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Napoleon 1813
In the autumn of 1813 our area found itself right in the middle of a war: Napoleon was fighting the Russians, Prussians and Austrians, and the routes between Dresden and Bohemia ran straight through here – via Pirna, Königstein, Gottleuba and the passes near Peterswald and Nollendorf. In June Napoleon inspected the Festung Königstein, in August there was fighting near Krietzschwitz and Kulm, and in September the Emperor himself spent days close by – in Liebstadt, Pirna, Gießhübel and on the Nollendorfer Höhe. For the villages, these months meant billeted troops, plundering and epidemics.
The fortress and the bridges
On 20 June 1813 Napoleon inspected the Festung Königstein for a good hour – he declined the sedan chair offered to him for the descent. Afterwards he had a military road built from Stolpen to the Elbe, the “Kaiserstraße” (Emperor’s Road), and two pontoon bridges thrown across the Elbe near Königstein. To protect them, a fortified camp was set up at the Lilienstein; the fortress handed over 22 cannons for it. From August, 485 French soldiers were stationed on the Königstein; they withdrew on 6 October 1813. That same year, Dresden’s art treasures were also stored in the fortress.
The skirmish at Krietzschwitz
On 26 August 1813, during the Battle of Dresden, General Vandamme and his corps crossed the Königstein bridges to the left bank of the Elbe. Near Krietzschwitz and Zehista, just outside Pirna, Prince Eugen of Württemberg, fighting on the Russian side, confronted him and held him up. The Allies then withdrew to Bohemia – but the delay cost Vandamme valuable time. In Krietzschwitz a monument commemorates Eugen of Württemberg.
The Battle of Kulm
Vandamme pursued the Allies across the mountains – through Hellendorf and Peterswald (Petrovice) and down into Bohemia. On 29 and 30 August 1813 battle was joined near Kulm (Chlumec) and Priesten (Přestanov). The Russians under Ostermann-Tolstoy held their ground, and then General Kleist’s Prussian corps fell on Vandamme’s rear over the Nollendorfer Höhe. Vandamme was taken prisoner, and thousands of soldiers with him – according to Wikipedia up to 12,000. From then on Kleist was allowed to call himself “Kleist von Nollendorf”. Kulm is regarded as one of the decisive preliminaries to the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig.
Napoleon right next door
In September 1813 Napoleon himself tried to break through across the mountains into Bohemia. On 9 September he spent the night at Schloss Kuckuckstein in Liebstadt – the home of Carl Adolf von Carlowitz, an opponent of Napoleon; the Emperor is said to have read for hours in his library. After that he was in Breitenau, in Peterswald – where he slept in the parsonage – on the Nollendorfer Höhe and in Gießhübel. In Pirna he stayed at Markt 20 (11/12 and 18–21 September), where a memorial plaque now hangs. On 17 September he attacked once more near Kulm, was repulsed and withdrew; at the beginning of October he set off for Leipzig.
At the Napoleonstein and here in the Bielatal
In September 1813 a large French camp lay on the Breite Heide near Langenhennersdorf, protected by earthworks – the remains are known today as the “Franzosenschanzen” (French redoubts). Zeis, the owner of the manor at Langenhennersdorf, wrote down an encounter with Napoleon on 15 September 1813. The Emperor is said to have watched his troops from the Napoleonstein, and a Russian cannonball is said to have narrowly missed him – that is tradition. What is documented is that Cossacks plundered Rosenthal and badly ransacked its church. Hellendorf saw seventeen engagements in 1813, and a French camp stood on the Hutstein for 16 weeks.
Pirna and the Sonnenstein
Pirna changed hands several times in 1813. The French occupied the Sonnenstein and rebuilt it as a fortress – the asylum, opened only in 1811, had to be evacuated, and its physician Ernst Gottlob Pienitz found accommodation in the town for its roughly 250 patients. Demolitions and shelling by the Austrians and Russians caused great damage. Only after Dresden capitulated on 11 November 1813 did the garrison withdraw. Some 2,000 sick and wounded lay in the town, typhus carried off many of the inhabitants, and Pirna was paying off its war debts for more than 30 years.
The price paid by the villages
The village chronicles show what the war meant for ordinary people: in Hellendorf seven houses burned down, horses, oxen and cows were driven off, and by the spring of 1814, 71 inhabitants – two fifths of the village – had died of dysentery and “hospital fever”. In Peterswald around 200 people died of epidemics between October 1813 and the summer of 1814. The manor of Langenhennersdorf, where officers had been quartered, had to be sold at auction in 1818.
Traces you can visit today
The Napoleonstein near Langenhennersdorf is a viewpoint with a bench and information boards. In Pirna the memorial plaque hangs at Markt 20, and in Liebstadt the “Napoleon Room” at Schloss Kuckuckstein has been refurnished. On the Lilienstein you can find remains of the earthworks and the “Franzosenborn” (French spring), and near Hohburkersdorf stands the Napoleonlinde (Napoleon’s lime tree). Over the border in Bohemia, a nature and history trail with eleven stops links the monuments of the Kulm battlefield – the Prussian one designed by Schinkel, the Austrian obelisk and the Russian monument in Přestanov – and in Nakléřov (Nollendorf) stands the Kleist monument. Every year at the end of August the Battle of Kulm is re-enacted in Chlumec and Přestanov.
As early as 1809
the Black Band: Troops were already marching over our passes four years earlier: in May 1809 the “Black Band” of the Duke of Brunswick, who was fighting against Napoleon, came through Hellendorf and Peterswald. Because the people of Peterswald could not pay the war tax demanded of them, Saxon troops plundered the village on 25 May 1809.
As of: 10/2026
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