Napoleon vs Schwarzenberg
- Thread starter Insidious Von
- Start date
Especially because the campaign was a total disaster, largely caused by Nap's own logistical incompetence. But National Pride will spin any episode into a "glorious win".
The Christian moral code is farily new and fairly bloody in practice. The humanist code was only 400 years.
The untouchables shows you the code of most of the past
- hurt one of ours, we put ten of them in the graveyard
-the more slaves you have the better (see bible)
-if you don't come back with the heads of your enemies, the mothers of Sparta would say, you better be broguh back dead on a shield
-Latin- enemy and stranger where the same word, ie anyone you did not know, kill.
If you read histories, moral treaties, and what not
City of God, the Prince, DeSade, the art of war, Robin Hood, King Arthur, etc
the good was killing. Trail by combat said god only let the good guys win. You where good if you won. Bismakrk and what not started to change with repeating:
Providence is always on the side of the big battalions proverbial saying, early 19th century; earlier versions are attributed to the Comte de Bussy-Rabutin (1618–93), ‘God is usually on the side of the big squadrons against the small,’ and Voltaire (1694–1778), ‘God is on the side not of the heavy battalions but of the best shots.
The first nations people in Canada genocides the Vikings, and had ritual raping and kidnapping of other tribes as well as combat and murder as part of their value as men.
Most of history equates killing with good. Humanistic liberal values have been around 400 years in any force. Its why the USA values -even if never lived up to - where so strange and noteworthy. It was considered immoral not to have serfs slaves and nobels bu most of the world when the USA was formed.
We still have the kick ass mentally as a society. Sports heros are heros despite rape or drug use or whaever, as log as they win. They are good, because they win. Or at least thy must be good right?
Napoleon was the Michal Jordon of his time. The best of the best with no peer and unlimited victories if he was not massively outnumbered.
The concept of Glory as a good is no longer generally taught - the last time it was tried was in Vietnam where the Pentegon bragged about body counts - how many sub humans Americans killed, friendly or not. Americans , many of them having experienced world war ii or if younger, seeing the horror on tv, changed the game.
The Russian thing - well that was a disaster however Russia at the time was a paper dragon. The world saw Russia as the sole superpower, the USA of the time. Totally false, England was in that place and while Russia was an old fully populated nation bigger than the USA (which was mostly empty at the time) its military was the worst in Europe and most of the population where serf/slaves. But on paper it was a mega power (much lie China today or even Canada in some ignorant parts of the world) and any battle against it a victory.
But yes the winter destroyed the military victories for sure.
Historically, it was very important. As an aside, Canadians useless war in Afghanistan has the highway for hero, were murdered many for no point yet lots of praise because it was for the god cause.
Likely our history books will put as a great victory. Harper is certainly praised for his military support.
Was their a wining stradgy - full war with rationing sometimel like the pandemic now. But Canada just wanted a pr war, not a real one - which was pointless. Taliban back in power and rinse and repeat.
Last edited:
Thomas Jefferson on Napoleon
Laurence Vance
May 4, 2004
The beginning of May reminds those who are conscious of history of the deposing and exiling of the monster Napoleon Bonaparte (1769—1821). It was in fact 190 years ago that he was exiled to the island of Elba.
The alliance of Great Britain, Sweden, Russia, Prussia, and Austria (the Sixth Coalition [1812—1814]) against Napoleon led to the occupation of Paris at the end of March of 1814. This was followed by Napoleon’s abdication on April 6 in favor of his son. But because the Allies demanded unconditional surrender, Napoleon abdicated again, unconditionally, on April 11.
By the treaty signed at Fontainebleau (in the same palace where Louis XIV signed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685), Napoleon was exiled to the island of Elba, Italy’s third largest, lying just off the coast of Tuscany. He landed on the island on May 4, 1814, and remained there until his escape on February 26, 1815. And then, as most people remember about Napoleon, he suffered his final defeat at Waterloo, in present-day Belgium, on June 18, 1815.
For some strange reason, Napoleon is admired by many who would be quick to denounce Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Tito, and Mao Tse-Tung as dictators. But surely the man who said that he would gladly sacrifice a million men to secure his paramountcy belongs in the pantheon of monsters we call dictators?
The Napoleonic wars that plagued Europe from 1803—1815 did not escape the notice of our third president, Thomas Jefferson (1743—1826).
As everyone learns at some point in an American history class, one of Jefferson’s first acts as president was the purchase of the Louisiana territory west of the Mississippi that was controlled by France. What most people don’t remember, however, is that Jefferson purchased the Louisiana territory from Napoleon.
...................................................................................................
..................................................................................................
........................................................................................................
Any favor that Jefferson had toward Napoleon after the Louisiana Purchase soon withered away. Napoleon and Jefferson were contemporaries in time, but not companions in thought.
Perhaps the most famous quote from Jefferson is that oft-repeated one from his first inaugural address, delivered on March 4, 1801: “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations — entangling alliances with none.” That this is the exact opposite of Napoleon can be seen in the statements made by Jefferson about him.
Jefferson recognized the undue admiration that many accorded to Napoleon while he was yet alive:
I have grieved to see even good republicans so infatuated as to this man, as to consider his downfall as calamitous to the cause of liberty. In their indignation against England which is just, they seem to consider all her enemies as our friends, when it is well known there was not a being on earth who bore us so deadly a hatred. To whine after this exorcised demon is a disgrace to republicans, and must have arisen either from want of reflection, or the indulgence of passion against principle. Robespierre met the fate, and his memory the execration, he so justly merited. The rich were his victims, and perished by thousands. It is by millions that Bonaparte destroys the poor, and he is eulogized and deified by the sycophants even of science. These merit more than the mere oblivion to which they will be consigned: and the day will come when a just posterity will give to their hero the only preeminence he has earned, that of having been the greatest of the destroyers of the human race. What year of his military life has not consigned a million of human beings to death, to poverty and wretchedness! What field in Europe may not raise a monument of the murders, the burnings, the desolations, the famines, and miseries it has witnessed from him?
Of the principles and advantages of commerce, Bonaparte appears to be ignorant. Bonaparte’s hatred of us is only a little less than that he bears to England, and England to us. Our form of government is odious to him, as a standing contrast between republican and despotic rule; and as much from that hatred, as from ignorance in political economy, he had excluded intercourse between us and his people, by prohibiting the only articles they wanted from us, cotton and tobacco.
Jefferson considered Napoleon to be a tyrant:
We neither expected, nor wished any act of friendship from Bonaparte, and always detested him as a tyrant. That Bonaparte is an unprincipled tyrant, who is deluging the continent of Europe with blood, there is not a human being, not even the wife of his bosom who does not see. No man on earth has stronger detestation than myself of the unprincipled tyrant who is deluging the continent of Europe with blood. No one was more gratified by his disasters of the last campaign. A ruthless tyrant, drenching Europe in blood to obtain through future time the character of the destroyer of mankind.
On the destruction wrought by Napoleon, Jefferson said:
A conqueror roaming over the earth with havoc and destruction. I grieve for France; although it cannot be denied that by the afflictions with which she wantonly and wickedly overwhelmed other nations, she has merited severe reprisals. For it is no excuse to lay the enormities to the wretch who led them, and who has been the author of more miserly and suffering to the world, than any being who ever lived before him. After destroying the liberties of his country, he has exhausted all its resources, physical and moral, to indulge his own maniac ambition, his own tyrannical and overbearing spirit. His sufferings cannot be too great. I view Bonaparte as a political engine only, and a very wicked one; you, I believe, as both political and religious, and obeying, as an instrument, an Unseen Hand. I still deprecate his becoming sole lord of the continent of Europe, which he would have been, had he reached in triumph the gates of St. Petersburg. The establishment in our day of another Roman Empire, spreading vassalage and depravity over the face of the globe, is not, I hope, within the purposes of Heaven.
On Napoleon personally, Jefferson stated:
Bonaparte saw nothing in this world but himself, and looked on the people under him as his cattle, beasts for burthen and slaughter. Bonaparte was a lion in the field only. In civil life, a cold-blooded, calculating, unprincipled usurper, without a virtue; no statesman, knowing nothing of commerce, political economy, or civil government, and supplying ignorance by bold presumption. As to Bonaparte, I should not doubt the revocation of his edicts, were he governed by reason. But his policy is so crooked that it eludes conjecture.
Upon the exile of Napoleon, Jefferson remarked:
The Attila of the age dethroned, the ruthless destroyer of ten millions of the human race, whose thirst for blood appeared unquenchable, the great oppressor of the rights and liberties of the world, shut up within the circle of a little island of the Mediterranean, and dwindled to the condition of an humble and degraded pensioner on the bounty of those he had most injured. How miserably, how meanly, has he closed his inflated career! What a sample of the bathos will his history present! He should have perished on the swords of his enemies, under the walls of Paris.
...................................................................................
.................................................................................
www.lewrockwell.com
Laurence Vance
May 4, 2004
The beginning of May reminds those who are conscious of history of the deposing and exiling of the monster Napoleon Bonaparte (1769—1821). It was in fact 190 years ago that he was exiled to the island of Elba.
The alliance of Great Britain, Sweden, Russia, Prussia, and Austria (the Sixth Coalition [1812—1814]) against Napoleon led to the occupation of Paris at the end of March of 1814. This was followed by Napoleon’s abdication on April 6 in favor of his son. But because the Allies demanded unconditional surrender, Napoleon abdicated again, unconditionally, on April 11.
By the treaty signed at Fontainebleau (in the same palace where Louis XIV signed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685), Napoleon was exiled to the island of Elba, Italy’s third largest, lying just off the coast of Tuscany. He landed on the island on May 4, 1814, and remained there until his escape on February 26, 1815. And then, as most people remember about Napoleon, he suffered his final defeat at Waterloo, in present-day Belgium, on June 18, 1815.
For some strange reason, Napoleon is admired by many who would be quick to denounce Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Tito, and Mao Tse-Tung as dictators. But surely the man who said that he would gladly sacrifice a million men to secure his paramountcy belongs in the pantheon of monsters we call dictators?
The Napoleonic wars that plagued Europe from 1803—1815 did not escape the notice of our third president, Thomas Jefferson (1743—1826).
As everyone learns at some point in an American history class, one of Jefferson’s first acts as president was the purchase of the Louisiana territory west of the Mississippi that was controlled by France. What most people don’t remember, however, is that Jefferson purchased the Louisiana territory from Napoleon.
...................................................................................................
..................................................................................................
........................................................................................................
Any favor that Jefferson had toward Napoleon after the Louisiana Purchase soon withered away. Napoleon and Jefferson were contemporaries in time, but not companions in thought.
Perhaps the most famous quote from Jefferson is that oft-repeated one from his first inaugural address, delivered on March 4, 1801: “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations — entangling alliances with none.” That this is the exact opposite of Napoleon can be seen in the statements made by Jefferson about him.
Jefferson recognized the undue admiration that many accorded to Napoleon while he was yet alive:
I have grieved to see even good republicans so infatuated as to this man, as to consider his downfall as calamitous to the cause of liberty. In their indignation against England which is just, they seem to consider all her enemies as our friends, when it is well known there was not a being on earth who bore us so deadly a hatred. To whine after this exorcised demon is a disgrace to republicans, and must have arisen either from want of reflection, or the indulgence of passion against principle. Robespierre met the fate, and his memory the execration, he so justly merited. The rich were his victims, and perished by thousands. It is by millions that Bonaparte destroys the poor, and he is eulogized and deified by the sycophants even of science. These merit more than the mere oblivion to which they will be consigned: and the day will come when a just posterity will give to their hero the only preeminence he has earned, that of having been the greatest of the destroyers of the human race. What year of his military life has not consigned a million of human beings to death, to poverty and wretchedness! What field in Europe may not raise a monument of the murders, the burnings, the desolations, the famines, and miseries it has witnessed from him?
Of the principles and advantages of commerce, Bonaparte appears to be ignorant. Bonaparte’s hatred of us is only a little less than that he bears to England, and England to us. Our form of government is odious to him, as a standing contrast between republican and despotic rule; and as much from that hatred, as from ignorance in political economy, he had excluded intercourse between us and his people, by prohibiting the only articles they wanted from us, cotton and tobacco.
Jefferson considered Napoleon to be a tyrant:
We neither expected, nor wished any act of friendship from Bonaparte, and always detested him as a tyrant. That Bonaparte is an unprincipled tyrant, who is deluging the continent of Europe with blood, there is not a human being, not even the wife of his bosom who does not see. No man on earth has stronger detestation than myself of the unprincipled tyrant who is deluging the continent of Europe with blood. No one was more gratified by his disasters of the last campaign. A ruthless tyrant, drenching Europe in blood to obtain through future time the character of the destroyer of mankind.
On the destruction wrought by Napoleon, Jefferson said:
A conqueror roaming over the earth with havoc and destruction. I grieve for France; although it cannot be denied that by the afflictions with which she wantonly and wickedly overwhelmed other nations, she has merited severe reprisals. For it is no excuse to lay the enormities to the wretch who led them, and who has been the author of more miserly and suffering to the world, than any being who ever lived before him. After destroying the liberties of his country, he has exhausted all its resources, physical and moral, to indulge his own maniac ambition, his own tyrannical and overbearing spirit. His sufferings cannot be too great. I view Bonaparte as a political engine only, and a very wicked one; you, I believe, as both political and religious, and obeying, as an instrument, an Unseen Hand. I still deprecate his becoming sole lord of the continent of Europe, which he would have been, had he reached in triumph the gates of St. Petersburg. The establishment in our day of another Roman Empire, spreading vassalage and depravity over the face of the globe, is not, I hope, within the purposes of Heaven.
On Napoleon personally, Jefferson stated:
Bonaparte saw nothing in this world but himself, and looked on the people under him as his cattle, beasts for burthen and slaughter. Bonaparte was a lion in the field only. In civil life, a cold-blooded, calculating, unprincipled usurper, without a virtue; no statesman, knowing nothing of commerce, political economy, or civil government, and supplying ignorance by bold presumption. As to Bonaparte, I should not doubt the revocation of his edicts, were he governed by reason. But his policy is so crooked that it eludes conjecture.
Upon the exile of Napoleon, Jefferson remarked:
The Attila of the age dethroned, the ruthless destroyer of ten millions of the human race, whose thirst for blood appeared unquenchable, the great oppressor of the rights and liberties of the world, shut up within the circle of a little island of the Mediterranean, and dwindled to the condition of an humble and degraded pensioner on the bounty of those he had most injured. How miserably, how meanly, has he closed his inflated career! What a sample of the bathos will his history present! He should have perished on the swords of his enemies, under the walls of Paris.
...................................................................................
.................................................................................
Jefferson on Napoleon - LewRockwell
The beginning of May reminds those who are conscious of history of the deposing and exiling of the monster Napoleon Bonaparte (1769—1821). It was in fact 190 years ago that he was exiled to the island of Elba. The alliance of Great Britain, Sweden, Russia, Prussia, and Austria (the Sixth...
www.lewrockwell.com
It is reported that his forces killed thousands of POW's after the conquest of Egypt.
Napoleon and his army in their retreat from Moscow
would have been annihilated by Barclay de Tolly had he
been the general in command of the Russian army instead
of the lethargic Mikhail Kutuzov. Pyotr Bagration, had he
survived Borodino also would have destroyed Napoleon.
Napoleon escaped from capture at Berezina only by luck.
would have been annihilated by Barclay de Tolly had he
been the general in command of the Russian army instead
of the lethargic Mikhail Kutuzov. Pyotr Bagration, had he
survived Borodino also would have destroyed Napoleon.
Napoleon escaped from capture at Berezina only by luck.
Bonaparte saw nothing in this world but himself, and looked on the people under him as his cattle, beasts for burthen and slaughter. Bonaparte was a lion in the field only. In civil life, a cold-blooded, calculating, unprincipled usurper, without a virtue; no statesman, knowing nothing of commerce, political economy, or civil government, and supplying ignorance by bold presumption. As to Bonaparte, I should not doubt the revocation of his edicts, were he governed by reason. But his policy is so crooked that it eludes conjecture.
sound like anyone we know?
sound like anyone we know?
Kutuzov was near death in 1812 and pretty useless and decrepit. The legend is that he sat on his ass in the rear during the big battle before Moscow - Borodino - while Barclay and Bagration did the heavy lifting. Barclay was superseded because as a Baltic guy, he wasn't "truly Russian" and the courtiers around the Czar disparaged him until the Czar appointed Kutuzov as general in chief.
Barclay usually fares the best in contemporary accounts of the campaign and may have been the guy for the job. Unfortunately, he would never get another independent command.
Bagration had a massive ego and was a "take control and lead a charge" kind of guy who was great leading small units, but may not have had the stuff to lead the entire army. He died at Borodino leading a charge.
The main Russian army was pretty fucked up by Fall 1812. Remember that those guys were marching through the snow for day after day too. OTOH they at least got food - unlike the French. The Berezina was supposed to be a 3-way trap. Napoleon had to cross a half-frozen river where all the bridges were destroyed with 3 Russian armies closing in - Wittgenstein from the North, Chichagov from the South and Kutuzov from the East. Wittgenstein and Chichagov weren't particularly good either and Napoleon managed to get across - not that it mattered much because his entire army was already dead, soon to starve / freeze to death or so frostbitten and fatigued that they were in no condition to ever fight again.
Nap himself drove away from his dying army in a sled and wrapped in fur blankets with ample food and wine and raised a whole new army of rookies to fight the next campaign.
