Wellington's Way of Waging War

One thing that hasn't been mentioned thus far - and I thought it might have been in the "what if Napoleon had reacted after Ligny and destroyed Wellington's army before it escaped from Quatre Bras" part of the debate - is what they thought of each other at the time. Napoleon appears to have been over-confident after his somewhat bloody victory over Blucher and seems to have not rated Wellington or his army very highly, despite the presence of several subordinates who had been beaten by him in Spain. Wellington on the other hand seems to have shown his opponent a lot more respect (and indeed in later years, said he was the best commander "of this age, or any age"). Does anyone feel that this might have contributed to victory/defeat or that it marks one man out as better than the other?

I know this is a reductive observation to make but am nonetheless inclined to say " But it wasn't" and "He didn't." Unquestionably, Wellington was a British general who learned his trade in a professional army employed primarily to seize and defend colonial possessions, with the implications relating to size and composition of force. There hadn't been an English grand captain in Europe since Marlborough. Now, there's an interesting 'what if..'

Without doubt, comparisons are odorous. In the end - literally- there was really only one day when the relative merits of Wellington and Napoleon mattered. Although we might agree that on the 18th June all Wellington had to do was 'not lose,' he managed that task with considerable skill, determination, and great personal courage, all of which he would doubtless have considered as the minimum required of him, had he been asked (Clearly the day owed a great deal to his generals on the field and the soldiers under his command, and of course to Blucher and the Prussians). Not that he shied away from saying in later years, "it would not have done," had he not been there. Wellington was not one for false modesty. In relation to Napoleon, I am not really sure what 'coming close', 'almost winning ' really means. Is there really a valid distinction to be made between "who was 'best'" and who won? For reasons I assume most of us would agree on, even if it was the nearest run thing you ever saw, Waterloo was a catastrophic defeat from which Napoleon and the men who rallied to his cause never recovered. It's not as if there was going to be a rematch, or next year's league championship.

Hi Hans-Karl, Glad you are enjoying the series.

Napoleon's best day, in my opinion, was Austerlitz. Wellington's was Salamanca. Tactically I would say Napoleon just (only just) has the edge. The challenge of the comparison comes in the fact that operationally they have very different ways of working (in part because they have very different political circumstances to operate under - Napoleon can summon yet another army as and when he demands it, Wellington has to make do with meagre resources). Wellington therefore achieved greater impact with a more limited force, whilst Napoleon could afford to be more grandiose in scope, send out corps in search of the enemy, and then rush to the aid of whichever force found them, allowing them to soak up the casulaties until he arrived (Auerstadt, Freidland, etc). Yet we also know what Napoleon could achieve with a smaller force (Italian Campaign, 1814 campaign). That cautiousness on Wellington's part means that he never needed to fight his way out of trouble, which in turn means that his victories lack the 'flair' of Napoleon's. It ends up being an apples and oranges situation, but in the absence of evidence, I feel it's difficult to prove that Wellington outclassed Napoleon at his best. In some ways, its a moot point, but people do love to debate these things, so whilst there were more interesting questions to cover than 'Who was better', it had to be covered in the interview, before we moved on to more useful considerations.

No arguments regarding the 1815 campaign from me, but the fact remains that Napoleon was a long way from his best in that campaign, and came very close victory on a number of occasions: evening of 15th June almost taking Quatre Bras, 16th June generally, Ney coming close to taking QB, Napoleon almost crushing the Prussians at Ligny, and then on the 18th with D'Erlon's assault. Failures on Napoleon's side were predominantly, I would say operational, and despite that he came very close to winning, which says a great deal about Napoleon on an 'off day'.