re: I've been reading up on the Napoleonic Wars as of late...

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Since 1945

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Mutually assured destruction

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Excellent read. For those of you that like historical fiction the Sharpe's Rifle series by Bernard Cornwell are very good.

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Agreed... it’s great.

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I find it interesting and pretty ironic that the best tactic other armies came up with to deal with Napoleon's Lightning movements was to just turn and run. In turn, it stretched the French supply lines beyond their capabilities. That is when they even used supply lines as Napoleon used foraging to his advantage for his smaller "corps".

The Russians turned to a scorched earth policy to deal with this and still ran all the way to Moscow before turning to face Napoleon...and still lost the city.

Pretty incredible.

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Other factors were important, too, but lengthy supply lines did and does cause an army to lose its sharp edge.
Attrition wears down armies, leaders, equipment, horses and men. Nappy's health in 1805 was fine, but, 10 years later, it his health was bad enough to affect things.

Also, Nappy's system of command and control lost its effectiveness as the decade of 1805 to 1815 progressed. He tried to make all of the decisions himself. When a campaign gets too big, this is impossible.

Nappy's underlings were often not talented enough to make the right moves, and this hurt Nappy's aims. Nappy lost a talented "chief assistant" named Berthier, and this loss caused command and control problems and fatal mistakes.

But it is a key point to remember that's related to what you say - yes, Nappy's enemies DID adopt and copy from the 1805 French Army practices. The Allies adopted the Corps system and refined it to more closely resemble the French practice. The Allies also tried to train the individual battalions to be able to move on the battlefield in proper compact "assault column" formations, and to quickly stop to deploy into Line or Square formation upon command, and then back into assault column and moving forward.

A higher American emphasis on the individual translates to a lower tolerance for death. Has always been the case.

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saw between 127,000 and 155,000 men 

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yeah but they are on the metric system. Once you convert to SAE that number drops significantly.

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Thats why what the US did for Europe after ww2 was so special. That continent had been going through countless cycles of horrible war for centuries. Finally after ww2, we helped all the nations out financially, basically became their military, and ushered in an era of peace and economic growth the likes of which those countries had never seen. Of course they will never admit that, and they hate us for it, but Pax Americana is very real. Since 1945, the world has been progressing faster and further than it ever had.

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Thank God we saved the world and defeated the bad guys. Now everyone can let their kids watch tv that tells them theyre the wrong gender and to hate Jesus

I’d post more about this but I have to bake another 47 gay wedding cakes today or the government will shut down my bakery

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And he was aged, tired, sick and strategically out-maneuvered when he did face them. On the other hand, the British soldiers and Welly were superb on that day

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it didn’t help tallyrand betrayed him

At least he made it to Moscow unlike Hitler I guess.

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It's not the size of the formation, it's the technique you use to advance your formation and penetrate the enemy's defenses.

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As true in love as in warfare.

Keep in mind it wasn't just the British that were responsible for the victory at waterloo.

" The first is that it was a “British” victory by “British” soldiers. This myth sprang up in the later 19th century in overblown Victorian history books (especially those written for children). Victorians were good at this, and if they had been more analytical and balanced in writing their histories, I’d be out of a job, Buzzkillers.

Nearly three-quarters of Wellington’s force were continental European soldiers. They were Hannoverians, Saxons, Dutch, Belgians, not to mention the Prussian army under General Blucher that tipped the balance in favor of allied forces just in time. Taken in total, British soldiers made up about 15% of the total victorious force."

The British military have a knack for taking credit for things that they weren't necessarily responsible for. You see it time in time again in their history books.