Military History

"I am only at the beginning of the course I must run...I can no longer obey; I have tasted command and I cannot give it up."
--Napoleon Bonaparte I

On December 18, 1793, cannons of the Revolutionary army under the command of twenty-four-year-old Major Napoleon Bonaparte destroyed ten English ships anchored in Toulon's harbor. After his distinguished part in dislodging the British, Napoleon gained national recognition and was promoted to the rank of brigadier general. Throughout the winter of 1794-1795 Napoleon was employed in the defense of the Mediterranean coast. Then, in April 1795, he was ordered to Paris, and in June he was assigned to the Army of the West. He refused this position, pleading poor health. This refusal almost brought an end to his military career, and he was assigned to the Bureau of Topography of the Committee of Public Safety. Because of his refusal, Napoleon was in Paris when the royalists attempted to overthrow the Directory on October 5, 1795. Mobs of Parisians joined national guardsmen bent on toppling the Republic. The government called on Napoleon to repel the attack and defend the Tuileries. Napoleon put down the uprising of thirteen Vendémiaire by unhesitatingly turning his artillery on the attackers, dispersing the mob with what he called "a whiff of grapeshot." Three weeks later he was made a full general, commander of the Army of the Interior.

On April 2, 1796, Bonaparte led his army forward into Italy. He was badly outnumbered. His 38,000 French soldiers faced 38,000 Austrians and their allies — 25,000 Piedmontese. Bonaparte's plan was to isolate the Austrians from the Piedmontese, then conquer each separately. In just two weeks, he broke the back of Piedmont’s army, crushing their troops with lightning attacks at the battles of Montenotte and Mondovi. One Piedmontese officer would later complain: "They sent a young madman who attacks right, left, and from the rear. It's an intolerable way of making war." On April 26, Piedmont surrendered. Bonaparte demanded gold and silver, and paid his troops the first real money they had seen in years. "Soldiers," he said, "we thank you." As the Austrians fled eastward, their rear guard hoped to slow Bonaparte down by making a stand at the little Italian village of Lodi.The Austrians fortified a narrow wooden bridge in Lodi with fourteen cannons and three battalions, and dared Bonaparte to cross it. Bonaparte ordered a simple frontal assault on the bridge. The French made it halfway across the bridge but fell back under a vicious hail of fire. Bonaparte urged them forward and, in a final charge, they stormed across. The Austrian guns fell silent. It was not a great victory. The Austrian army had in fact escaped. But Bonaparte had won the respect and devotion of his men.

"He came out all sweaty and grimy and covered with gunsmoke. The troops liked that. They began calling him the Little Corporal right there. It was, 'You identify with us.' You're our corporal."
--Owen Connelly, PBS' Napoleon

"They haven’t seen anything yet," Napoleon told one of his generals. "In our time, no one has the slightest conception of what is great. It is up to me to give them an example." While he ruled in Italy, Bonaparte never stopped chasing the Austrians. Throughout the autumn of 1796, he whittled away the Austrian army with victories at Castiglione, Bassano and Arcole. In March 1797, just two months after routing the enemy at Rivoli and driving them from northern Italy, he crossed the Alps into Austria itself, and by April 7, 1797, was within seventy-five miles of Vienna. Napoleon forced the Austrians to sign the Treaty of Campoformio on October 17, 1797. The treaty gave France the territory west of the Rhine and control of Italy. Napoleon returned to Paris the hero of the hour.

Napoleon did not wish to remain idle in Paris; nor did the government wish to see a popular general in the capital without a command to occupy him. Therefore, an expedition to Egypt was proposed. Strategically, the expedition would extend French influence into the Mediterranean and threaten British control in India. In the summer of 1798, Napoleon eluded a British fleet, captured the port of Malta, and on July 1, landed with 35,000 soldiers in Egypt.

Napoleon quickly captured Alexandria, and then on July 3, led his soldiers across the desert toward Cairo — and a looming battle. Remarkable for their courage, pride, and cruelty, the Mamelukes waited fearlessly for the French armies. On July 21, 1798, after marching two weeks across the desert, Bonaparte’s armies came within sight of the pyramids — and 10,000 Mamelukes drawn up on horseback across the sands.

"Napoleon just organized his army into five gigantic squares. These are men kneeling and standing and firing so you got a continual rolling fire. The Mamelukes rode around the squares and were shot at by that square and by this square. The French lost thirty men, the Mamelukes lost probably five or six thousand."
--Donald Howard, PBS' Napoleon

The Battle of the Pyramids was over in an hour. Three days later, Bonaparte led his army into Cairo. Napoleon reorganized the government, the postal service, and the system for collecting taxes; introduced the first printing presses; created a health department; built new hospitals for the poor in Cairo; and founded the Institut d'Egypte. During the French occupation the Rosetta Stone was discovered, and the Nile was explored as far south as Aswan.

But Bonaparte’s dreams of an empire in the middle East were quickly shattered. The British Admiral Horatio Nelson caught the French fleet anchored off the Egyptian coast and blew it to pieces. Bonaparte and 35,000 soldiers were trapped in Egypt. After throwing a Turkish army back into the sea at Aboukir (July 1799), Napoleon left the army under the command of Gen. Jean Baptiste Kléber and returned to France with a handful of officers.

France was still fighting Great Britain and Austria, and Bonaparte conceived a daring plan to catch the Austrians by surprise.n the Spring of 1800, he took his soldiers over the Alps — 40,000 men, field artillery, trekking across treacherous layers of snow and ice through the Great St. Bernard Pass. Not since the Carthaginian general Hannibal had an army attempted such an outlandish offensive. On the morning of June 14, he faced the Austrians at Marengo, just forty-five miles from Milan. By the end of the day, there were 6,000 French casualties, but nearly twice as many Austrians had been killed or wounded. The French had won. This victory, which Napoleon always considered one of his greatest, again brought Italy under French control.

Early the next year, the Emperor of Austria ordered a halt to the fighting and signed a treaty with France. Great Britain followed the year after. For the first time in ten years, all of Europe was at peace.

As 1805 began, Napoleon was planning to cross the English Channel and invade Great Britain with 2000 ships and 200,000 soldiers. The French and British were at war once again: irreconcilable enemies struggling for dominance on the continent of Europe.Austria and Russia had joined Britain in an alliance to destroy him. On September 10, Austria attacked French-controlled Bavaria. Tens of thousands of Russian soldiers lumbered forward to unite with their Austrian allies. Napoleon’s soldiers marched deeper and deeper into Europe. Waiting were two enemy armies that outnumbered them almost two to one. The Russians and Austrians planned to defeat the French by sheer force of numbers. But Napoleon saw at once the flaw in the allied strategy.

"He will swing in across Germany and cut off the leading Austrian forces before the Russians can come up. His plan is just hit first, hit with mass forces, and catch these boys before they can all link up."
--Colonel John Robert Elting, PBS' Napoleon

At the battlefield near Ulm, 27,000 men surrendered on October 19. General Karl Mack had lost almost his entire army. "I have accomplished my object," Napoleon wrote. "I have destroyed the Austrian army by simply marching." On November 14, Napoleon led his soldiers into Vienna, the capital of the ancient Austrian Empire. But his triumph had been shadowed by a disaster. On October 21, the British Admiral Horatio Nelson had caught a French and allied Spanish fleet at Trafalgar and utterly destroyed it. Napoleon no longer had a fleet he could count on, and now, in December 1805, the Grand Army itself was in danger. All of Europe had become a deadly trap. On November 22, the Russian and Austrian armies finally united into a single fighting force — 90,000 allies against 75,000 Frenchmen. To combat the allied forces, Napoleon chose a battlefield near the village of Austerlitz, where the countryside was dominated by a gently sloping hill, the Pratzen Heights. Napoleon’s army controlled the Heights, but he would now sacrifice his commanding position in a daring gambit to lure the Russians to attack his right flank.

"Napoleon knows that the enemy is aware that he is in a difficult position. So he will exploit it like in judo - he will use a seeming weakness and turn it against the enemy. He will make the enemy believe he is afraid."
--Michel Keratraut, PBS' Napoleon

"And that is where his genius reveals itself. He’s going to make the enemy think that he is weaker than he actually is to draw the enemy into an attack."
--Jacques Garnier, PBS' Napoleon

He had summoned two divisions of soldiers from Vienna. They had covered the seventy miles in only two days. Napoleon had put reinforcements where they were least expected, and faster than anyone thought possible. His troops, exhausted after their long march from Vienna, struggled to hold on. As the sun began to rise, Napoleon’s army appeared out of the mist. On top of the Pratzen, the Tsar watched the French materialize out of the valley. By 9:30 am, the French controlled the Pratzen Heights, demolishing the center of the allied position. Napoleon swept across the battlefield and attacked the allies from behind. By five o’clock, Austerlitz was silent. Nine thousand Frenchmen were killed or wounded, along with 16,000 Russians and Austrians. The Tsar and his army retreated. But the Austrian Emperor himself, Francis I, came to sue for peace. Austerlitz had raised Napoleon’s star to new heights. He had won his greatest victory, the victory of which he would always be the proudest.

Alarmed by France’s growing power, the Prussians now challenged Napoleon, who made short work of them. "The idea that Prussia could take the field against me by herself," he said, "seems so ridiculous that it does not merit discussion." Defeating the Prussian army at the battles of Jéna and Auerstädt, Napoleon captured 140,000 prisoners and left 25,000 dead or wounded. The might of the Prussian army had been entirely crushed in October of 1806..Napoleon entered Berlin in triumph. Prussia was reduced to a second-rate power, and the fighting moved eastward into Poland as the Russians belatedly came to the aid of their defeated ally. Napoleon was in Warsaw when he was stunned by the news of a surprise Russian attack. He struck back at once, first at Eylau, just 130 miles from the Russian border, then, later in nearby Friedland.

The carnage in both battles was terrible: 70,000 French and Russian soldiers killed or wounded. Napoleon’s army was torn and bloody; the Tsar’s army was in ruins.Alexander I made peace at Tilsit on June 25, 1807. This understanding between the two emperors divided Europe. Alexander was to have a free hand in the east to take Finland and Bessarabia, while Napoleon was free to reshape western and central Europe as he pleased. The most significant result was the creation of the grand duchy of Warsaw (1807).

France rejoiced at the signing of the treaty between the two giant powers. Once again, peace in Europe seemed secure.

Because a naval war was no longer possible, Napoleon introduced the Continental system, or blockade, designed to exclude all British goods from Europe. In this manner he hoped to ruin the British economy and to force the "nation of shopkeepers" to make peace on French terms. On November 30, French troops entered the Portuguese capital of Lisbon and closed the country's ports to English ships. Spain, alarmed at France's aggression, began to question their alliance with Napoleon. By 1808, Napoleon had installed his brother Joseph as the king of Spain and sent 118,000 soldiers across into Spain to insure his rule. Determined to bend the Spanish people to his will, he had decided to make Spain a part of his empire. Napoleon could never imagine that some people loved their countries as much as he loved his own. On May 2, the Spanish people rose up against the French army in Madrid.The French retaliated, killing thousands of Spaniards. It was the start of a brutal, no-holds-barred war, marked by savagery on both sides. The French tortured and mutilated their prisoners; the Spanish did the same. Thousands died, but there was no decisive victory. Napoleon would keep his armies in Spain for five years, unable to break the will of the Spanish people.

English troops were welcomed when they landed in Portugal. Their commander Sir Arthur Wellesley, later known as the Duke of Wellington, defeated Junot's dispersed army at Cintra on August 30, 1808. Two months earlier, General Dupont's 18,000 men were forced to surrender. Napoleon was furious. After sweeping aside the Spanish forces, Napoleon arrived in Madrid on December 4, 1808. He immediately turned his attention to the English forces, eager to strike a blow at his most aloof enemy. Unfortunately, Napoleon was compelled to leave his force in Spain under the command of his marshals because Austria, which had suffered defeat at Napoleon's hands three times, was once again preparing for war. Wellington's combined force of English, Portuguese and Spanish soldiers steadily drove the French from the Iberian Peninsula. On January 19, 1812, Wellington beat the French at Ciudad Rodrigo. By July of the same year, he defeated General Marmont at Arapiles. Finally, Wellington routed the remaining French troops under Joseph's command in 1813, driving the French army over the Pyrenees back into France. The French army suffered 300,000 casualties during the six-year campaign. Napoleon's power faded as the death toll reached ever higher.

Austria launched a campaign to liberate neighboring countries from Napoleon's rule. Hoping to inspire large-scale revolution throughout the Confederacy of the Rhine, Austrian troops invade Bavaria on April 8, 1809, proclaiming a War of German Liberation. But the people of Bavaria, who had profited from Napoleon's earlier defeat of Austria, rallied once again around Napoleon as he assembled his troops for battle.

Two weeks later, Napoleon battered the Austrians, forcing them to retreat back across the border. He then swooped down on Vienna once again, capturing the city on May 13. Even with the capital in enemy control, Emperor Francis I refused to sign a peace treaty. Napoleon would have to crush the massive Austrian army to bring him to the negotiations table.

155,000 Austrians fought Napoleon's 173,000 troops, the largest army Napoleon ever led into battle. After two days of relentless fighting, 32,500 soldiers of the Grand Armée were dead or wounded, along with 37,146 Austrians. In October 1809, Francis I signed a peace treaty with Napoleon. Their terms of the agreement were very favorable to the Emperor of the French — three million of Francis' subjects (out of sixteen million) become subjects of Napoleon. It was the fourth, and last, time the Austrians would be beaten.

Alexander's refusal to close Russian ports to British ships led to Napoleon's Russian campaign of 1812. Napoleon’s edict barring trade with Great Britain was ruining the Russian economy. In response, Napoleon invaded Russia on June 24, 1812. Never in living memory had so large an army been assembled — Italians, Poles, German, French — more than 600,000 men from every corner of his empire. Napoleon's army trudged slowly across Russia's vast, open spaces. He hoped to annihilate his enemy quickly, but the Russians would not give battle. As the Tsar's armies retreated, they burned the countryside behind them, leaving the Cossacks to hack at Napoleon's rear and flanks, then gallop away.

As the days passed, the blazing heat of the Russian summer began to take its toll. Soldiers fell out from exhaustion, sickness, and desertion — more than five thousand a day. After two months, before Napoleon had fought a single battle, 150,000 soldiers were out of action. At last, with summer ending, the Russians turned and faced their enemy at the crossroads village of Borodino. Moscow, the holy city of Russia, was at stake. The battle of Borodino was brutal. Napoleon threw his enormous army at the Russians in a frontal assault, showing little of his old strategic subtlety. The Russians fought the Emperor's armies to a standstill. The next day they withdrew, leaving Napoleon proclaiming victory. As Napoleon’s army entered the city on September 14, he found it almost deserted. That night, Moscow began to burn.

Fearing the approach of winter but reluctant to abandon his conquest, Napoleon wrote the Tsar proposing negotiations.On October 19, laden with spoils, they marched out of the Kremlin through the Gate of the Savior. It was a warm Fall day. Three weeks later it began to snow.Temperatures fell to twenty-two degrees below zero. Food ran out. Horses died by the thousands. Hungry soldiers quarreled over the horseflesh. They were fighting starvation, cold, fatigue, disease — and the Cossacks.

Six months before, he had crossed into Russia with more than a half million soldiers, confident of victory. Now, on December 5, rumors of a coup in Paris forced him to abandon his troops and head back to the French capital.

Lützen to Elba

Clinging to the hope that one decisive battle could turn his luck around, Napoleon rallied France for yet another campaign in central Europe. He battered the Allies at the battles of Lützen on May 2, 1813. The two sides signed the Armistice of Pleiswitz a month later, giving each side time to recover. With little time to maneuver, both Napoleon and the Allies turned to Austria, hoping to persuade them to enter the war on their side.

On August 12, 1813, Austria declared war on France and joined the Allies on the battlefield.n the fall of 1813, the Allies caught Napoleon at Leipzig where they outnumbered him two to one and punished his armies in a bruising battle that lasted three days. Napoleon dealt them a defeat at Hanau on October 30, but the legend of Napoleon’s invincibility was over. His armies were now in retreat everywhere in Europe.Holland was lost to the Empire on November 13. The Austrians occupied Switzerland on December 30, threatening the borders of France. The tide of war was running against Napoleon; in two months he lost 400,000 men.

By the beginning of 1814, Napoleon was again in Paris when he learned that the Allies had invaded France itself. Throughout the winter and spring, Napoleon defeated larger Allied armies at Brienne, Champaubert, Montmirail, Montereau and Rheims. It was a desperate campaign, and Napoleon fought with all his old brilliance. But 85,000 Frenchmen stood no chance against 350,000 allies.

On April 12, 1814, Napoleon picked up a pen and renounced his throne. Once master over an empire of seventy million people, he would now become the emperor of the tiny island of Elba. His enemies thought Napoleon's exile would bring peace to Europe. Napoleon had other plans.

Napoleon was exiled to the island of Elba, where he was sovereign ruler for 10 months. As the alliance of the Great Powers broke down during the Congress of Vienna and the French people became dissatisfied with the restored royalists, Napoleon made plans to return to power. Sailing from Elba on February 26, 1815, with 1,050 soldiers, Napoleon landed in southern France and marched unopposed to Paris, where he reinstated himself on March 21. Louis XVIII, the Bourbon king, fled and thus began Napoleon's new reign: the Hundred Days. The news hit Europe like a bombshell. "The Devil," his enemies said, "has been unchained."

By the end of May, the British and Prussians had two armies in Belgium. Austrian and Russian soldiers were on the way. Napoleon's only hope for survival was one last, desperate gamble. He planned to drive a wedge between the British and the Prussians, and defeat them before the Austrians and the Russians could arrive. Napoleon raised an army, and marched toward Waterloo. Wellington commanded 68,000 men, but he was counting on 72,000 more - the Prussians, led by Marshal Bleucher von Wahlstatt. Beaten by Napoleon at the village of Ligny on June 16, Bleucher withdrew his troops. Unsure if Wellington would stand, Bleucher hesitated to send his troops into Napoleon's path again.Wellington took a strong, defensive position, well aware of Napoleon’s genius on the attack. As the sun rose higher in the sky, the Duke and his soldiers braced themselves. But Waterloo remained silent. Nearly five hours had passed since daybreak, yet Napoleon had not given the order to attack. "I felt that Fortune was abandoning me," Napoleon said. "I no longer had the feeling that I was sure to succeed."

Shortly after midday, Napoleon ordered a barrage of his most powerful cannon — seventy-four guns steadily lobbed cannon balls at Wellington’s center. But Wellington had ordered his soldiers to take cover behind the crest of the ridge on which they stood, beyond the reach of the French guns. Napoleon’s soldiers charged. The British counterattacked, driving the French back in confusion.Advance elements of the Prussian army were beginning to reach the battlefield. Napoleon would have to break Wellington’s center at once. The French cavalry charged on the order of Marshal Michel Ney. Convinced that the British line was weakening, he led his cavalry forward.With reckless abandon, Ney led charge after charge. Napoleon was losing control of the battlefield. The French cavalry was destroyed - but the English center appeared on the verge of collapse. Prussian soldiers began to emerge from the smoke, still in the far-distance.

Napoleon called for the Imperial Guard, the most feared of all his soldiers. Throughout the fighting he had held them in reserve. Now he sent them forward. As the Guard fell back, panic spread through the ranks of Napoleon's army. And then disaster was upon them: the Prussians were in the field.

"The Prussians really were the last drop of water that tipped the bucket over. Napoleon had to draw forces from his center to deal with Bleucher. Bleucher won the battle. If Bleucher hadn’t been there, I don’t think Wellington would have made it."
--Alistair Horne, PBS' Napoleon

"He began the battle too late, he gave orders that weren’t clear, but in reality he lost the battle of Waterloo because he didn’t believe he could win it, because he didn’t believe he could win the campaign. Waterloo could have been won, but the war would have been lost anyway."
--Michel Keratraut, PBS' Napoleon

On June 22, 1815 — four days after the Battle of Waterloo — he abdicated his throne for the second time. With no hope of escape, he put himself at the mercy of Great Britain. This time, they would take no chances; they exiled Napoleon to the remote island of St. Helena, thousands of miles from France. He would never hold power again.