Napoleon’s biggest battles

9 min read

We examine the stunning victories and painful defeats that would come to define the ruler’s military career

WORDS: SPENCER MIZEN

SIEGE OF TOULON

A coloured engraving depicts a youthful Napoleon explaining his plans for taking the port of Toulon

GETTY IMAGES X3, ALAMY X4

AUGUSTDECEMBER 1793

An audacious raid that announced Napoleon Bonaparte to the world

It may not be as celebrated as the likes of Austerlitz or Friedland (see page 37). Yet when it comes to evaluating Napoleon’s greatest victories, the Siege of Toulon cannot be overlooked. It was here, after all, that he first revealed his genius.

The Siege of Toulon took place from August to December 1793 at the height of the French Revolutionary Wars. French royalist forces, supported by an Anglo-Spanish fleet, had seized the Mediterranean port, and French republican efforts to dislodge them initially failed.

Napoleon changed all that. He masterminded an attack that, in the early hours of 17 December, ejected the allies from a series of forts along Toulon’s anchorage. Napoleon lost blood in the assault, courtesy of a wound to the thigh inflicted by a British bayonet. But he gained a lot more.

THE NILE

Admiral Horatio Nelson’s victory at Aboukir Bay thwarted France’s ambitions in the Mediterranean

1–3 AUGUST 1798

When Napoleon’s aims of dominating the Mediterranean sank without trace

By the end of the 1790s, Napoleon was rapidly establishing himself as a dominant figure across much of continental Europe. It was a different story on water, however. For more than a decade, the Royal Navy foiled Napoleon’s attempts to dominate the high seas – thanks, to a considerable extent, to Admiral Horatio Nelson’s victory in Aboukir Bay from 1–3 August 1798.

The battle of the Nile was triggered by Napoleon’s decision to send a fleet to Egypt to support a French occupation of the country. Nelson tracked the French to the coast of north Africa and, at dusk, decided to pounce. The battle raged all night. Nelson himself sustained a wound to the head. But, by early the following day, just two of France’s 13 ships of the line had evaded capture or destruction. The British were now the undisputed masters of the Mediterranean.

TRAFALGAR

Nelson, with his arm outstretched, is depicted on board HMS Victory prior to his demise at Trafalgar

21 OCTOBER 1805

The feted naval clash that ended Nelson’s life – and Napoleon’s plans to invade Britain

An iconic admiral dies at the moment of his greatest victory. Is it any wonder that, for the British people at least, the battle of Trafalgar held more emotional resonance than perhaps any other battle

This article is from...

History Revealed Magazine

11 May 2023

History of War

Hitler’s commandos

While Allied Special Forces were busy testing the boundaries of ‘ungentlemanly warfare’, the Third Reich was also attempting to build its own crop of crack fighters. No task was too dangerous or dirty for these men, who were led by Hitler’s favourite ‘commando’, Otto Skorzeny. But were these ‘elite’ troops, and the man who led them, the stuff of legend or another piece of over-hyped military mythology?

Who Do You Think You Are?

Q & a

Q I am trying to work out what Joseph Mellor Vernon (1886–1953) did during the First World War. A pottery worker living in Porthill, Stoke-on-Trent, he married Phoebe Turner in 1911 and they had three

Fortean Times

Thelevitationsofst josephofcopertinoexplained?

The idea of human levitation is, by its very nature, subversive and surreal. The phenomenon – if we temporarily accept such a thing in order to examine it – involves events that imply that our underst

BBC Wildlife Magazine

On thehunt

S ince 2009, Amy Dickman has come across some horrific sights on the edge of Ruaha National Park in Central Tanzania where she studies, and tries to resolve, conflict between people and predators. The

BBC Sky at Night Magazine

Touching thesun

On 12 August 2018, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe (PSP) blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station into the pre-dawn Florida sky on a mission to become the first-ever spacecraft to ‘touch the Sun’.