Grande Armée
The Grande Armée was the primary field army of the French Imperial Army during the Napoleonic Wars. Commanded by Napoleon, from 1804 to 1808 it won a series of military victories that allowed the First French Empire to exercise unprecedented control over most of Europe. Widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest fighting forces ever assembled, it suffered catastrophic losses during the disastrous French invasion of Russia, after which it never recovered its strategic superiority and ended its military career with a total defeat during the Hundred Days in 1815.
The Grande Armée was formed in 1804 from the Armée des côtes de l'Océan more commonly referred to as the Armée d'Angleterre, a field army of over 100,000 men assembled for Napoleon's planned invasion of the United Kingdom. He subsequently led the field army to Central Europe and defeated Austrian and Russian forces as part of the War of the Third Coalition. Thereafter, the Grande Armée was the principal field army deployed in the War of the Fourth Coalition, Peninsular War and War of the Fifth Coalition, where the French army slowly lost a large portion of its veteran soldiers, strength and prestige, and in the invasion of Russia, War of the Sixth Coalition and Hundred Days. The term Grande Armée is often used to refer to multinational armies led by Napoleon in his campaigns; however, during the War of the Fifth Coalition and the Waterloo campaign, other formations were led by him de facto, namely the Army of Germany and the Army of the North, respectively.
In addition to its size and multinational composition, the Grande Armée was known for its innovative formations, tactics, logistics and communications. While most contingents were commanded by French generals, except for the Polish and Austrian contingent, soldiers could climb the ranks regardless of class, wealth, or national origin, unlike many other European armies of the era. Upon its formation, the Grande Armée consisted of six corps led by Napoleon's marshals and senior generals. When the Austrian and Russian armies began their preparations to invade France in late 1805, the Grande Armée was quickly ordered across the Rhine into southern Germany, leading to Napoleon's victories at Ulm and Austerlitz. The French army grew as Napoleon seized power across Europe, recruiting troops from occupied and allied nations; it reached its peak of one million men at the start of the Russian campaign in 1812, with the Grande Armée reaching its height of 413,000 French soldiers and over 600,000 men overall when including foreign recruits.
In summer of 1812, as large of an amount as 300,000 French troops fought in the Peninsular War. Napoleon opened a second war front as the Grande Armée marched slowly east, and the Russians fell back with its approach. After the capture of Smolensk and tactical victory at Borodino, the French reached Moscow on 14 September 1812. However, the army was already drastically reduced by skirmishes with the Russians, disease, desertion, heat, exhaustion, and long communication lines. The army spent a month in Moscow but was ultimately forced to march back westward. Cold, starvation, and disease, as well as constant harassment by Cossacks and Russian partisans, resulted in the Grande Armée utter destruction as a fighting force. Only 120,000 men survived to leave Russia ; of these, 50,000 were Austrians, Prussians, and other Germans, 20,000 were Poles, and just 35,000 were French. As many as 380,000 died in the campaign. Napoleon led a new army during the campaign in Germany in 1813, the defense of France in 1814, and the Waterloo campaign in 1815, but the Grande Armée would never regain its height of June 1812, and France would find itself invaded on multiple fronts from the Spanish border to the German border. Eventually Napoleonic France would be ultimately defeated by Treaty of Paris. In total, from 1805 to 1813, over 2.1 million Frenchmen were conscripted into the French Imperial Army in military defeat for France. Estimates for French military deaths during the Napoleonic Wars generally range between 700,000 and 1.8 million, with many modern historians placing the likely figure around one million.
History
''For a history of the French Army in the period of 1792–1804 during the wars of the First and Second Coalitions see French Revolutionary Army.''1804–1806
The Grande Armée was originally formed as L'Armée des côtes de l'Océan intended for the invasion of Britain, at the port of Boulogne in 1804. Following Napoleon's coronation as Emperor of the French in 1804, the Third Coalition was formed against France and the Grande Armée turned its sights eastwards in 1805. The army left Boulogne in late August and through rapid marches, surrounded General Karl von Mack's isolated Austrian Army at the fortress of Ulm. The Ulm campaign, as it came to be known, resulted in 60,000 Austrian prisoners at the cost of just 2,000 French soldiers. By November, Vienna was taken but Austria refused to capitulate, maintaining an army in the field. In addition, its ally Russia had yet to commit to action. The war would continue for a while longer. Affairs were decisively settled on 2 December 1805 at the Battle of Austerlitz, where the numerically inferior Grande Armée routed a combined Russo-Austrian army led by Russian Emperor Alexander I. The stunning victory led to the Treaty of Pressburg on 26 December 1805, with the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire the following year.File:La bataille d'Austerlitz. 2 decembre 1805.jpg|thumb|right|The Battle of Austerlitz, 2nd December 1805, by François Gérard|290x290px
The alarming increase of French power in Central Europe disturbed Prussia, which had remained neutral the previous year. After much diplomatic wrangling, Prussia secured promises of Russian military aid and the Fourth Coalition against France came into being in 1806. The Grande Armée advanced into Prussian territory with the famed bataillon-carré system, whereby corps marched in close supporting distances and became vanguards, rearguards, or flank forces as the situation demanded, and decisively defeated the Prussians at Jena and Auerstedt, both fought on 14 October 1806. After a legendary pursuit, the French took 140,000 prisoners and killed and wounded roughly 25,000. Marshal Louis-Nicolas Davout's III Corps, the victors at Auerstedt, received the honours of marching into Berlin first. Once more, the French had defeated an enemy before its allies could arrive, and once more, this did not bring peace.
File:Iena.jpg|thumb|left|Napoleon reviewing the Imperial Guard at the Battle of Jena, 14 October 1806|205x205px
1807–1808
Napoleon now turned his attentions to Poland, where the remaining Prussian armies were linking up with their Russian allies. A difficult winter campaign produced nothing but a stalemate, made worse by the Battle of Eylau on 7–8 February 1807, where Russian and French casualties soared for little gain. The campaign resumed in the spring and this time General Levin August von Bennigsen's Russian army was soundly defeated at the Battle of Friedland on 14 June 1807. This victory brought about the Treaties of Tilsit between France, Russia, and Prussia in July, leaving Napoleon with no enemies on the continent.The Grande Armée was dissolved in October 1808 and its constituents formed into the Army of Spain and the Army of the Rhine, which in 1809 was reorganized into the Army of Germany.
1810–1812
With the exception of Spain, a three-year lull ensued. Diplomatic tensions with Russia, however, became so acute that they eventually led to war in 1812. Napoleon assembled the largest field army he had ever commanded to deal with this menace. On 24 June 1812, shortly before the invasion, the assembled troops with a total strength of 685,000 men were made up of:• 410,000 from the French Empire
• 95,000 Poles
• 35,000 Austrians
• 30,000 Italians
• 24,000 Bavarians
• 20,000 Saxons
• 20,000 Prussians
• 17,000 Westphalians
• 15,000 Swiss
• 10,000 Danes and Norwegians
• 4,000 Spaniards
• 4,000 Portuguese
• 3,500 Croats
• 2,000 Irish
File:Battle of Borodino.jpg|right|thumb|The Battle of Moscow by Louis-François Lejeune. The Battle of Borodino was the bloodiest single-day battle of the Napoleonic Wars.|225x225px
The new Grande Armée was somewhat different from before; over one-third of its ranks were now filled by non-French conscripts coming from satellite states or countries allied to France. The behemoth force crossed the Niemen River on 24 June 1812, and Napoleon hoped that quick marching could place his men between the two main Russian armies, commanded by Generals Barclay de Tolly and Pyotr Bagration. However, the campaign was characterized by many frustrations, as the Russians succeeded no fewer than three times in evading Napoleon's pincers. A final stand for the defence of Moscow led to the massive Battle of Borodino on 7 September 1812. There the Grande Armée won a bloody but indecisive and arguably pyrrhic victory. A week after the battle, the Grande Armée finally entered Moscow only to find the city largely empty and ablaze. Its soldiers were now forced to deal with the fires while hunting down arsonists and guarding the city's historic districts. Napoleon and his army spent over a month in Moscow, vainly hoping that the Russian emperor would respond to the French peace offers. After these efforts failed, the French set out on 19 October, now only a shadow of their former selves. The epic retreat over the Russian winter dominates popular conceptions of the war, even though over half of the Grande Armée had been lost during the summer. The French were harassed repeatedly by the converging Russian armies, Marshal Michel Ney even conducting a rearguard separation between his troops and the Russians, and by the time the Berezina was reached Napoleon only had about 49,000 troops and 40,000 stragglers of little military value. The resulting battle and the monumental work of General Jean Baptiste Eblé's engineers saved the remnants of the Grande Armée. Napoleon left his men in order to reach Paris and address new military and political matters. Of the 685,000 men that constituted the initial invasion force, only 93,000 survived.