Napoleon’s motives have remained a subject of controversy from his own day until ours. He may have hoped to deliver a tremendous blow to Prussia’s war-making capacity and morale. Ironically, the heavy losses and strategic reverses sustained by the French left Napoleon’s Grande Armee vulnerable to an Allied coalition that eventually drove Napoleon from Central Europe forever.
Michael V. Leggiere is Assistant Professor and Deputy Director, Military History Center, University of North Texas, and author of Napoleon & Berlin: The Franco-Prussian War in North Germany, 1813 (OU Press, 2002), and The Fall of Napoleon, Vol. I: The Allied Invasion of France, 1813-181 (Cambridge, 2007).