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N Napoleonic Wars

Forces

Grande Armee, British sea power, and coalition armies -- historical structures.

Educational history. Casualty figures are documented ranges. This is not operational advice, a ranking of nations, or a how-to for weapons or coups.

French corps organisation and conscription were the institutional revolution. Coalition armies learned to concentrate in 1813 after years of being beaten in detail.

The Royal Navy's blockade was a force structure: ships of the line, dockyards, and press gangs -- a British state more than a battle.

Systems

Corps d'armee

Semi-independent all-arms bodies -- Napoleon's organisational signature.

British fiscal-naval state

Taxes, debt, and dockyards as a way of making war without a Grande Armee.

Coalition staffs

Improving from 1805 to 1813-15 -- Trachenberg plan as political-military coordination.

Guerrillas in Spain

Popular war that regulars could not map away.

Continental System

Economic warfare as occupation policy.

Congress diplomacy

Vienna as a standing method, not a single party.

Meters

European political shock
84
Naval decision (Britain)
88
Conscription leap
80
Colonial/Atlantic reach
60
Battle-painting memory
82
Industrial tech shift
35

Hotspots

1

Central Europe

Austerlitz, Jena, Wagram, Leipzig -- the imperial chessboard.

2

English Channel / Trafalgar

Invasion threat and its naval end.

3

Spain and Portugal

The ulcer: sieges, lines, guerrillas.

4

Russian corridor 1812

Kovno to Moscow and back -- distance as a weapon.

5

Belgian ridge 1815

Waterloo and Wavre as a two-battlefield day.

Materials

Horses

1812 consumed them; later campaigns felt the shortage.

British gold

Subsidies to Russia, Prussia and Austria.

Grain and forage

Living off the country worked in Germany and failed in Russia's emptiness.

Oak and copper

Ships of the line as industrial products of a pre-steam age.

Cavalry and artillery matter in the paintings; typhus and supply mattered more in Russia.

This is not a guide to employing horse artillery. It is a historical force picture.

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