This weekend episode Victor Davis Hanson and cohost Sami Winc discuss the significance of the Napoleonic Wars and look at the whole production of a plum crop after they discuss some current news.
Menu
This weekend episode Victor Davis Hanson and cohost Sami Winc discuss the significance of the Napoleonic Wars and look at the whole production of a plum crop after they discuss some current news.
Trivia
The current Swedish King is French.
I have read Napoleon was a genus at logistics and supplying the army.
He also introduced canned food.
A friend of mine who was pretty sharp,
said Napoleon at Waterloo had dysentery
so was not able to supervise the battle.
My family raised peaches in 1940s near Turlock CA.
The picking crews were Okies and Arkies.
My dad caught the president of the Peach Association cheating the farmers.
In the 1950s my dad and another man built a big vacuum machine to pickup clover seed.
The clover was cut, win-rowed and harvested with a standard harvester.
Both the standard and vacuumed clover bulk was blown into wagons
and then run thru a very long stationary harvester.
At one time clover was $1.25/lb but then went to $0.50/lb.
but the seed was valuable.
Thank you for sharing! Very interesting.
20 years ago was 2003. So Victor thinks that in 2003 there were many white males who got into the system through non meritocratic means? Could you please provide some examples?
Mr. Hanson,
I really love when you talk about farming. Listening to you talk about the old varieties of plums and peaches, really makes me want to grow those fruits that I can taste the fruit I used to have in my youth. Where can I buy Santa Rosa Plum trees or the peach varietal? Im in the Bay Area so I think I could put them in my personal orchard. My apricots do well, so I assume the rest would also do well. Thanks so much for everything you do to educate us. Thanks Jack and Sami your contributions are also very much appreciated.
Rose Fisk
Knightsen CA
Victor – Thank you for sharing on how difficult it is to farm orchards. The process has much uncertainty and uncontrollable variables. Here are two words of wisdom that family farmers may especially identify with –
Prepare your work outside;
get everything ready for yourself in the field,
and after that build your house.
Proverbs 24:27
Better is a dinner of herbs where love is
than a fattened ox and hatred with it.
Proverbs 15:17
Victor – Thank you for sharing on how difficult it is to farm orchards. There is much uncertainty and many things one cannot control. I have a greater appreciation for the cost of fruit now. Family farmers may especially be able to identify with the following words of wisdom –
Prepare your work outside;
get everything ready for yourself in the field,
and after that build your house.
Proverbs 24:27
Better is a dinner of herbs where love is
than a fattened ox and hatred with it.
Proverbs 15:17
Napoleon did not invent the concept of a corps. The Austrians did, a generation earlier, in the Seven Years War. The French at that time also adopted the strategy. A precondition for using corps was to have a proper general staff to conduct the planning it requires. Armies at that time were regimental, that is, there was no permanent organization higher than the regiment, and any combinations above that were temporary. Frederick the Great’s army is the prime example. He had only a rudimentary staff and corresponded directly with his regimental commanders.
The Austrians first employed forces organized into corps in their victory at Hochkirch in 1758. The French began to employ corps in their army in central Germany a few years later. Prince Henry, Frederick’s brother, also began to organize his army in Saxony along corps lines.
You are correct that Napoleon developed the organization to a high level. But it’s necessary to note that it was really the only way to direct an army of the nation in arms. There were too many men under arms for anything else.
Awesome fact check! Thanks for sharing what you know with the rest of us!
As far as Operation Barbarossa goes, the campaign to subdue Yugoslavia represented a significant. Had Hitler not ordered invading Yugoslavia, to punish its government, basically, for indicating that it would withdraw into a neutral policy, Barbarossa would have started 4 to 6 weeks earlier.
Fight not your enemy too often, Spartan, lest you become his teacher.
I stumbled across a book at a yard sale or used book store…….somewhere 20 to 25 years back. It is titled “Diary of a Napoleonic Foot Soldier.” Evidently this soldiers real diary was found stored in an attic of a family in rural Kansas I believe it was and if memory serves it was around the 1920’s when they discovered it. They then had it verified and also had it published. I didn’t give the book much thought but one mid-winter snowy weekend I picked it up and WOW! Talk about a stunning read! This soldier wrote of the travels in and more so the sheer misery and hunger those that survived the trek home endured. He was one of the minority that made it all the way back. Not a very long read but you feel as if you are right there with them suffering. He was a very talented writer.