Trachenberg Plan

Alexander I of Russia, Francis II of Austria and Frederick William III of Prussia meet after defeating Napoleon at the Battle of Leipzig.

The Trachenberg Plan was concocted by Allied commanders in the 1813 German Campaign during the War of the Sixth Coalition of the Napoleonic Wars, at the palace of Trachenberg. The plan advocated avoiding direct engagement with the French emperor, Napoleon I. This resulted from fear of the Emperor's now legendary prowess in battle. Consequently the Allies planned to engage and defeat the French 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 by the Coalition at Napoleon's hands at the battles of Lützen, Bautzen and Dresden. The plan ultimately worked and at the Battle of Leipzig, where the Allies had a considerable numerical advantage, the Emperor was soundly defeated and driven out of Germany, across the Rhine back into France itself. The plan was the work of the Austrian chief of staff of the allied coalition, Radetzky and the Swedish Crown Prince Charles John (formerly Napoleon's marshal Jean Baptiste Bernadotte) whose experience with the tactics and methods of the French Army, as well as personal insight on the mind of Napoleon, proved invaluable.

References

• Barton, Sir Dunbar Plunket (1930). The Amazing Career of Bernadotte 1763–1844, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston.
• 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.
• Las Cases, Emmanuel-Auguste-Dieudonné (1890). "Memoirs of the Life, Exile, and Conversations of the Emperor Napoleon, Volume III," Worthington Company, New York.