The Grande Armée is an incredible military institution that allowed Napoleon to implement well-defined operational process within the framework of conventional wars. Favoring mobility (in particular by living off the land), the Emperor innovated by creating an army model that reflect his conceptions of war, with an unparalleled staff organization, military structure based on corps that incorporated infantry, cavalry, a large artillery reserve (from 1809) and a “large park of artillery, engineers and crews” to meet various logistical needs. The operational and tactical superiority born out of this conceptual advance shone in early years but diminished due to sustained campaigning, internal entropy, and advances made by the opponents in response to the French victories. From a historical point of view, the Grande Armée served as a model for the field armies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

On the morning of 9 August 1915, the 216th Fortress Company, Royal Engineers, marched from the Nuneaton drill hall to Trent Valley railway station. The troops were accompanied by the mayor and other local dignitaries, ‘cheering crowds, and the strains of “Auld Lang Syne” played by the Borough band’.1 The men boarded a train provided by the London and North-Western Railway and, like the majority of their colleagues in the multitude of units despatched across the globe in service of the British armed forces during the First World War, commenced their war experience at the end of a railway journey. Throughout the conflict, railway stations across Britain provided the locations for the transition between civil and military life. These ‘gates of goodbye’ acquired a tone of sobriety as the war progressed. They bore witness to the separations of families as the railways conveyed soldiers from the comforts of home leave to the horrors of the front; provided many of those on the home front with their first glimpse of the wounded, or of displaced Belgians who had found their way across the English Channel – frequently upon steamers owned and operated by British railway companies; and delivered the troops into the post-war world upon demobilisation.

Imperial Russia combined elements of the European early modern military‒fiscal state with features familiar to historians of Eurasian empires. The core of Russian international power was a professional, regular army organised and trained on European lines, sustained by effective administrative and fiscal institutions, and rooted in the tight alliance between a strong monarchy and a hereditary landowning and service nobility which took Europe as its model. To these sources of power Russia’s Eurasian imperial heritage added strategic depth and enormous natural resources. Russia’s Cossack irregular cavalry, heirs to an old tradition of Eurasian steppe warfare, played a major role in Napoleon’s defeat in 1812‒14. Even more important was the fact that the Russian Empire stood first in the world as regards horsepower in an era when the horse was vital to success in war. Together with these structural elements of Russian power the ability of the Russian army to learn and apply the lessons of Revolutionary and Napoleonic era warfare made a crucial contribution to its triumph in 1812‒14.

The British coal industry was central to the war effort. Industry, including most crucially the manufacture of munitions, needed coal. The railways shifted its products and were essential for the movement of troops. Military operations depended on coal, most notably the provision of South Wales steam coal to the fleet. A reliable and affordable supply for household consumption was vital for both warmth and morale. Much of the export market had vanished in August 1914, but coal was provided to the French whose own coalfields were largely under German occupation. The challenge for the government and the industry is evident in the basic statistics. Production had peaked in 1913 at 287 million tons produced by a workforce of 1,118,000. By 1918, production was 60 million tons less, a drop only partially compensated for by a halving of the output exported. The workforce had fallen by over 100,000; output per man-shift had declined from 20.32 cwt to 17.75. The average selling price at the pithead had doubled. Rumours abounded of fabulous profits. State intervention was inevitable. Any effective response to the problem of output necessitated the co-operation of the workforce and the involvement of its trade union representatives.1

The high level of the Napoleonic military and financial threat concentrated the minds of different interests in Britain, ensuring broad cooperation. This enabled the government to tax the rich without serious resistance, thus furnishing the basis of war finance. Loans came from the City of London, which worked closely with the government. Contracts with contractors were generally well administered. Naval superiority enabled convoys to protect and maintain trade, and particularly to obtain specie from Mexico, much needed by Wellington’s armies in the Peninsula as well as for subsidies for continental powers. For the last two years of the war, the government had to deploy the talent and energy of Nathan Meyer Rothschild to ensure that the British army on the continent was paid. Despite periods of extreme political stress, financial confidence was never broken. Parts of industry thrived, trade flourished, infrastructure investment continued. The British economy finished the war in a healthy state, although the economic impact of financing the war had very long-term political effects.

This chapter examines the “nuts and bolts” of war, including the formidable problems of movement and supply, transportation and administration. Logistics represent a vital element of warfare, indispensable to the operations of armies ever since the emergence of organized warfare. Broadly defined, this concept involves moving, supplying, and maintaining military forces, as well as transportation of material, food and animals, communications, personnel replacement, quarters, depots, and rear administration. The Napoleonic Wars witnessed important developments in the logistics and one of its lasting effects was creation and successful dissemination of bureaucratic reforms that improved state’s ability to mobilize forces and extract resources

Seasoned London detective Frederick Porter Wensley recorded in his memoirs that he had been ‘much affected by the war … both personally and professionally’. He had experienced huge family tragedy with the deaths of two sons in the armed forces. His work routine had also been transformed: ‘ As the war went on large numbers of the criminal classes were drawn into the fighting services, but on the other hand, there sprang up a variety of new offences peculiar to the time.’1 The Defence of the Realm Act (DORA), rushed through Parliament in August 1914, ushered in a wide range of regulations and prohibitions, including restrictions on lighting and licensing as well as the movement of people, vastly increasing the powers of the state. Whilst the number of prosecutions in the courts for serious ‘crimes’ fell, the volume of work that police officers were required to do expanded seismically across the UK.

Siege warfare followed most of the practice established before, but a larger use of guns, the improvement of gunpowder and sometimes orders to fight to the last stand led to an escalation in violence. This was enhanced too by the growing involvement of civilians, especially in Spain, which gave a more exacerbated dimension to the fights

Small wars, or guerrilla wars, had an enormous impact in the age of Napoleon. Fought by peasants with access to land and resources, guerrilla wars in Haiti and Spain, in particular, reshaped the world in ways as profound as any of the major regular campaigns. They bled and demoralized the French and set the stage for the emergence of new nations in the Americas. This essay examines the two successful guerrilla wars in Haiti and Spain and compares them to two failed guerrilla wars in Calabria and the Tyrol in order to identify the key factors determining success or failure by guerrilla forces. Among the keys to success were: the geo-strategic importance of the theater of war; mobilizing ideologies; the presence of imperial troops for a long period of time with all of the resulting violence that implies; the reliance of imperial troops on requisitions in the countryside; the presence of strong allies; the impact of disease; and, above all, the presence of socio-economic conditions that both motivated peasants to take up arms to defend their families, land, and resources against long odds and that supplied peasants with the wherewithal to survive the French counterinsurgency.

After Napoleon’s triumph at Austerlitz, a new war loomed on the horizon. In 1806, Prussia confronted the growing French ambitions in the War of the Fourth Coalition. It proved to be a mistake as Napoleon routed the Prussian army barely two weeks into the war. After humiliation of Prussia, on the battlefield at Jena, the French Emperor turned his attention to subduing his Russian foe and marched into Poland in the winter of 1806. Six months later, the Russians had been beaten and brought to the peace table and Napoleon was at the height of his powers.

Wood and timber were essential materials in maintaining the British war effort. Trench and tunnel revetments held up the western front, pit-props meant the mining industries could continue to supply munitions factories and railways, and the construction of camps housing new armies or migrant workers required massive amounts of timber. Although the First World War is seen as a pivotal event in the road to modernity, the list of vital uses for this ancient material is long. The woodlands of pre-war Britain were poorly managed for timber production, the nation relying very heavily on bulky imports. Improved self-sufficiency was therefore especially important as available shipping space declined as the war progressed. Although from mid-1916 a great deal of timber utilised on the western front was obtained from French forests by Canadian lumbermen, the woodlands, forestry profession and branches in the timber trade of the United Kingdom had to be mobilised and controlled to meet demand. The fact that stocks were eventually established, both in Britain and on the continent, and that shortages were never crippling to the war effort, illustrate how well these measures worked.1

This chapter argues that the conflict at sea was an important and frequently overlooked part of the Napoleonic Wars. Focusing primarily on the Royal Navy and French maritime forces, but also mentioning the navies of Spain, Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands and United States, it outlines the manifold ways in which maritime warfare shaped wider events on land, and helped determine the conflict’s final outcome. It demonstrates that French attempts to invade Britain were successfully rebuffed by the Royal Navy, ensuring that Britain remained in the conflict. The chapter then offers a more modern take on the commonly misunderstood Battle of Trafalgar, arguing that it was far from decisive and did little to change the course of the war. The naval conflict continued in earnest after 1805, and the war of trade became all-consuming, particularly after the inception of ‘Napoleon’s Continental system’. Here the navy offered a stubborn resistance to the French Emperor’s objectives, helping to encourage illicit trade with the European continent while also expanding Britain’s empire and mercantilist reach elsewhere in the globe. Finally, it demonstrates that maritime support was crucial to the land war, not least Wellington’s Peninsula campaign.

In the weeks following Napoleon’s monumental defeat at the battle of Leipzig, Coalition forces failed to catch his army as it retreated through Germany and across the Rhine River. Regardless, the Allies decided to launch a comprehensive invasion of France from the North Sea to Switzerland. In late November 40,000 Prussian, British, and Russian troops invaded Holland. One month later, 200,000 Allied soldiers crossed the Upper Rhine to invade Alsace, Switzerland, and Franche-Comté. Shortly after, on New Year’s Day, an additional 75,000 men crossed the Middle Rhine and drove through Lorraine toward the fortress of Metz. By the end of January, Holland and Belgium had fallen, and two Allied armies stood at the Marne and Aube Rivers ready to march on Paris. This circumstance forced Bonaparte to leave his capital and finally assume personal command of the army. After ferocious fighting in February, Napoleon made a daring gamble. To threaten the Coalition’s lifeline across the Rhine, he decided to maneuver against the rear of the main Allied army in the hope of forcing it to withdraw from France. With the French emperor between them and the Rhine River, the Allies took advantage of the open roads to reach Paris. The city surrendered on 31 March. Six days later, Napoleon abdicated unconditionally.

The chapter discusses the events of the War of the Third Coalition that climaxed on the field of Austerlitz in one of the most famous battles in military history. The 1805 Campaign was the first one Napoleon fought as the emperor and it consolidated his martial reputation: a classic example of the general’s logistical and operational brilliance that allowed him to outmarch and outfight his enemy in just three months after the start of the war. Beginning with the bold and rapid advance of the French Army from the Rhine to the Danube, the chapter examines Napoleon’s envelopment of the Austrian army at Ulm, the manoeuvres to Austerlitz and the counter-attack that resulted in the decisive defeat for the Austro-Russian Army.

Building on a comprehensive conscription system established ahead of the French Wars, the Habsburg Monarchy could raise armies almost as large as those available to Revolutionary and Napoleonic France. But fielding a large force was not enough to win. Among the more prominent factors undermining Austria’s military capacity was the collective ethos of her officers, whose meagre pay, low social standing, and limited promotion opportunities bred indifference to military professionalism. While reform efforts by the talented Archduke Charles substantially improved the fighting effectiveness of the Habsburg troops, the Archduke never enjoyed the full trust of the emperor. Against Charles’ advice, in 1805 the army was pushed unprepared into war, resulting in a crushing defeat. In spite of far better military performance in 1809, the Monarchy’s attempt to take on the Napoleonic Empire single-handedly led to another costly failure. Forced to scale down its army in the Peace of Schönbrunn, Austria covertly retained much of its veteran manpower. In 1812, while nominally a French ally, further arrangements were set for a rapid expansion and training of her forces. When the Habsburgs have re-joined the war against Napoleon, the size and quality of the Austrian contingent tipped the balance in favour of the Allied Coalition ensuring Napoleon’s final defeat.

A European periphery though the region may have been, the Napoleonic Wars had profound impact on Scandinavia, contributing decisively to the emergence of the modern Scandinavian nation-states in place of multi-national Danish and Swedish empires. Pitting Denmark and Sweden against each other through their alliances to France and Britain, respectively, the wars in Scandinavia bore almost every hallmark of the Napoleonic warfare elsewhere: Mass mobilization, economic warfare and disruption, guerrillas, and political and dynastic upheaval. Their geographic scope was extensive, as fighting took place from the North Cape to the river Elbe, from Bergen to Karelia, and in the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. Although the Scandinavian armies were small by continental standards, naval and economic warfare ensured that the wars were nevertheless fought on a grand scale with enormous human consequences, as civilian society was heavily impacted and sometimes even made a deliberate target of military operations. Still, as the Napoleonic Wars in Scandinavia ended with a massive territorial and political shift in 1814, the military restraint and political moderation shown by the belligerents in the latter stages of the wars contrasted with warfare and events elsewhere in Europe.