On 2 December 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself emperor of the French. Three days later, he held an elaborate ceremony on the Champ de Mars in Paris. In front of the École Militaire, the academy where Napoleon had received his formal training to become an officer in the French army, workers erected an elaborate pavilion modeled on the headquarters of a Roman emperor. On a dais in the center rose the throne of the new Caesar. As a self-made man lacking dynastic legitimacy, Napoleon engineered this spectacle to align his regime with the military ethos and traditions of the Roman Empire. On his signal, deputations from the regiments of his army approached the throne. Napoleon rose and issued orders for the distribution of new battle standards and regimental colors to replace those of the republic that he had toppled. Atop each blue regimental flagpole perched a bronze eagle with outstretched wings and head turned to the left. Again borrowing from ancient tradition, Napoleon modeled his Eagles after the aquila, or eagle – the symbol of Rome's legions dating back to 104 BC. Likewise having outstretched wings, the Roman aquila looked to its right. After distributing the Eagles, Napoleon spoke to his warriors: “Soldiers! Behold your colors! These Eagles will always be your rallying point. They will always be where your emperor will judge necessary for the defense of his throne and his people. Swear to sacrifice your lives for their defense; and, by your courage, to keep them constantly in the path of victory. You swear.”

This seven-year project has been greatly assisted by many dear friends and colleagues who gave limitless support, shared their research, and focused early drafts. Alexander Mikaberidze is a friend like no other: for years he has not merely graciously provided me with Russian sources, but he also translates them; I am deeply indebted to Alex. His help in canvassing Russia's archival collection as well as his insight have greatly improved this work. Other dear friends such as Rick Schneid, Huw Davies, Jack Gill, Dennis Showalter, Jeremy Black, Chuck White, and Peter Hofschröer have provided endless support, inspiration, and assistance. I must also convey my deepest appreciation to Peter Harrington of the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection at Brown University for providing all the artwork that accompanies the text on the shortest notice. At Cambridge University Press, I wish to thank Hew Strachan for his support, Michael Watson for his patience and understanding, and especially for granting me the opportunity to present the 1813 campaign in two volumes, and Rosalyn Scott for seeing the manuscript through production. At the University of North Texas, I am indebted to the Department of History, the Military History Center, and the College of Arts and Sciences for their generous financial support. Behind all three is my chairman, colleague, and friend, Rick McCaslin, who has been a steady source of support and encouragement. I am fortunate to have worked with two of the foremost military historians in the world: Geoff Wawro and Rob Citino. Both set the standard extremely high but their steadfast advice and encouragement are boundless. I especially want to thank Geoff for his friendship, confidence, and support. Last but not least, I thank my graduate students for their patience when they found the door to my office closed: Jon Abel, Chad Tomaselli, Jordan Hayworth, Nate Jarrett, Casey Baker, and Eric Smith.

More than 300,000 imperial troops moved east through Prussia as part of Napoleon's massive 600,000-man army for the invasion of Russia. The orderly requisition of Prussian goods and provisions soon collapsed under the strain, prompting the French to loot indiscriminately. Words fail to describe the devastation of the Prussian provinces, especially East Prussia. Atrocities that accompanied the rape of the land by Prussia's “ally” rivaled the human disaster of the Thirty Years War. The Hanoverian minister Ludwig von Ompteda noted that the French had left the Prussian peasants with “nothing but eyes to weep with in their misery.” The French also carried off the 20,842 soldiers who formed the Prussian contingent of the Grande Armée of 1812. Commanded by General Julius August von Grawert, the Prussian corps consisted of the best units drawn from the six brigades of the Prussian army, with the East Prussian regiments providing the largest contribution because their depots stood closest to the staging areas of the imperial army. Napoleon forced Frederick William to demobilize the rest of the Prussian army in accordance with the 42,000-man limit of the 1808 treaty. Thus, approximately 22,000 troops remained in Prussia, backed by a trained reserve of 36,424.

On the evening of 22 June 1812, the Grande Armée commenced the invasion of Russia. Poor health forced Grawert to turn over command to General Yorck. As the 27th Infantry Division of the Grande Armée, the Prussians served in Marshal Jacques-Étienne Macdonald's X Corps. While X Corps marched toward Riga, Napoleon led the main body of the Grande Armée in pursuit of the Russians, who implemented the defensive plans drafted by Phull and Barclay de Tolly. Although failing to destroy the Russian army at Borodino on 7 September, Napoleon reached an evacuated Moscow one week later. Not only did the tsar refuse to negotiate, but the Russians also had burned the city. Having to choose between remaining at Moscow – 1,200 miles from Paris – for the winter or withdrawing, the emperor chose the latter. On 19 October, a much smaller Grande Armée commenced the retreat.

“At this moment, I am leaving for Mainz,” Napoleon informed his father-in-law, Kaiser Francis, on 13 April 1813. “I had no plans to do so before the 20th but the news I received of enemy movements on the left bank of the Elbe has prompted me to hasten my departure by several days. I will be at Mainz between the 15th and 16th.” From Mainz, he informed Jerome on the 18th that Marshals Bessières and Marmont had reached Eisenach with “a corps of 50,000 men, all French,” that Ney had arrived at Erfurt with 60,000 men, and that Bertrand had started his march from Bamberg to Coburg “with 60,000 men, two-thirds French, one-third Italian.” According to the latest report Napoleon received from Eugene, dated the 16th, the left wing of Army of the Elbe extended to the Elbe west of its confluence with the Saale while the right reached the foothills of the Harz. Napoleon anxiously sought to push his Army of the Main to the Saale just south of Eugene. His chief of staff, Marshal Louis-Alexandre Berthier, explained to Ney that “this movement requires some caution and, once completed, IV, III, VI Corps, and the Guard will be on the line of the Saale on the same battlefield.”

Prussia withdrew from the struggle against Revolutionary France known as the War of the First Coalition (1792–1797) in the year 1795. Declaring neutrality, Berlin followed this course while the other powers again fought France in the War of the Second Coalition (1798–1801). During this conflict, General Bonaparte overthrew the French government and proclaimed himself dictator under the title of First Consul. Citizen Bonaparte led France to victory in that war and concluded peace with Great Britain in 1802. His 1803 reorganization of Germany awarded Prussia generous territorial compensation for Rhineland districts lost to French expansion. Diplomatic relations between France and Prussia remained strong, with Napoleon insinuating that he supported Berlin's goal of organizing North Germany into a Prussian-dominated confederation. Renewed war between France and Britain in 1803 prompted Napoleon to occupy Hanover, a possession of the British crown, with 30,000 French troops. His actions threatened Prussian national security because of Hanover's proximity to Brandenburg. Moreover, the Prussians secretly coveted the Electorate.

Relations between France and Prussia considerably deteriorated two years later during the 1805 War of the Third Coalition. Moved by a November meeting with Tsar Alexander I at Potsdam, Frederick William III agreed to issue an ultimatum to Napoleon that among other stipulations demanded a French withdrawal west of the Rhine. Should Napoleon refuse, the Prussians would join the Third Coalition: Russia, Great Britain, and Austria. After the Prussian foreign minister, Christian von Haugwitz, reached Napoleon's headquarters deep in Bohemia to deliver the ultimatum, the French emperor refused to see him, knowing the reason for his arrival. Shortly after, Napoleon's stunning 2 December 1805 victory over the Austro-Russian army at Austerlitz ended the Third Coalition. Napoleon then summoned Haugwitz.

All remained quiet in the French camp on the “lovely May morning” of the 20th, giving the appearance that Napoleon would not attempt to cross the Spree on this day. From one of Bautzen's church steeples, Prussian staff officers noted at 9:15 the march of two imperial infantry divisions northeast from the plateau of Welka as well as the massing of cavalry on the French left. Napoleon himself could be seen reconnoitering the Bautzen position. Along with the reports from the previous day, this news prompted Wittgenstein to continue the measures already started by the corps commanders that corresponded to his instructions for countering a movement through Guttau (Gottamelde) by the French left wing to envelop the Allied right. Accordingly, Barclay would extend the right wing north, leaving Kleist's corps on the hills at Burk to cover his movement; the army then would follow Barclay.

Earlier that morning, Barclay posted his main body between Klix and Brösa; Yorck's corps remained in reserve on the hill of Guttau; and Blücher pushed forward an entire brigade to the Kreckwitz heights (see Map 6). Around noon, he received final instructions from Wittgenstein to move II Corps from Baschütz north to a position between Kreckwitz and Brösa. Grand Duke Constantine's two cuirassier divisions would combine with Blücher's Reserve Cavalry to extend the right wing to Brösa and serve as an intermediate line between Blücher and Barclay. Unsure of the number of villages on the right bank of the Spree between Kreckwitz and Brösa, Wittgenstein directed Blücher to occupy as many as he found. Gorchakov's infantry would form the second line by marching north and assuming the position vacated by II Corps at Baschütz. Kleist would remain at Burk; the infantry of the Russian Guard and Reserve would likewise maintain their positions south of the Bautzen–Weißenberg road. These measures did not achieve fruition. Wittgenstein recalled the cuirassiers to cover the batteries south of Litten. Next, Barclay reported that he could not maintain the Klix–Brösa line and so fell back to the Malschwitz–Gleina line. Under these circumstances Blücher posted Zieten's brigade between Kreckwitz and Doberschütz, concealing his other two brigades as well as Dolffs's Reserve Cavalry along the eastern foot of the Kreckwitz heights.

On 16 March, the same day that St.-Marsan received official news of the Russo-Prussian alliance along with Frederick William's declaration of war, the vanguard of Blücher's II Corps struck the road to Dresden. The remaining troops followed on the 17th, with the exception of Colonel Friedrich Erhard von Röder's Brandenburg Brigade. Frederick William wanted the Brandenburgers to remain at Breslau due to the presence of Poniatowski's Poles at Tarnowitz, 100 miles southeast of Breslau. However, on Scharnhorst's orders, the brigade followed II Corps on the 24th after Poniatowski continued his forced retreat to Austria. Frederick William would not forget this affront.

With Scharnhorst serving as chief, Blücher's staff represented the very pinnacle of Prussian military thinking and may well have been the greatest staff of all time in terms of intellect, acumen, and collective experience. Majors Karl Wilhelm von Grolman, Johann Wilhelm von Krauseneck, and Otto August Rühle von Lilienstern, joined later by Lieutenant-Colonel Karl Ferdinand von Müffling – all future Chiefs of the General Staff of the Prussian Army – as well as many other majors, captains, and lieutenants, assisted Scharnhorst. Clausewitz, who remained in the tsar's service, accompanied the staff as the Russian liaison. In addition, Prince August, the king's cousin, accompanied headquarters as General Inspector of the Artillery. The seventeen-year-old crown prince, affectionately called “Fritz,” the king's brother, Prince William, the king's nephew, Prince Frederick (son of Frederick William's brother, Louis), and the king's brother-in-law, Prince Karl of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, all joined Blücher to earn their spurs. Frederick William remained with the tsar throughout the war.

Including Prussia among the five great powers is misleading. Based on its paltry resources, small population, and indefensible frontiers, the kingdom legitimately stood as the most powerful of the second-tier states such as Spain, Portugal, Naples, Bavaria, and the Ottoman Empire. The Prussians themselves recognized this fact. After Frederick the Great's War of Bavarian Succession (1778–1779) against Austria, Prussia did not want to risk a unilateral conflict against another great power. Prussia's deference to Great Britain, Austria, Russia, and France became quite apparent just two years after Frederick's death. In 1788, his nephew and successor, Frederick William II, assumed the status of junior partner in the Anglo-Prussian effort to end the Patriot Revolt in the Netherlands. In 1792, the alliance with Austria during the War of the First Coalition again relegated Prussia to junior status, as did Russia's orchestration of the Second and Third Partitions of Poland in 1793 and 1795 respectively. The situation did not change under Frederick William III. During the 1803 reorganization of Germany, the Prussians were quite content to have Napoleon to take the lead. In 1805, Alexander goaded Frederick William toward war with Napoleon but within the security of a multipower coalition. Prussian participation in the War of the Third Coalition did not come to pass, yet the War of the Fourth Coalition in the following year clearly demonstrated to the Prussians that they could not stand alone against another great power. Alexander did come to Frederick William's aid, but not in time. This became the crucial question of Prussia's pro-Russian party in 1811: could and would the tsar arrive in time to save Prussia from total annihilation? How much trust could the Prussians place in the timely support of Great Britain – which had committed its small army to Iberia – and Austria, now bound to Napoleon through marriage? Scharnhorst believed that only a miracle could save Prussia.

Around 2:00 A.M. on 3 May, Miloradovich received orders to march seven miles northeast along the right bank of the Elster from Zeitz to the village of Predel. There he would unite with Duke Eugen's II Infantry Corps to form the rearguard of the Allied army as it retreated from Lützen. After requisitioning several wagons from the nearby villages to use to transport his infantry and having kept his corps in a state of readiness throughout the night, Miloradovich immediately began the march. His main body reached Predel, less than five miles southwest of Pegau, at daybreak. For the retreat on the 3rd, Wittgenstein divided the Allied army into two columns based on nationality: on the left, the Prussians marched to Borna while the Russians withdrew to Frohburg on the right. After the French pulled out of Leipzig, Kleist's Cossacks reoccupied the city on the 3rd, but Wittgenstein's orders to retreat prompted them to follow the rest of the corps through Wurzen and across the Elbe by way of the pontoon bridge at Mühlberg. Bülow, who had driven the French from Halle on the 2nd, retreated across the Elbe to cover Berlin.

Numerous wagons carried the wounded from Pegau through Groitzsch on the road to Borna. Further east, the Russian parks and baggage proceeded along the Penig–Freiberg road to Dresden. Again, faulty Russian staff work plagued the operation. As for issuing instructions to the corps commanders, Volkonsky relied on Auvray to determine the direction of the retreat while Auvray believed Volkonsky would arrange the details of the march and so did nothing. This blunder and the overlooking of many details rendered an orderly retreat from the battlefield impossible. “At the very first step the instability of the duality of command was proven,” judges Bogdanovich. “Had the bravery and perseverance of the Allies on 2 May not made such a deep impression on the enemy,” explains Caemmerer, “the aimlessness of the departure certainly would have had evil consequences. As it was, they found time to gradually solve even this difficult task.”

A closer analysis of the development of the literary market, the popular, military and academic historiography on the period of the Napoleonic Wars and the publication of autobiographies and war memoirs treating this era up to the First World War reveals remarkably clear trends in the production of memories of the Anti-Napoleonic Wars. It shows the increasing influence of the expanding literary market and with it the creation of a culture-consuming national public. It points to the growing authority of the master narratives produced by a professionalizing academic historiography, but also demonstrates that these master narratives were always challenged by the counter-narratives of academic, military and popular historians – even though the multiplicity of interpretations accepted in academia declined and a pro-Prussian, monarchic-conservative or national-liberal interpretation of the period of the Anti-Napoleonic Wars gained ascendancy in Imperial German historiography. Furthermore, this analysis demonstrates that throughout the nineteenth century, the master narratives of historians competed with the far more diverse recollections of the era in published autobiographies and war memoirs. These memory texts reveal the broadest diversity of interpretations, because the majority of them were not written by Prussian supporters of the struggle against Napoleon, but by soldiers, officers and generals who had fought in the Napoleonic army up to 1813.

For both historiography and autobiographical accounts, the importance of the twenty-fifth, fiftieth and one-hundredth anniversaries of the wars as occasions for writing and publishing is striking. Political events such as the Rhine crisis, the failure of the Revolution of 1848–49, the Wars of German Unification and the founding of the German Empire clearly left their mark on the narratives and their reception. While the commercialization of the literary market and the growing readership had more influence on the production of autobiographical memory, both contributed especially to the boom in edited reprints of autobiographical accounts of the Anti-Napoleonic Wars occasioned by the hundredth anniversary.

The collective practices and the political culture of the period of the wars of 1813–15 and the postwar era with their movements, associations, festivals, rituals and symbols, developed in Prussia and other parts of Germany, were not only instrumental in their time, but also had a lasting influence on monarchical, nationalist and military culture until the First World War. During the wars of 1813–15 they significantly helped to mobilize patriotic-national sentiments and with them war support, albeit with substantial regional variations, as indicated by the different levels of mobilization for the militia and the volunteers’ movement, for wartime charity and patriotic women’s associations, and for the patriotic-national and military festivals, rituals and symbols introduced. After the wars, associations, celebrations, rituals and symbols organized the commemoration of the fallen soldiers and other war victims and supported the process of cultural demobilization more generally, including the integration of the returning militiamen and volunteers into civilian life. Just as the patriotic-national discourse of the wars of 1813–15 and the postwar era yielded a template for nationalist rhetoric in the following century, so too did the patriotic-national associations, festivals, rituals and symbols of the period provide a blueprint for monarchical, nationalist and military culture up to the First World War, as the history of the Iron Cross demonstrates. Hence, both the patterns of political thinking and the collective practices and cultural representation developed during and after the period of the struggle against Napoleon were important carriers of the collective memories of the Anti-Napoleonic Wars. These memories reflected to a surprising extent the old political and regional battles of the war and postwar period, at least until German unification in 1871. Popular literary media were another important carrier of collective memories. The most influential among them were the history books, autobiographical accounts and novels that are studied in the next two parts.

The extent to which men were marshaled for the militia and volunteered in Prussia in 1813 is one indicator of the scale of the population’s mobilization for war. Even in retrospect, it is remarkable how quickly the monarchy succeeded in the spring and summer of 1813 – despite all adverse circumstances – in marshaling a large field army that, in coalition with the Russian troops, matched the rapidly reconstructed Grande Armée. As a result of mobilization for the militia and volunteer units, the Prussian army grew from 67,000 men in March 1813 to 245,000 in August 1813; 113,000 of them were in the militia. An additional 49,372 volunteers signed up, of whom 24,841 served in the “national regiments,” volunteer rifle (Jäger) detachments and volunteer units such as the Lützow Free Corps and 24,531 in the regiments of the standing army and the militia. Resistance to the introduction of universal conscription among the male population was in general astonishingly small. Many young men even volunteered.

Recruitment for the militia and the volunteer units and their equipment, arming and outfitting were all funded and organized by the local communities and thus required the broad support of the civilian population. The militia and volunteer movement, therefore, needs to be conceptualized as a collective practice of patriotic-national war support. The volunteer movement in particular can only be understood in this way, because each volunteer was only accepted as such if he enlisted fully equipped, armed and outfitted. In the equestrian units, the volunteers themselves, their families and friends or sponsors in the community even had to buy their horses, which was quite expensive. The level of this form of war support naturally differed significantly between the various regions, social strata and ethnic groups of the Prussian monarchy. It correlated, as I will demonstrate in this part, with disparities in support for war charity, the spread of the patriotic women’s associations and the level of acceptance of patriotic-national culture. A more detailed analysis of the regional and social differences in military mobilization within Prussia thus helps us to understand the complex interplay of factors that influenced more general patriotic-national mobilization for war in the old and new territories of the monarchy and far beyond.

“Who is a Man?” asked Ernst Moritz Arndt, in a poem that first appeared in February 1813 in the appendix to the Brief Catechism for German Soldiers. This question occupied not only him but also his contemporaries to a degree hardly imaginable today. Diverse images of masculinity were developed in the patriotic-national discourse of the time. Arndt, for example, defined a ”German man“ in the poem as follows:

1. He is a man prepared to fight,

2. For his wife and his dear child;

3. For a cold breast lacks will and might,

4. And its deeds will be as wind.

1. He is a man prepared to die,

2. For liberty, duty, and right:

3. A God-fearing heart knows all is well,

4. His step is ever light.

1. He is a man prepared to die,

2. For God and fatherland,

3. Until the grave he’ll carry on

4. With heart and voice and hand.

1. So, German man, so, free man,

2. With God thy lord to the foe!

3. For God alone can aid thy cause,

4. And luck and victory bestow.

Here, as in other songs in the Catechism, Arndt entreated German men to recall their core virtues. Apart from military valor, these included love of liberty and country, piety, strength and courage – manly virtues, he asserted, that their Germanic forefathers had demonstrated. At the heart of this model of masculinity was the inseparable equation of masculinity, military valor and patriotism. While these masculine virtues had been propagated, especially in poetry, since the Seven Years’ War, it was only in the war years 1813–15 that they became the core of the dominant model of masculinity that served to bolster recently introduced universal conscription ideologically. A closer analysis of the contemporary discourse, however, reveals complementary and competing variants of this model, each with its own specific political notions of war and military service. In this chapter, I first examine the changing ideas of warfare and the debate over the character of the wars of 1813–15 – which had a lasting influence on the contested construction of war memories and the political claims related to them – and then explore the variant models of valorous masculinity.

Ernst Moritz Arndt wrote these words in May 1817 to his friend Councilor of War Johann Georg Scheffner in Königsberg. Like many of his contemporaries, he sensed that he was living in a period of transition and rapid transformation. The experience of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars had changed the perception of time in many ways, leading to a “memory crisis” that educated contemporaries responded to in large numbers by turning toward history. The intensity of the renewed “historical impulse” since the early nineteenth century expressed the powerful perception of a “deprivation of the past.” In the German-speaking region this development became evident not just in the political journalism and Romantic literature of the time, but also in the writings of early historicism, which turned with heightened interest to the German past, including the most recent events. The first accounts of the history of the wars of 1813–15 and the “time of the French” appeared soon after it was over. In subsequent decades, this historical impulse expressed itself in the development of history into a professional academic discipline and the accompanying triumph of historicism, the founding of a variety of archaeological and historical societies as well as local historical and museum associations, in the culture of monuments and not least in the first boom in autobiographies and war memoirs and the growing treatment of subjects from history in other literary texts such as biographies and novels. The development of this history boom suggests that – apart from a number of more general factors that led to a discovery of the past and a growing interest in historical topics among the broader public – the period of the Napoleonic Wars itself was such a formative experience for contemporaries and subsequent generations that it required intensive processing in individual and collective memory beyond the national politics of memory pursued by the state, the military and churches.