Napoleon and Wellington: The Battle of Waterloo- and the Great Commanders who Fought it

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Simon and Schuster, 2001 - 350 σελίδες
"An award-winning historian offers an eye-opening view of the relationship between Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington, whose lives moved inexorably to their meeting at Waterloo, one of the most famous battles of all time."


At breakfast 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 caliber of the British commander opposite him. Now Andrew Roberts presents an original, highly revisionist view of the relationship between the two greatest captains of their age and of the great battle that determined European history in the nineteenth century.

Napoleon, who was born in the same year as Wellington -- 1769 -- fought Wellington by proxy years earlier in the Peninsular War, praising his ruthlessness in private while publicly deriding him as a mere "general of sepoys." In contrast, Wellington publicly lauded Napoleon, saying that his presence on a battlefield was worth forty thousand men, but privately he wrote long memoranda lambasting Napoleon's campaigning techniques.

Although Wellington saved Napoleon from execution after Waterloo, the emperor left money in his will to the man who had tried to assassinate the duke. Wellington in turn amassed a series of Napoleonic trophies of his great victory, even sleeping with two of the emperor's mistresses.

The fascinating, constantly changing relationship between these two historical giants forms the basis of Andrew Roberts's compelling study in pride, rivalry, propaganda, nostalgia and posthumous revenge. It is at once a brilliant work of military history and a triumphant biography.

Featuring a cast of fascinating supporting characters -- including the empress Josephine, the Prince Regent and Talleyrand -- "Napoleon and Wellington" provides the definitive account of the most decisive battle of the nineteenth century.

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Περιεχόμενα

A Fine Time for an Enterprising Young Man
3
Apprenticeship at Arms 17991805
14
A Near Miss 18051808
29
March June 1815
138
Thank God I Have Met Him 18 June 1815
163
Wellington Protects Napoleon and His
182
Shepherding the Scapegoats 18151816
199
A Shrinking Colossus 18171821
226
Remembering with Advantages 18221835
244
The War for Clios Ear 18361852
267
Conclusion
288
Bibliography
317
Index compiled by Douglas Matthews
331
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Andrew Roberts was born on January 13, 1963 in Hammersmith, England. He studied at Gonville and Caius College and earned his B.A. degree in Modern History in 1985. He began his post-graduate career in corporate finance as an investment banker and private company director with the London merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co. He published his first historical book in 1991. He went on to become a public commentator appearing in several periodicals such as The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator. Roberts himself is best known for his 2009 non-fiction work The Storm of War A look at the Second World War covering historical factors such as Hitler's rise to power and the organisation of Nazi Germany, the book received the British Army Military Book of the Year Award for 2010. In 2018 his work, Churchill: Walking with Destiny, made the Bestseller List.

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