Archduke Charles .vs. Wellington - Page 17 - Historum

**Pacific_Victory** · June 17th, 2012, 02:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paulinus

Thank you. To your enquiry about the Horse Guards it was basically where the commander in chief of the British Army resided; however, as it was also directly linked to the bastion of undeserved privilege that was the cavalry it was potentially a bit of a hornet's nest for a field commander like Wellington and hence the reason why the sensibilities of the cavalry had to be handled carefully.

Don't you just hate when aristocracy gets in the way of competency?

Paulinus · June 17th, 2012, 02:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pacific_Victory

Don't you just hate when aristocracy gets in the way of competency?

Almost as much as the aristocrats hated competency getting in the way of aristocracy... I'm pretty sure abuse of privilege happens today except now its the money talking rather than a title.

**Pacific_Victory** · June 17th, 2012, 02:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paulinus

Almost as much as the aristocrats hated competency getting in the way of aristocracy... I'm pretty sure abuse of privilege happens today except now its the money talking rather than a title.

Without a doubt.

The worst of all is when the few competent aristocrats get replaced by the incompetents with better titles.

**jeroenrottgering** · June 17th, 2012, 02:28 PM

For once democracy is right.

ELITEOFKINGWARMAN8 · June 17th, 2012, 05:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pacific_Victory

Wellington?

Yes.

I'm going to bed shortly since you asked so nicely. But before I go to bed, just some food for thought.

Wellington beat Nappy ONCE.... With HELP from the Prussians.
ADC Beat Nappy once WITHOUT the help of anyone. Wasn't the best win, but a win is a win.

And Blucher, a man who really isn't apart of the "great" general's club won, how many against Nappy in 1814? 2?, if I not only read correctly on Wikipedia but in David Chandler's Waterloo book I have in my possession for the past 10 years? So feed on that ADC haters! :smoke:

Wins don't necessary count for anything, just like American football Superbowl rings, it how you actually won that counts. If it's solely about wins, then Blucher would be considered better then Wellington, and you people really would hang me for that.

I be back tomorrow.

**Kevinmeath** · June 18th, 2012, 12:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sultan44

Not romanticiesed, Just trying to tell y'all he was'n the badass general he was, all he did was sit on hills which is not a tactical miracle, Period!

He fought a war not an X-box game, there's nothing 'badass' about it he only fought when he thought he would win, if not well he simply 'ran' (such a coward!) other people may call it manoeuvre and did so until he thought he could win.

He would manoeuvre to such an extent that he 'ran' to siege lines he had built around Lisbon where he sat and got stronger (supplied by the RN as he knew would happen) and the French with poor logistics (another of his strong points) starved.

Not very 'badass' to sit there and let your enemy starve-- bloody clever mind you! his soldiers liked it, a small 'butchers bill'.

What is the problem of 'sitting on a hill'? by which I presume he always tried to select a battlefield that was not only to his advantage but protected his troops from the worse cannon fire. Surely that is a good thing?

He used the 'reverse slope' to protect his troops , put out a large screen of light infantry skirmishers (some armed with rifles -sneaky!) and only deployed his infantry to meet the threat as it advanced.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paulinus

....................................

As for the British cavalry it seems to have been a dumping ground for disaffected aristocrats and hence something of political minefield. Wellington may well have been playing with fire if he'd tried to reform it and hence it probably wasn't worth the risk.

At the time in many European armies ,not simply the British, 'other' things decide if and how you became an officer (the Royal Navy promoted on the outlandish and frankly 'common' policy of merit!-- good god sir whatever next!).

In Britian the cavalry was more 'fashionable' and tended to attract the officer who wanted to purchase his promotion (such as Wellington by the way). It didn't train for war but rather parades and so had to learn quickly when it came to theatre (not the 'show' kind where a smart uniform was a must!) this was a problem -especially as the French cavalry was rather good.

Having said that it was not as 'bad' as some people ,even Wellington, painted it. For instance the worst 'foppish' officer would not go to war but exchange and stay at home.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sultan44

Then he's the better strategist, not a military genius

Well I would agree Wellington was not a 'genius' he just made the system he had work well.

You by the way share the same opinion of his abilities as his mother-- she thought he would never make a soldier he was the youngest and 'least talented' of her sons.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paulinus

Thank you. To your enquiry about the Horse Guards it was basically where the commander in chief of the British Army resided; however, as it was also directly linked to the bastion of undeserved privilege that was the cavalry it was potentially a bit of a hornet's nest for a field commander like Wellington and hence the reason why the sensibilities of the cavalry had to be handled carefully.

True 'Horse Guards' were a regiment but also the term given to the 'Headquarters' of the army, basically their offices were on Horseguards parade.

**Linschoten** · June 18th, 2012, 01:27 AM

Quote:

Wellington beat Nappy ONCE.... With HELP from the Prussians.
ADC Beat Nappy once WITHOUT the help of anyone. Wasn't the best win, but a win is a win.

This is constantly repeated, but doesn't really count against Wellington in any way; at Waterloo he was commanding a scratch army which was international in character, with too few experienced troops, and his entire plan of battle depended on the arrival of the Prussians. At Aspern-Essling, Archduke Charles had a coherent Austrian army of high quality, and had the edge of Napoleon in numbers of infantry, cavalry and artillery; and incidentally, the Archduke did not defeat Napoleon in the decisive manner in which he was defeated at Waterloo, since he was able to withdraw, regroup and inflict a decisive defeat on the Austrians only two months later at Wagram. Though I am not crticizing the Archduke on that account or marking him down against Wellington, since the quality of a general cannot be judged on the basis of such point-scoring, but on his overall record of competence, flair and success in the situations in which he finds himself; but merely to suggest that most of the criticisms that have been made against Wellington here have been rather superficial.

**Mangekyou** · June 18th, 2012, 03:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ELITEOFKINGWARMAN8

Wellington beat Nappy ONCE.... With HELP from the Prussians.
ADC Beat Nappy once WITHOUT the help of anyone. Wasn't the best win, but a win is a win.

Now lets look at this a bit more closely.

At Waterloo Wellington was commanding a neopolitan force, a lot of his veterans were fighting the war in America.

Also, He wa facing a better trained army, and he planned for Bluchr to come to his aid, ust as he was going to go to Blucher's said earlier, but was stopped at the crossroads.

It was a decisive victory.

The victory that Charles got at Asspern was a minor check to Napoleon, partly through his own aggressiveness and the fact his forces had to cross a single bridge. Charles was defeated comfortably at Wagram not long after.

It was a minor victory.

**Rongo** · June 18th, 2012, 05:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ELITEOFKINGWARMAN8

Wellington beat Nappy ONCE.... With HELP from the Prussians.
ADC Beat Nappy once WITHOUT the help of anyone. Wasn't the best win, but a win is a win.

Charles did indeed have an ally at Aspern-Essling - a much more powerful ally than Blucher. An ally Napoleon would later refer to as "General Danube":

Quote:

The Danube was very different. Of its 400 tributaries, many came from the Swiss or Tyrolese uplands and the Bavarian Alps. In May and June, the melting snows from these regions could raise the Danube at Vienna by as much as 15 feet- already that spring of 1809, the level had varied from 4 feet above an extreme low-water mark to 13 feet below flood level. When the river reached its maximum height, each of its arms became a miniature sea in which islets and sandbanks disappeared and trees torn from the river banks would sweep downstream on the torrent.
...

Meanwhile the Danube had continued to rise. An hour after the battle began, the Vienna bridge ruptured for the second time; thus Lannes' corps, Davout's corps, the Ist and 2nd heavy cavalry divisions and the artillery park were all unable to reach the left bank, where Massena and Lannes had only 27 battalions and 38 squadrons.
...

On the 22nd, the French buildup on the Marchfeld increased, but the unstable bridges still gave trouble and continuous passage was impossible. The cannon sunk in the Danube to act as anchors had settled on gravel and had not sunk deeply enough in it to resist the currents of the flooding river-or the impact of stone-filled barges launched by the Austrians upstream.

There were now so many troops crowded into the French bridgehead that General Boulart of the Guard artillery found it hard to give his guns a decent field of fire. The Austrian guns, presented with so many targets in so confined a space, caused terrible casualties
...

Napoleon badly needed Davout's corps to cross the river, but this was prevented by a fresh rupture of the Vienna bridge. The Danube was under flood and whipped by a strong wind that tore from its banks trees, stacks of fodder, rafts and boats, all of which went swirling downstream. The bridges were almost gone. Here and there five or six boats held together, and in one place there were twelve, but there were wide intervening gaps with absolutely nothing to bridge them. The river had risen eight feet and was a third wider, rolling along full of floating objects–where the chains of the anchors had held, they were too short to save the boats. Large boats and rafts were coming downstream at the speed of a galloping horse, falling across-the few portions of the bridges still intact.
...

Meanwhile, the Danube was now so high that parts of the Prater woods were flooded and it seemed quite possible that Lobau itself would soon be submerged.

Source: Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Aspern-Essling

And yet with all that, Charles didn't follow up the victory, and ended up turning it into a decisive defeat at Wagram just 6 weeks later.

Young Guard · June 18th, 2012, 07:35 AM

I believe that Charles is better then Wellington.