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8분만에 알아보는 프랑스혁명! / 프랑스역사 세계사

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8분만에 알아보는 프랑스혁명! / 프랑스역사 세계사

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8분만에 알아보는 프랑스혁명! / 프랑스역사 세계사

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Causes of the French Revolution

As the 18th century drew to a close, France's costly involvement in the American Revolution, combined with extravagant spending by King Louis XVI, had left France on the brink of bankruptcy.

Not only were the royal coffers depleted, but several years of poor harvests, drought, cattle disease and skyrocketing bread prices had kindled unrest among peasants and the urban poor. Many expressed their desperation and resentment toward a regime that imposed heavy taxes-yet failed to provide any relief-by rioting, looting and striking.

In the fall of 1786, Louis XVI's controller general, Charles Alexandre de Calonne, proposed a financial reform package that included a universal land tax from which the aristocratic classes would no longer be exempt.

Estates General

To garner support for these measures and forestall a growing aristocratic revolt, the king summoned the Estates General ( les états généraux) - an assembly representing France's clergy, nobility and middle class - for the first time since 1614.

The meeting was scheduled for May 5, 1789; in the meantime, delegates of the three estates from each locality would compile lists of grievances ( cahiers de doléances) to present to the king.

Rise of the Third Estate

France's population, of course, had changed considerably since 1614. The non-aristocratic, middle-class members of the Third Estate now represented 98 percent of the people but could still be outvoted by the other two bodies.

In the lead-up to the May 5 meeting, the Third Estate began to mobilize support for equal representation and the abolishment of the noble veto-in other words, they wanted voting by head and not by status.

While all of the orders shared a common desire for fiscal and judicial reform as well as a more representative form of government, the nobles in particular were loath to give up the privileges they had long enjoyed under the traditional system.

Tennis Court Oath

By the time the Estates General convened at Versailles, the highly public debate over its voting process had erupted into open hostility between the three orders, eclipsing the original purpose of the meeting and the authority of the man who had convened it - the king himself.

On June 17, with talks over procedure stalled, the Third Estate met alone and formally adopted the title of National Assembly; three days later, they met in a nearby indoor tennis court and took the so-called Tennis Court Oath (serment du jeu de paume), vowing not to disperse until constitutional reform had been achieved.

Within a week, most of the clerical deputies and 47 liberal nobles had joined them, and on June 27 Louis XVI grudgingly absorbed all three orders into the new National Assembly.

The Bastille

On June 12, as the National Assembly (known as the National Constituent Assembly during its work on a constitution) continued to meet at Versailles, fear and violence consumed the capital.

Though enthusiastic about the recent breakdown of royal power, Parisians grew panicked as rumors of an impending military coup began to circulate. A popular insurgency culminated on July 14 when rioters stormed the Bastille fortress in an attempt to secure gunpowder and weapons; many consider this event, now commemorated in France as a national holiday, as the start of the French Revolution.

The wave of revolutionary fervor and widespread hysteria quickly swept the entire country. Revolting against years of exploitation, peasants looted and burned the homes of tax collectors, landlords and the aristocratic elite.

Known as the Great Fear ( la Grande peur), the agrarian insurrection hastened the growing exodus of nobles from France and inspired the National Constituent Assembly to abolish feudalism on August 4, 1789, signing what historian Georges Lefebvre later called the "death certificate of the old order."

Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen

IIn late August, the Assembly adopted the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen ( Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen), a statement of democratic principles grounded in the philosophical and political ideas of Enlightenment thinkers like Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

The document proclaimed the Assembly's commitment to replace the ancien régime with a system based on equal opportunity, freedom of speech, popular sovereignty and representative government.

Drafting a formal constitution proved much more of a challenge for the National Constituent Assembly, which had the added burden of functioning as a legislature during harsh economic times.

For months, its members wrestled with fundamental questions about the shape and expanse of France's new political landscape. For instance, who would be responsible for electing delegates? Would the clergy owe allegiance to the Roman Catholic Church or the French government? Perhaps most importantly, how much authority would the king, his public image further weakened after a failed attempt to flee the country in June 1791, retain?

Adopted on September 3, 1791, France's first written constitution echoed the more moderate voices in the Assembly, establishing a constitutional monarchy in which the king enjoyed royal veto power and the ability to appoint ministers. This compromise did not sit well with influential radicals like Maximilien de Robespierre, Camille Desmoulins and Georges Danton, who began drumming up popular support for a more republican form of government and for the trial of Louis XVI.

French Revolution Turns Radical

In April 1792, the newly elected Legislative Assembly declared war on Austria and Prussia, where it believed that French émigrés were building counterrevolutionary alliances; it also hoped to spread its revolutionary ideals across Europe through warfare.

On the domestic front, meanwhile, the political crisis took a radical turn when a group of insurgents led by the extremist Jacobins attacked the royal residence in Paris and arrested the king on August 10, 1792.

The following month, amid a wave of violence in which Parisian insurrectionists massacred hundreds of accused counterrevolutionaries, the Legislative Assembly was replaced by the National Convention, which proclaimed the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of the French republic.

On January 21, 1793, it sent King Louis XVI, condemned to death for high treason and crimes against the state, to the guillotine; his wife Marie-Antoinette suffered the same fate nine months later.

Reign of Terror

Following the king's execution, war with various European powers and intense divisions within the National Convention brought the French Revolution to its most violent and turbulent phase.

In June 1793, the Jacobins seized control of the National Convention from the more moderate Girondins and instituted a series of radical measures, including the establishment of a new calendar and the eradication of Christianity.

They also unleashed the bloody Reign of Terror (la Terreur), a 10-month period in which suspected enemies of the revolution were guillotined by the thousands. Many of the killings were carried out under orders from Robespierre, who dominated the draconian Committee of Public Safety until his own execution on July 28, 1794.

Did you know? Over 17,000 people were officially tried and executed during the Reign of Terror, and an unknown number of others died in prison or without trial.

Thermidorian Reaction

The death of Robespierre marked the beginning of the Thermidorian Reaction, a moderate phase in which the French people revolted against the Reign of Terror's excesses.

On August 22, 1795, the National Convention, composed largely of Girondins who had survived the Reign of Terror, approved a new constitution that created France's first bicameral legislature.

Executive power would lie in the hands of a five-member Directory ( Directoire) appointed by parliament. Royalists and Jacobins protested the new regime but were swiftly silenced by the army, now led by a young and successful general named Napoleon Bonaparte.

French Revolution Ends: Napoleon's Rise

The Directory's four years in power were riddled with financial crises, popular discontent, inefficiency and, above all, political corruption. By the late 1790s, the directors relied almost entirely on the military to maintain their authority and had ceded much of their power to the generals in the field.

On November 9, 1799, as frustration with their leadership reached a fever pitch, Napoleon Bonaparte staged a coup d'état, abolishing the Directory and appointing himself France's " first consul." The event marked the end of the French Revolution and the beginning of the Napoleonic era, during which France would come to dominate much of continental Europe.

Photo Gallery

Sources

French Revolution. The National Archives (U.K.)
The United States and the French Revolution, 1789-1799. Office of the Historian. U.S. Department of State.
Versailles, from the French Revolution to the Interwar Period. Chateau de Versailles.
French Revolution. Monticello.org.
Individuals, institutions, and innovation in the debates of the French Revolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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French Revolution: Timeline, Causes & Dates | HISTORY

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The French Revolution began in 1789. Soon, the Bastille was stormed and the monarchy eliminated. After the Reign of Terror, France established a new government.

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The French Revolution: Crash Course European History #21

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Napoleon Bonaparte: Crash Course European History

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Napoleon Bonaparte: Crash Course European History

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Napoleon Bonaparte: Crash Course European History #22

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フランス革命とは何か？なぜ起きたの？わかりやすく解説します

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フランス革命とは何か？なぜ起きたの？わかりやすく解説します

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フランス革命とは何か？なぜ起きたの？わかりやすく解説します

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The Astonishing Rise to Leadership and Power of Napoleon Bonaparte

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The Astonishing Rise to Leadership and Power of Napoleon Bonaparte

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History vs. Napoleon Bonaparte - Alex Gendler

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The Rise Of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte | History Hit | Timeline

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Was Napoleon Bonaparte an enlightened leader or tyrant?

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Was Napoleon Bonaparte an enlightened leader or tyrant?

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The year was 1802. France's wealthiest colony, Saint-Domingue, on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola-today shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic-was in turmoil. As former slaves battled their French overlords, an alliance of Black and mixed-raced generals fought to restore order under the French flag.

Then came news from Guadeloupe, another French colony in the Caribbean. Freed Blacks who had rebelled against French troops trying to re-enslave them had lost their battle.

French general and ruler Napoleon Bonaparte-the subject of a new movie that will be released in theaters in November-had reneged on a promise he made that year: the reestablishment of slavery in French colonies would exclude Guadeloupe and other territories where Black people had been freed during the French Revolution. But economics superseded, and Bonaparte restored laws in Guadeloupe that were struck down when France had abolished slavery in 1794.

After eight years of freedom, Black Guadeloupeans were now back in bondage.

Black fighters as well as those of mixed race-known across the Caribbean as mulatto-quickly realized that the mighty expedition of French troops deployed under the command of Bonaparte's brother-in-law, Army General Charles Leclerc, weren't in Saint-Domingue just to restore order. Their purpose was to reinstate slavery, and reassert French control over the entire island after slave revolt leader Toussaint Louverture published an 1801 constitution proclaiming himself governor-general for life and codifying the abolishment of slavery.

Suddenly the resistance movement that began in 1791 with a series of slave rebellions on the island-though roiled by internal conflicts, shifting alliances, and the arrest and deportation of Louverture-was ignited. The events of 1802 would give birth to the world's first Black-led independent nation post colonialism: Haiti.

It also would forever seal a legacy for Bonaparte that remains a source of contention 200 years after his death.

"Napoleon reinstated slavery in 1802 and the French parliament, in 2001, declared by law that colonial slavery was a crime against humanity," says Georges Michel, a Haitian historian in Port-au-Prince. For Bonaparte's role in rolling back abolition, Michel sees the military leader as a man who was "a criminal against humanity."

He also sees an irony in the way in which the most famous Frenchman died. "The same way that Napoleon kidnapped Toussaint Louverture, and put him in captivity, he also finishes his life in captivity. He will have the same fate as Toussaint Louverture."

French studies professor Andrew Curran said that while Bonaparte has been widely written about, there is often an ellipsis in his narrative where the Haitian Revolution is missing.

"Part of it is the fact that the Haitian Revolution, and the loss of Saint-Domingue, really was such an enormously powerful and awful thing for the French. It's kind of their Vietnam," says Curran, who teaches at Wesleyan University and is the author of The Anatomy of Blackness: Science and Slavery in an Age of Enlightenment. "The fact that this enormous country was beaten resoundingly by people they thought were not at the level of people who should not have beaten them-there was an enormous amount of shame, which turned into the most violent racism."

Dueling legacies

Bonaparte died on May 5, 1821, in a damp and rat-infested house in St. Helena, a remote island in the middle of the South Atlantic, where he was living in exile. He was 51. (See a painting that captures Bonaparte's final moments.)

In 2021, bicentennial commemorations of his death opened old wounds. His dueling legacies of hero and tyrant serve as a reminder of France's dark colonial past, where the forced labor of enslaved Africans made it one of Europe's wealthiest nations.

While tributes were planned in the French overseas departments of Guadeloupe and Martinique, not everyone toasted the ex-emperor's complicated legacy.

In Haiti, there was no wreath laying or Catholic Mass held in his honor, as took place in St. Helena, nor were there reenactments of Bonaparte's adventures, like those seen on the Mediterranean island of Elba, where the bicentenary of his April 11, 1814 arrival in exile was celebrated with fanfare.

In death, as in life, Bonaparte is dividing opinion and arousing powerful sentiments about his ascent and fall from power, his contributions to France, and the legacy he left scattered across the Caribbean-particularly in Haiti, where his mark remains ingrained in a bloody history.

Enlightened leader or warmonger?

For admirers, Bonaparte is considered an enlightened autocrat and the architect of modern France. His creation of the state-run secondary schools known as the lycées-attended by many of the country's elite as part of his reform of the education system-remains a cornerstone of today. His legal contribution in the form of the Civil Code abolished feudal privileges, unified laws, and formed the basis of today's French civil law. He also organized France with his structured, centralized government.

A pragmatist, he both promoted science and reintroduced religion, putting Judaism, Protestantism, and Catholicism on the same footing-not because he was religious but because he saw it as politically necessary. In his heyday, he brought glory to France, and financial salvation after the messy French Revolution, whose universal values-"liberty, equality, fraternity"-are shared by many nations, including Haiti, which adopted it as the republic's official motto.

"Of course, Napoleon is glorious because of the military victories," says Peter Hicks, a British historian with the Fondation Napoléon in Paris. "It's not the way we think these days, perhaps. But at the time, he was hugely popular because of the immense success of the French army and the growing nature of the French army."

But with success came failings and human suffering. To detractors, he is a warmonger and despot who negotiated, manipulated, and politicized his way into singular power in a bloodless 1799 coup. The leader of France then amended the constitution three years later to appoint himself First Consul for Life.

Bonaparte is not associated with individual liberty, as exemplified by his reinstatement of slavery and conflict with Louverture, who declared that "All men are born, live, and die free" in his 1801 constitution.

Miffed not just by the language in the constitution but also by Louverture's self-imposed act to rule for life, Bonaparte later wrote in his memoirs that "Toussaint knew very well that in proclaiming his constitution, he had thrown away his mask and had drawn his sword out of its sheath forever."

Marlene Daut, associate professor of African Diaspora Studies at the University of Virginia, says that to point to positive contributions by Bonaparte "is to suggest that the people whose lives he destroyed actually don't matter."

The total number of civilian and military casualties attributed to Bonaparte varies, with French historian Hippolyte Taine estimating 1.7 million deaths and others putting the figure as low as 600,000. Daut says other estimates vary between three million and six million. It's one of the reasons she sees Bonaparte as an odd choice to hail as a hero.

The debate on Bonaparte's legacy comes amid deep soul-searching, which extends beyond the United States, about racism, discrimination, colonialism, and the enslavement of Black people.

In the French Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique, where commemoration events took place, some see the French government's bicentennial recognition as an affront-another example of a nation that prides itself as operating on a colorblind, egalitarian creed but acts with blinders on when it comes to slavery's legacy.

The French recognize that Bonaparte is problematic, Daut says, but aren't necessarily embracing a widespread reckoning. "To admit that Napoleon is racist, to them is to say something about French people and they cannot handle that," she says. "Even when they're willing to concede the facts of what he did-and they're not actually denying the facts-it makes them deeply, deeply uncomfortable, because what does that mean about all of the wealth that they have in their country. What does that mean about all of the prosperity? What does that mean about French identity? That it's built on the backs of murdering people, and not just people in Haiti."

Life in exile

Bonaparte's life in exile took a drastic turn.As a military leader, he carried out several successful campaigns during the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, crowned himself emperor, and survived dozens of assassination attempts. (Claiming the crown cost Napoleon a famous fan: Beethoven.)

But he ultimately fell out of favor and ended up banished-twice-first to Elba, then to St. Helena.

His first stint in exile comes in 1814 after a failed Russian invasion. European allies force his abdication and dispatch Bonaparte to Elba, where he rules over the 12,000 inhabitants of the tiny island off the Tuscan coast. He is promised money that never comes from a bankrupt France, and spends his 300 days there reforming Elba's government and economy, overseeing road construction and other projects.

Bonaparte, who claimed he wanted to live "like a justice of the peace," is free to move about. No one guards him, and no ships circle the island to keep him there. But the man who was used to leading armies and served as French emperor for a decade grows restless.

Gambling on the belief that the French army is still loyal to him, he flees back to his homeland, where a band of soldiers joins him in his quest to reconquer power. That endeavor lasts for a full hundred days.

"Europe cannot believe it, the world cannot believe it," says Hicks of the Fondation Napoléon. "The hundred days are extraordinary. People go, 'Wow, he did that?' And France doesn't react negatively. It doesn't react positively."

At the time of Bonaparte's escape from Elba in February 1815, Europe's leaders are meeting in what is known as the watershed Conference of Vienna to reorganize the region following his conquests. They are aware of his escapades, and on March 13, a week before his arrival in Paris, Bonaparte is declared an outlaw.

His arch enemy, the British, had unsuccessfully been trying to ban slavery. To annoy them, and to appear as a liberal ruler after he finally arrives in Paris, Bonaparte declares the abolition of slavery in France-for a second time. (It would take more than three decades for free Blacks in French territories to witness the full abolition of slavery. In 1848, France becomes the only country to abolish slavery three times, amid a struggle of economic and racist interests and human rights).

Viewing him as an obstacle to peace, the armies of Russia, Austria, and Britain unite one last time against Bonaparte in June and surround France. Over three days in the Battle of Waterloo, Bonaparte finally meets defeat. Unable to escape to America, he eventually surrenders to the British.

Bonaparte is exiled to St. Helena, Britain's windswept, rugged outpost off the coast of Africa- a penal colony in the middle of the South Atlantic where the closest land border is 1,200 miles away. Bonaparte spends his days tending to his garden and rewriting history in his memoirs.

When death arrives six years later, reportedly from stomach cancer, Bonaparte's body is encased in not one but four nested caskets-one made of tin that held his body, two crafted from mahogany, and another in lead. He is buried underneath a willow tree in a grave 10 feet down in the earth.

Fears of an outlash by Bonaparte loyalists and possible unrest in a politically fragile France would keep the Corsican-born leader in exile in death-19 years would pass before his remains return to France. When his body arrives, curious crowds line the streets to get a glimpse of the horse-drawn coffin. Bonaparte's remains are today at a monument in Les Invalides complex in Paris.

Legacy of a slave revolt

While the restoration of bondage in Guadeloupe in 1802 became a turning point in the Haitian Revolution, so too did the capture of its leader, Louverture, who died a lonely death in a cold French prison.

As a French colony, Saint-Domingue had the Caribbean's largest enslaved population, with many subjected to brutal beatings and other acts of violence. There were also people of mixed race and free Blacks who, while not enslaved, were subjected to a rigid caste system and denied citizenship by the island's white leaders. The turmoil was exacerbated by the French Revolution, and in 1793, to quell conflict, France ended slavery in the colony. The following year it was abolished in all French territories.

The idea of having Saint-Domingue return to a colony where Black people were once again enslaved, and those of mixed ancestry subject to a caste system-as in Guadeloupe and Martinique, which had just returned to the French fold from the British-was unthinkable.

"Napoleon's mission, with the deployment of Leclerc, was to return Saint-Domingue to what it was before 1794, before the revolution started," says Pierre Buteau, a Haitian historian and author. "They concluded that the only way for them to establish control in Saint-Domingue, they had to eliminate all of the big leaders of the revolution."

But the leaders were not the only target. In a letter to Bonaparte, Leclerc writes that the abolition movement is so strong that reasserting power in Saint-Domingue would require a drastic move: eliminating all of the adult Black population, including children over the age of 12.

"A war of extermination was going to take place, but this war of extermination is what will lead to the Battle of Vertières," Buteau says of the last major battle of the revolution, which led to France being kicked out of the island.

The repression gets brutal. Leclerc and his second-in-command, General Donatien-Marie-Joseph Rochambeau, unleash vicious man-eating dogs, drown Black people at sea, and parade the heads of rebellious individuals as a warning.

"Most of the famous images from the Haitian Revolution from the 18th and 19th century show Black people with white people's heads," Daut says. "That's rich, because actually it was the other way around."

"They got the examples from the white colonists because that is exactly what they would always do," she continues. "Any free person who agitated for rights, complained about prejudices, they would cut off their heads, stick it on pikes, and paraded around the town, literally."

Some scholars argue that the Haitian Revolution, which remains the only successful slave revolt in history, should not be considered among Bonaparte's defeats because he wasn't there, and his expeditionary army was led by generals.

Others say it is overdue for predominantly white countries like France and Britain, which had a history of enslaving people, to tell a fuller narrative of their empires.

Bonaparte deployed more than 60,000 soldiers to the island-and still lost. The revolt also halted his expansion plans west into the United States, thereby leading to the Louisiana Purchase. And it cost France the main crown jewel in an empire that stretched into Africa and the Caribbean.

Jacqueline Charles is the Haiti correspondent for the Miami Herald. She was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for her coverage of the 2010 Haiti earthquake and was honored with the Maria Moors Cabot Prize in 2018 for stories from across the Americas.

Born in Milan, Sergio Ramazzotti has written and photographed stories for some of the leading magazines around the world with a special interest in covering wars and humanitarian crises. He worked with Ornella D'Alessio on this story.

Editor's note: This story originally published on May 4, 2021. It has been updated.

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Was Napoleon Bonaparte an enlightened leader or tyrant?

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More than 200 years after Bonaparte's death, history-and a new movie-fuel debate about his legacy, France's colonial past, and the leader's ties to Haiti.

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Creation of the Bank of France by Napoleon Bonaparte

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Creation of the Bank of France by Napoleon Bonaparte

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The XVIIIth century was not beneficial to paper money. Scalded by the financial scandal of John Law (1671 - 1729) in 1720, the French had plenty of time to confirm their aversion to printed money when they were fooled a second time with brandishing revolutionary assignats that were nothing else than a lightning and spectacular inflation. Some, however, got rich. Among them, the Swiss financier Jean-Frédéric Perregaux (1744 - 1808). Precisely preceding the perpetual neutrality that will later make the pride of his native Switzerland, our Helvetian, who, before the Revolution, mixed with the world's most popular aristocratic circles, was careful not to display too clearly his political opinions during the brutal change of regime. He preferred, as many at that time, to adapt them to the necessities of the moment. It was certainly the right move since the members of the nobility - fiercely attached to their heads - were quick to flee abroad taking care to carry with them a considerable part of the metal currency of the late Kingdom of France. A financial crisis hit the people, who - having nothing to fear for their own head - had everything to fear for their finances. In an extremely unfavorable economic climate, bankruptcies were numerous and internal trade paralyzed. The Directory was unable to remedy the problem in a sustainable way and it was not until the Brumaire coup (November 9-10th, 1799) to see the emergence of hope for a government stability essential to an economic recovery of the country. It was then that our dashing Swiss banker approached Bonaparte, the context and Napoleon smiling at him in concert.

Perregaux and a few banker friends (Le Couteulx, Mallet and Perier) first obtained the right to print bank notes for their own establishment named Caisse des Comptes Courants . They aim to collect the savings then hoarded by individuals and increase the amount of money in circulation. The Banque de France was created on 18th January 1800 by decree and quickly absorbed the Caisse des Comptes Courants . The very young Banque de France settled in the Hôtel de Toulouse, rue de la Vrillière in Paris, of course.

The first Consul wanted to be cautious and wanted to guarantee the stability and reliability of this new institution. The first issues of notes were thus guaranteed to find their equivalent in quantity of gold of the same value to any person who wished it. To proceed to the exchange, one should simply go to the Rue de la Vrillière. It was all about the reputation of the bank and its future, the first Consul was perfectly aware. The French, who enjoyed nothing less than being fooled three times in a row, were at first extremely suspicious. Then little by little, confidence returned. It must be said that Bonaparte's personal, hard-hitting and irresistible involvement had something to do with this success. He placed some of his own funds in trust with the Bank and persuaded his family and relatives to do the same. The transaction, together with the capital contributed by wealthy shareholders, provided the institution with considerable capital, which was necessary to establish its essential importance. Soon, the Bank of France was the only bank authorized to issue monetary values ​​hence its name "central bank".

The main clients of the bank were ordinary banks, whose business was to lend money to individuals and businesses. The principle was therefore based on the promise of repayment made by the borrower to his banker, a promise referred to as a "bill of exchange". At the same time, ordinary banks needed money to lend to new customers. They needed to have sufficient financial reserves to act without waiting for borrower clients to repay their debts. Ordinary banks turned to the Banque de France and bought him notes in exchange for the bills of exchange they had at their disposal. Naturally, the amount of money increased in the country and allowed to revive commerce and industry. In turn, the latter made profits that were inevitably taxed. Finally, the increasing value of taxes levied by the state allowed the country to get rich and the First Consul to finance his army (and not his campaigns).

The first notes issued by the Bank of France were of such value that they were not accessible to all. The 500-franc notes represented a little more than a year's salary for a worker, and that of 1000 was equivalent to double the work, naturally. Not being convertible into gold elsewhere than in Paris, the notes further restricted the circle of lovers of bundles. These notes occupied so well the only high Parisian business that they had confused any merchant if a citizen would have the idea to give one of these papers to pay for a chicken (not far from becoming Marengo).

On the other hand, the memory of John Law and the revolutionary assignats remained tenacious, and the French countryside still preferred metallic values ​​for their trade. The Revolution, by a law of August 15th, 1795 had already decided to replace the livre tournois by the "franc d'argent" but its will alone was not enough. Indeed, the fiery and first Republic had that in common with Josephine de Beauharnais (1763 - 1814) at the same time that no one had enough money - metal for one, ready for the other - to satisfy their needs. It was thus necessary to wait for the 7th germinal year XI (March 28th, 1803) to see reappear this franc which borrowed at its date of creation the name under which it will exercise until 1928 namely, the franc "germinal".

The first two banknotes put into circulation by the Banque de France represented considerable sums. From then on, everything had to be done to prevent as much as possible the appearance of false. The paper was first produced at the stationery of Buges in Loiret but it was quickly preferred that of the paper mill of the Marais at Jouy-sur-Morin. The addition of a watermark between the two sheets of paper constituting each note was one of the first security provisions. Then came the quality of the drawing for which Charles Percier (1764 - 1838) was called upon. This neoclassical architect who had distinguished himself in his achievements for financiers working alongside the First Consul was not long to be warmly recommended to the latter who praised his talents for a long time. The engraving of the matrix was entrusted to Jean-Bertrand Andrieu (1761 - 1822) who took as a support a steel plate to guarantee an inking always equal. Finally, the engraving typography returned to Firmin Didot (1764 - 1836) whose name is still well known today by lovers of prints and old editions. A stub was added, a dry stamp (embossing the paper obtained with a press) and a wet stamp (a technique for printing simultaneously on the front and back).

As for the symbolism of the chosen motifs, we find the strong influence of the Roman Empire (tinged with the neoclassical taste born from the excavations of Herculaneum and Pompeii in the XVIIIth century). Compass and square evoke the tools of the builders using geometry and architecture, while the rooster emblem of France rubs shoulders with the scale of Justice. The divinities represented are those that the great estates considered as constituting a strong state in the XIXth century: Vulcan for industry, Apollo for the arts, Ceres for agriculture and Poseidon for the colonial empire.

Metal coins are subject to the same concerns, both security and symbolism. The Republican motifs were replaced at the obverse of the pieces by Bonaparte's bare-headed profile - whose engraver, General Pierre-Joseph Tiolier (1763 - 1819) painted the portrait - accompanied by a legend "Bonaparte First Consul". The reverse was an olive crown, the face value of the coin and the legend "French Republic". Of course, an imperial proclamation will be enough for the motives of coins and notes to be changed once more.

The creation of the Banque de France had a decisive impact on the country's economy and its imperial expansion (although it did not finance them, the Emperor always defended it). Paper money improved, gaining security and discouraging counterfeiters. However, in 1959, the Bank of France issued a 100 franc note of Napoleon. This note made famous the forger Czesław Jan Bojarski (1912 - 2003) who made a specialty of the falsification of these "Bonaparte notes". His mastery in this field is still unchallenged and unmatched. These fakes are now rare and expensive collectibles. An irony of history that certainly did not escape the Emperor if he had been alive to appreciate it.

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Creation of the Bank of France by Napoleon Bonaparte - Napoléon Cologne le Blog

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In this very young XIXth century, the moribund economy post Revolution urged the First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte to create the Bank of France...

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How Napoleon Financed His Wars: From Plunder to Prosperity

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How Napoleon Financed His Wars: From Plunder to Prosperity

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How Napoleon Financed His Wars: From Plunder to Prosperity

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The Waterloo Association is an historical society for those interested in the Battle of Waterloo and the Peninsular Campaigns of the Duke of Wellington.

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Napoleonic Code (French Civil Code) - 64 Parishes

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The French Civil Code of 1804 standardized civil law in France, becoming a model legal framework for jurisdictions around the world, including Louisiana.

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The Napoleonic Code: Property, Succession, and Gender

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The Napoleonic Code: Property, Succession, and Gender

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21 January 1793 - Louis XVI is executed

Having been convicted of high treason, Louis XVI is beheaded by guillotine in what is now Place de la Concorde, Paris. The execution sparks outrage among the monarchies of Europe.

1 June 1794 - Britain's 'Glorious First of June'

With Britain now part of the coalition of powers fighting France, a fleet led by Admiral Lord Howe attacks 26 French warships sent to escort an American grain convoy into Brest. The vital convoy does reach France, but superior British gunnery costs the French seven warships (six captured and one sunk) and 5,000 casualties.

14 February 1797 - Spain is defeated at Cape St Vincent

With Spain now allied to the French Republic, Britain's Admiral Sir John Jervis (pictured below) and 15 warships attack a Spanish fleet of 27 off southern Portugal. Thanks to a melee created by the then-commodore Horatio Nelson, British captains win several individual ship encounters. Their superior rate of fire has a deadly effect and four Spanish ships are captured.

21 July 1798 - Battle of the Pyramids

A young general, Napoleon Bonaparte, leads an invasion of Ottoman-ruled Egypt in an effort to defend French trade interests and weaken Britain's access to India. At the so-called battle of the Pyramids, he repels the Mamluk cavalry to seize Lower Egypt.

9-10 November 1799 - Napoleon seizes power

Having made his name in Italy and Egypt, Napoleon returns to France to find the government under pressure after setbacks in the War of the Second Coalition (led by Britain, Austria and Russia). He mounts a bloodless coup and becomes first consul of France, eventually crowning himself emperor in 1804.

14 June 1800 - A decisive moment at Marengo

Napoleon's opening campaign as first consul is an invasion of northern Italy, beginning with a crossing of the Great St Bernard Pass. At Marengo, he finds the Austrians a formidable rival, and his enforced retreat for much of the battle is only reversed following a successful counter-attack by French reinforcements. A quarter of the French army become casualties. The Austrians ask for an armistice.

27 March 1802 - The Peace of Amiens

Britain, Spain and the Batavian Republic (the Netherlands) agree a peace treaty with France in the city of Amiens, marking the end of the War of the Second Coalition and the French Revolutionary Wars as a whole. The French signatory is Napoleon's older brother, Joseph Bonaparte.

20 October 1805 - The French leader shows his brilliance at Ulm

Attacking the Austrians in the War of the Third Coalition, Napoleon moves his Grande Armée (a 'Great Army', comprising troops from the Armée d'Angleterre) by rapid marches that outmanoeuvre part of the Austrian army based at Ulm. In the face of his brilliant strategic campaign the enemy surrenders (although Austria remains in the war), opening the way for the overrunning of southern Germany.

Vice Admiral Lord Nelson intercepts a Franco-Spanish fleet off Cape Trafalgar near Cádiz. The British attack in two divisions, splitting the opponents into groups. The battle of Trafalgar then becomes a series of small struggles between individual ships or groups in which British gunnery and seamanship prevails, albeit at the cost of heavy casualties - including Nelson himself. Meanwhile, Napoleon's planned invasion of Britain has failed to materialise.

2 December 1805 - Battle of Austerlitz

In perhaps his greatest ever victory, Napoleon defeats a larger Russian and Austrian army near the town of Austerlitz (now in the Czech Republic). Around 16,000 Austrian and Russian troops are killed or wounded, with 11,000 taken prisoner. The defeat leads Francis I of Austria to accepta harsh peace two days later.

14 October 1806 - Prussian resistance is crushed

Frederick William III of Prussia joins Russia as part of the Fourth Coalition, but Napoleon attacks before Russian reinforcements can arrive. At the twin battles of Jena and Auerstädt in Saxony, the poorly-commanded Prussian forces are defeated. Napoleon crushes what he thinks is the main body of the Prussian army at Jena, but it is actually at Auerstädt, where it is expertly defeated by Marshal Louis-Nicolas Davout.

7-8 February 1807 - Napoleon struggles at Eylau

Moving east, Napoleon finds the Russians to be tough opponents. At Eylau in East Prussia, repeated French attacks fail to break the Russians, who withdraw during the night. French casualties are heavy and, although Napoleon gains possession of the battlefield and Russian losses are heavier, he wins neither tactically nor strategically.

14 June 1807 - Battle of Friedland

Russia, with an inferior force and their backs to a river, attacks the French at Friedland. The plan fails and leads to heavy losses. It leaves the Russians so
battered that they need time to rebuild their army. The subsequent Treaties of Tilsit on 7 and 9 July bring about an uneasy peace.

5 May 1808 - The costly Peninsular War begins

After Portugal refuses to adopt Napoleon's Continental System (blocking it from trading with Britain), he invades the country via Spain, causing the royal family to flee. He then occupies Madrid, sparking a mass uprising, before overthrowing the Spanish monarchy on 5 May 1808. The Peninsular War ensues, with Anglo-Portuguese troops securing early victories against the French at Roliça and Vimeiro in August.

21-22 May 1809 - Napoleon faces a challenge by the Danube

Austria resumes conflict with France in 1809 as part of the Fifth Coalition. The first major battle, fought at Aspern and Essling near Vienna, reflects little credit on Napoleon, whose bold attack on a superior Austrian force is repelled, before a serious Austrian assault leaves the French isolated on the north bank of the Danube. The French army is not destroyed, but Napoleon abandons the battlefield.

5-6 July 1809 - The French counter-attack at Wagram

After failure at Aspern-Essling, Napoleon counter-attacks north of Vienna at Wagram. He drives Archduke Charles from the field, helped by a successful flank manoeuvre, but the Austrian army is not routed. Both sides use artillery to great effect. Wagram is followed by peace with Austria on French terms.

24-25 June 1812 - France invades Russia

Napoleon seeks to deal with the crisis in his relations with Russia by striking at the centre of its power, and with an army so large that it will guarantee victory. More than 600,000 French and allied troops cross the Niemen river and invade Russian territory without resistance, denying Napoleon the decisive battle he had initially sought.

7 September 1812 -A deadly day at Borodino

The Russians attempt to stop Napoleon's advance on Moscow at Borodino, a battle involving around 250,000 men and in excess of 1,100 cannon. The battle lasts all day with total casualties of some 77,000. The Russians resist French attacks and are driven back without breaking. Napoleon refuses to commit his Imperial Guard, which might have been decisive. The Russians abandon the battlefield at night. Despite heavier Russian casualties, it is Napoleon's losses - about a quarter of his army - that are crucial.

14 September 1812 - Napoleon enters Moscow

After the battle of Borodino, the road to Moscow is left open. Napoleon enters an undefended city on 14 September, only to find it set ablaze that night. Alexander I refuses to negotiate and Napoleon's supply situation deteriorates, forcing him to abandon Moscow on 19 October. Heavy snowfalls turn the retreat into a nightmare and thousands of troops die. Meanwhile, the costly Peninsular War in Spain and Portugal continues to drain Napoleon's resources even further.

26-27 August 1813 - Battle of Dresden

In 1813, Prussia, Austria and Sweden join Russia in the fight against a now-outnumbered Napoleon as part of the Sixth Coalition. They plan to avoid direct battle with him and only attack forces led by his subordinates. However, Frederick William III of Prussia insists on fighting the French emperor, and an army commanded by Prince Schwarzenberg is beaten by Napoleon at Dresden.

16-19 October 1813 - Severe losses at Leipzig

At the battle of the Nations at Leipzig, Napoleon is heavily outnumbered by converging Allied forces. Unable to defeat his opponents, whom he nevertheless holds off, he decides to retreat. In total, the French lose around 68,000 men.

6 April 1814 - Napoleon abdicates

In early 1814, Napoleon, with some success, attacks the Austro-Prussian-Russian forces that invade eastern France, manoeuvring with skill to destroy the most exposed units. Their superior numbers tell, however, and the coalition troops march into Paris. A provisional government deposes Napoleon and he formally abdicates on 6 April. Unaware of the news, Britain's Arthur Wellesley captures Toulouse a few days later, having invaded France via the Pyrenees.

1 March 1815 - An unexpected return

Napoleon escapes from exile on the Mediterranean island of Elba with a small flotilla and about 1,100 troops. He comes ashore near Antibes, southern France, on 1 March where the garrison surrenders. The army of the new French king, Louis XVIII, proves unwilling to mount effective opposition, and on 20 March, Napoleon enters Paris to reclaim power. Louis has already fled the city.

9 June 1815 - The Congress of Vienna ends

Following months of negotiations in Vienna, ambassadors from several major powers (including Austria, Britain, Prussia and Russia) sign an act that redistributes a number of European territories. The objective is to create long-term peace by settling issues arising from both the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars.

15 June 1815 - The Waterloo campaign begins

As coalition forces prepare to mount an invasion of France, Napoleon decides the best way of breaking it down is to attack the powers individually. In what is now Belgium, he plans a concentration of troops south of the Prussian and British-led armies, with the intention of following it with a rapid advance designed to defeat them separately before advancing on Brussels.

16 June 1815 - A futile French victory at Ligny

The French defeat the Prussians at Ligny but Napoleon can't outflank them as he had hoped. He instead has to rely on costly frontal attacks that drive the Prussians back without breaking them. French losses ensure Napoleon has a smaller margin of manpower for subsequent operations. To the northwest, the French are less successful against a British-led allied force at Quatre Bras.

18 June 1815 - Wellington's triumph

Napoleon's hopes are crushed during the battle of Waterloo as a result of a defensive engagement with the British-led army under Arthur Wellesley (now Duke of Wellington), joined later in the day by the Prussian army, which moves to their support. Napoleon's lack of operational and tactical imagination plays a major part in his defeat.

15 July 1815 - Final surrender

Facing rising opposition and an erosion of support, Napoleon's regime collapses. Having abdicated in favour of his son on 22 June, he plans to go to America, but a British naval blockade makes it impossible. Feeling he will get better treatment from Britain than other foes, he boards HMS Bellerophon on 15 July. He is sent to the island of St Helena, in the distant south Atlantic, where he is imprisoned until his death on 5 May 1821.

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Napoleonic Wars timeline: the key dates you need to know

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Jeremy Black charts Napoleon's rise to power in Revolutionary France and the dramatic chain of events leading up to his final defeat at Waterloo

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Napoleon contrives a military coup that ends the Directory and gives him sweeping powers as First Consul

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The First French Empire under Napoleon I, 1812

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The First French Empire under Napoleon I, 1812

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Early in 1801 the British war against France under Napoleon as First Consul was not going well and the country was sick of it. When the Younger Pitt's government fell in February, the new premier was Henry Addington, who was bent on peace and an end to entanglements on the Continent.

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Afterwards, Napoleon and his wife Josephine emerged from Notre-Dame to a mixed reception from the crowds lining the streets for the procession. Whatever his military achievements, Napoleon was far from popular with the ordinary people of Paris.

They enjoyed the spectacle of the coronation - all the fireworks and illuminations - but they had little real enthusiasm for Napoleon himself, as he sourly noted. If anything, they preferred his wife.

It was a critical time for Napoleon. He had been declared emperor in May as a "sure means of establishing peace and quiet in France". Despite the horrors of the French Revolution, the country was still monarchist at heart and had grown weary of the constant plots against its head of state.

By making Napoleon emperor and guaranteeing the succession to his heirs, the French were hoping to put an end to the attempts on his life and secure the continuity and stability of the new regime. But there were still plenty of people in France who preferred a return of the Bourbons to the promotion of this Corsican upstart.

The flames of discontent were vigorously fanned by the British, who saw Napoleon as a threat to world order. Convinced that he was using the Peace of Amiens as a breathing space in his quest for domination of Europe, the British had declared war again in May 1803, before Napoleon could complete the build-up of his armed forces. Their aim now was to topple him by any legitimate means possible.

They baulked at assassinating a foreign head of state, but were quite happy to finance Napoleon's overthrow by his own people, if it could be arranged. Large supplies of gold coin were stored at Walmer Castle, Kent, for the purpose. The money was shipped across to France at night, along with a constant stream of spies and agents provocateurs seeking to bring an end to Napoleon's rule.

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The traffic was so intense that Talleyrand, the French foreign minister, had lodged a formal protest, accusing the British of interfering in France's internal affairs. The British had huffed and puffed, but had been unable to deny this diplomatic faux pas. "It is an acknowledged Right of Belligerent Powers to avail themselves of any discontents existing in the countries with which they happen to be at war," they had claimed in response.

The French in turn had decided that the quickest way to end the war was to invade Britain before the British could effect an alliance with Russia and Austria. Once the British had been subdued, there would be no alliance and Napoleon would be free to concentrate on his ambitions in Italy, Egypt, Turkey and northern Europe. He coveted Britain's imperial possessions as well - the sugar islands of the West Indies and the seemingly bottomless resources of India. His aim was for France to supplant Britain as the richest and most powerful trading nation on Earth, with himself at the country's head.

He saw himself as another Charlemagne, moulding all of western Europe into a new Frankish empire. There would be little to stop him, once the British were out of the way.

Napoleon's Grand Army

Napoleon began to assemble his invasion force immediately after the resumption of the war in 1803. Later to be renamed the Grand Army, it was known initially as the Army of England and at its peak numbered perhaps 167,000 men - an astonishing figure in the days when the logistics of maintaining a large force were far more formidable than now. Most were housed in camps specially built along the cliff tops between Calais and Boulogne, with a perfect view of England in clear weather.

The troops looking across the Channel were the elite of the French army, carefully selected for the task ahead. Almost all the officers had seen active service in Italy, Egypt and other campaigns. So had more than half the men. With commanders as distinguished as Ney, Soult and Davout, there had never been an army like it in modern times.

"I do not believe," wrote one of their junior officers, "that there existed at any period, nor in any country, such an excellent military school as there was at the Boulogne camp. The general who had command of it, the generals under his orders, and the troops which it comprised were all drafted from the pick of the French army, and the greatest general that had ever appeared, Napoleon Bonaparte, used to come himself frequently to inspect those old troops and the young fighting men who were being formed under those excellent models".

The new emperor knew exactly what he would do when his men had captured London. Napoleon claimed: "With God's help I will put an end to the future and very existence of England."

King George would be overthrown and a republic proclaimed, with liberty, equality and fraternity for all. The nobility would be abolished and their lands and fine houses would be confiscated.

The House of Lords would be abolished as well. The House of Commons would be allowed to remain, but only after major reform. There would be democracy for all and a redistribution of property in favour of the ordinary working man. A proclamation was to be issued, announcing that the French came as friends, to restore popular government and liberate common people from a corrupt aristocracy.

Before any of that could be done however, Napoleon had to get his troops across the Channel. They practised the invasion repeatedly on nearby beaches, storming ashore from their landing craft to seize the cliffs of Boulogne. Sometimes they came ashore under gunfire from their own batteries, to give them a taste of what the real thing would be like.

For the younger soldiers, these live-firing exercises were often all too realistic: "During a practice attack, I sniffed the scent of powder for the first time and received my baptism of fire. I hate to admit it, but I was really frightened! The terrible reality of danger, the brutality of cannon balls, bullets flying, corpses lying around would make any recruit's heart beat faster. But we soon got used to it. A searching look from the veterans, a scornful smile, above all the fear of ridicule, banished all nervousness and we ended up encouraging danger".

Britain will be mine, all mine

Napoleon oversaw the training from a wooden pavilion that had been built for him at Boulogne, on the cliff next to the telegraph station. The pavilion contained a four foot telescope on a mahogany tripod, pointing towards Dover. On clear days, Napoleon liked to look across the sea to the castle, muttering to himself that England would be his with a few hours of calm weather.

It was in the pavilion that his admirals tried to explain the difficulties of the invasion to him. Napoleon had assembled a flotilla of more than 2,000 vessels for the crossing, but they were crammed so tight into the Channel ports that it would be impossible to launch them all on one tide. It would need several days of calm weather to get all the ships to sea, by which time the Royal Navy would certainly have launched a counter-attack. There were sandbanks to negotiate as well, and treacherous currents off the English coast. The flotilla's flat-bottomed barges were ideal for running troops ashore, but highly unsafe for a Channel crossing. They would be swamped in even the lightest of swells, and thousands would drown. The whole operation was fraught with difficulties that Napoleon, a soldier rather than a sailor, had not properly considered when he drew up his plans.

But he was determined to invade, whatever the problems might be. He would not have a free hand in the rest of Europe until the British had been eliminated. The British knew it and stepped up their espionage as Napoleon's activities gathered pace. In June 1804 alone, eight smartly dressed Englishmen had been captured at Boulogne, carrying incendiary devices to set fire to the flotilla. They were shot within the hour.

The men were followed by another Englishman who was searched in front of Napoleon himself and found to have a map sewn into his clothes. The map showed all the latest Boulogne fortifications, including Napoleon's pavilion on the cliff. "All right," the man admitted, as the French ripped the lining of his waistcoat. "The game's up. There's 20 guineas gone."

Boldest of all was the beautiful English blonde who presented herself to Napoleon's staff one day, insisting that she had a message for the emperor's ears alone. She was almost certainly a spy, hoping to get secrets out of him in bed, but Napoleon saw her anyway, granting her an audience in his pavilion. He fended off her advances and sent her away empty-handed.

With the flotilla assembled and the army ready to go, the only remaining obstacle to the invasion was the Royal Navy, which maintained a constant blockade of the Channel ports.

In spring 1805, Napoleon devised a plan to lure the navy away by sending Admiral Villeneuve and a large Franco-Spanish fleet to attack British interests in the West Indies. He reasoned that the Royal Navy would have to abandon its blockade and follow, rather than see Britain's sugar islands captured by the French.

He himself added to the deception by embarking on a tour of Italy to lull the British into a false sense of security. He returned secretly in July and headed back to Boulogne on 3 August to launch the invasion - only to discover the Royal Navy blockade still in place.

Undaunted, Napoleon pinned his hopes on Villeneuve's return from the West Indies. At 3am on 21 August, apparently under the impression that Villeneuve's fleet would appear with the dawn to protect his flotilla from the Royal Navy, Napoleon gave the order for the invasion to proceed.

His step-daughter Hortense was at a military ball when word came for officers to rejoin their units at once and embark the landing craft. She followed as they galloped through the night to Boulogne. "I myself felt overcome with an inexpressible emotion at the idea that such a momentous event was happening before my eyes. I already imagined that I was witnessing the naval battle and seeing our vessels plunge into the watery deep. I trembled at the thought."

In the event though, Villeneuve's ships did not appear at dawn and Napoleon cancelled the invasion, declaring that it had all just been a training exercise. His troops were outraged as they disembarked and trudged back to camp. Many had sold their watches so as to have spending money in London.

Fortune smiles on Britain

A few days later, Napoleon paraded his troops again and gave them some astonishing news. Alarmed at Napoleon's annexation of territory during his Italian tour, and funded with English gold, the Austrians had declared war on France. They had invaded Bavaria, where they intended to link up with the Russian army and attack France across the Rhine.

Napoleon responded at once. Leaving 25,000 troops behind to keep the English guessing, he ordered the rest to march to the Rhine immediately. The Grand Army left within hours, hurrying across France at breakneck speed. They took the Austrians by surprise, defeating them first at Ulm, then decisively at the battle of Austerlitz. Napoleon had intended to double back thereafter and renew his attack on Britain, but Villeneuve's fleet had ceased to exist by then, destroyed at the battle of Trafalgar. Britain was safe from invasion, but Napoleon reigned supreme in Europe. The war dragged on for another ten years.

Napoleon's planned invasion of Britain: how the threat fizzled out

27 March 1802 | Unable to defeat each other after nine years of war, Britain and France agree an uneasy peace in the Treaty of Amiens

17 May 1803 | France continues to annex territory. Britain declares war again before the French complete their naval expansion

May 1804 | Pitt succeeds Addington as Britain's prime minister and turns his attention to Napoleon's gathering invasion forces

5 October 1804 | Spanish ships with bullion for Napoleon are waylaid by the Royal Navy with great loss of life; Spain declares war in December

2 December 1804 | Napoleon crowns himself at Notre Dame while the Pope looks on. Governments all across Europe are horrified

29 March 1805 | Admiral Villeneuve's fleet leaves Toulon for the West Indies, hoping to lure the Royal Navy away from its defence of the English Channel

April 1805 | Napoleon begins a tour of north Italy, planning to lull the British into a false sense of security before returning secretly to Boulogne to launch an invasion

May 1805 | Napoleon annexes more Italian territory, forcing Russia and Austria into a military alliance with Britain as the only way to stop him

22 July 1805 | Villeneuve's Franco-Spanish fleet returns from the West Indies, aiming for Boulogne. Intercepted by the Royal Navy, it retreats to Cadiz instead

August-December 1805 | Napoleon speeds his army across France as the Austrians invade Bavaria to attack France while the Grand Army is in Boulogne. The Austrians are routed at Austerlitz

21 October 1805 | Lord Nelson attacks Villeneuve's fleet off Cape Trafalgar, south of Cadiz. Twenty enemy ships are destroyed. The remainder never fight again
Nicholas Best is an author and former literary critic for the Financial Times. His books include Trafalgar: The Untold Story of the Greatest Sea Battle in History
This article was first published in the December 2004 issue of BBC History Magazine

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Napoleon's planned invasion of England: what went wrong?

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On 2 December 1804, Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned Emperor of France, and his imperial ambitions extended to the islands across the Channel. Nicholas Best explains how Napoleon intended to invade Britain, and what Britain planned to do to stop him.

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THE BATTLE OF AUSTERLITZ AND THE PRINCIPLES OF WAR

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THE BATTLE OF AUSTERLITZ AND THE PRINCIPLES OF WAR

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Le Maréchal Davoust (Prince d'Eckmuhl). Engraved by Mauduison, ca. 1830.

The Battle of Austerlitz and the Principles of War

Marshal Soult will give orders for three divisions to take places beyond the ravine at seven o'clock in the morning, in such a manner as to be prepared to commence operations of the day, which is to be a march to the front by echelon, the right wing in advance. Marshal Soult himself, report to the Emperor at his Headquarters at seven-thirty in the morning.( 1)

The Battle of Austerlitz is one of the greatest and most-studied battles of history. But great battles are made up of small ones. This paper is an attempt to illustrate the eight Principles of War, as developed and taught today by the United States Army, through the study of one such small one.

The Principle of Simplicity (Clear, uncomplicated plans and clear, concise orders to insure understanding.)

( 2) Marshal Soult reported as ordered to the Emperor at his headquarters on Zuran Hill. There, he met the other commanders - Marshal JeanBaptiste Bernadotte commanding the 1st Corps; Marshal Louis-Nicolas Davout commanding the 3rd; Marshal Jean Lannes, the 4th; Joachim Murat, the Cavalry; Marshal Jean-Baptiste Bessieres, The Guard; and Marshal Berthiér, the Chief of Staff.( 3) At this morning meeting, Napoleon made some adjustments to the plan he had worked out the previous night, the most significant of which affected Soult's 4th Corps. Soult's 3rd Division commanded had been skirmishing that night along the lower Goldbach and was already engaged with the enemy. This morning, Napoleon confirmed Soult's deployment of Legrand's division along the lower Goldbach, and instructed him to make the initial attack using only his 1st and 2nd Divisions, commanded by General Saint-Hilaire and General Vandamme respectively. Soult had moved these troops across the Goldbach earlier that morning in accordance with Berthiér's orders of the previous evening.( 4)

As the other Marshals received their orders, saluted and departed, Napoleon held Soult. A report had arrived that the Allied troops had left the heights of Pratzen undefended. According to General Thiébault ( 5), Napoleon asked Soult: "How long do your troops need to get to the top of the Pratzen?" Soult is said to have replied that he required no more than twenty minutes ( 6). Napoleon replied: "Very well. We'll wait another quarter of an hour." Fifteen minutes later, he said: "Go." Soult returned to the flats east of the Goldbach, where the morning mist and the smoke of campfires still hid Saint-Hilaire's and Vandamme's divisions.

Napoleon's plan was to permit the Allied Army, some 86,000 Russian and Austrian troops serving under their own monarchs, Alexander I and Francis II, to attempt to flank him on the right. Then, while Davout's 3rd Corps which had begun arriving on the right held them, Napoleon would in turn attack the Allies' right and rear with most of his army. The key to the battlefield was the Pratzen heights, the high ground above the village of Pratze (Prace in Czech) - a roughly five-kilometer ridge that runs southeast from Stare Vignohrady ("Old Vineyards") (290 meters altitude) through a saddle above the village to Pratzenberg (Pratze Hill) (325 meters). This high ground separated the area south of the Brunn-Austerlitz road, which was to be Napoleon's main axis of attack, from the villages of Augezd, Tellnitz, and Sokolnitz, which marked the Allies' intended route.

Much of the Allied army, operating under a plan proposed by Major General Franz von Weyrother, the Austrian Chief of Staff, had camped on and to the east of the Pratzen Heights on the night of 1-2 December. Organized in four roughly corpssize columns under the overall command of Russian General Mikhail Kutuzov, they had begun moving during the night. By 0800 the last of first three columns had cleared the Pratzeberg and was beginning to descend towards Tellnitz in the lower Goldbach valley some two miles south of General Saint-Hilaire's Division.

Soult's second division under General Vandamme was on the left, massed in front of the village of Jirzikowsitz. Its mission was to clear the northeastern edge of the Pratzen Heights and maintain contact with Bernadotte's 1st Corps on its left. General Saint-Hilaire's Division - 6,800 strong - was drawn up along a three-kilometer front east of the villages of Puntowiz and Kobelnitz. Its mission was to clear the Pratzen Heights and serve as a pivot for the Army.

General Saint-Hilaire's division was organized into an advanced guard ( 7) and two brigades. The Advanced Guard, commanded by Général de Brigade Charles Morand, was composed of a single, two-battalion regiment, the 10th Léger (1,500 men) under Colonel Pierre Pouzet. The 1st Brigade was commanded by Général de Brigade Paul Thiébault, an officer more noted for his staff work for Marshal André Massena than for his command experience. It was composed of the 14th (1700) and 36th (1700) Lignes. Each regiment had two battalions in the field. The 2nd Brigade (3,500), commanded by Général de Brigade Louis Varé, was composed of the 43rd and 55th Lignes.

The Principle of the Objective (Direct every military operation towards a clearly defined, decisive, and attainable, objective.)

8). At this time, a French battalion consisted of nine companies each with an actual strength of approximately 80-90 men. One company was organized as an elite ( voltigeur)( 9) company for skirmishing, while the others were grouped into two-company divisions ( 10). The usual maneuver formation in battle was a closed battalion column of divisions, each division in three ranks one pace apart; each division three paces behind the other. This resulted in a block of men approximately fifty by twenty-five meters, with a front of about 50 men ( 11). In a regimental column, the leading battalion would be followed by the second at a distance of approximately 50 meters. Apparently, Saint-Hilarie and Thiébault modified Napoleon's order-of-battle instructions slightly (as did the other divisions of Soult's command) with the 10th Léger deploying in line, and the 1st Brigade following in a line of regiments in battalion column ( 12).

The Principle of the Offensive (Seize, retain, and exploit the initiative.)

13)

Thiébault at the head of the 2/14th routed the two Novgorod battalions while the 36th under Colonel Houdar de Lamotte deployed into line and into the four Russian battalions south of the village, recapturing the guns, wounding two Russian generals and capturing one. The six routed Russian battalions fled to the northeast, disordering the remaining five battalions of the Russian portion of the 4th Column. General Kutuzov attempted to rally the, and for his pains was slightly wounded by a musket ball fired by someone in the 36th. The Tsar, also in that portion of the field, sent his physician to help. Kutuzov told the doctor: "Assure him (the Tsar) that I am not badly hurt," and then, pointing towards the Pratzen Heights he exclaimed, "That is where we are really hurt."( 14)

The Principle of Surprise (Strike the enemy at a time or place, or in a manner for which he is unprepared.)

If Colonel Mazas' first battalion had been startled by Russian fire, this surprise was far less destructive, at least in the long run, than the surprise the Russian commander in that area of the battlefield received. General Kutuzov, although in nominal command of the entire army, had remained with the 4th (and last) Column. At about 0800, a Russian staff officer, Major Carl F. Toll, riding through the village of Pratz in advance of the 4th Column observed for the first time SaintHilaire's division's advance. Toll galloped back to the commander of the Russian co-commander of the column, Lieutenant-General Mikhail Miloradovich, who sent forward the only troops at hand - three weak battalions (two of the Novgorod Musketeers and one Apsheron) totaling only 750 men plus a few hussars and two guns. One battalion stayed in reserve, another deployed south of the village, and the third - the one that surprised Colonel Mazas - ranged along the bank of the ravine. All of these battalions were routed by Thiebault's counterattack. An Austrian officer in his account of battle described the impact upon General Kutuzov:

A massive column of French infantry was suddenly descried in a bottom, in front of Pratzen. ... General Koutousoff (Kutuzov), whom this movement of the enemy had taken by surprise, (thinking himself the assailant, and seeing himself attacked in the midst of his combinations and his movements, felt all the importance of maintaining the heights of Pratzen against which the French were moving. ... It was the summit of the heights of Pratzen which decided the fate of the day.( 15)

Principle of Maneuver (Place the enemy in a disadvantageous position through flexible application of combat power.)

While Thiébault reestablished the division's left flank, Morand's light infantry arrived at the crest of the Pratzeberg and almost immediately came under attack from rear brigade of the 2nd Allied Column under Russian Major General Sergei Mikhailovich Kamensky. A traffic jam had delayed Kamensky's brigade earlier in the morning when the Austrian cavalry, finding themselves in the wrong position, simply cut through the 2nd Column in an attempt to return to their proper position. Kamensky saw the French on the Pratzeberg as his brigade descended into the lower Goldbach valley. He faced his troops about and marched with 4,000
men towards Morand's 10th Léger deployed on the crest. Kamensky sent one battalion to his left, nearly outflanking the 10th. General Saint-Hilaire, the division commander, saved the situation by bringing the 1/14th at a run from the rear where Colonel Mazas had rallied it, and put it in line on the right of the 10th.

Thiébault, having cleared the left flank, marched the three battalions still under his direct control (1/36th, 2/36th, and 1/14th) towards the left of the 10th. As he was doing this, however, he saw a body of troops moving towards the Pratzeberg from the east, to his left and rear. As they came closer, one called out: "Don't shoot, we are Bavarians." Thiébault halted his column and General Saint-Hilaire joined him. They had a short discussion as to the true nationality of the troops. They were, in fact, the Austrian brigades of General-majors Franz Jurczek and Heinrich Rottermund under Lieutenant-General Johann Karl Kollowrath, the Austrian co-commander of the 4th Column. Thiébault rode forward for a closer look. As he did so, he met General Morand, who was also concerned about the identity of these new troops on his left flank and rear. While they were trying to identify the new troops through their spyglasses, they saw a "Bavarian" officer ride to make contact with an officer from Kamensky's Brigade. That was evidence enough ( 16).

Thiébault brought up the 1/36th on the left of the 10th to act as a pivot. He then posted the 2/36th in line facing east towards the new arrivals. On the far left of his line he posted the 2/14 in attack column formation "so as to have a mass which I could oppose, if necessary, to those that were advancing against us and a force with which I could, without disturbing my line, meet cavalry or other corps that might try to surround us."( 17)

Thus was formed the "hook" - the " crochet," as Austrian General Karl Stutterheim called it. The French line now extended from slightly west of the highest point of the Pratzeberg east for about 800 meters, then turned north and ran for perhaps another 800 meters down towards the village of Pratzen, where the line was anchored on the village church. The French battalions in line required a frontage of about 200 meters. A battalion in assault column (2/14th on the left) needed about 50 meters. Even with the necessary intervals between the battalions, they were stretched thin. But the battalions did not simply stand still - "The French generals" wrote General Stutterheim, "maneuvered their troops with that ability which is the result of a military eye, and of experience, taking advantage of the inequalities of ground to cover their troops from fire, and to conceal their movements."( 18)

Principle of Mass (Concentrate the effects of combat power at the decisive place and time.)

20).

Approaching Thiébault's three battalions and gunners totaling some 2,600 men were 16 Austrian battalions over 8,000 strong. They were not, however, Emperor Francis' best. The Austrian battalions were formed mostly of unhealthy soldiers or untrained recruits from the 6th (depot) ( 21) battalions of their regiments. Thiébault ordered his men to shoot for the white cross belts of the Austrians. When the Austrians approached to a distance of forty yards, the infantry masking the guns fell back. Thiébault wrote:

Their fire (the guns) vied with that of my line, which was the best infantry in the world for standing firm, aiming straight and knocking over the enemy with perfect coolness. ... I saw every round tear large square holes through these regiments till they retired in a flying mass from the attack on my three battalions. I had not lost a single man...( 22)

As Thiébault's three battalions prepared to receive the Austrians, Kamensky's Brigade was pushing Morand's men slowly back over the hill - the French infantry firing by volley while the artillerymen manhandled their guns to the rear. But as the Austrians on the left broke and fled, the Russian attack also slowed. "The ardor of this attack soon evaporated... the enemy, and his steadiness, soon changed it to a slow uncertain pace accompanied by an ill-directed fire of
musketry."( 23)

Now, the hinge of Austerlitz swung, and the door began to close on the Allies in the lower Goldbach valley. Thiébault swung his troops to the right to face south, aligning on Morand's men. Then, all six battalions advanced down the slope of the Pratzberg, driving Kamensky's troops down the slope to the south and capturing three of his guns and two flags ( 24).

The Principle of Unity of Command (For every object, insure unity of effort under one responsible commander.)

During a brief lull in the fighting, the three generals on the Pratezberg looked around for support. None was apparent. Except for the timely arrival of Fontenay's guns, nothing had been heard from any higher headquarters.

We had no news either of the Imperial headquarters or of Marshal Soult, and it was with a certain anxiety that we had become convinced of our isolation. We held the heights, but we were not done with having to defend them ( 25).

If the French were having command problems, theirs were nothing compared to those of the Allies. Three brigade commanders had been wounded. The co-commanders of the Allied 4th Column (Kollowrath and Miloradovich) had been defeated by fighting individually and without effective coordination. Kamensky's brigade was fighting independently of its senior headquarters (Prschibitschewski's Division), and the other units of the Allied 3nd Column were under growing pressure from Davout's Corps now arriving on the French right. Even the senior leadership of the Allied Army was fragmented. Tsar Alexander, who had originally taken his post on the top of Stare Vihonhrady, had been swept along by the Russians retreating from their defeat in Pratze Village. General Kutuzov, bleeding from his head wound and unable to rally the Russians, had moved on to join first Kollowrath's forces and, finally, Kamensky's Brigade. At the end of the day, he confessed "that he could not report on the conduct of his officers 'since my location on that day did not permit me to see in person what was happening elsewhere on the field'."( 26)

Despite the destruction wrought upon Kollowrath's Austrian troops of the 4th Column and the repulse of Kamensky's brigade, the Russian and Austrian officers, including Kutuzov and General Weyrother, rallied these regiments and launched one more desperate attack on the hill, attacking on a wide front up the southern slope. Slowly, the French were pushed back towards the crest. As they reached the crest, there was another pause, and General Saint-Hilaire called over Thiébault and Morand, and proposed that the division withdraw to a more defensible position. The three officers were standing behind Colonel Pierre Pouzet of the 10th Léger Infantry, who overheard them. Colonel Pouzet turned to the group and said:

Retire, general? If we take one more pace to the rear, we are done for. There is only one way to get out of this with honor, and that is to put our heads down and go at everything in front of us and, above all, not allow the enemy time to count our muskets ( 27).

The commanders returned to their units, and for the next half-hour, the battle for the crest raged. Thiébault had two horses shot from under him. Colonel Mazas of the 14th Ligne was killed, as was Thiébault's aide. Colonel de Lamotte of the 36th Ligne and General Saint-Hilaire, the division commander, were wounded.

At this juncture that a representative of a higher headquarters finally appeared. He was Colonel Alexandre de Girardin, aide-de-camp to Marshal Berthiér, the Chief of Staff. Although Girardin's duty was simply to determine the situation and condition of Saint-Hilaire's division and return to headquarters, he remained, "riding incessantly to and fro from end to end of our lines, pushing the men's knapsacks, as one may say, he gave powerful aid in supporting and cheering them on... ."( 28)

The Allied attack wavered and fell back. The French advanced in a final effort, driving them off to the southeast, capturing three more guns and two flags, and pursuing them with cannon fire. General Saint-Hilaire went to the rear to have his wound dressed, and Thiébault became the acting division commander.

The Principle of Economy of Force (Allot minimum essential combative power to secondary efforts.)

The true economy of force achieved at Austerlitz was Napoleon's decision to defend initially the lower Goldbach from Koblenitz to Tellnitz (a distance of about three kilometers), with Legrand's thinly spread Third Division of Soult's 4th Corps. Hard-marching reinforcements - the leading elements of Général de Division Victor Friant's division of Davout's 3rd Corps - began arriving at 0600, about the same time Kienmayer, leading the advance guard of the 1st Allied Column, opened the battle with attack on Legrand's single regiment, the 3rd Ligne, garrisoning Tellnitz. Davout's buildup continued until 1300, when together with Soult, he launched the final assault on the Allies.

On the Pratzberg, Thiébault's hinge continued to swing to the south and west. As his force faced west from the heights, he was joined by Général de brigade Victor Levasseur's 3rd Brigade of Legrand's Third Division marching down the Goldbach from below Kobelinz. At this point, Levassuer's Brigade was one of the very few brigades in the Army that had not been engaged. Thiébault placed this brigade on the right of his own, with Morand's 10th Léger Infantry on his left. At about the same time, General Saint-Hilaire returned with further orders,
and long-absent 2nd Brigade of Saint-Hiliare's division arrived on the right flank of Vandamme's division which had crossed the Stare Vinohrady, completed the rout of Kollowrath's Allied 4th Column, and then wheeled to the south to join Saint-Hilaire.

Saint-Hilaire's new orders were to advance off of the Pratzeberg, now being occupied by Vandamme's division and to drive down behind the Russians and attack the village of Sokolnitz and Sokolnitz Castle. The Castle, a few hundred meters north of the village, was not truly a castle, but rather a large complex, with a chateau and a tangle of lanes, stables, massive five-story barns, and a large enclosed garden called the "Pheasantry". The Russians here were facing west, defending themselves against an attack by General Friant's division of Davout's 3rd Corps coming across the Goldbach. Suddenly, they were surrounded.

Levasseur's Brigade attacked through the Pheasantry and the fields north of it. Thiébault, leading the 36th Ligne and the remnants of the 14th, swept down behind the Russians attacking the Castle complex while the 10th Léger attacked between the Castle and Sokolnitz village. The smoke and noise was now overwhelming, and in the confusion, higher organization began to disappear as the French troops drove in for the finish. Surrounded, the Russians fought bitterly:

"Those (Russians) who guarded the house and its outbuildings made a desperate defense. Avenues, stables, barns - everything served them for shelter, and everywhere they fought till the last extremity. A great massacre took place."( 29)

Having cleared the Castle area, Thiébault was attempting the realign his troops with those of Morand and Levasseur when he saw a group of his men taking long shots at some Russian guns. He found a sub-lieutenant and ordered him to form the men up. He then looked around for an officer to lead an attack on the guns. "I could not see a captain - officers were getting scarce ... ."( 30) Since the guns had to be silenced before he could move the brigade forward, Thiébault resolved to do it himself. Leading his little band, he approached within 30 meters of the guns when they fired. Thiébault went down, wounded in the shoulder and arm by grapeshot. The sub-lieutenant and twenty men were killed. The others overran the guns. The battle was over for General Thiébault. Thirty minutes later, it was over for everyone.

For the First Brigade, it had been an expensive victory. The brigade commander had been wounded. One regimental commander was dead, the other wounded, and, in all, two-thirds of the officers of both regiments were casualties. Of the 3,307 present for duty on 7 November 1805, the brigade lost 842 killed and wounded. Of the remainder of the 1st Division, the Advance Guard lost 350, and the 2nd Brigade 643 ( 31).

No single action or unit "won" the Battle of Austerlitz. Legrande's stubborn delaying action around Tellnitz; the timely arrival of Davout's 3rd Corps; the charge of the Imperial Guard Cavalry that defeated the Russian Guard Cavalry in the center; Lannes' 5th Corps defeat of Bagration at Santon Hill and Bosnitz - all were critical. But, in the words of one commentator on the battle: "The decisive moment of the day ... this honor belongs to the action on the Pratzeberg"32 - The action of the 10th Léger along the crest, and the 1st Brigade, 1st Division, 4th Corps, which manned the " crochet" - the hinge on which the French battle line turned.

And finally, it is useful to evaluate the principles of war in respect to what were, in fact, tactical operations by the smallest unit that could carry out articulated maneuvers - the brigade of two to four battalions. While single battalions could deploy and (re)ploy from various types of columns into line and back, these maneuvers remain an expression of simple linear tactics. The brigade was the smallest unit whose constituent parts could maneuver independently. Although some of these principles were certainly more relevant than others (Napoleon's exercise of "economy of force" caused an outcome for Thiébault's brigade and Saint-Hilaire's division), this narrative demonstrates that the Principles of War can be identified and the impact of their application appreciated in the actions of a single brigade - in this case, the 1st Brigade of the 1st Division of the French 4th Corps on 2 December 1805.

Notes

(1) "Disposition Générales Pour la Journée Du II, 1 Dec 1805," Correspondance de Napoleon ler publiée par ordre de l'empereur Napoléon III (Paris, 1858-1869). No. 9535. XI, 537
(2) All the "Principles of War" are from U.S. Army Field Manual 3-0 [Operations], (Washington, 2001), Section 4, 11-15.
(3) Philippe Paul Ségur, An aide-de-camp of Napoleon (New York, 1895), 246.
(4) Ibid., 247. In 1847, Baron Adolphe Thiébault, in his article "Passage du Goldbach" argues that the troops did not cross the stream until 0800 hrs based on his reading of his father's notes. However, review of the testimony of Ségur, the official Relation du Depot de la guerre, another possible interpretation of General Thiébault's own notes (quoted by the Baron), and analysis of elapsed times and distances involved, together indicate that the troops of Saint-Hilaire and Vandamme were on the east side of the Goldbach before daylight. Also see: "Rapport de la bataille d'Austerlitz par Soult" in Alexander Berthiér, et. al. Relations et rapports officiels de la bataille d'Austerlitz (Paris, 1999), 17.
(5) Thiébault, III, 457.
(6) If this conversation is accurate, Soult was only slightly optimistic. From flats on the eastern side of the Goldbach in front of Kobelnitz where St. Hillary's Division was formed to the top of the Pratzenberg is approximately 2000 meters. The same conversation is reported in the official "Relations de la bataille d'Austerlitz" prepared by the Depot de Guerre in 1847 (Berthiér et. al, Relations et rapports officiels, 92) and by Ségur in An aid-de-camp of Napoleon, 247. However, Ségur reports that Soult replied: "ten minutes," an improbable time, even from the advanced line of departure.
(7) The Advance Guard of the 1st Division, 4th Corps had originally been designated the 1st Brigade. When General Thiébault had joined the unit on 12 September 1806 at Germich in Austria, he had complained to Marshal Soult that as senior général de brigade he was entitled to command the lst Brigade. Soult laughed, and redesignated Morand's unit "The Advance Guard" thereby giving Thiébault the lst (senior) Brigade. (Thiébault, II, 126).
(8) "Vues de l'Empereur au subjet d'ordre de bataille" (26 Nov 1805). Correspondance de Napoleon ler. No. 9527. XI, 531.
(9) The organization was adopted for light infantry battalions in March, 1804 and for line battalions in September, 1805. See Col. John Elting, Swords Around the Throne (New York, 1997), 209.
(10) These two-company divisions (c. 180 men) should not to be confused with divisions of a corps, which averaged 6,000-8,000 men.
(11) David Chandler, The Campaigns of Napoleon (New York, 1966), 342.
(12) Brent Nosworthy, Battle Tactics of Napoleon and His Enemies (London, 1995), 137-138
(13) Thiébault, III, 468.
(14) From Aleksandr Ivanovich Mikhailovsky-Danilevsky's Relation de la campagne de 1805 (Paris, 1847), 184. Quoted in Christopher Duffy, Austerlitz 1805 (London, 1977), 116, and Scott Bowden, Napoleon and Austerlitz (Chicago, 1997), 346.
(15) Karl Freiher von Stutterheim, A Detailed Account of the Battle of Austerlitz (London, 1807), 98-99.
(16) Thiébault, III, 471.
(17) Ibid., III, 470.
(18) Stutterheim, 104.
(19) Fontenay was a cousin of Thiébault's childhood friend and later pharmacist to Napoleon, Charles Cadet-Gassincourt.
(20) Thiébault, III, 471.
(21) Depot battalions were normally left at the regiment's home base to train new recruits. In this instance, the Austrians had them with the field army, possibly because so many Austrian depots had been already overrun by the French.
(22) Ibid., II, 162.
(23) Stutterheim, 105.
(24) Thiébault, Adolphe. Role de la Brigade Thiébault a la Bataille d'Austerlitz (Paris, 1847), 14.
(25) Thiébault, III, 473.
(26) Quoted in Duffy, 121.
(27) Thiébault, III, 475. Although Thiébault is sometimes accused of somewhat colorful, after-the-fact writing, a separate account of this incident from the Journal des opérations du 4e corps recounts that Pouzet told Saint-Hilaire: "General, we must advance with the bayonet or we are lost." To which, the General replied: "Yes, forward." (Quoted by Bowden in Napoleon and Austerlitz, 353).
(28) Thiébault, III, 476.
(29) Ibid., II, 167.
(30) Ibid., II, 167.
(31) Thiébault, 22-23
(32) Duffy, 133

Publication Title :

Napoleonic Scholarship: The Journal of the International Napoleonic Society (with permission)

Review number :

4

Page numbers :

55-63

Month of Publication :

November

Year of publication :

2011

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The Battle of Austerlitz and the Principles of War - napoleon.org

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The Battle of Austerlitz and the Principles of War Marshal Soult will give orders for three divisions to take places beyond the ravine at seven o'clock in the morning, in such a manner as to be prepared to commence operations of the day, which is to be a march to the front by echelon, the ...

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Napoleonic Wars

Between 1808 and 1814, the British Army fought a war in the Iberian Peninsula against the invading forces of Napoleon's France. Aided by their Spanish and Portuguese allies, the British held off superior French numbers before winning a series of victories and driving them out. They then carried the war into France, playing an important part in Napoleon's first overthrow.

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From 1808 to 1814, the British Army, aided by its Spanish and Portuguese allies, held off superior numbers of French troops before driving them out of Iberia. They then carried the war into France, playing an important part in Napoleon's first overthrow.

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Why Napoleon’s Invasion of Russia Was the Beginning of the End

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Why Napoleon’s Invasion of Russia Was the Beginning of the End

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After taking power in 1799, French leader Napoleon Bonaparte won a string of military victories that gave him control over most of Europe. He annexed present-day Belgium and Holland, along with large chunks of present-day Italy, Croatia and Germany, and he set up dependencies in Switzerland, Poland and various German states. Spain was largely under his hegemony despite continuing guerilla warfare there, and Austria, Prussia and Russia had been browbeaten into becoming allies. Only Great Britain remained completely outside of his grasp.

In 1806 Napoleon decided to punish the British with an embargo that became known as the Continental System. But by the end of 1810, Czar Alexander I had stopped complying due to its deleterious effect on Russian trade and the value of the ruble. Alexander also imposed a heavy tax on French luxury products like lace and rebuffed Napoleon's attempt to marry one of his sisters.

Exacerbating tensions was the 1807 formation of the Duchy of Warsaw. Though Napoleon created that state from Prussian, not Russian, lands, Alexander worried that it would incite a hostile Polish nationalism, according to D.M.G. Sutherland, a history professor at the University of Maryland who has authored two books on the Napoleonic era. "Down to the present day, the love affair between the French and Polish is pretty permanent," Sutherland said.

Napoleon, who considered Russia a natural ally since it had no territorial conflicts with France, soon moved to teach Alexander a lesson. In 1812 the French emperor raised a massive army of troops from all over Europe, the first of which entered Russia on June 24. "It was the most diverse European army since the Crusades," Sutherland said.

Estimates vary, but experts believe that at least 450,000 Grande Armée soldiers and perhaps as many as 650,000 ended up crossing the Niemen River to fight approximately 200,000 soldiers on the Russian side. By comparison, George Washington's army during the American Revolution rarely numbered more than 10,000 or 15,000 men, explained Sheperd Paine, president of the Napoleonic Historical Society.

Napoleon's goal was to win a quick victory that forced Alexander to the negotiating table. The Russians pulled back, however, and let the Grande Armée capture the city of Vilna on June 27 with barely a fight. In an ominous sign of things to come, an electrical storm pouring down freezing rain, hail and sleet killed a number of troops and horses that very night. To make matters worse, Grande Armée soldiers were already deserting in search of food and plunder.

Nonetheless, Napoleon remained confident. "I have come once and for all to finish off these barbarians of the North," he purportedly declared to his top military advisors. "The sword is now drawn. They must be pushed back into their ice, so that for the next 25 years they no longer come to busy themselves with the affairs of civilized Europe."

In late July, the Russians similarly abandoned Vitebsk, setting fire to military stores and a bridge on their way out. Then, in mid-August, they retreated from Smolensk and torched that city. Many peasants, meanwhile, burned their crops to prevent them from falling into French hands. "Certainly, the scorched earth tactics were incredibly important in denying the French army sustenance," said David A. Bell, a history professor at Princeton University and author of The First Total War: Napoleon's Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It. The summer heat had likewise become oppressive, and Grande Armée soldiers were coming down with insect-borne diseases such as typhus and water-related diseases like dysentery.

Thousands of men died while fighting at Smolensk and elsewhere. But the Russians did not truly make a stand until the September 7 Battle of Borodino, which took place just 75 miles from Moscow. That day, the French and Russians pounded each other with artillery and launched a number of charges and countercharges. Roughly three canon booms and seven musket shots rang out each second. The losses on both sides were enormous, with total casualties of at least 70,000. Rather than continue with a second day of fighting, the Russians withdrew and left the road to Moscow open.

On September 14, the Grande Armée entered the ancient capital of Moscow, only to see it too become engulfed in flames. Most residents had already escaped the city, leaving behind vast quantities of hard liquor but little food. French troops drank and pillaged while Napoleon waited for Alexander to sue for peace. No offer ever came. With snow flurries having already fallen, Napoleon led his army out of Moscow on October 19, realizing that it could not survive the winter there.

By this time, Napoleon was down to some 100,000 troops, the rest having died, deserted or been wounded, captured or left along the supply line. Originally he planned a southerly retreat, but his troops were forced back to the road they took in after a replenished Russian army engaged them at Maloyaroslavets. All forage along that route had already been consumed, and when the army arrived at Smolensk it found that stragglers had eaten the food left there. Horses were dying in droves, and the Grande Armée's flanks and rear guard faced constant attacks.

To top it off, an unusually early winter set in, complete with high winds, sub-zero temperatures and lots of snow. On particularly bad nights, thousands of men and horses succumbed to exposure. Stories abound of soldiers splitting open dead animals and crawling inside for warmth, or stacking dead bodies in windows for insulation. "Things got bad very quickly," Paine said. "It was a constant attrition."

In late November, the Grande Armée narrowly escaped complete annihilation when it crossed the frigid Berezina River, but it had to leave behind thousands of wounded. "From then on, it was almost every man for himself," Paine said. On December 5, Napoleon left the army under the command of Joachim Murat and sped toward Paris amid rumors of a coup attempt. Nine days later, what little remained of the Grande Armée's rear guard stumbled back across the Niemen River.

Emboldened by the defeat, Austria, Prussia and Sweden re-joined Russia and Great Britain in the fight against Napoleon. Although the French emperor was able to raise another massive army, this time it was short on both cavalry and experience. Napoleon won some initial victories against his enemies, but he suffered a crushing defeat in October 1813 at the Battle of Leipzig.

By the following March, Paris had been captured and Napoleon was forced into exile on the island of Elba. In 1815 Napoleon made one more attempt to take power but was overcome at the Battle of Waterloo. "Charles XII tried it, Napoleon tried it, Hitler tried it," Bell said. "It never seems to work out invading Russia."

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Why Napoleon's Invasion of Russia Was the Beginning of the End | HISTORY

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The French emperor-intent on conquering Europe-sent 600,000 troops into Russia. Six disastrous months later, only an estimated 100,000 made it out.

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The Italian campaign of 1796-1797, waged by a young Napoleon Bonaparte, was a decisive campaign in the French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802). It led to the defeat of Austria, the beginning of French control of northern Italy, and the end of the war, but most importantly, it launched Bonaparte himself to new heights of fame and power.

The War of the First Coalition, the first of the Revolutionary Wars, had been ongoing since 1792, fought between the French Republic and a coalition of anti-French powers. Yet most of the fighting had taken place in Flanders and Germany, leaving the Italian front as more of a sideshow. Upon taking command of the Army of Italy in March 1796, Bonaparte would make the Italian theater the most important operation in the war, stunning all of Europe as he beat every Austrian army sent against him and redrew the map of northern Italy. His brilliant campaign led Austria to sue for peace and end the war in October 1797 and made Bonaparte one of the most influential men in France.

To Destiny

Bonaparte left for the front after a honeymoon of only 48 hours; he left his bride with a golden medallion inscribed with the words 'To Destiny'.

On 27 March 1796, General Napoleon Bonaparte arrived in Nice to take command of the French Army of Italy. It had been a whirlwind of a month for the young general, who had received the command on 2 March, only seven days before marrying the attractive Joséphine de Beauharnais. Joséphine was the former mistress of Paul Barras, a member of the French Directory and one of the most powerful men in France, leading to rumors that Bonaparte had only received his command as a favor from Barras to his old paramour. Yet, by this point, Bonaparte had already built a reputation in the French army, having distinguished himself at the Siege of Toulon in 1793 and by crushing the royalist revolt of 13 Vendemiaire in 1795. Whatever the true reasons for his appointment, Bonaparte left for the front after a honeymoon of only 48 hours; as a wedding gift, he left his bride with a golden medallion inscribed with the words 'To Destiny'.

Upon arriving at Nice, General Bonaparte's first order of business was to hold a troop inspection. He was met with a ragged, demoralized force on the point of mutiny. The men were starving and malnourished, given only meager rations provided by corrupt contractors who charged extortionate prices. They lacked the most basic supplies; muskets, bayonets, and uniforms were all rare commodities, and entire battalions went without shoes. The army had not been paid for months, and when pay did arrive, it was in the form of the nearly worthless banknotes called mandats territoriaux, which was all the practically destitute French Directory could provide. Disease, desertion, and battlefield casualties had whittled the army down from an initial strength of 106,000 men in 1792, to only 37,600 men and 60 guns in March 1796, with no new replacements on the way. Bonaparte had his work cut out for him.

Bonaparte was also introduced to his officers, many of whom would become major players in the Napoleonic story. Bonaparte's chief of staff was Alexandre Berthier, an administrative genius whose ability to work 20-hour days and keep up with Bonaparte's rapid-fire orders kept the army's staff running like clockwork. The division commanders included Jean Sérurier, a gloomy general with 34 years of experience in the old Royal Army; Pierre Augereau, a former mercenary, dancing master, and duelist, who once killed an officer over an insult; and André Masséna, a talented general whose appetites for loot were only matched by his lust for women. Other soon-to-be famous officers under Bonaparte's command included Joachim Murat, Jean-Andoche Junot, Jean Lannes, Barthélemy Joubert, and Auguste Marmont. As David G. Chandler notes, "rarely had such a galaxy of military talent served together at one time and place" (57).

At first, these officers were unimpressed with their new commander-in-chief. At only 26, the short and wiry Bonaparte "looked more like a mathematician than a general", and the pleasure he took in showing off the portrait of his new wife made him seem juvenile. The generals would soon realize they had underestimated him. Immediately, Bonaparte reorganized the commissariat and threatened the venal contractors. He recalled the cavalry from winter quarters and quietly secured a loan of 3 million francs from Genoese financiers. He reintroduced discipline by disbanding mutinous battalions and court-martialing two officers for singing anti-revolutionary songs. Within days, Bonaparte had won the respect of his subordinates; as Masséna famously remarked, Bonaparte "donned his general's cap and seemed to grow by two feet" (Roberts, 75).

Bonaparte next tried to win over the rank-and-file soldiers, promising them the victories and riches that had hitherto only been afforded to their comrades in Germany and Flanders:

Soldiers! You are hungry and naked; the government owes you much but can give you nothing. The patience and courage you have displayed among these rocks are admirable, but they give you no glory-not a glimmer falls upon you. I will lead you into the most fertile plains on earth. Rich provinces, opulent towns, all shall be at your disposal ... soldiers of Italy! Will you be lacking in courage or endurance?

(Chandler, 53)

It was a bold promise, especially for a general who was yet to lead an army into battle. On 10 April, five days before Bonaparte intended to launch his campaign, he received word that 53,000 Austrian and Piedmontese troops were already bearing down upon him. The time had come for Bonaparte to meet his destiny.

The Little Corporal

The Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia had been at war with the French Republic since 1793, but its heart was not in the fight. The Piedmontese distrusted their Austrian allies, whose commander, Johan Beaulieu, had likewise been warned against trusting the Piedmontese. Therefore, it was Bonaparte's intention to drive a wedge between the two armies and defeat each one in turn. On 12 April, moving with astonishing speed, he attacked Montenotte, a mountain village where the enemy line was dangerously overextended. Masséna led his division around the enemy's right flank in the pouring rain and enveloped them. It was Bonaparte's first victory as commander-in-chief of an army; the Austro-Piedmontese lost 2,500 men to 800 French casualties.

In the following days, Bonaparte beat the Allies twice more at Millesimo (13 April) and Dego (14 April), where he succeeded in driving the retreating Piedmontese and Austrian armies apart. He launched an invasion of Piedmont, defeating the Piedmontese army a week later at the Battle of Mondovì (21 April), which left the road to the Piedmontese capital of Turin wide open. Piedmont-Sardinia sued for peace and accepted the Armistice of Cherasco on 28 April; in less than a month of campaigning, Bonaparte had knocked one enemy out of the war. Now, it was time to face the Austrians.

As part of the treaty of Cherasco, Bonaparte included a 'secret' clause, which allowed him to use the bridge at Valenza over the River Po; this news was leaked to Austrian General Beaulieu, who guarded the pass. However, this was just a ploy by Bonaparte, who actually crossed the river at Piacenza, c. 110 kilometers (70 mi) to the east. The Austrians were taken by surprise and were forced to pull back to protect the road to Milan. The French pursued and, on 10 May, intercepted the Austrians as they crossed the Adda River, at the town of Lodi. By the time the French arrived, most of the Austrian army was already across, and only a rearguard force remained in the town. The rearguard was driven back by grenadiers under General Lannes, but Bonaparte was now faced with the task of seizing the bridge across the Adda before the Austrians destroyed it. A company of carabiniers under Colonel Dupas accepted the suicidal task of leading the assault, and at 5 p.m., the French made a frenzied charge onto the bridge, into a hail of Austrian grapeshot. French soldiers waded into the shallows and fired up at Austrian gunners, while wave after wave of French assaults finally took the bridge.

By itself, the Battle of Lodi held little significance - the Austrians were already retreating, and both sides suffered equal casualties. Yet the battle showed the determined bravery of the French soldiers and soon took an important place in Napoleonic legend. Bonaparte's victory at Lodi earned him the love of his men, who gave him the affectionate nickname of "the Little Corporal". The battle also seemed to convince Bonaparte of the greatness of his destiny. He later wrote:

I no longer regarded myself as a simple general, but as a man called upon to decide the fate of peoples. It came to me then that I really could become a decisive actor on the national stage. At that point was the first spark of high ambition.

(Roberts, 91)

Fearing that Bonaparte was becoming too popular, the Directory in Paris proposed that he split the command of the Army of Italy with the more experienced General Kellermann of the Army of the Alps; Bonaparte not only refused to share command but threatened to resign if he was forced to. Unwilling to risk losing their most successful general, the Directory abandoned the scheme.

Entering Milan

The Army of Italy was paid in hard cash for the first time since 1793.

On 15 May 1796, the Army of Italy entered Milan to great fanfare and acclaim from the populace, which was glad to see the back of the Austrian army. Bonaparte immediately set about reorganizing the Milanese government into a new 'sister republic', or French satellite state, that became the Transpadane Republic. Bonaparte helped draft the republic's constitution, appointed Italian Jacobins to the government, and ensured the foundation of pro-French political clubs. Despite this mask of liberation, Bonaparte still had an army to pay, and he levied a total of 20 million francs from Milan and the dukes of Parma and Modena. Thus, the Army of Italy was paid in hard cash for the first time since 1793. Bonaparte turned a blind eye as his generals looted the city and sent priceless works of art back to Paris.

On 21 May, he departed for Mantua, where Beaulieu had holed up with his army. But no sooner had he left than he received reports of rebellions breaking out in Milan and Pavia. Bonaparte swiftly returned and wrought severe retribution on the Italian rebels. He stormed the gates of Pavia and let his men sack the city without restraint for several hours, while General Lannes took vengeance on the rebellious town of Binasco, shooting all the men and burning the houses down. Such brutality was meant to warn the rest of occupied Italy of the cost of defying their French 'liberators'.

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Besieging Mantua

Mantua was part of the Quadrilateral, a collection of four fortresses that guarded the Alpine passes and held the key to Austrian control of northern Italy. Therefore, when Bonaparte besieged Mantua on 2 June with a reinforced and resupplied army, it was vital for the Austrians to prevent it from falling. Field Marshal Dagobert von Wurmser, a veteran of the Seven Years' War, was given command of 50,000 troops and ordered to relieve the Siege of Mantua at all costs. To move more swiftly, Wurmser decided to divide his army: 18,000 men under his lieutenant, General Quasdanovich, would advance down the west side of Lake Garda while Wurmser himself led the remaining 32,000 down the east side. When Bonaparte caught wind of this advance, he knew he had to defeat each army before they had a chance to coalesce.

At the end of July, Bonaparte ended the siege of Mantua, abandoning 179 cannons and mortars and dumping their ammunition into the lakes. On 3-4 August, he beat Quasdanovich at the Second Battle of Lonato, and he defeated Wurmser at the Battle of Castiglione the next day. After losing some 5,000 men across both battles, the Austrians were forced to retreat, allowing Bonaparte to return to Mantua to continue the siege. Wurmser regrouped and attacked again at the end of August. He met Bonaparte in a series of battles but was defeated at the Battle of Bassano on 8 September. Still hoping to relieve the siege, Wurmser retreated toward Mantua, but another defeat at the hands of General Masséna forced him into the city. Now with the addition of Wurmser's men, there were not enough supplies to feed the entire garrison. When Bonaparte promptly resumed the siege, the Austrians quickly had to resort to eating horseflesh; before long, disease and malnutrition carried off 150 soldiers per day, as well as countless civilians. Despite the suffering, Wurmser refused to surrender.

Abandoned in the Depths of Italy

In November, the Austrians made a third attempt to lift the siege. This time, they were commanded by the 61-year-old Hungarian General József Alvinczi, who Bonaparte would later praise as his most capable adversary in the Italian campaign. On 2 November, Alvinczi crossed the Piave and sent forces under Quasdanovich ahead of him to take Vicenza via Bassano. On 6 November, Bonaparte tried to stop Quasdanovich's advance at the Second Battle of Bassano, but the French general found himself outnumbered and was forced to withdraw; it was the first real defeat of Bonaparte's career. Falling back to Vicenza, Bonaparte received word that a French division under General Vaubois had suffered a crushing defeat near Cembra and Calliano. Needing to reassert discipline, Bonaparte removed Vaubois from command and harangued his men, saying, "Soldiers of the 39th and 85th Infantry, you are no longer fit to belong to the French Army ... the chief-of-staff will cause to be inscribed on your flags, 'these men are no longer part of the Army of Italy'" (Roberts, 120). These humiliated demibrigades fought with extra vigor in the coming fights.

On 12 November, Bonaparte held Verona against an onslaught of Austrian troops, and both sides rested the following day. This was undoubtedly the bleakest moment in the campaign, as evidenced by Bonaparte's despairing letter to the Directory: "Perhaps the hour ... of my own death is at hand ... we are abandoned in the depths of Italy" (Chandler, 103). But Bonaparte was not about to admit defeat; on 15 November, he attacked Alvinczi at the Battle of Arcole, with most of the fighting taking place around a bridge over the Adige River. After an initial attempt to seize the bridge by Augereau's men was repulsed, Bonaparte seized a flag and led the second charge himself. The charge became bogged down on the bridge, and Bonaparte's aide-de-camp was killed beside him; Bonaparte would probably have been killed himself, had he not been knocked off the bridge and into the marshy ground beneath. It took two more days and 3,000 casualties, but the French ultimately seized the bridge and won the battle.

Victory

After Arcole, Bonaparte continued to lay siege to Mantua. Of the 18,500 soldiers garrisoned in the city, only 9,800 were fit for duty, and the city's rations were expected to run out by 17 January. If Austria wanted to lift the siege, it had to do it soon. A fourth and final attempt was made by Alvinczi, and the two armies clashed once again on 14 January 1797 at the Battle of Rivoli. It was a resounding French victory; while the French lost 3,000 men, the Austrians suffered 4,000 killed and wounded and lost an additional 8,000 captured. Rivoli dashed the last hopes of Mantua; they finally surrendered on 2 February. 16,300 Austrian soldiers had died of starvation and disease since the siege began, along with thousands of civilians.

The fall of Mantua opened Bonaparte's army to its ultimate objective: Vienna. On 10 March 1797, Bonaparte led 40,000 men through Tyrol to Klagenfurt and then to Loeben in Styria, where they could apparently see the spires of Vienna, 160 kilometers (100 mi) away. Bonaparte fought a few minor battles against Archduke Charles, brother of the Austrian emperor, but the Austrians dared not risk a major fight, as they were still threatened by the French armies on the Rhine. The Austrians decided to sue for peace, and Bonaparte accepted their offer for an armistice at Loeben on 2 April. The details of this armistice were finalized on 17 October 1797, with the Treaty of Campo Formio. The War of the First Coalition was over.

Bonaparte overstepped himself by negotiating on behalf of the French Republic, not even bothering to consult the Directory. He got Austria to acknowledge French control of Belgium and the left bank of the Rhine, as well as the creation of a new sister republic in Italy, the Cisalpine Republic. In compensation for Austria's territorial losses, Bonaparte offered it lands belonging to the neutral Serene Republic of Venice, an ideal sacrificial lamb; Venice was thereby partitioned between Austria and the Cisalpine Republic, ending the serene republic's 1,200-year existence.

Conclusion

The Italian campaign of 1796-97 saw the dawn of a new era. While it contributed significantly to France's victory in the French Revolutionary Wars, it was perhaps more important for its role in the creation of Napoleon Bonaparte. Bonaparte became a celebrity in Paris and found himself renowned throughout Europe. His generals, many of whom would go on to serve as Napoleon's marshals, earned fame and glory in Italy. Not even 28 years old, Bonaparte had changed the map of northern Italy, given life to republics, humbled one of Europe's foremost powers, and achieved heights of popularity at home. But despite all this, the story of Napoleon was only just beginning.

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The Italian campaign of 1796-1797, waged by a young Napoleon Bonaparte, was a decisive campaign in the French Revolutionary Wars (1792-1802). It led to the defeat of Austria, the beginning of French...

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Napoleon’s Stunning Debut: The Italian Campaign

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Napoleon’s Stunning Debut: The Italian Campaign

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By Dana Lombardy

Barthélemy Schérer, commander of the French Army, gazed at the new military orders from Paris in disbelief. The grandoise strategy, detailing an advance on three fronts with the armies uniting in Tyrol for a concentrated thrust at Vienna, were far beyond the capabilities of the starving southern army he commanded along the French Riveria against the combined forces of Austria and Sardinia. Disgusted at the situation before him, he asked to be relieved. He also suggested that the member of the Topgraphical Bureau who drafted the strategy, the 26-year-old upstart Corsican, General Napoleon Bonaparte, be sent to carry them out. And that is exactly what happened. On February 23, 1796, Schérer was relieved of command and replaced with Bonaparte.

In 1792, Revolutionary France went to war with Austria and Prussia. Following the execution of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette in January 1793, Great Britain, Spain, the Dutch Republic, and several minor Italian states joined what became known as the First Coalition. Its mission was to restore the French monarchy and destroy the French Republic before its ideas of liberty, equality, brotherhood among men, and violence spread to other nations.

Napoleon had missed the greatest fame and glory achieved by revolutionary France in 1794. French victories that year wrecked the First Coalition. Holland became the Batavian Republic in January of 1795 and an ally of France. Prussia made peace in April 1795, and Spain did likewise in July. By the summer 1795, Britain, Austria, and Sardinia were the only major powers still at war with France.

The Directory's strategy for 1796 did not have an overall plan other than to invade enemy territory. The unpaid, underfed, and nearly mutinous soldiers of France were susceptible to a military-led revolt. A successful war of aggression could enable the revolutionary armies to feed, clothe, and pay themselves off of the enemy.

Napoleon's Army of Italy

On paper, Bonaparte's Army of Italy had 116,000 men. In reality, effective strength was about 61,000, and more than two-thirds of these troops were spread out nearly 200 miles along the Mediterranean coast from the French city of Marseilles to the small town of Voltri, nine miles from the important port of Genoa, Italy.

The French forces were dispersed to feed themselves off the local countryside and to protect their vulnerable coastline and coastal roads against British and Sardinian naval raids. As soon as he arrived, Napoleon moved the army's headquarters forward 42 miles from Nice to Albenga and went on rounds of personal inspections, which allowed Bonaparte to assess the capabilities of his army.

On March 28, he wrote to the Directory that the "administrative situation of the army is bad, but no longer desperate.... From now on the army will eat good bread and will have meat, and it has already had considerable advances on its back pay.... I shall march in a short while."

The Army of Italy had 11 divisions. Four of these were for coastal defense administratively controlled from Nice. Under Bonaparte's direct control at the front were seven divisions: André Masséna's advance guard that included Amédée Laharpe's and Jean-Baptiste Meynier's divisions, Charles Augereau's division, Jean Sérurier's division, Henry-Christian-Michel Stengel's cavalry division, and two small divisions under Pierre-Dominique Garnier and François Macquard.

Stengel's cavalry protected the army's rear along the coast, while Garnier and Macquard held defensive positions on the far left that linked up with the Army of the Alps. That left four divisions with 37,600 men for Napoleon's offensive, a force about 70 percent the size of the enemy they faced.

Beaulieu and Colli

Opposing the Army of Italy were two separate allied armies. After De Vins resigned due to illness in 1794, an experienced 56-year-old Austrian general, Baron Michelangelo Alessandro Colli-Marchi, took command of the 25,000-man Sardinian Army in the Ligurian Alps of northern Italy. Colli's troops were spread out guarding mountain passes, including the key town of Ceva. If the French broke through the mountains in this area, they could march on the Sardinian capital of Turin around 50 miles away.

An Austrian army, supported by Neapolitan cavalry, deployed 30,000 troops under the command of 70-year-old Jean-Pierre de Beaulieu, a veteran of the Seven Years' War and battles against revolutionary France from 1792. Beaulieu took command in March 1796, the same month that Bonaparte arrived.

Beaulieu and Colli were friends who in theory were equal in command responsibility. In reality, Beaulieu's views prevailed. Both men noted Napoleon's arrival in March and anticipated a French offensive. Colli's chief of staff wrote: "General Bonaparte is not known for any striking feat, but he is understood to be a profound theorist and a man of talent." The Austrian commanders also had good intelligence on the condition of the Army of Italy and thought it incapable of a sustained attack in the near future.

Colli's force of 25,000 was spread over 55 miles of mountainous terrain, watching Garnier's and Macquard's divisions and the Army of the Alps in the west and guarding the route to Turin by occupying numerous passes through the Ligurian Alps.

Beaulieu's army of 30,000 was spread out even more, from its supply depots and line of communication from Milan through Alessandria to a few miles outside the seaport of Genoa, also maintaining contact with Colli near the key mountain pass at Dego. Beaulieu was eager to occupy Genoa to establish direct contact with the British fleet. It would take time to concentrate his widely dispersed troops for this attack, but he felt he had time to conduct a limited operation against an isolated French unit at Voltri near Genoa.

Austrian Advance on Voltri

Beaulieu was convinced that Masséna would be forced to march to the aid of the French troops in Voltri. He hoped that such a move would seriously weaken the French position in Savona and that an Austrian column would be able to capture that coastal town behind Masséna's anticipated move and trap his command.

Occupying Voltri was supposed to pressure Genoa into providing the French with money and provisions. However, it achieved little in obtaining supplies and only left the French Army badly extended and vulnerable to attack. Before Napoleon could start his offensive, 3,200 Austrians under Baron Carl Philipp Sebottendorf, supported by 4,000 more under Baron Filippo Pittoni, hit 5,000 French under Jean-Baptiste Cervoni at Voltri on April 10. After a few hundred casualties, the French retreated the next morning.

Bonaparte was described as momentarily furious when he learned that French troops had been pushed out of Voltri. On the other hand, Philippe-Paul de Ségur, an aide to Napoleon, wrote in his memoirs that Bonaparte received news of the Austrian attack calmly and said he knew how to make them regret it.

Regardless of Napoleon's emotional state, the Austrian attack at Voltri was an opportunity for the French. Nearly 25 percent of Beaulieu's 30,000 troops were engaged at Voltri and therefore too far away to quickly reinforce the Austrians under Count Eugène-Guillaume-Alexis Mercy d'Argenteau guarding the passes around Dego.

12 Hours of Marching and Fighting

Argenteau was supposed to strike Savona when Masséna left the area to rescue Voltri. Instead, before the battle Napoleon ordered a fighting retreat from Voltri to Savona if required. This proved unnecessary as the French troops were not pursued by Beaulieu's attacking force. After Beaulieu's success at Voltri, he started moving his troops to reinforce Argenteau via Acqui. It would prove to be too little, too late.

Beaulieu's plan to trap Masséna's force between Savona and Voltri came unraveled. There was no pursuit after the Austrian victory at Voltri, so the encirclement was now totally left up to Argenteau.

Argenteau's 9,000 troops were spread out 20 miles between Dego and Acqui (and 6,000 assembling another 20 miles away around Alessandria), but he attempted to follow Beaulieu's orders. Before dawn on April 11, he marched a column of 3,700 men through Montenotte toward Savona. The Habsburg Hungarian and Croat troops made contact with the French just before the latter's defensive complex of redoubts called Monte Negino.

Argenteau's soldiers attacked a key French redoubt three times, exposing themselves to fire as they moved up single file along a narrow crest. The French, under Antoine-Guillaume Rampon, were outnumbered but held on stubbornly. An Austrian report written after the battle noted that most of their officers were killed or wounded leading the attacks on the French redoubts. Although casualties were actually light (fewer than 100 for the French, slightly more for the Hungarians and Croats), Argenteau's men were exhausted from nearly 12 hours of marching and fighting over difficult mountainous terrain.

Argenteau pulled his column back as darkness fell and arrayed his men in several lines on Monte Pra where they slept with their weapons. The Austrians were unaware that on that same night of April 12, nearly 26,000 French soldiers in Laharpe's, Meynier's, and Augereau's divisions were marching toward Dego as Bonaparte's offensive began.

Napoleon's 1796 Offensive: Splitting the Two Armies

Napoleon's grand offensive plan was to attack between the two enemy armies, splitting them apart. He could then concentrate against Colli's Sardinians and, if all went well, decisively defeat them before Beaulieu could join Colli to prevent such a disaster.

A lesser commander might have delayed or even canceled a planned offensive to deal with the two Austrian attacks. Instead, while the sound of distant gunfire could be heard, Napoleon conferred with his generals in Savona to make final arrangements for the movement of three divisions scheduled for that night. This conference occurred after receiving reports that confirmed the Austrians were not pushing on after their victory at Voltri and had been stopped at Monte Negino.

Although Bonaparte left no detailed written plan for his 1796 offensive, it clearly followed the strategy he outlined in July 1795 and in January 1796 when he was working in the Topographical Bureau. It borrowed ideas from Bourcet's 1744 invasion plan of Piedmont and included months of personal inspection of the operational area by the young general when he served in the Army of Italy.

When Laharpe's division hit Argenteau's Hungarians and Croats on the morning of April 12, they appeared out of the morning fog " like a cresting wave." The Habsburg commander tried to stand, but he was outnumbered to his front and then another column of Masséna's men appeared in his rear. The Austrian forces fled rather than be surrounded. It was not much of a battle, but Montenotte was an essential first step in separating Colli's and Beaulieu's armies.

Unfortunately for the French, Augereau's division, with a brigade from Meynier's division in the lead, was behind schedule. The night march along a narrow 15-mile trail over a high pass failed to catch up with Masséna by nightfall on April 12.

The stage was set for two days of confused combat and missed opportunities that could have wrecked Napoleon's well-coordinated and initially confident orders.

The fighting on April 12 had seen the French victorious, and Bonaparte issued an order of the day that exaggerated enemy losses and had other inaccuracies-but was probably good for morale.

Holding the Castle of Cosseria

Argenteau sent a report to Beaulieu about his retreat and losing nearly 700 men, noting that Dego was "in the greatest danger." Argenteau saw the French threat in separating the two armies by taking Dego, but Beaulieu could not reach Argenteau with reinforcements quickly. There were only four allied battalions in Dego (the three French divisions approaching counted more than 30), but Argenteau felt his troops were too exhausted and disorganized to do any more than cover Acqui. Rather than march to aid Dego, he awaited orders and more troops.

Argenteau appealed to Colli for help, but despite learning about the French offensive on the afternoon of April 12, the commander of the Sardinian Army reacted without urgency. Into the area commanded by Marchese Giovanni Provera, Colli sent a combined grenadier battalion to occupy the heights at Cosseria and personally led four more battalions of these elite troops to Monte Zemlo to await the next French effort. These positions blocked the route into Piedmont but did little to support the Austrian and Sardinian troops in Dego.

Napoleon's orders for April 13 had high expectations: Masséna to push beyond Dego, Laharpe to advance to Cairo, and Augereau to capture Millesimo and the positions that approached Ceva. Sérurier's division, until now held in the Tanaro River Valley area, was to start its move forward so it could add its weight to the eventual attack on Ceva.

There was a serious logistical reason for the junction with Sérurier. The furthest advanced French troops were already suffering from food shortages and needed to draw upon the supply magazine at Bardinetto, but that road was blocked by the Sardinians at Millesimo. One of Augereau's brigades under Jean-Baptiste Rusca pushed forward to open that road.

Mistakes by Napoleon's subordinates and hard fighting by his enemies would nearly derail his offensive campaign after an initially successful first day.

The Sardinian grenadiers reached the castle of Cosseria near Millesimo on April 13 just before Augereau's division encircled it. After calling for its surrender and being rebuffed, the French made three separate attacks. The final assault began around 4:00 pm and nearly succeeded. The Sardinians, low on ammunition, resorted to throwing rocks at the attackers. Stunned by the fierce defense and loss of several key officers, the French fell back.

The French lost between 600 and 1,000 men in the attacks against Cosseria. A local man who provided lodging for Augereau later wrote that he found the general holding his hands on his forehead, repeating the words: "This blessed castle will force us to turn back to the Riviera." Colli's single battalion of Sardinian grenadiers had helped Provera's 4,000 men stop a division of 8,500 French.

Overwhelming Dego

Masséna, waiting for Laharpe's troops, decided not to attack Dego on April 13, believing (incorrectly) that it was strongly defended. If Colli and Beaulieu acted quickly, the two Austrian commanders might recover from their perilous situation.

Bonaparte would not give them that chance. Noting that the Sardinians at Cosseria were almost out of ammunition, he thought they would surrender the next day, which they did. He ordered big fires to be lit that night approaching Millesimo from the Bormida valley to make Colli think that Sérurier's division was closer than it was. Napoleon also rode to Masséna to urge the attack on Dego for April 14.

Masséna's reconnaissance of Dego on April 13 revealed its defensive weaknesses. Now with Laharpe's men available, the French employed the tactic that had worked at Montenotte on the morning of April 12: a frontal assault to distract the enemy accompanied by turning movements. Pressured from all sides, the allied defense in Dego crumbled just as Argenteau began arriving with reinforcements.

The victorious French overcame Dego by sheer weight of numbers (Masséna's 9,500 to 3,000 Austrians under Baron Mathias Rukavina or Roccavina) and then collided with the relief column, throwing it into disorder. A brief pursuit ensued until darkness, including French cavalry that harassed Argenteau's withdrawal. The French captured at least four colors and from 1,500 to more than 4,000 prisoners, depending upon the report.

The Austrian Counterattack

Convinced that Beaulieu's forces were not in a position to cause him any more problems, Bonaparte met with his generals at Cairo at 10 pm on April 14. He ordered Laharpe's division back to Cairo to prepare to join Augereau and Sérurier against Colli.

Discipline broke down among the victorious French at Dego, and they became as disorganized as the retreating Austrians. According to one of the French brigade commanders, "The lack of regularity in the food supply produced many marauders." There were also numerous incidents of looting and wanton destruction.

The French disintegration meant that there was a lack of military vigilance with few or poorly manned outposts. The Austrians might have been struggling with the new pace of operations dictated by Bonaparte, but they did not lack courage or determination. And they would hit back with a vengeance on April 15 at Dego.

Baron Josef Philipp Vukassovich, one of Argenteau's better generals, recognized the opportunity and quickly led five battalions of about 3,000 men back toward Dego. A captured French officer told Vukassovich that there were 20,000 enemy troops in the area, but Vukassovich decided to press on.

Like Laharpe at Montenotte, the Austrians appeared out of the morning fog, and the surprised French attempted to form a defense. Several French officers were cut down, which precipitated a retreat. Hundreds of French soldiers were captured as well as cannon that were now put back into service by Vukassovich's grenadiers acting as artillerymen. Except for the castle in Dego, the Austrians again held the town.

When the seriousness of the situation became apparent to Napoleon, he ordered Laharpe to countermarch his division to Dego. Masséna arrived about four hours after the Austrian attack-his absence for so long a few writers attributed to a woman, or looting. Whether Masséna was derelict in his duties that morning or simply elsewhere on reconnaissance or inspection, when he arrived he quickly proceeded to gather 8,000 men to retake Dego.

Concerned about being enveloped in Dego and with no sign of help from Beaulieu, Vukassovich began withdrawing-constantly harassed by the cautiously pursuing French. His gallant attack made Bonaparte more careful for the next few days, but by the end of April 15 Vukassovich returned to the area of Acqui with only a few of the troops he had led into Dego that morning. By not supporting Vukassovich, Beaulieu missed his best opportunity to thwart Napoleon's offensive.

Taking Ceva

Four days into his first offensive, Bonaparte had successfully wedged his four divisions between the two allied armies. Operations had not developed perfectly, however, and it required Napoleon's repeated attention at various points along the front to maintain the initiative he seized on April 12. Compared to Colli and Beaulieu attempting to direct their forces from the rear, Napoleon's style of personal, relentless leadership was a paradigm shift in warfare.

After regrouping and obtaining sustenance for his troops from local authorities and reconnaissance to make sure that no substantial Austrian forces were within striking distance on April 16, Napoleon prepared for the attack at Ceva (although he left Laharpe's division in the Dego-Montenotte area as a precaution).

Colli had retreated from Monte Zemlo to the fortified town of Ceva and the network of defenses around it. Bonaparte knew about the formidable positions from the memoirs of de Maillebois, but now he could actually see them.

Colli did not expect the French to attack such a strong position, and, suspecting that Bonaparte would attempt a maneuver against his vulnerable right, he marched away with eight battalions the night of April 15. That still left around 13,000 Sardinians to defend Ceva, and they defeated all attempts on April 16 by Augereau's 7,500 troops to probe (French version) or attack (Sardinian opinion) their redoubts.

Despite the successful defense at Ceva on April 16 and the heroic stand at Cosseria on April 13, morale among the senior Sardinian officers was low. Now on his way back after learning of the French attack at Ceva, Colli received a report from his commanders that they thought it wise to retire. The hostess of the house where Colli stayed that night wrote in her journal: "Fear and indecision were the result of the council of war." Colli wrote the order to abandon Ceva.

Augereau occupied the abandoned entrenchments at Ceva the next day, and Bonaparte ordered an immediate pursuit, ignoring the small garrison left behind in the town's citadel. There would be no costly French assaults as had occurred at Cosseria, and no siege. The French marched off, leaving the few Sardinian troops in their rear. As there were virtually no supplies reaching the French troops, there was nothing for the Sardinians to intercept or cut off.

Retreat From San Michele

Colli's next strong defensive line was at San Michele (also called La Bicocca), where he positioned 8,000 men and 15 guns. An assault on April 19 by 11,500 troops under Augereau and Sérurier was stalled until a group of skirmishers following retreating Sardinian pickets was able to cross at an unguarded aqueduct and a French brigade got across the river to cause panic among the defenders.

As at Dego, the victors immediately began to pillage. This time it was Sérurier's division that was punished for its lack of discipline, being thrown out of San Michele by a counterattack organized by Colli. Lack of food was the bane of the French Army of Italy, and halting the offensive ran the risk of seeing it disintegrate into a rabble. The people of the mountainous region could barely support themselves, let alone nearly 40,000 hungry French soldiers and their horses.

Napoleon held a meeting with his generals at Ceva to prepare to retake San Michele. But the French spent April 20 mostly resting the troops, finding food, and restoring discipline and order.

Despite his victory at San Michele, Colli emptied supply magazines and destroyed bridges preparing for further retreat. Until Beaulieu's army could reach him, Colli wanted to preserve his army. During the night of April 20-21, the Sardinians pulled back toward the large magazines at Mondovì.

Negotiations With Napoleon

Bonaparte arrived that night to scout San Michele for the next day's action. He found a ford that enabled his troops to cross the river despite the destroyed bridge and discovered that the Piedmontese had gone, leaving their campfires burning. Napoleon ordered an immediate pursuit, catching Colli's rear guard late the next morning. Very quickly, Colli's army was retreating in confusion.

Napoleon, accompanied by his friend Saliceti, made a triumphal entry into Mondovì on April 21. That night, King Victor Amadeus III met with his ministers in Turin and sent envoys to meet the French government representative in Genoa. A letter was also sent to Colli asking him to open negotiations with Bonaparte for an armistice.

Napoleon received Colli's letter on April 23, but he continued his movements toward Turin and replied that evening that only the Directory could negotiate peace. However, if two of the three fortresses of Cuneo, Alessandria, and Tortona were turned over to the French, he would suspend hostilities. To make sure that Beaulieu's forces would not link up with Colli's demoralized army, Augereau seized Alba, and Masséna occupied Cherasco.

With help from Beaulieu unlikely and his demoralized and weakened army just miles from Turin, King Amadeus accepted Bonaparte's terms on April 26. It was just 15 days since the French offensive began on April 12.

Armistice With Sardinia and Austria

Bonaparte had accomplished in two weeks what none of the commanders fighting in this area of Italy had been able to achieve in the 1740s or from 1792-1795. To some historians, it was the weakness and betrayal of the Sardinian king that gave Napoleon his victory. However, French soldiers were often beaten by their hard-fighting adversaries in the 1796 campaign, and the Austrian commanders were dedicated professionals who did not quit easily.

The primary reason for the end of the Italian stalemate in 1796 was Napoleon Bonaparte. He simply outthought, outplanned, outreacted, and outgeneraled his opponents.

Napoleon signed an armistice with Sardinia on April 28, which violated the Directory's orders that he take no diplomatic action. However, when his brother Joseph reached Paris with letters and reports announcing the army's success along with 21 captured Austrian and Sardinian colors and much loot, the Directory ignored Bonaparte's insubordination and showed gratitude for the victory France badly needed in the spring 1796.

In keeping with his new style of military operations, Napoleon did not rest on his laurels. He provisioned his army at the expense of Sardinia, reorganized it into a more effective force, received reinforcements from the nearby French Army of the Alps, and by May 5, only a week after signing the armistice with Sardinia, was already chasing Beaulieu across northern Italy.

After nearly another year of fighting, Napoleon forced the Austrians to sign an armistice in April 1797.

Back to the issue this appears in

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Napoleon's Stunning Debut: The Italian Campaign

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Napoleon Bonaparte's road to glory began in 1796 with a two-week campaign in Italy that announced his arrival on the European stage.

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Napoleon’s great cultural charade | HistoryExtra

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Many of his contemporaries suspected that he harboured no genuine love for the arts. So why was Napoleon so desperate to project himself as a connoisseur of culture? Alan Forrest investigates

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Was Napoleon Bonaparte an enlightened leader or tyrant?

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Was Napoleon Bonaparte an enlightened leader or tyrant?

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The year was 1802. France's wealthiest colony, Saint-Domingue, on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola-today shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic-was in turmoil. As former slaves battled their French overlords, an alliance of Black and mixed-raced generals fought to restore order under the French flag.

Then came news from Guadeloupe, another French colony in the Caribbean. Freed Blacks who had rebelled against French troops trying to re-enslave them had lost their battle.

French general and ruler Napoleon Bonaparte had reneged on a promise he made that year: the reestablishment of slavery in French colonies would exclude Guadeloupe and other territories where Black people had been freed during the French Revolution. But economics superseded, and Bonaparte restored laws in Guadeloupe that were struck down when France had abolished slavery in 1794.

After eight years of freedom, Black Guadeloupeans were now back in bondage.

Black fighters, as well as those of mixed race-known across the Caribbean as mulatto -quickly realised that the mighty expedition of French troops deployed under the command of Bonaparte's brother-in-law, Army General Charles Leclerc, weren't in Saint-Domingue just to restore order. Their purpose was to reinstate slavery, and reassert French control over the entire island after slave revolt leader Toussaint Louverture published an 1801 constitution proclaiming himself governor-general for life and codifying the abolishment of slavery.

Suddenly the resistance movement that began in 1791 with a series of slave rebellions on the island-though roiled by internal conflicts, shifting alliances, and the arrest and deportation of Louverture-was ignited. The events of 1802 would give birth to the world's first Black-led independent nation post colonialism: Haiti.

It also would forever seal a legacy for Bonaparte that remains a source of contention 200 years after his death.

"Napoleon reinstated slavery in 1802 and the French parliament, in 2001, declared by law that colonial slavery was a crime against humanity," says Georges Michel, a Haitian historian in Port-au-Prince. For Bonaparte's role in rolling back abolition, Michel sees the military leader as a man who was "a criminal against humanity."

He also sees an irony in the way in which the most famous Frenchman died. "The same way that Napoleon kidnapped Toussaint Louverture, and put him in captivity, he also finishes his life in captivity. He will have the same fate as Toussaint Louverture."

French studies professor Andrew Curran said that while Bonaparte has been widely written about, there is often an ellipsis in his narrative where the Haitian Revolution is missing.

"Part of it is the fact that the Haitian Revolution, and the loss of Saint-Domingue, really was such an enormously powerful and awful thing for the French. It's kind of their Vietnam," says Curran, who teaches at Wesleyan University and is the author of The Anatomy of Blackness: Science and Slavery in an Age of Enlightenment. "The fact that this enormous country was beaten resoundingly by people they thought were not at the level of people who should not have beaten them-there was an enormous amount of shame, which turned into the most violent racism."

This year's bicentennial commemorations of his death open old wounds. His duelling legacies of hero and tyrant serve as a reminder of France's dark colonial past, where the forced labour of enslaved Africans made it one of Europe's wealthiest nations.

While tributes are planned in the French overseas departments of Guadeloupe and Martinique, not everyone will be toasting the ex-emperor's complicated legacy.

For Haitians, there will be no wreath laying or Catholic Mass, planned in St. Helena, or reenactments of Bonaparte's adventures, like those seen on the Mediterranean island of Elba, where the bicentenary of his April 11, 1814 arrival in exile was celebrated with fanfare.

In death, as in life, Bonaparte is dividing opinion and arousing powerful sentiments about his ascent and fall from power, his contributions to France, and the legacy he left scattered across the Caribbean-particularly in Haiti, where his mark remains ingrained in a bloody history.

Enlightened leader or warmonger?

For admirers, Bonaparte is considered an enlightened autocrat and the architect of modern France. His creation of the state-run secondary schools known as the lycées-attended by many of the country's elite as part of his reform of the education system-remains a cornerstone of today. His legal contribution in the form of the Civil Code abolished feudal privileges, unified laws, and formed the basis of today's French civil law. He also organised France with his structured, centralised government.

A pragmatist, he both promoted science and reintroduced religion, putting Judaism, Protestantism, and Catholicism on the same footing-not because he was religious but because he saw it as politically necessary. In his heyday, he brings glory to France, and financial salvation after the messy French Revolution, whose universal values-"liberty, equality, fraternity"-are shared by many nations, including Haiti, which adopted it as the republic's official motto.

"Of course, Napoleon is glorious because of the military victories," says Peter Hicks, a British historian with the Fondation Napoléon in Paris. "It's not the way we think these days, perhaps. But at the time, he was hugely popular because of the immense success of the French army and the growing nature of the French army."

But with success came failings and human suffering. To detractors, he is a warmonger and despot who negotiated, manipulated, and politicised his way into singular power in a bloodless 1799 coup. The leader of France then amended the constitution three years later to appoint himself First Consul for Life.

Bonaparte is not associated with individual liberty, as exemplified by his reinstatement of slavery and conflict with Louverture, who declared that "All men are born, live, and die free" in his 1801 constitution.

Miffed not just by the language in the constitution but also by Louverture's self-imposed act to rule for life, Bonaparte later wrote in his memoirs that "Toussaint knew very well that in proclaiming his constitution, he had thrown away his mask and had drawn his sword out of its sheath forever."

Marlene Daut, associate professor of African Diaspora Studies at the University of Virginia, says that to point to positive contributions by Bonaparte "is to suggest that the people whose lives he destroyed actually don't matter.

The total number of civilian and military casualties attributed to Bonaparte varies, with French historian Hippolyte Taine estimating 1.7 million deaths and others putting the figure as low as 600,000. Daut says other estimates vary between three million and six million. It's one of the reasons she sees Bonaparte as an odd choice to hail as a hero.

The debate on Bonaparte's legacy comes amid deep soul-searching about racism, discrimination, colonialism, and the enslavement of Black people.

In the French Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique, where commemoration events are planned, some see the French government's bicentennial recognition as an affront- another example of a nation that prides itself as operating on a colourblind, egalitarian creed but acts with blinders on when it comes to slavery's legacy.

The French recognise that Bonaparte is problematic, Daut says, but aren't necessarily embracing a widespread reckoning. "To admit that Napoleon is racist, to them is to say something about French people and they cannot handle that," she says. "Even when they're willing to concede the facts of what he did-and they're not actually denying the facts-it makes them deeply, deeply uncomfortable, because what does that mean about all of the wealth that they have in their country. What does that mean about all of the prosperity? What does that mean about French identity? That it's built on the backs of murdering people, and not just people in Haiti."

Bonaparte's life in exile took a drastic turn.As a military leader, he carried out several successful campaigns during the French revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, crowned himself emperor, and survived dozens of assassination attempts. (Claiming the crown cost Napoleon a famous fan: Beethoven.)

But he ultimately falls out of favour and ends up banished-twice-first to Elba, then to St. Helena.

His first stint in exile comes in 1814 after a failed Russian invasion. European allies force his abdication and dispatch Bonaparte to Elba, where he rules over the 12,000 inhabitants of the tiny island off the Tuscan coast. He is promised money that never comes from a bankrupt France, and spends his 300 days there reforming Elba's government and economy, overseeing road construction and other projects.

Bonaparte, who claimed he wanted to live "like a justice of the peace," is free to move about. No one guards him, and no ships circle the island to keep him there. But the man who was used to leading armies and served as French emperor for a decade grows restless.

Gambling on the belief that the French army is still loyal to him, he flees back to his homeland, where a band of soldiers joins him in his quest to reconquer power. That endeavour lasts for a full hundred days.

"Europe cannot believe it, the world cannot believe it," says Hicks of the Fondation Napoléon. "The hundred days are extraordinary. People go, 'Wow, he did that?' And France doesn't react negatively. It doesn't react positively."

At the time of Bonaparte's escape from Elba in February 1815, Europe's leaders are meeting in what is known as the watershed Conference of Vienna to reorganise the region following his conquests. They are aware of his escapades, and on March 13, a week before his arrival in Paris, Bonaparte is declared an outlaw.

His arch enemy, the British, had unsuccessfully been trying to ban slavery. To annoy them, and to appear as a liberal ruler after he finally arrives in Paris, Bonaparte declares the abolition of slavery in France-for a second time. (It would take more than three decades for free Blacks in French territories to witness the full abolition of slavery. In 1848, France becomes the only country to abolish slavery three times, amid a struggle of economic and racist interests and human rights).

Viewing him as an obstacle to peace, the armies of Russia, Austria, and Britain unite one last time against Bonaparte in June and surround France. Over three days in the Battle of Waterloo, Bonaparte finally meets defeat. Unable to escape to America, he eventually surrenders to the British.

Bonaparte is exiled to St. Helena, Britain's windswept, rugged outpost off the coast of Africa- a penal colony in the middle of the South Atlantic where the closest land border is 1,200 miles away. Bonaparte spends his days tending to his garden and rewriting history in his memoirs.

When death arrives six years later, reportedly from stomach cancer, Bonaparte's body is encased in not one but four nested caskets-one made of tin that held his body, two crafted from mahogany, and another in lead. He is buried underneath a willow tree in a grave 10 feet down in the earth.

Fears of an outlash by Bonaparte loyalists and possible unrest in a politically fragile France would keep the Corsican-born leader in exile in death-19 years would pass before his remains return to France. When his body arrives, curious crowds line the streets to get a glimpse of the horse-drawn coffin. Bonaparte's remains are today at a monument in Les Invalides complex in Paris.

Legacy of a slave revolt

While the restoration of bondage in Guadeloupe in 1802 became a turning point in the Haitian Revolution, so too did the capture of its leader, Louverture, who died a lonely death in a cold French prison.

As a French colony, Saint-Domingue had the Caribbean's largest enslaved population, with many subjected to brutal beatings and other acts of violence. There were also people of mixed race and free Blacks who, while not enslaved, were subjected to a rigid caste system and denied citizenship by the island's white leaders. The turmoil was exacerbated by the French Revolution, and in 1793, to quell conflict, France ended slavery in the colony. The following year it was abolished in all French territories.

The idea of having Saint-Domingue return to a colony where Black people were once again enslaved, and those of mixed ancestry subject to a caste system-as in Guadeloupe and Martinique, which had just returned to the French fold from the British-was unthinkable.

"Napoleon's mission, with the deployment of Leclerc, was to return Saint-Domingue to what it was before 1794, before the revolution started," says Pierre Buteau, a Haitian historian and author. "They concluded that the only way for them to establish control in Saint-Domingue, they had to eliminate all of the big leaders of the revolution."

But the leaders were not the only target. In a letter to Bonaparte, Leclerc writes that the abolition movement is so strong that reasserting power in Saint-Domingue would require a drastic move: eliminating all of the adult Black population, including children over the age of 12.

"A war of extermination was going to take place, but this war of extermination is what will lead to the Battle of Vertières," Buteau says of the last major battle of the revolution, which led to France being kicked out of the island.

The repression gets brutal. Leclerc and his second-in-command, General Donatien-Marie-Joseph Rochambeau, unleash vicious man-eating dogs, drown Black people at sea, and parade the heads of rebellious individuals as a warning.

"Most of the famous images from the Haitian Revolution from the 18th and 19th century show Black people with white people's heads," Daut says. "That's rich, because actually it was the other way around."

"They got the examples from the white colonists because that is exactly what they would always do," she continues. "Any free person who agitated for rights, complained about prejudices, they would cut off their heads, stick it on pikes, and paraded around the town, literally."

Some scholars argue that the Haitian Revolution, which remains the only successful slave revolt in history, should not be considered among Bonaparte's defeats because he wasn't there, and his expeditionary army was led by generals.

Others say it is overdue for predominantly white countries like France and Britain, which had a history of enslaving people, to tell a fuller narrative of their empires.

Bonaparte deployed more than 60,000 soldiers to the island-and still lost. The revolt also halted his expansion plans west into the United States, thereby leading to the Louisiana Purchase. And it cost France the main crown jewel in an empire that stretched into Africa and the Caribbean.

Born in Milan, Sergio Ramazzotti has written and photographed stories for some of the leading magazines around the world with a special interest in covering wars and humanitarian crises. He and Ornella D'Alessio reported this story on Napoloen together.

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Was Napoleon Bonaparte an enlightened leader or tyrant?

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Bicentennial commemorations of Bonaparte's death fuel debate about his legacy, France's colonial past, and the leader's ties to Haiti.

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'The Death of Napoleon' captures the end of a tumultuous era

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'The Death of Napoleon' captures the end of a tumultuous era

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Napoleon Bonaparte died on May 5, 1821, on the remote South Atlantic island of St. Helena. To the British, Dutch, and Prussian coalition who had exiled him there in 1815, he was a despot, but to France, he was seen as a devotee of the Enlightenment.

In the decade following his demise, Napoleon's image underwent a transformation in France. The monarchy had been restored, but by the late 1820s, it was growing unpopular. King Charles X was seen as a threat to the civil liberties established during the Napoleonic era. This mistrust revived Napoleon's reputation and put him in a more heroic light. (Beethoven was once Napoleon's biggest fan but became his biggest critic.)

Fascination with the French leader's death led Charles de Steuben, a German-born Romantic painter living in Paris, to immortalise the event. Steuben's painting depicts the moment of Napoleon's death and seeks to capture the sense of awe in the room at the death of a man whose legendary career had begun in the French Revolution.

Napoleon declared himself France's First Consul in 1799 and then emperor in 1804. For the next decade, he led France against a series of European coalitions during the Napoleonic Wars and expanded his empire throughout much of continental Europe before his defeat in 1814. He was exiled to the Mediterranean island of Elba, but he escaped and briefly reasserted control over France before a crushing final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

Napoleon's military prowess earned him the fear of his enemies, but his civil reforms in France brought him the respect of his people. The Napoleonic Code, introduced in 1804, replaced the existing patchwork of French laws with a unified national system built on the principles of the Enlightenment: universal male suffrage, property rights, equality (for men), and religious freedom. (Inside the Christmas Eve plot to kill Napoleon.)

Even in his final exile on St. Helena, Napoleon proved a magnetic presence. Passengers of ships docked to resupply would hurry to meet the great general. He developed strong personal bonds with the coterie who had accompanied him into exile. Although some speculate that he was murdered, most agree that Napoleon's death in 1821, at the age of 51, was the result of stomach cancer. (Napoleon's military defeat in Egypt yielded a victory for history.)

Hushed grief

The son of an army officer, Charles de Steuben was born in 1788, his youth and artistic training coinciding with Napoleon's rise to power. The portrayal of key moments in Napoleon's dramatic military career would feature among some of Steuben's best known works.

Using his high-level contacts among figures in Napoleon's circle, Steuben interviewed and sketched many of the people who had been present when Napoleon died at Longwood House on St. Helena. Painstakingly researching the room's furniture and layout, he painted a carefully composed scene of hushed grief. Notable among the figures are Gen. Henri Bertrand, who loyally followed Napoleon into exile; Bertrand's wife, Fanny; and their children, of whom Napoleon had become very fond.

The best known version of "The Death of Napoleon" was completed in 1828. French writer Stendhal considered it "a masterpiece of expression." In 1830 the installation of a more liberal monarchy in France further boosted admiration of Napoleon, who suddenly became a wildly popular figure in theatre, art, and music. This fervour led to the diffusion of Steuben's deathbed scene in the form of engravings throughout Europe in the 1830s. (What can 200-year-old DNA tell us about a murdered French revolutionary?)

The French author François-René de Chateaubriand wrote that Napoleon possessed "the mightiest breath of life to ever animate human clay," a grandeur of vision that permeates Steuben's masterpiece of historical reconstruction. It hangs today in the Napoleon Museum at the Arenenberg Palace in Switzerland, the former residence of Napoleon's stepdaughter, Hortense.

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'The Death of Napoleon' captures the end of a tumultuous era

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Napoleon Bonaparte died on May 5, 1821, on the remote South Atlantic island of St. Helena. To the British, Dutch, and Prussian coalition who had exiled him there in 1815, he was a despot, but to France, he was seen as a devotee of the Enlightenment.

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The Artistic Legacy of Napoleon Bonaparte

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The Artistic Legacy of Napoleon Bonaparte

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BOTH adored and excoriated in his own time and through history, Napoleon Bonaparte was, like most people, a man of opposing traits. In ``War and Peace,'' Leo Tolstoy begins his first chapter with the remarks of a member of the Russian nobility, Anna Pavlovna Scherer, who calls the new French emperor the antichrist. That she did not even deign to give him his newly assumed title was not surprising, since France was then the enemy of Russia. She did not hesitate to brand him as a usurper and a murderer. Many of the French, uneasy and unhappy over the great power of this strange little Corsican, would secretly have agreed with her.

Napoleon's role as a military leader and empire builder is well documented in literature and history, but less familiar is the influence he exerted in the world of art. He seized treasure everywhere he could - as the spoils of war - notably the great horses of San Marco, which were eventually returned to Venice (though not to their earlier site, Constantinople). But the bulk of the art objects in France at this time were never returned to their owners. They had been appropriated during the French Revolution from French royal palaces, from the Roman Catholic Church, and from private collections. These were in storage at the Louvre and Versailles under the control of the government, which, fortunately, recognized that they really belonged to the nation.

It was under the aegis of Napoleon that the museum as we know it was born, organized, and fostered. The idea of a museum had certainly been envisioned earlier - as in Holland when a wealthy arts patron had left provisions in his will for his collection to be publicly viewed - but now the time had come for the widespread openings.

In a spirit of practical idealism, during those first cataclysmic years of the revolution, France set up 15 ``provincial museums,'' or ``miniature Louvres,'' filling them with the treasures at hand, which were mainly paintings. There was no lack of material, and no need to pay for it - that had been done through the centuries. An army of bureaucrats, inspired by the Enlightenment, now arose to handle the disbursement of the paintings.

IT is surprising that in the process of redistributing these priceless objects over so wide an area relatively little was damaged or misappropriated. Those in charge were animated by a genuine patriotic feeling that all this beauty belonged to the long-suffering people of France, who had always been deprived of their due. These people, it was believed, must now be educated to appreciate their heritage, to develop taste, to learn history. Inventories were drawn up and catalogs written, while attention was paid to conservation and preservation.

In that period the French entertained a wider concept of the term ``province'' - more like that of the Roman Empire - than the sense we have of the word today. Among the 15 sites selected for provincial museums were Milan, Mainz, and Geneva - because these cities had been incorporated into the Napoleonic empire, and it was hoped they would remain part of it forever. As Napoleon placed his relatives on many of the thrones of Europe, museums were also founded in distant capitals - the Prado in Madrid and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, for example. These new imperialists, in their wish to instill in their citizens a sense of taste and style, were in fact perpetuating elements that had distinguished the ancien regime, which they professed to detest. The new France had become the greatest possessor of artistic treasure since Rome had triumphed over Greece and Egypt, and from 1791 to the end of the century it had to regroup, transfer, and distribute a stream of valuables, a feat accomplished with success.

The city of Lille was a natural choice for one of the 15 provincial museums. Once part of the almost fabled kingdom of Burgundy, Lille was allied to the rich Flemish tradition, holding to its past as part of the southern Netherlands. It had been incorporated into France by the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1668), by Louis XIV. Aware of the importance of this frontier city, wishing it to come over to France in spirit, Louis had given it handsome municipal buildings and monuments.

The pictures shown here are an indication of the diversity the Musee des Beaux Arts in Lille has achieved in the centuries since Napoleon's time. The striking oil painting ``The Letter'' by Francisco Goya (1746-1828) exemplifies not only his splendid virtuosity but also his propensity for caustic observation for society. In the foreground a beautiful woman, standing in full and brilliant light and holding the letter, commands the scene at first sight. At her side, but in shadow, is her dark duenna with a parasol. At first these two characters are almost all we see, till we perceive that behind and below them another drama is presented: a group of poor washerwomen, thin and desperate, avid. They are all part of the moral problem confronting Spain, which was in a condition of degradation and social collapse due to continuing wars and the greed of the governing classes. This had become so bad that in the end Goya left his own country and went to live in Bordeaux.

In his youth, Goya had painted a field with women washing in a brook, a lovely, laughing scene, and had also done a lady with a letter, a sweet and gentle figure. In ``The Letter,'' he combined these two scenes in a diametrically opposite mood, a piercing document of the times.

IN another painting from the museum at Lille, ``A Study of Cows, After Jacob Jordaens'' by Vincent van Gogh, we enter again an entirely different environment of development and inspiration. Van Gogh had a short life, only 10 years of which were given to painting, and in which he produced his amazing works. At points during this decade he was confined to mental homes, and in order to endure spent his time painting. Not accustomed to drawing upon his memory or imagination, he would then be obliged to copy prints, something of which he was ashamed. He justified it by explaining that he would base his work on another artist's, just as a musician composes variations on a theme, not realizing that he needed no defense. He could never have heard that the Chinese, for instance, considered copying an essential and admirable branch of painting, where each painter would express his own talents with subtle interpretations.

This wonderful picture of cows comes from a print by a rather obscure artist called Paul-Ferdinand Gachet, and which was, in turn, based on a famous painting of the same subject by Jacob Jordaens (1593-1687). The Dutch have traditionally been fond of painting cattle, and have done this with great eclat, their own low fields affording them a plethora of models. In Jordaens's time, nature study was a cultivated art, and pictures of flora and fauna were much admired. The Gachet print was therefore a stepping stone between Jordaens and van Gogh.

In all three of these studies, the field, the sky, and the position of the cows are roughly similar, but the results are as different as were the men themselves. Van Gogh's interpretation needs no discussion - it is a glorious tour de force, speaking for itself, lavish in its happiness and artistry, of so cheerful a tone that it sets everyone smiling.

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The Artistic Legacy of Napoleon Bonaparte

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BOTH adored and excoriated in his own time and through history, Napoleon Bonaparte was, like most people, a man of opposing traits. In ``War and Pe