Why didn't Napoleon make any attempt to dismantle the Prussian and Austrian Empires? Either through direct annexation, setting up a client state, placing a Bonaparte on the throne or partitioning among small-allied states?
Napoleon occupied Vienna in 1805, and was in a military position to totally dismantle the Austrian Empire if he saw fit. Instead he had to face them again in a much closer affair at Wagram in 1809. The disloyalty of the Austro-German contingent during the 1812 Invasion of Russia was a major factor in Napoleon's crushing defeat, or at least the epic scale of it. And Austria and Prussia supplied the main armies of 1813.
The Duchy of Warsaw created out of Prussian territory was one of Napoleon's most useful and loyal allies. Napoleon could likewise have created client states out of Bohemia and Hungary which would have provided an important defensive belt following 1812.
The thing about Napoleon as a conqueror is that he did not expand France's political borders all the far relative to his military conquests. Even if you count his puppet states as French territories, he still never attempted to occupy the two great European powers Austria and Prussia, that his armies had already bested. Had Napoleon did to Austria, what he did to Spain, the conditions in central europe would have proven far less favorable to any guerrilla war.
Napoleon occupied Vienna in 1805, and was in a military position to totally dismantle the Austrian Empire if he saw fit. Instead he had to face them again in a much closer affair at Wagram in 1809. The disloyalty of the Austro-German contingent during the 1812 Invasion of Russia was a major factor in Napoleon's crushing defeat, or at least the epic scale of it. And Austria and Prussia supplied the main armies of 1813.
The Duchy of Warsaw created out of Prussian territory was one of Napoleon's most useful and loyal allies. Napoleon could likewise have created client states out of Bohemia and Hungary which would have provided an important defensive belt following 1812.
The thing about Napoleon as a conqueror is that he did not expand France's political borders all the far relative to his military conquests. Even if you count his puppet states as French territories, he still never attempted to occupy the two great European powers Austria and Prussia, that his armies had already bested. Had Napoleon did to Austria, what he did to Spain, the conditions in central europe would have proven far less favorable to any guerrilla war.