La Bataille de Bautzen 1813

Strategic Situation Spring 1813 As the last Cossacks exited the battlefield at Lutzen on May 2, 1813, both the Prussians and Russians must have felt mildly optimistic, if somewhat incomplete. The Coalition army, under the command of General Peter Wittgenstein, had survived the incessant onslaught of the new Grande Armée, and was still was able to stagger off the battlefield in one piece. The allies survived the best the Emperor Napoleon could throw at the Coalition forces. In fact, the Coalition forces had fallen into the trap Napoleon had set for them. He had dangled Ney’s corps in front of Wittgenstein and Blucher; and they had taken the bait. But now, at the end of Lutzen, the Allies were protected by their ample surplus of cavalry as they moved away from the French further east into Saxony. Though the Emperor was left in possession of the Lutzen battlefield; despite Napoleon’s best efforts, he literally did not have the horses to bring this drama to a denouement. So what led these warring parties to where they were after Lutzen. In 1812, Napoleon had disastrously led a conquering army of roughly 600,000 into Russia— less than 15% returned—most of those mainly Prussians and Austrians. Defeated by marauding Cossacks; an angry Russian populace and one of the worst winters in history, the Emperor left the remnants of La Grande Armée on December 8, 1812 (giving military command first to Murat; who in turn gave turned over his command to Prince Eugene) and returned post-haste to Paris.

Napoleon’s 1813 Spring Campaign (Map Courtesy of Wikipedia)

Eugene parried back and forth with the Russians, now joined by the Prussians in the Sixth Coalition, and gradually found himself as far west as Magdeburg on the Elbe River in April in 1813. Eugene was defeated by the Russo-Prussian army under

La Bataille de Bautzen 1813

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