page_title: Étienne Marie Antoine Champion de Nansouty
section_title: Campaign in Saxony
hierarchical_section_title: Étienne Marie Antoine Champion de Nansouty / Napoleonic Wars / War of the Sixth Coalition / Campaign in Saxony
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Feldmarschall Carl Philipp Fürst von Wrede
context_page_description: Étienne-Marie-Antoine Champion, comte de Nansouty was a French cavalry commander during the French Revolutionary Wars who rose to the rank of General of Division in 1803 and subsequently held important military commands during the Napoleonic Wars.
  Of noble Burgundian descent, he was a student at the Brienne military school, then was a graduate of the Paris military school. Nansouty began his military career in 1785, as a sub-lieutenant in the regiment Bourgogne-Infanterie, where his father had served during the wars of Louis XV. A cavalry officer at the outbreak of the French Revolutionary Wars in 1792, Nansouty was commissioned as an aide-de-camp to Marshal Nicolas Luckner. During the First Coalition, he saw service as a lieutenant-colonel and squadron commander in the 9th Cavalry Regiment, campaigning with the French armies on the Rhine and in Germany. Promoted to Colonel in 1793 and given the command of the 9th Cavalry, he was noted for several well-led cavalry actions.
context_section_description: In 1813, most military operations took part in Saxony, with the Chasseurs-à-cheval and Colbert's Chevau-légers lanciers encountering the enemy in several isolated cavalry actions, but the first serious action came only at the Battle of Dresden, where Nansouty's Guard cavalry supported Marshal Michel Ney's attack on the extreme left, in conjunction with Marshal Édouard Mortier's "Young Guard" infantry divisions. 
  However, the Guard cavalry was not needed as a whole before the epic "Battle of Nations" at Leipzig. Placed in reserve at first, the Guard cavalry and artillery had to spring into action at once, after Napoleon received news of the Saxon defection. With the Saxons now in the Coalition camp and firing at the soldiers who moments before had been their allies, the situation of some of the French troops became desperate. The position of General Durutte's division, placed close to Saxon lines, was particularly tenuous and Napoleon soon came to its aid, with Nansouty in command of the Guard cavalry and horse artillery. Nansouty launched an impetuous charge with some of his regiments, the Grenadiers-à-cheval, Dragons and Chevau-légers and the Saxons were unable to hold out in this sector. However, the situation changed on 19 October, with the untimely explosion of a bridge over the Elster, the main retreat line for the French rearguard, which was now blocked in the city of Leipzig. The Guard cavalry extricated itself from the field of battle and was very useful in covering the retreat of the remaining French forces.
  With the Grande Armée in full retreat, another dangerous situation occurred on 29 October. With Bavaria now also in the camp of the Coalition, an Austro-Bavarian army of some 45,000 men, under General Karl Philipp von Wrede, who had fought under the command of the Emperor during the previous campaigns, tried to block the French retreat and delay the French force until the arrival of the rest of the Coalition forces. Wrede had the means necessary to achieve his goal, as he possessed a numerous artillery of about one hundred pieces and a powerful cavalry of 50 squadrons. In comparison, the French forces were much dispersed and only a few units remained cohesive and combat-capable. During the ensuing Battle of Hanau, Wrede placed his troops in front of the forest of Lamboi, through which he expected that the French would retreat. He also positioned almost all of his cavalry on the left, placing it under the command of Field Marshal-Lieutenant Spleny. Despite his numeric inferiority, Napoleon sent forward a part of his men against Bavarians deployed in the forest before him, but the intervention of the Foot Guards was soon required. The Bavarians had fought alongside the French in the past and the sight of the fearsome Bearskins of French Guardsmen shook their morale and they abandoned their position in the forest after a brief fight. But, with the fire of a Bavarian grand battery upon them, the French infantry soon had to stop. Napoleon positioned General Le Noury's artillery in battery and brought in support General Drouot with the horse artillery of the Guard, as well as other pieces, constituting a grand battery of some 50 pieces that was soon able to respond adequately to the Austro-Bavarian cannonade. Nansouty, with the Guard Dragoons and Lancers, was instructed to protect this battery from the enemy and thus positioned his men behind the guns.
  Seeing this inauspicious development, Wrede sent his cavalry, no less than 7,000 men, to charge Drouot's grand battery. The steady French canister fire was devastating and many Coalition squadrons turned back to safety. Some of them did manage to get to the French guns and crossed the battery, with the Guard cavalry immediately countercharging and driving them off. With the gun line now out of danger, Nansouty, with the aid of Sebastiani's cuirassiers launched a pursuit of the repulsed enemy horse, encountering and breaking an Austrian cuirassier regiment, the Knesevich Dragoon regiment and two Bavarian chevaulegers regiments, all under the personal command of Field
caption: Bavarian General Karl Philipp von Wrede tried to block Napoleon's retreat back to France, resulting in the Battle of Hanau. During the battle, the Austro-Bavarian cavalry was defeated by Nansouty's Imperial Guard cavalry.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "QuickTime 7.6.9", "Image DateTime": "2011:01:31 01:05:23", "Image HostComputer": "Mac OS X 10.5.8", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "296", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "5107", "Thumbnail YCbCrPositioning": "Centered"}