The Futility of War Part 1 - Napoleon

Napoleon Bonaparte, later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French general and statesman who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led a series of military campaigns across Europe during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars from 1796 to 1815.

 After the revolution (1789-1792), Napoleon led various campaigns across Europe. He invaded Egypt in 1798 with the purpose of disrupting British trade. He was defeated at the Battle of the Nile by the British Admiral Nelson.

Over his next few years as Emperor there were major conflicts throughout Europe, known as the Napoleonic Wars, including campaigns in Spain and Portugal, Eastern Europe and notably an invasion oof Russia in 1812, where he lost most of his army who were frozen to death.

The Arc de Triomphe was erected in his honour in 1806 celebrating his various campaigns, and in 1814, as a result of the European treaty of Fontainebleau, Napoleon was exiled to the Island of Elba, part of Corsica, from which he escaped. He again led a French Army which, on June 18th, 1815, was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo by British forces under Wellington and a Prussian army under Blucher.

Napoleon eventually surrendered to the British on July 15th, 1815. The British exiled him to the Island of St Helena in the South Atlantic, where he died in 1821. He was finally buried in the Dome des Invalides in Paris in 1840 as a hero!

With all the campaigns, battles and wars conducted by Napoleon, did the territory known as France gain at all? The answer is no – not one square meter!

It seems that, in the end, all of Napoleon’s campaigns, the decades of warfare, were all completely pointless.

In light of this, how do we think Putin’s war in Ukraine will turn out? So far there have been one million Russian casualties, including dead and wounded.

He has destroyed his relationship with Western Europe and the Western world generally, and is in the processing of bankrupting Russia.

And to what end?