Taste The Tip Of My Sabre

 D'Artagnan wannabe.

So I was out doing my shoplifting shopping when I saw this DVD called Napoleon's war: 1812. Yeah yeah yeah I shouldn't be watching such things because of my PTSD but I thought, 'it's a Russian battle, no flasbacks to the old thin red line, I should be fine' also being a buff history buff I likes me knowledge.  

It was to honour the 200th anniversary of the battle of Borodino (lest we forget) except that anniversary would have been 4 years ago ... ah well.
Napoleon's forces against the Russians, the deadliest day of the Napoleonic Wars. 250,000 troops and 70,000 causalities .... this movie/documentary was bound to be EPIC!!!!!

Like Saving Ryan's Privates I was bound to see dazed soldiers holding their own limbs or shell shocked troops in fetal positions while the grape shot exploded all around them killing their comrades with horses falling to their deaths sending the riders flying .... who doesn't like seeing horses getting killed. 

Both sides were exhausted and the Russians withdrew from the field. Without a clear victory the French retreated from Moscow so the Russians claimed a victory though not really. As like Hitler the Russian winter wins their battles for them.

I settled doon with my new external DVD player as me laptop DVD died years ago from porn overdose.

Sure it was in subtitles but that was fine. What I got was something like Roman Polanski's camp slap stick vampire movie with The Three Musketeers and Robin Hood. A dodgy song turned up when the action started. Good sword fighting though not a drop of blood to be seen. The 250,000 men turned into a cast of about 30. Like the Sharpe TV show they no doubt switched hats to appear as the other side when needed as the uniforms looked strikingly all the same.

    
The three honourable Polish lancers with some young bloke that they decided could join them because he could fight like fuck ..... musket balls only hit our heroes when the plot needed it and one guy fought with 2 sabres because one is never enough. Can I hold my sword sideways like a gangsta?

They were all like Terence Hill, crappy actors that do tons of stunts. I wonder if these were stuntmen forced into acting as that is never good to watch. There was running across the the tops of horses and loads of nut crushing leaps onto saddles.
The battle of Borodino looked more like an unimportant skirmish with slo-mo explosions, you wouldn't have known that it was a major battle. 

There was a tavern scene with Friar Tuck  Porthos  totally goosing a serving wench, his fingers were right up in that crack as she unsuspectingly passed him by. Everyone laughed cos back then sexual harassment was enjoyable, unlike the PC werld of today. 

Being in a tavern also means a bar fight ... right? 

 You love it bitch!

The fat lancer used a leg of lamb as a weapon in between bites of it and when they fought near a wench they stopped to snog her and she was grateful because back then weemen weren't offended by inappropriate sexual behaviour and were all asking for it.   

 
No Shorty, I don't if it's yer birthday, we are not celebrating like it's yer birthday. I shall not drink while Justin Bieber is on the ye olde juke of earl box. Put Kayne West on so I can bust some moves. 

The evil bad guy double agent in the story had a midget bodyguard .... aye cos tiny people can really fight huh. I would have liked to have seen his back story evolved and see how he came to be the toady of the bad guy. 
Maybe his father was an evil henchman and so to seek his approval he became one too .... ach what a sad tale, seeking yer parents approval will never make you happy and parents are just cunts that can't be pleased.

 
Napoleon was in the movie a little but the plot became less and less about Borodino and about stopping Naploeon from taking the Russian Queen's crown and giving it to Marie Louise, Napoleon's second wife after he divorced Josephine. 
It was a very expensive crown but more importantly would not be good for morale if the French had it. Fuck the war, death and conquest, the crown is vitally important. 
 

 Napoleon sure dated out of his league. 

There was also a hot Polish lass with a comedy side kick hand maiden. She was hot at times and just odd the rest of the time, a fine love interest for D'Artagnan who was fairly odd looking himself. 

    

No one told the hot chick to not stare at the camera .... fine acting.  I must do a Google search to see if she has been in any pornos ..... don't tell me that you don't do the same thing.

Who the fuck are you, Florence Nightingale? she wasn't even born yet.  

D'Artagnan got wounded and was found by pure chance by the hot chick who knew how to stop wounds from becoming infected, ahead of her time going by how quickly he recovered. 

His was the only time a hero was hit by a bullet (really lead balls) and the only time I saw blood .... The story went like: You have a wounded enemy soldier in yer bed with whom you've fallen in love with even though you know nothing about him and oh no, yer French soldier fiancee is about to turn up and barge in demanding yer answer to his marriage proposal he made in a letter that you didn't read and you'll say yes by accident because you don't know what he asked .... awkward!  

Best to have a ball and pass off Caitlyn D'Artagnan as a woman ... he was strangely very comfortable with this by the way.

 

It all escalated very quickly with yet another chase and big fight scene and for some reason the evil bad guy decided to force the hot chick to marry him in a Robin prince of thieves moment. 

Is she like the only decent looking chick in the cuntry or something? I suppose there 'is' a war on for fucks sake.

The Foley artist on this film should have gotten an Oscar with the amount of swish swish clang clang there was with all the sword play, maybe they weren't white or something. 

  

A thing they don't mention about the battle of Borodino is the fight scene in the tower.

 

Which led to the famous battle of Borodino hot air balloon fight scene to rescue the hot chick and the crown.

You should always check that the villain is dead as sometimes they get killed then come back to life with a lit candle and light the fuses of the box of explosives you have in yer balloon causing you to jump from a great height into a pond.

So romantic!

As the three watch the couple snog in the pond after leaping from a balloon before it exploded they talk about their plans. Fatso has some serving wench rape in mind.

Oh you guys!

Star Wars moment. While I am surprised that movies like this are still getting made I am not surprised that Napoleon lost with men like this against him. If you want to learn about the battle of Borodino that the Russians didn't even win but think they did then don't watch this film.

A cold dejected Napoleon finds out that he only has vodka to drink as he makes his way back to France. The last scene of the movie has the lancers in pursuit of him. Damn I hope they make a sequel. Napoleon's war: 1812 .. 2, shit just got real. 

Happy Waterloo Day!

The Scots Greys were almost completely wiped out.

On a Sunday 18th June 1815 the battle of Waterloo took place in what is present day Belgium. I can remember it like yesterday but it wasn't yesterday as I always have chicken and chips on a Sunday and I certainly did not have chicken and chips yesterday. 

Napoleon and his French mostly veterans, faced of against the Duke of Wellington with his British, Irish, Prussian, Dutch .... loads of foreigners and many not very experienced. Both commanders were aged 46 .
It was a close run battle in which Wellington won the day by leading a daring bayonet charge and Napoleon ran away to Paris in typical French style.... though he was born on Corsica. Bred to be the perfect fleeing machine.  

Private Peter McMullen from Downpatrick of the 27th (Inniskilling) Regiment of Foot (the only Irish regiment in the battle) was wounded when a canon shot took off both his arms.

His heavily pregnant wife Elizabeth ran onto the battle field and dragged her husband to safety (probably giving him shit all the way) even though a musket shot fractured her leg. She gave birth to a daughter while still in hospital.

The (grand old) Duke of York, Frederick Augustus Hanover heard about this and visited them and agreed to become the child's godfather, the girl was named Frederica McMullen of Waterloo, she died months afterwards but still.
The 27th regiment were praised by Wellington for having saved his entire centre line in the battle.
 

 Lion's mound at Waterloo.

The dead lay on the battlefield for soldiers and scavengers to rummage through. Teeth were big business then as the rich were eating more sugar and rotting their teeth they needed new ones, these dentures were to be known as Waterloo teeth.

The British government didn't have the money to build monuments to the war dead so it dedicated a London bridge to them in 1817 and had a massive celebration parade. The Waterloo bridge became famous for suicides and prostitution and because of water damaged it was demolished and rebuilt getting finished in 1945 by a mostly female work force which got it the nickname The ladies bridge. 

In 1820 King William I of the Netherlands built a huge mound on the Waterloo battleground, Wellington said "They have altered my field of battle!". They were still finding bodies on the ground even then as not all made it to the mass graves. In the 1830's and 40's fertiliser companies raided the battlefield for bones to grind up and sell to the farmers as fertiliser. A Yorkshire newspaper ran a campaign to have this practice stopped in the 1860's.

The only complete skeleton found in 200 years was found under a car  park. Friederich Brandt a 23 year-old Hanoverian of the King’s German Legion of George III. He still had a musket ball lodged in his ribs. He was 5 foot 2 inches and had a slight curvature of the spine. He had 20 coins, French and German which were equivalent to a month's wage and had an iron spoon.

Both sides lost around 20,000 men each, many of those killed and forgotten about and used as fertilizer or for spare parts for the rich, some things never change for the common soldier.