Napoleon 1- War With Britain

Napoleon had only the British to contend with from, 1803 to 1805, and once more, France could only win by sending an army into the British Isles, while the British could only win by uniting the continent against Napoleon. Napoleon started preparing for an invasion once more, but this time he was more determined and prepared on a grander scale. 

 

Between Brest and Antwerp, he gathered over 2,000 ships, and he concentrated his Grand Army in the camp at Boulogne (1803). However, the issue remained the same as in 1798, for the French to cross the Channel, they needed to have command of the sea. 

 

Even with Spanish assistance, the French fleet was still unable to hope to destroy more than one British squadron because it was still far inferior to the British navy. In order to make the balance between the Franco-Spanish navy and the British navy roughly equal, a British squadron was lured into these waters in December 1804, and French and Spanish squadrons massed in the Antilles were ordered to defeat it. This was done in order to prevent Spain from joining the war with Great Britain. 

 

Then, there would be a chance for a successful combat at the Channel's entrance. The plan didn't work. Admiral Pierre de Villeneuve's French squadron from the Mediterranean arrived at the designated meeting location in the Antilles all by itself. It retreated back toward Europe in July 1805 while being pursued by Nelson and deciding not to confront him. The British blockaded it there. Villeneuve, who had been accused of cowardice by a furious Napoleon, decided to breach the blockade with the assistance of a Spanish squadron, but, on October 21, 1805, Nelson assaulted him off Cape Trafalgar. 

 

During the engagement, Nelson was killed, but the Franco-Spanish fleet was completely wiped off. The British had triumphed decisively, removing the threat of invasion and granting them freedom of navigation. They had also been successful in assembling a new anti-French coalition made up of Austria, Russia, Sweden, and Naples. Three months prior to Trafalgar, on July 24, 1805, Napoleon ordered the Grand Army to move from Boulogne to the Danube (thus ruling out an invasion of England even if the French had won at Trafalgar). The Grand Army defeated the Austrians admirably at Ulm the week before Trafalgar, and on November 13, Napoleon marched into Vienna. 

 

In the Battle of Austerlitz on December 2, 1805, he defeated the combined Austrian and Russian troops, earning himself his greatest triumph. By signing the Treaty of Pressburg, Austria gave up all control over Italy, gave Napoleon Venetia and Dalmatia, as well as a large portion of Germany to his allies Bavaria, Württemberg, and Baden. The Bourbons in the Kingdom of Naples, which had been given to Napoleon's brother Joseph, were subsequently deposed by the French. The Confederation of the Rhine was established in July 1806 and would soon unite all of western Germany under French protection. 

 

Prussia joined the war against France in September 1806, and on October 14 their soldiers were routed at Jena and Auerstädt. The Russians fared better in Eylau in February 1807, but they were utterly destroyed at Friedland in June. Napoleon met Countess Marie Walewska in Warsaw, a Polish patriot who dreamed that Napoleon would revive her nation. She produced a son for Napoleon. Alexander I, the Russian emperor, had the option of continuing the conflict but was sick of his country's association with the British. 

 

In northern Prussia close to the Russian border, in Tilsit, he encountered Napoleon. They signed agreements there, on a raft anchored in the Nemen River, creating the Grand Duchy of Warsaw out of the Polish territories that had broken away from Prussia and, in essence, giving Napoleon the western half of Europe and Alexander the eastern. Alexander even made the hazy threat of a land assault on British Indian territories. 

 

Napoleon attempted to force capitulation by strangling the British economy once he lost all desire to invade England. He wanted to spark an uprising among the country's unemployed by forbidding them from importing anything from Britain, which would force the government to file a peace suit. He prohibited all trade with the British Isles, ordered the seizure of all products arriving from English factories or from British colonies, and declared all ships—both British and foreign—that had touched the ports of England or her colonies to have been fair game. 

 

The blockade needed to be carefully enforced across all of Europe for it to be effective. Portugal, an old ally of England, however, first displayed resistance to comply, as the blockade would spell commercial disaster for Portugal. Napoleon made the decision to use force to overcome Portuguese resistance. Charles IV of Spain permitted the French troops to enter his country and they took control of Lisbon, nevertheless, Napoleon's men remaining in Spain's north for an extended period of time sparked an uprising. 

 

Napoleon, sensing an opportunity to rid Europe of the last Bourbon emperors, summoned the Spanish royal family to Bayonne in April 1808 and obtained both Charles IV's and Ferdinand VII's abdications, they were then imprisoned in Talleyrand's château. Insurrection swept over the entire nation after a brutal crackdown on an uprising in Madrid when the Spaniards refused to recognize Joseph Bonaparte, king of Naples, as their new ruler.

 

Napoleon's reputation took a severe hit after his soldiers were defeated in Portugal and Spain. The Iberian Peninsula quickly rose to prominence and was used by the British as a bridgehead to the Continent. The energetic Arthur Wellesley (after the first duke of Wellington), who took over command in 1809, led the Anglo-Spanish-Portuguese armies to resounding victories. Napoleon gathered a large gathering of princes for the Congress of Erfurt (September–October 1808), a meeting with Alexander I, in an effort to impress the Russian monarch and elicit promises of assistance. 

 

No matter if Alexander was impressed or not, he would not commit in any way. Talleyrand, who was already negotiating with the Russian emperor behind his master's back after becoming appalled by Napoleon's policies, contributed to Alexander's refusal as well. However, Napoleon appeared to be on the verge of crushing the uprising by the beginning of 1809 after the majority of the Grand Army was sent to Spain. Then, in an effort to rally all of Germany against the French, Austria began an invasion in Bavaria in April. 

 

Again defeating the Habsburgs on July 6, Napoleon completed the "Continental System" by acquiring the Illyrian Provinces through the Treaty of Schönbrunn, which was signed on October 14, 1809. 

 

Napoleon's fortunes reached their pinnacle in 1810 despite some setbacks in Spain and Portugal. He saw himself as the successor to Charlemagne. The birth of a son, the king of Rome, in March 1811 seemed to assure the future of his empire—now at its greatest extent, including not only the Illyrian Provinces but also Etruria (Tuscany), some of the Papal States, Holland, and the German states bordering the North Sea. He rejected Joséphine, who had not given him a child, so that he could marry Marie-Louise, daughter of the Austrian emperor Francis I. 

 

A ring of vassal states led by the emperor's relatives encircled the empire, the Kingdom of Westphalia was ruled by Jérôme Bonaparte, the Kingdom of Spain by Joseph Bonaparte, the Kingdom of Italy by Eugène de Beauharnais, Josephine’s son, who served as viceroy, the Kingdom of Naples by Joachim Murat, Napoleon's brother-in-law, and the Principality of Lucca and Piombin Treaties also connected the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, the Rhine Confederation, and the Swiss Confederation, whose mediator was Napoleon, tightly to the empire. 

 

Napoleon's marriage to Marie-Louise appeared to bind even Austria to France. Prior to 1796, the political map of Europe was extremely convoluted but was now substantially simplified. But neither geographic features nor "nationalities" coincided with the borders. Napoleon was not interested in achieving either German or Italian unity while he was in power, despite what he may have said in the past. However, he laid the foundation for the unification of Germany and Italy by lowering the number of states, relocating borders, combining populations, and spreading institutions similar to those that the French Revolution and nationalism had established in that country. 

 

The first reaction to French dominance was born out of national sentiment across Europe, which was sparked by French ideals and contact with Frenchmen. The Spanish national Cortes (parliament), assembled at Cádiz by the insurrectionists, promulgated a constitution in 1812 that was influenced by the principles of the French Revolution of 1789 as well as by British institutions. Spanish guerrillas harassed the French beginning in 1809 with the help of British troops. 

 

Russian catastrophe and its aftereffects Since the Congress of Erfurt, the Russian monarch had demonstrated a decreasing propensity to work with Napoleon as a reliable ally. Napoleon consequently gathered his forces in Poland in the spring of 1812 with the intention of intimidating Alexander. After a few last-ditch negotiations, his Grand Army, which numbered roughly 600,000 soldiers and included extorted Prussian and Austrian contingents, started crossing the Nemen River in late June. The Russians turned back and pursued a scorched-earth strategy. The approaches to Moscow were not reached by Napoleon's army until the first of September. 

 

On September 7, Mikhail I. Kutuzov, the head of the Russian military, engaged it at Borodino. After a brutal, deadly, and indecisive battle, Napoleon eventually took control of Moscow, which the Russians had fled. The majority of the town was destroyed by a massive fire that started on the same day. Additionally, Alexander abruptly declined to deal with Napoleon. It was compelled to withdraw, and the impending arrival of winter made it dreadful. Less than 10,000 troops who were capable of engaging in combat remained with Napoleon's main force following the challenging Berezina River crossing in November. 

 

All of Europe's peoples were inspired to resist Napoleon by this calamity. The news sparked a wave of anti-French protests in Germany. In December, the Prussian troops turned on the French and left the Grand Army. The Italian people started to turn against Napoleon, and the Austrians withdrew their troops and became more antagonistic. Even in France, there were more and more indications that the dictatorship was unpopular. On October 23, 1812, a disgruntled general named Claude-François de Malet declared Napoleon had passed away in Russia, almost leading to a coup d'état in Paris. 

 

Napoleon's decision to rush return to France before the Grand Army was assembled was significantly influenced by this occurrence. On December 18, he arrived in Paris and immediately started stiffening the dictatorship, raising money via various means, and raising more troops.

 

As a result, unlike in 1792 and 1793, when France fought for her independence, the forces arrayed against it in 1813 were those of nations fighting for their liberation, not mercenary armies, and the French themselves, despite their bravery, had lost their earlier fervor. The nation was no longer committed to the emperor's vision of conquest. At the Battles of Lützen and Bautzen in May 1813, Napoleon achieved several victories over the Russians and Prussians, but his depleted army need reinforcements. 

 

Napoleon was persuaded to accept an armistice by the armed Austrian mediation, and a convention was held in Prague during this time. The Grand Duchy of Warsaw, the Confederation of the Rhine, and Prussia's return to its 1805 borders were among the exceedingly favorable conditions Austria proposed. The French Empire was to be allowed to revert to its original boundaries. Napoleon committed the error of procrastinating too much. Before he could respond, the conference adjourned on August 10, at that point, Austria declared war. 

 

Even worse than in the spring, the French were in. As one German contingent after another defected to the enemy side, the allies were adding additional soldiers every day. The Battle of Leipzig, often known as the "Battle of the Nations," which took place from October 16 to 19, 1813, is considered to be the worst disaster since Napoleon's ascent to power. That loss quickly turned into collapse. 

 

After being forced to retire, the French armies in Spain were routed in June, and by October, the British were attacking their fortifications north of the Pyrenees. The Austrians launched an invasion in Italy, crossed the Adige River, and took control of Romagna. Negotiations were started with the Viennese court by Murat, who was now openly betraying the emperor who had appointed him king of Naples. Belgians and Dutch demonstrators opposed Napoleon.