Battle of the Göhrde

Monument from 1839 to the Göhrd battle

date	September 16, 1813
place	near Göhrde in Lower Saxony
output	Coalition victory

Parties to the conflict
France 1804 France	Prussia Kingdom Prussia Russia Kurhannover Russian Empire 1721 Electorate of Braunschweig-Lüneburg
Commander
France 1804 Marc Pécheux	Russian Empire 1721 Count Wallmoden
Troop strength
3,000 men	12,300 men
losses
1,000 men	unknown

The Battle of the Göhrde took place on September 16, 1813 during the Wars of Liberation in the area of today's Göhrde State Forest , which in 1813 belonged to the Aller department in the Kingdom of Westphalia . The allies consisted of Prussian and Russian troops, the Russian-German Legion , the Lützow Free Corps , the British and Hanoverians (including the 3rd Hussars Regiment of the King's German Legion ), the Hanseatic Legion , Mecklenburgers and Sweden under the command of Lieutenant General Graf Wallmoden together . This contingent defeated a Napoleonic division under the command of General Marc Nicolas Louis Pécheux .

The battlefield lies in the border area of today's districts of Lüneburg and Lüchow-Dannenberg between the places Oldendorf an der Göhrde and Göhrde .

prehistory

The Göhrde had belonged to the Electorate of Hanover until the time of the Napoleonic Wars , but came under French control in 1803. The formation of the Russian-Prussian alliance against France in the spring of 1813 triggered a general uprising against French rule in northern Germany. In parts of Hanover, such as in the now French department of the Elbe estuary and in the royal Westphalian department of the Aller , the French were driven out, while troops of the allies under Colonel Friedrich Karl von Tettenborn conquered the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Hamburg. However, after the victorious battle near Lüneburg , the allies had to face the advancing XIII. Corps under Marshal Davout withdraw across the Elbe and evacuate Hamburg.

After the end of the armistice in the summer of 1813, free corps like the Lützowers repeatedly attacked French supply trains, couriers and bases on the left of the Elbe, while the Wallmoden corps remained on the right of the Elbe. Up until then, Davout's Corps had been quite passive. It was limited to keeping the Wallmoden corps in check. As a measure against the skirmishes, Davout sent General Pécheux's 12th Division to the western bank of the Elbe in September . Pécheux sent a brigade with 3,000 French to Lüneburg, the task of these troops was to establish contact with the French troops in Magdeburg .

The Wallmoden corps advanced on September 15 with 12,300 men to Dömitz , crossed the Elbe, marched against the French and set up camp near Dannenberg on the Elbe.

course

The French brigade Pécheux made an advance against the allies. In the early afternoon of September 16, 1813, the battle broke out on the Steinker Heights in the community of Nahrendorf an der Göhrde. Wallmoden's units arrived one after the other and attacked the French in a poorly coordinated manner. These individual attacks were all repulsed. Only in the evening did the Hanoverian Halkett brigade manage to force the French troops to withdraw. Congreve missiles were used for the first time on German soil in the battle .

consequences

The battle of the Göhrde interrupted the axis between the XIII. Corps under General Davout with headquarters in Hamburg on the one hand and Napoleon's main army in Saxony on the other. This interrupted the French supply line from France via Hanover to Magdeburg and Berlin shortly before the Battle of Leipzig .

Commemoration

Memorial stone for a mass grave near the battlefield

Since 1839 a memorial built by King Ernst August of Hanover has been commemorating the battle with a large carved boulder . It is located north of the federal highway 216 about 2 km after Oldendorf in the direction of Dannenberg. About 1000 fallen soldiers from all nations involved in the battle were buried in a mass grave on the spot. It was rediscovered in 1985 and is hidden in the forest about 100 meters from the monument.

The freedom fighter Eleonore Prochaska became famous , who, with an unconditional will to resist Napoleon, had joined the Lützow Freikorps without being recognized. She was wounded during the battle. On October 5, 1813, she succumbed to her injuries in a private house in Dannenberg, Lange Straße 32. A sign on the house reminds of this. Two days later she was buried with military honors in the St. Anne's cemetery.

Every two years near Lüben between Dahlenburg and Göhrde, the historical battle is re-enacted on the site of what happened at that time.

In the Dahlenburg local history museum there is a diorama of the battle of the Göhrde. In the permanent exhibition, the positions of the various troops are shown using 1500 tin figures.

Photo gallery

Re-enactment of the battle by reenactors .

March
Battle re-enactment musket fire
Battle re-enactment cavalry attack
Battle re-enactment with shooters of the King's German Legion (2nd light bat.)
Battle reenactment with cannons

literature

Marc Bastet: The Battle of the Göhrde - 1813. Merlin-Verlag, Gifkendorf 2007, ISBN 978-3-87536-258-9 .
Benno Bode: The Battle of Göhrde, September 16, 1813. A home book and a festive gift, the Hanover region, especially the Göhrde communities (Bleckede, Dannenberg, Uelzen districts) and the Göhrde regiments (Dragoon Regt. Field Artillery Regt. No. 10) for the jubilee celebration in 1913. Geibel, Hanover 1913.
Ernst-August Nebig: The Battle of the Göhrde. Lützow's wild, daring hunt. In: Lower Saxony. Magazine for home and culture. Vol. 94, 1994, ISSN 0176-3385 , pp. 235-237.
Bernhard Schwertfeger: The meeting on the Göhrde on September 16, 1813. A contribution to the history of the year 1813 and the ancestral history of the infantry regiments 25, 27, 30 and 31, the Jäger battalions 3 and 4, the Uhlan regiments 6 and 8, the Hussar Regiment 9, the Field Artillery Regiments 3 and 8. In: Military weekly paper. Booklet. 1897, ZDB -ID 207819-3 , pp. 259-310.
Ernst Andreas Friedrich : The monument in the Göhrde , pp. 173-175, in: If stones could talk , Volume II, Landbuch-Verlag, Hanover 1992, ISBN 3-7842-0479-1 .
Frank Bauer, Göhrde September 16, 1813 (Small series History of the Wars of Liberation 1813–1815), Issue 23, Potsdam 2008.

Web links

Commons : Battle of the Göhrde - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

↑ Berndt Wachter: From Dannenberg and his story , 2nd edition, Dannenberg 1983

53.153136111111 10.835486111111Coordinates: 53 ° 9 ′ 11.3 " N , 10 ° 50 ′ 7.7" E

[1] Berndt Wachter: From Dannenberg and his story , 2nd edition, Dannenberg 1983