The Way of the Warrior by James F. Dunnigan

Author:James F. Dunnigan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466887305
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

THE CHALLENGE

Starting with nothing but a junior officer’s commission, Napoleon had to overcome all obstacles to become ruler of France and master of Europe and beyond.

But first, there were life and death matters. Revolutions tend to eat their children, and the French Revolution was no different. After the more rabid revolutionaries had killed each other off in the late 1790s, Napoleon stepped in and picked up the pieces. In 1799, shortly after turning thirty, he participated in a coup to replace the five-man Directory (office of the president) with one-man rule of himself as consul (president of France).

Gaining power, as Napoleon discovered, required rather different skills than those used to keep control of the most powerful nation in Europe. In 1800, France had a population of 22 million, although Napoleon soon added adjacent areas to swell the “French” population to nearly 30 million. Of Napoleon’s principal enemies, Great Britain had only 9.5 million people. The Austrian Empire had 24 million people. Prussia had nine million, and what passed for Germany in those days (a collection of independent states) had 24 million. Russia had thirty million people, Spain had 9.5 million, and Portugal 2.8 million. Italy, another collection of independent states, had 15 million people. What Napoleon had to do was make France strong enough to deal with the military might of more populous coalitions. Most of Europe opposed France, for one reason or another, and France was always outnumbered.

Napoleon came to power with France still torn by its recent revolution. It was the liberating ideas of this revolution, spreading to adjacent nations, that brought to France wave after wave of royalist armies intent on stamping out this threat to the crowned heads of Europe. Napoleon had to consolidate his power in a democratically minded France while neutralizing the armies of his nervous neighbors.

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