Quotes & Sayings About Napoleonic Wars

No one can deny that the feudal wars, which were quite localized and subject moreover to restrictive regulation by the spiritual authority, were nothing compared to the national wars that have resulted, following the Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire, in armed nations, and we have seen in our own day new developments hardly reassuring for the future.
By compelling all men indiscriminately lo take part in modern wars, the essential distinctions among the social functions are entirely ignored, this being moreover a logical consequence of 'egalitarianism'. — Rene Guenon

His [Pitt's] successor as prime minister was Mr. Addington, who was a friend of Mr. Pitt, just as Mr. Pitt was a friend of Mr. Addington; but their respective friends were each other's enemies. Mr. Fox, who was Mr. Pitt's enemy (although many of his friends were Mr. Pitt's friends), had always stood uncompromisingly for peace with France and held dangerously liberal opinions; nevertheless, in 1804, Mr. Fox and Mr. Pitt got together to overthrow Mr. Pitt's friend Mr. Addington, who was pushing the war effort with insufficient vigor. — J. Christopher Herold

There has never been a century that has not had a systemic war - a systemic war, meaning when the entire system convulses. From the Seven Years' War in Europe to the Napoleonic Wars of the 19th century to the World Wars, every century has one. — George Friedman

What could make the Napoleonic Wars more exciting? Dragons. — Naomi Novik

Half a world away, on the same Friday, the Chamber of Deputies in France opened debate on paying the United States a debt of 25 million francs (about $5 million) as an indemnity for French damage to American shipping during the Napoleonic wars. France had agreed to pay the money under an 1831 treaty, but after four days of consideration, by a margin of eight, France declined to honor its obligations. — Jon Meacham

It cost about 75 cents to kill a man in Ceasar's time. The price rose to about $3,000 per man during the Napoleonic wars; to $5,000 in the American Civil War; and then to $21,000 per man in World War I. Estimates for the future wars indicate that it may cost the warring countries not less than $50,000 for each man killed. — Homer Bone

On the heels of the Enlightenment came the French Revolution: a brief promise of democracy followed by a train of regicides, putsches, fanatics, mobs, terrors, and preemptive wars, culminating in a megalomaniacal emperor and an insane war of conquest. More than a quarter of a million people were killed in the Revolution and its aftermath, and another 2 to 4 million were killed in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. In reflecting on this catastrophe, it was natural for people to reason, "After this, therefore because of this," and for intellectuals on the right and the left to blame the Enlightenment. This is what you get, they say, when you eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, — Steven Pinker

So, what's the story?"
"No story. Just a nightmare."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning, heavy compression lines in his cartilage, severe bruising on his kidneys, liver and lower intestines. Fracture marks on his collar bone, tibia, radius, humerus, scapular, femur and every single one of his ribs have been broken. Don't even get me started on the concussive damage to his skull and brain tissue. Twenty-three percent of this boys body is scared for life. And yet, every organ is functioning normally and his neurological activity is above average. He's eighteen years old and he weights about two bills but remove the scar tissue and he'd weigh about a buck-ten. All in all, I say he lived inside a hydraulic car press, went through the Napoleonic wars and was on board the Hindenburg when it went down in flame and yet he's okay ... this boy just refuses to die. — S.L.J. Shortt

From Caesar's legions to the Napoleonic wars. From the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the industrial revolution to the defeat of nazism. We have helped to write European history, and Europe has helped write ours. — David Cameron

I went to grad school with the grand plan of getting my Ph.D. and writing weighty, Tudor-Stuart-set historical fiction - from which I emerged with a law degree and a series of light-hearted historical romances about flower-named spies during the Napoleonic wars. — Lauren Willig

The brief legal emancipation of Jews during the Napoleonic wars released unparalleled economic, professional, and cultural energies. It was though a high dam had suddenly been breached. — Amos Elon

Triage on a battlefield (where the word originated in the Napoleonic Wars) came down to three choices: Those that don't need help right now, those that can survive if they get help right now and those that are probably going to die whether they get help or not. — John Ringo

According to legend, when a monkey survived a shipwreck off the north-east coast near Hartlepool during the Napoleonic wars, it was hanged as a suspected French spy. The monkey did not help its defense by being dressed in a French navy uniform when it was found, or by refusing to answer its interrogators (some local fishermen) in English. The sounds that came from the monkey were assumed to be French, and so the monkey was strung up at the beach. — Chris Roberts

But the tale or narrative set in the past may have its particular time-free value; and the candid reader will not misunderstand me, will not suppose that I intend any preposterous comparison, when I observe that Homer was farther removed in time from Troy than I am from the Napoleonic wars; yet he spoke to the Greeks for 2,000 years and more. — Patrick O'Brian

In the wars against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, as in so many later conflicts, British women seem to have been no more markedly pacifist than men. Instead, and exactly like so many of their male countrymen, some women found ways of combining support for the national interest with a measure of self-promotion. By assisting the war effort, women demonstrated that their concerns were by no means confined to the domestic sphere. Under cover of a patriotism that was often genuine and profound, they carved out for themselves a real if precarious place in the public sphere. — Linda Colley

I think there is a risk that the Holocaust will be placed under a glass bubble just like the Napoleonic Wars or the Thirty Years' War. If you don't make the connection between memories of past atrocities and the present, there isn't any point to it. There are plenty of horrible things happening today in Germany and in the rest of the world. — Anita Lasker-Wallfisch

The English soldier was probably the worst-treated soldier in Europe, and judging from the English casualty rates during the Napoleonic wars, English generals were more lavish with their soldiers' lives than were their French and German colleagues. — J. Christopher Herold

The war against Napoleon was won not by England but by Russia, Austria, and Prussia; but England won the last battle and she won the peace. — J. Christopher Herold

Fifty-five thousand, five hundred and seventy-three dead from Bomber Command. Seven million German dead, including the five hundred thousand killed by the Allied bombing campaign. The sixty million dead overall of the Second World War, including eleven million murdered in the Holocaust. The sixteen million of the First World War, over four million in Vietnam, forty million to the Mongol conquests, three and a half million to the Hundred Years War, the fall of Rome took seven million, the Napoleonic Wars took four million, twenty million to the Taiping Rebellion. And so on and so on and so on, all the way back to the Garden when Cain killed Abel. — Kate Atkinson

Always wetweating-always wetweating! — Leo Tolstoy

Seven million German dead, including the five hundred thousand killed by the Allied bombing campaign. The sixty million dead overall of the Second World War, including eleven million murdered in the Holocaust. The sixteen million of the First World War, over four million in Vietnam, forty million to the Mongol conquests, three and a half million to the Hundred Years War, the fall of Rome took seven million, the Napoleonic Wars took four million, twenty million to the Taiping Rebellion. And so on and so on and so on, all the way back to — Kate Atkinson

Let those who are actually concerned with peace observe that capitalism gave mankind the longest period of peace in history - a period during which there were no wars involving the entire civilized world - from the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815 to the outbreak of World War I in 1914. — Ayn Rand

Historians are lenient to those who succeed and stern to those who fail; in this, and this alone, they display strong political sense. — J. Christopher Herold

The right-wing Tories and the conservative Whigs fought Napoleon as the Usurper and the Enemy of the Established Order; the liberal Tories and the radical Whigs fought him as the Betrayer of the Revolution and the Enslaver of Europe; they were all agreed in fighting him, and his notion that their disagreement signified national disunion was mere wishful thinking. All dictators since his time have fallen into the same trap: themselves blind to the values of liberty, they cannot conceive that people who disagree on its meaning can nevertheless unite in upholding their freedoms against patent despotism. — J. Christopher Herold