Defense of Danzig 1813

Operations During April

by A. Ricciardiello, Poland

From a military operations point of view not a lot went on. A few small sorties were carried out, the most significant being on 27th April.

Rapp had teamed that the Duke of Wurtemberg took command of the blockade in place of General Loewis. Rapp took this to be the signal for greater activity on the part of the besiegers. It prompted him to send out another sortie in search of supplies A previous attempt on the 15th was well executed, but it returned empty handed some others had failed to even get very far, despite the frequent slackness of the enemy.

Under Bachelu a detachment passed through Heubude to get to the region of Nehrung. The idea being to take animals and forage. They force-marched to the Russians at Bohnsarck, routed them at Wordeln, taking prisoner a company of Lituanskoi grenadiers, and followed the rest of the 3500 defending the area to Pasewark where he finally stopped. Another group went beyond the Vistula, up to the Lacoste fort and forced away the Russians from a dyke, who were followed for 5 leagues.

In freeing up so much territory, they managed to gather 500 cows, 400 other smaller animals, 600 quintals of straw and 230 quintals of oats. They returned to Danzig on 30th April with their gains for the loss of only 46 men killed and wounded.

Obviously what spurred these sorties was the dire straits the town was in. Conditions were forever getting worse. Medicine was lacking, as was forage, Straw and food. Added to this, illness in general was the norm. In the hospitals epidemics broke out, which up to the end of March were taking in up to 200 people a day. For the month of April 3000 people died of disease including Generals Franceschi and Gault (19.3 and 6.4 respectively. These two men were frequent visitors to their soldiers in the hospitals.)

Even in May, when the weather was getting notably better, 2000 died.

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