"Foreigners at Waterloo. " Topic

By foreign I mean not belonging to any of the armies at the battle.

I'm sure I saw a photograph from Bonderchuks movie in which I spotted Austrian, Russian and Spanish uniforms. Military observers? Military liaison officers?

Were they real? Who were they?
Alava was there in his Spanish uniform….

By foreign I mean not belonging to any of the armies at the battle.

I'm sure I saw a photograph from Bonderchuks movie in which I spotted Austrian, Russian and Spanish uniforms. Military observers? Military liaison officers?

Were they real? Who were they?
Alava was there in his Spanish uniform….

I wouldn't use Bondarchuk's movie as a source!

I would change that to "any movie".

Wellington had a number of foreign commissioners with him at Waterloo. Have a look at this for the uniforms.

link

Really Dear Boy! Apart from the British, they were all foreigners!

Well, since none of them (except DeLancey) were Americans, they were all foreigners. But lots of the Prussian Army were still wearing uniforms issued by various other powers or annexed states.

Hafen and 4th Cuirassier are quite right of course. Other than contemporary newsreel footage, no movie anywhere should be cited as a source. Unless you think the Germans really were using M-48's in North Africa? I saw it in a movie, after all.

And of course, movies use not proper sources but other movies as their sources. This is why all sword and sandal epics look the same.

One of the worst offenders is Gladiator. It starts with Russell Crowe walking through a field of wheat planted in dead straight lines by a seed drill, invented some 1,600 years later than the film's setting. The wheat is shown as waist-height whereas until recent times it was grown to head height and the stalks fed to horses.

The Romans then advance in a single rank without a pilum volley while a cavalry attack led personally by the commander goes in. He shouts "Roma victor" instead of "Roma victrix" and when he becomes a gladiator he only ever fights to the death against other adult male gladiators. He never fights two dwarves, for example, nor do we see evidence of dwarf-versus-gladiatrix fights.

All the statues are white unpainted marble, although Roman statuary was actually painted and draped with clothing. Arrows kill people on impact.

Tsuh. Then you look at something like Pompeii and it is immediately obvious where all its visuals came from.

And of course, movies use not proper sources but other movies as their sources. This is why all sword and sandal epics look the same.

Well, that and the fact that movies re-use whatever props are laying around rather than recreate them. Much cheaper. The one I really like is the 1940 movie Pride and Prejudice with Lawrance Oliver and Greer Garson. They didn't have the budget to create 1790's clothing, so they used Gone with the Wind suits and dresses, setting the scene in 1860s Britain… Hoop skirts and Beauregard ties.

The real historical version of Pride and Prejudice :
imdb.com/title/tt1374989

=============

I thought it was : "Really Dear Boy! Apart from the English, they were all foreigners!"

=============

I once, during my mis-spent youth, had the occasion to ask a Royal Navy officer, heir to some lordship or other, and admittedly a bit tipsy at the time, who were the "wogs"?
It appeared at first that the term applied to people from Asia, the Indian sub-continent and Africa. Then I asked about Turks, were they "wogs"? or Greeks? or Russians?
His response :
"Mah deah fell-owe …. the wogs, eh? …. well, don't you see …. they begin at Calais."

I will totally bet that word is suppressed as far too non PC.

Western Oriental Gentlemen was the meaning in my day. It would now be unacceptable, but it was not particularly ill meant even then.

A similar term was applied to Italians in WWII but with one letter changed. It was far more a term of abuse.

The fun is seeing the uniforms at DoR's Ball in Waterloo and working out who is whom. Duke of Brunswick and Price of Orange are shown and even credited in some cast lists, but spoke not a word. Artilleryman's link is invaluable in identifying them and they are not badly portrayed in the film actually.

This summer I read about a a family whose ancestor supposedly fought for the British from 1809 taking part in waterloo as a Hussar I think.
They had a sword they said was from the battle. Experts were supposed to look at the sword to see if it was genuine.

Ahem- 'Wily, Oriental Gentlemen'

Ah…….Wily…

Now I have lived to be 64 years and always thought there was a strange contradiction. If they were Occidental, how could they be Oriental?

The things one learns here. Imagine our Rebel Colonial Cousins waking tomorrow, across the Pond, and asking "What the hell are they on about?"

Trajanus

Really Dear Boy! Apart from the British, they were all foreigners!

Yes old bean! For that's what they call us….

Paul :)

Artilleryman!
That's them! I guess the movie just went with any Austrian gear lying around. You can see them in the scene where Wellington had the life guard bugler sounding the recall.

H

Deadhead

Wops = Italians, Degos = Spaniards. My dad (Who fought in North Africa, Sicily,and Italy (Hampshire Regiment) said that Wogs were the Arabs and called them thus whenever he spoke about them. From what I remember, my dad never ever used the 'N' or 'C' word and the wost swear word he would use was 'bloody' and sh** but he would call the Italians Eyties, Germans as Jerries, Americans as Yanks, New Zealanders as Kiwis and Australians as Aussies. The rest, Irish, Scots, Welsh, Canadians, Poles, French, and Russians by their proper terms. They were all 'unless they were British, foreigners.

Wog – "worker of the government. Working On Government Service, referring to Indians working for the British Raj, or referring to Egyptian labourers working on the Suez Canal during the British Occupation in the early 20th Century."

according to the Flashman books, Queen Victoria took exception to the use of the N word about her subjects. She requested that the term Worthy oriental gentlemen be used instead. Of Course that is a lot of letters so to cut down on cost of telegraphing messages the substitute W.O.G was used.

The word 'bint' comes from the desert and I am pretty sure it means 'miss' or 'girl'. I also suspect that the expression "the bee's knees" is a corruption of the "the business" from the same locale.

"What's the beer like in Cairo then, Abdul? Is it any good?"
"It's very good sir."
"It's the business, is it?"
"Yes sir. The beesnees. The bee's knees."

I always thought it was "worthy" also – from before the Flashman books. But I am "rebel colonial cousin" and easily might misunderstand.

I thought the part that was no longer polite was "oriental".

"Many Americans may not be aware that the word ‘Oriental' is derogatory," [Congresswoman Grace Meng (D-NY)] said. "But it is an insulting term that needed to be removed from the books
link

There appear to be issues with "the East," and "the Far East":
link

=================

My maternal grandmother, born into a good Congregationalist (i.e. Puritan) family in eastern Massachusettes in 1890, was quite a social liberal – a fitting heiress of the family's revolutionary and later abolitionist traditions.

In the early 1960's, as the issue of (Black) civil rights became more a part of common discussion, I remember this admonishment :

"You must always know in your heart that the Good Lord created all people in his image. If you see racism or oppression of people based on the color of their skin, it is offense against against God's Will and un-Christian. It you see it in our country, it is an offense agianst the Constitution and un-American. It does not matter if a person is African, Portuguese, Spanish or Italian – Black people are just the same as you and me."

Always though it came from gollywog. Still remember getting them in marmalade jars in the 80s.

I had a silly yank girl mouth off at me once for describing China as oriental. A British Chinese guy told her its fine. She shut up then.
I put it down to cultural differences. I made a point of saying Oriental a lot round her after that. I'm a bastard.

Describing her as an 'Oriental slot'? Well yes, that could be taken as offensive…

What an unfortunate auto correct.
She was white by the way.

closer to on-topic ….

The Russian commissioner at Waterloo was actually an emigré Corsican, who literally had a "vendetta" against the Buonaparti : luogotenente generale Carlo Andrea Pozzo, conte di Borgo (Alata, near Ajaccio 1764 – Paris 1842)

See : link

Read and enjoyed here at 8:36 Eastern Daylight Time.

The one epithet for foreigners I seem to have missed starts with an L, but that's probably just context. Not generally perjorative, unless it came from old Joe Stilwell, in which case, it is time to take John Masters' advice and go stand with his emissary on an FPL (that's a fixed line for you fellas who learned to speak Army Creole on the other side of the pond).

Thanks for further enriching my understanding of Flashman!

"Americans as Yanks"

I am honored to be called a Yank or Yankee – but maybe guys from Mississippi are less pleased by it?

To British people, all US citizens/residents are "Yanks", right (not just northerners, not just New Englanders, not just seamen/traders/shipbuilders from New England)?

What about Canadians – are they "Yankees" also to our British cousins?

You have no idea! There used to be a joke in the American South: what's the difference between a Yankee and a d*** Yankee? A Yankee is a Northerner who comes South and goes home again; a d*** Yankee is a Northerner who comes South and stays. You didn't have to go very far South to hear that joke either; people in Raleigh, North Carolina were saying that the suburb of Carey stood for "containment area for relocated Yankees" in the mid-90s.

But regional identity has changed as people move; even the old accents are disappearing. The differences have more to do with urban versus rural now.

I am honored to be called a Yank or Yankee – but maybe guys from Mississippi are less pleased by it?

To British people, all US citizens/residents are "Yanks", right (not just northerners, not just New Englanders, not just seamen/traders/shipbuilders from New England)?

What about Canadians – are they "Yankees" also to our British cousins?

Perhaps sometime after 1940, when 'yank' came to be rendered as 'septic' in Cockney rhyming slang, the perjorative began to creep in.

Canadians have always been 'Canadians', I think, although I seem to remember I learned 'Canuck' from British war comics with no idea where it came from.

So what terms were used in Napoleonic times? I do not mean the "Grognard" of such controversy on another current site.

I mean what did the British soldiers call their allies/their opponents? Same for the French….or the Prussians or the Russians?

French called us Rosbifs and Goddams I read.
We called Americans "Johnathon" for some reason.
Spanish were called "Dons" or "Dago"

Russians … not sure.

"Crapaud" pops up from time to time in British usage in the Napoleonic era; it's the French word for "toad," presumably a substitute for the more familiar form that we all know.

As a Yank, I always find it funny that the go-to slurs for the Anglo-French rivalry involve dietary stereotypes.

I think Brother Jonathan was a jibe at New England Puritan mores and naming habits. "Don" stems, I think, from a polite form of Spanish aristocratic address.

Example official terms for the French
--- apostate idolaters
--- unclean beasts in human form
--- atheist spawn of harlots and fiends

Example official terms for Napoléon
--- false messiah
--- anti-christ
--- blasphemous scarlet demon

Names for the military actions in 1812
--- immediately at the time : "holy war", "righteous war"
--- later : "Patriotic war"

Names for the military actions in 1813/1814
--- immediately at the time : "cross-border campaign"
--- later : "Liberation war"

The officers and urban militiamen (literate) referred to the French quite politely "French", "enemy", occasionally "foreigners" – and they were careful to preserve honorifics "le maréchal prince d'Eckmuhl", "le roi Murat", "le colonel baron Méda", and so one.

The very few Russian rankers who left memoirs were either promoted officers and followed their polite style, or became priests and tended toward veiwing the French as "apostate idolaters", etc.
I suppose they had "mat" slang names for them also – but every word in "mat" will (or at least should) be filitered.