One theory I've heard for this, and sorry I don't remember the source, is that Napoleon suspected if he truly did take down the Russian royalty then he expected the rest of European royalty to unite and attack attack him.
> Also what surprises me, after years of several revolutions and chaos in France, how could Napoleon gather such a large army.
Conscription + France was basically the China of Europe at that point: it was almost as populated as the rest of Europe combined.
France then had a very, very, early demographic transition which dramatically limited its population. Had France followed the demographic path of England or Germany, France would have around 250M inhabitants today.
> France was basically the China of Europe at that point: it was almost as populated as the rest of Europe combined.
That doesn't seem to be correct. From Wikipedia: "During the Middle Ages, more than one-quarter of Europe's total population was French;[8] by the seventeenth century, this had decreased slightly to one-fifth. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, other European countries, such as Germany and Russia, had caught up with France and overtaken it in number of people." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_France
he essentially invented the modern concept of conscription. there were press gangs and conscription-like things all through history but for the most part soldiers were professionals
He didn't invent it, the revolutionary government did and Bonaparte then inherited a massive experimented army after the French Republic having been at war for a decade when he took power.
