15 - Habsburg Grand Strategy in the Napoleonic Wars

Summary

Perhaps no other part of Europe was transformed more by the Napoleonic whirlwind than German-speaking Central Europe. Years of war destroyed the venerable Holy Roman Empire and almost all the states within it, while radically altering the shape and socio-economic systems of those that remained. Although the German Habsburgs managed to survive they, too, were compelled to adjust to the new realities of the revolutionary age. Even before the first shots were fired, they lost the security they had derived from their admittedly tepid alliance with Bourbon France. Whereas they lost the rich Austrian Netherlands barely a year into the conflict, the revolution in military and diplomatic tactics that Napoleon Bonaparte employed inflicted far worse damage over the ensuing two decades.