Austria’s declaration against France, on 12 August 1813, changed the dynamics of the war by transferring the Coalition’s center of gravity from Russia to Austria. Aside from liberating the garrisons of the Vistula fortresses and perhaps rallying the Poles, the appearance of an imperial army and even Napoleon himself on the banks of the Vistula would not have had the same impact on the Allies in the Fall Campaign as during the Spring Campaign. Russian lines of communication could be rerouted through Austria. The provinces of the Prussian heartland would have been lost but the bulk of the Prussian regular army – I and II Corps and the Guard – would not have been affected. In fact, the main challenge for the Allies would not have been Napoleon’s presence at the Vistula, but navigating the shock waves caused by the loss of the Army of North Germany, which had to be eliminated or driven into the Oder fortresses before any French force could reach the Vistula. Napoleon recognized that Austria’s accession to the Coalition rendered unconditional victory through eccentric maneuvering unlikely. Instead, he had to defeat the Austrians, which meant decisively crushing the Bohemian Army. To accomplish this task, he planned to utilize his central position and operate from his base at Dresden.

Austria had certainly come a long way since the French emperor’s 1809 proclamation that “the House of Lorraine has ceased to exist,” in large part thanks to Napoleon’s intransigence. Metternich’s usurpation of the Coalition’s diplomatic and military leadership provided by far the most decisive development of the armistice. In the former category, Metternich seized the reins of the Coalition. While a worthy adversary in his own right, Tsar Alexander simply could not outmaneuver Metternich in the ensuing diplomatic chess match for control of the Coalition. Determined to conduct a cabinet war for the equilibrium of Europe rather than a people’s war of liberation, Metternich resolved to direct the struggle so that any peace would serve Austrian national security objectives. Emerging as the Coalition’s prime minister, he aimed to wage war to restore Habsburg preponderance over Central Europe while limiting Prussian and Russian gains. Napoleon’s fate became a secondary concern; Metternich did not aspire to remove Bonaparte from the French throne, believing that only a strong Napoleonic France could counter Russia.