Revolutionary wars
Valmy to Amiens -- conscription, Italy, Egypt, and the rise of Bonaparte.
Dating from 1803 hides 1792-1802, when the methods (conscription, living off the country) were already in use.
The wars were European and extra-European: Egypt, the Caribbean, the Cape, and India were not blank margins.
Timeline
- 18 Brumaire
Napoleon takes power in France; the revolutionary wars continue under a new executive.
- Amiens breaks
Britain and France resume war; the Napoleonic series conventionally opens.
- Trafalgar
Nelson dies and the combined Franco-Spanish fleet is destroyed -- British sea control for the rest of the wars.
- Austerlitz
Napoleon defeats Austria and Russia; the Third Coalition collapses.
- Spain erupts
Joseph Bonaparte on the Spanish throne; a war of occupation and guerrillas begins.
- Russia
Borodino, Moscow, retreat -- the Grande Armee ceases to be the 1811 instrument.
- Leipzig
Four-day Battle of the Nations; Napoleon loses Germany.
- Abdication
Allies enter Paris; Napoleon is sent to Elba; Vienna congress opens.
- Hundred Days
Escape from Elba; the seventh coalition forms.
- Waterloo
Wellington and Blucher end the imperial return; exile to St Helena follows.
Eras
Imperial peak
Trafalgar at sea; Austerlitz, Jena, Tilsit on land.
Spain and stalemate
Peninsula ulcer; Wagram still a land victory; Continental System strains.
Collapse
Russia, Leipzig, the 1814 France campaign, first abdication.
Hundred Days
Elba, Waterloo, St Helena, Vienna's final act.
Milestones
Mass conscription
The levee made population a military resource later states copied.
Trafalgar
A single afternoon that locked British naval supremacy for a century.
Vienna concert
A diplomatic operating system for nineteenth-century Europe.
Vienna's map lasted longer than Napoleon's bulletins. The social world of 1789 did not return.
St Helena created a literary emperor who sometimes outshines the archival one.