Napoleon I

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Originally posted by Paul

On the second count I know of nobody who considers Waterloo anything but an allied victory.

yeah, but hat was not ym question, it's clear that the Anglo-Dutch army had lost the battle if the Prussians had not arrvied.

For Quatra Bras you have to look at the objectives. Wellington wanted to hold the French at the crossroads and then retreat retreat. The French wanted to drive the British away and fall on the Prussian flank. Wellington succeeded and saved the campaign.

no you're wrong, thats British biased history-writing. Wellesleys objective was to join armies with Bl�cher, and the French objevtice was to prevent this, which suceeded at the twin battles of Quatre Bras and Ligny.

Originally posted by The Golden Phallanx

and yes Temujin I consider myself german

good for you, but you aren't. 

Originally posted by Quetzalcoatl

That's why I hate the empire, on the republicans path there was only carnage, the conquered enemies would not have dared revolted against the republicans. Napoleon was naive fool, how many time did France have to fight austria, for then to submit, the republican would have simply burn the damn country.

and then there are Frenchmen who complain about the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS...this only shows how much of a Republic the Directoire et al really were, Napoleon hismlf was the real Revolution...Napoleon did not kill his own people under the guillotine as did maniacs like Robbespierre.

Originally posted by Exarchus

His greatest battle was Borodino if you count in involved men. If you mean the best victory, it got to be Austerlitz. His greatest defeat isn't a military one, it's against the Russian winter.

I also like Borodino a lot, in fact it's my favourite battle of the Napoelonic wars as it was one of the largest and the bloodiest of them all, and it had an awesome cavalry charge. however, i do not think it was a real French victory. napoleons aim was a fast defeat of the Russian army soon after his invasion and occupying Moscow to force the Czar to surrender. the aim of the Russians was to prevent battle and force the huge army to axhaust itself, giving battle was a bad idea, so at least Borodino was a strategical victory for Napoleon. but looking at the battle itself, the French aim was to take the Grande Redoute, whiel the Russian objective was simply to hold position, in which they more or less suceeded, OK, at the end of the day, the Raevsky battery was lost, but at a very high cost and the rest of the Russian line has been sucessfully defended, the only reason the Russians retreated overnight was because they suffered higher casualties than expected and couldn't dare give another day of battle.
for the winter. i must say especially regarding Napoleons camapign, this is a myth, prolly amde up after WW2. if you look at the whole camapign you see that most of the Grande Armee was lost during the first few weeks, as napoelon pushed his army merciless on to catch up with the Russian at the cost of his cavalry. mayn horses were therefore already lost before he could engage the enemy for the first time. and now for the winter. it has been estimated that the Grande Armee lost appx 1/3 fo their army, but research has shown that the Russian army as well suffered aroudn 1/3 of their strengh due to the effects of the winter weather, this is also the reason why the Grande Armee could stay in Moscow unmolested from Russian counterattacks for the whoel time of their stay. therefore, you can easily neglect the effect of winter for this campaign.

Edited by Temujin