Out of the 900,000 men, the field armies deployed against France numbered less than 250,000. Another 200,000 served in the Russian Navy. In September 1812, Russia had 900,000 enlisted men in its land forces, and between 17 2.1 million men served in its army. But Napoleon was prepared to make no concessions. To have secured a compromise peace, then, would have been comparatively easy. As for Austria and Prussia, they simply wanted to be left alone. Esdaile rejects that explanation and instead says that it was a good time to stop expansion, for the major powers were ready to accept Napoleon as he was: in 1806 both Russia and Britain had been positively eager to make peace, and they might well have agreed to terms that would have left the Napoleonic imperium almost completely intact. His admirers say that Napoleon wanted to stop now, but was forced to continue in order to gain greater security from the countries that refused to accept his conquests.
Napoleon had now consolidated his hold on France, had taken control of Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and most of Western Germany and northern Italy. Napoleon's army had a record of continuous unbroken victories on land, but the full force of the Russian army had not yet come into play. With the withdrawal of Austria from the war, stalemate ensued. Although the UK had a population of approximately 16 million against France's 30 million, the French numerical advantage was offset by British subsidies that paid for many of the Austrian and Russian soldiers, peaking at about 450,000 men in 1813. Financing the warĪ key element in British success was its ability to mobilise the nation's industrial and financial resources and apply them to defeating France. Many in the French government believed that cutting Britain off from the Continent would end its economic influence over Europe and isolate it. This ensured that France could never consolidate its control over Europe in peace.
Britain had the greatest industrial capacity in Europe, and its mastery of the seas allowed it to build up considerable economic strength through trade. France's population and agricultural capacity far outstripped that of Britain.
Colonial possessions, but could do nothing about France's trade with the major continental economies and posed little threat to French territory in Europe.
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