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More Rhyming History
Mar. 8th, 2022 01:02 pmThere's a saying that history doesn't repeat itself but it rhymes. I've made some predictions based on that, in a series of posts the rest of this century, where I say the 21st rhymes with the 19th century. Here's another such rhyme - Napoleon III and Putin.
Napoleon III was the nephew of the more famous Napoleon Bonaparte. His real first name was Charles, but he used an outsized ego and his family history to become Emperor of France on a platform of "make France great again." (No apologies to any recent politician.) As part of that plan, in 1862 he embarked on the Second French intervention in Mexico.
The details of how and why said intervention came to be aren't important, although I found a fascinating bit of history on the Duke of Moctezuma de Tultengo, a descendent of the last Aztec emperor who is a current Spanish noble, while researching this. The basic thrust of the Intervention was for Napoleon and the Mexican nobility to install an emperor to rule Mexico and cooperate with France. There was a long war, in which France and the Imperials won some battles but never scored a knockout blow. France, bloodied and broke, withdrew, then got their asses kicked in the Franco-Prussian War.
If you assume Putin, a former KGB agent, is playing the Napoleon III role, the parallels with the current situation are obvious. It's also looking like a repeat of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan - wars in which a conventional force may take territory but get bled to death.
Napoleon III was the nephew of the more famous Napoleon Bonaparte. His real first name was Charles, but he used an outsized ego and his family history to become Emperor of France on a platform of "make France great again." (No apologies to any recent politician.) As part of that plan, in 1862 he embarked on the Second French intervention in Mexico.
The details of how and why said intervention came to be aren't important, although I found a fascinating bit of history on the Duke of Moctezuma de Tultengo, a descendent of the last Aztec emperor who is a current Spanish noble, while researching this. The basic thrust of the Intervention was for Napoleon and the Mexican nobility to install an emperor to rule Mexico and cooperate with France. There was a long war, in which France and the Imperials won some battles but never scored a knockout blow. France, bloodied and broke, withdrew, then got their asses kicked in the Franco-Prussian War.
If you assume Putin, a former KGB agent, is playing the Napoleon III role, the parallels with the current situation are obvious. It's also looking like a repeat of the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan - wars in which a conventional force may take territory but get bled to death.
