"Napoleon was a European to his core – except when..." Topic

…. it came to England.

"Napoleon didn't get the English. As he drove the British army out of Spain in the first weeks of 1809, and finally closed in under what was left of the redcoats on the beaches near La Coruña in the country's far north-west, he witnessed a small incident that opens a window on his mind.

As the horses of the retreating British fell victim to disease and exhaustion, their riders shot their mounts by the roadside to prevent them falling into enemy hands.

More had to be killed on the beaches at La Coruña, something which upset the hardened British soldiers deeply, and many memoirs recount that "the incessant cracking of hussars' pistols, as the unfortunate chargers were shot was the thing the lingered longest in their memories of all the sounds of those unhappy days."…."
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Amicalement
Armand

That an Oxford Professor of History was reduced to writing this speaks very poorly for Oxford. Even the "home of lost causes" should be able to distinguish between actual lost causes and the lies of defeated tyrants. Absolute monarchs are not "European." They are in fact the "Oriental" phenomenon which defines Europe by contrast.

Special mention goes to his praise of the Garda of Ireland as the descendant of the RIC, and thus supposedly inspired by Napoleon's Gendarmerie. Does the author imagine there is no one left who remembers that the IRA began the post-WWI "Troubles" by cold-bloodedly shooting every policeman they could reach?

Napoleon wasn't at La Coruña so would only have heard this second hand from others; even then are we to believe this upset someone who reportedly said "a man like me troubles himself little about a million men"? I suspect this is a joke / fake-news as I can't believe a Professor at Oxford would know so little about his subject as to believe Napoleon was an eye witness at La Coruña.

Glup!….

Amicalement
Armand