Echoing in the domed roofed cathedral of Notre Dame on the wintry evening of 2 December 1804 was the glorious music of a choir singing a mighty Vivat in Aeternum as Consul Bonaparte approached the alter, sending tingles of astonishment and admiration down the spines of the congregation. Victoriously, he held aloft the crown and gently brought it to rest on his brow, completing the transformation from First Consul to Emperor of the French. The First French Empire was born amongst the smoldering ashes of the oppressive Bourbon monarchy, and the glorious liberties won by the Revolution were incarnate in the Emperor of the French, the “Son of the Revolution;” however, the ancient enemies of France, along with the deposed vainglorious nobles allied to the abhorred Bourbons and the bloody despots opposed to the Revolution, thought it inconceivable that the French managed find a leader who not only defended la patrie successfully but also molded it into the foremost power of Europe. Such a situation was anathema to them, and so they concluded, “For the sake of our thrones and wealth, we must crush the free nation of France;” with that resolution, the newly-crowned Emperor Napoleon was condemned to spend the rest of his reign defending la patrie from the restless hordes of the Coalitions, as he had defended it throughout the Directory and Consulate.
Before the Empire, Napoleon had taken part in the Coup of 18 Brumaire that established the French Consulate, of which Napoleon would become First Consul. Napoleon realized that peace was required in order to solve the internal mayhem in France, and in the most sincere fashion he wrote to the monarchs of Europe in the spirit of friendship and cooperation. To King George III of England, he wrote:
“Is there no end to the war which…has desolated every quarter of the globe? How is it that the two most enlightened nations in Europe, both stronger and more powerful than their safety and independence require, consent to sacrifice their commercial success, their internal prosperity, and the happiness of their homes, to dreams of imaginary greatness? How is it that they do not envisage peace as their greatest glory as well as their greatest need? …The fate of every civilized nation depends on the ending of a war which is embroiling the whole world.”
In reply, England insultingly demanded that France not only surrender all the gains of the War of the First Coalition but also return to the tyranny it had been subjugated to for the past several centuries under the barbaric Bourbons. Peace overtures were also made to Austrian Emperor Francis I, but they were rebuffed just the same. Napoleon was left with no choice; with the allied powers refusing to accept peace, he himself would have to step forward and bring the War of the Second Coalition to an end, as quickly as possible.
Consequently, on 15 May 1800 First Consul Bonaparte directed his troops under General Berthier across the Great Saint Bernard Pass into Italy, where he took the enemy by storm and vanquished their forces, culminating with the famous Battle of Marengo that sent the remaining Austrians flying out of Italy; these were the same Austrians who during the previous war had invaded Italy and imposed their tyranny upon the native peoples, and who during this new invasion had dismantled the Cisalpine and Ligurian Republics that Napoleon had helped the native peoples create to ensure their own liberties. In his victory, Napoleon did not choose to continue the war with Austria or Europe; instead, he wrote to Emperor Francis:
“Thousands of Frenchmen and Austrians are no more…Thousands of bereaved families are praying that fathers, husbands, and sons may return! …The evil is irremediable: may it teach us to avoid anything that might prolong hostilities! The prospect so affects my heart that I refuse to accept the failure of my previous advances, and take it upon myself to write again to Your Majesty, to entreat you to put an end to the misfortunes of Europe…I implore Your Majesty to hear the cry of humanity, and not to allow the offspring of two brave and powerful nations to slaughter one another for the sake of interests of which they know nothing…I contented myself with an arm armistice, in the hope that this would be a first step towards a world-peace,”
Unfortunately, the Austrians wouldn’t accept defeat just yet, and so peace would have to wait until December, after the French won a decisive victory on the Western front at the Battle of Hohenlinden. In February 1801, the Treaty of Lunéville was signed, requiring the Austrians only to conform to Treaty of Campo Formio that they had violated by entering into the War of the Second Coalition and invading Italy again; the treaty allowed the Austrians to keep neighboring Italian territories and provided for the creation (or this time the re-creation) of the Cisalpine and Ligurian Republics, making it a more-than-fair treaty for the defeated Austrians who could have lost much more it were not for Napoleon’s desire for peace.
Before long, First Consul Bonaparte was able even to convince France’s erstwhile enemy England of the necessity of peace, resulting in the Peace of Amiens in 1802. Before long, however, England grew weary of peace. The English government began endorsing assassination plots against Napoleon, funding the infamous terrorist Georges Cadoudal who tried to blow Napoleon to smithereens using an explosive device whose name has gone down in history as the Infernal Machine. More importantly, the English government refused to conform to Treaty of Amiens that they willingly signed, which stipulated that the English were to leave the important Mediterranean island of Malta. The tenth article of the treaty clearly stated, “Malta…shall be restored to the order of St. John of Jerusalem to be held on the same conditions, on which it possessed them [several other little islands as well] before the war.” To be more precise, paragraph 4 of that article stated, “The forces of his Britannic majesty shall evacuate the island, and its dependencies, within three months from the exchange of the ratifications, or sooner if possible,” but neither within the three months nor afterwards was the island of Malta. Napoleon attempted to bargain with them in turn, even offering to have Russian mediation in the issue, but it was to no avail; England wanted war, and they would have it, starting on 18 May 1803 with the Royal Navy seizing any and all French ships.
And so it was that after 2 December 1804, the newly crowned Emperor of the French reviewed his newly created Grande Armée of 200,000 soldiers assembled at Boulogne on the coast of the English Channel, preparing for a possible invasion. Unfortunately, following the same strategy as the past twelve years, England wouldn’t enter the war alone; instead, it would bribe the other European powers into forming yet another alliance, tuning the situation from a Franco-English war into the War of the Third Coalition. With Austrian and Russian forces arming to the East, Napoleon needed to act quickly.
Weighing the prospects of an invasion of England, Emperor Napoleon quickly abandoned the idea and instead shifted his attention on his mainland enemies, whose forces were trickling across Germany and others down into Italy. Closely censoring local presses, Napoleon managed to quickly move his force into Germany where he caught the Austrians completely by surprise, defeating the Unfortunate General Mack at Ulm and occupying the capital of Vienna. Finally, on 2 December 1805, the anniversary of his coronation, Napoleon won his greatest victory at the Battle of Austerlitz, defeating a conjoined Russian and Austrian force of at least 85,000 soldiers that outnumbered his no more than 73,000 man force. Resulting from the humiliating defeat, Emperor Francis signed the Treaty of Pressburg that again reinforced the Treaties of Campo Formio and Lunéville, as well as liberating the various Germanic states and unifying them into the Confederation of the Rhine. Again, he managed to defend France from another unified threat from surrounding despots seeking to destroy freedom and liberties that threaten their own thrones.
Surely being gripped by either insanity or incompetence, the Prussians decide to renew the war that had consumed Europe for the past 14 years. Under the leadership of King Frederick William III, Prussia joined Britain and Russia in declaring war on France and initiating the War of the Fourth Coalition; the foolishness of this move was that the Russian forces weren’t anywhere near close enough to reinforce the Prussians, and so King Frederick was essentially challenging Napoleonic France to one-on-one combat. Although Prussia was once the home of Frederick the Great, a military genius who transformed Prussia’s army into a near-unstable machine twenty years earlier, its army was no longer in the same fighting condition, nor as tactically advanced as Napoleon’s Grande Armée. Bribed by England and unsettled by the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine, Prussia marched ahead of the Coalition forces in 6 October 1806. Expectedly, the French army under Emperor Napoleon marched out to take the war to Prussia; it was still a defensive war for the French, but they would take the fight to the enemy’s frontier. By 14 October the Grande Armée met the enemy, and the twin battles of Jena and Auerstädt saw the destruction of a Prussian army that was but a mockery of its former, glorious self; on 25 October Napoleon led his forces into the capital of Berlin.
Still not able to be left in peace, Emperor Napoleon continued the good fight against Russia, defeating them finally at the Battle of Friedland on 14 June 1807. With the Russian army defeated, Russian Tsar Alexander I and Napoleon signed the Treaty of Tilsit, sealing a peace that would be further ratified at the Congress of Erfurt. Emperor Napoleon had yet again brought an end to the war in Europe and successfully defended la patrie from the despotic tyrants surrounding him. France, the cradle of freedom and liberty in Europe, was safe again, and had survived another warmongering coalition formed against it.
