After Napoleon's defeat in the Russian campaign of 1812, a vehemently anti-French mood had spread in northern Germany, starting in East Prussia in January 1813.

On 14 March, the Russian cavalry leader Friedrich Karl von Tettenborn appeared at the head of 1,300 Cossacks with two guns in Ludwigslust and persuaded Mecklenburg to switch sides from the Confederation of the Rhine to the Allies.

Lübeck and Lauenburg re-established the constitutional relationships that had been abolished by France, and the representatives of the estates of the former duchies of Bremen and Verden met to decide to arm the people.

In this situation, on 21 March, the citizens of Lüneburg, a town of 10,000 people[2] drove the French officials out of their city and began to raise volunteer troops.

There, armed citizens and Alexander von Benckendorff's Cossacks had prevented an occupation of the city by General Wathier's flying column on 28 March.

Morand's 34th Division numbered about 2,800 men with nine guns, including a hastily assembled cavalry force of 75 consisting of dragoons, chasseurs, mounted douaniers and gendarmes.

The disorganized resistance of armed citizens at the medieval city gates was quickly broken, many were arrested and in the evening Morand appointed fifty of them to be shot the next day.

His troops ran into one of Dörnberg's traps: surprised, they saw themselves exposed to a massive flank attack by Russian hussars, lost their guns and were taken prisoner except for part of the cavalry.

Only in the late morning did Morand realize that a regular Russian-Prussian infantry and artillery force was attacking Lüneburg with the aim of conquering it.

Morand, already wounded, lost track and ordered a retreat from the city at noon to a French force stationed west of the New Gate.

His order could no longer be obeyed by any of his detachments, because some were locked in various gates and buildings by the Prussian and Russian troops pushing into the city and were already beginning to capitulate.

After a failed attempt to break through to retreat to Reppenstedt, the Russian-Prussian artillery, reinforced with captured cannons, began to shoot up the surrounded troops.

While Prussia presented itself to the public as a pioneer of the liberation struggle, the role of the Rhine Confederation state of Saxony in the suppression of the uprising in northern Germany was badly noted.