Qualla: Capitulation of Stettin

Capitulation of Stettin: Introduction

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jean-Antoine-Simeon Fort (1793-1861). Artist name is at lower left., Public domain. Antoine Lasalle rode up to the fortress of Stettin on the afternoon of 29 October 1806 with eight hundred hussars and two field guns. Behind its walls stood 5,300 Prussian soldiers, 281 cannon, and provisions enough to sit out a long siege. By the small hours of the next morning the place was his. Napoleon's note of congratulation to Marshal Murat was only half a joke: "My compliments on the capture of Stettin; if your light cavalry thus takes fortified towns, I must disband the engineers and melt down my heavy artillery." The city is Szczecin now, a Polish port where the Oder braids toward the Baltic, and the surrender that happened here is still taught as a case study in what fear does to an army.

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Image: Jean-Antoine-Simeon Fort (1793-1861). Artist name is at lower left. | Public domain

Capitulation of Stettin: Fifteen Days After Jena

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Carle Vernet, Public domain. Napoleon's Grande Armée had shattered the Prussian and Saxon armies at Jena-Auerstedt on 14 October. The Duke of Brunswick, who commanded at Auerstedt, took a mortal wound and died at Ottensen, near Hamburg, on 10 November; Ernst von Rüchel was carried off the field at Jena. What...

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Image: Carle Vernet | Public domain

Capitulation of Stettin: The Second Summons

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Matthäus Merian, Public domain. Lasalle demanded Stettin's surrender in the early afternoon of the 29th, and Lieutenant General Friedrich Gisbert Wilhelm von Romberg refused him. At four o'clock a second summons arrived, this one carrying a threat of harsh treatment for the city and the claim that Lannes' entir...

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Image: Matthäus Merian | Public domain

Capitulation of Stettin: What Changed Hands

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Matthäus Merian, Public domain. Romberg handed over the fortress, 5,300 troops and 281 guns. The garrison was a patchwork: survivors of Schimmelpfennig's flank guard, cut up at Zehdenick three days earlier, together with the third battalions of seven infantry regiments. One hundred officers were released on the...

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Image: Matthäus Merian | Public domain

Capitulation of Stettin: The Reckoning

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Matthäus Merian, Public domain. Prussia did not let it go. In March 1809, Romberg was convicted of giving up Stettin without a fight and sentenced to life imprisonment; he died on 21 May that year, two months short of his eightieth birthday, before the sentence began. The pattern repeated up and down the Oder. ...

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Image: Matthäus Merian | Public domain

Capitulation of Stettin: A Siege That Never Happened

Mon, 03 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Matthäus Merian, Public domain. Antoine-Jean Gros painted General Lasalle at the Siege of Stettin and exhibited it at the Salon of 1808 in the Louvre — a heroic canvas commemorating an assault nobody made. Within a week of the capitulation, three isolated Prussian columns were hunted down at Boldekow, Anklam an...

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Image: Matthäus Merian | Public domain