War of The Fifth Coalition - Aftermath

Aftermath

Although France had not completely defeated Austria, the Treaty of Schönbrunn, signed on 14 October 1809, nevertheless imposed a heavy political toll on the Austrians. As a result of the treaty, France received Carinthia, Carniola, and the Adriatic ports, while Galicia was given to the Poles, the Salzburg area of the Tyrol went to the Bavarians, and Russia was ceded the district of Tarnopol. Austria lost over three million subjects, about 20% of her total population. Emperor Francis also agreed to pay an indemnity equivalent to almost 85 million francs, gave recognition to Napoleon's brother Joseph as the King of Spain, and reaffirmed the exclusion of British trade from his remaining dominions. The Austrian army would never field more than 150,000 men at a time for the duration of the Napoleonic Wars. The Austrian defeat paved the way for the marriage of Napoleon to the daughter of Emperor Francis, Marie Louise. Dangerously, Napoleon assumed that his marriage to Marie Louise would eliminate Austria as a future threat, but the Habsburgs were not as driven by familial ties as Napoleon thought.

The impact of the conflict was not all positive from the French perspective. The revolts in Tyrol and the Kingdom of Westphalia during the conflict were an indication that there was much discontent over French rule among the German population. Just a few days after the conclusion of the Treaty of Schönbrunn, an 18-year-old German named Stapps approached Napoleon during an army review and attempted to stab the emperor, but he was intercepted in the nick of time by General Rapp. The emerging forces of German nationalism were too strongly rooted by this time, and the War of the Fifth Coalition played an important role in nurturing their development. By 1813, when the Sixth Coalition was fighting the French for control of Central Europe, the German population was fiercely opposed to French rule and largely supported the Allies.

The war also undermined French military superiority and the Napoleonic image. The Battle of Aspern-Essling was the first major defeat in Napoleon's career and was warmly greeted by much of Europe. The Austrians had also shown that strategic insight and tactical ability were no longer a French monopoly. The French themselves were actually suffering from tactical shortcomings; the decline in tactical skill of the French infantry led to increasingly heavy columns of foot soldiers eschewing all manoeuvre and relying on sheer weight of numbers to break through, a development best emphasised by MacDonald's attack at Wagram. The Grande Armée lost its qualitative edge partly because raw conscripts replaced many of the veterans of Austerlitz and Jena, eroding tactical flexibility. Additionally, Napoleon's armies were more and more composed of non-French contingents, undermining morale. Although Napoleon manoeuvred with customary brilliance, as evidenced by overturning the awful initial French position, the growing size of his armies stretched even his impressive mental faculties. The scale of warfare grew too large for even Napoleon to fully cope with, a lesson that would be brutally repeated during the invasion of Russia in 1812.