The Duke Of Wellington The Man Who Defeated Napoleon

(The Duke of Wellington 1814)

Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington,  (c. 29 April/1 May 1769 – 14 September 1852), was an Anglo-Irish soldier and statesman, and one of the leading military and political figures of the 19th century. He is often referred to as simply "The Duke of Wellington", even after his death, when there have been subsequent Dukes of Wellington.

Born in Ireland to a prominent Ascendancy family, he was commissioned an ensign in the British Army in 1787. Serving in Ireland as aide-de-camp to two successive Lords Lieutenant of Ireland he was also elected as a Member of Parliament in the Irish House of Commons. A colonel by 1796, Wellesley saw action in the Netherlands and later India where he fought in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War at the Battle of Seringapatam. He was later appointed governor of Seringapatam and Mysore.

Wellesley rose to prominence as a general during the Peninsular campaign of the Napoleonic Wars, and was promoted to the rank of field marshal after leading the allied forces to victory against the French at the Battle of Vitoria in 1813. Following Napoleon's exile in 1814, he served as the ambassador to France and was granted a Dukedom. During the Hundred Days in 1815, he commanded the allied army which, with a Prussian army under Blücher, defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. Wellesley's battle record is exemplary, ultimately participating in some 60 battles throughout his military career.

(Wellington Arm Coat)

On 26 February 1815, Napoleon escaped from Elba and returned to France. He regained control of the country by May and faced a renewed alliance against him.[89] Wellington left Vienna for what became known as the Waterloo Campaign. He arrived in Belgium to take command of the British-German army and their allied Dutch-Belgians, all stationed alongside the Prussian forces of Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher.

The French invaded Belgium, defeated the Prussians at Ligny, and fought an indecisive battle with Wellington at the Battle of Quatre Bras. These events compelled the Anglo-Allied army to retreat to a ridge on the Brussels road, just south of the small town of Waterloo. On 17 June, a torrential rain soaked in, hampering movement. The next day, on 18 June, the Battle of Waterloo was fought. This was the first time Wellington had encountered Napoleon, and he commanded an Anglo-German-Dutch army that consisted of 68,000 troops, 24,000 of whom were British.

Much historical discussion has been made about Napoleon's decision to send 33,000 troops under Marshal Grouchy to intercept the Prussians, but—having defeated Blücher at Ligny on 16 June and forced the Allies to retreat in divergent directions—Napoleon may have been strategically astute in a judgement that he would have been unable to beat the combined Allied forces on one battlefield]. Wellington's comparable strategic gamble was to leave 17,000 troops and artillery at Hal, northwest of the Mont Saint Jean. The potential benefits of this decision were not only to provide Wellington with a reserve with which to fight again the following day, should the action on 18 June prove inconclusive, but to protect his line of retreat to the sea.

 (Battle of Assaye)

Napoleon wished to divide Wellington and Blücher, rather than drive them together. His plan was to pin Wellington's right with an attack on Hougoumont, then shatter Wellington's left position with an all-out infantry assault. This tactic had been successful with other opponents earlier in Napoleon's career.

But Hougoumont held out, defended by the Coldstream Guards, and Scots Guards,[94] and the infantry attack by the French was broken up by Allied cavalry, in badly controlled charges which resulted in many losses to the allies. Napoleon's only option left was an all-out assault on the Allied centre. Wellington's reorganisation of his line was taken as the prelude to retreat, and waves of French cavalry attacked the Allies, which drove them into scattered defensive groupings ('squares'). This type of massed cavalry attack relied almost entirely on psychological shock for effect. Close artillery support could disrupt infantry squares and allow cavalry to penetrate; at Waterloo, however, co-operation between the French cavalry and artillery was not impressive. The French artillery did not get close enough to the Anglo-allied infantry in sufficient numbers to be decisive. Napoleon's tactical skills are deemed to have been inferior to his skills as a strategist according to historians - coordination of the various branches of the French army at Waterloo was haphazard throughout, and at this moment decisively lacking. The squares held, the spaces between them protected by remnants of the Allied cavalry, and gradually the French cavalry assault, obliged to charge uphill through muddy terrain crisscrossed by sunken roads, petered out. The Prussians had begun driving through Napoleon's outposts, and it was now clear that the Prussians had fought their way through to the battlefield.

(Arthur Wellesley aged 36)

Napoleon made a last attempt to smash Wellington's centre before his two enemies could achieve any kind of linkage. At about six in the evening, the farmhouse of La Haye Sainte, linchpin of the Allied front, was finally taken. Wellington redrew the remnants of his front and prepared for the final assault; he did not know that the dark uniforms visible in the distance were the forces of Blücher rather than those of Grouchy. Napoleon sent forward the Old Guard, held in reserve to provide the decisive blow, and it branched out in a two-pronged attack to finish off what Napoleon believed to be an Allied army on the verge of annihilation. But Wellington had prepared a large-scale ambush for the Guard; they ran into local counter-attacks and enfilade fire from British infantry, hidden behind slopes. Unprepared, completely outnumbered, the Guard faltered, was checked, and triggered a French panic.

(Arthue Wellesley as a Major General India)

Wellington ordered an advance of the Allied line, just as the Prussians were overrunning the French positions to the east, and what remained of the French army abandoned the field in disorder. Wellington and Blücher met at the inn of La Belle Alliance, on the north–south road which bisected the battlefield, and it was agreed that the relatively rested Prussians should pursue the retreating French army back to France.

Wellington's army had held off the French attacks for several hours before Blücher's arrival, but there is still debate about whether the Allied victory would have been so crushing had it not been for the arrival of the Prussian Army. A third of Napoleon's army, under Marshal Grouchy, were engaged against the Prussians at Wavre some miles to the east, while 50 000 under Blücher attacked the French right. Considering these factors, and the fact that about a third of Wellington's army were German, one German historian in the 1990s went so far as to describe Waterloo as a "German Victory".

(Duke of Wellington 1831 by John Jackson)

On 22 June, the French Emperor abdicated again, and was transported by the British to Saint Helena, an island in the Atlantic. Waterloo marked the end of the Napoleonic Wars and was canonised within a generation as one of "The Fifteen Decisive Battles of the World". The Treaty of Paris was signed on 20 November 1815.

An opponent of parliamentary reform, he was given the epithet the "Iron Duke" because of the iron shutters he had fixed to his windows to stop the pro-reform mob from breaking them. He was twice Prime Minister under the Tory party and oversaw the passage of the Catholic Relief Act 1829. He was Prime Minister from 1828–30 and served briefly in 1834. He was unable to prevent the passage of the Reform Act of 1832 and continued as one of the leading figures in the House of Lords until his retirement. He remained Commander-in-Chief of the British Army until his death in 1852.

(Duke of Wellington By Fransisco Goya)

Wellington received numerous awards and honours during and after his lifetime. These include a wide range of titles as well as buildings in his name, such as Wellington's Column, and the Wellington Monument in his native Dublin. Two of his former homes are now open to the public, including Apsley House in London and Stratfield Saye House. His name has also been applied to numerous buildings and places, including Wellington, the capital of New Zealand and HMS Iron Duke, a First World War battleship. In addition he is the only person to have had the honour of having not one but two Royal Air Force bombers named for him - the Vickers Wellesley and the Vickers Wellington, and at a time when the convention was for British bombers to be named after landlocked cities. The First Duke of Wellington died in 1852 and in the following year Queen Victoria, in recognition of the 33rd foot regiment's long ties to him, ordered that the 33rd foot regiment's title be changed to the 33rd (or The Duke of Wellington's) Regiment, now known as The 3rd Battalion Yorkshire Regiment (Duke of Wellington's), based in Wellesley Barracks Halifax.

 (Statue of Wellington in Woodhouse Moor, Leeds)