Military dead
Millions across twenty-plus years if 1792 is included; the 1803-15 core is still enormous.
About 3.5-6 million dead is the band; disease outran bullets in many years. The 1812 retreat is a civilian and prisoner horror as well as a military one.
Haiti's war and the restoration of slavery in French colonies (1802) belong on the moral ledger of the same state that issued the Code.
Bands
1812 losses
The single worst French demographic shock of the era.
Civilian / guerrilla
Spain and Russia especially -- poorly counted.
Caribbean
Saint-Domingue's war and yellow fever as a separate slaughter.
Fiscal
British debt and French requisitions -- two ways to pay for the same years.
Regions
France
Conscription, glory, and the later legend at the Invalides.
German lands
Defeat, reform (Scharnhorst), and a nationalism Napoleon helped invent against himself.
Iberia
Popular war and Wellington's long campaign.
Russia
1812 as a national epic and a demographic wound.
Britain
Naval supremacy, 1812 war with the US, and a century of maritime confidence.
Atlantic colonies
Haiti, the Cape, the Caribbean sugar war -- the extra-European file.
Key numbers
Core years1803-1815
Deaths (range)about 3.5-6 million
Trafalgar21 Oct 1805
Waterloo18 Jun 1815
Makers
French arsenals
Charleville muskets and Gribeauval artillery as state products.
British dockyards
The industrial core of sea power.
Continental contractors
Cloth, shoes, and the constant shortage of cavalry horses.
Bank of England / City
Credit as a weapon.
Publishers and print
Bulletins and caricatures as wartime media.
Congress hosts
Vienna's social season as diplomatic infrastructure.
British subsidies were a fiscal cost that bought continental armies. French requisitions were a cost paid by occupied peasants.
Veterans of the Grande Armee became a political class in Restoration France -- the half-pay officer as a type.