12 failures of Napoleon Bonaparte. Two centuries after Waterloo and the final collapse of Napoleonic France, the debate continues over who is to be credited for the overall victory. In a series of publications "Voennogo Obozreniye" ("Waterloo. Point of no return"), the very special strategic role played in the overthrow of the Corsican upstart Russian Emperor Alexander I. And the author is not going to refute the fact that he had British capital behind him.
The last to defeat the French emperor on the battlefield were Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher, 73-year-old Prussian field marshal and Napoleon's age 46-year-old 1st Duke of Wellington, British field marshal Arthur Wellesley.
Prussian cadet and Eton graduate
Fate willed that at the beginning of the battle that decided the fate of Napoleon, it was the British who opposed him under the command of General Arthur Wellesley, who had recently received the title of Duke of Wellington. He was a sophisticated, albeit poor aristocrat who was born in Ireland, did not differ in special talents and graduated from Eton College with a sin in half. Then he fought for many years in the Pyrenees, but Napoleon contemptuously called Wellington a Sepoy general.
This is understandable, because his last adversary was one of many who conquered India, but it is not clear why the French emperor at the same time forgot his brilliant victories in Egypt and Palestine. However, Wellington, who had repeatedly beaten Napoleon's marshals in the Pyrenees, was literally one step away from defeat, even defeat, at Waterloo, and his soldiers managed to withstand, not least because they knew that the Prussians would not abandon them.
However, even together with the Prussians, the British could be defeated, but it was Gebhard Leberecht von Blucher who did everything to prevent this from happening. Blucher, originally from the quiet suburb of Rostock in Pomerania, which recently moved from Sweden to Prussia, was also an aristocrat, also not the richest. He chose a military career not at all for the sake of earning money, although he even had to hire a Swedish army and fight against the Prussian troops in the Seven Years War.
However, the continuous wars that the Prussian king Frederick II waged on the old continent provided Blucher with excellent opportunities for promotion. This is exactly what a distant relative, the Prussian Colonel von Belling, clearly explained to him, who was captured by the Prussians. It cannot be said that Blucher made good use of such opportunities - in not the highest officer rank, the king dismissed the obstinate and did not recognize drills, stating that "Captain Blucher can get the hell out of it."
If it were not for the age difference, the careers of the two generals, English and Prussian, could well be considered similar. They were such condottieri, mercenaries. Wellington in India fought not only out of patriotic motives. And Blucher did go over to the side of the enemy, so that then, despite the rebuke of Frederick the Great, he made his choice and become a real Prussian. He managed to return to the service after fourteen years of living in his own estate, when Frederick II died, and young Arthur Wellesley, by the way, like Napoleone Buonaparte, was only three years old.
Napoleon began collecting his victories in the midst of the revolutionary wars, and as a military leader he was far ahead of Wellington and Blucher. They were promoted to high posts when the authority of the commander General Bonaparte, who became Emperor Napoleon, rose to unimaginable heights. However, this did not stop the Prussian and the Englishman from always wanting to fight the Corsican upstart on the battlefield.
They, each in their own way, regularly annoyed Napoleon, Wellington - from Spain, Blucher - wherever he could, having managed not only to lose, but even to win several battles against the emperor. And so it was until they had to fight together already - on the Waterloo field. And if Napoleon had success there, his last winners, in fact, could be the same Austrian Schwarzenberg or one of the Russian generals.
Old hussar and young colonizer
When 46-year-old Blucher became a colonel of the "black hussars" and after that fought the French almost without interruption, Arthur Wellesley celebrated his 20th birthday. He noted that he was elected to the House of Commons of Ireland from the town of Trim. Wellesley's military career was going well, he had already become a lieutenant, but was looking for a more lucrative civilian service. Napoleon at this time was mainly busy with his studies and family affairs, regularly visiting Corsica.
However, Wellesley did not quit his military service, taking a long-term leave, and two years later, when he received the rank of captain, he resumed his career in the 58th Infantry Regiment. Then he, a good rider, retrained into dragoons, unsuccessfully wooed a certain Kitty Pekinham with a good dowry, but received a tough refusal. In desperation, Arthur, who was fond of playing the violin, burned all his instruments and decided to focus on military service.
By the time Wellesley began, according to the practice adopted in the British army, to buy one officer rank after another, Blucher already had the right to count on becoming a general simply by length of service. However, he received it only when he again had to fight the French and defeat General Michaud on the Rhine at Kirrweiler. In anticipation of another promotion, Blucher first received an independent command - at the head of the observation corps on the border with France.
Until 1801, in fact, a rather old Prussian did not differ in anything special in battles, although military campaigns were the most suitable for that. However, speaking of Blucher's age, one should not forget that the Prussian army was then ruled by Friedrich generals, many of whom were under 80. In 1801, Blucher was awarded the rank of lieutenant general, which, by definition, implied a very good pension, but a restless hussar I was not going to retire.
His future English ally by that time had already been in India for almost five years, albeit with interruptions. Lieutenant Colonel Wellesley traveled there in 1796, when the promising revolutionary General Bonaparte marched victoriously at the head of his half-starved Italian army across the mountains and valleys of Piedmont and Lombardy.
Arthur's older brother Roger made an unexpectedly brilliant career, becoming Governor-General of India, and immediately again invited the colonel, who had already sniffed gunpowder, who had distinguished himself more than once not only in India, but also earlier, in the Dutch campaign of 1793-1795. The future duke himself greatly appreciated that experience, noting that the time spent in the Netherlands "at least taught me what not to do and this valuable lesson will be remembered forever."
In the battles against the troops of the principality of Mysore, where Tipu-Sultan ruled, Wellesley acquired skills not only in combat, but also in logistic work, which were very useful to him later, including at Waterloo. During the siege of Seringapatama, the colonel failed a night attack that was supposed to clear the way for heavy cannons, in which he not only lost 25 people, but was also slightly wounded in the knee. In the morning the British could attack again, but their commander decided "never to attack the enemy, who prepared for the defense and took a comfortable position, not verified by reconnaissance in the daylight."
It cannot be ruled out that a successful military career came as a surprise to Arthur Wellesley, although the Duke of Wellington himself did not later deny the fact that he was greatly helped by the patronage of his older brother. In addition to purely military duties, the English aristocrat who received the rank of general did an excellent job of the governor of Mysore, one of the largest provinces of India.
A real British colonialist in those days had to fight almost constantly. The most impressive victory of General Wellesley was the Battle of Asai, in which he, with a detachment of five thousand, smashed to smithereens a 50 thousand Maratha army. Just like Bonaparte at Mount Tabor, but Bonaparte always had guns - either many or better quality than the enemy's. And Wellesley had only 17 guns against a hundred at the Sultan.
Not only in the fields of Eton, as the authors of some of Wellington's biographies write, but also in the Indian campaigns the character of the future "iron duke" was formed. By the way, do not forget that there were no playing fields in Eton when Arthur Wellesley studied there. And he, who once burned his violins, acquired the legendary stunning endurance, apparently, in India. Adding to it, in general, common sense common for an English nobleman, decisiveness combined with punctuality, attention to detail and reasonable caution, we get that cold cocktail that can be safely called the "Duke of Wellington".
Marshal Forward and the Iron Duke
Ice and fire, as you know, are often close to each other, which is why fate brought Wellington and Blucher together in the end. Blucher was sometimes completely out of measure, but he, like Wellington, knew how to squeeze everything out of his soldiers, albeit by completely different means. Obviously, it was not in vain that life led him through testing by such an ally as the Austrian prince Schwarzenberg, with his not ice, but rather, some kind of wadded temperament.
The very first serious test "for Bonaparte" for Blucher was the 1806 campaign, in which he entered the rank of lieutenant general under the command of General York. They managed to withdraw their regiments, defeated by Marshal Davout at Auerstedt, to Lubeck, but there they were still forced to surrender. In the captivity of the French, Blucher's bitterness against Napoleon, whom he considered not so much the successor of the revolution that violated all monarchical foundations, but simply an invader, grew infinitely.
Most likely, General Wellesley, too, did not have warm feelings for the French emperor, who, moreover, settled in the Iberian Peninsula, where the British themselves have felt almost masters for a long time. The English army, which supported both the Spanish Bourbons, whom Napoleon simply arrested, and the Portuguese Braganza, who soon fled to Brazil, needed a worthy leader.
Arthur Wellesley left India when his brother Richard expired as Governor General. Interestingly, on the way to Foggy Albion, the brothers stopped on St. Helena and lived in the same Longwood House, which was later rebuilt so that Napoleon spent his last years there. Wellington was one of those who, after the victorious return from India, insisted on the need to fight Napoleon just beyond the Pyrenees, leaving the rest of Europe to its kings and emperors.
Since 1809, Wellington has conducted almost continuous operations against French marshals in Spain and Portugal. He did not have time to catch Napoleon's trip to Madrid, which probably saved him from defeat. Wellington drove the French out of the Spanish capital in the same unfortunate year for Napoleon in 1812, and a year later, having finally cleared the Iberian Peninsula, he became a field marshal.
Many of those French soldiers and officers who fought with the British during several campaigns in the Pyrenees, already in June 1815, will again go to battle against the "red coats". At Quatre Bras and at Waterloo. And General Blucher, returning from captivity after the Peace of Tilsit, was appointed to the post of Governor-General of Pomerania. Napoleon prudently did not give this huge Prussian province to Sweden, where his former marshal and distant relative Bernadotte soon became the sovereign master, later - King Carl Johan XIV, the founder of the current ruling dynasty.
Blucher only a year later received the rank of general from the cavalry and … did not receive any appointment in the Russian campaign of 1812. This happened only because the old hussar did not hide his hatred of Napoleon, whom King Frederick William III was openly afraid of, which is why he preferred to send Blucher into retirement. The Prussian corps in the Russian campaign was commanded by the same York von Wartenburg, with whom Blucher retreated from Auerstedt in 1806. General York eventually became the winner in the lost campaign of 1812, concluding the Taurogen Convention with the Russian general Diebitsch.
York actually pulled Prussia out of the influence of Napoleonic France, and Blucher, who immediately returned to the army, became one of the heroes of the campaigns of 1813 and 1814, in which he commanded the Silesian army. He participated in all the battles in which he could, and there is some special logic of history that it was Blucher who managed to bring his soldiers to the Waterloo field, who called him Feldmarschall Vorwärts! (Field Marshal or Marshal Forward!).
But the appearance of the English army on the fields of Flanders, moreover, under the command of Wellington, is not easy to call logical. It is clear that when Napoleon returned from the island of Elba to Paris in the spring of 1815, English troops were no longer needed in Spain. But after all, Field Marshal Wellesley himself received his ducal title for the peace concluded in Toulouse as a result of the Spanish campaigns after the first abdication of Napoleon. Prior to that, he refused to march on Paris at the head of an army half of Spaniards and Portuguese, whom he simply dismissed for fear of robbery and plunder on French soil.
By the way, the famous nickname Iron Duke, which was given even to several ships of the British Grand-fleet, is not associated with specific events. It stuck to Wellington much later than Waterloo due to his rare political tenacity, including as prime minister.
Wellington arrived in Flanders, more precisely, in Brabant near Brussels, to the Anglo-Dutch army directly from the Congress of Vienna. There, by the way, he quite emotionally defended the right of the French to decide for themselves whether they needed the Bourbons or someone else. And the troops of the combined army, in which the British, Welsh and Scots were only slightly more than the Dutch, were very prudently stationed at the French border.
As a result, the British and Prussians took the first blow of the revived Napoleonic army. At Waterloo, it was Wellington's unparalleled endurance and the resilience of his soldiers, combined with the equally unparalleled impulse of Blucher's army, that ultimately defeated Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte's France.
How different these two winners of Napoleon were can be judged by this fact. Blucher literally demanded to shoot Napoleon, which Wellington immediately opposed. He even considered softness towards France a guarantee of future peace, returned her border fortresses and imposed a British veto on a multimillion-dollar contribution.
