Waterloo and the French army.
I'll post some more here later. I don't have time, But what I am going to write is to prove the French army has always been superior and how at Waterloo they actually were winning the battle.
Arugements:
Indeed, However Wellington lost a third of his forces at Waterloo. Leaving Grouchy and Davout were bad mistakes,bad indeed,for had Napoleon bought them ,France would have easily won. But let us not forget that Napoleon himself was an excellent general,normally what I meant was that when the Prussians attacked,he sended 8 battalions of infantry. Napoleon used this to defeat his enemy when they were being attacked on their flank and would send their best infantry to attack,only to result in their defeat. That is what Blucher did at Waterloo,he attacked the left flank,and Napoleon commited his order of mistake. Wellington was facing a general who had fought for 21 years,fought in 60 battles and have extremly good infantry and generals,like on NTW multiplayer,you're facing a ten star general,you lose a lot,but then your ally comes in to save the day. I don't agree with the generals however. Grouchy at least had four hours to arrive on the battlefield. Napoleon was winning the battle,by the time Wellington was trying to resist the French attacks,he made some very foolish blunders, He sent the best of his cavarly to attack the French art.What happens? They're attacked by Napoleon's supeiror cavarly,remeber here that the British army was only good in infantry and light infantry,they weren't well known for their cavarly,while Napoleon had superiror infantry,cavarly and art.
Too many people make this bad mistake. Napoleon's army ,if you read waterloo had already begun winning the battle,his infantry proved tougher to break,and Napoleon's cavarly defeated a lot of the british cavarly,including the elites. When Napoleon returend to France, he had a army of veterans at his disposal. If his army was not superior,then he wouldnt have been winning the battle. Their ''rigid'' dispciline was aslo of the French.They were withdrawing by the time Bonaparte's troops were attacking them.
the army at Waterloo was ill-disciplined and nowhere near good enough for the job they were tasked with.
Then how did Napoleon almost win this battle? How did he manage to capture all the 3 houses? Hugomont, La sayinte ,and how did they manage to destroy the english?
Napoleon proved his army was still the best after Ligny. The arimes of Prussia,Austria and Russia had taken dramatic improvements, but Napoleon was far clever than that.
Waterloo would have been a desicive victory for the French, Had they won that battle,they could mass more men to join the army. And if they did,they'd have armies of experienced soldiers. Napoleon's tactic was to outwit them(Which he did) by attacking one by one. But Waterloo was to be his defeat.
However, Napoleon was unable to maintain the kind of lasting alliances that would have allowed French hegemony to continue and in the end almost all of Europe was united against him.
If there were one weakness of Napoleon,I'd think it would be his diplomacy. Napoleon hoped to gain victories so that he could encoruage his allies to come back to him.
Now about the numbers. If Napoleon had defeated the english and the Prussians at Waterloo, he would have done his best to defeat the Austrians. Soon he would have turned into Spain and Portugal,therefore defeating them. While the coaltion may have bought millions of men, We must remeber that Marshall Davout would have been used extensivly agasint the Spanish and British armies
Napoleon still had a handful of experinced Marshalls,and he would have used them fully to his advantage. If the allies had this tactic to trap his Marshalls,Napoleon would have sooner or later found out,and he would have reversed this. He would have used his Marshalls to defeat the oncoming enemy forces. Remeber that numbers do not mean anything. Why ,four hundred chassuers of the cavarly forced a thousand strong Prussian garrasion out of their castle or town. Napoleon was a clever general and I am sure whatever he found he would have used it to his advantage.
It was never to do with numbers. Napoleon's army were well experienced soldiers,and Napoleon had a ton of artillery at Waterloo. Napoleon was outnumbered at Austerltiz himself. He was outnumbered at the battles of Aspern Essling. By simply stating about the numbers is saying that the Napoleonic wars were based on numbers is false.While it may be true ,all armies depended on numbers.
Look at Napoleon's campagin in italy in then.
He lead a inexperinced army to victory agasint the Austrians,and how was that? he had numbers of about 30,000 to 47,000 and to 12,000,while the normal army would have managed to permit 107,000 men,they could only effectivly manage to field 30,000 men. 30,000 men defeated a 45 ,000 strong Austrian army, The Austrians heavily outnumbered the French, But Napoleon's army was well stretched,but he used his three generals to defeat the Piedmontesse and the Austrians
Battle of Hohenlinden ,where the French outnumbered the Austrians in infantry,but lacked in cavarly and guns,which the Austrians had bought plenty. And who won? The French did.
The battle of Austerlitz. Napoleon won,and how many infantry? 72,000. The Austro-Russians :85,000.
So it didn't depend on numbers you see,it gradually increased,but with the right leadership of effective leaders,any one of them with less troops could have won any battle.
The Russians did not win much battles under the leadership of Napoleon. It was the weather and the cossacks that defeated Napoleon,not the armies.
Jerome's and Foy's divisions
attack Hougoumont.
"At Hougoumont, the struggle continued unabated. The British Guards light companies, the Brunswickers and one of du Plat's KGL battalions fought with two of Foy's regiments. ... A battery of French howitzers lobbed shells into the buildings, setting them alight. The chateau, the farmhouse, the stables and storehaouses all went up in flames. The British fell back into the chapel and the gardener's house from where they continued to fire on the French..." (Hofschroer - "1815 Waterloo Campaign - The German Victory" p 81)
The French grenadier companies led the assault, and they forced their way through a small side door into the upper courtyard. They even took several prisoners before the musket fire from the windows and walls drove them out. The Nassau battalion and British Guards battalion followed them and regained much of the lost ground. It was the last large infantry attack on Hougoumont.
I provided that source for a reason. It shows just how well trained Napoleon's army was. If you look at it, the german writer is giving credit to us. Even still the british had squares, the French cavarly was at large. And I don't know why didn't Napoleon do anything after that. Had Davout been there, it would have been a completley different story
Some writers have said Napoleon showed a strange lethargy at Waterloo, due to bad health. He relied a lot on Ney to run the battle.
Indeed.Somehow what happened here, is that Napoleon liked to withdraw his opponents. Say I am facing you on a chess match or a battlefiled. Now you have a much stronger and better army than me. What am I going to do? I'm going to distract you, which will cause you to commit your best troops into battle. But then what happens? Your best troops are now stuck, and your army is now much smaller than mine. I can take advantage now and win. This was Napoleon's favoured attack
What Blucher did here was, he distracted Grouchy. When Grouchy should have marched to Napoleon to help him. Napoleon was doing the complete of his stragety. It caused him to use his best troops up and then he was stuck, he couldn't do anything much. And the Young guard should have formed squares when they were attacked by the Prussian Cavarly. Blucher used the tactic Napoleon would have loved to use again.
Portions of the artillery had been overrun by the British cavalry charge earlier in the day and the British were ensconced behind their reverse slope anyway so the only damage that was inflicted came from errant shells.
Only half of them had been overrun. Napoleon had combated the british cavarly charge using his Polish Lancers.
Indeed, though it should be remembered that Napoleon had commanded Grouchy to distract the Prussians. There was a lot of confusion about the direction of the Prussian march after Ligny late on the 16th and throughout the 17th and by all accounts Napoleon and his staff all believed that the Prussians would march further away from Waterloo. Of course they did not and this, combined with Grouchy's own lethargy, meant that the Prussians were not pinned and in turn were capable of lending Wellington support.
A clever tactic, but Blucher did outwit Napoleon in this one.
Also I'm currently reading through Barbero's The Battle: A New History of Waterloo and I'm starting to rethink my earlier comments on the inferiority of Napoleon's troops. I maintain that they were, on the whole, inferior to the British, but I may have overstated the extent to some degree.
Ha! The French army was of a strong degree during this period. At Elyau, Marshall Lannes held 10,000 french army against a large Russian force, while Napoleon was arriving.. How else did Napoleon win battles? With inferior infantry? Have you tried Napoleonic total war 3? The French army was equally skilled in combat, great morale and excellent infantry. It is no wonder that The English faced the wrath of the French army. Think of Agincourt. The French had heavy cavarly agasint a small english army, who weren't even that well advanced. It has always beem the French that has provided everything for Europe.
To show you
. Henceforth, the Emperor ordered, the men would perform the basics of the soldier's school and practice platoon drill each morning. They would fire 12 cartridges daily at the marks and for 2 hours in the evening perform battalion maneuvres. (Arnold - "Napoleon Conquers Austria")
It was by no means an illiterate infantry. In 1812 the 33rd Line Infantry Regiment had 500 "privates worthy of NCO rank" and more than 700 who understood the decimal system, and the first three rules of arithmetic. Many of the officers were classically educated.
The French napoleonic infantrymen were known as being good marchers.
John Mill of British Coldstream Guards writes, "Their movements compared with ours are as mail coaches to dung carts. In all weathers and at all times they are accustomed to march, when our men would fall sick by hundreds ... Another peculiar excellence of the French infantry is their steadiness in manoeuvering under fire."
At Leipzig, the ferocity shown by both sides in the struugle for Probstheida was truly unique, as were the losses they suffered. An attempt by the Old Guard to advance south, however, was stopped by the Allied artillery on the low hill about 500 m away. Generals Baillot, Montgenet and Rochambeau were all killed during the fighting here, while French regiments which especially distinguished themselves were the 2nd, 4th and 18th Line and the 11th Light. Even Prinz August von Preussen wrote most flatteringly of the enemy's valour. Allies staff officer Maximilian von Thielen writes: "The French [infantrymen] were holding out with unparalled stubborness ..."
In general, the napoleonic infantryman was easy everywhere, little or nothing worried him, neither the pyramids of Egypt nor the vast plains of snowy Russia. No matter where he found himself, he considered himself to be a representative of the French way of life. The army will never forget that under Napoleon's eagles, deserving men of courage and intelligence were raised to the highest levels of society. Simple soldiers became marshals, princes, dukes and kings. The French soldier had become an equal citizen by right and by glory. Every soldier of Roman Empire could make a career in the army. The veterans could even aspire to become primus pilus.
In 1814 the French infantry found itself in heavily reduced size. A handful of heroes faced all of Europe to whom they themselves had taught the art of fighting over the past decade. The young recruits of French infantry under General Pacthod fought like lions at Fere Champenoise. Large squares formed by them withstood several charges made by cuirassiers, lancers, dragoons, and the Guards. They held their ground even after being decimated by musket fire at close range, followed by more cavalry attacks on every side.
If you think French infantry were that inferior, look at these sources.
The reason they lost were despite having brilliant generals, the allies against Napoleon adopted his tactics and used them against his Marshalls, from which they found it difficult to fight back. By then, most of the battles depended on Napoleon himself.
Agincourt was a example of this. The French commanders were highly confident in winning the battle. This has always been the case with the French, they have always expected to win battles. And they lost. This was during around the 14th century.
I shall provide some more later.
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