French victories
- Thread starter tom
- Start date
Abdul Hadi Pasha
Banned
Hmm.
It's hard to even find an accurate assessment of Nicopolis since it had been so colored by centuries of nationalist rhetoric about the horrible tyannical Ottomans and their merciless oppression of the Christians. If 'merciless oppression' means lowering taxes by 80% and abolishing the corvee, then I guess it was.
The Ottoman losses were not that great; the French broke through the initial lines of light cavalry and light infantry, whose purpose is to wear down the enemy then back off. The Ottoman army was about the same size as the Crusader army, somewhere around 30,000 men, not 200,000 as the chronicles report, and Beyazid didn't massacre his captives because he was enraged at his losses, he massacred them because he was enraged that the Crusaders had massacred every Muslim they could get their hands on.
There is no reason why the Crusaders shouldn't have won; they had an equal-sized army, and more heavy cavalry, but once again, Ottoman organizational superiority and command unity won the day.
It's hard to even find an accurate assessment of Nicopolis since it had been so colored by centuries of nationalist rhetoric about the horrible tyannical Ottomans and their merciless oppression of the Christians. If 'merciless oppression' means lowering taxes by 80% and abolishing the corvee, then I guess it was.
The Ottoman losses were not that great; the French broke through the initial lines of light cavalry and light infantry, whose purpose is to wear down the enemy then back off. The Ottoman army was about the same size as the Crusader army, somewhere around 30,000 men, not 200,000 as the chronicles report, and Beyazid didn't massacre his captives because he was enraged at his losses, he massacred them because he was enraged that the Crusaders had massacred every Muslim they could get their hands on.
There is no reason why the Crusaders shouldn't have won; they had an equal-sized army, and more heavy cavalry, but once again, Ottoman organizational superiority and command unity won the day.
I wish I could remember the name ...
One of the more prominent French nobles who was taken prisoner at Nicopolis was later ransomed and was one of the senior French commanders at Agincourt. He apparently drew up a battle plan that was fairly good - had it had been followed, the French would almost certainly have had a better chance of winning. Instead, though, some of the French knights attacked prematurely, and the battle went out of the effective control of the senior French leaders and ended up with a series of uncoordinated attacks under a hail of English arrows.
One of the more prominent French nobles who was taken prisoner at Nicopolis was later ransomed and was one of the senior French commanders at Agincourt. He apparently drew up a battle plan that was fairly good - had it had been followed, the French would almost certainly have had a better chance of winning. Instead, though, some of the French knights attacked prematurely, and the battle went out of the effective control of the senior French leaders and ended up with a series of uncoordinated attacks under a hail of English arrows.
Speaking of French victories, let's not forget Charles Martel, either. Without him we'd probably all be speaking Arabic right now. 
Reading over this post, I could think of one way that a French victory in the Seven Years War could radically alter history: in the mid 1790s, a certain General Buonaparte is sent by the Directory to take command of the Army of Quebec...
Reading over this post, I could think of one way that a French victory in the Seven Years War could radically alter history: in the mid 1790s, a certain General Buonaparte is sent by the Directory to take command of the Army of Quebec...
What about the Philippe Kieffer's Free French Commandos at Sword Beach on D-Day performing just as well as any other Allied elite unit ? Or in Dec 1994 when a counter-terrorist GIGN team took out the hijackers on the AirFrance flight at Marseilles ? Of course, there's also the example of William the Bastard and how his Norman knights and archers narrowly won at Hastings in 1066, which meant tremendous Franco-Norman influence on English culture, language, politics, etc which is still influential today