Dissolution of the Rhine Confederation. Army of Silesia. Army of the North Russo-Prussian Reserve. Southern Wing. Corps-Group Wittgenstein. Army of Poland Northern Sector. Lindenau Leipzig Sector. Eastern Sector. Southern Sector. The Battle of Leipzig , [ e ] also known as the Battle of the Nations , [ f ] was fought from 16 to 19 October at Leipzig , Saxony. The battle was the culmination of the German Campaign of and involved , soldiers, 2, artillery pieces, the expenditure of , rounds of artillery ammunition, and , casualties, making it the largest battle of the Napoleonic Wars , and the largest battle in Europe prior to World War I.
Decisively defeated, Napoleon was compelled to return to France while the Sixth Coalition kept up its momentum, dissolving the Confederation of the Rhine and invading France early the next year. Napoleon was forced to abdicate and was exiled to Elba in May The French Emperor Napoleon I attempted to force Emperor Alexander I of Russia into rejoining his unpopular Continental System by invading Russia on 24 June with around , troops, and eventually entered Moscow in late , following the bloody, yet indecisive Battle of Borodino.
However, Alexander refused to surrender even as the French occupied the city, which was set on fire by the time of its occupation. To make matters even worse for Napoleon, in June , the combined armies of Portugal , Spain , and the United Kingdom , under the command of the Duke of Wellington , had decisively routed the French at the Battle of Vitoria in the Peninsular War , and were now advancing towards the Pyrenees and into France itself.
With this string of defeats, the French armies were in retreat on all fronts across Europe. The allies regrouped as the Sixth Coalition, comprising Prussia, Russia, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, the United Kingdom, as well as smaller German states whose citizens and leaders were no longer loyal to the French emperor.
Despite disastrous campaigns in Spain and Russia in , France was still able to rebuild another massive army for Napoleon. Though this new army was large in numbers, it was mostly made up of raw and young French conscripts , many of whom had no desire to fight in Napoleon's wars.
