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Praetorium Honoris

Friday, November 11, 2022

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:

34 comments:

  1. Oh, this makes me so happy; History Dump! Knew pieces and parts but not the whole (for example, I had no idea so many people died - I can see how it became the scarring event it did). Thanks Sarge!

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    1. I like to occasional inflict history on people. 😁

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  2. Well stated Sarge, short and concise, easy to follow. Looking forward to this.

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    1. It's the kind of stuff I wished was covered in school, but generally isn't.

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  3. Back in school the French & Indian war was just that, no mention of the rest of the world and "it" happened before our war of independence.

    I'm trying to get a handle on what-when...

    The Viking Age, 793–1066 AD
    William the Conqueror, first Norman king of England, 1066
    The crusades, 1095 - 1291
    Hundred Years' War (France-England) 1337 – 1453
    The 30 years war, (more European players than I can count, religious based it ended with the Peace of Westphalia), 1618 to 1648
    The Seven Years' War - (French and Indian War) 1754-1763
    American Revolution 1775-1787
    French Revolution 1789-1792
    French Revolutionary wars, (France vs Britain, Austria, Prussia, Russia, and several other monarchies) 1792 to 1799
    Napoleonic Wars 1803-1815

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    1. You've created a most excellent timeline, Rob. I just might steal it.

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    2. Please, help yourself. It helps me to see where things are, when they happened in relation to the rest of history.
      I have noticed that these days history is often ignored, downplayed or misrepresented if it disagrees with whatever an entity is trying to do.

      The global warming/climate change narrative is a prime example... history shows that it has been both warmer and colder since the ice sheets retreated 10k years ago. That doesn't help today's popular argument by the media so it's ignored, downplayed or misrepresented.

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    3. You left out the French naval war against the US in the 1790's.

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    4. Ah yes, the Quasi-War from 07 Jul 1798 to 30 Sep 1800. An interesting time which set precedents which still reverberate through history. (Think Vietnam and the First Gulf War.)

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  4. Good grief, it has ever been thus. Napoleon's BROTHER!??!?!?! These "Divine Rightists" have always existed. Pelosi's to the left of me, Newsome's to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle again! Holy handgrenades Batman, there really is nothing new under the sun. Well, except for the American Experiment. A pox on the Divine Rightists in our own land.

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    1. Brothers (and sisters). He made older brother Joseph King of Spain, younger brother Louis King of Holland, younger brother Jérôme King of Westphalia, sisters married off to become Princesses and Queens, it was very profitable to be a Bonaparte in the early part of the 19th Century.

      The so-called divine right of kings is pure bullshit.

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  5. Crusty Old TV Tech here. Why can't history teachers make this kind of interesting story so as to teach young'uns? My history books were full of Sominex, like that guy in Ferris Bueller going on about Glass-Stegall! Second thought, none of the history books really exposed the family connections and ramifications to the nations therein. Witness Joseph Bonaparte. I did not learn of the Spanish view of Bonaparte until I took Iberian History in college (in Spanish, of course). They loathed him, and called him "Pepe Botellas" (in English, Joey Bottles) due to him being a drunkard. Spain suffered more than almost any other European nation under the Corsican rule (Napoleon being Corsican, though he wielded the power of France). Then later on the ripples continued. Napoleon III (his nephew) installed an Austrian on the Mexican throne, and arguably caused 60 years of chaos in Mexico, ending in the time of Pancho Villa et. Al.

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    1. The Spanish, quite rightly, don't have pleasant memories of the Bonaparte family.

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    2. Well, arguably, the Santa Ana era was a long history of chaos. Then there's the period after Pancho Villa, up to the 1950's, which... was chaos. And the periods after, which.... were and are chaos. Mexico has always, no matter who ruled/rules it, been in various states of chaos of one form or another. Must be something in the water.

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    3. The appointee on the Mexican throne was ignored during the American Civil War. When it ended, the US had veterans of some of the best
      armies on the planet. The Monroe Doctrine was dusted off and suggestions made to enforce it. The Mexican Empire just kind of folded.

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  6. 'Always financed by Great Britain' or 'The Golden Cavalry of St George' as it was known. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Cavalry_of_St_George
    A lot of people in the UK cling to a myth that most of the wars of the past were fought by 'plucky little Britain going it alone'. The reality is/was that the UK invariably fights as part of an alliance. Amazing what a bit of bribery can do isn't it?
    Retired

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    1. Well, in all fairness, our cousins across the pond are usually on the side of the angels.

      I rather like the term "The Golden Cavalry of St George," haven't heard it before today. I shall remember it.

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  7. I could never figure out why I could never evince much interest in "HISTORY" (perhaps due to the way it was taught): who did what to whom and with what, at what time and who won. Even at the college level it was just more of the same in greater detail, everybody closely examining their favorite tree unable to see the copse, the forest, the great swath of forests carpeting the foothillls of range of mountains and the way they were all interconnected.
    It ws only sometime in the past twenty years that I read some author who considered and connected WWI and WWII calling them The Great Thirty years War.
    Maybe it was just the way it was taught, maybe I shouldn't've fallen asleep in class.

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    1. It was definitely the way it was taught, at least in my own experience. When I was in college, the head of the history department made history come to life. Most of the professors followed suit, their enthusiasm for history was obvious and they passed that along to their students, especially Yours Truly.

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  8. How in the world do you determine where to start your story? I feel so stupid when I read all of the stuff that I never heard of particularly before. But I do have a green thumb!

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    1. Honestly, I don't really know the ow and why of where I choose to start a tale. Sometimes it just happens. My first WWII series was going to be a short week or so of posts starting just before D-Day and ending a few days after the landings. Somehow it just took off. I intentionally tried to tie it to the events occurring in the past round about the same date.

      The War in the Wild series didn't have quite that structure, which might be why I had to pause it for a while. I need to determine what's going to happen to the characters and, perhaps more importantly, why it will happen.

      The second World War II series was intended to cover the early days of the characters in the first series. It too was tied (though a lot more loosely) to the timeline of the war. It seemed to flow well, but now I need to edit that and "bring it up to code," so to speak.

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  9. A concise roundup of all things Napoleonish. Too bad you couldn't write the textbooks.

    Something you left out, though, was the continued and increased tempo of skullduggery, raids, and otherwise bad acting by the North African kingdoms, sultanates, caliphates, idiotates that stirred things up quite mightily and used the power vacuums after key incidents to raid and steal and outright destroy things in Western Europe and in the Med and eastern Atlantic. Things got so bad the attacks drew the insular interests of the fledgling US Navy to try to curb-stomp the actions of state-sponsored piracy and outright power-attacks.

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    1. I mean, one of the many reasons the Europeans didn't descend like a pack of wolves is that they were too busy at each others throats and couldn't not afford to pay off the paynim (a gross oversimplification, but I love gross oversimplifications almost as much as ellipses.)

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    2. Beans #1 - I don't know how many times I've wished for editorial control over history text books. Could they make them any more boring?

      Oh yeah, the shores of Tripoli and all that.

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    3. Beans #2 - Things always seem to go to shite somewhere when the major powers are busy killing off their young.

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  10. So Horatio Hornblower, who was born 4July 1776, and entered the Royal Navy at age 17, was in the Napoleonic Wars right from the start, although most historians dismiss the claims that he had any real involvement in the actual cause of the wars.

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    1. One could look at at things that way. But in truth, he was also in the Wars of the French Revolution from nearly the beginning as well!

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  11. Haven't had time to read the post yet (but I surely will!)
    Bayou Renaissance Man had a post you should check out, along with subsequent ones over coming days dealing with the trials, tribulations and solutions for self published authors. Just in case you might know someone looking to get their work in print.
    https://bayourenaissanceman.blogspot.com/2022/11/blogging-will-be-intermittent-for-next.html
    John Blackshoe

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    1. The self-publishing route sounds so very painful for little reward, but I'll look into it. Trying to break in with an established publisher seems nearly impossible in these "woke" times.

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  12. The Napoleonic epic is one of the greatest in history. He starts as a second son of a very minor provincial noble family, but through brilliant generalship and ruthless politics made himself master of two-thirds of Europe. General, lawgiver…a once-in-a-century polymath.

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Just be polite... that's all I ask. (For Buck)
Can't be nice, go somewhere else...

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