Battle at Dodendorf
As a skirmish at Dodendorf one is fighting between the Free Corps schillsche hunters on the one hand and the French and Westphalian troops alternatively referred. The battle took place on May 5, 1809 near Dodendorf south of Magdeburg and is to be seen as a forerunner of the wars of liberation directed against the occupation by Napoleonic France .
Starting position
French troops under Napoléon Bonaparte inflicted a serious defeat on Prussian troops in the course of the coalition wars with the battle of Jena and Auerstedt on October 14, 1806. In 1807, in the Peace of Tilsit , Prussia had to accept enormous territorial losses. Among other things, all Prussian areas west of the Elbe fell to French vassal states. Magdeburg together with the strong Magdeburg fortress now belonged to the newly formed Kingdom of Westphalia and housed a French garrison . In fact, these German areas were occupied by the French.
Ferdinand von Schill had distinguished himself in the defense of the Kolberg fortress and in 1809 commanded a Prussian troop formation with the 2nd Brandenburg Hussar Regiment . Contrary to the orders of his superiors, he withdrew from Berlin on April 28, 1809 with this troop formation and thus founded the Freikorps der Schillschen Jäger. With these he crossed the Elbe and operated west of the Elbe, among other things in the area of the Kingdom of Westphalia. On May 2, he occupied Dessau and distributed an appeal to all Germans . He called on them to join him and wage a liberation struggle against France.
Advance
In the course of May 4, 1809, Schill had received the news that the military were moving out of the Magdeburg fortress to provide the Schill Corps. In fact, the Magdeburg governor General Michaud sent the Westphalian General von Uslar with 1,100 men in the direction of the village of Dodendorf, which is about 10 km south of the fortress, to fight the Schill hunters. The Westphalian troops took up positions north of the village.
On the morning of May 5, 1809, the Schill hunters gathered near the village of Borne in the southern Magdeburger Börde to meet the expected army from the north via Bahrendorf and Sülldorf . Since the governor had doubts about the reliability of the troops, he also sent the first Westphalian line regiment under the command of Colonel Vautier to Dodendorf in the early morning of May 5th , where it arrived at around 11 a.m.
When Vautier arrived, he could already see clouds of dust returning from the direction of Sülldorf to Dodendorf from the west - caused by the advance guard of the Schill hunters. Vautier ordered an immediate regrouping of the troops. These now essentially took a rifle line west of Dodendorf. A company of grenadiers was deployed to secure the Magdeburg- Halle (Saale) road east of the village . They occupied a roadhouse south of the village and set up a gun there. A 20-man officer post was set up on a nearby hill and formed the southernmost point of the rifle chain. The northern end of the rifle chain was at the Dodendorfer mill .
On the French / Westphalian side, two companies of the French 22nd Infantry Regiment and four Westphalian infantry companies had started. They outnumbered Schill's troops ten times.
Schill's troops approaching from the west of the firing line and rallied on the west of Dodendorf on the brawn located Masch mill . Schill wanted to try to convince the German Westphalian troops to overflow. Lieutenant Stock rode to the Westphalian positions and talked to an officer. The moment Stock turned his horse, Colonel Vautier gave the order to fire. Stick was fatally hit. Nevertheless, Schill tried again to contact the Westphalen, and the second attempt also failed. Thereupon Schill ordered the attack.
The battle
The 1st Schill squadron , led by Lieutenant Diezelsky , attacked Westphalen, which formed a chain of riflemen. Lieutenant Diezelsky was fatally hit by a bullet. However, the attack by the riders was so strong that the rifle chain was pushed back right up to the village. The Westphalian infantry sought protection behind the churchyard wall of the St. Christophorus Church . From this sheltered position, the infantry succeeded in bloody repulsing the attack by the Schill riders.
At the same time, the 4th Schill Squadron, under the command of Lieutenant von Brünnow, attacked the southern positions and advanced as far as the Chaussee. The Westphalian troops fled north to the village and were pursued by the Schill hussars . French guns opened fire on the hussars.
At this time, Schill attacked the French companies north of the village with the 2nd and 3rd squadrons under the leadership of Kettenburg and Adolf von Lützow . With tactical skill, the French troops were positioned directly on a steep hill, so that some of the attackers' horses rolled over backwards. Part of the 3rd Squadron bypassed the French positions to the north, advanced quickly to the south and attacked the weaker Westphalian units in their rear.
output
Neither side succeeded in fighting for a clear military victory. In the evening Schill ordered the retreat. On the side of the Schill Freikorps, 6 officers and 83 soldiers were dead or seriously wounded. Schill had lost a third of his regiment. Major Adolf von Lützow was also a close confidante of Schill's among the seriously wounded. He was brought across the Elbe to the Prussian Schöneiche near Berlin and nursed to health in the house of the landlord's hunter; a cast iron plaque reminds of it to this day . The losses on the French and Westphalian sides were numerically even greater. Colonel Vautier was among the dead. The King of Westphalia, Jérôme Bonaparte - a brother of Napoleon - placed a bounty of 10,000 francs on Schill on the same day . The Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. strongly condemned the unauthorized action. While the battle of Dodendorf and its outcome were only of minor importance from a military point of view, the greater impact was the symbolism that was given by the fact that rioters had challenged France and its allies despite their numerical inferiority and had not been defeated. Morally, Schill was seen as the winner from a German perspective. In this respect, the battle for the coming wars of liberation was of great moral importance.
Deduction
The Schill Corps moved to Wanzleben and thus deeper into the Westphalian area. There they were warmly welcomed by Friedrich Ludwig Kühne , Mayor of the city and the canton of Wanzleben , and housed in the village and the surrounding area on the night of May 5th to 6th. Schill was a guest at Kühne and spent the night on the estate . This stay was later processed literarily in a play by Arnold Robolski .
The Schill hunters then moved on via Langenweddingen , Haldensleben and the Altmark . They later took Stralsund and were defeated while defending the city. Schill died there on May 31, 1809, only three weeks after the Battle of Dodendorf.
Personalities
As a member of the Schill Corps, the later Prussian general and military writer Karl Wilhelm von Willisen also took part in the battle as a 19-year-old .
monument
For the 50th anniversary in 1859, the people of Dodendorf put a memorial in memory of what happened, which is still preserved today. The so-called Schill Memorial is designed as a stone cross and commemorates the Prussian fallen soldiers on an attached inscription. French and Westphalian victims were not mentioned, although Dodendorf had belonged to the Kingdom of Westphalia during the events. The inscription reads: The memory of the 21 Prussians from Schill's Corps who fell here on May 5, 1809 and who rest in God. Behind the cross under the hill lie the 21 Prussian fallen soldiers and the killed horses. At some distance from the Schill monument there is an information board that provides information about the historical events.
literature
- Georg Baersch , Ferdinand von Schill's Train and Death in 1809 , p.52ff
- Frank Bauer: Schills Zug April 28 to May 31, 1809. Hope and failure of an attempt at insurrection, Small series History of the Wars of Liberation 1813–1815, no. 26, Potsdam 2009.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Arnold Robolski "Schill in Wanzleben - a time frame from the 1809" 1905th
Coordinates: 52 ° 2 ′ 29.8 ″ N , 11 ° 36 ′ 44.9 ″ E