Napoleon Bonaparte's empire collapsed in 1813 after his disastrous Russian campaign.
The sixth coalition, made up of the British, Russians, Prussians, Austrians, Swedes, Spaniards and Portuguese, had rallied against him.
At the time, the "little corporal" ordered the French to refer to the English as "perfidious Albion", turning this insult into a commonplace.
The first major victory of the British against the Napoleonic forces took place in 1798, during the Battle of the Nile, won by Admiral Nelson.
The latter capitalizes on the domination of the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean Sea by winning seven years later the spectacular battle of Trafalgar, to the southwest of the Spanish coast.
If Nelson is killed there, the victory of the British is total, despite their numerical inferiority.
The Battle of Trafalgar by JMW Turner.
© Wikipedia Creative Commons
After invading Portugal in 1807, Napoleon then turned against his Spanish allies the following year by installing his brother Joseph on the throne of Spain in place of King Ferdinand VII. The British did not fail to intervene by protecting Portugal and providing support to the Spaniards. The decisive battle took place in 1813 in Vitoria, between the French troops who escorted the Spanish King Joseph Bonaparte in his flight and a conglomerate of British, Spanish and Portuguese troops. The victory of the allies obliges the Emperor Napoleon to return the Spanish crown to Ferdinand VII.
The sixth coalition then invaded France and pushed the "Grand General" to abdicate in 1814. The following year, Napoleon succeeded in escaping from his exile on the island of Elba and returned to the offensive.
But the Duke of Wellington and the Prussian Marshal Leberecht von Blücher put a stop to his ambitions in Waterloo in 1815. The deposed emperor was then definitively isolated on the island of Saint Helena.
The Battle of Waterloo represented by Irish painter William Sadler.
© Wikipedia Creative Commons
Two hundred years after his death, on May 5, 1821, France 24 looks back on Napoleon's hostility and defeats against the British with the historian and biographer Andrew Roberts, author of "Napoleon The Great".
France 24: According to the historian J.
E. Cookson, by fighting the French revolutionary army then the Napoleonic army, the British went "from a police action against a revolutionary regime to a war of national survival".
How did this process go?
Andrew Roberts:
This quote is a good summary of the problems the British encountered with the French after the coup d'état of 18 Brumaire in 1799. In front of them, they went from a dying government with a brilliant general [Bonaparte] to an energetic government with the same general, who really changed everything by becoming First Consul that same year. This has placed the UK government in a much more difficult position. He thought until then that he could contain the revolutionary wars, as the expression goes, between "the whale and the wolf". The whale being the Royal Navy, which couldn't really harm France, and the wolf that protects its territory being France, which also couldn't harm the British. But suddenly, a real danger arose,with the threat between 1802 and 1805 of a French invasion. Napoleon only needed good weather and a little luck in the English Channel to land any army in Kent or Sussex. He could then have walked to London in less than a week.
What explains the British military success, especially that of the Royal Navy, against the military genius of Bonaparte?
It's really through training.
The Royal Navy had to stay 90% of its time at sea when it blockaded Toulon, Brest and other French ports.
Nelson's ships remained in operation most of the time.
They also had a lot more gunpowder so they fired a lot more.
After spending so much time at sea, the Royal Navy could attack sideways twice as fast as the French.
This explains why there was no significant victory for the French navy during the Revolutionary or Napoleonic wars.
Although he turned out to be a genius in many areas, Napoleon had shortcomings in terms of naval battles.
He didn't really understand the difference between "upwind" and "leeward".
Although he was born on an island, Corsica, he didn't really understand that it wasn't enough to just have more boats to win.
He was also not as close to his admirals at sea as they could be to his marshals on land.
A portrait of Admiral Nelson by Lemuel Francis Abbott in 1799 © Wikipedia Creative Commons
What kinds of tactics did Nelson and Wellington use to defeat him?
When fighting in both the Iberian Peninsula and Waterloo, Wellington was fighting in a coalition war.
This is very important and has worked in his favor.
He spoke French fluently, he admired the Portuguese and the Spanish, especially their regular army.
He was born to be a coalition fighter.
On the other hand, the Napoleonic wars could not have been won, just like World War II, if the invasion of Russia had not gone wrong.
But where the British proved to be formidable was during their attacks on the periphery.
Another important area is that of cooperation between the British Army and Navy. Even if it started badly during the Napoleonic wars, this understanding has improved. There was also a major overhaul of the army in 1808-1809 by Prince Frederic, Duke of York, which has been underestimated by history. Although he was not a very good general, he proved to be a great administrator. The army he sent to the peninsula was modern. It was based on meritocracy and received regular pay.
As far as Nelson is concerned, the strategy he used in the Battle of Trafalgar was similar to that used by Admiral Rodney in the Battle of Les Saintes (a naval battle in the Caribbean during the Franco-English War in 1782 in North America, editor's note) when you divide your forces in two and attack your enemy at a right angle.
But the most wonderful thing about Nelson was the fact that he was always on the offensive.
He understood that being on the attack was a huge advantage in naval battles.
If you look at what he did on the Nile when he managed to muster his forces on both sides of the French fleet at Aboukir, you realize that he was able to mold his strategy according to the direction of the wind from a brilliant way.
Nelson and Wellington were also successful in using the circumstances to their advantage.
The Duke of Wellington painted by Thomas Lawrence circa 1815-16.
© Wikipedia Creative Commons
For Napoleon, the United Kingdom was the "treacherous Albion" and a nation of "shopkeepers". As you note in your bio, this hostility towards the British was already palpable in his youth. Where does it come from
?
When he went to Angers and Brienne for his military training, he received an education from people who had been influenced by the Seven Years' War (which between 1756 and 1763 opposed France, allied to Austria, and Great Britain, allied with Prussia, editor's note) during which the French had been crushed by the British.
He grew up in an atmosphere of anglophobia.
It should be noted, however, that when he met the English at Elbe, during his military campaigns or in preparation for the Battle of Waterloo, he got on very well with them.
He met a dozen British people.
He was very friends with Lord John Russell (future Prime Minister who had visited Napoleon in Elbe in his younger years, Editor's note) and Charles James Fox (a British statesman, admirer of the French Revolution, Editor's note).
Napoleon liked the English when he met them, but this was obviously not the case when they were in numbers against him.
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