The Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of major conflicts that pitted Napoleon Bonaparte’s French Empire against a shifting series of coalitions led primarily by Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia. What began as an extension of the French Revolutionary Wars quickly became a continent-wide struggle for dominance, as Napoleon conquered much of Europe, spread revolutionary legal and administrative reforms, and redrew the political map—only to be ultimately defeated at Waterloo in 1815, reshaping the modern world in the process.