19th century nationalism hits different. The Prussians also copied the French cuirassier’s sword after the Napoleonic Wars and used it in the Franco-Prussian War against Napoleon III.
by Oversama
19th century nationalism hits different. The Prussians also copied the French cuirassier’s sword after the Napoleonic Wars and used it in the Franco-Prussian War against Napoleon III.
by Oversama
11 Comments
Europe spent an entire century fighting Napoleon only to end up looking exactly like him.
Prussia: Hey France can I copy your homework
France: Sure just make it look different
Prussia: Sure thing.
The Prussians did more than copy the Cuirassier sword. They also stole tens of thousands of them after Waterloo.
They were also given 1796 Light Cavalry Sabres by the British, which were later modied into the 1811 Blucher sabre, with the main difference being some mass got shaved off the blade.
If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. If you do beat ‘em, just take their drip.
Everyone copied the Polish lancers. They were some of the finest cavalry in the world, it would be a wonder if they weren’t copied. They were on a tier matched only by the Marathas, Cossacks, and a handful of other India cavalry groups.
Which is why Britain then used all of them as cavalry but the Cossacks until WW1
Pretty sure the Prussians also ‘borrowed’/stole what became the pickelhaube from the Russian Empire and managed to deploy it before the Russians themselves. It also went on to influence and inspire various British helmets from the Household Cavalry to modern police helmets.
Also the grenadier guards stealing their hats (almost literally) from the old guard
To be fair, everyone was whole-hog copying Napoleon’s Polish lancers.
Drip transcends national boundaries.
>!Also maybe people just copy what’s effective, much like how jerry cans and Stahlhelm shape seemed to be just that good.!<
Britain didn’t need nationalism after the Napoleonic Wars, simply because they won and their monarchy was intact. Germany on the other hand had just lost the HRE, now Austria was an Empire, but that also gave the need to define an Austrian identity. Same with the new German states. The whole identity crisis arose because their previous identity vanished. This also created a certain need for authors like the Grimms, who repopularised a national mythology. This was later copied elsewhere like in Finland with the Kalevala. England in particular didn’t need such a new national mythology, as the mythology of the monarchy had that role.
The French copy nobody and everybody copy the French.