Napoleonic wars
Napoleonic wars (1803-15). The Napoleonic wars were a series of conflicts, all involving France, that dominated European history at the start of the 19th century, and cast a long shadow over most of its remainder. The Treaty of Lunéville and the Peace of Amiens sought to conserve the balance of power which had emerged in Europe in the course of the French Revolutionary wars. While not entirely satisfactory for all concerned, it was not unbearable either: Britain was war-weary and evincing signs of a willingness to barter with France; Austria, though keen to reassert herself in Italy and Germany, was also exhausted and prepared to compromise in return for peace with security; Russia, with an invulnerable sphere of influence in eastern Europe, was also a guarantor of the Lunéville settlement and thus enjoyed a prominent role in the West; while France, enlarged and reinvigorated, had regained her former standing.
It is possible then that these treaties might have formed the basis of a more durable peace, had the powers been willing to honour them in both spirit and letter. However, tension between, initially, Russia and Britain had ineluctable ramifications for other international relationships. Soon, France and Britain were again at loggerheads, culminating in the latter declaring war in May 1803.
As France's first Consul, Napoleon had made the most of the respite granted by the short-lived Peace of Amiens. In order to revitalize his country and consolidate his own position, he had begun implementing a range of economic, administrative, and military reforms. Besides increasing France's overall robustness and prosperity, these were intended to permit the state to mobilize its resources with unprecedented efficiency. Military strength, for instance, was largely dependent upon the availability of manpower and money, which in turn called for efficacious conscription and taxation systems, all of which had to be administered by a suitably competent bureaucracy. This called for talent to be blended with vocational and professional training. Accordingly, Napoleon's meritocracy channelled the gifted and diligent into an educational system which was geared to serving the needs of the regime. Though never completely eradicated, the nepotism and reliance on cronies which was a feature of so many European courts, armies, and governmental machines during this period came to be recognized as a potentially fatal flaw.
Indeed, in waging war against Napoleon, his opponents learned the hard way that they too would have to imitate at least some of his methods if they were to have any hope of success. This suggested the need for reforms which went beyond modifications to their armed forces; change in the latter would necessitate the transformation of the very societies they were seeking to shield from the dangerous ideas unleashed by the French Revolution. This was an alarming paradox for some of France's adversaries. Nevertheless, they were compelled to adopt Napoleon's methods to some degree or face annihilation.
Some of the most striking changes occurred in the size and organization of armies. Whereas at the start of the Napoleonic wars European armies were unitary forces which were assembled on an ad hoc basis using infantry battalions, cannon, and cavalry squadrons as basic building blocks, as early as 1800 Napoleon had devised a permanent structure for the French army consisting of corps d'armée which subdivided into divisions and brigades. Divisions were self-contained, comprising a mixture of artillery, infantry, cavalry, engineers, and logistic troops. The notion of semi-autonomous combined-arms units was not new, but Napoleon, refining the theories of others in the light of his own practical experience, developed the concept to an unprecedented degree. Skilfully co-ordinating skirmishers, heavy infantry, cavalry, and guns—the latter two in particular being employed en masse in an unprecedented fashion—he derived the maximum synergy from these complementary arms. The enhanced flexibility of his forces at the tactical level also yielded benefits on the strategic plane. Each of his corps formed a small army in its own right. Capable of independent manoeuvre along several axes, and expected to live off the land, Napoleon's forces shook off the constraints of 18th-century warfare, with its emphasis on positions, magazines, and protracted campaigns. Ever larger, yet endowed with an unprecedented capacity for strategic mobility, they manoeuvred rapidly over what were often vast tracts of Europe, cornering their opponents and compelling them to fight or surrender. Indeed, in contrast to almost all 18th-century commanders, for Napoleon the goal of strategy was to destroy the enemy's means to resist through battle, not attrition.
Napoleon exploited this early form of blitzkrieg as far as his immense skill and the technology of his time would permit. However, with the range of the largest field gun being no more than 1, 094 yards (1, 000 metres), armies had to be brought into close contact with one another for an engagement to occur. Napoleon was an unsurpassed exponent of manoeuvre warfare. Nevertheless, fought over relatively vast theatres and comprising forced marches punctuated only by pitched battles, his campaigns called for the mobilization of armies of unheard-of dimensions. For every casualty on the battlefield, several soldiers were killed or invalided by disease, exhaustion, or malnutrition. Likewise, thousands of horses perished in the course of the various campaigns. Indeed, as Napoleon's adversaries mobilized more and more of their own resources in order to confront him on more equal terms, the war was to take on an increasingly total nature.
To begin with, the geostrategic situation imposed considerable limits on the scope and complexion of the conflict. Having declared war on France, Britain was quite unable to deal her a decisive blow. While, as an island, Britain was difficult to invade, it was equally hard for her forces to influence affairs on the continent. Although the Royal Navy quickly bottled the French fleet up in its ports and harried the enemy's merchantmen, there was a persistent fear that a hostile armada might jeopardize the British Isles or key trade outlets. The blockade was strategically indispensable, but it stretched naval resources to the limit.
Britain's army was committed to defending the motherland, colonial possessions, and pivotal bases, notably in the Mediterranean, leaving comparatively few soldiers for expeditions on the European mainland. Moreover, in order to move troops overseas, Britain needed ships. Entrusted with the defence of the home waters and the foreign trade on which Britain's prosperity and, ultimately, her ability to pay for the war depended, the Royal Navy already faced too many demands on its resources and tonnage was in short supply. Even the triumph of Trafalgar in 1805 was to fail to dispel Britain's basic strategic problems; her naval supremacy was a necessary condition for France's defeat, but it was not a sufficient one. Indeed, although Britain, relying on the flexibility of naval power, was to execute a number of raids on the littoral of the European continent during the course of the struggle with Napoleon and was even to sustain a sizeable army on the Iberian peninsula after 1807, it was evident that she herself could never muster sufficient military might on land to counter France. Only the great powers of central and eastern Europe might do that.
They, on the other hand, lacked the wherewithal to do this, at least initially. They were still as interested in competing with one another as they were in containing French power, and they lacked both the money and the incentive to commit themselves to another war. By the end of 1804 Russia and Austria had been sufficiently alienated by French actions in Germany and Italy to enter into a coalition with Britain. She, as the world's only industrialized country and most prosperous power, was far better placed to provide her partners with specie and equipment, which she did on a lavish scale, than with troops, but she did undertake to commit most of her army to expeditions against Hanover and Naples.
So it was that the Third Coalition was born. Napoleon, who had been proclaimed emperor in December 1804, assembled an army along the Channel coast in preparation for an invasion of England. He hoped to gain at least local naval supremacy for the duration of the crossing, but it soon became clear that the Royal Navy would continue to bar his flotilla's path. Aware of the preparations that Austria and Russia were making for war, he resolved to strike at them and, thus, indirectly at Britain; he too realized that, without continental allies, ‘Perfidious Albion’ would be almost impotent.
The Napoleonic wars: the Waterloo campaign, 1815.
(Click to enlarge)
Accordingly, amidst conditions of great secrecy, he wheeled his forces, now dubbed the Grande Armée, towards the Rhine. Advancing at tremendous speed, they pounced before the Russians could reach the theatre. Encircling an unsuspecting Austrian army at Ulm, they compelled it to surrender before marching on Vienna. The Russian vanguards recoiled before them. Retiring to Austerlitz, they were joined by reinforcements from Russia and a contingent of Austrians, bringing their strength up to some 89, 000 men. After eight weeks of ceaseless operations which had taken them nearly 621 miles (1, 000 km) from their homeland, the French, badly outnumbered, tired, and apparently dispirited, seemed at the end of their tether. However, when the Allies fell on them on 2 December 1805, Napoleon launched a brilliant riposte which swept his adversaries from the field with crippling losses.
Although Nelson's victory at Trafalgar in October had ended any French maritime threat to Britain for the time being, Austerlitz gutted the Third Coalition and the Austrians sued for peace. Napoleon proceeded to redraw the map of Germany. Rewarding various princes who had supported him against Austria with titles and land, he abolished the ancient Reich and replaced it with the Rheinbund. This was to vary in size over the coming years as new territories were assimilated and others were transferred between polities, but, in substituting around 30 sizeable states for the hundreds of entities which had constituted the Reich, it transformed the geopolitics of the region, laying the foundations of modern Germany.
This alarmed and offended Prussia, Austria's traditional rival in the region. Uncertain how to react in the face of developments, Prussia had remained neutral during the war of the Third Coalition. She had been on the verge of giving Napoleon an ultimatum when, quite unexpectedly, he had triumphed at Austerlitz. At this, the Prussian emissary had sought to change horses in midstream, but he failed to impress the emperor who was well aware of Berlin's machinations in recent months. Napoleon demanded that Prussia join him in an exclusive pact against Britain and surrender many of her possessions in southern and western Germany to France or her ally, Bavaria. In return, Prussia would receive Hanover.
The Napoleonic wars: Napoleon's disastrous 1812 campaign against Russia and the retreat from Moscow (bottom).
(Click to enlarge)
With Austria defeated, Russia's armies withdrawing eastwards, and Britain increasingly suspicious, Prussia now found herself isolated and exposed to the full might of the French empire. After a bout of dubious diplomacy, which was largely an attempt to buy time in which to mobilize their forces, the Prussians issued Napoleon with an ultimatum in October 1806. He had been hoping that war might be avoided: a Russian envoy had accepted a draft peace treaty, Britain had appeared a little more conciliatory of late, and he doubted that Prussia would be so rash as to challenge France alone. Provoked by Berlin's demands he again unleashed the Grande Armée.
The ensuing campaign was a catastrophe for Prussia. Her army, thought to be the finest in Europe, was antiquated and proved no match for the French forces on the battlefield. Strategically, too, Napoleon dazzled and overwhelmed his opponents with a series of brisk, bold manoeuvres. Outmarched, the Prussians were also outfought in battles which occurred simultaneously at Jena and Auerstadt on 14 October. Thereafter, Napoleon's troops commenced what was to become one of the most thorough and rapid pursuits in military annals. Engulfed by the French tide as it surged towards Berlin, the remnants of the dejected Prussian forces surrendered en masse. So great was the demoralization that formidable fortresses capitulated to mere cavalry units. Whereas the supposedly rickety Habsburg empire had managed to survive years of war and defeat at France's hands, within four weeks of the start of Napoleon's campaign against her, Prussia had experienced almost total military and political collapse.
As King Frederick William III took refuge in Königsberg, the few remaining units of his army linked up with the Russians in Poland and launched a counter-offensive. On 8 February 1807, Napoleon brought them to battle at Eylau, but was held off in a gory confrontation that took place in atrocious weather. Licking his wounds, he reduced Danzig while awaiting the enemy's next move. In early June, the Allies again took the offensive, only to be repelled by Napoleon's counterstroke which culminated in the battle of Friedland. Roughly half of the Russian army was killed or wounded as Napoleon swept it into the river Alle.
This catastrophe prompted Tsar Alexander I to make peace, regardless of the consequences for his Prussian ally. Indeed, contemptuously excluded from the proceedings, Frederick William could only look on as his realm was dismembered by Napoleon and his erstwhile partner. The Treaty of Tilsit altered the map of Europe dramatically. Burdened with reparations and occupied, Prussia ceased to be a great power; her Polish provinces became Napoleon's grand duchy of Warsaw and all of her lands west of the Elbe were transferred to the new kingdom of Westphalia. The demise of the Fourth Coalition climaxed with Russia becoming France's ally, joining both Napoleon's anti-British maritime league and his Continental System.
Unable to bring his military power to bear against her, Napoleon had resolved to subdue his most implacable opponent, Britain, through economic strangulation. Late in 1806, he issued the Berlin Decrees, closing all European ports and coastlines under French control to British trade. Further decrees refined the Continental System as it was known and, over the next few years, it was extended to an ever larger area of Europe through alliance or conquest. However, it was apparent that such a blockade could only have much prospect of success if it, first, genuinely involved all the continent and, second, was applied long and consistently enough. Moreover, the British retaliated with orders-in-council which regulated neutral trade with the French empire and its vassal states. This placed the USA and the unaligned countries of Europe in an invidious position. They were effectively compelled to choose between being either the enemies or the allies of France or Britain; neutrality became meaningless. So it was that in 1807, as the British attacked Denmark, destroying her fleet and bombarding Copenhagen, Napoleon turned his attention to Lisbon.
Bent on compelling Portugal to join the Continental System, Napoleon concluded the secret Treaty of Fontainbleau with Spain. This envisaged the partition of Portugal. However, within months of their troops occupying the kingdom, the Allied powers turned on one another. Seriously misjudging the popular mood in Spain, Napoleon, with a mixture of intrigue and brute force, sought to remove the Bourbons and replace them with one of his brothers. An insurrection flared up, which, supported by Spanish, Portuguese, and British regular troops, turned into a war that raged across Iberia until the French were finally driven out in late 1813.
The ‘Spanish Ulcer’, as Napoleon dubbed the Peninsular war, was to cost him dear, not least in terms of its wider ramifications. Believing him to be preoccupied by events in the peninsula, Austria joined a new coalition, the fifth, and suddenly launched an offensive into southern Germany in April 1809. Having learnt from her earlier defeats and having reformed her armed forces accordingly, she proved a more formidable opponent than in past conflicts. Napoleon saved the situation with his customary skill and resourcefulness, but he suffered his first serious repulse at Aspern-Essling and, although ultimately victorious at Wagram, the largest battle yet seen in the gunpowder age, he could not drub Austria into submission until as late as mid-October. In the interim, an abortive British landing at Walcheren highlighted both the vulnerability of his empire's littoral to amphibious attack and the limitations of Britain's military capabilities.
By 1812, her endeavours to control neutral trade with France had embroiled Britain in a distracting war with the USA. However, Russia and France also found themselves on a collision course over the Continental System and other divisive issues. Invading Russia at the head of a colossal army, Napoleon sought to encircle and annihilate the Russian forces within three weeks. But his quarry eluded him. Obliged to venture ever further east over scorched earth, he failed to clinch a decisive victory at Borodino and, after having captured Moscow, had it burned around his ears. The retreat that followed was a holocaust.
With the Grande Armée all but obliterated in Russia, first Prussia and then Austria turned on Napoleon, who, drawing on France's last reserves of manpower and other resources, clung to Germany throughout 1813, securing several major if indecisive victories at the head of his improvised and outnumbered army. Finally cornered and defeated at Leipzig, his remaining allies began abandoning him as the triumphant forces of the Sixth Coalition converged on France. For all his talents, he could not keep such overwhelming numbers at bay for long. Paris fell, his marshals virtually mutinied, and he abdicated in favour of his infant son on 6 April 1814. The child had no chance.
France had been at war almost incessantly for over twenty years. She had lost millions of men and her colonies, her overseas trade was strangled, and she was virtually bankrupt. Although she was treated far more leniently by the Allies than she had much right to expect, the restored Bourbons could scarcely cope with the problems they inherited. Popular disenchantment soon set in. Napoleon, seizing his chance, escaped from exile and overthrew the monarchy. His reckless gamble lasted but a Hundred Days, culminating in Waterloo and his second abdication. The French, their country defeated and occupied, also lost any hope of national reconciliation.
The Napoleonic wars were over, but their ramifications were to continue. In fact, having engulfed most of Europe, claiming millions of lives and touching yet more, having necessitated the mobilization of so much of the states' manpower and other resources, and having included the largest battles yet seen, the conflict was, until supplanted by that of 1914-18, widely known as the ‘Great War’. Many of its socio-economic, artistic, political, and diplomatic repercussions continued to be felt for decades, as did its influence on military thought and doctrine, while, to this day, armed forces retain the pyramid architecture that was first adopted during this harbinger of ‘total’ war.
Bibliography
- Chandler, D., The Campaigns of Napoleon (London, 1966).
- Esdaile, C., The Wars of Napoleon (London, 1995).
- Gates, D., The Napoleonic Wars, 1803-1815 (London, 1997)
— David Gates
