redhouse

Call me a damn fool traditionalist, but I'm going to have to opt for the chap who won. Also Napoleon Brandy is over-rated, but everyone loves a good pair of wellies.

Although I can appreciate a man with a plan, set on conquering half the continent..! -1 for including Holland in his plan though. Wellington it is.

You guys are crazy, napoleon has much better victories, and wellington just won waterloo with more men and pretty much everything in his favour.

Yeah but Napoleon apparently provoked a situation in which many men were against him and he didn't have a lot in his favor. Many of the world's great conquerers made the unforgivable mistake of overstretching. Napoleon did. Wellington didn't.

Firtsly, I would say at least initially much of europe was against France because of the anti-conservative absolutist monarchist values they possessed. Thus the conservative concert of Vienna after the napoleonic wars, and the policy thereafter of making sure revolutions against monarchies did not succeed. Anyways, besides that, you are conflating his skill as a general, and what he chose to do as head of state. A general does not decide let's conquer europe and just do it, Napoleon decided to overstrech (i.e. invade russia) as the head ofstate, so this point does not go against him as a general, nor for Wellington as a general.

The question is who was better general, not statesman.

Wellington is not just Waterloo. He made a name for himself in the battlefields of India and defeated Napoleon's best generals one by one in Portugal and Spain with inferior supply lines and fewer troops. Waterloo was an isolated test that Wellington won despite having mostly green troops.

@ulytau.

So are you proposing narrowing down the discussion to the eras in which these men held the rank of a general? Should it include Napoleon's stint as brigadier-general? Should it exclude the promotion of Wellington to field marshal?

Should it? Should it.

And napoleon has numerous victories that were even better? I think it was Hugo that said 'To make Wellington so great is to belittle England', and this is not to say that he was a bad general, but he is not so exceptional as people like to portray, I would argue he has nothing to the standard of Marengo, certainly not to Friedland or Austerlitz

@redhouse, obviously not, but i think by general it should be discussed their role as a commanding officer like a general, not things that come under a completely different role i.e. head of state

@SD

Napoleon ordered his armies to take what food they needed from the people, and as such was hated everywhere he conquered. This provided his army short term gains but the long term costs of fighting against dedicated bands of resistance was huge. This was a novice mistake that lost him the war, and for that reason alone he was an inferior general to Wellington.

For starters redhouse, you can learn to distinguish a military leader from a political one. Then we can progress further.

This... is interesting. Wellington won Waterloo, and was basically responsible for keeping Spain and Portugal out of French hands. Napoleon conquered all of Europe, minus England, Russia (barely), and Spain.

Wellington had the aid of Spanish guerrillas when fighting the Peninsular war, and for most of the campaign Napoleon was not there. He fought Napoleon's marshals and won consistently. While the French marshals were not on par with the Emperor himself, they were on the whole quite good, and beating them is surely and accomplishment in and of itself.

Napoleon delivered stunning victories against numerically superior opponents on many occasions (Austerlitz anyone?) and made some brilliant strategic moves that caught the anti-French alliance off-guard. His biggest blunder was probably Spain, as in sucked men and effort into a virtual black hole for the entirety of his campaign. Russia was also a bad move, but he recovered and fought back for two more years against more nations than he had previously faced at once and with inferior troops (compared to the men that had won victories like Austerlitz, Jena, and Friedland; not necessarily compared to his enemies).

Waterloo is, to my knowledge, the only time Napoleon and Wellington faced off directly. Napoleon had just come back from exile. His army was not up to the standard of the Grand Armee that died in Russia. However, they still made a good showing. On the other hand, many of the Old Guard were recalled veterans, and they broke in the final charge. Wellington won partially through his choice of ground. However, there were many other factors, including British discipline in delivering volleys even as the vaunted Imperial Guard approached and the timely arrival of Prussian reinforcements (which were able to enter battle because Grouchy did not press them hard enough). Had Napoleon dispatched a more aggressive commander, the Prussians would have been kept off balance and probably been unable to reinforce Wellington, at which point the rest of the French army could have overwhelmed the English.

All in all, it's a tough match. Tactically, I give the edge to Napoleon. Strategically, I would do the same--this in no way belittles Wellington's conduct in the Peninsular war, but Napoleon kept men supplied very far from home and fought a war that literally encompassed all of Europe before mechanization or long-distance communication.

Wellington was also a brilliant general, but he is up against arguably the best in history.

@ Socrates - saying Wellington had more men at Waterloo can go either way. Yes, you can count Blucher's army. But on the other hand, there's a strong argument that the battle was decided already by the time Blucher showed up. Yes, Blucher's late arrival made the victory all the more crushing, but it's hard to argue that Napoleon would have held the field if Blucher had been 12 hours later. And saying that Wellington had all the advantages is incorrect. For example, Napoleon had an advantage in artillery. Other things that Wellington did have in his favor - the ground they fought on for example - is the result of Wellington out-generalling Napoleon and choosing excellent ground.

@ Octavious - people were anti the french anyway because they held backwater conservative notions

@ Flem - Blucher's army were arguably decisive, I think Napoleon would have edged the battle if the army's arrival wasn't then. The weather - complete chance, was in a way that really negated Napoleon's artillery, pure chance, and Napoleon had a guide that deceived him, there were many things, I think Wellington was good, but Napoleon is really one of the greatest of all time.

1: Nelson, anybody?
2: This is distinctly different then Grant and Lee, in that neither really faced a constant uphill struggle. Napoleon had his brilliant victory at the Battle of the Three Emperors, but Wellington was no less brilliant in besting him at Waterloo. So... I really don't know. I'd say Wellington, because it's just such a close one, so I'll take him slightly because of the victory. Barely. A win over the other isn't normally enough to do it, but lacking any other big tie breaker, I'll take Wellington.

@ SD

And of course to the Spanish the British were their natural allies :p. C'mon, Soc, Blighty had been at war with the Spanish on and off for Britain's entire existance. Half the population of Spain thought we were the spawn of Satan. It took a real effort by the French to make themselves even more unpopular than us.

@Octavious One instantiation, and I don't think they were less popular, I think the spanish were fighitng for independence in the first real war about/for the nation (as a modern concept), throughout most of the rest of europe though...

It's an interesting debate to be had, although I'm sure I'll hold onto my preference for Napoleon, even though everyone on both sides seems to be making good points