The
Napoleonic Wars were a series of conflicts declared against
Napoleon'sNapoleon Bonaparte later known as Napoleon I, and previously Napoleone di Buonaparte, was a military and political leader of France whose actions shaped European politics in the early 19th century.Born in Corsica and trained as an artillery officer in mainland France, Bonaparte rose to prominence...
French EmpireThe French Empire
, also known as the Greater French Empire or First French Empire, but more commonly known as the Napoleonic Empire, was the empire of Napoleon I in France...
and changing sets of European allies by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the
French RevolutionThe French Revolution was a period of political and social upheaval and radical change in the history of France, during which the French governmental structure, previously an absolute monarchy with feudal privileges for the aristocracy and Catholic clergy, underwent radical change to forms based...
of 1789, they revolutionized European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to the application of modern
mass conscriptionLevée en masse is defined in Article 4, letter A paragraph 6 of the Third Geneva Convention. It is a French term for mass conscription during the French Revolutionary Wars, particularly for the one from 23 August 1793.- Terminology :...
. French power rose quickly, conquering most of Europe, but collapsed rapidly after France's disastrous
invasion of Russia in 1812The French invasion of Russia of 1812 was a turning point in the Napoleonic Wars. The campaign reduced the French and allied invasion forces to a tiny fraction of their initial strength...
. Napoleon's empire ultimately suffered complete military defeat resulting in the
restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in FranceThe Bourbon Restoration is the name given to the restored Bourbon Kingdom of France which existed from 1814 until the July Revolution of 1830, with the interval of the "Hundred Days" from Napoleon Bonaparte's return from Elba to the Battle of Waterloo in 1814–15. The regime was a constitutional...
. The wars resulted in the dissolution of the
Holy Roman EmpireThe Holy Roman Empire was a union of territories in Central Europe during the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period under a Holy Roman Emperor. The first emperor of the Holy Roman Empire was Otto I, crowned in 962. The last was Francis II, who abdicated and dissolved the Empire in 1806 during...
. Meanwhile the
Spanish EmpireThe Spanish Empire was one of the largest empires in world history, and one of the first global empires. It included territories and colonies in Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia and Oceania, from the 15th century through—in the case of its African holdings—the latter portion of the 20th century...
began to unravel as French occupation of Spain weakened Spain's hold over its colonies, providing an opening for nationalist revolutions in
Latin AmericaLatin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish, Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,501 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
. As a direct result of the Napoleonic wars the
British EmpireThe British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom, that had originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height it was...
became the foremost
world powerWorld Power is the first studio album by the electronic band Snap!. It contains the hit single, "The Power".-Track listing:# "The Power" – 5:44# "Ooops Up" – 6:42# "Cult of Snap!" – 5:21# "Believe the Hype" – 4:50...
for the next century.
No consensus exists as to when the
French Revolutionary WarsThe French Revolutionary Wars were a series of major conflicts, from 1792 until 1802, fought between the French Revolutionary government and several European states...
ended and the Napoleonic Wars began. Possible dates include 9 November 1799, when Bonaparte seized power in France with the
coup of 18 BrumaireThe coup of 18 Brumaire was the coup d'état by which General Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the French Directory, replacing it with the French Consulate...
; 18 May 1803, when a renewed declaration of war between Britain and France ended the only period of peace in Europe between 1792 and 1814; and 2 December 1804, when Bonaparte crowned himself Emperor.
The Napoleonic Wars ended following Napoleon's final
defeat at WaterlooIn the Battle of Waterloo forces of the French Empire under Napoleon Bonaparte and Michel Ney were defeated by those of the Seventh Coalition, including an Anglo-Allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington and a Prussian army under the command of Gebhard von Blücher...
on 18 June 1815 and the
Second Treaty of ParisTreaty of Paris of 1815, was signed on 20 November 1815 following the defeat and second abdication of Napoleon Bonaparte. In February, Napoleon had escaped from his exile on Elba; he entered Paris on 20 March, beginning the Hundred Days of his restored rule. Four days after France's defeat in the...
.
Background 1789–1802
The
French RevolutionThe French Revolution was a period of political and social upheaval and radical change in the history of France, during which the French governmental structure, previously an absolute monarchy with feudal privileges for the aristocracy and Catholic clergy, underwent radical change to forms based...
of 1789 had a significant impact throughout Europe, which only increased with the arrest of King
Louis XVI of FranceLouis XVI of France ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1774 until 1791, and then as King of the French from 1791 to 1792. Suspended and arrested during the Insurrection of 10 August 1792, he was tried by the National Convention, found guilty of treason, and executed by guillotine on 21...
in 1792 and his execution for "crimes of tyranny" against the French people in January 1793. The first attempt to crush the French Republic came in 1793 when
AustriaThe Austrian Empire was a modern era successor empire founded on a remnant of the Holy Roman Empire centered on what is today's Austria that officially lasted from 1804 to 1867...
, the
Kingdom of SardiniaKingdom of Sardinia, also known as Piedmont-Sardinia or Sardinia-Piedmont, was the name given to the possessions of the House of Savoy in 1720, when the crown of Sardinia was awarded by the Treaty of London to Duke Victor Amadeus II of Savoy to compensate him for the loss of the crown of Sicily to...
, the
Kingdom of NaplesThe Kingdom of Naples is the modern day name for a polity which existed on the southern part of the Italian peninsula. Also known contemporaneously, and somewhat confusingly, as the Kingdom of Sicily, this kingdom was founded after the secession of the island of Sicily from the old Kingdom of...
,
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
, Spain and the
Kingdom of Great BritainThe Kingdom of Great Britain, also known as the United Kingdom of Great Britain, was a sovereign state in northwest Europe, in existence from 1707 to 1801...
formed the
First CoalitionThe First Coalition was the first major concerted effort of multiple European powers to contain Revolutionary France. It took shape after the French Revolutionary Wars had already begun....
. French measures, including general conscription (
levée en masseLevée en masse is defined in Article 4, letter A paragraph 6 of the Third Geneva Convention. It is a French term for mass conscription during the French Revolutionary Wars, particularly for the one from 23 August 1793.- Terminology :...
), military reform, and
total warTotal war is a conflict of unlimited scope in which a belligerent engages in a mobilization of all available resources at their disposal, whether human, industrial, agricultural, military, natural, technological, or otherwise, in order to entirely destroy or render beyond use their rival's capacity...
, contributed to the defeat of the First Coalition. The war ended when Bonaparte forced the Austrians to accept his terms in the
Treaty of Campo FormioThe Treaty of Campo Formio or Peace of Campo Formio was signed on 17 October 1797 by Napoleon Bonaparte and Count Ludwig von Cobenzl as representatives of France and Austria...
. Great Britain remained the only anti-French power still in the field by 1797.
The
Second CoalitionThe "Second Coalition" was the second attempt by European powers led by Austria and Russia to contain or eliminate Revolutionary France. While Napoleon Bonaparte was leading an expedition to Egypt, a number of France's enemies formed a new alliance and attempted to roll back his previous conquests...
was formed in 1798 by Austria, Great Britain, the Kingdom of Naples, the
Ottoman EmpireThe Ottoman Empire or Ottoman State , also known by its contemporaries as the Turkish Empire or Turkey , was an empire that lasted from 1299 to November 1, 1922 The Ottoman Empire or Ottoman State (Ottoman Turkish: دَوْلَتِ عَلِیَّهِ عُثْمَانِیَّه Dawlet-il ʿAliyyat-il ʿOs̠māniyye, Modern Turkish:...
,
Papal StatesThe Papal States, State of the Church or Pontifical States were one of the major historical states of Italy from roughly the 6th century until the Italian peninsula was unified in 1861 by the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia .The Papal States comprised territories under...
, Portugal, and Russia. During the War of the Second Coalition, the French Republic suffered from corruption and division under the
DirectoryThe Executive Directory was a body of five Directors that held executive power in France following the Convention and preceding the Consulate...
. France also lacked funds, and no longer had the services of
Lazare CarnotLazare Nicolas Marguerite, Comte Carnot , the Organizer of Victory in the French Revolutionary Wars, was a French politician, engineer, and mathematician.-Education and early life:...
, the war minister who had guided it to successive victories following extensive reforms during the early 1790s. Napoleon Bonaparte, the main architect of victory in the last years of the First Coalition, had gone to campaign in
EgyptEgypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia...
. Missing two of its most important military figures from the previous conflict, the Republic suffered successive defeats against revitalized enemies whom British financial support brought back into the war.
Bonaparte returned from Egypt to France on 23 August 1799, and seized control of the French government on 9 November 1799 in the
coup of 18 BrumaireThe coup of 18 Brumaire was the coup d'état by which General Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the French Directory, replacing it with the French Consulate...
, replacing the
DirectoryThe Executive Directory was a body of five Directors that held executive power in France following the Convention and preceding the Consulate...
with the
ConsulateThe Consulate was the government of France between the fall of the Directory in the coup of 18 Brumaire in 1799 until the start of the Napoleonic Empire in 1804...
. He reorganized the French military and created a reserve army positioned to support campaigns either on the
RhineThe Rhine is one of the longest and most important rivers in Europe, at , with an average discharge of more than ....
or in Italy. On all fronts, French advances caught the Austrians off-guard and knocked Russia out of the war. In Italy, Bonaparte won a victory against the Austrians at
MarengoThe Battle of Marengo was fought on 14 June 1800 between French forces under Napoleon Bonaparte and Austrian forces near the city of Alessandria, in Piedmont, Italy...
(1800). But the decisive win came on the Rhine at
HohenlindenThe Battle of Hohenlinden was fought on 3 December 1800 during the French Revolutionary Wars, near Munich, modern Germany. The battle resulted in a French victory under General Jean Moreau against the Austrians and Bavarians under Archduke John of Austria, forcing the Austrians to sign an...
in 1800. The defeated Austrians left the conflict after the
Treaty of LunévilleThe Treaty of Lunéville was signed on February 9, 1801 between the French Republic and the Holy Roman Empire by Joseph Bonaparte and Count Ludwig von Cobenzl, respectively....
(9 February 1801). Thus the Second Coalition ended in another French triumph. However, the United Kingdom remained an important influence on the continental powers in encouraging their resistance to France. London had brought the Second Coalition together through subsidies, and Bonaparte realised that without either defeating the British or signing a treaty with them he could not achieve complete peace.
Start date and nomenclature
No consensus exists as to when the
French Revolutionary WarsThe French Revolutionary Wars were a series of major conflicts, from 1792 until 1802, fought between the French Revolutionary government and several European states...
ended and the Napoleonic Wars began. Possible dates include 9 November 1799, when Bonaparte
seized powerThe coup of 18 Brumaire was the coup d'état by which General Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the French Directory, replacing it with the French Consulate...
in France; 18 May 1803, when Britain and France ended the only period of peace in Europe between 1792 and 1814, and 2 December 1804, when Bonaparte crowned himself Emperor.
Sources in the UK occasionally refer to the nearly continuous period of warfare from 1792 to 1815 as the
Great French WarThe Great French War is a term sometimes used to describe the period of almost continuous conflict from April 20, 1792 to November 20, 1815 , between France and various other states of Europe...
, or as the final phase of the Anglo-French
Second Hundred Years' WarThe Second Hundred Years' War is a periodization used by some historians to describe the series of military conflicts between the Kingdom of England and France that occurred from about 1689 to 1815...
, spanning the period 1689 to 1815.
War between Britain and France, 1803–1814
Unlike its many coalition partners, Britain remained at war throughout the period of the Napoleonic Wars. Protected by naval supremacy (in the words of Admiral
JervisAdmiral of the Fleet John Jervis, 1st Earl of St Vincent GCB PC RN was an Admiral in the Royal Navy.-Early career:...
to 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"), the United Kingdom maintained low-intensity land warfare on a global scale for over a decade. The British Army gave long-term support to the Spanish rebellion in the
Peninsular WarThe Peninsular War was a contest between France and the allied powers of Spain, the United Kingdom, and Portugal for control of the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars...
of 1808–1814. Protected by topography, assisted by massive Spanish guerrilla activity, and sometimes falling back to
massive earthworksThe Lines of Torres Vedras were lines of forts built in secrecy to defend Lisbon during the Peninsular War. Named after the nearby town of Torres Vedras, they were ordered by Arthur Wellesley, Viscount Wellington, constructed by Portuguese workers between November 1809 and September 1810, and used...
, Anglo-Portuguese forces succeeded in harassing French troops for several years. By 1815, the British Army would play the central role in the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo.
The
Treaty of AmiensThe Treaty of Amiens temporarily ended the hostilities between France and the United Kingdom during the French Revolutionary Wars. It was signed in the city of Amiens on 25 March 1802 by Joseph Bonaparte and the Marquess Cornwallis as a "Definitive Treaty of Peace"...
(25 March 1802) resulted in peace between the UK and France, but satisfied neither side. Both parties dishonored parts of it: the French intervened in the
SwissIn Swiss history, the Helvetic Republic represented an early attempt to impose a central authority over Switzerland, which until then consisted mainly of self-governing cantons united by a loose military alliance, and conquered territories such as Vaud...
civil strife (
StecklikriegThe Stecklikrieg of 1802 resulted in the collapse of the Helvetic Republic, the renewed French occupation of Switzerland and ultimately the Act of Mediation dictated by Napoleon on 10 March 1803....
) and occupied several coastal cities in Italy, while the UK occupied
MaltaMalta , officially the Republic of Malta , is a densely populated developed European country in the European Union. The Southern European island nation is an archipelago that includes the inhabited islands of Malta, Gozo and Comino, along with a number of smaller, uninhabited islands...
. Bonaparte tried to exploit the brief peace at sea to restore the colonial rule in the
rebellious AntillesThe Haitian Revolution is, as historian C.L.R. James affirms, "the only successful slave revolt in history." It established Haiti as the first republic ruled by blacks. At the time of the revolution, Haiti was known as Saint-Domingue and was a colony of France...
. The expedition, though initially successful, would soon turn to a disaster, with the French commander and Bonaparte’s brother-in-law,
Charles LeclercCharles Victor Emmanuel Leclerc was a French Army general and husband to Pauline Bonaparte, sister to Napoleon Bonaparte.-To 1801:...
, dying of
yellow feverYellow fever is an acute viral disease. The virus, a 40 to 50 nm enveloped RNA virus of the family of Flaviviridae is transmitted by the bite of mosquitoes...
and almost his entire force destroyed by the disease combined with the fierce attacks by the rebels.
Hostilities between Britain and France renewed on 18 May 1803. The Coalition war-aims changed over the course of the conflict: a general desire to restore the French monarchy became closely linked to the struggle to stop Bonaparte.
Bonaparte declared France an Empire on 18 May 1804 and crowned himself Emperor at Notre-Dame on 2 December.
Having lost most of its colonial empire in the preceding decades, French efforts were focused mainly in Europe.
HaitiHaiti , officially the Republic of Haiti , is a Creole- and French-speaking Caribbean country. Along with the Dominican Republic, it occupies the island of Hispaniola, in the Greater Antillean archipelago...
had won its independence, the
Louisiana TerritoryThe Territory of Louisiana was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from July 4, 1805, until June 4, 1812, when it was renamed the Territory of Missouri....
had been sold to the United States of America, and British naval superiority threatened any potential for France to establish colonies outside Europe. Beyond minor naval actions against British imperial interests, the Napoleonic Wars were much less global in scope than preceding conflicts such as
Seven Years' WarThe Seven Years' War lasted between 1754 and 1763 and involved all of the major European powers of the period. The war pitted Prussia and Britain and a coalition of smaller German states against an alliance consisting of Austria, France, Russia, Sweden, and Saxony...
which historians would term a "
world warA world war is a war affecting the majority of the world's most powerful and populous nations. World wars span several continents, and last for multiple years...
".
In 1806, Napoleon issued the series of
Berlin DecreeThe Berlin Decree was issued by Napoleon on November 21, 1806, following the French success against Prussia at the Battle of Jena. The decree forbade the import of British goods into European countries allied with or dependent upon France, and installed the Continental System in Europe.It...
s, which brought into effect the
Continental SystemThe Continental System was the foreign policy of Napoleon I of France in his struggle against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland during the Napoleonic Wars...
. This policy aimed to eliminate the threat from Britain by closing French-controlled territory to its trade. Britain maintained a standing army of just 220,000 at the height of the Napoleonic Wars, whereas France's strength peaked at over 2,500,000, as well as several hundred thousand
national guardsmenThe National Guard was the name given at the time of the French Revolution to the militias formed in each city, in imitation of the National Guard created in Paris. It was a military force separate from the regular army...
that Napoleon could draft into the military if necessary; however, British subsidies paid for a large proportion of the soldiers deployed by other coalition powers, peaking at about 450,000 in 1813. The Royal Navy effectively disrupted France's extra-continental trade—both by seizing and threatening French shipping and by seizing French colonial possessions—but could do nothing about France's trade with the major continental economies and posed little threat to French territory in Europe. Also, France's population and
agriculturalAgriculture is the production of food and goods through farming and forestry. Agriculture was the key development that led to the rise of human civilization, with the husbandry of domesticated animals and plants creating food surpluses that enabled the development of more densely populated and...
capacity far outstripped that of Britain. However, Britain had the greatest industrial capacity in Europe, and its mastery of the seas allowed it to build up considerable economic strength through trade. That sufficed to ensure that France could never consolidate its control over Europe in peace. However, many in the French government believed that cutting Britain off from the Continent would end its economic influence over Europe and isolate it.
War of the Third Coalition 1805
Napoleon planned an invasion of Great Britain, and massed 180,000 effectives at
BoulogneBoulogne-sur-Mer is a city in northern France. It is a sub-prefecture of the department of Pas-de-Calais. The population of the city was 44,859 in the 1999 census, whereas that of the whole metropolitan area was 135,116.-Name:...
. However, in order to mount his invasion, he needed to achieve naval superiority—or at least to pull the British fleet away from the
English ChannelThe English Channel is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that separates England from northern France, and joins the North Sea to the Atlantic. It is about long and varies in width from at its widest, to only in the Strait of Dover...
. A complex plan to distract the British by threatening their possessions in the West Indies failed when a Franco-Spanish fleet under Admiral Villeneuve turned back after an indecisive action off
Cape FinisterreIn the Battle of Cape Finisterre off Galicia, Spain, the British fleet under Admiral Calder prevented the Franco-Spanish fleet under Admiral de Villeneuve from entering the English Channel to help Napoleon invade Britain during the War of the Third Coalition in the Napoleonic Wars.- Strategic...
on 22 July 1805. The Royal Navy blockaded Villeneuve in
CádizCádiz is a city and port in southwestern Spain. It is the capital of the Cádiz Province, one of eight which make up the autonomous community of Andalusia....
until he left for
NaplesNaples in Italy, is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples. The city is known for its rich history, art, culture, architecture, music and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,800 years old...
on 19 October; the British squadron subsequently caught and defeated his fleet in the
Battle of TrafalgarThe Battle of Trafalgar was a sea battle fought between the British Royal Navy and the combined fleets of the French Navy and Spanish Navy, during the War of the Third Coalition of the Napoleonic Wars . The battle was the most decisive British naval victory of the war...
on 21 October (the British commander,
Lord NelsonVice Admiral Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson, 1st Duke of Bronté, KB was a British flag officer famous for his service in the Royal Navy, particularly during the Napoleonic Wars...
, died in the battle). Napoleon would never again have the opportunity to challenge the British at sea. By this time, however, Napoleon had already all but abandoned plans to invade England, and had again turned his attention to enemies on the Continent. The French army left Boulogne and moved towards Austria.
In April 1805, the United Kingdom and Russia signed a treaty with the aim of removing the French from Holland and Switzerland. Austria joined the alliance after the annexation of
GenoaGenoa is a city and an important seaport in northern Italy, the capital of the Province of Genoa and of the region of Liguria. The city has a population of about 610,000 and the urban area has a population of about 900,000...
and the proclamation of Napoleon as
King of ItalyThe Kingdom of Italy was founded in Northern Italy by Napoleon, and ended with his defeat and fall.-Constitutional Statutes:...
on 17 March 1805.
The Austrians began the war by invading
BavariaThe Kingdom of Bavaria was a German state that existed from 1806–1918. Elector Maximilian IV Joseph of the House of Wittelsbach became the first King of Bavaria in 1806 as Maximilian I Joseph. The monarchy would remain held by the Wittelsbachs until the kingdom's dissolution in 1918...
with an army of about 70,000 under
Karl Mack von LeiberichKarl Freiherr Mack von Leiberich , Austrian soldier, was born at Nenslingen, in Bavaria.In 1770 he joined an Austrian cavalry regiment, in which his uncle, Leiberich, was a squadron commander, becoming an officer seven years later...
, and the French army marched out from Boulogne in late July, 1805 to confront them. At
UlmThe Battle of Ulm was a series of minor skirmishes at the end of Napoleon Bonaparte's Ulm Campaign, culminating in the surrender of an entire Austrian army near Ulm in Württemberg....
(25 September–20 October) Napoleon surrounded Mack's army, forcing its surrender without significant losses. With the main Austrian army north of the
AlpsThe Alps are one of the great mountain range systems of Europe, stretching from Austria and Slovenia in the east; through Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Germany; to France in the west....
defeated (another army under Archduke Charles manoeuvred inconclusively against
André MassénaJean-André Masséna 1st Duc de Rivoli, 1st Prince d'Essling was a French military commander during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars...
's French army in Italy), Napoleon occupied
ViennaVienna is the capital of the Republic of Austria and also one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.7 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre. It is the 10th largest city by...
. Far from his supply lines, he faced a larger Austro-Russian army under the command of Mikhail Kutuzov, with the Emperor
Alexander I of RussiaAlexander I of Russia , also known as Alexander the Blessed served as Emperor of Russia from 23 March 1801 to 1 December 1825 and Ruler of Poland from 1815 to 1825, as well as the first Russian Grand Duke of Finland and Lithuania.He was born in Saint Petersburg to Grand Duke Paul Petrovich, later...
personally present. On 2 December, Napoleon crushed the joint Austro-Russian army in
MoraviaMoravia is a historical region in central Europe in the east of the Czech Republic, one of the former Czech lands. It takes its name from the Morava River which rises in the northwest of the region.-Geography:...
at
AusterlitzThe Battle of Austerlitz also known as the Battle of the Three Emperors, was one of Napoleon Bonaparte's greatest victories, effectively destroying the Third Coalition against the French Empire...
(usually considered his greatest victory). He inflicted a total of 25,000 casualties on a numerically superior enemy army while sustaining fewer than 7,000 in his own force.
Austria signed the Treaty of Pressburg (26 December 1805) and left the Coalition. The Treaty required the Austrians to give up Venetia to the French-dominated
Kingdom of ItalyThe Kingdom of Italy was founded in Northern Italy by Napoleon, and ended with his defeat and fall.-Constitutional Statutes:...
and the
TyrolGerman Tyrol is a historical region in the Alps now divided between Austria and Italy. It includes largely ethnic German areas of historical County of Tyrol: the Austrian state of Tyrol and the Italian region known as the Alto Adige/Südtirol but not the largely Italian-speaking Trentino...
to Bavaria.
With the withdrawal of Austria from the war, stalemate ensued. Napoleon's army had a record of continuous unbroken victories on land, but the full force of the Russian army had not yet come into play.
War of the Fourth Coalition 1806–1807
Within months of the collapse of the Third Coalition, the Fourth Coalition (1806–07) against France was formed by Prussia, Russia, Saxony, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. In July 1806, Napoleon formed the
Confederation of the RhineThe Confederation of the Rhine or Rhine Confederation was a client state of the First French Empire. It was formed initially from 16 German states by Napoleon after he defeated Austria's Francis II and Russia's Alexander I in the Battle of Austerlitz. The Treaty of Pressburg, in effect, led to the...
out of the many tiny German states which constituted the
RhinelandThe Rhineland is the general name for the land on both sides of the river Rhine in the west of Germany. After the collapse of the French Empire in the early 19th century, the German and Dutch speaking regions at the middle and lower course of the Rhine were annexed to the kingdom of Prussia...
and most other western parts of Germany. He amalgamated many of the smaller states into larger electorates, duchies and kingdoms to make the governance of non-Prussian Germany smoother. Napoleon elevated the rulers of the two largest Confederation states,
SaxonyThe Free State of Saxony is a federal state of Germany, located in the southeastern part of present-day Germany. It is the tenth-largest German state in area and the sixth largest in population , of Germany's sixteen states.Long in the heart of German-speaking Europe, Saxony became one of the new...
and
BavariaBavaria , with an area of and almost 12.5 million inhabitants, is located in the southeast of Germany and is the largest state of Germany by area, forming almost 20% of the total land area of Germany...
, to the status of kings.
In August 1806, the Prussian king, Friedrich Wilhelm III decided to go to war independently of any other great power except the distant Russia. The Russian army, an ally of Prussia, was still far away when Prussia declared war. In September, Napoleon unleashed all the French forces east of the Rhine. Napoleon himself defeated a Prussian army at Jena (14 October 1806), and Davout defeated another at Auerstädt on the same day. Some 160,000 French soldiers (increasing in number as the campaign went on) attacked Prussia, moving with such speed that they destroyed as an effective military force the entire Prussian army of 250,000—which sustained 25,000 casualties, lost a further 150,000
prisonersA prisoner of war or enemy prisoner of war is a combatant who is held in continuing custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict...
and 4,000 artillery pieces, and over 100,000 muskets stockpiled in Berlin. At Jena, Napoleon fought only a detachment of the Prussian force. Auerstädt involved a single French corps defeating the bulk of the Prussian army. Napoleon entered Berlin on 27 October 1806. He visited the tomb of Frederick the Great and instructed his marshals to remove their hats there, saying, "If he were alive we wouldn't be here today". In total Napoleon had taken only 19 days from beginning his attack on Prussia until knocking it out of the war with the capture of Berlin and the destruction of its principal armies at Jena and Auerstädt. By contrast, Prussia had fought for three years in the War of the First Coalition with little achievement.
In the next stage of the war the French drove Russian forces out of Poland and instituted a new state, the
Duchy of WarsawThe Duchy of Warsaw was a Polish state established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1807 from the Polish lands ceded by the Kingdom of Prussia under the terms of the Treaties of Tilsit. The duchy was held in personal union by one of Napoleon's allies, King Frederick Augustus I of Saxony...
. Then Napoleon turned north to confront the remainder of the Russian army and to try to capture the temporary Prussian capital at
KönigsbergKönigsberg was the capital of eastern Prussia from the Late Middle Ages until 1945. It was founded by the Teutonic Knights just south of the Sambian peninsula in the year 1255 AD during the Northern Crusades and named for King Ottokar II of Bohemia...
. A tactical draw at
EylauThe Battle of Eylau or Battle of Preussisch-Eylau was a bloody and inconclusive battle between Napoléon's Grande Armée and a mostly Russian army under General Bennigsen near the town of Preußisch Eylau in East Prussia....
(7–8 February 1807) forced the Russians to withdraw further north. Napoleon then routed the Russian army at
FriedlandThe Battle of Friedland saw Napoleon Bonaparte's French army decisively defeat Count von Bennigsen's Russian army about twenty-seven miles southeast of Königsberg...
(14 June 1807). Following this defeat, Alexander had to make peace with Napoleon at Tilsit (7 July 1807). By September,
Marshal BruneGuillaume Marie Anne Brune, 1st Comte Brune was a French soldier and political figure who rose to Marshal of France....
completed the occupation of
Swedish PomeraniaSwedish Pomerania was a Dominion under the Swedish Crown from the 17th to the 19th century, situated on what is now the Baltic coast of Germany and Poland...
, allowing the Swedish army, however, to withdraw with all its munitions of war.
During 1807, Britain attacked Denmark and captured its fleet. The large Danish fleet could have greatly aided the French by replacing many of the ships France had lost at Trafalgar in 1805. The British attack helped bring Denmark into the war on the side of France.
At the
Congress of ErfurtThe Congress of Erfurt was the meeting between Emperor Napoleon I of France and Tsar Alexander I of Russia from 27 September to 14 October 1808 intended to reaffirm the alliance concluded the previous year with the Treaty of Tilsit which followed the end of the War of the Fourth...
(September–October 1808), Napoleon and Alexander agreed that Russia should force Sweden to join the Continental System, which led to the
Finnish WarThe Finnish War was fought between Sweden and Russia from February 1808 to September 1809. As a result of the war, the eastern third of Sweden was established as the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland within the Russian Empire...
of 1808–09 and to the division of Sweden into two parts separated by the
Gulf of BothniaThe Gulf of Bothnia is the northernmost arm of the Baltic Sea. It is situated between Finland's west coast and Sweden's east coast. In the south of the gulf lie the Åland Islands, between the Sea of Åland and the Archipelago Sea.-Name:...
. The eastern part became the Russian
Grand Duchy of FinlandThe Grand Duchy of Finland was the predecessor state of modern Finland that existed in its territory 1809–1917 as part of the Russian Empire.- History :...
.
War of the Fifth Coalition 1809
The Fifth Coalition (1809) of the United Kingdom and Austria against France formed as the UK engaged in the
Peninsular WarThe Peninsular War was a contest between France and the allied powers of Spain, the United Kingdom, and Portugal for control of the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars...
against France.
Again the UK stood alone, and the sea became the major
theatre of warIn warfare, a theater or theatre is defined as a specific geographical area of conduct of armed conflict, bordered by areas where no combat is taking place....
against Napoleon's allies. During the time of the Fifth Coalition, the Royal Navy won a succession of victories in the French colonies.
On land, the Fifth Coalition attempted few extensive military endeavours. One, the Walcheren Expedition of 1809, involved a dual effort by the British Army and the Royal Navy to relieve Austrian forces under intense French pressure. It ended in disaster after the Army commander—
John Pitt, 2nd Earl of ChathamJohn Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham, KG, PC was the eldest son of William Pitt the Elder and an elder brother of William Pitt the Younger. He served in various capacities in the Tory cabinets of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. During the Napoleonic Wars, he commanded the British force in the...
—failed to capture the objective, the naval base of French-controlled
Antwerp||-||-||-||}Antwerp is a city and municipality in Belgium and the capital of the Antwerp province in Flanders, one of Belgium's three regions. Antwerp's total population is 472,071 and its total area is , giving a population density of 2,308 inhabitants per km²...
. For the most part of the years of the Fifth Coalition, British military operations on land—apart from in the
Iberian PeninsulaThe Iberian Peninsula, or Iberia, is located in the extreme southwest of Europe and includes modern-day Spain, Portugal, Andorra and Gibraltar and a very small area of France. It is the westernmost of the three major southern European peninsulas—the Iberian, Italian, and Balkan peninsulas...
—remained restricted to hit-and-run operations executed by the Royal Navy, which dominated the sea after having beaten down almost all substantial naval opposition from France and its allies and blockading what remained of France's naval forces in heavily fortified French-controlled ports. These rapid-attack operations functioned rather like exo-territorial guerrilla strikes: they aimed mostly at destroying blockaded French naval and mercantile shipping, and disrupting French supplies, communications, and military units stationed near the coasts. Often, when British allies attempted military actions within several dozen miles or so of the sea, the Royal Navy would arrive and would land troops and supplies and aid the Coalition's land forces in a concerted operation. Royal Navy ships even provided artillery support against French units when fighting strayed near enough to the coastline. However, the ability and quality of the land forces governed these operations. For example, when operating with inexperienced guerrilla forces in Spain, the Royal Navy sometimes failed to achieve its objectives simply because of the lack of manpower that the Navy's guerrilla allies had promised to supply.
Economic warfare also continued—the French Continental System against the British naval blockade of French-controlled territory. Due to military shortages and lack of organisation in French territory, many breaches of the Continental System occurred as French-dominated states engaged in illicit (though often tolerated) trade with British smugglers. Both sides entered additional conflicts in attempts to enforce their blockade; the British fought the United States in the
War of 1812The War of 1812, between the United States of America and the British Empire , lasted from 1812 to 1815. It was fought chiefly on the Atlantic Ocean and on the land, coasts and waterways of North America.There were several immediate stated causes for the U.S...
(1812–15), and the French engaged in the
Peninsular WarThe Peninsular War was a contest between France and the allied powers of Spain, the United Kingdom, and Portugal for control of the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars...
(1808–14). The Iberian conflict began when Portugal continued trade with the UK despite French restrictions. When Spain failed to maintain the continental system, the uneasy Spanish alliance with France ended in all but name. French troops gradually encroached on Spanish territory until they occupied
MadridMadrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. It is the third-most populous municipality in the European Union after Greater London and Berlin, and its metropolitan area is the third-most populous city by urban area in the European Union after Paris and London.The city is located on the river...
, and installed a client monarchy. This provoked an explosion of popular rebellions across Spain. Heavy British involvement soon followed.
Austria, previously an ally of France, took the opportunity to attempt to restore its imperial territories in Germany as held prior to Austerlitz. Austria achieved a number of initial victories against the thinly-spread army of Marshal
DavoutLouis-Nicolas d'Avout , better known as Davout, 1st Duc d'Auerstaedt, 1st Prince d'Eckmühl, was a Marshal of France during the Napoleonic Era. His prodigious talent for war along with his reputation as a stern disciplinarian, earned him the title "The Iron Marshal"...
. Napoleon had left Davout with only 170,000 troops to defend France's entire eastern frontier (in the 1790s, 800,000 troops had carried out the same task, but holding a much shorter front).
Napoleon had enjoyed easy success in Spain, retaking Madrid, defeating the Spanish and consequently forcing a withdrawal of the heavily out-numbered British army from the Iberian Peninsula (
Battle of CorunnaThe Battle of Corunna refers to a battle of the Peninsular War. On January 16, 1809, a French army under Marshal Soult attacked the British under Sir John Moore...
, 16 January 1809). But when he left, the guerrilla war against his forces in the countryside continued to tie down great numbers of troops. Austria's attack prevented Napoleon from successfully wrapping up operations against British forces by necessitating his departure for Austria, and he never returned to the Peninsula theatre. In his absence and that of his best marshals (Davout remained in the east throughout the war) the French situation in Spain deteriorated, and then became dire when
Sir Arthur WellesleyField Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, KG, KP, GCB, GCH, PC, FRS , was an Anglo-Irish soldier and statesman, and one of the leading military and political figures of the nineteenth century....
, arrived to take charge of British-Portuguese forces.
The Austrians drove into the
Duchy of WarsawThe Duchy of Warsaw was a Polish state established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1807 from the Polish lands ceded by the Kingdom of Prussia under the terms of the Treaties of Tilsit. The duchy was held in personal union by one of Napoleon's allies, King Frederick Augustus I of Saxony...
, but suffered defeat at the Battle of Raszyn on 19 April 1809. The Polish army captured
West GaliciaNew Galicia or Western Galicia was an administrative region of the Habsburg Monarchy, created after the Third Partition of Poland in 1795. In 1803 it was merged with Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, but retained some autonomy...
following its earlier success.
Napoleon assumed personal command in the east and bolstered the army there for his counter-attack on Austria. After a few small battles, the well-run campaign forced the Austrians to withdraw from Bavaria, and Napoleon advanced into Austria. His hurried attempt to cross the
DanubeThe Danube is the longest river in the European Union and Europe's second longest river after the Volga.The river originates in the Black Forest in Germany as the much smaller Brigach and Breg rivers which join at the German town Donaueschingen, after which it is known as the Danube and flows...
resulted in the massive
Battle of Aspern-EsslingIn the Battle of Aspern-Essling , Napoleon attempted a forced crossing of the Danube near Vienna, but the French and their allies were driven back by the Austrians under Archduke Charles...
(22 May 1809)— Napoleon's first significant tactical defeat. But the Austrian commander,
Archduke KarlArchduke Charles of Austria, Duke of Teschen was an Austrian field-marshal, the son of emperor Leopold II and his wife Infanta Maria Luisa of Spain...
, failed to follow up on his indecisive victory, allowing Napoleon to prepare and seize Vienna in early July. He defeated the Austrians at
WagramThe Battle of Wagram was the most important military engagement of the War of the Fifth Coalition and took place on the Marchfeld plain, on the north bank of the Danube. An important site of the battle was the village of Deutsch-Wagram, 10 kilometres northeast of Vienna, which would give its name...
, on 5–6 July (During this battle, Napoleon stripped Marshal Bernadotte of his title and ridiculed him in front of other senior officers. Shortly thereafter, Bernadotte took up the offer from Sweden to fill the vacant position of Crown Prince there. Later he would actively participate in wars against his former Emperor).
The War of the Fifth Coalition ended with the
Treaty of SchönbrunnThe Treaty of Schönbrunn , sometimes known as the Treaty of Vienna, was signed between France and Austria at the Schönbrunn Palace of Vienna on 14 October 1809. This treaty ended the Fifth Coalition during the Napoleonic Wars...
(14 October 1809). In the east, only the
TyrolGerman Tyrol is a historical region in the Alps now divided between Austria and Italy. It includes largely ethnic German areas of historical County of Tyrol: the Austrian state of Tyrol and the Italian region known as the Alto Adige/Südtirol but not the largely Italian-speaking Trentino...
ese rebels led by
Andreas HoferAndreas Hofer was a Tirolean innkeeper and patriot. He was the leader of a rebellion against Napoleon's forces....
continued to fight the French-Bavarian army until finally defeated in November 1809, while in the west the Peninsular War continued.
In 1810, the French Empire reached its greatest extent. On the continent, the British and Portuguese remained restricted to the area around
LisbonLisbon is the capital and largest city of Portugal. It is also the seat of the district of Lisbon and the main city of the Lisbon region...
(behind their impregnable
lines of Torres VedrasThe Lines of Torres Vedras were lines of forts built in secrecy to defend Lisbon during the Peninsular War. Named after the nearby town of Torres Vedras, they were ordered by Arthur Wellesley, Viscount Wellington, constructed by Portuguese workers between November 1809 and September 1810, and used...
) and to
besieged CadizThe Siege of Cádiz a siege of the large Spanish naval base of Cádiz by a French army from February 5, 1810 to August 24, 1812 during the Peninsular War. Following the occupation of Madrid on March 23 1808, Cádiz became the Spanish seat of power, and was targeted by 60,000 French troops under the...
. Napoleon married
Marie-LouiseMarie Louise of Austria , born Archduchess Marie Louise of Austria , became upon marriage Empress of the French , and in 1817 became Duchess of Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla .
...
, an Austrian Archduchess, with the aim of ensuring a more stable alliance with Austria and of providing the Emperor with an heir (something his first wife, Josephine, had failed to do). As well as the French Empire, Napoleon controlled the Swiss Confederation, the Confederation of the Rhine, the Duchy of Warsaw and the Kingdom of Italy. Territories allied with the French included:
- the Kingdom of Spain (under Joseph Bonaparte
align=right|Joseph-Napoléon Bonaparte, King of Naples and Sicily, King of Spain and the Indies, Comte de Survilliers was the elder brother of Napoleon I of France, who made him King of Naples and Sicily and later King of Spain as Joseph I of Spain...
, Napoleon's elder brother)
- the Kingdom of Westphalia
The Kingdom of Westphalia was a historical state that existed from 1807-1813 in parts of present-day Germany. While formally independent, it was a vassal state of the First French Empire, ruled by Napoléon's brother Jérôme Bonaparte. It was named after Westphalia, but had little territory in common...
(Jérôme BonaparteJérôme-Napoléon Bonaparte, French Prince, King of Westphalia, 1st Prince of Montfort was the youngest brother of Napoleon, who made him king of Westphalia...
, Napoleon's younger brother)
- the Kingdom of Naples (under Joachim Murat
Joachim-Napoléon Murat , 1st Prince Murat, Grand Duke of Berg and Cleves, Marshal of France and Admiral of France, was King of Naples from 1808 to 1815. He received his titles in part by being the brother-in-law of Napoleon Bonaparte, through marriage to Napoleon's youngest sister, Caroline...
, husband of Napoleon's sister CarolineMaria Annunziata Carolina Murat , better known as Caroline Bonaparte, was the seventh surviving child and third surviving daughter of Carlo Buonaparte and Letizia Ramolino and a younger sister of Napoleon I of France...
)
- the Principality
A principality is a monarchical feudatory or sovereign state, ruled or reigned over by a monarch with the title of prince or princess, or a monarch with another title within the generic use of the term prince....
of Lucca and Piombino (under Elisa BonaparteMaria Anna Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi, Princesse Française, Duchess of Lucca and Princess of Piombino, Grand Duchess of Tuscany, Comtesse de Compignano was the fourth surviving child and eldest surviving daughter of Carlo Buonaparte and Letizia Ramolino.-Biography:Elisa was born in Ajaccio, Corsica...
(Napoleon's sister) and her husband Felice Bacciocchi);
and Napoleon's former enemies, Prussia and Austria.
The Invasion of Russia 1812
The Treaty of Tilsit in 1807 resulted in the
Anglo-Russian WarThe Anglo-Russian War took place 1807-1812, during the Napoleonic Wars.As part of the terms of the Treaty of Tilsit, Russia was obliged to close off her maritime trade with Great Britain, as part of Napoleon's continuing efforts to establish the Continental System, strengthening economic ties...
(1807–12). Emperor Alexander I declared war on the United Kingdom after the British attack on Denmark in September 1807. British men-of-war supported the Swedish fleet during the
Finnish WarThe Finnish War was fought between Sweden and Russia from February 1808 to September 1809. As a result of the war, the eastern third of Sweden was established as the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland within the Russian Empire...
and had victories over the Russians in the
Gulf of FinlandThe Gulf of Finland is the easternmost arm of the Baltic Sea that extends between Finland and Estonia all the way to Saint Petersburg in Russia, where the river Neva drains into it. Other major cities around the gulf include Helsinki and Tallinn...
in July 1808 and August 1809. However, the success of the Russian army on the land forced Sweden to sign peace-treaties with Russia in 1809 and with France in 1810 and to join the
Continental BlockadeThe Continental System was the foreign policy of Napoleon I of France in his struggle against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland during the Napoleonic Wars...
against Britain. But Franco-Russian relations became progressively worse after 1810, and the Russian war with the UK effectively ended. In April 1812, Britain, Russia and Sweden signed secret agreements directed against Napoleon.
In 1812, Napoleon invaded Russia. He aimed to compel Emperor
Alexander IAlexander I of Russia , also known as Alexander the Blessed served as Emperor of Russia from 23 March 1801 to 1 December 1825 and Ruler of Poland from 1815 to 1825, as well as the first Russian Grand Duke of Finland and Lithuania.He was born in Saint Petersburg to Grand Duke Paul Petrovich, later...
to remain in the Continental System and to remove the imminent threat of a Russian invasion of Poland. The French-led
Grande Armée, consisting of 650,000 men (270,000 Frenchmen and many soldiers of allies or subject areas), crossed the Niemen River on 23 June 1812. Russia proclaimed a Patriotic War, while Napoleon proclaimed a Second Polish war. The Poles supplied almost 100,000 troops for the invasion-force, but against their expectations, Napoleon avoided any concessions to Poland, having in mind further negotiations with Russia. Russia maintained a scorched-earth policy of retreat, broken only by the
Battle of BorodinoThe Battle of Borodino , fought on September 7, 1812, was the largest and bloodiest single-day action of the French invasion of Russia, involving more than 250,000 troops and resulting in at least 70,000 casualties...
on 7 September 1812. This required the
Grande Armée to adjust its methods of operation, but it refused to do so. This refusal led to most of the losses of the main column of the
Grande Armée, which in one case amounted to 95,000 troops in a single week. The bloody confrontation of Borodino ended in a tactical defeat for Russia, thus opening the road to Moscow for Napoleon.
By 14 September 1812, the
Grande Armée had captured Moscow. But by then, the Russians had largely abandoned the city, even releasing prisoners from Moscow's prisons to inconvenience the French. Alexander I refused to capitulate, and the governor, Count
Fyodor Vasilievich RostopchinCount Fyodor Vasilievich Rostopchin was a Russian statesman, who served as governor of Moscow during French invasion of Russia.Fyodor Rostopchin had great influence over the tsar Paul I, who made him in 1796 adjutant general, grand-marshal of the court, then Foreign Minister. In 1799, he received...
, ordered the city burnt to the ground. With no sign of clear victory in sight, Napoleon began the disastrous Great Retreat from Moscow. The remnants of the
Grande Armée crossed the
Berezina RiverThe Berezina is a river in Belarus and a tributary of the Dnieper River.The Berezina Preserve by the river is in the UNESCO list of Biosphere Preserves.-Historical significance:...
in November, and only 27,000 fit soldiers remained. Napoleon then left his army and returned to Paris to prepare to defend Poland against the advancing Russians. With some 380,000 men dead and 100,000 captured, the situation seemed less dire than at first. The Russians had lost around 210,000 men, leaving their army depleted. But with their shorter supply-lines, they could replenish their armies faster than the French.
War of the Sixth Coalition 1812–1814
Seeing an opportunity in Napoleon's historic defeat, Prussia, Sweden, Austria, and a number of German states re-entered the war. Napoleon vowed that he would create a new army as large as the one he had sent into Russia, and quickly built up his forces in the east from 30,000 to 130,000 and eventually to 400,000. Napoleon inflicted 40,000 casualties on the Allies at
LützenIn the Battle of Lützen , Napoleon lured a combined Prussian and Russian force into a trap, halting the advances of the Sixth Coalition after his devastating losses in Russia. The Russian commander, Prince Peter Wittgenstein, attempting to undo Napoleon's capture of Leipzig, attacked Napoleon's...
(2 May 1813) and
BautzenIn the Battle of Bautzen a combined Russian/Prussian army was pushed back by Napoleon, but escaped destruction, some sources claim, because Michel Ney failed to block their retreat...
(20–21 May 1813). Both battles involved total forces of over 250,000, making them some of the largest conflicts of the wars so far.
Meanwhile, in the
Peninsular WarThe Peninsular War was a contest between France and the allied powers of Spain, the United Kingdom, and Portugal for control of the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars...
, Arthur Wellesley renewed the Anglo-Portuguese advance into Spain just after New Year in 1812, besieging and capturing the fortified towns of
Ciudad RodrigoCiudad Rodrigo is a small cathedral city in Salamanca Province in western Spain ....
,
BadajozBadajoz is the capital of the Spanish province of Badajoz in the autonomous community of Extremadura, situated close to the Portuguese border, on the left bank of the river Guadiana, and the Madrid–Lisbon railway. The population in 2007 was 145,257.Badajoz is the see of a bishopric...
, and in the Battle of Salamanca (which was a damaging defeat to the French). As the French regrouped, the Anglo–Portuguese entered Madrid and advanced towards Burgos, before retreating all the way to Portugal when renewed French concentrations threatened to trap them. As a consequence of the Salamanca campaign, the French were forced to end their long siege of Cadiz and to permanently evacuate the provinces of
AndalusiaAndalusia Andalusia Andalusia ' onMouseout='HidePop("99597")' href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Asturias">Asturias
The Principality of Asturias is an autonomous community within the kingdom of Spain, former Kingdom of Asturias in the Middle Ages...
.
In a strategic move, Wellesley planned to move his supply base from Lisbon to Santander. The Anglo–Portuguese forces swept northwards in late May and seized Burgos. On 21 June, at
VitoriaAt the Battle of Vitoria an allied British, Portuguese, and Spanish army under General Arthur Wellesley broke the French army under Joseph Bonaparte and Marshal Jean-Baptiste Jourdan near Vitoria in Spain, leading to eventual victory in the Peninsular War.-Background:In July 1812, after the Battle...
, the combined Anglo-Portuguese and Spanish armies won against
Joseph Bonapartealign=right|Joseph-Napoléon Bonaparte, King of Naples and Sicily, King of Spain and the Indies, Comte de Survilliers was the elder brother of Napoleon I of France, who made him King of Naples and Sicily and later King of Spain as Joseph I of Spain...
, finally breaking the French power in Spain. The French had to retreat out of the Iberian peninsula, over the
PyreneesThe Pyrenees are a range of mountains in southwest Europe that form a natural border between France and Spain...
.
The belligerents declared an armistice from 4 June 1813 (continuing until 13 August) during which time both sides attempted to recover from the loss of approximately a quarter of a million total troops in the preceding two months. During this time Coalition negotiations finally brought Austria out in open opposition to France. Two principal Austrian armies took the field, adding an additional 300,000 troops to the Coalition armies in Germany. In total the Allies now had around 800,000 front-line troops in the German theatre, with a strategic reserve of 350,000 formed to support the frontline operations.
Napoleon succeeded in bringing the total imperial forces in the region to around 650,000—although only 250,000 came under his direct command, with another 120,000 under Nicolas Charles Oudinot and 30,000 under Davout. The remainder of imperial forces came mostly from the Confederation of the Rhine, especially Saxony and Bavaria. In addition, to the south, Murat's Kingdom of Naples and
Eugène de BeauharnaisEugène Rose de Beauharnais, Prince Français, Prince of Venice, Viceroy of the Kingdom of Italy, Hereditary Grand Duke of Frankfurt, 1st Duke of Leuchtenberg and 1st Prince of Eichstätt ad personam was the first child and only son of the future French emperor Napoleon's first wife, Joséphine...
's Kingdom of Italy had a total of 100,000 armed men. In Spain, another 150,000 to 200,000 French troops steadily retreated before Anglo–Portuguese forces numbering around 100,000. Thus in total, around 900,000 French troops in all theatres faced around a million Coalition troops (not including the strategic reserve under formation in Germany). The gross figures may mislead slightly, as most of the German troops fighting on the side of the French fought at best unreliably and stood on the verge of defecting to the Allies. One can reasonably say that Napoleon could count on no more than 450,000 troops in Germany—which left him outnumbered about two to one.
Following the end of the armistice, Napoleon seemed to have regained the initiative at
DresdenThe Battle of Dresden was fought on 26-27 August, 1813 around Dresden, Germany, resulting in a French victory under Napoleon I against forces of the Sixth Coalition of Austrians, Russians and Prussians under Field Marshal Schwartzenberg. However, Napoleon's victory was not as complete as it could...
(August 1813), where he defeated a numerically-superior Coalition army and inflicted enormous casualties, while the French army sustained relatively few. However, the failures of his marshals and a slow resumption of the offensive on his part cost him any advantage that this victory might have secured. At the
Battle of LeipzigThe Battle of Leipzig or Battle of the Nations, fought on 16–19 October 1813, was one of the most decisive defeats suffered by Napoleon Bonaparte. The battle was fought on German soil and involved German troops on both sides, as a large proportion of Napoleon's troops actually came from the German...
in
SaxonyThe Free State of Saxony is a federal state of Germany, located in the southeastern part of present-day Germany. It is the tenth-largest German state in area and the sixth largest in population , of Germany's sixteen states.Long in the heart of German-speaking Europe, Saxony became one of the new...
(16–19 October 1813), also called the "Battle of the Nations", 191,000 French fought more than 300,000 Allies, and the defeated French had to retreat into France. Napoleon then fought a series of battles, including the
Battle of Arcis-sur-AubeThe Battle of Arcis-sur-Aube was Napoleon’s penultimate battle before his abdication and exile to Elba...
, in France itself, but the overwhelming numbers of the Allies steadily forced him back.
The Allies
entered ParisThe Battle of Paris was fought during the Napoleonic Wars in 1814. The French defeat led directly to the abdication of Napoleon I.-Background:...
on 30 March 1814. During this time Napoleon fought his
Six Days CampaignThe Six Days Campaign was a final series of victories by the forces of Napoleon Bonaparte as the Sixth Coalition closed in on Paris....
, in which he won multiple battles against the enemy forces advancing towards Paris. However, during this entire campaign he never managed to field more than 70,000 troops against more than half a million Coalition troops. At the
Treaty of ChaumontThe Treaty of Chaumont was a rejected cease-fire offered by the Allies of the Sixth Coalition to Napoleon Bonaparte in 1814.Following discussions in late February 1814, representatives of Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Great Britain reconvened a meeting at Chaumont on 1 March, 1814...
(9 March 1814), the Allies agreed to preserve the Coalition until Napoleon's total defeat.
Napoleon determined to fight on, even now, incapable of fathoming his massive fall from power. During the campaign he had issued a decree for 900,000 fresh conscripts, but only a fraction of these ever materialized, and Napoleon's increasingly unrealistic schemes for victory eventually gave way to the reality of the hopeless situation. Napoleon abdicated on 6 April. However, occasional military actions continued in Italy, Spain, and Holland throughout the spring of 1814.
The victors exiled Napoleon to the island of
ElbaElba is an island in Tuscany, Italy, from the coastal town of Piombino. It is the largest island of the Tuscan Archipelago, located between the Tyrrhenian Sea and Ligurian Sea, and the third largest island in Italy after Sicily and Sardinia. Elba and the other islands of the Tuscan Archipelago...
, and restored the French
BourbonThe House of Bourbon is an important European royal house, a branch of the Capetian dynasty. Bourbon kings first ruled Navarre and France in the 16th century. By the 18th century, members of the Bourbon dynasty also held thrones in Spain, Naples & Sicily, and Parma...
monarchy in the person of
Louis XVIIILouis XVIII , Louis Stanislas Xavier de France, was King of France and Navarre from 1814 to 1824, omitting the Hundred Days in 1815. Louis XVIII spent twenty-three years in exile, from 1791 to 1814, due to the French Revolution, and was exiled again in 1815, upon the return of Napoleon Bonaparte...
. They signed the
Treaty of FontainebleauThe Treaty of Fontainebleau was an agreement established in Paris on 11 April 1814 between Napoleon Bonaparte and representatives from Austria, Hungary and Bohemia, Russia, and Prussia. The treaty was signed at Paris on 11 April by the plenipotentiaries of both sides, and ratified by Napoleon on...
(11 April 1814) and initiated the
Congress of ViennaThe Congress of Vienna was a conference of ambassadors of European states chaired by the Austrian statesman Klemens Wenzel von Metternich, and held in Vienna from November, 1814 to June, 1815. Its objective was to settle the many issues arising from the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic...
to redraw the map of Europe.
Gunboat War 1807–1814
Initially, Denmark-Norway declared itself
neutralArmed neutrality, in international politics, is the posture of a state or group of states which makes no alliance with either side in a war, but asserts that it will defend itself against resulting incursions from all parties....
in the Napoleonic Wars, established a navy, and traded with both sides. But the British attacked and captured or destroyed large portions of the
Dano-Norwegian fleetThe Royal Danish-Norwegian Navy or The Common Fleet also known simply as the Danish Navy was the naval force of the united kingdoms Denmark and Norway from 1509 to 12 April 1814. The fleet was established when the Royal Danish Navy and the Royal Norwegian Navy was combined by King Hans, when he...
in the
First Battle of CopenhagenThe Battle of Copenhagen was an engagement which saw a British fleet under the command of Admiral Sir Hyde Parker fight and strategically defeat a Danish-Norwegian fleet anchored just off Copenhagen on 2 April, 1801. Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson led the main attack...
(2 April 1801), and again in the
Second Battle of CopenhagenFor the earlier naval battle see Battle of Copenhagen The Second Battle of Copenhagen, was a British preemptive attack on Copenhagen, targeting the civilian population in order to seize the Dano-Norwegian fleet....
(August–September 1807). This ended the Dano-Norwegian neutrality, who engaged in a naval guerilla war in which small gunboats would attack larger British ships in Danish and Norwegian waters. The Gunboat War effectively ended with a British victory at the
Battle of LyngørThe Battle of Lyngør was a naval battle fought between Denmark-Norway and Britain in 1812 on the southern coast of Norway, effectively concluding the Gunboat War in Britain's favour and putting Denmark-Norway out of the war.-Background:...
in 1812, involving the destruction of the last large Dano-Norwegian ship—the
frigateA frigate is a warship. The term has been used for warships of many sizes and roles over the past few centuries.In the 17th century, the term was used for any warship built for speed and manoeuvrability, the description often used being "frigate-built"...
NajadenHDMS Najaden was a frigate in the Royal Danish-Norwegian Navy. She was ommissioned in 1811, and originally carryed 36 guns. She was later upgraded to 42. She was sunk in the Battle of Lyngør on 12 July 1812 by the British ship of the line HMS Dictator and the Cruizer class brig-sloop Calypso.-...
.
War of 1812
Coinciding with the War of the Sixth Coalition, the otherwise neutral United States, owing to various transgressions on by the British, declared war on the United Kingdom and attempted to invade Canada. The war ended in
status quo ante bellumThe term status quo ante bellum comes from Latin meaning literally, the state in which things were before the war.The term was originally used in treaties to refer to the withdrawal of enemy troops and the restoration of prewar leadership. When used as such, it means that no side gains or loses...
under the
Treaty of GhentThe Treaty of Ghent , signed on December 24, 1814, in Ghent, Netherlands , was the peace treaty that ended the War of 1812 between the United States of America and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. The treaty largely restored relations between the two countries to status quo ante...
, signed on 24 December 1814, though sporadic fighting continued for several months (most notably, the
Battle of New OrleansThe Battle of New Orleans took place on January 8, 1815, and was the final major battle of the War of 1812. American forces, commanded by General Andrew Jackson, defeated an invading British Army intent on seizing New Orleans and the vast territory America had acquired with the Louisiana Purchase...
). Apart from the seizing of then-Spanish
MobileMobile is the third most populous city in the Southern U.S. state of Alabama and is the county seat of Mobile County. It is located on the Mobile River and the central Gulf Coast of the United States. The population within the city limits was 198,915 during the 2000 census...
by the United States, there was negligible involvement from other participants of the broader Napoleonic War. The main effect of the War of 1812 on the wider Napoleonic Wars was to force Britain to divert troops, supplies and funds to defending Canada. This inadvertently helped Napoleon in that Britain could no longer use these troops, supplies and funds in the war against France.
War of the Seventh Coalition 1815
- See also Hundred Days
The Hundred Days, sometimes known as the Hundred Days of Napoleon or Napoleon's Hundred Days for specificity, marked the period between Napoleon Bonaparte's return from exile on Elba to Paris on 20 March 1815 and the second restoration of King Louis XVIII on 8 July 1815...
and the Neapolitan WarThe Neapolitan War was a conflict between the Napoleonic Kingdom of Naples and the Austrian Empire. It started on 15 March 1815 when Joachim Murat declared war on Austria and ended on 20 May 1815 with the signing of the Treaty of Casalanza...
between the Kingdom of NaplesThe Kingdom of Naples is the modern day name for a polity which existed on the southern part of the Italian peninsula. Also known contemporaneously, and somewhat confusingly, as the Kingdom of Sicily, this kingdom was founded after the secession of the island of Sicily from the old Kingdom of...
and the Austrian EmpireThe Austrian Empire was a modern era successor empire founded on a remnant of the Holy Roman Empire centered on what is today's Austria that officially lasted from 1804 to 1867...
.
The Seventh Coalition (1815) pitted the United Kingdom, Russia, Prussia, Sweden, Austria, the Netherlands and a number of German states against France. The period known as the
Hundred DaysThe Hundred Days, sometimes known as the Hundred Days of Napoleon or Napoleon's Hundred Days for specificity, marked the period between Napoleon Bonaparte's return from exile on Elba to Paris on 20 March 1815 and the second restoration of King Louis XVIII on 8 July 1815...
began after Napoleon left Elba and landed at
CannesCannes France, is one of the best-known cities of the French Riviera, a busy tourist destination and host of the annual Cannes Film Festival. The population was 70,400 as of the 2007 census. Cannes is the home of numerous luxurious houses and mansions as well as many high-end gated communities...
(1 March 1815). Travelling to Paris, picking up support as he went, he eventually overthrew the restored Louis XVIII. The Allies rapidly gathered their armies to meet him again. Napoleon raised 280,000 men, whom he distributed among several armies. To add to the 90,000 troops in the standing army, he recalled well over a quarter of a million veterans from past campaigns and issued a decree for the eventual draft of around 2.5 million new men into the French army. This faced an initial Coalition force of about 700,000—although Coalition campaign-plans provided for one million front-line troops, supported by around 200,000 garrison, logistics and other auxiliary personnel. The Coalition intended this force to have overwhelming numbers against the numerically inferior imperial French army—which in fact never came close to reaching Napoleon's goal of more than 2.5 million under arms.
Napoleon took about 124,000 men of the Army of the North on a pre-emptive strike against the Allies in Belgium. He intended to attack the Coalition armies before they combined, in hope of driving the British into the sea and the Prussians out of the war. His march to the frontier achieved the surprise he had planned. He forced Prussia to fight at
LignyThe Battle of Ligny was the last victory of the military career of Napoleon Bonaparte. In this battle, French troops of the Armée du Nord under Napoleon's command, defeated a Prussian army under Field Marshal Blücher, near Ligny in present-day Belgium...
on 16 June 1815, and the defeated Prussians retreated in some disorder. On the same day, the left wing of the Army of the North, under the command of Marshal
Michel NeyMichel Ney , 1st Duc d'Elchingen, 1st Prince de la Moskowa , was a French soldier and military commander during the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars. He was one of the original 18 Marshals of France created by Napoleon I...
, succeeded in stopping any of Wellington's forces going to aid Blücher's Prussians by fighting a blocking action at
Quatre BrasThe Battle of Quatre Bras, between Wellington's Anglo-Dutch army and the left wing of the Armée du Nord under Marshal Michel Ney, was fought near the strategic crossroads of Quatre Bras on 16 June 1815.- Prelude :...
. Ney failed to clear the cross-roads and Wellington reinforced the position. But with the Prussian retreat, Wellington too had to retreat. He fell back to a previously reconnoitred position on an
escarpmentIn geomorphology, an escarpment is a transition zone between different physiogeographic provinces that involves a sharp, steep elevation differential, characterized by a cliff or steep slope. Usually escarpment is used interchangeably with scarp...
at Mont St Jean, a few miles south of the village of
WaterlooWaterloo is a Walloon municipality located in the province of Walloon Brabant, Belgium. On January 1, 2006, Waterloo had a total population of 29,315...
.
Napoleon took the reserve of the Army of the North, and reunited his forces with those of Ney to pursue Wellington's army, after he ordered Marshal
GrouchyEmmanuel de Grouchy, 2nd Marquis de Grouchy was a French general and marshal.-Biography:Grouchy was born in Paris, the son of François-Jacques de Grouchy, 1st Marquis de Grouchy and intellectual wife Gilberte Fréteau de Pény . His sister was Sophie de Condorcet, a noted femininist...
to take the right wing of the Army of the North and stop the Prussians re-grouping. Grouchy failed, and although he engaged and defeated the Prussian rearguard under the command of Lt-Gen
von ThielmannJohann Adolf Freiherr von Thielmann was a Saxon and Prussian cavalry soldier from Dresden.Entering the Saxon cavalry in 1782, he saw service against the French in the Revolutionary Wars and in the Jena campaign...
in the
Battle of WavreIn the Battle of Wavre was the final major military action of the Hundred Days campaign and the Napoleonic Wars. It was fought on 18-19 June 1815 between the Prussian rearguard under the command of General Johann von Thielmann and three corps of the French army under the command of Marshal Grouchy...
(18–19 June), the rest of the Prussian army "marched towards the sound of the guns" in the direction of Waterloo. Napoleon delayed the start of fighting at the
Battle of WaterlooIn the Battle of Waterloo forces of the French Empire under Napoleon Bonaparte and Michel Ney were defeated by those of the Seventh Coalition, including an Anglo-Allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington and a Prussian army under the command of Gebhard von Blücher...
on the morning of 18 June for several hours while he waited for the ground to dry after the previous night's rain. By late afternoon, the French army had not succeeded in driving Wellington's forces from the escarpment on which they stood. When the Prussians arrived and attacked the French right flank in ever-increasing numbers, Napoleon's strategy of keeping the Coalition armies divided had failed and a combined Coalition general advance drove his army from the field in confusion.
Grouchy partially redeemed himself by organizing a successful and well-ordered retreat towards Paris, where Marshal Davout had 117,000 men ready to turn back the 116,000 men of Blücher and Wellington. Militarily, it appeared quite possible (even probable) that the French could defeat Wellington and Blücher, but politics proved the source of the Emperor's downfall. And, even if Davout had succeeded in defeating the two northern Coalition armies, around 400,000 Russian and Austrian troops continued to advance from the east.
On arriving at Paris three days after Waterloo, Napoleon still clung to the hope of a concerted national resistance; but the temper of the
chamberMany parliaments or other legislatures consist of two chambers : an elected lower house, and an upper house or Senate which may be appointed or elected by a different mechanism from the lower house. This style of two houses is called bicameral...
s, and of the public generally, did not favour his view. The politicians forced Napoleon to abdicate again on 22 June 1815. Despite the Emperor’s abdication, irregular warfare continued along the eastern borders and on the outskirts of Paris until the signing of a cease-fire on 4 July. On 15 July, Napoleon surrendered himself to the British squadron at
RochefortRochefort is a commune in south-western France, a seaport on the Atlantic Ocean. It is a sub-prefecture of the Charente-Maritime département.-History:...
. The Allies exiled him to the remote South Atlantic island of
Saint HelenaSaint Helena , named after St Helena of Constantinople, is an island of volcanic origin in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is part of the British overseas territory of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha which also includes Ascension Island and the islands of Tristan da Cunha.The island...
, where he died on 5 May 1821.
Meanwhile in Italy,
Joachim MuratJoachim-Napoléon Murat , 1st Prince Murat, Grand Duke of Berg and Cleves, Marshal of France and Admiral of France, was King of Naples from 1808 to 1815. He received his titles in part by being the brother-in-law of Napoleon Bonaparte, through marriage to Napoleon's youngest sister, Caroline...
, whom the Allies had allowed to remain King of
NaplesThe Kingdom of Naples is the modern day name for a polity which existed on the southern part of the Italian peninsula. Also known contemporaneously, and somewhat confusingly, as the Kingdom of Sicily, this kingdom was founded after the secession of the island of Sicily from the old Kingdom of...
after Napoleon's initial defeat, once again allied with his brother-in-law, triggering the
Neapolitan WarThe Neapolitan War was a conflict between the Napoleonic Kingdom of Naples and the Austrian Empire. It started on 15 March 1815 when Joachim Murat declared war on Austria and ended on 20 May 1815 with the signing of the Treaty of Casalanza...
(March to May, 1815). Hoping to find support among Italian nationalists fearing the increasing influence of the Habsburgs in Italy, Murat issued the Rimini Proclamation inciting them to war. But the proclamation failed and the Austrians soon crushed Murat at the
Battle of TolentinoThe Battle of Tolentino was fought on 2 – 3 May 1815 near Tolentino, in what is now Marche, Italy: it was the decisive battle in the Neapolitan War, fought by the Napoleonic King of Naples Joachim Murat to keep the throne after the Congress of Vienna. The battle itself shares many parallels with...
(2 May to 3 May 1815), forcing him to flee. The
BourbonsThe House of Bourbon is an important European royal house, a branch of the Capetian dynasty. Bourbon kings first ruled Navarre and France in the 16th century. By the 18th century, members of the Bourbon dynasty also held thrones in Spain, Naples & Sicily, and Parma...
returned to the throne of Naples on 20 May 1815. Murat tried to regain his throne, but after that failed, a firing squad executed him on 13 October 1815.
Political effects
The Napoleonic Wars brought great changes both to Europe and the Americas. Napoleon had brought most of
Western EuropeWestern Europe is the collection of countries in the westernmost region of Europe, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a cultural entity—the region lying west of Central Europe...
under one rule—an achievement not met since the days of the
Roman EmpireThe Roman Empire was the post-Republican phase of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean. The term is used to describe the Roman state during and after the time of the first emperor,...
, although
CharlemagneCharlemagne was King of the Franks from 768 to his death. He expanded the Frankish kingdoms into a Frankish Empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe...
reduced a large area of central Europe into a
single empireCarolingian Empire is a historiographical term sometimes used to refer to the realm of the Franks under the Carolingian dynasty. This dynasty is seen as the founders of France and Germany...
. But France's constant warfare with the combined other major powers of Europe for over two decades finally took its toll. By the end of the Napoleonic Wars, France no longer held the role of the dominant
powerA Great power or Nation or Empire is a nation or state that, through its great economic, political and military strength, is able to exert power and influence over not only its own region of the world, but far beyond to others...
in Europe, as it had since the times of
Louis XIVLouis XIV , popularly known as the Sun King , was King of France and of Navarre His reign, from 1643 to his death in 1715, lasted seventy-two years, three months, and eighteen days, and is the longest documented reign of any European monarch.Louis began personally governing France after the death...
.
The
United KingdomThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland was the formal name and the state form of the United Kingdom from 1 January 1801 until 12 April 1927...
emerged as the most powerful country in the world, coined by some as a
hyperpowerA hyperpower is a state that is militarily, economically and technologically dominant on the world stage. The British Empire, the Mongol Empire, and the Roman Empire are considered to be the most potent examples of previous hyperpowers...
. Britain's
Royal NavyThe Royal Navy of the United Kingdom is the oldest of HM Armed Forces . From the beginning of the 18th century until well into the 20th century, it was the most powerful navy in the world, playing a key part in establishing the British Empire as the dominant world power from 1815 until the early...
gained unquestioned naval superiority throughout the world and her industrial economy made it the most powerful commercial country as well.
In most European countries, the importation of the ideals of the French Revolution (
democracyDemocracy is a system of government in which either the actual governing is carried out by the people governed , or the power to do so is granted by them...
,
due processDue process alternatively due process of law or the process that is due, is the principle that the government must respect all of the legal rights that are owed to a person according to the law...
in courts, abolition of privileges, etc.) left a mark. The increasing prosperity and clout of the middle classes became incorporated into custom and law, and the vast new wealth built on bourgeois activities, such as
commerceCommerce is a division of trade or production which deals with the exchange of goods and services from producer to final consumer. It comprises the trading of something of economic value such as goods, services, information, or money between two or more entities...
and
industryAn industry is the manufacturing of a good or service within a category. Although industry is a broad term for any kind of economic production, in economics and urban planning industry is a synonym for the secondary sector, which is a type of economic activity involved in the manufacturing of raw...
, meant that European monarchs found it difficult to restore pre-revolutionary absolutism, and had to keep some of the reforms enacted during Napoleon's rule. Institutional legacies remain to this day: many European countries have a
civil-lawCivil law is a legal system inspired by Roman law, the primary feature of which is that laws are written into a collection, codified, and not determined, as in common law, by judges. The principle of civil law is to provide all citizens with an accessible and written collection of the laws which...
legal system, with clearly redacted codes compiling their basic laws—an enduring legacy of the
Napoleonic CodeThe Napoleonic Code, or Code Napoléon is the French civil code, established under Napoléon I in 1804. The code forbade privileges based on birth, allowed freedom of religion, and specified that government jobs go to the most qualified...
.
A relatively new and increasingly powerful movement became significant.
NationalismNationalism is an ideology, a sentiment, a form of culture, or a social movement that focuses on the nation. It is a type of collectivism emphasizing the collective of a specific nation...
would shape the course of much of future European history; its growth spelled the beginning of some states and the end of others. The map of Europe changed dramatically in the hundred years following the
Napoleonic EraThe Napoleonic Era is a period in the history of France and Europe. It is generally classified as including the fourth and final stage of the French Revolution, the first being the National Assembly, the second being the Legislative Assembly, and the third being the Directory...
, based not on fiefs and aristocracy, but on the perceived basis of human culture, national origins, and national ideology. Bonaparte's reign over Europe sowed the seeds for the founding of the nation-states of Germany and Italy by starting the process of consolidating city-states, kingdoms and principalities.
The Napoleonic wars also played a key role in the independence of the American Colonies from their European motherlands. The conflict significantly weakened the authority and military power of the Spanish Empire, especially after the
Battle of TrafalgarThe Battle of Trafalgar was a sea battle fought between the British Royal Navy and the combined fleets of the French Navy and Spanish Navy, during the War of the Third Coalition of the Napoleonic Wars . The battle was the most decisive British naval victory of the war...
, which seriously hampered the contact of viceroyalties with Americans. Evidence of this are the many uprisings in Hispanic Americas after the end of the war, which eventually lead to the
Hispanic American wars of independenceThe Spanish American wars of independence were the numerous wars against Spanish rule in Spanish America that took place during the early 19th century, from 1808 until 1829. The conflict started in 1808, with juntas established in Mexico and Montevideo in reaction to the events of the Peninsular War...
. In Portuguese America,
BrazilBrazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is a country in South America. It is the fifth largest country by geographical area, occupying nearly half of South America, the fifth most populous country, and the fourth most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean...
experienced greater autonomy as it now
served as siege of the Portuguese EmpireThe Transfer of the Portuguese Court to Brazil was an episode in the history of Portugal and the history of Brazil in which the Portuguese royal family and the court fled to Brazil and remained there from 1808 until April 26, 1821...
and ascended politically to the status of Kingdom. These events also contributed to the
Portuguese Liberal RevolutionThe Liberal Revolution of 1820 was a political revolution that erupted in 1820 and lasted until 1826. It was unchained via a military insurrection in the city of Porto, in northern Portugal, that quickly and peacefully spread to the rest of the country. From 1807 to 1811 Napoleonic French forces...
in 1820 and the Independence of Brazil in 1822.
After the war, in order to prevent another such war, Europe was divided into states according to the
balance of powerBalance of power may refer to:* balance of power in international relations — when there is parity or stability between competing forces* balance of power — when an individual or minor group can exercise a decisive influence on legislation because evenly weighted major groups act in opposition to...
theory. This meant in theory that no European state would become strong enough to dominate Europe in the future. This directly lead to the formation of alliances between the
German EmpireThe German Empire is the name commonly used in English to describe Germany from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871 to 1918, when it became a German republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of Wilhelm II .The term Second Reich...
, The Austro-Hungarian Empire and the
Kingdom of ItalyThere have been several distinct entities known as the Kingdom of Italy. Italy under the rule of Odoacer from 476 to 493 is often called the kingdom of Italy, since it encompassed the Roman province of Italy and Odoacer is periodically styled rex...
—the
Triple AllianceThe Triple Alliance was the military alliance among Germany, Austria–Hungary, and Italy that lasted from 1882 until the start of World War I in 1914. Each member promised mutual support in the event of an attack by any two other great powers, or for Germany and Italy, an attack by France alone...
and Great Britain, the
French Third RepublicThe French Third Republic was the republican government of France between the end of the Second French Empire in 1870 and the Vichy Regime after the invasion of France by the German...
and the
Russian EmpireThe Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia, and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...
's
Triple EntenteThe Triple Entente was the name given to the loose alignment between the United Kingdom, France, and Russia after the signing of the Anglo-Russian Entente in 1907...
which led to the First World War.
Another concept emerged—that of a unified Europe. Napoleon mentioned on several occasions his intention to create a single European state, and although his defeat set back the idea by one-and-a-half centuries, it re-emerged after the end of the Second World War.
Military legacy
The Napoleonic Wars also had a profound military impact. Until the time of Napoleon, European states employed relatively small armies, made up of both national soldiers and
mercenariesA mercenary is a professional soldier hired by a foreign army, as opposed to a soldier enlisted in the armed forces of a sovereign state. He or she takes part in armed conflict on many different scales, and is "motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain...
. However, military innovators in the mid-18th century began to recognize the potential of an entire nation at war: a "nation in arms".
France, with the fourth-largest population in Europe by the end of the 18th century (27 million, as compared to the United Kingdom's 12 million and Russia's 35 to 40 million), seemed well poised to take advantage of the
levée en masseLevée en masse is defined in Article 4, letter A paragraph 6 of the Third Geneva Convention. It is a French term for mass conscription during the French Revolutionary Wars, particularly for the one from 23 August 1793.- Terminology :...
. Because the
French RevolutionThe French Revolution was a period of political and social upheaval and radical change in the history of France, during which the French governmental structure, previously an absolute monarchy with feudal privileges for the aristocracy and Catholic clergy, underwent radical change to forms based...
and Napoleon's reign witnessed the first application of the lessons of the 18th century's wars on trade and dynastic disputes, commentators often falsely assume that such ideas arose from the revolution rather than found their implementation in it.
But not all the credit for the innovations of this period go to Napoleon.
Lazare CarnotLazare Nicolas Marguerite, Comte Carnot , the Organizer of Victory in the French Revolutionary Wars, was a French politician, engineer, and mathematician.-Education and early life:...
played a large part in the reorganization of the French army from 1793 to 1794—a time which saw previous French misfortunes reversed, with Republican armies advancing on all fronts.
The sizes of the armies involved give an obvious indication of the changes in warfare. During Europe's major pre-revolutionary war, the
Seven Years' WarThe Seven Years' War lasted between 1754 and 1763 and involved all of the major European powers of the period. The war pitted Prussia and Britain and a coalition of smaller German states against an alliance consisting of Austria, France, Russia, Sweden, and Saxony...
of 1756–1763, few armies ever numbered more than 200,000. By contrast, the French army peaked in size in the 1790s with 1.5 million Frenchmen enlisted. In total, about 2.8 million Frenchmen fought on land and about 150,000 at sea, bringing the total for France to almost 3 million combatants.
The UK had 747,670 men under arms between 1792 and 1815, and had about 250,000 personnel in the
Royal NavyThe Royal Navy of the United Kingdom is the oldest of HM Armed Forces . From the beginning of the 18th century until well into the 20th century, it was the most powerful navy in the world, playing a key part in establishing the British Empire as the dominant world power from 1815 until the early...
. In September 1812, Russia had about 904,000 enlisted men in its land forces, and between 1799 and 1815 a total of 2.1 million men served in the Russian army, with perhaps 400,000 serving from 1792 to 1799. A further 200,000 or so served in the Russian Navy from 1792 to 1815. There are no consistent statistics for other major combatants. Austria's forces peaked at about 576,000 and had little or no naval component. Apart from the UK, Austria proved the most persistent enemy of France, and one can reasonably assume that more than a million Austrians served in total. Prussia never had more than 320,000 men under arms at any time, only just ahead of the UK. Spain's armies also peaked at around 300,000 men, not including a considerable force of guerrillas. Otherwise only the United States (286,730 total combatants), the
Maratha ConfederationThe Maratha Empire or the Maratha Confederacy was a Hindu state located in present-day India. It existed from 1674 to 1818...
, the
Ottoman EmpireThe Ottoman Empire or Ottoman State , also known by its contemporaries as the Turkish Empire or Turkey , was an empire that lasted from 1299 to November 1, 1922 The Ottoman Empire or Ottoman State (Ottoman Turkish: دَوْلَتِ عَلِیَّهِ عُثْمَانِیَّه Dawlet-il ʿAliyyat-il ʿOs̠māniyye, Modern Turkish:...
,
ItalyThe Kingdom of Italy was founded in Northern Italy by Napoleon, and ended with his defeat and fall.-Constitutional Statutes:...
,
NaplesThe Kingdom of Naples is the modern day name for a polity which existed on the southern part of the Italian peninsula. Also known contemporaneously, and somewhat confusingly, as the Kingdom of Sicily, this kingdom was founded after the secession of the island of Sicily from the old Kingdom of...
and the
Duchy of WarsawThe Duchy of Warsaw was a Polish state established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1807 from the Polish lands ceded by the Kingdom of Prussia under the terms of the Treaties of Tilsit. The duchy was held in personal union by one of Napoleon's allies, King Frederick Augustus I of Saxony...
ever had more than 100,000 men under arms. Even small nations now had armies rivalling the size of the Great Powers' forces of past wars. However, one should bear in mind that the above numbers of soldiers come from military records and in practice the actual numbers of fighting men would fall below this level due to desertion,
fraudIn the broadest sense, a fraud is an intentional deception made for personal gain or to damage another individual. The specific legal definition varies by legal jurisdiction. Fraud is a crime, and is also a civil law violation....
by officers claiming non-existent soldiers' pay, death and, in some countries, deliberate exaggeration to ensure that forces met enlistment-targets. Despite this, the size of armed forces expanded at this time.
The initial stages of the
Industrial RevolutionThe Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, and transport had a profound effect on the socioeconomic and cultural conditions in the United Kingdom. The changes subsequently spread throughout Europe, North...
had much to do with larger military forces—it became easy to mass-produce weapons and thus to equip significantly larger forces. The UK served as the largest single manufacturer of armaments in this period, supplying most of the weapons used by the Coalition powers throughout the conflicts (although using relatively few itself). France produced the second-largest total of armaments, equipping its own huge forces as well as those of the
Confederation of the RhineThe Confederation of the Rhine or Rhine Confederation was a client state of the First French Empire. It was formed initially from 16 German states by Napoleon after he defeated Austria's Francis II and Russia's Alexander I in the Battle of Austerlitz. The Treaty of Pressburg, in effect, led to the...
and other allies.
Napoleon himself showed innovative tendencies in his use of mobility to offset numerical disadvantages, as brilliantly demonstrated in the rout of the Austro-Russian forces in 1805 in the
Battle of AusterlitzThe Battle of Austerlitz also known as the Battle of the Three Emperors, was one of Napoleon Bonaparte's greatest victories, effectively destroying the Third Coalition against the French Empire...
. The French Army reorganized the role of
artilleryArtillery is a military combat Arm that employs weapons capable of discharging large projectiles in combat. They are generally capable of adding considerable fire power to the military capability of an armed force...
, forming independent, mobile units, as opposed to the previous tradition of attaching artillery pieces in support of troops. Napoleon standardized
cannonballRound shot is an obsolete solid projectile without explosive charge, fired from a cannon. As the name implies, round shot is spherical; its diameter is slightly less than the bore of the gun it is fired from.Round shot was made in early times from dressed stone, but by the 17th century, from iron...
sizes to ensure easier resupply and compatibility among his army's artillery pieces.
Another advance affected warfare: the semaphore system had allowed the French War-Minister, Carnot, to communicate with French forces on the frontiers throughout the 1790s. The French continued to use this system throughout the Napoleonic wars. Additionally, aerial surveillance came into use for the first time when the French used a hot-air balloon to survey Coalition positions before the
Battle of FleurusIn the Battle of Fleurus French forces under Jourdan defeated an Austrian army under Saxe-Cobourg in one of the most decisive battles in the Low Countries during the French Revolutionary Wars...
, on 26 June 1794. Advances in
ordnanceA weapon is a tool used to apply force for the purpose of hunting, attack, self-defense, or defense in combat.Weapons can be as simple as a club, or as complex as an intercontinental ballistic missile, and include those that damage individual or group morale.-Prehistoric weapons:Very simple weapon...
and rocketry also occurred in the course of the conflict.
Last veterans
- Geert Adriaans Boomgaard (1788–1899) was the last surviving veteran. He fought for France in the 33ème Régiment Léger
- Loius Victor Baillot (1793–1898) also from France, was the last Battle of Waterloo
In the Battle of Waterloo forces of the French Empire under Napoleon Bonaparte and Michel Ney were defeated by those of the Seventh Coalition, including an Anglo-Allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington and a Prussian army under the command of Gebhard von Blücher...
veteran. He also saw action at the siege of HamburgThe city of Hamburg was one of the most powerful fortresses east of the Rhine. After being freed from Napoleonic rule by advancing Cossacks and other following allied troops it was once more occupied by Marshal Davout's French XIII Corps on 28 May 1813, at the height of the campaign for Germany in...
.
- Pedro Martinez (1789–1898) was the last Battle of Trafalgar
The Battle of Trafalgar was a sea battle fought between the British Royal Navy and the combined fleets of the French Navy and Spanish Navy, during the War of the Third Coalition of the Napoleonic Wars . The battle was the most decisive British naval victory of the war...
veteran. He served in the Spanish navy on San Juan NepomucenoSan Juan Nepomuceno was a Spanish ship of the line launched in 1765 from the royal shipyard in Guarnizo . Like many 18th Century Spanish warships she was named after a saint...
.
- Josephine Mazurkewicz (1784–1896) was the last female veteran. She was an assistant surgeon in Napoleon's army and later participated in the Crimean War
The Crimean War was fought between the Russian Empire on one side and an alliance of the British Empire, France, the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Sardinia on the other. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...
.
- Pvt Morris Shea (1795–1892) of the 73rd Foot was the last British veteran.
- Sir Provo Wallis
Admiral of the Fleet Sir Provo William Perry Wallis, GCB was a naval war hero and Admiral of the Fleet for the Royal Navy...
(1791–1892) was the last Royal Navy officer. He saw action on HMS ShannonHMS Shannon was a 38-gun Leda class frigate of the Royal Navy. She was launched in 1806 and served in the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812...
during the War of 1812The War of 1812, between the United States of America and the British Empire , lasted from 1812 to 1815. It was fought chiefly on the Atlantic Ocean and on the land, coasts and waterways of North America.There were several immediate stated causes for the U.S...
.
In fiction
- Leo Tolstoy's
Leo Tolstoy, or Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy , was a Russian writer widely regarded as among the greatest of novelists. His masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina represent in their scope, breadth and vivid depiction of 19th-century Russian life and attitudes, the peak of realist...
epic novel, War and PeaceWar and Peace , a Russian novel by Leo Tolstoy, is considered one of the world's greatest works of fiction. It is regarded, along with Anna Karenina , as his finest literary achievement....
recounts Napoleon's wars between 1805 and 1812 (especially the disastrous 1812 invasion of Russia and subsequent retreat) but from a Russian perspective.
- Stendhal's
Marie-Henri Beyle , better known by his pen name Stendhal, was a 19th-century French writer. Known for his acute analysis of his characters' psychology, he is considered one of the earliest and foremost practitioners of realism in his two novels Le Rouge et le Noir and La Chartreuse de Parme...
novel The Charterhouse of ParmaThe Charterhouse of Parma is a novel published in 1839 by Stendhal. The novel, along with The Red and the Black, is considered Stendhal's finest work.-Plot summary:...
opens with a ground-level recounting of the Battle of WaterlooIn the Battle of Waterloo forces of the French Empire under Napoleon Bonaparte and Michel Ney were defeated by those of the Seventh Coalition, including an Anglo-Allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington and a Prussian army under the command of Gebhard von Blücher...
and the subsequent chaotic retreat of French forces.
- Les Misérables
Les Misérables is a novel by French author Victor Hugo and is widely considered one of the greatest novels of the 19th century...
by Victor HugoVictor-Marie Hugo was a French poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
takes place against the backdrop of the Napoleonic War and subsequent decades, and in its unabridged form contains an epic telling of the Battle of WaterlooIn the Battle of Waterloo forces of the French Empire under Napoleon Bonaparte and Michel Ney were defeated by those of the Seventh Coalition, including an Anglo-Allied army under the command of the Duke of Wellington and a Prussian army under the command of Gebhard von Blücher...
.
- William Makepeace Thackeray's
William Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist of the 19th century. He was famous for his satirical works, particularly Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of English society.-Biography:...
novel Vanity Fair takes place during the Napoleonic Wars—one of its protagonists dies at the Battle of Waterloo.
- The Temeraire
The Temeraire series of novels by Naomi Novik is comprised of His Majesty's Dragon , Throne of Jade, Black Powder War, Empire of Ivory, and Victory of Eagles...
series by Naomi NovikNaomi Novik is an American novelist. She was born in New York in 1973, a first-generation American. Her father is of Lithuanian Jewish ancestry, and her mother is an ethnic Pole. She studied English Literature at Brown University, and holds a Master's degree in Computer Science from Columbia...
takes place in alternate-universeParallel universe or alternative reality is a self-contained separate reality coexisting with one's own. A specific group of parallel universes is called a multiverse, although this term can also be used to describe the possible parallel universes that constitute physical reality...
Napoleonic Wars where dragons exist and serve in combat.
- The Lord Ramage
Nicholas, Lord Ramage was the fictional character at the centre of a series of sea novels written by Dudley Pope. Ramage was an officer in the British Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars....
series by Dudley PopeDudley Bernard Egerton Pope was a British writer of both nautical fiction and history, most notable for his Lord Ramage series of historical novels....
takes place during the Napoleonic Wars.
- Charlotte Brontë's
Charlotte Brontë was an English novelist, the eldest of the three Brontë sisters whose novels are English literature standards...
novel ShirleyShirley is an 1849 social novel by the English novelist Charlotte Brontë. It was Brontë's second published novel after Jane Eyre . The novel is set in Yorkshire in the period 1811–1812, during the industrial depression resulting from the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812...
(1849), set during the Napoleonic Wars, explores some of the economic effects of war on rural Yorkshire.
- The Count of Monte Cristo
The Count of Monte Cristo is an adventure novel by Alexandre Dumas, père. It is often considered to be, along with The Three Musketeers, Dumas' most popular work. The writing of the work was completed in 1844...
by Alexandre Dumas, pèreAlexandre Dumas, père, born Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie was a French writer, best known for his numerous historical novels of high adventure which have made him one of the most widely read French authors in the world...
starts during the tail-end of the Napoleonic Wars. The main character, Edmond DantèsEdmond Dantès is the protagonist and title character of Alexandre Dumas, père's novel, The Count of Monte Cristo.Dumas may have gotten the idea for the character of Edmond from a story which he found in a book compiled by Jacques Peuchet, archivist to the French police. Peuchet related the tale of...
, suffers imprisonment following false accusations of Bonapartist leanings.
- The novelist Jane Austen
Jane Austen was an English novelist, whose realism, biting social commentary and use of free indirect speech, have earned her a place as one of the most widely read and most beloved writers in English literature....
lived much of her life during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, and two of her brothers served in the Royal NavyThe Royal Navy of the United Kingdom is the oldest of HM Armed Forces . From the beginning of the 18th century until well into the 20th century, it was the most powerful navy in the world, playing a key part in establishing the British Empire as the dominant world power from 1815 until the early...
. Austen almost never refers to specific dates or historical events in her novels, but wartime England forms part of the general backdrop to several of them: in Pride and PrejudicePride and Prejudice is a novel by Jane Austen. First published on 28 January 1813, it was her second published novel. Its manuscript was initially written between 1796 and 1797 in Steventon, Hampshire, where Austen lived in the rectory...
(1813, but possibly written during the 1790s), the local militiaThe term militia is commonly used today to refer to a military force composed of ordinary citizens to provide defense, emergency law enforcement, or paramilitary service, in times of emergency without being paid a regular salary or committed to a fixed term of service. It is a polyseme with...
(civilian volunteers) has been called up for home defence and its officers play an important role in the plot; in Mansfield ParkMansfield Park may mean:* Mansfield Park by Jane Austen* Mansfield Park , based on the novel, directed by Patricia Rozema, starring Frances O'Connor, Embeth Davidtz, and Sheila Gish in 1999...
(1814), Fanny Price's brother William is a midshipmanA midshipman is an officer cadet, or alternatively a commissioned officer of the lowest rank, in the Royal Navy, United States Navy, and many Commonwealth navies.The word derives from the area aboard a ship, amidships, where these officers were berthed...
(officer in training) in the Royal NavyThe Royal Navy of the United Kingdom is the oldest of HM Armed Forces . From the beginning of the 18th century until well into the 20th century, it was the most powerful navy in the world, playing a key part in establishing the British Empire as the dominant world power from 1815 until the early...
; and in PersuasionPersuasion is a form of social influence. It is the process of guiding people and oneself toward the adoption of an idea, attitude, or action by rational and symbolic means. It is a strategy of problem-solving relying on "appeals" rather than coercion...
(1818), Frederic Wentworth and several other characters are naval officers recently returned from service.
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Brigadier Gerard
Brigadier Gerard is the hero of a series of comic short stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The hero, Etienne Gerard, is a Hussar in the French Army during the Napoleonic Wars. Gerard's most notable attribute is his vanity - he is utterly convinced that he is the bravest soldier, greatest swordsman,...
serves as a French soldier during the Napoleonic Wars
- Jeanette Winterson
Jeanette Winterson OBE is a British novelist.-Early years:Winterson was born in Manchester and raised in Accrington, Lancashire, by adopted parents Constance and John William Winterson. On track to becoming a Pentecostal Christian missionary, she began evangelising and writing sermons at age six,...
's 1987 novel The Passion (book)
- Fyodor Dostoevsky
Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky was a Russian writer, essayist and philosopher, known for...
's book The IdiotThe Idiot is a novel written by the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky and first published in 1868. It was first published serially in Russian in Russky Vestnik, St. Petersburg, 1868-1869. The Idiot is ranked, along with other works from Dostoevsky, as one of the most brilliant literary...
had a character, General Ivolgin, who witnessed and recounted his relationship with Napoleon during the Campaign of Russia.
- The Bloody Jack
Bloody Jack can refer to:*"Bloody Jack", the nickname of 19th century Māori chief Tuhawaiki.*Bloody Jack , a book of poetry by Dennis Cooley.*Bloody Jack , a young adult book written by L.A. Meyer....
book series by Louis A. MeyerLouis A. Meyer ,[Meyer, L.A. , brief autobiography on author's own webpage. Accessed February 25, 2009.] writes under the name L.A. Meyer. Best-known as the author of the Bloody Jack seafaring novels, he is also a painter.- Personal life :L.A. Meyer was born in Johnstown,...
is set during the Second Coalition of the Napoleonic Wars, and retells many famous battles of the age. The heroine, Jacky, soon meets none other than Bonaparte himself.
- The Aubrey–Maturin series
The Aubrey–Maturin series is a sequence of historical novels — 20 completed and one unfinished — by Patrick O'Brian, set during the Napoleonic Wars and centering on the friendship between Captain Jack Aubrey of the Royal Navy and his ship's surgeon Stephen Maturin, who is also a physician, natural...
of novels is a sequence of 20 historical novels by Patrick O'BrianPatrick O'Brian, CBE , born Richard Patrick Russ, was an English novelist and translator, best known for his Aubrey–Maturin series of novels set in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars and centered on the friendship of English Naval Captain Jack Aubrey and the Irish–Catalan physician...
portraying the rise of Jack Aubrey from Lieutenant to Rear Admiral during the Napoleonic Wars.
- The Sharpe
Richard Sharpe is the central character in Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe series of historical fiction stories. These formed the basis for an ITV television series wherein the eponymous character was played by Sean Bean....
series by Bernard CornwellBernard Cornwell OBE is an English author of historical novels. He is best known for his novels about Napoleonic Wars rifleman Richard Sharpe which were adapted into a series of Sharpe television films.-Biography:...
star the character Richard Sharpe, a soldier in the British Army, who fights throughout the Napoleonic Wars.
- The Hornblower
Horatio Hornblower is the fictional protagonist of a series of novels by C. S. Forester, and later the subject of films and television programs....
books by C.S. Forester follow the naval career of Horatio Hornblower during the Napoleonic Wars.
- The Napoleonic Wars provide the backdrop for The Emperor, The Victory, The Regency and The Campaigners, Volumes 11, 12, 13 and 14 respectively of The Morland Dynasty
The Morland Dynasty is a series of historical novels by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles. There are currently thirty books in the series. The first book begins in 1434 and features the Wars of the Roses; the most recent book begins in 1916 and deals with the Battle of the Somme...
, a series of historical novels by author Cynthia Harrod-EaglesCynthia Harrod-Eagles is a prolific and successful British novelist, best known for her Morland Dynasty series.Cynthia Harrod-Eagles was born in Shepherd's Bush, London and educated at Burlington School. Her first successful novel was The Waiting Game , and she became a full-time writer in 1979....
.
- The Richard Bolitho
-Overview:Richard Bolitho is a fictional Royal Navy officer who is the main character in a series of novels written by Douglas Reeman . Bolitho was born in 1756 in Falmouth, Cornwall, in the United Kingdom, the second son of a prestigious naval family. He joined the navy in 1768. He served in the...
series by Alexander KentAlexander Kent may refer to:* Alexander Kent, a Cartographer* a pseudonym of British writer Douglas Reeman*Alex Kent, a bass guitarist...
novels portray this period of history from a naval perspective.
- Dinah Dean's series of historical novels are set against the background of the Napoleonic Wars and are told from a Russian perspective - "The Road to Kaluga", "Flight From the Eagle", "The Eagle's Fate", "The Wheel of Fortune", "The Green Gallant" - follow a small group of soldiers (and their relatives) over months of campaigning from the fall of Moscow up to the liberation of Paris, the last 3 books - "The Ice King", "Tatya's Story", "The River of Time" - fall some years later but have the same cast of characters.
- Bryan Talbot
Bryan Talbot is a comic book artist and writer. He is best known as the creator of The Adventures of Luther Arkwright and its sequel Heart of Empire.-Biography:Talbot began his comics work in the underground comix scene of the late 1960s...
's graphic novelA graphic novel is a narrative work in which the story is conveyed to the reader using the comics form. The term is employed in a broad manner, encompassing non-fiction works and thematically linked short stories as well as fictional stories across a number of genres.Graphic novels are typically...
GrandvilleGrandville is a British graphic novel written and drawn by Bryan Talbot. Published on 15th October, 2009, it is a mixture of the steampunk, alternative history, thriller and furry genres. It is set in a world in which France won the Napoleonic Wars and invaded Britain, and in which the world is...
is set in an alternate history in which France won the Napoleonic War, invaded Britain and guillotinedThe guillotine was a device used for carrying out executions by decapitation. It consists of a tall upright frame from which a blade is suspended. This blade is raised with a rope and then allowed to drop, severing the victim's head from their body...
the British Royal FamilyImage:Roy-fam-2007.jpg|right|500px|thumb|Members of the Royal Family gathered for a dinner celebrating the 60th wedding anniversary of Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh Image:Roy-fam-2007.jpg|right|500px|thumb|Members of the Royal Family gathered for a dinner...
.
See also
- Grande Armée
- Coalition forces of the Napoleonic Wars
- British Army during the Napoleonic Wars
The British Army during the Napoleonic Wars experienced a time of rapid change. At the beginning of the French Revolutionary Wars in 1793, the army was a small, awkwardly administered force of barely 40,000 men. By the end of the period, the numbers had vastly increased. At its peak, in 1813, the...
- Imperial and Royal Army during the Napoleonic Wars
The Imperial and Royal Army was that of the Austrian Empire, formed on 11 August 1804 preceding the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire ruled by the Habsburgs, under Emperor Francis II .-Background to the army:...
- Royal Prussian Army of the Napoleonic Wars
The Royal Prussian Army was the principal armed force of the Kingdom of Prussia during its participation in the Napoleonic Wars.Frederick the Great's successor, his nephew Frederick William II , relaxed conditions in Prussia and had little interest in war...
- Imperial Russian Army
The Imperial Russian Army was the land armed force of the Russian Empire, active from around 1721 to the Russian Revolution of 1917.-Precursors: Regiments of the New Order:...
- Eastbourne Redoubt
Eastbourne Redoubt is a fort on what is now Royal Parade, Eastbourne, East Sussex, England.-History:The Redoubt was built between 1804 and 1810 to support the associated Martello Towers in defending against the threat of an invasion by Napoleon. It has defended the Eastbourne coast for nearly 200...
- European Restoration
Marked by revolt, revolution, and the rise of the middle class, the period of European restoration refers to the monarchical struggle for legitimacy against their citizens and military following the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars...
(1815–1848)
- Bourbon Restoration
The Bourbon Restoration is the name given to the restored Bourbon Kingdom of France which existed from 1814 until the July Revolution of 1830, with the interval of the "Hundred Days" from Napoleon Bonaparte's return from Elba to the Battle of Waterloo in 1814–15. The regime was a constitutional...
(1814–1830)
- Hundred Years' War
The Hundred Years' War was a prolonged conflict lasting from 1337 to 1453 between two royal houses for the French throne, which was vacant with the extinction of the senior Capetian line of French kings. The two primary contenders were the House of Valois and the House of Plantagenet, also known...
- List of Napoleonic battles
- Martello tower
Martello towers are small defensive forts built in several countries of the British Empire during the 19th century, from the time of the Napoleonic Wars onwards....
- Military career of Napoleon Bonaparte
The military career of Napoleon Bonaparte spanned over 20 years. As emperor, he led the French Armies in the Napoleonic Wars.-Early career:1769August 15 - Napoleon born Nabulione di Buonaparte in Ajaccio, Corsica.1778...
- Military history of France
The military history of France encompasses a large panorama of conflicts and struggles extending for more than 2,000 years across areas including modern France, greater Europe, and European territorial possessions overseas....
- Military history of the peoples of the British Isles
- World War I
World War I , also known as the First World War, the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, was a global military conflict which involved most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance...
- World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
- Strategy of the central position
The strategy of the central position was a key strategy used by Napoleon in the Napoleonic Wars. It involved attacking of two cooperating armies at their hinge, swinging around to fight one until it fled, then turning to face the other. The strategy allowed the use of a smaller force to defeat a...
- British invasions of the Río de la Plata
The British invasions of the Río de la Plata were a series of unsuccessful British attempts to seize control of the Spanish colonies located around the La Plata Basin in South America . The invasions took place between 1806 and 1807, as part of the Napoleonic Wars, when Spain was an ally of...
- List of wars and disasters by death toll
External links