Wellington lecture 2012 | To war with Wellington | UoS
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- Опубліковано 6 січ 2013
- Established in 1989, from an endowment from the Spanish Ambassador, the Wellington Lecture, held at the University of Southampton is given each year on the aspects of the life and times of the first Duke of Wellington.
Bringing together analysis of Wellington's political and military strategy and the detailed and often moving accounts of those who fought under him, Peter Snow paints a vivid picture of the brilliant commander who once described his men as the 'scum of the earth', yet led them to one of the most important victories in British history.
When the British were pushed out of Portugal every officer was court marshalled except Wellington ... instead he was sent back in charge and the rest is history ... He was a master tactician and the best defensive commander of all time ... the Spanish and Portuguese bestowed many honours on him ... he picked out Waterloo to fight Napoleon in advance ... he was undefeated when in total command, he was the best of the best
Very interesting presentation. Thank you for publishing it.
It's not so much the history ,but rather the historian who make it enjoyably interesting. I've seen this man before, alwaysfun.
I have a short letter written to my first cousin (Lt General Sir William Nicolay), from Arthur Wellesley. Is someone able to help decipher it? Not the text, but the people involved?
He didn't win every battle! Burgos instantly springs to mind.
@Daniel West why's it called the battle of Burgos?
My understanding is that Wellington withdrew from the siege of Burgos for fear of being cut off from his other forces as the French advanced. So not a defeat.
@@Kaiserbill99 He didn't took big siegeguns from Madrid. So he was on his field guns alone. The Royal Engineers were a rather "skeleton force" at that time. (M. Glover: Wellington as Military Commander", 1968)
Wellington as prime minister got a bill through that wrote religious tolerance into law. A feat comparable to Waterloo, in his own estimation.
Not really voluntarily.
@@EK-gr9gdyes, that one was. All parties opposed it. Including the king. As per historian Richard Holmes. I go with his research.
59:25 Wonderful small world...
It is like Ron Burgundy lecturing on American history, if you could imagine that. Read the revered French historian Charles Blonde, for example. He has a different version of events.However, as Napoleon himself predicted, the victors get to write the history books.
Snow is hardly Ron Burgundy. He was educated at Oxford. And the quote re history being "written by the victors" is largely attributed to Churchill or to Herman Goring. Napoleon is attributed as saying something along the lines of "History is a set of lies that people have agreed upon" which is not the same thing. Whatever the inaccuracies it is still the case that Wellington's forces booted the French out of the Iberian peninsula.
All if not nearly all mentioned here, including Wellington born in Ireland.
At Waterloo, you had a British leader, born on small island called Ireland, beating a leader of France, born on a small island, called Corsica. They were respectively neither English nor French let me add.
From an old Somerset family.
Its how he used the coalition.....
one of my relatives guarded Napoleon when he was captured.....[puffed chest]
@@vitoamos2815 One of mine took the first French Eagle captured by British forces at the battle of Bussaco, but yours is still impressive :) Portuguese or Spanish?
@@Delogros your related to Richard Sharpe!?
Yeah I'm an ass.
@@ironstarofmordian7098 I wouldn't mind being related to the first Napoleonic war hero caught on tape ;) though to be fair he captured his at Talavera mine was at Bussaco
This lecture is ok as an introduction, Mr Snow is easy to listen to but its a bit sketchy & misleading, not to mention biased & there are factual mistakes, not huge but enough to make me think that if there are any French history buffs watching this then they wont be happy buffs.
Wellington was a great Irish man
wagram was not even fought til ONE year after Welesley entered Portugal in 1808 My god this man
I have listened to you for about five minutes, and have lost count of mistakes. Lord Longford was her brother NOT her father ! Also he was younger Than the Duke as he will become
Please if you are going to talk , get your facts right
You are taking money under false pretences
Sorry to say this as I like your and your sons work
(1:55) in a simple "holding action" with "hammer and anvil". (3:58) Well, Burgos, was not a victory.
A fine Irishman 😊
Just because you're born in a stable doesn't make you a horse.
From an old Somerset family.
Sir, I am sure you can do it better, it was not a comic event, a few mistakes.
The horse was named Copenhagen because he subjected my neutral capitol to the first terror bombardment in history in order to seize our fleet in 1807. And in his fawning over the great general, this lecturer forgets that it was not Napoleon himself that led at Waterloo, but a PTSD-wrecked Ney whose trauma induced him to fall back on the simplest of tactics; mostly the Charge. Meanwhile Napoleon was incapacitated by the gout.
Its always nice to see someone do some research!
That’s a rather oversimplified version of the history but then again so is John Snow’s account
That’s a rather oversimplified version of the history but then again so is John Snow’s account
@@theholmes8308 so true he glosses over so much
"The horse was named Copenhagen because he subjected my neutral capitol to the first terror bombardment in history" No he didn't.. in 1807 attack on Copenhagen he was only in command of an infantry Brigade... :S
If the great general was so great why did it take him five years to finally defeat the French in Portugal and Spain. He needed the Portuguese and Spanish armies, not to mention the insurgents to do it. To defeat Napoleon at Waterloo he needed the Prussians to help him out of a tough spot. Most of his army at Waterloo was German and Dutch.
Stephen Smith he's great because no one else could have done what he did. But I agree that the amount of allied help is overlooked.
hey Steve, assuming your first statement is meant as a question (a lot of folks would end it with a question mark,) The answer is simply .. Logistics.
And they (allies) performed far above expectations at both Quatre Bras and at Waterloo. To fight as tenaciously as they did must, to some degree, indicate the confidence they had in Wellington's generalship.
"If the great general was so great why did it take him five years to finally defeat the French in Portugal and Spain" several reasons but mainly logistics and simple numbers, most of the time Wellingtons army was in the 30-40,000 man area about 1/2 Portuguese who where largely British trained and lead and this army simply was (obviously) not large enough to wrestle Spain from at times 1/3 of a million Frenchman, Wellington could engage individual marshals and cause mischief but that was about it.
After Salamanca though and so after he was made de-facto commander and chief of the Spanish forces and having received significant reinforcement forces for the UK (25,000 British at Salamaca 13 months later 57,000 British troops at Vitoria) Wellington had the forces to drive the French from Spain and having these forces he achieved the task in less then 6 months.
@@Delogros that's right, numbers.
propaganda nonsense this book is only 50% accurate
Elaborate
Napoleon was very over rated ... his attitude was to throw large battalions of men at the opposition along with a large gun cannon superiority ... unlike the great Duke of Wellington he did not care how many men he lost
British chest beating jingoism. Not a word of historical truth. This man is a TV news anchor. Not a historian. Do not be fooled.
@@analogeit and what business did you people have in invading india,australia,africa and bahamas ? Those people were also happy in their own lives.Typical attitude.
Fooled? We are not talking about the black arts here. Johns a lovely man & dedicated history buff, he retired from reading the news years ago, this is a lecture for those with a general interest in the period, not angry bitter men old men with nothing positive to say, about anything. Napoleon himself was very self critical about the tactical mistakes & the arrogant assumptions he had made about Spanish & Portuguese war & peoples. Trying reading a book or two on the subject or sucking a chocolate lime.
Mark McCormack, thank you, this lecture is outrageous, so many inaccuracies, the English love chest beating we all know that, we all should know that 75% of Wellington’s army at Waterloo were not English a fact rarely raised by English historians although Wellington spoke glowingly of them in his dispatches and by the way as everyone is well aware ‘The Duke’ was ☘️ Irish ☘️ and Napoleon was Corsican for what’s that worth. In closing there is one undeniable fact about both men, they had no fear, the bravest of the brave, do your research and you will be shocked at how many horses they had shot beneath them, simply unbelievable.
While Wellington was great, he would not have defeated Napoleon with the aid of the Dutch, Germans, and of course the Prussians. Napoleon always fought wars against coalitions. No one country could have defeated him.
ehsfb20011 Russia did
The Russian winter defeated Napoleon, not the nation Russia.
@@kelvinktfong in the war of the 6th Coalition Napoleon at times was very close to defeating the combined Coalition of Prussia, Russia, Austria, Sweden, UK, Spain, Portugal and numerous Germanic states.
@ehsfb20011: Had Wellington's army at Waterloo been comprised of his Peninsula veterans,rather than the mixture he actually had,I doubt that the Prussians would have been needed.To keep that British,Dutch/Begian and German mix fighting as long as he did before the Prussians arrived was masterful.Very few were veterans and many of those who were veteran had fought for the French! Wellington never received anywhere near Napoleon's resources,never having soldiers' lives to squander and didn't even get the officers he wanted from his own masters in London for the Waterloo campaign.He kept a dreadful hodge-podge fighting long enough until the Prussians came,fulfilling the original plan: combine the allied armies and beat the French together.To say he couldn't beat Napoleon with a better army is nowhere near certain.Napoleon was very good,but so was Wellington.
@@philipmarsden7104 You are entirely correct. W. himself in later years said that if he had had his peninsular army at Waterloo (i.e., if his army had been composed ENTIRELY of peninsular veterans), he would have made short work of N. Apparently he even made a sweeping motion with his arm when he said this. And W. was not given to empty boasting.
This speaker is simply not well enough educated about Wellington and the Iberian Peninsula Campaign, his comments about Waterloo are simply inaccurate, the English represented at best 25% of the coalition forces at Waterloo, it should be noted Wellington as always fought with great courage in particular at Waterloo however even he described the victory to his brother Richard in the days following the battle as ‘a near run thing’, if the 35,000 Prussian’s don’t arrive in the late afternoon Napoleon would have been victorious, I should add if it doesn’t rain overnight victory would have been achieved by the French by 1300hrs. Regrettably victors write their own history, I stopped teaching history many years ago so please forgive me if these numbers are not perfect, if my memory serves me correctly Wellington won 10 from 10 none of which could be described as ‘Battles’ more like skirmishes, Napoleon won 52 of 60 Battles absolutely no contest Napoleon the greatest of them all, some one will suggest Alexander the Great but that’s absurd at best Alexander never commanded an army greater than 25,000 men.
He's missed loads out not great unfortunately