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The Glorious Imbecility of War
Submitted by Bill Bonner via Bonner & Partners,
Napoleon Returns
Today, on the eve of the bicentennial of the Battle of Waterloo, we do not celebrate war. Only a fool would celebrate something so horrible. But we pay our respects to the glorious imbecility of it.
War may be dreadful, little more than a racket in many ways, but it is also a magnificent undertaking. It engages the heart and the brain at once and exposes both the genius of our race and its incredible stupidity.
But we are talking about real war. Not phony wars against enemies who pose no real threat. Phony wars earn real profits for the war industry, but only an ersatz glory for the warriors. Real soldiers take no pride in them. Instead, to a real hero, they are a source of shame and embarrassment.
Wars are not conducted to “Free the Holy Land.” Or “Make the World Safe for Democracy.” Or “Rid the World of Tyrants.” Or “Fight Terrorism.” Those are only the cover stories used by the jingoists to get the public to surrender its treasure… and its sons. Wars are fought to release the fighting spirit – that ghost of many millennia – in the scrap for survival.
And so it was that, 200 years ago tomorrow, one of the greatest military geniuses of all time, Napoleon Bonaparte, faced the armies of the Seventh Coalition – principally, the British, under the Duke of Wellington, and the Prussians, under Gebhard von Blücher.
Napoleon Bonaparte, born in Ajaccio, Corsica, later emperor of France and famous (and usually victorious) general, and later still, pensioner on the island of St. Helena
Napoleon had been run out of France, but he had come back. The veterans of the Napoleonic Wars rallied to his cause, and he soon had an army of 73,000 seasoned soldiers. Moving fast, he put his forces in his favored “central position” between Wellington and Blücher.
On June 16, he attacked the Prussians at the Battle of Ligny and drove them back. Then he turned to Wellington, who had formed his army on a low ridge, south of the Belgian village of Waterloo.
Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington, here seen trying to imitate Napoleon
Napoleon knew how to plan and execute a campaign. He was where he wanted to be, with two of his best commanders on either side of him, Marshal Grouchy on his right and Marshal Ney on his left.
But two things conspired against Napoleon. The Prussians had been beaten, but not destroyed. They quickly regrouped and then marched on Waterloo. And it rained. Soft ground always favors the defender. The attacker wears himself out in the mud. Wellington only had to hold his position. Napoleon had to break the British line before the Prussians arrived at his back…
Prince Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, who upset Napoleon’s plans at Waterloo by arriving a lot earlier than expected, shortly after having been defeated already at Ligny two days earlier.
“Wellington Is a Bad General”
And so, the stage was set, on June 18, for one of the most extravagant showdowns in military history. Napoleon was having breakfast on the morning of the battle when one of his generals suggested a reorganization that might strengthen the French position. Bonaparte replied:
“Just because you have all been beaten by Wellington, you think he’s a good general. I tell you Wellington is a bad general, the English are bad troops, and this affair is nothing more than eating breakfast.”
Wellington shared Napoleon’s opinion of his troops. He thought they were bad, too. They were a collection of soldiers drawn from many different units. They had not seen action in almost 20 years. Many were poorly trained. Of his cavalry he wrote:
“I didn’t like to see four British opposed to four French. And as the numbers increased and order, of course, became more necessary, I was the more unwilling to risk our men without having a superiority in numbers.”
The battle began in the late morning. No one knows exactly when. Quickly, the “fog of war” descended on the battlefield, with no one sure what was going on. Crucially, Napoleon missed the rapid approach of the Prussians. He had expected them to need two days to get back in fighting order after their defeat at Ligny.
The Battle of Waterloo
An Englishman describes the scene once the battle was under way:
“I stood near them for about a minute to contemplate the scene: It was grand beyond description. Hougoumont [the escarpment where British and other allied forces faced off against the French] and its wood sent up a broad flame through the dark masses of smoke that overhung the field; beneath this cloud the French were indistinctly visible.
Here a waving mass of long red feathers could be seen; there, gleams as from a sheet of steel showed that the cuirassiers [armored French cavalry] were moving; 400 cannon were belching forth fire and death on every side; the roaring and shouting were indistinguishably commixed – together they gave me an idea of a laboring volcano.
Bodies of infantry and cavalry were pouring down on us, and it was time to leave contemplation, so I moved towards our columns, which were standing up in square.”
A map of the battle: Napoleon’s troops in blue, Wellington’s in red, and Blücher’s in gray, by Ipankonin – click to enlarge.
To win the battle, the French had to dislodge Wellington from his ridge at Hougoumont. Again and again, they attacked. And again and again, they failed. The Englishmen – along with a large number of Irishmen, Scots, and Germans – held their ground.
The Royal Scots Greys, the Gordon Highlanders, the Irish Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers – all fought better than Bonaparte or Wellington had expected. But the “bravest of the brave” was on the French side – Marshal Ney, whose statue we encountered on Sunday.
Good old Marechal Michel Ney, who was responsible for tactics on the battlefield. He had one horse after another shot out from under him. Not a quitter, that’s for sure.
A Hero’s Hero
When we saw the statue, we wondered: What sort of people are these who execute a man for treason and then honor his memory with a statue of him in their capital city?
Ney was a hero’s hero – a man whose military career was such a long shot… that so defied the odds… it was hard to believe he ever existed. He was everything our modern military lard-butts are not. He was the fighting spirit in the flesh.
The French launched as many as 12 separate attacks against Wellington’s lines. Ney, leading the charges personally, had five horses shot from under him.
A British infantryman remembers what it was like to see him coming:
“About 4 p.m., the enemy’s artillery in front of us ceased firing all of a sudden, and we saw large masses of cavalry advance: Not a man present who survived could have forgotten in after life the awful grandeur of that charge.
You discovered at a distance what appeared to be an overwhelming, long moving line, which, ever advancing, glittered like a stormy wave of the sea when it catches the sunlight.
On they came until they got near enough, whilst the very earth seemed to vibrate beneath the thundering tramp of the mounted host. One might suppose that nothing could have resisted the shock of this terrible moving mass.
They were the famous cuirassiers, almost all old soldiers, who had distinguished themselves on most of the battlefields of Europe.
In an almost incredibly short period they were within twenty yards of us, shouting “Vive l’Empereur!”
The word of command, “Prepare to receive cavalry,” had been given, every man in the front ranks knelt, and a wall bristling with steel, held together by steady hands, presented itself to the infuriated cuirassiers.”
Marshal Ney leading the charge of the French cavalry.
Marshal Ney’s cavalry overran the British cannons. But without infantry and artillery support, he could not break the cavalry-proof defensive squares Wellington’s infantrymen formed.
And then Blücher arrived … and Napoleon was beaten. His “central position became a trap.” The Prussians hammered the French against the British anvil. At the end of the battle, Ney led one of the last infantry charges, shouting to his men, “Come see how a marshal of France dies!”
Prince Blücher’s Prussian troops, in form of the remainder of the IV. corps led by Friedrich Wilhelm Freiherr von Bülow, attack Plancenoit, at the right flank of Napoleon’s troops.
Four days after the battle, Major W.E. Frye described what he saw:
“22 June – This morning I went to visit the field of battle, which is a little beyond the village of Waterloo, on the plateau of Mont-Saint-Jean; but on arrival there the sight was too horrible to behold. I felt sick in the stomach and was obliged to return.
The multitude of carcasses, the heaps of wounded men with mangled limbs unable to move, and perishing from not having their wounds dressed or from hunger, as the Allies were, of course, obliged to take their surgeons and wagons with them, formed a spectacle I shall never forget. The wounded, both of the Allies and the French, remain in an equally deplorable state.”
More to come … on what happened to brave Marshall Ney.
This house served as Napoleon’s headquarters during the battle of Waterloo
Photo credit: Kelisi
The battle between 5:30 to 8:00 pm: Bülow’s attack on Plancenoit begins at 5:30 pm. Ney and his cavalry take La Haye Sainte around 6:00 pm and the Old Guard launches an attack on the British center at 7:00 pm. Map by Gregory Fremont-Barnes.
The storming of La Haye – Marshal Ney can be spotted to the right, sword pointing to the sky.
Painting by Richard Knötel
* * *
Addendum: Lord Uxbridge’s Leg
Lord Uxbridge led countless charges of British light cavalry, and similar to Marshal Ney, had numerous horses shot from out under him in the process. One of the last cannonballs fired in the battle shattered one of his legs (Uxbridge to Wellington: “By God, sir, I’ve lost my leg!” Wellington pauses, takes a look. “By God sir, so you have”). The leg, as well as its replacement, subsequently attained considerable, if somewhat morbid, fame.
Lord Uxbridge’s famous wooden leg. His real leg was hit by a cannonball during the battle and had to be amputated without antiseptic or anesthetics. Lord Uxbridge reportedly remarked during the procedure that “the knives appear somewhat blunt”.
Photo credit: Andreas von Einsiedel
Uxbridge’s real leg got its own burial place, while his wooden prosthetic leg is these days exhibited in a museum. The inscription on the tombstone of his leg reads:
“Here lies the Leg of the illustrious and valiant Earl Uxbridge, Lieutenant-General of His Britannic Majesty, Commander in Chief of the English, Belgian and Dutch cavalry, wounded on the 18 June 1815 at the memorable battle of Waterloo, who, by his heroism, assisted in the triumph of the cause of mankind, gloriously decided by the resounding victory of the said day.”
The leg’s burial site soon began to attract tourists from all over Europe, which proves that one definitely shouldn’t let a shattered leg go to waste.
George Canning was even moved to write a poem about Uxbridge’s leg:
“Here rests, and let no saucy knave
Presume to sneer and laugh,
To learn that mouldering in the grave
Is laid a British calf.
For he who writes these lines is sure
That those who read the whole
Will find such laugh were premature,
For here, too, lies a sole.
And here five little ones repose,
Twin-born with other five;
Unheeded by their brother toes,
Who now are all alive.
A leg and foot to speak more plain
Lie here, of one commanding;
Who, though his wits he might retain,
Lost half his understanding.
And when the guns, with thunder fraught,
Pour’d bullets thick as hail,
Could only in this way be taught
To give his foe leg-bail.
And now in England, just as gay –
As in the battle brave –
Goes to the rout, review, or play,
With one foot in the grave.
Fortune in vain here showed her spite,
For he will still be found,
Should England’s sons engage in fight,
Resolved to stand his ground.
But fortune’s pardon I must beg,
She meant not to disarm;
And when she lopped the hero’s leg
By no means sought his harm,
And but indulged a harmless whim,
Since he could walk with one,
She saw two legs were lost on him
Who never meant to run.
* * *
Image captions and addendum by Acting-Man.com's Pater Tenebrarum
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War is the ultimate expression of our collective insanity. The hypocrisy begins within. Why is it we can kill fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters of others, but be outraged when it is done to ours?
Patriotism and propaganda.
Is that John Kerry in the 2nd portrait?
P.S. All wars are banker wars. Especially the Napoleonic Wars.
The Rothschilds already possessed a significant fortune before the start of the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815), and the family had gained preeminence in the bullion trade by this time.[18] From London in 1813 to 1815, Nathan Mayer Rothschild was instrumental in almost single-handedly financing the British war effort, organising the shipment of bullion to the Duke of Wellington's armies across Europe, as well as arranging the payment of British financial subsidies to their continental allies.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rothschild_family
By the time the war was over the Rothschilds were 14 times richer than the next richest banking family the Barings.
And when war is brought to your door?
The progression (aggression) gets personnel when it goes down this chain:
It is overseas
It is at your borders
It is inside your country
Inside your state
Inside your county
Inside your city
Inside your neighborhood
Inside your property
Inside your house, your family.
Best to have no wars but if another brings one lets hope we can muster enough collective support to prevent the above, even if we start it.
A thought: Any declaration of war must include the establishment an independent tribunal to investigate the reason for the war and conduct of the war. It would report it's finding to the public within one year after the war was declared over. Then off with necessary heads.
War exposes how far humanity is from being human.
Correction: War exposes how far humanity is from being humane
War is still very human...emotionally we are barely out of the woods from an evolutionary perspective. Still got a long way to go.
In my grade school years, I was totally fascinated by the Napoleonic era and wars. Napoleon bestowing the handle of "the bravest of the brave" on Marshall Ney didn't fully do Ney justice. Notwithstanding Ney giving the order to his firing squad to shoot, the honor and pride that it took to countermand his lawyer's claim that he wasn't French (since Prussia had taken control of his home after the seventh coalition victory) and therefore could not be guilty of treason is a lesson for the ages. But the age of having principles and standing by them, no matter the consequences, is viewed as a relic of the Victorian era with no place in the modern world. Oh to have been a fly on the wall to have seen Napoleon's reaction when he learned of the execution of the man who vowed to arrest him, then paid the ultimate price for loyalty.
Which is another way of saying that what culture, society, religion, history and science told us we are, and forced down our throats what they defined us to be, is not what we actually are, at all.
And with that I profoundly agree to an unlimited extent. I would say we absolutely are not what we have been told we are by those constructs and narratives.
We are something else, entirely.
"Why is it we can kill fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters of others, but be outraged when it is done to ours?"
Ingroup-outgroup morality.
Morals are just behavioral adaptations that promoted the survival of the group in which they arose.
I like what you say but for some reason I think if we have time to debate and question the validity of a war, the reasons for it may be inherently dubious.
Miffed
Very true ! I believe that the Rothchilds supported both sides (French vs British) and so they made a fortune indeed !!! I am sure the family networth is over a $$ trillion dollars . Amazingly for a family with such great wealth today. They keep a VERY low profile & the common people of the world aren't even aware of them lol
if we look at the families on both sides of many of the wars, we see related royals. We are always fools to side with any of them. They are skilled at the whole making it look essential and patriotic yet they betray as a standard tactic, everyone over time. And the media liars are really an enemy.
Rothchild had a messanger on a fast horse at the Battle with instruction to high tail it back as soon as the outcome was sure. He knew hours before anyone else in Britain that Napoleon had lost and Britain was saved. So what did he do? He sold the pound as if they'de lost until everyone else followed in panic selling. When the dust settled he went all in at rock bottom prices and owned the country!
A bankers war no dought!
This is a historical fact
This is mythology
I vaguely remember that Nial Ferguson classified this as nazi mythology in his book The ascent of money.
That is why Napleon sold almost half of the current US .from Detroit to Luisiana to the Americans to fund thesle wars.
Patriotism and propaganda.
No, Nationalism and Propaganda - Patriotism has nothing to do with wars of aggression. Patriotism is love of country and people - Nationalism is love of government and the lies they spout to get people to die for the wishes of the parasitic few.
Don't forget financial rewards for the winner. We would also be speaking French right now if they were the winners. The English spread their culture thruogh cnquists from war.
Napoleon lost Waterloo for want of a bag of nails.
His cavalry took the opposing artillery positions,but could not hold them,
or spike the canon without those nails.
Always remember your objective.
or real story told us that he was backstabed by one of his generals. UK just bribed him, but who knows=)
Western history is not a history at all- it's like a trailer to the film
you know about one episode, but you know nothing about everything else
He lost it for a lot of reasons, over confidence, no attention to detail but most of all, having the Prussians fall on his flank...lol.
Trust me if you come between Scooby and Scooby snack, it's war. Cold as it may seem.
Tonight I'm on the Jitney Southhampton bound. When I arrive I will be about 30 minutes into a major speedball that I caught in the bus bathroom. IDGAF. Time to unwind, Scooby style.
Does anyone remember that ZH 'contributor' the one who use to post the stories about the cocktail parties that he would attend in Connecticut? Remember? Wayback.
I wanna find that cocksuck tonight if he's out here.
So Now ZH is a FB or I want to suck dIck app?
Steve Hughes on the subject of war:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohogzxiqqkM&feature=youtu.be&t=36m25s
JuliaS
People should understand by now that Comediennes/Comedians are well rounded and understanding of society ails.
The MSM will deride Beppe Grillo because he can master their BS and articulate it to an audience much more easily and freely than Mario Drughi and yet Drughi can do whatever it takes to achieve nothing.
Three hail Marys.
Great so Wellington caught Napoleon off guard suffering with Hemorrhoids is the latest excuse from the French who sent a 3rd grade diplomat this week to the 5 day Anniversary Remembrance of the Battle of Waterloo in Belgium.
Wellington fought tooth and nail not to hand over the Vote to the Serfs in England only Caving when the Sheeples brought out the Pitchforks and were ready to burn down their Castles and Country Estates.
Wellington's great great great maybe another great grandson has recently married into the German aristocracy keeping the great revolving door of Slave Masters in Europe alive and well for further generations.
Nice!
Replenishing the soil with the blood of Patriots and tyrants is good for the planet Earth. It is our collective duty to see that the tyrants and patriots fulfill their function in society through to the fertilizing stage of the process of helping planet Earth. The tyrants & patriots signed on for this outcome years ago IMHO, it is their collective right.
And so what's your point?
And now our valiant heroes fight with drones, terrorize and murder women and children and torture the helpless as entertainment.
war is not result of incompetent leaders, it is a result of incompetent people allowing incompetent leadership to exist
Today was the reinactment of the battle of waterloo and they threathened to tow away the car of Napoleon and Napoleon said he was going to leave the battle if they toughed his car. So after a small dispute with the police, the police backed down and left the car alone :)
It wqsn’t a biggy... there where only about 60000 people waiting for the end of the battle :)
Hillarious and the cops lost the real battle :)
Napoleon had the initiative, but underestimated the enemy.
Who can blame him? Wellington himself underestimated his own troops.
But Napoleon's underestimation of Blucher was his downfall. Blucher's arrival on the scene was the decisive event. And it is inconceivable that Napoleon did not know it immediately.
You see, it is not the number or mass of troops that is decisive, but the mass on a particular location at a particular time. Blucher's position in the map above is a flanking one. He could muster his full strength against the side of Napoleon's line.
You see, linear warfare presents a situation much the opposite of the 300 at thermopolae. There only a few men can present their weapons to their opponents, and so the few are equal to the many at that point, and in that time. The enemy then, must match him for quality...or find a way around the choke point. At Waterloo Bucher's troops approached Napoleon's flank. Only the few French on the end of Napoleon's line could engage Bucher. But, being open terrain, Bucher could engage those few with his full strength. There was no mountain pass to constrain him.
This is a lesson most miss even today, because it impacts always, rather than only during linear warfare.
It is not the number of men with guns, but the ability to direct them agiley for the purpose of putting more power in one tightly defined 4-dimensional space, that is decisive.
To those who study such matters, it is known that Napoleon's chief contribution to military science was the invention of the staff, and through it, the organizational ability to direct troops where previously thought impossible.
His downfall was to believe his invention could not be copied, and the misestimation of the quality of the men he faced.
That's war.
Always a gamble.
Long live the revolution.
The real barbarous relic.
War...
Rich old men sending poor young men to kill each other so that the rich old men stay rich.
Wake the fuck up, people!
Was talking to a banker and mentioned war - he perked right up "I love war - it's a great way to make a lot of money!" - so I asked him if he was lacking a moral compass, "Well, it's just human nature - one group is always wanting to steal another group's resources - it's always been that way..." and I said "Hmmm - weird - because I don't think I've ever seen an oil company exec, banker, or politician shouldering a rifle during my time in country .... seems like the people who want to steal those resources never do the fighting or dying" to which he replied "Well, the people get the benefits of those resources...." and I replied, "Well, I'm pretty sure I still have to pay for those resources .... so why would I care if I buy it from a guy across the ocean, or some sociopathic prick across town who let people die so he could make another million? .... maybe those of us who do the fighting need to redirect and get rid of the people who want to steal those resources ... that might end the wars .... it's worth a try, anyway...."
He gave me a shit-eating grin and walked away.
Napolean was a hero that got carried awy at the end. His greatest triumph was destroying the Holy Roman Empire by killing the last emporer and captuing his tag team Pope and imprisoning him till he died. This war released humanity from an evil empire and was well worth sacrifice. War can be good when a greater evil is vanquished. It is a neccesary part of living in this broken world we live in.
The history of the human race is the history of war. Humans are brutal and stupid. It will not change.
During WWII, when Europe, Russia, Africa, and part of Asia were killing each other by the millions, sane people were attending the opera and dining in nice restaurants in Argentina.
You can't change the human propensity for mass murder. You can, however, ignore the patriotic propaganda and stay out of the way of war. It's a big world. Go to a peaceful place. Take care of yourself and your loved ones.
If you insist on defending your patch of misery like a junkyard dog, you will not understand what I am saying. It doesn't matter. The world needs cannon fodder. Sign up now.
The Truth About The Famous Palindrome.
It didn't start out as a Palindrome at all.
Lord Uxbridge's remark "Able was I ere I saw my leg on the other side of the room," was later turned into the famous Palindrome about the Napster and his wretched time share on Elba.
There is great licence about the writing of historical events as the author so ably points out.
An aside.....
"The end of the old republic" by f. Kagan is a very masterful book about the beginnings of the Napoleonic wars. Told from many sides, it is an excellent read. However, his brother robert is married to vic nuland. It gives one pause to see these neocons grasp the breadth of history and strategy and make blunders Napoleon would even find "infantile".
for a brilliant and absolutely authoratative analysis
of Napoleon's Russian Campaign prior to Waterloo,
read Dominic Lieven's "Russia Against Napoleon",
Professor Lieven also has an excellent YouTube interview
discussing this book:
The Tsar Liberates Europe? Russia against Napoleon, 1807-1814
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzElqomAATI
Dominic Lieven says something interesting about Waterloo in the youtube clip you provided :
( starting at about 10 min 0 seconds )
"Waterloo is absoluterly part of British patriotic mythology...ehh..I was completely like most boys of my era brought up on the believe that the British have won the battle of Waterloo, vitually unaided, and it was sort of a shock to me at about the age of 15 to discover that a quarter of the troops of the allied side were British, the other three quarters being Germans of one description or another. The British stole Waterloo, ..."
( not sure where the Belgian and Dutch troops fit into his numbers )
fuck all this shit.
the only reason Napoleon fell at waterloo was becasue God Almighty had, for some reaosn, turned against the cagey corsican.
the turn at waterloo is a secret shared only among God & Napoleon.
as for his rank among men, there are few with whom to compare.
Napoleon Bonaparte was/is one of the world's rare and exquisite Greats.
perhaps he should've studied his Bible:
"pride commeth before a downfall; and a haughty heart proceedeth destruction."
quote's provenance?...somewhere in Proverbs...google it, you worthless modernists.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbGV-MVfgec
selah,
janus
I'm afraid (y) our lord does not bother so much. He still gave us free will be it for good or evil and most of the Great are IMHO evil beyond any belief. Napoleon is just one of them Alexander the Great, he was so great to get hundreds of thousands from his soldiers killt. Lincoln has still blood on his hands. The biggest slaugthering was carried out by highly industrialized states and still we stick to them. How stupid can men be?
i was drinking.
anyway, Napoleon, for all his flaws, took the continent from a patchwork of schlortic feifdoms into an epoch of republics. it's easy to remember the blood, but most forget his civil code and numberless achievements for the betterment of mankind.
perhaps if the hapsburgs, autro-hungarians, and others had listened, there wouldn't have been any need for the bloodshed.
sure, to the rentier class, Napoleon is a villain; to all who treasure the rule of law and the citizen's equality before it, he's still a hero.
and as for Alexander, well...don't get me started.
janus
He was by any means a murderer. That's the simple fact.
are you French ?
non.
il americano.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnYX5yIJfdU
janus
The historic meaning of Napoleonic campaign is that for the first time Napoleon created unpaid truly national army form with willing peasants run by generals distinguished by their talents and experience rather than aristocratic lineage. Remember that fame of Napoleon was not because of his aggressive external wars but that he defended revolution from Prussian attempts to destroy it. He had under his command overall as many as million men. Unfortunately, he later destroyed that revolution himself.
His return from Elba in 1815 was just pure ego play, doomed to fail since he did not have national support anymore.
we kill the unborn by the millions, with very little emotion or understanding of the value of human life-yet decry the adult game "racket" called war. either you value human life or you do not. you cannot be against bankster wars, yet ok with killing unborn children, and be consistant or true to both.
This is true in your mind, but that doesn't make it true. There is no Magic Sky Daddy. Your beliefs are primitive.
"But we are talking about real war. Not phony wars against enemies who pose no real threat. Phony wars earn real profits for the war industry, but only an ersatz glory for the warriors. Real soldiers take no pride in them. Instead, to a real hero, they are a source of shame and embarrassment."
That fool begins well and immediately disgraces himself by proceeding to glorify one of the most moronic imperialists of history, Napoleon. It took that demented bloke only ten years to completely run France down. The French army had sucked in all the available males of the country, to end up in tatters, and the French finances were totally wrecked. Once he was done, France was a desert.
Even Hitler did better: his running Germany into a solid wall took twelve years, two more than Napoleon.
'Murikins won't change easy if they carry on thinking that might is right and that winning battles is being a "good leader".
Napoleon = Hitler minus the mustache.
If you look at things from a macro-perspective the similarities between Napoleon and Hitler are indeed inescapable. But I am sure in much of Europe this is the kind of thing you can think but not say.
There are many differences, but not that many to put them on the opposite sides of a continuum, to proclaim one the devil and the other a near-God. Some will say that this is were extremes meet, well, who knows ? I suspect the perceptions are in no small part shaped by propaganda. Demonization of the enemy, and glorification ( near-deification ) of one's own. The above comment by Janus, who almost puts Napoleon in a separate category that is closer to God is an example of this. ( "the turn at waterloo is a secret shared only among God & Napoleon." )
They were probably similar in many ways. Probably thought alike in many ways.
Thanks for the great post !
you are welcome