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The Napoleonic Wars: The Rise And Fall Of An Empire PDF

350 Pages·2004·36.73 MB·English
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Contents Foreword by Bernard Cornwell 7 Introduction 10 Chronology 15 Part l:The rise of the Emperor 1805-1807 Background to war - A temporary peace 21 Warring sides - The armies prepare 27 The fighting From Ulm to the Treaty of Tilsit 36 Portrait of a soldier - Lannes. Marshal of France 94 Portrait of a musician at war - Philippe-Rene Girault 98 Part ll:The empires fight back 1808-1812 Background to war Mutiny and defiance 105 Warring sides - France. Austria, Russia 107 The fighting The Austrian campaign and the march on Moscow 113 Portrait of a soldier - Barclay de Tolly and Jacob Walter 172 Portrait of a civilian - Louise Fusil 178 How the period ended Napoleon under pressure 181 Part III:The Peninsular War 1807-1814 Background to war Perennial foes: Britain France and Spain 184 Warring sides Opposing forces 188 Outbreak - Origins of the conflict 195 The fighting A war of contrasts 200 Portrait of a soldier - Private Edward Costello. 95th Rifles 238 Portrait of a civilian - George Canning, British Foreign Secretary, 1807-1809 242 How the war ended - Anti-climax: The campaign of 1814 247 Part IV: The fall of the French empire 1813-1815 Background to war - Origins of Prussian and Russian hostility 253 Warring sides - Opposing forces 259 Outbreak A bid for revenge 266 The fighting - The 'War of German Liberation' and the invasion of France 271 Portrait of a soldier Captain Cavalie Mercer. Royal Horse Artillery 298 Portrait of a civilian Lord Castlereagh, British Foreign Secretary 302 How the war ended - Denouement at Waterloo 306 The world around war 313 Conclusion and consequences 321 Further reading and bibliography 339 Index 343 Foreword by Bernard Cornwell At around halt past seven on the apart as Moscow and Washington were put smoke-shrouded evening of 18 June 1815, to the torch, and battles were fought in Napoleon's Imperial Guard marched to their India, Egypt, the Caribbean and South last attack. These were the Emperor's shock America. It was, truly, a World War, yet at troops, battle-hardened veterans going to the heart of it was Europe, and at the heart deliver the killing blow against an enemy of Europe was France, and at France's heart desperately weakened by an afternoon's was Napoleon Bonaparte, the man who has fighting. The sinking sun was hidden by given his name to the titanic struggles that cloud and further obscured by powder ended on Waterloo's ridge. smoke that thickened as the artillery on the The story of the Napoleonic Wars begins low hill began to drive round shot, shells in 1802 with the Peace of Amiens, known to and canister into the Guard's ranks. Hut some in Britain as 'the peace which passeth cannon alone would never stop elite troops all understanding', an ironic quotation from like the Guard who were marching in the Bible. The peace treaty, signed between columns, each a thick mass of men driven by Britain and Trance, was, at best, cynical, for the sound of drums, and watched by their both countries must have known the wars Emperor as their Eagle-topped banners would begin again since their competing advanced across sodden ground obstructed ambitions were utterly unresolved, and at by hundreds of dead horses and men. stake was nothing less than the domination Napoleon's finest troops, supported by the of the planet. The mighty British war fleets survivors of the afternoon's attacks, already controlled the world's oceans, but advanced across flattened rye that had been there had to be some purpose to that scorched black by cannon lire, and so up the domination, and it was trade. The English, gentle slope to where the enemy, they were Napoleon sneered, are a nation of assured, needed just one blow to collapse. shopkeepers, but the shopkeepers had to be The majority of the Imperial Guard had beaten if France's ambitions were to be never met that enemy. It was British realised, and the chief of those ambitions infantry, many of them veterans of the was to become the world's super-power. If Peninsular War and trained to one deadly Britain fell then France could take her skill; the delivery of musket volleys. And on growing empire and all the vast trade of the the ridge of Waterloo, under the foul- world, the spices and sugar and cotton and smelling gun smoke, the irresistible Imperial metals, would flow through Paris and from Guard met the immovable redcoats. It was their profits Trance would become ever the climax of the Napoleonic Wars and a richer, more powerful and glorious. moment when history trembled in the This, then, is the story of a power balance. The Guard could not know it, but struggle, and the odds, at the tale's they were about to be defeated and with beginning, seem to favour the French. them ended the Eagles, the Empire and Britain, it is true, has those great battle fleets, twenty-two years of warfare. but her army is small, and the armies of her That warfare had started in 1793, and the European allies have mostly suffered defeat Napoleonic Wars are the second half of the at the hands of the resurgent French. The long struggle that was sparked by the French Revolution thrust France into turmoil, but Revolution. During those years capitals as far out of the wreckage emerges a conscript 8 The Napoleonic Wars army which has astonished Europe with its but being one of three would never satisfy victories, many of them gained by a young Napoleon and once again he used warfare to Corsican officer who was christened establish his supremacy. Austria was still Nabulion Buonaparte. He was born in 1769, France's most dangerous enemy on the also the year of the birth of Arthur Wellesley, European mainland and Napoleon, in his later the Duke of Wellington. Wellesley was second Italian campaign, defeated them born to aristocratic privilege, but Napoleon's utterly and secured a peace treaty which family, even though they claimed noble ceded vast areas to France. It was another lineage, was impoverished. Corsica was a spectacular victory and Napoleon was wild place on Europe's edge, and then, as rewarded by being made Emperor. He was now, there was a struggle in the island 35 now, the sole ruler of France, and the against French domination, but Napoleon, most feared soldier in Europe. after flirting with the cause of Corsican That is where the story of the Napoleonic independence, moved to France and trained Wars begins. 1 he Peace of Amiens, which as an artillery officer. His rise, from that Britain and France signed after Austria's moment, was extraordinary. In 1792 he was defeat, lasted little more than a year. a lieutenant, and a year later, aged 24, he Napoleon had been trying to extend the was a Brigadier-General thanks to his French empire overseas, specifically in the brilliance in evicting the British fleet from sugar-rich West Indies, and Britain, seeing its Toulon harbour. Two years later he used his trade supremacy threatened and, as ever, artillery to suppress a revolt in Paris and was fearing an over-mighty power on mainland rewarded with command of the French Europe, went back to war, and there would armies fighting the Austrians in northern be little peace now for the next twelve years. Italy. The war there was going badly for the That is the story you are about to read and it French, but the young general, still in his is a magnificent tale, shot through with mid-twenties, showed that he had a supreme horror and blood and heroism, and with an talent for battle. The Austrians were ending so dramatic and unlikely that no humiliated. Hollywood screenwriter or historical novelist That campaign made Napoleon famous would dare to contrive it. It is, at times, a and it did not hurt that, as a young man, complicated tale. It begins simply enough he had rock star good looks. He became with Napoleon devising a plan to invade corpulent later, but he never lost his Britain and thus end the wars at a single youthful appetite for military conquest. stroke, but Nelson's victory at Trafalgar After the Italian success he conceived an sealed the doom of that endeavour, and from ambitious plan to take Egypt which, he then on Britain followed a twofold strategy. declared, would offer a stepping stone to She encouraged her European allies to attack India where France's native allies were France on land while she attempted to fighting the British. He captured Egypt, but strangle French trade with her sea-power, when his fleet was destroyed at Aboukir Bay but, when Napoleon's invasion of Spain and by Horatio Nelson, he was effectively Portugal turned sour, Britain saw an stranded in the desert. The campaign was a opportunity to intervene with her small failure, but Napoleon evaded the British army. That resulted in what we know as the naval blockade and, leaving his army Peninsular War, the chief contribution of the behind, sailed to France and spun the British army to Napoleon's defeat and the Egyptian adventure as a success. He arrived arena in which my fictional hero, Richard in Paris when France was again in turmoil as Sharpe, has his adventures. It was, in truth, a yet another post-revolutionary government sideshow, but one that drained French collapsed and, from its wreckage, Napoleon strength and out of it emerged a re- seized power. He became First Consul, one of invigorated British army, led by a man who three men who led the French government, proved himself to be the pre-eminent soldier Foreword 9 of the day, the Duke of Wellington. The describing. Then, when I need to know the Duke had never fought Napoleon himself, colour of a French hussar's uniform or the but on that rain-soaked ridge, south of exact weapon carried by a Spanish grenadier, Brussels, in June 1815, the two finally met in it is back to the shelves for another Osprey the horrendous clash of Waterloo, and from book. Now, in one volume, Osprey that carnage emerged a world dominated by Publishing is gathering its narratives of one super-power, Britain, that would last the Napoleonic Wars and in this book you until, a century later, new armies and new will find all of the Osprey virtues; a concise ambitions again tore Europe apart. and clear story presented with superb Thousands of books have been written illustrations. It is, indeed, essential history, about the wars. I have at least two thousand and its authors, Todd Fisher and Gregory on my shelves, but whenever I am plotting Fremont-Barnes, bring it to vivid life. So, new mischief for Sharpe I invariably start imagine yourself at the beginning of the with an Osprey book because I know it will nineteenth century, with an overmighty provide a well-written and comprehensible Emperor about to indulge his passion for account of whatever campaign I am war . . . and read on. Introduction Background Following the Berlin Decrees of December 1806, which had established the Continental When Napoleon Bonaparte became First System, Napoleon sought ways to use this Consul by coup d'etat on 9 November 1799 mainland European blockade against the he issued an ominous proclamation to the British. The real hole in his net was the soldiers of France: 'It is no longer a question Iberian peninsula. of defending your frontiers, but of invading Spain, under a weak King Charles and a enemy states.' The gauntlet was thus laid wicked first minister, Godoy, had been down before the world, and England in France's official ally since 1795. Spain's particular. No longer was France fighting to participation in the war had often been half- defend the French Revolution but to expand hearted, and its major contribution, its navy, her frontiers for larger and less definable aims. had been smashed by the British at Trafalgar, In 179/5, Austria, Prussia, Spain, the United Godoy had flirted with the idea of joining Provinces and England had formed the First Prussia in 1806 and attacking France from Coalition and in the same year the young the south. At the time, Napoleon had been Napoleon Bonaparte had shown his potential embroiled in his campaign in Germany, but by freeing Toulon from a Royal Navy siege. be had learned of the scheme and had He showed his star quality once again the bullied Spain into fulfilling her role as ally. same year when he took command of the He had demanded they send the cream of French Army fighting Austrian and Sardinian their army to northern Germany as Imperial forces. support troops. Deprived of her main strike In May 1798 Napoleon sailed from Toulon force. Spain had then had to sit out the war. to Egypt with plans to conquer the Ottoman Napoleon's aim was to close off the Empire. The French fleet was destroyed by Portuguese ports and on 21 October 1807 Admiral Nelson at Aboukir Bay, the French Godoy signed the Treaty of Fontainebleau Army failed to take Acre and Napoleon allowing French troops access to Portugal via returned to Paris in advance of the army. Spain. An army, under Junot, took Lisbon In 1800 Napoleon launched an attack over that November and more French troops the Alps to take on a larger Austrian force at followed into Spain. Marengo on 14 June and snatched victory By this time, Spain was on the verge of from the jaws of defeat. This was followed by civil war. Two opposing camps were forming, the Treaty of Luneville in February 1801. one around the king, the other around By 1802, Napoleon had not only signed Ferdinand, the king's son. When Ferdinand the Peace of Amiens, which brought peace overthrew his father and arrested Godoy. with England, but he also had a Concordat both camps appealed to Napoleon for with the Vatican and had declared support. A conference with all parties was Consulship for life. called in Bayonne in May 1808. Napoleon The peace with England constituted a made the mistake of assuming that after the period of consolidation before war broke out corrupt Bourbon family, the former rulers of with even greater ferocity in May 1803. The France, the Spanish people would welcome a pattern from now to 1806 was to be one of more liberal, efficient government. He domination on land by the French and installed his brother Joseph upon the throne. domination at sea by the British, culminating In fact the opposite was true. Joseph was in the epic victory of Trafalgar in October 1805. crowned in Burgos on 7 July 1808 and entered Introduction 11 Madrid only after a Spanish revolt had been exaggerated reports of French defeats in Spain suppressed in the city. He was not to stay reaching the Austrians, they saw an long. The French Suffered several reverses in Opportunity to strike. the field and Joseph had to evacuate Madrid Napoleon could not have foreseen in soon alter his arrival. By August, little of Spain 1807 the significance of the Peninsular War, was left in French hands. however wise we have become with the benefit Napoleon planned his counter-attack. His of hindsight. Napoleon's lightning campaigns first step was to call a meeting in Erfurt with of I805-1807 were based on a system that his new ally, Tsar Alexander of Russia. relied on rapid march and concentration of following the French victories of 1805-07, force. The army lived off the land rather than the Tsar had signed an alliance with Napoleon being dependent on lengthy supply lines, at Tilsit. Austria had had first chance to play cumbersome commissariat wagons and static this role of French ally, but had spurned the depots. In short, his armies fed themselves on opportunity, preferring instead another the move, and maximum force could thus he attempt to regain its losses of the last concentrated at a desired point. However, 15 years' conflict. She now stood alone Napoleon's experiences in east Prussia and on the continent among the great powers, Poland in the first half of 1807 had shown how wishing to renew the war against Napoleon. difficult it was to conduct operations when The meeting at Erfurt, from September laboring under the twin disadvantages of poor through October of 1808. was intended to land and roads, the Iberian Peninsula had both secure the French peace while Napoleon these disadvantages. The Grande Armée could moved into Spain to re-establish his brother sustain itself under such conditions for a Joseph on the throne. Although Alexander limited period - but not for years on end. agreed to hold up his end of the alliance and Extreme poverty, primitive communications by keep an eye on Austria, he was not being road - in many cases merely a shabby dirt track sincere. Talleyrand. Napoleon's Special envoy, - unnavigable rivers, and forbidding mountain had been plotting against Napoleon and ranges created formidable obstacles to large Trance. Throughout the Erfurt conference he bodies Of men and horses. had held meetings with Alexander, urging The problems experienced by the French him to feign compliance and divulging were greatly exacerbated by the fact that they Napoleon's state secrets. faced not only the regular armed forces of the When the conference ended, Napoleon Allies, but also the ordinary peoples of the hurried south to join the army assembling Iberian peninsula themselves. As Clausewitz along the Spanish border. France's honor put it a few years later: 'In Spain the war was on the line, and with an eye to restoring became of itself an affair of the people ..." it Napoleon began his campaign at the Ordinary French soldiers like Albert de Rocca, beginning of November. Madrid fell once a veteran of many campaigns, captured the again into French hands, but the effort essence of the kind of fanatical resistance that meant that much of Napoleon's main he and his comrades faced: army was now committed to the Spanish enterprise. Not only were they fighting the We were not called to fight against Spanish armies and the guerrillas, but they [professional] troops ... but against a people now had to deal with the British, who had insulated from all the other continental nations by landed an army in Portugal, under Sir Arthur its manners, its prejudices, and even the nature of Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington. its country. The Spaniards were to oppose to us a While Napoleon was embroiled in Spain, resistance so much more the obstinate, as they Austria was considering her options. believed it to be the object of the French Still smarting from the defeats by government to make the Peninsula a secondary Napoleon in 1796, 1800, and 1805, she state, irrevocably subject to the dominion of looked for a chance of revenge. With wildly France. 12 The Napoleonic Wars Indeed, the French soon discovered that the Devil. Such hitter sentiments had not neither the geography nor the population been seen in Europe since the dreadful days were at all hospitable. No conflict prior to of the wars of religion in the sixteenth and the twentieth century posed such a daunting seventeenth centuries. So great was the depth combination of native resistance and natural of feeling that even Protestant British troops obstacles. Topographical features in Iberia were considered heretics: the Spanish even ranged from the snow-capped Pyrenees to sometimes objected to the burial of those the burning wastes of the Sierra Morena. If troops - their own allies - in consecrated geography and climate were not extreme Catholic ground. The atheistic, liberal enough, combatants were constantly subject principles of the French Revolution were seen to virulent diseases including typhus, by many reactionary Spanish nobles and dysentery, and malaria. clergymen as grave threats to their authority Napoleon's decision to occupy Spain and property, to social harmony and the proved a great miscalculation. Past spiritual righteousness of the one true experiences of occupation in western and religion. The French became a convenient central Europe were characterized, with some focus of attention for all Spanish society's notable exceptions, by passive populations problems, not least its grinding poverty. who submitted to French authority in The contrast between the conduct of the general and in some cases to Bonapartist rule regular, professional forces and those of the specifically. Spain was the only country guerrillas was remarkable. Two distinct types occupied by France that Napoleon had not of war, one conventional and the other entirely conquered. For the Emperor, waging unconventional, were quickly to emerge. The war against regular armies was the stuff that British and French met in set-piece battles had made his armies legendary in their own and skirmishes and generally treated each time. However, in the Peninsula a national other with courtesy off the battlefield. In cause, very different from that which had so fact, fraternization was commonplace, animated the French during the 1790s, but despite Wellington's strict orders to the just as potent, rapidly and inexorably spread contrary. Provided they were observed in the spirit of revolt across the provinces. All advance, foraging parties were generally left across Spain's vast rural expanse, with its in peace and sentries at outposts frequently conspicuous absence of a large middle class, bartered goods, smoked together and which might have acted as a moderate force, chatted. Informal truces between pickets a virulent form of nationalism took firm enabled each side to exchange small hold. Far from embracing any liberal notions numbers of badly injured prisoners. of political or social reform on the model of The guerrilla war, however, marked a low the French Revolution, this movement point in barbarity for both sides. Partisans, championed a cause diametrically opposed whose proliferation proved unstoppable, to change, with an anachronistic and almost ruthlessly cut down small groups of soldiers blind faith in Crown and Church. In a at isolated posts, stragglers, and the society that was overwhelmingly rural, the wounded. French troops regularly committed mass of simple, ignorant peasantry held up atrocities in the countryside, including the Bourbon monarchy as the defenders of pillage, murder, and arson. Atrocities the true faith, descendants of their forebears committed by both sides rapidly assumed an who had liberated medieval Spain from the enormous scale and a horrendous nature, hated Moors. with reprisal feeding bloody reprisal, thus In short, the war became something continuing the cycle of bitterness and of a crusade, but of liberation rather than swelling the partisan ranks. The conflict in conquest, and the clergy enthusiastically the Peninsula, therefore, being both a clash invoked divine help in ridding the land of of professional armies and a struggle- occupiers whom they portrayed as agents of involving entire peoples, contained elements Introduction 13 of both conventional and unconventional despite having lost over half a million men, warfare, making it a precursor in many ways Napoleon prepared for a new campaign in the to the conflicts of the twentieth century. coming spring. The Russians, emboldened by The Peninsular War spanned most of the Napoleon's retreat, were prepared to carry the years of the Napoleonic Empire. When it war, which was to become the War of the began the Emperor of France stood Sixth Coalition, into Germany, with Prussia as triumphant over nearly the whole of the a junior partner in a new alliance. European continent. The reputation of That this alliance had been preceded by the British Army had not yet recovered five others provides a good indication of the from its defeat in the War of American Great Powers' failure to curb French expansion Independence and from its poor showing since the start of the wars two decades earlier. in the French Revolutionary Wars, and Yet for Prussia and for a number of other Sir Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of German states, this new struggle was to have Wellington, was only a minor general an ideological component which had been whose destiny was not yet clear. Yet in the absent from her war of 1806-1807: the course of the war Wellington heaped campaign of 1813 was to become known by victory upon victory. By the time the war its patriotic title: the 'War of German had ended, in 1814, the British Army had, Liberation'. The moral forces which had once despite many retreats, marched from the given impetus to the armies of revolutionary shores of Portugal to southern France, France were now coming back to haunt them, emerging as one of the most professional, though with some adaptations. The Prussians well-motivated, and efficient fighting forces had no desire for a republic, but their ever to have left British shores, led by the nationalism had been awakened, and the war nation's greatest soldier. That the French was to be for the liberation of 'Germany', were doomed from the start is certainly more than half a century before an actual open to question; but that the Peninsular nation state by that name emerged. War ultimately played a critical role in the At this stage, the coalition did not contain defeat of France is incontestable. all the Great Powers, yet unity was essential Napoleon himself acknowledged the fact tor success. Some nations, such as Austria and years later during his exile on St. Helena Sweden, wished to wait and see how the tide when he admitted that of fortune moved, but ultimately they and most of the former members of the ... that miserable Spanish affair turned Confederation of the Rhine, including opinion against me and rehabilitated England. Bavaria and Saxony, would side with the It enabled them to continue the war. The Allies in numbers which Napoleon could markets of South America were opened to them; never hope to match. Britain, too, would play they put an army on the Peninsula ... [which] a vital diplomatic and financial role in the became the agent of victory; the terrible node of war, ensuring Allied unity and providing all the intrigues that formed on the Continent ... millions of pounds in subsidies to nations [the Spanish affair] is what killed me. that could supply the manpower required. Britain had committed tens of thousands of By 1810 Napoleon had established an men to the ongoing struggle in Spain, and empire in Europe that surpassed that of continued to man the fleets which blockaded Charlemagne a millennium before. Yet French ports and starved Napoleon's empire within the space of a few years it would of seaborne trade. collapse and the battles that were fought Yet Napoleon was not to be daunted by during the climactic years 1813-15, included circumstances that lesser commanders might two of the most decisive in history. have deemed hopeless. Quickly raising new The seeds of destruction were sown during armies composed of young, inexperienced the Russian campaign in 1812. after which, conscripts and invalided veterans, but

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