Editing Napoleonic Wars (section)

===Napoleon's tactics===
[[Napoleon]] was, and remains, famous for his battlefield victories, and historians have spent enormous attention in analysing them.{{sfn|Chandler|1966}}{{page needed|date=May 2021}} In 2008, Donald Sutherland wrote:

<blockquote>The ideal Napoleonic battle was to manipulate the enemy into an unfavourable position through manoeuvre and deception, force him to commit his main forces and reserve to the main battle and then undertake an enveloping attack with uncommitted or reserve troops on the flank or rear. Such a surprise attack would either produce a devastating effect on morale or force him to weaken his main battle line. Either way, the enemy's own impulsiveness began the process by which even a smaller French army could defeat the enemy's forces one by one.{{sfn|Sutherland |2008 |p=[https://books.google.com/books?id=DuwHSN9QTroC&pg=PA356 356]}}</blockquote>

After 1807, Napoleon's creation of a highly mobile, well-armed artillery force gave artillery usage an increased tactical importance. Napoleon, rather than relying on infantry to wear away the enemy's defences, could now use massed artillery as a spearhead to pound a break in the enemy's line. Once that was achieved he sent in infantry and cavalry.{{sfn|McConachy |2001 |pp=617–640|ps=:&nbsp;McConachy rejects the alternative theory that growing reliance on artillery by the French army beginning in 1807 was an outgrowth of the declining quality of the French infantry and, later, France's inferiority in cavalry numbers}}{{page range too broad|date=May 2021}}