NAPOLEON IN NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC GERMANY

There are few individuals in history that have captured the imagination of historians as much as Napoleon Bonaparte who, over the course of little more than a decade, acquired control of most of the western and central mainland of Europe by conquest or alliance. In Germany in 1806, after the defeat of the Austro-Russian armies by Napoleon at Austerlitz, the 1000-year-old Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation came to an end. Prussia also met defeat in 1806 in the battle of Jena and Auerstedt and subsequently Napoleon ruled over all of Germany until his defeat at the Battle of the Nations near Leipzig in October 1813 . As 2006 marks the 200th anniversary of Bonaparte's usurpation of all German territory, Gerd Ludwig traced his steps, photographing monuments and museums, reenactments and historic places for an article in the November issue of the German edition of National Geographic Magazine.