Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo caused in part by Indonesian volcanic eruption
Electrically charged volcanic ash short-circuited Earth’s atmosphere in 1815, causing global poor weather and Napoleon’s defeat, says new research.
Historians know that rainy and muddy conditions helped the Allied army defeat the French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo. The June 1815 event changed the course of European history.
Two months prior, a volcano named Mount Tambora erupted on the Indonesian island of Sumbawa, killing 100,000 people and plunging the Earth into a ‘year without a summer’ in 1816.
Now, Dr Matthew Genge from Imperial College London has discovered that electrified volcanic ash from eruptions can ‘short-circuit’ the electrical current of the ionosphere – the upper level of the atmosphere that is responsible for cloud formation.
The findings, published today in Geology, could confirm the suggested link between the eruption and Napoleon’s defeat.
Dr Genge, from Imperial’s Department of Earth Science and Engineering, suggests that the Tambora eruption short-circuited the ionosphere, ultimately leading to a pulse of cloud formation. This brought heavy rain across Europe that contributed to Napoleon Bonaparte’s defeat.
From History.com
On June 16, 1815, he defeated the Prussians under Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher at Ligny, and sent 33,000 men, or about one-third of his total force, in pursuit of the retreating Prussians. On June 18, Napoleon led his remaining 72,000 troops against the Duke of Wellington’s 68,000-man allied army, which had taken up a strong position 12 miles south of Brussels near the village of Waterloo. In a fatal blunder, Napoleon waited until mid-day to give the command to attack in order to let the ground dry. The delay in fighting gave Blucher’s troops, who had eluded their pursuers, time to march to Waterloo and join the battle by the late afternoon.
The paper shows that eruptions can hurl ash much higher than previously thought into the atmosphere – up to 100 kilometres above ground.
Dr Genge said: “Previously, geologists thought that volcanic ash gets trapped in the lower atmosphere, because volcanic plumes rise buoyantly. My research, however, shows that ash can be shot into the upper atmosphere by electrical forces.”
A series of experiments showed that that electrostatic forces could lift ash far higher than by buoyancy alone. Dr Genge created a model to calculate how far charged volcanic ash could levitate, and found that particles smaller than 0.2 millionths of a metre in diameter could reach the ionosphere during large eruptions.
He said: “Volcanic plumes and ash both can have negative electrical charges and thus the plume repels the ash, propelling it high in the atmosphere. The effect works very much like the way two magnets are pushed away from each other if their poles match.”
The experimental results are consistent with historical records from other eruptions.
Weather records are sparse for 1815, so to test his theory, Dr Genge examined weather records following the 1883 eruption of another Indonesian volcano, Krakatau.
The data showed lower average temperatures and reduced rainfall almost immediately after the eruption began, and global rainfall was lower during the eruption than either period before or after.
He also found reports of ionosphere disturbance after the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo, Philippines, which could have been caused by charged ash in the ionosphere from the volcano plume.
In addition, a special cloud type appeared more frequently than usual following the Krakatau eruption. Noctilucent clouds are rare and luminous, and form in the ionosphere. Dr Genge suggests these clouds therefore provide evidence for the electrostatic levitation of ash from large volcanic eruptions.
Dr Genge said:
“Vigo Hugo in the novel Les Miserables said of the Battle of Waterloo: ‘an unseasonably clouded sky sufficed to bring about the collapse of a World.’
Now we are a step closer to understanding Tambora’s part in the Battle from half a world away.”
###
Very interesting. Of course there is no proof that the eruption caused the wet weather that affected the battle. It rains a fair bit in Belgium with around ten rainy days in June, the month of the battle. Victor Hugo whilst a great author was obviously not an expert on Belgium’s weather!
Definitely! What matters is the change from “normal” weather, so if Belgium is that wet usually, attributing the outcome of Waterloo to a volcano does seem a stretch.
From my reading it only rained for about 2 days immediately prior to the battle. Memoirs from such as Georgiana Lennox (the daughter of the Duchess of Richmond) are quite specific that casualties from the initial phases of the battle made it back to Brussels before the rains started.
Now when theoden king of Rohan takes his people to helms deep and sauraman sends his uruk Kai ten thousand strong to wipe them out. It starts to rain that night. Are we saying that an eruption from Mount Doom caused that rain. And did it make any difference? The uruk Kai breeched the hammerhelm and it took a Calvary charge from eomer third Marshall of the riddermark on saromans left flank to turn the tide of the battle.
Similarly, whoever wrote the following probably wasn’t a military tactician.
Everybody’s an armchair quarterback. The Battle of Agincourt was in large part decided by the mud. What would have happened if Napoleon had charged through the mud? We don’t know. Probably Napoleon did. We can’t call his delay a blunder because we don’t know what would have happened if he didn’t delay.
Scholars tend to be arrogant and tend not to see their own blind spots.
Rain also played a major part in French defeat at Crecy in 1346. God is clearly not a Frenchman, and to adapt a phrase: the sun never sets on the anglophone empire.
Commie Bob,
Yet Agincourt was in October, when heavy rain is not uncommon.
Mud has featured in every war in northern France and Belgium.
Bingo! Some military scholar thinks he’s a better general than Napoleon. Imagine what Alexander the Mediocre could have accomplished if he was as smart as that guy!
He should be a climate scientist in his spare time!
Are there any reports or documentation of the French forces being unduly hampered by rain and mud in their attack? I have never read aything about it.
I remember a television programme about Waterloo by a military historian, who showed that the initial artillery bombardment by the French was not very effective because a) Wellington got his troops to lie down behind the ridge he was defending and b) the cannonballs went splat into the mud and caused much less damage than if they had hit dry ground and ricocheted through troops standing in line.
It does seem that Napoleon lost the battle as much as Wellington won it.
Picking the ground on which you are going to fight is as much a part of military strategy as is what you do with your troops once the fighting does start.
My favorite example is Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours. The Arab commander felt compelled to attack up hill into a forest because his troops were unprepared for the oncoming winter.
That, in turn, reminds me of Stalin’s miserably unprepared troops attacking Finland in mountainous terrain, in winter, and getting their behinds kicked. link
Finland is mostly flat, with some low mountains in the north, in Lapland. There was fighting in the north, around Petsamo, but most of the Winter War was fought in the south, plus a little in the center.
The main obstacles for the Red Army were forest, river, lake and bog, through and across which ran few roads.
The point is that because of the strategic situation Napoleon had to allow Wellington the luxury of picking the battle field. Thus giving up Napoleons most important skill, the ability to out maneuver his enemy which he did almost every single time with out fail. Wellington didn’t out maneuver Napoleon, Napoleon gave him the choice out of strategic Nesessity. Napoleon knew he had very little chance to pull off the miracle of defeating all of the enemies he was facing and that he had to gamble, he did and he lost.
As noted, Napoleon didn’t have to let Wellington pick the battlefield. But he did, because he thought the Allies were making a mistake. That was just one of the French commands many costly errors.
He had won other major victories by letting his enemies make positional errors or luring them into making such mistakes. This time, he was wrong, not Wellington.
The rain might have hampered the French cavalry’s ability effectively to pursue the defeated Allies after QB, but it also might have been another command error.
Not that Wellington was flawless. He apparently forgot about 17,000 troops at his second position at Halle.
http://www.1815fieldarmy.nl/news/127-halle-wellington-s-second-position-during-waterloo
YUP, ……. “might” does not always triumph over ”smarts”.
Napoleon’s “smarts” were also lacking when he launched his “attack” on Russia (Moscow) in the dead of the Russian winter. It cost him a defeat and loss of ¾ of a million soldiers.
Sam,
He didn’t launch the attack in the dead of winter.
OK, iffen you say so.
So, what was the date when his soldiers entered Moscow?
Wellington’s plan was to fight a defensive battle, holding the French advance, until the Prussians could come to his support. The rain/mud delayed the French attack and so helped Wellington, but the rain/mud delayed the Prussian march to the battlefield, and so helped Napoleon.
You could argue the case either way, but Napoleon lost so it makes a good excuse for his failure to win
I ran a computer model of the battle and Napoleon won! I’m just waiting for the French to rewrite history.
Yes. Napoleon liked to maneuver his artillery, and the mud made that impossible early in the morning. Also long-range bombardment required solid cannon balls, which would stick in the mud, instead of bouncing along the ground, killing or hideously wounding all in their path.
Plus, of course infantry and cavalry are also impaired by mud. As the French were on the attack, mud hurt them more than the Allies. The Prussians of course were also on the march, though.
Nobody knows when the battle actually started. Wellington said 10 AM, but other eye witnesses on both sides say not until 11:30, when the ground had dried up some.
Of course, Wellington and Bulcher had nothing to do with it….
And Nathan Rotschild pulled artful bit of deceit in London, leading to him and his heirs dominating world banking ever since.
He was known to have the fasted couriers around and that he would have knowledge of the victor before even the King of England. As all waited at the exchange in London, he came out with a glum face and did not say anything. Everyone went into panic selling. He waited for prices to go through the floor then bought everything he could get his hands on.
Once the true victory was announced proces shot back up and Nathan became one of the richest men in London.
He later said ” If I can control a countries money, I care not who writes the laws. ”
A principal which applies in spades 200 years later.
In mid-June, the chances of rain at Waterloo each day is 31% now. It might have been even rainier during the Dalton Minimum of the Little Ice Age.
Doesn’t mean that the eruption had no effect, but rain in June in Belgium isn’t unusual. What’s strange to me is that April and May (except its last week) there are less rainy than June and July.
https://weatherspark.com/m/51012/6/Average-Weather-in-June-in-Waterloo-Belgium
Possibly relevant. What are the odds of the French losing a battle to the English in the last 500 or so years?
This was during the Dalton Minimum so yes the local weather could have been affected by the combination of the volcanic aerosols and the quiet sun.
The text says
“The data showed lower average temperatures and reduced rainfall almost immediately after the eruption began, and global rainfall was lower during the eruption than either period before or after.”
From where do you get that “wet weather” claims.
Sailed past Tambora in November, 2010. The shapes at the base of the slope, produced by the lava of previous eruptions, looked very much like a “sleeping green dragon” to me.
Couldn’t possibly have been that Wellington was a better commander and the allied troops were better than their counterparts.
Nope, it needed a volcano to beat Napoleon.
Do you mean that Wellington counted on the volcano whereas Napoleon failed to account for its efects? Maybe Napoleon was one of those climate neg… er, skeptics, who vote for Trump lol
Now seriously, it didn’t need a volcano. Any other unpredictable scenario that favored Wellington could have worked as well. In this case it was some heavy rain at the right time, whether or not the volcano triggered it.
1) Napoleon & company were at the bottom of a long up-hill rise, charging into Wellington, who’s troops could maneuver out of sight on the reverse side of the hill.
2) Napoleon’s Cavalry made a suicidal charge up the hill into Wellington’s guns (goodbye Cavalry)
3) Napoleon wasn’t feeling well on the day of battle (at least a major hemorrhoids)
Javert Chip
As I have said on this blog before, haemorrhoids are Gods curse on mankind. Nothing the devil can eject from the bowels of the earth will ever compare to what God inflicted on the bowels of man.
It appears on this occasion, God chose a side.
Napoleon’s supporters do cite his illness, just as do Lee’s at Gettysburg.
But the fact remained that he and Ney, to whom he gave more command authority than was wise, to put it mildly, made grievous errors which cost them the battle and campaign.
Among Nappy’s mistakes was not accepting his daring, dashing, literally colorful cavalry commander Marshal Murat back into his service. Unlike the plodding Grouchy, with a third of Nappy’s army, Murat would have ridden to the sound of the guns, instead of dumbly continuing to follow the Prussians. The trailing French infantry could have held up the Prussians, while the cavalry could have arrived on the field in time to turn the tide at Waterloo. The next day, Grouchy did beat Prussian III Corps at Wavre, when it didn’t matter.
After stealing a march on the Allies and Prussians to set up the battles of Ligny and Quatres Bras, Nappy and Ney then dithered, sending D’Erlon’s corps marching back and forth between the two fights, without its participating in either. Had D’Erlon arrived at QB, Wellington would have been whipped then and there. If at Ligny, then the Prussians would have been too weakened to fight at Waterloo and Plancenoit.
At Waterloo, Nappy let the supposedly diversionary attack on Wellington’s right, at Hougoumont, spiral out of control. In hind sight, he should have gone straight for the Dutch-Belgian troops on the Allied left, with everything he had, horse, foot and guns, as early as he could.
Contrary to popular belief, however, Wellington did need to funnel troops and guns to his right to hold onto Hougoumont, weakening his center. But the French threw in somewhat more, the reverse of what Nappy planned.
When the ailing Nappy went to lie down, Ney idiotically launched an unsupported cavalry attack, without artillery to blast the compact Allied defensive squares to pieces, then bringing up infantry to finish off the shattered squares.
Just some of the Emperor’s mistakes which gave victory to the Iron Duke and Prince Bluecher.
Sgt
“In hind sight, he should have gone straight for the Dutch-Belgian troops on the Allied left, with everything he had, horse, foot and guns, as early as he could.”
Were we all blessed with hindsight, we wouldn’t be debating climate change today.
True.
Nappy was relying on Grouchy to slow down Bluecher, so thought he had more time than he did. He also expected Wellington to weaken his center more than he did.
Oh yea, and it was Napoleon who initiated combat with Wellington (ie started the battle)
He had no choice, Wellington and Blucher were only about 20% of the enemies invading France. Every second he waited was more time for his enemies to combine. He had near zero chance of winning but if he had any it was defeating his enemies one army at a time before they combined, hench he had to force the issue, but this necessitated ceding the choice of battle field to his enemy.
Everyone keeps discussing tactics but it was the strategic situation that drove Napoleons decisions, he made bad ones but frankly had very little control over it.
The Prussian and Anglo-Allies were more than 20% of Nappy’s enemies in 1815, and probably more dangerous than the Austrians, Russians, and motley assorted Germans, Swiss, Italians and Scandinavians. Let us not forget Lichtenstein, Sardinia and French royalists. And “Austrians” includes Hungarians, Czechs and what have you from the recently defunct Holy Roman Empire, which, as per Voltaire, wasn’t holy, Roman or much of an empire.
In June, the Anglo-Allies and Prussians had over 200,000 men in the field. The other Seventh Coalition allies had about 337,000 troops threatening the eastern French frontiers.
Except your numbers are wrong the combined force facing Napoleon was less than 120 000 and and the rest of the combined armies threatening France was closer to 450,000
Nope.
Wellington had 85,000, with the 17,000 at Halle/ With the ~5000 dead and wounded from QB, that’s 90,000 at the start of the campaign. At Ligny, Bluecher had 84,000, for a total in both armies of 174,000, and neither of those figures includes all Prussian and Anglo-Allied forces in theater.
Dunno how you derived 450,000 for the other coalition troops. Maybe includes some Russian forces still on the march. But my figure for the frontier battles on the Rhine and Italian borders are generally accepted. I linked to the sources.
I suppose somewhere there was something that happened which will be discovered to be the reason for the Patriots losing the Super Bowl.
the Eagles were better!
The ref’s kept better track of Brady’s balls?
Superstorm Sandy has got to be part of the explanation somewhere, somehow.
…In a fatal blunder, Napoleon waited until mid-day to give the command to attack in order to let the ground dry. The delay in fighting gave Blucher’s troops, who had eluded their pursuers, time to march to Waterloo and join the battle by the late afternoon. …
Um. It also meant that the Prussians had to undertake a forced march in wet conditions, which must have slowed them down. Sounds like six of one and half a dozen of the other.
Napoleon was the decision-taker on the ground. I would say that his blunder was allowing the Prussian Army to retreat in good order, and not giving Grouchy specific enough orders to pursue them effectively with his right wing. The several battles between the three armies depended very much on maneuver, and the commanders all knew what the conditions were.
Incidentally, the medical fraternity claim that Napoleon was suffering from piles, and it was this that caused his tactical mistakes on the day. Every profession wants to claim that their specialty was the crucial consideration….
“It also meant that the Prussians had to undertake a forced march in wet conditions, which must have slowed them down. Sounds like six of one and half a dozen of the other.”
I saw a video in which it was claimed that the reason for waiting for the ground to dry out was to allow his solid cannon balls to bounce along it, wreaking havoc on troops in their path, instead of bogging down in the mud. (Napoleon was originally an artillery officer.) I gathered that this was what made them so lethal—they didn’t have to hit their target on the fly—and they kept on going even after tearing through their first hits.
I understood Napoleon suffered from Ulcerative Bowel Syndrome (UBS)! Far more discomforting than Haemahroids!
I agree with the Hot Scott. Wellington out Generalled Napoleon.
Exactly what did Wellington do to out general him? Other than taking high ground and wait for Napoleon to attack him. He had the clear advantage and still almost lost, Napoleon was gambling he knew it and nearly pulled it off.
Bob b,
Picking the high ground and defending are the actions of a good commander, and
he won.
Lee is the prime example correct, but than again when he had to change and be the attacker how did it work for him?
Wellington didn’t have to be the aggressor so where is the genius (was Mead a genius?)? Napoleon did and almost pulled it off. I am not saying Wellington was a bad general that got lucky, he made solid practical choices a won, but he had the advantage off not needed to gamble. Wellington didn’t out general Napoleon, he just didn’t lose to him, though it was probably closer than it should have been.
Like Alexander before him Napoleon stands out in history as one of the great generals because he won almost every battle he fought in and he was the aggressor almost every time. Napoleon didn’t lose because of Wellington or Tambora or even just the rain. He lost because his giant ego made him attack Russia, a logistical nightmare that he had almost no chance of winning. If he hadn’t Waterlow would never have happened and Wellington would just be a relatively minor general in english history.
Napoleon could have in the end had Russia (or at least the valuable parts of it) if he was patient and had simply taken small bits year after year and forced the Russians to attack him to take it back, but the gambling aggressor that he was would not allow it, so in the end what made him a great general was also what undid him.
On Saint Helena Napoleon said that Wellington’s choice of where to make a stand was wrong (he should have said risky) because there was no nearby cover to retreat to—the forest being ten miles back—if French forces had made a breakthrough.
The author who quoted him then countered that Napoleon had lost his best troops, but Wellington had conserved his (mostly his regulars from Spain) in the reserves. Thus, any breakthrough would have run into a second line of resistance and bogged down in a melée and hand-to-hand combat. During which, or during an allied retreat, the Prussians would have begun arriving behind the French, diverting French forces and heartening Wellington’s soldiers.
Wellington said afterwards that he firmly beloved that Blucher would fulfill his promise to join him. Blucher did all he could, and more than most other generals, with a forced night-time march.
“On Saint Helena Napoleon said that Wellington’s choice of where to make a stand was wrong (he should have said risky) because there was no nearby cover to retreat to—the forest being ten miles back—if French forces had made a breakthrough”
This is my point Wellington was relying on Bloucher and it almost blew up in his face.
“… because there was no nearby cover to retreat to.”
All the more reason for Wellingtons guys to understand that they will not be retreating … no second thoughts … all in. I’m not saying Wellington did this, but others have.
Wellington also defeated French forces in the Spanish Peninsula Campaign in the late 18th C! He’d fought him before & knew how he operated I would suggest!
And Andrew Jackson beat Waterloo veterans in New Orleans with a rag tag force, what’s the point?
Rifles versus muskets, the more accurate further ranged weapon won the day! It took the British Army many years to finally adopt a rifle, basically because they were slower to load, despite their advantages, plus the British Army had relied on its volley fire for many years. In the early days of WW1 in a couple of calvary charges against British lines, with the British armed with the Lee-Enfield rifle, (using the James Paris-Lee bolt action, the fastest in the world for many a year), the German High Command were told that the British were armed with at least 4 machine guns per company, when in fact only on machine gun was issued per company! Just sayin!
But the real coup de gras for the French is they forgot to bring their accordions!
Every time you say Bluecher,. I hear horses neighing.
Same British tactics resulted in the burning of Washington DC.
Rifles had some advantages but the reload time was a huge disadvantage. The British rarely fired more then one or two volleys before charging the position and driving the enemy off the field. You are way over simplifying it, the technological situation was almost identical to the revalotion.
“identical to the revalotion.”
The who with the what??
Both the British Army and King’s German Legion had rifles. Britain had learned their value in America, while German (and later Austrian) armies had had jaeger since c. 1631.
British Green Jackets were armed with the Baker rifle. Even today British regiments descended from Rifle Brigade units say “Fix swords!” rather than “Fix bayonets”, since rifles were shorter than muskets, so needed longer knives on the end when formed in square to repel cavalry.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifle_Brigade_(The_Prince_Consort%27s_Own)
Go through it battle by battle, rarely was he out number, in the 2 or 3 major battles that weren’t tactile maneuver battles he had strong defensive position. Again competent good general nothing on the level of Bonaparte’s achievements. He did lose several smaller actions and sieges.
Again if it wasn’t for Waterloo a battle he had all the advantages in and should have won Wellington would only be a footnote in history.
Wellington and the Portuguese were badly outnumbered at Bussaco and Fuentes de Oñoro, and opposed by French veterans. At Salamanca, both sides were about even in number.
In battles in which he did have more troops, Wellington’s numbers were inflated by often unreliable Spanish forces. These were often sieges, in which defenders are typically outnumbered.
Even without Waterloo, Wellington would be remembered as one of the best British (Irish) generals, based upon India, Iberia and southern France. He had already been made a duke in 1814 for his successes.
I think Alan was talking about American long rifles, a very different animal.
Possibly possibly. Always difficult to tell with a 200 word post 🙂
Late 18th/early 19th isn’t really my Special Topic so open to correction but my understanding has always been that the British were one of the first armies to formally equip units with rifles. Use of rifles by irregular troops of course had been going on for a long time. Generally speaking. I think.
20th century I am more prepared to argue about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A4ger_(infantry)#Age_of_Enlightenment_(18th_century)
“According to a popular theory, the earliest known Jäger unit was a company formed in about 1631 in Hesse-Kassel, under William V, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel. Wilhelm supposedly formed an elite light infantry unit for the Hessian Army, around a core drawn from his personal staff of gamekeepers (Revierjäger; “game preserve hunter”), forest rangers and/or professional hunters.”
Regardless of the historical truth of this 17th century origin “theory”, the Russians, Germans, Austrians, etc. did have Jaeger or Schuetzen units before the British:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sch%C3%BCtzen_(military)
This list doesn’t mention those of the HRE, ie Austrian-Hungarian empire=monarchy before 1806.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_J%C3%A4ger_units
The 18th century Austrians had a repeating air rifle, made famous by Lewis and Clark:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girandoni_air_rifle
Craig,
My comment is under moderation, probably due to too many links.
The short answer is that Germans, Austrians and Russians had rifle units in the 18th century, if not indeed in the 17th.
The most distinctive 18th century weapon of such units was an Austrian repeating air rifle, one of which Lewis and Clark carried with them on their expedition for President Jefferson west to the mouth of the Columbia River and back.
OK, now I see that it has been approved, but will leave this reply up too.
Sorta.
The British army could be argued to be early adopters with the rifle, bringing in the Baker Rifle in 1800 for their ‘light’ (read skirmishing) units. Open to correction but I don’t think any of the other continental armies issued rifles at this scale for many years.
The machine gun/1914 comment is a bit out. British organisation had two Vickers or Maxim weapons at Battalion level. Battalions at that stage were 4 companys giving a rough slice as 1/2 a gun per company.
The normal discussion on this period makes a major point of this, pointing out that the Germans had much more weapons c.f. the British but it is a bit apples to different apples. Germans had their weapons at Regimental level (equal to the Brigade under British terms) and from memory had 12 guns. This works out to 4 per battalion, although in practice being Regimental support they were easier to concentrate when needed.
What also needs to be considered is that machine guns were not wonder weapons and the claims that a single weapon had the same firepower as an entire infantry company are a bit difficult to back. Practical rate of fire was about 150-200 rpm which in pure bullets in the air terms is about the same as 20 riflemen.
(then you get into discussions about suppression fire vs aimed fire and all sorts of other apples to oranges discussions and we digress.)
Studying the early BEF vs German battles is tricky. Lot of recycled myths and jingo creeps in.
The British army was actually a late adopter of rifles, but had more than the French.
Germans and Austrians adopted rifles in the 18th and even 17th centuries.
And of course Americans, building on the German tradition, in the 18th century. Our Pennsylvania rifles owed to the “Dutch”, ie German. settlements there.
The British did experiment with Fergunson’s breech-loading rifle during the American Revolution, but didn’t adopt it.
But by 1777, continental European armies already fielded standardized muzzle-loading rifles in specialist units.
Bob boder
He was assisted by the French pirate Jean Lafitte.
So?
Time travel neat, New Orleans Jan 8 1815
michael 🙂
Unlikely. Battle of NO was fought in January 1815. Waterloo was in June of that year.
Walter,
While there might have been time for the survivors of NO to reach Belgium, the fact remains that some high quality regiments were destroyed there which would have come in handy against the French.
It wasn’t just the battle losses, but the ravages of disease.
Bob,
There were no Waterloo veterans at New Orleans, which took place before the later battle.
Bob,
Napoleon’s goal in attacking Russia wasn’t just to occupy the parts of the Russian Empire which he needed to enforce his Continental System shutting Britain out of trade with Europe.
Crazy as it might seem, he wanted ultimately to reach India via Russia, the Caspian Sea and Persia, there to kill the British lion in its Asian lair. He tried via Egypt, but that hadn’t worked out.
Having liberated Poland, he could have done the same for the Baltic States and Finland. But he was hunting bigger game.
It wasn’t just the cold winter, but typhus in the summer and fall which did in his army. He took comfort in the fact that most of those who died in his service in Russia weren’t Frenchmen.
He would not have won without the Prussians.
True. It was the French vs. the rest of Europe.
That’s also how Sherman tanks beat German tanks in the Battle of Arracourt, by positioning and use of tank killers-Hellcats.
The point is because of the strategic situation Napoleon had to let Wellington pick the field of Battle. Wellington didnt screw it up but he didn’t out maneveur Napoleon either, he had the advantage and he took it, competent but not brilliant.
Considering the French surprised the English (et al) by their quick arrival in the Quatre Bras area, to the extent that a ball for Wellington and many of his senior officers was interrupted with the news of Napoleon’s imminent arrival, please explain exactly how Napoleon “…had to let Wellington pick the field of battle”.
Already have about ten times. If you are trying to say Wellington didn’t pick the battle field I am not sure how to even answer that
So do the French get a participation medal and a moral victory?
Bob B,
Good generalship on the day ?
Fortifying two forward positions, forming a line on a reverse slope, getting line infantry to lay down, keeping a very large reserve, weakening the left (where he hoped the Prussians would show up.
Poor generalship ?
Losing the heavy cavalry early on.
Again i never said that Wellington wasn’t competent, he clearly was, but he also had huge advantages the most important of which was time on his hands. Napoleon’s army was hodgepodge and he had too many enemies to confront, he was forced to gamble and he did and lost. Wellington knew all of this and took advantage and won but there was no decisive action that Wellington took that won the battle there was no brilliant maneuvering there was good competent planning. He should have won and he did, but it was much closer than it probably should have been.
Again does Mead deserve as much praise and adulation as Wellington? He didn’t need anybody to come along and swing the battle in his favor, he performed just as well or better in a very similar situation. He wasn’t fighting a hodgepodge army, he was facing the best general of his day who had never lost, he didn’t have an allied army that showed up in the nick of time to save his bacon, he picked an ideal position and conducted a well disciplined defense battle plan.
Montgomery was in a very similar situation at El Alamein, he had all the advantages and he won because he didn’t do anything stupid to lose it. Did he prove to be a brilliant general in the end?
Wellington was a good competent general that had the good sense to take advantage of the battle situation. Reverse it, would he be able to accomplish what Napoleon did prior to this battle or Alexander the great or Rommel, the answer is no, Nelson was a genius and innovative, Wellington was not .
Wellington never lost a significant battle during the entire Peninsular campaign, while fighting with usually numerically inferior forces against the best of Napoleon’s Marshals. If you think Wellington was not innovative, try looking at the lines of Torres Vedras. How many generals would have had the chutzpah to wall off an entire peninsular, and furthermore do it without either the French or his political masters in England finding out?
Yes it’s right up there with Caesar at Alesia.
Come on! he fortified a rear position in case he had to fall back to it.
Exactly how many significant battles were there.
Bob,
Wellington fought and usually won a lot of significant battles in Iberia and southern France. Dunno what you consider significant, but many of them were big deals:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_career_of_Arthur_Wellesley,_1st_Duke_of_Wellington#Battle_record
Some of them involved more than 100,000 men.
Sorry my reply is miss placed above
Bob B,
Wellington was fighting a defensive action at Waterloo. What brilliant manoeuvres does a brilliant general make when fighting a defensive action. That’s a difficult one, especially in an age when you had very limited intel and the fear of what you could not see and did not know vastly outweighed what you did know.
The manoeuvres that he did make, mostly worked. for example
Feeding just enough of the guard into Hougumont to keep it in allied hands.
Keeping the centre of balance of his army right behind where the next attack came.
Counter attacking at the right moment, when the attack of the Imperial Guard was repelled
Most important (in my mind) he was in the right spot at each crisis point. This lent a massive morale boost to the units that most needed it and prevented a mass rout.
As far as rifles go, the British had only three battalions, iirc, which were useful, but not decisive. I think the French young guard had a battalion also.
As far as a hodgepodge army goes, the anglo allied army was much more of a mixed bag than the French. Only a third of the line infantry were high quality and even the British guards battalions were considered to be not quite as good as the Imperial Old Guard.
FYI. The manoeuvres that didn’t work included sending a battalion of Hanoverians into the smoke to reinforce Hougumont. The battalion was in line formation when they should have moved more slowly as a square. There was a regiment of cuirassiers nearby. Its not recorded what happened (as far as I know/) but none of the battalion was seen or heard from again.
Wellington did a fine job, never said he didn’t. What I said was he had every advantage so he should have won. If Napoleon only had Wellington forces to deal with and the time to maneuver him into a position of his choosing the outcome would have been different but he didn’t and Wellington didn’t do anything stupid so Napoleon lost.
Bob B,
Lets put it another way. The battle could have gone either way, I don’t know of anyone who disputes that.
It went Wellingtons way.
What you have to realise is, for that era, the French moved very fast. Your intel was 15 minutes away but the French were on you in 5 minutes. The skill was being in the right place 10 minutes early. Wellington had that skill.
So far as the ACW is concerned, maybe we could talk about that separately.
I feel enlightened
The problem with citing Napoleon’s supposed disadvantages, is that he permitted those disadvantages to become critical factors. Napoleon-romantics want to make exuses of them, but the reality is that the really good commanders do not permit their weaknesses to become critically factors.
The advantage of the aggressor is to choose the time and place of the battle….. so citing Wellington’s position is an admissions that Wellington’s out-generalled Napoleon.
Napoleon relied on his artillery. Wellington countered by taking up positions that negated it’s effectiveness. Napoleon didn’t adapt in turn.
Napoleon never did learn from the series of defeats inflicted in the Peninsular, that attacking in Column against high-quality infantry deployed in Line, was a poor tactic.it worked against poor infantry, but not against the English. Simple mathematics are against you when only the front ranks of your column can’t fire, while the whole of the opposing line can fire at your formation.
Another weakness of Napoleon was revealed in his orders to his Marshals in the Peninsular…… he never came to grips with the effects of the terrain, conditions and populace of Spain. He issued impossible orders as though carrying them out was as simple as moving pieces on a chess-board.
Glorious failures don’t count. Napoleon eww – or should have known – his weaknesses. His failure to deal with them effectively, are failures in Generalship.
The French did develop tactics to adapt the column attack to stubborn, rapidly firing infantry. At Waterloo, they tried but didn’t always succeed in putting the new, wedge-like formations into effect.
For the thousandth time the strategic situation forced Napoleon to attack and allow Wellington to pick the battle field, Wellington did not out maneuver him.
Napoleon was making a huge gamble and it failed but just barely.
If the strategic situation had been what it was prior to Russia Napoleon would have out maneuvered Wellington like he did everyone else and probably defeated him easily, however true to Wellington compentacy he probably would have avoided total disaster and would have found a way to save most of his army.
Blucher performed the heroics by getting his army back in good order after a defeat, out maneuvering his pursuer and showing up at the right place at the right time, that was brilliant and I think Wellington himself makes that clear in his comments.
Wellington picked his ground, which he had scouted previously. Nappy made the mistake of allowing the Allies to form up on ground of their choosing. Unlike the Duke, Nappy didn’t know the lay of the land beyond the ridge.
The battle wouldn’t even have happened had Nappy and Ney destroyed Wellington at Quatres Bras, as they would have done had d’Erlon’s corps been brought into the fight.
Still, it’s doubtful that any other Allied general could have beaten Napoleon that day. Wellington made good decisions at critical junctures, and the French didn’t.
No he did not. He had fewer men, his army was multinational, making command very difficult, and much of it was quite raw. The French were more experienced and more motivated and Napoleon was the unchallenged commander.
Wellington’s only advantage we as the ground, which he choose.
Eternal Optimist,
While you’re right that Wellington fed only limited reinforcements directly into the farmhouse at Hougoumont, he had to commit some 12,000 men and guns badly needed in his center, in order to keep open the way along the hollow to bring ammo and supplies to the troops besieged at the farm.
and it was that large formation. mostly guardsmen, that fired into the flank of the attack of the French imperial guard
Wellington’s army was far more hodgepodge than Napoleon’s.
In fact, 64% of his troops at Waterloo were non-British/Irish, ie Hanoverian and other Germans, Netherlandish and Belgian.
Fair point but Napoleons Army was bereft of officers that had any experience with the solders the were leading, in fact while the units themselves had many veteran soldiers the officer corp was a total mishmash. Wellington’s forces were from many country’s but they were still cohesive units with a proper officer Corp.
No matter how you slice it Wellington had every advantage, but the most important of these was that Napoleon had to win and win now. He had a million enemy soldiers converging on France and the only chance he had ( which frankly probably was zero) was if he could defeat Wellington and Blucher immediatly and then try to hit the next group of invaders before they could come together and crush him. This allowed Wellington to pick the time and the place and take Napoleons biggest strength away from him, his genius of our maneuvering his enemy’s. Still If Blucher hadn’t shown up Wellington may very well have lost with all his advantages. Even if Wellington has lost Napoleon was still doomed.
Napoleon lost in Russia and that’s the facts.
Wellington did not have every advantage. Fighting on the defense was surely a big one, but on the field in the morning, the Duke was outnumbered and facing troops of generally superior quality, with more horse and guns. His Netherlandish and Belgian allies, and even some of the Germans, had previously fought for the French Empire.
Without Napoleon’s and Ney’s many mistakes, Wellington would have lost. But Nappy wouldn’t have been able to pursue him relentlessly, since he needed to turn to finish off Bluecher.
But, as you note, the French situation was essentially hopeless, as long as the coalition allies stuck together.
Wellington won. What “brilliant maneuver” did he need? Wellington held the farmhouses for as long as possible and forced Napoleon to expend large numbers of troops in them. That was key. And most battles are lost not won, by the army that makes fewest mistakes. And as many historians have shown, once a battle began in the 19th century, the control a general had over their troops was minimal.
Alexander was a better general than Napoleon. Arguably the best ever. Not so sure about Rommel, who wasn’t even the best German general of WWII.
Nelson should indeed get the most credit for defeating Napoleon. Whether he would or could have invaded Britain can’t be known, but Trafalgar meant that he had to turn his splendid Grande Armee away from the Channel and march it at blazing speed into the heart of the continent, to victory over Russia, Austria and German states at Austerlitz, at least as great a triumph on land as was Nelson’s at sea.
Trafalgar also led to the Continental System, which proved Napoleon’s downfall, when he invaded Russia in order to enforce the embargo. It also drew him toward India, in order to strike the British Empire in its treasure chest.
But Wellington was the best of all the coalition generals against whom Nappy fought, with the possible exceptions of Bagration and Kutuzov. Don’t think he ever faced the ever victorious Suvorov.
“The Prussian soldier, historian, and theorist Carl von Clausewitz, who as a young colonel had served as chief-of-staff to Thielmann’s Prussian III Corps during the Waterloo campaign, expressed the following opinion:
Bonaparte and the authors who support him have always attempted to portray the great catastrophes that befell him as the result of chance. They seek to make their readers believe that through his great wisdom and extraordinary energy the whole project had already moved forward with the greatest confidence, that complete success was but a hair’s breadth away, when treachery, accident, or even fate, as they sometimes call it, ruined everything. He and his supporters do not want to admit that huge mistakes, sheer recklessness, and, above all, overreaching ambition that exceeded all realistic possibilities, were the true causes.
— Carl von Clausewitz.[192] “
Bob, Read again Clausewitz’s quote you kindly provided and then re-read all that you wrote early.
Every battle is a close run thing. Seemingly minor mistakes can cost victory. Seemingly good strategic and tactical decisions do not necessarily lead to victory. As we all should know winning very battle does not win the war.
Suggest you also re-read the “Art of War” by Sun Tzu. His writings were basically the textbook for North Korea and North Vietnam.
I don’t have to reread it, Clausewitz is saying he had little chance of winning from the get go. So how does this make Wellington the revered general he is? Again Everyone knows Wellington’s name What did he do that Meade didn’t?
I don’t think its fair to say that Wellington had all the advantages.
first off, there are advantages that last the whole battle.
Then there are advantages that are temporary, and can be squandered or used to great advantage.
The French had some terrific battle advantages:-
They moved very fast.
They had a lot of heavy cavalry.
They had a grand battery concept
They had a very large Guard corps
They had a large proportion of light infantry cf with the allies
They had more cannon
On average , they were more experienced
The anglo-allies had some terrific advantages
two forward strongholds, Hougumont and la haye sainte
slope to hide behind
early mud
good possibility the Prussians would reinforce the left
good solid infantry battalions with excellent firepower in the reserve
EO,
True. But some Allied light infantry had rifles. Most of the German troops defending La Haye Sainte were armed with Baker rifles.
3 battalions of allies had rifles. 1 battalion of french
ok. sgt
The problem with having a super weapon, like the baker rifle, at waterloo, is that the supply network does not cover it. So when the ammo runs out you are left with a three foot club. The rifles performed very well…till the ammo ran out.
La Haye Sainte defence did not rely on rifles. But the line infantry ALSO ran out of ammo, mainly due to marauding French light cavalry, the proximity of I corps and the grand battery.
The rifles pulled back to the sandpit and were replenished… the Kings German Legion had a tougher time
EO,
I don’t see the Baker as a super weapon, but it clearly helped defend La Haye Sainte, where allies could hunker down to reload.
Wellington was able, at cost, to keep Hougoumont supplied with ammo, but not La Haye Sainte. Yet its mostly German garrison held out just long enough.
Regular British light infantry also had a modified Brown Bess musket, but dunno if it were used at Waterloo. It featured a brass grip behind the trigger guard and a rear sight. With a patched ball, it offered superior accuracy than a standard musket, while retaining faster reloading than a rifle.
Of course in a pinch you can also shoot an unpatched ball out of a rifle at close range.
The main points here are that the rifle was not decisive. The resupply of La Haye Sainte was not decisive. What was decisive was the fortifying of the forward position cost the French at least an hour.
Fortifying an outpost seems an obvious strategy in this day and age..
because if it gets by passed, we just whistle and the troops come back to the main line. In those days, they would be lost.
Wellington made the judgement that the French would be compelled to attack, because it(La Haye Sainte) covered the main road to Brussells.
again, he was right.
He had every strategic advantage and more than his share of tactical advantage. Name one strategic advantage Napoleon had.
Surprise ?
he crossed the border whilst the allies were at a ball, considering what Napoleon might do next
Napoleon had the advantage of initiative, by stealing a march on the Allies before the battles of Ligny and QB. He squandered part of that advantage by not destroying either enemy army, due to tactical blundering.
But the French still could have kept Wellington from seizing his preferred position. They didn’t because Nappy thought Wellington was making a mistake. He wasn’t familiar with Wellington or veteran British forces. Those whom he had personally fought in Spain weren’t of the post-Peninsular War class.
Nappy also had local manpower superiority, which would have been irresistible if Grouchy had ridden to the sound of the guns, as Murat would have done and as the Emperor reasonable expected he’d do, despite his orders.
Yet even without Grouchy, the French advantage in cavalry and guns should have proved decisive, had Nappy and Ney not made so many mistakes and Wellington so few.
B.B.
No one forced Napoleon to leave Elba and commence another campaign. The timing was his choice.
That was his advantage….. the choice to not commence the campaign if – and this is your claim – the advantages were all without his enemy.
BB….
Every time you try to claim that Bonaparte was beaten as the result of an “unavoidable” strategic situation, you are admitting that he wasn’t a good enough commander to comprehend this when he commenced his campaign, or to develop an effective counter-strategy.
Sounds a bit like Elon Musk.
Throughout the day, Wellington maintained reasonably strict firing discipline, especially in the face of the cavalry and, most impressively, in the face of “squares” of the “immortals”, Napoleon’s Imperial guards. They stood their ground and defended the line.
Good to know it wasn’t the Brits but Climate Change™ who defeated Nappy. Ha ha!
We’ve never needed the weather before to beat the frogs.
Oh yeah, how about at Trafalgar?
Oh wait, never mind.
I got it, I got it. Yorktown!
Now if you could just find a way to win the World Cup.
Braddock….
But against Braddock, the French had their Indian allies.
almost everybody, everywhere had allies.
Braddock had none with him.
The closest thing he had was the Virginia militia, to include young George Washington, plus exactly eight Mingo Indian scouts.
By contrast, the French force included some 637 natives.
The History.com quote makes a serious error.
“In a fatal blunder, Napoleon waited until mid-day to give the command to attack in order to let the ground dry.”
This is simply incorrect. Napoleon had less than half his army on the field until noon. Most of it was strung out on the road back towards Charleroi for 10 miles during the night of June 17-18. He’d once started a major battle at Eylau in 1807 with only half his army available at day-start, and it went badly. A tactical mistake he never repeated.
The above article speculates that the volcano caused poor weather during the Waterloo campaign.
There were other French army Corps blocking allied advances across the length of the eastern border.
These forces fought defensive and delaying battles, in general, very successfully.
The reason forces so inferior in numbers were able to stall or stop the advances of armies ten times their size was the weather had turned to crap. Rain and in some of the high elevations snow. This part of the 100 days campaign are well worth reading, many times it is the history which is not flashy that holds the key
It was not just Waterloo.
I cannot say if the volcano was the cause of the poor weather but myself I always wondered.
michael
True. The mighty coalition was gathering yet again against France. Eventually it would have crushed Nappy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_campaigns_of_1815
Maybe the volcano played a role, but rain in mid-June in Western Europe isn’t that odd. The Allies attacked Normandy on D-Day because our WX ships knew a break in the storms was coming, but the Germans didn’t, which is why Rommel was absent on June 6, 1944. The US Mulberry harbor was destroyed by a storm on 19 June.
Wasn’t Napoleon identified as the second of Nostradamus’s antichrists? So clearly god caused Tambora to erupt to destroy him and save the world from the devil. Clear scientific evidence of the existence of GOD!
OK sillness off now.
There you go – more proof God is an Englishman :0)
explain the World Cup than?
God prefers real football… 😉
can’t argue with that, especial being a life long Eagles fan.
Oh you mean Rugby!
Rugby is a form of bar room brawl played outdoors.
How about Irish football? Australian rules?
Obviously a fan of rugby – won that in 2003 – but as an Englishman he plays fair and lets Jonny Foreigner win so we don’t have to keep apologising. Sorry to take up your time.
Try throwing a ball forward once in a while it’s kind of fun.
We call that cricket – now that’s a game the man upstairs can appreciate. We can play for five days and still end up with a draw :0) Actually, my daughter is pretty good throwing one of your funny-shaped balls forward (she’s a javelin thrower) – actually got complimented in Central Park last year.
I have watched almost every sport now to man but for some reason i never spent any time on Cricket, weird since its the second most watched sport in the world. Maybe I’ll make a point learning the game.
Unfortunately there aren’t any good women’s Football leagues out there for her to compete in.
Napolean lost because he, and his marshals, screwed up. Rain is a fact of life in the field, and it was his job to account for it. It’s not like it suddenly started raining on top of the Imperial Guard when he sent them forward, or caused Grouchy to go marching off to oblivion.
The die was cast and rain affects both sides.
As Julius said, alea jacta est.
Actually if he said it at all, it would likely have been in Greek – “kubus aneriphtho”. Greek was the formal language of the Roman aristocracy in the Republic period
Unless he said it for his men to hear, who didn’t have the benefit of an aristocratic education. Although many if not most legionaries could read and write Latin in the West or Greek in the East.
Just a guess, but Wellington defending the top of a hill was probably better for maneuvering than French marching up a muddy hill.
Never mind the iosphere, methinks there’s been a ‘short circuit’ between this guy’s ears and/or inside his computer.
Possibly a Windows 10 Computer Model he used was it?
Certainly for the scrapheap in either case
There is doubt over the story that Napoleon delayed to allow the ground to dry out. The French have always used every excuse going to explain why Napoleon lost: they don’t need any new ones!
Off-topic, but related.
Is there a discernible effect on west coast weather due to the recent volcanic eruption in Hawaii?
Dry weather in California is not unusual in August, but Seattle seems to be unusually dry. The dryness likely is making the fires, wild or not, worse.
completely different type of eruption
Nothing unusual for Seattle or the PNW. All joking aside about how much rain we get, truth is between the 4th of July and October our norm is to not get a lot of rain if any. That means all our spring brush growth just sits there waiting on a spark to get the party started.
The Pacific NW is usually dry during the summer. What makes for a bad fire season is a snowy winter, producing more grass and other small fuel in the spring. When all this material dries out by July and August, fires will be worse, whether set by people or lightning. More people in the woods means more ignition sources.
Fires are made worse by letting fuels build up by stopping grazing and suppressing natural fires, and by not thinning the forests.
Surely if Wellington had lost, the cause would be Tambora’s eruption. There is no way to win an argument with a zealot.
So the fact that Napoleon was not well to begin with and his wife ignored his letters to return to him, all of which has a real bearing on judgment, had nothing to do with his defeat?
Okay, sure.
Prior to this, he had sent a letter to his Austrian wife Marie Louise asking her to come with her (his) son to his Champs de Mai coronation, and received no answer. In addition, ships carrying two British regiments bound for America (remember that attempt to try to take back the colonies, anyone?) were turned back twice by storms and were sent to the Continent to join Old Hookey.
Blame it on the weather if you like, but there were many other factors involved, including Napoleon’s poor health.
Heavens, what nonsense. Maybe some Brits will fall for anything associated with Waterloo, but Napoleon was bound to lose the war against the grand allience, ashes or no ashes. Even a French victory at Waterloo would not have changed that.
Yep, he lost in Russia, after that it was over.
So in saying that, you are saying that Napoleon was an incompetent strategist for leaving Elba and leading his nation into a campaign that he should have known to be unwinnable.
I dispute the clam that Napolean’s defeat was due to bad weath. That bad weather seriously hindered von Blucher’s march to aid Wellington – his troops had to march all night thru miserable weather , and he had to guess where they would be needed the next day. The hero in Napolean’s defeat was von Blucher, not some volcano. Get real, people.
Blucher came very late to the field. While History.com might claim “The delay in fighting gave Blucher’s troops, who had eluded their pursuers, time to march to Waterloo and join the battle by the late afternoon”, Wellington is reliably recorded as saying at 5.45 p.m. “I would to God that either nightfall or the Prussians would come”. The Prussians did not appear until well after 6 p.m. when the battle had been raging for over six hours.
By the time the Prussians appeared, Napoleon had effectively admitted defeat and was beginning to withdraw. Wellington’s troops were too exhausted at that point to give chase, so it was the (relatively) fresh Prussian troops arriving that were able to give the coup de grace to Napoleon. However, it was Wellington’s troops that did the heavy lifting.
And if Grouchy had showed up instead Blucher would you be saying the same thing?
“Wellington himself wrote in his official dispatch back to London:
I should not do justice to my own feelings, or to Marshal Blücher and the Prussian army, if I did not attribute the successful result of this arduous day to the cordial and timely assistance I received from them. The operation of General Bülow upon the enemy’s flank was a most decisive one; and, even if I had not found myself in a situation to make the attack which produced the final result, it would have forced the enemy to retire if his attacks should have failed, and would have prevented him from taking advantage of them if they should unfortunately have succeeded”.[180]””
No, the Prussians came into action on the French flank at Plancenoite during the afternoon which was why Napoleon was short of troops in the centre. It was when his final attack with the Imperial Guard failed and they fell back in disorder that the French broke amid cries of ‘sauve qui peut!’. Not a planned withdrawal by any means.
Roger,
You neglect the Prussian attack on the French right at Plancenoit, which drew off elite Guard units the French needed against Wellington.
From the description the “experiment” was the running of a computer model. This is a misuse of the term experiment. It is really just an exercise in hypothesizing. A true experiment has actual physician processes and observations. While the theory may be true it requires real world observations for validation.
It is generally accepted that Tambora affected global weather the following year, but to say an eruption in April (eruptions lasted into July) affected European weather in June seems a stretch.
Wellington defeated the French in Portugal and Spain and at Waterloo.
Winners win and losers make excuses.
No, the rain did not determine the outcome of the battle. It rained on both sides.
Not following this. First he says that the volcano caused rain that helped defeat Napoleon. Then he says:
“The data showed lower average temperatures and reduced rainfall almost immediately after the eruption began, and global rainfall was lower during the eruption than either period before or after.”
Say what? Which is it, more rain or less?
For further info see my post Missing the Missing Summer. The claimed volcanic temperature effect is NOT visible in contemporary temperature records.
Is this study correct about electrostatic forces? Could be, although bear in mind, the author presents zero actual evidence for his claim, just model results.
Skepticism furthers …
w.
“Say what? Which is it, more rain or less?”
That’s Climate science for you!
Ah, Willis, I noticed the same thing. And I had to scroll down quite a bit to see that someone else had seen it.
OK, so there was less rain worldwide, but more at Waterloo, both caused by Tambora? Note to my Brit friends: don’t take a jackhammer to those statues of Wellington just yet. Perhaps somebody should tell Dr Matthew that it does tend rain a lot in Belgium. An average of 132 days per year (about every third day, on average). That’s what makes all those trees grow. It also tends to get cold and snowy there at times, as a (sadly now deceased) friend found out when he was visiting there in 1944 with the 101st Div.
All you Britts picking on the French need to remember that a gang of ragtag swamp bunnies and hill folk lead by old hickory Colonel Andrew Jackson with the help of Jean Lafitte kicked major General Edward Packenham’s butt at the battle of New Orleans at which Packenham was killed.
Though the French do not have exactly a stellar record in battle they were a great help in the foundation of the US of A as well. Of course as many of us gun collectors like to say, I have a great French battle rifle for sale, never fired and only dropped once.
Good line about the French military.
Packenham was also the bother in law of Wellington, I believe.
It was recycled by Americans to denigrate our ARVN allies, but in fairness, it didn’t do justice to the best South Vietnamese troops.
That should be Pakenham.
The Spanish and Dutch also provided important aid in the form of men, materiel and money to the American rebels during the Revolution.
AS WW1 showed, the finest troops in the world will fail if marched into heavy fire directed by competent troops protected by entrenchments and earthworks.
NEw Orleans was a failure by the British Commander whose uninspired tactics gave all the advantage to the defenders.
Many a Divisional Commander has failed to make the step up to successful command of an Army. (Recalling the number of unsuccessful Commanders on the Northern side of the American Civil War should illustrate the point) . Unfortunately, it is also true that the only way to find out, is to give your man an army and watch what happens….
In the case of NO, the Americans were well led, and the English were not. That is the only valid conclusion.
The British force wasn’t all English. While not as polyglot as the American mishmash, it did include Scots Highlander and black West African regiments, plus some Indians.