The film Waterloo was on tonight. It was the story of how we managed to give Napoleon a well justified thrashing. Tomorrow we can watch Sharpe giving him another thrashing in Spain/Portugal.
We are all proud of the way we fought against him, and the ingenuity of our military. And lets not forget Nelson, who defeated Napoleon’s navy.
There is a good discussion in one episode of Sharpe about why Sharpe is fighting for the wrong side. Napoleon was fighting against a corrupt royalty. You can easily argue that he was on the side of right, and the British winning forces were on the side of wrong.
Historical perspective is interesting.
Recently a statue in Edinburgh has had a new plaque attached to denounce the person as somebody that delayed the end of slavery. He did. But others argue that his approach was necessary to gain the winning vote. In other words a strictly moral view of trying to make slavery illegal immediately would have led to a strong backlash that would, in the end, have extended slavery.
We can’t be sure about his intentions, because we can never really know what is inside a persons mind. But we can get an idea from his will that left an item to William Wilberforce, suggesting a connection.
It seems that we might be twisting history to match our current hobbyhorse.
But maybe not just history, maybe the present as well.