The History Book

214

N

apoleon’s defeat at the

Battle of Waterloo, south

of Brussels, on June 18,

1815 marked his final overthrow

as Emperor of the French, ending

23 years of European warfare. It

was an epic encounter, fought on

rain-soaked ground, in which

118,000 British, Dutch, and

Prussian forces finally prevailed

over a French army of 73,000,

hastily assembled by Napoleon.

France’s Revolutionary Wars,

which began in 1792, had been

launched to extend Revolutionary

principles to neighboring states

and to defend France against

its enemies. Under Napoleon,

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Revolutionary and

Napoleonic Wars 

BEFORE

1792 The Revolutionary

Wars against Republican

France begin.

1799 Napoleon seizes power

in a military coup.

1804 Napoleon names himself

Emperor of the French.

1805 The British are victorious

against France and Spain in

the naval Battle of Trafalgar.

1807 France invades Portugal.

1809 Austria is defeated in

Napoleon’s last major victory.

1814 A series of defeats lead

to Napoleon’s abdication.

AFTER

1815 Napoleon is exiled for the

final time, and the Bourbon

monarchy is restored.

1830 The Bourbon monarchy

is overthrown.

France institutes

mass conscription,

creating armies of an

unprecedented size.

Sweeping conquests

create the largest

European empire since

Charlemagne’s time.

The rate of Napoleonic

conquest becomes

unsustainable.

Napoleon becomes

emperor and vows

to restore France’s

dominant role in Europe.

The invasion of

Russia leaves Napoleon

overextended and French

manpower depleted.

Napoleon is

finally defeated

at Waterloo.

I MUST MAKE OF ALL THE

PEOPLES OF EUROPE ONE

PEOPLE, AND OF PARIS THE

CAPITAL OF THE WORLD

THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO (1815)

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215

See also: Louis XIV begins personal rule of France 190 190 ■ The Battle of Quebec 191 ■

Diderot publishes the Encyclopédie 192–95 ■ The signing of the Declaration of Independence 204–07 ■

The storming of the Bastille 208–13 ■ The 1848 revolutions 228–29

CHANGING SOCIETIES

they became, in effect, wars of

conquest, despite being waged

in the name of the Revolution.

A continent reshaped

During the Revolutionary Wars,

France had established sister

republics in northern Italy and the

Low Countries; under Napoleon,

many of these were reformed into

kingdoms, whose monarchs came

from the Emperor’s family. States

across Germany were carved up, at

the expense of Prussia, to become

a French puppet state, while the

800-year-old Holy Roman Empire

was abolished. From 1807, much of

Poland was controlled by the French

as the Grand Duchy of Warsaw.

These were states recast on French

lines: clerical power was reduced,

serfdom abolished, and aristocratic

privilege ended. But such reforms

provoked inevitable resentments.

Napoleon’s conquests were the

result not just of military genius

but also of greatly enlarged French

armies. Conscription, introduced

in 1793, swelled the French army

from 160,000 men to 1.5 million.

Only Britain, protected by the

English Channel, remained

undefeated, its position as the

world’s leading maritime power

underscored by victory at Trafalgar,

off southern Spain, in 1805. But

maritime muscle alone was not

enough to beat Napoleon. Britain’s

most significant role was financing

the endlessly shifting alliances

confronting the French.

In response, Napoleon imposed

the Continental System, which

forbade trade between continental

Europe and Britain. However,

Portugal and Russia continued

to trade with Britain, prompting

Napoleonic invasions in 1807

and 1812 respectively.

Resistance to Napoleonic rule

was mounting; the Spanish began

a brutal guerrilla war that drained

French resources and came to be

referred to by Napoleon as the

“Spanish ulcer.”

The final defeat

Napoleon had bred a sense of

French invincibility, and this made

his eventual defeat all the more

traumatic for the nation. Of the

450,000 men he led against Russia

in 1812, barely 40,000 survived.

Napoleon had overreached

himself. At Leipzig, Germany, in

1813, outnumbered three to one by

forces from Austria, Prussia, Russia,

and Sweden, he suffered his first

major defeat. By Waterloo, his forces

had recovered slightly, and the ratio

was only two to one, but Napoleon’s

military genius failed to redress the

balance and his imperial ambition

ended in the Waterloo mud. ■

Napoleon Bonaparte Born in Ajaccio, on the island^

of Corsica, to a family with

claims to minor Italian nobility,

Napoleon Bonaparte (1769–1821)

was commissioned in the French

army in 1785 and was an

enthusiastic supporter of the

Revolution. In 1796, at the age

of 26, he was appointed to

command the Army of Italy,

winning a series of impressive

victories. Two years later,

Napoleon led an unsuccessful

French invasion of Egypt.

Increasingly convinced of his

destiny, by 1800, having staged a

coup d’état, he dominated France

as he would subsequently

dominate Europe. He was

as brilliant and tireless an

administrator as he was a

soldier. His most enduring

reform was the introduction,

in 1804, of the Napoleonic

Code, which is still the basis

of French law. Forced to resign

in 1814, Napoleon was exiled

to the island of Elba in the

Mediterranean, from where he

escaped before his final defeat

at Waterloo. In 1815, he was

despatched to St. Helena in the

South Atlantic, where he died

six years later.

All Frenchmen are in

permanent requisition for

the services of the armies.

Declaration of

Conscription, 1793

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