Leipzig 1813

Merveldt And His Mission— He Gets The Last Laugh

The date was October 16, 1813 and La Bataille de Leipzig was about to begin. In the Saxon countryside surrounding the city of Leipzig, a series of smaller battles were about to commence in such places as Lindenau and Wiederitzsch; Wachau and Markleeburg; and also at the small town of Dölitz, where Poniatowski’s Poles and a few Frenchmen under General Lefol defended a narrow front of assault friendly terrain behind the Pleisse river flanked by virtually impassable marshes. The chateau the Poles occupied on their side of the river, anchored the French defense. No doubt, the large Austrian force arrayed on the coalition lines looked at that edifice that they hoped to capture as more the candidate to be their coffin as opposed to a glorious objective. Many of the Austrian troops silently viewed the impending battle as a foolish exercise, only promising to lead to another Austrian defeat like so many before. “Why would our commanders ask us to do the impossible,” they thought. There was a collective shudder from the Austrians gathering as they pondered their immediate future in this world. The troops looked at the chateau and then looked at the general and his aide mounted on their horses nearby the various assembled soldiers. In the various German dialects and other languages common to the Hapsburg realm, variations on familiar obscene and profane remarks—though in somewhat muted tones-- were directed towards the overall Austrian commander as the men prepared to march—possibly—to their frightening fates. The general, though the smell of battle was in the air, was preoccupied by memories of. his previous meetings with his Emperor hundreds of miles away in Vienna. The meetings which discussed his real purpose of his presence near this little town just outside of Leipzig…. Too often, military aficionados of the Age of Napoleon have a struggling understanding of the influence of diplomatic intrigues upon the time. The era is replete with the stories of both men and women who influenced the events of the day even more so than the victory of one corps over another. La Bataille de Dölitz was the source of such an intrigue. The French certainly had their share of generals who were as capable as diplomats as they were as tacticians and strategists. Whether it was Rapp and Sebastiani; or Savary and Lauriston; the French generals knew how to use a diplomatic pouch as easily as a sabre. Though it was rarer event among the Coalition generals, men of similar talents could also be found. Merveldt, commander of the Austrian 2 nd Army Abteilung arrayed before Dölitz on October 16, 1813 was such a man. Contemporary accounts of the Battle of Leipzig have not been kind to Maximillian, Count von Merveldt, the Westphalian professional general who was in the service of the Hapsburg emperor, Francis I. After all, he was captured early in the Dölitz portion of the Battle of Leipzig by wandering into a group of Polish and Saxon cavalry early in the contest, and was not around to savor in the great victory that Schwartzenberg and his band of brigands and mercenaries stumbled into at Leipzig. The story which had circulated around the Coalition campfires was that the myopic Merveldt, had initially thought that the posse of Poles that had captured him were Hungarians and that he had mistakenly identified the foes as friends. Merveldt is then taken behind the French lines and escorted to meet the Emperor.

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