Napoleonic Wars, 1803-1815

Modern Wars

by David Gates

Known collectively as the 'Great War', for over a decade the Napoleonic Wars engulfed not only a whole continent but also the overseas possessions of the leading European states. A war of unprecedented scale and intensity, it was in many ways a product of change that acted as a catalyst for upheaval and reform across much of Europe, with aspects of its legacy lingering to this very day.

There is a mass of literature on Napoleon and his times, yet there are only a handful of scholarly works that seek to cover the Napoleonic Wars in their entirety, and fewer still that place the conflict in any broader framework. This study redresses the balance. Drawing on recent findings and applying a 'total' history approach, it explores the causes and effects of the conflict, and places it in the context of the evolution of modern warfare. It reappraises the most significant and controversial military ventures, including the war at sea and Napoleon's campaigns of 1805-9. The study gives an insight into the factors that shaped the war, setting the struggle in its wider economic, cultural, political and intellectual dimensions.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

336 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

David Gates is Deputy Director and Senior Fellow of the Centre for Defence and International Security Studies at the University of Lancaster.

Reviews

[MarcosKtulu · Rating 4 out of 5]

A reprint of the title originally released in 1997, Gates’ work condenses the state of knowledge of the era by the late nineties, which draws a lot from 70´s and 80´s secondary sources, with by then already massive bibliography. Most is summed in a final bibliographical essay.
Not leaving doubts about the author´s grade of command of the topic, it is not altogether clear what he sets out to do: an introduction, a general survey, a military account, an epochal characterization of socio-political conditions, a tactical and strategical analysis of the art of war, or a mishmash of all the aforesaid. There´s a sense of un-evenness, given the disparity with which he treats some campaigns. Either detailed minutiae, or straight one line mention.
Gates´ approach is a mixed bag of contents starting a caveat in the introduction, stressing the importance of being critical of sources and not take for fact anything written. Then there is an overview of each of the belligerents and key raw data and state of their armies and arms.
Action begins with the detailed Austerlitz campaign, after France and UK recommence hostilities. In this very first battle one can grasp one of the problems with the maps provided, being black and white, all forces, usually black squares, bear no distinction as to whose force they belong. The other problem is how hard is to follow operational troop deployments in wide array of german cities.
Interspersed is a chapter on naval wafare, mainly about how Royal navy was overstreched by the blockading, amphibious and convoying duties. The era saw little of decisive engagements, save from Trafalgar.
Chronological narrative carries on as campaigns ending on brilliant Jena and Austerstädt and further continuation in Eylau and Friedland knock Prussia and Russia out of the war. Gates` narrative again is lavish on movements and manouvers of corps.
One of the topical, essay-like chapters is about “the reformists”, dealing with the administrative and military challenges that the defeated ancient regime orders like Prussia, Russia and Austria had to cope with in order to level off Napoleon`s ingenious revolutionary empire.
Another chapter covers economic performance, comparing essentially French resource management to British one, and it´s confrontation through the continental system and orders in council. Despite severe strains, british finanacial system proved sounder. Ultimately, though, competition in merchant navy drags United States into conflict as well.
The most detailed chapter involves the Rise and fall of the fifth coalition, French invasion of Portugal, and especially battles of Eggmühl, Aspern-Essling and Wagram, curbing Austria but failing to destroy it.
After that, two chapters on Napoleon´s soon to be self-destructive failures: a full chapter on Peninsular war, and then another about the Invasion of Russia, not so fully loaded of military affairs but of diplomatic ones, leading to the breakup of Russo-french relations. In the next, German war of liberation, Napoleon constantly tries to make up for his severe losses and irreplaceable resource drainage, well handed in Lützen and Bautzen, but eventually exceeded, badly outnumbered and defeated in Leipzig. Descriptions about these battles are rather short. The same occurs in the defensive French campaign of 1814, yet here not even the names of the battles are given. Waterloo and the 100 days is dismissed as an overrated battle, and the chapter dedicated to it is largely filled with counter-factic claims that even a French victory there would have been too little and too late for Napoleon, against so large and determined odds. The conclusion states that successive coalitions learnt how to wage war together and how to offset Napoleons advantages. Napoleon, as well, fell short of the dogma of war serving just as a mean to achieve a political aim, and not an end it itself.
As said, the bibliographical ending chapter makes criticisms or warnings of colleagues` works. Very entertaining read.

[Trish · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent, readable and comprehensive overview of the Napoleonic Wars period. I did detect a slight pro-Napoleon bias at times, but not too badly. The thing that did annoy me though was both the British contribution to the Peninsula War, and the Waterloo Campaign, were rather dismissed as "lots of people have written about this, so I'm not going to go into much detail", when surely that should also be true of the rest of the Napoleonic Wars. Still, all in all a useful primer.

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good, basic summary of both the military and diplomatic aspects of the Napoleonic Wars (which is what I was looking for), though it could've used more attention to naval matters.

[Terry Quirke · Rating 3 out of 5]

A decent summary of the Napoleonic campaigns, it concentrates on those Napoleon himself fought in so the Peninsular Campaign only gets limited coverage. A good overall summary, it doesn't get bogged down in detail or character studies.

[Jonathan Bar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Muy fácil de entender, pero se nota que el autor es anglosajón. Lo malo, como indica el propio título si quieres contexto previo a 1803...no hay mucho. Sin embargo explica a la perfección el bloqueo continental. Te hace darte cuenta de que no empezó realmente en 1806.

[Aaron Kleinheksel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was looking for a follow-up to my recent read of The Days of the French Revolution, to pick up the story where that book left off, and to provide a good one-volume narrative history of the Napoleonic Wars. This checked those boxes, though there were a couple dropped years between the advent of Napoleon and the start of this book.

Gates' writing got better as the book progressed, as he delved a bit more into the political situation and the convoluted diplomatic problems surrounding the military campaigns. The almost constant warfare on the European continent from 1793 to 1815 resulted in casualties (by %) that virtually equaled that of World War I, which war also seized from the Napoleonic Wars the title of "The Great War." The scale of the armies wielded by the nations involved was not seen again until 1914.

I agree with the author's view that Napoleon, for all his battlefield genius, lost sight of the purpose of war, and because of that missed the opportunities he had in 1807-1812 to achieve reasonable aims. Gates does a good job demonstrating his familiarity with the historical record of the period, and offers succinct critiques that seem fair to me. Along with that, he includes a large bibliography at the end with advice on further reading for those interested in deeper scholarship.

I enjoyed this book and recommend it for anyone wishing to get a bird's-eye view of what was essentially the real First World War without getting bogged down in too much ground-level detail. I plan on further reading in the future to go deeper, but this was just right for now.

[Legens · Rating 2 out of 5]

A concise overview, sadly marred by the atrocious maps in the chapters describing campaigns. While the book (rightly, on this level) has just as much and more coverage of operations than of individual battles, most of the maps are on the tactical level. These are dubiously produced - the French and the Allied forces are both shaded black, a lot of abbreviations are used for commanders and villages - but at least give an idea of their battle. Operational maps, on the other hand, are few and far between (instead of at least one per campaign chapter). Thus Gates narrates in great detail which river Napoleon's forces crossed in order to trap the enemy in which town between them and a supporting corps in which village - but the reader either has to use an atlas or possess encyclopedic knowledge of geography to follow those movements. That is a pity, because the book has valuable insights on the economics, diplomacy, and organization of the Napoleonic Wars.

[Mark Bowden · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is impossible to give this book a fair star rating. Parts of it, to the author's credit, are worth five stars while others, the publisher's fault (?), are only worth one. To deal with the weak points first, it is almost impossible to follow the very complex campaigns, manoeuvres and battles of these wars because there are not enough maps and those that there are, are very poor. Many places, rivers and areas mentioned in the text are not shown on the maps. In the badly drawn battle plans the publisher has elected to show Napoleon's forces in black and the Allied forces in black - so no possibility of confusion there. On the credit side, the author lays out his sound approach to history in the Introduction and in intervening chapters on, for instance, the belligerents, the reformists, trade patterns and resource constraints, he makes valuable points and provides illuminating insights. Only the relatively short chapter on the war at sea is a bit weak.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

While this book purported to be a summary, it contained a much greater level of detail than what I was looking for, or needed. I liberally skim-read large sections which descended into hour by hour descriptions of battles, including the implications of particular pieces of terrain, weather or luck had on the outcome, even while other battles range alongside. Regardless, the book was able to increase my overall understanding of the wars, including their political complexity, even if I retain very little of the details of that complexity. I am not sure who I would recommend this book to, except maybe for a history buff of part of European who wanted to place that history in the context of everything else that was happening in Europe at the time - especially if they are interested in blow-by-blow summaries of individual battles!

[Ben Duerksen · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a serviceable overview of the Napoleonic period, but not a particularly good one. The book’s writing is obtuse, repetitive in many places, overuses turns of phrase, and is full of passive voice. The content itself provides a moderately detailed synopsis of the period, but details are often included without context or the warranted embellishment to justify their inclusions in the first place. What's more, in many areas the detail undermines the stated purpose of the book, which is to provide an all-encompassing synthesis of the period; yet, a large chunk of the book is tactical minutiae, and even that is hard to follow due to the poor quality of included maps. The lack of more than a couple of geopolitical and campaign maps in a period overview is also a massive oversight. Overall I'd have to hope there are better examples in the genre elsewhere since this book's publication.

[David Haddon · Rating 3 out of 5]

This had way more names, places, etc going on than I hoped. I was looking for a "Napoleanic Wars for Relatively Informed Dummies" but this was way more into the realm of a summary refresher for advanced pupils.

For me, not enough maps. And I was 100 pages in before I got over being annoyed by paragraphs that average 3/4 pages.

So way more academic than I hoped for. Without giving me as much of the basics as I hoped for.

[Hamish Kadrian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A ambitious book in scope but it conserves itself to the overarching forces and most relevant information. It gives a sweep of the major military conflicts but does a good job of showing the economic, social and political forces behind each. Personally I am more interested in the finer details of military doctrine but I cannot fault this book for that as that was never its goal. A good introduction to the Napoleonic wars if you are interested.

[Gilbert Collins · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent overview and an analysis of an Napoleonic wars.

The volume of Napoleon literature is immense, but this one volume addition is very good for those who can only afford to purchase a small library on Napoleonic titles.

[Allan · Rating 4 out of 5]

An informative book.

[Eoin Conroy · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a bit of a chore, as it was largely manoeuvre-by-manoeuvre accounts of battles with very little thought given to creating a sense of the space any of this takes place in, so there are frequent sequences of town and river names which requires constant referring back to the maps to get any sort of sense of it. David Gates takes a pot shot at Owen Connolly’s Blundering to Glory in this, but he could have taken a cue from Connolly when it comes to readability.

While his style creates an annoying stop-start feeling, I mainly thought this was good. It has a sort of bitchy quality you get with some historians which I quite like, such as the above mentioned swipe at Connolly, and a similar amusing knock on Charles Esdaile.

There are some very interesting interventions here about the proto-nationalism often identified as emerging during these European wars. Gates dismissed outright the idea that the nascent nationalist figures from Germany in this period had any popular appeal at all, and the only effect they had were with small scale action which was usually small, and alienated most of the people it tried to reach.

He has a similar deconstruction of Spanish Guerrilla warfare too, which Gates doesn’t identify as nationalistic in our current sense, or even proto-nationalistic, and was ultimately a reaction based in xenophobia, the fear that the French were going to take their religion from them, and also just a backlash against the direct harmful impact that the presence of troops had on their lives, such as their foraging.


I admired this book more than I liked it.

[Cynic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dry, but interesting. Gates gives an interesting viewpoint: instead of focus on just Napoleon, he takes the entire European view, with it's infighting and political deception.