De-Constructing the French Wars: Napoleon as Anti-Strategist

The Emperor Napoleon I is regarded as one of the greatest generals of all time and, as such, he has attracted an immense bibliography. In spite of this, there have been few studies of him as a strategist: instead, it is simply assumed that it was enough for the Emperor to have conducted an operation for it to have had a logical strategic goal. In this article, however, Napoleon is shown to have been primarily an opportunist, who was frequently guided by the needs of the moment and swayed from his course by circumstance, while it is further suggested that, even considered on their own merits, many of his decisions were faulty in the extreme.