Editing Napoleonic Wars (section)

===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}}