An Analysis of the French economic industrial and military mobilization in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars 1789-1815

Abstract

The intellectual aspiration of the paper is to analyse all aspects of French economic mobilization during the Napoleonic wars. Using detailed statistics from various sources related to army logistics, defence production, war finance, trade volumes, confiscated goods and wealth the paper demonstrates that during the Napoleonic wars France enjoyed a developed defence industry which supplied the armies with adequate war material. However all other aspects (domestic agricultural and industrial production, finance, trade) were problematic, forcing the French to relay heavily on confiscated wealth.