The Times Great Military Lives: Leadership and Courage – from Waterloo to the Falklands in Obituaries

Thus terminated, with unexampled glory to England and its army, the great Peninsular War – a struggle commenced with ambiguous views and prosecuted with doubtful expectations, but carried to a triumphant conclusion by the extraordinary genius of a single man.

His conduct of the war in the Peninsula confirmed Field Marshal The Duke of Wellington’s outstanding reputation as a strategist. Always conscious of the enemy’s strengths, capabilities, dispositions and opportunities, he advanced, withdrew and fought his almost invariably less numerous army so as to place the French at a crucial disadvantage at each decisive juncture. As a leader, he understood the nature of the British soldier of the period: capricious of good discipline – other than the Foot Guards – in moments of triumph and disaster, yet tenacious in battle when led by competent officers careful with the lives of their men. He encouraged them by his words before and after battle and, his reputation established, inspired them by his imperturbable presence in the saddle at the centre of the fight.

The Waterloo campaign of 1815 provided him with scant opportunity to show his strategic skill. Having gathered his army during the Hundred Days since returning from Elba, Napoleon had the strategic initiative but was hindered by the need to win a decisive battle for political purposes. In Wellington’s words, ‘It was a near run thing’, during which it might be said that Napoleon relied on his presence to inspire his troops, giving virtually no directions to his key subordinates during the battle, thereby losing it for want of proper attention. Wellington fought a shrewd tactical battle at Waterloo. Aware Napoleon had to win to survive politically, he placed his main body on reverse slopes, where they could not be seen or fired upon, withdrew his forward regiments in the face of Napoleon’s attack and, even when the French hesitated on seeing his force previously concealed on the reverse slopes, held his decisive counter-attack until he saw Marshal Blücher arrive with his Prussians to give him numerical as well as – by then – the tactical advantage.

After the defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, Wellington might have retired to the country estates that he was now able to afford, but he was only 46 years old and was to devote another 37 tears to the military and political service of his country. Throughout this period he vigorously opposed reform in the Army, such as improved education of the soldiery, abolition of flogging and the purchase of commissions by officers, arguing that the social order was the basis of military discipline. As Tory Prime Minister from 1828 to 1830, when Catholic Emancipation was a critical demand, he at first acceded to the view that it should not become a political issue but later, perceiving that delay would lead to increased violence if not war in Ireland, brought King George IV round to accept it. He also served as Foreign Secretary in Sir Robert Peel’s first administration of 1834-1835 and again, as Minister without Portfolio, in his second from 1841-to 1846. He was the first commoner to be granted a state funeral on his death in 1852.

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