Napoleonic Wars

I

Introduction

Napoleonic Wars, name given to the series of military campaigns that gripped most of Europe between 1803 and 1815. As the name implies, the central figure in this conflict was Napoleon Bonaparte, who became the ruler of France in November 1799. Following the lead given by Napoleon himself in the course both of the war and his subsequent imprisonment on St Helena, many historians have argued that the war was due to ideological hostility to the French Revolution, in whose colours Napoleon was always wont to drape himself, or the determination of the British to eliminate France as an economic and commercial rival. For a variety of reasons, however, such theories have been increasingly discredited. War, it is recognized, would almost certainly have characterized the first two decades of the 19th century even had he never been born, but academic historians are now all but united in underlining Napoleon's personal responsibility for the conflict. Not one of France's opponents ever entertained a return to the ancien régime as one of their war aims, while all of them tried détente and even alliance as a means of responding to the new France. Similarly, for a power supposedly fighting for economic and commercial aims, Britain was surprisingly willing to make concessions on these issues, her central concern being all too clearly security in Europe.

Napoleon, then, was hardly a man of peace forced into war against his will. Having first done much to perpetuate conflict in the 1790s (by going beyond the wishes of the Directory in challenging fundamental Austrian and Russian interests in Italy and the Balkans) and then sabotaged the peace that brought the French Revolutionary Wars to an end, from 1803 onwards his actions were such as to drive power after power to take up arms against him when in fact they wanted peace or even alliance. At first, the continental powers fought in isolation or in partial combinations whose members frequently could not even trust one another to stand firm, and in consequence Napoleon was able to prevail. In 1812, however, the tide turned and by the autumn of 1813 Napoleon was facing a constellation of opponents that was so large as to be unbeatable. Unable to bring himself to settle for compromise terms that would have enabled him at least to stay on the throne of France, Napoleon continued to fight on in the hope of splitting the alliance, but such hopes were all in vain, April 1814 seeing him left with no option but to abdicate. Sent into exile on Elba, he made a dramatic attempt to regain power, but this, too, was utterly futile, and the sometime emperor therefore ended his days as a prisoner on the lonely Atlantic island of St Helena.

II

Background to Conflict, 1799-1803

At all times, then, it was Napoleon who was the chief focus of conflict. Ironically, however, he came to power as a peacemaker. Virtually all shades of French opinion were heartily sick of war by 1799, the new First Consul's great advantage being that he seemed to be able to combine peace with the protection of the Revolutionary settlement. As he rode into Paris immediately following the coup, indeed, his path was lined by cheering crowds. Virtually the first action of Consular diplomacy was therefore the despatch of appeals to both George III of England and Francis II of Austria for an end to the War of the Second Coalition (strictly speaking, Francis was at this time Francis II of the Holy Roman Empire; however, when this collapsed, he took the title “Emperor of Austria”, becoming Francis I). These, however, were hardly serious. As Napoleon well knew, France's current opponents—Britain, Turkey, Austria, and Naples—were in too good a position to be likely to accept them. The war, then, went on, but this was almost certainly exactly what the First Consul wanted, for, having thrown the responsibility for continuing the war on his enemies, he could now seek further victories that would augment his glory and allow him to dictate peace on his own terms.

There followed the campaign of 1800. Seizing the initiative, the Austrians attacked in Italy, drove back the outnumbered French and besieged Genoa, which, defended with great courage, held out till June 4. Despite the fact that he had been taken by surprise, Napoleon's response was dramatic: while forces under the command of General Jean Victor Moreau crossed the Rhine and defeated the Austrians at Stockach on May 3, the First Consul led the newly created Army of Reserve across the Alps and descended on the Austrian rear, winning a very narrow victory at Marengo on June 14. Although the campaign was badly bungled by Napoleon's standards, sufficient damage had been done to the Austrians to force them to evacuate their Italian conquests and persuade Francis II to open peace negotiations at Lunéville. However it took a further defeat at Hohenlinden for Francis to accept the French terms, Austria being forced to accept France's annexation of Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine, to recognize the independence of the various French satellite states that had been established in the 1790s, and to give up the Habsburg-ruled duchies of Modena and Tuscany, together with part of recently acquired Venetia.

With Austria completely humbled, there yet remained the Ottoman Empire, Naples, and Britain. Of these, however, the Turks took no further part in the war after the reconquest of Egypt (which had been invaded by Napoleon in 1798) in August 1801, while the Neapolitans were persuaded to sue for peace by a defeat at Siena. At the same time, even British commitment to the war was rapidly falling away. Left to herself, Britain's military prospects were limited, while at home there was a growing economic crisis, and the new administration of Henry Addington therefore announced that it was ready to come to terms. In keeping with his image as the reluctant warrior, Napoleon was content to entertain these overtures, and all the more so as he had problems of his own and saw peace as an opportunity to strengthen his power at home, rebuild the battered French navy and bring Germany further under France's sway.

The result was the Treaty of Amiens of March 25, 1802. This, however, was never likely to lead to a lasting peace. Though Britain and France had been prepared to come to terms, the former still desired security in Europe and the latter to preserve French hegemony, the two goals soon proving to be incompatible. Nor were matters helped by the fact that the settlement was essentially an unequal one. In order to obtain peace, Britain had been prepared to offer conditions that were extremely generous. France's natural frontiers were recognized, along with the various satellite republics, and almost all Britain's many conquests restored to their original owners. All that Napoleon had to do in exchange being to withdraw all his forces from his satellites and treat them as independent states. For peace to last, therefore, much would depend upon Napoleon. At the very least, the First Consul would have to withdraw his troops from Holland, Switzerland, and Italy, respect the integrity and independence of the Cisalpine, Ligurian, Helvetic, and Batavian Republics, and generally restrain his actions in Europe. A liberal policy towards British trade would also have been advisable, along with an end to French expansion in the wider world.

Given Napoleon's character, however, all this was most unlikely, and the only sign of movement—the abandonment of France's colonial ambitions in the western hemisphere represented by the sale of Louisiana to the United States—was negated by massive naval construction and evidence of fresh designs on Egypt. In consequence, Britain went back to war as early as May 18, 1803. The France of 1803, however, was infinitely more powerful than the France of 1799. Thus, in the four years since he had come to power, Napoleon had ended the chaos that had characterized the domestic situation ever since the Revolution. Major concessions to the Church and improved security arrangements had broken the back of popular resistance and opened the way for taxation and conscription to function effectively. A new system of local government centred on the prefect had greatly increased the power of the state. And the all-important notables—the propertied groups who were the backbone of the French system of government—had been conciliated by the promulgation of a new legal code that in a variety of ways consolidated their position in society. Not only was the war effort secure from domestic disruption, meanwhile, but it also had access to greater resources. Massive naval construction, for example, had in part replaced the terrible losses of the Revolutionary Wars between 1792 and 1802, while a French-orchestrated re-organization of the Holy Roman Empire (a necessary consequence of Austria's surrender of the left bank of the Rhine) had won for France a range of new collaborators in Germany in the form of the much-enlarged states of Bavaria, Baden, and Württemberg.

III

The War of the Third Coalition, 1803-1805

Forced to fight alone—in 1803 neither Austria, nor Prussia nor Russia had the slightest desire to go to war with Napoleon—Britain therefore faced a major challenge. All the more was this the case as the reduced size of her regular army meant that her chief weapons in any war with France must normally be colonial operations and naval blockades, the trouble with these being that they were inclined to reduce her chances of obtaining the allies she needed in continental Europe. What saved Britain, of course, was the fact that she was an island. Other than harassing Britain's trade by occupying certain strategic ports in Germany and Italy and seizing the German state of Hanover, whose ruler was George III, the only thing that Napoleon could do was to mass a large army at Boulogne in the hope that he would be able to get it across the Channel. Taken seriously by the British though the threat was—enormous home defence forces were mobilized and elaborate defences constructed along the coast of Kent and Sussex—so long as a strong fleet was kept in the vicinity there was no chance of this whatsoever, and there therefore ensued a prolonged stalemate.

On the military front, the months that followed were chiefly marked by repeated efforts to divert the Channel fleet for long enough for Napoleon's army to get on board ship and reach the coast. More important by far, however, was the changing diplomatic situation. In brief, this was transformed in that Britain had by the middle of 1805 become the centre of a powerful “third coalition”. Much weight is often given here to the kidnapping and execution of the Duc d'Enghien, a distant connection of the French royal family, on suspicion of involvement in a royalist conspiracy, but only in Sweden did this affair have the effect of a casus belli, or pretext for starting a war. To understand the origins of the Third Coalition we must rather turn to the war against England. For all the eastern powers Napoleon's early moves on the Continent were at the very least alarming and in some cases actually injurious, although it was, in fact, initially only Russia that hit back. Alexander I, having for various reasons been particularly annoyed by Napoleon's highhandedness, augmented conscription, sent an amphibious force to the Mediterranean, and gave the British government to understand that he was prepared to negotiate a defensive alliance against Napoleon. Then, on May 18, 1804, there came the declaration that France was to become a hereditary empire. With French power as unrivalled as it was, this was not to be endured, for, by enabling Napoleon to lay claim to the mantle of Charlemagne, it opened the way for him formally to supplant the Holy Roman Emperor as overlord of Germany, and in consequence Russia began to work for a new coalition that would drive Napoleon back at least to the limits he had agreed upon at Lunéville and Amiens, obtaining for this purpose the promise of substantial British subsidies. Meanwhile, an ultimatum was sent to Napoleon demanding that he evacuate Hanover and Naples, the French ruler's predictable refusal to comply leading Russia to break off diplomatic relations in September 1804.

Even now, however, a general war seemed a long way off. Anglo-Russian relations were disrupted by serious quarrels over Malta, while Austria would agree to no more than a defensive alliance with Russia. As for Prussia, fears that Napoleon might launch a surprise attack upon her were countered by suspicions of Austria, Russia, and Sweden that led her actually to explore the possibility of an alliance with France. At the beginning of 1805, then, the Third Coalition was really no closer than before. Yet again, however, what changed the situation was the behaviour of Napoleon. Early in 1805 he announced that he was to take the title of King of Italy, the ci-devant Italian Republic now being restyled as a kingdom with his step-son, Eugène de Beauharnais, as its viceroy. Nor was Napoleon finished: formally placing the new crown on his own head in Milan on May 26, in early June he announced the annexation of Genoa, Parma, and Piacenza, and appropriated Lucca as a principality for his younger sister, Elise. As a result on April 11 Britain and Russia signed a treaty of alliance that committed the latter to war unless Napoleon agreed to conform to the terms of the treaties of Amiens and Lunéville. With Russia committed to war, Vienna had to follow suit. Either Austria renounced all thought of recovering her influence in Italy, deserted her only ally, and risked fighting alone later, or she took up arms. On August 9, 1805, then, Austria formally joined the Third Coalition, this soon being further swelled by Sweden, and, after some hesitation, Naples, which the French had hastily evacuated for fear that their forces would be overwhelmed.

With Austrian forces moving into Bavaria and northern Italy, a Russo-Swedish army concentrating at Stralsund, British troops preparing to invade Hanover, an Anglo-Russian force landing at Naples, and 95,000 more Russians marching for the Danube, the coalition desired by the British since 1803 was now a fait accompli. Only the Prussians remained aloof, kept neutral by their distrust of the other eastern powers, guarantees that their neutrality would be respected, and hopes of obtaining Hanover (which they had long coveted) and an alliance with France. In reality, however, Napoleon had little to fear. Having spent its time on the Channel coast engaging in intensive training, the army that he now set in motion was at the peak of its abilities, while its mobility and striking power had been greatly enhanced by the introduction of the so-called corps system (the organization of the French army into independent forces of all arms). At all events, the campaign was a triumph. In brief, the Austrians were crushed at Ulm, Vienna occupied, and the Russians defeated at Austerlitz. For good measure, Ferdinand and Maria Carolina of Naples were forced to flee to Sicily, and Joseph Bonaparte placed upon the throne. As it happened, these crushing blows, for which the British naval victory at Trafalgar was little or no compensation, did not bring peace, but for some months it appeared that they might do so. Austria was forced to surrender, being stripped in the process of much of its territory in Germany and Italy, not to mention an indemnity of 40,000,000 francs, while Russia and Britain, too, were inclined to seek a settlement and opened peace negotiations.

IV

The Zenith of French Power, 1805-1807

Despite the fact that Britain in particular was once again prepared to offer generous terms, these came to naught, although the year 1806 passed with only clashes between the British and the Russians on the one hand and the French on the other. In part, this was because it was now the turn of Prussia to experience Napoleon's attentions. On December 15, 1805, she had gained her treaty of alliance with France, but this proved such a disaster that in September 1806 Berlin declared war (in brief, the Prussians found that alliance with France meant economic ruin and diplomatic humiliation). Fighting all but alone when a year before she might have done so in the company of both Austria and Russia, Prussia was now crushed: with her army broken at the double disaster of the battles of Jena and Auerstädt, most of the country was occupied and King Frederick William forced to flee to Königsberg. Joined in East Prussia by large Russian forces, the Prussians fought on, and on February 7-8, 1807, the French were held to an extremely bloody draw at Eylau. However, on June 14 the Russians were overwhelmed at Friedland, Alexander now being persuaded not only to sue for peace, but to seek an alliance with Napoleon (deeply mistrustful of Britain, the tsar also hoped to gain French help in the Balkans, where he was currently engaged in a bitter war with Turkey). Anxious for Russian support in the implementation of his new policy of defeating Britain by excluding all her exports from Europe—the so-called Continental Blockade—Napoleon welcomed this approach, and the result was the Treaty of Tilsit, whereby Alexander obtained a substantial portion of Prussian Poland and promises of French support against Turkey in exchange for recognizing the new frontiers that had resulted from the campaigns of 1805, pressurizing Britain and her remaining allies to make peace, and, if necessary, going to war against them (Prussia, by contrast, was forced to pay a heavy indemnity, reduce her army by seven eighths, maintain a large French garrison, and accept the loss of half her territory).