Napoleonic France Appreciation Thread
Can we just take a moment to appreciate how Napoleonic France basically dominated the civilized world in battle for such a long time period? At that time, Qing was opium land, the Indians were getting cucked by British Empire, America was an irrelevant backwater. Europe probably made up >85% of global GDP, and Napoleonic France was very close to practically global supremacy.
Napoleonic France was smacking other hyperpowers around simultaneously like they were third-rate African nations like a year after they just had the biggest revolution in history. Best of all, they had practically the same technology as the hyperpowers that be in Europe, but demonstrated supremacy through sheer valour and cunning.
Lol don't make up gdp numbers
Qing was essentially Chicago with rhe amount of drug addicts, British Raj was being cucked by the empire upon which the sun never sets, everywhere else was irrelevant. Europe was civilization at that time.
No bro Qing and Ottoman were neck and neck with Europe, but you are a troll so...
The Qing Empire, despite the drug problem, was by no means uncivilized as you strangely claim, and the British Raj didn't even exist yet - that only happened after 1857.
Do you Europhiles really convince yourself that Europe was the only bastion of civilisation? And that too Western Europe, which had barely been civilized for more than a few hundred years at that point?
I swear, the level of self-delusion you have lmao
The French make a few good things:
- Fries
- Bread
- Waves at Hossegor
- Champagne
That’s about it.
French would've been the new Latin and the world, from Great Qing to New England would fly the French flag if the English Channel didn't exist.
White flags as well
You puny europoors like to shit on France for surrendering because of recency bias (20th century stuff). You forgot you got ROFLclapped by Napoleon all over the place before that Wellington beef guy stopped him with an army 3x Napoleon's size.
Aside from all of this being entirely fabricated,it's untrue. Britain was bankrolling like 4 different empires in their fight against France. They regularly beat the living crap out of the French under Napoleon, whether that was the various naval battles in the Mediterranean or the Peninsular Campaign. I'm not sure they lost a significant campaign against the French - certainly their economy and financial performance was far in excess of anything the Continental system could scrape together. Which is why... the French fell apart and the British continued to dominate world politics for another 100+ years.
I really wonder where this douchebag is coming from. I mean, its not like trolls are unusual on this forum, but it's a little strange that this barely literate 15 year old randomly decided that in between bouts of jacking off in his mother's basement, he was going to ride Napoleonic France as a hobby horse...
why are you this offended that some dude made a meme topic about Napoleonic France
Aside from the fact that it's like the third thread he's made, fanboying Napoleon?
I'm upset because this idiot is making shit up and asserting it as fact. I have some attachment to the concept of "facts", which I understand isn't in vogue these days, but I feel obligated to refute it for the benefit of anyone reading along who might actually think this person has the slightest clue what they're talking about. And since it's a stupid, obviously wrong argument he's making, I'm treating it with the amount of respect it deserves. Not every opinion is equally valid, and I think anyone spouting as inherently dumb a point as this jackass deserves to be called, to their face, the kind of person they are - a barely literate ass, an immature, cretinous tool. Nothing is given to anyone in this life, but this person has earned the title of "dipshit".
It's true to say Napoleon never won a major campaign against the British, which stamped out their significance. Strong military talent ( Wellington, Nelson, etc) and sheer economic power had kept Napoleon's empire at bay throughout the many wars. In the long run, due to deficits, this was one of the main contributing factors to his downfall.
However, I think it's fair to say Napoleon had been one of the closest to creating a unified Europe under an emperorship. A similar scale hadn't been seen since Rome after the 2nd Punic Wars (Arguably) and the Mongol Empire (Arguably). In my view, there were 7 coalitions and Britain had been a part of 5 that had failed. It wasn't until the 6th, that Napoleon had lost and been deposed. Sent to rule Elba, never to return...(Kek)
Napoleon does a really good job at capturing the imagination of megalomaniacs, especially finance majors, as cringe as it is. He hadn't come from a spectacular birth in any sense but through his own sheer determination and wit, he had been close as anyone to ruling the world. This is really well captured when Napoleon takes the wreath crown from the pope and puts it on himself. However, as it was one of the reasons for his rise, I felt it was a huge characteristic in his downfall (Especially during the Peninsular Wars, which had been referred to his Vietnam). However, I don't have the time to go into that much detail...
I will say as mentioned, that this is a Bias place to debate this. WSO is like the anime convention for people with a Napoleon Complex.
Agreed that the Mongols were by far the closest to world domination. They nearly conquered all of Europe under general Subutai and obliterated a 100,000-man European army of knights (the largest army assembled up to that point). The only reason they had to stop was because the khan (Genghis Khan's son) died unexpectedly and on a whim the entire army went back to Mongolia to decide who would take his place.
Is this a joke? Charlemagne did create a unified Europe, at least to the extent we're discussing with Napoleon. And the British came closer to a global empire than Napoleon did - the end of the Third Carnatic War put the writing on the wall for British control of India, they still had their North American colonies at that point... that's a global empire right there in excess of anything Napoleon achieved, and the British weren't even done!
Except for all the other people who came much closer to ruling the world. Which is... a lot of people. Napoleon came close to conquering Europe. That isn't the same. Genghis Khan spent time as a slave. Timur probably invented his relationship to Genghis out of whole cloth. Khalid ibn al-Walid was a complete nobody. Napoleon's story is unusual but hardly unique.
Anyone referring to the Peninsular War as "Napoleon's Vietnam" is too interested in appealing to a modern audience. Napoleon never actually fought in the Peninsular War! And it wasn't a guerilla war, but a protracted campaign in which the British simply outfought and out-financed the French. If anything killed Napoleon, it was his invasion of Russia (obviously). Had he stopped at neutering Prussia and Austria and solidifying his Confederation of the Rhine, he'd have been fine.
Oh man… don’t get me started. My boy Napoleon. Nowadays we may all experience what it feels to be the best at something: the best in Excel, the best at presentations, the best at managing relations… imagine being the best at war. Napoleon was, in his time, the best general in the entire world. He found the optimal strategy for warfare in his time in the way you may find the optimal strategy in a game like chess and then he just went around exporting massive french cock ready to fuck br*t twinks. As the second-to-last man to attempt to revive the glory of the roman empire he has my respect. Napoleon deserves to rule over you because he is at least 100x smarter than you or any of us.
Sadly in his time the brts were a global superpower with literally infinite money to keep fighting him. All they did was wait until he made one mistake and then literally invested all of their money into beating him. The only good thing I can say about the brts in this regard is that even in the many periods of time when all of Europe was exhausted and they were the only ones with infinite cashflows, they did not try to take over Europe. I always think that post-Napoleonic wars with how devastated all of Europe was, technically Br*tain could have probably conquered everyone except maybe Russia.
All I can say is that there once was a dream. A dream to purge Europe from the royalists who infected it. A dream called France.
It was GB’s clairvoyance of Brexit that helped them avoid conquering Europe.
Wait, so who is the last man? Hitler? Does he also have your respect?
I credit Hitler with only one thing - trying to take over Europe is based. But I don't respect him because everything else about him sucks. The real goal is taking over Europe so why was he wasting so much money rounding up Jews in camps? Completely unnecesary and part of that is why he lost. But beyond that, in the case of Hitler he wasn't really the military savant behind his military success. He did not come up with Blitzkrieg in the same way that we may say that Napoleon invented his tactics and many of his calls were awful. Sadly I must say that Hitler only got lucky. He striked Europe at a moment where every other country had barely any energy to fight him. He was able to swallow so much of Europe only because of appeasement but the moment the engines got fired up and people actually fought back he went down almost as fast as he went up.
Look at Europe today. If a moderately sized nation like Italy started all of a sudden charging every other country with all of their military at once I'd bet they would be able to swallow at least half of Europe before the U.S. sent a couple of soldiers to wipe them out. On the other hand my boy Napoleon did it when every other country was geared and ready for war. Napoleon was not even the one who started. Other countries were attacking him just because they did not like the revolution. And despite every other country being armed to the teeth he managed to fuck all of them. Based.
Untrue. He was the best general in all of human history, not just of his time.
Whoever is throwing MS at me quite simply does not know how good of a strategist Napoleon was. He was like if Alexander the Great was reincarnated, but decided to max out his "strategy" skill tree by reallocating all his "charisma" and "fighting skills" points.
The best general in all of history is Julius Caesar. If I can say that when everyone else in Europe was playing checkers, Napoleon was playing chess then I can also say that when everyone else in Europe was playing tic tac toe, Caesar was playing 11th dimensional Go.
If you need empirical data there’s also the fact that Julius Caesar was completely undefeated even after he fought against the entire Roman Republic on his own and killed every single general in the opposing side. The only guy who even came close to him was Labienus and that was because he had studied Caesar for all of his military career. Caesar also single-handedly civilized France so if it wasn’t for him, to this day the French would be barbarians living in mud huts.
All good, aaaannnddddd then as usual the British come in and defeat them in battle
oui
The world would be a better place if Macron ended up like Louis XVI
Buddy - who told you Europe made up > 85% of global GDP lol.
China and India were by far the largest economies in the world, making up an estimated 48% of global GDP just by themselves, as they had for most of recorded history in the last 2000 years.. It's funny how people like you have led yourselves to believe Europe to be the centre of the universe.
During Napolean's conquests? No. Qing was basically Chicago with the amount of drug addicts and India was getting sodomized by the British Empire.
Ok buddy. Let's ignore common sense and real statistics, and pretend Europe was the centre of the world during the Napoleonic Conquests.
I swear, you are either an incredibly infuriating troll, or one of the dumbest people out there - how are you gonna argue with literal statistics? China and India together dominated the world economy during the time of Napoleon's conquests, and only an insecure idiot who jerks off to notions of European supremacy would deny facts.
Prospective monkey in IB lmao - more like prospective poster child for human idiocy.
The 18th & 19th centuries were a notable time of “gentleman-warfare.” Most of the military officers were well mannered and well educated gentlemen who were just as comfortable in a ballroom dance or political debate as they were fighting in the field. The Duke of Wellington said “Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.” Here he’s referring to the values taught in school and how they helped the British military
It was one of the more civilized age, although there weren't as many chances to prove your valour or nobility like in classical antiquity.
I rank Napoleon 4th out of all European conquerors. Who came closer? Augustus, Hitler, and Macron.
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