Wellington’s frank presentation of facts to staff (June 17, 1815) –> slide 3
- Taken Quatre Bras
- Prussians lost at Ligny
- So, we’re buggered if we stay at Quatre Bras
- I guess it’s Waterloo then.
Wellington gives restrained and proper speech before the battle (June 18, 1815) –> slide 2
- I say, let’s give Bonny a good thrashing
- Pip, pip, and so on.
Wellington encourages generals –> slide 4
- Certainly, Napoleon is worth 40,000 extra troops
- Have no clear idea where Blucher and the bloody Prussians are
- On the other hand, I don’t know what effect our troops will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me.
Uxbridge reports to Wellington on how the heavy cavalry charge went –> slide 6
- The Household Brigade smashed through cuirassiers
- Destroyed Aulard’s Brigade
- Uh, then they kept going…
- So, Union Brigade bashed Bourgeois’s brigade
- Um, then they kept going …
Uxbridge reports to Wellington on how the heavy cavalry charge went –> slide 7
- And then Napoleon counter-attacked
- So, the upshot is, we’re out of heavy cavalry.
Blucher presents “now vat you say?” –> slide 2
- So here ve are, you poxy Frenchman
- Ya, here on your right flank
- Now who is crapping their lederhosen?
Napoleon presents “bugger” –> slide 6
- Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in
- Also applies to running away
- Perhaps I start again in America.
More Bonny Fun:
Napoleon Headsquisher
The Lost PowerPoints (Napoleonic Edition)
The Battle of Waterloo, June 18, 1815 [wiki]
[…] Fake History: No book delighted me more last year than John (of The Daily Show and “I’m a PC” fame) Hodgman’s Areas of My Expertise, a delirious almanac of untrue history that reads like the dreams you might have if you fell asleep reading a history textbook. The book is wonderfully absurd (I’ve already excerpted some of my favorite parts) but the flights of fancy spin off from real historical trivia and often reward historical knowledge. In context, some of the funniest parts of Expertise are the true facts stuck in amongst the madness. Other people are tilling these fields as well: George Pendle, the author of Strange Angel, a breezy but real biography of American rocket pioneer turned occultist Jack Parsons, has followed up with a totally made-up biography of forgettable president Millard Fillmore. Pendle also appears in a mock documentary called That Was History as a bow-tied talking head discussing 19th-century anti-clown legislation. Closer to (my) home, Mark Rayner’s The Skwib often features pseudohistorical comedy that demands considerable background knowledge (for instance, his series of Lost Powerpoint Slides), and through Mark, I seem to have fallen in with something known as The Emily Chesley Reading Circle, about which the less said the better. Some explorations of the form are more Borgesian art projects than jokes: witness the everexpanding history of Kymaerica, the World Without Oil, or the wonderful Boilerplate, the 19th-century robot that fooled comedian Chris Elliot. […]