Editing Napoleonic Wars (section)

==Military legacy==

===Enlarged scope===
[[File:Lejeune - Bataille de Marengo.jpg|thumb|In 1800, Bonaparte took the French Army across the Alps, eventually defeating the Austrians at [[Battle of Marengo|Marengo]].]]

Until the time of [[Napoleon]], European states employed relatively small armies, made up of both national soldiers and [[mercenary|mercenaries]]. These regulars were highly drilled, professional soldiers. [[Ancien Régime]] armies could only deploy small field armies due to rudimentary staffs and comprehensive yet cumbersome logistics. Both issues combined to limit field forces to approximately 30,000 men under a single commander.

Military innovators in the mid-18th century began to recognise the potential of an entire nation at war: a "nation in arms".<ref>{{Cite web |title=Napoleon's Total War |url=http://www.historynet.com/wars_conflicts/napoleonic_wars/6361907.html |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080401054136/http://www.historynet.com/wars_conflicts/napoleonic_wars/6361907.html |archive-date=1 April 2008 |access-date=18 November 2008 |publisher=HistoryNet.com}}</ref>

The scale of warfare dramatically enlarged during the Revolutionary and subsequent Napoleonic Wars. During Europe's major pre-revolutionary war, the [[Seven Years' War]] of 1756–1763, few armies ever numbered more than 200,000 with field forces often numbering less than 30,000. The French innovations of separate corps (allowing a single commander to efficiently command more than the traditional command span of 30,000 men) and living off the land (which allowed field armies to deploy more men without requiring an equal increase in supply arrangements such as depots and supply trains) allowed the French republic to field much larger armies than their opponents. Napoleon ensured during the time of the French republic that separate French field armies operated as a single army under his control, often allowing him to substantially outnumber his opponents. This forced his continental opponents to also increase the size of their armies, moving away from the traditional small, well-drilled Ancien Régime armies of the 18th century to mass conscript armies.

[[File:Antoine-Jean Gros - Napoleon on the Battlefield of Eylau - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|left|Napoleon on the field of [[Battle of Eylau|Eylau]]]]

The [[Battle of Marengo]], which largely ended the War of the Second Coalition, was fought with fewer than 60,000 men on both sides. The [[Battle of Austerlitz]] which ended the War of the Third Coalition involved fewer than 160,000 men. The [[Battle of Friedland]] which led to peace with Russia in 1807 involved about 150,000 men.

After these defeats, the continental powers developed various forms of mass conscription to allow them to face France on even terms, and the size of field armies increased rapidly. The [[Battle of Wagram]] of 1809 involved 300,000 men, and 500,000 fought at [[Battle of Leipzig|Leipzig]] in 1813, of whom 150,000 were killed or wounded.

About a million French soldiers became casualties (wounded, invalided or killed), a higher proportion than in the [[First World War]]. The European total may have reached 5,000,000 military deaths, including disease.{{sfn|Bell|2007|p=7}}{{sfn|Kennedy|1989|pp=99–100}}{{Verify source|date=May 2021}}

France had the second-largest population in Europe by the end of the 18th century (28&nbsp;million, as compared to Britain's 12&nbsp;million and Russia's 35 to 40&nbsp;million).{{sfn|McEvedy|Jones|1978|pp=41–222}}{{page range too broad|date=May 2021}} It was well poised to take advantage of the ''[[levée en masse]]''. Before Napoleon's efforts, [[Lazare Carnot]] played a large part in the reorganisation of the [[French Revolutionary Army]] from 1793 to 1794—a time which saw previous French misfortunes reversed, with Republican armies advancing on all fronts.

[[File:National Museum in Poznan - Przejście przez Berezynę.JPG|thumb|Napoleon's retreat from Russia in 1812. His {{lang|fr|[[Grande Armée]]}} had lost about half a million men.]]
The French army peaked in size in the 1790s with 1.5&nbsp;million Frenchmen enlisted although battlefield strength was much less. Haphazard bookkeeping, rudimentary medical support and lax recruitment standards ensured that many soldiers either never existed, fell ill or were unable to withstand the physical demands of soldiering.

About 2.8&nbsp;million Frenchmen fought on land and about 150,000 at sea, bringing the total for France to almost 3&nbsp;million combatants during almost 25 years of warfare.<ref name="John France 2011 351" />

[[File:Trafalgar Crepin mg 0578.jpg|thumb|The [[Battle of Trafalgar]]]]
Britain had 750,000 men under arms between 1792 and 1815 as its [[British Army|army]] expanded from 40,000 men in 1793{{cn|date=April 2024}} to a peak of 250,000 men in 1813.<ref name="Oxford132" /> Over 250,000 sailors served in the [[Royal Navy]]. In September 1812, Russia had 900,000 enlisted men in its [[Imperial Russian Army|army]], and between 1799 and 1815 2.1&nbsp;million men served in its army. Another 200,000 served in the [[Imperial Russian Navy]]. Out of the 900,000 men, the field armies deployed against France numbered less than 250,000.

There are no consistent statistics for other major combatants. [[Austrian Army during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars|Austria's forces]] peaked at about 576,000 (during the War of the Sixth Coalition) and had little or no naval component yet never fielded more than 250,000 men in field armies. After Britain, Austria proved the most persistent enemy of France; more than a million Austrians served during the long wars. Its large army was overall quite homogeneous and solid and in 1813 operated in Germany (140,000 men), Italy and the Balkans (90,000 men at its peak, about 50,000 men during most of the campaigning on these fronts). Austria's manpower was becoming quite limited towards the end of the wars, leading its generals to favour cautious and conservative strategies, to limit their losses.

[[File:Baschkiren gegen Franzosen.jpg|thumb|French soldiers in skirmish with [[Bashkirs]] and [[Cossacks]] in 1813]]
Prussia never had more than 320,000 men under arms at any time. In 1813–1815, the core of its [[Prussian Army|army]] (about 100,000 men) was characterised by competence and determination, but the bulk of its forces consisted of second- and third-line troops, as well as [[Landwehr|militiamen]] of variable strength. Many of these troops performed reasonably well and often displayed considerable bravery but lacked the professionalism of their regular counterparts and were not as well equipped. Others were largely unfit for operations, except sieges. During the 1813 campaign, 130,000 men were used in the military operations, with 100,000 effectively participating in the main [[German campaign of 1813|German campaign]], and about 30,000 being used to besiege isolated French garrisons.{{sfn|Leggiere|2014}}

[[Spanish Army (Peninsular War)|Spain's armies]] also peaked at around 200,000 men, not including more than 50,000 guerrillas scattered over Spain. In addition the [[Maratha Empire]], the [[Ottoman Empire]], [[Kingdom of Italy (Napoleonic)|Italy]], [[Army of the Kingdom of Naples (Napoleonic)|Naples]] and the [[Duchy of Warsaw]] each had more than 100,000 men under arms. Even small nations now had armies rivalling the size of the [[Great Powers]]' forces of past wars but most of these were poor quality forces only suitable for garrison duties. The size of their combat forces remained modest yet they could still provide a welcome addition to the major powers. The percentage of French troops in the {{lang|fr|Grande Armée}} which Napoleon led into Russia was about 50 per cent while the French allies also provided a significant contribution to the French forces in Spain. As these small nations joined the coalition forces in 1813–1814, they provided a useful addition to the coalition while depriving Napoleon of much-needed manpower.

===Innovations===
The initial stages of the [[Industrial Revolution]] had much to do with larger military forces—it became easy to mass-produce weapons and thus to equip larger forces. Britain was the largest single manufacturer of armaments in this period. It supplied most of the weapons used by the coalition powers throughout the conflicts. France produced the second-largest total of armaments, equipping its own huge forces as well as those of the [[Confederation of the Rhine]] and other allies.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Christopher David Hall |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9Ue8AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA28 |title=British Strategy in the Napoleonic War, 1803–15 |publisher=Manchester U.P. |year=1992 |isbn=978-0-7190-3606-4 |page=28 |access-date=18 June 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150930130903/https://books.google.com/books?id=9Ue8AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA28 |archive-date=30 September 2015 |url-status=live}}</ref>

Napoleon showed innovative tendencies in his use of mobility to offset numerical disadvantages, as demonstrated in the rout of the Austro–Russian forces in 1805 in the [[Battle of Austerlitz]]. The French Army redefined the role of artillery, forming independent, mobile units, as opposed to the previous tradition of attaching artillery pieces in support of troops.<ref name="auto1" />

The [[Semaphore line|semaphore system]] had allowed the French War-Minister, Carnot, to communicate with French forces on the frontiers throughout the 1790s. The French continued to use this system throughout the Napoleonic wars. [[Aerial surveillance]] was used for the first time when the French used a hot-air balloon to survey coalition positions before the [[Battle of Fleurus (1794)|Battle of Fleurus]], on 26 June 1794.{{sfn|Palmer|1941|pp=81–83}}

===Total war===
{{Main|Total war}}
[[File:Goya-Guerra (32).jpg|thumb|right|[[Francisco Goya|Goya's]] ''[[The Disasters of War]]'', showing French atrocities against Spanish civilians]]
Historians have explored how the Napoleonic wars became total wars. Most historians argue that the escalation in size and scope came from two sources. First was the ideological clash between revolutionary/egalitarian and conservative/hierarchical belief systems. Second was the emergence of [[nationalism]] in France, Germany, Spain, and elsewhere, that made these "people's wars" instead of contests between monarchs.{{sfn|Stoker|Schneid|Blanton|2008|pp=24, 31–32, 38}} Bell has argued that even more important than ideology and nationalism were the intellectual transformations in the culture of war that came about through the [[Age of Enlightenment]].{{sfn|Bell|2007|pp=7–13}} One factor, he says, is that war was no longer a routine event but a transforming experience for societies—a total experience. Secondly, the military emerged in its own right as a separate sphere of society distinct from the ordinary civilian world. The French Revolution made every civilian a part of the war machine, either as a soldier through universal conscription, or as a vital cog in the home front machinery supporting and supplying the army. Out of that, says Bell, came "militarism", the belief that the military role was morally superior to the civilian role in times of great national crisis. The fighting army represented the essence of the nation's soul.{{efn|Many historians say it was not the "first" total war; for a critique of Bell see {{Cite book |last=Frederick C. Schneid |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=V086MVIushMC&pg=PA1802 |title=Napoleonic Wars |publisher=Potomac Books |year=2012 |isbn=978-1-59797-578-0 |page=1802 |access-date=18 June 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150930174847/https://books.google.com/books?id=V086MVIushMC&pg=PA1802 |archive-date=30 September 2015 |url-status=live}}}} As Napoleon proclaimed, "It is the soldier who founds a Republic and it is the soldier who maintains it."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Robert Harvey |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JB1SXLBGP18C&pg=PT328 |title=The War of Wars |publisher=Constable & Robinson |year=2013 |isbn=978-1-84901-260-7 |page=328 |access-date=18 June 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150930180631/https://books.google.com/books?id=JB1SXLBGP18C&pg=PT328 |archive-date=30 September 2015 |url-status=live}}</ref> Napoleon said on his career "I closed the gulf of anarchy and brought order out of chaos. I rewarded merit regardless of birth or wealth, wherever I found it. I abolished feudalism and restored equality to all religion and before the law. I fought the decrepit monarchies of the Old Regime because the alternative was the destruction of all this. I purified the Revolution."<ref>{{Cite book |last=H.A Currathers |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VwBzCgAAQBAJ |title=Napoleon on Campaign |publisher=Sword & Pen Military |year=2014 |isbn=978-1-78346-250-6 |page=181 |access-date=5 June 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210715013934/https://books.google.com/books?id=VwBzCgAAQBAJ |archive-date=15 July 2021 |url-status=live}}</ref>