Pope Benedict XV, the “unknown pope” of the Great War, died on January 22, 1922, after a short illness. The conclave elected a new leader, Pope Pius XI, who, in his position as papal nuncio, had seen the Bolshevik armies advance on Warsaw during the Polish–Soviet War; the Church endured, its leadership increasingly turning to authoritarian alliances that would confront the specter of Bolshevism. Papal funerals were and are symbolic points of reflection for the Church, and the choice of an end date to this study is deliberately arbitrary. Since this book has argued for continuities and adaptations of traditions, especially in the everyday lives of ordinary Catholics, such a stopping point represents a narrative convenience.

Chronologically, the story could have easily extended further. The Franco-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr and the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923 would have been another leap along the road to Hitler's accession to the chancellorship of Germany. In Austria, the decisive shift to authoritarianism happened with the Justice Ministry fire of 1927, which helped lead to civil war in 1934. Indeed, explicating the full political legacy of two fallen empires, Habsburg and Hohenzollern, would require treating the histories of their individual state components, as well as the transnational, national, local, familial, and personal levels. Although the empires fell in Autumn 1918, this book has shown how this political narrative of historians’ convenience does not correspond to the lived religion of believers who experienced the Great War. The Catholic story of the twentieth century does not fit the standard story of the Great War as an epic moment of disillusioning modernism, either in 1914 or in 1918. Indeed, the persistence and adaptation of Catholic tradition helps lend strength to the claim that the period from 1914 to 1945 is best seen as a continuum, a “Second Thirty Years War.” In helping make sense of the twentieth century, this book has demonstrated a transnational Catholicism of lived religion, destabilizing a master narrative of disillusion for the losing powers' cultural history.

Including most of III Corps, Macdonald’s army held a twelve-mile line stretching northeast to southwest along the Katzbach between Goldberg and Liegnitz on the evening of the 25th. Souham’s main body camped at Rothkirch, with one division still marching east from Haynau to Liegnitz, which the French occupied. Sébastiani’s cavalry passed the night at Hohendorf, some nine miles southwest of Liegnitz and four miles northeast of Goldberg. Lauriston’s V Corps maintained Goldberg itself, with a vanguard at Prausnitz. Gérard’s XI Corps stood just west of Goldberg; his 31st Division held Schönau, eleven miles south of Goldberg. After losing two days because of Ney, Macdonald eagerly prepared to move against Blücher’s suspected position north of Jauer. He wanted to drive the Allied army deeper into Silesia and believed the mere advance of his own army would suffice to achieve this goal (see Map 2).

Just as Blücher needed a battle to save his army, Macdonald likewise needed to improve the situation of his own. Supply became a headache that worsened with each passing hour. Sitting in a region sucked dry during the armistice, his army desperately needed to move across the Katzbach and the Wütende Neiße in the hope of finding food in the untouched region of the former neutral zone. The region as far west as the Queis offered little for the masses that concentrated along the Katzbach. Inadequate supply forced the individual soldier to survive as best he could, inflicting devastation and violence on the inhabitants. The complete breakdown of discipline led to the victimization of the civilian population through plunder, robbery, burning, rape, and murder. Now the time had come for this army to conduct a military operation: could discipline be restored with the flip of a switch?

Moving forward into battle, the soldiers heard the sounds of their impending rendezvous. Booming artillery rounds punctuated the ever-increasing din of rifle and machine-gun fire. The troops marched in formation closer to the front line near Möuhlhausen. A courier arrived from the commanding officer, and the battalion leader shouted out, “Herr Priest, it's serious: do your duty!” The military chaplain, a purple stola over his uniform, stepped to the head of each company. In his diary, he noted that his nerves trembled and his heart beat rapidly as he intoned as loudly and as confidently as he could muster: “Dear comrades! An earnest hour has arrived for you. Reconcile with your Lord God, repent with all your heart all the sins of your life and say: O God, be merciful to me, a poor sinner! Each man must do his duty at his post. I now give you absolution: I absolve you of all of your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” The orders went out and the regiment went into action, the priest moving forward into a hail of bullets and shrapnel. Regardless of his intent to advance with the troops, he quickly became occupied ministering to the wounded and dying. From the very beginning of the Great War, industrial warfare strained the Catholic Church's resources at the front line.

Near the end of the war, the Church still struggled to understand the conflict and to allocate its resources to the men at the front. In a 1918 position paper entitled “Inner Reform of the Army,” the leader of Austro-Hungarian military chaplaincy reflected, “Modern war had developed the necessity of holding out for days under the heaviest artillery fire … that placed especially high demands on nerves and willpower.” The chaplains’ chief reflected that, “new forms of battle,” especially the “so-called stationary struggle [Stellungskampf]” caused an “inconsolable monotony of battle and work” in the “extremely primitive forms of life.”

At Leipzig, Blücher and his staff recognized the extent of the costly but momentous victory. On 19 October, Gneisenau wrote to his wife that “our assault on Leipzig was very bloody. After many hours of work our troops stormed the city. General Blücher and I were the first to enter. We found a mass of prisoners, 20,000 wounded, even more sick. The dead lay everywhere. Destroyed houses, overturned baggage wagons, troops of all nations; it is a mess without equal. Every step has been taken to pursue the enemy briskly. We will destroy the remainder of his army.” Blücher also boasted to his wife that on the 16th he had engaged the French at Möckern, taking 4,000 prisoners, 45 guns, 1 Eagle, and various other standards. He described the events on the 18th and 19th as “the greatest battle the earth has ever seen; 600,000 men fought with each other; around 2:00 P.M. I took Leipzig by storm, the king of Saxony and many generals were captured, the Polish prince Poniatowski drowned; 170 cannon were taken and around 40,000 men are now prisoners. Napoleon escaped, but he is not safe. At this moment my cavalry has brought in another 2,000 prisoners; the entire [French] army is lost.” Yet not all observers wrote such gleeful accounts. Commenting on the barbarity of war, the British ambassador to Austria, George Hamilton Gordon, Lord Aberdeen, noted: “For three or four miles the ground is covered with bodies of men and horses, many not dead. Wounded wretches unable to crawl, crying for water amidst heaps of putrefying bodies. Their screams are heard at an immense distance, and still ring in my ears.”

Catholic women and children experienced both positive and negative changes in their traditional roles during the war. Massive historiographical shifts in social and cultural histories of the First World War have demonstrated women's fundamental importance during the conflict. The process of total war was already dramatically reordering pre-war conceptions of gender roles, creating a fundamental tension between traditional images and new expectations for both men and women in Central Europe. The war saw attempts both to challenge gender roles and to restore order. Even in progressive nations like Weimar Germany and the United States where women gained the right to vote comparatively early as a direct result of the war, there was often a wide gap between the rhetoric and the practical reality of women's roles in the new social orders. As Erika Kuhlman has argued in a path-breaking transnational study, new public focus on human rights and equality did not correct unequal imbalances in gender relations. Through discourses on motherhood and female virtue, women were active agents in a process whereby “nations reinforced traditional, patriarchal relationships among men and women (in which masculinity remained privileged and femininity continued to be valued) by shunting women back to traditional female employment and honoring women as mothers (and fallen soldiers as heroes).”

While new generations of scholarship have blurred boundaries between home front and battlefront, women's religious experience of the war, especially in defeated Central Europe, remains a comparatively unexplored aspect of the cultural history of the war. The historiography of gender in the Habsburg monarchy during the war, long neglected in comparison to other combatant states, has seen recent advances. As Christa Höammerle has recently argued, multifaceted conceptions of gender reflect the all-encompassing social relations of the drive toward total war, thus illuminating changing identities during periods of immense upheaval and reform.

In the streaming rain, Blücher rode back to Brechelshof accompanied by Gneisenau. Initially silent, he then joked with his companion. “No, Gneisenau,” he purportedly exclaimed, “we have won the battle and nobody can deny us that. Now, they will demand to know how we did it so well and I will have to teach them!” Unable to find a structure large enough to accommodate Army Headquarters because the few buildings on the estate housed the wounded, they went to the Rittergut (manor), which now served as the army’s main hospital. Karl Ernst Friedrich, Baron von Richthofen, had purchased the estate, previously the Leubus Seminary, in 1811 during Prussia’s liquidation of religious holdings. At a long table in the large, arched great room, Blücher and his staff sat down to a meager victory dinner consisting of boiled potatoes served in large clay bowls. Although the potatoes were freshly dug, no spices could be found to add flavor. Seated at the far end of the table, young Scharnhorst seemed restless and looked around disappointingly. Blücher noticed and asked the lieutenant what troubled him. When Scharnhorst declared he desired salt, Blücher bellowed: “He is such a gourmand that he even needs salt!”

After dinner, work continued deep into the night. Blücher wrote his own report to the magistrate of Breslau announcing the victory as well as requesting care for the wounded and food for his troops. Despite his exhaustion, he also penned private letters. “Today was the day that I have so long wished for,” he divulged to his wife; “we have completely defeated the enemy, capturing many cannon and taking many prisoners.

Yorck’s van – a combined-arms detachment commanded by Lobenthal – spearheaded the drive into the neutral zone. Departing from Lorzendorf (Wawrzeńczyce), the Prussians marched almost twenty miles northwest to secure Mertschütz, itself halfway to Liegnitz. From Panzkau (Pęczków), one cavalry detachment under Major Schenk consisting of two squadrons each from the 2nd Leib Hussars and the Brandenburg Hussars established communication with Sacken’s corps. Yorck’s main body trooped to Saarau and Konradswaldau (Mrowiny) in three columns. For added security, the Prussian corps commander kept the cavalry of each of his four brigades close to the infantry. To the left of the Prussians, Langeron’s vanguard reached Jauer; the main body halted ten miles to its southeast at Striegau, itself four miles west of Yorck’s main body. Two hundred Cossacks maintained communication between Yorck’s and Langeron’s vanguards. On Blücher’s right, Sacken’s corps marched into Breslau but did not achieve its objectives of Neumarkt and Deutschlissa. After occupying the provincial capital, the Russian corps commander continued only to Breslau’s western suburbs instead of the Schweidnitz stream. He pushed six Cossack regiments to Deutschlissa rather than Neumarkt. Purportedly, Sacken admitted to purposefully deviating from the disposition. On Blücher’s extreme left wing, Kaysarov led Pahlen III’s van of four Jäger battalions and three Cossack regiments only to Schmiedeberg, likewise falling short of his objective of reaching Hirschberg. Blücher’s headquarters moved to Würben, four miles north of Schweidnitz (see Map 2).

The triumphant proclamation Blücher issued to the troops on 1 September masked the anxiety of Silesian Army Headquarters, which only increased on the 2nd. On this day, Blücher received Barclay’s letter from Altenberg dated the 29th, which reported the failed attempt on Dresden and the advance of Vandamme’s I Corps from Königstein around the right flank of the Bohemian Army. In response, Schwarzenberg decided to retreat over the Erzgebirge and back into Bohemia. Still, the Allies held all the mountain passes and Barclay predicted Schwarzenberg would advance again soon. He added that the Prussian troops had distinguished themselves through discipline and courage. Later that day, Major Wenzel Liechtenstein arrived from Schwarzenberg’s headquarters to present a verbal report based on extensive instructions from the Austrian staff. Not only did Liechtenstein provide news of the battle of Dresden, but he also requested that Blücher march to Bohemia with 50,000 men to reinforce the main army. The Austrian major also delivered Gneisenau a letter from Neipperg at Liebenau urging him to support Schwarzenberg’s request. “In the name of the good cause,” wrote Neipperg, “please do what is possible. By doing this, you will only bring more military renown to your glorious army.”

As noted, the Bohemian Army had moved across the Saxon frontier on 22 August, storming the imperial camp at Pirna on the 23rd. As the Silesian Army engaged the Army of the Bober on the 26th, Schwarzenberg assailed Dresden. However, the three days Schwarzenberg used to cover the twelve miles that separated Pirna from Dresden cost him dearly.

French losses for the 16th neared 25,000 while the Allies lost 30,000: an ominous ratio because Napoleon’s reinforcements would increase the Grande Armée only to 200,000 men and 900 guns while the Allies would reach 300,000 men and 1,500 guns with the arrival of the North German and Polish Armies. Although the emperor considered the 16th a victory, he could not predict what the Allies would do next. Would they retreat as they had done after less decisive battles such as Lützen, Bautzen, and Dresden? If they did retreat, should Napoleon pursue or move closer to Dresden or to France? If they concentrated their armies north and south of Leipzig, should he retreat? If they attacked, Gyulay’s position at Lindenau could jeopardize his retreat. Alone in his tent with maps spread before him, Napoleon awaited news of the enemy, considering all the movements he could execute the following day, including a retreat to the Rhine. Odeleben tells us that he “passed a very uneasy night. [General Étienne-Marie-Antoine] Nansouty and other generals were called to his bedside.”

According to Jean-Jacques Pelet, “in the middle of the night he [Napoleon] learned the true state of affairs and the misfortunes that had befallen his lieutenants who were engaged away from him.” From Schönefeld at 1:00 A.M. on the 17th, Ney announced that VI Corps had fought the combined armies of Blücher and Bernadotte supported by one Austrian division and lost over half of its effectives and more than thirty guns. He also informed the master that Bertrand had been attacked by at least 20,000 men and had suffered large losses. Ney added that, if such disproportionate forces attacked his army group on the 17th, it would be forced to fall back on Liebertwolkwitz. Marmont added that he could not determine his losses until the corps could be reorganized on the 17th but that the more than 60,000 infantry and 12,000 cavalry facing him had increased visibly. From Holzhausen, Macdonald reported that the enemy opposite him numbered between 40,000 and 50,000 men. He predicted the Allies would attack him on the 17th with even more forces. Bertrand expressed the same concerns; he and Poniatowski claimed to be out of ammunition.

In the dark night of 1/2 May, Blücher's corps became strung out on the ten-mile march from Rötha to Pegau. As a result, the head of his column rather than the whole corps reached Audigast late, around 5:00 A.M. With the disposition awaiting him two miles further west at Pegau, Blücher did not know that Yorck's corps would be moving southwest from Zwenkau to strike the Rötha–Pegau road in accordance with Wittgenstein's instructions to be “immediately behind Blücher's columns around 5:00 A.M.” Although some discrepancy exists among the sources, it appears that Blücher directed his foremost brigades – Zieten's 2nd and Klüx's 1st – to Storkwitz as the right wing. While marching to Storkwitz, Zieten's brigade collided with the lead unit of Yorck's corps at Audigast (see Map 3). The resulting entanglement and confusion cost the Prussians four precious hours. It did little good that Wittgenstein, who rode up and met with Yorck's staff for a short while, explained how the Corsican, with his back to Berlin, would be forced to accept battle on terms that favored the Allies. The bungled march particularly aggravated General Friedrich Heinrich von Hünerbein, commander of Yorck's 8th Brigade, who sarcastically shouted to Chaplain Schultze that Wittgenstein seemed all too willing to give a consolation sermon. After clearing his troops from the road, Yorck waited for Blücher's brigades to march past. As soon as Dolffs's Reserve Cavalry struck the road to Pegau, Yorck followed. This meant that Blücher's left wing column, Röder's Reserve Brigade, which remained far behind due to the slow march from Rötha, first needed to wait for Yorck and then Berg to pass.

During the course of 25 May, Napoleon wrote to Durosnel, the commandant of Dresden. This letter stated that the emperor planned to go to Bunzlau that day and from there to Glogau and Frankfurt-am-Oder. This intention accounted for the orders early that morning for his right wing to march northeast toward Liegnitz. Assuming that the Allied army would retreat to Breslau along the Russian main line of communication, Napoleon returned to the idea of a great strategic envelopment and combined it with the core tenet of his master plan: the taking of Berlin. While he fixed the Allies at the Silesian capital presumably with his right, he would swing north with his left, cross the Oder at Glogau and then swoop south to fall on the rear of the Allies at Breslau. Meanwhile, the advance of the Grande Armée downstream the Oder probably would force the Prussians to evacuate Berlin. If not, a reinforced Oudinot would dispatch Bülow and take the capital.

Yet rumors reached Imperial Headquarters that a portion of the Allied army had marched north to unite with Bülow. Did this mark the long anticipated split between the Prussians and Russians? If, as Napoleon expected, the Allied army continued the retreat from Bunzlau through Breslau along the Russian line of communication, the Prussians certainly would recognize that they could not follow their allies into Poland. If the Prussians indeed separated from the Russians, he could return to the idea of defeating each in detail. If they did not separate and did not detach any forces to support Bülow, he could pursue his plan of a strategic envelopment on the Oder. Thus, to determine his next move, he needed accurate intelligence. Consequently, Napoleon ordered II Corps, which stood seven miles northwest of Bunzlau at Thommendorf (Tomisław), to march twenty-five miles further north to Sprottau (Szprotawa) on the Bober.

The lack of experienced cavalry continued to hamper Napoleon after the Allies crossed the Elbe. With his mounted arm unable to maintain contact with the enemy, he could not determine the direction of Wittgenstein's retreat. Thus far, the Allies had proved two of Napoleon's assumptions wrong: they did not defend the Elbe and they did not separate, although he still counted on this happening at any moment. As of 12 May, he did not know where their main body stood. He so desired to see them separate that he convinced himself that it would happen despite lacking hard evidence. Certain that the Russians remained on the great east–west highway to Breslau, he did not know if the Prussians had followed or had moved north to defend Berlin, which appeared the natural response for them to make.

Napoleon's first step on 12 May officially dissolved Eugene's Army of the Elbe, summoning its staff to join the imperial maison and sending his stepson to Italy via Munich. To intimidate the Austrians, he would form a corps of observation on the Adige River consisting of all troops of the Kingdom of Italy and the Illyrian provinces. Napoleon directed Macdonald's XI Corps toward Bischofswerda on the highway to Bautzen. General Pierre-Joseph Bruyères's 1st Division of Light Cavalry would screen Macdonald's march east. Napoleon's orders to Macdonald explained that Eugene's departure signaled the marshal's complete control of XI Corps, meaning he should communicate directly with Berthier. In essence, Macdonald now commanded the vanguard of the Grande Armée, and with it came certain expectations.