Chapter 20 Chapter 1 Development Chapter 4 War 2

2 Since victory was overwhelmingly French, there is no need here to discuss the military operations of the land war in detail. In 1793-1794, the French saved the Revolution. In 1794-1795 they occupied the Low Countries, the Rhineland, parts of Spain, Switzerland, Savoy (and Liguria). In 1796, Napoleon's famous Italian campaign enabled the French to win all of Italy and broke the First Coalition against France.Napoleon's expeditions to Malta, Egypt, and Syria (1797-1799) were cut off from his bases by British naval power, and during his absence the Second Coalition drove the French out over Italy and sent them back to Germany.The Allied defeat in Switzerland (Battle of Zurich, 1799) saved France from invasion, and soon after Napoleon's return and seizure of power, the French were on the mend again.By 1801 they had imposed peace on their Continental allies, and by 1802 they had even forced the British to accept it.Thereafter, in the areas conquered or controlled in 1794-1798, French dominance has been unquestioned. From 1805 to 1807, a round of renewed attempts to resist France pushed French influence to the Russian border. In 1805, Austria was defeated at the Battle of Austerlitz in Moravia and forced to negotiate a peace.Prussia, which entered the war alone and late, was crushed and dismembered at the battle of Jena and Auerstaedt in 1806.Despite defeat at Austerlitz, defeat at Eylau (1807), and another defeat at Friedland (1807), Russia remained a military power intact. The Treaty of Tilsit (1807) treated Russia with justifiable courtesy, even though it established French hegemony on the Continent—except for Scandinavia and the Turkish Balkans. In 1809, Austria attempted to break free from French control, but was defeated at the battles of Aspern-Essling and Wagram.However, in 1808 the Spaniards revolted against Napoleon's brother Joseph as their king, thus opening a new battlefield for the British. Regular military operations continued in the Iberian Peninsula, but due to the periodic defeats and retreats of the British ( Such as 1809-1810), but did not achieve significant results.

But at sea, the French were completely defeated by this time.After the Battle of Trafalgar (1805), the chance of maintaining contact at sea, let alone crossing the Channel to invade Britain, disappeared.There seemed to be no way to defeat Britain other than economic pressure, so Napoleon tried to effectively impose an economic blockade through the "Continental System".The difficulties in implementing the blockade to a considerable extent undermined the stability of the "Tilsit Peace Treaty" and led to a break with Russia, which became a turning point in Napoleon's fate.Russia was invaded and Moscow was occupied.If the tsar, like most of Napoleon's enemies, had negotiated a peace under similar circumstances, the venture would have been accomplished.But the Tsar did not do so, and the problem facing Napoleon was to fight a hopeless, endless war, or to retreat.Both are equally disastrous.As mentioned earlier, the French army's winning method was to fight quick battles in areas rich and populous enough for the country to survive.But what worked well in Lombardy or the Rhineland, where it was first developed, still worked in central Europe, and failed completely in the barren lands of Poland and Russia.Napoleon's defeat was not so much the harsh Russian winter as his inability to keep his large army adequately fed.The Moscow retreat destroyed this army.Once upon a time, the 610,000 large army that crossed the Russian border for the first time, when it crossed the border again, only tens of thousands remained.

In this case, the last alliance against France included not only France's old enemies and victims, but also those who were anxious to stand on the side that was now clearly victorious, and only the king of Saxony left his original followers too late.A new, mostly untrained French army was crushed at Leipzig (1813), and despite Napoleon's dizzying maneuvers, Allied troops pushed relentlessly towards the French mainland, while the British moved from The Iberian Peninsula invades France.Paris was occupied, and the Emperor abdicated on April 6, 1814.His attempt to restore power in 1815 ended in defeat at the Battle of Waterloo (1815).