Louis-Nicolas Davout, duke of Auerstedt

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Louis-Nicolas Davout, duke of Auerstedt

Q: What were the Napoleonic Wars?

The Napoleonic Wars were a series of conflicts between Napoleon ’s France and a shifting web of alliances among other European powers. The wars lasted from about 1800 to 1815, and for a brief time they made Napoleon the master of Europe.

Q: When did the Napoleonic Wars take place?

The Napoleonic Wars took place from about 1800 to 1815. They were a continuation of the French Revolutionary wars , which ran from 1792 to 1799. Together these conflicts represented 23 years of nearly uninterrupted war in Europe.

Q: Why were the Napoleonic Wars important?

The Congress of Vienna , which was the settlement that followed the Napoleonic Wars, remade the map of Europe and set the stage for the emergence of Germany and Italy as unified states. The pressures of the Napoleonic Wars also likely prompted Napoleon to sell the Louisiana Territory to the United States.

Q: How did the Napoleonic Wars end?

After the Allies entered Paris in March 1814, Napoleon abdicated and was exiled to the island of Elba. He returned to France in March 1815 and rebuilt his army, but he was defeated by Allied forces under the duke of Wellington and Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher at the Battle of Waterloo on June 18, 1815. Only after this defeat and Napoleon’s second abdication did the Napoleonic Wars end.

Q: What did the Napoleonic Wars have to do with the Era of Good Feelings in the United States?

The end of the Napoleonic Wars prompted a period of disengagement from European affairs by the United States that was known as the Era of Good Feelings . The “good feelings” in the United States were created by isolationism, a lull in sectional tension, and the political calm that resulted from the collapse of the Federalist Party .

French general

Also known as: Louis-Nicolas Davout, Duc d’Auerstedt, Prince d’Eckmühl, Louis-Nicolas d’Avout

Written by John G. Gallaher

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French in full:: Louis-Nicolas Davout, duc d’Auerstedt, prince d’Eckmühl

Original name:: Louis-Nicolas d’Avout

Born:: May 10, 1770, Annoux, France

Died:: June 1, 1823, Paris (aged 53)

Role In:: Battle of Austerlitz; Battle of Jena; Napoleonic Wars

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Louis-Nicolas Davout, duke of Auerstedt (born May 10, 1770, Annoux, France—died June 1, 1823, Paris) was a French marshal who was one of the most distinguished of Napoleon’s field commanders.

Born into the noble family of d’Avout, he was educated at the École Royale Militaire in Paris and entered Louis XVI’s service as a second lieutenant in 1788. Amid the divisions caused by the French Revolution in the army, d’Avout sided with the pro-revolutionaries in 1790 and was forced out, but he was reinstated after the establishment of the First Republic two years later. At that time he changed the spelling of his name to Davout so as not to indicate his noble birth.

He served with distinction in the armies in northern France and Belgium and rose rapidly to the rank of general of brigade (1793). But the antiaristocratic Jacobins soon purged him from his position; after their fall from power in 1794, he was reinstated yet again. In 1798 he served under Napoleon in Egypt. Returning to France in 1800, Davout later married Louise-Aimée Leclerc, sister-in-law to Napoleon’s sister Pauline Bonaparte.

Given command of the troops at Bruges that became the Third Corps of Napoleon’s army and named marshal of the empire, Davout played a major role in the Battle of Austerlitz (1805). The following year, at Auerstädt, with 26,000 men of the Third Corps, he destroyed a Prussian army of nearly 60,000 troops; that success would earn him the title duke of Auerstädt. He also played a significant role in the Battles of Eylau (1807), Eckmühl (1809), and Wagram (1809).

Davout commanded the First Corps during Napoleon’s Russian campaign (1812) and was wounded at the Battle of Borodino. In 1813 Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Leipzig, and his army retreated west of the Rhine. Davout was left in command of the besieged city of Hamburg, and from October 1813 to May 1814 he held the city, surrendering it only when the new Bourbon government of France confirmed that Napoleon had abdicated.

Upon Davout’s return to France, Louis XVIII refused to receive him. When Napoleon returned to power in 1815, Davout was named minister of war. Several months later, after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, Davout took the remains of the army south of the Loire River. He was forced out of the army and exiled to central France. In 1819 Davout was restored to his honours and title and named a peer of France.

John G. Gallaher The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Napoleonic Wars

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Greatest extent of Napoleon I's empire, 1812

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Napoleonic Wars

European history

Written and fact-checked by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Last Updated: Feb 21, 2025 • Article History

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Date:: c. 1801 - 1815

Location:: Europe

Participants:: Austria; France; Ottoman Empire; Portugal; Prussia; Russia; Spain; United Kingdom

Context:: British Empire

Major Events:: Battle of the Nile; Peninsular War; Battle of the Pyramids; Battle of Trafalgar; Battle of Waterloo

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What were the Napoleonic Wars?

When did the Napoleonic Wars take place?

Why were the Napoleonic Wars important?

How did the Napoleonic Wars end?

What did the Napoleonic Wars have to do with the Era of Good Feelings in the United States?

Napoleonic Wars, series of wars between Napoleonic France and shifting alliances of other European powers that produced a brief French hegemony over most of Europe. Along with the French Revolutionary wars, the Napoleonic Wars constitute a 23-year period of recurrent conflict that concluded only with the Battle of Waterloo and Napoleon’s second abdication on June 22, 1815.

(See “Napoleon’s Major Battles” Interactive Map)

When the Coup of 18–19 Brumaire (November 9–10, 1799) brought Napoleon Bonaparte to power, the Second Coalition against France was beginning to break up. In Holland a capitulation had been signed for the withdrawal of the Anglo-Russian expeditionary force. Although the Russo-Austrian forces in Italy had won a series of victories, the course of the campaign in Switzerland had reflected growing differences between Austria and Russia. Despite Russia’s subsequent abandonment of the common cause and France’s recovery of control over Holland and Switzerland, the British government paid no serious attention to Bonaparte’s proposals for peace in December 1799. On the one hand the regime in France had yet to prove itself and on the other it was expected that the Austrians would make further gains.

The defeat of Austria, 1800–01

Napoleon IFirst Consul Bonaparte, oil on canvas by Antoine-Jean Gros, c. 1802; National Museum of the Legion of Honor, Paris.

Though Bonaparte had to embark on the campaigns of 1800 with inadequate forces and funds, the weaknesses of allied strategy went far to offset the disadvantages under which he laboured. Austria had decided on an equal division of its strength by maintaining armies of approximately 100,000 men in both the German and Italian theatres. Instead of reinforcing Austrian strength in northern Italy, where there was most hope of success, the British government spent its efforts in limited and isolated enterprises, among them an expedition of 6,000 men to capture Belle-Île off the Brittany coast and another of 5,000 to join the 6,000 already on the Balearic Island of Minorca. When in June these two forces were diverted to cooperate with the Austrians they arrived off the Italian coast too late to be of use.

Bonaparte’s plan was to treat Italy as a secondary theatre and to seek a decisive victory in Germany. It proved impossible to increase Victor Moreau’s Army of the Rhine to more than 120,000—too small a margin of superiority to guarantee the success required. Nevertheless, Bonaparte was busy with the creation of an army of reserve which was to be concentrated around Dijon and was destined to act under his command in Italy. Until he had engaged this force in the south, Bonaparte would be able, should the need arise, to take it to Moreau’s assistance. In Italy André Masséna’s 30,000–40,000 outnumbered troops were to face the Austrians in the Apennines and in the Maritime Alps until the army of reserve, marching to the south of the Army of the Rhine, should cross the Alps, fall upon the Austrians’ lines of communication, cut off their retreat from Piedmont, and bring them to battle. Bonaparte had hoped that Moreau would mass the Army of the Rhine in Switzerland and cross the river at Schaffhausen to turn the Austrian left in strength and obtain a decisive victory before dispatching some of his army to join the force descending on the rear of the Austrians in Italy. Moreau, however, preferred to cross the Rhine at intervals over a distance of 60 miles (approximately 100 km) and to encounter the Austrians before concentrating his own forces.

Louis IX of France (St. Louis), stained glass window of Louis IX during the Crusades. (Unknown location.)

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