Ciao Alfiere,
I follow your reasoning regarding the background behind your variant scenario
I saw the maps at NBC great effort perhaps you can do one for the Zucker map
Both men read the same books believe it or not, however le destine preferred Bonaparte
if you are big on destiny then you start to see that Napoleon was an original at least
when it comes down to what he did best:
(analogies)
he has hardly ever been discussed without
a side glance at Caesar and Alexander the first being unacceptable and the second being
correct (Spangler)
And when it comes to analogies Frederick the Great compared the French to the Macedonians
under Philip and the Germans to the Greeks
(romantic)
Alexander and Napoleon were romantics; though they stood on the threshold of Civilization and in its cold clean air, the one fancied himself an Achilles the other read Werther.
Caesar on the contrary was a pure man of fact gifted with immense understanding (Spangler)
Napoleon burned with 'a great duty to Civilization'.
(imperialism)
Napoleon had in his graver moments a strong feeling for the deep logic of world-becoming and
in such moments could divine to what extent he was, and to what extent he had a destiny.
(from his letters- beginning of the Russian Campaign)" I feel myself driven towards an end that I do not know. As soon as I shall have reached it, as soon as I shall become unnecessary, an atom will suffice to shatter me"...here certainly not a pragmatist (Spengler)
here is the passage that send shivers up the spine
' The tragic in Napoleon's life-which still awaits discovery by a poet great enough to comprehend it
and shape it-was that he, who rose into effective being by fighting British policy and the British
spirit which that policy so eminently represented, completed by the very fighting the continental
victory of this spirit, which thereupon became strong enough, in the guise of "liberated nations"
to overpower him and to send him to St Helena to die.
It was not Napoleon who originated the expansion principle. That had arisen out of the Puritanism
of Cromwell's milieu which called into life the British Colonial Empire. Transmitted through the
schooled intellects of Rousseau and Mirabeau to the Revolutionary armies, of which English philosophical ideas were essentially the driving force, it became their tendency even from that day of Valmy. It was not Napoleon who formed the idea, but the idea that formed Napoleon, and when he came to the throne he was obliged to pursue it further against the only power, namely England
whose purpose was the same as his own. The Empire was a creation of French blood but of English style. It was in London again that Locke, Shaftesbury, Samuel Clarke and above all Bentham built
up the theory of "European Civilization"--the Western Hellenism which Bayle, Voltaire, and Rousseau carried to Paris. Thus it was in this England of Parliamentarianism, business morality
and journalism that Valmy, Marengo, Jena, Smolensk and Liepzig were fought, and in all these
battles it was the English spirit that defeated the French culture of the West.
The French Consul had no intention of incorporating west Europe in France, his prime object was--note the Alexander idea on the threshold of every Civilization!--to replace the British Colonial
Empire for a French one. Thereby, French preponderance in the western-culture region would have been placed on a practically unassailable foundation; it would have been the Empire of Charles the V on which the sun never set, but managed from Paris after all, in spite of Columbus and Philip, and organized as an economic-military instead of an ecclesiastical-chivalric unit.
So far reaching, probably was the destiny that was in Napoleon. But the peace of Paris in 1763
had already decided the question against France, and Napoleon's great plans, time and again
came to grief in petty incidents.
At Acre a few guns were landed in the nick of time from the British Warships.
At the Peace of Amiens, when the wole of the Mississippi Basin was still amongst his assets
and he was in close touch with the Maratha powers that were resisting the British progress in India
but again a minor naval incident (Linois to Pondichery in 1803) obliged him to abandon the whole of a carefully prepared enterprise; and lastly when Dalmatia, Corfu and all of Italy he had made the
Adriatic a French lake, with a view of another expedition to the East, and was negotiating with the
Shah of Persia, for action against India and whose aid would infallibly have induced its success.
It was only after the failure of all extra-European combinations, that he chose as his ultima-ratio
in the battle against England, the incorporation of Germany and Spain, and so raising against himself his own English Revolutionary ideas, the very ideas of which he had been the vehicle, he
took the step that made him "no longer necessary".
A " United States of Europe" actualized through Napoleon as a founder of a romantic and popular
military monarchy is the analogue of the Realm of the Diadochi; when actualized as a twenty first century economic organism, by a matter of fact Caesar, it will be the counter part of the imperium
Romanum. These are incidentals, but they are a picture of history.
But Napoleon's victories and defeats (which always hide a victory of England and Civilization over Culture) his Imperial dignity, his fall, the Grande Nation, the episodic liberation of Italy (in 1796,
as in 1859, essentially no more than a change of political costume for a people long since become
insignificant) the destruction of the Gothic ruin of the Roman-German Empire, are mere surface
phenomena...the storming of the Bastille, Valmy, Austerlitz, Waterloo and the rise of Prussia thus
correspond to the Classical-history facts of Chaeronea, Gaugamela(Arbela), Alexander 's Indian expedition and the Roman victory at Sentinum (295 B.C.)
AND WE BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND THAT IN WARS AND POLITICAL CATASTROPHES--THE
CHIEF MATERIAL OF OUR HISTORICAL WRITINGS--VICTORY IS NOT THE ESSENCE OF
THE FIGHT. (Spengler, The Decline of the West)
(tact of command)
....It is not "the" truth or "the" good or "the" upright but "the" Roman or "the" Puritan or "the" Prussian that is a fact. The sum of honor and duty, discipline, resolution is a thing not learned from books, but awakened in the stream of being by a living exemplar...the genuine statesman is
distinguished from the "mere politician", the "player who plays for the pleasure of the game".
Highest of all however is not action, but the ability to command. It is this that takes the individual
out of himself and makes him the center of a world of action. There is one kind of commanding
that makes obedience a proud, free and noble habit. (Davout sic my opinion )
quote" What makes Napoleon, what makes Charles"
That kind Napoleon did not possess. A residue of subaltern outlook prevented him from training
men to be men and not bureau-personnel...but one who, like Caesar and Frederick the Great possesses... (Spengler) next time the rest.
Earlier I pointed out that Charles and Napoleon read the same books, they probably did but
came to different conclusions. Charles never really had to fight for his crown, although he
showed some energy in the Campaign of 1809 , once the 'coordinateur supreme' got the
engine running to his will Charles was easily pushed aside. Charles too like Napoleon did not
have that quality of command but he of course had never been a 'subaltern' unless you
bring Charles father in the picture. So who were Napoleon's and Charles 'subalterns' ?
If Napoleon could not capitalize on his gifted subalterns : Davout, Massena, Lannes Desaix
and perhaps because of his incapacity to understand 'human personality' prevented, these gentlemen very possibly knew Rousseau by heart but also had that particular quality which made them leaders for awhile, Charles, His Imperial Majesty was hardly a "citoyen" to his generals
Charles and most if not all of the 'Etat Major Austrichenne' were also considered to be 'bureau-personnel' and infinitely less 'able to command' and to educate their 'citizen soldiers' after all.
Austrian and French 'citizen soldiers' had poor to highest 'esprit the corps' the willingness
to be freely commanded which the French soldier made into a noble habit and to help rise
its leader (s) compared to 'blind obedience' which the English soldier could never match the Austrian indolent nature either, (but very closely resembled the French because of their 'common idea') were often brutalized by their commanders, for petty infractions, so when the going got
though they lacked the willingness to rise above their station.
I apologize for the length of this post
zu
HistWar (English zone)