Leipzig 1813

the fury he faced could only be a large French force and not the 2500 or so Poles Dombrowski actually had…… The Desperate Year 1813 1813 was a desperate year for all of Europe: the Empire of the French was still recovering from the catastrophic military; financial and demographic events of the ill - fated Russian Campaign. The various members of the Sixth Coalition, suffering nearly as much as the French in what had been mainly Coalition defeats over the years, also had suffered heavy losses in the so-called War of German Liberation (referred to by some in Marshal Enterprises as the War of German Regression and by others as the War of German Aggression.) Politically, the struggles of 1812 and 1813 had stunned the various German states—there was no reliable guide to which way the wind might be blowing, and past bad experiences with Austrian or Prussian hegemony conflicted with nascent feelings of German nationalism. For every French victory at Bautzen or Dresden, there was a French defeat at Kulm or Dennewitz. The future for the German states, as well as the rest of Europe could be defined as….murky. However, the most desperate of all nations were the Poles. The Poles had made a tremendous psychic and human contribution to the French invasion of Russia in 1812. Depending on which source is cited, the Poles (and their Lithuanian brothers) contributed nearly 100,000 to La Grande Armee in 1812. However, when Prince Poniatowski assembled the remnants of the Polish contingent to Russia in Warsaw in 1813, there were around 5000 troops left. The French (and therefore Polish) position could not support itself east of the Elbe (except in some isolated fortresses) as the harsh winter of 1813 concluded. So the French withdrew from Poland—for the last time, leaving the Poles again subject to partition by the Coalition partners. What were the Poles to do? The Poles knew the Coalition had no place for an independent Poland in their midst, so fate once again threw them together with their French brethren like had happened so often since the French Revolution. Poles, in small groups and detachments, began to assemble with La Grande Armee, and the Poles again proved themselves to be valuable to the French cause throughout the campaigns in Germany in 1813, whether it be as “Polish” national troops, or as direct components of the French army. By the time of the Leipzig cycle of battles in October 1813, however, the French position in Germany again became untenable, and the Poles were again faced with a desperate situation. While the Polish VIII Corps under Poniatowski labored in the southern front of the French army at Leipzig, Dombrowski’s 27 th Division, acting independently and with most of its guns detached to Poniatowski, had been assigned to Ney’s northern wing and were stationed at the twin villages of Wiederitzsch. While Dombrowski had served with distinction in Russia, most of the 27 th Division had served in Spain and were considered an elite or near-elite formation. In 1810, at Fuengirola, the 300 Poles of the 4 th Polish Infantry routed a 4500 man joint Anglo-Spanish force which included the 82 nd and 89 th British regiments and supported by a British naval squadron. The British general commanding the Coalition forces was captured and spent the remainder of the war in French captivity. After striking fear into both the hearts of British and Spaniards alike, the Poles were brought to Germany in an attempt to save the French position in

Marshal Enterprises

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La Bataille de Leipzig 1813