If Napoleon was so smart, why did he lose?

If Napoleon was so smart, why did he lose?

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flanders_Campaign
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Verdun_(1792)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Valmy
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhine_Campaign_of_1795
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_campaigns_of_the_French_Revolutionary_Wars
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Pyrenees
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_France_(1795)
napoleon-series.org/military/listings/c_1stcoalition.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jemappes
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Aldenhoven_(1793)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Black_Mountain
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waterloo

he invaded russia too fast

Because he wasn't actually that smart.

Napoleon had already lost before Waterloo.

Yeah, one of his generals recommended spending the winter in Minsk if I remember right.

Napoleon was so stupid when it came to Russia.

Why didn't he just invade 12 months before the Winter?

He had to fight coalitions of more than one nation. It's a miracle that he won 5 wars in a row against varying coalitions

Considering he also had multiple nations on his side in those, its not particularly miraculous.
Especially comparing Frances population with the population of said countries.

shit cunt general is why

given that much resources still couldnt hit the side of a barn door

r u dum

Those "nations" were pretty much subjugated client states, He had to fight against kingdoms and empires, so the french were a single entity with little 'allies".
It shows the superiority of authoritarian, militaristic republics desu

>Those "nations" were pretty much subjugated client states
Which changes nothing about my point? He didn't have to fight many of them in the first place, so their relationship nature is irrelevant.

>He had to fight against kingdoms and empires
France itself was a empire and europes most populous nation at the time. If he had fought these empires and kingdoms at the same time, things would have worked out much different, but he didn't. When he did, he got his ass beat.

Yeah faggot, every single nation gas the same worth
Let's totally disregard the fact the coalition side had manu great powers while Napoleon's only had castrated satellite he had to defeat first in order to have them as "ally"....

What next? Germany should have won WW2 as they had France and Poland as allies?

You're a disgusting dishonest butthurt faggot, m8
Here are the populations of European country in 1800:

British Empire: 114 millions (UK: 10,000)
Austria (+ German and Italian possessions): 40 millions
Russia: 35 millions
France: 27 millions
Spain: 11 millions
Prussia: 11 millions
Portugal: 10 millions

So, by counting only these relevant coalition members, and without counting the British Empire population as a whole (but UK's only), you have 27 millions French vs 117 millions Allies

Spain was on Napoleon's side tho

France had Conscription, I do not believe the other countries did until later on.

After France defeated them, yep

French mass conscription is what balanced out the huge population advantage the Coalition had during the Revolutionary Wars
But when Napoleon took over, he greatly reduced it

>You're a disgusting dishonest butthurt faggot, m8
I have no idea why you think I'm butthurt in any fashion. And your numbers are completly false.

The French Republics poppulation was 38,378,000 by 1800 its colonial populations were negligibly small, in difference to Britains, for obvious reasons. Just France alone had already 27 milion people, together with belgium and italian posessions this was over 33 milion people in europe. The entire Holy Roman empires population was only 24 milion by comparison. Your number of 40 milion is purely a figment of your imagination.

If people are so smart, why do they die?

Dumb question.

It ain't gonna suck itself

>Austria (+ German and Italian possessions): 40 millions
The entirety of the HRE didn't have 40 millions. Please stop making things up frog.

I know you're memeing, but if Napoleon died in 1811 he'd be remembered as a modern Augustus

R u merely pretending ?

>people discussing total populations instead of army sizes

lol

>100 million or more allies
>28 million Frenchmen

Hold on, this guy says there were 38 millions French actually (but he doesnt deny that there were 114 millions Brits, 35 millions Ruskies...etc)
Totally changes everything, doesnt it?

>more people died in the battle of Moscow than all of these battle's combined

Really make yuh thank

I leave out the pooskins since they were essentially deadweight.

28 million French
11 million Brits
30 million Austrians + allies
12 million Prussians
38 million Russians
3-5 million other nations (Netherlands, Italian states, Northern states) that fought France off and on.

So 28 million to 100 million. Definitely not what this user claimed

I guess I'm forgetting the meme parts of the empire like Canada/Aussie/Zealand/small islands.

>So 28 million to 100 million.
Thats comparing all these nations combined with France, aside from Russia France did have the largest population. Which actually matters a lot becaause that made coordinating their force much easier. its not like all these nations balled up their armies and stiomped them collectively over to France. or even fought to the point of attrition in the Revolutionary War, when the actual matter of force attrition started mattering, the Coalition Wars, France ended up losing.

Now I'm not saying it was the Jews, but...

You're kinda ignoring how most of these didn't fight at the same time. In fact during the First Coalition France was actually losing until members of the coalition started pulling out because the attrition wasn't worth it.
The First War of the Colaition in 1792 was basically entirely fought by Austria.

>its not like all these nations balled up their armies and stiomped them collectively over to France.

Actually, they did That was before Napoleon's rise to power, but during the Revolutionary Wars, all the allied monarchies attacked France from every side at once

Austrians, Prussians, Dutch and Brits launched a combined assault through the Belgian border
>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flanders_Campaign

Other Prussian and Austrian forces attacked through Alsace
>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Verdun_(1792)
>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Valmy
>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhine_Campaign_of_1795

>Russians and Austrians again attacked through the Italian border (Italy was an Austrian possession)
>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_campaigns_of_the_French_Revolutionary_Wars

Spaniards attacked through the Pyrenees
>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Pyrenees

And Brits launched some unsuccessful invasion in Brittany
>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_France_(1795)

You should probably check those dates, I'm going to assume in your favour you didn't deliberatly try to misrepresent. These attacks didn't happen "all together" they were highly unccordinated and seperate campaigns. Additionally, France was 'losing' when they did actually all attack, and only after Britain abandoned attempts of invasion and prussia had pulled out of the war did France start pushing back. Moreover you might notice how Russia, the only country with a population equal to Frances, wasn't involved at all.

If you look up the actual Battles of these campaigns, you will notice France nearly always outnumbered their opposition, and quite significantly at that. The advantage of having the signle largest population and of course the defensive position.
Russia and the Ottomans, were only nominally involved in the War and Prussia pulled out in 1794, before France managed to actually push back against the Coalition.
I'm not saying it wasn't a formidable piece of strategic work to use the discoordination of the coalition forces to smack them with bigger armies individually, but they definitly didn't "ball up their armies", if they had, they would have won.

Because he's overrated as fuck. If he was actually good Wellington wouldn't have BTFO him.

>If you look up the actual Battles of these campaigns, you will notice France nearly always outnumbered their opposition, and quite significantly at that

Not really, in the French Revolutionary Wars, forces were mostly even (less than 10,000 of difference) for most battles

In the Napoleonic Wars on the other hand, the French were almost always outnumbered

>Not really, in the French Revolutionary Wars, forces were mostly even (less than 10,000 of difference) for most battles
10k difference is pretty huge when had less than 50k on either side. Thats 20% more bodies to throw around.

>Additionally, France was 'losing' when they did actually all attack, and only after Britain abandoned attempts of invasion and prussia had pulled out of the war did France start pushing back.

Britain stopped its attempt because they were getting rekt each time

>Not really, in the French Revolutionary Wars, forces were mostly even (less than 10,000 of difference) for most battles
I'm confused why you think that 10 000 isn'r a huge number more troops in that era. In the Battle of Valmy, one of the most important ones, for example France had 50000 against only 35000 hostiles and thats a low estimate on the French side.
France significantly outnumbered them basically every time and even in the later coalition wars France outnumbered or had even numbers in most battles.

That's why I said "less than".
Most battles in that wars have numbers like "32k vs 38k" or "27k vs 23k"
Nothing really significant in that age of warfare
Number of artillery pieces, for one, was more relevant

>In the Battle of Valmy, one of the most important ones, for example France had 50000 against only 35000 hostiles

Why do you lie on the internet?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Valmy

>Most battles in that wars have numbers like "32k vs 38k" or "27k vs 23k"
Except its not really "less than".
Battle of Jemappes: 40k French against 13k Austrians
Battle of Menin: 40k French against 20k Dutch
Wattignies: 45k against 22k
And I could go on. Basically all major french victories wer ein absolutely overhwelming numbers.

Hell, only time they were outnumbered or even like Pirmasens, they got wrekt.

Your sources are garbage
>napoleon-series.org/military/listings/c_1stcoalition.html

Numbers were utterly irrelevant at Valmy anyway, as there was barely any fighting

If you want battles in which numbers actually mattered, look at those

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Jemappes
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Verdun_(1792)

Now that's what I call a significant number advantage

>.[8] Combined, Dumouriez' Army of the North and Kellermann's Army of the Centre totalled approximately 54,000 troops.[9]
Because you can't read and only look at the sid table instead of reading how the battle actually went down.
I know you frenchies are super assmad about anyone not thinking Napoleon was the greatest thing ever, but its just sad to watch. The French army performed admirably, but it wasn't some magic super army that beat all of europe at the same time as you like to imagine.

>Except its not really "less than".
>Battle of Jemappes: 40k French against 13k Austrians
>Battle of Menin: 40k French against 20k Dutch
>Wattignies: 45k against 22k

Cherrypicked af

One could do the same on the other way

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Verdun_(1792)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Aldenhoven_(1793)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Black_Mountain

Fact is that, in most battles, numbers were about even (off by 2,000-8,000, in battles numbers more than 30k on each sides)

Notice how all of those except the last one france gets pounded hard?
Also
>3 battles
>Clearly it was 50/50!
No, it just wasn't. There is no cherry picking here, you can look at the list yourself, the napoleonic wars are well researched, France outnumbered in the majority of engagements and lost pretty much all it didn't and lost as least as many as it won when they were even.

>I know you frenchies are super assmad about anyone not thinking Napoleon was the greatest thing ever, but its just sad to watch

But this whole debate we're having about numbers have nothing to do with Napoleon, you retarded faglord
We're discussing the Revolutionary Wars, a decade before Napoleon took over

Napoleon was outnumbered in most of the major battles he fought as an emperor, that's a fact
How can you even be considered worth debating with if you can't differenciate the Early Revolutionary Wars with the Napoleonic Wars?

>Fact is that, in most battles, numbers were about even (off by 2,000-8,000, in battles numbers more than 30k on each sides)
Except thats the opposite of how facts were, in most cases it was the smaller engagements that had small differences and the larger they got, the larger became the difference because France had more troops in each theater at any given time, because they 'did' actually ball up their armies and leveraged individual numerical superiority.

>Notice how all of those except the last one france gets pounded hard?
Well, I'd say that 4k French losing to 60k Prussians is less shameful than what happened to Coalition forces at Jemappes, Menon and Wattignies (aka losing with a much smaller number difference)


>3 battles
>Clearly it was 50/50!
You mean compared to the 3 you cited there ?

His loyalty to his retarded dago brothers.
He made Talleyrand butthurt by calling him shit in silk stockings.
This traitorous dickhead.

Why was Babe Ruth considered such a great hitter? I mean, he struck out sometimes.

Because he was black.