Battle of Leipzig - Opposing Forces

Opposing Forces

The French had around 150,000 soldiers along with 700 guns plus 15,000 Poles, 10,000 Italians, and 20,000 Saxons, totaling to 190,000 troops on the Napoleonic side. The Coalition, on the other hand has some 430,000 troops along with 1,500 guns fielded in the battle consisting of 200,000 Russians, 130,000 Austrians and Hungarians, 80,000 Prussians, and 20,000 Swedes. This makes the largest battle since Borodino, Wagram, Jena and Auerstadt, and Ulm.

The French Grande Armée, under the supreme command of Emperor Napoleon, was in a complacent state; most of his troops consist of teens and inexperienced men conscripted shortly after the utter destruction of Grande Armée during Napoleon's ill-fated invasion of Russia. Napoleon conscripted these men to be readied for an even larger campaign against the newly-formed Sixth Coalition and its forces stationed in Germany. Whilst he won the battles at Lützen and Bautzen, his army is steadily depleting as Grande Armée forces were seemingly defeated in some battles commanded by Napoleon's marshals while the commanders of the Coalition forces closely follow the Trachenberg Plan. The French Imperial cavalry was also in a complacent state; they were of poor quality compared to those who were mobilized during the Russian campaign. This was the reason why Napoleon could not keep his eyes to his lines of communications nor scout some enemy positions, the fact that fruited during the battle at Grossbeeren, a settlement just south of Berlin.

The Coalition army, under the overall supreme command of Czar Alexander I Romanov and Russian field marshal Prince Barclay de Tolly as the commander-in-chief of the army, was composed of four army-level commands: the Russian-Austrian Army of Bohemia under Karl von Schwarzenberg, the Russian-Prussian Army of Silesia under Gebhard von Blücher, the Russian Army of Poland under Levin August von Benningsen and the Swedish-Russian-Prussian Army of the North under Charles John Bernadotte.