Proving Grounds
Two of the great, decisive battles of the War of the Fifth Coalition would take place mere days apart and as little as a hundred and sixty miles apart. Though the war would, from the time hostilities were declared, last close to six months, the meetings of great armies at Leipzig and Czestochowa effectively ended the conflict, but for the fighting and the diplomacy.
The latter and less lopsided battle occurred first, on April 28-29, 1814. The gathered Austro-Prussian army in Silesia under Archduke John and Charles Phillip, the Prince of Schwarzenberg, had linked up at Gleiwitz and prepared to march as rapidly as possible and straight at its target - Warsaw, capital of "bastard Poland." The route from the Gleiwitz-Kattowitz area to Warsaw, however, would take the army straight through Czestochowa, which offered the least circuitous route as well as the most favorable terrain for a rapid march, especially with the army overweighted to cavalry in order to strike fast and break the Duchy as quickly as possible. The Warsovian armies were keenly aware of this and had gotten an advance cavalry scouting regiment into the town already, two days ahead of Poniatowski's army just behind. The time the Austrians and Prussians had spent meeting up after mobilizing had given their Polish opponents a large advantage in closing in on the inevitable meeting ground despite its greater distance from Warsaw, Poznan and the heartland of the Duchy.
Czestochowa lies between two hilly wooded escarpments and immediately to the west of the Warta river, all terrain that favored the defenders. Once Poniatowski knew the Coalition was headed straight into the gap rather than bypassing to his west (he correctly deduced that Schwarzenberg would not bother fording the Warta or looping all the way southeast to bypass the highlands via Krakow) he held much of his army back behind town to the north while creating artillery screens and moving much of his cavalry to the rugged hills on east and west, under tree cover. The Prussia-Austrian army walked straight into a trap, dubbed "the Cannae at Czestochowa," with cavalry collapsing in on them from the flanks after they were lured forward near the city and Poniatowski hitting them with the weight of his infantry once they were close. The armies were also more relatively matched in size than Schwarzenberg had anticipated and he immediately called a retreat, with the armies fleeing back to safer ground in Kattowitz, where Poniatowski soon thereafter bottled them up (though he lacked the resources to properly besiege them and still have the flexibility to respond to counterattacks from further west, and thus left them room to retreat). Austro-Prussian casualties were double those of Warsaw's and the retreat was a humiliation, and the Duchy would not be seriously threatened for the remainder of the conflict. And yet, it was not the greatest disaster inflicted on Prussia, for Schwarzenberg at least had made the right decision once he recognized the trap sprung and had an army intact.
Friedrich Wilhelm III was not so lucky. Like his must trusted commander in Silesia, he too knew that to wait for Napoleon to gather his full strength would be suicide and that the Fifth Coalition's advantage lay in attacking quickly and early. His mobilized forces thus sought to punch into Saxony, ideally break one of France's key allies in the Confederation, and hope for an Austrian breakthrough in Bavaria to knock out two of the three major German powers opposed to them. It was a risky strategy reliant on
elan and proximity; Prussia found that while they enjoyed both, the daring forced march through the Fulda left them facing off not with Friedrich August alone but the Saxon King as well as Napoleon himself, as well as a substantial and veteran French force that had joined with their Saxon allies at Naumburg and were able to respond quickly when scouts reported that the Prussians were nearing Leipzig. Napoleon turned the army east immediately and descended upon his prey.
The Battle of Leipzig in the early days of May 1814 remain one of the most decisive annihilations in the history of warfare. A Prussian Army nearly the size of that at Jena was effectively destroyed, suffering close to 40,000 casualties in two days, against only 15,000 for the French and 11,000 for the Saxons - not small numbers by any means, but lower than the opponent. On the heels of the defeat at Czestochowa (which King Friedrich Wilhlem was unaware of as he marched towards the Elbe) it effectively destroyed the Prussians as an effective field force, and left only small garrisons left on the road to Berlin to oppose Napoleon. Friedrich Wilhelm broke his leg and was captured, and four of his key officers were killed on the field on May 2. Those Prussians who were not killed or wounded were for the most part captured; it is estimated that as few as 5,000 were able to effectively flee the theater, and with such miniscule numbers there was little for them to do to regroup as Napoleon reassembled his armies, absorbed two corps of reinforcements and began the march towards Berlin.
One of the chief antagonists of the Fifth Coalition had been effectively forced from the conflict within only the first two months of its start.