150,000 men and 300 cannon, and there were a further so,ooo on the sick
list. Food supplies were running out, and the whole of Germany except
for Saxony had gone over to the enemy. To husband his resources
Napoleon decided to shorten his front and was contemplating breaking
off all contact with the enemy when they changed tactics. Leaving
Dresden alone, they decided to concentrate at Leipzig to cut French lines
to the Rhine. Napoleon moved swiftly to take up his favourite centre
position around Leipzig, enabling him to move either against the
combined forces of Blucher and Bernadotte ( 140,000) or Schwarzenberg
and Bennigsen (r8o,ooo). But he made the bad error of leaving St-Cyr in
Dresden with a large garrison, again offending against the principle of
concentration of fo rce. Hanging on to Dresden at this stage in the
campaign made no sense militarily, though possibly politically, as it was
the capital of Saxony, his one remaining ally. But the time fo r caution was
long gone. The Emperor needed to assemble every available man for one
last battle.
The game of military tag went on for three weeks, with Bernadotte,
BlUcher, MacDonald and Napoleon all chasing each other at various
times: the French Army wore itself out with marching and counter
marching while achieving nothing. Napoleon's dilemma was that if he
pursued Blucher and Bernadotte too far, he would leave Leipzig
unguarded. At the same time, because the Allies always avoided battle
with him, he could spend forever probing out of Leipzig without making
contact. His one chance came on 5 October when BlUcher and Bernadotte
linked up. The Swedish monarch favoured withdrawal over the Elbe, but
Blucher was adamant that they must join Schwarzenberg and the Army
of Bohemia; the three armies therefore finally converged on Leipzig.
Based at Duben from 10-14 October, Napoleon was once again sunk in
the deepest gloom. Fain reported that he would sit at his desk with an
abstracted expression, doodling on a piece of paper.
The French now faced the obvious danger of being trapped between
three armies instead of being able to defeat the enemy piecemeal.
Napoleon finally ordered a general concentration of his forces at Leipzig,
but still kept a substantial garrison in Dresden. Once again it was the
hard-driving Blucher who ultimately persuaded the Allies to take on
Bonaparte in a final battle; both Bernadotte and Schwarzenberg were
highly dubious. So it was that 16o,ooo French troops faced twice that
number of Allies in a titanic three-day struggle that ever afterwards bore
the title 'the Battle of the Nations'.
The geography of Leipzig determined the course of the battle.
Napoleon had the advantage of interior lines to offset his numerical
marcin
(Marcin)
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