14 ms·
Napoleon was innovative, but only covering his career to 1805 sort of ignores the final punchline. Over the next ten years he was repeatedly defeated by a coali
by ojbyrne 16y ago
Napoleon was innovative, but only covering his career to 1805 sort of ignores the final punchline. Over the next ten years he was repeatedly defeated by a coalition that could field larger armies, and slowly but surely stole (or improved on) all of his innovations. Thus demonstrating the "innovator's dilemma."
- nl 16y agoThat's not true. Napoleon repeatedly defeated larger coalitions. Battle of Austerlitz (1805): defeated the combined armies of the Austrian and Russian empire, which led to the collapse of the Third Coalition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Coalition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Coalition) Battle of Jena-Auerstedt (1806): defeated the Prussians, which led to the collapse of the Fourth Coalition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Fourth_Coalition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Fourth_Coalition) Battle of Wagram (1809): defeated the Austrian army, which collapsed the Fifth Coalition (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Fifth_Coalition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Fifth_Coalition) In conclusion, it wasn't larger coalitions improving on Napoleon's tactics that beat him. It was firstly the Russian winter, and secondly the superbly trained and professional British army (which used very different tactics)which first defeated his Marshals in the Peninsular campaign and then joined with the Prussians to beat him at Waterloo.
- varjag 16y agoI like how whoever gets defeated in Russia always blames it on bad weather.
- nl 16y agoExcept for the Mongols [1][2]. [1] I guess they didn't get defeated, and the "bad Russian weather" was much better than the Mongolian weather they were used to [2] And to some extent, the Rus tribe which founded Russia. Being Vikings, they probably found the "bad Russian weather" quite reasonable, too.