6 x 9 in.  352 pages.  32 illustrations, 8 maps.

The crucial three-day battle of  Leipzig, known to posterity as the Battle of  the Nations, was the biggest battle of the Napoleonic Wars. There were five hundred and sixty thousand soldiers on the battlefield.

The battle of Leipzig was also one of Napoleon's worst  defeats, and it sealed the fate of his empire. Now in a superbly narrated new account of the battle, entitled 1813:  LEIPZIG - NAPOLEON AND THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS, Digby Smith describes the events of 17, 18 and 19 October 1813, and sets down not only the detail and brutality of the  fighting, but tells the  significance of  the battle.

At the height of the battle Napoleon fielded more than 200,000 men against an Allied force - which  included contingents from Russia, Austria, Prussia and Sweden - of some 360,000 soldiers. Cornered against the River Elster, Napoleon, outnumbered and suffering heavily from the fire of 1,400 Allied guns, was soundly defeated, had to relinquish control of Germany and was forced back into France.

Digby Smith's evocative account of Leipzig concentrates on the ferocious fighting, charts the fortunes of the struggle and underlines the incredible human cost of the battle. Using a wealth of  first-hand accounts, many of them previously unpublished in English, he brings the dramatic struggle to life and demonstrates just what it was like for the average French, German, Russian, Prussian, Austrian or Swedish soldier to take part in the Battle of the Nations.

Digby Smith, also known to Napoleonic enthusiasts as Otto von Pivka, is a highly respected scholar of this period and author of numerous books including the major reference works THE GREENHILL NAPOLEONIC WARS DATA BOOK and NAPOLEON'S  REGIMENTS:  BATTLE HISTORIES OF THE REGIMENTS OF THE FRENCH ARMY, 1792-1815.

Figures for casualties in battles are always contentious. In this extract from the book Digby Smith presents information on 'the cost of the battle', and says:

"The haul of prisoners and booty that fell into Allied hands was immense. According to Zelle, the combat of 19 October cost  the French 6,000 dead and wounded. III Corps lost 122 officers and 2,742 men dead and wounded and forty-seven guns; VI Corps lost 500 all ranks including twenty-four officers, of whom twenty were in Friedrich's division; XI Corps lost fifty-seven officers and 1,200 men; the Poles 1,000; Durutte 200; and Lauriston fourteen officers and 200 men. 'On the Allied side we know only that Borstell's 5th Division of von Bulow's III (Prussian) Corps, Army of the North, lost twenty-three officers and 860 men; Hessen Homburg's 3rd Division scarcely fewer; Langeron at least 2,000; Sacken about the same; and Bennigsen about 1,000. This brings the Allied loss for the 19th to 7,000.'

Zelle continues:

"As Napoleon had 308 guns and 120,000 men on 20 October, his total loss for the period from 14th-19th October (without counting  the 20,000 sick and wounded in  Leipzig) was 70,000 men  - of  these 50,000 dead and wounded - and 400 guns.  About 5-6,000 deserted, 14,000 were captured. French sources give 19,300 dead and 33,800 wounded.

One marshal (Poniatowski) had been killed, and two others wounded, as were four commanding generals; five generals of division had been killed, seven wounded; ten brigadiers killed, thirty wounded; five adjutant commandants were killed, eight
wounded. Colonels - nine killed, thirty-four wounded; field officers - thirty-five killed, 125 wounded.

The following generals - some wounded - were captured after the Elster bridge was destroyed:

French: Reynier and Lauriston, Arle, d'Aubry, d'Augeranville, Bertrand, Bony, Charpentier, Chassot, Harlet, d'Hennin, Mandeville, Oppeln, Pierot, Valory and Vissot.

Confederation of the Rhine: Prinz Emil von Hesen, the Markgraf von Baden, the Saxons von Gersdorf, von Zeschau and von Bose; von Jett, von Rauchhaupt, von Scheffer and von Stockhorn.

Poles: Axamitowski, Bronikowski, Grabowski, Kaminiecki, Krasinski, Rautenstrauch and Uminski.

Croats: Silvarish.

The Prussians lost at least 20,000 (Kleist lost 9,500, Bulow certainly more than 2,000, Yorck 7,400).

I thus assess the real Allied loss from 14th-19th October at 72,000 men (not counting about 4,000 prisoners). A French source gives 32,509 dead and 45,000 wounded. Ten generals were dead, nineteen wounded one captured.

In all, 120,000 lives must have been lost at Leipzig either directly or due to wounds (and sickness?).

Official Allied lists show the following losses from 16-19 October (after the Austrian Kriegs-Archiv, Quistorp, and Plotho) and speak volumes for the relative efforts of the nations involved:
 

	Officers	Men
Russians	865	21,740
Prussians	498	15,556
Austrians	419	14,641
Swedes	12	203
	____	_____
Total	1,794	52,040

Expressed by armies, the losses were as shown below:
 

	Officers	Men
Army of Bohemia	1,114	36,469
Army of Silesia	487	9,779
Army of Poland	70	3,000
Army of the North	123	2,792

The raging flood of the war now ebbed quickly away to the west, leaving sorely-tried Saxony and its capital - in the centre of a wide belt of nearly total devastation - to lick its wounds and try to recover from the trauma. This healing process took years. Firstly there were the wounded and the sick of  the armies that filled the city and every surrounding village: to these were added, very rapidly, thousands of civilians sick from weakness and from disease resulting from the presence of so many  corpses, the lack of food and shelter, and the absence of hygiene, medical facilities, doctors and medicine.'

Digby Smith continues:

The effects of  the Allied victory at Leipzig were truly momentous. It had smashed Napoleon's stranglehold on Europe for good, opened up European markets for external international trade for the first time since the Berlin Decree six years earlier, destroyed the Confederation of the Rhine, liberated Germany, catapulted Prussia into the ranks of the Continent's leading powers, and laid the basis for the final defeat and dethronement of Napoleon and the restoration of the Bourbons.

The blind faith which thousands had previously placed in the Emperor also began to fade. On 22 October, Murat, his own brother-in-law, had a secret meeting with the Austrian General Graf Mier near Erfurt, to sound out the possibility of changing sides and retaining his crown. Napoleon learned of this, but only after Murat had left to return to Naples.

In his memoirs, written on Elba, Napoleon's account of these momentous events has little in common with the actual events of October 1813:

'The armies clashed on the fields of Leipzig on the 16th October. The French army was victorious. The Austrians were defeated and thrown out of all their positions. A commander of one of  the enemy corps, the Graf von Meerveldt, was captured.

On the 18th October, the victory was won by  the French, despite the defeat suffered by the Duke of Ragusa (Marmont) on the 16th. Then the entire Saxon army, with sixty guns, went over to the enemy at one of the most vital points in the army's position and turned their guns on the French. Such base treachery was bound to bring about the ruin of the French army and to give all the honours of the day to the Allies. With half my guard I  rushed up, defeated the Saxons and the Swedes and
threw them out of their positions.

The day of the 18th came to an end. The enemy fell back along the entire battlefield, which remained in French hands. During the night, the French army moved to place itself behind the Elster and to open up direct communications with Erfurt, from when it awaited the ammunition resupply which it needed. In  the days from the 16th to the 18th it had fired over 150,000 cannon shots.

The treachery of various corps of the Confederation of the Rhine, who had been contaminated by the example of the Saxons on the previous day, and the accident at the Leipzig  bridge, which  was demolished too soon, caused the still-victorious army  extremely heavy losses.

The French army crossed the Saale at Weissenfels, where it was to reorganise itself and await ammunition resupply from Erfurt, which was available in adequate quantities, when we heard news of the Austro-Bavarian army. This had made forced  marches and  had reached the Main. I had to move against them. On 30th October they made contact with the French army,  and fought a battle in front of Hanau, on the way to Frankfurt. Although the Austro-Bavarian army was strong and was in a  good position, it was completely defeated and thrown out of Hanau, which was occupied by Count Bertrand. The French army continued its withdrawal over the Rhine and crossed this river on the 2nd November.'

Some victory!

1813:  LEIPZIG - THE BATTLE OF THE NATIONS is the first full scale and detailed book on this climactic battle  for nearly a century. It is a major new work on Napoleonic history, and will be the focal book of the International Napoleonic Fair, at which Digby Smith will be lecturing (and autographing  copies of  the book) (in February 2001).

Greenhill Books/U.S. Distributor Stackpole Books  ISBN 1-85367-435-4

Click here to order 1813: Leipzig - Napoleon and the Battle of Nations!