Battle of Courtrai (1814)

Battle of Courtrai (1814)
Part of War of the Sixth Coalition
Lille Antwerp Courtrai Ghent Tournai Breda Hoogstraten Maubeuge Brussels class=notpageimage| 1814 Campaign in the Low Countries (in what are now Belgium and Holland)
Date 31 March 1814[1] Location Kortrijk, Belgium 50°50′N 3°16′E / 50.833°N 3.267°E / 50.833; 3.267 Result French victory[1]
Belligerents
France	Saxony  Prussia
Commanders and leaders
Nicolas Maison	Johann Thielmann Friedrich von Hellwig
Units involved
I Corps	III German Corps
Strength
9,500–13,000[1] 35–36 guns	3,800–9,000[1] 6–7 guns
Casualties and losses
300[1]–800	900[1]–1,908 2–3 guns lost

War of the Sixth Coalition:
Campaign Low Countries 1814

50km
30miles

Courtrai

Bergen op Zoom

3

Antwerp

2

Hoogstraten

1

  

The color black indicates the current battle.

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 body, Army of the North led by Prince Jean Baptiste Bernadotte sent major elements into the Low Countries to drive out the Imperial French occupation forces. In time, the Coalition forces, joined by a British expedition and other reinforcements, succeeded in driving the local French forces back to Lille and isolating most of the remainder in Antwerp.

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.