James Baquet In talking about Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo in 1815, we have already discussed his failure in the Moscow campaign of 1812 (which gave us Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture”). At that time, I mentioned that he subsequently (in 1813) lost to the Sixth Coalition, which caused the French Senate to pass the “Emperor’s Demise Act” and send him into his first exile. Today, let’s look a little closer at that defeat by the Sixth Coalition, which took place at Leipzig. After the defeat in Moscow, other countries expected Napoleon to cease his activities. But he built another army and was again preparing to acquire territory. Napoleon could not believe that his varied enemies would trust each other enough to cooperate against him. He was wrong. He was surprised to discover that Austria’s foreign minister had convinced other countries to form a coalition to stand against him. In fact, the Battle of Leipzig is also sometimes called the Battle of the Nations. In the end, Russia, Prussia, Austria, Sweden, Great Britain, Spain, and Portugal, as well as several smaller provinces, came together as the Sixth Coalition, the sixth time that European powers had allied against France. Napoleon in his hubris ignored the coalition and crossed into Germany, reckoning he would defeat each army as he encountered it. And indeed, his strategy seemed to work — at first. But his new army was not as effective as his old one. Upon learning that armies were marching on him from three points of the compass, he asked for a truce — and then turned down the terms offered to him. When battle resumed, the Coalition ran a campaign of harassment rather than frontal attack, exhausting the French soldiers and resources. By September 1813, they had been driven back to Leipzig, where Napoleon’s 175,000 men defended the town against the Coalition’s 350,000. With men defecting to the other side, Napoleon requested another truce — which was refused. He retreated to Paris, which the allies took March 30 of the next year, and sent him into his first exile. The Battle of Leipzig had handed Napoleon a defeat from which he never recovered. Vocabulary: Which words above mean: 1. going to the other side 2. excessive pride, overconfidence 3. started again 4. details of an agreement 5. alliance, union 6. repeated, small attacks 7. device for determining direction 8. face-to-face 9. sending away from one’s native land 10. figuring | 