You Did What__ Mad Plans and Great Historical Disasters - Bill Fawcett [33]
Would Davout have fought Waterloo differently? That seems likely. He was most certainly a very different type of commander. His record in past battles was one of efficient and reasoned leadership. Steady where Ney was impulsive, efficient more than brave. Would just a few moments of calmer consideration and calculated movement have made a difference? Wellington won the Battle of Waterloo literally by a matter of minutes, and the massed musket fire of a few thousand tired, thirsty men in the 52nd and the Foot Guards stopped the French Old Guard’s desperate columns from splitting their center, an action that would almost certainly have routed the badly depleted and exhausted British and Dutch. If there had been even a few thousand heavy cavalry remaining to accompany them, the British would have been unable to form line and their firepower would have been seriously diminished. But there weren’t.
Ney was executed by a suitably, in the king’s opinion, betrayed Louis. Davout eventually was made minister of war and reformed the French army. If Napoleon had given his most efficient Iron Marshal command of his army at Waterloo…?
You Wore What?
Clothes make the man. Or in this case a misplaced sense of macho and style made all the difference. For want of a scarf, the kingdom was lost.
WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON
WASHINGTON, D.C., 1840
Brian M. Thomsen
William Henry Harrison was a hero of the War of 1812, the leader of the American Army of the Northwest credited with killing Tecumseh and smashing his confederacy, which many believed forced the British to abandon their holdings in the American Northwest. He also served in both houses of Congress, and was setting his sights on the White House.
The year was 1840, and Harrison had deftly manuevered himself into the role of favorite presidential candidate for the Whig party. A true successor to the popular man - of - action legacy of the party as personified best by Andrew “Old Hickory” Jackson, he had positioned himself as part war hero and part farmer (despite his Virginia aristocrat roots) with a log cabin legacy and a hankering for hard cider. He and his supporters even came up with a slogan that has entered the annals of all-time memorable political campaigns; “Tippecanoe and Tyler too” was an alliterative stroke of genius that linked Harrison’s quasi-distinguished war record as the “hero” of the Battle of Tippecanoe with the name of his running mate in a slogan that politically meant nothing but at the same time kept the candidates’ identities front and center. Indeed Harrison’s entire campaign followed suit with massive, hard-drinking rallies to support his candidacy, with an abundance of political doodads, emblems, and party favors of log cabins, buckskin balls, and patriotic streamers with a notable lack of solid public policy and substance.
Harrison had set his sights on defeating the incumbent president, Martin Van Buren, the so-called Little Magician of Kinderhook, with a man’s man-of-action campaign. He became the backwoods war hero he had enacted for the campaign, and that was whom the American people wanted for president.
He was also the candidate the political fixers wanted as well. This was the dawning of party politics as controlled by backroom bosses in smoke-filled rooms. The Whig party advocated a weak presidency with the government supported primarily by a strong Congress. In many ways the president, in their opinions, was primarily a figurehead, and who better for the presidential mantle than a candidate whose entire platform consisted of image and hype with very little substance or policy?
And it worked!
With 82 percent of the eligible populace voting, Harrison locked up 53 percent of the popular vote, and an overwhelming majority in the electoral college.
William Henry Harrison was victorious