In Our Time - Napoleon and Wellington

Episode Date: October 25, 2001

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the histories of Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington. On the morning of the battle of Waterloo Napoleon told his loyal lieutenants, “I tell you that Wellington is a bad general, that the English are bad troops and ce sera l’affaire d’un dejeuner”...in other words; ‘this, my friends, will be a picnic!’ But did Napoleon really have such little respect for the man who would be his nemesis, or when he dismissed the Iron Duke so lightly was he just trying to raise morale? There are some curious parallels between the two rivals, they were both born in the same year, 1769, both read the works of Caesar and chose Hannibal as their personal hero, both enjoyed the pleasures of two of the same mistresses, and they even ate the food of the same personal chef. Though Wellington bested Napoleon on the field of Waterloo in 1815, who was the greater general, who left the larger legacy and ultimately, who won? With Andrew Roberts, military historian; Mike Broers, University of Aberdeen; Belinda Beaton, from the Department of History of Art, at Oxford University.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, on the morning of the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon told his loyal lieutenants, I tell you that Wellington is a bad general,

that the English are bad troops, and it's a la Ferdin de June. In other words, this, my friends, will be a picnic. Some of those lieutenants disagreed, especially those who, unlike Napoleon, had fought against Wellington. But did Napoleon really have such little respect for the man who would be his nemesis? Or when he dismissed the Iron Duke so lightly, was he just trying to raise morale? There are some curious parallels between the two rivals. They were born in the same year, 1769.

Both were given career lifts by their brothers, and nepotism no sweat. Both read the works of Caesar and chose Hannibal as their personal hero. both enjoyed the pleasures of two of the same mistresses, and they even ate the food of the same personal chef. Though Wellington bested Napoleon the only time they ever met, which was on the Field of Waterloo in 1815, who was the Greater General, who left a larger legacy, and ultimately who won.

With me to discuss the comparative histories of two of the Titans of 19th century history is Andrew Roberts, author of a dashing new book, Napoleon and Wellington. Also with us is the Napoleon ex-specialist, Mike Brewers, of Aberdeon University and the Wellingtonian Belinda Beaton from the Department of History of Art at Oxford University. Andrew Roberts, Napoleon was famously from the island of Corsica and took up the cause of Corsican independence and then switched to take up the cause of French revolutionary independence. Can you tell us briskly how, from one to the other, he became

at the age of 26, the commander of the Italian army, this rocket rise? It was an astonishingly Meteoric career, yes. By the time he was 23, he was only a captain. Within three years, he'd become a commander-in-chief of the French forces in Italy. He was tremendously lucky. At one point, he was imprisoned on his life at Antib, and could well have been executed. And so it was an up-and-down thing. The interesting point also bearing in mind Wellington is that he also, of course, came from an island and from that class that ruled Ireland at the same time as Napoleon's family were helping to rule Corsica. But do we see, obviously there was terrific drive.

We talk about luck. He managed not to get himself executed, being a sort of follower of Robspere and all that. Was there any, was it noticeable? Are we looking at somebody who was noticeable from the start? As a genius, he could not be stopped. It was really too long, the siege of Toulon, in which he made it clear,

both to the other French commanders on the spot and also to his political masters in Paris, that here was a man of exceptional drive and verven ability. He was fortunate in that Toulon was an artillery engagement primarily, and he was an artillery officer. But, yes, it certainly was more than just luck. This was an astonishing man. Wellington makes a far less promising start.

You write in your book, After his 21st birthday, Wellington simply trod water, showing little capacity for anything worthwhile. And by the age of 26, Wellington, if we're talking about a comparison, just wasn't in the picture. No, the comparison completely breaks down here. He's a wallflower, effectively, organising vice-regal picnics in Dublin. He's somebody who, until really the summer of 1793,

when he famously burns his violin, he doesn't give it to anybody, he doesn't leave it in a cupboard or sell it. He actually puts it on the fire, a tremendously symbolic gesture, I think, of the way he's going to completely change his life. But there was no sign then of the Wellington to come. I mean, there was no sign of determination, the doggedness. His brother had given him a decent job,

and he'd loved Eaton with people, said, worse the effect of hardly, could hardly have had a less distinguished career. Yes, which was made all the worse because, of course, his elder brother Richard, who later became Governor General of India, was he won every prize at Eaton and very much put his younger brother Arthur in the shade. So we have those two then. Mike Rose, Wellington then goes to Indian and made his name,

there, made his first name there. What was the basis of his success? Well, that depends on who you listen to. I think particularly interesting looking at Andrew's book. There's a feeling that Wellington really was a good general in India, that he had the making some outstanding career. But there again, there is a fair amount, I think, in Napoleon's remark that he was a seapoy general. Can you just unravel that for people?

Yes, of course. A CPO-WI, C-P-P-O-S-Poy. Cepoy means is an Indian soldier, an Indian infantryman. And one of the problems, I think, one of the real problems about assessing Wellington's early career is that India was, in a sense, a third world country. These were third world armies. It's a long time before Wellington tests himself against good European opposition, first world opposition, if you like.

He does have a series of successes in India, which I think show a fair amount of military. military skill of quick thinking. The Indian army is a particular milieu in the 18th century as well. Even the British High Command didn't have a high opinion of the officers they sent to India or they wouldn't have been there in the first place. And really, when the Napoleonic Wars reached their height, when the British find they have to create a land army,

India is where they have to look to. And Wellington is virtually all they've got. If you're looking at Wellington in terms of its personal qualities, I'm inclined to think this is where Wellington, like so many other British officers of his generation, were forged. Belinda Beat, Napoleon's notable success before Waterloo, India was slightly discounted at the time, even though I don't think Wellington discounted it very much.

But he was notably successful in Spain in what became known as the Peninsular War. How famous you're a Wellingtonian, how famous did that success make him? Oh, the Peninsular War? It made him very successful. It got off to a bad start. And then very gradually, as the British stopped being known for evacuations, because the British Army had a terrible reputation on the continent. It was the Navy where the glory was. And nobody really talks about the fact that Napoleon was dealing with the Navy that was going into decline. And he never managed to correct what was happening in naval terms. So suddenly the British Army was developing a reputation it had never had, and its mystique started to pick up, not so much with the men, but the officers who were doing this work in the Peninsular War became very popular. Wellington managed to get Jerome Bonaparte's carriage and send all the things home to London.

And suddenly you had a situation in the Peninsula War where Wellington was taking the Spanish and the Portuguese armies, who he considered to be inferior men, and he was turning it around. and suddenly there were a commemoration of Wellington all over England. Why did Napoleon never commit himself to Spain, given the force he knew he brought to a battlefield? And Andrew? Well, he went there for two months, captured Madrid very quickly,

and then left because he wanted to conclude an Austrian alliance and put down a plot of Fouches and Tanneros. And so it just happened, by sheer coincidence, that the two months that Napoleon was in Spain doing very well and thinking that Spanish campaigning was easy, Wellington was at Chelsea going up in front of a parliamentary inquiry into his convention at Cintra, this deal that he'd done with the French generals,

which was very unpopular in Britain. And so it was one of those huge coincidences of history that for the only two months out of the six years of the Peninsular War, these two men did not in fact clash. I've also got to remember 1810, 18, 11, and this is something that's often forgotten when you look at it from a British or a Spanish point of view. The French tides riding pretty high in Spain for a lot of that time.

Soucher's made tremendous inroads, one of Napoleon's generals, carving right down the eastern coast through Catalonia and Valencia. The Spanish resistance is hemmed in in Cadiz, and there's a great romantic aura around the Spanish guerrilla that he's the savior of the nation. He's a national hero. And like any historical myth, the reality's very, different. Large tracks of rural Spain were fed up with the guerrillas. They were raiding the harvest

to keep themselves going. They were descending into banditry. And one of the great cards that Napoleon's marshals can play in Spain is law and order. We may be foreigners, but we can restore order. The guerrillas are tipping over into criminality. And in 1810-11, there's strong reasons for Napoleon not to go to Spain because really the French aren't doing too badly. Wellington's hemmed in. They have no idea what Wellington and Beresford, who was really the virtually the vice-roy of Portugal and Englishmen who commanded Portugal in the absence of the King, they have no idea what those two are doing in Portugal. They're taking a quiet, principally maritime little country and turning it into a military powerhouse.

So what would you say to summarize before we go towards Waterloo? What has Wellington arrived at after India and the peninsula wall? First of all, you, Andrew. He's arrived at tremendous self-confidence. He's come up from being a knight who's landed to a Duke who crosses the Pyrenees. And that helps him enormously in service. in terms of his own self-respect. He's a success over, he defeats, I think, six Napoleonic marshals in all,

which is a tremendous figure and something that Napoleon, of course, knows perfectly well. By the time he is over the Pyrenees by 1814, he also knows, of course, that the Grande Armée has been completely destroyed in the snows of Russia. And so when he is going to face Napoleon, it will be, with a very different, Napoleon will be with a very different and much less impressive army than the one that he took over the River Neiman in 1812. Wellington and Napoleon were leading arms in Europe at the same time

but under very different conditions, social and political pressures. Can we talk about that now? Belinda, can you lead us in there? I think this is what we always have to remember is that Napoleon was a head of state at this point. Wellington is a brilliant general, but what Napoleon has to contend with on the home front is quite extraordinary. He had managed to alienate the Pope,

and in fact he had the Pope in under house arrest for a while and out of Rome. He is running the continental blockade and trying to ensure that any provisions that are bought from Britain, if they are brought from Britain, will be bought with specie payments.

This doesn't completely work. He is in a situation where initially he was making a lot of money from indemnities, from other countries, and then as his military successes, ended, France has got a cash flow problem. And what he also was able to do for himself at this point as emperor was create a cult of the emperor, which is quite extraordinary. But what a lot of

people forget is Napoleon had to pay artists to do his work, because if he didn't employ these people, he would have had a situation where during the terror, one out of six people who'd riotated in Paris had been an artisan or an artist or a cabinet maker. So there is suddenly a huge cult of the emperor developing in part for economic reasons. But Napoleon's ability to maintain its own popularity went up and down. And so by the time he was getting ready to come to water, well, before the fiasco where he was sent to Elba, he basically had a lot of things to contend with.

The Duke of Wellington just didn't have to deal with. What sort of pressure was Wellington under then, under Obama? Severe political pressure back at home during the earlier stages of the Peninsular War, certainly. The Whigs opposed the war and they were constantly threatening to form the government. That would have ended the peninsula war pretty much overnight if that had happened. So he had political pressures back home. He also had quite severe financial pressure, although Britain was financing the not just her own war effort but also the war effort of various coalition partners, there was always a possibility of a tap on resources.

And then right at the end, he had a far more aggressive French rearguard action than he was expecting. Marshall Sault put up a pretty impressive fight down in southern France. And of course, he was also in enemy territory. He was in France. So they both had these problems. at the time. Can we talk about battle tactics now, Mike Rose? Militarily Napoleon had been stunning, successful all over Europe.

Arslichena, Borodino, Lini, and even in the retreat from Russia, I mean, a year or two later, he's back with his 1814 campaign, arguably his most dashing and successful campaign. So was he an innovative general, and if so, what was innovations, and what were basically his tactics? The tactics hadn't changed a great deal from those devised in the 1790s by the French Revolutionary armies. He's trying to break, as indeed his predecessors and his contemporaries were doing in the French army, with the slow-moving 18th century tactics that really Wellington still uses to great effect. French army moves fast, it lives off the land, but it can cover great distances. One of the things that Napoleon does, I think, that it's not exactly innovative, but it is relevant.

revolutionary is that when he's preparing for his invasion of England, around 1834, and he has everybody up around Boulogne and Calais in the big camps, this is the basis of his future success. He trains those troops. They're all raw peasant levies by this stage. Most of the revolutionary army's been killed off or pensioned off. He teaches them how to swim. He teaches them amphibious landing operations.

It creates tremendous speed of corps, and it creates enormous levels of fitness in the army. And this is what no one's ready for at Austerite. Not so much the tactics. They've got used to the shot column and things like that. The shot column being sending the huge columns. The shock column is simply a long huge column of men long and thin to pierce a line because most 18th century armies fight in a line

and you basically try to break it. Like a battering round really, yes. But moving very quickly in the last. levels of fitness help to improve the shock impact, if you like. But the other thing that he develops at this time, over these two years, really, up in the Channel ports, is the cavalry. The French cavalry had been a bad joke in the 18th century compared to the Hungarian cavalry that the Austrians could draw on, the Polish Lancers and the Cossacks that the Prussian and Russian armies could draw on. It takes a long time to train a cavalryman. Napoleon has that time.

and Bologna, and he does, and in Murat, who becomes his brother-in-law and the King of Naples, later on, he finds an inspired cavalry general. Now, what that means is that when Napoleon brings a big enemy army to battle, which is what he likes to do, he likes one big engagement, it's not over on the battlefield. Your retreat is going to be harassed, possibly cut off by Murat's very large, very good cavalry. This is what he unleashes in Europe in 185 in Austroletes. no one's ready for an army that's as physically fit,

as well-trained, with morale as high as it is, and indeed right from the ranks of the soldiers to the marshals themselves so very young and full of energy. Another thing that we haven't touched on is the very size of the army, the Grin-Lévet, putting more than a million men in the field, and we have to remember at the time that France had a population of about 30 million,

compared with our population, of about 7 million, and other countries were proportionally low compared with that massive population. Even so he would put masses of men into the field. Now, Andrew, what was the impact there? Well, the impact was revolutionary as well because this leve en masse that was a French revolutionary concept, once it had got someone like Napoleon to lead and guide it,

became in a sort of blitz-creak type situation, became a unstoppable force. And as you say, the astonishing differences in terms of proportion from today as the size of populations was such that the invasion of Russia was not such a mad concept in 1812 as it was in, say, 1941 when Hitler tried the same thing

because there wasn't this massive population disproportionate superiority that the Russians enjoyed, which was one of the reasons, of course, that unlike Hitler, Napoleon did get to the Kremlin, did capture it, if it had been a two-season campaign rather than trying to do it all at once,

and if he'd retreated earlier, and if the Russians had given battle other than obviously at Borodino, things might have gone a different way. And I think it's important to note, too, that Wellington always said for the rest of his life that Napoleon had the better army. And this is one of the reasons he came out with Skim of the Earth. And we talk about conscription.

And recent studies have shown that they had a tremendous problem with deserters in France. And it was not as easy to get men for the army as people have thought in the past. But what is interesting is that you had a situation, where Napoleon maintained, Wellington maintained rather, that because the army was cross-cultural and it came from different parts of society, they were actually better behaved and better to train and discipline, I think you'd agree with that.

Napoleon's talking about his own army. No, this is Wellington on Napoleon. This is the interesting thing. Wellington always said that Napoleon had the better army. In a special memo he wrote, he said that Marlborough always commanded armies that were better than that of his enemy. and he said, I always commanded armies that were worse than my enemies.

And this is one of the reasons why he really was proud of his accomplishment because he had the scum of the earth and they were the scum of the earth and that he trained them into an effective fighting army. Well, let's talk about Wellington's effective fighting army. What about Wellington's thin red line? Was that an innovation?

And if so, even if it wasn't, can you tell us what it was because it became a famous factor, didn't it? Yeah, it's the perfect foil. to the French column if it's used properly. Basically, it's a line of two, possibly three soldiers, preferably dug into a position, and each rank fires in turn.

That sounds easy, but it's very difficult to train people to do it, because while one rank fires, the other's reloading, and that's very difficult with the weaponry of the time. One of the things that Wellington does to help this is he's very good at choosing his topography. He knows the geography of a battlefield very well, and can dig his men into positions where that very simple tactic can work very well. But the training that goes into getting an infantryman to work like that is enormous.

Can you just, is there a sense of which Napoleon lost Waterloo, Andrew Romans? How do you mean? Well, in the sense that had he made, in your book, you say, had he done this, had he sent more forces to nay, had he started the attack three hours earlier, had he done about three or four other things, he would have been more successful, he would probably have won Waterloo. Did his mistakes? and it is underestimating of Wellington and so on.

So I've mentioned already three things we could say wasn't as much that Wellington won, Wellington at Blucho won, but that Napoleon lost. Yes, you could certainly say that. You could certainly say that. But what we don't know is even if he hadn't made the various tactical and strategic errors that he did make or that he allowed his subordinate commanders to make,

we still don't know whether or not the British line would have been broken. And if the British line doesn't break at Waterloo, then victory is certain, unbeknownst to Napoleon, Bluquer is on his way. What about Wellington paid generous and lavish tribute? Bluchers more than saving the day, didn't he? Cordial and timely assistance. It was cordial and timely assistance,

but there are a couple of things that are interesting. First of all, Bluher suggested calling at the Battle of La Belle Alleyance, and Wellington decided it should be called Waterloo because Waterloo would tip off the English tongue more easily, which I thought was quite interesting. The other thing is that Bluher was an old man. So although he was commemorated and celebrated in Germany, he also had a couple of accidents and he fell off a horse.

And Bluher was insane. And Wellington also quietly told people about how Blueher thought he was pregnant by an elephant. So Blueher doesn't get the same sort of glory in private conversation from the Duke of Wellington, though he was very grateful for the troops. And I think it's also extraordinary that Blueher kept his word and arrived. considering that he had been injured a few days earlier. And he wouldn't have fought the battle. Wellington would not have fought the battle where he did,

had he not known that Bluca was on his way. The idea that it can be seen as a German victory or an Anglo-Allied victory, but it's madness because you have to see them as a joint victory because that was the whole basis of the battle plan. I think part of it was too that Bluher could not speak French and Wellington as a result had a far greater role in the diplomatic process afterwards.

He was sort of more cosmopolitan, and that made a big difference in terms of how Wellington was able to orchestrate things after Waterloo. Let's spend a few minutes talking about what they thought about each other, which is one of the threads of Andrew's book. At the time of Waterloo, despite what Napoleon said to his generals on the morning of Battlander, you give me the clear impression that he'd got a reasonably high respect for Wellington.

I think in over 11 different occasions, six of them on Elbow, but also strips spreading back all the way back to the peninsula war. Napoleon said positive or admiring, openly admiring things, always in private. Of course, when the French prince in the newspapers, it was standard practice to do down Wellington. But privately, he would say to people like Conancourt, his ambassador to Russia, that Wellington was a good general. and yet on the morning of the battle, he effectively despised him and shared nothing but from contempt for him.

And I believe this is really a straightforward pre-battle conference tactic. You don't try to destroy the morale of your top generals by glorifying the abilities of your opponent. And what about Wellington's view of Napoleon, Mike? Well, he's in awe of him at the beginning. Napoleon is the man you have to have. to face, and I think this grows all the time. Thank God I have met him, said Wellington.

He wanted to face up to the great man of his dad, didn't he? Well, that's what he said sometimes. I think at other times in Spain, he's very glad Napoleon hasn't showed up. He's sort of waiting for him to turn up and turn the tide against him because he knows, of course, that's what he did to poor John Moore, his predecessor in Spain. Things were going pretty well until Napoleon turned up. But Napoleon is the person that they obviously all stand in off.

Wellington did this extraordinary thing we're told of not letting his men shoot and exposed, Napoleon was exposed to his fire and he didn't, he said don't shoot him, he kept him alive on the battlefield of Waterloo. Very important that, because had he been killed in what was considered an ungentlemanly way, he might have got, rather as you did after the First World War in Germany, a stabb in the back legend, that the hero worship of Napoleon would have known no bounds in France, because he had been killed by sort of dishonorable means. However, had he fought the battle and lost it in a straightforward and fair fight, which is what happened, it was much easier for the Bourbons to be restored. Your use of the word gentleman takes us to the sort of legacy, one of the legacies in the 19th century of Wellington. The cult of the Battle of Waterloo grew massively and of Wellington.

There's something you have to remember about the gentleman and the upstart, and that is that Napoleon sat at St. Helena dictating his memoirs, but he also wrote a will, and in the will, he was willing to reward an assassin who'd missed Wellington in Paris. And this was the ultimate indication that in a way I think Napoleon lost the Battle of Waterloo, that his nemesis had gotten to him that much,

that he would do something that ungentlemanly. So I think this is where Wellington, on a personal level, suddenly had a huge psychological advantage. I want to get to ideas, though. Now, the idea of Wellington in the 19th century, Andrew, became, it seems to me, tell me for me, I just, we haven't got much time now, it became a dominating idea in British life,

the idea of the gentleman, the idea of the conservative, the idea of the anti-European, the idea of the non-intellectual, that would take a volume to answer and I have to clean my muddy boots, that sort of thing, when asked a question, all that, do you think that was a force that went through? Yes, absolutely.

His personality was turned into an ethos, a gentleman's ethos that was tremendously important to the development of the public school system, of the attitude of gentlemen and players, the way in which the inspired amateur, which he was presented as ridiculously, into the fact that he was the most professional soldiers,

could prevail, and also, of course, the British, the Britain with fewer soldiers, defeating the European with more. This was all very important to the creation of the sort of Victorian imperial myth. Did you comment on that, Mike, and then we'll talk about Napoleon's legacy? Yes, no, I think that's very right.

The two men come to symbolize their national caricatures, I think, for the better part of a century. You said that Napoleon's legacy made his actually military career seem rather trivial by comparison with his great civic legacy, the Napoleonic Code to do with civil rights, liberties, divorce laws, property and so on. Yes, Napoleon exports the basic reforms of the French Revolution to the rest of Europe, and I think his legacy is twofold. He lays down really the game plan, the template for the way most of Western continental Europe is going to be governed from then on. He also begins the process of the estrangement of the state from the citizen. You must always remember how unpopular Napoleon was by the peoples he ruled.

Another great legacies, of course, was nationalism in Europe. The reaction to Napoleon, especially in Germany after the War of Liberation of 1813, does create, a sense of the advantages of having nation-state like Prussia being so efficient that it's able to take on the French and defeat them. And so along with the concept of modern European liberalism, you also have this sense of Prussian nationalism, which, of course, in the following century, becomes a disaster for all of us. You've got to be very brief, my.

No, disagree. He's beaten by local particularism, fighting the centralised state for traditional reasons. No, disagree. the thought to leave you with. Next time, next week I'll be discussing Confucianism. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you very much for listening. We hope you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast. You can find hundreds of other programs about history, science and philosophy at BBC.com.com.com.com.com.