Memorial Church is opposite the Deutsche Bücherei in Philipp-Rosenthal-Straße.
