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Napoleon

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  • 23-08-2019 7:13pm
    #1
    Montage of Feck
    Registered Users Posts: 3,495 ✭✭✭


    No I'm not claiming to be him, but what would Europe be like today if he hadn't surrended at Waterloo?

    Obviously Abba wouldn't have had a hit with waterloo.

    🙈🙉🙊



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    #2
    EmmetSpiceland
    Registered Users Posts: 10,529 ✭✭✭✭EmmetSpiceland


    Dynamite.

    The tide is turning…



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    #3
    kneemos
    Registered Users Posts: 20,409 ✭✭✭✭kneemos


    We'd be speaking french.


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    #4
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 0 ✭ [Deleted User]


    We wouldn't have a clichéd expression.


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    #5
    Roger Hassenforder
    Closed Accounts Posts: 8,555 ✭✭✭Roger Hassenforder


    EmmetSpiceland wrote: »
    Dynamite.

    We'd all be absolute tossers. Despised throughout the developed world.

    Although, if he didnt surrender there, knowing their penchant for cheese eating and surrendering, it would have come sooner rather than later.


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    #6
    Hande hoche!
    Registered Users Posts: 7,452 ✭✭✭Hande hoche!


    Macron would have lost the last election to Gerard Depardieu.


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    #7
    RobbingBandit
    Registered Users Posts: 18,086 ✭✭✭✭RobbingBandit


    Would have been a European uprising Prussia would have kicked his derriere Russia Austria Hungary The Dutch and The English royals would have kicked theirs and World War 1 would have been a century earlier with Spain and the yanks joining in to create a massive endless war halting the Industrial Revolution in its tracks as the inventors would be making weapons for their respective nation states.

    I'd guess the fall of the monarchy wouldn't happen to the extent that it did and whichever side won would lord over the peasants for a very long time which would probably be the mad age of enlightenment calendar.


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    #8
    Montage of Feck
    Registered Users Posts: 3,495 ✭✭✭Montage of Feck


    Roger Hassenforder wrote: »
    We'd all be absolute tossers. Despised throughout the developed world.

    Although, if he didnt surrender there, knowing their penchant for cheese eating and surrendering, it would have come sooner rather than later.

    The French have won more battles than any other nation.

    🙈🙉🙊



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    #9
    corner of hells
    Registered Users Posts: 8,358 ✭✭✭corner of hells


    We wouldn't have had Napoleon Brandy.
    Wellington Brandy just doesn't sound right.


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    #10
    endacl
    Registered Users Posts: 22,233 ✭✭✭✭endacl


    We would have Napoleon Boots though. That'd be cool.


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    #11
    corner of hells
    Registered Users Posts: 8,358 ✭✭✭corner of hells


    Montage of Feck wrote: »
    The French have won more battles than any other nation.

    I've a French Lebel rifle from the First World War.
    Never fired , just a bit of damage from when it was dropped.


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    #12
    Naggdefy
    Closed Accounts Posts: 1,981 ✭✭✭Naggdefy


    Montage of Feck wrote: »
    The French have won more battles than any other nation.

    And Napoleon has won many more battles than any other general and his percentage win v loss is highest.

    A truly remarkable genius in so many ways. Bicentenary of his death 5.49am May 5th 2021. Vive l'Emperor!


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    #13
    Tony EH
    Registered Users Posts: 18,914 ✭✭✭✭Tony EH


    Montage of Feck wrote: »
    No I'm not claiming to be him, but what would Europe be like today if he hadn't surrended at Waterloo?

    Pretty much the same.

    If Wellington and Blucher had been defeated, it really wouldn't have made that much difference. The armies of Russia and Austria outnumbered Nappy's armies and they were intent on getting rid of him one way or another.

    In short, Napoleon's days were numbered, whether Waterloo was lost or not.


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    #14
    SnazzyPig
    Registered Users Posts: 263 ✭✭SnazzyPig


    Great video here -



    One a wishful thinking waffler, the other arguing against his own class and natural instincts.


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    #15
    Tony EH
    Registered Users Posts: 18,914 ✭✭✭✭Tony EH


    SnazzyPig wrote: »
    Great video here -

    Watched that a while age. Zamoyski fails miserably to provide a convincing argument.


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    #16
    SnazzyPig
    Registered Users Posts: 263 ✭✭SnazzyPig


    Tony EH wrote: »
    Watched that a while age. Zamoyski fails miserably to provide a convincing argument.

    Zamoyski doesn't engage with the proposition even.


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    #17
    archer22
    Registered Users Posts: 2,116 ✭✭✭archer22


    corner of hells wrote: »
    I've a French Lebel rifle from the First World War.
    Never fired , just a bit of damage from when it was dropped.

    If you think Frenchmen can't fight, then you need to read up on the french Charlemagne Division that served in the German army during world war two.

    They were the most ferocious fighters in the Battle of Berlin.


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    #18
    Ipso
    Closed Accounts Posts: 5,995 ✭✭✭Ipso


    corner of hells wrote: »
    I've a French Lebel rifle from the First World War.
    Never fired , just a bit of damage from when it was dropped.

    Strange that a country that just saw some of the worse aspects of WW1 not even a generation before were reluctant to get into another world war.
    Of course one of the hilarious aspects of the surrender monkey meme is that it really got going after France didn't join in the iraq war, then you had the freedom fries and other such nonsense. This was mainly driven by people who then turned around and voted for someone who called the Iraq War a disaster.


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    #19
    corner of hells
    Registered Users Posts: 8,358 ✭✭✭corner of hells


    archer22 wrote: »
    If you think Frenchmen can't fight, then you need to read up on the french Charlemagne Division that served in the German army during world war two.

    They were the most ferocious fighters in the Battle of Berlin.

    I am , of course joking.


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    #20
    corner of hells
    Registered Users Posts: 8,358 ✭✭✭corner of hells


    Ipso wrote: »
    Strange that a country that just saw some of the worse aspects of WW1 not even a generation before were reluctant to get into another world war.
    Of course one of the hilarious aspects of the surrender monkey meme is that it really got going after France didn't join in the iraq war, then you had the freedom fries and other such nonsense. This was mainly driven by people who then turned around and voted for someone who called the Iraq War a disaster.

    I appreciate what you're saying , I'm joking with the post.


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    #21
    Tuco88
    Registered Users Posts: 1,052 ✭✭✭Tuco88


    Surrender monkeys??? The French and Verdun? It was like Stalingrad...


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    #22
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 0 ✭ [Deleted User]


    Montage of Feck wrote: »
    No I'm not claiming to be him, but what would Europe be like today if he hadn't surrended at Waterloo?

    Obviously Abba wouldn't have had a hit with waterloo.

    Is this post really a request for somebody to post why Napoleon is, far and away, the most influential European of the past 500 or even 1000 years? That he was in essence the cause of the creation of most modern European states? And the founder of the most common legal system on the planet, the civil code/Napoleonic code? And the key factor in an enormous plethora of modernisation of the emerging European states, armies and nationalisms? Would these have emerged to unify without his existence? Most of his influence is a consequence of reaction to him rather than of his intentions.

    As for Waterloo, the supposedly "decisive British victory" over Napoleon in 1815. Despite the British nationalist propaganda, only one-third of Wellington's troops actually came from the then UK - the majority of his "British" force was composed of German speakers/soldiers from the German states. On top of that, some 50,000 more soldiers were part of the Prussian Army at Waterloo. A mere 73,000 were on Napoleon's side in Waterloo, with a combined 118,000 soldiers against him.

    In contrast, some 700,000 soldiers were in Napoleon's Grande Armée that invaded Russia in 1812, at the time the largest military invasion in recorded history. They faced some 500,000 Russian troops, or some 900,000 including militia at its peak. Waterloo is just another example of the distorted perspective of history which Irish people are given by virtue of being anglocentric/soaking up their media and myths.


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    #23
    Míshásta
    Registered Users Posts: 634 ✭✭✭Míshásta


    Montage of Feck wrote: »
    what would Europe be like today if he hadn't surrended at Waterloo?

    He didn't surrender at Waterloo, he lost the battle.

    He surrendered nearly a month after the battle to the Captain of the HMS Bellerophon off the French coast.


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    #24
    RhubarbCrumble
    Closed Accounts Posts: 3,174 ✭✭✭RhubarbCrumble


    I've got bloody 'Waterloo' stuck in my head now. Cheers for that OP!


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    #25
    Montage of Feck
    Registered Users Posts: 3,495 ✭✭✭Montage of Feck


    So your telling me Abba lied in their song?

    🙈🙉🙊



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    #26
    gitane007
    Registered Users Posts: 131 ✭✭gitane007


    No idea what Europe would be like ...........but i always thought Marshall Ney lost the battle of Waterloo for the French by exhausting and pretty much destroying the Cavalry after sending it against the Squares repeatedly. I'd say Ney was suffering from PTSD or some **** after the Retreat from Russia a few years earlier , he lost his cool and went into Rambo mode , kinda like Hitler during the last few days in his bunker. He left Napoleon with no choice other than to throw the imperial gaurd in and hope they could salvage a victory before he legged it.


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    #27
    branie2
    Registered Users Posts: 10,292 ✭✭✭✭branie2


    The UK would be ruled by France


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    #28
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 0 ✭ [Deleted User]


    Montage of Feck wrote: »
    The French have won more battles than any other nation.

    Not the ones that really mattered though


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    #29
    jmayo
    Registered Users Posts: 13,092 ✭✭✭✭jmayo


    archer22 wrote: »
    If you think Frenchmen can't fight, then you need to read up on the french Charlemagne Division that served in the German army during world war two.

    They were the most ferocious fighters in the Battle of Berlin.

    Sorry to divert a little, but a lot of the foreigners in the likes of the Waffen-SS were there because they wanted to be there. They had signed up and had turned their backs on their own states and fellow citizens.
    And they knew when the end came they had no where to go.

    After the war a fair few of them joined French Foreign Legion as way out of Europe.
    Thinking about it the Vietnamese probably got rid of some distinctly unsavoury characters that had escaped justice and were too low in rank to ever have been picked up in Nuremberg trials.


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    #30
    Thelonious Monk
    Registered Users Posts: 13,754 ✭✭✭✭Thelonious Monk


    Naggdefy wrote: »
    And Napoleon has won many more battles than any other general and his percentage win v loss is highest.

    A truly remarkable genius in so many ways. Bicentenary of his death 5.49am May 5th 2021. Vive l'Emperor!

    Josephine still f*cked around on him tho


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    #31
    Prince Andrew
    Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 10 ✭Prince Andrew


    My daddy told me that if weren't for the tenacity of the Duke of Wellington all may have been lost.

    My daddy told me that the Duke was a vicious bastard from Ireland who had already massacred thousands of Indians and was erstwhile, tempered and fanatical with the sword. He drank a bottle of wine every day and only ate cold meat and bread.

    Whilst I trained as a cadet with the Royal Navy my commanding officer told me that even had Napolean defeated the Duke at Waterloo it is highly likely that the Navy would have scuppered his plan to lay siege to England. Lord Nelson would have seen to his imminent demise.

    I also heard that he was very small narcissistic homophobe who was prone to bouts of depression and slept alot. He was fond of the fairer sex and was known to engage in prolific sexual encounters with women whilst not defeating foreign armies on the dark fields of battle. He was vertically challenged and suffered from small man syndrome. He even arrested the Pope.

    I would imagine the invention of the helicopter would have had a more significant impact on the development of Europe after the end of the second world war. The first helicopters were invented in 1936, during the reign of Adolf Hitler in Germany, where my great grandfather is from. My great uncle used to like him and they used to attend the same parties and share mistresses.


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