I'm currently reading Andrew Roberts Napoleon and he doesn't adequately answer this. St Petersburg was the capital and had Alexander. Why did Napoleon let the Russians bait him further and further towards Moscow with the lure of a decisive battle? Napoleon must have realisex the sheer size of his invasion force would slow him. He saw how bad Polish and Lithuanian roads were about 5 years earlier.

Roberts mentions that Napoleon read up on the Swedes failed invasion over a hundred years earlier and was concientious of how brutal Russian winters could be. He sat around in Moscow waiting for a reply to his peace offer to Alexander. Did Napoleon really think taking Moscow was adequate for peace? Did Napoleon understand the Prussians and Austrians surrendered because their armies were defeated and not their capitals taken?

I'm just curious. When his military career started he was a voracious consumer of information. So much so he accurately predicted the Austrians maneuvers in North Italy up to a month ahead of time Roberts cited. Did Napoleon just not have adequate sources on the logistical nightmare of invading Russia? He knew a scorched earth retreat was possible since Wellington did it retreating back to Lisbon. Did Napoleon think the Russians would give battle when they were outnumbered? Was Napoleon really unaware of the rate of attrition because his generals were lying as Roberts says.

I'm just looking for a different view of huge series of errors that led to the catastrophe of his empire. Was Napoleon guilty of the cliche explanation of megalomania? I mean he had an outlandish idea he could conquer the Middle East and threaten India when he was in Egypt. Sometimes Napoleon was just wrong as in this unfulfilled fantasy.

Thanks for any answers.

Did they exists in case Japan didn't surrender after dropping the nuclear bombs? If so how did they look like out? Thanks! ( I hope this one isn't hypothetical ...)

Hello,

My 11yrs old son is very into learning about World War 1 and World War 2. It's all he talks about! I'm trying to find books with pictures and not just writing. He has ASD and the pictures really help him understand it better. I was hoping people here would have some suggestions?

Thank you kindly!

Hi Everyone,

Recently I saw Goonies for the umpteenth time and I really liked the fiction of the pirate boss hiding his ship in a cave and then becoming entombed in it. It wouldn't be such a stretch to imagine SOME of that stuff going on. Keep in mind I'm not expecting any of the interesting stuff in the movie (boobie traps, a cave big enough to hold a square-rigger etc). I'm just talking about pirates in that area; the west coast and in particular the US west coast.

I've tried to chase this down before. In a prior attempt at researching this, I found a book called "The Unforgiving Coast" about shipwrecks in that area. But it's mostly about steamers and cargo ships that fetched up on the high ramparts and scary-ass cliffs in the area.

Does anyone know of any interesting WEST coast stories of pirates operating in the area? By definition around the word 'pirate', I'm sure there had to have been ship that were raided in the area - and in virtually any sea or ocean in the world for that matter. I'm just looking for Left Coast stories centered around private-practice pirates operating in the area, privateering in the area and other state-sponsored pirate action in the area.

Thank you in advance for reading this and for anything that comes to mind.

I was absolutely shocked by this scene and tried to search online for the truth. I've had a hard time finding much information about what exactly happened. Can someone enlighten me, please

Something I've never really understood is why, unlike Canada or South Africa which were colonized in large sections, America was divided into 13 small colonies?

Edit: I'm aware that Canada and the Caribbean islands were their own separate colonies. I'm asking about the 13 specific colonies that formed the United States later.

I recently became involved in a discussion/debate regarding whether or not George Washington is senior to John J. Pershing. To me, it seems clear that the resolution of Congress in 1976 (Public Law 94-479) expresses an intention that no one, past or present, ever outrank Washington. However, does this mean that his rank is superior to Pershing's, or merely equal (and, therefore, not techincally outranked)?

It seems to me that date of commission does not apply here.

It has always seemed to me that Australians have a lot of more "British" in their general culture than Americans, despite both being former colonies and despite both being nations of immigrants. Things like a general drinking culture, football, fashion, language...to me it seems that Australia is a very similar to Britain while America is just out on its own.

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Granted, they may not have figured it was a whole continent right off the bat. But someone must have gone there for untapped lumber and other resources.

Didn't they ever sail southward to see how far that "Island" went?

The problem of hunger existed for as long as humanity did, yet the refeeding syndrome (a potentially fatal condition occuring when a person starts eating after a period of starvation) has only been described after the second world war. Why did it take people so long to notice its existance and describe it?

I don’t think the Middle Ages were a particularly nice, but it always seems like the Middle Ages were a bit more tame compared to what came next based on a lot of stuff I’ve read.

I'm asking this because I'm creating a Jonathan swift style satire essay about political unrest and radicalism in which the "Modest Proposal" is to legalize hate crime to get rid of all of the politically unhappy people (since they will kill each other off). And since I'd like to use numbers for my satire, I'd like to know how much hate crime was in the U.S. in the years following the greatest time of civil unrest in our history per capita, and then scale that up for our current population, and double it since there's a second group creating unrest (Antifa). Thanks in advance :D

I'm wondering whether we have any insight as to whether this is environment-driven (and particularly curious regarding places where we have a long cultural record of the effects of popular culture, so the US and Britain, for example)

Did they know about the Romans that they conquered 400 years earlier?

Did they know that they originated from northern germany?

Did they know that they were pagan until the 7th century?

Did they know that the norse, who they fought for 200 years, were of the same group of people as them?

From what I can tell, most Classical authors use Lakedaimon where most modern writers use Sparta; modern translators often convert the former to the latter when rendering ancient texts, i.e.

ὦ ξεῖν', ἀγγέλλειν Λακεδαιμονίοις ὅτι τῇδε κείμεθα τοῖς κείνων ῥήμασι πειθόμενοι.

Go, tell the Spartans, stranger passing by/That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.

What gives? Did everyone just decide to switch to the easier spelling at some point?