Napoleonic Wars Trivia
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50 free Napoleonic Wars trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Between Britain's declaration of war in May 1803 and the Second Treaty of Paris in November 1815, Napoleon fought seven coalitions, crowned his brothers, redrew the map of Germany and Poland, marched 450,000 men into Russia and brought 27,000 back across the Berezina. The wars invented mass conscription and guerrilla warfare, bankrupted Spain's empire and left Britain master of the seas for a century. This quiz covers the whole span: Ulm and Austerlitz, Nelson at Trafalgar, the nineteen days that destroyed Prussia, Tilsit and the Continental System, the Spanish ulcer and the Lines of Torres Vedras, Aspern-Essling and Wagram, the burning of Moscow, the Battle of the Nations, Vitoria, the Hundred Days, Ligny, Grouchy's late arrival at Wavre, and the rain that delayed Waterloo. Fifty questions with four options each and a short explanation after every answer. Play on your phone or print it for a history quiz night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Britain's declaration of war in May 1803 ended a brief peace signed at which town?
Amiens
Amiens. The peace lasted only about 14 months: Britain refused to evacuate Malta as the treaty required, and the two powers were soon at war again.
Q 02Which 1805 battle, fought on the first anniversary of his coronation, is often called Napoleon's greatest victory?
Austerlitz
Austerlitz. Napoleon deliberately weakened his right wing to tempt the Allies down off the Pratzen Heights, then stormed the heights and split their army in two.
Q 03In October 1805 Napoleon surrounded General Mack's Austrian army and forced its surrender at which Danube city?
Ulm
Ulm. Rapid marching let Napoleon wheel his army round behind Mack and cut his retreat, and the trapped Austrians surrendered before their Russian allies could arrive.
Q 04Which British admiral died winning the Battle of Trafalgar in October 1805?
Nelson
Nelson. A musket ball fired from the rigging of the French ship Redoutable struck him on his own quarterdeck, and he died below a few hours later, after hearing that enemy ships were surrendering.
Q 05Which admiral commanded the Franco-Spanish fleet defeated at Trafalgar?
Villeneuve
Villeneuve. He learned that Napoleon was sending an officer to replace him, so he took the fleet out of Cádiz before the man could arrive, and ended the battle a British prisoner.
Q 06Napoleon's army for invading Britain trained from 1803 in a vast camp beside which French Channel port?
Boulogne
Boulogne. The invasion never sailed: in August 1805 Napoleon broke camp and marched the army east against Austria instead.
Q 07Which December 1805 treaty, signed in today's Bratislava, took Austria out of the Third Coalition?
Treaty of Pressburg
Treaty of Pressburg. Austria gave up Venetia and the Tyrol and had to accept Napoleon's allies, the rulers of Bavaria and Württemberg, as kings.
Q 08Which league of German client states did Napoleon create in July 1806, with himself as its Protector?
Confederation of the Rhine
Confederation of the Rhine. Its members walked out of the Holy Roman Empire, and within weeks Emperor Francis II laid down the imperial crown and the old empire was gone.
Q 09On 14 October 1806 Napoleon won at Jena while which marshal won at Auerstädt?
Davout
Davout. With a single corps, heavily outnumbered, he beat the main Prussian army, while Napoleon, a dozen miles away, was crushing what turned out to be the smaller force.
Q 10During his 1806 conquest of Prussia, Napoleon made a point of visiting whose tomb in Potsdam?
Frederick the Great
Frederick the Great. Napoleon rated the Prussian king among the great commanders, and is said to have told his officers they would not be standing there if Frederick were still alive.
Q 11In 1806 Napoleon carried off to Paris the four-horse chariot from atop which landmark?
Brandenburg Gate
Brandenburg Gate. The Quadriga went to Paris as a trophy and stayed eight years, until Napoleon's fall in 1814 let the Prussians bring it home.
Q 12Which February 1807 battle, fought against the Russians in a blinding snowstorm, ended in a bloody draw?
Eylau
Eylau. A French attack blundered through the snow and was cut to pieces, and only a massed cavalry charge led by Murat saved Napoleon's centre.
Q 13Napoleon and Tsar Alexander I made peace in July 1807 at which town?
Tilsit
Tilsit. The two emperors first met on a raft moored in mid-river, and the peace they made stripped Prussia of about half its territory.
Q 21Sir John Moore was killed at which January 1809 battle, fought at the end of a gruelling winter retreat across Spain?
Corunna
Corunna. Moore's frozen, ragged army reached the port to find its transports had not yet arrived, so it had to turn and beat off the French before it could sail.
Q 22Which 1809 battle near Vienna, won by Austria's Archduke Charles, was Napoleon's first major defeat in a decade?
Aspern-Essling
Aspern-Essling. With only part of his army over the Danube, the Austrians sent heavy barges downstream to wreck his bridges, and he had to pull back, losing Marshal Lannes.
Q 23Which marshal left the army in disgrace after Wagram and was elected Crown Prince of Sweden a year later?
Bernadotte
Q 14In 1807 Britain bombarded which capital to seize its fleet before Napoleon could?
Copenhagen
Copenhagen. Days of shelling set much of the city ablaze and the Danes gave up their fleet, then stayed at war with Britain as Napoleon's ally until 1814.
Q 15In 1807 Napoleon handed his new Duchy of Warsaw to the king of which German state?
Saxony
Saxony. Its king stayed loyal to Napoleon almost to the end, and it cost him: in 1815 much of his kingdom was handed to Prussia.
Q 16Napoleon's Berlin Decree of November 1806 established what?
The Continental System
The Continental System. It barred British goods from every port Napoleon controlled, but smuggling was rife, and enforcing the ban helped drag him into invading Russia.
Q 17Which brother did Napoleon install as King of Spain in 1808?
Joseph
Joseph. Revolt drove him out of Madrid soon after he arrived, and though Napoleon put him back, the French generals in Spain took their orders from Paris, not from him.
Q 18Napoleon is said to have given the draining Peninsular War which bitter nickname?
The Spanish ulcer
The Spanish ulcer. For six years the war tied down hundreds of thousands of French soldiers, men Napoleon sorely needed once he turned on Russia.
Q 19Behind which secretly built fortifications near Lisbon did Wellington's army shelter in 1810?
Lines of Torres Vedras
Lines of Torres Vedras. Wellington had the countryside in front stripped of food, so Masséna's army sat starving before the forts for months and then retreated.
Q 20Which word for irregular fighters entered English from Spain's resistance to Napoleon in the Peninsular War?
Guerrilla
Guerrilla. Spanish for 'little war', it named the peasant bands whose raids and ambushes wore the French down while Spain's regular armies kept losing battles.
Bernadotte. The Swedes remembered his kindness to their prisoners and wanted a soldier; three years later he led an army against Napoleon at Leipzig.
Q 24Britain's disastrous 1809 Walcheren Expedition up the Scheldt failed to reach which French-held naval base?
Antwerp
Antwerp. The army stalled in the marshy Scheldt islands, where fever killed about 4,000 men against roughly 100 lost in battle, and it sailed home without nearing the city.
Q 25Which innkeeper led Tyrol's 1809 peasant uprising against Bavarian and French rule?
Andreas Hofer
Andreas Hofer. Betrayed by a neighbour for the reward on his head, he was shot at Mantua in 1810; the outcry was such that Napoleon later claimed it was done against his wishes.
Q 26Napoleon married which Austrian archduchess in 1810?
Marie-Louise
Marie-Louise. She gave Napoleon his longed-for son within a year, but when he fell in 1814 she ignored his pleas to join him in exile and went home to Vienna.
Q 27Napoleon's brother-in-law Joachim Murat ruled which kingdom?
Naples
Naples. He turned on Napoleon in 1814 to keep his crown, lost it anyway the next year, and was shot after landing in Calabria with a tiny band to win it back.
Q 28The Grande Armée crossed which river to invade Russia on 24 June 1812?
Niemen
Niemen. Five years earlier Napoleon and the tsar had sealed their alliance on a raft moored in this same river; by December the wreck of his army was stumbling back across it.
Q 29Which disease began ravaging the Grande Armée within days of invading Russia in 1812?
Typhus
Typhus. Sickness, hunger and desertion had cost Napoleon around 100,000 men before he fought a single major battle, months before the famous winter set in.
Q 30Which Russian commander's long retreat before Napoleon in 1812 caused such an outcry that the tsar replaced him with Kutuzov?
Barclay de Tolly
Barclay de Tolly. He gave ground and burned what he left behind until the uproar forced the tsar's hand; yet Kutuzov kept falling back too, all the way past Moscow.