Images and Ideas: Napoléon

This blog post is largely informed by the book 'Napoleon the Great' by Andrew Roberts, and the Ridley Scott movie. I enjoyed both. The movie was worth seeing on a large cinema screen.

Napoleon (Wikipedia article)

The book by Andrew Roberts is excellent, and enjoyed rave reviews.

NAPOLEON THE GREAT

‘An epic joy... Never before have the scope and sweep of Napoleon’s life been encapsulated so cogently’

Roger Lewis, Daily Mail

‘Magisterial and beautifully written... Napoleon could have few biographers more dedicated to their subject. Not only has Roberts worked his way through Napoleon’s 33,000 extant letters but he has also walked the ground of 53 of Napoleon’s 60 battlefields... What is more, he made the long and still arduous journey to St Helena... The result of these labours is a richly detailed and sure-footed reappraisal of the man, his achievements — and failures — and the extraordinary times in which he lived’

Jeremy Jennings, Standpoint

‘Roberts is an uncommonly gifted writer, capable of synthesizing vast amounts of material and rendering it in clear, elegant prose. The result is a thrilling tale of military and political genius, and easily the finest one-volume biography of Napoleon in English’

Michael F. Bishop, Washington Post

‘Masterly... beautifully written and a pleasure to read’ Economist

‘There have been more books written about Napoleon than there have been days since he died. Do we really need another? The answer to that question, at least if the book is by the distinguished historian Andrew Roberts, is an emphatic yes. Napoleon is the most well-rounded and nuanced biography of this astonishing man to be had. In the masterly hands of Andrew Roberts, one of the most extraordinary — and consequential — human beings who has ever lived has been brought to vivid and exemplary life’

John Steele Gordon, Commentary

‘Andrew Roberts’s impressive Napoleon the Great stands as a laudatory obelisk to the unknown moody soldier with a craving for suicide who ended the French Revolution, gave France a new constitution and was crowned Emperor. His Napoleon is a protean, sympathetic figure, considerate of his men... and obsessively well read.

Nicholas Shakespeare, Daily Telegraph, Best Biographies of 2014

‘This book is simply spectacular. Roberts writes beautifully and, aided by meticulous historical research,

brings Napoleon alive before the reader, with grapeshot and cannon fire splattering across the page’

Kevin J. Hamilton, Seattle Times

‘The great man has found in Roberts a worthy biographer. He has written a superbly nuanced portrait of a

complex, likeable and never less than fascinating character that will stand as the benchmark for a genera-

tion’

Saul David, Evening Standard

‘An epically scaled new biography... Roberts brilliantly conveys the sheer energy and presence of Napoleon the organizational and military whirlwind who, through crisp and incessant questioning, sized up people and problems and got things done.... His dynamism shines in Roberts’s set-piece chapters on major battles like Austerlitz, Jena, and Marengo, turning visionary military maneuvers into politically potent moments’

Duncan Kelly, The New York Times Book Review

‘My non-fiction book of the year is Andrew Roberts’s Napoleon the Great: superb narrative history grounded in new research’

Michael Gove, New Statesman, Books of the Year

I agree. It is a great read.

My only reservation is that the maps and diagrams are hard to follow. I have therefore added several YouTube videos of the key battles, which, I think, make them easier to understand.

Napoléon's Life.

He was born on 15th August 1769 in Ajaccio on the island of Corsica into a minor aristocratic family. The year before Napoleon was born, the island of Corsica was sold to France by the Italian state of Genoa. An independence movement, which Napoleon's father supported, was crushed by the French.

Napoleon's native tongue was Corsican. He learned to speak French at ten, and always had a heavy Corsican accent.

He was sent to France at nine to undergo an intense education in French before being admitted to the elite Royal Military School of Brienne-le-Chateau. He was something of an outsider there. He later went to the even more elite École Royale Militaire in Paris. He read widely, and became something of a classical scholar, as well as skilled mathematician, which was relevant to his special interest in artillery. He was described as “The Enlightenment on Horseback”.

The French Revolution broke out on 14th July 1789, with the storming of the Bastille. (Napoleon was 19 years old). He joined the revolution, in Corsica.

In 1791 he returned to France and was promoted to lieutenant and later to captain. In June 1792 the mob in Paris captured Louis XVI. He was beheaded on 21st January 1793.

The French Revolution and the Reign of Terror triggered the opposition of many European monarchies, led by Britain, which fought against France for the next 22 years.

The Siege of Toulon 1793

In August 1793, the British fleet occupied the naval base of Toulon at the invitation of the royalist forces. Napoleon (then 24) was given command of the artillery for the revolutionary forces. He rose to the occasion and assembled an attack on the fort which overlooked the harbour containing the British fleet. On 17th December 1793 Napoleon attacked, and poured heated cannon-balls onto the British ships, setting many on fire. The victory established Napoleon's reputation. He was promoted to brigadier-general.

A good video explaining the siege of Toulon. 14 minutes.

In July 1794, a reaction against the Reign of Terror led to both the Robespierre brothers being guillotined. Napoleon was arrested, and was in danger of suffering the same fate.

In the event, he was released, but the chaos of the revolution had created much instability, with different factions vying for power. On 5th October 1795, a group of royalists planned to stage an insurrection to reinstall law and order. Napoleon was appointed second-in-command of the Army of the Interior, with orders to crush the revolt. He captured a number of cannons and installed them on key streets. He used grape-shot, and about 1,400 of the insurrectionists were killed. The battle was known as 13 Vendémiaire.

Battle between the French Revolutionary troops and Royalist forces in the streets of Paris.

Napoleon's position was greatly enhanced by this event. Shortly afterwards he met Joséphine, the widow of General Alexandre de Beauharnais, who had been guillotined. They married in March 1796.

Joséphine

The day of his wedding, Napoleon was promoted to being in command of the 'Army of Italy', tasked with fighting the Austrians. He was 26.

First Italian campaign

Crossing the Alps

He was in charge of five divisional commanders, all older and significantly more experienced than him. The French army was in a decrepit state. He won a series of battles, effectively establishing French rule over northern Italy.

During the campaign, Napoleon crossed the Apennines and the Alps, defeated a Sardinian army and no fewer than six Austrian armies, and killed, wounded or captured 120,000 Austrian soldiers. All this he had done before his twenty-eighth birthday. Eighteen months earlier he had been an unknown, moody soldier writing essays on suicide; now he was famous across Europe, having defeated mighty Austria, wrung peace treaties from the Pope and the kings of Piedmont and Naples, and defeated in every conceivable set of military circumstances most of Austria’s most celebrated generals.

Napoleon had fought against Austrian forces that were invariably superior in number, but which he had often outnumbered on the field of battle thanks to his repeated strategy of the central position. A profound study of the history and geography of Italy before he ever set foot there had proved extremely helpful, as had his willingness to experiment with others’ ideas, and his minute calculations of logistics, for which his prodigious memory was invaluable. Because he kept his divisions within one day’s march of each other, he was able to concentrate them for battle and, once joined, he showed great calmness under pressure.

The campaign resulted in the Treaty of Campo Formio. Bonaparte returned to Paris on 5 December 1797 as a hero.

French acquisitions

Egyptian Expedition

He was given command the Army of Egypt in March 1798. His Egyptian expedition included a group of 167 scientists, with mathematicians, naturalists, chemists, and geodesists among them. Their discoveries included the Rosetta Stone.

Napoleon invades Egypt

The campaign there did not go well. The French fleet was destroyed by Horatio Nelson at the Battle of the Nile.

The Battle of the Nile: Destruction of the French flagship 'L'Orient'

Napoleon continued to fight on land, winning engagements in Arish, Gaza, Jaffa, and Haifa, but being defeated at Acre.

He discovered that Joséphine had been unfaithful to him in his absence. He undertook a sort of revenge affair with the beautiful young wife of one of his lieutenants, Pauline Fourès. She was quite a character, who had several other lovers. She later made a fortune in the Brazilian timber business, wore men’s clothing and smoked a pipe, before coming back to Paris with her pet parrots and monkeys and living to be ninety.

The greatest long-term achievements of Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign were not military or strategic, but intellectual, cultural and artistic. The first volume of Vivant Denon’s vast and magisterial Description de Egypte was published in 1809. Its preface recalled that Egypt had been invaded by Alexander and the Caesars, whose missions there had been the models for Napoleon's. For the rest of Napoleon’s life, and indeed after it, further volumes of this truly extraordinary work appeared, finally numbering twenty-one and constituting a monument in the history of scholarship and publishing. The savants had missed nothing. From Cairo, Thebes, Luxor, Karnak, Aswan and all the other sites of Ancient Egyptian temples, there were immensely detailed scale drawings (20 inches by 27) in both colour and black and white of obelisks, sphinxes, hieroglyphics, cartouches, pyramids and sexually aroused pharaohs, as well as mummified birds, cats, snakes and dogs.

Instability back in France led Napoleon to leave his army and return to Paris where he met a hero's welcome.

The Coup

The coup d'état of 18 Brumaire occurred on 9th November 1799. It had been planned by the Abbé Sieyès, but in the event, Napoleon came to be the leader of it. Napoleon became "first consul" for ten years, with two consuls appointed by him who had consultative voices only. His power was confirmed by the new "Constitution of the Year VIII", originally devised by Sieyès to give Napoleon a minor role, but rewritten by Napoleon, and accepted by direct popular vote (3,000,000 in favour, 1,567 opposed). The constitution preserved the appearance of a republic but, in reality, established a dictatorship. Napoleon was 30.

Napoleon during the coup

While Napoleon had been in Egypt, the Austrians had reoccupied Italy. In 1800, Napoleon led an army back over the Swiss Alps, and won the Battle of Marengo. His position as First Consul was strengthened by the successful outcome of the battle.

The Battle of Marengo

In a new plebiscite during the spring of 1802, the French public came out in huge numbers to approve a constitution that made the Consulate permanent, essentially elevating Napoleon to dictator for life.

After some assassination plots against him, he launched yet another referendum. Napoleon was elected as Emperor.

Napoleon's coronation, at which Pope Pius VII officiated, took place at Notre Dame de Paris, on 2 December 1804.

The Coronation of Napoleon as Emperor

War had broken out again with Britain and the other members of the Third Coalition. Napoleon planned to invade England and assembled a Grande Armée. His naval plans went awry, and ended with the Battle of Trafalgar on 21st October 1805 when Nelson defeated the French and Spanish fleets.

French flagship Bucentaure dismasted

Following the battle, the Royal Navy was never again seriously challenged by the French fleet in a large-scale engagement.

Facing a potential invasion from his continental enemies, Napoleon abandoned his plan to invade England and sought to destroy the isolated Austrian armies in Southern Germany. On 25th September 1805, 200,000 French troops crossed the Rhine, and occupied Vienna in November, capturing 100,000 muskets, 500 cannons, and the intact bridges across the Danube.

The Battle of Austerlitz, 2nd December 1805, was one of the most important and decisive military engagements of the Napoleonic Wars.

The Battle of Austerlitz 1805

Excerpt from the Ridley Scott movie

Frederick William III of Prussia decided on war with France. Prussia and Russia signed a new military alliance creating the fourth coalition against France. Napoleon pursued a successful campaign against these allies, winning battles in Jena-Auerstedt, Berlin and Friedland, the last of which wiped out about 30% of the Russian army. The battles ended with the Treaties of Tilsit in July 1807.

Napoleon installed several members of his family as rulers of various countries under his control. His elder brother Joseph became King of Spain. His younger brother Jérôme became King of Westphalia. He then made another brother, Louis, King of Holland. Other allies of his were granted major titles and roles as rulers. Most were failures. Napoleon's loyalty to his family and his desire to establish a royal house of Bonaparte across Europe led to several misjudgments.

After Tilsit, Napoleon turned his attention to the Iberian Peninsular (Spain and Portugal).

Napoleon later called the Peninsular campaign, "the unlucky war [that] ruined me." It tied up some 300,000 French troops from 1808 to 1812. By 1814, the French had been driven from the peninsula, with over 150,000 casualties in the campaign.

In November 1809, he divorced Joséphine, who was unable to provide him with an heir. He then married the Austrian Emperor's daughter, Marie Louise. On 20th March 1811, she gave birth to François Napoleon, known as the King of Rome.

The extent of the French Empire in 1812

Invasion Of Russia

Peace with Russia proved fragile. Napoleon wanted to force European countries to join an embargo against Britain called the Continental System. Russia in particular failed to cooperate. On 24th June 1812 the invasion commenced.

The Russians avoided Napoleon's objective of a decisive engagement and instead retreated deeper into Russia. A brief attempt at resistance was made at Smolensk in August; the Russians were defeated in a series of battles, and Napoleon resumed his advance. The Russians again avoided battle. Owing to the Russian army's scorched earth tactics, the French found it increasingly difficult to forage food for themselves and their horses.

The Russians eventually offered battle outside Moscow on 7 September: the Battle of Borodino resulted in approximately 44,000 Russian and 35,000 French dead, wounded or captured, and may have been the bloodiest day of battle in history up to that point in time.

The Battle of Borodino from 'War and Peace', the Soviet film (1967).

Although the French won the battle, they were significantly weakened, which led, in due course, to a disastrous retreat.

When they arrived in Moscow, the Russians had deserted it, and then set it on fire.

Moscow ablaze

The French suffered in the course of a ruinous retreat, including from the harshness of the Russian Winter. The Armée had begun as over 400,000 frontline troops, with fewer than 40,000 crossing the Berezina River in November 1812.

Napoleon retreating from Moscow

The Russian campaign explained

Napoleon lost about 524,000 men, with about 100,000 captured. The 1812 campaign had also been disastrous for French finances.

The Battle of Leipzig

War of the Sixth Coalition

There was a lull in fighting over the winter of 1812–13 while both the Russians and the French rebuilt their forces; Napoleon was able to field 350,000 troops. Heartened by France's loss in Russia, Prussia joined with Austria, Sweden, Russia, Great Britain, Spain, and Portugal in a new coalition. Napoleon assumed command in Germany and inflicted a series of defeats on the Coalition culminating in the Battle of Dresden in August 1813.

Despite these successes, the numbers continued to mount against Napoleon, and the French army was pinned down by a force twice its size and lost at the Battle of Leipzig (October 1813). This was by far the largest battle of the Napoleonic Wars. Between the dead and the wounded, Napoleon lost around 47,000 men over the three days. Some 38,000 men were captured, along with 325 guns, 900 wagons and 28 colours and standards (including 3 eagles), making it statistically easily the worst defeat of his career.

The Battle of Leipzig, animated video 15 minutes.

Over late 1813 and early 1814, the coalition of forces opposed to Napoleon strengthened and advanced until they invaded France. After defeating the French on the outskirts of Paris, on 31st March the Coalition armies entered the city with Tsar Alexander I at the head of the army followed by the King of Prussia and Prince Schwarzenberg. On 2nd April the French Senate declared Napoleon deposed. Napoleon abdicated on 11 April 1814.

Exile to Elba

In the Treaty of Fontainebleau, the Allies exiled Napoleon to Elba, an island of 12,000 inhabitants in the Mediterranean, 10 km off the Tuscan coast. They gave him sovereignty over the island and allowed him to retain the title of Emperor.

He was on Elba from 3rd May 1814 to 26th February 1815. When in 1803 Elba had been ceded to France, Napoleon had written of its ‘mild and industrious population, two superb harbours and a rich mine’, but now that he was its monarch he described its 20,000 acres as a ‘royaume d’opérette’ (operetta kingdom). Any other sovereign might have relaxed on the charming, temperate, delightful island, especially after the gruelling nature of the previous two years, but such was Napoleon’s nature that he flung himself energetically into every aspect of its life - while always on the look-out for an opportunity to return to France should the political situation there favour it.

During his nearly ten months on Elba he reorganized his new kingdom’s defences, gave money to the poorest of its 11,400 inhabitants, installed a fountain on the roadside outside Poggio (which still produces cold, clean drinking water today), read voraciously (leaving a library of 1,100 volumes to the municipality of Portoferraio), played with his pet monkey Jénar, walked the coastline along goat-paths while humming Italian arias, grew avenues of mulberry trees, reformed customs and excise, repaired the barracks, built a hospital, planted vineyards, paved parts of Portoferraio for the first time and irrigated land. He also organized regular rubbish collections, passed a law prohibiting children from sleeping more than five to a bed, set up a court of appeal and an inspectorate to widen roads and build bridges. While it was undeniably Lilliputian compared to his former territories, he wanted Elba to be the best-run royaume d’opérette in Europe. His attention to the tiniest details was undimmed, even extending to the kind of bread he wanted fed to his hunting dogs.

His first wife Joséphine died in May 1814. His second wife Marie Louise ran off to Vienna with an Austrian general.

Meanwhile, the Bourbon monarchy was restored in France, and made many unpopular decisions. Taxes were increased and pensions cut. Napoleon heard on the grape-vine that many French would welcome his return.

On 26th February 1815, he secretly left Elba and sailed for the south of France with a tiny force of 1,142 men and two light cannons. He took a mountain route to Grenoble, and later Paris, collecting support as he went.

The ‘Route Napoléon’ was instituted by the French government in 1934 to encourage tourism, and impressive stone eagles were placed along it, of which a handful still survive today. Every town and village Napoleon went through has a sign proudly announcing the fact, and it is possible to see many of the places where he slept on what became a legendary journey north. Starting in the Alpes-Maritimes department, he marched through Alpes-de-Haute-Provence and Hautes-Alpes, and reached Grenoble in the Isére by the night of March 7, travelling 190 miles in only six days. He went on foot and on horseback across high plateaux and plains, over bare rocks and verdant pasture, past Swiss-style villages, over 6,000-foot snowcapped mountains with vertiginous drops and down winding Corniche-style roads. Today the Route Napoléon is considered one of the great cycling and motorcycling roads of the world.

Easily the most dramatic moment of the journey came a few hundred yards south of the town of Laffrey, where Napoleon encountered a battalion of royalist troops. According to Bonapartist legend, Napoleon, standing before them well within musket range, with only his far smaller number of Imperial Guardsmen protecting him, threw back his iconic grey overcoat and pointed to his breast, asking if they wanted to fire on their Emperor. In testament to the continuing power of his charisma, the troops threw down their muskets and mobbed him.

On 20th March 1815 he reached Fontainebleau, and the King Louis XVIII fled. Napoleon was received with great acclamation. He became de facto Emperor again.

One Hundred Days

The Hundred Days, between his return to Paris, and his second exile to St Helena, certainly contributed to making Napoleon a legend. During his first exile Napoleon left France very unpopular. The people held him responsible for the numerous French deaths in the Russian campaign, for the massive invasion of France in 1814 (which had not occurred since the Hundred Years' War ) and for all the calamities that this foreign occupation had generated. However, the restored Bourbon monarchy quickly became unpopular with the French, in particular by attacking the French revolutionary heritage, of which Napoleon always posed as guarantor.

The Congress of Vienna was in session when Napoleon escaped from Elba, and the Allies (Austria, Prussia, Russia and the United Kingdom) all promptly declared war on France in the War of the Seventh Coalition. France was outnumbered, and after a series of battles, was defeated in the battle of Waterloo.