"Unimaginable Horror and Misery": The Battle of Leipzig in October 1813 in Civilian Experience and Perception

Title"Unimaginable Horror and Misery": The Battle of Leipzig in October 1813 in Civilian Experience and Perception
Publication TypeBook Chapter
Year of Publication2009
AuthorsHagemann, Karen
EditorForrest, Alan, Karen Hagemann, and Jane Rendall
Book TitleSoldiers, Citizens and Civilians: Experiences and Perceptions of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1790-1820
Pagination157 - 178
PublisherPalgrave Macmillan
CityBasingstoke, UK
Abstract

This book chapter in the edited volume Soldiers, Citizens and Civilians: Experiences and Perceptions of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, 1790-1820 with essays that discuss the formative experience of those wars for men and women, as soldiers, citizens and civilians, focuses on  the "Battle of the Nations" at Leipzig and its experience and perception by civilians. Between 16 and 19 October 1813 a total of more than 171,000 men under Napoleon's supreme command, faced 301,500 Coalition forces in Leipzig under the command of the Austrian field marshal Prince Schwarzenberg. A substantial number of the forces on the European continent — more than 470,000 soldiers of the most diverse nationalities — had massed in Saxony. This made Leipzig — the "Battle of the Nations," as it was already known to contemporaries — the largest battle in history before the First World War. The number of dead soldiers reached more than 110,000, many of them died after the battle because of epidemics. In addition, 15 percent of the civilan  population in the region died because of these pandemics the armies brought into the villages and towns around Leipzig. Mora than 60 villages in the region were destroyed, the landscape devastated and businesses ruined. It tooks years to come in term with the aftermath of the battle.

URLhttps://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9780230583290_9
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6994569473

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799974158

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