Battle of the Nations near Leipzig

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Battle of the Nations near Leipzig
Battle of the Nations near Leipzig (painting by Vladimir Moschkow, 1815)
Battle of the Nations near Leipzig
(painting by Vladimir Moschkow, 1815)
date October 16-19, 1813
place Leipzig , Kingdom of Saxony
output decisive victory of the coalition
consequences Retreat of the French army behind the Rhine
Parties to the conflict

France 1804First empire France Duchy of Warsaw some states of the Rhine Confederation Italy Naples
Duchy of WarsawDuchy of Warsaw 

Italy 1805Italy 
Kingdom of NaplesKingdom of Naples 

Russian Empire 1721Russian Empire Russia Prussia Austria Sweden Supported by: United Kingdom
Prussia KingdomKingdom of Prussia 
Austrian EmpireEmpire of Austria 
SwedenSweden 

United Kingdom 1801United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland 

Commander

France 1804First empire Napoleon Bonaparte

Austrian EmpireEmpire of Austria Karl Philipp zu Schwarzenberg Michael Barclay de Tolly Gebhard von Blücher Crown Prince Karl Johann
Russian Empire 1721Russian Empire
Prussia KingdomKingdom of Prussia
SwedenSweden

Troop strength
on October 16:
190,000 men
690 cannons 		on October 16:
205,000 men
918 cannons
on October 19:
365,000 men
1500 cannons
losses

72,000 of
them:
38,000 dead and wounded
30,000 prisoners
5,000 defectors
300 guns

54,000 dead and wounded
thereof:
22,800 dead and wounded Russians
16,600 dead and wounded Prussians
14,400 dead and wounded Austrians
200 dead and wounded Swedes

Battles of the Wars of Liberation (1813-1815)
Overview of the battlefield
Illustration for the 50th anniversary of the Battle from the Gazebo , October 1863. ( Caption )
Prince Karl Philipp zu Schwarzenberg reports victory in the Battle of Nations near Leipzig to the allied monarchs. Painting by Johann Peter Krafft , 1817, Heeresgeschichtliches Museum Vienna.

The Battle of the Nations near Leipzig from October 16-19, 1813 was the decisive battle of the Wars of Liberation . The troops of the allies, mainly Russia , Prussia , Austria and Sweden , fought against the troops of Napoleon Bonaparte .

With up to 600,000 soldiers from over a dozen countries involved, this battle was probably the greatest battle in world history by the beginning of the 20th century. In this most important battle of the war of liberation against Napoleonic rule, the numerically superior allied armies of the Austrians, Prussians, Russians and Swedes brought Napoleon Bonaparte the decisive defeat that forced him to withdraw from Germany with the remaining army and without allies.

Of the approximately 600,000 soldiers involved, 92,000 were killed or wounded in the battle.

The 91 meter high Völkerschlachtdenkmal was completed in Leipzig in 1913 on the 100th anniversary . This landmark was erected near the area where the most violent fighting took place and most of the soldiers fell.

designation

Achim von Arnim was the first to name the event "Völkerschlacht" in an article in the Berlin daily Der Prussische Correspondent on October 22nd, 1813. He may have thought of the legend of the "Völkerschlacht am Birkenbaum" , which was an end-time "Völkerschlacht" in Westphalia prophesied in which "Russia, Sweden and all of the north" and "France, Italy, Spain and all of the south" will stand against each other. In the summer of 1813 the idea that this "great battle of nations" was imminent as a decisive battle against Napoleon was so common in view of the political and military situation at least in the Arnim district that he wrote it in a letter of September 14th until the end of the year 1813 predicted.

On October 25, Der Prussische Correspondent published the Ninth Army Report of the Silesian Army of October 19 , in which the reporter Karl von Müffling also described the battle as the "Battle of the Nations". As an army report in the form of a leaflet that has now been found shows, Müffling used “people's battle” instead of “people's battle”. Arnim, who was the first to publish the leaflet, has apparently added a few words to the report and, like the “People's Battle”, changed them. The newspapers of the time then reprinted Arnim's text and not that of the leaflet. Henrich Steffens , however, remembers that the approach of the Bohemian Army, observed from a distance, seized Blücher's staff with “great force”. It was compared to the Great Migration, and Müffling had already called the upcoming battle the "Battle of the Nations".

Even if other contemporaries used the word “Völkerschlacht” as early as October 1813 and it quickly established itself, it was mainly in the descriptive sense “... near Leipzig”. The official designation “Battle of Leipzig” prevailed in German journalism until the “Völkerschlacht” prevailed at the time the Monument to the Battle of the Nations was erected on the occasion of its centenary.

Due to the large number of nations involved, the battle is also known as the multi-ethnic battle .

prehistory

After Napoleon's catastrophic defeat in the Russian campaign in 1812 , General Yorck , who commanded the Prussian auxiliary corps, concluded the Tauroggen Convention with the Russian General Diebitsch on December 30, 1812 . This stopped the fighting between Prussia and Russia. The Austrian auxiliary corps under General Schwarzenberg concluded an armistice with the Russians on January 30, 1813, after Austria had previously declared to Napoleon that it would not increase the strength of the troop contingent for France under any circumstances. On February 28, Russia and Prussia signed an alliance treaty and on March 16 they declared war on France. On February 24, there had already been uprisings in Hamburg against the French occupation, Russian troops marched into Hamburg on March 18, but soon had to vacate the city again. On March 19, the Russian Tsar and the Prussian King called in a proclamation to the Germans , including the German princes in particular, to join the fight against France and declared the Confederation of the Rhine dissolved. Only Mecklenburg followed this call, all other rulers still feared Napoleon. Austria remained neutral and tried to mediate a peaceful solution to the conflict, but made it clear that it would intervene militarily if the negotiations should fail. Saxony signed an alliance with Austria on April 26th.

On April 29 and 30, the French troops crossed the Saale at Merseburg and Weissenfels. At that time they had 150,000 men. At that time, there were only 43,000 Prussians and 58,000 Russians. After the battle of Möckern on April 5, 1813, the Saxon king changed sides and subordinated his army to Napoleon. In the battles that followed, both sides suffered great losses. An armistice was agreed on June 4th, and Russian and Prussian troops withdrew to Silesia. On June 24, Austria concluded an alliance with Russia and Prussia, but this would only be valid if negotiations with Napoleon failed. For further negotiations, the Austrian Chancellor Metternich met Napoleon in Dresden on June 26th, and the armistice was extended to August 10th. On August 10, Austria broke off negotiations because no agreement could be reached and Napoleon obviously only wanted to buy time. On August 12, Austria declared war on France. The coalition forces, led by Austrian Field Marshal Karl Philipp zu Schwarzenberg , crossed the Oder on August 11 and resumed the war. Both sides had used the truce to recruit soldiers and bring in reinforcements. Napoleon now had 442,000 men, 40,000 of them cavalry. Opposite him were 184,000 Russians, 160,000 Prussians, 127,000 Austrians, 23,000 Swedes, 6,000 Mecklenburgers and a further 9,000 from the rest of Germany, mainly the King's German Legion (KGL) from the former Electorate of Hanover , which had been in personal union with Great Britain. Further reinforcements followed in the course of the war. The Hanseatic Legion was formed in May.

Three armies were formed from the troops of the coalition: The Bohemian Army under the Austrian Field Marshal Schwarzenberg consisted of the 127,000 Austrians, to which 82,000 Russians and 45,000 Prussians came. The Silesian Army under the Prussian General Blücher consisted of 66,000 Russians and 38,000 Prussians. The Northern Army under the Swedish Crown Prince Karl Johann consisted of 73,000 Prussians, 29,000 Russians and 23,000 Swedes and 144 British, including the missile force of Captain Richard Bogue.

The defeats of the French troops in August and September had caused Napoleon to withdraw from Dresden and to unite his army on October 14th around Leipzig, against which the armies of the allies now also set concentrically in motion. An equestrian battle near Liebertwolkwitz on October 14th initiated the great battles of the next few days. The happy outcome of this cavalry battle for the Allies seemed a good omen. Napoleon was looking for a decisive battle. With the guards and eight corps, he had 210,000 men at his disposal, including 14,000 horsemen and 700 guns. Due to incorrect information, he doubted the presence of the entire Bohemian and Silesian armies, because on the one hand he still did not believe in Austria's participation and on the other hand he suspected the Silesian army further north.

Course of the battle

First day

On October 15, Napoleon positioned the majority of his troops with 110,000 men south of Leipzig, from Connewitz and Markkleeberg on the Pleiße via Wachau and Liebertwolkwitz to Holzhausen . General Henri-Gratien Bertrand stood at Lindenau to cover the road to the west; Marshal Marmont and Michel Ney were to the north of Leipzig . The Allies initially only had 200,000 men, as the corps of Colloredo-Mansfeld and Levin August von Bennigsen were only on the march and the Crown Prince of Sweden was still holding back the Northern Army. The main mass formed the Bohemian Army under Karl Philipp zu Schwarzenberg with 130,000 men, which advanced from the south and where Tsar Alexander I of Russia and King Friedrich Wilhelm III. stopped by Prussia .

Schwarzenberg's plan was, while Gyulay and 20,000 men set out against Lindenau and Blücher von Schkeuditz against Leipzig, to advance with the main force in the swampy lowlands between Elster and Pleiße against Connewitz, to bypass the right wing of the French and to conquer Leipzig by the shortest route.

At the appeal of Tsar Alexander because of the difficult terrain, Schwarzenberg entrusted the execution of his plan to the 35,000 Austrians under Merveldt and Hereditary Prince Friedrich von Hessen-Homburg . The corps of Johann von Klenau , Ludwig Adolf Peter zu Sayn-Wittgenstein and Friedrich von Kleist under Barclay de Tolly's command were to attack the French in the front and push them against Leipzig. In this way, the Bohemian Army was divided into three battlefields separated by rivers and swamps.

Before dawn on October 16, the Barclay army set in motion and opened gunfire at around 9 a.m., whereupon the assault columns advanced against the French position. Kleist snatched from Prince Josef Anton Poniatowski Markkleeberg; four times he was ousted from it, four times he stormed it again and maintained it with difficulty. Wachau, where Napoleon himself commanded, was conquered by Prussians and Russians under Prince Eugene of Württemberg , but had to be left again with heavy losses from the superior French artillery . Nor did Gortschakow and Klenau succeed in taking Liebertwolkwitz. They also lost the Kolmberg; the whole line of the allies was so weakened by the fighting that they could hardly maintain their positions. The Austrian operations on Connewitz were also unsuccessful. Thereupon, after noon, Schwarzenberg rushed to Barclay's aid with the Hessen-Homburg Corps.

Map of troop positions on October 16
  • Napoleonic armies
  • Allied armies

    • Napoleon, encouraged by the course of the battle so far, now decided to attack himself. At 3 p.m., 8,000 French horsemen tried to break through the center of the allies near Wachau. They pushed as far as the hill on which the monarchs and Schwarzenberg were. But the riders could be repulsed by the Russian infantry and the allied cavalry hurrying to help. A second attack by the French infantry, the Lauriston Corps, on Güldengossa also failed. Napoleon, too, could no longer lead fresh troops into the fire, and the night ended the fighting. The Allied attack on the enemy position had failed with a loss of 20,000 men dead and wounded.

    Gyulay's cautious attack on Lindenau had meanwhile been rejected by Bertrand. However, the actions of the Silesian Army had a decisive success. Without waiting for the Northern Army, Blücher broke out on orders to participate in the joint attack on Leipzig and encountered heavy resistance at Wiederitzsch and Möckern . Jan Henryk Dąbrowski stood at the first village with a weak division, but Alexandre Andrault de Langeron held them all day. At the last village stood Marmont with 17,000 men, who had just received the order to come to Wachau to help and had therefore already given up the better position he had previously occupied further north. Upon learning of the enemy's approach, he decided to await their attack and asked Marshal Ney for assistance.

    General Yorck of the allies directed the attack of his corps, which was about 20,000 men strong, against the village of Möckern, which was a natural fortress due to its location and which was stormed after several unsuccessful attacks with the loss of 7,000 men. After Marmont's corps had been destroyed, Marshal Ney turned back on his way to help Marmont, but was too late to intervene at Wachau.

    Yorck's victory at Möckern had broken through the French position in the north of Leipzig and wrested the hoped-for victory at Wachau from Napoleon by preventing two French corps from attacking the allied Bohemian army there with fresh forces.

    Second day

    October 17th, a Sunday, was mostly quiet. There was a pause in the fight, only in the north did Blücher conquer Eutritzsch and Gohlis and advance close to Leipzig. The allies held a council of war at 2 o'clock in the village of Sestewitz ; it was decided to attack at 7 a.m. the next morning.

    Since Napoleon had not achieved a decisive victory and could not prevent the allies from renewing the attack after the arrival of 100,000 men reinforcements, while he himself only expected Reyniers' corps from Düben , he would have vacated his position near Leipzig, which had become untenable and have to resume battle elsewhere. For political reasons he did not do it; he built on the fact that Emperor Franz was his father-in-law. On October 17th, through General Merveldt imprisoned near Connewitz, he had the monarchs offered an armistice under conditions that would have brought him peace in August. But now the allies did not accept this offer and did not even appreciate an answer.

    third day

    Military situation around Leipzig on October 18th:
  • Napoleonic armies
  • Allied armies
    • Napoleon and Poniatowski near Leipzig. History painting by January Suchodolski (1797–1875)

    At 2 o'clock in the morning on October 18, Napoleon gave up the old position, which could no longer be maintained, and moved about an hour closer to Leipzig. The right wing under Poniatowski stood on the Pleiße from Connewitz to Dölitz, the center formed a protruding angle at Probstheida , the left wing extended to the Parthe and was bent back to its confluence with the Pleiße in the north of Leipzig. The new position - for four hours and only occupied by 150,000 men - was hardly able to cope with the combined attack of the allies, who had increased to 300,000 men with 1,400 guns.

    Nevertheless, the battle on October 18 was fierce and not everywhere victorious for the allies, since Napoleon defended his positions from the tobacco mill near Stötteritz more tenaciously and longer than would have been necessary to cover the retreat. The attack columns of the allies started moving very gradually, sometimes quite late, so that the thrust was not carried forward with full force all at once. On the left wing, the Austrians under Hessen-Homburg attacked the French positions on the right of the Pleiße in Dölitz and Loessnig , but they could not be taken. Probstheida was also asserted by the French under Napoleon's personal leadership against the attempted assault by the Barclay column.

    On the other hand, the right wing of the Bohemian Army under Bennigsen did not intervene until the afternoon . He conquered Zuckelhausen , Holzhausen and Paunsdorf , whereupon 3,000 to 4,000 Saxons under Captain Johann Baptista Joseph Hirsch and 500 Württemberg riders under General Karl von Normann-Ehrenfels switched to the Allied side. This betrayal ensured that even decades later apostates were described in France with the saying “C'est un Saxon” - “This is a Saxon”.

    Bülow and Wintzingerode from the Northern Army were already involved in the storming of Paunsdorf, and they had finally come up - despite Karl Johann's resistance. Langeron and Sacken of the Silesian Army captured Schönefeld and Gohlis, and when night fell the French in the east and north of Leipzig had been pushed back to the city for up to a quarter of an hour. Had Gyulay seized the Lindenau pass with sufficient armed forces, the ring around Napoleon would have been closed and his retreat would have been cut off. Meanwhile, Schwarzenberg had reservations about forcing the still feared enemy into a desperate battle, and Count Ignaz Gyulay was ordered only to watch the enemy and avoid an attack on Pegau. This happened, and so Bertrand was able to take the road to Weissenfels unhindered, where from noon the train, the wagons with wounded and the artillery park followed him. During the night the army began to march, the guards, the cavalry, the corps Victor and Augereau , while MacDonald , Ney and Lauriston were to defend the city and cover the retreat; any points outside of Leipzig have been cleared.

    Retreat of the French

    View from the Quandtschen tobacco mill over the battlefield to Leipzig, painting by Ernst Wilhelm Straßberger

    Napoleon, probably not counting on a defeat, had made inadequate arrangements for the retreat. This was therefore slow, especially since there was only one road to Weißenfels available. Meanwhile, on the Allied side, Emperor Alexander's proposal to cross the Pleiße with part of the army and to throw oneself on this road, as well as Blucher’s offer to pursue with 20,000 cavalrymen, was rejected. Preparations were made for a new battle on October 19th. After the morning mist had cleared and the French retreat had been recognized, the storming of Leipzig began. The French army withdrew hastily towards the Ranstädter Tor , and Napoleon himself could only reach the Ranstädter Steinweg with difficulty . Meanwhile the Russian armed forces, under the orders of Langeron and Sacken, had conquered the Hallesche Vorstadt and Bülow the Grimmaische Vorstadt; Here the Konigsberg Landwehr Battalion under Major Karl Friedrich Friccius succeeded in penetrating the city first; the Peterstor in the south was taken by Bennigsen. After the Elsterbrücke in front of the Ranstädter Tor, over which the retreat was to take place, had been blown up too early, panic broke out among the retreating French soldiers. Many perished while fleeing, according to Marshal Poniatowski; others had to surrender and were taken prisoner of war.

    consequences

    Entry of the Allied military leaders, led by Field Marshal Karl Philipp Fürst Schwarzenberg, on October 19, 1813 on the Leipzig market (idealized representation)
    Leipzig from the south on October 19, 1813

    After the withdrawal of the French army, the Russian Emperor, the King of Prussia and the Crown Prince of Sweden soon came to the city. The general cheer made us forget for a while the terrible misery caused by the great numbers of wounded and sick in the city. The three-day battle resulted in heavy losses: the Prussians counted 16,000 men and 600 officers as dead or wounded, the Imperial Russian Army 21,000 men and 860 officers, the Austrians 14,000 men and 400 officers. The French side lamented 38,000 dead or wounded, 15,000 prisoners and the loss of 300 guns, they left 23,000 men in the hospitals. Many of the wounded on both sides succumbed to their injuries in the following days due to a lack of medical care and insufficient hygiene . After the battle, a typhus epidemic broke out in Leipzig, killing numerous wounded and Leipzig residents.

    As a result of the battle, Napoleon's ambitions for power in German territory had finally failed. On March 14, 1813, Friedrich-Franz I of Mecklenburg-Schwerin was the first prince of the Rhine Confederation to break out of the alliance with the French and join the Russian-Prussian alliance. The Strelitz part of the country followed on March 30th. As the largest federal state on the Rhine, Bavaria had moved to the Allied camp shortly before the battle on October 8 through the Treaty of Ried . As a result of the French defeat, Württemberg went over to the Allies on November 2, 1813, Baden and November 23, Nassau and Hesse and left the Confederation of the Rhine. Smaller states of the Rhine Confederation followed until December 1813. In April 1813, King Friedrich-August I of Saxony withdrew from joining the Russian-Prussian coalition through an alliance with Austria, which was still neutral. After Austria joined the coalition, he remained in alliance with Napoleon despite the unauthorized change of sides by a large part of the Saxon army. When he made himself available to the victors for the fight against Napoleon after his defeat, they took him captive and subordinated the conquered Saxony to the Allied central administration department .

    Napoleon withdrew from Germany only with 100,000 men from the armies of France and the Duchy of Warsaw . Another 80,000 French and Poles were trapped in the besieged fortresses and thus also lost. Switzerland granted the advancing Allied armies free passage. At the moment when the French “Empire” was in disarray, Prince Metternich offered Napoleon a peace under mild circumstances that would leave France at the Rhine border . Napoleon refused this, ignoring the circumstances. At the beginning of 1814 the Allied advance into France began, which was ultimately to overthrow Napoleon.

    German commemoration

    Völkerschlachtdenkmal
    The Russian-Prussian Monument and Apelstein No. 2 (2008)
    Re-enactment on October 20, 2013 for the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Nations

    For the first anniversary of the Battle of Nations, decentralized celebrations were held in many places in Germany. Ernst Moritz Arndt played a part in this, in particular through his work A Word on the Celebration of the Battle of Leipzig , published in September 1814 , in which he called for “German festivals”.

    The festivals themselves presented themselves in many places as a mixture of traditional folk festival, church festivals and an adaptation of the national holidays in France and the USA : processions , public speeches with mostly patriotic content, gun salutes, campfires, a service the next day and in the evening Ball or dance party. Thematically, the festivals were mostly directed towards the nature and history of Germany, had religious echoes and were guided by strongly anti-French feelings. The Wartburg Festival in 1817 was just one variant of these celebrations.

    In the German states, October 18th was celebrated for a long time as the beginning of a rebirth. Numerous memorial stones mark the most memorable points of the battle, such as the cast iron pointed column (since 1847) on the " Monarch's Hill ", the monument to Prince Schwarzenberg (a stone cuboid not far from Meusdorf ), the Napoleon stone not far from the Thonberg, the so-called Apelsteine and several others monuments erected in the city mainly in memory of the coalition forces.

    In 1814 a "Society for the Celebration of October 19th" was founded in Leipzig. He wanted to preserve the Battle of the Nations in as realistic a tradition as possible and tried to collect all the documents on the Battle of the Nations. In 1863 the 50th anniversary of the battle was celebrated in a particularly festive manner, shortly before the events of 1866 to 1871, which somewhat pushed back the memory of the Leipzig fight. In this context, the Leipzig writer Theodor Apel had 44 stones set up in the vicinity of Leipzig from 1861 to 1864 to mark the course of the battle (Apelsteine). Six more were later set up privately, from an Apels foundation and associations. In 1875 a new corvette of the German navy was christened "Leipzig" in honor of the Leipzig Battle. In 1913 the Völkerschlachtdenkmal and the Russian Memorial Church were inaugurated as a memorial and memorial, and the Austrian monuments were erected. In 1913, a three-mark piece was minted in the Muldenhütten mint to mark the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Leipzig. There are also several museums in Leipzig and the surrounding area that deal with the Battle of Nations and the living conditions of this time, for example the tin figure museum in the Torhaus Dölitz , the Seifertshain medical and hospital museum , the Körnerhaus Großzschocher , the memorial museum Liebertwolkwitz and the regional museum in the Torhaus Markkleeberg .

    On the road between Liebertwolkwitz and Güldengossa am Apelstein Nr. 2, on the 175th anniversary of the battle, the "Russian-Prussian Monument" to mark the opening of the fighting was inaugurated on the initiative of the Völkerschlacht interest group in the GDR's Kulturbund on October 16 through the Battle of Wachau and at the same time serve as a symbol for the "German-Soviet brotherhood in arms" proclaimed in the GDR.

    On October 20, 2013, a re-enactment with 6,000 participants from 28 countries took place to mark the 200-year commemoration . Around 35,000 visitors saw the battle representations in the Markkleeberger Weinteichsenke in the south of Leipzig.

    Exhibitions

    • 2013: Custom-made heroes - 200 years of the Battle of the Nations . City History Museum Leipzig
    • 2013: 1813 Fight for Europe - The Austrians in the Battle of Nations near Leipzig . Museum Torhaus zu Markkleeberg
    • 2013–2015: 360 ° panorama Leipzig 1813 - In the turmoil of the Battle of Nations by Yadegar Asisi . Panometer Leipzig

    Others

    In September 2011 the Mosaik Steinchen für Steinchen Verlag published a special issue of the comic series Mosaik zur Völkerschlacht in cooperation with the Museum für Stadtgeschichte Leipzig .

    literature

    Web links

    Commons : Völkerschlacht bei Leipzig  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files
    Wikivoyage: In the footsteps of the Battle of Nations  - travel guide
    Wikisource: Battle of the Nations near Leipzig  - Sources and full texts
    Wiktionary: Völkerschlacht  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

    Individual evidence

    1. ↑ Peter Hofschröer: Leipzig 1813: the battle of the nations. 1993, p. 72. The losses from the battles of October 14 are not included here, as no reliable documents are available.
    2. ↑ Peter Hofschröer: Leipzig 1813: the battle of the nations. 1993, p. 71. The total strength of the Allied forces on the first day of the battle divided into 202 battalions and 348 squadrons.
    3. ^ Russell Frank Weigley: The age of battles: the quest for decisive warfare from Breitenfeld to Waterloo. 2004, p. 480.
    4. ↑ Christopher Clark : Prussia - Rise and Fall 1600-1947. 1st edition. Phanteon Verlag, 2008, p. 429.
    5. ^ A b Russell Frank Weigley: The age of battles: the quest for decisive warfare from Breitenfeld to Waterloo. 2004, p. 482.
    6. ^ The battle near Leipzig on October 16, 17, 18 and 19, 1813 in R. Braeuner: History of the Prussian Landwehr. Historical representation and illumination of its prehistory, establishment and later organization. Volume 1, Berlin 1863, pp. 273–293 ( limited preview in Google book search)
    7. ^ Karl-Volker Neugebauer (Ed.): Fundamentals of German military history. Volume 1: Historical Overview. Military History Research Office . Verlag Rombach, Freiburg im Breisgau 1993, ISBN 3-7930-0662-6 , p. 122.
    8. ↑ Jürgen Knaack : How the Battle of Nations near Leipzig in 1813 got its name. In: Steffen Dietzsch, Ariane Ludwig (ed.): Achim von Arnim and his circle. De Gruyter, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-11-023308-7 , pp. 269-278, here pp. 269 f.
    9. ↑ [Friedrich] Zurbonsen: The Battle of Nations of the future “on the birch tree”. Legendary portrayed by Prof. Dr. Friedr. Zurbonsen , JP Bachem, Cologne 1910, reprinted by Bohmeier, Leipzig 2008, p. 5, quoted by Knaack, p. 272, there also the following Arnim quote.
    10. ↑ In addition Carsten Lind: Ninth Army Report. Leipzig, October 19th, 1813 (PDF)
    11. ↑ See: Was ich erlebte , 10 volumes, Breslau 1840–1844 (autobiography) ( digitized version) , volume 7, p. 307: 295. Knaack points this out, pp. 270f., Also p. 273.
    12. ↑ References in Knaack, p. 273 ff. According to Knaack, the descriptions of the name “Battle of the Nations”, which were widespread until the anniversary year 2013, are outdated. They were based on research results from 1903 and 1906. Thereafter, the name went back to the Müffling report. The claim that by “battle of nations” he meant the battle of the “army peoples”, i.e. the troops of the rulers involved, whereupon “patriotically minded contemporaries quickly reinterpreted the term ... into a battle fought by peoples thirsting for freedom and longing for national unity "As they z. B. represented the German Historical Museum in 200 Years of the Battle of the Nations near Leipzig in October 2013, is of a later date and has no evidence. Knaack, p. 273 calls it “rather unlikely”.
    13. ↑ Archaeologists came across 200-year-old corpses: New mass grave of the multi-ethnic battle of Leipzig discovered. Wiener Zeitung , March 30, 2012, accessed on January 7, 2016 .
    14. ↑ 200 years ago: Horrified by the "dimension of dying". DiePresse.com , October 15, 2013, accessed on January 7, 2016 .
    15. ^ The Kalisch proclamation in documentarchiv.de
    16. ^ Georges Lefebvre: Napoleon. P. 535.
    17. ↑ Andreas Platthaus: 1813 - The Battle of Nations and the end of the old world. Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2015, ISBN 978-3-499-62922-8 , p. 287.
    18. ↑ Captain Richard Bogue rocket troop. Retrieved March 1, 2018 .
    19. ↑ Dieter Miedtank, Rolf deer, Manfred Beyer: Missing Monuments - Kills - forgetting. Military writings of the Working Group of Saxon Military History e. V. Heft 7, Dresden 2005, ISBN 978-3-9809520-1-9 , p. 29.
    20. ↑ Interesting facts about the Leipzig Battle of the Nations ... that the betrayal of the Saxons resulted in a French proverb? ( Memento from February 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) mdr.de accessed on February 8, 2015.
    21. ^ Albert Sidney Britt, Thomas E. Griess: The wars of Napoleon. Square One Publishers, Garden City Park, NY 2003, ISBN 0-7570-0154-8 , p. 145.
    22. ^ Ernst Moritz Arndt: A word about the celebration of the Leipzig battle. PW Eichenberg, Frankfurt am Main 1814, p. 4 ( online ).
    23. ^ Medical and Hospital Museum 1813 Seifertshain | Seifertshain. Accessed June 10, 2019 (German).
    24. ↑ Markkleeberg website .
    25. ↑ The date in the Cyrillic text is incorrect. According to the Julian calendar valid in Russia at the time , October 3 should be written instead of October 28, 1813. In addition, the forgotten second "T" was added to the name of General Prinz Eugen von Württemberg.
    26. ↑ 6000 men fight the Battle of Nations again. In: The world . 20th October 2013.
    27. ↑ www.voelkerschlacht-jubilaeum.de
    28. ↑ Abrafaxe in Leipzig: Mosaic special edition on the Battle of the Nations and the construction of the monument. Leipziger Volkszeitung , September 12, 2011, accessed on January 7, 2016 .

    Coordinates: 51 ° 18 ′ 49.6 "  N , 12 ° 24 ′ 25.4"  E