200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo
Today marks the 200th anniversary of the defeat of the Emperor Napoleon by the Duke of Wellington in the bloody Battle of Waterloo. I did a blog posting a couple of weeks ago in which I explained that we would be hearing more about this conflict and today the “Mirror newspaper has a short, but informative, article by historian and former television presenter Peter Snow.
Meanwhile, on BBC2 television, we are two-thirds of the way through a three-part series on Napoleon written and presented by the Right-wing historian Andrew Roberts. He is presenting a very revisionist view of the Frenchman as a noble and progressive leader.
Certainly Napoleon was a brilliant military commander and introduced long-lasting legal and administrative reforms to France, but he was a despot and a megalomanic.