Battle near Lüneburg

In the battle near Lüneburg on April 2, 1813, allied Prussians and Russians victorious over a French corps. The battle was the first major combat operation after the French defeated in Russia retreated behind the Elbe . Its importance lay in the moral effect on the German public as the first success of the allies in the wars of liberation that were now beginning .

Battle near Lüneburg

Part of: Wars of Liberation

date	April 2, 1813
place	Luneburg
output	Surrender of the French

Parties to the conflict
France	Russia Prussia
Commander
Joseph Morand	Wilhelm von Dörnberg Karl von Borcke
Troop strength
2800 infantry, 75 cavalry, 9 guns	1100 infantry (including 751 Prussians), over 2000 cavalry, 10 artillery (including 4 Prussian), many armed citizens
losses
500 dead and wounded, almost 2,300 prisoners, all guns	300 dead and wounded, including 46 Prussians

prehistory

After Napoleon's defeat in the Russian campaign in 1812 , a vehemently anti-French mood had spread in northern Germany, starting in East Prussia , since January 1813. It turned into an open rebellion when, in mid-February, Prussia took a clear turn against France and Russian equestrian associations swarmed over the Oder. At the end of February, the Hanseatic departments annexed by France in 1810 were also included .

Serious riots broke out in Hamburg on February 24th. After the standing legal shooting of seven arbitrarily detained increased the unrest on 2 and 3 March 1813 granted the French on March 12, the city and the rebellion spread to Lübeck and Stade about.

On March 14, the Russian cavalry leader Tettenborn appeared at the head of 1,300 Cossacks with two guns in Ludwigslust and persuaded Mecklenburg to change sides from the Rhine Confederation to the allies. He then pushed the French forces who had withdrawn from Stralsund under General Joseph Morand across the Elbe. On March 18, Tettenborn moved into Hamburg. At the same time, Russian horsemen roamed through Harburg , Stade and Lüneburg , celebrated by the residents . Lübeck and Lauenburg restored the constitutional conditions that had been eliminated by France, and the representatives of the estates of the former duchies of Bremen and Verden met to decide on arming the people. In this situation, the citizens of Lüneburg chased the French officials out of their city on March 21 and began to set up volunteer troops.

On Napoleon's orders, General Vandamme concentrated 25,000 men on the lower Weser , at the same time he was supposed to restore order in the Hanseatic departments. He arrived in Bremen on March 27th and ordered Morand to fight against insurgents and Cossacks in Tostedt . They had to withdraw to Hamburg. Now Morand received the order to carry out a punitive expedition against Lüneburg. There armed citizens and Cossacks of Benckendorff prevented an occupation of the city by General Wathier's flying column on March 28th .

The further Morand's association moved from Bremen, the more the Cossacks of the Russian Corps surrounded and attacked Benckendorff . Due to his experience in organizing uprisings and in leading the Little War , Dörnberg, who was appointed Russian general, had previously been commissioned to trigger a general popular uprising in the Hanover area , but failed to cross the Elbe during Werben on March 26th. When it became clear that Lüneburg was Morand's target, the commander-in-chief of the right wing of the Russian-Prussian armies, General Wittgenstein, sent the Dörnberg Corps across the Elbe near Lenzen on March 31 to support the rebellious city. Dörnberg quickly approached his goal from the southeast, branching off troops to build a line of retreat to Boizenburg .

Opposing forces

Morand's troops numbered about 2,800 men with nine guns, including a hastily assembled 75-man cavalry force, consisting of dragoons , chasseurs , mounted douaniers and gendarmes . The core of his corps were two battalions (out of three) of the Saxon infantry regiment "Prinz Maximilian" and a Saxon battery .

Dörnberg was an infantry battalion and ½ battery with four guns from the Prussian Borstell brigade and, among Russian troops, a jäger battalion, four hussar squadrons and two dragoon squadrons and the Benckendorff corps with three Cossack and one Bashkir squad and two guns, a total of 1,100 infantry and around 1,300 horsemen , assumed. Before the attack on Lüneburg, the Russian Patrol Corps Chernyshov , which consisted of 1,800 horsemen with four guns, united with him .

course

On April 1st, Morand attacked Lüneburg from the west. The unorganized resistance of armed citizens at the medieval city ​​gates was quickly broken, many were arrested and in the evening Morand ordered fifty of them to be shot the next day. On the same day the Dörnberg corps had come to Lüchow and that under Benckendorff to Dannenberg . Both agreed to meet Tschernyschow, whose riders had crossed the Elbe on March 31st at Bählau and were in Wustrow , to conquer Lüneburg on April 2nd.

When Cossacks appeared at the southern city gate in the early hours of the morning, Morand believed he was dealing with troops as before. He sent two guns with an infantry cover and his 75 horsemen in front of the city to drive the enemy away. His troops ran into a trap by Dörnberg: they were surprised to find themselves exposed to a massive flank attack by Russian hussars, lost their guns and were captured except for some of the riders. It was not until late in the morning that Morand realized that a regular Russian-Prussian infantry and artillery force was attacking Lüneburg with the aim of conquering it. Meanwhile a city gate was in the hands of Prussian fusiliers under Major Borcke . While fighting broke out at other city gates, armed citizens freed those sentenced to be shot and attacked enemy soldiers in the streets. Morand, already wounded, lost track of the situation and at noon ordered the retreat from the city to a French troop pausing to the west in front of the New Gate . His orders could no longer be obeyed by any of his detachments because some of them were trapped in various gates and buildings by the Prussian and Russian troops pushing into the city and were already beginning to surrender. Morand was now trying to recapture from outside. The attack, in which he was seriously wounded this time, failed after initial successes. It was here that the famous act of the Lüneburg bourgeois daughter Johanna Stegen came about . She supplied Prussian fusiliers with urgently needed ammunition, which she had recovered from an abandoned ammunition wagon on the battlefield at risk of death. In the afternoon Russian riders had surrounded Morand's troop. An honorable capitulation accepted by Dörnberg could not be enforced by the Saxon officers because of the refusal of the French to stop the fire. After an attempt to break through to retreat to Reppenstedt had failed, the Russian-Prussian artillery, reinforced with booty cannons, began to shoot down the trapped troops. At around 5 p.m. that afternoon, Morand's entire corps surrendered and was taken prisoner.

Military and political consequences

The very next day, the winners had to retreat in front of an 11,000-strong division that was advancing northwards to the left of the Elbe under Marshal Davout . Dörnberg's corps crossed the Elbe near Boizenburg with the prisoners and numerous refugees from Lüneburg, including Johanna Stegen. Morand died there on April 5th of his wounds. Davout appeared on April 4th in Lüneburg and showed unexpected leniency towards the residents by being satisfied with the imposition of a contribution and general disarmament. The announcements by Dörnberg and Tettenborn that they would shoot a captured French soldier or hang such an officer for every German who was shot dead may have contributed to the renunciation of worse . When Vandamme withdrew from the seething area between the Elbe and Aller in the coming days , Dörnberg occupied Lüneburg again on April 11th. It was not until Vandamme set out to conquer Hamburg in May that Lüneburg had to be evacuated by the allies for a long time.

The news of the destruction of Morand's corps quickly spread throughout northern Germany and sparked jubilation and confidence in victory. The mention of the cooperation of Russian and Prussian soldiers with armed citizens and, for the first time, that of a woman as a participant in the fight was unusual. The innovative character of the war, the preußischerseits not only of professional soldiers was out, was clearly in an obituary of Vossische newspaper for the first fallen volunteer riflemen Georg Haase, a son of the introduction of animal vaccination and the abolition of serfdom in Pomerania known agricultural reformer Georg Friedrich Haase. The Haase couple announced to the public that their son "died for the fatherland, German freedom, national honor and our beloved king"; they ended with the words: “The loss of such a child is hard; but it is a comfort to us that we too could give a son for the great holy purpose. We deeply feel the need for such sacrifices. ”Another new feature was the awarding of a similar award to officers and soldiers in the Prussian army, the first Iron Cross , by King Friedrich Wilhelm . In addition to Major Borcke, a number of officers, NCOs and common soldiers received the Iron Cross II class.

While Prussia presented itself in public as a pioneer of the liberation struggle, the role of the federal state of Saxony in the suppression of the uprising in northern Germany was badly noted. When the Saxon Foreign Minister Senff wanted Prussia and Russia to recognize Saxony's neutrality in April , his negotiating partners had to hold it against him that the soldiers of his King Friedrich August were fighting with the Prussians in the alleys of Lüneburg . The battle near Lüneburg seemed exemplary to contemporaries in terms of cause and outcome. German historiography kept this memory alive well into the 20th century.

literature

• W. Görges: Lüneburg a hundred years ago. The meeting on April 2, 1813, the first victory in the Wars of Liberation . Herold & Wahlstab, Lüneburg 1913.
• [Albert] v. Holleben (arr.): History of the spring campaign 1813 and its prehistory. First volume . ESMittler, Berlin 1904, here: The capture of Lüneburg , pp. 268–273.
• [Modest-Joanovites] Bogdanowitsch: History of the campaign in 1812 according to the most reliable sources . Volume I., Bernhard Schlicke, Leipzig 1863
• Frank Bauer: Lüneburg April 2, 1813. The liberation struggle begins (Small series history of the liberation wars 1813–1815, no. 21), Potsdam 2008.

Web links

• on the battle near Lüneburg by Frank Bauer with reproduction of a source text

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wording of the advertisement in Nicolaus Henningsen (Ed.): Preussens Aufstieg und der Befreiungskampf 1813 , Cologne, undated (1913), p. 56