What I want to do is give you a
broad overview of all of the wars that France was
in at this time. And then talk about in a little
bit more detail exactly what Napoleon was up to. And his role in either beginning
or ending many of these wars. So you might remember from 1792
to 1797, you had your war of the First Coalition. And the players there
were Prussia, Austria, and Great Britain. I'll just write Britain
for short. And this was essentially
started by the French. You might remember, King Louis
XVI was alive then. He supported the war, because
he thought that they would lose and maybe reinstate him. Or that it would make
him popular. The revolutionaries liked the
war because they wanted to spread the Revolution. And you might remember it ended
at the Treaty of Campo Formio in 1797, due mainly to
Napoleon's victories in Italy. At that time, he was in charge
of the Italian campaign. And the government
of France at that time was the Directory. In power to a large degree
because of Napoleon's ability to defend them. Then from 1798-- let me do this
in a different color-- from 1798 to 1802, you have
the Second Coalition. Now you might immediately
see, Napoleon took power at the end of 1799. So this war spanned some of the
Directory being in control and some of Napoleon as First
Consul being in control. And here the players-- once
again you have Austria and Great Britain-- they tend to be
always at war with France at this period, especially
Great Britain. And instead of Prussia,
you have Russia. And actually, just to help you
visualize what the Austrian Empire looked like at this
time-- and the Prussian Empire, this map doesn't
do it justice. Let me go down to this map. That's in 1810. Let me go a little
bit earlier here. This is in 1805. And I'll draw the boundaries
a little bit bolder than they did. So this is France. These are the boundaries
of France. Actually, it was able to
take some territory in what is now Italy. I could do the whole boundary
if you like, but I think you get the idea. But the one empire that existed
then that doesn't exist in its current
form, was Prussia. Doesn't even exist at all. There is no Prussian Empire,
or Prussian nation, or the country of Prussia anymore. You can see there it had some
overlap with Germany, some overlap with Poland, some other
countries, won't go into detail there. Then you have the
Austrian Empire. Austrian Empire is
right over there. As you can see, it encompasses
much more than just the modern nation or country of Austria. Then you have the Russian
Empire, which, give or take, looks not too different
than Russia today. But the big difference between
the world-- there's many differences-- between the world
now and the world then was that there was no
nation of Germany. You had a bunch of people
speaking German, but they were divided into a bunch of
small little states. This map doesn't show it. Some of them were under Austrian
control, some of them were under Prussian control. And this loose confederation of
German kingdoms and states, this was called the
Holy Roman Empire. Let me write that down. And as Voltaire famously said,
they were neither holy, nor Roman-- they didn't speak Latin,
they weren't Italian, they were German. It wasn't holy, this
wasn't controlled by a religious figure. And it wasn't an empire, it
wasn't a tightly-controlled state that was kind of expanding
its boundaries. It was just a loose
confederation of kingdoms. So that gives you a
visualization of what the world looked like right then. So with that in mind, let me
go back to my overview. Right there. And then the Second Coalition,
in 1801 you had the Treaty of Luneville. Once again, this was a defeat
of the Austrians, mainly due to the military capabilities. Napoleon was now in
charge of France. But he led once again,
an Italian campaign against the Austrians. This is his victory in
Marengo right there. I'll go into a little
more detail on that. And that essentially declared
victory on Austria, allowed Napoleon to take more territory along the Italian peninsula. You can see it right there. And then later he had the Treaty
of Amiens with the British in 1802. And that really ended
the coalition. I guess you could say the
coalition ended in 1801, because Austria was out of it. Russia was kind of just
passively observing. They participated. But they didn't really give
or take or lose anything. And then I could say at this
point the United Kingdom, essentially I guess the best
explanation of why that it was war fatigue. But we'll see that they weren't
tired for long. Because then in May of 1803, you
have the beginning of your Third Coalition . And then I'll go to a little
bit more detail about this. The Third Coalition, Britain
declares war on what we could call the French Empire. And this isn't going
to end until 1805. So you can see, Great Britain
is essentially at war almost continuously. There's a few gaps
give or take. But there's always
this tension. This is the Third Coalition. And once again, I could write
the United Kingdom if you like, because they actually now
are the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. You have the United Kingdom
in there, we have Russia in there. And once again, we
have Austria. And there were other players. There was Portugal. But these were the
prime players. And we'll see in this video
that this, the war of the Third Coalition, really ended
with Napoleon being the dominant power in Europe. And ended with him essentially
thinking that he is unstoppable. So I'll do a little bit
more detail on that. This resulted in 1805, with
the then Emperor Napoleon. And we'll talk about how
he became emperor. But in 1805, Napoleon-- maybe
I should say 1806, because this ended at the end of 1805--
Napoleon views himself as unstoppable, as invincible. He got some good victories
that fed his already large ego. So with this as an overview,
let's review a little bit of the life of Napoleon and the
roles that he directly played in pretty much all of
these conflicts. So the first time we heard about
Napoleon was in 1793. And I'll just draw
it right here. You're might remember, there
were all of these Royalist insurrections going on against
the revolutionary government. And they had this bright
artillery captain in Toulon who put down an uprising
there in 1793. He got some, I guess you could
say, France-wide, or nationwide fame from
doing that. Then in 1795, you might
remember, the Directory was trying to get formed in Paris. So this is 1793. Then in 1795-- let me do a
better color than that. That's hard to read. In 1795, he defended the
Tuileries by essentially sending out that grapeshot and
mowing down people to keep the Royalists from taking out the
revolutionary government. So once again, hugely,
hugely popular. So all of that was occurring
during the war of the First Coalition. And then Napoleon was made the
general in charge of the Italian campaign. And in 1797, he was essentially
able to end the war of the First Coalition in a
victorious way for France by defeating Austria and Italy. And that ended the
First Coalition with the Campo Formio. This was Napoleon. Then, you might remember, OK,
he's this hugely popular guy. He actually started publishing
some newspapers. And he actually sent some
military generals to put down further counter revolutions on
the part of the Royalists. So he became even more
and more popular. And the Directory was
a little bit afraid of him at this point. So they said, hey why don't you
go do whatever you want. And that's when Napoleon
left from Toulon and he went to Egypt. He went to Egypt with his
visions of grandeur, where he did all of the damage
down there. And killed and won multiple wars
against the Ottomans in both Egypt and Syria. But unfortunately for him, his
good friend Horatio Nelson destroyed his whole fleet in
the Battle of the Nile. Horatio-- let me draw that
in a darker color. So that is Horatio Nelson
destroyed his entire fleet there. So they were stranded. In 1799, Napoleon was
essentially able to abandon all of his troops and
then come back to France on his own. So this is in 1799, Napoleon
makes his way back to France. And then we saw in the last
video, he takes power with two of the directors as the three
consuls of France. But in short order, he is able
to declare himself as First Consul in 1799. This is hard to read. And is essentially the dictator,
or the authoritarian ruler, of France. But all of while this was
happening, remember, this was all during this war of
the Second Coalition. In 1798, he wasn't much help
in that war, he was out in Egypt doing all of these
silly things. They were at war with Britain,
that's why Horatio Nelson went and destroyed his fleet. But even after he takes power
at the end of 1799 or early 1800, they're still at war. So Napoleon, he decides
to take charge. So he leads the troops across
the Alps into Italy. And once again, this pattern
is emerging. And this one actually wasn't
very clear in the beginning that it was going
to go his way. The Italian campaign, it
started very badly. But eventually, he was able to
win against, once again, the Austrians at the Battle of
Marengo and Hohenlinden. I know I'm probably not saying
all of these well. But once again, through Napoleon
directly leading the troops, he was able to end the
war of the Second Coalition. And then the United Kingdom, or
Great Britain, however you want to call it-- many times
when people use the word Great Britain it's referring to the
entire United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. If you wanted to be formal,
Great Britain refers just to the island of Great Britain that
has England and Scotland and Wales on it, while
this is Ireland. But I don't feel like keep
repeatedly saying United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Ireland, which was now united in the early 1800s. I'll just keep saying
Great Britain. But there was just fatigue. So the war essentially ended
with Great Britain as well. This is, as we said before, this
was the Treaty of Amiens. But very, very, very,
short-lived peace. Because in 1803, with Napoleon
still in power, the Third Coalition formed. And in the next video, we're
going to see exactly how Napoleon was able to once again
be victorious over these powers to become essentially,
in his mind, invincible.