Geopolitics and Markets Review – 1st April 2024

The Napoleonic Era – Part 1

Contents

1. Introduction

2. The Napoleonic Age – French Revolutionary Wars

3. Napoleonic Wars

4. War of the Third Coalition

5. War of the Fourth Coalition

6. War of the Fifth Coalition

7. Concluding Remarks

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Bitesize Edition

• As my series on the history of the Balkans continues, this week we take a small diversion to Europe and the rise of Napoleon. This period saw the major powers in Europe distracted by the rise of the French Empire.

• Today, I’ll cover the first half of this rise with the French Revolutionary Wars, and the Wars of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Coalition.

• This period saw the French and Ottomans cross paths when the French invaded Egypt and Syria in the Ottoman sphere of influence in the Middle East, but outside of this, interactions between the two remained less common than the French with their European neighbours.

• During the Third and Fourth Coalition Wars, it appeared that the French under Napoleon were invincible. They suffered a defeat at the Battle of Aspern-Essling against the Austrians during the Fifth Coalition, but after this, there’s still much more of this story to be told. For now, let’s dive into the story that gets us to this point.  

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Introduction

In a series stretching far longer than I imagined it would, we still have the Ottomans in control of the majority of the Balkans at the beginning of the 19^th century (1800s). However, their decline at this point was clear. We’ve seen the Ottoman influence declining to the Russians around the Black Sea, and the Habsburgs in the Northern Balkans. This trend of falling influence was to continue with the conflict between empires, but this time, the Ottoman Empire was also imploding from within.

Before this internal implosion, we’ll start with the Napoleonic Wars.