Napoleon's Rage: The Peninsular War For Spain And Portugal | Man Who Would Rule Europe | Timeline

access to hundreds more exclusive history documentaries by downloading the history hit app [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] by 1807 Napoleon Was preparing to attack Portugal that country's long-term alliance with England was becoming a thorn in the emperor's flesh it thwarted his ambition to enforce the Continental systems throughout Europe and cut off all trade with England what the British had done is they'd block aided trade going to France and France's allies but at the same time they'd sold vast quantities of material to anybody willing to buy it and you know particularly by smuggling it often but also to sort of as it were allies or intimidated Powers who were quite happy to do things by the you know the by the back door Napoleon's determined to stop this the continental system was simply a boycott by the entire continent so Napoleon hoped of British goods he realized that especially after Trafalgar there was no way in which he could get at the British directly because of Britain's Maritime Supremacy but he believed with some justification that the British economy rested on export or die and so if he could prevent the British from exporting their manufactured goods to the continent the British economy will get into difficulties and the British will be forced to make peace on Napoleon's terms he thus the Treaty of tillsit and in the Berlin decrees introduced the Continental System whereby no Continental power was allowed to trade either in British goods or handle British ships or British goods coming in Via neutrals the only problem is that a trade embargo of this nature is a two-edged weapon it cuts both ways and the big question was who was going to die first and as it transpired the ruination it brought upon the Continental Nations largely accepting a French I must say because Napoleon robbed Peter to pay Paul and made sure that the French system survived at least damaged but it drove the hansiatic towns into bankruptcy it ruined Holland human beings being what they were smuggling was Rife so the continental system was naked commercial Warfare my motto is France first if English Commerce triumphs on the Seas that is because the English dominate the oceans it is therefore logical that since France is superior on land she should make her trade dominant there otherwise All Is Lost it was a system very very difficult to enforce because in effect what Napoleon was trying to do was to police the entire Coastline of the continent of Europe some parts of that Coastline were directly under his control as the as in France for example and there it was relatively straightforward to keep British goods out but it was a very different matter trying to keep let us say British goods out of Trieste which could then make their way across the Alps and Into the Heart of Europe or to keep British goods out of Scandinavia and wherever one whenever one hole was stopped up another one appeared so it was very difficult to seal off the continent from British goods Portugal is an obvious loophole and therefore Napoleon's terms troops have to be sent to Portugal Portugal was traditionally Britain's best Ally on the continent it was a major trading partner of Britain and it had depended for British troops on its security The Producers had sent troops there in the 1700s they sent a big Force there in 1762. Portugal's opponent Spain and Spain had traditionally looked to France bulbong Dynasty had ruled both both States throughout the century until Louis XVI was deposed in France um Spain then went to war with the French but following her defeat Spain moved increasingly into the French sphere of influence although it was a sphere of influence which was very much set by a bullying manner by the French discover the past with exclusive history documentaries from history hit and uncover the secrets of some of the most famous people and events in history history hit brings you the stories that shaped the world through exclusive documentaries from the world's top historians travel with us to the bloody Battle of Stalingrad or uncover the lives of the people who called Pompeii home we also aim to bring you the stories and legends that shaped our world through our award-winning podcast Network sign up now for a free trial and timeline fans get 50 of their first three months just be sure to use the code timeline at checkout Napoleon had other motives for invading Portugal he could move from there to Spain where he could take advantage of the political chaos in the country and absorb it into his French Empire Napoleon becomes interested in the idea of overthrowing the bourbon in Spain and replacing them by a member of his own family one of his brothers now this reflects first of all Napoleon's dynasticism he was very interested in the second half of the 1800s of pushing his family into kingdoms or principalities he had created in Holland for example Naples Westphalia and so on but it also reflects in a sense which what the factor one can often see with autocratic individuals and dictators which is a lack of willingness to accept the imperfections and imprecisions of a relationship the Spanish Throne was occupied by the demented Charles IV but the real power lay in the hands of Queen Maria Luisa and her lover Manuel de Godoy the Spanish or rather their ruling Clique which included Godoy the prince of peace they were in favor of working together with Napoleon against the British one because of the long history of conflict with us on the sea two because of our long contract on religion and thirdly because they felt that they could make some oh God I felt he made some quick bucks out of helping the French invade Portugal from which he was going to get a slice Napoleon believed there was widespread support in Spain for the country to join the Continental System in this region he seriously overstretched his support another little blind spot of his I think you know in the case of if I say jump you jump and in this particular case he said you will not have British goods but public taste becomes so dependent upon things like coffee tea spices silk cotton manufactured goods which were made in Britain at a fraction of the cost they made in Europe there was a ready market and people wanted these things and they were not really after a couple of months they were not really that sold on the money on the system that they would say okay we are going to deprive ourselves of all these luxuries of life and just so that you can win the war because they knew damn well that Napoleon wasn't depriving himself of these Commodities and neither was France Napoleon certainly miscalculated very badly over Spain he made the mistake of supposing that because the royal family in Spain was self-evidently decrepit that the rest of the country was in a similar condition and he also seriously underestimated the attachment that a large bulk of the Spanish population felt towards not so much Charles IV as towards the his eldest son and Heir the prince of the Asturias Ferdinand we forget sometimes that Napoleon had a lot of support from certain elements of Spanish Society namely the educated middle class who were really quite tired of the oppressive nature of the church this was after all the Church of the Inquisition which was you know just exactly the opposite of of of the the the ideals of of the the French government and so those people supported Napoleon but what Napoleon failed to take into account was that they were a relatively small group of people the common people of Spain really wanted nothing to do with the French with Napoleon these these really wonderful intellectual ideas of equality and freedom were really nothing compared to their deep religious beliefs and their deep sense of of patriotism for their Nation not only had Napoleon underestimated the level of resistance in Spain he had also underestimated the terrain the Iberian Peninsula was much more rugged than Napoleon had imagined the landscape was wild vegetation was sparse it would be impossible for an army to live off the land and with the rudimentary Supply and Logistics systems of the 19th century that was a serious error Napoleon miscalculated in his invasion of Portugal and Spain largely because of his overconfidence he had become so used to being right so used to being Victorious at this stage that he ignored the advice of others who knew better he apparently was also and I find this hard to believe very ignorant of the actual physical conditions in Spain he misjudged its size He was unaware of the Primitive state of the roads He was unaware of the barrenness of the country it has been said of Spain that Spain is a place where small armies get defeated in large army starve and he apparently hadn't heard this or if he had he'd chosen to ignore it the armies could not live off the land they had a great difficulty in moving around and consequently bite the very nature of the territory in Spain by its geography it was bound to be a crack a tougher nut to crack than let us say Bavaria Austria or or Prussia or indeed anywhere in on the great North German plain during the summer of 1807 Napoleon did a deal with Godoy they would cooperate to partition Portico and Godoy agreed to provide Napoleon with soldiers and supplies in return he would be granted all particles south of the river take us as a result of the secret pact in November 1807 a French army of 25 000 under androshuno Advanced through Spain towards Portugal Juno was a hot head who had earned himself the nickname The Storm he arrived at Lisbon on 30th November to find that the entire Portuguese Fleet had left and so an army under General Juno was sent across Spain to Portugal and occupied the Portuguese Capital with very little resistance other than curiously enough a Russian Fleet that was acting in a neutral capacity which refused to uh to leave the harbor but the Portuguese government fled to Brazil and it was it was a very simple occupation of Portugal by the French meanwhile in Spain plots were afoot to have Charles deposed his son Ferdinand supported such moves by 1808 popular Rising against Godoy forced the royal family to seek Exile in France Napoleon posing as a mediator between Father and Son met them at Bayonne there he ordered Charles to abdicate and Ferdinand to renounce a succession he then declared his brother Joseph Bonaparte king of Spain with his brother Jerome already installed as king of Westphalia Brother Louis occupying the Throne of Holland and even his stepson Eugene deputizing his Viceroy of Italy the Bonaparte family now effectively controlled Europe this was nepotism on a spectacular scale naturally Napoleon sincerely believed in the benefits of French rule as shown in a letter to Jerome the previous November the peoples of Germany as well as those of France Italy and Spain desire equality and demand liberal ideas I have been managing the Affairs of Europe long enough to be convinced that the burden imposed by the privileged classes is contrary to the wishes of General opinion be a constitutional King having established Joseph as king of Spain he dispatched Marshall Miura with an army to take Madrid and impose French rule if Napoleon thought the decision would be popular he was mistaken Napoleon horribly miscalculated the effect that his putting Joseph on the throne would have when the people thought Napoleon was going to support Ferdinand who they rather liked over others then that was fine with the Spanish people but once they realized there was going to be king Jose then then the deal was off and the Spanish people were not going to support the French the response is not what he had anticipated it becomes quite possible to seize the Royal Family but there is a popular reaction in Spain the French use enormous Force against it famous paintings of course have been shooting of people in Madrid by Goya but widespread popular resistance both by regular and by irregular Spanish forces ensure that Napoleon has to send large amounts of troops into Spain on 2nd May the Spanish people rose up against muraz Army they killed 150 of muras mamaloop Cavalry before the uprising was put down [Applause] foreign Mass executions followed and resistance to the French was stiffened this effectively developed into a civil war between Spanish liberals and reactionaries [Applause] worse was to follow at balen on 19th July 1808 some 40 000 Spaniards surrounded 9 000 raw French recruits and forced them to surrender it's the first time that a French army has been decisively defeated and indeed surrenders to the Spanish Army sent shockwaves through Europe and of course it's it's a very embarrassing occurrence as far as Napoleon's concerned and that encourages the Spanish Army in their pursuit of the fight against the French there was only one solution the emperor himself would have to intervene Napoleon hastily persuaded Tsar Alexander the first to keep the austrians in check while he personally took a hundred thousand veterans from the Grand Army and marched to Spain okay in Cadiz the Spaniards turned to Britain for help the Spanish had every reason to believe that the British would help simply on past record namely that the British appeared to have Limitless amounts of money and a limitless will to support the opponents of revolutionary France and then of Napoleon and although there was certainly a good deal of argument in Whitehall as to whether the Spanish should be assisted I don't think there was ever any doubt that they would be at this stage there was no unified Spanish opinion there were Regional yantas who were doing their own thing Independence of the central Hunter there was a widespread rejection of French rule and French interference in Spanish Affairs and the Junta of the Asturias approached Britain with a plea for support to fight against the French so the climate was ripe the Spanish quinters thought for Britain to come in and give them a hand to throw The Fringe out Sir Arthur Wellesley the future Duke of Wellington was dispatched with a force of 14 000 men in August they defeated Juno at femiera [Applause] despite his promising start to the campaign Wellesley was recalled and replaced by Sir John Moore Napoleon now had 200 000 troops deployed on the river Ebro the recapture of Madrid should have been a formality instead more with 28 000 men used diversionary tactics to draw off the French before retreating to karuna there on 11th January 1809 a famous rear guard action was fought more and six thousand of his men were killed but the British forces succeeded in withdrawing and Napoleon could hardly claim it as a victory his immediate hopes of crushing Spain and Portugal were unresolved and he presently withdrew from the campaign writing shortly afterwards Napoleon noted the error of his ways the era committed in Spain was not that of proceeding too rapidly but that of proceeding too slowly after my departure had I remained there a few months I would have taken Lisbon and Cadiz United all parties and pacified the country in his latter years in his Memoirs written on Saint Helena Napoleon saw it rather differently with hindsight he correctly analyzed the situation as a French victory the Spanish war ended in 1809 in three months I had beaten and dispersed the four Spanish armies of a hundred and sixty thousand men taken Madrid and Saragosa and forced General Moore to re-embark after losing half of his army his stores and Military chests Spain was conquered what Napoleon thought he could do in 1808 was to take control of Spain and thus Portugal very quickly and with a minimum of effort it turned out that he could not take control and that in the six years which it which then the camp the campaigns lasted it would prove to be an ulcer which is the common metaphor but it was really a sort of hemorrhaging it just hemorrhaged and hemorrhaged and Hemorrhage men and money in the past Napoleon had relied on all his Wars making profits he would make war the expense of one country to create a war chest to take on another one but in the case of Spain Not only was there no money to be extracted it became a net and very serious strain on his financial resources and more seriously ultimately on his military resources Joseph as king of Spain now took over command of the army it was a disaster the new king of Spain remained inactive wasting four months he should have marched on Cadiz Valencia and Lisbon political means would then have done the rest when Napoleon himself was in Spain he was not defeated militarily when Napoleon was there it really was like the Duke of Wellington is purported to have said that his hat on the battlefield was worth 50 000 men the fact was that Napoleon was very successful when he left he left his Marshals in charge and his brother the king and there was infighting there was a real lack of unity of command and so as a result where you could have had tremendous French victories instead you ended up with French losses and it turned out to be a disaster with French forces inactive Wellesley returned to the peninsula and soon established a foothold in Portugal it was a worrying development for Napoleon the anglo- Portuguese Army became a skillful and battle-hardened as the French army the Spanish Expedition under Sir John Moore is unsuccessful in Portugal on the other hand the British are more successful they land an expeditionary force it defeats the French and by the time the French arrived larger French forces arrive the British are well prepared for them and although it is to be a long process this is to be the basis of the eventual driving of the French out of Spain and what this has been termed the Spanish ulcer an ulcer in the sense that it took a continual amount of French resources to try and cope with the situation there British forces underwels me were able to defeat French forces and to resist French forces at a time when the rest of Europe was not doing so and that was a permanent question mark about the stability of the Napoleonic achievement in Spain the regular Spanish armies presented little problem for Napoleon's vastly Superior forces it was The Irregular forces soon to be termed guerrillas who proved a constant harassment with their lightning raids on supply lines the Spanish Countryside is so rugged that it lends itself very much to guerrilla warfare there's lots of places the gorillas can hide not just in the Villages but in the mountains and the valleys and what have you and it's very difficult to build to police there's also lots of vulnerable Convoy routes the great North Road for example from Beyond down to Madrid went through numerous defiles which could be easily ambushed and at the height of the Peninsular War simple convoys themselves would require whole brigades as an escort to be able to ensure that not just convoys but even even Messengers were able to get through with with important orders from the emperor and of course this created a great drain on Manpower and to try and combat It the French showed little quarter to the Spanish peasants that were caught in the act of Guerrilla warfare and this uh this little compassionately showed was reciprocated in kind by the Spanish themselves and will be tied any French soldier that was caught by the Spanish peasant or gorilla he came to a very bloody and ugly end captured French soldiers were stoned to death others were blinded with Pikes orchestrated and left to bleed to death it was a cruel and vicious way of waging psychological warfare morale was Rock Bottom they existed in a series of isolated forts cut off from one another if you sent out a battalion to do something and never came back if you send out a division they saw nothing their correspondence went adrift it was placed immediately on Wellington stable he was capable about maneuvering them which he frequently did it was a very very depressing sapping experience for the French and their armies not surprisingly many in the French army were beginning to lose their enthusiasm for this war men such as Marshall McDonald I had a very strong objection to the manner in which the war was carried on in Spain my objection had its roots in the dishonesty or what in high places is called policy which caused the invasion of the country however the noble and courageous resistance of its inhabitants triumphed over our efforts and our arms the biggest problem with Spain from Napoleon's point of view was not just the loss of men but the loss of prestige the loss of the era of invincibility he had gone into Spain he personally had been quite successful in his own campaign but once he left the whole thing began to unravel he was being booted out of the country or the French were being booted out of the country by a combination of of course the British soldiers under Wellington but also by the uprising of the very people to whom he had hoped to bring the enlightenment of his regime now we can all argue that those people would have been better off with King Joseph and under French control in terms of individual liberties and the lack of Oppression of the church and so on but the fact of the matter is they didn't see it that way and they ultimately were able to Prevail and this was a huge body blow to Napoleon's Prestige this really gave hope to a number of his old enemies that aha this guy can be defeated after all Napoleon soon faced problems from a new quarter Austria although defeated austellit seemed to have dented the power of the Habsburg Empire within three years the Austrian Archduke Charles had begun to rebuild the army he created a front-line force of 150 000 Men supplemented by regiments of mobile skirmishes and Sharpshooters after the catastrophic failures at ULM and astorits in 1805. the austrians really did make a big effort to put their house in order a really major off effort by their standards they are starting to learn from the experiences of the past decade or so and so During the period of 1806 through to the end of 1808 beginning of 1809 the Austrian Army learned from its betters looked at the French system of general staff and organization and adopted many of the good features of the French army and applied them to the Austrian Army this made the Austrian Army far more flexible and a much more able to react in the face of the enemy than he had previously done so before so by 1809 whilst Napoleon still maintained a certain content for the Austrian army they were by far a more efficient fighting machine Napoleon was beginning to find himself committed on too many fronts the Army was left with insufficient hardened troops raw recruits were drafted in a large proportion of the Grand Army had been absorbed into Spain itself many of the elite units and very experienced units were fighting down there so that when Napoleon had to put together an army many of them were formed from raw conscripts although it seemed very little action and had received very little training the French army after the camp of beloin any new conscripts in joining us were expected to be trained on the march to their units they would be they would join up they'd be issued with two pairs of boots a pair of pantaloons given a knapsack formed of maybe a group of half a dozen to a dozen men under a sergeant or a Corporal and they'd be marched off to the unit at that March depending on where the unit was could take upward of two or three months and as they got closer to the unit so the units with which they were marching would grow and they'd undergo drill and weapon training on the March so by the time they arrived at the unit they'd had undergone some basic instruction but there'd be no formal instruction in the same way as the Army had received at the camper beloin um so they were very much a raw army supplemented with experienced ncos and officers this was uncharacteristic of Napoleon and went against everything he believed in every war ought to be methodical because every war ought to be conducted in Conformity with the principles and rules of the art and with an object it should be carried on with the forces proportioned to the obstacles that are foreseen Napoleon was running into a structural weakness which had Afflicted the French war effort ever since the French Revolutionary Wars began in 1792. and that was that they were overstretched when that War began the population of France was about 28 million it was probably the most populous state in Europe but there were lots of other states quite close and so when they try as they do increasingly in the 1790s and they're more spectacularly under Napoleon to bring a large part eventually the whole of the European continent under their Direct Control they are trying to do it from a base which is too narrow and too shallow and that leads to over exertion Napoleon unwisely feels that he has suppressed Spanish opposition and it therefore seems possible for him to turn in 1809 and deal with the austrians um the austrians had not wanted to go to war with France again they had been badly beaten in the uh 1805 campaign but Napoleon is not satisfied with their position and it's fair to say that there is a revengeist a tradition or not tradition group within Austrian policy circles who interact with French aggression and Lead there to another War in February 1809 the Austrian Emperor Francis II decided his army now stood a good chance of beating the French he then delayed for two months before sending Archduke Charles with an army of 200 000 into Bavaria the idea was to attack the French before the Imperial Guard arrived from Spain meanwhile another Austrian Army commanded by Archduke John was to hold Italy Napoleon was still in Paris leaving the Army in Bavaria under the command of Martial Bertier he was no field commander and Napoleon was soon forced to take over inflicting heavy losses on the Austrian Army the presence of a general is indispensable he is the head the whole of the Army on 12 May the French entered Vienna aware that Archduke John was now moving his army from Italy Napoleon attempted to create a Bridgehead across the Danube at The Villages of Aspen and esling his army soon found itself outnumbered Napoleon had rushed forward on a way for victories in 1809 to Vienna which he immediately took and he pushed further on as fast as he could to the Danube it determined to thrust across it as fast as he could he was a believer in E equals m c squared kinetic energy he was going to smash the Archduke before the architect could re-think things however he underestimated the gravity of the obstacle he had to conquer that was the river Danube this River was in flood and his Bridges were flimsily built and were repeatedly broken by the stone-filled boats and the water Mills sorry flower mills which the austrians floated down stream to smash his Communications with his main Army on the Western Bank he thrustmosona's division across and told them talk told him to occupy the the twin Villages of us burn essling and create a Bridgehead there's his intention that that Bridgehead should be there until the rest of the army could come across but with the collapse of the pontoon bridges overnight Napoleon wasn't able to do that the austrians attacked first taking Napoleon unawares there were losses of twenty thousand killed or wounded on each side it was a humiliating defeat for the French and news quickly spread throughout Europe what Napoleon learned from Aspen was that he needed to take the Austrian Army very seriously this was the first true reverse in a major battle that Napoleon had suffered which was undeniably a defeat for the first time in a major battle Napoleon was unequivocally defeated by the austrians who showed they'd really had learned something from the defeats of 1805. so and Napoleon recognized that he had to pull back regroup reorganize and show and take the austrians seriously and and that he did he then Drew breath pulled back onto the island of lobao and rethought things determined to go ahead in a much more methodical matter manner with more um more permanently built Bridges across the river to stockpile his ammunition to bring up the cannon to concentrate his forces from Italy and from various parts of Bohemia ready for the final knockout blow at vagram Napoleon wouldn't be hurried into a second confrontation for six weeks he laid careful preparations as he waited for reinforcements to arrive the austrians hoped that hatred of the French would cause uprisings throughout Germany they especially looked for support from the prussians the prussians held back they could see that Napoleon was not yet defeated they decided to remain neutral on 5th July Archduke Charles had set up a defensive position in the village of vagram Napoleon was now ready for action the Battle of Wagram was impending which would in all probability determine the question of peace and it would afterwards be a proper time to negotiate with the Holy See and to bring these Troublesome Affairs to a close a two-day battle dominated by the artillery of both sides followed at last Napoleon broke through the Austrian Center [Applause] although the French were victorious there were heavy losses on both sides forty thousand austrians and thirty thousand French yet Charles was still able to withdraw intact 80 000 men and demand an armistice that grand was that was touch and go and although it was a French Victory the Archduke Charles retreated in good order and certainly lived a fight another day there was no need for the political will of the austrians to collapse as it did in 1809 and to throw their hands up and in Despair and say oh we've been beaten again they haven't really been beaten yet the piece of shernburn split up parts of Austria between Bavaria France and Russia and the continental system was imposed upon the Habsburg Empire Napoleon's enemies were already detecting signs of weakness he had set himself a hectic pace and was now finding it difficult to maintain he still had belief in his own infallibility and a tendency to underestimate the opposition by this time 1809 Napoleon had realized that he himself had only a certain limited time left for Waging War at this intensity physically there was going to come a time when he couldn't carry on he was however extremely pleased with the performance of his Grand Army it didn't need any more tweaking the commanders who could do the jobs were in the right situation and the whole organization responded to what he commanded it to do so from that point of view he was happy I think he remains living in something of a Fool's Paradise in 1809 it had been a very close call against the austrians and he'd been defeated Aspen but the signs were there for the really far-sighted the clear-sighted military observers to read someone like clousavix for example who could see what was going wrong with the Napoleonic War Machine the Spanish also was still busily hemorrhaging away uh there was no sign that that was being brought under control and there's an even more ominous sign which Napoleon was very slow to pick up and that is that the rhetoric of Liberty was moving from one side to another on the one hand we can see Bonaparte trying to put Joseph onto the Throne of Spain and thereby making it seem as this is now Warfare for the sake of the Bonaparte Dynasty rather than for the interests of France least of all the interests of humanity Liberty equality and fraternity on the other hand we see the Spanish and then in 1809 we see the austrians and others allied with them advancing their cause as the cause of Liberty they're stealing as it were the rhetoric from the French in June 1809 he sent Marshall Massena Prince of esling to Spain with 130 000 men uh busako he faced an anglo- Portuguese Army of 80 000. the French launched their attack the two armies were of an equal force but the position at busako was very strong the attack failed and the next morning the Army turned the lines by proceeding on to coimbra the enemy then affected his Retreat on Lisbon burning laying waste the country from the French point of view it was a total shambles but Napoleon had continuing problems with Holland in 1806 he had placed his brother Louis on the throne within a year he was writing to reprimand him a prince who gets a reputation for good nature in the first year of his Reign is laughed at in the second the love that Kings Inspire should be virile partly an apprehensive respect and partly a thirst for reputation when a king is said to be a good fellow his Reign is a failure beginning in 1806 Napoleon began placing his numerous relations on the Thrones of Europe he puts Joseph in as king of Naples in 1806 switches Joseph to Spain in 1808 and puts his brother-in-law mura on the throne of Naples he creates a kingdom for brother Jerome in Westphalia and he puts his brother Louis on the throne of the Netherlands and that was a that was a tough uh it was a tough assignment for for Louis the Dutch were notoriously truculent they'd been subjected to all manner of discrimination and exploitation by the French French since their Conquest in 1794-5 and most importantly the Dutch were suffering very seriously as a result of the continental system and the blockade of England the trouble with Louis and his over dutchness had bubbled up before the final break in 18010 and as early as 1807 Napoleon was aware by his network of spies that Louis was perhaps not only allowing but encouraging smuggling to save his realm from bankruptcy he sent one or two rather heavily worded warning shots across Louise Bao but eventually because Louis refused to come to heal in 1810 he called into Paris and forced him to abdicate and he absorbed the kingdom of Holland into Metropolitan France as he kept on absorbing bits of the coast meanwhile things were not going well in Napoleon's private life the empress Josephine was now into her forties and the likelihood of her producing more children was Slim he had an illegitimate son through his mistress Maria walevska but he needed a younger bride who would bear him a legitimate male heir he told Josephine of his intention to obtain a divorce I still love you but in politics there is no heart only head the divorce was quite amicable Napoleon insisted that Josephine should still retain the title of empress and maintain her court at malmaison even before the divorce Napoleon had set about searching for a new wife at one point he contemplated a match with the 16 year old Anna sister of Tsar Alexander the Tsar seemed all in favor of the marriage but his mother began to have serious misgivings over her daughter's happiness and whether she would be free to practice the Orthodox religion in Paris it was decided that Anna should wait until she was 18 before she was married Napoleon now turned his attentions to Austria Francis II had an eligible daughter Mari Louise in contrast to the fiercely independent Josephine Mari Louise was nervous and somewhat empty-headed Antoine tibauto the prefect of Marseille and a staunch Republican was one who attended the ceremony among High State officials I was not the only one to remain cool about his marriage which created so many anxieties as far as men of the Revolution were concerned neither Instinct nor reason LED them to see any good in it but when the news breaks in 1810 that Napoleon is going to marry the daughter of the emperor Francis the first it's a sensation Mary Louise's great art Mary Antoinette had been executed as recently as 1793 so this was a a very peculiar event indeed and called Shock horror throughout aristocratic circles um in Europe they they trembled with indignation and horror at the event remember that Napoleon was Corsican and he had this Corsican sense of the importance and the Loyalty of family he really believed I think that if he could tie himself to the Emperor of Austria that he would never again have to worry about Austria being an enemy joining a coalition against him that Family Ties would be much more important than geopolitical considerations I don't think the marriage to Mary Louise had any effect on his conduct policy whatsoever he was very attached to her in fact the correspondence between them is really rather touching I mean clearly he did admire her perhaps even love us she certainly fell in love with him was greatly impressed by sexual prowess apart from anything else um but I don't think it had any impact on Napoleon's policy he continued to treat the habsburgs as if they were his vassals and that was really the only relationship that Napoleon could tolerate he could not tolerate a union between equals it had to be a Lord and vassal situation and he was always the Lord the wedding took place in April 1810 the Austrian Ambassador Prince schwarzenberg laid on a lavish fate to celebrate the Union in the garden of his hotel in Paris however some Gore's draperies caught fire and there were several deaths despite the tragedy Mari Louise enjoyed her wedding night in July 1810 she became pregnant on 20th of March 1811 she went into labor Mari Louise gave birth to a healthy son who was named the king of Rome when Josephine heard the news she sent her congratulations Napoleon Overjoyed wrote back sun is plump and healthy he has my chest my mouth my eyes I am at the summit of my happiness 1811 in some respects as the Holly point of the Napoleonic position there are still opponents Britain has in no way been defeated there was still intensive opposition in Iberia in Spain and Portugal but if one puts that to one side what is striking is that most of Europe is under French control of French hegemony there is then one other power Russia now Russia Tsar Alexander had reached a deal um with Napoleon uh on the barge and the river Neiman when they'd met the the tillset agreement in 1807 and for want of a better word this is an agreement about spheres of influence much of Europe under the French sphere of influence but obviously a Russian sphere of influence to the east having said that Napoleon isn't satisfied he is a man who finds it very difficult to accept that anything other than what he wants and in particular in the case of the Russians he is dissatisfied because they are not anymore paying attention to the Continental System they feel that trade with Britain is important to their economy and from again Napoleon is building up his army again now initially it looks as though he intended in 1810 not to attack Russia but just to intimidate Russia it's in 1811 that he starts more actively planning for war [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Timeline - World History Documentaries

Views: 170,722

Keywords: Battle for control, Consequences of invasion, Continental trade, Dan Snow, Determination, Economic warfare, European warfare, French empire expansion, Historical podcast, Historical sources, History, History buffs, Invasion of Iberian Peninsula, Loss and gain of territories, Military history, Napoleon Bonaparte, Resistance movements, Spain, Spanish history, Timeline - World History Documentaries, Timeline of events

Id: N73VMXCXzo8

Length: 48min 51sec (2931 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 19 2023