4.32 Europe: a.d. 1801 to 1900  (Page 14/27)

Crushing defeats were given to Austria at Austerlitz (1805), to Prussia at Jena (1806) and to Russia at Friedland (1807). In 1808 in a rapid invasion of Spain a British expedition force was forced back to the sea

He decreed that all ports and coasts of the European continent were closed to the entry of British goods. The blockade worked at first and by 1810 England was in a severe economic depression while France prospered with an accelerated Industrial Revolution. Then suddenly the situation reversed. The French textile industry was unable to get raw material and capital, a banking firm in Lubeck failed and in 1811 France had a great depression, with bank failures, factory closings, strikes, poverty, riots and areas of starvation. The blockade had been particularly damaging to Russia also and after Czar Alexander had made peace with Turkey, he signed a mutual aid pact with Sweden and offered an alliance with England, while he opened his ports to ships of all nations. Then he declared war on France.

The mobilizations of both the Russians and French were massive. Napoleon had some difficulty conscripting the now somewhat satiated French, but annexations to France almost doubled the number of "Frenchmen" to about 44,000,000 by 1810 so that eventually he had an army of 680,000 fighting men, less than 1/2 of which were actually French. Only a minority even spoke French. (Ref. 279 ) Relentlessly he churned on to Vilna, Smolensk and Moscow, with the Russian armies retreating in an orderly f ashion ahead of him and burning and destroying all possible provisions. As he arrived in Moscow he found the city almost deserted and then mysteriously 2/3 of the city was burned, whether by the French, Russian soldiers or by order of Count Rostopchin, governor of Moscow, no one knows for certain. Finding no one to fight and with winter approaching, Napoleon decided to return to central Europe. Winter caught him and Russian troops harassed him from the flanks and the rear. The loss of men was unbelievable and only 30,000 men re-crossed the Nieman River into East Prussia in December, 1812. Dominique-Jean Larrey, Napoleon's chief surgeon is said to have performed over 200 amputations during one 24 hour period during that Russian campaign. (Ref. 125 )

Czar Alexander had followed the retreating French armies as they approached East Prussia and he urged the king and people of Prussia to join him against Napoleon. In the meantime the latter was trying to recoup his financial losses, conscript still another army, defend his Italian possessions against Austria and console the French people for his defeat in Russia. He arranged a temporary truce through the help of Metternich, but all nations simply used that time for more war preparation. Napoleon received a contingent of men from Denmark and returned to the battles, but Bernadotte of Sweden brought an army to join the allles of Prussia, Russia, Bohemia and Austria and finally after Napoleon's Saxor and Bavarian troops deserted him, he was soundly defeated at Leipzig in 3 days of terrible carnage in October of 1813.