Napoleon's Battles: From the Nile to Waterloo

The war in brief

These are the battles of Napoleon's career, from the French Revolutionary Wars to the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. The early run, Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena-Auerstedt and Friedland, shows his system at its peak: corps marching apart and fighting together, speed that caught enemies divided, and a decisive blow at the point of weakness. Trafalgar and the Nile show the limit of that system, because Britain's navy kept him off the sea. Wagram was won at a far higher cost, Borodino left the Russian army intact before the disaster of 1812, and Vitoria, Leipzig and Waterloo record coalitions that had learned to fight him. It is the clearest single career to follow in this encyclopedia.