Why We’d Be Better Off if Napoleon Never Lost at Waterloo
An interesting take on history that I have not considered before.
It is a very long article. Enjoy.
Why We’d Be Better Off if Napoleon Never Lost at Waterloo
An interesting take on history that I have not considered before.
It is a very long article. Enjoy.
ΜOΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ
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.
Napoleon deserved to lose Waterloo, and Wellington to win it, but the essential point in this bicentenary year is that the epic battle did not need to be fought—and the world would have been better off if it hadn’t been.
ΜOΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ
pjohns (06-18-2017)
Of course it would have been followed by the Battle of Warsaw, Smolensk and others as Napoleon was just not one to stop fighting.
Peter1469 (06-18-2017)
I will read the article tomorrow. For now I'll say that it wouldn't have mattered if Napoleon had won at Waterloo at least in military terms. Outside divine intervention, highly unlikely considering the attitude of Revolutionary France, there was no way the France of 1815 could have sustained a war with Britain, Prussia, Russia and Austria among others.
Whoever criticizes capitalism, while approving immigration, whose working class is its first victim, had better shut up. Whoever criticizes immigration, while remaining silent about capitalism, should do the same.
~Alain de Benoist
Peter1469 (06-18-2017)