Победы, которых могло не быть

“The horse went lame - the commander was killed, the cavalry was defeated, the army was fleeing. The enemy entered the city, not sparing prisoners, Because there was no nail in the forge,” - an old English poem translated by S. Ya. Marshak, familiar to all of us since childhood. Do you think this happens not only in poetry? However, if the French cavalrymen had two dozen ordinary nails to rivet English cannons, Napoleon would not have lost the Battle of Waterloo. History, especially military history, often mocks all objective factors and laws. The author of this book, a war correspondent for the BBC and CBS, has collected a whole collection of “victories that might not have happened.” So how did blind chance and stupidity change history?