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For several years, Democrats have gleefully watched as Republicans threatened to eat their own at the ballot box. Trying to enforce a rigid orthodoxy, groups such as the Senate Conservatives Fund, the Club for Growth and others have funded primary challengers if Republicans didn't fall in line on certain votes on taxes, spending cuts and other conservative issues.

Now, it's Democrats' turn to try and manage intra-party turmoil — also rooted in a similar economic populist strain to the fight on the right — over President Obama's trade legislation. The fight could spill over into the next election, with labor groups threatening primaries against members — even those who sit in swing districts — who sided with the president.

Last Friday, the fast-track authority the president wanted to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership failed in the House after Democrats blocked a key part of the bill that would provide job-training assistance to those who could lose jobs if the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or TPP, a massive Pan-Asian trade deal, is finalized.

Part of that fast-track authority — with the job-training assistance stripped out — passed the House Thursday narrowly, 218-208. But it still has to get through the Senate before the president can sign it. The challenge for President Obama now is how to get enough Democrats on board in the Senate without the job assistance in the bill or if there will be a supplementary bill that puts it back in.

Labor groups — a well-funded and powerful Democratic stronghold — waged a massive campaign against the bill and claimed victory after it went down last week. Several Democrats found themselves targeted by unions and progressive groups, warning consequences if they backed the trade bill.

"Democrats who allowed the passage of Fast Track Authority for the job-killing TPP, should know that we will not lift a finger or raise a penny to protect you when you're attacked in 2016," said Jim Dean, chairman of Democracy for America after the House vote Thursday. "We will encourage our progressive allies to join us in leaving you to rot, and we will actively search for opportunities to primary you with a real Democrat. ... Make no mistake, we will make certain that your vote to fast track the destruction of American jobs will be remembered and will haunt you for years to come."

Some have already put their money where their mouth is, too — even if that means inadvertently helping a Republican win next November. The AFL-CIO launched a six-figure ad buy in the expensive New York City media market slamming freshman Democratic Rep. Kathleen Rice for switching her position to back the deal. The freshman congresswoman won her Long Island seat just 52 to 47 percent in 2014.

A Rice spokesman shot back telling Vox, "I wouldn't want to be a labor leader and have to explain to my hardworking nurses or truck drivers or tradesmen why we're wasting hundreds of thousands of their families' dollars attacking a progressive Democrat who's with them on nearly every issue but this bill. And I certainly wouldn't want to have to explain to those workers that if their money is successful, they'll get a staunch anti-union representative as their reward."

The labor group also aired a TV ad against California Democratic Rep. Ami Bera, charging he will "do anything to keep his job, including shipping your job overseas."

In total, just 27 Democrats voted yes on both the Trade Promotion Authority, TPA, and Trade Adjustment Assistance, TAA, measures last week. Most of those members come from centrist districts and are facing tough reelection fights. That includes Bera, who is among the most vulnerable members of Congress after only narrowly winning reelection last November. He has claimed the groups are trying to "bully" him into changing his position and that he's voting for what is best for his district.

But labor groups don't seem fazed by the prospect a Republican who would be at odds with them even more could win the seat.

"Ami Bera won off the support of working families' boots in the district, knocking on doors for him," AFL-CIO spokesperson Amaya Smith told Politico. "But no one's saying, 'Let's not call him out, because we're scared of a Republican taking him out.'"

Another California Democratic lawmaker is already seeing rumblings of a primary challenge. Labor groups are urging Assemblyman Henry Perea to challenge Democratic Rep. Jim Costa, according to Roll Call. Costa also only narrowly won reelection last year.

In California, especially, unions and progressives backing another Democrat could have an impact. The state has a "top-two" party primary system, with the top-two finishers advancing regardless of party. An anti-trade candidate could push past the incumbent in a primary and be favored over the GOP nominee, or a split among Democrats could help two Republicans make it to the general.

Some are starting to see shades of the advent of the Tea Party in the aggressive tactics. New York Times columnist David Brooks certainly thinks so, writing in a column this week raising the idea that "the Republican Tea Partiers are suspicious of all global diplomatic arrangements. The Democrats' version of the Tea Partiers are suspicious of all global economic arrangements."

Other groups say that the biggest threat is that their members won't be helping with grassroots efforts. But if it comes to using the same tactics they decry in conservatives, some Democrats are embracing that moniker.

"To the extent that the Tea Party puts pressure on the Republican Party, then yes, we're also putting pressure on Congress to behave a certain type of way," MoveOn.org Action campaign director Justin Krebs told NPR.

MoveOn.org has already put another top lawmaker on notice over trade. Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, faced backlash for his support for the bill, with the group saying there is support for a primary challenger, though no alternative has yet emerged.

Earlier this year, the group Fight for the Future began following Wyden around to town-hall meetings in Oregon with a 30-foot blimp, urging him to oppose the trade deal.

The divide isn't just manifesting itself in Congress, though. With progressives like Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Vermont Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders — who's surging in the Democratic presidential primary race — leading the charge, it's an issue that's spilling out into the presidential race, too.

Leading Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton has expressed skepticism about the current deal, but has yet to take a concrete position either for or against the proposal. Previously, as secretary of state, she was in favor of it.

Progressives are promising this will be a defining issue for them next election cycle and beyond — one they will use as a stringent litmus test for candidates.

"We know that our members are deeply committed to this issue," Krebs said. "I think you will see that leading into the 2016 discussion even more."

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Pick up a romance novel and you'll often get more than just a pleasant read – many fans of historical romance say their favorite books have given them a new grounding in history and geography by bringing long-lost people and places to life.

So I'd hazard a guess that few Americans under the age of 30 know much about Napoleon Bonaparte, beyond the fact that he was short and had a complex, unless they study history — or read romance.

But Napoleon was possibly the single most influential person in Europe during the early years of the 19th century, a man who came close to subjugating the entire continent — until he met his final defeat at the battle of Waterloo, exactly 200 years ago today.

And of course, the Battle of Waterloo forms a powerful backdrop to many Regency romances — so I thought I'd check in with some fabulous Regency authors and see how they felt this pivotal historical event affected the romance genre.

Loretta Chase

Miss Wonderful

by Loretta Lynda Chase

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Like a great many other writers who started in the traditional Regency genre, I was acutely conscious of the Napoleonic Wars in general (inspiration for all manner of spy stories) and Waterloo in particular. I've read about the battle, in detail, many times, and I always end up crying, as I do usually when studying any battle anywhere, for all that's lost, on both the winning and the losing sides.

Waterloo is probably the one single historical event that gave me a visceral understanding of heroism — the men forming their squares and filling in the gaps as their fellows were cut down; the men defending Hougoumont. Images form in my mind's eye of men falling in battle, and of the ugly aftermath which has been described time and again, and of the Duke of Wellington's grief. I think these images are at work, somewhere in the back of my mind, whenever I'm thinking about bravery and heroic behavior (of men and women), and that remarkable British sang-froid.

This notion of courage has fed into my characters, whether Waterloo is relevant to the story or not. But I did use Waterloo directly at least once, creating a hero suffering from PTSD, in Miss Wonderful. I think any writer who's spent time learning about Wellington, or who's studied the battle in any way must absorb and be inspired by a deep understanding of the bravery and desperation and hellishness of that long day.

Sabrina Jeffries

Surrender

by Amanda Quick

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Everything I know about the personal cost of Waterloo, I learned from Regency-set historical romances. Tales of wounded heroes finding love in the bleak aftermath of that battle were always more compelling to me than a dry history book describing the strategies of the campaign. And in reality, there were lots of wounded to go around — 10,000 from that battle alone.

Regency historicals are filled with heroes disabled both physically and psychologically by the horrors of that battle, of heroines who lost brothers, husbands, fathers, and cousins, coping with a very different landscape than the one they were taught to navigate in.

One of my favorite romances, Amanda Quick's Surrender, has a hero who lay for hours on the battlefield, wounded and unable to move, while human vultures looted the bodies of the dead. Regency historicals often make powerful statements about the cost of war, but in the end it's the stories of love triumphing over the horrors that stay with me.

Katharine Ashe

War veterans are a staple of romance, and in historical romance no other battle figures more prominently than Waterloo. The great battle hardens some heroes, honing their strengths and preparing them for the challenges that civilian life might throw at them (including the love of a feisty heroine). Vanessa Kelly's How to Plan a Wedding for a Royal Spy, which features a military intelligence officer, begins on the battlefield just after the French are routed, setting him up him to rout other villains back home.

An Infamous Army

A Novel of Love, War, Wellington and Waterloo

by Georgette Heyer

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Waterloo damages other fictional heroes, leaving them with emotional and physical scars that they carry into new sorts of combat at home (with the help of a feisty heroine). The hero in Caroline Linden's It Takes a Scandal heads off to war for glory and adventure but is wounded at Waterloo and returns home to face the devastation of his family and estate.

But Waterloo isn't always relegated to backstory. Romance novelists don't often throw heroes and heroines onto the fields of actual battles, but some of the genre's greatest writers have done so with Waterloo, to spectacular effect. Mary Jo Putney's Shattered Rainbows reveals the brittle glitter of the weeks before the battle, as officers and their wives in Brussels danced at balls up to the very eve of the fight, and also includes a thrilling description of the actual battle. The mother of the Regency sub-genre, Georgette Heyer, wrote such a fine treatment of the battle in An Infamous Army that it ended up on a reading list for students at Sandhurst, the British military academy.

In a snippet of dialogue between two officers in the midst of the fighting, Heyer sums up the glory, the horror, and the human reality of Waterloo:

"Well, I'm glad I was in it, anyway. To tell you the truth, I haven't liked it as much as I thought I should. It's seeing one's friends go, one after the other, and being so hellish frightened oneself."

"I know."

"Do you think we can hold out, Charles?"

"Yes, of course we can, and we will."

Honor, sacrifice, heroism, love that triumphs despite all: This is the stuff of wonderful historical romance. Epically huge and dramatic, Waterloo is the fiery inferno out of which great romance heroes stride, changed profoundly, but ultimately for the best.

battle of waterloo

Summer of Love

On the bicentennial of the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte's most celebrated statement about food and warfare – "An army marches on its stomach" – is worth recalling.

Except there is no record of him saying it. Just as there is no record of Marie Antoinette saying, "Let them eat cake."

If he did say it, the words would have been as hollow as the stomachs of his soldiers. Though one of the greatest military generals of all time, Napoleon was surprisingly negligent about feeding his army.

His orders for the Grande Arme's rations were ample enough: "Soup, boiled beef, a roasted joint and some vegetables; no dessert." But bad roads and poor weather often prevented supply wagons from reaching campsites in time.

During the Italian campaign, in which the 27-year-old Napoleon made his name as a general by defeating a much larger Austrian army and its allies, his men simply foraged off the land or plundered nearby villages — a common military practice then.

Even while fighting the Russians in a poor country like Poland, conditions, though difficult, still allowed for humor. The French soldiers learned the Polish words: "Kleba? Niema." Meaning, "Bread? There's none." One day, as Napoleon passed a column of infantry, a hungry solider cried out, "Papa, kleba." "Niema," he shot back. "The whole column burst into shouts of laughter," his valet Louis Constant Wairy wrote in his memoirs, "and no further request was made."

But the suffering Napoleon's army underwent on his hottest and coldest campaigns – in Egypt and Russia – was no laughing matter.

The 1798 Egyptian misadventure was launched with such speed and secrecy, writes historian Philip Dwyer in Napoleon, The Path the Power, there was no time even to issue water canteens. As a result, the 55,000-strong army had to endure a three-day march from Alexandria to Cairo through burning sands, in thick European uniforms and carrying heavy armor. Thinking they would be able to forage like they had in Italy, many had thrown away their hard biscuits. Scores died of heat and thirst, while others, driven mad by hunger, thirst, sandstorms and Bedouin attacks, simply put a bullet through their own brains. When the army reached the Nile, there was water and food, but, furious and embittered, the men went on a killing and looting rampage.

i

Napoleon's last grand attack at Waterloo. Life of Napoleon Bonaparte by William M. Sloane hide caption

itoggle caption Life of Napoleon Bonaparte by William M. Sloane

Napoleon's last grand attack at Waterloo.

Life of Napoleon Bonaparte by William M. Sloane

Despite this harrowing tutorial in thirst, Napoleon embarked the very next year on an even more foolhardy 10-day march from Cairo to Syria. Again, there wasn't enough food. Water, carried in goatskins on camel back, was, according to one sergeant, "hot, disagreeable and dirty, like water from a cobbler's tub." And soldiers began to commit suicide. A stampede at a solitary well killed 30. The desperate men dug sea sorrel, ate it and developed dysentery.

And all for nothing. In Syria, the plague awaited them, and at the small but stubborn fortress at Acre (now in Israel), a coalition of Ottomans and English gave Napoleon his first taste of defeat, forcing him to retreat.

Equally grotesque was the 1812 Russia campaign. The Grande Arme was annihilated more by starvation and cold than by the Cossacks. With absolutely no food supplies and temperatures at 20 below zero, the ravenous men ate horseflesh seasoned with gunpowder, often fighting over a fallen horse's flank to tear out its liver, sometimes even before ascertaining whether the animal had died. Through the campaign, flocks of buzzards feasted on corpses of soldiers on the roads and battlefields.

The buzzards were not the only ones who ate well.

The late French historian Andre Castelot wrote in Napoleon that through the famine, Napoleon continued his daily repast of "white bread, Chambertin, beef or mutton, and his favorite rice with beans or lentils." But the valet Louis Wairy claimed that his distraught master, who ranted at his officers for not securing enough rations, ate like an ordinary soldier.

True, Napoleon was an indifferent eater (though fastidious about bread). He often skipped meals, eating only when hungry — usually calling for roast chicken, a dish he seems to have enjoyed. In the kitchens of his Tuileries Palace at Paris, chickens were constantly roasted on spits to suit his erratic hunger pangs. When he rode out of Cairo on Christmas Eve to survey the Suez isthmus, the only provisions he took were three roast chickens wrapped in paper.

He had a soldier's impatience for fussy dinner rituals and "lacked much of eating decently; and always preferred his fingers to a fork or spoon," writes his valet. Nor did he have a nose for fine wine, being perfectly content to drink Chambertin diluted with water. At camp at Boulogne, he asked a marshal at his table what he thought of the wine being served. The marshal replied with tactful candor, "There is better," making the Emperor and other guests smile.

Only after his defeat at Waterloo, when he'd been permanently stripped of power, did Napoleon seem to revel in its meal-time trappings. On the island of St. Helena, as a prisoner of the British, he was served dinner every night by a uniformed butler who announced, "His Majesty is served." As footmen served soups, entrees, roasts, side-dishes and sweets on rare porcelain and silver plate, Napoleon – surrounded by a small group of officers in full dress uniform, with their wives in dcollet dresses – played the part of the emperor he no longer was.

What a change from the man who had bolted his breakfast in eight minutes, and dinner in 12. He normally ate his breakfast alone, but on that fateful, rain-soaked morning of June 18, 2015, he called what came to be known as his Breakfast Conference.

As the Duke of Wellington's redcoats waited outside the village of Waterloo, in present-day Belgium, Napoleon summoned his generals to the farmhouse where he had spent a sleepless night. Wellington, he told them with trademark bravado, was "a poor general." The English were "poor troops." His officers were unconvinced. But the Emperor assured them it would all be over by lunchtime.

Nina Martyris is a freelance journalist based in Knoxville, Tenn.

army food

Napoleon

food history

Napoleonic wars

Waterloo

On the bicentennial of the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon Bonaparte's most celebrated statement about food and warfare – "An army marches on its stomach" – is worth recalling.

Except there is no record of him saying it. Just as there is no record of Marie Antoinette saying, "Let them eat cake."

If he did say it, the words would have been as hollow as the stomachs of his soldiers. Though one of the greatest military generals of all time, Napoleon was surprisingly negligent about feeding his army.

His orders for the Grande Arme's rations were ample enough: "Soup, boiled beef, a roasted joint and some vegetables; no dessert." But bad roads and poor weather often prevented supply wagons from reaching campsites in time.

During the Italian campaign, in which the 27-year-old Napoleon made his name as a general by defeating a much larger Austrian army and its allies, his men simply foraged off the land or plundered nearby villages — a common military practice then.

Even while fighting the Russians in a poor country like Poland, conditions, though difficult, still allowed for humor. The French soldiers learned the Polish words: "Kleba? Niema." Meaning, "Bread? There's none." One day, as Napoleon passed a column of infantry, a hungry solider cried out, "Papa, kleba." "Niema," he shot back. "The whole column burst into shouts of laughter," his valet Louis Constant Wairy wrote in his memoirs, "and no further request was made."

But the suffering Napoleon's army underwent on his hottest and coldest campaigns – in Egypt and Russia – was no laughing matter.

The 1798 Egyptian misadventure was launched with such speed and secrecy, writes historian Philip Dwyer in Napoleon, The Path the Power, there was no time even to issue water canteens. As a result, the 55,000-strong army had to endure a three-day march from Alexandria to Cairo through burning sands, in thick European uniforms and carrying heavy armor. Thinking they would be able to forage like they had in Italy, many had thrown away their hard biscuits. Scores died of heat and thirst, while others, driven mad by hunger, thirst, sandstorms and Bedouin attacks, simply put a bullet through their own brains. When the army reached the Nile, there was water and food, but, furious and embittered, the men went on a killing and looting rampage.

i

Napoleon's last grand attack at Waterloo. Life of Napoleon Bonaparte by William M. Sloane hide caption

itoggle caption Life of Napoleon Bonaparte by William M. Sloane

Napoleon's last grand attack at Waterloo.

Life of Napoleon Bonaparte by William M. Sloane

Despite this harrowing tutorial in thirst, Napoleon embarked the very next year on an even more foolhardy 10-day march from Cairo to Syria. Again, there wasn't enough food. Water, carried in goatskins on camel back, was, according to one sergeant, "hot, disagreeable and dirty, like water from a cobbler's tub." And soldiers began to commit suicide. A stampede at a solitary well killed 30. The desperate men dug sea sorrel, ate it and developed dysentery.

And all for nothing. In Syria, the plague awaited them, and at the small but stubborn fortress at Acre (now in Israel), a coalition of Ottomans and English gave Napoleon his first taste of defeat, forcing him to retreat.

Equally grotesque was the 1812 Russia campaign. The Grande Arme was annihilated more by starvation and cold than by the Cossacks. With absolutely no food supplies and temperatures at 20 below zero, the ravenous men ate horseflesh seasoned with gunpowder, often fighting over a fallen horse's flank to tear out its liver, sometimes even before ascertaining whether the animal had died. Through the campaign, flocks of buzzards feasted on corpses of soldiers on the roads and battlefields.

The buzzards were not the only ones who ate well.

The late French historian Andre Castelot wrote in Napoleon that through the famine, Napoleon continued his daily repast of "white bread, Chambertin, beef or mutton, and his favorite rice with beans or lentils." But the valet Louis Wairy claimed that his distraught master, who ranted at his officers for not securing enough rations, ate like an ordinary soldier.

True, Napoleon was an indifferent eater (though fastidious about bread). He often skipped meals, eating only when hungry — usually calling for roast chicken, a dish he seems to have enjoyed. In the kitchens of his Tuileries Palace at Paris, chickens were constantly roasted on spits to suit his erratic hunger pangs. When he rode out of Cairo on Christmas Eve to survey the Suez isthmus, the only provisions he took were three roast chickens wrapped in paper.

He had a soldier's impatience for fussy dinner rituals and "lacked much of eating decently; and always preferred his fingers to a fork or spoon," writes his valet. Nor did he have a nose for fine wine, being perfectly content to drink Chambertin diluted with water. At camp at Boulogne, he asked a marshal at his table what he thought of the wine being served. The marshal replied with tactful candor, "There is better," making the Emperor and other guests smile.

Only after his defeat at Waterloo, when he'd been permanently stripped of power, did Napoleon seem to revel in its meal-time trappings. On the island of St. Helena, as a prisoner of the British, he was served dinner every night by a uniformed butler who announced, "His Majesty is served." As footmen served soups, entrees, roasts, side-dishes and sweets on rare porcelain and silver plate, Napoleon – surrounded by a small group of officers in full dress uniform, with their wives in dcollet dresses – played the part of the emperor he no longer was.

What a change from the man who had bolted his breakfast in eight minutes, and dinner in 12. He normally ate his breakfast alone, but on that fateful, rain-soaked morning of June 18, 2015, he called what came to be known as his Breakfast Conference.

As the Duke of Wellington's redcoats waited outside the village of Waterloo, in present-day Belgium, Napoleon summoned his generals to the farmhouse where he had spent a sleepless night. Wellington, he told them with trademark bravado, was "a poor general." The English were "poor troops." His officers were unconvinced. But the Emperor assured them it would all be over by lunchtime.

Nina Martyris is a freelance journalist based in Knoxville, Tenn.

army food

Napoleon

food history

Napoleonic wars

Waterloo