Reviews of the battle at Waterloo almost always look at the multitude of mistakes made, primarily on Napoleon’s part. While it is true he made more than was his wont, it still took a commander able to take advantage of those mistakes in order to emerge victorious. In considering the principles of war that Wellington best implemented, the clear choices are mass, maneuver, unity of command, and morale. Although he showed the elements of offensive in a number of battles and used surprise to his advantage at Vittoria, enough of his battles were fought on the defensive that these principles cannot be selected.
In the three battles discussed here, Wellington was outnumbered twice. Leading up to the battle at Assaye, he tried to implement a pincer movement with Stevenson’s force. Should he have divided his forces and hoped for coordinated attacks across miles of unfamiliar terrain without communication between the two columns? On the surface of it, no. But neither would it have been wise to wait for Stevenson’s arrival rather than attacking the Marathas on his own. In his book on the Anglo-Maratha Wars, Brigadier K. G. Pitre expresses the opinion that it “would have been logistically and strategically impossible to conduct this campaign with a single force. If Wellesley had combined both armies, the combination would have been not only hopelessly clumsy and slow, but totally incapable of guarding the Peshwa and the Nizam’s territory. It could not have secured Ahmednagar and Jama. Moreover, both corps could not have advanced through the same defile on the same day.” Neither could he have withdrawn after making contact with the Marathas, for their cavalry would have harassed his column unmercifully. Once on the battlefield, however, his concentration of force was handled admirably. He used the mass of his troops at the Maratha right, breaking their line and forcing a withdrawal. Any other maneuver would almost certainly have ended in his destruction.
At Vittoria, although his forces were on separate lines of approach, they converged on the bulk of the French army along the Zadorra River line. The mass, three-fourths of his army, struck the front and both flanks of the primary French line, forcing a retreat. The fourth column was sufficient to accomplish its task of securing the road to Bilbao and, had it been more aggressively employed, could have been the anvil for the main attack’s hammer.
At Waterloo, the use of mass only occurred at the end of the day. Wellington had no single decisive point to hold, and thus his numbers were dispersed across the battlefield. Only when the French had thrown in the Imperial Guard, and failed, did he get to use the mass of his force, which at that point was almost every man still upright. After being subject to attacks at almost all points, his entire line became the mass of his offensive as he went over from defense to offense.
Wellington also demonstrated the principle of maneuver from the earliest days in India. The battle at Assaye showed his ability to read terrain and respond almost immediately. Surprised to find the Marathas in a strong defensive position rather than in open formation as he had been led to believe, he saw the ability to shift his arriving troops around to the right to strike the Maratha flank. Again surprised by the speed of the Maratha change of front, he adapted his plan on the spot to deploy his forces more strongly to his left to strike the decisive blow while maintaining pressure on other parts of the enemy line. Corrigan asserts, “Assaye surely gives the lie to any suggestion that he was always cautious or lacked the speed of reaction to fight an encounter battle. Immediately upon realising that the Mahratta army were as close as they were, he had galloped straight to where he could see for himself, then in minutes had decided that the best option was to attack at once, had made his plan, issued his orders and had got the army under way.”
Vittoria was almost a textbook example of moving a force along separate lines. The entire 1813 Peninsular Campaign up to the battle at Vittoria showed Wellington’s ability to continually threaten an enemy flank to force his retreat. His fast-moving army, operating in very rough terrain, kept the French army completely at bay until the French forces held their ground around Vittoria, where he was almost able to pull off a complete battle of encirclement. Once the French decided to make a stand, his forces came together to oblige their retreat from the battlefield. Given the difficulties of communication over the miles separating the four columns, to assign routes and responsibilities to three men (while he commanded the fourth column) and have them come together, if not perfectly, then certainly in a sufficiently timely manner to accomplish his goal was a remarkable feat. The southernmost column operated virtually independently on the Heights of Puebla while Wellington was able to shift the line of attack immediately upon hearing of the uncovered bridge near Tres Puentes. The arrival of Picton and Dalrymple was almost fortuitously late, since Wellington’s earlier attack with the Light Division meant the French northern flank was more exposed than it would have been had the two attacks been simultaneous.
At Waterloo, all of Wellington’s maneuvering prior to the battle was in response to the surprise line of attack Napoleon chose and Ney’s attack at Quatre Bras. After Quatre Bras, however, he was able to withdraw his men along lines he ordered to a battlefield of his choosing. Once the battle commenced, all of his maneuvering was again in reaction to attacks; the real maneuvering was his shifting of reserves from point to point as the battle progressed. It was the arrival of the flank attack by the Prussians that provided the bulk of the allied maneuver that day, but it was a move Wellington expected, even if he did not command it.
Wellington employed the principle of unity of command increasingly as his career progressed. This was due mainly to the very irregular quality of his subordinate commanders. In India he had few subordinates to worry about; as he and most of his officers were young, they learned together and were more likely to think alike. He learned some tactics from the Marathas and had no trouble implementing them without others who disagreed with his views. As Corrigan points out, “It was Wellesley and Wellesley alone who, without teaching, training or instructional manuals to help him, devised the tactics and organisation which won the war.” At Assaye, Wellington’s personal reconnaissance gave him the opportunity to take in the situation and immediately move to action. Pitre notes, “His first infantry attack… unhinged the Maratha right flank.… An unexpected situation developed, when the ‘dead’ gunners turned their guns and started firing at the cavalry. Wellesley restored the position by employing his remaining infantry units who restored his rear area.… Wellesley ordered Maxwell’s second charge, but in the time thus gained, he realigned his infantry for the second attack.” His constant movement around the battlefield was what saved the day after the skirmishers advanced in the wrong direction. He was on the spot to see the developing problem and order in the cavalry to save the exposed soldiers, and in doing so drive some Maratha cavalry back into their own lines.
In Portugal Wellington often complained about the low caliber of officer sent to him from England. In 1811, he wrote to the Horse Guards concerning some of his commanders: “I have received the letter announcing the appointment of Sir William Erskine, General Lumley and General Hay to this Army. The first I understand to be a madman. I believe you agree that the second is not very wise. The third may be useful.” Even had they been of better or even consistent quality, it probably would have made little difference; Wellington had little use for seconds in command: “It has a great and high-sounding title, without duties or responsibility of any description… excepting in giving opinions for which he is in no manner responsible.”
Almost all accounts of Wellington’s command style reflect his disdain for those under him, and he not only rejected the concept of an immediate subordinate but also was not terribly fond of the idea of a staff along modern or even Napoleonic lines. He was not inclined to consult with subordinates on anything but technical matters, and he was not happy with the independent views of others. He was, however, dependent on subordinates who would follow orders, since he was often in the thick of the battle on a large field and could not, as at Assaye, be everywhere. After the battle at Vittoria, he court-martialed a battery commander for moving his guns on the directive of another senior officer. At the same time, had Graham not followed his orders to the letter and cut the road to Bayonne, he might have been able to seize Vittoria instead and destroy the French army.
At Waterloo Wellington made sure each unit was properly placed and had a clear understanding of its orders; he then rode back and forth across the lines to move men and materiel as needed. Orders were sent off by aides-de-camp, but Wellington was completely hands-on during the battle, not only repositioning reserves but at times taking personal command of units whose officers were killed or wounded. In his analysis of Wellington as a commander, Michael Glover writes, “Three times he personally led up the wavering Brunswick battalions and the third time they stayed in line and did their duty. A rifleman of the Ninety-fifth recalled how during the French cavalry charges ‘while we were in square the second time, the Duke of Wellington and his staff came up to us in all the fire, and saw we had lost all our commanding officers; he, himself, gave the word of command.’” By taking control to such an extent, Wellington would have left his forces in dire straits had he been incapacitated or killed, which does not argue in his favor. Further, any failures would be laid only at his feet.
Wellington also employed the principle of morale to great effect, despite the fact that he is often criticized for displaying an uncaring attitude toward his soldiers. He certainly was not one to ride along the lines and whip up enthusiasm by his presence, as Napoleon or Alexander did. He famously called his troops “the scum of the earth,” although he followed it up (less famously) with the line “but you can hardly conceive of such a set brought together, and it is really wonderful that we should have made them the fine fellows they are.” Many things transformed the drunks of the city slums into a trusted soldiery: the Dundas and Moore reforms implemented in the boot camps of England, the increasing development of the concept of loyalty to the regiment, and the willingness to follow a winner. Wellington may not have earned the adulation of the troops, but he earned their respect. For all his denigrating comments, Wellington respected his troops as well; as he said to his confidante Lady Salisbury, “I could have done anything with that army, it was in such splendid order.”
Wellington’s aloof personality proved more an advantage than a drawback, for his apparent calmness under fire was essential to the men’s morale. Russell Weigley comments that “[t]he calmness of the Iron Duke during the climactic phase of the battle [Waterloo] was also invaluable in shaping the outcome, holding the Anglo-Dutch army to its stubborn resistance against the desperate onslaughts of the French.” This characteristic, shown at his final battle, was also there in his younger days at Assaye: as a volunteer in the 78th commented, he was “in the thick of the action the whole time.… I never saw a man so cool and collected as he was.” Wellington rode back and forth along the Mont St. Jean ridge throughout the battle of Waterloo, fully exposed to enemy fire as subordinates were shot down on either side; nothing could have been done at that battle to more motivate the men following him. He may not have been in the middle of the fight like Alexander or Belisarius or Gustavus, but Wellington risked death nonetheless. John Keegan writes, “That he had been spared was unquestionably one of the most remarkable outcomes of the battle, for he had been exposed to danger from its beginning to its end. Of his personal staff of sixty-three, no less than twenty had been killed or wounded.… Moreover, he himself had consistently been within cannon range of the enemy and frequently within musket range—say a hundred yards. That he had been mobile only made his exposure more extreme, for he always moved towards not away from fire.”
Although his campaigns in Iberia were a mixed bag of advance and retreat, Wellington finished his career the victor in every theater in which he fought. He had strategic and tactical genius. As Chandler notes, “His generalship was a blend of calculated example, of ‘heroic generalship’ at many a critical moment and place on the battlefield, and of cool realistic appraisal of strategic realities and military capabilities. That remains as clear today as it has ever done before.” Chandler attributes four major strengths to him: he never feared the French way of fighting, he grasped his role in the overall grand strategy of wherever he fought, he was a master of logistics, and he developed great skill in minor tactics, especially in his signature use of the reverse slope on the defensive. Although Wellington had risen through the ranks through purchase, he had been wise enough to learn lessons at each level of command so he knew what was necessary in any situation. Philip Haythornthwaite notes that “he owed much of his success to the attention he always paid to the inferior parts of tactics as a regimental officer. It was his firm belief that before a commander can group divisions and move an army he must understand the mechanism and power of the individual soldier, then that of a company, a battalion, a brigade and so on.”
Perhaps the one word that best describes Wellington as commander is flexibility, or the ability to use what was at hand to accomplish his goals, no matter how it may have looked. His comparison between his own methods and those of his French opponents in the peninsula best illustrates his way of war: “They planned their campaigns just as you might make a splendid piece of harness. It looks well; and answers very well; until it gets broken; and then you are done for. Now I made my campaigns of ropes. If anything went wrong, I tied a knot; and went on.”
