Is a King a Slave of History? Or is the King a Slave of Money?

A biophysical analysis of Napoleon's downfall

The sentence “A king is history’s slave” is from Leon Tolstoy’s War and Peace. A King is a slave of everything that made him a King, especially money.

Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 was not just one more military adventure that ended in defeat for a powerful ruler. It was a gigantic, world-changing event. Never before had such a large army been assembled: more than 600,000 Western European soldiers, not just from France, marched Eastward, followed by an even larger intendance of supporting personnel. If you think that at that time Europe had probably around 200 million inhabitants, it is a truly huge number. Maybe one in ten of those who invaded Russia survived and made it back home.

Why did Napoleon take such a mad decision? Leon Tolstoy was among those who asked themselves the question. In his “War and Peace” (1869), he wrote:

On the twelfth of June, 1812, the forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian frontier and war began, that is, an event took place opposed to human reason and to human nature.

What produced this extraordinary occurrence? What were its causes? The historians tell us with naïve assurance that its causes were the wrongs inflicted on the Duke of Oldenburg, the nonobservance of the Continental System, the ambition of Napoleon, the firmness of Alexander, the mistakes of the diplomatists, and so on.

<..> It is natural that these and a countless and infinite quantity of other reasons, the number depending on the endless diversity of points of view, presented themselves to the men of that day; but to us, to posterity who view the thing that happened in all its magnitude and perceive its plain and terrible meaning, these causes seem insufficient.

<..> To us, the wish or objection of this or that French corporal to serve a second term appears as much a cause as Napoleon’s refusal to withdraw his troops beyond the Vistula and to restore the duchy of Oldenburg; for had he not wished to serve, and had a second, a third, and a thousandth corporal and private also refused, there would have been so many less men in Napoleon’s army and the war could not have occurred.

Tolstoy was close to the real answer when he wondered why “this or that French corporal” decided to enlist in Napoleon’s army. And the reason was simple: the corporal was paid to enlist. So, he chose the risky rewards of a military campaign over the certainty of a life of poverty as a peasant. Other people made a similar choice, but with much higher rewards and lower risks: the elites, the bankers, the industrialists, and all those who profited from the war without having to fight in it. Napoleon himself was forced to keep waging wars simply because he had no other choice. On this point, Tolstoy was spot on when he said that “A king is history’s slave.”

Napoleon’s huge campaigns were possible — even unavoidable — because Europe had entered the Industrial Revolution. It started first in England, during the 18th century, fueled by the availability of cheap coal. At that time, France was a relatively coal-poor region. Nevertheless, France managed to obtain coal by annexing the Saar Region and the Rhineland, which were later to become part of Germany. France also annexed part of Belgium, the Borinage region, around Mons, in Belgium, which provided more coal to fuel the French industry. France also imported coal from England and had relatively large resources of charcoal. In this way, it managed to start its industrial revolution in parallel with the British one.

The French economy grew, becoming a huge machine turning resources into accumulated capital. This capital existed in the form of money that had to be spent in some way. One way was to turn it into weapons and armies. Napoleon was a consequence of this trend. France's overseas empire had been largely lost to Britain over the previous half-century, leaving European expansion as the only direction in which French power could grow.

Napoleon was keenly aware of the need for money for his campaigns. The quote “three things are needed for war: money, money, and money” is often attributed to him. Although he may never have said that, it is in line with his way of operating. Napoleon wasn’t so much a slave to history as he was a slave to money.

Yet, in principle, France didn’t lack money. At the start of the Napoleonic period, France’s economy was nearly two times larger than Britain’s.

However, the French advantage was in large part negated by the higher GDP per capita of Britain, which allowed the British government to tax its subjects at higher rates to finance military expenses. Still, if you add the GDP of the European territories that France could force into submission, the advantage for the French coalition was overwhelming, at least in principle.

So, the Napoleonic period started with a series of victories for France, which led to the creation of the French Empire in 1804. At that point, Napoleon didn’t depend on French resources for his wars any longer. Defeated enemies provided funds by plunder, requisitions, contributions, and indemnities. Napoleon was not a scientist, but when he said “war must feed war,” he was close to one of the fundamental concepts of modern system science: feedback. The profits of a war fed larger wars, generating a positive feedback loop that grew on itself.

But no feedback loop can grow forever. War as an economic enterprise is subjected to resource overexploitation, just as all economic processes are. Napoleon, likely, had no concept of “overexploitation” in his mind, but he was destined to succumb to it. He could win battles only as long as he could finance them. The Graph below, created by Claude, provides an approximate picture of the growth and final collapse of Napoleon’s military financing (from Source: Branda 2008, Did the war pay for the war? Napoleonica. la Revue.)

The figure shows a typical “Seneca Shape” for the military expenses of the French government during Napoleonic times. It is the shape created by the overexploitation of a resource that can’t reform itself to match the dissipation rate. The expenses of Napoleon’s campaigns simply couldn’t be sustained.

The collapse was hastened by a further factor: the superiority of Britain over France at sea. It was clear that the English channel it was an impassable barrier for the French armies after the defeat of Napoleon’s fleet at Trafalgar in 1805. So, Napoleon devised a new idea: the Continental Blockade (or Continental System).

It was a large-scale economic warfare strategy designed to paralyze Great Britain by banning trade between the United Kingdom and the French Empire and its allies. It was another first of Napoleonic times: never before had an economic blockade been attempted on such a scale. To find a similar example of an all-out blockade of an entire state, you have to go back to the Spartan Blockade of Athens (405 BCE). It failed to break Athens.

Unfortunately for Napoleon, the Continental Blockade was an unmitigated disaster. If you look at the data in the figure above, the blockade advantaged the British Empire, whose economy rapidly grew to match the French level. Among other things, the blockade was never completely tight and, paradoxically, it allowed the import of British coal in Europe to keep the French industry running.

On the opposite sides of the French Empire, Portugal and Russia eventually declared they wouldn’t join or would abandon the blockade. That forced Napoleon to invade both, and neither military adventure was successful. Portugal was, on the whole, a minor problem, but Russia was a serious one. Napoleon himself understood that, and he committed everything, including his own prestige, to the attempt to force Russia to terms. And we all know how it went.

Paradoxically, little would have changed if Napoleon had managed to defeat the Russians. The blockade and the French military effort were simply unsustainable. Something had to give, and it was the French Empire’s turn to disappear from history.

Victor Hugo clearly framed the situation in his “Les Miserables” "Was it possible that Napoleon should win this battle? We answer, no. Why? Because of Wellington? Because of Blucher? No. Because of God. For Bonaparte to be conqueror at Waterloo was no longer within the law of the nineteenth century. Another series of acts was under way, in which Napoleon had no place.”

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Fast forward to our times, and the similarities of the current situation with that of the last years of Napoleon’s rule are stunning, to say the least. We have two world empires: the Western maritime empire, mainly the coalition of the US, Western Europe, and Japan, and the Eurasian land powers, Russia, China, and Iran. Despite the reversal of the maritime/land characteristics, the Western Empire is doing what the late First French Empire was doing: aggressively expanding its power and its military expenses, using also naval blockades, sanctions, and embargoes.

The dominant power of the Western coalition, the US (the equivalent of France in Napoleonic times), is extracting resources from its allies at unsustainable rates. Donald Trump is proposing to raise the US military budget of 40% in a single year — and it will probably keep increasing.

Eventually, we are going to reach the point at which the military expenses will extract all the surplus from the Western economy, turning it into a completely militarized system. Even before we arrive at that, the similarities with Napoleonic times are remarkable in terms of the various embargoes, blockades, and sanctions that the West is inflicting at the same time on its allies and on the states perceived as enemies. Just as in Napoleon’s case, it is very difficult to maintain the blockades tight, while the embargoed countries are working at finding ways to bypass the sanctions.

What ended Napoleon's empire was not a battle but the exhaustion of the productive base that fed it. The same exhaustion is now visible in the West, and our ruling class doesn’t have an obvious target to invade equivalent to Russia in Napoleonic times. To maintain the similarity, perhaps the West should now invade China, but if that were to be attempted, the results might be even worse than those of the Russian Retreat for Napoleon. Fortunately, while it is true that history often rhymes, it doesn’t have to rhyme exactly all the time.