Thermopylae...yes indeed. Not Marathon. Thanks much for all the corrections, Don, you are absolutely right. The reason I was plenty inaccurate on what I said was simply that I was tired at the time and didn't have the time to look it all up first and check the details when I mentioned that battle. I was in a hurry, in other words. Thanks for jogging my fading memory.

Bert - You mistake my meaning. French armies were defeated by Wellington many times in the Peninsular campaign, yes, but those French armies were not being personally commanded by Napoleon, but by various of his generals. He was campaigning elsewhere. Neither were the French fleets personally commanded by Napoleon. He was a land general. I was pointing out that when he was personally in command, he very seldom lost a battle. In fact, I believe the only significant set piece battles he ever lost when personally commanding on the field were: 1. The Battle of Nations (the encirclement at Leipzig) and 2. Waterloo

(In the case of Leipzig the French were tremendously outnumbered and encircled, so they did surprisingly well to manage an orderly withdrawal of most of their forces rather than a panicked rout. This again speaks very well for Napoleon's command abilities.)

As for Wellington, I don't think he ever lost a battle. He was a very canny tactician.