James Baquet The German city of Dresden has suffered repeated depredations. In 1760 the city — then in the Electorate of Saxony, an imperial state of the Holy Roman Empire — was unsuccessfully besieged by a Prussian force under Frederick the Great. In 1945, it suffered the infamous bombing of Dresden by a combined British/American force. At that time, as today, Dresden was the capital of the German state of Saxony. (Kurt Vonnegut, an American author, was held there as a POW and based the novel “Slaughterhouse Five” on his first-hand experience of the bombing.) But the unfortunate event we’re discussing today happened between those two dates. The August 1813 Battle of Dresden was an engagement in the Napoleonic Wars, when the Sixth Coalition — made up of Austria, Prussia, Russia, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Sweden, Spain and a number of German States — attempted unsuccessfully to oust the French under Napoleon from Central Europe. They were more successful the following year, when Napoleon was defeated and sent into his penultimate exile, on Elba. On Aug. 16, the French had fortified Dresden and were holding it as a base for Napoleon’s operations in the area. He was planning to attack the Coalition piecemeal, but they had a similar plan: rather than confront Napoleon directly, they prevailed in a number of smaller battles before the assault on Dresden, which took place Aug. 26 and 27. France was holding the city when the Coalition brought 214,000 men to bear, mainly Austrians, Russians and Prussians. The French strategy was a simple one: hold out until Napoleon arrived with his main force, which would bring their total manpower to 135,000. He did, sooner than expected, and repelled the assault. He then continued the counterattack the following day, though outnumbered by a three-to-two ratio, decimating the allied troops through his renowned tactical brilliance. Then, through illness (he was said to have been “suffering from a violent colic”), and short on horses after the Moscow debacle the previous year, he broke off pursuit and failed to dismantle the Coalition force entirely. He would regret this omission the following year. Vocabulary: Which word or phrase above means: 1. prisoner of war 2. succeeded, won 3. failure to do something 4. killing a significant percentage of 5. bit by bit 6. famous for bad reasons 7. intestinal pain 8. take apart 9. having fewer men 10. next-to-the-last | 