Invasion and Occupation: Civilian-Military Relations in Central Europe during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars

During the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, the armies of France in German central Europe committed numerous atrocities against civilians, the most common of which were robbery and looting. Survivors chronicled their horrible experiences in diaries, letters, and memoirs published after the climax of the war. Works by Karen Hagemann, Ute Planert, and Katherine Aaslestad have exposed the complexities of military-civilian relations in southern Germany, Prussia, and Hamburg, respectively. This chapter examines the hardships - namely, looting, violence, requisitioning, and disease - experienced by civilians in Central Europe at the hands of the French soldiers during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. It challenges the traditional nineteenth-century narrative of the wars in which German nationhood was solidified by military occupation and subjugation, and shows that some civilians were able to profit from the war to enrich themselves.