Urban Warfare and Reconstruction during the Napoleonic War: Case Studies from Hamburg and Leipzig

Twentieth century wars were not the first to blur distinctions between home and front, soldiers and civilians in urban warfare.  This study explores the fate of two German cities and their populations in northern and central Europe during and after the Napoleonic Wars.  If most traditional studies on Napoleonic warfare have focused on successful French military campaigns, at least until 1812, or on unsuccessful Austrian or Prussian responses to French expansion, until 1813, a study of the urban experience generates a broader understanding of  these wars and their social costs.  Furthermore, a study that explores the relationship between cities and military occupations, sieges, and battles reveals both the legacy of destruction, and rebuilding, as well as of commemoration. 

          Wars and their relationship to civil society are often better understood when they are explored beyond the fields of combat. This project explores the experience of the Napoleonic Warfare beyond the battlefield to understand how military occupation, which included economic warfare, billeting, conscription, and administrative reforms, shaped the experience of war for urban Germans during the Napoleonic era.  Exploring the day to day life of occupied cities also uncovers the motivations and goals that generated the mobilization of civilian resources against the Napoleonic Empire in city streets and market places, and eventually in fields of combat.

            This study of the urban experience during the Napoleonic Wars also reveals the range of wartime experiences.  For example if such cities as Hamburg faced severe economic decline due to economic warfare, other cities like Leipzig endured the consequences of battle and destruction.  Both cities struggled with the problem of ill and injured soldiers, civilian war refugees and Allied occupying armies. Finally the wartime trauma inflicted on both cities generated different strategies of reconstruction and post-war commemoration.