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So if Napoleon wins Waterloo, does it merely prolong the inevitable?

Posted on 8/2/26 at 12:02 pm
Posted by prplhze2000
Parts Unknown
Member since Jan 2007
58675 posts
Posted on 8/2/26 at 12:02 pm
He was still heavily outnumbered when all coalition forces are totaled up. He had to attack them in pieces. Was he simply running out of men or had everyone else adapted to his tactics.

Would the British have signed a peace treaty after Waterloo or would they have doubled down?
Posted by soccerfüt
Location: A Series of Tubes
Member since May 2013
75926 posts
Posted on 8/2/26 at 12:04 pm to
Speed Queens would be the only washers & dryers you could buy.
Posted by Ed Osteen
Member since Oct 2007
59328 posts
Posted on 8/2/26 at 12:07 pm to
Posted by Rip Torner
Member since Jul 2023
3137 posts
Posted on 8/2/26 at 12:10 pm to
Napoleon was an outstanding artillery officer and leader. However, his tactics once mastered by his enemies greatly neutered his once formidable army. By the time of Waterloo, his army was a shell of its former self. It was inevitable much like the Germans in WW1
Posted by OWLFAN86
Erotic Novelist
Member since Jun 2004
197772 posts
Posted on 8/2/26 at 12:11 pm to
Great Britain and the allies were never going to make peace with a man who's effective talents were purely military

Napoleon needed to make war so he could affect power, because he could not control France politically
Posted by Cosmo
glassman's guest house
Member since Oct 2003
132467 posts
Posted on 8/2/26 at 12:22 pm to
quote:

Great Britain and the allies were never going to make peace with a man who's effective talents were purely military


Yep

He wasnt a fart sniffing noble. Could never give him a seat at the table
Posted by Missouri Waltz
Adrift off the Spanish Main
Member since Feb 2016
1673 posts
Posted on 8/2/26 at 12:22 pm to
I don't know other than he was very unlucky to lose the battle.

Wellington had not a clue what Napoleon was up to. He thought the French would try to flank him, cut off the English Channel, and then destroy his army. Napoleon on the other hand thought the Germans had all retreated and gone home. However, once Blücher and Gneisenau arrived that battle was over.
This post was edited on 8/2/26 at 12:23 pm
Posted by Penrod
Member since Jan 2011
57221 posts
Posted on 8/2/26 at 12:26 pm to
quote:

He had to attack them in pieces. Was he simply running out of men or had everyone else adapted to his tactics.

Your hunch is correct. Napoleon was a great general. However, one of the reasons he had such incredible victories is because he was fighting buffoons. Eventually, the European aristocracies, found generals who were competent. At that point, the weight of the arms against him were just too much.
Posted by TigerBR1111
Baton Rouge
Member since Sep 2014
8740 posts
Posted on 8/2/26 at 12:29 pm to
Napoleon was in all kinds of trouble even before it got to Waterloo. For one fricking with the Russians put him in a bad spot.
Posted by Cfrobel
Member since Nov 2019
340 posts
Posted on 8/2/26 at 12:30 pm to
quote:

Would the British have signed a peace treaty after Waterloo or would they have doubled down?


No, the UK seemed willing to drive themselves into fiscal insolvency, peak debt to GDP ratio of somewhere between 200%-250%, to ensure a strong Continental power did not exist.
Posted by prplhze2000
Parts Unknown
Member since Jan 2007
58675 posts
Posted on 8/2/26 at 12:36 pm to
I would submit the Grand Army that invaded Russia was not that good an army. It was French but a lot of troops came from other countries.

His best troops were in Spain, which Wellington chewed up. I would say Spain cost him more than Russia did in terms of fighting ability.
Posted by OWLFAN86
Erotic Novelist
Member since Jun 2004
197772 posts
Posted on 8/2/26 at 12:48 pm to
Well, his Generals in Spain did not do him any service

But this was one of those Wars where the native population, Spanish in this case also heavily contributed to Wellington's effectiveness and success
Posted by Penrod
Member since Jan 2011
57221 posts
Posted on 8/2/26 at 12:52 pm to
quote:

No, the UK seemed willing to drive themselves into fiscal insolvency, peak debt to GDP ratio of somewhere between 200%-250%, to ensure a strong Continental power did not exist.

On the contrary, the UK had undergone the industrial revolution. No other country could compete with Britain on price. It was Napoleon who desperately tried to exclude British products, via his "Continental System", from Europe.

Britain had their reasons for wanting to stop the French democratic revolution - namely its contagion - but by the time Napoleon declared himself emperor that was no longer an issue.
Posted by kajunman
Member since Dec 2015
8811 posts
Posted on 8/2/26 at 12:53 pm to
Everything would be the same as it is.
Posted by BlackPawnMartyr
Houston, TX
Member since Dec 2010
16361 posts
Posted on 8/2/26 at 1:42 pm to
Horse losses in Russia campaign were also a huge problem.

quote:

The estimates vary, but a commonly cited figure is that Napoleon lost around 200,000 horses during the campaign


quote:

A scholarly study by historian Dominic Lieven makes the particularly important point that, for Napoleon, the loss of horses in 1812 was arguably even more consequential than the loss of men. The shortage seriously undermined his ability to fight effectively in 1813.


quote:

France could conscript hundreds of thousands of young men.
But you can't manufacture a good cavalry horse in six months.
A cavalry horse needs to be:
bred
raised
trained
conditioned
accustomed to gunfire
accustomed to formations
physically strong enough to carry a heavily equipped cavalryman
And Napoleon had just lost a huge portion of the trained horse population upon which his cavalry and artillery depended.


Napoleon would run around defeating army after army in Europe trying to keep them from linking up. But he could never completely destroy and army because he longer had the calvary to run them down in panic retreat, which is where the major casualties were accomplished in this age of warfare.

This video shows how it affected him in later battles....
This post was edited on 8/2/26 at 2:15 pm
Posted by Burt Reynolds
Monterey, CA
Member since Jul 2008
24674 posts
Posted on 8/2/26 at 1:51 pm to
quote:

It was inevitable much like the Germans in WW1


That wasnt inevitable at all
Posted by Zendog
Santa Barbara
Member since Feb 2019
7029 posts
Posted on 8/2/26 at 1:58 pm to
but he lost
Posted by BestBanker
Member since Nov 2011
19699 posts
Posted on 8/2/26 at 2:05 pm to
And we wouldn't have Abba.
Posted by RollTide1987
Baltimore, MD
Member since Nov 2009
71644 posts
Posted on 8/2/26 at 2:20 pm to
quote:

So if Napoleon wins Waterloo, does it merely prolong the inevitable?



Yes.

And if he had somehow snatched victory from the jaws of defeat at Waterloo, his army was pretty beat up and all of Europe would have been mobilizing against him. They were tired of him and wanted him off the chessboard. Not only that, France was still very weary and beat-up from almost 20 years of constant warfare. There is no way they would have been able to last.
Posted by WestSideTiger
Baton Rouge
Member since Jan 2004
5460 posts
Posted on 8/2/26 at 2:21 pm to
quote:

And we wouldn't have Abba.

It’s funny how people’s YouTube algorithms start syncing up.

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