38: Napoleon's Hundred Days, Part III

“Waterloo” is a name so historic and iconic that it’s taken on more than its literal meaning—when we speak of someone “meeting their Waterloo,” we’re talking about their final epic defeat. Napoleon Bonaparte certainly did meet that end on the farm fields of Belgium in June 1815, but the story of how his brief restoration as France’s Emperor came crashing down is more than just the story of a single battle. Historians since 1815 have been more guilty than anyone else at distorting and sanitizing the story of this event, turning a tragic occurrence with real human consequences into little more than a tabletop strategy game with a lot of maps and symbols that obscure what really happened on that field. What was Waterloo really about? What were the stakes? Why are we so reluctant to remember it as anything more than a textbook military exercise? These are the questions that underlie this episode.

In this, the final installment in a three-part series on Napoleon’s Hundred Days, Dr. Sean Munger will throw away the maps and symbols and try to get to the heart of what the Battle of Waterloo was. In this episode you’ll learn why what you may think you know about Napoleon’s defeat is wrong, or at least distorted; you’ll ponder the existential implications of getting a bayonet in the face; you’ll marvel at how such a consequential man as Napoleon ultimately had so little to offer the people he asked to die for him by the thousands; and you’ll meet a 19th century British model-maker who landed the job of a lifetime and wound up seriously screwing up an important moment in European history. This is one of the highlight moments of the entire Second Decade, and one of the main reasons this podcast exists!

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