The Napoleonic Wars
France exports revolution by conquest, and Europe redraws itself afterwards.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 12 years
- Known to
- ± 1 year
- Era
- Industrial, Holocene
Napoleon dominates Europe from 1803 until Waterloo in 1815, spreading the Napoleonic Code, metric measures, legal equality and the abolition of feudal dues wherever his armies go — while conscripting on a scale nobody had attempted. The Russian campaign of 1812 destroys an army of half a million. The Congress of Vienna restores monarchies but cannot restore the assumptions, and nationalism becomes the organising force of the century.