History UsefulNotes / TheNapoleonicWars

* See UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparteAndTheNapoleonicWarsInFiction.

* ''Napoleon Crossing the Alps'' by Creator/JacquesLouisDavid (produced in five versions, 1801-1805) shows an idealized Napoleon on a rearing charger. In 1850 Paul Delaroche produced a painting showing the same subject as it really happened: Napoleon riding on a mule led by a guide.

While Britain continued the war alone, they did have one last partner in Continental Europe: Portugal. The Portuguese are the oldest allies of Britain, and it is so surprise that they refused to implement Napoleon's trade embargo on the British. To add credibility to his word and attempt to strangle the British economy, Napoleon decided that Portugal had to be brought to terms. Together with Spain, the French invaded Portugal.\\\

Napoleon's invasion was fought with supply problems from the very beginning. They had yet to even leave the Duchy of Warsaw before the supply train started breaking down. It was a portend of things to come. Part of the issue was that Napoleon's army was simply too gigantic; ''Le Grande Armee'' forces numbered at least 400,000, with some estimates putting it above 600,000. It was an impressive host for the time, and it was assembled with forces from every client nation of France. Much of the army spoke no French at all, yet many contingents, particularly the Italians, would gain fame for their resolve. However, it would all be for nothing, as a force of that size proved impossible for the infrastructure that had been prepared for it, and immediately the invasion ran into problems.\\\

* More books have been written about Napoleon than about anyone else in history, with the possible exceptions of UsefulNotes/{{Jesus}}, UsefulNotes/AbrahamLincoln and UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler.

* French historian Thierry Lentz, director of the Fondation Napoléon, is famous for his detailed debunkings (including via books) of both approximations and pseudo-history about Napoleon and the wars.

* The Napoleonic Wars were commemorated in a number of monuments all over UsefulNotes/{{Europe}}, notably the Column of the Grande Armée (on the place Vendôme), the Arc de Triomphe and the smaller Arc de Triomphe du Carroussel in UsefulNotes/{{Paris}}, Nelson's Column on Trafalgar Square in UsefulNotes/{{London}}, Nelson's Pillar on O'Connell Street in UsefulNotes/{{Dublin}} (destroyed by Irish republicans in 1966), the cast-iron ''Kreuzbergdenkmal'' in UsefulNotes/{{Berlin}}, the Lion of Waterloo (which commemorates the wounding of the Prince of Orange, later King William II of the Netherlands), and the ''Völkerschlachtsdenkmal'' (1913) in Leipzig.

* French historian Thierry Lentz, director of the Fondation Napoléon; is famous for his detailed debunkings (including via books) of both approximations and pseudo-history about Napoleon and the wars.

!!Art and Architecture

For fiction and other works based on these wars in various media, see [[UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparteAndTheNapoleonicWarsInFiction here]].

* The ''Brigadier Gerard'' books by Creator/ArthurConanDoyle
* ''Goya'' by Lion Feuchtwanger (also filmed)
* ''Literature/FevreDream''
* ''Literature/SevenMenOfGascony''
** Delderfield also wrote ''Too Few for Drums'' featuring a PluckyMiddie ON LAND!
* ''Conquest'' aka ''Marie Walewska'' - Creator/GretaGarbo plays Napoleon's Polish mistress
* ''Un Ballo in Maschera'' by Music/GiuseppeVerdi is an operatic dramatization of the assassination of king Gustavus III of Sweden, only due to the censors' constraint the story had to be transposed to ... Massachusetts.
* Norwegian playwright Creator/{{Henrik Ibsen}} wrote an epic poem based on stories from the British blockade of Norway. The poem, ''Terje Vigen'', is arguably Ibsen´s greatest {{tear jerker}}, relating the story of a fisherman trying to breach the blockade by rowing to Denmark for supplies for his family. The Brits intervene, of course, and the antagonist spends the rest of the war in prison, only to find his family dead when returning home. The rest of the poem tells of his resentment and eventual revenge on the British lord who made him miserable. They all figure it out in the end, though. [[http://www.sitater.com/home/ibsen/vigen/idx_eng.htm English translation.]]
* Thomas Flanagan's ''The Year of the French'' deals with events in County Mayo during the 1798 Rebellion in Ireland. It was adapted into an Irish-British-French television series in 1982 with music by ''The Chieftains''.
* The novella ''Liberty or Death'' by David Cook also deals with the Irish Rebellion of 1798.
* The HistoricalFiction book series ''Episodios Nacionales'' (National Episodes) by Benito Pérez Galdós, has its first ten novels set in this time period, from ''Trafalgar'' (taking place during the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Trafalgar eponymous battle]] in 1805) to ''The Battle of the Arapiles'' (Spanish name for the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Salamanca Battle of Salamanca]] in 1812). The main character in these novels (save for ''Gerona'') is Gabriel Araceli, who, like Forrest Gump, ends up meeting many historical characters and takes part in historical events (such as the aforementioned Battle of Trafalgar and the May 2nd Uprising).

* The Napoleonic Wars were commemorated in a number of monuments all over Europe, notably the Column of the Grande Armée (on the place Vendôme), the Arc de Triomphe and the smaller Arc de Triomphe du Carroussel in UsefulNotes/{{Paris}}, Nelson's Column on Trafalgar Square in UsefulNotes/{{London}}, Nelson's Pillar on O'Connell Street in UsefulNotes/{{Dublin}} (destroyed by Irish republicans in 1966), the cast-iron ''Kreuzbergdenkmal'' in UsefulNotes/{{Berlin}}, the Lion of Waterloo (which commemorates the wounding of the Prince of Orange, later King William II of the Netherlands), and the ''Völkerschlachtsdenkmal'' (1913) in Leipzig.

* ''Literature/BloodyJack''.

* ''Literature/HoratioHornblower''

* ''Literature/AubreyMaturin''
* ''Literature/TheTalesOfEnsignStal'': A collection of poems about the Finnish war.
* Lauren Willig's ''Literature/PinkCarnation'' series follows on from ''Literature/TheScarletPimpernel'' and tracks the adventures of similarly-named spies in Britain, Ireland, France and India during the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon himself appears in the first book.

* Lord Byron's ''Don Juan'' contains references to the Russian siege of Izmail (1790). His ''Childe Harold'' also contains a famous poetic version of the Duchess of Richmond's ball on the eve of the Waterloo campaign.
* The Polish national epic ''Pan Tadeusz'' by Adam Mickiewicz is set in Lithuania before and during Napoleon's invasion of Russia.
* Napoleon and the Napoleonic Wars turn up all over the place in the works of [[UsefulNotes/DichterAndDenker Heinrich Heine]]. Best known is his poem "The Grenadiers", which was set to music by Music/RobertSchumann (using the German original) and Music/RichardWagner (using a French translation - he wrote this when he lived in Paris).
* ''Waterloo oder Die hundert Tage'' ("Waterloo or The Hundred Days") by German playwright Christian Dietrich Grabbe (1801-1836). A huge unwieldy play that had to wait until 1895 for its first performance. Grabbe also left the fragment of a drama called ''Kosciuszko'' about the Polish national hero.
* [[UsefulNotes/DichterAndDenker Theodor Fontane's]] first novel, ''Before the Storm'', is set in Prussia in the winter of 1812/13. ''Schach von Wuthenow'' presents the country as ossified on the eve of the war of 1806.
* The ''Conscript of 1813'' and ''Waterloo'' by Erckmann and Chatrian. One of the most realistic 19th century novelizations of the last years of the wars from the perspective of an unassuming Alsatian recruit.

* ''The Man of Destiny'' by George Bernard Shaw

* The ''Literature/{{Temeraire}}'' series follows the Wars of the Third and Fourth Coalitions [[InSpiteOfANail fairly closely]] (with the obvious exception of the [[DragonRider draconic air forces]]) before going completely OffTheRails in the fourth book.

* ''Literature/BillyBudd'' takes place in the summer of 1797, with the Nore mutiny casting a shadow over the plot.

Napoleon had thought that a decisive defeat of the Russian armies would force them to capitulate, just as it had before. However, Russian Minister of War Barclay de Tolly had no intention to give Napoleon the decisive battle he sought, and instead implemented a "scorched earth" policy, burning fields and infrastructure and pulling back his forces. The policy was working. Napoleon's supply lines were stretched thin and proved inadequate to supply his massive force over such a vast distance. However, de Tolly's policy was deeply unpopular with the Russian people and monarchy, as a lack of decisive victories and the surrendering of massive amounts of territory -albeit burned and useless territory- was demoralizing to the Russian people. This compelled de Tolly to face Napoleon in a pitched battle at Smolensk, which he lost. He was sacked and replaced by Prince Mikhail Kutuzov. Despite his advancing age and disputable mental fitness, he would actually managed to perform better than de Tolly on the field, although this was mostly by accident and his willingness to keep throwing bodies at the enemy. Napoleon continued his advance into Russia, coming dangerously close to Moscow. In response, Kutuzov confronted Napoleon at Borodino. The battle was hard-fought, and Napoleon narrowly won the day. It ended up being the bloodiest day of the Napoleonic Wars. The Russians were able to retreat from the advancing French, saving most of what was left of their army.\\\

By this point, ''Le Grande Armee'' had already deteriorated. Disease, a once-in-a-century heatwave, mass desertions, pestilence filled swamps, starvation, and even freak storms had obliterated much of its force. What was left was completely ragtag, with no discipline remaining and only a desperate need to survive driving them. Nearly all the horses had perished, either under the suicidal charges of [[BloodKnight Murat]], or more frequently by exhaustion on the campaign trail. Despite this, many of the men remained staunchly loyal to Napoleon. After all, the only way out of this mess was to win, and the only man who ''could'' win a war against the Russian behemoth was Napoleon. The survivors of the brutal march hunkered down in Moscow, which had been burned to the ground by the Russian military, police, and civilian volunteers. There was barely any shelter left, looting was rampant as the pay rate for soldiers was paltry. Fraggings[[note]]deliberate killing of an officer by soldiers under his command[[/note]] were frequent, as were fights over disputes. Some of Moscow remained in habitable condition, and tens of thousands of people stayed behind when the city was evacuated. Many found work the only way they could in the ravaged city; working as "camp followers," a historical euphemism for sex workers.\\\

Kutuzov had withdrawn his forces to the south, having suffered such dire casualties that he believed they wouldn't survive another battle. However, the political situation was in no way in Napoleon's favor, as even the serfs had come out against him. His invasion had brought ruin to the country, and he had failed to liberate the serfs. Indeed, ''Le Grande Armee'' became notorious among the Russian peasantry for its penchant for looting, raping, murdering, lawlessness, and arson. It was a despised force. The nobility was already distrustful of the revolutionaries, whose principles of meritocracy and universal rights threatened the foundations of what was essentially their slave empire. This meant that Russia was politically united in all social strata, for it had a nearly non-existent middle class[[note]]note that this term does not mean what it means in a modern context. The "middle class" off the time were wealthy businessmen or artisans who had accrued some means of wealth, but were still denied legal privileges under the aristocratic systems of Europe.[[/note]] that comprised the bulk of revolutionary supporters in Europe. The war would continue, despite much of the country lying in ruin. With his marshals were revolting against him and officers were deserting en masse, ultimately the only thing keeping the survivors there was their belief that Napoleon could fix this mess. Napoleon sought to retreat to Smolensk for the time, which was also a devastated ruin on account of the French mortars setting its mostly wooden architecture alight. However, Kutuzov was blocking the only tenable root to Smolensk; the only other way was back they came, and it was a barren wasteland on account of both the scorched earth policy and ''Le Grande Armee'''s rampant looting. His commanders fought a couple of engagements against Kutuzov's forces, but they were indecisive. What was more was that Comrade Winter was beginning to set in, causing an already dire supply situation to go beyond the point of desperation.\\\

Napoleon's forces were starving, and eventually began freezing in the cold. Russian insurgents, mostly regiments of mounted Cossacks,[[note]]Peoples who inhabited what is now Ukraine and the Don region of Russia. They were nomadic, fiercely independent, adept at fighting, and even more adept at drinking. At first they were enemies of the Russian regime, but they gradually found themselves subordinated but also employed by them as vanguard forces or guerrilla fighters.[[/note]] waged guerrilla attacks on Napoleon's forces, costing them dearly. The winter was disastrously cold, and men were only issued a single uniform with no winter cover at the time. Skin froze to the barrels of their muskets and ripped from the flesh if they tried to pry them off. There was basically no more supply train, and rear regiments marched over a field of corpses and deeply packed ice. Stopping was suicidal; men froze to death when idle for only 10 minutes or less. Fingers and toes became frostbitten and gangrenous, causing them to rot and fall off. Many men had no boots nor shoes to speak of, as extra pairs had not been brought along and the originals had disintegrated months ago. Lucky soldiers could trade for or steal a pair, but unlucky ones had to make do with footwraps or worse, barefoot. What horses that remained could barely move faster than a trot and struggled to pull wagons overloaded with wounded. They proved incapable of pulling cannons, leading to much of the artillery to be abandoned, along with much of the ''artillery corps itself'' who either deserted or simply starved as they were no longer a priority without their horses. With the Grand Army being whittled down by the elements, people began to doubt Napoleon's capability. He had become paranoid and restless after he was nearly captured by cossacks at the Battle of Maloyaroslavets, and his marshals were now vocally disagreeing with his decisions. Mass surrender to the Russians was common, as was desertion of whole regiments. Incidents of cannibalism began to occur in the ranks, and cannibals were executed on sight by Russian forces. The force of anywhere from 413,000-613,000 had been decimated to just 49,000[[note]]some estimates are even lower[[/note]], who found themselves fighting Kutuzov one last time while attempting to cross the Berezina River. The Russians had destroyed the bridges, and Napoleon had abandoned all of his pontoon equipment as it was proving too heavy a strain on the valuable remaining horses. One defiant Dutch battalion of engineers had kept theirs, and it proved to be the thing that would save Napoleon's life, albeit not many other peoples'. The Battle of the Berezina resulted in what shattered remnants of ''Le Grande Armee'' were left facing off against a Russian force nearly twice their size, while trying to build, defend, and cross a pontoon bridge. Russian artillery ravaged them, but shockingly the bridge was assembled and Napoleon, along with some of his forces, escaped. Many thousands of camp followers had tagged along with them since Moscow, having no homes or valuables and thus no reason to stay. They were mostly massacred during the battle, and the survivors were all murdered following the battle for cooperating with the French. \\\

Napoleon and some of his men staggered back into Poland. The death toll of his Russian campaign was devastating. Almost half a million French and French-aligned soldiers were killed or captured in the campaign, and it proved to be the first decisive loss for the French. By the end of 1812, ''Le Grande Armee'' was all but destroyed, Napoleon had abandoned his position and returned to Paris to prepare for the inevitable counter-attack, and the French had completely abandoned Russian soil. However, the war was not without its losses on the Russian side: much of the country, including its most valuable farmland and two of its most important cities, was completely ruined. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians alike died, mostly from starvation, disease, and the cold. Combat losses were still quite high, but completely outnumbered by those outside of combat. Russia was in no state to counterattack anytime soon, but Napoleon's disastrous defeat brought many of his old enemies into the Sixth Coalition against him. Over the course of 1813, Sweden, Prussia, Austria, and many German principalities would switch sides, seeing an opportunity to defeat Napoleon. It would not be easy. Although the French were defeated in Spain by the Anglo-Portuguese forces, Napoleon was able to hold off the Coalition in Germany for some time.\\\

Down, but not out, Napoleon retreated to France and organized its defense. He was able to win victory after victory against the invading Coalition, but he was simply overwhelmed by the massive Coalition numbers and had no way from actually winning the war. With the situation being utterly hopeless, Napoleon abdicated the throne of France on April 6th of 1814. The Allies exiled him to the island of Elba in the Mediterranean, and began literally drawing up the maps for a post-war Europe at the Congress of Vienna.\\\

The Congress was proving to be a massive failure. The French were incensed by their losses of territory, the restoration of the monarchy, and the return of the unpopular aristocratic '' émigré''. Meanwhile, disagreements over Poland and Germany were bringing the Coalition powers on the verge of war. Napoleon watched the situation unfolding from his imprisonment on Elba, and started to formulate a plan. He could utilize popular resentment against the Congress in France to mobilize a large army, and successfully use the ambitions of the Coalition powers to shatter the Coalition entirely.\\\

Napoleon slipped aboard a French ship and escaped back to France. News of his return signaled a popular uprising, and the French flocked to his banner by the thousands. Famously, when confronted by Royalist forces, Napoleon stepped in front of their rifles and proclaimed "If anyone wishes to shoot his Emperor, here I am!" As with many other French soldiers, they defected to his cause. Louis XVIII abandoned the capital, and Napoleon entered Paris to the cheers of a massive crowd.\\\

Napoleon's return was poorly received by the Coalition. Napoleon had hoped that perhaps France could achieve a peaceful resolution, but he was practical enough to know that the Coalition would never allow it. He raised a force of nearly 200,000 in preparation for the Coalition invasion, which came when the Seventh Coalition declared war on him on the 13th of March, 1815.\\\

The Coalition forces began mobilizing, but it would be months before they could be ready for a combined offensive. The British and Prussians, still hot off the heels of their invasion of France in 1814, had thousands of men ready to invade, but the Austrians and Russians needed to marshal out new armies and march westward first, which would cost the allies time. Napoleon knew that, just as in 1814, he would be overwhelmed by sheer numbers if he allowed the Coalition to form a unified army. He chose to preempt them by striking against Coalition forces in the Low Countries.\\\

Napoleon's forces successfully kept the British and Prussian forces in Belgium split up. He planned to defeat both armies in detail, engaging and destroying each before the other could react. At the battle of Ligny, Blucher's Prussians were forced to retreat but while this was going on, Marshal Ney was hesitating to attack the outnumbered British at the battle of Quartre Bras, which proved crucial to the veteran of the Peninsular War, the Duke of Wellington, who had enough time to relocate his troops to the more defensible position at Belgian village of Waterloo. Victorious, Napoleon turned to engage the British at Waterloo. The British, outnumbered alongside their Dutch and German allies, held off successive attacks by the French forces, including extensive artillery bombardment, but took brutal casualties from close range artillery fire into infantry squares (which the British infantry had been forced into by the presence of the French cavalry). However, the supposedly withdrawing Prussians unexpectedly arrived, and serve as the hammer to the British anvil by smashing into the French flanks and driving them from the field. The Prussians had managed to rally just days before and outwitted French attempts to pursue them, allowing them to retreat in good order, regroup, and march to Wellington's aid.\\\

Napoleon relinquished control of the Army of the North and returned to Paris, hoping to rally more troops to oppose the invading Coalition forces. However, his decisive defeat had dampened the spirits of his supporters and emboldened the royalists, and ultimately he was forced to abdicate. The victorious Anglo-Prussian forces entered Paris not long after, signalling the end of the Hundred Days, and of the Napoleonic Wars.\\\

* The Quasi-War or Franco-American War (1798-1800): An undeclared naval war resulting from French anger because of America's sensible (or ungrateful?) neutrality during the War of the First Coalition.

* ''Literature/{{Sharpe}}''

* ''Comicbook/{{Grandville}}'' is set in the 21st century of a world where Napoleon won, and Britain was a French vassal until claiming independence via a socialist revolution in the 1990s. Oh, and it's a WorldOfFunnyAnimals where Napoleon was a [[KingOfBeasts lion]].
* ''ComicBook/InvasionesInglesas'' is a comic focused in the British invasions of Buenos Aires and Montevideo that took place during the conflict.

* Theatre/{{Tosca}}, the {{opera}} by Music/GiacomoPuccini, is tangentially related: the war affects it, though it hardly affects the war.
** The same goes for Creator/HeinrichVonKleist's novella ''The Marquise of O''; it was adapted into a film by French director Eric Rohmer that won the ''Grand Prix Spécial'' at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival.
** Only at the very end of ''Literature/ThePitAndThePendulum'' by Creator/EdgarAllanPoe it becomes apparent that the story is set during the Peninsular War.

* Over the last decade, there have been a great number of French graphic novels centred on Napoleon. Some stick to reality and attempt to give a colourful account of Napoleon's life... others (like ''Double Masque'') go on a completely fictional tangent.
** Of special interest is ''Malet'', the 2005 graphic novel by Nicolas Juncker about the conspiracy and abortive coup of 1812. In the [[ShownTheirWork appendix Juncker explains how difficult it was to make sense of the various conflicting historical accounts and self-serving memoirs that chronicle the event]].

For fiction based on these wars in various media, see [[UsefulNotes/NapoleonBonaparteAndTheNapoleonicWarsInFiction here]].

* ''Napoleon Crossing the Alps'' by Jacques-Louis David (produced in five versions, 1801-1805) shows an idealized Napoleon on a rearing charger. In 1850 Paul Delaroche produced a painting showing the same subject as it really happened: Napoleon riding on a mule led by a guide.
* Creator/FranciscoDeGoya's paintings of the Second and Third of May 1808 in Madrid, the first showing the Madrilenes fighting Napoleon's Mameluks of the Guard in the streets, the latter the shooting by French firing squad of a group of Spanish rebels. Also Goya's sometimes spine-chilling series of prints, [[Art/TheDisastersOfWar ''Los desastres de la guerra'']]. Goya's infamous ''Art/BlackPaintings'' are also believed to have been at least partly inspired by the sociopolitical chaos that followed the wars.
* The Napoleonic Wars were commemorated in a number of monuments all over Europe, notably the Column of the Grande Armée (on the place Vendôme), the Arc de Triomphe and the smaller Arc de Triomphe du Carroussel in Paris, Nelson's Column on Trafalgar Square in London, the cast-iron ''Kreuzbergdenkmal'' in Berlin, the Lion of Waterloo (which commemorates the wounding of the Prince of Orange, later King William II of the Netherlands), and the ''Völkerschlachtsdenkmal'' (1913) in Leipzig.

!!Music
* Beethoven originally wanted to dedicate his Third Symphony to Napoleon Bonaparte, but changed his mind when he learned that he was making himself an emperor. In 1809 he wrote a march for the Austrian ''Landwehr'' (militia), which was picked up in 1813 by the Prussians, which is why it is now best known as the ''Marsch des Yorckschen Korps''. He also wrote his "battle symphony" (originally scored for a musical automat) to commemorate Wellington's 1813 victory at Vitoria.
* Music/PyotrIlyichTchaikovsky's ''1812 Ouverture'', scored for a full orchestra, church bells and real cannons, written partially to commemorate the Battle of Borodino.

!!TableTopGames
* The first proper wargames were developed in Germany during the Napoleonic wars as educational aids for officers.
* Miniatures Wargaming got its start with Napoleonic miniatures.
* One of Creator/AvalonHill's first board wargames, in the early 1960's, was--you guessed it--''Waterloo'', based on the Hundred Days campaign. The Napoleonic Wars have proven an especially popular subject for map-and-counter (and, later, computer) wargaming ever since.
* On a related note, the battle of Waterloo/La Belle Alliance is especially well-documented in part because William Siborne, who made dioramas of the battle with miniature soldiers, got every surviving participating officer he could get his hands on to write down what they had done and seen there.
* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wesely#The_Braunstein_Game "The Braunstein Game"]], a wargaming-''TabletopGame/{{Diplomacy}}'' mash-up created by David Wesely in the mid-1960s and set in a fictional German university town during the Napoleonic Wars, is considered one of the direct ancestors of the [[{{RPG}} tabletop role-playing game]], as Dave Arneson took inspiration from it for his own ''Blackmoor'' campaign which eventually became part of ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons''.

!!WebOriginal
* ''[[Literature/TheLadyVoltigeur The Lady Voltigeur]]'' by [[https://www.fictionpress.com/u/990919/YumehaMinakami YumehaMinakami]]

!!Video Games

* ''[[VideoGame/{{Cossacks}} Cossacks 2 : Napoleonic Wars]]'' and its expansion ''Battle for Europe''.
* ''VideoGame/NapoleonTotalWar'' and its expansion ''The Peninsular Campaign''.
* ''VideoGame/EmpireEarth'' features the Peninsular War and the battle of Waterloo as the final English campaign missions, while the second game has Napoleon as the main enemy in the Russian campaign and a few levels of the German campaign.
* A few mods for ''VideoGame/MountAndBlade'' and ''Mount & Blade: Warband'', as well as the multiplayer-only DLC ''Mount & Blade: Napoleonic Wars'' for ''Warband''.
* ''VideoGame/GutsNBlackpowder'' is a ZombieApocalypse set in this era.

!!FanFics
* ''[[FanFic/IceOnTheRhine Ice on the Rhine]]'' by [[https://www.fanfiction.net/u/5378155/IamInferior IamInferior.]]

* Creator/{{Stendhal}}'s ''Literature/TheCharterhouseOfParma'' shows its hero as an unwitting observer of the battle of Waterloo in 1815, a device that Tolstoy later copied. Stendhal was an unabashed Napoleon loyalist, who served in his army to Moscow and remained loyal during the Hundred Days. He refused to return to France until 1821, spending most of his time in Italy.
* In ''Literature/TheCountOfMonteCristo'' by Creator/AlexandreDumas, the whole plot is kicked into motion by Napoleon's planned escape from Elba. The main hero, a sailor called Edmond Dantès, is denounced by his enemies as a conspirator to the Bonapartist plot after he innocently agrees to deliver Napoleon's letter from Elba to France, following the late captain's last wish. The book gives a vivid description of rivalry between the Royalists and Bonapartists. Napoleon is featured as TheGhost, but king Louis XVIII does make an appearance.

* Creator/LeoTolstoy's seminal novel ''Literature/WarAndPeace'', which includes not just a famous account of the battle of Borodino, but big chunks of both the 1805 and 1812 campaigns. Also turned into several movies and television series, as well as an opera (by Prokofiev).
* ''Literature/LesMiserables'' - contains an account of Waterloo in which Creator/VictorHugo declares the French, and in particular Count Cambronne, the moral victors. He also wrote an epic poem that was highly influential on the popular image of that battle in France.