"France was too small a tool for Napoleon."

A correspondent writes in,

Napoleon could not reach England on foot. Nothing else mattered.

England always was going to defeat Napoleon because:

(1) Napoleon could not reach England on foot with an army, but England could reach Napoleon on foot with an army.
(2) England is upwind from France, and English sailing ships that were upwind had the advantage over downwind ships.
(3) France could not spend as much on a navy as England because France had to pay for a big army to defend itself from land armies that could reach it on foot.
(4) Napoleon had little or no knowledge of naval warfare although he grew up in a seafront town on an island in a sea. This was his main weakness. He never said, "I don't have a navy, so ...."

He had to give up the Louisiana Purchase because he had no technological answer to the 74-gun British ship-of-the-line. He could not reach all parts of Europe. Norway, Sweden, and probably Denmark were out of the question. He could not stay in Egypt, or anywhere else in Africa, unless with the permission of England. Russia was militarily stronger than France. So he was confined to dry land on the European peninsula by Russian military strength and British ships.

The increased size of warships, their faster speed, larger carrying capacity, and longer-range guns gave sea power the advantage over land power. Britain could reduce any French seaport to rubble with a broadside from 3,700 guns of 100 ships-of-the-line and do it all over again in a few minutes. The existence of ships-of-the-line with 74-gun over-ruled the great man qualities of Napoleon.

Once Napoleon chose the wrong mountain to climb (conquest without having sea power) his great man qualities assured that he would get to the top of the wrong mountain.

Nowadays, ultrasonic missiles possessed by land powers make possible for them to sink surface navies. Houthis in Yemen are testing this on ships in the Red Sea, possibly using ultrasonic Russian missiles provided to them by way of Iran.

This technological change is starting a new cycle of economics, technology and history.
 
Rocket missiles possessed by land powers have now made the surface battle ships of naval powers obsolete, so, countries that depend on surface ships will be less powerful than countries that depend on rocket powered weapons.

Some of our thoughts:

• One of the best summaries of Napoleon's career that we have seen is from this review of the Andrew Roberts biography: "Whereas in his early political and military career all of Napoleon’s strengths proved to be an uncannily perfect fit for the weaknesses of his opponents, the environmental factors shifted such that Napoleon faced a political-evolutionary dead end. Having mistook his earlier luck for fate, he mismeasured (or was simply unaware of) the enormous risks he was taking in this new, hostile environment and committed himself in such a way that he was doomed to be defeated."
• Great essay on the concept of the "competent authoritarian" in revolutionary times: "Those who just wanted competent authority invested in the ablest man would have been much better off supporting the man shooting at them, though it was very hard for them to know that at the time. Even in modern times, Augusto Pinochet led the crackdown on anti-Allende protests in 1972! All of which is to say, that it’s not nearly as obvious as you might think where exactly the next competent authoritarian might come from. It is a mistake to place too much weight in the man’s politics before he seizes power. Those destined to rule seem to instinctively know that the first thing to do is actually acquire the power to rule, by whatever means necessary, otherwise all your grand visions amount to very little." Who is our competent authoritarian going to be? Obviously not Trump... Musk? Erik Prince? (Great name for a monarch.)
  
• Wouldn't it be interesting to bike the Route Napoleon? ("325 km stretch of  road winding through the hills and mountains of Provence in France. The road from Antibes to Grenoble follows the route taken by Napoleon during his 1815 escape from the island of Elba, off the coast of Italy.")
• Physicist Steve Hsu tweets often (constantly) about the supremacy of missiles versus surface ships like aircraft carriers. To the point where he is almost like a one-man demoralization campaign against the U.S. Navy. What's he doing in America?
• A while back we posted this essay arguing that Napoleon was the "Best General Ever": "Among all generals, Napoleon had the highest WAR (16.679) by a large margin. In fact, the next highest performer, Julius Caesar (7.445 WAR), had less than half the WAR accumulated by Napoleon across his battles. Napoleon benefited from the large number of battles in which he led forces. Among his 43 listed battles, he won 38 and lost only 5. Napoleon overcame difficult odds in 17 of his victories, and commanded at a disadvantage in all 5 of his losses. No other general came close to Napoleon in total battles. While Napoleon commanded forces in 43 battles, the next most prolific general was Robert E. Lee, with 27 battles (the average battle count was 1.5). Napoleon’s large battle count allowed him more opportunities to demonstrate his tactical prowess."
• In 2019 we read Village in the Vaucluse which mentioned that the generation of men born between 1785 and 1795 was "bled white" by Napoleon. Then there were further losses in WWI and WWII. He said that the demographic pyramid of 1951, compared with 1851, was "only a ragged ghost." As economists what we should think about when considering Napoleon is the opportunity cost of what he did. What else could have been done with all those men, horses, and material resources? Surely something much greater.