Curated category
Napoleonic Wars
- Malet coup of 1812At four in the morning on the 23rd of October 1812, a man in a general's uniform slipped out of a Parisian sanatorium and walked calmly toward the…
- War of the Third CoalitionThe War of the Third Coalition was a conflict that remade Europe in the space of a few months in 1805 and into 1806. At its heart was a single breathtaking…
- War of the Second CoalitionThe War of the Second Coalition began not with a formal declaration but with a cascade of broken promises, angry emperors, and a French general who could not…
- War of the Fourth CoalitionThe War of the Fourth Coalition climaxed on the 27th of October 1806, when Napoleon walked into Berlin and stopped at the tomb of Frederick the Great.
- War of the Fifth CoalitionThe War of the Fifth Coalition began not with a formal declaration but with a terse note. On the 9th of April 1809, Archduke Charles of Austria sent a…
- Frankfurt proposalsThe Frankfurt proposals landed in front of Napoleon I in November 1813, in the middle of the War of the Sixth Coalition.
- Continental SystemThe Continental System was Napoleon's grand attempt to strangle Britain without firing a single shot at sea. On the 21st of November 1806, he signed the…
- War of 1812The War of 1812 began on the 18th of June 1812, when President James Madison signed a declaration of war against Britain into law, setting off a conflict…
- Napoleonic WarsThe Napoleonic Wars killed and wounded hundreds of thousands of men at a single river crossing -- the Berezina -- and yet that disaster was only one episode…
- Hundred DaysThe Hundred Days is one of history's most compressed political and military dramas. On the 20th of March 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte rode back into Paris after…
- Peninsular WarThe Peninsular War was, by Napoleon Bonaparte's own admission, a wound that would not close. He called it the "Spanish ulcer." Between 1808 and 1814, France…
- War of the Sixth CoalitionThe War of the Sixth Coalition ended one of the most consequential military careers in history, and it did so not with a single catastrophic battle but with…
- Napoleonic tacticsNapoleonic tactics shaped the battlefield for roughly half a century, from the late 18th century until the rifled musket made them obsolete.
- Finnish WarThe Finnish War began on the 21st of February 1808, when 24,000 Russian troops crossed the Swedish-Russian border at Ahvenkoski.