Sixth Coalition
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The Sixth Coalition (1812-1814) was a coalition of Austria, Prussia, Russia, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and a number of German States against Napoleonic France. After Napoleon's disastrous defeat in his invasion of Russia, the continental powers who had been humiliated by Napoleon in various wars saw a final opportunity to defeat him and joined the coalition which previously consisted only of the Russians and British in addition to Spanish and Portuguese rebels in Iberia. With their armies reorganized along more Napoleonic lines, they defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Leipzig in Saxony in October 1813, and mounted a successful invasion of France in 1814, forcing Napoleon to abdicate and restoring the House of Bourbon.
2.5 million troops fought in the conflict and the total dead amounted to as many as 2 million (some estimates suggest that over a million died in Russia alone). It included the battles of Smolensk, Borodino, Lützen, Dresden and the epic Battle of Nations - the largest of the Napoleonic wars, and indeed the largest battle in Western history up until the First World War. The final stage of the campaign, the defence of France, saw the Emperor temporarily return to his former talent as he fought off immensely numerically superior armies in the Six Days Campaign, which many say was the best campaign of his entire career. Ultimately his earlier mistakes in Russia and Germany were too great to be rectified at this late stage and the Allies occupied Paris, forcing the emperor to abdicate.
In 1812 Napoleon invaded Russia to compel Emperor Alexander I to remain in the Continental System and to remove the imminent threat of Russian invasion of Poland. The Grande Armée, consisting of 650,000 men (270,000 Frenchmen and many soldiers of allies or subject areas), crossed the Niemen River on June 23 1812. Russia proclaimed a Patriotic War, while Napoleon proclaimed a Second Polish war, but against the expectations of the Poles who supplied almost 100,000 troops for the invasion force he avoided any concessions toward Poland, having in mind further negotiations with Russia. Russia maintained a scorched earth policy of retreat broken only by the Borodino on September 7, when the Russians stood and fought. This was bloody and the Russians were eventually forced to back down, thus opening the road to Moscow. By September 14, Moscow was captured although by this point it had been largely abandoned by the Russians and prisoners had been released from Moscow’s prisons to inconvenience the French. Alexander I refused to capitulate and with no sign of clear victory in sight Napoleon was forced to withdraw from Moscow after the governor, Prince Rastopchin, ordered the city burnt to the ground. So the disastrous Great Retreat began, with 370,000 casualties largely as a result of starvation and the freezing weather conditions, and 200,000 captured. By November only 27,000 fit soldiers were among those who crossed the Berezina River. Napoleon now left his army to return to Paris and prepare a defence of Poland from the advancing Russians. The situation was not as dire as it might at first have seemed — the Russians had lost around 400,000 men and their army was similarly depleted. However they had the advantage of shorter supply lines and were able to replenish their armies with greater speed than the French.
Meanwhile, in the Peninsular War, at Vitoria (June 21 1813), Arthur Wellesley's victory over Joseph Bonaparte finally broke the French power in Spain. The French were forced to retreat out of Spain, over the Pyrenees.
Seeing an opportunity in Napoleon's historic defeat, Prussia re-entered the war. Napoleon vowed that he would create a new army as large as that he had sent into Russia, and quickly built up his forces in the east from 30,000 to 130,000 and eventually to 400,000. Napoleon inflicted 40,000 casualties on the Allies at Lützen (May 2) and Bautzen (May 20 - 21). Both battles involved total forces of over 250,000 — making them some of the largest conflicts of the wars so far.
The belligerents declared an armistice from June 4 1813 (continuing until August 13) during which time both sides attempted to recover from approximately quarter of a million losses since April. During this time Allied negotiations finally brought Austria out in open opposition to France. Two principal Austrian armies were deployed, adding an additional 300,000 troops to the Allied armies in Germany. In total the Allies now had around 800,000 frontline troops in the German theatre with a strategic reserve of 350,000 being formed to support the frontline operations.
Napoleon succeeded in bringing the total imperial forces in the region up to around 650,000 — although only 250,000 were under his direct command, with another 120,000 under Nicolas Charles Oudinot and 30,000 under Davout. The Confederation of the Rhine furnished Napoleon with the bulk of the remainder of the forces with Saxony and Bavaria as principal contributors. In addition, to the south Murat's Kingdom of Naples and Eugène de Beauharnais's Kingdom of Italy had a combined total of 100,000 men under arms. In Spain an additional 150-200,000 French troops were being steadily beaten back by Spanish and British forces numbering around 150,000. Thus in total around 900,000 French troops were opposed in all theatres by somewhere around a million Allied troops (not including the strategic reserve being formed in Germany). The figures are however slightly misleading as most of the German troops fighting on the side of the French were unreliable at best and on the verge of defecting to the Allies. It is reasonable to say that Napoleon could count on no more than 450,000 troops in Germany — which meant he was outnumbered by about two to one.
Following the end of the armistice Napoleon seemed to have regained the initiative at Dresden, where he defeated a numerically-superior allied army and inflicted enormous casualties, while the French army sustained relatively few. However the failures of his marshals and a slow resumption of the offensive on his part cost him any advantage that this victory might have secured him. At the Battle of Leipzig in Saxony (October 16–19, 1813), also called the "Battle of the Nations", 191,000 French fought more than 450,000 Allies, and the French were defeated and forced to retreat into France. Napoleon then fought a series of battles, including the Battle of Arcis-sur-Aube, in France, but was steadily forced back against overwhelming odds.
During this time Napoleon fought his Six Days Campaign, in which he won multiple battles against the enemy forces advancing towards Paris. However he never managed to field more than 70,000 troops during this entire campaign against more than half a million Allied troops. At the Treaty of Chaumont (March 9) the Allies agreed to preserve the Coalition until Napoleon's total defeat. The Allies entered Paris on March 30 1814. Napoleon was determined to fight on, even now, incapable of fathoming his massive fall from power. During the campaign he had issued a decree for 900,000 fresh conscripts, but only a fraction of these were ever raised and Napoleon's increasingly unrealistic schemes for victory eventually gave way to the reality of the hopeless situation. Napoleon abdicated on April 6. However, occasional military actions continued in Italy, Spain and Holland throughout the spring of 1814.
The victors exiled Napoleon to the island of Elba, and restored the Bourbon monarchy in the person of Louis XVIII. The Treaty of Fontainebleau was signed and the Congress of Vienna was held to redraw the map of Europe.
See also
- Napoleonic Wars
- First Coalition
- Second Coalition
- Third Coalition
- Fourth Coalition
- Fifth Coalition
- Seventh Coalition
External links
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