| Tango01 | 07 Sep 2019 10:12 p.m. PST |
… Wardrobe Malfunction in History "200 years ago, Napoleon's army took on the Russians in the Battle of Maloyaroslavets. Though a French victory, the battle marked a major strategic setback, as the Russians moved to block Napoleon's path of retreat out of their country. In the end, only 10,000 Frenchmen out of an initial half a million made it out of Russia alive. Why did this happen? Historians still puzzle over this military catastrophe today, Big Think reports, but a new theory points to an unlikely culprit: the army's buttons…."
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 deadhead  | 08 Sep 2019 2:59 a.m. PST |
The tin buttons froze and crumbled it seems. The French did not think to tie a belt around their overcoat. They did not starve, die of disease or exhaustion, nor perish at the hands of Cossacks or jolly cross peasants. It was their buttons…. |
| Garde de Paris | 08 Sep 2019 3:53 a.m. PST |
WOW! "Button-counters" beware! TMP is coming for you! GdeP |
 Flashman14 | 08 Sep 2019 4:38 a.m. PST |
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| Tango01 | 08 Sep 2019 4:31 p.m. PST |
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| 4th Cuirassier | 09 Sep 2019 2:26 a.m. PST |
A combination of typhus, battle casualties, adverse weather and inadequate supply arrangements, surely. I'm sure the buttons played their role, but I do wonder how Minard would have plotted button disintegration on his legendary graphic.
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| deadhead | 09 Sep 2019 2:35 a.m. PST |
Funniest thing, but Wiki gives an alternative translation of Bouton as a knob. Could there have been a misunderstanding from the original French text? It did get very chilly some mornings in Russia and is quite possible that it was not the buttons that froze. Brass monkeys they say…. |
| ConnaughtRanger | 09 Sep 2019 1:17 p.m. PST |
Deadhead – don't give them yet another excuse! |
| 4th Cuirassier | 10 Sep 2019 6:30 a.m. PST |
As Clive James once wrote, the French lover is like the French soldier: he talks his performance up a storm, but when coming to grips with the other side, he discharges his weapon out of range and rolls over. |
| deadhead | 10 Sep 2019 8:10 a.m. PST |
At least you did not say heads to the rear at the first opportunity. |
| 4th Cuirassier | 10 Sep 2019 8:11 a.m. PST |
That would be the German in my experience… |
| Bill N | 10 Sep 2019 12:24 p.m. PST |
Weren't most of the losses in the Grand Army suffered before Maloyaroslavets? |
| deadhead | 10 Sep 2019 12:38 p.m. PST |
For sure. Very good point. But the real Retreat from Moscow only started then. That was what captured the imagination, then and to this day. No one cared about deaths from exhaustion and heat stroke, dehydration, disease, battle, all on the march to Moscow. The legend is that is was the cold and Cossacks that did for Boney in Russia. Not truly gross indiscipline, chaotic staff work and supply admin, morale failure and let us not forget the Russians, who never ever give up when invaded (OK 1917 I admit) |
ponders nirvana.