Napoleon's Great Army was built to invade Britain and died in Russia
The Grande Armée began in 1804 as a force camped at Boulogne for an invasion of Britain that never came. Turned east, it crushed Austria, Russia and Prussia in two years. Then, in 1812, a host of 685,000 marched into Russia and only 93,000 came back.
What made it formidable was organisation as much as size. It started with six corps under Napoleon's marshals, and soldiers could rise through the ranks regardless of class, wealth or origin, unlike most European armies of the day. The corps moved in a formation called the bataillon-carre, marching close enough to support one another and switching roles as vanguard, rearguard or flank as events demanded.
Leaving Boulogne in late August 1805, it swept round the Austrian general Karl von Mack at Ulm, taking 60,000 prisoners for the loss of about 2,000 French. On 2 December the outnumbered French routed a Russo-Austrian army at Austerlitz, and the Holy Roman Empire was dissolved the next year. In October 1806 twin victories at Jena and Auerstedt shattered Prussia, and the pursuit yielded 140,000 prisoners. After a bloody stalemate at Eylau, victory at Friedland in June 1807 produced the Treaties of Tilsit, leaving Napoleon with no enemies on the continent. The army was then dissolved in October 1808 and reorganised.
For Russia, Napoleon gathered his largest force ever, over a third of it non-French: Poles, Austrians, Bavarians, Saxons, Prussians, even 2,000 Irish. It crossed the Niemen on 24 June 1812, but the Russian armies slipped its grip three times. Borodino, on 7 September, was a costly and indecisive win, and a week later the French entered a largely empty, burning Moscow. More than half the army had already melted away during summer from typhus, heat, desertion and skirmishes, before the famous winter retreat began on 19 October.
By the Berezina crossing Napoleon had about 49,000 effective troops, saved by General Eble's engineers. The army never regained its strength. New levies won at Lutzen, Bautzen and Dresden in 1813 before defeat at Leipzig, and the final collapse came in the Hundred Days of 1815. Between 1805 and 1813 France conscripted more than 2.1 million men, and many historians put French military deaths in the wars at around one million.
Source: Grande Armée
