Napoleon is considered one of the geniuses in military history. In 1792 when the levée en masse was instituted in France, the French armies became one of the largest armies in Europe. One good thing that the French armies had is that they were very mobile, meaning that they could move from battlefield to battlefield very rapidly. Another good thing about the French army was that it was made up of citizen-soldiers, unlike other armies in Europe which employed unreliable mercenaries. Napoleon encouraged his men to live off the land, rather than using costly time to provide adequate provisions through the maintenance of a supply line, something that made the French occupying army highly unpopular.

Through the Treaty of Amiens (1802), France was officially at peace with Great Britain. Yet Napoleon only saw this peace as a temporary measure while he set out for European domination. To piss off the British he sent troops to Haiti. Then he sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States for $11 Million. Then he planned to invade England. Yet at the Battle of Trafalgar on October 21, 1805, Napoleon was defeated by the Royal Navy, yet in that battle Admiral Horatio Nelson died :-(.

The Third Coalition was formed (3rd Coalition: Austria, Russia, and Great Britain). Napoleon set out first to beat the Austrians, which he did at the Battle of Ulm in October 1805, and in Austerlitz he got his best victory against a Russian force. After this he set out to destroy the Holy Roman Empire, and he created the Confederacy of the Rhine, which is a loose grouping of I think was 16 states, which were under the influence of France. Then after HRE was dissolved, the Prussians joined the Third Coalition. But then the Prussians lost in the Battle of Jena in which he obliterated the Prussian Army and occupied the capital city of Berlin.

After the Prussians lost, the Russian Czar Alexander I (r. 1801-1825) wanted to make peace with France. He met with Napoleon on a raft on July 7, 1807, and the two signed the Treaty of Tilsit, with the Prussian King waiting on the shore to see what the two of them had done. Under Tilsit, Prussia (thanks to Alex) was saved yet it had to reduce its size by half and had to become an ally of France against Britain. Napoleon established the Continental System which attempted to ban British goods from entering Europe. Rather than weakening England, it back-fired and it instead weakened the economies of the occupied states of Europe.

The Continental System and the resentment that it caused throughout Europe helped galvanize support against the French. At first, wherever the French went, they brought with them ideals of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. In Venice, they freed the Jews from the ghetto, and established religious toleration. They imposed a Civil Code.

Yet resentment grew, and Napoleon's defeat became inevitable...