So the Falklands War wasn't a war. We've all obviously got the wrong end of the stick the last 33 years. You obviously know better.
Why we must remember the bloody cost of Waterloo
- Thread starter Blackleaf
- Start date
So the Falklands War wasn't a war. We've all obviously got the wrong end of the stick the last 33 years. You obviously know better.
Reagan saved Thatchers butt as well as the brit navy. Logistics, weapons, and intelligence were provided and without it the brits would have failed. A third world airforce put quite a few RN ships to the bottom.
What is the armament on that ice breaker? lol
A helipad on the NS 50 Let Pobedy Arktika-class nuclear-powered icebreaker. (RIA Novosti / Alexey Filippov)
The brits can't even patrol the English Channel which has now become the Putin Channel as Russian ships are doing circles in it while it takes the brits days to respond.
As for the War of 1812... we won.
And Blucher, The Prince of Orange, and the Duke of Brunswick were the true victors at Waterloo.
To The Prince of Orange!
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America gave Britain back much more of its territory that America invaded. Canada is not part of America today as a result.
I should point out that Canada is part of the Commonwealth, has its Queen as Head of State and its main institutions - like its parliament and military - are based on Britain's, not America's.
The treaty said nothing about two of the key issues that started the war in the first place - the "rights" of neutral US. vessels and the impressment of British (not American, as the Yanks still believe) sailors back into the RN after they deserted to the USN. These still took place after Britain won the war.
No, you didn't. You lost.
Much in the same fashion as this:
One single shot was all it took
Diese jungs saugen!
BL is so proud of briddish kidnapping and pressing sailors. The brits did that of course because they could not maintain their ships with the desertion of tens of thousands of brit sailors. So it is easy to say that the Battle of Trafalgar was won by the Americans as the brits all deserted.
"Look men! See how sh*tty the brit sailors are!"
Canada and Britain today are not friends. In some ways they are alienated. However, Canada and America are as friendly as two independent states can be. We have the longest undefended border in the world. Canada and America have each others back. Please note that yesterday the US reprimanded the UK for its constant accommodation of China. In some ways the UK has become China's lackey.
The Commonwealth is like the Holy Roman Empire. It means nothing today.
Britain stopped impressing Americans into the Royal Navy after the Treaty of Ghent was signed. Britain wasn't looking for further trouble.
Britain intended to expand British North America down the Mississippi Valley and cut off further expansion by the young Republic. Britain surrendered that objective. The war ended in a return to the status quo ante. That wasn't a victory for either side from a neutral and objective standpoint.
Is that what they teach you in school? It was really just a skirmish on the fringes of the Napoleonic Wars, and by any reasonable measure nobody won anything by it, it was a draw. If you *must* pick a winner, consider that the Americans started it and achieved none of their war aims. Doesn't sound like a victory to me.
No plan survives first contact with the enemy. For America the War of 1812 became existential. Britain intended to put an end to the young Republic, but failed. Britain realized the potential of the young Republic becoming the greatest power in North America, and attempted to use the conflict to stop the spread of America across the continent. A little more than thirty years after the war ended Britain was negotiating with an America that had spread to the Pacific Northwest. In a later era Britain's possessions in North America became America's greatest friend, and grew distant from Britain. In the fullness of time who won and who lost. Today Britain has become a toady of the Chinese.
The fact that, in 2015, the Amerians STILL believe that the British kidnapped American sailors and pressed them into the Royal Navy just shows how biased "history" teaching is in American schools today.
Of over 18,000 men in total, there were 22 Americans fighting in Nelson's navy during the Battle of Trafalgar.
Come off it. Britain - Canada's mother nation - is probably Canada's biggest ally. Most Canadians are of British descent, and both countries have family, as we all historical, ties.
Also, looking the other way, a survey of November 2012 showed that Americans view Britain, not Canada, as their biggest ally.
On the issue of trust, the same survey showed that 50% of Canadian respondents said they trust Britain the most compared to 37% who picked the U.S. The Americans surveyed ranked Canada and Britain even.
And, as I've pointed out, Canada's major institutions, such as her parliament, system of governance and military, are based on the Mother Country's not America's inferior system.
Americans view Britain, not Canada, as closest ally: Survey | Canada | News | To
It means so "little" to Canada that the chances that Canada are to leave that brilliant organisation in the next 100 years is practically nil.
Britain didn't impress Americans into the Royal Navy. That's a myth, yet it's amazing how many Yanks believe that still today.
The British re-impressed British sailors back into the Royal Navy after they had deserted onto American ships.
Also, the British didn't stop re-impressing British sailors, who had deserted onto American ships, after the Treaty of Ghent was signed. They stopped doing it long before it was signed. The Treaty of Ghent also failed to secure official British acknowledgment of American maritime rights, so that's another area in which the Americans lost.
No, it didn't. America wanted to expand and to seize British territory.
It returned to the status quo on at least one matter: the fact that Canada remained British, not becoming American.
No, it bloody didn't. America was the aggressor in the conflict.
We tried to stop you annexing BRITISH territory.
Considering that China is the largest foreign holder of US Treasury bills, bonds and notes and buys US debt to support the dollar, I'd say that the US is a toady of the Chinese.
Canada's 'Mother Nation' would be one of the many First Nations that allowed European settlers to walk the soil.
That said, the Brits would not qualify as the first in that arena, probably the French or possibly the Norwegians (Vikings) prior to that.
Britain is Canada's Mother Nation. Without the British Empire, there'd be no Canada. And you can come back and object to that all you like. It doesn't make it any less true.
Roots of Canada here:
Kanata - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sorry Blackie, you Brits were late to the party... As per usual, you were beat-out by the French
Kanata - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sorry Blackie, you Brits were late to the party... As per usual, you were beat-out by the French
Blackster,
I reiterate all of my points and stand by them. The presidency of Barack Obama has seen a dramatic decline in American opinion of Britain. The special relationship has truly died during the Obama years.
I reiterate all of my points and stand by them. The presidency of Barack Obama has seen a dramatic decline in American opinion of Britain. The special relationship has truly died during the Obama years.
So the brits needed Americans to win their biggest naval battle ever for them.
Lovely.
Too bad that the Brits didn't shanghai any American naval personnel to Captain and operate the HMS Hood.
Maybe this wouldn't have happened
One
..Single
... Solitary
.... Shot
Britain is Canada's Mother Nation. Without the British Empire, there would be no Canada.
As for the French - it isn't the French system of governance that Canada has. It has the British Westminster system of governance. Canada doesn't have Hollande as its Head of State. It has Elizabeth II. Canada's military model is based on Britain's, not France's. Canada follows English Common Law, in which felons are innocent until proven guilty, not France's brutal Napoleonic Law, in which fellows are guilty until proven innocent. 60% of Canadians speak English, compared to just 23% who speak French. Half of all Canadians are of British descent, whereas just 16% are of Froggy descent. Canada got its independence from Britain, not France, and today is a member of the Commonwealth rather than the Francophonie. Canada used to have the Union Jack, not the French flag nor that of any other nation, on its flag (it's just a tragedy they got rid of it. They should have kept acknowledging and thanking the Mother Country for creating Canada).
Canada is a product of the British Empire. The British Empire created the nation of Canada and had there been no British Empire there would be no Canada today. I have noticed that this seems to be a bit of an inconvenient truth for Canadians. It's something which they are in denial of and they don't like to acknowledge it. But that doesn't make it any less true. The same also applied to the US, Australia, New Zealand and other British-invented countries.
Do what you like, mate. You're still wrong.
Poll after poll shows that Yanks view Britain as their biggest ally (they certainly don't view Canada as their biggest ally, a country which refused to fight alongside them in Iraq).
A poll in 2009 also found that 89% of Yanks viewed the UK favourably and a poll in the same year showed that 70% of Britons viewed the US favourably.
Something which has never happened.
There were 18,000 or so men and boys in Nelson's fleet at Trafalgar.
Of those 18,000, around 1,260 were foreign and the rest were British. Of the 1,260 or so foreigners, just 22 were Yanks.
The French should end their love affair with Napoleon – he was an utterly brutal and callous dictator
Instead of going bananas about the Waterloo euro coin, France should celebrate Bonaparte's fall along with the rest of Europe
Napoleon: a brilliant, utterly brutal and callous military dictator Photo: CORBIS
By Dan Snow, British/Canadian TV historian, the son of BBC journalist Peter Snow, the nephew of Channel 4 news reporter Jon Snow and the great-great-grandson of David Lloyd George
14 Mar 2015
The Telegraph
The French are up in arms about this new euro coin
We’ve all been there. Every nation has skeletons. History is a sorry roll-call of atrocities, as genocidal young men gave free reign to their darkest urges. A king we style “the Lionheart”, whose proud statue stands next to Parliament, slaughtered thousands of Muslim hostages before the walls of Acre; centuries later millions of abducted Africans were crammed on to filth-covered orlop decks and put to work as slaves, by men who smile at us from Gainsboroughs.
Americans annihilated a race of people as they forged a vast empire, called it a nation and said it was destiny. Even our unimpeachable, tree-hugging brethren in the Nordic countries were once ironsided warriors whose dragonships penetrated Europe’s great rivers like poison moving through arteries. This year Germany is yet again being made to confront its gigantic historic crimes with another round of anniversaries, of the liberation of Auschwitz, and its final defeat.
Now France, too, is finding itself in the unwelcome position of confronting anniversaries in which it is cast as the aggressor. Two hundred years ago this month, the deposed Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte was rampaging north to Paris, intent on seizing back power. He had chosen to go out in a blaze of glory rather than risk death by a thousand ignominious slights in exile.
Better to die with sword in hand, he said grandly. Brave words, coming from one who knew that he would almost certainly not die of a sword thrust to the guts on a battlefield among a carpet of dead and wounded boys, his ears echoing with screams of agony and loss – a fate which now awaited thousands of others, condemned by his ambition.
In 1815, Europe agreed on little. The furious King of Prussia even challenged the lead Austrian negotiator at the Congress of Vienna, the post-war carve up of Europe, to a duel. Yet they were as one when it came to Bonaparte. Napoleon was an unacceptable threat to European stability. He embodied a terrifying mix of age-old French expansionism married to a fresh, visceral, liberal stirring that, combined, spelt the absolute destruction of ancien régimes. The Russians, Austrians, Prussians, Dutch, British, Spanish and many others combined to ensure that Europe would not be dragged back into the abyss of appalling violence that had scarred the previous decades.
They were successful. At the battle of Waterloo, a rapidly assembled allied army from the UK, Low Countries and several German principalities, under the command of the Duke of Wellington, fought a tenacious defence, buying time for the Prussian army to crash into Napoleon’s eastern flank.
Victory was total. Waterloo entered our lexicon as a reverse from which there is no possible salvation. Expensive, ponderous, jealousy-ridden, but effective. It is not surprising that Europe today seeks quietly to celebrate this achievement. An innocuous coin will be minted. The French have gone bananas. It is fascinating. They presumably think Angela Merkel should be forced to sit through unending interpretative dance on D-day beaches to atone for Germany’s aggression, but when Germany and others dream up a coin to mark the end of Napoleon, a man who occupied Berlin, looted Frederick the Great’s tomb, treated Germany as today a student treats their parents’ fridge, well, that is totalement inacceptable.
Many people, understandably, are sympathetic to anyone, even Napoleon, who threatened the continued domination of Europe by a caste of befeathered Emperors and Prince Bishops. However, as 1918 was to show, the violent removal of this anachronistic vestige did not lead to fully fledged Lockean liberal states springing like Athena from the forehead of Zeus.
It is true that Napoleon Bonaparte, as a politician, favoured the application of enlightenment principles in government, having little time for religion and other medieval practices. But he was also responsible for the deaths of millions of men, women and children across Europe and beyond. He was a military dictator. A brilliant, utterly brutal and callous one. He, alone in European history, conquered an empire that stretched from Portugal to Moscow. His cunning, speed, firepower, concentration of overwhelming force, charisma, energy and ability to inspire loyalty made him virtually unbeatable. However, the rapacious reality of his rule belied his lofty ideas. The financial costs of his conquests were imposed on the defeated. His men scoured the landscape for supplies, like locusts leaving famine in their wake. Cities were sacked, women raped, treasures looted. His siblings and cronies were installed on thrones in client kingdoms, and flowery hereditary titles were bestowed with abandon.
In battle he sacrificed men like a chess master does his pawns. He abandoned his own army in the depths of a Russian winter; in Egypt he bolted, leaving another entire army to rot. He counted not the cost. When he needed to he unleashed massive, bludgeoning attacks against enemy strongpoints, sending his loyal followers into the teeth of withering enemy fire while cynically boasting that his men “will fight long and hard for a bit of coloured ribbon”.
Napoleon, Caesar, Clive, perhaps even Churchill, are heroes for an age that is past. An age of empires and armies, of conquest and power. We can be awe-struck by their brilliance and the sheer scale of their ambition, but we should be grateful that we no longer live in a world which allows them to dominate and mobilise entire societies.
Napoleon was a brilliant commander, an able administrator, a man who bent to the arc of history with the heat of his desire. But also a man who made legions of widows, orphans and invalids as he pursued his version of destiny. What nation that bore the highest toll of casualties? You guessed it, France. The French should learn to marvel, but not admire. They should let us have our coin and perhaps even slip one into their own wallets.
• Read Dan Snow's five-star Telegraph review of 'Napoleon the Great' by Andrew Roberts
Dan and Peter Snow's 'The Battle of Waterloo Experience' is out on May 7
The French should end their love affair with Napoleon – he was an utterly brutal and callous dictator - Telegraph