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Okay, thank you. I’ll be more specific as well: by writing home I mean reporting back to their commanding officers

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Is it true that French soldiers were expected to write home during battle in perfect calligraphy if they wanted a promotion? lol sorry it’s random, and I liked this article. Felt like this is the place to ask

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I've never heard this, and it sounds implausible. But implausible and impossible are different things entirely. If I learn anything different, I'll post it here.

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Also happened after the conclusion of the religious wars a century before. Pirating became a reasonable profession in the early 1700's

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History echoed the Horrible Peace after the end of the Napoleonic war in the post war period that lasted beyond 1945 until well into the 50s as the war-weary Britts continued with food rationing as they dealt with their grey, hungry world pock-marked with huge holes made by the Luftwaffe. The country was beyond broke into crushing debt. Emigration was possible for the few, but emigrants could not take their savings with them. A generation of war and post-war babies grew up poorly nourished and severely depressed by the prospect of a grim future shackled by a class structure unchanged -- if anything exacerbated -- by six years of war.

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Thanks for this review. It is an interesting era and a fascinating subject. You might want to take a look at my biography “Bonaparte & Brimstone” which followed a naval lieutenant through that same quandary. The war had made sense to him as he furthered his career, but being stuck on half pay in the years which followed was an unhappy time. My subject took command of merchant vessels from the 1820s, but the abrupt end of his years in active service and the sense of ‘unfinished business’ weighed heavily throughout his life. I dived deep into one person, but would have loved to have read this book. Best wishes, Simon Brown

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