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| Europe |
| Today in History: Waterloo, 1815 |
| 2008-06-18 |
| "I saw four regiments of the middle guard, conducted by the Emperor, arriving. With these troops, he wished to renew the attack, and penetrate the centre of the enemy. He ordered me to lead them on; generals, officers and soldiers all displayed the greatest intrepidity; but this body of troops was too weak to resist, for a long time, the forces opposed to it by the enemy, and it was soon necessary to renounce the hope which this attack had, for a few moments, inspired." —Marshall Ney |
| Posted by:Mike |
| #4 JFM totally agree about Ney. He committed one of the biggest head-up-a** acts in the history of warfare. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2008-06-18 18:51 |
| #3 I'll freely admit that when I'm playing Napoleonic miniatures, I root for the French (unless there are Highlanders on the table, in which case I default to my Scots ancestry). The last big game I played in was a full recreation of Waterloo. I got stuck with the Dutch-Belgian militia. They came under artillery fire and failed their morale check, leaving a trail of discarded muskets and wooden shoes as they raced off the table. |
| Posted by: Mike 2008-06-18 12:42 |
| #2 Ah, JFM, if he had only had Davout to pursue the Prussians with his usual vigor after Ligny, instead of ensconcing him back in Paris to run the war ministry, and switched the assignements of Soult and Suchet, who was a far better administrator in the absence created by the death of Berthier, the story would have been even more interesting. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2008-06-18 12:13 |
| #1 Napoleon's greatest mistake: not having had Ney shot. It was Ney stupidity who allowed tha Russian Army not be destroyed at Borodino. It was Ney's indiscpline who allowed Blucher to escape from Ligny. It was Ney's mix of stupidity and indiscipline who allowed Wellington to hold until Prussian's arrival. After that instead to use the reserve as a bulwark buying time for the rallying of troops who had panicked, he tried to get a heroic death leading it oved forward, was usrprised in marching order by the Prussina cavalry and had the reserve dispersed and so it happenned that an armmy of one hundred tousand men was unable to resist three orb four thousand (at most) Pruisiian horseme: bevcause every onbe who truied to stand and shoot back was instantly surrounded and killed, how differnet it would have been if instead of individuals the pockets of resistance had been hundreds or thousands. But Ney had spent the reserve to play hero. Hanibal's weakness was being unable to exploit victory, Napoleon's weakeness was being unable to promote the right people: those generals and Marshalls "made" by him (instead of being legacies of the Republic) were uniformly very, very brave but not most of them were not very bright. |
| Posted by: JFM 2008-06-18 11:49 |