Return to Napoleonic France

 

Over the past eighteen months or so I’ve been reading a lot about warfare. Specifically, World War II. I enjoy more “birds-eye” books rather than “ground-level” ones, “strategic books” on the art of war rather than “tactical” books on the practice of it. And there’s a reason. The atrocities committed by the Nazis tends to destroy one’s faith in humanity, and more. It wears one down. Not only the atrocities by Hitler’s band of evil thugs, but also those committed by the Japanese and the Soviets. Even the allies are not immune, with the questionable ethics behind their use of strategic air warfare, i.e. the firebombing of civilians in Tokyo and Dresden.

There’s also another angle why I’m taking an undefined break from World War II. It’s the Sovietization of the workplace, and the public square, that’s happening in America c. 2020-21. Read or talk about Nazis, and soon enough you’re accused of being one. It’s inevitable. Same thing goes for the Civil War, of which I was an interested student since 2012. With the craziness behind America’s current Race obsession, white supremacy, and the tearing down of Confederate statues, one best not discuss the Civil War, the war where 250,000 white Northern soldiers gave their lives for the ultimate goal of ending slavery.

Anyway, about six or eight weeks ago, when I was mulling all this over in my head, I remembered Napoleon. Over the years I’ve read several books on the Napoleonic era (roughly 1796-1815). In college I had a great history professor who ignited this interest to the point where I read two books on the French Revolution on my own. This lead to an immense biography of Napoleon, which I enjoyed immensely. In 2017 I read a neat book called Napoleon as Military Commander, where each chapter delved into one of the man’s 12 or 15 great battles. Two years later I read a different thick tome of biography. So I realized, why not dive into the Napoleonic Wars? Surely 2020-21 America wouldn’t have a problem with me doing that, would it?

Another factor that steered me in this direction was the search for an epic book series to lose myself in. Someone on some internet bulletin board recommended the works of Bernard Cornwall. He wrote a dozen or so paperbacks featuring Napoleonic soldier Richard Sharpe over the course of Napoleon’s campaigns. Sounded interesting and the endorsement was legit. So I used birthday money and purchased two of those books. They’re on deck.

Then, scanning the World History shelves of a massive used books store, this softcover 450-page tome caught my eye:

The Battle: A History of the Battle of Waterloo, © 2003 by Alessandro Barbero (translated from the Italian by John Cullen)

Once my Halloween reading, Dracula, was completed, I leaped into it. It’s a fast read. I am hallway done with the 424 pages. Each chapter is a manageable 5-7 pages that examines a certain area of the Battle of Waterloo in a way not too deep to get lost in the weeds but deep and clear enough where one can visualize and follow the battle. The whole thing moves in an easy, chronological order, and contains many interesting facts.

For instance, this one:

Several historians and students of the battle, over the years, have analyzed the relationship between battlefield deaths and logistics. Consider the musket, the main weapon used by the infantry. A rather poor weapon and highly inaccurate. Curious generals at the time tested various models. If one shot a musket at a target 30 feet wide and 6 feet high, at a distance of a hundred paces, about 75 percent of the shots would land. However, in the heat of battle and the fog of war, with targets moving and shooting back at you, this figure could dwindle as low as 5 percent.

One historian looked at the data and concluded that for every battlefield death, 459 musket balls were fired. Another came up with a figure of one out of 162. Yet another proposed a one out of 227 calculation. For my amateur musings, I took the rounded average: one out of every 282 shots were lethal.

So if you were in a formation of a hundred infantrymen, facing another similar formation at a hundred yards of basically open field, advancing and firing upon one another, what are your statistical chances of survival?

Well, consider the fact that the musket could be fired twice a minute and each engagement lasted about ten minutes. That’s about two hundred shots a minute heading at you and your fellow men. Two thousand in a typical encounter. If 5 percent hit their mark, then a hundred musket balls would land. One for each member of your group. Not all would be lethal, however.

Now look at that one out of every 282 shots being lethal. In this scenario, seven men would be killed. (2,000 shots divided by 282 lethal ones.) Though you’d have nearly a hundred percent chance, on average, of being hit, 93 percent of the time you’d survive with minor or major, nonfatal wounds. Still, I marvel at the courage these men must have had to fight these battles.

Review of the book to follow in a week or two.