Napoleon's Empire

The genesis of Napoleon’s empire was very much akin with the French foreign policy ambitions of the Revolution and even in the Ancien Regime. We can see a continuity here between the mechanisations of successive French states that further suggests that successive battles were inevitable under any French leader. The French revolutionaries had decided on extending France’s natural frontiers such as the Rhine and Alps. According to Stuart Woolf , the Napoleonic Empire was the continuation of a French civilizing mission in Europe. He argues that the French political class planned on enroaching the neighbouring territories and imposing the French model of the secular state as it would produce societies compatible with a modernised France. Thus,

The fundamental change in warfare included the intensification of war, the ideology which drove it being one of secular nature as well as the concept of civic nationalism. This radical aggrandizement of war resulted by linking a secular ideology with a view to fighting battle in order to annihilate the opponent. This was then exemplified in French plans to mobilize and entire economy and state geared towards war as well as the transformation from the professional soldier to the citizen soldier. This development to total warfare can clearly be seen in Napoleon’s efforts to subjugate Spain in 1808 . When the citizen army came into existence these mass armies conducted war with a new found ruthlessness, intensity and a new style of combat suited to unlimited warfare. This can also be seen in the Battle of Austerlitz Therefore the components for a new style of warfare and large-scale war were in place in 1789 which heightened the possibility for an extended period of battles to ensue between the major European powers. During this period along with the rise of the citizen soldier, there came an emphasis on the role of the decisive battle and total war, which explains the way in which Napoleon fought his battles and to the extent.

According to R.B. Mowat one of Napoleon’s aims was to obtain peace . In support of this argument, arguably all of Napoleon’s wars were fought with defence in mind where he merely sought to defend the ‘natural frontiers’ that France had won in the revolution and to safeguard her vulnerable flanks by establishing sister republics in Holland and Switzerland through which were consolidated by the Italian campaigns in the French revolutionary wars. Sorel argues that the battles fought by him were done so in justifiable defence from the monarchical powers of Europe, continually re assembling the coalitions against France. This strengthens the claim that the origins of such battles were provoked by European powers who felt threatened by Napoleon’s increasing power and influence, arguably the leading culprit being Britain whose gold funded every new coalition which chose to challenge France and British weapons which armed France’s enemies. An underlying reason which pushed Napoleon to war particularly in the invasion of Iberia is that by 1807, French society and the economy was in need of aid and so required France to seek out further