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The Rise of Napoleon Bonaparte
In 1799, after the French Revolution had quieted into the Thermidorean Reaction, a brilliant general named Napoleon Bonaparte overthrew the ruling Directory and came into power as leader of the Consulate in 1799. Under Napoleon, France became a nationalist power, expanding its territory into Italy and exerting its influence over other countries. Napoleon consolidated his rule by suppressing rebellions in France, normalizing relations with the Church in the Concordat of 1801, and streamlining the French law system with the Napoleonic Code. By 1804, Napoleon was so powerful that he declared himself Emperor.
Defeating the various military coalitions the other powers of Europe threw against him, Napoleon won battle after battle at Marengo (1800), Austerlitz (1805), Jena-Auerstadt, and Friedland (1807). He built a vast empire of dependent states, forced Tsar Alexander I of Russia to ally with him in the 1807 Treaty of Tilsit, and, for a time, controlled the majority of Europe. Everywhere he went, he spread the reforms and influence of the French Revolution to a remarkable extent. Just about the only blemish on his record during the first decade of the 19th century was a stunning naval loss to Britain at the Battle of Trafalgar.
The Decline of Napoleon’s Empire and the Continental System
Seeking to undermine Britain's sea power, Napoleon issued the Berlin Decree in 1806, imposing the “Continental System” on Europe in an effort stop European countries from trading with Britain. However, instead of hurting Britain, the Continental System hurt Napoleon. It inspired a new sense of Germanic nationalism that culminated in Romanticism, an intellectual rebellion against French Enlightenment ideas. Meanwhile, in Spain, the attempt to impose the Continental System led to the Peninsular War, a protracted guerrilla war that diverted French forces from the rest of Europe.
In 1810, Napoleon replaced his wife, Josephine, who had borne him no heir, with a younger wife, Marie Louise of Austria, who bore him a son referred to as The King of Rome. Napoleon's happiness did not last, however, because at the end of 1810, Alexander I defied France by withdrawing Russia from the Continental System. In response, Napoleon moved his Grand Army into Russia in 1812. Though Napoleon’s army pushed the Russians into constant retreat, they were decimated by the terrible Russian winter. When Napoleon rushed home to raise a new army, he was defeated in October 1813 by an international coalition of armies at the Battle of Leipzig.
Napoleon’s Defeat and the Congress of Vienna
In 1814, Napoleon was exiled to the island of Elba, with Louis XVIII taking back the throne of France that Louis XVI lost just 20 years earlier. As European powers were just starting to negotiate a settlement, Napoleon escaped from Elba and returned to France, raising an army during the period known as the Hundred Days. This army was defeated by Britain’s Duke of Wellington and Gebhard von Blücher of Prussia at Waterloo in June 1815. He was then exiled to Saint Helena in the South Atlantic, where he died in 1821.
The chaotic Europe left behind by nearly two decades of war was reorganized by the Congress of Vienna (1814-1815). The major powers sent their top negotiators: Klemens von Metternich of Austria, Viscount Castlereagh of Britain, Alexander I of Russia, Karl August von Hardenberg of Prussia, and Charles Maurice de Talleyrand of France. The complex and delicate negotiations in Vienna created a stable Europe wherein no one power could dominate the others as Napoleon's France had. Not until a century later, when World War I started in 1914, would another Europe-wide military conflict break out.
