The siege of Kolberg (also spelled Colberg or Kołobrzeg) took place from March to 2 July 1807 during the War of the Fourth Coalition, part of the Napoleonic Wars. An army of the First French Empire and several foreign auxiliaries (including Polish insurgents) of France besieged the fortified town of Kolberg, the only remaining Prussian-held fortress in the Province of Pomerania. The siege was not successful and was lifted upon the announcement of the Peace of Tilsit.
After Prussia lost the Battle of Jena–Auerstedt in late 1806, French troops marched north into Prussian Pomerania. Fortified Stettin (Szczecin) surrendered without battle, and the province became occupied by the French forces. Kolberg resisted, and the implementation of a French siege was delayed until March 1807 by the freikorps of Ferdinand von Schill operating around the fortress and capturing the assigned French commander of the siege, Victor-Perrin. During these months, the military commander of Kolberg, Lucadou, and the representative of the local populace, Nettelbeck, prepared the fortress's defensive structures.
The French forces commanded by Teulié, composed primarily of troops from Italy, succeeded in encircling Kolberg by mid-March. Napoleon put the siege force under the command of Loison; Frederick William III entrusted Gneisenau with the defense. In early April, the siege forces were for a short time commanded by Mortier, who had marched a large force from besieged Swedish Stralsund to Kolberg but was ordered to return when Stralsund's defenders gained ground. Other reinforcements came from states of the Confederation of the Rhine (Kingdom of Württemberg, Saxon duchies and the Duchy of Nassau), the Kingdom of Holland, and France.
With the western surroundings of Kolberg flooded by the defenders, fighting concentrated on the eastern forefield of the fortress, where Wolfsberg sconce had been constructed on Lucadou's behalf. Aiding the defense from the nearby Baltic Sea were a British and a Swedish vessel. By late June, Napoleon massively reinforced the siege forces to bring about a decision. The siege force then also concentrated on taking the port north of the town. On 2 July, fighting ceased when Prussia had agreed on an unfavourable peace after her ally Russia suffered a decisive defeat at Friedland. Of the twenty Prussian fortresses, Kolberg was one of the few remaining in Prussian hands until the war's end. The battle became a myth in Prussia and was later used by Nazi propaganda efforts. While prior to World War II the city commemorated the defendants, it started to honor the commander of the Polish troops after 1945, when the city became part of a Polish state.
Prelude
Within two weeks after the Battle of Jena-Auerstedt (14 October 1806), Napoleon's Grande Armée had pursued the defeated Royal Prussian Army to Pasewalk in Prussian Pomerania. The provincial capital Stettin (now Szczecin), one of twenty Prussian fortresses, capitulated on 29 October the province's only fortress remaining in Prussian hands. Pierre Thouvenout was appointed French governor of Pomerania and sent his envoy Mestram to accept Kolberg's expected capitulation and take control of it.
On 8 November 1806, Mestram met with the Prussian commander of Kolberg Louis Maurice de Lucadou (Ludwig Moritz von Lucadou) before its walls. Lucadou's refusal to hand over the fortress came as a surprise to the French generals and the Prussian administration in Stettin, who had already pledged allegiance to the French; it further led part of the defeated Prussian army to take refuge in Kolberg and reinforce the two musketeer battalions of the von Owstien and von Borcke regiments and the 72 guns garrisoned there. Lucadou ordered the Persante (Parseta) river west of Kolberg to be dammed up to flood the area around the fortress, and arranged the construction of Wolfsberg sconce east of the town. Coordination of these measures with Joachim Nettelbeck, representative of the Kolberg citizens, was however impaired by the latter's personal grievances against Lucadou.
Among the Prussian soldiers who had retreated to Kolberg after Jena and Auerstedt was secondelieutenant Ferdinand von Schill, who after his recovery from a severe head injury in the house of Kolberg senator Westphal was ordered to patrol the areas west of the fortress with a small cavalry unit. Supplied with information about French movements by local peasants, he succeeded in capturing a number of French officers and soldiers, gathering food and financial supplies in neighboring towns and villages, and recruiting volunteers to his unit from inside and outside Kolberg.