Napoleonic Wars

Now the military genious: What is the greatest victory of Napoleon Bonaparte ?

a. Austerlitz
b. Arcole
c. Borodino
d. Pyramids
e. Jena

The majority of the Habsburg's officer core was a comlete disaster. (For the question about mistakes)

The Austrians had their idiot moments. It'll come up once again when a shitty general [Conrad], A messed up railway system, and it's cultural mix and mess amongst other things would screw the Austrians in WW1.

Can someone say "YOU WENT TO THE WRONG SERBIAN NEIGHBORHOOD, AUSTRIAN SCUM"

Austerlitz is definitely his greatest victory, while Leipzig is his greatest defeat.
You, however forget, that while he was one of the greatest generals, he was a terrible politician, his actual failure was clear, as he didn't realize, that he made the majority of the continent his enemy, while losing his best men in a pointless war. Then came Leipzig, where he faced with an army nearly the double of his. And the coalition army still had its veterans. Waterloo was just the aftermath of his work

Kaiser Antonio I wrote:Now the military genious: What is the greatest victory of Napoleon Bonaparte ?

a. Austerlitz
b. Arcole
c. Borodino
d. Pyramids
e. Jena

Defiantly Austerlitz

Koopinator wrote:I am actually making my own video on the French revolutionary/Napoleonic wars... Here is a little preview.

That looks neat! People often don't included the rest of the world when involving the Napoleonic wars.

Koopinator wrote:I am actually making my own video on the French revolutionary/Napoleonic wars... Here is a little preview.

Tell me when you are done. I would like to see it as well. It looks great!

ScarletHistorian wrote:Back on Topic, let's talk about the dumbest decisions made in the Napoleonic Wars...other than Napoleon invading Russia...

Napoleon rejecting the Frankfurt Proposals

If you were born in the Napoleonic Era, how would you handle serving for your irl country?

I in particular won't mind being in the US Army in 1812.

Koopinator wrote:I am actually making my own video on the French revolutionary/Napoleonic wars... Here is a little preview.

The French (I believe) hadn't yet sold Louisiana to the US yet

Orion Gamer wrote:

Koopinator wrote:I am actually making my own video on the French revolutionary/Napoleonic wars... Here is a little preview.

The French (I believe) hadn't yet sold Louisiana to the US yet

I think Napoleon sold Louisina to the US

Those are the first lines of the Text of the Louisiana Purchase Treaty
"The President of the United States of America and the First Consul of the French Republic in the name of the French People desiring to remove all Source of misunderstanding relative to objects of discussion mentioned in the Second and fifth articles o f the Convention of the 8th Vendé miaire an 9/30 September 1800 relative to the rights claimed by the United States in virtue of the Treaty concluded at Madrid the 27 of October 1795" (1)

Yes, but it says on the map 1796

i noticed that only after posting. So indeed Louisiana should be in the map as a France territory

Orion Gamer wrote:

Koopinator wrote:I am actually making my own video on the French revolutionary/Napoleonic wars... Here is a little preview.

The French (I believe) hadn't yet sold Louisiana to the US yet

The map shows Louisiana as part of spain. France only owned Louisiana after the Convention of 1800.

A lot of love for Napoleon here?
As fascinating as he is my moral judgement of him is harsh. Not only was he a dictator who declared himself emperor, he also subjugated about all of Europe.
(Not just Bolivar was disappointed, so was Beethoven who wanted to dedicate him his 3rd Symphony - he shred the paper into pieces after learning of Napoleons Coronation)
He certainly brought some sort of progress to much of Europe regarding his Code Civil and improving the economy through Standartisation, but why did he do it though? Not because he loved the people but because of selfish reasons, he tried to establish himself as a successor to Charlemagne after having crushed the republic, he was a despot only out for himself, threw away lives left and right and didn't give a damn about what was destroyed in the process.
Maybe he was a necessary evil insofar as that without him the outlook on the monarchy and society would have been widely different, but as a person? yack.

Napoleon issued a proclamation for the Diet of Hungary (parliament) promising tha if we dethrone the Habsburgs, we will be given our freedom back, and that we may rule ourselves independently, however the lords at the diet realized that they would only change one overlord, to an other, who might be even worse than the Habsburgs were, as they were at least forced to respect the autonomus status of Hungary

I don't know that Napoleon or his wars were totally necessary. The world was liberalizing whether the monarchs liked it or not. They were even able to keep things going for a while after the wars ended.

I think sans Napoleon, or even if he came to power and decided to just hold French territory and refrain from fighting wars across Europe, the world was changing. He was just the second bump in the road.

Cold War Communist wrote:I don't know that Napoleon or his wars were totally necessary. The world was liberalizing whether the monarchs liked it or not. They were even able to keep things going for a while after the wars ended.

I think sans Napoleon, or even if he came to power and decided to just hold French territory and refrain from fighting wars across Europe, the world was changing. He was just the second bump in the road.

I beg to differ. He united hundreds of small German states in to about 40, which made it far easier to unify Germany. If he never would have done that, Bismarck never would have been able to unite Germany because Austria would effectively block it, as the HRE would never have been dissolved by Napoleon. Because of that, the world wars probably never would have happened. Also, you mentioned liberalizing. While it is true that Europe was liberalizing, the Napoleonic Wars never would have happened, so there would have been less anti-liberalism, as Napoleon brought it across Europe with his conquests.

I think Napolean was great, there were too many people willing to fight and die during the Enlightenment, and he may have really sped up the process by killing like a good 50% of the right winged people in the world.

B12ad wrote:by killing like a good 50% of the right winged people in the world.

Given the size of German states before him, he may have killed a good 50% of many countries...
However it was important how he made Germany a bit less of a mess, and also he tried to help Wolfe Tone, so lovely lad.

DukeOfTea wrote:

B12ad wrote:by killing like a good 50% of the right winged people in the world.

Given the size of German states before him, he may have killed a good 50% of many countries...
However it was important how he made Germany a bit less of a mess, and also he tried to help Wolfe Tone, so lovely lad.

Yes this is definitely true, and to add more to the issue he definitely created discontent among many German peoples that would go on to be the basis for future conflicts with the French state. Such an example I believe would be the Franco-Prussian War to annex back Alsace and Lorraine.

Also it is my belief that perhaps it wasn't necessary for them to clean the house of German affairs which in the end would mean Napoleon wouldn't have gone down in history as a gigantic war mongering plump in French history.

He was definitely the type of guy to get copied in the future because of what he did for history. I read somewhere that it was the big clash of egalitarian vs hierarchical belief systems which seems to exist to this day. Lastly, it sets the stage for what we believe to be the first origins of a total war system.

Orion Gamer wrote:If he never would have done that, Bismarck never would have been able to unite Germany because Austria would effectively block it, as the HRE would never have been dissolved by Napoleon. Because of that, the world wars probably never would have happened.

Austria was poised to break up the HRE, and Prussia was a growing power. I don't know of anything to suggest that Prussia would not have unified Germany under its rule if Napoleon did not consolidate some of the states that existed.

Cold War Communist wrote:
Austria was poised to break up the HRE, and Prussia was a growing power. I don't know of anything to suggest that Prussia would not have unified Germany under its rule if Napoleon did not consolidate some of the states that existed.

Austria only dissolvedthe HRE because they wanted to be an emporer, and theyhad to give up the title of Holy Roman Empire to do that. As for Germany, I am not saying Prussia wouldn't have united it eventually, it would have taken much longer and included much of Poland, which they only lost to Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw. Also Austria would have been more influential in Germany.

Cold War Communist wrote:

Austria was poised to break up the HRE, and Prussia was a growing power. I don't know of anything to suggest that Prussia would not have unified Germany under its rule if Napoleon did not consolidate some of the states that existed.

If Austria was the Emperor, why would they want to dissolve one of the strongest domains of Habsburg control? It doesn't make sense that the Habsburgs would do that.