Battle of Courtrai (1814)

Part of War of the Sixth Coalition

Date	31 March 1814
Location	Kortrijk, Belgium
Result	French victory

Belligerents

Imperial France

Kingdom of Saxony

Kingdom of Prussia

Commanders and leaders

Nicolas Maison

Johann Thielmann

Friedrich Hellwig

Units involved

I Corps

III German Corps

Strength

9,500, 35–36 guns

3,800–8,500, 6–7 guns

Casualties and losses

300–800

900–1,908, 2–3 guns

The Battle of Courtrai (31 March 1814) saw Johann von Thielmann's Kingdom of Saxony troops and a few Prussians encounter an Imperial French force under Nicolas Joseph Maison near Kortrijk (Courtrai), a city south-west of Ghent in what is now Belgium. Thielmann attacked only to find himself facing the bulk of Maison's I Corps. The action ended in a rout of the Saxons, most of whom were under fire for the first time.

While Napoleon battled the main Coalition armies: the Army of Bohemia or the Grand Army, under the command of the Austrian Prince Schwarzenberg and the Army of Silesia under the command of the Prussian General Prince Blücher in a major campaign in north-east France, a secondary campaign was waged in the Low Countries to the north. A third Coalition army, the Army of the North, of about 120,000 men, with Prussian and Russian corps under the command of Wintzingerode and Bülow, and Dutch troops under Prince Bernadotte, move support on the right flank through the Netherlands and Laon (in the Picardy region in northern France); this force was not ready when the initial invasion of France took place and did not reach northern France until March.

Badly outnumbered by the Coalition forces under Karl August, Grand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, Maison mounted a daring operation. He marched north from Lille to Antwerp where he added one division from its French garrison to his army. Moving south again, he drubbed the aggressive Thielmann when the Saxon general tried to head him off. The Battle of Paris on 30 March and the subsequent abdication of Napoleon ended the war soon afterwards.

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