Why We’d Be Better Off if Napoleon Never Lost at Waterloo
Hundreds of thousands of historians have pored over the questions of why he attacked when, where and how he attacked. Yet 200 years after the fact, a different question must be asked: Why was the Battle of Waterloo even fought? Was it really necessary to secure the peace and security of Europe?
.. Yet he said he would be remembered not for his military victories, but for his domestic reforms, especially the Code Napoleon, that brilliant distillation of 42 competing and often contradictory legal codes into a single, easily comprehensible body of French law.
.. But the French averted war with the United States over its inevitable expansion westward, and the 80 million francs they received allowed Napoleon to rebuild France, especially its army.
.. Napoleon started none of those wars, but he won all of them.
.. in 1812 he responded to France’s being cut out of Russian markets—in violation of the Tilsit terms—by invading Russia.