Napoleon Bonaparte
General, consul, emperor: the wars bear his name because he, more than any minister, was the French state's war plan. He died on St Helena on 5 May 1821.
Power
3
Peak
3
End
3
David's paintings and British caricatures (Gillray) invented two Napoleons before the archives were open.
Nelson's funeral and Wellington's later unpopularity show that icons have second acts.
People
Horatio Nelson
Nelson's Nile (1798) and Trafalgar (1805) made him the English naval saint. He died on Victory at Trafalgar.
Nile
3
Trafalgar
3
Death
3
Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
Wellington learned in India, won in the Peninsula, and held the ridge at Waterloo until Blucher arrived. Later a conservative prime minister.
Peninsula
3
Waterloo
3
Later
3
Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher
Blucher's arrival at Waterloo is the allied fact English stories sometimes shrink. He had already fought through 1813-14.
Age
3
Role
3
Battle
3
Klemens von Metternich
Metternich managed Austria's exit from the French alliance and the Vienna settlement -- the conservative architect of the next generation.
Peak
3
Stage
3
Line
3
Mikhail Kutuzov
Kutuzov, after Borodino, preserved the army and let distance and winter finish the 1812 invasion -- Tolstoy's general, and a real one.
1812
3
Method
3
Death
3
Toussaint Louverture
Toussaint's war against French, Spanish and British forces, and Haiti's 1804 independence, is the Caribbean Napoleonic war -- and a story of slavery's defeat.
Theatre
3
Captured
3
Independence
3
Tsar Alexander I
Alexander was Tilsit partner, 1812 enemy, and a pious presence at Vienna. His break with the Continental System helped trigger 1812.
Tilsit
3
1812
3
Vienna
3
Debate
Great man or structures?
Whether Napoleon's genius or France's demographic and organisational edge explains 1805-07 -- most serious accounts want both, in changing ratios.
Was Vienna a reactionary cage?
It kept a general European war away for decades and sat on liberal and national movements until 1848. Both sentences are true.
Women appear as salon diplomats, sutlers, and -- in Spain -- as named guerrillas; the canvas still prefers men on horses.
Haitian leaders are now entering the English textbook, late.