time in the history of this country when, from the situation of Europe, we might more
reasonably expect fifteen years of peace, than we may at the present moment (Pitt, 1915:
16). Instead of fifteen years of peace, Britain was to endure twenty-two years of war.
The wars with France cast a giant shadow forward over the first half of the nineteenth
century and even beyond. As a strategic event those linked wars were a potent source of
reputations, memories, myths and legends throughout Europe. After all, the Napoleonic
style of statecraft and strategy was nothing if not geopolitically inclusive. Napoleon’s
strategic behaviour reached out and touched people from the River Tagus to the River
Moskva, not to mention the unfortunates who crossed his path in Egypt and the Levant
in 179 8 –9. Culture – popular, strategic and military – in many lands was heavily perme-
ated by tales about the Great War against (or for) France. Of course, the memories faded,
the veterans expired and new contexts emerged. But some legends grew rather than faded
over time, especially if strategic history provided no evidence to suggest that a legend
should not be treated as a historical, or even divine, verdict on national worthiness.
For example, Britain’s Royal Navy, the premier symbol of and instrument to protect its
great power status, did not wage a fleet battle from 21 October 1 8 05 (Trafalgar) until
31 May 1916 (Jutland). The burden of Trafalgar was one of exalted national expectations.
For a century, Britons believed that the outcome there was the proper, even inevitable,
result when the Royal Navy met enemies in main force at sea.
Until 1914, by far the greatest strategic episode in modern times was that which soaked
Europe in blood between 1792 and 1 8 15. If that reads like purple prose, inappropriate to
a serious work of strategic history, consider the estimated facts on casualties. In the wars
of 1792–1 8 15 some 1.4 million Frenchmen died, albeit principally from the hardships of
military life and, above all, from disease (Browning, 2002: 45). For a telling comparison,
of French males born between 1790 and 1795, 3 8 per cent died in the wars. That figure
compares unfavourably with the death rate for French males born between 1 8 91 and
18 95, of whom some 14 per cent fell in World War I (Gates, 2001: 55). Also, the death
rate for British soldiers from 1794 to 1 8 15 was proportionately higher than from 1914
to 191 8. British fatalities in these French wars were 240,000, with 27,000 of those falling
in battle. Military life, its hardships and many risks, carried a high promise of death or
incapacity.
Throughout the nineteenth century, people looked back to the Great War with France,
and to its dominant figure, Napoleon Bonaparte, for inspiration, for instruction, as a
warning, and simply because it was the last general European, hence ‘world’, conflict.
Intellectually, notwithstanding the galloping material progress of the nineteenth century,
the leading theories of war were, and remained, decidedly Napoleonic. Both Clausewitz
and, especially, Jomini were inspired by Napoleon’s behaviour as the exemplar of the war-
maker. Clausewitz transcended his contemporary historical context and the often raw
emotions occasioned by his varied personal experience. Jomini too was successful in
that he set out to explain both how Napoleon triumphed as a general and how those
triumphs could be attributed in good part to the Emperor’s adherence to certain rules and
enduring principles. It is scarcely surprising that Napoleon’s reputation and methods,
puffed vigorously and even rigorously by Jomini, should dominate the military thought,
and some of the military practice, of most of the century. After all, Napoleon fought no
fewer than fifty-five battles between the time of his first independent command in 1796
and his nemesis at Waterloo in 1 8 15. Of those fifty-five, only eight (some people argue
34 War, peace and international relations