
Why the Battle of Waterloo was fought - fitzwatermellow
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/we-better-off-napoleon-never-lost-waterloo-180955298/?no-ist
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devindotcom
Most of the article is not about why we'd be better off - not to say it isn't
worth reading, but at the end we find:

"If Napoleon had remained emperor of France for the six years remaining in his
natural life, European civilization would have benefited inestimably. The
reactionary Holy Alliance of Russia, Prussia and Austria would not have been
able to crush liberal constitutionalist movements in Spain, Greece, Eastern
Europe and elsewhere; pressure to join France in abolishing slavery in Asia,
Africa and the Caribbean would have grown; the benefits of meritocracy over
feudalism would have had time to become more widely appreciated; Jews would
not have been forced back into their ghettos in the Papal States and made to
wear the yellow star again; encouragement of the arts and sciences would have
been better understood and copied; and the plans to rebuild Paris would have
been implemented, making it the most gorgeous city in the world."

Some arguable points, but Napoleon was... shall we say, capricious. It seems
naive to think that all this would have happened the way it's put there.

Still, it makes for fun speculation. If you like that, you should read
Creasy's "15 Decisive Battles in the History of the World," at least if you
don't mind a bit (well, more than a bit) of Anglocentrism. There's a lot of
this "if things had gone the other way" stuff and it's great conversation
fodder.

Also, Hugo's narrative of Waterloo in "Les Miserables" is wonderful and worth
reading if you are at all intrigued.

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exelius
For as much as history portrays Napoleon as a dictator (which he was), it
neglects that most of his adversaries were ALSO dictators who did equally
horrible things.

In Napoleon's mind, he wasn't as much conquering Europe as liberating it from
the clutches of nobility. Napoleon viewed himself as a better kind of dictator
than the other European monarchs: one who rose to power through his own merit
and who selected men for tasks based on their abilities, not their bloodlines.
This narrative was decidedly less popular outside of France -- which had
essentially executed all of its nobility in the preceding decades, so there
was nobody left to disagree. But it really was a war of ideals over who should
rule: an arbitrary (and increasingly inbred) line of inherited nobility, or
the best man for the job?

If Napoleon had won at Waterloo, Europe would have saved itself a century of
war. But the USA would also not exist in its current form -- much of the
reason for the rise of American dominance in the 20th century was because
Europe was rebuilt after WWII by the American war machine cranking out large
quantities of steel and industrial machinery.

And who knows how the 20th century would have turned out without the US as a
global superpower. Maybe without war and famine in 19th century Europe,
there's never a migration and the central US remains as uninhabited as
Siberia. It's fun to think of the "what if?" questions,

~~~
walshemj
or America could have ended up next on Napoleons list - lets be honest the US
army in 1812 would have been no Mach for Napoleon.

~~~
exelius
I think Napoleon likely would have allied with the US over the long term. The
US did not have the baggage of nobility, was ruled by enlightenment thinkers,
and we already had a common enemy in the British.

That said, the US was a sparsely-populated backwater outpost at the time with
only about 7 million inhabitants (a million of whom were slaves). For
comparison, the population of Europe during the same time was close to 140
million. We simply didn't have the manpower, infrastructure or money to
meaningfully contribute to a European conflict at the time.

~~~
smacktoward
Not to mention the enormous logistical difficulties of landing and supplying a
cross-Atlantic amphibious army large enough to conquer a continent in the age
of sail.

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jpwagner
I claim that you could quite reasonably argue "we'd be better off" if you were
allowed to alter any single event in past history. It should be called "proof
by fantasy land".

~~~
Bostonian
How would you "reasonably argue" that we'd be better off if Germany and Japan
had won World War II?

~~~
chr15p
Depends on the single event that led to their victory but you could easily
argue that the British Empire would have been better off if it had never gone
to war with Germany in 1939. Its a war that basically bankrupted Britain,
caused the collapse of the empire, pushed Britain from being the major
superpower into second division status, led to the dominance of its major
rival (America), and has generally blighted the last 60 years of British
history.

Humanity is better off because Germany lost, but Britain? Not so much.

~~~
greedo
Actually, WW1 is what led to the demise of the UK, not WW2. WW2 was just the
denouement. The generations that were lost on the Somme and Flanders crippled
the empire.

~~~
yellowapple
WWI was the cause of the demise of pretty much all of Europe, directly
resulting in heavy generational damage to Western Europe, kickstarting the
communist revolution in Russia (which might have been tolerable in and of
itself under Leninist or Trotskyist rule, but was then classifiable as
"demise" once Stalin was in power), and (in the end) imposing excessive
punishments on Germany post-war that caused severe economic problems and
spurred the desire for a return to glory - one promised (and briefly realized)
by the Nazi party.

~~~
greedo
It also led to more centralized economies, and suppression of dissent in the
U.S. as well.

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vmarsy
A very interesting historical read with a biased view pro-Napoleon, but the
facts seems pretty well explained.

Only the last paragraph briefly discuss the title, as if the author could have
predicted the future for 150 years. But as the french proverb says: "avec des
si on mettrait Paris en bouteille" [1]

[1]
[http://www.wordreference.com/fren/Avec%20des%20si,%20on%20me...](http://www.wordreference.com/fren/Avec%20des%20si,%20on%20mettrait%20Paris%20en%20bouteille)

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dang
As several users have pointed out, this article's content is misrepresented by
its title, so we've changed it. Suggestions for a better one are welcome.

The article reads a little weirdly, in fact, as if large chunk of it were
missing before the abrupt change of subject at the end. But it's still a fine
historical piece.

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geuis
Just skip to the end. It's just a long and opinionated recap of French history
with some supposition thrown in at the end.

