Napoleonic Wars
2008/9 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Pre 1900 Military
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The Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) involved Napoleon's French Empire and a shifting set of European allies and opposing coalitions. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionized European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to the application of modern mass conscription. French power rose quickly, conquering most of Europe, but collapsed rapidly after France's disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812. Napoleon's empire ultimately suffered complete military defeat, resulting in the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in France. Meanwhile the Spanish Empire began to unravel as French occupation of Spain weakened the Spanish hold over its colonies, providing an opening for nationalist revolutions in Latin America.
No consensus exists as to when the French Revolutionary Wars ended and the Napoleonic Wars began. Possible dates include November 9, 1799, when Bonaparte seized power in France; May 18, 1803, when Britain and France ended the only period of peace in Europe between 1792 and 1814, and December 2, 1804, when Bonaparte crowned himself Emperor.
The Napoleonic Wars ended following Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo ( 18 June 1815) and the Second Treaty of Paris. Some sources (in the United Kingdom) occasionally refer to the nearly continuous period of warfare from 1792 to 1815 as the Great French War, or as the final phase of the Anglo-French Second Hundred Years' War, spanning the period 1689 to 1815.
Background 1789–1802
The French Revolution of 1789 had a significant impact throughout Europe, which only increased with the arrest of King Louis XVI of France in 1792 and his subsequent execution in January 1793. The first attempt to crush the French Republic came in 1793 when Austria, the Kingdom of Sardinia, the Kingdom of Naples, Prussia, Spain, and the Kingdom of Great Britain formed the First Coalition. French measures, including general conscription ( levée en masse), military reform, and total war, 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 Formio. Great Britain remained the only anti-French power still in the field by 1797.
The Second Coalition, formed in 1798, consisted of the following nations or states: Austria, Great Britain, the Kingdom of Naples, the Ottoman Empire, Papal States, Portugal, and Russia. During the War of the Second Coalition, the French Republic suffered from corruption and division under the Directory. France also lacked funds to prosecute the war and no longer had the services of Lazare Carnot, the war-minister who had guided her 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 Egypt. Stripped of two of its most important military figures from the previous conflict, the Republic suffered successive defeats against revitalized enemies which British financial support brought back into the war.
Bonaparte returned from Egypt to France on August 23, 1799, and seized control of the French government on 9 November 1799 in the coup of 18 Brumaire, replacing the Directory with the Consulate. He reorganized the French military and created a reserve army positioned to support campaigns either on the Rhine or in Italy. On all fronts, French advances caught the Austrians off-guard. In Italy, Bonaparte won a victory against the Austrians at Marengo (1800). However, the decisive battle came on the Rhine at Hohenlinden in 1800. The defeated Austrians left the conflict after the Treaty of Lunéville ( 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 a complete peace.
War between Britain and France, 1803–1814
Unlike its many coalition partners, Britain remained at war throughout the entire period of the hostilities of the Napoleonic Wars. Protected by naval supremacy (in the words of Admiral Jervis 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 could maintain 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 War of 1808-1814. Protected by topography, assisted by massive Spanish guerrilla activity, and sometimes falling back to massive earthworks, 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 Amiens ( 25 March 1802) resulted in peace between the UK and France, but it satisfied neither side. Both parties dishonoured parts of it: the French intervened in the Swiss civil strife ( Stecklikrieg) and occupied several coastal cities in Italy, while the United Kingdom occupied Malta. Bonaparte attempted to exploit the brief peace at sea to restore the colonial rule in the rebellious Antilles. The expedition, though initially successful, would soon turn to a disaster, with the French commander and Bonaparte’s brother-in-law, Charles Leclerc, dying of yellow fever and almost his entire force destroyed by the disease combined with the fierce attacks by the rebels.
Hostilities between Great Britain and France recommenced on May 18, 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 May 18, 1804 and crowned himself Emperor at Notre-Dame on December 2.
Having lost most of its colonial empire in the preceding decades, French efforts were focused mainly in Europe. Haiti had won its independence, the Louisiana Territory had been sold to the United States of America, and British naval superiority threatened any potential for France to establish colonies outside of Europe. Beyond some minor naval actions against British imperial interests, the Napoleonic Wars were much less global in scope than preceding conflicts such as Seven Years' War which historians would term a " world war".
In 1806, Napoleon issued the series of Berlin Decrees, which brought into effect the Continental System. This policy aimed to eliminate the threat of the United Kingdom by closing French-controlled territory to its trade. The United Kingdom's army remained a minimal threat to France; the UK maintained a standing army of just 220,000 at the height of the Napoleonic Wars, whereas France's strength peaked at over 1,500,000 — in addition to the armies of numerous allies and several hundred thousand national guardsmen that Napoleon could draft into the military if necessary. The Royal Navy, however, 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. In addition France's population and agricultural capacity far outstripped that of the United Kingdom. However, the United Kingdom possessed 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 the United Kingdom off from the Continent would end its economic influence over Europe and isolate it. Though the French designed the Continental System to achieve this, it never succeeded in its objective.
Third Coalition 1805
Napoleon planned an invasion of England, and massed 180,000 effectives at Boulogne. 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 Channel. 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 Finisterre on July 22, 1805. The Royal Navy blockaded Villeneuve in Cádiz until he left for Naples on October 19; the British squadron subsequently caught and defeated his fleet in the Battle of Trafalgar on October 21 (the British commander, Lord Nelson, 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 turned his attention to enemies on the Continent once again. 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 Genoa and the proclamation of Napoleon as King of Italy on 17 March 1805.
The Austrians began the war by invading Bavaria with an army of about 70,000 under Karl Mack von Leiberich, and the French army marched out from Boulogne in late July, 1805 to confront them. At Ulm ( September 25 – October 20) Napoleon surrounded Mack's army, forcing its surrender without significant losses. With the main Austrian army north of the Alps defeated (another army under Archduke Charles manoeuvred inconclusively against André Masséna's French army in Italy), Napoleon occupied Vienna. Far from his supply lines, he faced a larger Austro-Russian army under the command of Mikhail Kutuzov, with the Emperor Alexander of Russia personally present. On December 2 Napoleon crushed the joint Austro-Russian army in Moravia at Austerlitz (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 Italy and the Tyrol 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.
Fourth Coalition 1806–1807
The Fourth Coalition (1806–07) of Prussia, Russia, Saxony, Sweden, and the United Kingdom against France formed within months of the collapse of the previous coalition. In July 1806 Napoleon formed the Confederation of the Rhine out of the many tiny German states which constituted the Rhineland 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, Saxony and Bavaria, to the status of kings.
In August 1806 the Prussian king, Friedrich Wilhelm III made the decision to go to war independently of any other great power, save the distant Russia. (A more sensible course of action might have involved declaring war the previous year and joining Austria and Russia. This might have contained Napoleon and prevented the Coalition disaster at Austerlitz.) In any event, the Russian army, an ally of Prussia, still remained 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 ( October 14, 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 Napoleon succeeded in destroying as an effective military force the entire quarter-of-a-million strong Prussian army — which sustained 25,000 casualties, lost a further 150,000 prisoners 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.
The next stage of the war involved the French driving Russian forces out of Poland and instituting a new state, the Duchy of Warsaw. Napoleon then turned north to confront the remainder of the Russian army and to attempt to capture the temporary Prussian capital at Königsberg. A tactical draw at Eylau ( February 7 – February 8, 1807) forced the Russians to withdraw further north. Napoleon then routed the Russian army at Friedland ( June 14, 1807). Following this defeat, Alexander had to make peace with Napoleon at Tilsit ( July 7, 1807). By September, Marshal Brune completed the occupation of Swedish Pomerania, allowing the Swedish army, however, to withdraw with all its munitions of war.
During 1807 the British attacked Denmark with the aim of capturing the Danish fleet. The Danes had a large fleet which could have greatly aided the French if it had fallen into their hands: Danish vessels could have replaced many of the ships the French had lost at Trafalgar in 1805. The British attacked Copenhagen and captured the Danish fleet. This helped bring Denmark into the war on the side of the French.
At the Congress of Erfurt (September – October 1808) Napoleon and Alexander agreed that Russia should force Sweden to join the Continental System, which led to the Finnish War of 1808–09 and to the division of Sweden into two parts separated by the Gulf of Bothnia. The eastern part became the Russian Grand Duchy of Finland.
Fifth Coalition 1809
The Fifth Coalition (1809) of the United Kingdom and Austria against France formed as the United Kingdom engaged in the Peninsular War against France.
Once again, the United Kingdom stood alone, and the sea became the major theatre of war between the United Kingdom and Napoleon's allies. During the time of the Fifth Coalition, the Royal Navy won a succession of victories in the French colonies and another major naval victory against the neutral Denmark at the Battle of Copenhagen ( September 2, 1807).
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 Chatham — failed to capture the objective, the naval base of French-controlled Antwerp. For the most part of the years of the Fifth Coalition, British military operations on land — apart from in the Iberian Peninsula — 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 the latter'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.
The struggle also continued in the sphere of economic warfare — the French Continental System against the British naval blockade of French-controlled territory. Due to military shortages and lack of organisation in French territory, numerous 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 1812 (1812-15), and the French engaged in the Peninsular War (1808-14). The Iberian conflict began when Portugal continued trade with the United Kingdom despite French restrictions. When Spain failed to maintain the system the Spanish alliance with France came to an end and French troops gradually encroached on Spanish territory until they occupied Madrid. British intervention soon followed.
Austria, previously an ally of the French, 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 Davout. 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 Corunna, 16 January 1809). 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 in the absence of his best marshals (Davout remained in the east throughout the war) the French situation in Spain deteriorated, especially when the prodigious British general, Sir Arthur Wellesley, arrived to command the British forces.
The Austrians drove into the Duchy of Warsaw, but suffered defeat at the Battle of Raszyn April 19, 1809. The Polish army captured West Galicia following its earlier success.
Napoleon assumed personal command in the east and bolstered the army there for his counter-attack on Austria. After a well-run campaign that, after a few small battles, forced the Austrians to withdraw from Bavaria, Napoleon advanced into Austria. His hurried attempt to cross the Danube resulted in the massive Battle of Aspern-Essling ( 22 May 1809) — Napoleon's first significant tactical defeat. Failure by the Austrian commander, Archduke Karl, to follow up on his indecisive victory meant that Napoleon could prepare for a renewed attempt to seize Vienna, and in early July he did so. He defeated the Austrians at Wagram, on July 5 – July 6 (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 Schönbrunn ( October 14, 1809). In the east only the Tyrolese rebels led by Andreas Hofer 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 Lisbon (behind their impregnable lines of Torres Vedras) and to besieged Cadiz. Napoleon married Marie-Louise, an Austrian Archduchess, with the aims 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, Napoleon's elder brother)
- the Kingdom of Westphalia ( Jérôme Bonaparte, Napoleon's younger brother)
- the Kingdom of Naples (under Joachim Murat, husband of Napoleon's sister Caroline)
- the Principality of Lucca and Piombino (under Elisa Bonaparte (Napoleon's sister) and her husband Felice Bacciocchi);
and Napoleon's former enemies, Prussia and Austria.
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