Main content
World history
Course: World history > Unit 5
Lesson 3: Napoleon Bonaparte- Napoleon and the Wars of the First and Second Coalitions
- Napoleon and the War of the Third Coalition
- Napoleon and the War of the Fourth Coalition
- Napoleon's Peninsular Campaigns
- French invasion of Russia
- Napoleon forced to abdicate
- Hundred days and Waterloo
© 2023 Khan AcademyTerms of usePrivacy PolicyCookie Notice
Napoleon's Peninsular Campaigns
French forces get embroiled in the Iberian Peninsula. Created by Sal Khan.
Want to join the conversation?
- So what happened with the starving masses in France? Were they still without sufficient food supplies all the way through the 5th coalition? Or did Nepoleon's conquests finally benefit the people of France?(25 votes)
- No they greately benefitted through Napoleon's conquest's. France became very rich having a well established bougeoise class all through the 19th century and into the 20th century.
The legacy Napolean left behind was the reason why France became such a dominant political, military, economic and artistic power throughout the 19th and into 20th centuries. Napolean wrought immense changes to the whole world by doing away with its nobility and allowing a prosperous bougeousie/middle class to ascend in France which greatly affected the rest of europe and the United States. Mostly Napoleonic legacy(27 votes)
- At, Sal talks about the result of the battles of the 5th Coalition — again a win for Napoleon's France. Why did the Austrians declare war on France again, given they had lost the previous skirmishes? Did something change to make Austria think that Napoleon had weakened since their previous battles together? 15:45(7 votes)
- The Austrians accurately thought Napoleon would over extend himself by invading Spain. With this in mind they decided to declare war again. The fight that followed was very costly for both sides.(15 votes)
- Were any of his other brothers/sisters made dukes/duchesses or kings of any other territory?(7 votes)
- AFAIK:
Holland - Louis I (1806–1810)
Naples - Joseph I (1806–1808)
Westphalia - Jérôme I (1807–1813)
Spain - Joseph I (1808–1813)
Tuscany - Elisa Bonaparte (1809–1814)(10 votes)
- Was Napoleon ever married, and did he ever have any children?(6 votes)
- Yes. He was married to a French lady, but he couldn't have children with her. So he divorced her and had a son with the Princess of Austria. But his son (Napoleon II) died in his 20's.(10 votes)
- What does annexd, papal and abducted mean?(5 votes)
- Papal- refers to the papacy (office or authority of the pope) or the Pope (the leader of the Catholic Church).
Annexed- means to add to one's territory, like the US annexed Florida, as an example.
Abducted- basically means by taking people hostage (a person or people seized or held for a specific condition)(10 votes)
- The Portuguese Royal Family had to come to Brazil in 1808 and the first action was to establish commerce with "Friendly Nations", that means England... at very, very low taxes... That was terrible for the Napoleon's Continetal System. Question: why did Portugal help England? Why not an alliance with France? The alliance with Englad by the Treaty of Methuen was not good for Portugal...(3 votes)
- The deep and ancient friendship of England and Portugal dates back to the Middle Ages. England and Portugal often ganged up themselves against the Castilian (Spanish) threat. The Anglo-Portuguese Alliance was officially ratified in 1386 in the Treaty of Windsor. Since then, the two nations fought alongside each other. They fought together in Portuguese Restoration War, Spanish War of Succession, Seven Years War, the Napoleon Wars, the Great War, and many others. This alliance is still in effect today through NATO. The Anglo-Portuguese Alliance is the oldest military alliance in history.
Now let's switch the topic back to the Napoleonic era. Your first question was likely answered in the first paragraph. Now to answer your second question, Portugal was actually pressured by France and Spain in 1801 to cancel their treaty with Great Britain, and enter an alliance with them. Portugal refused, and they had good reasons. Portugal's relationship with those powers, especially Spain, were strained throughout much of history. Also, there have been talks between France and Spain to partition Portugal for themselves. Portugal has every reason to fear Franco-Spanish diplomatic approach. But Portugal's refusal costed them Olivenza in the War of the Oranges. Spanish annexation of Olivenza still causes both governments to quarrel over the territory, although it is unofficial.(6 votes)
- Did France ever get rid of the hunger? Did they just starve?(4 votes)
- hundreds of people starved. Eventually, though, there were changes made in the government and France began the road to recovery.(3 votes)
- What is the approximate size of Napoleon's army during his European conquests?(2 votes)
- The Grande Army of the First French Army had its peak size on the eve of the Russian invasion. The size was about 650,000 men, but it differs by sources and calculations.(5 votes)
- During this time were the people of France still starving? Was France still essentially "poor""?(2 votes)
- Yes but during his attacks on other countries the winner will get taxes and could "essentially" break the poor factor but it never worked.(4 votes)
- So whatever happened to the Pope Pius VII? Did he ever escape, was he killed, set free, what happened to him? Sal doesn't say anything about him in the next video.(3 votes)
- Pope Pius VII died in his prison in France in 1799. Some say he died from hip fracture and others say he died of a stroke, although he suffered from gastritis and long series of hiccups. But the point is that he died in prison.(2 votes)
Video transcript
In the video on the Fourth
Coalition, I forgot to add to one super important
consequence of the Treaties of Tilsit. And especially the Treaty
of Tilsit with Prussia. I already talked about that it
was all about carving up Prussia, and humiliating
Prussia. And really removing it from
the status of one the preeminent powers. And all I talked about was the
loss of the territories of Prussia west of the Elbe. And that's about that
area right there. But just as important
as that, the Polish holdings of Prussia. So all of this area right over
here, this also was removed from Prussia and became a
French satellite state. It became the Duchy of Warsaw. So I just really want
to emphasize. The Treaty of Tilsit, I only
emphasized kind of what happened on the western side
of Prussia, but the eastern side of Prussia also
got carved up. And Prussia essentially
lost half of its size. So it's very dramatic
humiliation for Prussia at the end of the Treaty of Tilsit. Or the Treaties of Tilsit. Now with that out of the way,
we talked about in the last video, that at the end of the
Fourth Coalition, Napoleon was kind of near the peak
of his power. He'd kind of done everything
right. He had this kind of steady
upward momentum, or France had a steady upward momentum
in its power. But what we're going to see in
this video, at least the beginnings of the downfall
of Napoleon. And it's not going to
be obvious when you look at the territory. Because from a territorial point
of view, you're going to see in this video that he's
actually gaining territory. But he is going to start doing
some of the actions that end up undermining him. So we talked about in the last
video, we talked about this whole notion of the Continental
System, where Napoleon was obsessed with
people on the continent of Europe boycotting England,
not trading with England. And he figured this is the only
way that he could really undermine England's dominance
on the ocean. Or eventually maybe even
undermine England generally. So as we said, in the Treaties
of Tilsit he got Russia to participate in the Continental
System. So he wanted everyone
to buy into it. And one party that, at this
point, we're talking about-- we're in 1807 now-- one party
that wasn't all that keen in participating in the Continental System was Portugal. That's Portugal right there. So Napoleon goes and chats--
well they didn't chat directly-- but he gets
the agreement of the King of Spain. This is Charles IV, and he's
going to look like a bit of a fool and this video. And Napoleon says, hey Charles,
let's go in there, let's go into Portugal, that
little upstart country that doesn't want to participate
in the Continental System. You and me, we'll
invade together. We'll bring them into kind of
our realm of influence. And we can both kind of pillage
the lands and get the wealth of Portugal. Charles IV, he's all
up for this. So a combined French and Spanish
force invade Portugal. So in 1807, this is
the end of 1807, it's actually in October. In October, you have a combined
French and Spanish invasion of Portugal. And they are able to take
Portugal, but we're going to see that it's reasonably
temporary. Now I just mentioned that this
guy is going to look like the fool of this video. And the reason is, because
with the excuse of reinforcements, obviously to get
to Portugal, you have to go through Spain. So with the excuse of sending in
reinforcements, Napoleon in 1808-- and now we're talking
about early 1808, in particular in March. So with the excuse of sending
in reinforcements to support the Portugal campaign, and Spain
is like your my ally, sure, send those hundreds of
thousands of troops right through our territory. We're not going to
worry about it. And with that excuse, Napoleon
was able to send 100,000 troops and occupy Madrid. So this is one of
those lessons of never get too greedy. This guy got greedy, wanted
to help Napoleon. Or I guess the other lesson
is be careful who your friends are. This guy wanted to invade
Portugal, but the side effect of it is that Madrid
gets occupied. And that actually he
gets dethrowned. And so you have this situation
here, the French are now in control of Spain. In May of 1808-- and this is
really going to be the first little spark that is kind of
the downfall of Napoleon. In May 2, 1808, a popular
uprising starts in Madrid. Dos de Mayo. So a popular uprising
in Madrid. And at the same time, a little
bit after that-- So you can imagine, this is
a hugely tumultuous time. You have this occupation of
Portugal with the excuse of reinforcements in March. The French troops
occupy Madrid. Then in May-- so a couple of
months later-- a popular uprising starts in Madrid. This leads to popular uprisings
throughout Spain. But at the very same time as
this-- this is a little bit after the uprising in May--
Napoleon says, oh, this is just a little uprising, I'm
still in control of Spain. He appoints his other brother--
remember, there's this whole business he's putting
his brothers in charge of different parts
of the Empire. He puts his brother Joseph, he
appoints his brother Joseph-- or you could kind of say-- he
inserts his brother Joseph as the King of Spain. So this is all in kind
of early, mid-1808. Spain is in all of
this turmoil. A new king has been appointed,
who is Napoleon's brother. The old king is no
longer in charge. You have this ongoing
battle in Portugal. They don't have a firm hold
on Portugal just yet. And in the rest of 1808, the
uprising that occurs throughout Spain is actually
pretty successful in enforcing the French troops to retreat. And a major, I guess, aspect of
this uprising is it's one of the first real national
uprisings in history. It's people saying we are
Spanish, we do not like being controlled by the French. We do not like how they have
treated our royalty. We as a nation are
going to rise up. And the other interesting aspect
of this whole uprising that starts in Madrid with Dos
de Mayo, but then it starts continuing throughout the whole
nation, is the idea of guerrilla warfare. Not gorilla warfare. And this comes from the Spanish
for little war. Not from the large ape. And what it implies, you
probably heard the word on the news before, is kind of a
non-conventional style of fighting, where small little
groups kind of engage their enemy in very nontraditional
styles. So it becomes a very painful--
at least for it Napoleon's forces-- it became very
difficult fighting these non-conventional battles
all over Spain. So they were able to force
the French to retreat. Napoleon says, gee,
you know what? If you want a job well done,
you've got to do it yourself. So Napoleon comes in at the end
of the year, and then he retakes Madrid. So December of 1808, Napoleon
back in Madrid. Now, you might say all
is fine and well. Now Napoleon is back here. He has firm control of Spain. But not everything is good. Because as you could imagine,
there's all these other characters here that keep
forming coalitions for and against Napoleon. Even when they say that they're
allied, you know that in the back of their minds they
can't wait until they can declare the next war
on Napoleon. So in 1809-- let me write this
down-- Austria declares war. And since Great Britain was in--
at this point in time-- perpetual war with France, this becomes the Fifth Coalition. But this one is fairly
short-lived. Napoleon says gee, I got these
guys on my eastern front. Austria is re-declaring
war on me. So he leaves Spain to
go lead that fight. And he leaves 300,000 of
his best troops in Spain to hold Spain. And frankly, this is the most
important side effect of the Fifth Coalition, is that it
makes Napoleon go to fight Austria, to lead that effort,
as opposed to worrying about Spain. And essentially by doing that--
and I don't know if it's necessarily the fact that
Napoleon wasn't there. But it could be because Napoleon
wasn't there-- is that Spain just becomes
a major thorn in Napoleon's side. This guerrilla warfare just
continues on and on and on. And it just goes
back and forth. And the French will
win a battle and they'll win another battle. But they still don't
have control. And these guerrillas will kind
of peck at them and continue the uprising. And this really just drains
the French army. And really just gets at them
little bit by little bit, really over the remainder
of Napoleon's reign. So all the way until 1814. We haven't gone over that yet. But this occurs all
the way to 1814. So I said at the beginning the
video, this is one of the starting points of Napoleon's
downfall. That's just because he was just
stuck in Spain from 1808 on, just continuing to have to
send troops and supplies and reinforcements and wealth to
support what they called the Peninsular Campaign. And it just drains him. It drains his resources,
it drains his energy. And it really hurts his ability
to fight wars with all of the other people who he
needs to fight wars with. This is one of the
major downfalls. The other one, which we'll
probably talk about in the next video or video
after that, is his invasion of Russia. Which he does in 1812. One could debate which
one drains France's resources more. But the invasion of
Russia really decimates Napoleon's forces. And really makes him susceptible
to really conquest by England and all of
the other allies. And we're going to see that
in a couple of videos. So you have this been Peninsular
Campaign continuing to drain Napoleon. It all started because he
wanted to enforce the Continental System
on Portugal. And he got a little
bit greedy. And he also wanted
to conquer Spain. And just to highlight
why it's called the Peninsular Campaign. This right here, a little bit
of geography, this is called the Iberian Peninsula right
there that I'm circling. So you could call it the Iberian
Peninsular Campaign, because it's everything that's
going on in this Peninsula in Spain and Portugal. Now if we back up a little bit
back to 1808, where we had this uprising in Spain, and
they were able to push the French back. At the same time, you also had a
popular uprising in Portugal roughly in the fall, late
summer or fall of 1808. The British got excited. They saw it as their chance to
push Napoleon out of Portugal. So you have this
gentleman right here, Sir Arthur Wellesley. He's a future Duke
of Wellington. And he's eventually going to
be responsible for pushing Napoleon out of Spain
entirely. Or at least out of Madrid. Him and along with the British
and along with the Portuguese are able to push the French
out in August of 1808. So let me put this in my not so
neatly drawn timeline here. So in December, Napoleon is
back, so right before that in August, out of Portugal. And this is another motivation
for Napoleon to say, gee, you know what? Things aren't going well on the
Iberian Peninsula, I have to take charge of
things myself. Now, at the very same time as
all of this is happening, and this is really just kind of
out of interest. Well it's more than out of interest,
because actually it has huge global repercussions. You might say, OK, well you have
this Iberian Peninsula. Spain is going back and
forth between the French and the guerillas. And Portugal has this whole
situation where their king was dethrowned, but then the British
help and take it back. But you could imagine, these
nations are in just a super state of flux. Now you could also imagine, the
King of Spain wasn't just the King of Spain, he was King
of the Spanish Empire. And the Spanish Empire, the main
land mass of the Spanish Empire was in the Americas. So this right here. That was the Spanish
Empire at the time. This was a 400 year old
Spanish Empire. Starting with Columbus sailing
the ocean blue in 1492. You had this huge
Spanish Empire. And one of the really important
side effects of Napoleon invading Spain and
having this long protracted engagement in Spain, is it
catalyzed the ability of these colonies at the time to start
looking for their independence. And we're going to do whole
videos on that in the future. But this really is one of the
things that allowed them to get independence. Obviously, if the empire is in
flux, these guys can say hey, gee, why do we have to listen
to that nation anymore? We don't even know who's
in charge there. At the same time, same
thing in Portugal. Brazilian independence didn't
come until a little bit later after this period, but
Napoleon's invasion is what really sparked the beginning
of a lot of turmoil in Portugal. And that eventually is one of
the causes that leads to the eventual independence
of Brazil. That doesn't happen for another
10 or 15 years. But you could imagine, this is
where a lot of that action can be traced back. Now, another interesting
point that occurred around this time. And actually, I didn't tell
you what happened on the Fifth Coalition. I said Austria declared war. Obviously Britain was
already at war. So it was the Fifth Coalition. Napoleon had to leave, that
maybe made Spain a little bit harder to hold for France. And that's why it kind of
bled France slowly. But Napoleon was able to
take care of Austria. And then he was able to
take a little bit more land from them. Actually Galicia, this area of
Austria was given to the Duchy of Warsaw, which was a French
satellite state. And then Austria once again, had
to say oh Napoleon, we're your friend, we're going to
do whatever you ask us to. So you can imagine at this time
landwise, the empire of Napoleon seemed pretty
dramatic. You could include Spain here. Although he had to spend a lot
of resources to keep Spain. And then now we had Austria, at
least it was in the fold. You know Prussia was not
really happy about it. But this whole area here, the
western half of Poland was under French control. Germany-- the Confederacy
of the Rhine-- which is now Germany. And then a good bit of Italy,
the Kingdom of Italy was also a French satellite state. But Napoleon, of course, he
wanted everyone to participate in the Continental System. That's the only way to really
strangle England. And the Papal States were
not participating in the Continental System. So he sent some people over
to kind of try to convince them to. And when they didn't, they
occupied the Papal States. So French troops occupied
the Papal States. And then once again, this
was still back in 1808. This is actually early
1808, it's just on a different front. So in February, up
here, in 1808. Actually, that's before they
even occupied Madrid. So in 1808, February, French
troops occupy Papal States. They essentially give them over
to the Kingdom of Italy, which at that time was a
French satellite state. So it's almost like annexing
it to France. And then once the Fifth
Coalition was done with, Napoleon felt so good about
himself, that he formally annexed the Papal States. Now we're in 1809. In 1809, he formally-- The
Papal States are actually annexed into the
French Empire. Now you can imagine that
the Pope wasn't that happy about this. This is the Pope at the time,
this is Pius VII. He wasn't so happy about it. So he excommunicates Napoleon. And I'll do a whole video
on excommunication. But it's really about as bad as
something you could do to someone within the powers
of the Catholic Church. And by implication, you're no
longer part of the church, and you'll probably go to hell now,
at least if the Pope has anything to do with it. So Napoleon wasn't
happy about this. He sent some people, some
officers, once again to talk to the Pope about it. To say hey, gee, why
do you want to excommunicate Napoleon? Why don't you just play nice? Why don't you just agree to
whatever Napoleon says? The Pope doesn't agree, and
so he gets abducted. This is why it's interesting. Napoleon, he's not afraid to
take some serious action. So he gets abducted in 1809
by French officers. And it's not clear, it's not
obvious that Napoleon told them to do it. But once he was abducted, and
they actually started shuttling him all around France
depending on who needed to talk to him. Or if they were afraid that the
British might try to free him from one port, they would
send them some place else. But it wasn't clear that
Napoleon ordered this. But he never ordered
his release. So in some ways, you got
to say that it was sanctioned by Napoleon. So all of this mess starts, you
know, Napoleon is messing with the Pope. He has this ongoing bleeding
going on in Spain. And that ends actually in 1812
where Sir Arthur Wellesley finally retakes Madrid. But during this whole period,
you can imagine it's really draining into the resources
of the French Empire.