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Quatre Bras
While looking for something else (number of horses Marshal Ney lost at the Battle of Quartre Bras, still unknown), I noticed something interesting about Ney's conduct of that battle -- a battle I'm sad to say I've read very little about, because the other three battles have always seemed more interesting to me. What's interesting is that he used horse artillery very well. This is surprising because, at Waterloo, it's like he completely forgot such a thing existed. Now I'm wondering if the French lost Waterloo at Quatre Bras when their horse artillery was expended.As I've written before, at this time horse artillery was the most elite unit in the armies of the day. They combined the increased knowledge and training (and intelligence) needed to operate artillery in general, with the boldness of cavalry, and required a very large number of well trained horses to pull the guns around the battlefield at the speed of cavalry. They were like a combination of today's Delta Force "operators" and the crews that operate the Little Birds that often carry them into the fight.
So what horse artillery did the French have at Quatre Bras?
2nd Bty, 4th Horse Arty (four 6 lb., two 6" how.)
3rd Bty, 2nd Horse Arty (four 6 lb., two 5.5" how.)
And at Waterloo?
Old Guard Horse Artillery - 399 men, 4 batteries, 24 pieces + 73 men, 1 battery, 6 pieces
So, yes. The only French horse artillery at Waterloo were not under Ney's command. Here's a key quote, "[French] Horse artillery was scarce to boot. Most of it had been ordered to reinforce the massed battery by General Lallemand, commander of the Old Guard foot batteries." -Source
So Quatre Bras was a classic Pyric Victory for the French. They won but at a cost so high that they were at a disadvantage a few days later at Waterloo. It could also be argued that Lallemand bore some responsibility for wasting his horse artillery, but you could also blame Napoleon for not committing his Guard earlier. Or you could blame Napoleon, or maybe Soult, for not detaching the Old Guard horse artillery so that Ney could have used it.
All that being said, I still keep to my previous idea that it was in fact the mutual hatred of Napoleon's Marshals that was the undoing of the French in this campaign. But at least now I can take back what I've said about Ney's failure to employ horse artillery during the battle, he apparently didn't have any under his command to employ.
Trump
I avoided as much of the inauguration as I could today -- and I never assume politicians mean what they say -- but if Trump really means any of what he said today about jobs he's going to have to toss David Ricardo onto the ash heap of history. I would put up with a good deal to get that outcome. And who but a "populist" (nominal) Republican could achieve such a thing? He could be like Nixon with China... though maybe in reverse as it comes to China.
Also, given our foreign policy over the past 16 years, a little "America First," and let the rest of the world sort itself out, may not be the worst idea. It's hard to see how he could do any worse than George W. Bush. Maybe he can even get the Navy to reduce the number of carriers they think they need.
In either of these cases, I'll believe it when I see it.
Absalom
p303 ...It was Shreve speaking, though... it might have been either of them and was in a sense both: both thinking as one... the two of them creating between them, out of the rag-tag and bob-ends of old tales and talking, people who perhaps had never existed at all anywhere, who, shadows, were shadows not of flesh and blood which had lived and died but shadows in turn of what were... shades too...So, just as this is not just a novel about a family in Jefferson or just a novel about Race -- or even Race and Class in the South -- you also have to add that it is a novel about the creation of fiction. Like the beginning and end of that Alain Tanner film -- where the camera begins by passing through the film crew to the actors and the action, and then at the end pulls back out so we again see the film crew -- here the author gives us characters spinning the tale he is telling out of thin air... alternatingly ice cold and then hot and humid. There is no illusion that he is telling a "true" story, except in so far as "truth" is what we, like Devi, dream up.
Which means, now I think about it, that the story they are creating is also their story. This cooperative fiction should be telling us something about them. Of course to get that I would have to read more of the novels that feature them as characters. It's either cunning or cruel to force me to read more novels to confirm my suspicions here.
p308 Still Shreve, now talking about the octaroon, "...Men seem to have to marry some day, sooner or later. And this is one whom I know, who makes me no trouble. And with the ceremony, that bother, already done. And as for a little matter like a spot of negro blood --" [sic, I think " should be '] not needing to talk much, say much either, not needing to say I seem to have been born into this world with so few fathers that I have too many brothers to outrage and shame while alive and hence too many descendants to bequeath my little portion of hurt and harm to, dead; not that, just 'a little spot of negro blood --'...."
So this is, I believe, the first hint we have of the "little spot of negro blood." To join the boys in their plotting, I do find it surprising that the mother, given the circumstances of her being set aside, would allow her son this alliance. And does this presume that the lawyer didn't know about the other "spot of negro blood?" Did the lawyer-client relationship extend to winking at something like that in the Old South, I wonder. So we have Bon in a relationship just a shade darker (see what I did there?) than Sutpen's but handling it just a little differently, not setting aside the octaroon but rather the institution of marriage as it came to her. Had the marriage with Judith have come to pass, would the octaroon have taken it better than Bon's mother? This treatment would seem to be if anything a little worse. Unless you were Mormon. Also, isn't it interesting that we are never even given a name for "the octaroon?" She seems to be treated shabbily by everyone. I would love to read a feminist examination of male-female relationships in this novel. The juxtaposition of "Penelope" and Milly in that crucial scene is no accident. For Sutpen marriage has more to do with animal husbandry than anything else.
And I can imagine Charles Swann reading about Bon's possession of the octaroon with considerable interest. Not just a marriage contract but a chattel contract as well. Then he would really be assured of always getting a good cup of tea. Though the Russians wouldn't care for this, as the opportunity for laceration would be sadly reduced. Or so one would imagine.
Troy
Yesterday while rooting in my backpack for something, I discovered The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction, by Eric H. Cline. I can't recall who gave me this, probably someone in my book club. I started reading it today. It is, so far, a decent summary of what is currently known (as of 2013) about the various accounts of the Trojan War and about what historical facts might lie behind these tales. It's always concerning when Herodotus is mentioned as a source of information, but so far the author seems to be doing a decent job. Though I would have emphasized the use of this story in Attic Tragedy.It is a little odd, I admit, that I (with my interest in history in general and military history in particular) think the story of the House of Atreus is more interesting than the tale of the war that is at the heart of all their travails. And isn't that just a tiny bit like the situation I just described in Absalom? Take a sketchy account of a long ago war and spin it into gold by adding in betrayal and sacrifice and revenge and still more revenge.
There's a famous quote about how no one would have known of Hector's virtues if the Greeks had not come to plunder Ilium (even the Stoics wouldn't have made such an heartless claim); but I would say a tragic tapestry woven of the tales of Iphigenia, Cassandra, Clytemnestra, Electra, and the rest is almost worth the death and destruction described in the Cycle. Maybe it even justifies the slave economy that Attic tragedy was built on.
As much as I love The Odyssey (and especially that final ur-action scene at the end where Odysseus reclaims his kingdom with the assistance of Athena, I feel that The Odyssey is a pointless tangent that takes us away from the main story of what those wacky Atreus kids will do next.
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