Trachenberg Plan

War of the 6th Coalition: 1813
Napoleon's battles Day Losses Battle Led by 0 2.200 Möckern Eugène Lützen 27 22.000 Bautzen 45 20.000 51 1.400 Haynau Maison 56 2.200 Luckau Oudinot 109 3.000 Großbeeren Oudinot 112 30.000 Katzbach Macdonald Dresden 112 10.000 115 25.000 Kulm Vandamme 123 23.000 Dennewitz Ney 133 1.500 Göhrde Pécheux 145 2.100 Altenburg Lefebvre 146 700 Rosslau Ney 150 1.900 Wartenburg Bertrand Leipzig 163 79.000 Hanau 177 4.500
Day: days gone since 5 April 1813, Battle of Möckern Losses: French soldiers killed+wounded+captured Red dot: French tactical victory

War of the 6th Coalition: 1814
Napoleon's battles Day Losses Battle Led by 0 700 Bar-sur-Aube(1) Mortier Brienne 5 3.000 Rothière 8 4.000 9 ? Lesmont Lagrange Champau. 18 600 Montmirail 19 2.000 Thierry 20 400 Vaucham. 22 600 Mormant 25 600 Montereau 26 2.000 35 3.100 Bar-sur-Aube Macdonald 36 250 Tresmes Macdonald 37 1.300 Julien Augereau 39 3.000 Laubressel Macdonald Craonne 43 5.400 Laon 45 6.500 47 700 Mâcon Musnier Reims 48 600 56 1.000 Limonest Augereau Arcis 56 3.000 61 10.000 Champenoise Augereau Dizier 62 600 66 5.000 Paris Joseph
Day: days gone since 24 Jan 1814, Bar-sur-Aube(1) Losses: French soldiers killed+wounded+captured Red dot: French tactical victory

The Trachenberg Plan was a campaign strategy created by the Allies in the German Campaign of 1813 during the War of the Sixth Coalition, and named for the conference held at the palace of Trachenberg. The plan advocated avoiding direct engagement with French emperor, Napoleon I, which had resulted from fear of the emperor's now legendary prowess in battle. Consequently, the Allies planned to engage and defeat Napoleon's marshals and generals separately, and thus weaken his army while they built up an overwhelming force even he could not defeat. It was decided upon after a series of defeats and near disasters at the hands of Napoleon at Lützen, Bautzen and Dresden. The plan was successful, and at the Battle of Leipzig, where the Allies had a considerable numerical advantage, Napoleon was soundly defeated and driven out of Germany, back to the Rhine.

Development

Former Marshal of the Empire Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, later Crown Prince Charles John of Sweden, co-author of the Trachenberg Plan

The plan held elements of a number of other plans developed over the past two years by men such as Russian generals Karl Wilhelm von Toll, Barclay de Tolly and former French General, and Napoleon's erstwhile rival, Jean Victor Moreau, who was in correspondence with Charles John and en route to Sweden in summer 1813. However, the final plan was primarily an amalgam of two prior works that had been developed in parallel: the Trachenberg Protocol and the Reichenbach Plan, created by Crown Prince Charles John of Sweden (formerly Napoleon's Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte) whose experience with the tactics and methods of the Grande Armée, as well as personal insight on Napoleon's strategies, proved invaluable, and the Austrian chief of staff of the Sixth Coalition, Joseph Radetzky von Radetz.

Charles John had given a great deal of military advice to Tsar Alexander I of Russia during the 1812 Russian Campaign (after having turned down Alexander's offer of generalissimo of the Russian armies) on how to defeat the French invasion, and was able to see the successful practical outcomes of some of his theories and strategies that had been used by the Russians. Charles John refined his strategies over the next year, applied them to the probable theater of operations of Northern Germany, and presented them to Alexander and Frederick Wilhelm III of Prussia at the Trachenberg Conference held on July 9-12, 1813 during the Truce of Pläswitz. The Allied sovereigns, after modifications to take into account the various policy considerations necessary to keep the disparate coalition partners happy, adopted Charles John's proposals as the basis of the general Coalition campaign plan. Meanwhile, Radetzky and the Austrians had been developing their own campaign plan in parallel, despite not officially joining the Sixth Coalition until August 12, 1813, based on the presumed theater of Saxony and Northeast Germany with a final decisive battle as its climax, the details of which folded well into the protocol agreed to at Trachenberg. The combined, modified version of the two prior campaign plans became known as the Trachenberg Plan.

See also

Attrition warfare against Napoleon

References

• Barton, Sir Dunbar Plunket (1930). The Amazing Career of Bernadotte 1763–1844, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.
• Barton, Sir Dunbar Plunket (1925). Bernadotte: Prince and King 1810-1844, John Murray, London.
• Chandler, David G (1966). The Campaigns of Napoleon Volume II, Macmillan Company, New York.
• Las Cases, Emmanuel-Auguste-Dieudonné (1890). Memoirs of the Life, Exile, and Conversations of the Emperor Napoleon, Volume III, Worthington Company, New York.
• Leggiere, Michael V (2015). Napoleon and the Struggle for Germany: The Franco-Prussian War of 1813 Volume II, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
• Leggiere, Michael V (2014). Blücher: Scourge of Napoleon, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.
• Palmer, Alan (1990). Bernadotte: Napoleon's Marshal, Sweden's King, John Murray, London.
• Scott, Franklin D. (1935) Bernadotte and the Fall of Napoleon, Harvard University Press, Cambridge.