Siege of Mainz (1814)
The last siege of Mainz took place from January 3rd to May 4th, 1814 during the "Winter Campaign 1814" of the Wars of Liberation for the Mayence , which had been French since 1797 . In this dispute, 30,000 Russian soldiers, who were supported by 9,000 Germans from February, besieged the Mainz fortress under the command of Louis Alexandre Andrault de Langeron . The siege ended with the surrender of the defenders under the governor Charles Antoine Morand (1771-1835). A free withdrawal of the French was negotiated.
After the defeat of the Grande Armée near Leipzig and Hanau in 1813, the surviving soldiers fled in panic back to the Rhine and across the Mainz ship bridge into the city. They brought the so-called Typhus de Mayence with them, which is estimated to have killed over 16,000 French soldiers and almost 2,500 Mainz residents (10% of the population!). The Prefect Jeanbon St. André , who died on December 10, 1813, was among the victims . The garrison town , weakened in this way , was enclosed on the left bank of the Rhine after the Silesian Army crossed the Rhine - Blücher moved from the right to the left bank of the Rhine near Kaub in January 1814 , Sacken near Mannheim . With the arrival of the 5th German Army Corps on February 18, the siege ring was completed on both sides of the Rhine. Over three months, the remaining 27,000 French under General Morand resisted the siege of the most important eastern fortress of the empire, until they - after the fall of Paris , the abdication of Napoleon and the swearing-in on the new King Louis XVIII. - on May 4, 1814 , had to evacuate Mayence and the Kastel bridgehead on the right bank of the Rhine .
On the same day the 5th German Army Corps moved in under the leadership of Duke Ernst I of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha .
Individual evidence
- ^ Mainz from 1793 to 1814 Institute for Historical Regional Studies at the University of Mainz
- ^ Fr. Forster: History of the Wars of Liberation 1813, 1814, 1815, p. 1107
- ↑ Constanze Martin: "Mainzer Question" 1814-1816 Institute for Historical Regional Studies at the University of Mainz
- ^ Farewell to the “Grande Armée” Mainzer Allgemeine on May 5, 2014