Why was Napoleon Bonaparte considered so great?

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

dennilfloss

Past Lifer 1957-2014 In Memoriam
Oct 21, 1999
30,549
12
0
dennilfloss.blogspot.com
Originally posted by: marvdmartian
Didn't matter if it never really belonged to the French, it kept them from going to war over it when we likely would have eventually expanded that way anyways.

Reminds me of the Quasi-War between those two shortly after France had helped the US.:D

The Kingdom of France had been a major ally of the United States in the American Revolutionary War, but the new government of Revolutionary France viewed the Jay Treaty, a 1794 agreement between the United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain, as a violation of France?s 1778 Treaty of Alliance with the United States. The Jay Treaty resolved several points of contention between the United States and Great Britain that had lingered since the end of the war, but also contained economic clauses, and seeing that the United States had already declared neutrality in the conflict between Great Britain and France, that American legislation was being passed for a trade deal with their enemy led to French outrage. The French government was also outraged by the U.S. refusal to continue repaying its debt to France on the basis that it had been extinguished with the establishment of a Republic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi-War

 
Jun 26, 2007
11,925
2
0
Originally posted by: ProfJohn
From Wiki:
The Napoleonic Code, or Code Napoléon (originally called the Code civil des Français) was the French civil code, established under Napoléon I. It was drafted rapidly by a commission of four eminent jurists and entered into force on March 21, 1804. Even though the Napoleonic code was not the first legal code to be established in a European country with a civil legal system ? it was preceded by the Codex Maximilianeus bavaricus civilis (Bavaria, 1756), the Allgemeines Landrecht (Prussia, 1792) and the West Galician Code, (Galicia, then part of Austria, 1797) ? it is considered the first successful codification[citation needed] and strongly influenced the law of many other countries. The Code, with its stress on clearly written and accessible law, was a major step in establishing the rule of law. Historians have called it "one of the few documents which have influenced the whole world."
His victories on a battle field live on only in books and history classes, but his law advancement really did change the world.

You'd think so, wouldn't you, with the extreme barbaric laws that still exist, but the thought about human rights and individual responsibility came earlier than that, from the Whigs in England.

They were the first to introduce private ownership, secular laws and equal human rights including the right to freely express yourself and congregate, this later on was implemented in what was to be the lawmaking cradle that every afterthought was stolen from, Jamestown, the first American colony.

If not for liberalism, Repubs and conservs wouldn't even have the right to disagree with the lay in public.

Some still think they shouldn't, since the are an embarressment to the US as it is today.
 
Oct 27, 2007
17,010
1
0
Originally posted by: JohnOfSheffield
There are about ten dozens of books, read one, don't expect us to do your homework assignment for you.

However, mention some shit about Patton and Rommel as Blinder bomber suggests, that will do fine.

And no BlinderBomber, just because you don't know shit about the issue, you can't just make shit up, he didn't just outthink them, he and his generals killed them all, do you know why? of course not, do you have any clue at all?

Why do you always have to be such a fucking dick around here?
 

Nebor

Lifer
Jun 24, 2003
29,582
11
76
Originally posted by: GodlessAstronomer
Originally posted by: JohnOfSheffield
There are about ten dozens of books, read one, don't expect us to do your homework assignment for you.

However, mention some shit about Patton and Rommel as Blinder bomber suggests, that will do fine.

And no BlinderBomber, just because you don't know shit about the issue, you can't just make shit up, he didn't just outthink them, he and his generals killed them all, do you know why? of course not, do you have any clue at all?

Why do you always have to be such a fucking dick around here?

He's english, being a dick on the internet is the only freedom they have left. They'll actually be MORE free once sharia law takes over.
 

Drift3r

Guest
Jun 3, 2003
3,572
0
0
Originally posted by: BlinderBomber
When you examine military history you often find that each era of warfare has its great generals and strategists. During the Second World War, both Patton and Rommel were considered geniuses among mortals. Yet, Napoleon is considered the single greatest tactician of the past two hundred years because, unlike other great generals, he emerged without any great advances in warfare technology. Both Rommel and Patton embraced mobile warfare and understood it to its very core far better and more completely than others. Napoleon, though, conquered most of 'civilized' Europe without any great advance in technology - without machine guns, or smokeless cartridges, or rifled barrels. His soldiers, though numerous, weren't particularly better trained or better equipped to handle 19th century warfare. No, Napoleon decimated the armies of Europe simply by out thinking them.

I believe it was Heinz Guderian who first established and adopted the art of "mobile warfare" during WW2. Rommel and Paton were just very bright students of the art of war who learned and adopted the doctrine of mobile warfare established by Heinz IMHO.
 

lupi

Lifer
Apr 8, 2001
32,539
260
126
The only French leader outside of some psycho chick that other nations feared?
 

BeauJangles

Lifer
Aug 26, 2001
13,941
1
0
Originally posted by: Drift3r
Originally posted by: BlinderBomber
When you examine military history you often find that each era of warfare has its great generals and strategists. During the Second World War, both Patton and Rommel were considered geniuses among mortals. Yet, Napoleon is considered the single greatest tactician of the past two hundred years because, unlike other great generals, he emerged without any great advances in warfare technology. Both Rommel and Patton embraced mobile warfare and understood it to its very core far better and more completely than others. Napoleon, though, conquered most of 'civilized' Europe without any great advance in technology - without machine guns, or smokeless cartridges, or rifled barrels. His soldiers, though numerous, weren't particularly better trained or better equipped to handle 19th century warfare. No, Napoleon decimated the armies of Europe simply by out thinking them.

I believe it was Heinz Guderian who first established and adopted the art of "mobile warfare" during WW2. Rommel and Paton were just very bright students of the art of war who learned and adopted the doctrine of mobile warfare established by Heinz IMHO.

Actually, the roots of mobile warfare go back much, much farther. Liddell Hart was basically the founding father of the concepts used by Germany during World War II. In the second half of WW1 and into the 1920s, he advocated massing tanks in large groups and using infantry, mounted on trucks, as support. Guderian, as well as other young German officers in interwar Germany latched onto these ideas and explored them much more fully than the British and French. Guderian, ultimately, was the architect of the plan put forth by Hart.*

My point about Rommel and Patton isn't that they 'invented' mobile warfare. Rather they, with others (including Guderian) capitalized very effectively on new technology to help make their names.

* I don't have any of my books in front of me, however Hart didn't operate in a vacuum. There was another tactician who proposed the same ideas during the same period. I believe his name was Fuller, though I'm not 100% certain.

As a broader point it's very interesting to look at warfare from 1916 - 1918. In that period, you will find that all the 'revolutionary' tactics of World War II were already being experimented with. It just took 20 years for the technology to catch up and make them effective.

Anyway, I could go on and on about the period... if you're interested shoot me a PM.