Napoleonic Europe

1809

In April Wellesley was promoted and became commander-in-chief of all British forces remaining in Portugal, with Prince William of Orange one of his aides. The British pushed forwards and secured victory at the Battle of Talavera. Wellesley was granted the title of Viscount Wellington of Talavera.

Further northward, in April the Austrians advanced over the River Inn and took Munich, capital of the Kingdom of Bavaria. Napoleon moved fast and the Austrians were defeated at Wagram, after pulling back from the Danube. In October peace was declared. On 15th December Napoleon and Josephine were officially divorced.
 

1810

In March, Napoleon married the Archduchess Marie-Louise of Austria, in an attempt secure his future conquests.

In July, Louis Bonaparte, realising that he cared more for the way that Napoleon's Continental blockade was hurting the Dutch than that his brother had placed him on the throne for just that purpose, abdicated. Napoleon took the Kingdom of Holland directly into the Empire.

On 12th October Wellington fell back to the massive defensive lines of Torres Vedras, hotly pursued by General Massena and the French army in Spain. Torres Vedras, a variety of redoubts and fieldworks, frowning lines of trenched and gun-crowned hills, was blockaded by Massena who held his position in front of the great lines, which he dared not attack, until 12th November. Then he fell back to Santarem whence he could still keep Wellington blockaded. He stubbornly held this position until March 1811.
 

1811

Massena made his withdrawal from Torres Vedras and the British followed. On 20th March Napoleon II was born (only to live a virtual prisoner in Vienna after 1815 and die aged twenty-one).

1812

Picton with the 3rd Division captured Ciudad Rodrigo on the 8/9th January. The British also captured the Badajoz fortress by April in a siege and vicious battle lasting from 16th March to 6th April. It was during the attack on the great breach at Badajoz that General Craufurd fought his last action.

Then, with Wellington pushing on, came the Siege of Burgos, in which the French were for a change undefeated and the British were forced by the arrival of Marmont’s army to pull back once more. On 19th July Salamanca was fought, ending in another French defeat, with Marmont losing an arm to a cannon ball.

In Russia, the French had declared war and fought the bloody Battle of Borodino against the Czar. Napoleon had as a Reserve force a division of Prussians, forced to take part in the campaign against their neighbours by the Treaty of Paris, though many Prussians were unhappy about this.

Later the French retreated from Moscow as Napoleon's Grand Armée fell apart. On the way they were continually attacked, an example being the crossing of the Berezina on 26th-29th November.

Once the disaster which befell the main French army had become apparent and pressure from the Russians grew, General Yorck, in charge of the Prussian Auxiliary Detachment, signed the Convention of Tauroggen on December 30th, which neutralised his Prussian contingent, saving them from the Russian retribution which followed the French.

Yorck returned to East Prussia in concert with the Russians and, in effect, the Wars of Liberation against the French had begun. On 18th December Napoleon made his last visit to Josephine at Malmaison.
 

1813

The British pushed on towards Vittoria. On June 15th they marched into the valley of Ebro, near the village of Arenas. 18th June and the 2/95th Rifles reach San Milan.

Not long after, on June 21st, the French were once more defeated at the Battle of Vittoria and were effectively driven out of Spain. The British campaign moved towards France with a battle at Taroutina on 18th October. By July Wellington was pushing the French back through the hill passes of the Pyrenees towards the French border.

They followed the Bidassoa River for a while and arrived in the village of Bera. The 42nd Highlanders landed at Passages on September 7th to join in on the siege of San Sebastian, and blockaded Pamplona while they were there. The French there were greatly reinforced by Marshal Soult. On the 26th the British moved forward to the bridge of Janca.

On 10th November they fought at Petite La Rhune in France, moving up to the passage of Bidassoa and of the Nivelle, which forced the French back.

From 9th to 13th December there was stern fighting near Bayonne. On the 12th, Soult attacked Sir Rowland Hill's division with his whole force, which had been withdrawn from the rest of the front overnight. But Wellington had foreseen this and had reinforced Hill with the 6th Division.

Soult suffered a sanguinary defeat, and the British won a costly victory, bringing to an end the 1813 campaign. The French were forced back towards Toulouse while the British made winter quarters in the Pyrenees, suffering under incessant rain driving at them. They quartered from 14th December to 21st February of the following year.

The 6th Coalition was formed in Europe after Napoleon's Russian fiasco; Prussia and Russia joined forces, followed a good while later by Austria. Then the German states came over one-by-one, followed by the Kingdom of Naples declaring its neutrality, despite its king being Napoleon’s brother-in-law.

On 6th September Ney fought Blücher at Dennewitz, losing 53 guns and 22,000 men, double the number of Prussian casualties. On 3rd October the Prussians defeated Marshal Marmont at Wartenburg.

A few days later, on the 16th, battle took place around Moeckern, the beginning of the decisive Battle of Leipzig, which was fought against the French by all the allies of the 6th Coalition in what was afterwards named the Battle of the Nations. By Christmas the Allies were crossing the Rhine.
 

1814

Napoleon moved to Fontainebleau to organise the defence of Paris. Blücher headed the Prussian army against Napoleon in the Battle of Laon. Arriving at the gates of Paris on the 30th March, the Prussians entered two days later, led by Czar Alexander, accepting Marshal Marmont's surrender of his army.

The British helped by conquering Holland and Belgium under the leadership of General Sir Thomas Graham. Wellington's troops in southern France advanced further into French territory.

1814

Napoleon was forced to abdicate his position and surrendered to the Coalition armies, who then occupied Paris for approximately six months, until the Bourbon monarchy was safely restored to its proper place.

Then the European countries withdrew to their homelands, maintaining only small forces outside France. Napoleon was exiled to Elba, just off the west coast of Italy, with a personal retinue of about 900 men and officers, something the Russian Czar had argued for on his behalf.

The former Emperor of France spent the remainder of the year in total frustration, after being foiled by the British in several escape attempts. On 29th May, a Monday, after Napoleon had accepted exile, Josephine died after catching a chill which turned feverish.
 

1815

Napoleon finally escaped Elba on 26th January, after disguising himself and being smuggled out on a supply ship, and the period of the Hundred Days began, with French regiments pouring over to Napoleon's side. By 19th March he had reached Fontainebleau and Louis XVIII fled from Paris.

England hurried her best troops to the Netherlands, where a mixed army under Wellington was assembling. Lieutenant Kincaid's battalion of the 95th Rifles formed part of the 5th Division under General Picton.

During the two weeks of waiting to see what Napoleon would do, the 5th Division and the Duke of Brunswick's Division were held in reserve at Brussels, while the rest of the army formed a front line intended to check Napoleon until the allies could concentrate their forces.

1815

Returning to Paris ahead of the slower allies, Napoleon talked of being able to raise a force to protect the French capital from their enemies. But the fight had gone out of the French people, and perhaps some of the higher officers even delayed the Emperor's plans in the hope that there would be no more bloodshed.

Only the armies strung out along the French eastern border saw any further action, and those were against vastly superior forces; 210,000 Austrians, and a further 200,000 Russians alone, and were eventually forced to capitulate to circumstance, despite staunch resistance offered to the enemy.

On 3rd July the Convention of St Cloud was signed, which allowed the French forces in Paris to withdraw, and the French Provisional Government finally recognised Louis XVIII, who returned on 7th July, just 110 days after fleeing Paris.

Napoleon surrendered to the British who found him a suitable prison in the rocky Island of St. Helena, in the mid-Atlantic, where the former Emperor would spend the last six years of his life.
 

1821

Napoleon died from poisoning, the substances put into his food and drink by one of his companions, Montholon, a Bourbon supporter. Wellington had survived his last battle and lived to a ripe old age, spending much of his time in politics and serving a single term as Prime Minister.