The English Are Coming!!!!!

[turin08]

Well at least me anyway. I haven't been back to America since I lived there, so like four years. My Granparents have just moved from Eugene Oregon to Washington DC and me and my family are coming over to visit them for a week next weekend. I'm really excited as, even though I lived in the USA for nearly five years and have visited many times I've never been to Washington before. It's going to be so cool.

[AgentDrake]

Well, welcome (back), my good sir!

DC's pretty cool. Been there twice myself.

[SomeRandomDude]

Meet up with Dain and play LotR. He lives in Maryland, which is small enough to drive across in an hour.

[Gate Troll]

Meet up with Dain and play LotR. He lives in Maryland, which is small enough to drive across in an hour.

I live two counties down from Dain, but I wouldn't be able to play.

[turin08]

Hi everyone. Just got back from my trip to the USA and I had a great time. We flew to New York where we spent three days and then went to Washington to my Grandparents house for the next five. We went to see all the sites in Washington (we've been to NY before and so didn't feel like visiting all the sites again). I especially liked the Lincoln Memorial. Washington is very cool because its quite different from the other American cities I have been to in that its a lot closer to the great capitals of Europe than other US cities because it has the old monuments and magnificent old buildings. I only wish I'd been there in a couple of weeks as it would have been really cool to be there during the election but this was the only week my dad could get off.

[SomeRandomDude]

Yeah, America in general is FAR more contemporary than Europe. For one, we don't have as much history and tradition behind us as you guys. Only a couple centuries, while London's been around a couple millenia.

I think the reason DC shares similarities is because it was burned to the ground. Cities that have been burned to the ground seem to have a lot of history and monuments. Okay, I'm kidding,bBut yeah, DC is kinda the icon of American patriotism. While everything else is focused on capitalism and commerce, like, say, NYC, DC has been all about law, justice, country, etc. So its a logical place to iconize our heritage, which is probably why it has more monuments than any other city.

[turin08]

I believe that was our handiwork wasn't it. Do many people in America know about the war of 1812? Cos next to no-one here has ever heard of it. Most likely due to that rather embarassing defeat at New Orleans. And of course because its kind of overshadowed by the huge Empire clash that was the Napoleonic wars happening at the same time.

[TheJord]

When I lived in Canada, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE loved mentioning the war of 1812 to the Americans I lived with. The funniest part of it is that it was British troops doing the fighting from a part of the British Empire, so how these Canadians took pleasure in stating facts from that particular war was highly amusing to me.

[SomeRandomDude]

I believe that was our handiwork wasn't it. Do many people in America know about the war of 1812? Cos next to no-one here has ever heard of it. Most likely due to that rather embarassing defeat at New Orleans. And of course because its kind of overshadowed by the huge Empire clash that was the Napoleonic wars happening at the same time.

When you lose to the yanks, you try to forget it. And you did lose, quite frequently. In fact, you have a 100% defeat record with us in actual wars.

No, the war of 1812 is covered. The XYZ Affair (quasi-war with France) and, surprisingly, the Barbary Wars (war with Morocco and other North African pirate states) are the least known. The XYZ affair was small and insignificant enough, but the Barbary Wars (contributing the line "the shores of Tripoli" to the marine anthem, and the first significant war after the Revolution, as the XYZ affair was not significant), as well as the first action of the LEGENDARY USS Constitution.

Must not be politically correct to talk about our founding presidents' calls to destroy the infidel.

[turin08]

Yeah well you see we won against Napoleon so we choose to remember that instead. And of course the war of 1812 was only ever a little thing on the side. If we hadn't had the huge distraction of Napoleon and had been able to commit our full resources we could have crushed you quite easily. So its a good thing we didn't as I think it has been much better for the world to have a free independent America than a British colonial America. Although it would be really interesting to see how History might have gone differently had the war of Independence never happened or had happened but been lost by the Americans.

[Gate Troll]

I saw an 1812 reenactment a month ago. Normally we go to the Jefferson Patterson park in Calvert County Maryland every September for a small reenactment with about 50 local reenactors. This year however there was a massive reenactment called the Grand Tactical. It occurs every several years at different locations and this year Jefferson Patterson park was picked as the site. There were 700+ reenactors and two ships, the Maryland Dove and the Kalmar Nickel. I have pictures somewhere. I'll try to upload a few sometime.

[SomeRandomDude]

Yeah well you see we won against Napoleon so we choose to remember that instead. And of course the war of 1812 was only ever a little thing on the side. If we hadn't had the huge distraction of Napoleon and had been able to commit our full resources we could have crushed you quite easily. So its a good thing we didn't as I think it has been much better for the world to have a free independent America than a British colonial America. Although it would be really interesting to see how History might have gone differently had the war of Independence never happened or had happened but been lost by the Americans.

I was under the impression that the war with Napoleon had finished, and you WERE able to commit your full resources after that, but still lost.

No matter. Last time you committed your full resources, this happened.

Although it would be really interesting to see how History might have gone differently had the war of Independence never happened or had happened but been lost by the Americans.

It woulda just happened later. Though perhaps we may have been spare the French Revolution. The British Empire imploded less than a century later, and America would have been independent then. But perhaps Britain's anti-slavery policies would have been in full swing in America and we would have been spared our Civil War.

[turin08]

Yeah well you see we won against Napoleon so we choose to remember that instead. And of course the war of 1812 was only ever a little thing on the side. If we hadn't had the huge distraction of Napoleon and had been able to commit our full resources we could have crushed you quite easily. So its a good thing we didn't as I think it has been much better for the world to have a free independent America than a British colonial America. Although it would be really interesting to see how History might have gone differently had the war of Independence never happened or had happened but been lost by the Americans.

I was under the impression that the war with Napoleon had finished, and you WERE able to commit your full resources after that, but still lost.

No matter. Last time you committed your full resources, this happened.

Stupid French sticking their noses in where it didn't belong. Anyway 9,000 men was hardly our full forces, the battles of the Napoleonic wars were between armies of hundreds of thousands. The war with Napoleon didn't end until after Waterloo in 1815 and the war of 1812 happened at the same time as one of the bloodiest chapters of the Napoleonic wars, The Peninsular War which was basically Napoleons conquest of Spain and invasion of Portugal followed by the British, Spanish and Portugese resistance. It's where the Duke of Wellington made his name. 

[SomeRandomDude]

Well...what goes around comes around, I guess. The French bailed us out at Yorktown, and we've been bailing them out ever since.

[turin08]

Very true.