Word: waterlooed
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...Police Michel Gonzales, was confident that no judge would uphold the defendant. In polite society, after all, one never even says merde outright but le mot de Cambronne, a reference to the same word used by a Napoleonic general when the British suggested that he surrender at Waterloo...
...general who was late. "Time is everything," Lord Nelson said. "Five minutes makes the difference between victory and defeat." The French were kind enough to prove his point a few years later. If the dilatory Marshal Ney had beaten Blucher's Prussians to position at Waterloo, the battle could have ended in a French victory, and Wellington might have taken Bonaparte's lease on the house at St. Helena. Similarly, if Confederate General J.E.B. Stuart had shown up at Gettysburg when he was supposed to, instead of galloping his cavalry hither and yon through the quiet backwoods...
...Duke of Wellington may have believed that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. Napoleon was sure that the French General Staff had failed him. Sergei Bondarchuk has another idea. Though the English and French exchanged considerable fire and shed small oceans of blood, they had very little to do with the outcome. The beau stratagem was performed by old General Blücher and his vindictive Prussians. They and they alone are responsible for the outcome in Waterloo, or, as its subtitle might read, History Revised for Anglophobes...
...Peace, Bondarchuk found himself at home with war and inept with peace. In Waterloo, he again directs less than he deploys. Psychological insight is conveyed by closeups of the stars' eyes, interminable crosscuts from the Duke of Wellington to Napoleon Bonaparte and fatuous "voiceover" soliloquies, like Napoleon's: "This Englishman has two qualities that I admire-caution, and above all courage...
...Waterloo is not without its educational value, though even that would have been enhanced by a clearer map than the one Wellington uses; the youthful student or amateur will at least learn the elementary strategies of the period and enjoy an eagle's view of the battle that changed Europe's life. As for the golden history and legend, they lie buried beneath this delayed replay of a primer on strategy...