A Bit o' History, Part 1

Le Trophée¹
Édouard Detaille

So yeah, the Napoleonic Wars. A long time ago, guys with names which aren't common among us English-speakers, and in a place which is far different now than it was back then. Fought by people who have been dead for a very long time. No memories of the older generation's stories to give us a point of reference, so yes, perhaps my latest foray into fiction has been a bit hard to follow.

Juvat has referred to the Napoleonic Wars as "World War Zero." At first the amateur historian in me rebelled at that thought, as many professional historians consider the first truly global conflict to be the Seven Years War, which is known to us in North America as the French and Indian War. The latter was simply one theater of the former.

The Seven Years War lasted from 1756 to 1763 (yup, seven years) and was fought from North America to India, most of the fighting though was concentrated in Europe. It's a war which gets short shrift in high school history classes (at least in my day) as (at least in North America) the French and Indian War portion gets all the coverage (as weak as that may be, do the kids even study history anymore?). About the only name people might recognize from the Seven Years War is Frederick the Great (Friedrich der Große), and they probably know less about him than they realize.

So while juvat's use of the term "World War Zero" isn't that accurate, it ain't a bad characterization of the series of conflicts which followed the French Revolution. The wars fought by Napoléon also spanned the globe from the Americas (North and South) to Europe, stretching to Africa and India with naval battles being fought in nearly every ocean on the planet.

History tends to break those conflicts into different wars, usually with the number of whatever coalition was formed to defeat the French, always financed by Great Britain I might add, with the occasional war named for where it occurred. For instance:

• War of the Third Coalition, 1805
• War of the Fourth Coalition, 1806–1807
• Peninsular War, 1808–1814
• War of the Fifth Coalition, 1809
• Invasion of Russia, 1812
• War of the Sixth Coalition, 1812–1814
• War of the Seventh Coalition, 1815

The bottom line though is that it was one great war with occasional outbreaks of "peace."

A lot of people died in that stretch from 1805 to 1815, soldiers and civilians:

• Austria: 500,000 dead
• Spain: 586,000 dead
• Russia: 600,000 dead
• Prussia: 300,000 dead
• United Kingdom: 300,000 dead
• Portugal: 250,000 dead
• Italy: 120,000 dead
• Ottoman Empire: 50,000 dead
• Total: 4,000,000 total military and civilian dead or missing

• 306,000 French killed in action
• 65,000 French allies killed in action
• 800,000 French and allies killed by wounds, accidents or disease
• 600,000 civilians killed
• Total: 2,000,000 dead

The population of Europe (minus the Ottoman Empire) was roughly 200 million souls in 1800. The following list breaks it down by area/country:

• France 49,920,616
• Britain 16,476,160
• Holy Roman Empire 32,164,000
• Russian Empire 35,005,000
• Spain 13,349,884
• Habsburg monarchy (Austrian Empire) 23,145,000
• Kingdom of Prussia 10,700,000
• Portuguese Empire 2,900,000
• Kingdom of Naples 6,700,000
• Batavian Republic 1,850,000
• Sweden 3,347,000
• Kingdom of Sardinia 2,900,000
• Papal States 2,300,000
• Denmark–Norway 2,200,000
• Grand Duchy of Tuscany 1,224,000
• Parma 415,000
• Republic of Lucca 120,000
• Republic of Ragusa 30,000
• Liechtenstein 5,800
• San Marino 5,490
• Andorra 2,650

So no matter how you look at it, a series of wars or one single conflict, it was a very big deal. Especially to those who were directly impacted by it. (That whole "living in a place where an army of 200,000 is marching through my backyard while living off the land" like Rob mentioned. Many peasants were ruined by just such a thing over those years.)

So what was it all about? Was Napoléon one of those "conquer the world" guys? Well ...

France and Britain had been at each other's throats for centuries, the Seven Years War (our version of it, the French and Indian War) cost France her North American possessions (though they still held on to Louisiana until Napoléon sold it to us) and cost them a lot of money.

When the American Revolution broke out, we naughty colonials sought French help, which we eventually got, even though the French couldn't really afford it. So by the time we made peace with England, the French government was even more broke.

Which led, eventually, to the French Revolution, to make things really simple, I'll skip ahead to the French king (and his Austrian wife) being executed which pissed off all the other kings in Europe. Sets a bad example, dontcha know?

So the other kings resolved to invade France and restore the monarchy, most of the French people were not really down with that. Certain French politicians thought it would be a wonderful idea to spread their revolution to their neighbors. Things were a mess, within France and without.

This was the period of the Wars of the French Revolution which was divided into two periods:

• War of the First Coalition (1792–97)
• War of the Second Coalition (1798–1802)

So before Napoléon took over as Emperor, which led to ten years of war, you had ten years of war, as the crowned heads of Europe sought to undo the Revolution. During the War of the Second Coalition, Napoléon was in Egypt, where the British eventually defeated him. While there the French back home went from one disaster to another, which Napoléon knew of, so he decided to return to France and sort things out.

In 1799 he staged a coup d'état and took over the government as "First Consul," though there were two other consuls, Napoléon was the main guy. For he had the army to back him up. After a series of victories along the frontier and in Italy, everybody decided to quit fighting, even the British. The Treaty of Amiens resolved a number of issues (on paper at least) and stopped the fighting.

But, and here I'm being honest, the French kind of cheated on the terms of the treaty, claiming that the British were also cheating. Napoléon got tired of being "First Consul" and floated the idea of becoming Emperor. The idea was generally popular as the French were pretty sick of the state of affairs in their country.

In 1804 Napoléon Bonaparte was crowned (see below) Emperor of the French.

L'Empereur Napoleon se couronnant lui-même²
Jacques-Louis David

Sacre de l'empereur Napoléon Ier et couronnement de l'impératrice Joséphine
dans la cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris, le 2 décembre 1804³
Jacques-Louis David and Georges Rouget

So the rest of Europe was fine with Napoléon being emperor, right?

Um, not so much. The Peace of Amiens was short-lived ...

On 17 May 1803, before the official declaration of war and without any warning, the Royal Navy captured all the French and Dutch merchant ships stationed in Britain or sailing around, seizing more than 2 million pounds of commodities and taking their crews as prisoners. In response to that provocation, on 22 May (2 Prairial, year XI), the First Consul ordered the arrest of all British males between the ages of 18 and 60 in France and Italy, trapping many travelling civilians. The acts were denounced as illegal by all the major powers. Bonaparte claimed in the French press that the British prisoners that he had taken amounted to 10,000, but French documents compiled in Paris a few months later show that the numbers were 1,181. It was not until the abdication of Bonaparte in 1814 that the last of the imprisoned British civilians were allowed to return home.

Addington proved an ineffective prime minister in wartime and was replaced on 10 May 1804 with William Pitt, who formed the Third Coalition. Pitt was involved in failed assassination attempts on Bonaparte's life by Cadoudal and Pichegru.

Napoleon, now Emperor of the French, assembled armies on the coast of France to invade Great Britain, but Austria and Russia, Britain's allies, were preparing to invade France. The French armies were christened La Grande Armée and secretly left the coast to march against Austria and Russia before those armies could combine. The Grande Armée defeated Austria at Ulm the day before the Battle of Trafalgar, and Napoleon's victory at the Battle of Austerlitz effectively destroyed the Third Coalition. In 1806, Britain retook the Cape Colony from the Batavian Republic. Napoleon abolished the republic later that year in favour of the Kingdom of Holland, ruled by his brother Louis. However, in 1810, the Netherlands officially became a part of France. (Source)

And that, dear reader, is where our story begins.

Part 2 will cover the wars of Napoléon in broad strokes, to give you an idea of what the characters were involved in, stay tuned ...

¹ "The Trophy," is in the Public Domain. (Image cropped slightly to fit)

² Emperor Napoleon crowning himself, he actually did crown himself, David's sketch shows the Pope (Pius VII) sitting behind Napoléon. The actual painting shows him crowning Josephine.

³ Coronation of Emperor Napoleon I and coronation of Empress Josephine in Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, December 2, 1804.

Data sources:

• Seven Years War
• Napoleonic Wars
• Population