I'd feel the same way as you if the contributions and sacrifices of my fellow countrymen had been denigrated after the war by their former allies.bahdahbum wrote:All the allied cavalry was organised in one corps , but it was a theoretical organisation as the cavalry was used by brigadescame down more on the side of allowing mixed nationality cavalry divisions
As for the remarks concerning the fact that the british did loose Waterloo, well it was just an iddle remark . They did not use the french system, OK . And they also lost the battle being saved at the end by the timely arrival of the prussians . Ok the DB, brunswick and Hanvrian did loose the battle also .
About the battle my view is Napoleon lost (and perhaps there's a view that as a result the French won in the long run
), the Prussians won the battle and the Anglo-Allied army survived - just barely (a "near run thing" as Wellington said and he was there) - and in doing so set the conditions for a Prussian victory.As an aside, I remember reading somewhere an anecdote about Wellington after the war. He was reading an account of a fellow countryman who had participated in the battle. Wellington was jotting down in the margins "L" and "DL". His companion asked that that meant and the Duke said, "Lie and Damned Lie".
A most enlightening set of books to read are the series entitled, "Battles and Leader of the Civil War" which was a collection of articles written by participants in the American Civil after the war. You can read about the battle from one participant and than read about the same battle from another and not even think that you're reading about the same battle (even if the two writers were on the same side!). It's very clear that one purpose of these first hand accounts isn't an accurate history but really about self-promotion.
