Battle of the Mincio River (1814)

Battle of the Mincio River
Part of the War of the Sixth Coalition
Field Marshal Heinrich von Bellegarde and his staff at the battle of the Mincio River, by Albrecht Adam.
Date 8 February 1814 Location Mincio River, present-day Italy Result Indecisive
Belligerents
First French Empire Kingdom of Italy	Austrian Empire
Commanders and leaders
Eugène de Beauharnais	Heinrich von Bellegarde
Strength
34,000	35,000
Casualties and losses
3,500 dead and wounded	4,000 dead, wounded, and captured

In the War of the Sixth Coalition, the Battle of the Mincio River was fought on 8 February 1814 and resulted in an inconclusive engagement between the French under Eugène de Beauharnais and the Austrians under Field Marshal Heinrich von Bellegarde. The battle was not as decisive as Eugène hoped, and in the end it had little significant impact upon the major campaign being waged in France.

Following Napoleon's defeat at the Battle of Leipzig in 1813, French armies retreated westwards in a bid to save the Empire from the main Allied thrust. However, the 1814 campaign involved other theaters besides France, and one of these was Northern Italy, which the Austrians were making another attempt to recover. Murat, the King of Naples, had defected to the Allied side and was threatening the main French army under Napoleon's stepson, Eugène. An Austrian army commanded by Bellegarde advanced from the east and convinced Eugène that a battle was needed to eliminate one opponent before he could deal with the other. Since the Austrians were the more immediate threat, Eugène decided to make a stand on the Mincio River.

The battlefield was highly awkward for the armies involved; roughly 70,000 men would be fighting on a north-south axis of 20 miles that stretched from Lake Garda all the way down to the fortress of Mantua. The low force-to-space ratio meant that it would take time for each commander to understand the developing situation and would hamper effective responses. The Mincio River that interposed itself between Lake Garda and Mantua was dotted with villages and bridges that would become major focus points as the battle progressed.

Eugène had an army of 41,000, but detached 7,000 troops to guard his southern flank on the Po River, leaving 34,000 for the upcoming battle. His army consisted of the Italian Royal Guards, a cavalry division, and two pseudo-corps (not at full strength) under generals Paul Grenier and Jean-Antoine Verdier. The former's troops were positioned around Mantua while those of the latter defended the fortress of Peschiera at the northern edge of the battlefield. Eugène's plan called for a double envelopment that would eventually unite Grenier's and Verdier's forces and allow them to drive the Austrians from the field. It was a good plan on paper, but double envelopment, especially on this scale, usually works with heavy numerical superiority or tactical mobility, neither of which the French had.

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