Search Results for: Napoleonic Wars
Showing 276 results for your search
Qing and Opium Wars II
HMS Volage and HMS Hyacinth confront Chinese war junks at Chuenpee, 3 November 1839. The British repulse the Chinese advance in the city. Today many prominent historians downplay the role of science in the rise of the West, and the topic has aroused considerable discussion. As usual most of this…
Qing and Opium Wars III
Second Battle of Chuenpi. The Nemesis (right background) destroying Chinese war junks in Anson’s Bay The Nemesis and boats of the Sulphur, Calliope, Larne, and Starling destroying the Chinese war junks in Anson’s Bay, 7 January 1841. British forces advancing in Chuenpi. The storming of the forts and entrenchments of…
Napoleonic Era: Austrian Army Reform II
The Archduke John was so engaged with the Landwehr that he devoted most of the winter of 1808 to the organisation of the force and its training. Typical of the Archduke John’s devotion to the new unit was his insistence that orders and training were inescapably bound up with the…
Occupied Europe and the Napoleonic Empire
For all the might of France itself, such was the scale of the conflict that French resources alone were never enough to allow Napoleon to wage war with all its dreadful human costs. The solution was to exploit the Napoleonic Empire, which fell into three zones. First, there was the ‘Empire…
The Napoleonic French and Spanish Navies
Battle of Grand Port. On 22-24 August 1810, a British squadron of 4 frigates entered the bay of Grand Port to eliminate a French fleet of 2 frigates, 1 corvette and a captured East Indiaman. Historically, this is the only clear naval victory the French could claim during the Napoleonic…
Napoleonic War at Sea
After Nelson’s utter destruction of the French fleet at Aboukir in 1798, Bonaparte wrote that ‘the fates seem to have decided to prove to us that, if they have granted us hegemony on land, they have made our rivals the rulers of the waves’. This was partly because the Royal…
South American Wars of Independence
Bernardo O’Higgins, supreme director of the patriot forces, salutes San Martín after victory in the Battle of Maipú. Battle of Ayacucho By the time Napoleon Bonaparte betrayed Spain, his erstwhile ally, in 1808, deposing the king and replacing him with Bonaparte’s brother, discontent had already taken a firm hold in…
French Artillery – Early Napoleonic Era
French artillerie a pied de la Garde & their 12 pounder smoothbore cannon. French artillery doctrine can be neatly summed up in this passage from Tousard: In defensive positions, place the large calibers in situations from which you can discover the enemy at a great distance, and from which the…
French Napoleonic Artillery in Action
General Dampierre (who was saved from the guillotine by being mortally wounded in 1793) said that the French soldier depended implicitly on the superiority of his artillery and that there was a noticeable lessening of his courage if he saw that artillery receive a check or draw back. Throughout the…
The Evolution of French Napoleonic Army Organization
Quality of Napoleon’s army. One of the most significant developments in command and control during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars was the introduction of the combat division and army corps. The increasing size of armies during the eighteenth century as well as multiple theatres of war required administrative…