Napoleon And Wellington
The careers of Napoleon Bonaparte and
Arthur Wellesley, 1st duke of Wellington,
contrasted in many different ways.
The manner in which both rose to glory was
quite dissimilar. Napoleon
Bonaparte was born in Corsica on August 15, 1769 and
was thought to be the
most formidable military commander since Alexander the
great. He was a
bright, charismatic child of noble background. As a boy, he was
described as
good –willed and generous. At nine, through his father’s
influence, Napoleon
went off to military school in Paris at the expense of King
Louis XVI. It
was here that it was discovered that he had and amazing brain
capacity and
was considered a genius, yet nobody could imagine his success and
all of the
dead bodies he left in his wake for the sake of peace. Wellesley, on
the
other hand, was born on May 1, 1769, in Dublin and was also of
noble
background. As an adult, Wellesley would rise to rule the British
empire, but as
a schoolboy his future looked grim and lacked the genius that
Napoleon
possessed. His situation became so desperate that he was sent to
military
school, where his metamorphosis was astonishing. He found that he
enjoyed the
army and needed it to establish a career in life. He was given
the title "1st
Duke of Wellington" due to his military successes. In
school, Napoleon was
always the leader and could always win at games due to
his strategies and his
impeccability at outwitting the other team. He was
attracted to the military for
a number of reasons and he had secret weapons
such as his extraordinary
intelligence. The military schools of Napoleon and
Wellesley never engaged in
competition so they never met. Napoleon graduated
military school in 1785, at
the age of 16, and joined the artillery as a
second lieutenant. He studied
firepower and trained in the artillery, which
would help Napoleon become a
genius in this field. Meanwhile, in 1787,
Wellesley was commissioned to the
British army and, although he was
extremely ambitious, his youth sometimes
showed. In 1790, Wellesley was
elected to the Irish parliament and participated
in the unsuccessful campaign
of 1794-95 against French forces in the
Netherlands. Upon returning to
England in 1805, he was rewarded with knighthood.
After the Revolution
began, Napoleon became a lieutenant colonel in the Corsican
National
Guard but, in 1793, Corsica declared independence, and Bonaparte,
a
French patriot and a Republican, fled to France with his family. He
was
assigned, as a captain, to an army besieging Toulon, a naval base that,
aided by
a British fleet, was in revolt against the republic. Replacing a
wounded
artillery general, he drove the British fleet from the harbor, and
Toulon fell.
Napoleon was then promoted to brigadier general at the age
of 24 and in 1796 he
married Josephine de Beauharnais, the widow of an
aristocrat guillotined in the
Revolution and the mother of two children.
Also in 1796, Bonaparte was made
commander of the French army in Italy and
due to his victories, he became quite
well known and respected by the French.
In the same year, Wellesley, now holding
the rank of colonel in the army,
went to India, where he received his first
independent command. Wellesley’s
brother was appointed governor-general of
India in 1797, and Arthur took
part in several military campaigns and returned
to England in 1805. In 1798,
Bonaparte led an expedition to Turkish-ruled Egypt,
which he conquered yet
his fleet was destroyed. Undismayed, he reformed the
Egyptian government
and law, abolishing serfdom and feudalism and guaranteeing
basic rights. In
1799, he won a smashing victory over the Turks but failed to
capture Syria.
Napoleon then decided to leave his army and return to save
France, where
he joined a conspiracy against the government. He and his
colleagues seized
power in the coup d’etat of November 1799, and established a
new regime
called the Consulate. Under its constitution, Bonaparte, as first
consul, had
almost dictatorial powers. In 1802 the constitution was revised to
make
Bonaparte consul for life and then in 1804 it made him emperor.
He
reorganized the administration, simplified the court system, and all
schools in
France were put under centralized control. He standardized
French law in the
Napoleon Code and they guaranteed the rights and
liberties won in the
Revolution, including equality before the law and
freedom of religion. In 1806,
Napoleon conquered the kingdom of Naples
and the Dutch republic and destroyed
the Prussian army. Napoleon made an ally
of Czar Alexander I and greatly reduced
the size of Prussia and added many
new states to his empire. In all his new
kingdoms, the Napoleon Code was
established as law, feudalism and serfdom were
abolished, and freedom of
religion was established. Wellesley was involved in
the struggle against
Napoleon and he took part in military campaigns against
France. In 1809
Napoleon beat the Austrians (again) and abolished the Papal
States. He
divorced Josephine because she hadn’t borne him an heir, and
married the
Habsburg duchess Marie Louise, daughter of the Austrian emperor, who
gave
birth to Napoleon’s son in 1811. In 1808, Wellesley was given command of
the
British forces in Portugal and in the Peninsular War
(1808-1814),
Wellesley’s troops won a series of victories. In 1812,
Napoleon launched in
invasion of Russia that ended in a disastrous retreat
from Moscow because half
of his troops were lost due to the severe winter and
this was the first step to
Napoleon’s downfall. When Napoleon returned
from Russia, his enemies awaited
him and Wellesley’s troops pushed Napoleon
off the Iberian Peninsula. Even
though Wellesley was facing French troops in
battle, he had never before come
face to face with Napoleon during this time.
Napoleon had lost and Wellesley was
made 1st duke of Wellington. In April
1814, Napoleon’s marshals refused to
continue the struggle and Napoleon was
exiled to the Mediterranean island of
Elba, and the monarch of the
Bourbon family, Louis XVIII, returns to rule
France. Wellington had
become the embodiment of the ideal knight after Napoleon
was conquered and
was made British ambassador for France. Things went bad for
Louis XVIII
after Napoleon’s banishment and Napoleon felt that if he could get
back to
Paris he could exploit the situation. After 11 months of
banishment,
Napoleon escaped from Elba and on March 1, 1815, he landed on
the coast of
France and chose to take the long, hard route to Paris
through the Alps.
Napoleon had doubts as to whether he could take over
France once more but as he
marched through the Alps his doubts went away. The
people of France welcomed him
back and men began to march with Napoleon
through the Alps. Louis XVIII sent
troops to put a stop to Napoleon but
Napoleon, unarmed, walked out in front of
the king’s army and addressed.
Afterwards, one thousand men including a sea of
soldiers marched to Paris
behind Napoleon and Louis XVIII fled the country. When
Napoleon arrived
in Paris, jubilant crowds surrounded him. He has conquered the
entire country
of France without a drop of blood spilled. Napoleon made
overtures to his
neighbors, expressing his desires for peace, but they didn’t
want to hear of
it. By June 1, three months after reclaiming the throne,
Napoleon had a
standing army in place and complete control. On March 17 many
European
countries each agreed to contribute troops for an invasion to be
assembled in
Belgium near the French border and Wellington was put in command of
the
British troops. Napoleon learned of this invasion, which was to be
launched
on July 1, 1815, and he quickly determined to attack the allies on
their own
ground before their army could take shape. On June 16, he defeated
most of the
Prussian troops led by Prussian field marshal Gebhard
Leberecht von Blucher. On
June 17, Napoleon went in pursuit of
Wellington’s army but the day of the big
battle was forced to the 18th
because of muddy roads and the rain. During the
stormy night of the
seventeenth, Wellington had received assurances from Blucher
that strong
reinforcements from his army would arrive during the day. Wellington
then
decided to resist Napoleon until Blucher’s forces would arrive, but the
muddy
roads made it difficult to travel so the battle started before the arrival
of
the Prussian troops. After a night of rain, the British and French troops
met
at Waterloo and it was one of the greatest ironies of life that
Wellington was
already acquainted with the land and knew its attributes. To
the French, who
didn’t thoroughly examine the battlefield, it looked flat,
but Wellington knew
that it actually consisted of a series of rolling hills
and wasn’t, in
actuality, flat at all. On June 18, 1815, after 46 years, the
two military
geniuses came face to face. Napoleon was confident that he would
win and it
never crossed his mind that Wellington had never lost a major
campaign. Because
the ground was saturated with water, the French artillery
wouldn’t work well
so Napoleon decided to wait for the ground to dry while
the two armies faced
each other. At 11:25 a.m., Napoleon ordered his
artillery to open fire, yet
Wellington was ready for it and ordered half
his army to hide under the rolling
hills of Waterloo. The French armies then
crossed British lines to "divide and
conquer" but the British cavalry charged
through them and Wellington was
prepared for this. Napoleon then received
word that the Prussians were coming to
aid the English. He figured that if he
were able to defeat the British, he could
defeat the Prussians in the same
day but Napoleon knew he wouldn’t be able to
defeat both armies
simultaneously and was becoming anxious. Napoleon ordered a
massive cavalry
charge against the British with no artillery, yet it was a
mistake.
Wellington carefully formed his troops into a porcupine attach and shot
at
the French. The battlefield was now a mass of dead bodies. Wellington had
so
far been able to block all of the French maneuvers and for the first
time,
Napoleon was indecisive about what he was going to do on the
battlefield. The
British then lost control of a farmhouse that was on the
battlegrounds, which
was Napoleon’s smartest move and the British were now in
trouble. Napoleon was
faced with a decision and didn’t allow the Imperial
guard to attack at first.
Later, with the expected arrival of the
Prussians at any time, Napoleon led the
Imperial Guard himself. The
future of the French was on the line with this
decision but the British
remained where they were. The French Imperial Guard
attacked in columns and
as long as they remained in columns, Wellington felt
they still had a chance
at defeating the French. The British troops fired and
attacked the Imperial
Guard. The Imperial Guard retreated for the first time in
history and the
French army was disintegrating. The British cavalry then
attacked, the
Prussians arrived and Napoleon fled to Paris with the Imperial
Guard.
Napoleon was exiled for the second and last time. He was sent to the
island
of St. Helena, where he spent the remainder of his life. Wellington
remained
in France for the next three years as head of the allied army of
occupation
and returned to become prime minister of England.