Napoleon, was he that great?

[Rodion Romanovich]

I was mainly thinking of the powerful artillery France had at the time:

"The Napoleonic artillery was a product of the change in French military theory that followed humiliations of the Seven Years War. Especially painful was the defeat at Rossbach where 42.000 French and their Allies were trashed by 21,000 Prussians under Fredrick the Great. The French artillery in that time was according to the "system" of de Vallerie. The cannons were strongly built, very powerful, but very ornate and far too heavy to handle in the field.

The old system was gradually replaced by so-called Gribeauval System. The new guns were designed for more rapid movements, on and off the roads. Gribeauval stressed mobility, hitting power and accuracy. His important innovation was the elevating screw used to adjust the range of the cannon by raising or lowering its breech. Another innovation was the prolong. It was a heavy rope 30 feet long and used to connect the gun and its limber when it was necessary to fire while retiring or to unlimber the gun while crossing some difficult obstacle."
http://napoleonistyka.atspace.com/ar..._Napoleon.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Ba..._de_Gribeauval
Perhaps Gribeauval was to Napoleon what Philip II was to Alexander?

Anyhow, I'm not arguing that Napoleon was a total failure, or calling him less capable than the average general of the era - just questioning why he is called a genius. So, I'm asking: can you provide enough examples of clever actions to outweight the failures? I do recognize the examples of credit, but disagree that they outweigh the failures.

[Peasant Phill]

Napoleon's actions in fact delayed revolutionary ideas from gaining influence in the rest of Europe, making it take until 1848 until anything noteworthy happened again, because who could talk in favor of the Revolutionary ideas when talking positively of these ideas was, by propaganda from the nobility and the likes, the same as talking positive of the massmurderer Napoleon?

I can't say I agree with you there. After Waterloo the United Kingdom of the Netherlands was formed as a dam against the revolutionary ideas still very much alive in France. It seems that heads of state of England, Prussia, ... still felt threathened by those revolutionary ideas.

And it didn't take until 1848 until anything noteworthy happened. The southern part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands revolted in 1830 and founded Belgium in 1831 with the most liberal constitution since then. A constitution which is still in use to this day I might add.

[Justiciar]

It seems that heads of state of England, Prussia, ... still felt threathened by those revolutionary ideas.

You're telling me. What was it Arthur Wellesley said after the Peterloo business? Something in the vain of "It appears clear to me now that we must use those same tactics against our own people that we did against the French"?

[Brenus]

“Nappy was lucky to gain the cooperation with Talleyrand and Fuche men who kept his non-stop wars going. These three men allowed each other to gain power. He was the leader of a nation so military victory itself is only one facet. In politics and diplomacy he was an idiot and nothing more, his supposed great remaking of Frances political system was a complete sham, a puppet show to give his brutal autocracy some vestige of legitimacy”
“I agree completely”

Where did you read this kind of things?
Napoleon was a friend of Robespierre brother. He took power in planning carefully. He became friend with Barras, member of the Directoire. He mopped a Royalist insurrection then got the command of the Army of Italy… Realising in Egypt he had to come back to France if he wanted to count in the political game, he abandoned his troops to Gal Kleber and return to Paris. Then, he, Abbe Sieyes and Roger Ducos seized power in the Coup de Brumaire which saw them share power as equal consuls. Within months Bonaparte was First Consul and had eased his "equals" into early retirement.
He became Consul for life, then Emperor.
So, where do you see here a political and diplomatically idiot? France was at peace with all the major powers in Europe, and even with the Pope.
By the way, most of administrative reforms from Napoleon (himself being the heir of the Revolution) are still working.

“His country was already in shambles after this great revolution had utterly failed to achieve equality and justice to all, descending into a bloody anarchy”. Er, that was finished when Napoleon took power.

“His arrogance and overestimating of his abilities, and hunger for power, for example. He should have realized in the first place that he wasn't suited to being anything else than artillery commander or communication link between his more able marshals (which is the role he held during the early victories). When he started to take more initiative in the field by commanding his marshals instead of being the one who communicated between them (and stopped listening to their advice), and didn't realize he had nothing to do on the throne of a country, he and France started losing mass”
Did you really read about Napoleon or you just write what are your feelings? Arrogance and anger for power, probably, but for the rest: It took only 6 coalitions to defeat him:
The 2nd Coalition (1798-1801): Russia, Britain, Austria, Ottoman Empire, Portugal, Naples, Vatican.
The 3rd Coalition (1805): Austria, Great Britain, Russia, Sweden.
The 4th Coalition (1806-1807): Prussia, Saxony, Russia.
The 5th Coalition (1809): Great Britain and Austria.
The 6th Coalition (1812-1814): Great Britain and Russia, joined by Prussia, Sweden, Austria, German States.
The 7th Coalition (1815): Great Britain, Russia, Prussia, Sweden, Austria, German States.

The battle of Austerlitz is still one of the greatest battle plan ever which can compared with Hannibal battle of Cannea. So much for your amazing comment “artillery commander or communication link between his more able marshals”.
In Ulm, without even a real battle, he put Austria out of the war…
Clausewitz wrote his books on commenting Napoleon battles and campaign. Not the one from Kutusov, not from Wellington, no, from the defeated general…

Then, even defeated, he will write his own legend: « Au commencement était le Rêve, père et fils du Verbe. A la fin était l'Histoire. Voilà Napoléon. » “At the beginning was the Dream, father and Son of the Verb. And the End was History. Here is Napoleon.” From Max Gallo who wrote one of the biography of Napoleon.

“Napoleon's defeat in Egypt”: That is pushing a little bit: What Defeat?

“massmurderer Napoleon”: Can you give fact instead to use a process seen in the Moscow’s trails and Berlin Express Justice during Stalin and Hitler. I know that repeating things made them real (kind of surrealist concept) but I wanted some facts where Napoleon did organised mass killing of civilians populations, organised systematic rapes and deportations… And don’t go with the slaughters of 3.000 Turkish prisoners… I want mass murder.

“By 1800, the Enlightenment ideas had eliminated most religious fundamentalism and authority over most of Europe anyway.” And it is probably for this reason than all Europe joined against the French Revolution…
See the Perterloo Massacre in England, 6 of August 1819, for the winning Enlightenment...

“just questioning why he is called a genius” He invented a system which is still in use nowadays: The Army Corps, le Corps d’Armée, the "Code Napoleon" and spred (if not invented, but same thing can be said about the Code Napoleon, and your denial doesn't change the fact) the metric system which link all dimensions.

“I do recognize the examples of credit, but disagree that they outweigh the failures.” Did you real read what you wrote?

[Rodion Romanovich]

France was at peace with all the major powers in Europe, and even with the Pope.

Ehm...???? Did you miss about that part from 1808 to 1816?

“His arrogance and overestimating of his abilities, and hunger for power, for example. He should have realized in the first place that he wasn't suited to being anything else than artillery commander or communication link between his more able marshals (which is the role he held during the early victories). When he started to take more initiative in the field by commanding his marshals instead of being the one who communicated between them (and stopped listening to their advice), and didn't realize he had nothing to do on the throne of a country, he and France started losing mass”
Did you really read about Napoleon or you just write what are your feelings? Arrogance and anger for power, probably, but for the rest: It took only 6 coalitions to defeat him:
The 2nd Coalition (1798-1801): Russia, Britain, Austria, Ottoman Empire, Portugal, Naples, Vatican.
The 3rd Coalition (1805): Austria, Great Britain, Russia, Sweden.
The 4th Coalition (1806-1807): Prussia, Saxony, Russia.
The 5th Coalition (1809): Great Britain and Austria.
The 6th Coalition (1812-1814): Great Britain and Russia, joined by Prussia, Sweden, Austria, German States.
The 7th Coalition (1815): Great Britain, Russia, Prussia, Sweden, Austria, German States.

Let's look at the resources available to these coalitions:

THE FRENCH DEFENSIVE WAR PHASE:
At this time, the coalitions against Napoleon weren't strong, united or had the goal of complete surrender of France. These wars were of a more defensive (in terms of casus belli) character for France, but ended in France expending all its casus belli, moral high ground and making diplomatically dangerous moves that would draw in neutrals (mainly Prussia and Russia) on the side of the coalition.

Early French revolutionary wars and conflict with the 1st Coalition:
This was an unprovoked attack by mainly those Bourbon-dynasty ruled countries who opposed the revolution. They had no casus belli and they had low morale. France was victorious, of course.
- The French drove back the small Spanish expedition "Pyrenees campaign"
- The French attacked the isolated Austrian possessions in the Netherlands and successfully won a victory there. The area, along with the Rhineland, were occupied.
- The French revolutionary government in these campaigns saw the weakness and disorganization caused to their forces by the revolution and death of many nobles (previously commanders etc), but incredibly quickly responded to this by inventing the mass conscription, thus creating the basis for France's unmatched military strength in the coming decades.

1796:
In 1796 the revolutionary France went more aggressively on the offensive. Napoleon had command over the French forces in Italy, where he inflicted heavy losses on the Austrian forces thanks to the superior French artillery. However, he used careless diplomacy and the campaign was just as much an attempt to invade Italy, as an attempt to strike the enemies Naples and Austria. The successes from the previous year had now started splitting the enemies and making them accept separate peace treaties, but this invasion, which Napoleon had long advocated France should carry out, started spreading fears in Europe among both neutrals and parts of the coalition that had not yet accepted peace, that France had larger-scale imperial ambitions.

Meanwhile, the two other advances (by Jourdan and Moreau) made the mistake of striking the HRE rather than Austria. There were no negotiations or attempts at diplomatic resolution or splitting the HRE (which was only formally on Austria's side) from Austria, and the campaigns not only turned out unsuccessful, but also increased the justification for fearing that the French had imperialistic plans. Napoleon's success in the Italian campaign, while the others faced defeat, had a lot to do with the fact that the French superior mobile artillery was at its best in a terrain such as that in Italy, whereas it couldn't be used to quite the same effect in the other places. To how great extent is the striking of many neutral, uninvolved factions in this campaign Napoleon's fault? At least the invasion of Italy was supposedly to a great extent Boney's responsibility.

Next, Napoleon made the mistake of invading Egypt, which cost plenty of French troops, and even more reinforced the fear of imperialistic plans among the French. The invasion of Switzerland (not Napoleon's fault, though) again reinforced the picture, turning France's diplomatic position worse, as Russia and Prussia now begun considering joining the coalition. Why? Prussia: Because the French couldn't distinguish HRE from Austria, thus Prussia was threatened. Russia: if France had a wish to conquer the HRE step by step, then it was clear that a. they had imperialistic master plans and b. if they had plans to take the neutral HRE and Italy in the process of defeating Austria and Naples, then they would be likely to try to want to subjugate Russia as well, eventually.

2nd coalition conflict:
The coalition was still small, not coordinated, and all the participants were separated geographically.
- Spain, France and several small states (at least 350,000 troops active)
- Britain, Russia, Austria, smaller forces, all hugely separated geographically, with very loose cooperation, and most of them not really caring about much progress ashore, for example Britain (around 250,000 troops active)

The participants' lack of numbers in each campaign, and total lack of coordination, made them easy to defeat - in fact a much easier opponent than the opposition during the French revolutionary was was. Now, the conscription system, having been in action for some time, together with the massproduction of the new artillery, was also beginning to make a major difference.

Still, during this campaign, Napoleon's senseless risktaking almost made him suffer defeat around the time of the battle of Marengo.


PREEMPTIVE STRIKE AND GRADUAL SWITCHING TO OFFENSIVE WAR AND DIPLOMATIC BLUNDERS DUE TO BONEY'S VANITY PHASE:

Having been too careless in the diplomacy in the 1796, thus having drawn Russia into the war and Prussia almost into it, there were now plans for forming the very first really serious coalition with any forms of coordination of actions.

3rd coalition conflict:
The forming of this coalition wasn't completed, before Napoleon discovered their plans and struck preemptively. Moreover, Britain's role in the coalition was still not tight cooperation with the others, or with any aim of making any gains ashore. Napoleon's victory in this conflict was 100% a militarily victory, but caused no diplomatic gains, since the diplomatic position was already weakened by the previous actions. Napoleon's formation of the Confederation of the Rhine had the opposite of the intended effect - instead of separating the HRE from Austria as should have been done diplomatically before, now it was only made more provoking than the status before the war, sending a sign that France wasn't satisfied with conquering Italy and modern Belgium, but also had plans for complete dominance over the HRE eventually. Napoleon's vanity to crown himself emperor at the same time he dissolved the HRE, starting to use references to ancient Rome, and claiming the title which was usually used to refer to the empire he had no dissolved and picked a portion of, and his imposing of some control over the newly formed Rhine Confederation (making it more like a French client kingdom), completed the effect.

The military campaign had two phases, notice the French immense superiority in resources during the conflict:
- Ulm conflict: 235,000 French vs 72,000 Austrians
- Austerlitz conflict: 75,000 French vs 80,000 fatigued, demoralized Austrians - barely regrouped, and newly arrived Russians. The Russians had orders from the Tsar to attack at Austerlitz even though the terrain was worst possible for offensive, and the troops had the disadvantage of command difficulties as coalition armies always have. They had had no time for joint manouvers training at the time. The French army only had 75,000 men because Napoleon had overstretched his forces somewhat. He was lucky the Russian Tsar had ordered Kutuzov to attack in such bad terrain (with such bad mobility in the Russian artillery) when Napoleon would otherwise have had no choice but to retreat and regroup (only to be prepared to face a stronger opponent), or attack and face certain defeat.

The third coalition war was over before the neutrals - mainly Prussia, had had time to mobilize their forces to join, and Russia arrived late, as the French attack happened while the discussions were still in progress. This means the third coalition was also not to count as a "coalition against Napoleon".


THE IMPERIALISTIC, OFFENSIVE WARFARE AND A CHANCE OF GOOD PEACE THROWN AWAY BY BONEY IN FAVOR OF CHOOSING CERTAIN DEFEAT THROUGH MASSIVE BLOODSHED PHASE:

4th coalition conflict:
The 4th coalition was, again, in fact, not much of a coalition. This war started with Prussia, alone, declaring war on France. Russia could not join action until the end of the conflict, and at this time, Prussia was already defeated. Again, Napoleon had massive advantage in numbers and troop quality. The Prussian war was hopeless from the beginning, for example 90,000 French vs 38,000 Prussians at the battle of Jena. When the Russians intervened, Napoleon had slightly higher numbers than the Russians, but the Russians also had much lower troop quality. French casualties were pretty high in many of the battles, for example the Battle of Eylau (25k, Napoleon commanded, by the way). The French victory at Danzig was the only great demonstration of generalship in this campaign, but note: it wasn't commanded by Napoleon, but by Marshal Lefebvre, who won a crushing victory despite only a slight advantage in numbers. This allowed Napoleon numerical advantage 80,000 to 60,000 at the Battle of Friedland, which concluded this conflict.

Now, what did Napoleon do after this victory, when he - despite not holding the moral high ground and despite that having split up and defeated all opponents who had gone against him? Did he sigh deeply and thank God that he had gained victory despite not having morality entirely on his side, and that he now had the ability to establish a long-lasting and stable peace in Europe? That he had the chance to spread the ideas of freedom and liberty over Europe? That his previous vanity and diplomatical blunders had nearly led to his destruction before, and that he should be more careful from now on, in making diplomatic mistakes? That he now had the chance to establish the most favorable peace any commander could ever have hoped for? No! He invaded his own ally - Spain, so heavily reducing his strength everywhere that he went from being able to easily handle all his enemies, to marching towards his safe destruction. So heavily undermining all his casus belli, legitimacy and respect, that every old enough man in Europe were longing to see his destruction!


NAPOLEON'S FINAL UTTER, TOTAL DIPLOMATIC FAILURE PHASE:

So, having managed to defeat all his opponents before thanks to his superiority in troop quality and numbers, and the fact that neither of the "coalitions" so far had been coalition, but rather been several nations acting individually, he now invaded Spain.

From here we all know the rest: the fifth coalition - again a comparatively loose coalition, a pyrrhic victory for Napoleon. The invasion of Russia, late in the year, and lacking the supplies that were now tied down in Spain. Causing war with Portugal. Lines of Torres Vedras, Portugal, Spain and Britain together cooperating to liberate Spain. Total annihilation of 500,000 men in Russia. Attempt of gaining an impossible victory as the independent German states revolted. Invasion of French soil now becoming necessary to stop the endless expansion and greed for more power. And then Elba.

SUMMARY:
So can we really call anything "coalition" except the final, sixth coalition?

The battle of Austerlitz is still one of the greatest battle plan ever which can compared with Hannibal battle of Cannea.

I disagree. The key to Napoleon's victory at Austerlitz was that Kutuzov more or less at death threat from the Tsar had orders to attack despite having a slightly numerically inferior army, with communication difficulties with the demoralized Austrians he had to cooperate with to get even close to Nappy's numbers, inferior mobility for his artillery, and perfect defensive terrain for Nappy. If you are to pick an example of well fought battles in Nappy's life, I think Austerlitz is a bad choice. I would rather pick some of his battles in Italy, or his Six days campaign in 1814, for example.

“By 1800, the Enlightenment ideas had eliminated most religious fundamentalism and authority over most of Europe anyway.” And it is probably for this reason than all Europe joined against the French Revolution…
See the Perterloo Massacre in England, 6 of August 1819, for the winning Enlightenment...

Perhaps if you read my posts above you would see that I took England as an example of where the revolution failed - because of Napoleon's expansionism making it easy to propagandaize against the revolutionary ideas.

the metric system which link all dimensions.

This myth again? Didn't I already debunk this myth twice in this thread? No, Napoleon did NOT invent the metric system. In fact, he revoked the law which forbade usage of the old system. The revolutionary government and the Enlightenment scientists and philosophers gave us the metric system.

[paul_kiss]

No, I certainly don't think Napoleon has to be considered as one of the greatest (like Alexander The Great, e.g.). Just a prominent figure of the past. Besides his defeat in his Eastern campaign sets the things clear, I think.

[Prussian Abroad]

Alexander was born into greatness, Napoleon had to work his way through the ranks, something incredibly hard being a Corsican in Revolutionary France. His political campaigns between 1796 and 1805 were as impressive as the military campaigns in the same period. I think a lot of people here are just criticising his ego and battlefield nouse, but he was really a master of manouervres and innovation as proved in the Italian campaign, The Invasion of Russia, the founding of the laws that are still used in France today, the setting up of Corps which were to be used even in World War 2.
On the battlefield Napoleon was not the equal of a Marlborough or Frederick the Great, at least for the most part, he was in essence an artillery commander leading an army which is how the huge bloodbathes of Borodino, Eylau and Wagram came about.
If you're going to criticise Napoleon's generalship, fine, but you can't say the man wasn't great.

[The General]

No, I certainly don't think Napoleon has to be considered as one of the greatest (like Alexander The Great, e.g.). Just a prominent figure of the past.

A simplified view of the Europe at 1811:

(it's the map in Wikipedia, but I coloured Denmark, Russia, Prussia and Austria to give a better idea, imho)

Almost all of continental Europe is under Napoleon's hold (either directly, or forced into an alliance), only Spain is something of a question mark because of the mess that it is (I left it uncoloured to represent the war that was going on there). Considering the trouble it took him to achieve that, the series of campaigns and battles, I say, without a hint of fanboy-ism, Napoleon was one of the greatest military leaders/rulers, in my opinion.

Sure, he had his faults, sure, he had people helping him, but if you compare him to Alexander the Great, for example, times had changed, and one man could no longer rule vast amounts of lands, especially with the emerging nationalism. No man is without his faults, miscalculations and personality traits, but that's part of being human, and for one man, Napoleon did do a pretty good job, whether you liked him or not.

Of course, Napoleon has had his abilities exaggerated, partially due to himself, but if you look at his achievements, there's no doubt that he was one of the most prominent leaders of history.

Imho, at the very darn least.

[Paradox]

A lot of sources state that his many talented courtiers did most of the work. Also, he didn't know when to stop, he kept going right until his court officials betrayed and overthrew him. This is where you can compare him to Alexander, they both didn't know when to stop and consolidate their empire.

[IrishArmenian]

Well you can't really say he was lucky.
He had to be good at something.

[Paradox]

Of course, he was a good leader and, one of the major reasons why he's still considered one of the greatest generals in history, he stood out from the rest.

[econ21]

Anyhow, I'm not arguing that Napoleon was a total failure, or calling him less capable than the average general of the era - just questioning why he is called a genius. So, I'm asking: can you provide enough examples of clever actions to outweight the failures? I do recognize the examples of credit, but disagree that they outweigh the failures.

I think that's the wrong standard to assess genius. Weighing up successes against failures measures achievements, not genius. Ultimately, Napoleon failed - he ended up in exile, having left hundreds of thousands of men dead in war.

But genius means exceptional talent in at least one field. That may or may not be demonstrated in ultimate success. Genius does not necessarily imply consistency and may lead to hubris or other failings, which Napoleon's errors only too clearly demonstrate.

I think Kralizec has it right - that Napoleon was capable of both astonishing successes and colossal blunders. He is commonly considered a military genius because of the operational flair demonstrated in many of his campaigns - the early Italian campaigns, Austerlitz and the 1814 campaign. He also was strikingly successful in creating a war machine of a size and quality that made France pre-eminent in Europe for a decade. Personally, I don't rate him as a genius in battlefield command - as a probably biased Brit, I would favour Wellington over him. However, as a commander in chief and as a war leader he stands out as among the most talented in recorded history.

[Rodion Romanovich]

I think that's the wrong standard to assess genius. Weighing up successes against failures measures achievements, not genius.

I also weigh each success and failure by the available resources and the difficulty of achieving the achievement from the particular position the person was in just before his choice of action. I should have been more clear about that!

I think Loius has it right - that Napoleon was capable of both astonishing successes and colossal blunders. He is commonly considered a military genius because of the operational flair demonstrated in many of his campaigns - the early Italian campaigns, Austerlitz and the 1814 campaign. He also was strikingly successful in creating a war machine of a size and quality that made France pre-eminent in Europe for a decade. Personally, I don't rate him as a genius in battlefield command - as a probably biased Brit, I would favour Wellington over him. However, as a commander in chief and as a war leader he stands out as among the most talented in recorded history.

Don't you mean Kralizec? Anyway, yes, I agree with Kralizec. I think that any armchair general should study Napoleon's victories because there's some interesting tactics to learn from them, but I'm not sure I would recommend the type of warfare used by Napoleon as the main strategy to use by an army. Wellington and his likes use a strategy more of the "best worst case response and cover all cases" type of strategy, Napoleon uses a strategy based on being able to predict the behavior of the opponent. It can be devastatingly effective if you're good at psychology of your opponent, but in the long run, when your luck changes or your enemy learns of how the strategy works, it tends to be extremely ineffective and dangerous - and can very suddenly give an unexpected crushing defeat. Napoleon showed genius in his capabilities of psychology early on, but his attempt at transferring to the best-response type of warfare later on, when that was clearly more useful, became a big failure IMO - he couldn't handle that type of warfare very well compared to his opponents, who were IMO more skilled at that form.

[econ21]

Don't you mean Kralizec?

Sorry - you are right, my bad. Editing previous post.

[Kralizec]

It can be devastatingly effective if you're good at psychology of your opponent, but in the long run, when your luck changes or your enemy learns of how the strategy works, it tends to be extremely ineffective and dangerous

You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your tricks of war