Battle of Dresden
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- For the bombing of Dresden, see Bombing of Dresden in World War II.
| War of the Sixth Coalition |
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| Lützen – Bautzen - Grossbeeren - Katzbach - Dresden – Kulm - Dennewitz - Leipzig - Hanau – La Rothiere - Champaubert – Montmirail – Château-Thierry – Vauchamps - Montereau - Craonne - Laon - Arcis-sur-Aube - Paris |
The Battle of Dresden was fought on August 26-27, 1813, and resulted in a French victory under Napoleon Bonaparte against forces of the Sixth Coalition of Austrians, Russians and Prussians under Field Marshal Schwartzenberg. However, Napoleon's victory was not as complete as it could have been. Substantial pursuit was not undertaken after the battle, and the flanking corps was surrounded and forced to surrender a few days later at the Battle of Kulm.
Prelude
On August 16, Napoleon had sent Marshal Saint-Cyr's corps to fortify and hold Dresden in order to hinder allied movements and to serve as a possible base for his own maneuvers. He planned to strike against the interior lines of his enemies and defeat them in detail, before they could combine their full strength. He had some 300,000 men against allied forces totaling over 450,000. But the Coalition avoided battle with Napoleon himself, choosing to attack his subordinate commanders instead (see the Trachenburg Plan). On August 23, at the Battle of Grossbeeren, south of Berlin, Crown Prince Charles of Sweden (formerly French Marshal Bernadotte, Napoleon's own Marshals) defeated his old comrade Marshal Oudinot. And on August 26, Prussian Marshal Graf (Count) von Blücher defeated Marshal MacDonald at Katzbach.Battle
On the same day as Katzbach, Marshal Schwarzenberg, with over 200,000 men of the Austrian Army of Bohemia (and accompanied by the Austrian Emperor, the Russian Tsar and the Prussian King) attacked Saint-Cyr. But Napoleon arrived quickly and unexpectedly with reinforcements to repel this assault. Outnumbered 2-1, Napoleon attacked the following day (August 27), turned the allied left flank, and won an impressive tactical victory. Then suddenly, he had to leave the field (some speculate due to a fit of epilepsy* ) and the failure to follow up on his success allowed Schwarzenberg to withdraw and narrowly escape encirclement. The Coalition had lost some 38,000 men and 40 guns. French casualties totaled around 10,000.Aftermath
General Vandamme, acting mainly on his own initiative but without support from Saint-Cyr or the other Marshals, pursued the retreating Schwarzenberg, as he knew his Emperor would have wished. This resulted in the Battle of Kulm three days later.Note
- Some of Napoleon's officers noted he was "suffering from a violent cholic, which had been brought on by the cold rain, to which he had been exposed during the whole of the battle of the 27th." [1]
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