Soult was a traitor!

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sbeckett
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Soult was a traitor!

Post by sbeckett »

So I just released a book, details can be found at www.waterloobetrayed.com, where I accuse Soult of being a traitor in 1815.

I am blogging each day of the campaign, both at my site, and on Napoleon Series forum, so the evidence can be seen there, but here is a brief overview of his major acts:

- Orders to Gérard on June 5th did not match Napleon's intent
- Rewrote final concentration orders of June 10th, which besides for being very harmful to the advance, enabled Bourmont/staff to carry out their betrayal on the 14th. (Don't believe the sources that say everything happened on June 15th at 5:30am, that is based on Hulot's report, and it is not substantiated by the witnesses, but was pushed heavily by Charras and other republicans who wanted to give Napoleon no excuses)
- Deceived Napoleon of state of left Column/Wing on both June 15th and June 16.
- The orders he authored for the Grouchy recall were wrong, and he may have played a role on making sure the recall orders on June 17th were not received.

My book has a lot more than the above - over 100 pieces of correspondence in the original French, and translated into English, as well as long passages of Lettow-Vorbeck translated into English for the first time. When you see the full story, you'll soon realize that the only conspiracy theory that exists is the conventional history.

Here the one about the orderly to Vandamme breaking his leg? Really... any evidence? The source didn't even trust it... and the guy whose name in the extrait du Registre du Major-Général who carried the order to Vandamme, Faviers... he got two lance wounds to the neck at Waterloo according to his service records. Wow, on a shattered thigh? Now it is highly possible that it wasn't he who carried the order... but its also highly possible the story is BS.

And take that super famous quote, Waterloo as easy as Breakfast! Most repeated quote from the campaign... and you guessed it, crap. Again, source for that wouldn't even use it in his own book! And half the quote is found in other sources... but not the breakfast part!

Yes, it is amazing that one of, if not the, most written about Campaigns in history can still be dominated by such poor analysis, but it is true... and the reason for this is because you can count on 1 hand how many books have studied the "brilliant" French concentration - it was actually a disaster that caused the invasion to be delayed a full day from June 14th to June 15th.

I've been in email conversations with Norb, and I'll be bringing out a scenario for SoW-Waterloo in the upcoming months that offers the situation of what could have been had Napoleon had a loyal Major-Général: starting on June 14th, Prussians don't get their 12 hour head start, etc. I've done this using board games and maps, and I don't see how the Allies save Brussels.
Last edited by Little Powell on Fri Jun 12, 2015 4:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Little Powell
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Re: Soult was a traitor!

Post by Little Powell »

Sounds fascinating, thanks for posting.

BTW - I fixed your link incase your wondering why your topic shows edited by me.. :)
sbeckett
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Re: Soult was a traitor!

Post by sbeckett »

Thanks - and it says you are a map/scenario lead... so I may have lots of questions for you soon!
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