War of the 6th Coalition: 1813
Napoleon's
battles
Day
Losses
Battle
Led by
0
2.200
Möckern
Eugène
Lützen
27
22.000
Bautzen
45
20.000
51
1.400
Haynau
Maison
56
2.200
Luckau
Oudinot
109
3.000
Großbeeren
Oudinot
112
30.000
Katzbach
Macdonald
Dresden
112
10.000
115
25.000
Kulm
Vandamme
123
23.000
Dennewitz
Ney
133
1.500
Göhrde
Pécheux
145
2.100
Altenburg
Lefebvre
146
700
Rosslau
Ney
150
1.900
Wartenburg
Bertrand
Leipzig
163
79.000
Hanau
177
4.500

Day: days gone since 5 April 1813, Battle of Möckern
Losses: French soldiers killed+wounded+captured
Red dot: French tactical victory

War of the 6th Coalition: 1814
Napoleon's
battles
Day
Losses
Battle
Led by
0
700
Bar-sur-Aube(1)
Mortier
Brienne
5
3.000
Rothière
8
4.000
9
?
Lesmont
Lagrange
Champau.
18
600
Montmirail
19
2.000
Thierry
20
400
Vaucham.
22
600
Mormant
25
600
Montereau
26
2.000
35
3.100
Bar-sur-Aube
Macdonald
36
250
Tresmes
Macdonald
37
1.300
Julien
Augereau
39
3.000
Laubressel
Macdonald
Craonne
43
5.400
Laon
45
6.500
47
700
Mâcon
Musnier
Reims
48
600
56
1.000
Limonest
Augereau
Arcis
56
3.000
61
10.000
Champenoise
Augereau
Dizier
62
600
66
5.000
Paris
Joseph

Day: days gone since 24 Jan 1814, Bar-sur-Aube(1)
Losses: French soldiers killed+wounded+captured
Red dot: French tactical victory

The Trachenberg Plan was a campaign strategy created by the Allies in the German Campaign of 1813 during the War of the Sixth Coalition, and named for the conference held at the palace of Trachenberg.[1] The plan advocated avoiding direct engagement with French emperor, Napoleon I, which had resulted from fear of the emperor's now legendary prowess in battle. Consequently, the Allies planned to engage and defeat Napoleon's marshals and generals separately, and thus weaken his army while they built up an overwhelming force even he could not defeat. It was decided upon after a series of defeats and near disasters at the hands of Napoleon at Lützen, Bautzen and Dresden. The plan was successful, and at the Battle of Leipzig, where the Allies had a considerable numerical advantage, Napoleon was soundly defeated and driven out of Germany, back to the Rhine.

Development

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Former Marshal of the Empire Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, later Crown Prince Charles John of Sweden, co-author of the Trachenberg Plan

The plan held elements of a number of other plans developed over the past two years by men such as Russian generals Karl Wilhelm von Toll, Barclay de Tolly and former French General, and Napoleon's erstwhile rival, Jean Victor Moreau, who was in correspondence with Charles John and en route to Sweden in summer 1813. However, the final plan was primarily an amalgam of two prior works that had been developed in parallel: the Trachenberg Protocol and the Reichenbach Plan,[2] created by Crown Prince Charles John of Sweden (formerly Napoleon's Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte) whose experience with the tactics and methods of the Grande Armée, as well as personal insight on Napoleon's strategies, proved invaluable, and the Austrian chief of staff of the Sixth Coalition, Joseph Radetzky von Radetz.

Charles John had given a great deal of military advice to Tsar Alexander I of Russia during the 1812 Russian Campaign (after having turned down Alexander's offer of generalissimo of the Russian armies) on how to defeat the French invasion, and was able to see the successful practical outcomes of some of his theories and strategies that had been used by the Russians.[3] Charles John refined his strategies over the next year, applied them to the probable theater of operations of Northern Germany, and presented them to Alexander and Frederick Wilhelm III of Prussia at the Trachenberg Conference held on July 9-12, 1813 during the Truce of Pläswitz. The Allied sovereigns, after modifications to take into account the various policy considerations necessary to keep the disparate coalition partners happy, adopted Charles John's proposals as the basis of the general Coalition campaign plan.[4] Meanwhile, Radetzky and the Austrians had been developing their own campaign plan in parallel, despite not officially joining the Sixth Coalition until August 12, 1813, based on the presumed theater of Saxony and Northeast Germany with a final decisive battle as its climax, the details of which folded well into the protocol agreed to at Trachenberg. The combined, modified version of the two prior campaign plans became known as the Trachenberg Plan.[5][6][7]

See also

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Attrition warfare against Napoleon

Notes

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  1. ^ Leggiere, Michael (2015). pp. 51–54
  2. ^ Leggiere, Michael (2015). pp. 51–60
  3. ^ Barton, Dunbar Plunkett (1925) pp. 40-43. John Murray, London.
  4. ^ Scott, Franklin D. (1935) Bernadotte and the Fall of Napoleon. Pp. 88-90. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
  5. ^ Leggiere, Michael (2015). p. 62
  6. ^ Barton, Dunbar Plunkett (1930) pp. 283–284
  7. ^ Scott, Franklin D. (1935) Bernadotte and the Fall of Napoleon. P. 90. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.

References

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  • Barton, Sir Dunbar Plunket (1930). The Amazing Career of Bernadotte 1763–1844, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston. [ISBN missing]
  • Barton, Sir Dunbar Plunket (1925). Bernadotte: Prince and King 1810-1844, John Murray, London.
  • Chandler, David G (1966). The Campaigns of Napoleon Volume II, Macmillan Company, New York. [ISBN missing]
  • Las Cases, Emmanuel-Auguste-Dieudonné (1890). Memoirs of the Life, Exile, and Conversations of the Emperor Napoleon, Volume III, Worthington Company, New York. [ISBN missing]
  • Leggiere, Michael V (2015). Napoleon and the Struggle for Germany: The Franco-Prussian War of 1813 Volume II, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. [ISBN missing]
  • Leggiere, Michael V (2014). Blücher: Scourge of Napoleon, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman. [ISBN missing]
  • Palmer, Alan (1990). Bernadotte: Napoleon's Marshal, Sweden's King, John Murray, London. [ISBN missing]
  • Scott, Franklin D. (1935) Bernadotte and the Fall of Napoleon, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.