The Fall

CHAPTER 9 · 1813–1815 · The Age of Revolutions, 1775–1848

Now the coalition that never cohered finally does — and look at what the map shows arriving at Leipzig in October 1813: Russia, Prussia, Austria and Sweden converging with half a million men on Napoleon’s 200,000, in the “Battle of the Nations,” the largest engagement in European history before the World Wars. The allies have adopted every French invention — mass conscription, corps systems, even a rule (the Trachenberg Plan) to refuse battle wherever the Emperor commands in person and attack his marshals everywhere else. Three days break the Grand Empire: the Rhine Confederation defects mid-b

The turn: Leipzig, 16–19 October 1813.

This chapter is one scene of an interactive atlas: the map repaints as the dates advance, campaigns draw themselves, and every chapter argues its causes and consequences — then a field exam asks you to prove it on the map.