Napoleonic (First French) Empire: A Visual History

The First French Empire was Napoleon Bonaparte's state, proclaimed in May 1804 when the First Consul made himself Emperor of the French. It grew out of the French Revolutionary Wars and rested on the finest army in Europe. At its height in 1811-1812 France directly ruled from Hamburg to Rome and dominated satellite kingdoms and allies across the continent. The disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812 shattered the Grande Armee; defeat at Leipzig in 1813 and the fall of Paris in 1814 forced Napoleon's abdication. His return in the Hundred Days ended at Waterloo in June 1815.

When it existed: the era ribbon

The bold bar is Napoleonic (First French) Empire. The lighter bars are empires and wars from the same era and the same part of the world. Click any bar to jump to its page.

French Empire and satellite states

France's own territory including annexed departments, plus dependent kingdoms and duchies. Allied Austria, Prussia and Russia are excluded.

Timeline of the Napoleonic (First French) Empire

1. 1799
   Coup of 18 BrumaireNapoleon becomes First Consul.
2. 1804
   CoronationEmperor of the French, 2 December; the Civil Code published in March.
3. 1805
   Trafalgar and AusterlitzNaval defeat, then the greatest victory.
4. 1806
   Holy Roman Empire dissolvedConfederation of the Rhine created; Prussia crushed at Jena.
5. 1807
   Treaties of TilsitPeace with Russia and Prussia; the Continental System.
6. 1808
   Spain invadedThe Peninsular War begins.
7. 1809
   WagramAustria defeated again.
8. 1812
   Invasion of RussiaBorodino, Moscow, and the retreat.
9. 1813
   LeipzigThe Battle of the Nations.
10. 1814
    First abdicationExile to Elba.
11. 1815
    Hundred Days and WaterlooSecond abdication; exile to Saint Helena.
12. 1821
    Death of NapoleonSaint Helena, 5 May.

From general to emperor

Napoleon Bonaparte was born in Corsica in 1769, a year after France bought the island from Genoa. The Revolution opened the officer corps to talent, and he rose from artillery captain at Toulon in 1793 to commander of the Army of Italy in 1796, where a string of victories over Austria made him famous. An expedition to Egypt in 1798 was a strategic failure but a propaganda success.

In November 1799 he seized power in the coup of 18 Brumaire and became First Consul. He made peace with the Church, created the Bank of France and the Civil Code, and after a plebiscite crowned himself Emperor at Notre-Dame on 2 December 1804, taking the crown from the Pope's hands to place it on his own head.

The years of victory

Britain declared war in 1803 and paid for successive coalitions against France. Napoleon abandoned plans to invade England after Trafalgar (October 1805) but destroyed the Austrians and Russians at Austerlitz two months later, dissolved the thousand year old Holy Roman Empire in 1806, and crushed Prussia at Jena-Auerstedt that October. The Treaties of Tilsit in 1807 made him master of the continent.

He ruled through family: brothers on the thrones of Holland, Naples, Westphalia and Spain, a stepson in Italy, a marshal in Sweden. The Continental System, an attempt to shut British trade out of Europe, was meant to strangle his one unbeaten enemy. It leaked everywhere and drove him into Spain and, ultimately, Russia.

Overreach: Spain and Russia

Placing his brother Joseph on the Spanish throne in 1808 triggered a national uprising and a British expedition under Wellington. The Peninsular War tied down hundreds of thousands of French troops for six years, the 'Spanish ulcer'. Meanwhile Napoleon divorced Josephine to marry an Austrian archduchess and secure an heir, the King of Rome, born in 1811.

When Tsar Alexander broke with the Continental System, Napoleon led over 600,000 men into Russia in June 1812. He won at Borodino and entered Moscow in September, but the city burned, the Tsar refused to negotiate, and the retreat through snow and Cossack raids destroyed the army. Perhaps 100,000 came back.

Fall, exile, Hundred Days

Prussia and Austria joined Russia and Britain, and at Leipzig in October 1813, the largest battle in Europe before 1914, Napoleon was decisively beaten. He fought a brilliant defensive campaign in France in early 1814, but Paris fell on 31 March and his marshals forced him to abdicate. He was given the tiny island of Elba as a sovereign principality.

In March 1815 he escaped, landed in France and marched to Paris as troops sent to arrest him changed sides. The Hundred Days ended at Waterloo on 18 June 1815 when Wellington's Anglo-allied army held on until Blucher's Prussians arrived. Napoleon abdicated again on 22 June and surrendered to the British, who sent him to Saint Helena, where he died in 1821.

Related empires and wars

Chosen automatically by overlap in time and geography, plus a few hand picked connections.

Empires of the same era and region

• Holy Roman Empire (800 to 1806)
• Russian Empire (1721 to 1917)
• British Empire (1583 to 1997)
• Spanish Empire (1492 to 1976)
• Austro-Hungarian Empire (1867 to 1918)
• First French colonial empire (1534 to 1814)

Wars of the same era and region

• French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792 to 1815)
• Mexican War of Independence (1810 to 1821)
• Carlist Wars (1833 to 1876)
• Wars of Italian Unification (Risorgimento) (1848 to 1871)
• Greek War of Independence (1821 to 1829)
• Wars of German Unification (1864 to 1871)

10 surprising things about the Napoleonic (First French) Empire

1. Napoleon was of average height for his time (about 5 feet 6 or 7 inches). The 'short' myth comes from British cartoons and confusion between French and English inches.
2. He crowned himself at his coronation, but the moment was pre-arranged with the Pope, not a snub improvised on the day.
3. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803, which doubled the United States, was Napoleon selling land he needed cash from and could not defend from Britain.
4. The Napoleonic Code is still the basis of civil law in France, Belgium, much of Latin America, Louisiana and Quebec.
5. Napoleon's army in Russia was less than half French; it included Poles, Italians, Germans, Dutch, Swiss and even Portuguese and Spanish troops.
6. One of his marshals, Bernadotte, became Crown Prince of Sweden in 1810 and fought against Napoleon; the current Swedish royal family descends from him.
7. The retreat from Moscow inspired the flow map by Charles Minard in 1869, often called the best statistical graphic ever drawn.
8. Napoleon commissioned canned food; the technique that won a French prize in 1810 was designed to feed his armies.
9. During his exile on Elba he ruled the island of about 12,000 people seriously, reforming its roads and mines, for ten months.
10. Analysis of his hair has found high arsenic levels, but historians think the green wallpaper of the day and medicine, not poison, explain it; the official cause of death was stomach cancer.

Sources

• First French Empire Wikipedia
• Napoleon I Encyclopaedia Britannica
• Napoleon Bonaparte Fondation Napoleon (napoleon.org)
• Andrew Roberts, Napoleon the Great (2014) Allen Lane
• David Chandler, The Campaigns of Napoleon (1966) Macmillan

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