The siege of Danzig (16 January 1813 – 2 January 1814) was a siege of the city of Danzig during the

War of the Sixth Coalition In the War of the Sixth Coalition (March 1813 – May 1814), sometimes known in Germany as the Wars of Liberation, a coalition of Austria, Prussia, Russia, Spain, the United Kingdom, Portugal, Sweden, and a number of German States defeated F ...

by Russian and Prussian forces against

Jean Rapp General Count Jean Rapp (27 April 1771 – 8 November 1821) was a French Army officer during the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars and twice governor of the Free City of Danzig. He served as Aide-de-camp to French Generals Lou ...

's permanent French garrison, which had been augmented by soldiers from the Grande Armée retreating from its

Russian campaign The French invasion of Russia, also known as the Russian campaign, the Second Polish War, the Army of Twenty nations, and the Patriotic War of 1812 was launched by Napoleon Bonaparte to force the Russian Empire back into the continental block ...

. The garrison included two crack divisions under Étienne Heudelet de Bierre and Charles Louis Dieudonné Grandjean plus whole units and stragglers that had lost contact with their units, all with their health and morale both weakened and most of their equipment lost and carrying their wounded. The siege was begun by cossacks under hetman Matvei Platov, then was continued mainly by infantry, mainly militiamen and irregulars. It lasted ended in a French surrender to Coalition forces.

Background

The

Treaty of Tilsit The Treaties of Tilsit were two agreements signed by French Emperor Napoleon in the town of Tilsit in July 1807 in the aftermath of his victory at Friedland. The first was signed on 7 July, between Napoleon and Russian Emperor Alexander, when ...

of 1807 had made the city a Free City nominally under Prussian control. It was sited at the mouth of the River Vistula and along the coast of the

Baltic Sea The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden and the North and Central European Plain. The sea stretches from 53°N to 66°N latitude and ...

and then had 60,000 inhabitants. It was also a major supply depot for Napoleon's force, with large quantities of food, munitions, forage, weapons, clothing and ammunition, and needed to be held by his forces to keep the Prussians neutral and avoid them defecting to the coalition (as they later did). He was also attempting to re-group an army in his rear in order to confront the Coalition, and so needed to guard the line of the Vistula by garrisoning Danzig, Thorn and

Warsaw Warsaw ( pl, Warszawa, ), officially the Capital City of Warsaw,, abbreviation: ''m.st. Warszawa'' is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the River Vistula in east-central Poland, and its population is officia ...

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* {{DEFAULTSORT:Danzig, Siege Of (1813) Battles of the War of the Sixth Coalition Sieges of the Napoleonic Wars Sieges involving France Sieges involving Germany Sieges involving Prussia Sieges involving Russia Battles involving Prussia Conflicts in 1813 1813 in Prussia

Siege A siege is a military blockade of a city, or fortress, with the intent of conquering by attrition, or a well-prepared assault. This derives from la, sedere, lit=to sit. Siege warfare is a form of constant, low-intensity conflict characteriz ...

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