Napoleon

A DISCUSSION ON WHETHER OR NOT NAPOLEON’S MILITARY SUCCESSES WERE BASED ON GOOD LEADERSHIP AND EFFECTIVE STRATEGY

Between 1792 and 1815 France fought wars against a series of European coalitions.   The central figure was Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon was one of the greatest military minds in the history of warfare. Napoleon was regarded by Carl von Clausewitz as, “a genius in the operational art of war” and historians rank him as a great military commander. Wellington, when asked who the greatest general of the day was, answered: "In this age, in past ages, in any age, Napoleon.” Napoleon's genius lay not in revolutionizing of warfare itself, but in the refinement of existing means. He excelled at the tactical handling of the armies of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Napoleon established himself as a great leader of men during the revolutionary period with the siege of Toulon and his triumphs in Italy in 1796. These talents were refined and reached their height during the battles of Ulm, Austerlitz and Jena in the period of 1805-1806.   The scale of the Napoleonic Warfare, the size of armies involved , the speed with which Napoleon moved them, the completeness of his victories, the increasingly evident intention of the French to alter the European state system into a new continental order dominated by France was something and something for which history gave no precedence.[1]
Towards the end of the Empire the weaknesses of Napoleon as a military commander became more evident. The strategic failures of the decisions to invade Spain and Russia and the inability to keep the other major European powers divided proved disastrous. The increasing size and static nature of armies and the increasingly murderous nature of warfare during the latter part of the Empire revealed Napoleon's in ability to adapt to the changing shape of war. It is against this background of his success and later failures that this paper seeks to discuss whether or not...