Posted on 01/27/2017 7:17:03 AM PST by C19fan
On a quick read, I couldn’t tell if any of them had been thru the Russian invasion. The time frame was right for some of them, though.
Bookmark
TTIUWOP.
You guys have probably seen this, but everytime I see it, I realize just what a catastrophe the Russian campaign was. This is considered to be one of the finest graphs created, displaying multiple data elements graphically in a clear and understandable way:
A tad bit off-topic I suppose, but I never quite understood the admiration many folks have for Napoleon. Consider, for example, his ornate tomb in Paris. Napoleon brought misery and death to almost all of Europe, from Spain to all the way to Moscow. And he ended up as a miserable failure. A George Washington he was not.
(This brief rant is in no way directed at you, C19. Your post was a worthy history post.)
Didn’t Napoleon make a comment after his downfall they wanted him to be another George Washington.
What great photos of these French veterans. Somehow reminds me of Sir Conan Doyle’s Brigadier Gerard stories. Altho taken in 1858 these men can still fit in their uniforms of nearly half a century.
We forget how the French Army swept away the armies of Europe. Until they overreached in Russia and Spain.
Greed of any type is the downfall of many.
That, and liberalism.
That was included a rolled up print in Edward Tufte’s first edition of:
THE VISUAL DISPLAY OF QUANTITATIVE INFORMATION
The classic book on statistical graphics, charts, tables. Theory and practice in the design of data graphics, 250 illustrations of the best (and a few of the worst) statistical graphics, with detailed analysis of how to display data for precise, effective, quick analysis. Design of the high-resolution displays, small multiples. Editing and improving graphics. The data-ink ratio. Time-series, relational graphics, data maps, multivariate designs. Detection of graphical deception: design variation vs. data variation. Sources of deception. Aesthetics and data graphical displays.
This is the second edition of The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Recently published, this new edition provides excellent color reproductions of the many graphics of William Playfair, adds color to other images, and includes all the changes and corrections accumulated during 17 printings of the first edition.
Bought the first edition to aid improving our design firms graphic presentations. The poster size Napoleonic War graph was framed and pinned to the wall to serve as an exemplar.
Napoleon admired Washington. And perhaps Napoleon behaved much like a Washington during the days of the French Republic. So I guess folks could have seen him as another Washington.
The key difference between the two men was, of course, ambition. Napoleon was not content with just Paris. He had to have Madrid, Rome, Berlin, and Moscow as well. To my way of thinking, that makes him more like Hitler than like Washington.
Interesting post.
From 1800to 1945, the Europe lost forever its best genetic stock. Historians will note that European culture never recovered.
Greed = Liberalism
Yep!
Exellent book, I have read pieces of it.
I am a bit of a data junkie, so I really appreciate that graph. It really drives the point home, doesn’t it?
I’ve always wondered that too. I’m in the middle of reading a long and detailed biography of the man and am finding there actually was a lot to admire. He was a brilliant tactician and as an administrator his laws, the Napoleonic Code, brought European peasantry out of the dark ages. But he was also brash and over confident and in conquering most of the continent his armies devastated and killed on a scale that wouldn’t be seen again until the two world wars. Very complex individual, not all bad and certainly far from all good. But certainly not an evil incarnate like Stalin and Hitler.
Agreed. Napoleon is an excellent example of that old saying 'absolute power corrupts absolutely'.
But certainly not an evil incarnate like Stalin and Hitler.
I mostly agree. But when it comes to ambition - and the willingness to sacrifice soldiers for that ambition - Napoleon was maybe not so different from Stalin and Hitler
Ping
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