The Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815) involved Napoleon's French Empire and a shifting set of European allies and opposing coalitions. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionized European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to the application of modern mass conscription. French power rose quickly, conquering most of Europe, but collapsed rapidly after France's disastrous invasion of Russia in 1812. Napoleon's empire ultimately suffered complete military defeat, resulting in the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in France. Meanwhile the Spanish Empire began to unravel as French occupation of Spain weakened the Spanish hold over its colonies, providing an opening for nationalist revolutions in Latin America.
No consensus exists as to when the French Revolutionary Wars ended and the Napoleonic Wars began. Possible dates include November 9 1799, when Bonaparte seized power in France; May 18 1803, when Britain and France ended the only period of peace in Europe between 1792 and 1814, and December 2 1804, when Bonaparte crowned himself Emperor.
The Napoleonic Wars ended following Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo (18 June, 1815) and the Second Treaty of Paris. Some sources (chiefly in the United Kingdom) occasionally refer to the nearly continuous period of warfare from 1792 to 1815 as the Great French War, or as the final phase of the Anglo-French Second Hundred Years' War, spanning the period 1689 to 1815. As a direct result of the Napoleonic wars the British Empire remained the foremost world power for the next century.
