RE: France objects to "Waterloo" coin?
June 10, 2015 at 6:40 pm
(This post was last modified: June 10, 2015 at 6:46 pm by Anomalocaris.)
(June 10, 2015 at 5:05 pm)abaris Wrote:(June 10, 2015 at 3:57 pm)Chuck Wrote: Napoleon was far more progressive, and less dictatorial than any the continental monarchs whose hides were saved by Waterloo.
Their hides were already saved at Leipzig in 1813. Waterloo, which wasn't the only battle of the campaign by the way, was only the final death blow to Napoleon. But it's rather telling that the Bourbons, just reinstalled by their continental buddies, cut and ran the moment Napoleon showed up in France and their troops, sent out to catch him flocked to his camp immediately. They knew exactly that they got no backing in France. And even after Napoleon's defeat, they only could hold themselves for 15 short years.
Napoleon was such a bête noire that I doubt any royal hide on the continent felt themselves saved while he was at the head of an army. If Napoleon had whipped Wellington at Waterloo, I bet the crowned heads of Europe would feel their hides as completely unsaved as if Austerlitz and Jena had come again, and coalition would fracture.
