Grande Armée

La Grande Armée (French for 'The Great Army'; French pronunciation: [ɡʀɑ̃d aʀme]) was the main military component of the French Imperial Army commanded by Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte during the Napoleonic Wars. From 1804 to 1808, it won a series of military victories that allowed the French Empire to exercise unprecedented control over most of Europe. Widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest fighting forces ever assembled, it suffered enormous losses during the disastrous Peninsular War followed by the invasion of Russia in 1812, after which it never recovered its strategic superiority and ended in total defeat for Napoleonic France by the Peace of Paris in 1815.

The Grande Armée was formed in 1804 from the L'Armée des côtes de l'Océan (Army of the Ocean Coasts), a force of over 100,000 men that Napoleon had assembled for the proposed invasion of Britain. Napoleon later deployed the army in Central Europe to eliminate the combined threat of Austria and Russia, which were part of the Third Coalition formed against France. Thereafter, the Grande Armée was the principal military force deployed in the campaigns of 1806/7, the French invasion of Spain, and in the War of the Fifth Coalition, where the French army slowly lost its veteran soldiers, strength and prestige, and in the conflicts of 1812, 1813–14, and 1815. In practice, however, the term Grande Armée is used in English to refer to all the multinational forces gathered by Napoleon in his campaigns.

In addition to its size and multinational composition, the Grande Armée was known in history for its innovative formations, tactics, logistics, and communications. While most contingents were commanded by French generals, except for the Polish and Austrian corps, soldiers could climb the ranks regardless of class, wealth, or national origin, though the ultimate outcome was total defeat.

Upon its formation, the Grande Armée consisted of six corps under the command of Napoleon's marshals and senior generals. When the Austrian and Russian armies began preparations to invade France in late 1805, the Grande Armée was quickly ordered across the Rhine into southern Germany, leading to Napoleon's victories at Ulm and Austerlitz. The French Army grew as Napoleon seized power across Europe, recruiting troops from occupied and allied nations; it reached its peak of one million men at the start of the Russian campaign in 1812, with the Grande Armée reaching its height of 413,000 French soldiers and over 600,000 men overall when including foreign recruits.

In summer of 1812, as many as 300,000 French troops fought in the Peninsular War. Napoleon opened a second war front as the Grande Armée marched slowly east, and the Russians fell back with its approach. After the capture of Smolensk and victory at Borodino, the French reached Moscow on 14 September 1812. However, the army was already drastically reduced by skirmishes with the Russians, disease (principally typhus), desertion, heat, exhaustion, and long communication lines. The army spent a month in Moscow but was ultimately forced to march back westward. Cold, starvation, and disease, as well as constant harassment by Cossacks and Russian partisans, resulted in the Grande Armée's utter destruction as a fighting force. Only 120,000 men survived to leave Russia (excluding early deserters); of these, 50,000 were Austrians, Prussians, and other Germans, 20,000 were Poles, and just 35,000 were French. As many as 380,000 died in the campaign.

Napoleon led a new army during the campaign in Germany in 1813, the defense of France in 1814, and the Waterloo campaign in 1815, but the Grande Armée would never regain its height of June 1812, and France would find itself invaded on multiple fronts from the Spanish border to the German border. In total, from 1805 to 1813, over 2.1 million Frenchmen were conscripted into the French Imperial Army.