Dispatch 33
Added 2025-03-16 00:00:56 +0000 UTCHere is the thirty-third patrons-only Dispatch. Topics include: the Fabian strategy, mutinies, Louis Bonaparte's reign as King of Holland, and more from Lord Thomas Cochrane.
Don't forget to leave any questions for the next dispatch below. And once again: thank you for your support!
Comments
The impression I've gotten as the show progresses is that soldiers seem more willing to die in battle or at least are less likely to break and run as time progresses. Is that a false impression I'm getting just because everything is increasing in scale or is it actually true? What would account for that?
Steve Edwards
2025-04-15 21:12:48 +0000 UTCMy deepest condolences on the loss of your companion Townes. I know the feeling much too often of losing a loving cat.
Michael Macheret
2025-04-11 19:19:58 +0000 UTCI just finished the episode on the battle of Wagram and at this point, it feels like Napoleon battlefield and strategic intelligence (as in the information he is able to act on on the battlefield) is getting worse compared to his early military career. Would you agree with this assessment or are there simply more intelligence failure points when trying to coordinate more massive military units compared to the relatively small Army of Italy?
Lorenz Simon Noe
2025-04-11 01:22:41 +0000 UTCJust a comment for everyone: I have been reading the novelist Stendahl, who worked for the Empire as a supply commissioner, then went on to fame as a salon persona, travel writer (primarily about Italy) and finally novelist. His most famous novels, The Charterhouse of Parma and The Red and the Black, are about young men who just missed the Napoleonic era. They depict a post-Napoleonic world as being only about greed and pettiness, whereas glory and romance are now things of the past. They are dense but excellent reading for people. I strongly suggest Age of Napeolon fans read the first chapter of The Charterhouse of Parma, which paints the first Italian Campaign in vivid detail and with hilariously biased Republicanism. It really brings back to life the sense of adventure, style and passion that the Revolution inspired in its nearly-teenage soldiers.
Brian Bennett
2025-03-27 14:06:05 +0000 UTCThe series was excellent, although low budget, great characters and stories.
Wes
2025-03-24 22:03:06 +0000 UTCHello, I know this was episodes ago but the Toussaint Louverture miniseries are among my favorites. Would you do an episode on Louis Delgrès & Guadeloupe
Anthony Gilford
2025-03-23 04:51:55 +0000 UTCYou spoke about the effectiveness and purpose of the bayonet recently and I was surprised to hear that it was mainly a weapon of intimidation and only really used by the elite, experienced soldiers. The reason being that the action of using it at close quarters is an uncomfortable act as compared to using a musket on your enemy. My question is then related to the cavalry which used lances and sabres as weapons of battle. Certainly the act of slashing and stabbing in close proximity (arms length) of other mounted cavalry or retreating infantry must have been equally as brutal as using a bayonet. Can you explain the disconnect of the psychology of the bayonet vs the sword. Certainly charging a disciplined square would require aggressive use of the sword or lance.
Wes
2025-03-23 00:01:06 +0000 UTCI've just started listening through the Sharpe series on audiobook, listening in chronological order, and I keep being struck by the emphasis on Scottish officers wielding claymores in battle, either from horseback or whole assaulting fortresses in India. Was this a real phenomenon? I would have thought the claymore was outdated by this point.
Nathaniel Estabrooks
2025-03-21 22:27:01 +0000 UTCI'm only up to Episode 99 but just wanted to say that I've enjoyed the heck out of the first 6 dispatches I've listened to so far. So many great questions from the community and the content cut from the main epiisodes have been awesome as well. So glad you started doing them!
Carl J
2025-03-20 20:00:19 +0000 UTCLoved the discussion of the Fabian strategy. You mention some downsides of it as being self-evident or obvious, which is true, but I think they still need to be highlighted. Strategy games are probably to blame for a lot of this, but its easy to lose sight of the intimate perspective of a bystander in the war. I cannot imagine having to retreat and leave my home, village, foodstores, livestock, and family behind and vulnerable to a drunk, rapacious, thieving, and hostile army of young men. The long-term economic destruction of a village or locality from even a brief retreat and recapture is something I had never really contemplated even though it is an obvious result.
Pierce
2025-03-20 14:11:53 +0000 UTCEnglish political caricatures/depictions of Napoleon are famous and quite funny. Were there other figures in Napoleon’s government or any of his marshals that drew as much ire and derangement from the press in England? Funny satirical depictions of Murat or Ney? Were their idiosyncrasies and big personalities well known outside of France?
Pierce
2025-03-20 14:02:29 +0000 UTCI'm reading The Recollection of Rifleman Harris and in the book, the hardship of the march is very often mentioned. I was wondering what the average distance that was required for a Napoleonic-era soldier to march in a day. Was there any test for it? Were veteran soldiers able to walk further than green units? How big of a part did carriages play a role in the movement of an advancing army? And lastly how often did units got lost in the march? Btw thanks for the recommendation for the book its great!
Aviv tal
2025-03-19 12:29:48 +0000 UTCI have a follow-up question from the one in the last dispatch about ethnic and religious differences in the various armies. The Austrian army recruited soldiers from an extremely culturally diverse territory. Even just in Slovakia today, there are small border minorities and distinguishable regional dialects of the national language. All these cultural variations were far more prominent 200 years ago and they were spread over an empire encompassing many mutually-incomprehensible languages, such as German, Czech and Hungarian. So how did the Austrian military administration and bureaucracy manage to recruit and command these diverse peoples? Was a lingua franca enforced? Did the Austrians recruit multilingual specialists? Or was the recruitment, logistics, organisation and command of the Austrian armies sub-divided according to langague or ethnic group? And how could the soldiers of entirely different langage groups communicate on the battlefield? Also, if any fan of the era happens to be here in Košice, Slovakia, they may see where Kutuzov and Bagration resided around the time of the Battle of Austerlitz. The building is on the main street and features a plaque commemorating Kutuzov's stay. Thank you and greetings from Slovakia! Rick
Rick Škvaridlo
2025-03-19 12:10:57 +0000 UTCHello from Australia! Question: I’ve always heard a lot of talk here about the fear of French warships possibly attacking the colony of New South Wales which by 1809 was in its infancy. How real was this threat, was Sydney ever in any actual danger? And what were the ships that Napoleon did send here doing?
Nathaniel Traynor
2025-03-19 04:25:00 +0000 UTCAlways makes my day whenever I see an episode was released. Thanks for creating great quality content and answering questions so vividly!
James
2025-03-17 19:23:36 +0000 UTCHow were commands communicated on Nepoleonic battlefields? I remember reading that, during the American civil war, drummers would play specific rhythms/cadences for various commands, and bugles also come to mind - where there any specific advancements in battlefield communications during this era?
Russell Davis
2025-03-17 16:31:04 +0000 UTCDuring your discussion of the war of the 1st coalition, we learned about the Levee en Masse, and how it created a highly motivated army of citizen soldiers that could march faster, desert less, and fight more effectively. In other patriotic wars of the era, such as the American Revolution, was there any "prototype versions" of this? Were the French truly the first early modern army to come up with the citizen soldier idea?
Kirk R Johnson
2025-03-17 15:29:51 +0000 UTCThank you for the response! The second version of my name is pretty accurate.
Ale
2025-03-17 14:13:22 +0000 UTCBy the outbreak of WW1, France was well behind Germany in terms of manpower despite having more territory. This is generally attributed to a decline in the French birth rate throughout the 19th century. In your opinion, to what extent did the Revolution and the Napoleonic wars contribute to the low French birth rates in the 19th century?
Will
2025-03-17 03:39:52 +0000 UTCWhat sort of propaganda and arguments did monarchists use to try to counter or discredit bourgeoise democracy/republicanism? In what ways was it similar to or different from anticommunist polemics and propaganda in the modern era? How did this propaganda change after Napoleon declared himself emperor, or after the restoration of the Bourbons (did we get "democracy has failed everywhere it's been tried" arguments)? Did the US and its relatively new republic factor at all into this propaganda or did European pundits mostly ignore the Americans?
Dan Helton
2025-03-16 20:12:03 +0000 UTCI'm curious to hear about what life for average people and/or the new nobility was like in this time. Was it more similar to life under the Ancien Regime, the Jacobins, the Directory, or something different? Whenever I listen to the dispatches and the regular episodes I wonder what people typically did as well, since France and her allies were at peace. (at least compared to Spain and Southern Germany/Austria.)
Nathaniel Robie
2025-03-16 19:33:12 +0000 UTCanother great episode, thank you
Carla
2025-03-16 18:06:45 +0000 UTCYou mentioned secondary fronts during the war of the fifth coalition. Can you tell us a bit more about what happened in North Germany and if that affected Napoleons campaign in the south? Was he worried about a potential Spain in the North?
Julian Weber
2025-03-16 14:01:59 +0000 UTCI hail from the city of Daun 😊
Julian Weber
2025-03-16 13:59:41 +0000 UTCI very much appreciated the clarifications around the Batavian Republic and its relationship with the Empire. Would you care to do a similar summary regarding the Helvetic Republic? As far as I can tell, modern Switzerland has been greatly shaped by this period of its history. Would be interesting to hear your take on the relationship between Switzerland and the Empire. Thank you very much 🙏
George Apostol
2025-03-16 11:16:49 +0000 UTCI had a teacher who used to tell us stories of her many travels abroad, and she said that in Corsica all the souvenir shops are choke-full of Napoleon memorabilia. An anecdote she told us about Corsica is that at one point in Ajaccio they were lost so asked some locals for directions, in French. But the people she asked refused to reply in French, which made her wonder if they were local or not, so she asked them “wait, you’re French, right?” To which one of the locals, annoyed, straightened his back, placed his hands on his knees, and proclaimed “maybe *you*, madame, are French. But *we* are Corsicans”
Or Koren
2025-03-16 11:12:39 +0000 UTCWhat was the life of a messenger like? Armies and government didn’t have the instant communication were all used to today. What were the logistics and resources needed to facilitate such large scale operations?
Steven Reiman
2025-03-16 04:33:46 +0000 UTCIf I might be so bold as to add to this question, did the massive increase in production of uniforms and other supplies help spur proto-industrialization in Continental Europe? (In other words, did it leave any lasting legacy in the later 19th century as Europe industrialized?) I am aware that already at this stage Napoleon was envious of early British manufacturing and tried to imitate it, albeit with limited success. I know it's a massively complicated issue, but very curious if those things are related in any way.
Christopher Burton
2025-03-16 03:25:06 +0000 UTCI’d like to ask about the musicians who accompanied the armies of this era. Were drummer boys and buglers identified within and drawn from the ranks, or were they selected based on their musicianship in civilian life?
Bil
2025-03-16 03:14:46 +0000 UTCGonna get my question in before listening this time, but I'm sure it's great as always lol In the spirit of the season, what were taxes like in Napoleonic France? What kinds were collected, how were they collected, and how was the burden distributed across economic/social classes? How different was the Napoleonic system compared to pre-revolution France?
Adam H
2025-03-16 01:04:27 +0000 UTCA bit before this period, but Maria Theresia referred to one of her Generals, Daun as "her Fabius" due to his Fabian strategy, so that shows how well known both the strategy and the specific historical example was.
Chris Beer
2025-03-16 00:57:58 +0000 UTCWho made Napoleon’s uniforms? Was it the same as the shops that made the Army’s or was it more of a special tailor?
Noah
2025-03-16 00:02:48 +0000 UTC
