War between Britain and France, 1803–1814
By what year was the British Army playing a central role in the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo?
Napoleonic Wars
Unlike its many coalition partners, Britain remained at war throughout the period of the Napoleonic Wars. Protected by naval supremacy (in the words of Admiral Jervis to the House of Lords "I do not say, my Lords, that the French will not come. I say only they will not come by sea"), Britain maintained low-intensity land warfare on a global scale for over a decade. The British government paid out large sums of money to other European states, so that they could pay armies in the field against France. These payments are colloquially known as the Golden Cavalry of St George. The British Army provided long-term support to the Spanish rebellion in the Peninsular War of 1808–1814, assisted by Spanish guerrilla ('little war') tactics. Anglo-Portuguese forces under Arthur Wellesley supported the Spanish, which campaigned successfully against the French armies, eventually driving them from Spain, thus allowing Britain to invade southern France. By 1815, the British Army played the central role in the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo. In 1802, Napoleon victoriously brought to an end the War of the Second Coalition, with only Great Britain remaining formally at war. Isolated, Britain reluctantly agreed to end hostilities under the Treaty of Amiens (25 March 1802). Bonaparte tried to exploit the brief peace at sea to restore French colonial rule in Haiti. The expedition, though initially successful, would soon turn to a disaster, with the French commander Charles Leclerc, dying of yellow fever and almost his entire force destroyed by the disease. Napoleon gave up his New World dreams and sold Louisiana to the United States in 1803. Great Britain violated the terms of the Treaty of Amiens by occupying Malta and gathered a Third Coalition against France. The French intervention in the Swiss civil strife, a breach of the Treaty of Lunéville (1801) between France and the Holy Roman Empire which guaranteed Swiss sovereignty, was taken as a pretext by the British to break the peace of Amiens and declare war on France on 18 May 1803. The Coalition's war aims changed over the course of the conflict: a general desire to restore the French monarchy became closely linked to the struggle to stop Bonaparte. Beyond minor naval actions against British imperial interests, the Napoleonic Wars were much less global in scope than preceding conflicts such as Seven Years' War, which historians term a "world war".