Napoleon Bonaparte, It is not easy to find in history a figure as striking and more controversial than the Emperor Napoleon. Hardly any other of the greats got so much attention, so much enthusiasm and devastating criticism. His military activity, studied, it seemed, up and down, still leaves food not only for serious research, but also for the most fantastic versions and assumptions. Researchers almost unanimously and, it seems, forever gave Napoleon the first place among the outstanding military leaders.
Even Clausewitz called him "the last of the great commanders." This conclusion seems to have been confirmed by time itself. The global conflicts of the 20th century turned both the preparation of wars and the leadership of the battle into the business of numerous headquarters. after that, it is considered almost axiomatic that the mind and will of one person will never be able to exert such a powerful influence on the course of events as Napoleon did.
Yes, combat craft at the turn of the second and third millennia is increasingly becoming a collective affair. Stunning technological advances place the warlord in the position of commanding a powerful military machine made up of all branches of the military. Already in August 1914, barbed wire and machine guns seemed to have finally copied the image of the great commander into the archives of armchair historians.
However, the First World War died down, followed by the Second, the era of nuclear confrontation came, and interest in Napoleonic military art did not subside. It just flared up with renewed vigor. Moreover, with the appearance in all parts of the world of a considerable number of applicants for Bonaparte, an outdated topic seems to be becoming more relevant than ever. Bonapartism became surprisingly popular in Russia, as did the cult of Napoleon himself, although it sometimes takes on the character of a morbid mania.
Campaigns and battles of the brilliant commander, whose very participation in hostilities, according to his contemporaries, "did honor to the war", have long been unraveled. Its place is reserved for brilliant insights and painstaking preparation for future triumphs, fatal decisions and tragic mistakes. Almost every step of Napoleon and his every word - from Toulon to Waterloo and the island of St. Helena, has long been properly justified. Theoretical - from the point of view of the "high" rules of military art, or, when the Napoleonic legend requires it, mystical. This means that it was ordained from above - no more, no less. The latter, of course, fits best when talking about the failures of General Bonaparte, and then the Emperor of the French.
The successes and failures of Napoleon on the battlefield are the embodiment of his personal qualities. Time after time, calling the captain of artillery, revolutionary general, first consul, emperor a genius commander, we give him his due as a military and statesman. It must be admitted that Napoleon did everything to ensure that, at least in military affairs, he did not depend on the whims and whims of politicians. And he did it so quickly that Europe simply did not have time to gasp, as it received a new sovereign monarch. And after him - a whole dynasty of upstarts who settled "on the old rotten thrones."
But long before that, in the Italian campaign, Napoleon fought, practically without consulting Paris. And not only that - he ignored the recommendations of the Directory, and even allowed himself to dictate to the directors a political solution to problems. When the Italian army entered Milan, it was like a crowd of ragamuffins - they were thousands of soldiers, dressed in utter rags, who had not seen salaries for several months.
And nevertheless, its 27-year-old commander, who has won only four battles so far, ordered to arrange his entrance to the capital of Lombardy as if Hannibal or Caesar entered it millennia later. “He is striding widely, it’s time to stop” - these almost legendary words of the great Suvorov should have been well heard and appreciated both in Schönbrunn and in Sanssouci and Buckingham Palace.
They were not destined to converge on the battlefield. When Suvorov's regiments entered Italy, Bonaparte was already in Egypt. There he did feel like the sovereign master of a huge country. In the East, the general not only fights and creates conditions for the work of an innumerable staff of engineers and scientists who were "lucky" to go on an expedition with him. He concludes contracts, rewrites laws, carries out financial reforms, drafts large-scale projects of social transformation, builds canals and roads.
However, even this is not enough for the most ambitious of all ambitious. While besieging Acre, General Bonaparte ponders whether he should move to Constantinople in order to get even with the Turkish sultan with one blow, or go "to fight India", and then rightfully crown himself with the crown of the Emperor of the East. But fate again decreed otherwise. The imperial crown went to Napoleon, after 18 Brumaire and five brilliant years of the reign of the first consul, which brought France out of the protracted crisis and returned her primacy among the European powers.
So, getting rid of extraneous influences, Napoleon immediately and without unnecessary hesitation assumed responsibility for all possible failures. That is why military historians are so intriguing, moreover, they literally hypnotize the defeat of the great commander. As you know, it is better to learn from the mistakes of others - if these are the blunders of a genius, it is doubly instructive to analyze them.
There is no reason to try in a series of online publications to open unknown pages in the history of the Napoleonic wars. There seem to be almost no such people left. No one has any claims to be the discoverers of such a tempting topic as the defeat or failure of Napoleon Bonaparte. However, in the extensive Napoleonic bibliography, it is still difficult to find a special study where an attempt would be made to generalize the experience of victories over the greatest of the generals.
Voennoye Obozreniye does not claim to be an exclusive researcher, and articles from other sources may well be used in thematic publications of the anniversary year of 2019, there may be repetitions, including our articles, albeit with new comments. The Napoleonic series can be considered "open", including for new authors. At the same time, we do not need to observe the chronological sequence, we are not at all going to somehow rank the winners of Napoleon. The very same content of their own short sketches will, as a rule, be reduced to an attempt to look at the failures of the brilliant Corsican from a new angle.
The tragic result of all the state and military activities of Napoleon was the final and irrevocable defeat. Although even after the death of Napoleon, many were ready to believe in the victorious return of the emperor from Saint Helena. Perhaps, only Kutuzov and Alexander I managed to strategically outplay the French emperor, strategically France eventually lost in the confrontation with Britain.
But Napoleon lost no more than a dozen battles and only three companies in total. The year 1815 does not count here, because the emperor decided to abdicate when the French were already ready to give him carte blanche to unleash a popular war. Even less often, Napoleon admitted his failures. Even such an indisputable defeat as Aspern, the stubborn Corsican considered his tactical success until the end of his days. There is a certain logic in this conclusion - as a result of the battle, all the conditions for a future victory were created, and the enemy, despite a rather unexpected success, did not receive any real advantages.
And yet, even such mediocrities as the Russian General Bennigsen or the Austrian Field Marshal Schwarzenberg managed to resist against Napoleon himself. It is no coincidence that in the proposed series of articles the emphasis will be placed on direct battles that were unsuccessful for the French commander - where success was decided within one or two days, when the circumstances could no longer change anything or almost nothing in the position of the commanders. And this means that everything was decided directly on the battlefield, and the role of the commanders - the winner and the loser, manifested itself most clearly. An exception was made only for the siege of Acre, which lasted for two months - the temptation was too great to understand the reasons for the first defeat of Napoleon, then still the revolutionary General Bonaparte.
More than two centuries after the Napoleonic wars, even ardent apologists of the emperor do not dare to assert that the failures of their idol are more a consequence of the mistakes of the loser than the merit of the winners. However, the British historian David Chandler, in a sense, went even further, arguing that "if the Austrian core carried General Bonaparte to his grave, say, on the Arcole Bridge, there would be no war." But taking this point of view, any researcher will deliberately exaggerate the role of the French emperor himself. And will ignore the objective historical reasons for the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars.
Today, the researcher has an almost unlimited base of sources at his disposal, and perhaps that is why, when studying Napoleon's defeats, the simplest thing seems to have been to reduce the matter to the "analysis of his flights." But in this case, it will easily become like the most ardent Bonapartists, who long and forever denied the right to the leading role to those who managed or dared to fight Napoleon on equal terms. No, of course, Kutuzov, Archduke Karl, Blucher or Wellington are not turned into ordinary extras - so you humiliate the emperor himself. But the most that they, with this approach, have the right to claim is to be worthy opponents of the great player. Sometimes they are even "allowed" not to be defeated, and only in the best case - "allowed" to take advantage of Napoleon's blunders.
Historical assessments even now, in spite of all the elaboration of the topic, are surprisingly one-sided. In order to understand this, it is enough to get acquainted with the most striking of the characteristics extracted from the worldwide network that modern newly-minted Napoleonic scholars give the winners of their idol.
But it fell to them to cope with the indomitable Napoleonic genius. However, after each lost, or rather, not won, battle, with the exception of Waterloo, Napoleon demonstrated a truly miraculous revival and tried to quickly "return the debt" to the offender. Judge for yourself - after the siege of the fortress of Saint-Jean d'Acr was lifted, the Turkish sultan's army, which landed at Abukir, did not break Bennigsen at Eylau, Napoleon soon defeats him at Friedland, after Aspern, Wagram follows, after the heavy setbacks of 1812 - an impressive start to the next campaign, and after Leipzig - Hanau, finally, in 1814, the emperor, already in France, literally responds to every blow of the allies with a blow.
The true greatness of Napoleon as a commander is revealed precisely in his amazing ability to turn defeat into victory. One can take the liberty of claiming that Napoleon is greater in his defeats than in his victories. Even the most brilliant. All the more exciting it will be, together with the readers, to consistently analyze the causes and consequences of each of the failures of the great master of military affairs. We deliberately will not name all 12 of Napoleon's failures in the preface. Let at least some of them become a discovery for you.
