Battle of Dresden

Background

The armistice that followed Lützen and Bautzen ended in August 1813, and Austria joined Russia and Prussia against Napoleon. Under the Trachenberg plan, the Allied armies would retreat before Napoleon himself and strike at his marshals. Napoleon went first for Blücher's Army of Silesia, but when he took Löwenberg on the Bober on 21 August, Blücher simply fell back. Meanwhile Schwarzenberg's Army of Bohemia crossed the Erzgebirge into Saxony. It first aimed at Leipzig, then turned on Dresden, the French base on the Elbe.

Dresden was weakly held. Marshal Gouvion Saint-Cyr's XIV Corps, about 20,000 men, had been pushed back on the city, and the Allies reached its outskirts on 25 August. The defences were incomplete. They consisted of a ring of lunettes, barricaded suburbs and garden walls, and the remains of the old city wall. On the 25th the Tsar and Moreau wanted to storm the city at once, but Schwarzenberg insisted on waiting for his Austrians.

Napoleon left Macdonald to hold Blücher and turned back. He planned to cross the Elbe at Königstein with 100,000 men and fall on the Allied rear at Pirna. But late on the 25th his aide Gourgaud reached him at Stolpen with a gloomy report on Dresden's defences. At 01:00 on the 26th Napoleon ordered the Guard and Latour-Maubourg's cavalry to march straight for the city, with Victor and Marmont to follow. He left the stroke against the Allied rear to Vandamme's I Corps alone. The Guard covered about 90 miles in three days, marching across country beside the roads, which were kept for the guns and wagons.

The armies

The Army of Bohemia had about 150,000–158,000 men before Dresden. It was a coalition army with a crowded headquarters. Schwarzenberg commanded, but the Tsar and the King of Prussia were on the field, and the Emperor Francis was also with the army. They took advice from the exiled French general Moreau and from Jomini, who had deserted from Ney's staff. The Russians and Prussians under Wittgenstein and Kleist formed the right, with Barclay de Tolly's reserves behind. The Austrian corps of Colloredo, Chasteler and Gyulai held the centre and left, and Klenau's corps was still marching up from Tharandt. There were roughly 430 guns in the three wings. The Allied supply columns were in confusion on the mountain roads, and the troops were short of food.

The French had about 70,000 men by the evening of the 26th and some 120,000 on the 27th, with 486 guns. Saint-Cyr's XIV Corps held the works. Napoleon brought four divisions of the Young Guard under Mortier and Ney, the Old Guard in reserve, and some 23,000 cavalry of Latour-Maubourg's I Cavalry Corps and Pajol under Murat. Victor's II and Marmont's VI Corps arrived overnight. Many of the infantry were young conscripts. All of them carried flintlocks, whose priming would not stay dry in heavy rain.

The battle

CDB90 records the battle as a single engagement, number 137 (DRESDEN), from 05:00 on 26 August to 16:00 on 27 August. Times below come mostly from Petre.

26 August, morning. At 05:00 Ziethen's Prussians attacked the Grosser Garten, the walled park south-east of the city. With Roth's Russian advanced guard they had taken about three-quarters of it by noon. Between the park and the Elbe the Russians suffered from French guns firing across the river. In the south-west the Austrians advanced from about 06:00 towards Plauen and stormed the Feldschlösschen, a building only 300 yards from Redoubt IV. Beyond the Weisseritz they took Löbtau. Napoleon reached Dresden between 09:00 and 10:00 and rode the whole line. Behind the garden walls there was in places one defender to every ten paces. The Guard and Murat's cavalry began to come in over the Elbe bridges, and the Allied monarchs could see them coming from the Racknitz heights. Jomini and the Tsar now favoured retreat, but the King of Prussia did not. The general attack set for 16:00 was called off, but the signal guns were fired anyway.

26 August, afternoon. The Allies attacked all along the line. The Russians and Prussians reached Redoubt II but could not storm it, and Kleist got within ten yards of the Dohna suburb before he was thrown back. The Austrians stormed Redoubt III when its ammunition ran out, and the defenders were nearly all killed or wounded. Other Austrian attacks on Redoubts IV and V and towards Friedrichstadt failed. Most of the Allied army stood in reserve.

26 August, evening. At about 18:00 Napoleon counter-attacked with the Guard. Mortier drove the Russians back to Striesen and the Blasewitz wood, and the French fought their way back to the palace in the Grosser Garten by 19:00. The Young Guard retook Redoubt III, taking about 400 prisoners. Ney retook the Feldschlösschen with the bayonet, and Teste and Pajol cleared Friedrichstadt. By dark the French had regained nearly all they had lost. Towards midnight torrential rain began, and that night Victor's and Marmont's corps entered the city.

27 August. In the rain Napoleon attacked both Allied wings and held his centre. From 06:00 Mortier, with Nansouty's Guard cavalry, drove the Russians from Blasewitz and Seidnitz. By noon he had stormed Reick, with fierce fighting among the burning houses. Saint-Cyr's attacks on Leubnitz failed. At about 13:00 a shot from a French battery struck Moreau beside the Tsar, smashing both his legs. A planned Allied counter-attack on the French left never went in.

The decisive blow came beyond the Weisseritz. The stream ran in a deep gorge at Plauen and was swollen by the rain, and the Austrian left, about 24,000 men with 34 guns, was cut off from the centre. Murat had about 35,000 men there, 12,000 of them cavalry. He attacked from about 06:00–07:00 with Victor's infantry in four columns, Teste's division and the cavalry of Latour-Maubourg and Pajol. Victor's columns used the ravines to break the Austrian line at Rossthal and Neu Nimptsch. At about noon Austrian squares whose muskets would not fire were ridden down. Teste got round behind Meszko's division at Pennrich, and Meszko surrendered with four regiments. In a story told by Marbot, Bordesoulle made one square give in by showing it a battery ready to fire. Dolzschen fell at about 14:00, and by 15:00 the Austrian left had been destroyed. Klenau never arrived. That evening the Allied council of war decided to retreat into Bohemia.

Aftermath

The Allies lost about 38,000–40,000 men, among them perhaps 13,000–15,000 prisoners, with 40 guns and 15 colours. Petre puts the loss at 'probably at least 25,000'. The French lost about 10,000. Napoleon rode back into the city at 16:00, soaked through. Behind him came the Austrian prisoners, among them Meszko and two other generals. Moreau had both legs amputated on the field, and he died at Laun (Louny) in Bohemia on 2 September.

The victory was not followed up. The Allies retreated over poor mountain tracks, because Vandamme was on the Peterswalde road and Murat held the Freiberg road. Napoleon did not believe they had gone until the next morning. He fell ill, and he left the pursuit largely to Vandamme's single corps. At Kulm on 29–30 August Ostermann-Tolstoy's Russians held Vandamme, and then Kleist's Prussians came down on his rear from Nollendorf. Vandamme was captured with 8,000–10,000 of his men and 82 guns. Together with the defeats at Grossbeeren and the Katzbach, Kulm cancelled out much of what Dresden had won.

Historians still judge Dresden a brilliant tactical success. Petre ranks it among Napoleon's 'most remarkable, though almost his last, great victories', and he praises the unusual choice to attack both wings with fewer men. He also blames the Allies' indecision on the 26th, their weak left wing and their idle cavalry. The argument since has been about the days that followed, and whether illness or misjudgement stopped Napoleon reaping the fruits of victory.

Wargaming it

Dresden is two very different games. The 26th is an assault on a fortified city. The Allies have the numbers and a few hours to use them before the Guard arrives. Lunettes that cannot see one another, barricaded suburbs, garden walls, the Grosser Garten and the Feldschlösschen all need clear rules. A French player feeding in reinforcements by turn, from 10:00 onwards, makes a tense defence. The 27th is a set-piece of envelopment on both wings, with the weather as a player.

The Weisseritz gorge is the key terrain. It isolates the Austrian left, and a rule that rain damps the priming, cutting infantry fire sharply while leaving cavalry and artillery effective, explains the result. Low visibility and heavy going for guns matter too, since Barclay refused to commit his artillery for fear of not getting it back up the hill.

Brigade-level rules with hourly or half-hourly turns suit either day. The flank action beyond the Weisseritz works on its own at battalion level. The what-ifs come straight from the sources: the Allies storming the city on the 25th, before Napoleon arrived; Klenau arriving on time; reinforcements sent across the gorge from the reserve at Gittersee; the Russo-Prussian counter-attack on Mortier going in; or Napoleon keeping to his Königstein plan and falling on the Allied rear with 100,000 men.

Maps and pictures

Paintings and prints

Paintings and prints of the battle, from the time and the century after, by year: free-to-use pictures from the battle's category on Wikimedia Commons. Each opens its file page there, with the full caption and source.