Casualties of the Napoleonic Wars

The wars of the Napoleonic period (1799-1815) were financed by the British Court against the French, whose interests were threatened by the resurgence of French power in Europe by which the British considered "ally" to anyone who resisted Napoleon Bonaparte and his Grande Armee in any way.

It is necessary to take into account that these numbers are subject to considerable variations. Erik Durschmied, in his book The Hinge Factor, gives a figure of 1,400,000 French soldiers killed by all causes. Later, Adam Zamoyski estimates around 400,000 Russian soldiers killed in the 1812 campaign alone. This figure has also been revised by other sources. Civilian casualties in the 1812 campaign were probably comparable to military ones. Alan Schom estimates a figure of about 3 million military dead in wars, and this figure is once again generally accepted.

It is commonly estimated that more than 300,000 Frenchmen died in Russia in 1812, and between 250,000 and 300,000 Frenchmen died in Spain between 1808 and 1814, which gives a total of 750,000, to which must be added another hundreds of thousands of Frenchmen killed in other campaigns. Probably around 150,000 or 200,000 Frenchmen died in the German campaigns of 1813, for example. In this way, it seems clear that the numbers provided offer a very conservative estimate of the set.

In the Russian campaign, Napoleon's army suffered between 563,000 and 713,500 dead while the Russians suffered about 450,000 including non-combatants. In total, the figure is close to one million deaths.

In the war of the Sixth Coalition it is estimated that up to two million people died in the war, of these, only one million were soldiers.

It is impossible to make a rough estimate of the number of civilians killed. While military deaths are invariably between 2.5 and 3.5 million and the cost in civilian lives varies between 700,000 and 3 million (up to a million deaths in Spain). Thus, the Estimates of the total number of military and civilian deaths can vary from 3,250,000 to 6,500,000 deaths.

Calculation of deaths

The bloody wars of the period, intentionally called the Napoleonic Wars by the Allies after the fall of Emperor Napoleon I, caused the following direct and indirect casualties:

Country	Population	Increased number mobilized troops at the same time	% mobilized population	Military casualties
First French Empire	38,000.000	1,500,000	3,95	1,400,000
United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland	12,000.000	220,000	1.83	263.340
Austrian Empire	19,000.000	479,000	2.52	401.800
Kingdom of Prussia	5,000.000	200,000	4,00	409,000
Russian Empire	31.400,000	700,000	2.23	494.100
Kingdom of Spain	10,000.000	130.578	1.31	307.500
Kingdom of Sardinia	6.4 million	15,000	0.23	127.700

NOTE: The list of deaths includes those killed in combat or for other reasons such as disease, wounds, starvation, cold, drowning, friendly fire, atrocities, etc.