30.8.1813 Battle of Chlumec

Twenty thousand soldiers died in the Napoleonic battle of Chlumec in 1813. The arrival of the Prussians with General Kleist was decisive and the French were defeated. The battlefield was littered with corpses.

The Battle of Chlumec is also named after the skirmishes that took place on 24 and 26 March 1775, when peasants were beaten during the uprising at Chlumec. However, this Chlumec is located not far from Hradec Králové. The other one is near Ústí nad Labem. The combined armies of Austria, Russia and Prussia defeated the army of the French Emperor Napoleon, commanded by General Van Damme, there on 29 and 30 August 1813.

When Napoleon defeated the Allied armies at Dresden in August 1813, he decided to penetrate the Nakléřov Pass into Bohemia. After all, there was no other way, because the defeated retreating Allied armies were fleeing Germany through this route. "In the Allied army were also the Russian Tsar Alexander I and the Prussian King Frederick William III. Napoleon put General Van Damme in charge of the pursuit, and the retreating Allied army, the so-called Czech Czech Army, had multiple commanders," writes Richard Händl in Grey Eminences in Czech History.

The French had success at first, but Van Damm counted on reinforcements led by Napoleon himself, only they did not arrive in time. In the end the battle was decided by the arrival of the Prussians with General Kleist and the French were defeated. General Kleist was given a noble title for his services after the battle. During the clash at Chlumec, 9,300 Allies, mostly Russians, and 11,000 French died, and thousands more were wounded.

"The French, however, immediately after crossing the Erzgebirge, were surrounded and defeated in the two-day Battle of Chlumec 29.Van Damme was taken prisoner and his corps dispersed," says History and Military Science.

The battle is commemorated by a stone cross that marks the largest mass grave in the country. Ten thousand victims of the 1813 clash are buried beneath it. The battlefield was littered with corpses, which had to be buried as soon as possible because of the risk of spreading cholera. The cross is 122 centimetres high and is engraved with a sword with a curved blade.

Napoleon refused to accept defeat and on 17 and 18 September 1813 tried again to penetrate Bohemia via Chlumec. He settled in Náklerov, from where he could observe from the local church how his troops managed to penetrate the mountain pass. He was unable to descend to the valley and deploy his military chic. Again, the troops of Charles I Philip of Schwarzenberg stood in his way. Napoleon was forced to order a retreat on 18 September.

Sources.