Napoleonic Wars

• 1. Introduction

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  The 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 in more than a decade of near-continuous conflict that reshaped the entire planet. Between 1803 and 1815, Napoleon I fought a fluctuating array of coalitions across Europe, the Americas, and the seas, commanding armies that at peak numbered over two million soldiers. By the time it ended, the Holy Roman Empire had dissolved, the Spanish and Portuguese Empires were collapsing, and Britain had emerged as the world's foremost naval and economic power. What drove a single man to pit himself against the combined resources of virtually every major European state? How did Britain, with a population roughly half that of France, sustain the fight without a single armistice? And what does it mean that the wars Napoleon fought to hold Europe together ended by tearing it apart in ways that echoed for more than a century?

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• 2. Origins in Revolution

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  The French Revolution of 1789 sent alarm through every royal court in Europe. When Louis XVI was executed, that alarm hardened into collective action: Austria, the Kingdom of Sardinia, the Kingdom of Naples, Prussia, Spain, and Great Britain formed the First Coalition in 1793. France answered with mass conscription, military reforms, and a policy of total war that defeated the coalition despite a concurrent civil war at home. Napoleon, commanding the Armée d'Italie, forced Austria to sign the Treaty of Campo Formio, leaving only Britain still fighting. A Second Coalition formed in 1798, drawing in Britain, Austria, Naples, the Ottoman Empire, the Papal States, Portugal, Russia, and Sweden. The French Republic under the Directory was hollowing out from corruption and factional strife. It had also lost Lazare Carnot, the minister of war whose administrative energy had driven earlier French victories. Napoleon returned from a failed campaign in Egypt on the 23rd of August 1799 and seized control of the government on the 9th of November in a bloodless coup, replacing the Directory with the Consulate. He reorganised French forces, established a large strategic reserve, and defeated Austria decisively in June 1800. Austria fell again that December under Moreau's forces in Bavaria, and the Treaty of Luneville formalised France's dominance, compelling Britain to sign the Treaty of Amiens and accept a temporary peace. That peace would last barely a year.

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• 3. Britain Alone

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  Britain declared war on France on the 18th of May 1803, igniting what would become the longest continuous belligerence of the entire conflict. The stated trigger was the Malta question: under the Treaty of Amiens, Britain was supposed to evacuate the island, but delays over guarantees and growing French interference across Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands made British ministers unwilling to give it up. Prime Minister Henry Addington had publicly affirmed Britain was at peace even as his ministry issued an ultimatum demanding Malta for at least ten years, the permanent acquisition of Lampedusa from the Kingdom of Sicily, and the evacuation of Holland. Napoleon made a final secret offer -- Britain could keep Malta if France could occupy the Otranto peninsula in Naples -- but no deal was reached. Historian McLynn concluded that Britain went to war out of a mixture of economic motives and national anxiety about Napoleon's intentions, but that it proved the right choice because Napoleon's ambitions were genuinely hostile to British interests. Once at war, Britain relied on naval supremacy to avoid a land invasion. Admiral Jervis reportedly told the House of Lords: "I do not say, my Lords, that the French will not come. I say only they will not come by sea." That protection freed Britain to sustain low-intensity land warfare globally for over a decade while funding its allies. Under the Anglo-Russian agreement of 1803, Britain paid a subsidy of one and a half million pounds for every hundred thousand Russian soldiers in the field. British subsidies -- the so-called Golden Cavalry of St George -- peaked at around 450,000 men in 1813. The British budget in 1814 reached 98 million pounds, of which 40 million went to the army, 10 million to the navy, 10 million to allies, and 38 million to service a national debt that had soared to 679 million pounds, more than double the GDP. Nathan Mayer Rothschild was crucial to financing the effort from London between 1813 and 1815, organising the shipment of bullion to Wellington's armies and arranging subsidy payments to continental allies.

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• 4. Coalition to Coalition

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  Napoleon's method in battle, as the historian Donald Sutherland wrote in 2008, was to manoeuvre an enemy into an unfavourable position, force him to commit his main forces, and then strike the flank or rear with fresh uncommitted troops. After 1807, Napoleon added massed mobile artillery as a spearhead, using it to punch a hole in the enemy line before committing infantry and cavalry. At Austerlitz on the 2nd of December 1805 -- generally considered his greatest victory -- he inflicted 25,000 casualties on a numerically superior Austro-Russian army while sustaining fewer than 7,000 in his own force, with Emperor Alexander I of Russia personally present on the opposing side. Austria signed the Treaty of Pressburg on the 26th of December 1805 and left the coalition, surrendering Venetia and the Tyrol. Prussia joined the Fourth Coalition in 1806, and Napoleon destroyed it in 19 days. On the 14th of October 1806, Napoleon routed a Prussian army at Jena while his marshal Davout simultaneously defeated another at Auerstaedt. Out of 250,000 Prussian troops, 25,000 were casualties, 150,000 were taken prisoner, and over 100,000 muskets were lost. Napoleon entered Berlin on the 27th of October. At the tomb of Frederick the Great, he told his marshals to remove their hats, saying: "If he were alive we wouldn't be here today." He then defeated Russia at Friedland on the 14th of June 1807, and Alexander was forced to make peace at Tilsit on the 7th of July. Austria formed a Fifth Coalition in 1809, scoring a significant initial victory at Aspern-Essling -- Napoleon's first significant tactical defeat -- before being crushed at Wagram on the 5th-the 6th of July and accepting a harsher peace by October. By 1810, the French Empire had reached its greatest extent, with Napoleon controlling or allied to most of continental Europe.

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• 5. The Spanish Ulcer

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  Portugal continued trading with Britain despite Napoleon's Continental System, and when Spain failed to maintain the blockade, Napoleon seized his chance. He occupied Lisbon in November 1807, then deposed the Spanish royal family and installed his brother Joseph Bonaparte as King of Spain in 1808. The vast majority of the Spanish population rejected this. A popular explosion of rebellion followed, and Britain committed its army to support Spain and Portugal in what became the Peninsular War. Napoleon personally retook Madrid, defeated the Spanish forces, and forced British troops to evacuate from the Iberian Peninsula at the Battle of Corunna on the 16th of January 1809. But when he left Spain, guerrilla warfare continued to tie down enormous numbers of French troops. The historian David Gates called the conflict the "Spanish ulcer." Napoleon himself wrote later: "That unfortunate war destroyed me... All the circumstances of my disasters are bound up in that fatal knot." He never returned to the Peninsular theatre. Britain sent Sir Arthur Wellesley -- later the Duke of Wellington -- with a fresh army. The Anglo-Portuguese and their Spanish allies fought 60 major battles and 30 major sieges over more than six years. France and her allies lost at least 91,000 killed in action and 237,000 wounded in the peninsula alone. At Vitoria on the 21st of June 1813, Wellington's combined forces shattered French power in Spain, forcing French armies back over the Pyrenees. The effort had drained France of money, manpower, and prestige at the same time Napoleon was preparing to invade Russia.

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• 6. The Russian Catastrophe

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  Control over Poland was the root cause, as historian Schroeder concluded: both Napoleon and Tsar Alexander wanted a semi-autonomous Poland under their own influence. Russia's refusal to honour the Continental System provided the immediate pretext. On the 24th of June 1812, Napoleon crossed the Niemen River with a pan-European Grande Armee of 450,000 men, including 200,000 Frenchmen and soldiers drawn from allied and subject territories. The Poles contributed almost 100,000 men to the invasion force. Field Marshal Barclay de Tolly recognised that Napoleon needed a decisive engagement, so the Russian army refused to give him one, withdrawing east while scorched-earth tactics denied the French supplies. Diseases such as typhus and dysentery tore through the ranks; in one case the main column lost 95,000 men, including deserters, in a single week. Barclay de Tolly's retreating strategy, though effective, was politically untenable for a Baltic German commanding Russians. Prince Mikhail Kutuzov replaced him as Commander-in-Chief. On the 7th of September, the two armies met at Borodino, the largest and bloodiest single-day battle of the entire Napoleonic Wars. More than 250,000 men fought, and at least 70,000 became casualties. Napoleon captured the main positions but failed to destroy the Russian army. He entered Moscow on the 14th of September only to find the city largely evacuated and set ablaze on the orders of Governor Count Fyodor Rostopchin. Alexander refused to negotiate. In October, with no victory in sight, Napoleon began the Great Retreat. Russian forces blocked the road to Kaluga and its food supplies, forcing the French back down the already-stripped Smolensk road. Winter caught the underfed Grande Armee at the Berezina River in November; only 27,000 fit soldiers survived the crossing, with 380,000 men dead or missing and 100,000 captured. For every six soldiers who had entered Russia, only one came out in fighting condition.

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• 7. Collapse and Exile

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  Austria, Prussia, and Sweden switched sides after the Russian disaster, joining Russia and Britain in a Sixth Coalition. Napoleon rebuilt from 30,000 to 400,000 men in Germany with extraordinary speed. At Lutzen on the 2nd of May 1813 and at Bautzen on the 20th-the 21st of May, he inflicted 40,000 casualties on the Allies in battles involving more than 250,000 men per side. Klemens von Metternich offered Napoleon the Frankfurt proposals in November 1813: Napoleon could remain Emperor but France would retreat to its natural frontiers and surrender control of most of Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands. Napoleon, still expecting victory, rejected them. At Leipzig on the 16th-the 19th of October 1813 -- the Battle of the Nations -- 191,000 French fought more than 300,000 Allies and lost. The coalition invaded France on two fronts and entered Paris on the 30th of March 1814. Napoleon abdicated on the 6th of April. The victors exiled him to Elba, restored the Bourbon monarchy in the person of Louis XVIII, and initiated the Congress of Vienna to redraw Europe's borders. Napoleon escaped from Elba and landed at Cannes on the 1st of March 1815. He travelled to Paris, gathering support, and overthrew Louis XVIII. The Seventh Coalition mobilised around 700,000 troops against him. Napoleon took about 124,000 men of the Army of the North into Belgium on a pre-emptive strike, defeated Prussia at Ligny on the 16th of June 1815, but the Prussians rallied and joined Wellington's forces at Waterloo. The coalition defeated him there in June 1815 and exiled him to the island of Saint Helena, where he died six years later in 1821. The Congress of Vienna redrew Europe's borders; no major great power conflict would follow until the Crimean War in 1853.

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• 8. A Changed World

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  Mass conscription, introduced to sustain the enormous French armies, altered warfare permanently. So did the organised use of guerrilla tactics, which Spanish irregulars demonstrated could tie down a modern army indefinitely. The Napoleonic Code spread civil law reforms -- including new protections and administrative structures -- across the territories France had occupied, and those reforms largely survived Napoleon's fall wherever they had been adopted. Nationalism and liberalism, accelerated by the wars, reshaped political movements across Europe for the next century. The abdication of the Spanish royal family triggered independence movements across Spanish America; Napoleon's destabilising actions in Spain led directly to the Spanish American wars of independence and the decline of both the Spanish and Portuguese empires. The Haitian Revolution, which had begun in 1791, concluded in 1804, and France's defeat in Saint-Domingue led Napoleon to sell the territory making up the Louisiana Purchase to the United States. In Central Europe, the Grand Duchy of Warsaw that Napoleon created from Polish lands -- with a population of 4.3 million released from occupation -- sent about 200,000 men to his armies by 1814, including roughly 90,000 who marched to Moscow. Few of them returned. The duchy was absorbed into the Russian Empire as the semi-autonomous Congress Poland in 1815; Poland did not become a sovereign state again until 1918, following the collapse of the Russian, German, and Austro-Hungarian Empires. Britain's ability to finance allied armies through the entire conflict -- the total cost of the war amounting to 831 million pounds -- secured its rise as the world's foremost naval and economic power, a position it would hold for the rest of the century.

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