Michael V. Leggiere

After a truly bad introduction which highlights the author's weak knowledge about European history and military tactics, the book recovers and even delivers a nice operational study about von Bülow's fight with the Prussian bureaucracy on the one hand and the French forces on the other hand. Given his title, Leggiere tries to make the case that the fight for Berlin was important. Actually it was a side show while the main battles happened around the axis Leipzig to Dresden. Possession of show more Berlin would not have helped Napoleon much and he only allocated few forces for its capture. Overall, he should have assigned even fewer troops as they might have given him a decisive edge in the main theater.

The slickest and meanest game was played by Bernadotte in his role as Swedish king. Knowing that his only goal was the capture of Norway, he essentially kept his Swedish army out of the battles, letting the Prussians and Russians do the bleeding. The Swedish-Russian cooperation was hampered by the recent Finnish War: Russia had just wrested Finland away from Sweden and even shortly invaded Sweden's mainland. It is not quite clear whether the author is aware of this war. Overall, a good read about a lesser aspect of the 1813 campaign. show less