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| Siege of Hamburg | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Part of theGerman campaign of theSixth Coalition | |||||||
 1830s map of Hamburg during the siege (1813–14) | |||||||
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| Belligerents | |||||||
 French Empire |  Russian Empire | ||||||
| Commanders and leaders | |||||||
| Louis-Nicolas Davout | Levin August von BennigsenDmitry DokhturovLudwig von Wallmoden-Gimborn | ||||||
| Strength | |||||||
| 40,000 initially (25,000 men later left for France)[1] | 56,000[1] 120,000 at the time of January 1814[3] | ||||||
| Casualties and losses | |||||||
| 6,000 killed or wounded[1] | 6,000 killed or wounded[1] | ||||||
 | |||||||
Thesiege orblockade of Hamburg[1] was a military engagement of theWar of the Sixth Coalition fought betweenFrench andSixth Coalition forces in Hamburg. After being freed from Napoleonic rule by advancingCossacks and other following Coalition troops it was once more occupied byMarshal Davout's FrenchXIII Corps on 28 May 1813, at the height of theGerman Campaign of the war. Ordered to hold the city at all costs, Davout launched a characteristically energetic campaign against a similar numbered Army of the North made up ofPrussian and other Coalition troops under the command ofCount von Wallmoden-Gimborn, winning a number of minor engagements. Neither force was decidedly superior and the war ground to a halt and resulted in a rather stable front line between Lübeck and Lauenburg and further south along the Elbe river, even after the end of the cease-fire of the summer 1813. In October 1813 a French column's movement towardsDannenberg resulted in the only major engagement inNorthern Germany, theBattle of the Göhrde. The defeated French troops retreated back to Hamburg.
Despite steadily shrinking manpower, food and ammunition supplies, Davout's forces displayed no signs of abandoning Hamburg. When French armies withdrew west after the lostBattle of Leipzig at the end of the year, the Allies deployed a large portion ofBernadotte's Army of the North to watch the city during the 1814 campaign forFrance. Davout was still in control of Hamburg when theWar of the Sixth Coalition ended in April, and eventually capitulated to Russian forces underGeneral Bennigsen on 27 May 1814, obeying orders delivered byGeneral Gérard from the new king of France,Louis XVIII.
French forces are estimated to 42,000 (Including 10,000 Danes[4] and 8,000 wounded[3])
Allied forces are estimated to 52,000[2] in the start (Ludwig von Wallmoden-Gimborn's corps) to 120,000 in the seat area,[3] in January 1814, whenLevin August, Count von Bennigsen took command.Dmitry Dokhturov supervised the siege works from January to May.[5]
During Davout's defense of Hamburg, one type of silver coin was issued. The design of the 32 schilling coin of 1809 was reused, and the date was not changed, but the mintmaster's initials were changed from HSK (for Hans Schierven Knoph) to CAIG (for C. A. J. Ginquembre, who was the French director of the mint in 1813). The coins were issued in 1813, and are listed in the Standard Catalog of World Coins 1801-1900 by Krause Publications as type number KM242 for Hamburg.
Media related toSiege of Hamburg at Wikimedia Commons
