Hanging with History

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Last episode Talleyrand barely escapes France ahead of a death sentence.  Then the British decide he might be a spy, well he might have been an excellent spy, though we know he was not a spy. He went to America, George Washington refuses to see him, but Alexander Hamilton welcomes him. By the end Talleyrand has decided to play the danger...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. It is somewhat preposterous for an origins of the industrial revolution podcast to feature so much a French diplomat.  That would be true if Talleyrand were merely a French diplomat, rather than a bridge between the old world and the birth of the modern.  A man who nearly embodies the shift from the sacral to the instrumental, a man who...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. This is a deep dive into the problems of 1814 (being terror and bitterness) and the solution: Legitimacy, Huge, vast problems gripped Europe in 1814.  Usurpations all over Italy, chaos and foreign occupation in Germany, Thrones without occupants, deserters roaming France.   Solutions are needed, but can a continent dominated by fear find...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The Convention of Plesswitz ends and war begins again August 11.  The focus is on driving Napoleon out of Germany and then the action turns to Scandinavia, to include Danish Holstein, with most of the focus on Norway. Napoleon's desperate attempts to defend Saxony end at the biggest battle in European history to that time. Allied wa...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Of the large political entities in Europe in 1813 the Austrian empire was one of the oddest, from a modern perspective and possibly the most vulnerable. It was really the personal realm of the house of Habsburg.  I’ve talked a lot about it in the past assuming a great deal of background knowledge on the part of the listener, so let’s fil...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Trying to recover from defeat in 1812, Napoleon had enormous obstacles to overcome.  But these were NOT obvious at the time, surprisingly to us, most of the great and the good expected Napoleon to win in 1813. Tsar Alexander had some very unusual motivations for a major head of state in the Europe of the time.  These motivations, includi...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We examine the question: "Who won the bloody war anyway?" The Canadians won, the Native Americans lost, the British won, the Americans lost and most of all, far more importantly, the Americans won the war overwhelmingly.  The apparent contradiction here is resolved. The great clashed happen in the land war.  The elite British l...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The war starts with America terribly unprepared.  British efforts to make peace suffer from a lack of focus; Casltereagh is just not applying much brainpower and effort to the American sitution. Almost no navy.  A tiny regular army like 11,000 men, terribly officered.  No real tax funding for the government to speak of.  Deliberately, th...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The first episode of a mini arc on the War of 1812.  This covers origins and how the British got unto a war they had no interest in.  The Americans had a variety of motives.  The surface reasons usually discussed in popular history and podcasts seem a little crazy, not fitting in with te reality of the early 19th century very well.  But...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. 1812 in Iberia was heavily conditioned by the Napoleon's invasion of Russia. 1812 was a major transition year for the war in Iberia.  Wellington defeated Marmont's Army of Portugal in the course of an afternoon and drove King Jospeh out of Madrid.  The French were able to recover thanks to superior manpower.  However, in order...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The world turns on this 1812 campaign and its outcome.  We explore more issues, and turning points from the previous episode, some new and some expanding of previous issues.

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Napoleon never intended to invade as far as Moscow.  It was just supposed to be the 2nd Polish campaign.  But Napoleon's hammer blows kept missing. Napoleon's blend of insightful planning and terrible planning for the invasion led to the temptation to do what the Empereur knew was wrong.  Just go a little deeper. There were at...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The 1810 and 1811 campaigns in Iberia were defined by an absence- Napoleon’s absence.  Napoleon had won the battle of Wagram in July of 1809.  This was at once a decisive defeat of the Austrian army, and the biggest land battle in European history up to that point. Obviously, the flow of men was out of Spain, into Germany during 1809.  B...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We cover resistance to the French invasion of Catalonia in 1808.  What can a lone frigate do?  And then the battle of the Basque Roads (in Western France near Roquefort) where very unorthodox fireship tactics were used, French loses were high, but it could have been an annihilation victory except for…well, are we looking at the very wors...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The Austrian pro war party is emboldened by the French defeat at Bailen.  By April 1809 Archduke Charles is leading the newly reformed Austrian army into Bavaria. Napoleon has made a brilliant response, quite unexpectedly.  Davout's 3rd Corps and his German allies show they can still defeat the Austrians. But during the course of th...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Talleyrand represents a strand of the ancient regime, the old nobility that thrives and leads, right through the monstrosity and glory of Empire and the Reaction that follows.  Goethe is the literary Talleyrand, the carefully controlled spark of Romanticism, that could be said to spring into flame when Germany is born. Talleyrand's...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. We cover Napoleon's sneaky invasion of Spain, its preamble and Napoleon's motivations.  This is followed by a look at Wellington's invasion of Portugal and the battles of Rolica and Vimeiro, which lead to the French surrender of Portugal via the Convention of Cintra. The Spanish royal family is an arguement against traditi...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. This covers the 1807 Campaign in Poland and the eventual Treaty of Tilsit.  This is the true apex of Napoleon's glory and possibly the happiest time of his life. Also covers Junot's 1807 Campaign in Portugal.  This is notable for many reasons including the fact that Portugal did not resist, such was the power of Napoleon's...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. After Austerlitz Napoleon keeps the Grand Armee together in Central Germany. This allows him to rip up the map of Germany and redraw it to suit himself.  But this attitude towards Germany leads to a number of steps including dangling Hanover in front of Charles Fox and the Johan Palm incident, which drive the Prussians to declare war, de...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. 1805, Ulm and Austerlitz and the events that lead up to the War of the 3rd Coalition.  These are events that reveal genius in action. This means the Pichegru and Moreau plot.  The subsequent murder, or sorry, completely legal execution of the young prince of the house of Bourbon-Conde.  "It is worse than a crime, it is a blunder.&qu...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. Wellington, Jarlsberg, battle of the Wooden Shoes, Norge.  Such excitement. The Danish Navy is simply too large in the world of 1807 to simply sit there, stored up in ordinary in København's harbor. And the Danish merchant fleet, providing a carry trade to the world, cannot be left outside of Napoleon's economic warfare with Br...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The 2nd of the 3 episodes on Copenhagen.   This covers Nelson's attack on Copenhagen and the Danish defense.  The controversies about the battle are all explored in depth, the death of Tsar Paul, who was involved and who knew what when.  The signaling fiasco between Admiral Parker and Nelson, and Nelson's decision to reach a ce...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. First episode of a 3-episode arc on the British attacks on Copenhagen. This covers Danish history and Copenhagen history through the long 18th century.  Conflict with Sweden, intervention and peace making by Britain.   the long neutrality, Denmark as a Russian client state.  "The League of Armed Neutrality will save us!" The Pa...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. The defense of England is reviewed in terms of manpower, construction and engineering and advanced technology. We start off with the empirical philosophy of Smith and Hume, look at the WWI level of mobilization Britain was able to achieve, a level of mobilization 3-4 times that of France.  This was the real Levee En Masse.   We get some...

You can send a text, include contact info to get a response. One of the most important things that ever happened was this thing that never happened.  And that of course was Napoleon's invasion of Britain. French preparations for the invasion ad numerous consequences, one of which was the training and creation of the Grand Armee.  The weapon Napoleon used to dominate Europe from 1805-1807 was...