Could Napoleon Have Won?
His refusal to learn by experience, C.S. Forester suggests, was largely responsible for Napoleon’s ultimate failure
On the strength of a military reputation, and by a show of military force, Napoleon achieved supreme power in France, and he maintained that supreme power with the goodwill of the army. When his military reputation had declined, when he had lost the goodwill of the army, it was by military force that he was deposed. Whether anything short of a military disaster would have ended his reign, or that of his dynasty, is a question whose answer can never be known, and it can be left to the debate of the philosophers.
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