Napoleon and Berlin: The Franco-Prussian War in North Germany, 1813

In Napoleon and Berlin, Michael V. Leggiere explores Napoleon's almost obsessive desire to capture Berlin and how this strategy ultimately cost him the war.
 
Review by Thomas Zacharis, independent scholar, May 2007
“Volume 1 of a series of books on Campaign and Commanders, Napoleon and Berlin examines a campaign that brought Napoleon one step closer to his downfall while Prussia began to re-emerge from her status of a protectorate-satellite of the French Empire. Michael V. Leggiere, assistant professor of history at Louisiana State University at Shreveport and author of numerous essays on Napoleonic and Prussian military history, begins by analyzing the reasons for Prussia's defeat during Napoleon's 1806-1807 campaign. The humiliation of that debacle induced a strong-willed minority of the Prussian aristocracy to petition their king, Friedrich Wilhelm III, with proposals for and insistence upon, reforms in the army's military organization. Those changes were not however possible without social transformation, and yet the reforms needed for the modernization of the army required the collapse of the feudal system, something many in Prussia's ruling class did not want. Indeed, this dilemma that was to dog the political life of Germany right up to the Nazi era.

Leggiere describes the diplomatic and military maneouvres of the various coalitions made against Napoleon during the period before 1806, but especially after 1812. He puts heavy emphasis on the role of Britain's Lord Castlereagh in building a new alliance—using diplomacy and money—to isolate both Napoleon and Russia. In such a scenario the Prussia served as a buffer state between the French and Russian borders. 
 
From the military viewpoint, the author poses the vital question (concerning 1813 maneouvres), after the victory at Lützen: Would Napoleon violate his own principles and divide his forces rather than concentrate them in hopes of annihilating the main enemy army? Napoleon's final decision to divide his army, in a stubborn obsession to occupy Berlin, would cost him the battle.  The new Prussian army and the Landwehr, under the commands of Friedrich Wilhelm von Bülow and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher were to defeat the North French army in four battles and would play the key role in the Allied victory at Leipzig. In 1815, Napoleon would again divide his forces after Ligny—and again Bülow and Blücher would play an important role in his defeat. The results of those victories would set Prussia on an ultra-militaristic course that ultimately would unite Germany while at the same time quashing the people's desire for political democracy.  After the 1813 “war of liberation”, Prussia was to be swallowed up by 'Germany', Deutschland über alles would replace the beautiful songs for liberation.

Readers who are interested in the military and diplomatic history of Europe will find Napoleon and Berlin a wonderful, very well written book. The International Napoleonic Society was impressed enough to award the author its first literary award for 2002 for this remarkable work.”