Battle of Mormant

Battle of Mormant by Simeon Fort

Date	17 February 1814
Location	Mormant, France
Result	French victory

Belligerents

Commanders and leaders

Anton von Hardegg

Peter de Lamotte

Units involved

II Corps

Reserve of Paris

V Cavalry Corps

VI Cavalry Corps

VI Corps

V Corps

Strength

18,000–20,000

3,500–4,300, 12 gn.

Hardegg's division

Lamotte's division

Casualties and losses

600

+2,114, 9–12 guns

1,000

The Battle of Mormant (17 February 1814) was fought during the War of the Sixth Coalition between an Imperial French army under Emperor Napoleon I and a division of Russians under Count Peter Petrovich Pahlen. Enveloped by cavalry led by François Étienne de Kellermann and Édouard Jean-Baptiste Milhaud and infantry led by Étienne Maurice Gérard, Pahlen's outnumbered force was nearly destroyed, with only about a third of its soldiers escaping. Later in the day, a French column led by Marshal Claude Perrin Victor encountered an Austrian-Bavarian rearguard under Anton Leonhard von Hardegg and Peter de Lamotte in the Battle of Valjouan. Attacked by French infantry and cavalry, the Allied force was mauled before it withdrew behind the Seine River. The Mormant-Valjouan actions and the Battle of Montereau the following day marked the start of a French counteroffensive intended to drive back Karl Philipp, Prince of Schwarzenberg's Allied Army of Bohemia. The town of Mormant is located 50 kilometres (31 mi) southeast of Paris.

The Allied generals, particularly the Prussians, were exuberant over their victory over Napoleon at the Battle of La Rothière on 1 February 1814. They soon conceived a plan in which the main army under the Austrian Field Marshal Schwarzenberg advanced toward Paris via Troyes. Simultaneously, Prussian Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher's army took a more northerly route along the Marne River toward Meaux. When Napoleon realized that Blücher represented the more serious threat on 6 February, he began to shift his strength northward in order to deal with the Prussian field marshal. Leaving Marshals Victor and Nicolas Oudinot with 34,000 men to hold off Schwarzenberg's much larger army, Napoleon headed north on 9 February with 30,000 troops.

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