Battle of Hanau, 1813: Napoleon breaks through to the Rhine

Less than two weeks after the Battle of Nations at Leipzig, Napoleon's beaten army was streaming west toward the Rhine and France. Near the old town of Hanau a new enemy stood across its road: the army of Bavaria, which had marched under Napoleon's eagles since 1805 and had changed sides only three weeks before.²

Background

Napoleon lost the great battle around Leipzig from 16 to 19 October 1813 and pulled what was left of his army back through Erfurt toward the Rhine. F. Loraine Petre, the British historian of the campaign, describes the men who reached Erfurt as demoralized and quite unfit to face the armies behind them, and John Rickard notes that the army was losing its discipline as the retreat went on.³

Bavaria had been Napoleon's ally since 1805. On 8 October 1813, by the Treaty of Ried, it went over to the Allies. Its leading general, Karl Philipp von Wrede, did much to bring the treaty about, and he was then given command of both the Bavarian army and the Austrian troops that had faced it on the Inn.⁴

The House of Bavarian History explains why Wrede then went looking for a fight: he wanted to show the Allies that Bavaria's change of sides was meant seriously. Napoléon & Empire makes the same point, adding that for Bavaria a defeat was the lesser evil compared with doing nothing.⁵

Armies and commanders

Wrede was born in Heidelberg in 1767 and had risen in Napoleon's wars. After the campaign of 1809 the emperor made him a count of the French Empire. Petre found it curious that the man who owed his career and his title to Napoleon should now be among his bitterest enemies.⁶

Prince Schwarzenberg, the Allied commander, sent Wrede north to the Main, to sit across the French line of retreat. On the way he stopped before the fortress of Würzburg, failed to take it and had to leave troops there. His information was poor: as late as 28 October he was told that Napoleon was probably heading further north, toward Coblenz, and he believed the French coming his way were only a flank column of 18,000 to 20,000 men.⁷

How many men Wrede had is disputed. Rickard gives the force formed on the Inn as 43,000 Bavarians and Austrians, and Napoléon & Empire puts 43,000 at Hanau itself. Petre, who allows for the marching losses and the detachments, counts about 30,000 men and 58 guns at Hanau, and the House of Bavarian History also gives about 30,000.⁸

Napoleon had far more men on the road, but not all at hand. When the fighting began he had some 16,000 to 17,000 under Marshals Victor and Macdonald and General Sebastiani, with the Old Guard, its artillery under Drouot and its heavy cavalry under Nansouty close behind; Marmont and Bertrand were still marching up. The sources disagree about the balance. The National Gallery writes that the French had less than half Wrede's men and guns; the House of Bavarian History, that the French main force was twice as strong as his. Heigel splits the difference: Wrede had more infantry, Napoleon more artillery.⁹

The battle in phases

Hanau, a town of about 15,000 people, stood in the angle between the Main and its tributary the Kinzig. The Kinzig curved round the north of the town and in that wet autumn could be crossed by all arms only at two bridges: one north-west of Hanau and the Lamboy bridge about a mile to the east. The Lamboy forest came to within a mile of the town, and the great road from Erfurt to Frankfurt ran north of the river.¹⁰

On the morning of 30 October Wrede drew up east of Hanau across the main road. His right stood south of the Kinzig, linked to the rest only by the Lamboy bridge. His center stood between the river and the road, with the Kinzig at its back, and his left, mostly cavalry with 28 guns, was astride the road facing the forest. Petre calls the position hopelessly bad.¹¹

The French infantry of Victor and Macdonald worked forward through the forest, driving back the Bavarian outposts, and by about noon they stood at the edge of the wood opposite Wrede's center. Only then did Wrede understand that he faced the emperor himself. He is said to have answered that nothing could be changed now and that they must do their utmost as brave soldiers. He moved a brigade from his right to guard the Lamboy bridge and fought on.¹²

Turning point

Napoleon chose to strike at Wrede's left, on the open ground beside the road. Drouot had found a forest track north of the road that his guns could use. By about three in the afternoon two battalions of the Old Guard had cleared the woods in front of Wrede's left, and Drouot brought up a battery of about fifty guns, with Sebastiani's cavalry corps and the Guard heavy cavalry drawn up behind it.¹³

The French guns soon mastered Wrede's battery, which was also running short of ammunition. To save the day the Austro-Bavarian cavalry charged the grand battery and failed. The French cavalry of the Guard then charged in turn, swept Wrede's horsemen off the field and fell on the flank of his infantry. Heigel credits the victory above all to Napoleon's superiority in artillery.¹⁴ › Napoleon Bonaparte

Wrede's center, pounded by Drouot's guns and attacked by the cavalry, had to retreat with the Kinzig behind it. Its last three battalions were cut off and driven into the river, where several hundred men drowned. Two brigades from the right, called across to help, were pushed back in confusion onto the narrow Lamboy bridge, and again hundreds drowned in the Kinzig. By nightfall Wrede's army stood south of the river, along the road to Aschaffenburg, still holding Hanau. Napoleon, his road to Frankfurt now open, did not pursue.¹⁵

Aftermath

At two in the morning of 31 October the French bombarded Hanau, setting fire to its suburb, and the Austro-Bavarian garrison left the town; French troops moved in later that morning. Through the day the rest of Napoleon's army filed past on the main road, with Marmont watching the Lamboy bridge and Bertrand holding the town as a rearguard.¹⁶

Once most of the French had gone, Wrede attacked again. The assault on the Lamboy bridge failed. Rickard, Petre and the House of Bavarian History have his men retaking Hanau, while Napoléon & Empire says the attempt failed; all agree that Wrede was badly wounded in the fighting for the town. A last attack on the Kinzig bridge beyond it was beaten off, and nothing more stood between Napoleon and the Rhine.¹⁷

The losses are counted differently. Petre and Rickard put Wrede's losses for the four days from 28 to 31 October at about 9,250 men; Napoléon & Empire gives almost 5,000 killed and wounded and nearly as many prisoners. The French lost fewer in the fighting, but in the same days some 10,000 stragglers, among them five generals, fell into Allied hands.¹⁸

Napoleon himself reached Frankfurt on 31 October, and in the first days of November his army reached Mainz and the Rhine. The Allies gave him no time to rebuild it and invaded France early in 1814.¹⁹ › Battle of Montmirail, 1814

Legacy and memory

Hanau was one of Napoleon's last victories before France itself was invaded, and the museums of Hanau call it his last victory on German soil.²⁰

The verdicts on Wrede are mixed. Petre thought the position he took hopelessly bad and that he was lucky to save any part of his center and left. Napoleon is said to have remarked that he had been able to make Wrede a count but not a general. Heigel, writing for Bavaria's national biography, judged that Wrede was not among the great commanders but was a careful and brave general who almost always achieved what his means allowed.²¹

Painters kept the battle alive. In 1824 Horace Vernet painted it for the Duke of Orléans, the future King Louis-Philippe, as one of four battle scenes for the Palais-Royal, choosing Drouot's battery at the moment the Allied cavalry struck it. The National Gallery, which now owns the picture, notes that Vernet himself proposed Hanau and Montmirail so as to set the last victories of the Empire beside the first of the Revolution.²² › Battle of Valmy, 1792

Music remembers it too. On 8 December 1813 Beethoven's Seventh Symphony had its first performance in Vienna, at a charity concert for soldiers wounded at Hanau.²³

Visiting today

The fighting of 30 October took place on ground that now lies inside the town, in the Lamboy-Tümpelgarten district on the edge of the Lamboy forest.²⁴