Was Napoleon a madman driven only by an insatiable desire for conquest?
The relationships, rivalries, and conflicts between states have always been driven by a tangle of interwoven causes. There is no historical, political, or event-based reason why Napoleon's time should have escaped this. To consider the only causes of the wars as the resistance of the "aristocracies" to the "new ideas" or that of the "nations" to the French "hegemonic" ambitions is not enough to explain European affairs between 1800 and 1815. If this were the case, the episode would be reduced to an accident of history in which other differences would have been put on hold, as if the world had stopped turning so that all forces could concentrate on this titanic struggle. The rejection of revolutionary principles or the desire to overthrow an "ogre" certainly played a role, but these factors were reinforced and even often supplanted by old, even "permanent" data, at least on the scale of the decades preceding the episode.
The victory of Albion would have been that of "Good" against "Evil", to the point of denying the complexity of the world and its history. We will not be more tender with the militant historiography, essentially - but not exclusively - French, which affirms that, as a son of the Revolution, Napoleon only wanted to spread its ideas generously, to liberate the nations from all "feudalisms".
Without being totally excluded (because one cannot deny that, everywhere in Europe, there were many people who were convinced), it must find its place in a more complex whole, taking into account geopolitics, history and economics. The fact that the powers hostile to France sometimes used anti-revolutionary (and particularly anti-Jacobin) arguments or hid behind the pretext of a fight against an oppressor does not change much. We cannot believe without question a Pitt who proclaims before his Parliament that only the freedom of nations interests him, or an Alexander I who promises a "liberating" crusade against Napoleon. We will not believe the Emperor any more, either during his reign or in his work of rewriting history at Saint Helena, when he declares that he wanted to federate the peoples and only spread the principles of the Revolution.
We must also place Napoleon's action in the context of the struggle against the United Kingdom, which some British historians themselves call the "Long 18th century".
Their continental rivalry could be neither territorial (they had no direct border disputes) nor ideological (the British never saw it as a sufficient reason for war). If, for London, this rivalry was economic and was expressed through politics (which the English acknowledged without shame), the motives of Versailles and then Paris were not purely political either. No more than the promotion of generous ideas, the only "ambition" of the sovereigns, whether they were the last Bourbons or the first of the Bonapartes, the aspiration to domination or to "glory" does not explain all French diplomacy.
From the second part of the reign of Louis XV, Choiseul had convinced the king to turn away from continental operations to concentrate his efforts on overseas and the constitution of a powerful navy in order to thwart and then surpass the power of Albion. All facets of economic warfare had been used from then on by both sides: customs tariffs, control of raw materials and maritime routes, partial embargoes, sending of privateers, etc.
France and England were not the only ones to take the greatest account of economic factors. If free trade had seemed to gain ground in the 1780s, it poorly masked the efforts of each side to strengthen their naval capacities and their colonial implantation. Before being the confrontation of the sea against the land, the Franco-British conflict was a confrontation of the sea against the sea. England's entry into the war in 1793 was more motivated by the occupation or threats to places like Antwerp or Amsterdam and the opportunity to deprive France of part of its colonies (which could no longer be defended by a navy undermined by the emigration of the executives), than by the death of the king. I would add that Belgium, an essential stake for the United Kingdom, was a conquest of the revolutionaries, which Napoleon had sworn to defend when he took power. Since the annexation of Belgium, the Revolution and France were no longer masters of their destiny.
From now on, we have the picture of what will be repeated until 1814, until France returns to its former borders. With tenacity, England will renew coalitions of which it will be the soul and the purse, which France will exhaust itself to break and which will become larger, stronger, more united as the French advance further into Europe, only lifting the weight for it to fall back on them from above. "If I had been defeated at Marengo, you would have had all of 1814 and all of 1815," Napoleon told his companions at Saint Helena. Nothing could be more accurate. We had already almost had all of 1814 and all of 1815 in the summer of 1799.
The rest was played in unison. To avoid the domination of the European market by French productions, London had to become more and more directly involved in the affairs of the Continent, not to dominate it but to prevent the domination of a single power: it was a question of survival for a weakly populated country that had based its wealth on trade and processing industries. For its part, in order to guarantee outlets for its products despite its maritime weakness, France tried to achieve European political hegemony in order, on the one hand, to exclude its main competitor and, on the other hand, to place the economies of the Napoleonids and its allies under the dependence of its producers and merchants. And finally to ensure its security. From this point on, you can almost stop reading because you have the explanations for Napoleon's foreign policy.
But I will continue.
The European history of the Napoleonic years can also not be understood without taking into account the traditions and history of alliances. European alliances had certain constants. England felt close (for port and banking reasons) to the United Provinces and jealously preserved centuries-old agreements with Portugal. Russia saw Austria as an ally of interest in Poland and, further south, in the face of the Ottoman Empire. Bavaria felt close to France, which could help it resist Austrian appetites to the south and Prussian appetites to the north. As for Baden and Württemberg, the "proximity of the cannons of Strasbourg", as it was said at the time, placed them in the same camp. Saxony, although Protestant (but ruled by a Catholic), after having strayed for a few days into the Prussian alliance in 1806, continued as in the past to seek support in Paris to expand and resist its neighbor.
In general, the other German states also tried to escape Prussian or Austrian domination by alliances with non-Germanic powers (such as France or Russia). France itself never hesitated to have good relations with the Ottomans, considered itself directly involved in Polish affairs and, since Louis XV, had in principle abandoned Richelieu's program of reducing the House of Austria... a principle provisionally taken up by Napoleon during the treaties of Lunéville (1801), Presbourg (1805) and Schönbrunn (1809).
The ambitions of the different powers of Europe constituted a complicated tangle that explains the difficulty of forming large coalitions against France. For a long time, the game of the Napoleonic system benefited the interests of other actors than France. It was only at the end of the period that a general league was formed. It was the great success of English diplomacy to succeed in uniting all of Europe around its greatest common denominator, by playing on resentment, economy and finances, much more than on the principle of a "liberation" of the Continent. The Napoleonic system had become too incompatible with the profits of each. The Congress of Vienna, if one dares say so, put things back in order... while revealing that the rivalries that existed before the Napoleonic wars had still kept all their vigor.
All of these relations between states were also dominated by the clash between two antagonistic conceptions of the organization of Europe: balance or system.
England embodied the defense of the former, while Napoleonic France sought to organize the continent around it by creating the latter. The balance of powers or forces (balance of power) had been globally respected since the end of the Seven Years' War (1756-1763): no single state dominated the European concert. Defined by Louis XV, taken up by his successor and his main minister Vergennes, French policy consisted in maintaining this situation while playing on peaceful alliances to guarantee the security of France. A priori, this principle seemed to be the guarantee of peace in Europe itself. It was different on the economic level and, militarily, in the colonies or on "extra-European" theaters: Franco-English confrontation during the American War of Independence, Austro-Russo-Turkish wars or Anglo-Spanish friction at the beginning of the Revolution about the American trading posts.
Even though there had been no shortage of "regional" or bilateral conflicts, there had been no general war since the end of the Seven Years' War, at least not one of a nature to disturb the sharing of power between continental powers neutralizing each other. Champion and punctilious arbiter of the balance, Great Britain was not, however, a disinterested power. For her, the balance was reasoned in terms of interests and not of morality.
As much protected as isolated by the seas, she had turned to the open sea, conquering trading posts, ports and territories. But she could not neglect the main outlet for her productions. Her objective had long been to control the locks of the great maritime routes such as the English Channel, Gibraltar, Cape Town, Heligoland or Malta. That is why she gave herself the means to drive the French out of them, just as she neutralized them in the Mascarenes, which could be used to control the route to the Indies. Deprived of a land army (she could barely field 250,000 men at the end of the period), she had to rely on her diplomats and bankers to fight through proxy states against the emergence of any competitor capable of locking down the Continent or forming fleets capable of surpassing hers. The English elites did not hide this will, so true it is that for them, politics and economy were inextricably linked. There was no inconvenience on the other side of the Channel to admit that one fought for interests more than for principles, despite the necessary (but unconvincing) dressing of words. When the break with revolutionary France was consummated in 1793, no one was fooled by the pretext invoked for public opinion, namely the execution of Louis XVI, especially since the British regime had been refounded on the execution of Charles I, one hundred and fifty years earlier. An English politician specified, as if in an admission: "There can be no doubt that the great cause of the war between France and England has been and always will be their colonies." The circumstantial nature of the ideological pretext could not have been better expressed. The rest of the story shows that the government of London never lost sight of its principle of not letting one power dominate the Continent alone.
The destruction of its main adversary was never part of its war aims. On the contrary, it always pushed - even at the heart of the Congress of Vienna - for an indulgent peace with France: it would need it to counter the appetites of the other victors, Russians or Austrians. The fall of Napoleon did not put an end to the struggle to maintain a "balance" synonymous with its commercial domination and its security.
The other great European powers were all candidates, if not for the domination of the Continent, at least for the increase of their strength, by annexations or geo-economic advances. The four main continental entities outside France (Austria, Russia, Prussia and the Ottoman Empire) had strategic aims that were in many ways incompatible with each other and with those of their other neighbours.
Austria and Prussia observed each other without benevolence around the remains of the Holy Roman Empire. The former had to lose both its predominance in Germany and its influence in northern Italy. It also had an offensive strategy with plans to further expand its possessions in Bavaria, Poland (whose dismemberment gave it Galicia) or on its eastern and southern marches, in the Ottoman Balkans. Before the Revolution, it had relied heavily on its alliance with France to achieve this. However, the covetousness of the Wittelsbach territories remained deeply rooted in Austrian ambitions. It is not surprising in these conditions that the campaigns of 1805 and 1809 both began with the entry of the Austrians into Bavaria.
Prussian policy was apparently simpler to analyse. Territorially, the kingdom of Frederick William III was the smallest of the great continental powers, with limited borders and natural defences. Therefore, anything that could enlarge and protect Brandenburg was of interest to Berlin: a piece of Poland, a corridor in Saxony and - why not? - an annexation of Hanover, the hereditary province of the English sovereigns, on the one hand; a push to the south in order to be in a strong position to negotiate with Austria over Belgium (of which the Prussian possession of Cleves was close), on the other hand. Berlin advanced its pawns by strengthening its influence among the Protestant states or by showing understanding towards all those of whom Vienna appeared to be the predator.
Even between 1795 and 1806, when it was considered neutral, Prussia did not abandon these foreign policy objectives, trying to obtain them by bargaining or tips in return for its neutrality. At certain times, some thought that the Franco-Prussian alliance would allow a redistribution of the European cards. The war of 1806 and the treaty of Tilsit put an end to this illusion. With regard to the great powers, Berlin diplomacy pursued three objectives: to separate Austria and Russia (objective allies against the Ottomans), to keep France away from Germany (to be able to strengthen itself there) and to ally with England (while still eyeing Hanover). It must be admitted that, therefore, the diplomacy of Frederick William III could not follow a straight line.
Russia, for its part, had never ceased to see itself recognized as a European power, since Peter the Great. Christianity was its religion and it considered itself a bulwark against the Muslim intrusion in the West. Finally, the most active and richest part of its economy was located in its European part. To be more and more European and to gain productive territories, the Russians tirelessly tried to advance in two directions. To the north and west, they claimed their share of the Nordic countries (part of Karelia and Courland had been annexed in 1721) and of Poland (Lithuania and western Ukraine). Since the role their diplomats had played in the Treaty of Teschen (1779) signed under the leadership of France and Russia which prevented the Habsburgs from seizing Bavaria, the Russian sovereigns also considered themselves the protectors of a part of Germany, a role reinforced by marital alliances that made them parents of several princes there. This is how Alexander I never forgave the abduction of the Duke of Enghien in Baden territory, for whose security he considered himself guarantor (2,000 kilometers from his borders), or that he used the occupation of Oldenburg as a pretext to break the alliance of Tilsit. The second part of their strategic temptations was that the Russians wanted at all costs to have access to warm seas to develop their trade hampered by the harsh northern climate.
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