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Napoleon’s Wars

Fear and loathing in old Europe

Charles Esdaile
Allen Lane, 621pp, £30,

Allan Mallinson

Wednesday, 5th December 2007

Allan Mallinson

So how were the Napoleonic wars different? Most significantly, says Esdaile, is that they were the first to be waged by nations-in-arms. Here he cites intriguing statistics, though it is not clear whether he means us to take literally that various (British) Acts of Parliament laid down ‘that all men should tender some form of military service’, for if that was the spirit of parliament’s wish, it was certainly not the reality. What is the more intriguing, however, is that by its various, at most semi-coercive, pieces of legislation, Britain still managed to raise a proportionately greater number of men for land and sea service than did the levée en masse. But what these mass armies meant, argues the author, is that generals were able to seek decisions in battle, unlike those of the earlier dynastic wars. In the 18th century, because of the huge investment that the smaller, professional, armies (and fortresses) represented, generals were obliged to seek a decision through manoeuvre. In the War of the Spanish Succession, for example, there were perhaps a dozen major battles; in the Napoleonic wars the number was at least 40.

As to whether the history of Europe was the history of Napoleon, Esdaile makes the point that, at one level, it is possible to argue that peace or war were entirely within his gift; but that one of the reasons Napoleon survived so long was that there was no great ideological crusade against France; that, on the contrary, most of the powers of Europe continued to pursue traditional foreign policy objectives long after Napoleon had emerged as a far greater challenge to the international order than the French Revolution had ever been.

The best way to begin this book — and it is, truly, a magnificent study — is by pondering on the excellent sequence of maps in the preliminaries. Britain’s obsession with a continental balance of power is at once understandable; and in turn the continental anxiety over a system of states with too few natural borders, reliant therefore on standing armies, is all too obvious. Pitt could take comfort in raising the drawbridge after Austerlitz and telling the cabinet to roll up the map of Europe for a while, but in Berlin, Vienna and countless smaller capitals, it was an altogether different matter. It is this with which Napoleon’s Wars grapples so compellingly.