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00:00This is Frederick the Great, King of Prussia.
00:04In the 1740s, he took the province of Silesia
00:07from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
00:10In 1757, Frederick defended his new territory.
00:15He marched his army 200 miles in 16 days
00:19to meet an Austrian invasion near the town of Leuton.
00:22Outnumbered two to one, Frederick used a tactic
00:29that became his hallmark.
00:31He marched his Prussians toward the Austrian front,
00:34then wheeled them to the right under cover of Lowell Hills.
00:38They reappeared suddenly to the left of the Austrian army,
00:42which was being hammered by Prussian artillery.
00:47The Austrians were crushed.
00:52All of Prussia celebrated the great victory.
01:03From the Sanssouci Palace near Berlin,
01:06Frederick ruled his growing kingdom.
01:09The army Frederick created was unmatched by any in Europe.
01:14Its secret was drill.
01:19Today, drill seems purely ceremonial.
01:23But on the 18th-century battlefield,
01:25they met the difference between life and death.
01:28Men who can march precisely in time
01:31and change direction and speed as one on the parade ground
01:35can do the same in battle.
01:38This is exactly what Frederick had his troops do at Leuton.
01:42They changed direction while hidden from the Austrians,
01:46then reappeared where least expect.
01:49The drill perfected by Frederick is still practiced
02:04by modern armies today.
02:05March!
02:06Go like that!
02:08Frederick's tactics at Leuton were a masterpiece
02:09of precise battlefield maneuver but they were achieved at a cost.
02:18The tactics of 18th-century gunpowder armies required men
02:22to perform drill in a very rigid and methodical way.
02:26In a sense, they had to be beaten into it.
02:29There's a famous phrase of Frederick's that the men must be
02:32more frightened of their officers than they are of the enemy.
02:35And I think Frederickian discipline was very severe indeed.
02:39He did literally flog his army.
02:42With his ruthlessly disciplined army,
02:52Frederick took on Austria, Sweden, Russia, and France.
03:04Prussian aggression gave Britain the opportunity
03:06to attack her arch-rival, France.
03:10She joined the war on Prussia's side.
03:14A conflict that began in Europe now spread worldwide.
03:20It would last seven long years.
03:24The Seven Years' War, 1756 to 63, is often described
03:28as the First World War.
03:29And it became one, I think, for two reasons.
03:31One was that the combatants, Britain and France particularly,
03:37had large enough fleets to project power to great distances.
03:41The sailing warship having become an enormously powerful instrument
03:46of strategic outreach.
03:51Around the globe, on land, but most often at sea,
03:54wherever the British and French found each other, they fought.
03:57The key weapon was the warship.
04:01Fire!
04:06Equipped with cannon, it was the single most costly, powerful,
04:09and advanced weapon system of its day.
04:12These were floating fortresses.
04:26A single warship carried as much firepower as an entire army.
04:30The sea battles raged off India, Africa, and the Americas.
04:47But it was a dangerous game for the French.
04:53In a single year, the British captured 6,000 French sailors
04:57ships were being sunk faster than France could build them.
05:03French ships were being sunk faster than France could build them.
05:11And they were expensive.
05:17In this long war of attrition, the ability to pay for new ships
05:21was almost as important as winning battles.
05:27Here, Britain had the advantage.
05:31As an island nation, she spent most of her defense budget on ships.
05:35And Britain was wealthy, the world's most successful trading
05:39nation.
05:43By the mid-18th century, the British Royal Navy
05:46had built 300 vessels worth $2.5 billion at today's prices.
05:51The French, with a large and costly land army to support,
05:54couldn't compete in shipbuilding.
06:04And the more ships Britain made, the more powerful she became,
06:08protecting her trading interests, fighting off rivals,
06:11and claiming more colonies.
06:13This created yet greater wealth.
06:15British sea power in the 18th century
06:18was a partnership between government and business.
06:22The Bank of England was founded in 1694
06:24to fund a commercial war against the Dutch.
06:29In the Seven Years' War, France could not match Britain's ability
06:33to raise loans for the arms race.
06:34The British Navy won victory after victory over the French.
06:49By the end of the Seven Years' War,
06:51Britain had overwhelmed the French Navy.
06:54France had lost her most valuable colonies in Africa, India,
06:58and the Caribbean.
07:01The global war that Prussia started left Britain ruling the world.
07:04The British Navy was a great war of waves
07:06and poised to build an empire that
07:07would cover a quarter of the globe.
07:11The greatest prize for Britain was North America.
07:15In a series of victories spearheaded by the Royal Navy,
07:19the British advanced through the St. Lawrence Seaway
07:21into the Great Lakes and down the Hudson River.
07:28By the end of the war, Britain had replaced France
07:30as the dominant power in North America.
07:34Only 20 years later, Britain would face an enemy in North America
07:39that would challenge her global supremacy.
07:43This enemy would be inspired by revolutionary ideas
07:47and led by a soldier who fought for Britain in the Seven Years' War.
07:52His name was George Washington.
08:12In the mid-18th century, the British Army and Navy were invincible.
08:16Then, in 1775, in the colonies of North America,
08:23they met a new kind of enemy.
08:26What's distinctive and, I think, unprecedented about the American
08:31War of Independence is that the army of the rebels against King George III
08:35fought for an idea.
08:36They had taken a decision that they were badly ruled
08:39and that they were entitled to rule themselves,
08:42and that was the principal reason for which they were fighting.
08:47The military key to America was the Northeast.
08:51And the key to the Northeast was the Hudson River,
08:54which linked the British colony of New York by Lake Champlain
08:58to the St. Lawrence Seaway and Canada in the North.
09:01In a mountainous region that was densely forested
09:07and inhabited by Indians, the Hudson River
09:10was America's first military highway.
09:19The British Army in America was a conventional 18th century force
09:23of brutally disciplined professional soldiers.
09:26They were supplemented by highly-drilled foreign troops,
09:36Hessians, who came from Germany and had fought for the British
09:42in the Seven Years' War.
09:47One of them, Johann Konrad Derle, kept the diary
09:50throughout the Revolutionary War.
09:52The English keep their clothing very clean
09:55and had only the vices of cussing, swearing, drinking,
09:59whoring, and stealing, and these more so
10:02than almost all other people.
10:05Such was the reputation of the British.
10:11The American rebel army had no reputation at all.
10:16America had never even had an army.
10:19Very early on, the colonists recognized
10:24that it was essential to cut the Hudson line,
10:27which meant that the British would not be able to use the Hudson
10:31as their main channel of communication
10:33between their Canadian base and their zone of operations
10:36in the rebel area.
10:40The colonists' first organized attack
10:42was against Fort Ticonderoga on the Hudson River,
10:45south of Lake Champlain.
10:47It was a bold and successful assault led
10:59by the maverick commander, Benedict Arnold.
11:03It gave the colonists control of the Hudson River, America's
11:07military highway.
11:10A month after the victory at Ticonderoga,
11:12a new general took control of the rebel army,
11:15George Washington.
11:19Washington was a rarity in the rebel army
11:21because they had real military experience,
11:24having fought for the British in the Seven Years' War.
11:28The troops Washington commanded had no experience of war.
11:32At the Battle of Long Island in August 1776,
11:36they fled from a 20,000-strong British army.
11:40Washington was the last man to quit the battlefield.
11:44But it wasn't in the Americans' nature to give up,
11:47and they were driven by a powerful reason to fight, liberty.
11:52A month before their defeat at Long Island,
11:54the rebels had made a revolutionary proclamation,
11:58the Declaration of Independence.
12:01They demanded the right to determine their own future
12:04without interference from Britain.
12:06What began as a dispute over taxes was now a fight
12:10for an ideal that every American soldier was ready to die for.
12:15The rebels lacked military training,
12:17but they were highly motivated.
12:20Their lack of sophistication combined with their passion
12:23led to a particular style of warfare.
12:28Enemy patrols appeared, which approached our outposts
12:31through the bushes, fired upon them, and ran away again,
12:35discontinued every day, and some days more than once.
12:38From this, one can easily understand
12:40the difference between such a war and a war in Europe.
12:47The Americans couldn't compete with the British
12:49in a stand-and-fight, set-piece battle.
12:54But they could use the guerrilla tactics of hit-and-run.
12:58The British would never dare,
12:59because they feared their poorly paid troops
13:02would just run away.
13:09In America, something new in the history of war
13:11and civilization was born, an army motivated
13:15by a political ideal.
13:17This shared loyalty gave its apparent disorder a lethal edge.
13:21The Americans, unfettered by military convention,
13:27were highly mobile.
13:28The British and Hessians, who fought in close order formation,
13:32made easy targets.
13:36Their slowness is of the greatest disadvantage
13:39in a country almost covered by woods,
13:41and against an enemy whose chief qualification
13:43is running from fence to fence, and then skipping up
13:45in a regular but galling fire on troops who advance
13:49with the same paces at their exercise.
13:51The new American tactics were not just effective on land.
14:01In the autumn of 1776, Benedict Arnold built eight fighting
14:06ships in just six weeks, and commandeered five more.
14:12His 13 ships took on Britain's Royal Navy on Lake Champlain,
14:17in defense of Fort Ticonderoga to the south.
14:20Arnold used guerrilla tactics on water.
14:23He hid his ships behind Valkour Island
14:26and waited for the British to sail past.
14:29When they saw the Americans, they had to turn back into the wind.
14:32Arnold's 86 naval guns pounded them.
14:42Arnold's 86 naval guns pounded them.
14:47Eventually, the British won.
14:51Arnold sank his ships to prevent their capture and retreated.
14:55But Fort Ticonderoga was safe until the spring.
15:02Under Washington's leadership, the Americans grew
15:04into a disciplined force capable of fighting pitched battles.
15:08In July 1777, the British recaptured Fort Ticonderoga.
15:21This led to a pair of battles at Saratoga, a small town in New York
15:34State, halfway between New York City and Montreal.
15:36New York City and Montreal.
16:06They squared off in September and again in October.
16:25They squared off in September, and again in October.
16:41The ratio gates led 20,000 Americans to victory over 5,000
16:46British.
16:52For the British, it was humiliation.
16:55For the rebels, Saratoga was the turning point of the war.
17:00With Britain on the run, France recognized American independence.
17:04Then, she declared war on Britain.
17:08What started as a small war of independence against a colonial power
17:12turned into a war-owned conflict.
17:16Spain and Holland now declared war on Britain.
17:20The Americans took full advantage.
17:23Revolutionary fervor motivated Americans to victory over Britain and created a new nation.
17:32Napoleon would combine revolutionary fervor and military genius to conquer old nations.
17:41Our men stood amazingly well. Not even one showed a disposition to shrink.
17:51Our orders were not to fire until the enemy came within 50 yards of us.
17:56But when they perceived we stood their fire so coolly and resolutely, they declined coming any nearer, though trouble our number.
18:03Our men fought with more than Roman valor.
18:07In the American Revolutionary war, a new factor entered the history of warfare.
18:14It gave these American soldiers the courage to fight off the world's most powerful nation, Britain, even though outnumbered three to one.
18:24The new factor was political.
18:27These soldiers were committed to the cause of liberty and the right to determine their nation's future.
18:33The revolution was a cause worth dying for.
18:39Not since the triumphant armies of Islam a thousand years before had the world witnessed the battle-winning potential of an army willing to die for an ideal.
18:51In 18th century America, the religious ideal that motivated Muhammad's followers was replaced by a political ideal, revolution.
19:04In the 20th century, political ideals continued to inspire men to victory against the odds.
19:10Marxism and nationalism inspired the Viet Cong to hold out against the world's greatest power, America.
19:20The Nazis' perverted ideals of racial supremacy and fatherland inspired Hitler's German armies to take on the combined might of Europe, Russia, and America, and almost win.
19:34But when there is no great idea or cause to motivate men to fight, other factors encourage them to risk their lives.
19:43I think it's possible to see three factors which keep groups of men together in the extremes of combat.
19:51When everything says that they should give up and run away.
19:56When they're possessed by extreme fear, risk to their lives.
20:02One is coercion, simply people making them fight, superiors making them fight.
20:13Another is inducements, commonly in the past.
20:18The reason to go on fighting was that if you won, there'd be loot of some form or other.
20:25Everything from women to gold.
20:28And finally, there's anaesthesia or narcosis.
20:33It's common for men to dose themselves with drink or drugs in order to palliate their fear.
20:40And that seems to have been a pattern from as early as we have records to the present day.
20:46I mean, the Greeks certainly drank wine before going into battle.
20:50And there seems to be considerable evidence that American soldiers in Vietnam took drugs because they were frightened.
20:59But all the same, there is something beyond inducement, narcosis, coercion, which I call the X-factor.
21:08Something happens to groups of men when they band together to face danger together.
21:14When you spend long periods of time with the same two or three guys inside an armored vehicle, you become very close.
21:22There aren't too many secrets you keep from one another.
21:24There is a bond between those soldiers.
21:28And when something goes awry, you're not only concerned with yourself, but you're concerned with everybody on that vehicle.
21:35Even in the best organized campaigns, things go wrong.
21:42In war, soldiers die, often next to their closest comrades.
21:50You go through the grieving process just like anybody else does, except you have a lot of other things going on or it's going to happen again.
21:57So you've got to get through that grieving process, understand the grieving process, get through it, help everybody around you get through it,
22:04and then move on and keep plugging away at getting that mission accomplished.
22:09But you've got to understand that you are going to grieve just as if you lost a family member.
22:16Men are much more willing to fight hard and to fight well if they know they'll be cared for if wounded or sick.
22:23The Greeks and Romans developed basic military medical care.
22:29In today's armies, it's a high priority.
22:33The Allied soldiers who fought in the Gulf War knew that if they were wounded, help was at hand.
22:38I would say of the Gulf War, every soldier knew that if he or she got injured that they would receive immediate treatment and what I call primary care surgery if necessary within six hours of being injured.
22:56It played on the mind and thought, yeah, I'm part of a good organization, we can do it.
23:02So yeah, I think it had an effect on morale without a shadow of a doubt.
23:07But medical care is part of the civilized face of war.
23:13Even today, primitive forces sometimes motivate soldiers to fight.
23:17Roger that. Right turn.
23:19Coming right, coming right.
23:20A mixture of adrenaline and testosterone, the sheer exhilaration of combat.
23:26Three, two, one, to the impact.
23:31Oh, yes!
23:33It's true that the exhilaration of combat is often described, that people feel a sense of power and release when they're able to use their weapons, when they can see the effect of their fire on the enemy.
23:47When they're gripped by the intense activity and emotion of combat.
23:57But although it's an undoubted phenomenon, I do have to say that the records suggest that it's transient and associated particularly with the first experience of combat.
24:12Before people learn how dangerous it is, before they learn fear.
24:22Exhilaration may encourage soldiers into battle.
24:25But more tangible benefits keep men in armies over the long term.
24:30Retirement benefits attract the career soldier.
24:34You're looking at the most handsome man in the hospital.
24:42These inducements or benefits aren't new.
24:45The greatest ancient army, Rome's, gave soldiers land in return for a lifetime's work.
24:59Ten, ten, ten, ten, ten, ten, ten, ten, ten.
25:06Today armies offer a place to live, three meals a day, and the companionship of old comrades.
25:12Beyond the material benefits an army might offer its veterans, there's another intangible factor which for centuries has inspired men to fight.
25:30The notion of honor.
25:32The men of the portal are dead.
25:33The hearts are standing at attention.
25:34While we wait for the passing trade.
25:35The sons of today we salute you.
25:36The sons of an earlier day.
25:37We follow the close order behind you.
25:38Where you have pointed the way.
25:39It is strange that we talk about honor in warfare.
25:53But it's omnipresent, I think.
26:00It has existed from early times.
26:03It's been observed from early times and is observed today.
26:07A well-armed, distinguished man of war doesn't want to use his weapons against some contemptible, badly armed groundlings.
26:16He wants to fight people like himself because that's what makes him admired both on his own side and curacy on the other side as well.
26:25And he seeks admiration by the enemy almost as much as he does by his own side.
26:30And say from very, very early, from the earliest records of warfare almost, you find accounts of what we would call honor.
26:38You have respect for them because they're soldiers just like you.
26:43You don't dwell on the fact that you're taking human life, but it's part of your mission.
26:49You have to move on with it.
26:51And when given the opportunity, you treat them with dignity if they surrender.
26:56And treat them just as if you'd want to be treated if you were in their shoes.
27:00But of all the factors that go to create a battle-winning army, honor, discipline, comradeship, rewards, exhilaration,
27:12the greatest is the power of an ideal to motivate men.
27:17The revolutionary ideals of the American colonists won them a great victory against the British.
27:23A decade later, an ideal would again inspire an army, the greatest revolutionary army the world had seen,
27:31the Republican army of France.
27:42Paris, 1789.
27:46A mob of angry, hungry Parisians storms the royal prison, the Bastille.
27:52The first act of violence in a revolution that will sweep away a thousand years of rule by kings.
28:01Like the American Revolution before it, the French Revolution would have a radical effect on war and civilization.
28:11The American's goal was simple, to throw out the British and govern themselves.
28:24The French Revolution sought to change an old society from top to bottom.
28:30Liberty, equality, and fraternity.
28:46In the name of these high ideals, thousands of French aristocrats met their deaths at the hand of the mob or the blade of the guillotine.
28:55As the revolution changed the face of France, it changed the face of the French army.
29:04In 1789, 85% of army officers were aristocrats.
29:10Five years later, the guillotine and exile had reduced that to 3%.
29:18With powerful enemies outside France, the new republic needed an army and needed it quickly.
29:25In 1791, the republic trained 100,000 volunteer citizens and turned them into an army.
29:35In 1792, yet more volunteers joined up.
29:39But still, the republic needed more men as it found itself fighting Prussia, Austria, and Holland.
29:50For the first time in history, every able-bodied man was called to fight for his country.
29:56The French Revolutionary government called an entire nation to arms.
30:01Young men will go to battle. Married men will forge arms and transport supplies.
30:10Women will make tents, uniforms, and serve in hospitals.
30:15Children will pick bags.
30:18Old men will have themselves carried to public squares to inspire the courage of the warriors
30:24and to preach the hatred of kings and the unity of the republic.
30:31By the summer of 1794, one million men from every social class,
30:36from every occupation, from every part of France,
30:40had joined the army of the French Revolution.
30:43It was the largest European army ever assembled.
30:47To inspire this vast army with revolutionary fervor,
30:54the government distributed millions of copies of official bulletins,
30:58radical newspapers, and patriotic songs.
31:13Not only was the revolution to be protected within France,
31:16it was to be exported.
31:19People everywhere would be freed from the yoke of monarchy and aristocracy.
31:25The French soldiers who fought across Europe, from Spain to Moscow,
31:29thought of themselves as liberators, not conquerors.
31:33The idea, begun by the French in the 1790s, would reach its full potential
31:47in the vast armies and universal conscription of World War I.
31:52In France, men willingly served in the army because the state made them citizens.
32:07By World War I, this idea was universally accepted,
32:11and every able-bodied male citizen was called to arms.
32:15The French army was now based firmly on the notion of equality.
32:33Soldiers could rise through the ranks by talent rather than class.
32:38This meant the very best soldiers became officers,
32:45and gave the French army a huge advantage over opponents
32:48who considered aristocratic birth the main qualification.
32:55The most talented of them was a young Corsican artillery officer,
32:58Napoleon Bonaparte.
33:08His success on the battlefield was phenomenal.
33:13In 1804, at the age of 35, he proclaimed himself Emperor of France.
33:19Napoleon had a Roman relentlessness and ruthlessness.
33:29He was, in a way, a reincarnation of Rome a thousand years or more
33:34after the Empire had died.
33:36He benefited from the transformation of France into a war-making state
33:42immediately after the Revolution.
33:44The Revolution turned France into a war-making state.
33:51In Napoleon, the post-revolutionary army found a military genius to develop it further.
33:57Though Napoleon's army was no longer a revolutionary force,
34:01it was still an army of Frenchmen, sons of their nation and inspired by their leader.
34:07Napoleon continued to promote the best men, regardless of birth.
34:11Of his 26 most senior officers, one was a bandsman before 1789.
34:18Four were sergeants, and three were privates.
34:21One of these, Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte, ended his career as King of Sweden.
34:30Radical new officers created radical new ways of running an army.
34:34In 1792, the Revolutionary Army had created the First Combat Division,
34:40a miniature army of a few thousand men.
34:44It combined infantry, cavalry, and artillery,
34:47and could operate independently or with other divisions.
34:53The divisional system continues to this day in the U.S. Army and Marines.
35:01Napoleon perfected the system.
35:03He subdivided his army into individual corps, each with his own commander and responsibility for supplying itself.
35:12This is how Napoleon was able to move huge armies quickly.
35:16A Jean-Pierre Blaise, a corps officer, made a lightning march from the north coast of France,
35:22east across Europe, to Vienna, and Austerlitz in 1805.
35:29We were ordered to leave all unnecessary possessions at the depot,
35:33so we would be burdened with as little as possible.
35:36The rapidity of our march did not permit food supplies to follow us,
35:39but we were able to do without bread because we were in the midst of the best season for potatoes in the country where they are very good.
35:45How many times did we ruin the villagers' hopes? We stole the product of a year's work.
35:55The speed and foraging skills of Jean-Pierre and his comrades allowed Napoleon to march 500 miles in five weeks,
36:04the quickest march since the days of Genghis Khan.
36:07Arriving in the east with unexpected speed, Napoleon took the Austrians and the Russians by surprise,
36:16capturing Vienna and Austerlitz.
36:19From the end of 1805, Napoleon Bonaparte was master of the European mainland.
36:27But he wasn't master of the sea.
36:29His opponent was the British Admiral Horatio Nelson.
36:32Like Napoleon, Nelson was a man whose daring and skill won him rapid promotion through the ranks.
36:40Throughout 1805, Nelson chased the French fleet,
36:44finally bringing them to battle on October 21st near Cape Trafalgar.
36:51Nelson ignored the tradition of drawing alongside enemy ships to exchange broadsides.
36:56He invented a new tactic, the melee, giving his captains free reign to get in among the French ships.
37:04In the mayhem that followed, superior seamen ships secured victory.
37:13In the mayhem that followed, superior seamen ships secured victory.
37:25But Nelson himself was killed, shot by a French sniper at the moment of his greatest triumph.
37:38Napoleon continued to be master on land until he decided to invade Russia.
37:46The Russian campaign of 1812 ended in disaster when winter set in.
37:56Napoleon's army suffered 300,000 casualties.
38:01Most froze or starved to death.
38:05But Napoleon Bonaparte would not be finished off easily.
38:09He already had fought more battles and won more victories than Alexander the Great,
38:13Hannibal and Julius Caesar combined.
38:20He would be back.
38:28March 1815.
38:31Napoleon Bonaparte returned from exile on the tiny Mediterranean island of Elba,
38:37determined once more to be master of Europe.
38:40Only Britain and her allies, Prussia and Austria, could stop him.
38:47The battle would take place here at Waterloo in modern Belgium.
38:53Waterloo was a huge battle involving 190,000 men.
39:00Yet the battlefield itself was tiny, only a mile square.
39:04At each end were fortified farmhouses.
39:09On one side, La Haysan.
39:15On the other, Oogamont.
39:18Both would prove crucial in the battle.
39:21The two armies were exhausted.
39:24For days there had been vicious skirmishing.
39:25They'd had very little sleep the night before, and perhaps not the night before that either.
39:32They both marched quite a long distance.
39:36The night of June the 17th, 18th was awful, pouring rain.
39:42And they'd all got up wet, because they'd slept in the open.
39:44For the French, the presence of Napoleon was the best cure for aching limbs, and the greatest inspiration to fight.
39:55Napoleon was anxious to start the battle.
39:58He knew that Britain's 50,000 Prussian allies had not arrived.
40:02Without them, the two armies were equally matched at about 70,000 men each.
40:09But Napoleon was waiting for a heavy overnight rain to drain from the battlefield to give his horses a better chance.
40:20The cracked French cavalry, the cuirassiers, exercised their horses knowing that their role could be decisive.
40:26The British commander, the Duke of Wellington, was waiting too.
40:34He wanted Napoleon to make the first move.
40:39Just before 11 in the morning, French infantry began to form their lines.
40:45The French artillerymen primed their guns.
40:49Napoleon was ready.
40:51Two hundred and forty-six French cannons started the bombardment.
41:14But Wellington had made his men light up.
41:16Most of the French cannonballs went over the top.
41:20Unfortunately, in some places, there wasn't cover.
41:24One British battalion in particular, the 287s, were exposed to artillery fire for an hour or more.
41:33And when they marched away at the end, they left behind them a square of their own dead and wounded.
41:39At the same time, fighting began for the buildings at either end of the battlefield.
41:44One of these was Oogamont, a fortified farmhouse held by the British.
41:50The French came forward to try and break into Oogamont and so crumble the right-hand end of Wellington's line,
41:58which would have desperately weakened his position.
42:00So, a terrible, bitter little battle took place actually inside Oogamont, intensely hand-to-hand.
42:11The French actually broke down the great farmyard door.
42:16A giant of a Frenchman known to history as l'enfonceur, the man who broke in, actually got through.
42:21But the British managed to close the door behind him.
42:25They then raced around the courtyard, chasing the French, chasing them upstairs into attics.
42:32They were pinned into small confined spaces and skewered to death.
42:36They killed every single French soldier who got into the courtyard, except there was a little drummer boy whose life was spared.
42:50When Napoleon thought his artillery had softened up Wellington's line sufficiently, he sent in his cavalry.
43:05They charged into the valley and up the little slope toward the crest where the British were standing.
43:12Wellington then made his men stand up.
43:15And, of course, they formed square.
43:17That's to say, there was a front, two sides and a back to each of the battalion formations.
43:23This was the way infantry were trained to stand when they were charged by cavalry.
43:32They were also trained not to shoot until the cavalry were within killing range.
43:38And that meant only 50 yards, perhaps.
43:41A terrible test of the nerves of the soldiers as they saw this mass of horses bearing down on them.
44:01One officer described the sound of musket balls striking the breastplates of French cavalry as like hailstones.
44:08They were beating on glass.
44:10Fire!
44:18Fire!
44:22These were disciplined soldiers, and they did hold their fire.
44:25And once they held their fire, it was the cavalry who was gathered, not the infantry.
44:29Because horses will not ride into mass musketry fire.
44:33They went right onto buildings.
44:35So the cavalry fanned out, went round the sides of the squares, passed out into the back area of the allied line, and then reformed and galloped back again.
44:45Fire!
44:46This was the pattern of the battle during the afternoon.
44:57Some of the British squares were charged 12 times, fired 12 times, and survived 12 times.
45:05None of the British squares was broken by cavalry on the day of Waterloo.
45:11Napoleon saw his artillery and cavalry assaults hadn't worked.
45:15It was time to send in his elite infantry, the Imperial Guard.
45:18This was the decisive moment of the battle.
45:22Wellington galloped to the point, stood behind his troops, waiting, waiting.
45:27Suddenly, judge the moment when the French would be in range.
45:32The officers took the range, gave the order. A huge blast of musketry crashed out.
45:39Fire!
45:41Fire!
45:43Fire!
45:45Fire!
45:47Fire!
45:49Fire!
45:51Fire!
45:53Fire!
45:55Fire!
45:56Fire!
45:57Fire!
45:58Fire!
45:59Fire!
46:00Fire!
46:01Fire!
46:02Fire!
46:03Fire!
46:04Fire!
46:05Fire!
46:06Fire!
46:07Fire!
46:08Fire!
46:09Fire!
46:10Fire!
46:11Fire!
46:12Fire!
46:13Fire!
46:14Fire!
46:15Fire!
46:16Fire!
46:17Fire!
46:18Fire!
46:19Fire!
46:20Fire!
46:21Fire!
46:22Fire!
46:23Fire!
46:24Fire!
46:25Fire!
46:26Fire!
46:27Fire!
46:28Fire!
46:29Fire!
46:30Fire!
46:31Fire!
46:32Standing was crucial to the rhythm and dynamics of a gunpowder battle.
46:39And so the British infantry began to move forward, to follow them,
46:45to fire volleys into the retreating enemy.
46:49Wellington followed them on his horse,
46:52riding across the indescribable carnage of the battlefield,
46:56where men and horses lay dead in thousands,
46:5910,000 dead horses on the battlefield,
47:0240,000 dead and wounded men.
47:07There was a night of unimaginable, unspeakable suffering
47:12when the battlefield was loud with the cries of dying and wounded men and animals.
47:29They'd been looting.
47:32People had crept out onto the battlefield to strip the dead of their possessions
47:39and certainly in some cases to kill the wounded who protested at being looted.
47:45That took place.
47:47The work of rescue itself certainly didn't begin until daylight
47:51and then had to go on for two and three days.
47:54Some of the wounded of Waterloo were not brought to first aid
47:59until the third day after the battle.
48:03And, of course, a vast number of the wounded had died of shock and of thirst.
48:09So many of the thousands of dead of Waterloo died after the battle, not during the battle.
48:17Four days after the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte abdicated as emperor of France.
48:30The military genius, who for two decades had stunned and terrified Europe,
48:35spent his last years in exile on the island of St. Helena.
48:40Napoleon had perfected the gunpowder army just as the next revolution,
48:45the Industrial Revolution, would change war and civilization forever.
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