Attacking under the cover of fog, the Prussians broke into the city at several points and forced the French to retreat to Nijmegen after hard fighting in this War of the Sixth Coalition clash.

In late November 1813, Bülow's III Prussian Corps invaded the Netherlands, sparking a Dutch rebellion against the French.

Marshal Jacques MacDonald commanding the defending French XI Corps ordered Charpentier to evacuate Arnhem, but that general chose to ignore his instructions and suffered a defeat.

Nevertheless, friction between the Prussians and their Russian and Swedish allies resulted in a pause in the effort to liberate Holland and Belgium from the French.

Of Napoleon's enormous army, only 80,000 escaped west over the Saale River; the rest were dead, wounded, captured or defected to the Coalition.

[1] By the time the French emperor withdrew to the west bank of the Rhine River in November, there were only 60,000–70,000 soldiers left to defend France with approximately 100,000 more besieged in German fortresses.

Czar Alexander I of Russia wanted to capture Paris and remove Napoleon from power though some of his generals thought they had already shed enough Russian blood.

Depressed by the loss of his son in Russia, the French civil leader Charles-François Lebrun, duc de Plaisance responded ineffectively to the crisis.

[4] On 13 November Friedrich Wilhelm Freiherr von Bülow's III Prussian Corps advanced west from Minden toward the Dutch border.

The French were weakened by the desertion of their foreign battalions and were compelled to form infantry and cavalry units from customs agents and mounted gendarmes.

On the left wing were 10,000 troops in Henri François Marie Charpentier's 31st Division, the II Cavalry Corps and Amey's flying column.

[9] After Leipzig, Bernadotte took his army to north Germany intending to defeat the Kingdom of Denmark and force it to hand over Norway to Sweden.

Though impatient to invade Holland, Bülow was unable to secure permission to do so until Great Britain put pressure on the Prussian government.

[11] After finding the French defending an entrenched camp outside Arnhem, Oppen withdrew to Velp, leaving a screen of outposts.

Later in the day, Oppen was reinforced by Sydow with three Landwehr cavalry regiments and two fusilier battalions and Friedrich August Peter von Colomb's Streifkorps.

[12] MacDonald hoped to patch together a defensive line using Molitor's troops, 3,000 French National Guards under Antoine-Guillaume Rampon at Gorinchem and the XI Corps.

MacDonald decided that Arnhem was not defensible against a numerically greater force and returned to Nijmegen, leaving Charpentier and 4,000 troops to hold the city.

[13] On the morning of 29 November the French began shelling the Prussian positions from artillery pieces sited on the south bank of the Rhine.

Oppen soon launched a heavy assault on the French entrenched camp, but after initial success the Prussians were driven back.

[15] Led by a battalion of the Kolberg Regiment, Zglinitzki's column stormed the redoubt while Schmidt's men scaled the city wall[15] despite being enfiladed by canister shot from cannons sited on the south bank of the river.

Amey's retreating soldiers met Bigarré's 1st Brigade at Elst where Oppen's troopers found French infantry in position behind the Linge River and the pursuit ended.

Because Bernadotte appropriated some of his units, Wintzingerode stubbornly refused to support the invasion of Holland, even recalling some of Benckendorff's Cossacks.

Bülow wished to use Borstell's troops for field operations, but until Wintzingerode's Russians finally arrived at the end of December, the 5th Prussian Brigade was tied to the blockade of Wesel.