Comment by dbatten | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dbatten | Hacker News Reader

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I second the missing data points, especially technology and cultural/social conditions... but I'd also point out that a lot of history is written by the winners.

Napoleon was able to win the way he did because social conditions in France permitted him to conscript as many soldiers as he wanted and basically usurp the entire economic output of the country for the war effort. He famously bragged to one opponent that he couldn't be stopped because he could afford to "spend 30,000 lives a month." Other European societies at the time hadn't yet conceived of making war that way. And, once they all finally got around to it, we ended up with World War 1.

Julius Caesar was the other major outlier but Rome was undoubtedly more technologically and socially "advanced" than the Celts he fought early in his career. Furthermore, basically everything we know about Julius Caesar's exploits comes from books written by... Julius Caesar. Surely, he had an incentive to make his victories sound as dramatic as possible.

I think that's a pretty poor way to think about the time period between the Napoleonic Wars and World War I. Napoleon won many battles but ended up losing to the military and financial power of Great Britain (the so-called fiscal-military state). Basically Britain was able to fund its fighting effort by selling bonds instead of extorting 'gifts' from the nobility. Britain may not have worked in the same way as France, but I'd argue that Britain's was better and France never really recovered.

I'd also argue that the real reason Britain won was the overwhelming power of the Royal Navy, especially after Trafalagar and the decades long blockade of Europe. Keep in mind also that Britain overcame Napoleon even while fighting the sideshow of the War of 1812 against the United States. A good book on this would be In Nelson's Wake: The Navy and the Napoleonic Wars - James Davey

Napoleon may have famously bragged that he couldn't be stopped, but he was and lived the rest of his life in disgrace on St. Helena.

I don't disagree at all, but I feel this basically just makes my broader point. Napoleon eventually lost due to the political/financial/technological might of Britain, not because he hit a better general.

But wow, what a beautiful place to end your life in disgrace.

Disgrace? The Code Napoleon survives across Europe. The ghetto was never reestablished. The ancient regime was not reimposed in France.

That was called "Total war" - the entire country is engaged. Things where different elsewhere, you will be forgiven going through Jane Austin's novels and not noticing that the United Kingdom is at war with the French empire.

    Sense and Sensibility (1811)
    Pride and Prejudice (1813)
    Mansfield Park (1814)
    Emma (1815)

It took a while for war to be something waged by The State because it took a long time for people to come up with an idea of a The State at all. Before nationalism, war was something fought by one king against another king, and what vassals each could muster. They were just petty disputes between individuals and their friends, not wars between countries.

Countries were more like alliances of powerful individuals than what we now think of as a country. Power wasn't consolidated enough for kings to control the full resources of the country, and so people who had no feudal obligations to those disputes weren't At War in a meaningful way. France was the first major power to kill the kings and aristocrats whose squabbling kept any one of them from seizing control of the full resources of the country.

It was the reorganization of society into a social contract each citizen held directly with an abstract all-powerful State that led to the consolidation of power that allows for Total War to exist.

How far back are you going?

Although nations were a little different to what we now know, I couldn't conceive of calling the hundred years war (1350s - 1450s) a petty dispute between individuals and their friends.

Millions of arrows, tens of thousands of longbowmen, requirement for all males to train with the bow from youth, mass production of arrows all across the kingdom (and they were used in massive numbers). Looks rather like total war, just on a smaller scale. The cavalry (knights) were there in smaller numbers and from the nobility, much as armour is there in smaller numbers to infantry today. The requirement to train, and that everyone be armed meant revolts such as the peasant's revolt were surprisingly well armed.

That, of course, completely ignores the navy of a mainly seafaring nation. Though the standing navy with all its trappings didn't come in until Henry VIII

The shape of wars though would still be recognisable today.

From what I've read of the wars in Europe between the end of the wars of religion and the French revolution, the battles were not so much different from the ones fought by Napoleon, just perhaps bigger battles for Napoleon with more soldiers.

Louis XIV did a good job of dominating the nobility to consolidate power, and he fought wars to show it. He was the one who said "The State is Me," which goes to show a prototypical concept of The State was already developed. But he was only able to do it by such great expenditures of wealth and willpower that it ultimately bankrupted the country and led to the Revolution.

He commanded those resources because he was supremely rich. The State's relationship with its citizens is different from a king to his subjects, and doesn't require such great expenditures of wealth to maintain consolidation. The State was developed by kings, but once mature it no longer needed kings.

It took a while still after that for The State to reach a level of domination over society that allowed it to engage the entire country in war, which wouldn't have been possible had it still been subject to a king. The State is more like God, and kings are subject to it.

Thanks for bringing up one of my favorite authors, but Jane Austen should be used with caution.

1.) Generally speaking her novels focus on the direct experience of family and friends. She's cutting on issues like the hypocrisy of the clergy and the indolence of the landed gentry. Issues from society at large like the emergence of the English middle class intrude only implicitly. In fact she's commonly criticized for her narrow view. [0]

2.) Within those bounds there's a sizable military presence in both 'Pride and Prejudice' (soldiers at Meryton, Brighton, and elsewhere) as well as 'Persuasion', where many of the main characters are drawn from the English Navy and spent much of their life at sea.

I can't prove it but have long suspected the characters would have been quite different had they been published 15 years before or after. Within the scope of her concerns the society she portrays seems quite militarized.

[0] http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/novel_19c/a...

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