The Grande Armée (French for Great Army) was the army commanded by Napoleon during the Napoleonic Wars. From 1805 to 1809, the Grande Armée scored a streak of historic victories that gave the French Empire an unprecedented grip on power over the European continent. Widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest fighting forces ever assembled, it suffered terrible losses during the French invasion of Russia in 1812 and never recovered its tactical superiority after that campaign.