Paulinus

On top of which had Charles acted promptly after Aspern-Essling to prevent the French reinforcing Lobau Island then Napoleon would not have been able to defeat him at Wagram. I'm still waiting for those that favour Charles in this thread to find a comparable error committed in Wellington's career.

Rongo

So does anyone know Charles' reasoning for not taking action? It seems such an obvious thing to do...

Mangekyou

Sorry that is what I meant. Im having a bad day today with words, lol!

Mangekyou

I fail to see how this is relevant. Unless you want to talk counter factual history?

Wellington's plan was to hold Waterloo until Blucher arrived. It wasn't as if Blucher appeared out of nowhere.

You are also failing to take into account the fact that Wellington had a multi national rmy to command some of which were not experienced and some of which thought with Napoleon previously.

His style of command and the decisions he had to make at times were dictated by politics and the needs of his country.

jeroenrottgering

Its funny. Of all the responses all those who live in Great-Britain and the Commonwealth voted for Wellington while none for Archduke Charles. While the continent and the rest of the world voted a majority on Archduke Charles, but cared to give Wellington some votes as well. It's says enough at least for the Wellington votes.

Prince Maurice of Orange-Nassau was great too, but I wouldnt say he was better then Gustav Adolf.

Delenda est Roma

Gustav studied Maurice and the student outstripped the teacher by far. Gutsavus adolphus is one of my top 3 commanders.

Mangekyou

Beresford was told by Wellington not to use the cavalry rashly.

Its possible that Long may have indeed got the decisive victory is the attack had continued.

Beresford was an indecisive independent commander, but he and Wellington won the case put forward for not risking the heavy cavalry and Long was removed from command.

Rongo

What's intriguing to me is the comparison of this poll to another poll we did here just a couple months ago rating Wellington, Charles, and ALL of Napoleon's opponents:

http://www.historum.com/war-military...ic-france.html

In that poll, Wellington won hands down, and Charles got only 15% of the vote.

Linschoten

That's easily explicable, most people outside the German-speaking countries know very little about Charles, but if you put up a single candidate against Wellington, those who regard Wellington as 'overrated' (usually for emotional rather than historical reasons, to judge by the inadequate explanations offered here) get busy on Wiki and conclude: this must be somoeone I can support against that wretched Wellington who has been turned into such a hero by the British, and moreover had the impertinence to defeat Napoleon! This business of setting people against one another is a very bad way to approach historical questions anyhow. Althoough it might be illuminating the compare the specific merits and deficiencies of two commanders without turning it into a competition. If British people tend to rate Wellington higher than some others, it might be because they tend to know a lot more about his campaigning in the Peninsula and India. It is horribly apparent that most others are judging him entirely on Waterloo (not that he exactly disgraced himself there).

Paulinus

What's interesting in this thread is the dearth of cogent arguments put forward for why Charles is better than Wellington. You impune the motives of those who voted for Wellington because the majority are British but its pretty clear that most of those who've backed Charles have strong track records on this board of being strong Napoleon-philes which unfortunately raises questions about their objectivity when considering Wellington. The only way to persuade others to the contrary is to present dispassionate evidence in favour of Charles's superiority, so please enlighten us.