The Napoleonic Wars

6,500,000

estimated total dead

Each dot below represents 1,000 human lives. Scroll to watch the scale unfold.

Military Dead

3,500,000 soldiers killed in combat, from wounds, or from disease. Each = 1,000 lives.

French Empire & Allies — 1,400,000 military dead

Coalition Powers — 2,100,000 military dead

Civilian Dead

3,000,000 civilians killed — from violence, famine, disease, and displacement. Wars are not fought only by soldiers.

Civilian dead — 3,000,000

Deadliest Engagements

Leipzig (Battle of Nations)127,000

Borodino74,000

Wagram72,000

Waterloo65,000

Eylau50,000

Jena-Auerstedt38,000

Austerlitz36,000

Trafalgar6,953

For Perspective

How Napoleonic Wars's dead compare to other conflicts and events.

Napoleonic Wars — total dead6,500,000

American Civil War (total dead)670,000

World War I (total dead)20,000,000

World War II (total dead)70,000,000

Milestones of Loss

670,000 dead

Surpassing the entire American Civil War dead

1,400,000 dead

French Empire military dead alone — a generation consumed

3,500,000 dead

Total military dead across all Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815)

6,500,000 dead

Combined military and civilian dead — Europe bled white

All figures are historical estimates and vary across sources. The true human cost of war is impossible to fully quantify — these numbers represent the best scholarly consensus. Each number was a person with a name, a family, and a life unlived.