The first comprehensive history of the Fall Campaign that determined control of Central Europe following Napoleon's catastrophic defeat in Russia.

At a time when Napoleon needed all his forces to reassert French dominance in Central Europe, why did he fixate on the Prussian capital of Berlin? Instead of concentrating his forces for a decisive showdown with the enemy, he repeatedly detached large numbers of troops, under ineffective commanders, toward the capture of Berlin. In Napoleon and Berlin, Michael V. Leggiere explores Napoleon’s almost obsessive desire to capture Berlin and how this strategy ultimately lost him all of Germany. Napoleon’s motives have remained a subject of controversy from his own day until ours. He may have hoped to deliver a tremendous blow to Prussia’s war-making capacity and morale. Ironically, the heavy losses and strategic reverses sustained by the French left Napoleon’s Grande Armee vulnerable to an Allied coalition that eventually drove Napoleon from Central Europe forever.

When Napoleon’s Grand Armee went to war against the might of the Habsburg empire in 1809, its forces included more than 100,000 allied German troops. From his earliest imperial campaigns, these troops provided played a key role as Napoleon swept from victory to victory and in 1809 their fighting abilities were crucial to the campaign. With Napoleon’s French troops depleted and debilitated after the long struggle in the Spanish War, the German troops for the first time played a major combat role in the centre of the battle line. Aiming at a union of German states under French protection to replace the decrepit Holy Roman Empire, Napoleon sought to expand French influence in central Germany at the expense of the Austrian and Prussian monarchies, ensuring France’s own security. The campaign Napoleon waged in 1809 was his career watershed. He suffered his first reverse at Aspern. Victory was achieved at Wagram was not the knock-out blow he had envisaged. In this epic work, John Gill presents an unprecedented and comprehensive study of this year of glory for the German soldiers fighting for Napoleon, When combat opened they were in the thick of the action, fighting within French divisions and often without any French support atall. They demonstrated tremendous skill, courage and loyalty.

This book explores the history and the construction of memory in Prussia's and Germany's anti-Napoleonic wars of 1806-15.

This is the first comprehensive history of the campaign that determined control of Germany following Napoleon's catastrophic defeat in Russia. Michael Leggiere reveals how, in the spring of 1813, Prussia, the weakest of the Great Powers, led the struggle against Napoleon as a war of national liberation. Using German, French, British, Russian, Austrian and Swedish sources, he provides a panoramic history which covers the full sweep of the battle for Germany from the mobilization of the belligerents, strategy and operations to coalition warfare, diplomacy and civil-military relations. He shows how Russian war weariness conflicted with Prussian impetuosity, resulting in the crisis that almost ended the Sixth Coalition in early June. In a single campaign, Napoleon drove the Russo-Prussian army from the banks of the Saale to the banks of the Oder. The Russo-Prussian alliance was perilously close to imploding only to be saved at the eleventh-hour by an armistice.

This is the first comprehensive history of the campaign that determined control of Germany following Napoleon's catastrophic defeat in Russia. Michael V. Leggiere reveals how, in the spring of 1813, Prussia, the weakest of the great powers, led the struggle against Napoleon as a war of national liberation. Using German, French, British, Russian, Austrian and Swedish sources, he provides a panoramic history that covers the full sweep of the battle for Germany from the mobilization of the belligerents, strategy, and operations to coalition warfare, diplomacy, and civil-military relations. He shows how Russian war weariness conflicted with Prussian impetuosity, resulting in the crisis that almost ended the Sixth Coalition in early June. In a single campaign, Napoleon drove the Russo–Prussian army from the banks of the Saale to the banks of the Oder. The Russo–Prussian alliance was perilously close to imploding, only to be saved at the eleventh-hour by an armistice.