Napoleon Bonaparte

December 2, 1805 — one year to the day after his coronation. Facing a combined Austrian-Russian army under Emperor Francis II and Tsar Alexander I, Napoleon feigned weakness on his right, lured the Allies to attack it, then smashed through their weakened center. In five hours, the Third Coalition was destroyed. 36,000 Allied casualties; Napoleon lost 9,000. The most perfect battle in history.

Frederick the Great had made Prussia the most feared army in Europe. Napoleon destroyed it in a single day — October 14, 1806. While Napoleon crushed one Prussian army at Jena, Marshal Davout defeated a larger force at Auerstedt with only one corps. Napoleon entered Berlin 19 days later. Prussia sued for peace in humiliation. The ghost of Frederick had been exorcised.

Austria gambled on Napoleon's weakness after Spain bled his armies. Napoleon crossed the Danube under fire at Aspern-Essling — his first battlefield defeat — and came back. At Wagram, July 5–6, he used a massive artillery battery of 112 guns to batter the Austrian center while flanking it with a corps march. Austria signed the Treaty of Schönbrunn, ceding territory and paying an enormous indemnity.

September 7, 1812 — the battle Napoleon had waited for in Russia. Kutuzov's army stood at Borodino to defend Moscow. The fighting was unlike anything seen before: 75,000 casualties in a single day. Napoleon took the field but refused to commit the Imperial Guard that might have destroyed the Russian army. He took Moscow — and found it burning. Russia did not surrender.

October 16–19, 1813. Austria, Prussia, Russia, and Sweden converged on Napoleon with 380,000 men. Napoleon had 185,000. For three days he fought a defensive battle of extraordinary skill, but numbers told. When Saxon allies defected mid-battle, the line broke. The bridge over the Elster was destroyed prematurely, trapping 30,000 French troops. The road to Paris lay open.

After escaping Elba, Napoleon raised a new army and sought to divide and destroy the Allied forces in Belgium before they could concentrate. He won at Ligny, drew at Quatre Bras — but at Waterloo on June 18, Wellington held the ridge until Prussian reinforcements arrived. The Imperial Guard attacked and was repulsed — for the first time in history. The army shattered. Napoleon abdicated four days later.

Promulgated in 1804, the Code Napoléon remains the foundation of civil law in France, Belgium, Québec, Louisiana, and over 40 nations worldwide. It enshrined equality before the law, the right to property, freedom of religion, and the abolition of feudalism. Napoleon called it his greatest achievement — more lasting than 40 battles won. He was right.

Unable to invade Britain after Trafalgar, Napoleon attempted to strangle her economy by banning all Continental trade with the British Isles. The blockade hurt Britain but devastated Continental economies that depended on British goods and colonial trade. Portugal refused to comply — triggering the Peninsular War. Russia eventually broke it — triggering the 1812 invasion. The system that was meant to defeat Britain helped defeat Napoleon.

Napoleon created 26 Marshals of France — the most brilliant corps of generals any commander has assembled. Michel Ney, "the bravest of the brave," led cavalry charges that shook the earth. Louis-Nicolas Davout was undefeated in independent command. Joachim Murat was the finest cavalry commander of the age. Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte eventually became King of Sweden — and fought against Napoleon at Leipzig.

Napoleon built the lycée system — state secondary schools that exist to this day — and reformed the Grandes Écoles to train engineers, scientists, and administrators on merit rather than birth. The École Polytechnique became the greatest technical school in the world. Universal male education was his strategic vision: a France that could out-think as well as out-fight its rivals.

At its zenith for the Russian campaign of 1812, the Grande Armée numbered 685,000 soldiers from 20 nations — French, Polish, Italian, German, Dutch, Swiss, Portuguese. It was the largest army ever assembled in European history to that point. Organized into self-sufficient corps that could march independently and concentrate rapidly, it was the most sophisticated military machine the world had yet seen.

The Revolution had seized church property, executed priests, and tried to replace Christianity with a Cult of Reason. Napoleon negotiated the Concordat of 1801 with Pope Pius VII — recognizing Catholicism as the religion of the majority of French citizens while keeping church property nationalized. It was a masterpiece of pragmatic statecraft: France was reconciled with Rome, and Napoleon controlled the church's appointment of bishops.