Quote Originally Posted by Oleander Ardens View Post
It is certainly open to debate why of all countries the British got the best in an english PC Game

I find it especially funny when people start to cite Waterloo to show who superior the British were when even the 68000 strong Anglo-Netherland army consisted mostly of Germans (Hannover, Brunswick, KGL) and Dutch. Somehow the 50000 Prussians winning the day seem also often amiss when an Englishman recalls the story...

It is also worthwhile to say that the French army was at its best early in the war. The quality was bleeded white in the long campaigns in Europe against Austria, the guerillia war in Spain and the retreat in Russia.
British accounts curiously seem to leave out the involvement of the Dutch and Germans at Waterloo. In fact, strangely enough, I've had people argue that the British were the main military force responsible for defeating Napoleon. They never seem to have heard of Austria or Prussia, Russia, Spain, and so forth.

And, of course, you'll be hard pressed to find a school history book in the US that does any better than mention the Battle of Borodino. Firefox's spellcheck doesn't even pick it up.

I have never disagreed that the British were the ones who financed the Napoleonic Wars and did a good job of keeping the alliance together. Politics and economics are the strong points of the British, they play their enemies off against each other, organize alliances, and ensure that the people who support them are well paid. It's how they won India.

But the argument that the British are the superior military force in the world from 1700 to WWII which seems so prevalent is just silly. The British certainly had high quality soldiers, but they lack manpower. You can have as many supersoldiers as you want, but if Russia, France and Austria can all bury your entire army under a mountain of dead it doesn't matter. Russia, in particular, had that war-winning ability to throw soldiers at a problem until it went away, even if the soldiers in question were a bit under/over aged, had a few extra toes or had room-temperature IQ's.

When all you're doing is giving them a cap and a pike, one sometimes feels that recruitment standards can be a bit relaxed. And fighting the 'antichrist' helps a bit too.