""Berezina"" Topic

President Macron has been criticised in the French Parliament for presiding over a "Health Berezina" in relation to the current pandemic. I was given to understand from this Forum that the Crossing of the Berezina was an unqualified French success?

Militairement, la Bérézina a été un succès.
Mais on n'a retenu que l'expression française " c'est la Bérézina" qui signifie: une déroute ou une situation compliquée et désagréable.
J'ai personnellement visité le site de la bataille où il ne reste pas grand chose…

Ah, the vagaries of linguistic idiom!

I am reminded of the English expression, "I shall sort you out", which to those of us on this side of the pond implies organizing something but actually means resolving a problem – and with the right tone implying using any means necessary!

Frederick…yes, if you are in a pub round my way and a big geezer says he's going to 'sort you out' you might want to run…

'Meeting your Waterloo' has come to mean a final defeat for someone. However, if you were one of the Allies it would have meant a good thing. It is just the way these things develop in general use.

I wonder when 'Meeting your Waterloo' was first used?

"I wonder when 'Meeting your Waterloo' was first used?"

Maybe in 1815?

Word.

I was given to understand from this Forum that the Crossing of the Berezina was an unqualified French success?

The Berezina was a French victory over two Russian armies. And the French executed an assault river crossing in the face of one of them holding the opposite bank of the river after the Russians had taken and destroyed the one good and usable bridge over the river at Borisov.

'Unqualified success?' Define what you mean by that. Clausewitz clearly admired what Napoleon and the remnants of the Grande Armee had done and the failures of the Russian commanders, especially Kutusov who refused to support the two armies engaged at the Berezina, undoubtedly because he was afraid of Napoleon and didn't want to get his ears beaten down around his socks one more time.

The Berezina was a French victory over two Russian armies.

Well I'd say two of the three parties got what they wanted to achieve:

Napoleon – got what he wanted by extracted the remnant of his army out of Russia.
Kutuzov – got what he wanted, by driving the French from Holy Mother Russia with a favourable casualty ratio (2.2 to 1, or 5.7 to 1 if you count the lost stragglers). It's fairly obvious that the Russians would have hit harder under a more energetic commander. I can't see a commander like Souvorv, Kutuzov's mentor, letting the French escape.
Czar Alexander – the real loser, since he wanted Napoleon destroyed.

crossing the Berezina wasn't an unqualified success, it saved Nabulieone and part of his command, but it cost him also very dearly.

for that reason the French

c'est la Bérézina" qui signifie: une déroute ou une situation compliquée et désagréable.

fits well for the historic situation as well as the recent one regarding Covid.

Meeting your Waterloo' has come to mean a final defeat for someone. However, if you were one of the Allies it would have meant a good thing. It is just the way these things develop in general use.

It's because the vast majority of posterity views that period through Napoleon's eyes.

The "Meeting one's Waterloo" or any of that term's variant refers to an image of an invincible genius finally having a defeat, bad day, loss of luck etc.

I rather think he'd already had a few defeats, bad days and losses of "luck"? Last desperate throw of the dice springs to mind.