Military History Mk. III: One that I know of is an archaic word for dick, another is

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KYOON GRIFFEY JR: Apr 12, 2010; Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22

The column was a maneuver element not an attacking element. The whole point was to close in column (more narrow frontage, better mass and support, easier to keep step, you shouldn't be shooting anyway, easier to coordinate massed movement of battalions etc), with artillery and skirmishers in support, and then evolve in to a line of companies at a long musket shot (call it ~120 yds), close to ~60 yards, give a volley, in line, charge home with steel. This method is how it worked both in practice and in doctrine.

Why does the myth persist? A couple of factors:
1. There were indeed instances of French columns advancing through contact in columns. It was usually an accident or a product of only having very green troops (see 3, 5 as well).
2. Less steady troops were likely to fire early and then break, meaning that the French column would never get the chance to evolve in to line, which means that people would naturally think that the weight of the column was a decisive factor.
3. Especially against British generals like Wellington who were very fond of defilade positions, it was difficult for the column to fix the enemy line and pinpoint the spot at which the order would be given to evolve in to line. If you end up being screened up until 80-100 yds, you will suddenly realize that you should evolve in to line, but you will probably have a lot of already dead people and your column is very disrupted and under fire, making the evolution difficult. In many cases against the British, this exact ocurrence happened - the French leadership were unable to fix positions, they threw a couple columns forward, which evolved in to line too late but still did try to evolve in to line formation.
4. Later in the war as a lot of well-trained veteran officers and NCOs died, the new crop of less effective officers mistook the idea of deploying in columns of battalions and then evolving in to lines of companies for actually just charging all the way home in column.
5. A contributing factor to 4 was the relatively low standard of the average French infantry conscript late in the war. Green regiments are far less good at changing formation under fire. (this is probably true of the early Revolutionary army, but I know a lot less about that one)

It's kind of a dumb myth that persist for some weird reason (Plucky Britons Defeat Sniveling French By Being Clever, Stupid French)*. I wonder if it's as common in non-English speaking countries; I doubt it.

*incidentally this reminds me of another dumb similar myth, Plucky Colonists Defeat Idiotic Royalists By Hiding Behind Trees.

# ? Sep 22, 2017 08:05

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# ? May 13, 2024 02:02

Kemper Boyd: Aug 6, 2007; no kings, no gods, no masters but a comfy chair and no socks

The angle of how veterans tend to tell bullshit stories has been mentioned quite often ITT, this was a nice thing I found on FB re: that, since it hits like all the notes.

"Meanwhile my grandfather deserted the Polish army which he was conscripted into after seeing the Polish army do an 1800s styled cavalry charge in true cavalry outfits with the shiny helmets and bright clothing and lances against a German Panzer division. According to him, when he saw the Polish cavalrymen and the German tanks, he just dropped his gun and walked home."

# ? Sep 22, 2017 08:28

Jeb Bush 2012: Apr 4, 2007; A mathematician, like a painter or poet, is a maker of patterns. If his patterns are more permanent than theirs, it is because they are made with ideas.

I'm still a bit disappointed from when I realised that my (maternal, british) grandfather probably did not steal a bunch of american tanks, or witness a brash young british officer get his US ranks confused and accidentally roast general eisenhower. but the thought of him telling my (american) dad these stories as one last troll is also pretty endearing

# ? Sep 22, 2017 08:41

Splode: Jun 18, 2013; put some clothes on you little freak

Kemper Boyd posted:

The angle of how veterans tend to tell bullshit stories has been mentioned quite often ITT, this was a nice thing I found on FB re: that, since it hits like all the notes.

"Meanwhile my grandfather deserted the Polish army which he was conscripted into after seeing the Polish army do an 1800s styled cavalry charge in true cavalry outfits with the shiny helmets and bright clothing and lances against a German Panzer division. According to him, when he saw the Polish cavalrymen and the German tanks, he just dropped his gun and walked home."

The saddest part is that this myth is originally Nazi propoganda and it's often the only thing people know about Poland in WW2

# ? Sep 22, 2017 08:46

Alchenar: Apr 9, 2008

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

The column was a maneuver element not an attacking element. The whole point was to close in column (more narrow frontage, better mass and support, easier to keep step, you shouldn't be shooting anyway, easier to coordinate massed movement of battalions etc), with artillery and skirmishers in support, and then evolve in to a line of companies at a long musket shot (call it ~120 yds), close to ~60 yards, give a volley, in line, charge home with steel. This method is how it worked both in practice and in doctrine.

Why does the myth persist? A couple of factors:
1. There were indeed instances of French columns advancing through contact in columns. It was usually an accident or a product of only having very green troops (see 3, 5 as well).
2. Less steady troops were likely to fire early and then break, meaning that the French column would never get the chance to evolve in to line, which means that people would naturally think that the weight of the column was a decisive factor.
3. Especially against British generals like Wellington who were very fond of defilade positions, it was difficult for the column to fix the enemy line and pinpoint the spot at which the order would be given to evolve in to line. If you end up being screened up until 80-100 yds, you will suddenly realize that you should evolve in to line, but you will probably have a lot of already dead people and your column is very disrupted and under fire, making the evolution difficult. In many cases against the British, this exact ocurrence happened - the French leadership were unable to fix positions, they threw a couple columns forward, which evolved in to line too late but still did try to evolve in to line formation.
4. Later in the war as a lot of well-trained veteran officers and NCOs died, the new crop of less effective officers mistook the idea of deploying in columns of battalions and then evolving in to lines of companies for actually just charging all the way home in column.
5. A contributing factor to 4 was the relatively low standard of the average French infantry conscript late in the war. Green regiments are far less good at changing formation under fire. (this is probably true of the early Revolutionary army, but I know a lot less about that one)

It's kind of a dumb myth that persist for some weird reason (Plucky Britons Defeat Sniveling French By Being Clever, Stupid French)*. I wonder if it's as common in non-English speaking countries; I doubt it.

*incidentally this reminds me of another dumb similar myth, Plucky Colonists Defeat Idiotic Royalists By Hiding Behind Trees.

5. b) Early in the war the attacking column would be preceded by an enormous swarm of skirmishers (like, regiment sized) as a screening force to protect the column from fire and help fix positions. Later on the decline of infantry standards meant the screen had to be foregone.

# ? Sep 22, 2017 08:47

KYOON GRIFFEY JR: Apr 12, 2010; Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22

Alchenar posted:

5. b) Early in the war the attacking column would be preceded by an enormous swarm of skirmishers (like, regiment sized) as a screening force to protect the column from fire and help fix positions. Later on the decline of infantry standards meant the screen had to be foregone.

yeah true the French were really in to the battalion-sized formation for skirmishers instead of a light company per battalion as the British liked to do

# ? Sep 22, 2017 09:01

GotLag: Jul 17, 2005; 食べちゃダメだよ

KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:

*incidentally this reminds me of another dumb similar myth, Plucky Colonists Defeat Idiotic Royalists By Hiding Behind Trees.

My personal favourite is Plucky Flightless Birds Defeat Idiotic Colonists By Running Away From Machineguns

# ? Sep 22, 2017 09:08

Tias: May 25, 2008; Pictured: the patron saint of internet political arguments (probably)

This avatar made possible by a gift from the Religionthread Posters Relief Fund

SeanBeansShako posted:

I imagine it was just one of those things until advances in technology increased the suffering and destruction and peoples attitude towards war.

J�nger was a German assault trooper in WW1, it's safe to say he knows how much being in the receiving end of industrial amounts of artillery sucks. He just loved it for some reason :black101:

# ? Sep 22, 2017 09:09

Kemper Boyd: Aug 6, 2007; no kings, no gods, no masters but a comfy chair and no socks

I can see why a certain type of people would like being at war and absolutely excel at it. You're mostly dealing with not dying, thinking about the next meal and the next drink and apart from death or injury, you have no other real concerns.

# ? Sep 22, 2017 09:17

Trin Tragula: Apr 22, 2005

Kemper Boyd posted:

I can see why a certain type of people would like being at war and absolutely excel at it. You're mostly dealing with not dying, thinking about the next meal and the next drink and apart from death or injury, you have no other real concerns.

This is a theme that's in just about anything Erich Maria Remarque wrote; even the man who hates being at war struggles to reintegrate into society afterwards, with its expectations that you should engage with bullshit like "doing things proactively" and "long-term planning".

# ? Sep 22, 2017 09:43

Kemper Boyd: Aug 6, 2007; no kings, no gods, no masters but a comfy chair and no socks

Trin Tragula posted:

This is a theme that's in just about anything Erich Maria Remarque wrote; even the man who hates being at war struggles to reintegrate into society afterwards, with its expectations that you should engage with bullshit like "doing things proactively" and "long-term planning".

Now, if we'd keep all wars going for thirty years, we'd never have to do that. *taps side of nose*

# ? Sep 22, 2017 10:13

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Nebakenezzer posted:

Please tell me the diary is online somewhere

he spends a lot of time whining about his fellow soldiers, who are all tacky and unphilosophical

https://www.facebook.com/wittgensteindaybyday/

Trin Tragula posted:

In this reorganisation Hitler was promoted. Exactly what his rank was is, for English speakers, a Matter of Some Debate. He became a Gefreiter, which in my experience is usually translated into English (including by our questionably-informed friend Mr Wikipedia) as "Corporal". However, it also came with his reassignment to regimental HQ as a despatch runner. Importantly, it was a role that involved no command over other soldiers and he was not considered an NCO. Weber therefore refers to him as "Private Hitler" throughout the book, which I think is perhaps slightly unfair; "Private first class" may be more appropriate, but I do agree that calling him a corporal is wrong because it implies he was an NCO, which he wasn't. (In today's unified NATO rank structure, a German Gefreiter is placed at OR-2, equivalent to a British or American private; OR-3 is where the American private first class and the British lance-corporal live.)

i translate it as "squad leader," but that depends upon the prior existence of squads, ofc

# ? Sep 22, 2017 10:14

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Trin Tragula posted:

This is a theme that's in just about anything Erich Maria Remarque wrote; even the man who hates being at war struggles to reintegrate into society afterwards, with its expectations that you should engage with bullshit like "doing things proactively" and "long-term planning".

"naah"

--Hieronymus Sebastian Schutze, Fendrich

# ? Sep 22, 2017 10:14

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Kemper Boyd posted:

I can see why a certain type of people would like being at war and absolutely excel at it. You're mostly dealing with not dying, thinking about the next meal and the next drink and apart from death or injury, you have no other real concerns.

can you imagine a peacetime pappenheim?

# ? Sep 22, 2017 10:23

sullat: Jan 9, 2012

Trin Tragula posted:

(Of course, this is one important way in which Hitler's regiment's experience differed from Barthas's: he was present at several important battles, but they never went over the top.)

It's been a while since I read the memoirs, but didn't he 'go over the top' once early in the war, where they were cut to pieces by machine gun fire, and again near the end of the war, when they found a bunch of Germans with their hands in the air

# ? Sep 22, 2017 10:32

System Metternich: Feb 28, 2010; But what did he mean by that?

Did you know that historians are all a bunch of useless shits who get their knowledge exclusively from books and write about nothing but war? Yes, *all* of them - at least if you believe this guy, a Republican stock trader who went into insane screeching mode when the BBC dared to show black people in a documentary about Roman Britain, got roasted bad by historians from all over the board and now spends all day ragetweeting about how every single historian is an idiot bitch fucker who has no idea how things work in the ~~real world~~. It appears that he's even writing an entire book in which he's proposing bold statements such as “historians are no rocket scientists“ and “working as a debt collector for the mob makes you a better historian than doing archival research“ (!?). Come for the insane rants, stay for hot takes like these:

https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/910082341703471104

# ? Sep 22, 2017 10:35

feedmegin: Jul 30, 2008

System Metternich posted:

Did you know that historians are all a bunch of useless shits who get their knowledge exclusively from books and write about nothing but war? Yes, *all* of them - at least if you believe this guy, a Republican stock trader who went into insane screeching mode when the BBC dared to show black people in a documentary about Roman Britain, got roasted bad by historians from all over the board and now spends all day ragetweeting about how every single historian is an idiot bitch fucker who has no idea how things work in the ~~real world~~. It appears that he's even writing an entire book in which he's proposing bold statements such as “historians are no rocket scientists“ and “working as a debt collector for the mob makes you a better historian than doing archival research“ (!?). Come for the insane rants, stay for hot takes like these:

Didn't he say nasty things about Mary Beard? Hanging offense, imho.

(The word 'Africa' is literally from the Romans, of course they had black people around)

# ? Sep 22, 2017 10:46

spectralent: Oct 1, 2014; Me and the boys poppin' down to the shops

That's hilarious but it also makes me think that 20-30 years ago people would've just had a meltdown to their pals at a bar, then, without an entire planet of people to observe their hysterics and continue needling them for weeks, just go about their lives rather than evolving into some kind ragebeast that subsists by publishing books about how everyone who ever disagreed with you is a SJW betacuck.

# ? Sep 22, 2017 10:54

Fangz: Jul 5, 2007; Oh I see! This must be the Bad Opinion Zone!

Nassim Taleb is a walking talking case of Dunning Kruger syndrome who thinks writing a book about how 'sometimes unexpected things happen' makes you better than the experts in everything. I've been aware of his antics for a while.

# ? Sep 22, 2017 10:57

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

System Metternich posted:

Did you know that historians are all a bunch of useless shits who get their knowledge exclusively from books and write about nothing but war? Yes, *all* of them - at least if you believe this guy, a Republican stock trader who went into insane screeching mode when the BBC dared to show black people in a documentary about Roman Britain, got roasted bad by historians from all over the board and now spends all day ragetweeting about how every single historian is an idiot bitch fucker who has no idea how things work in the ~~real world~~. It appears that he's even writing an entire book in which he's proposing bold statements such as “historians are no rocket scientists“ and “working as a debt collector for the mob makes you a better historian than doing archival research“ (!?). Come for the insane rants, stay for hot takes like these:

https://twitter.com/nntaleb/status/910082341703471104

he's also a "Mediterranean supremacist" who said this:

that's a cute misspelling, it's probably so if anyone objects he can say he was joking. it's not a joke when people accuse him of poo poo though. Oh no.

# ? Sep 22, 2017 11:04

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Fangz posted:

Nassim Taleb is a walking talking case of Dunning Kruger syndrome who thinks writing a book about how 'sometimes unexpected things happen' makes you better than the experts in everything. I've been aware of his antics for a while.

he's pure evil, look at my screenshot

also as a professional mathematician there's no WAY he can't know that beard was talking about the random sampling of surviving bones. He must be deliberately misrepresenting her to smear her.

# ? Sep 22, 2017 11:07

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

feedmegin posted:

Didn't he say nasty things about Mary Beard? Hanging offense, imho.

(The word 'Africa' is literally from the Romans, of course they had black people around)

there are goons on twitter, right?

# ? Sep 22, 2017 11:09

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

We should write and publish a book on the history of Nassim Taleb being wrong about stuff.

# ? Sep 22, 2017 11:09

JcDent: May 13, 2013; Give me a rifle, one round, and point me at Berlin!

His mind is probably blown by an Empire that
1. knew of black people
2. Wasn't interested in enslaving them over white people.

Since I'm on the "keep Witcher whitish" territory, I'm curious just how common black people were in the middle ages. Could you see them outside the king's court or other places where the high, the mighty and the exiled lived? Where there black peasants in Bumfuckeviškės, Grand Dutchy of Lithuania? Could you find a black blacksmith in gently caress-upon-Bomme? Would peasants be aware of black people existing other than some trophy court Moor that they glimpsed while prostrating in a ditch while the king rolled by to prima noctis cuck their lord?

Back on Napoleonics: so how do skirmishers lock a position? What are the benefits of them being deployed in companies (like Brits) or battalions (like Frogs)? How do they fight other skirmishers? How do they know that it's time to form a line and get shot at by cannons with the rest of the lads?

As for soldiers enjoying the simplicity of war, it's probably hard for them to readjust to employment where petty bullshit is treated like life or death situations when they're anything but.

That and employers hoping that you will happily fall in line because you're just a grunt who just wants NCO-figure CEO to tell them what to do.

# ? Sep 22, 2017 11:11

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

speaking of statistics, i've read literally every muster roll from 1618-1651 in the saxon state archives and the places of origin of the guys who had that recorded look like this:

(not pictured: the baltic coast. There's dudes from there as far north as Talinn.)

# ? Sep 22, 2017 11:13

Arquinsiel: Jun 1, 2006; "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first."

God Bless Margaret Thatcher
God Bless England
RIP My Iron Lady

JcDent posted:

Since I'm on the "keep Witcher whitish" territory, I'm curious just how common black people were in the middle ages.

More common than the potato ubiquitous to those games.

# ? Sep 22, 2017 11:14

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

JcDent posted:

His mind is probably blown by an Empire that
1. knew of black people
2. Wasn't interested in enslaving them over white people.

Since I'm on the "keep Witcher whitish" territory, I'm curious just how common black people were in the middle ages. Could you see them outside the king's court or other places where the high, the mighty and the exiled lived? Where there black peasants in Bumfuckeviškės, Grand Dutchy of Lithuania? Could you find a black blacksmith in gently caress-upon-Bomme? Would peasants be aware of black people existing other than some trophy court Moor that they glimpsed while prostrating in a ditch while the king rolled by to prima noctis cuck their lord?

it varies by city.

nuremberg did a lot of trade with africa (it's why a number of the coats of arms of some oligarch families look a little...unfortunate now) and i have seen an illustration of a carnival with a black guy in it, but he was likely to have been a big merchant so it is more likely we're in the territory of "if you live in nuremberg you saw a black dude once in your life when his delegation came to your city" rather than "you know them personally"

# ? Sep 22, 2017 11:16

KYOON GRIFFEY JR: Apr 12, 2010; Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22

HEY GAIL posted:

i translate it as "squad leader," but that depends upon the prior existence of squads, ofc

Squad leader implies some sort of role commanding other enlisted, though. I think PFC or the modern Specialist is probably closer.

# ? Sep 22, 2017 11:18

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

HEY GAIL posted:

speaking of statistics, i've read literally every muster roll from 1618-1651 in the saxon state archives and the places of origin of the guys who had that recorded look like this:

(not pictured: the baltic coast. There's dudes from there as far north as Talinn.)

This is neat, even if the results aren't exactly unexpected (mostly people from in and near saxony, with the occasional down on their luck foreigner.)

# ? Sep 22, 2017 11:42

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

nothing to seehere posted:

This is neat, even if the results aren't exactly unexpected (mostly people from in and near saxony, with the occasional down on their luck foreigner.)

yeah it's what is now saxony and thuringia. it isn't not unexpected though, historians used to think these dudes came from everywhere in europe

this, however, is the mansfeld regiment (n=approx 270):

see the road to lombardy? there's even more dudes there since this was made, I found one guy from solothurn and one from intra, which is a tiny town on lake maggiore

HEY GUNS fucked around with this message at 12:27 on Sep 22, 2017

# ? Sep 22, 2017 11:46

Kemper Boyd: Aug 6, 2007; no kings, no gods, no masters but a comfy chair and no socks

HEY GAIL posted:

it varies by city.

nuremberg did a lot of trade with africa (it's why a number of the coats of arms of some oligarch families look a little...unfortunate now) and i have seen an illustration of a carnival with a black guy in it, but he was likely to have been a big merchant so it is more likely we're in the territory of "if you live in nuremberg you saw a black dude once in your life when his delegation came to your city" rather than "you know them personally"

POC's in pre-18th century Europe seem to mostly fall rather comfortably in the category of "not common, but not unheard of" for the most part.

Unless you think the peasants never left their home village and were nude all the time.

# ? Sep 22, 2017 12:35

Kemper Boyd: Aug 6, 2007; no kings, no gods, no masters but a comfy chair and no socks

HEY GAIL posted:

can you imagine a peacetime pappenheim?

For some reason I'm now thinking of Any Given Sunday or some other sports movie but with Pappenheim.

# ? Sep 22, 2017 12:37

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

Kemper Boyd posted:

For some reason I'm now thinking of Any Given Sunday or some other sports movie but with Pappenheim.

maybe sports, maybe car racing if cars are also a thing in this scenario...maybe aviation...

you'd have to find something for him to do, is my point.

# ? Sep 22, 2017 12:42

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

HEY GAIL posted:

yeah it's what is now saxony and thuringia. it isn't not unexpected though, historians used to think these dudes came from everywhere in europe

this, however, is the mansfeld regiment (n=approx 270):

see the road to lombardy? there's even more dudes there since this was made, I found one guy from solothurn and one from intra, which is a tiny town on lake maggiore

That brings me to another question, how do you locate all these tiny German villages people say they come from? While modt of them I imagine still exist as suburbs or still are villages , there's got to be a few names which are harder to find than using Google maps: how do you track down the tricky cases?

# ? Sep 22, 2017 13:02

HEY GUNS: Oct 11, 2012; FOPTIMUS PRIME

nothing to seehere posted:

That brings me to another question, how do you locate all these tiny German villages people say they come from? While modt of them I imagine still exist as suburbs or still are villages , there's got to be a few names which are harder to find than using Google maps: how do you track down the tricky cases?

there's a whole lot of unknowns. my total sample size is about 30,000 dudes. of those, many did not have their hometowns listed (i recorded them anyway, for other reasons like tracking careers or tracking families--and in the end, just to say i listed every muster roll for regular soldiers in the saxon state archives). Of the ones that were listed, there are plenty that I just don't know. Of the ones i DO know, sometimes there's more than one town of that name. I had to throw out all the "Neustadts" for instance. And most instances of "Frankfurt"--non ossis forget there's two. That's why there's tons of people in my records but only about 15,000 in this map.

more people are in my graph of soldiers by size of hometown than are in that map, because (for instance) frankfurt oder and frankfurt main were both cities with over 10,000 people in them as of 1600.

# ? Sep 22, 2017 13:07

SeanBeansShako: Nov 20, 2009; Now the Drums beat up again,
For all true Soldier Gentlemen.

Yeah basically if your city or region did sea trade, you will get non white european settling and working there and eventually putting down roots. It's super obvious but these crazy rascists don't see it. I bet in Bristol there are families that can trace their trading roots back to the 15th century.

Disinterested posted:

The idea of the column of French persists because of the British memory of the conflict and their habit of a line two deep by way of contrast, and their relative lack of use of the column.

But Austrians and Russians and Prussians of course did more of the fighting and in a more similar style. And that's without getting in to the mass as a formation.

I find it oddly fascinating with the weird Anglo-British obsession with the weird FRENCH COLUMNS stereotype even though we rarely mention the hilarious clusterfuck of the British Army having to learn again how to fight a modern war in the Revolutionary Wars and early Napoleonic Wars because one guy really bought into Frederick The Great.

# ? Sep 22, 2017 13:08

Siivola: Dec 23, 2012

No keep going don't stop

# ? Sep 22, 2017 13:10

Vincent Van Goatse: Nov 8, 2006; Enjoy every sandwich.; Smellrose

HEY GAIL posted:

maybe sports, maybe car racing if cars are also a thing in this scenario...maybe aviation...

you'd have to find something for him to do, is my point.

NASA Mission Control.

# ? Sep 22, 2017 13:12

KYOON GRIFFEY JR: Apr 12, 2010; Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22

slubice represent :poland:

# ? Sep 22, 2017 13:14

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# ? May 13, 2024 02:02

KYOON GRIFFEY JR: Apr 12, 2010; Runner-up, TRP Sack Race 2021/22

SeanBeansShako posted:

Yeah basically if your city or region did sea trade, you will get non white european settling and working there and eventually putting down roots. It's super obvious but these crazy rascists don't see it. I bet in Bristol there are families that can trace their trading roots back to the 15th century.

I find it oddly fascinating with the weird Anglo-British obsession with the weird FRENCH COLUMNS stereotype even though we rarely mention the hilarious clusterfuck of the British Army having to learn again how to fight a modern war in the Revolutionary Wars and early Napoleonic Wars because one guy really bought into Frederick The Great.

anglos really really want to believe that they defeated Napoleon by themselves which obviously requires being significantly more clever than the french

# ? Sep 22, 2017 13:15

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