Hi Everyone, Starting the first of what will be a series of threads here. If you could only ever ask ONE question about Napoleon, what would it be, and why?
(Hopefully someone will try to answer that question for you - you can post more than one question if you want!)
Napoleon's three greatest mistakes were invading the Spanish Peninsula, the invasion of Russia, and the Continental System.
The one that did the most damage was the war in Spain. It saddled Napoleon with a continuous second front and did more lasting damage than the invasion of Russia in that it was a constant drain on French and allied manpower.
Interestingly, at the beginning of 1813 some of Napoleon's subordinates urged him to withdraw half of the veterans from Spain and send them to central Europe to face the Prussians and Russians. That could have been decisive and would undoubtedly have kept Austria out of the war.
Unfortunately, Napoleon refused to do it, though he did draw on the French armies in Spain for cadres and replacements, sometimes entire units. That decision compounded the error and might have been the decisive decision of 1813.
Why didn't he make lasting peace in 1808, he could have, in case he was hell bent to do it, instead he invaded Spain.
Napoleon's definition of 'lucky' was the commanders ability to exploit accidents.
According to the British online newspaper, The Independent, this is a wrongly attributed quote. It actually came from Cardinal Mazarin in the mid-17th century, who said “The question is not whether he is a good general, but is he a lucky general?“. Napoleon seems to have referred to his own luck quite a lot, but this I think is about his intelligence effort - without key spies, his luck had deserved him. Napoleon is quoted by Chandler as saying the hour after 0200 was a special hour - this seems to be when the spies came in.
I heard once that Napoleon said he didn't care about getting generals who were smart; he just wanted generals who were lucky. Anybody else heard this, and what is the source and exact quotation, in French if possible?
We can just about prove you knew the Austrian plans for Rivoli, but Austerlitz is more at the prima facie stage - so go on, how much did you know in advance?
What was the bigger mistake for Napoleon: Invading Spain, invading Russia, or returning to France in 1814?
I'm in two minds about this. Spain (and the Peninsular War which followed) drained the French army of men and resources, but wasn't a 'game changer' until much later in the conflict. Russia had more obvious, and much wider ranging impacts, but would the consequences of Russia have been on the same scale without the Peninsular War?