Napoleon Bonaparte

December 2, 1805 · 45,000 total casualties

Austerlitz effectively ended the War of the Third Coalition. Austria signed the humiliating Treaty of Pressburg, ceding vast territories. The Holy Roman Empire was dissolved the following year. Napoleon's military reputation reached its zenith.

October 14, 1806 · 62,000 total casualties

The twin battles destroyed the myth of Prussian military invincibility built by Frederick the Great. Prussia sued for peace, losing half its territory by the Treaty of Tilsit. French dominance of continental Europe reached its peak.

February 7–8, 1807 · 40,000 total casualties

Eylau demonstrated that the Grande Armée was not invincible and that determined resistance could check Napoleon. The gruesome cost foreshadowed the attritional campaigns to come. Napoleon reportedly surveyed the blood-soaked field and remarked that no parent seeing this would be so quick to make war.

July 5–6, 1809 · 77,500 total casualties

Wagram ended the War of the Fifth Coalition and forced Austria into the Treaty of Schönbrunn, the most humiliating peace yet imposed on the Habsburgs. It also led to Napoleon's marriage to Archduchess Marie Louise, cementing a dynastic alliance.

September 7, 1812 · 80,000 total casualties

Though technically a French victory, Borodino was pyrrhic. Napoleon captured Moscow but found it evacuated and burning. Unable to force a decisive peace, he retreated in October, beginning the catastrophic withdrawal that destroyed the Grande Armée.

November 26–29, 1812 · 50,000 total casualties

Though Napoleon escaped with the core of his army — perhaps 40,000 organized troops from an original force of 600,000 — the Berezina became synonymous with catastrophe and the ultimate failure of the Russian campaign. 'Berezina' entered French vocabulary as a synonym for disaster.

October 16–19, 1813 · 127,000 total casualties

Leipzig shattered French power in Germany permanently. Napoleon retreated to France itself, and the German princes, now liberated, joined the Coalition in force. The battle effectively ended French domination of Europe.

June 16, 1815 · 31,500 total casualties

Though a tactical French victory, Ligny's strategic outcome was fatal. The Prussians were shaken but not destroyed, and their northward retreat kept them in contact with Wellington's Anglo-Allied army, enabling their crucial intervention at Waterloo two days later.

June 18, 1815 · 65,000 total casualties

Waterloo ended Napoleon's rule absolutely and permanently. He abdicated four days later and was exiled to Saint Helena, where he died in 1821. The battle reshaped Europe at the Congress of Vienna and established a century of relative continental peace under the Concert of Europe.