Napoleon and Wellington
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3.0 • 1 Rating
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
A dual biography of the greatest opposing generals of their age who ultimately became fixated on one another, by a bestselling historian.
'Thoroughly enjoyable, beautifully written and meticulously researched' Observer
On the morning of the battle of Waterloo, the Emperor Napoleon declared that the Duke of Wellington was a bad general, the British were bad soldiers and that France could not fail to win an easy victory. Forever afterwards historians have accused him of gross overconfidence, and massively underestimating the calibre of the British commander opposed to him.
Andrew Roberts presents an original, highly revisionist view of the relationship between the two greatest captains of their age. Napoleon, who was born in the same year as Wellington - 1769 - fought Wellington by proxy years earlier in the Peninsula War, praising his ruthlessness in private while publicly deriding him as a mere 'sepoy general'.
In contrast, Wellington publicly lauded Napoleon, saying that his presence on a battlefield was worth forty thousand men, but privately wrote long memoranda lambasting Napoleon's campaigning techniques. Although Wellington saved Napoleon from execution after Waterloo, Napoleon left money in his will to the man who had tried to assassinate Wellington. Wellington in turn amassed a series of Napoleonic trophies of his great victory, even sleeping with two of the Emperor's mistresses.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Gossipy and anecdotal, at times amusing and at other times enlightening, this book meanders across an era looking for connections between its two greatest generals. British Sunday Telegraphcontributor Roberts (Eminent Churchillians) concentrates not on the respective merits of Napoleon and Wellington, but on what they thought, wrote, and said about each other. He spices his text with vignettes such as an extensive description of Napoleon's hemorrhoid problem on the eve of Waterloo, and its successful treatment by the famous surgeon Baron Larrey. Then he demonstrates the relevance of his stories in this case by showing that Napoleon was by no means as debilitated on the day of battle as popular myth accepts. Wellington and Napoleon did not face each other until Waterloo in 1815. Napoleon, who first heard of Wellington in 1808, never showed his great rival quite the respect he deserved, let alone the respect Wellington considered his due, Roberts shows. Though partisans and critics of both men stress their differences, Roberts's text makes a convincing case that Napoleon and Wellington were more alike than either of them would have conceded. Both considered Hannibal their military hero; both carried Julius Caesar's Commentariesin the field. They even shared a couple of mistresses Wellington was at pains to show his post-Waterloo triumph in every way possible. Both were self-confident to the point of arrogance, consciously unemotional and obsessively focused on success. And they spent increasing amounts of time, particularly after 1815, blackguarding each other in the fashion of contemporary professional wrestlers. This history presumes a high level of background knowledge, but readers interested in the rivalries of the period will find it thoroughly absorbing.
