Napolean's Defeat Had Less to Do With Napoleon Than Once Thought!

A More Complex View of History:

In the past, it has been man’s tendency to blame people for events. They were not planned well enough, the troops were not led bravely enough, the troops were out-numbered, out-smarted; whatever. More often than not, the failings or skills of leaders were bandied about in elaborate discussions in the cultivated dining rooms and drinking houses of the so-called civilized western world.

But this view of things is gradually starting to change.

It began to change more or less with the advancement of several new theories that postulated that great events may have been affected by other conditions beyond man’s ability to change such as the cause and effect of natural patterns in nature. For example, recently, it has been postulated that the Fall of Ancient Rome may have been due to natural causes than any personal failures on the part of the Romans. Another theory on the loss of Greenland by the Danish was due less to their physical prowess and intelligence, than the fact that weather conditions was the cause that led to the defeat of the colony and the disappearance of the settlers.

Now, another event takes center stage and tends to put the blame for the great general Napolean’s defeat in Russia not on Napoleon but on nature.

In any case, in Napolean’s War, discussion led scientists to dig up the remains of 35 of his soldiers and subject those remains to scientific analysis. What they discovered is truly awesome. It turned out that lice remains that dated back to the scene of battle were detected as having carried the bacterial that causes trench fever. “Dental tissue was tested; seven were found to have trench fever bacteria, and three that the bacteria that caused typhus…”

It turned out that 1/3 of the bodies discovered in the mass graves were killed by lice-borne diseases. In effect, the soldiers that Bonaparte positioned against the Russians at Borodino and other great battles were in fact very, very sick and they had trench fever and typhus at the time thereby affecting the outcome of these battles that were regarded as having changed the face of Europe in the 1800’s….

In the near term, this may produce an entire rewriting of history. And who might wish to speculate on where the blame may be placed. For example, might we expect Michael Brown to blame the convergence of the planets on his failure of performance or might it have been due to bacteria yet to be discovered. Time will tell!

Les Aaron