The Napoleonic Wars

Napoleon crowns himself Emperor

On 2 December, in Notre-Dame de Paris and before Pope Pius VII, Napoleon takes the crown from the altar and places it on his own head, then crowns Josephine empress. The French Republic becomes the French Empire. David immortalises the scene on a canvas thirty feet wide.

The coronation was choreographed to weld the legitimacy of the old monarchy to the sovereignty of the Revolution: the Pope consecrated, but the Emperor crowned himself. Within months a new nobility, the Légion d'honneur, and the imperial court ritual would encase the Corsican artillery officer in the trappings of a dynasty. Beethoven, hearing of it, scratched out the dedication of his Eroica symphony.

Nelson destroys the fleets at Trafalgar

On 21 October, off Cape Trafalgar, Admiral Nelson signals 'England expects that every man will do his duty' and drives his columns through the Franco-Spanish line. Eighteen of Villeneuve's thirty-three ships are taken or destroyed; not one British vessel is lost. Nelson, shot on the deck of the Victory, dies as victory is won. Britain will rule the seas for a century.

Trafalgar ended forever Napoleon's hope of invading England and confirmed the Royal Navy's mastery that would enforce the blockade of the continent for the next ten years. Denied the sea, Napoleon turned his back on the camp at Boulogne and marched the Grande Armée east against Austria and Russia — a strategic pivot that would carry him to his greatest triumph within seven weeks.

The Battle of the Three Emperors

On 2 December, the first anniversary of his coronation, Napoleon lures the Austro-Russian army onto the Pratzen Heights above Austerlitz, then splits it in two with a stroke through the centre. Feigning weakness on his right, he shatters the allied left on the frozen ponds. It is the masterpiece of his career; the Third Coalition collapses and Austria sues for peace at Pressburg.

Austerlitz was the perfect battle of manoeuvre, and it remade the map of Europe. Within eight months the thousand-year-old Holy Roman Empire was dissolved; in its place Napoleon raised the Confederation of the Rhine under his protection. Francis II laid down the imperial crown of Charlemagne and kept only that of Austria. The old order of central Europe was gone.

Prussia is annihilated in a single day

On 14 October the army of Frederick the Great, unreformed since his death, is destroyed in the twin battles of Jena and Auerstedt. Napoleon enters Berlin on 27 October. From the Prussian capital he issues the Berlin Decree of 21 November, proclaiming the Continental System: the whole of Europe is closed to British commerce.

The humiliation of Jena would spur the reforms of Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Stein that rebuilt Prussia into the state that returned at Waterloo. The Continental System, meanwhile, was Napoleon's economic war on Britain — an attempt to bring the 'nation of shopkeepers' to its knees by strangling its trade. It would instead strangle the ports of Europe, breed smuggling and resentment, and drag the Emperor into Spain and Russia to enforce it.

The rafts on the Niemen

After the bloody draw of Eylau in February and the decisive victory of Friedland in June, Tsar Alexander I sues for peace. On 7 July, on a raft moored in the middle of the river Niemen at Tilsit, the two emperors meet and divide Europe between them. Russia joins the Continental System; Prussia is stripped of half her lands. Napoleon stands at the summit of his power.

The Dos de Mayo and the Peninsular War

Having lured the Bourbons into abdication and placed his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne, Napoleon provokes the rising of the Dos de Mayo in Madrid on 2 May, crushed by Murat's cavalry and immortalised by Goya. But the whole country rises in guerrilla war. In July a French army surrenders at Bailén — the first capitulation of the Empire in the open field.

Spain gave Britain the foothold it had lacked. Sir Arthur Wellesley — the future Duke of Wellington — landed in Portugal in August, and for six years an Anglo-Portuguese army and the Spanish guerrilleros bled the French white. Napoleon called it his 'Spanish ulcer'; it tied down a quarter of a million imperial troops, taught Europe that the Grande Armée could be beaten, and never healed until the war was over.

Austria beaten again at Wagram

Encouraged by Spain, Austria renews the war and checks Napoleon at Aspern-Essling in May — his first personal defeat. But on 5-6 July, in the greatest battle yet fought in Europe, half a million men clash at Wagram outside Vienna. Napoleon wins, and the Peace of Schönbrunn follows. To seal it he divorces Josephine and marries the Archduchess Marie-Louise of Austria.

The Grande Armée crosses the Niemen

On 24 June, angered by Russia's abandonment of the Continental System, Napoleon leads the largest army Europe has ever seen — some 600,000 men of twenty nations — across the Niemen into Russia. The Russians refuse battle and retreat, burning the land behind them. The bloody, indecisive slaughter of Borodino on 7 September opens the road to Moscow.

Moscow burns and the Grande Armée dies

Napoleon enters Moscow on 14 September to find it deserted and set ablaze. After waiting five weeks for a peace that never comes, he orders the retreat on 19 October. Winter, hunger, and the Cossacks turn the withdrawal into a catastrophe; at the crossing of the Berezina in late November the army is nearly annihilated. Of the men who crossed the Niemen in June, barely one in ten returns.

The Russian catastrophe was the turning point of the age. The myth of Napoleonic invincibility died in the snow with half a million men. As the Emperor raced ahead by sleigh to raise a new army in Paris, all of Europe took heart. Prussia changed sides at the Convention of Tauroggen; by the spring of 1813 a War of Liberation was under way, and the coalition that would destroy him was forming for the last time.

Leipzig

From 16 to 19 October, at Leipzig, the armies of Russia, Prussia, Austria, and Sweden — some 350,000 men — surround Napoleon's 200,000. It is the largest battle in Europe before the First World War. Overwhelmed and abandoned by his German allies, the Emperor retreats across the Rhine with a broken army. Germany is lost; the war moves to the frontiers of France.

Paris falls and Napoleon abdicates for Elba

Despite a brilliant defensive campaign in France, Napoleon is overwhelmed by numbers. The allies enter Paris on 31 March. Deserted by his marshals, the Emperor abdicates unconditionally at Fontainebleau on 6 April. By the Treaty of Fontainebleau he keeps the title of Emperor and is given the tiny Mediterranean island of Elba to rule; the Bourbon Louis XVIII is restored to the throne of France.

The flight of the eagle

On 1 March Napoleon lands near Cannes with a thousand men and marches north. The troops sent to arrest him defect to their old commander at Grenoble; Marshal Ney, who promised to bring him back in an iron cage, embraces him instead. On 20 March Louis XVIII flees and Napoleon re-enters the Tuileries. The Congress of Vienna declares him an outlaw, and Europe mobilises for one last war.

The last day of the Empire

On 18 June, on a muddy field in Belgium, Napoleon hurls his army against Wellington's Anglo-allied line at Waterloo. The British squares hold through a long day of cavalry charges. In the evening Blücher's Prussians arrive on the French right; the Imperial Guard, sent forward in a last assault, is broken. 'La Garde recule' — and the army dissolves in rout. It is the end.

Napoleon abdicated for the second time on 22 June and surrendered to the British aboard HMS Bellerophon, throwing himself, as he put it, upon the mercy of his most constant enemy. There would be no Elba this time: the allies exiled him to Saint Helena, a volcanic rock in the South Atlantic, where he died in 1821. The Second Treaty of Paris in November 1815 and the settlement of the Congress of Vienna restored the balance of Europe and opened a century with no general war.