[Self] Historical devils in the details

Been listening to contemporary intepretions of historical battles recently and boy-oh-boy do the historical "facts" (with historians' perspectives) take out the romanticism of epic battles.

Battle of Chi Bi
- It could have occured but not in the scale as mentioned in Romance of The 3 Kingdoms (RO3K). Instead of the 800,000 army raised by Cao Cao, it could have been just merely around 100,000~200,000 which was a mix of troops, cavalry (5,000) and Liu Biao's army that surrendered. Hence
- And what the heck! A lot of R03K tales which were mini-archlines in the Battle of Chi Bi supposedly did not happen at all! >_<
For example: Zhuge Liang's "loaning" the East Wind*, Jiang Gan getting tricked by Zhou Yu, Zhuge Liang using a boatfull of scarecrows to get arrows from Cao Cao. All great fables but just ... fables.

*The historian I listened to mentioned there was an actual change in wind direction but not due to Zhuge Liang's antics. BUT this is totally contradictory to this slab of stone I saw at Chibi itself - the Chibi museum had these fragments which were supposedly part of the alter which Zhuge Liang used to call forth the East Wind.


Waterloo
- Napoleon's surge to attack the 7th Coaltion Army first nearly worked. Due to a bungle, one of his generals did not decimate the Prussian army (The Frenchies defeated them but did not obliterate them). The Prussian army later regrouped and joined forces with Wellington's and became a key reason for his defeat.
- Wellington actually did not have much of an idea what the heck Napoleon was up to (supposedly). In fact Wellington attended a dance, and a cricket game several days before the great battle.

So the "real" details are interesting, sometimes they do shatter that element of valor in mighty tales, and sometimes they make you just ponder and scratch your head.