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Blog post #4-What impact did Napoleon Bonaparte have in our world?

For this round of research, I focused my research on the bad influences of Napoleon. Napoleon’s victories had based on the 15 years of the endless suffering of the European people, although he was not the only reason that Europe was at war for 15 years straight, he was a crucial factor in how those wars started and how many people had died in the war. For example, in the famous battle of Waterloo, there were around 100 thousand casualties (about the seating capacity of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum). (1) And in Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, because of his pride and uncertainties, France had lost 300 thousand soldiers. And Russia had also suffered a great casualty of 200 thousand soldiers. (2) Many soldiers drowned in the frozen lakes, many soldiers died of frostbite, many soldiers died of starvation, and many soldiers died of artillery attacks. Many dead soldiers’ corpses were never to be found, buried deep in the lake, shattered around the wastelands, or resting under the never melting snow. The people who had suffered because of that war never deserved to live such a terrible life.  

Napoleon had mostly not committed any war crimes, but he did once abandon his soldiers in Russia and left for Paris all by himself, his soldiers mostly did not make it back to France to see their families ever again, he left France with an army of almost 600 thousand people (about half the population of Hawaii), and only 200 thousand made it back safely to France territories. 

 

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Waterloo 

(2) https://www.nationalgeographic.org/thisday/jun24/napoleon-invades-russia/#:~:text=The%20invasion%20lasted%20six%20months,70%2C000%20casualties%20in%20one%20day. 

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