Napoleonic Wars casualties

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815) direct and indirect casualties breakdown as follows:

NOTE: Deaths listed include being killed in action and/or of other causes such as dying of disease, wounds, starvation, exposure, drowning, friendly fire, atrocities etc.

Contents

[edit] French Empire

France and allies:

  • 371,000 Killed in action [1]
  • ~400,000 Killed by disease[2]
  • 1,000,000 TOTAL French and Allies (much from German states) dead in action, desease and missing [3]

[edit] Countries against the French Empire

  • 400,000 TOTAL Russian dead and/or missing
  • 200,000 TOTAL Prussian dead and/or missing
  • ~300,000 TOTAL Austrian dead and/or missing
  • ~300,000 TOTAL Spanish dead and/or missing
  • 311,806 TOTAL British dead and/or missing[4]

[edit] Total Napoleonic Wars dead and missing

  • ~2,500,000 military personnel in Europe
  • ~1,000,000 civilians were killed in Europe & in rebellious French overseas colonies[5]

These numbers are subject to considerable variation. Erik Durschmied, in his book The Hinge Factor, gives a figure of 1.4 million French military deaths of all causes. Adam Zamoyski estimates that around 400,000 Russian soldiers died in the 1812 campaign alone; this figure is backed up by other sources[citation needed]. Civilian casualties in the 1812 campaign were probably comparable. Alan Schom estimates some 3 million military deaths in the wars and this figure, once again, is supported elsewhere. Common estimates of more than 500,000 French dead in Russia in 1812 and 250,000-300,000 French dead in Iberia between 1808 and 1814 give a total of at least 750,000, and to this must be added hundreds of thousands of more French dead in other campaigns - probably around 150,000 to 200,000 French dead in the German campaign of 1813, for example. Thus it is fair to say that the estimates above are highly conservative.

Civilian deaths are impossible to accurately estimate. Whilst military deaths are invariably put at between 2.5 million and 3.5 million, civilian death tolls vary from 750,000 to 3 million. Thus estimates of total dead, both military and civilian, can reasonably range from 3,250,000 to 6,500,000.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Gaston Bodart, Losses of Life in Modern Wars (1916)
  2. ^ Gaston Bodart, Losses of Life in Modern Wars (1916)
  3. ^ Gaston Bodart, Losses of Life in Modern Wars (1916)
  4. ^ Samuel Dumas, Losses of Life Caused By War 1923
    • UK Navy, 1804-15:
    KIA: 6,663
    Shipwrecks, drownings, fire: 13,621
    Disease: 72,102
    TOTAL: 92,386
    • UK Army, 1804-15:
    KIA: 25,569
    Disease: 193,851
    TOTAL: 219,420
    Navy and Army: 311,806
  5. ^ [1] Statistics of Wars, Oppressions and Atrocities of the Nineteenth Century