Decisive battle hunt
Early success; later a trap when enemies refused the script.
Napoleon's early campaigns sought a decisive battle after a manoeuvre. Spain and Russia punished that habit when space, guerrillas and climate refused a single afternoon.
Wellington's Peninsula war was a logistic and political campaign as much as a set of lines at Torres Vedras.
Principles
Sea control as strategy
Britain's way of staying undefeated while paying others to fight on land.
Occupation creates enemies
Spain and the Continental System as self-inflicted fronts.
Coalitions learn
1813 was not 1805 with different hats.
Settlement needs a concert
Vienna's habit of meeting outlasted any single treaty clause.
Steps
- Revolutionary mobilisation
1793-1800: a new French army and a general named Bonaparte.
Regime and army rose together.
- Break and resume
Amiens, then 1803 -- peace as an interval.
Trade disputes can reopen general wars.
- Land supremacy
1805-07 victories and Tilsit.
Winning battles is not ending Britain.
- Secondary wars
Spain, the System, colonial seizures.
Undefeated enemies find other fronts.
- Catastrophe in space
1812: an army too far from replacement.
Distance is a logistic fact.
- Concerted finish
1813-15: Leipzig, Paris, Waterloo.
Allies who stay allied can finish a hegemony.
Diagrams
A timeline of seven coalitions -- more honest than a single "vs Napoleon" blob.
A simple two-domain schematic of why 1807 was not a peace.
Limits
Death toll bands
Disease and 1812 civilians remain estimates.
Haitian integration
Still thin in older European campaign histories.
No battle recipe
Austerlitz is a dated event, not a template to run.
Battle narratives here are dated history. They are not instructions for repeating Austerlitz.
Waterloo was a close, muddy, allied battle -- not a solo British myth, even in British sources that know Blucher.