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Incompetence That Shaped History

Khalid Elhassan March 9, 2020 33 min

Nineteenth century Washington Metropolitan Police Force officers. Washington Metropolitan Police

38. Entrusting the Fate of an Army to a Corporal

The Battle of Leipzig, by Vladimir Ivanovich Moshkov, 1815. Wikimedia

Napoleon planned to use part of his army to hold off the enemy with street-to-street fighting in Leipzig, while the rest of the army and its heavy equipment crossed the town’s only bridge. According to a precise timetable, once the last of Napoleon’s men had crossed, the bridge would be blown up. The plan and the orderly retreat went without a hitch, until things suddenly went haywire early in the afternoon of October 19^th, 1813.

Napoleon had entrusted the task of blowing up the bridge to General Dulauloy. Dulauloy delegated it to Colonel Montfort. Montfort was not completely clear about the timetable, so he headed to Napoleon’s headquarters, seeking clarification. While away, he left Corporal Lafontaine in charge of the bridge’s explosives. Lafontaine knew even less than his Colonel about the retreat timetable. When he heard distant gunfire, he panicked.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.