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Napoleon had always been alive to the power of nomenclature and so he renamed the Place de la Révolution (formerly the Place Louis XV) as the Place de la Concorde, and demolished the giant female statue of Liberty there. ‘Concord,’ he later wrote, ‘that is what renders France invincible.’
By May 1803, some 90 per cent of all émigrés had returned to France, reversing the huge drain of talent that had so weakened the country.48 Of the 281 prefects appointed by Napoleon between 1800 and 1814, as many as 110 (39 per cent) had been Ancien Régime nobles.49
‘If you make war, employ severity and activity; it is the only means by which you make it shorter, and consequently less deplorable for humanity.’
Napoleon took a deep personal interest in the strategic dissemination of news. ‘Spread the following reports in an official manner,’ he once instructed Fouché. ‘They are, however, true. Spread them first in the salons, and then put them in the papers.’
As First Consul Napoleon made all public officials salaried servants of the state, ensured they were properly trained, and abolished promotion through corruption and nepotism, replacing it with rewards for talent and merit.
He insisted that his prefects provide him with systematic statistical data, ordering them to make extensive annual tours of their departments to glean first-hand information.65 He would later describe them as empereurs au petit pied (mini-emperors).
Only in areas in which Napoleon wasn’t interested, such as the relief of the poor and primary education, was much power left with the departments.
Interesting choices
Though it was humiliating that the new Italian Republic should be founded in France, where Talleyrand could better keep an eye on the delegates, this was the first time that the word ‘Italy’ had appeared on the political map of Europe since the collapse of Rome in the fifth century
Yet in a sense Joseph and Talleyrand had been too successful: because Britain gained so little, her commitment to the peace was correspondingly weak.
He has more unaffected dignity than I could conceive in man.
‘He made me lose one day and on one day depends the fate of the world;
He was at Znaim on the 17th when he learned about Trafalgar. The censorship he ordered was so complete that most Frenchmen heard about the disaster for the first time only in 1814.92
Wow
The conference continued till 7.30 a.m., when Napoleon was certain that everyone understood precisely what was required of them.
As was often the case, it was the last, fresh, formed-up body of troops to be sent in who swung the battle, justifying Napoleon’s policy of always holding back reserves.
The 4th Line, commanded by Major Bigarré but whose honorary colonel was Joseph Bonaparte, was charged by the Russian Guard Cuirassiers; it broke, turned and fled, although its men had the presence of mind to cry ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ as they ran past Napoleon.
A masterful plan, an appreciation of terrain, superb timing, a steady nerve, the discipline and training instilled at Boulogne, the corps system, exploitation of a momentary numerical advantage at the decisive point, tremendous esprit de corps, fine performances on the day by Friant, Davout, Vandamme, Soult and Saint-Hilaire, and a divided and occasionally incompetent enemy – Büxhowden was drunk during the battle – had given Napoleon the greatest victory of his career.
‘It is not peace that is important but the conditions of peace,’ he told Joseph, ‘and it’s too complicated for the comprehension of a Paris citizen. I am not accustomed to shape my policy after the discourses of Paris loungers.’
Night after night thereafter, the three men would dine early, say goodnight, and then Alexander would return to Napoleon’s apartments to talk long into the small hours without Frederick William knowing.
Lol
By imposing these humiliations on the great-nephew of Frederick the Great, Napoleon guaranteed that Prussia would feel perpetual resentment, but he calculated that Austrian revanchism over Pressburg and Prussian over Tilsit could be held in check by his new friendship with Russia.
Miscalculation
That he achieved this for a decade after the collapse of the Peace of Amiens, despite clearly being the European hegemon that each power most feared, was a tribute to his statesmanship. The effective dividing of Europe into French and Russian spheres of influence was the defining moment of this strategy.
The year 1810 had been a mixed one for Napoleon; although his Empire had reached the zenith of its power and territorial extent, he had made mistakes that boded ill for its future. Most of these errors had been unforced, and many of his problems, we can now see, were self-inflicted. He need not have quarrelled publicly with the Pope, certainly not to the point of arresting him. Impatience to make a dynastic alliance had offended Alexander and made him suspicious over Poland, even though Napoleon had no intention of restoring that kingdom. The Austrian marriage was never going to be enough to
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None of his opponents could threaten the existence of the largest European empire since Ancient Rome, larger even that Charlemagne’s. Only Napoleon himself could do that.
“No harangue, gentlemen!” is frequently the discouraging apostrophe with which Bonaparte cuts short these trembling deputations,’ recalled the civil servant Theodor von Faber.
It was largely in order to combat smuggling across the German north-west littoral that Napoleon annexed the Hanseatic Towns such as Hamburg, Bremen and Lübeck on December 19 1810.
Again annexation. No wonder he was always attacked. And smuggling? What a dumb reason. Just shifting the smuggling border
After Rome, Hanover and Holland, it was Napoleon’s fourth annexation in the past twelve months, and like them it arose directly as a result of his obsession with his protectionist economic war against Britain.
As in the attack on Moscow, Napoleon rejected the strategy that had served him so well in the past – that of concentrating solely on the enemy’s main force and annihilating it – and instead allowed secondary political objects to intervene, such as his desire to take Berlin and punish Prussia.
He just seems to lose his sharpness after first Polish campaign
‘In my position,’ he had written in a general note to his senior commanders only a week earlier, ‘any plan where I am not myself in the centre is inadmissible. Any plan which removes me to a distance establishes a regular war in which the superiority of the enemy cavalry, in numbers, and even in generals, would completely ruin me.’27 Here was an open recognition that his marshals couldn’t be expected to pull off the coups necessary to win battles against forces 70 per cent larger than theirs – indeed that most of them to his mind were barely capable of independent command.
When Jean-Baptiste Corbineau arrived the next day with the disastrous news Napoleon could only say: ‘That’s war: very high in the morning and very low in the evening: from triumph to failure is only one step.’
Napoleon spent most of September in Dresden, occasionally dashing out to engage any Allied forces that came too close, but incapable of making any large, campaign-winning strokes because of the Allies’ determination to avoid giving him battle, while continuing to concentrate on his subordinates.
Took them 10 years to figure this out
General Thiébault, a divisional commander in the campaign, accurately summed up the situation in the autumn of 1813: The arena of this gigantic struggle had increased in an alarming fashion. It was no longer the kind of ground of which advantage could be taken by some clever, secret, sudden manoeuvre, such as could be executed in a few hours, or at most in one or two days. Napoleon … could not turn the enemy’s flank as at Marengo or Jena, or even wreck an army, as at Wagram, by destroying one of its wings. Bernadotte to the north with 160,000 men, Blücher to the east with 160,000,
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Among the half-million men who fought at Leipzig in ‘The Battle of the Nations’ – the largest battle in European history up to that moment – were French, Germans (on both sides), Russians, Swedes, Italians, Poles, every nationality within the Austrian Empire and even a British rocket section.
Yet instead he allowed the whole of October 17 to pass by in rest and recuperation, requesting an armistice (which was refused)
Second time letting critical time slip by asking for peace he knew wouldn’t get
The Saxon battery actually turned around, unlimbered and began firing on the French lines. They had fought for Napoleon for seven years since deserting the Prussians after Jena, and such cool treachery was bad for French morale.
Although rockets had been known about for sixteen years, and their efficacy had been attested at Copenhagen in 1807, Napoleon hadn’t developed a rocket capacity of his own.
No comment on this?? Seems like a glaring lack of technical advancement, let alone simple curiosity. War is a matter of technology
I cannot understand that such a clever commander as the Emperor could let us starve. It would have been a very different life in that army if sufficient food had been available. And yet, no one who has not experienced it can have any idea of the enthusiasm which burst forth among the half-starved, exhausted soldiers when the Emperor was there in person. If all were demoralized and he appeared, his presence was like an electric shock. All shouted ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ and everyone charged blindly into the fire.
Pontoon bridges had not been built over the Pleisse, Luppe or White Elster rivers, so everyone had to cross by the single bridge over the Pleisse in the city,
It feels like a slow decline into absolute chaos. The administration all bogged down until it came down to his capacity alone it seems, as if he didn’t think of it, it then didn’t happen as no one else would
‘Between a battle lost and a battle won,’ Napoleon had said on the eve of the battle of Leipzig, ‘the distance is immense and there stand empires.’
Good line
It was a sign of Napoleon’s invincible optimism to have left so many men so far to the east. By 1814, most of them were prisoners-of-war.
He ordered that all payments of pensions and salaries be suspended so that the orders made by the war administration ministry could still be honoured.
He did not believe that a lasting peace would be possible if Napoleon remained on the throne of France.
Don’t think he was wrong, since Napoleon abandoned peace for as long as Britain was a power
‘I have never been seduced by prosperity; adversity shall find me superior to its blows.’
Good line
The French had allowed him his first defeat in Russia, but this second catastrophe at Leipzig, coming so soon afterwards, turned many of them against him.
‘The moment when the national existence is threatened is not the one to come to talk to me about constitutions and the rights of the people,’
These should have already been in place, no? Context on this quote would be helpful
Now that the Allies were crossing the Rhine, national unity was more important than political debate. France was about to be invaded and Napoleon was determined to fight.
But about to be invaded because of Napoleon’s ego. Doesn’t get to claim being the victim
‘It may happen to me to lose battles,’ Napoleon had told the Piedmontese envoys back in 1796, ‘but no one shall ever see me lose minutes either by over-confidence or by sloth.’
Not committing the Guard at Borodino, staying too long in Moscow and Leipzig, splitting his forces in the Leipzig and Waterloo campaigns and, finally, coming to the decisive engagement on ground which his opponent had chosen: all were the result of Napoleon not following his own military maxims.
Great summary. Last 3 years he loses his head
There is in fact no convincing evidence that any of the decisions Napoleon took on June 18 were the result of his physical state rather than his own misjudgements
‘In war,’ he told one of his captors the following year, ‘the game is always with him who commits the fewest faults.’81 In the Waterloo campaign that was Wellington, who had made a study of Napoleon’s tactics and career, was rigorous in his deployments, and was everywhere on the battlefield.
The best battlefield soldier Napoleon had fought before Waterloo had been Archduke Charles, and he was simply not prepared for a master-tactician of Wellington’s calibre – one, moreover, who had never lost a battle.
But he had been fighting Wellington in Spain for years. He should have known
