Empire at Tilsit
1807 high-water of French land power.
Austerlitz, Trafalgar, Moscow 1812, Leipzig, Waterloo: five place-names that structure European school maps.
The Peninsula is a long map of sieges (Badajoz, Ciudad Rodrigo) that English novels remember better than English syllabi.
Maps
Trafalgar approaches
Cadiz to the shoals -- a naval map.
1812 advance/retreat
The Smolensk-Moscow road.
Leipzig approaches
1813 Germany as a coalition map.
Waterloo-Wavre
Two battles, one day, one decision.
Portrayals
War and Peace
The English-language civilian epic of 1812.
Sharpe / Hornblower
British popular serial memory -- Peninsula and sea.
Abel Gance's Napoleon
Silent-film legend-making.
Waterloo (1970)
Soviet-Italian spectacle that still tours on television.
David and Gros
Official paint as wartime media.
HMS Victory tourism
A ship as a national relic.
Rituals
Trafalgar Night
Royal Navy dinners -- a living service ritual.
Waterloo anniversaries
Re-enactors and Belgian commemoration.
Invalides pilgrimage
French state memory at the tomb.
Sayings
Waterloo visitor centres now compete in three languages -- a memory industry.
Russian 1812 churches and Tolstoy remain a parallel atlas Anglophone readers meet as literature first.