Napoleon's Ratings / Wellington's Ratings

[ktotwf]

Well, the British are always willing to fight to the last Austrian/Russian/Prussian/Frenchman.

[Joisey]

ORIGINAL: morvwilson

ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76

I always laugh when passions for ones heroes overcloud the reality of the facts.

Wellington>French army.
Wellington>Napoleon.

Case closed.

I am with ktotwf here. What makes Nappy significant to me is that he was the most recent French leader to actually win some wars! The next previous time I can think of when France won anything was during the time of Henry VII. And that was because the King of England was insane!
After Nappy I have a hard time coming up with a war they won with out major assistance from the USA. Their most famous unit, The French Foriegn Legion, lost to machete weilding Mexican peasants!
The British army in my opinion have never understood how to wage a war on a continental scale. Their performance in the world wars still reflected their strategy in the Napoleonic wars. Nibble around the edges and leave the major work to their allies.

I have to agree with this. While the French won WWI, it was not due to French generalship but to the bravery, courage, and honor of the French rank and file soldiers (The Battle of the Somme comes to mind). Such were the losses incurred by the French during WWI, it appears that such traits were literally bled out of the French gene pool since.

[morvwilson]

No doubt! look at how much use the French have been recently!

[Murat]

The French have not won a war since Nappy. I mean little MEXICO kicked out the French, c'mon.

[morvwilson]

It is interesting to me that when you read about other armies and their famous units, they are stories about victory.
 
With the French Foriegn Legion, the stories are all defeats!

[sol_invictus]

My opinion is that the health of Napoleon prevented him form controlling the battle as he had in the past and would have at Waterloo if able. Of course we can go round and round over the many factors that led to Napoleon's defeat, but in the end, Napoleon must be responsible for his own defeat, for whatever reason. I think it is interesting to compare the degree of personl leadership between a healthy and active Wellington and a Napoleon who was ill and unengaged for a good portion of the battle.

[Murat]

ORIGINAL: ktotwf

Well, the British are always willing to fight to the last Austrian/Russian/Prussian/Frenchman.

ROFL

[Ursa MAior]

ORIGINAL: ASHBERY76

I always laugh when passions for ones heroes overcloud the reality of the facts.

Wellington>French army.
Wellington>Napoleon.

Case closed.

This is one of the typical posts that need not to be commented.

[malcolm_mccallum]

My best argument for why Wellington is a bad general?

Its not becasue he only ever fought defensive battles on good terrain and always fell back if the situation was not winnable by a static defense. No, that's just a prudent, unimaginitive methodology and it can be very successful. He shouldn't be raised up on a pedestle for this anymore than he should be denegrated for it.

The case against Wellington is that in the Peninsula, he fought for five years where he outnumbered the available French forces, won most of the battles, had vastly superior supply lines, and had his best troops available whereas the French were constantly losing their best troops to more important theaters.

Five years.

An aggressive, courageous Allied commander could have been in the Pyrenees by 1810...at the latest. When the French were starved before the fortress of Torres Vedras, the Allied army significantly outnumbered them. That Wellington failed to get a decisive result from that situation marks him as a poor General in my estimation.

[morvwilson]

Thanks Malcom, you seem to support my point.

GB leadership on land tends to be only adequate. Most British generals seem to have been more concerned about not loosing instead of winning. Which at a time when in most armies the blood in your veins more than your ability determined your rank. In this atmosphere Wellington was good enough to not loose but not always win a decisive victory.

GB power was built upon being able to control traffic in and out of the Med, Baltic and North seas not on the power of thier army. 

[MPHopcroft1]

I feel compelled to note that the two men played fundamentally different roles in their nation's war efforts. Napoleon was the supreme power of the French Empire, with the power and responsibility the entire conduct of the war and of the regime. Wellington, by contrast, carried out the strategic directives he recieved from London, and was basically given speciifc tasks to accomplish ("Retake Spain" or "Kick Napoleon out of Paris again"). Athough Wellington did becme a poltician, it was well after the war and his serivce as {rime Minister was merely a footnote in English history.

In EiA, the player is in the role of those men in Whitehall. Hopefully he will be somewhat more intelligent.

[Paper Tiger]

So the fact that Wellington was outnumbered and fighting a delaying action at Waterloo waiting for the Prussians in some way makes Wellington a bad general?
How? Wellington had fewer troops, many were of questionable qualityand yet Wellington still held the ground, and he did it for long enough that the Prussians arrived, and had they been an hour or two later the allies would most likely have still held until night time and then withdrawn after a bloody draw, and Wellington only had to draw, he had time to wait for reinforcements, the French had to win.
Wellington realised that often enough that survival is the first part of the job, phyric victories are no good, Wellington was almost always fighting with a small army with limited replacements. His first job was not to lose the army or throw it away. He did that and then he went on and he won with it afterwards.
Remember Talavera

[yammahoper]

Little Afghanistan kicked out the USSR.
 
Little Vietnam kicked out the USA.
 
Winning wars that are thousands of miles away against determined (and well supplied) partisans is never easy.  I also do not think these sorts of conflicts are fair assesments of a nations/leaders military prowess.
 
I do, however, find this discussion very interesting.  Wellington has always facinated me, the little man who beat the proverbial giant.  It seems impossible not to aknowledge the genius of Nappy, but Wellington seemed to have the more dificult job; fight and win a war with a small core army filled in with hired mercenaries and alliances. 
 
Certainly GB had plenty of experience using mercenaries, but the problems of shared command with allies is universal.  Wellington must have been quite the politician.  Then, at the big battle, moving so many men in formation, in time and space together...I have often wonderd if Nappys apparent casual approach Waterloo was because he did not believe Wellington could coordinate and pulll off the mnvs.  Nappy was a proud figure, who showed his ability to out guess himself quite clearly in Russia.  It often seems Nappys plan to push the british aside was the eqivalent of a casual wave of his hand, that beating them would not require reat effort, the flank would fall and they would fall back and IF the Prussian showed up, he would find the French holding field and ready to smash them.
 
All pure speculation on mybehalf of course.
 
yamma

[Murat]

ORIGINAL: yammahoper@yahoo.com

Little Afghanistan kicked out the USSR.

Little Vietnam kicked out the USA.

In both cases your 'kicked out' nation left voluntarily, unwilling to wage total war (nuke Hanoi, begin genocide, Vietnam capitulates, USSR may retaliate OR offer China a protectorate over Vietnam that we help them achieve, same result). Mexico did not have a well supplied partisan group, nor did they even have localized superiority in numbers (there were more French troops in Mexico than partisans). The French got their butts kicked - more casualties, more losses (same in Vietnam by the way). US and USSR in your examples actually had numerical inferiority in their respective endeavors and caused extremely higher casualties than they received.

[morvwilson]

I might also point out that during the Vietnam war the press was giving aid and comfort to the enemy just as they are doing today.

[Ursa MAior]

Please stay on topic.

As of guerillas Nappy had his share of them (btw the term also came to existence after the 2nd of may spanish uprising against the 'infidel' french).

IIRC no regular army (incl Grand Armée) was able to win (check IDF vs Hizbollah lately) against a partisan opponent (save for Alexander the Great, well he has married the daughter of one of them who can do it today? or SAS in in the 50"s in South Eastern Asia - they are hardly regular army in the average meaning of the word).

[morvwilson]

ORIGINAL: Ursa MAior

Please stay on topic.

As of guerillas Nappy had his share of them (btw the term also came to existence after the 2nd of may spanish uprising against the 'infidel' french).

IIRC no regular army (incl Grand Armée) was able to win (check IDF vs Hizbollah lately) against a partisan opponent (save for Alexander the Great, well he has married the daughter of one of them who can do it today? or SAS in in the 50"s in South Eastern Asia - they are hardly regular army in the average meaning of the word).

Some of this depends on how you define "guerillas". Because the ones that fail tend to be called failed rebelions.

During the American Civil War for example, there were some guerilla type fighters on the southern side (Quantrel's raiders). This did not stop the south from eventually loosing the war. Guerilla type warfare only works if there is outside assistance from a friendly government. The French, for instance, assisting the US colonies to throw out the British or more recently, the Mujahadeen (sp?) convincing the USSR that it was not worth staying in Afganistan. The Mujahadeen was backed by the US, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and several other countries.

As far as Hezbollah goes it is only political correctness, dictated by the press, and incompetant leadership at the highest levels that holds back the modern armies from wiping them out.

[iamspamus]

ORIGINAL: ktotwf

How was Wagram a mistake? It was a massive, but bloody victory.

And Borodino was an unimaginative bloody assault for a specific purpose - to destroy the Russian army since it had been brought to battle. Basically, its like picking an escalated assault in EIA in order to cause massive factor losses, because you need to win quickly to avoid attrition.

Not only did Napoleon win, he captured the most important city in Russia.

So, while most people would agree that Russia was a massive mistake, which it obviously was, Napoleon's tactical, strategic, and administrational skills were intact.

After Russia, he rushed back to France, formed a huge army out of nothing, rushed back out, and defeated Russia and Prussia in two battles running. Then, he defeated the Au/Pr/Rus at Dresden while hugely outnumbered. The way the Allies unraveled his army was by not attacking armies where Napoleon was leading.

Wagram is considered the last real "victory" of Napoleon. It does not compare at all to Austerlitz, Jena, or Marengo.

And Napoleon failed at Borodino. The Russian army, though mauled, retreated to fight again. In fact, this army (even if reinforced) blocked Napoleon's thrust south (Maryonoslats sp?) and forced Napoleon to retreat along the way that it marched, thus dooming it.

RE: Moscow, you can see how well that worked out for Nap. I would call Borodino a small tactical victory for Nap and a big strategic failure, even with taking Moscow, which didn't have the result that he anticpated. Finally, on this point, by this time Moscow was the spiritual center of Russia, but St. Pet had the governmental HQ, Tsar, and court. It was as important to take as Moscow and there was no attempt to do so.

I disagree that his skills were the same as well. Rather than outflanking (with the Polish corps, I believe) he did a straight ahead attack. He had lost the finesse of earlier years. Administratively, he HAD to make it a quick campaign, because his system of government needed him to be a the center and he couldn't afford to be away from Paris for too long.

I concur he was awesome even at the point of 1813-1814. The allies did decide to fight where Napoleon "wasn't". But this only makes sense. Defeat his marshalls. Why hit your head against a wall?

Jason

[iamspamus]

ORIGINAL: Camile Desmoulins

Some investigators think that It would be better Suchet in the place of Berthier, Soult against british (he know them very good) and Davout against prussians. The problem is the distrust. Ney wasn't confiable for Napoleon, remember that 40 days before was a royal army general.

I don´t like the 5-5-3 of Wellington, because he can withdraw with a 100% of posibilities too many times. He can withdraw a whole campaign and you can´t fight against the british army. I've wrote about this proble two years ago. I proposed that he can´t withdraw three consecutive times, another tactical selection for the next fight.

Nappy must drop in the last years. His tactical performance it's not so brillant than before. Many battles as wagram, Borodino or Leipzig, no more lighting victories as Austerlitz or Jena. And strategically are good, but with lathency periods alternate with euphory periods. Was an irregular leader in the last stages of the war.

Camille

I agree. I think that we had Wellington as a 453 rather than a 553.

As stated before, I think that Napoleon's ability did and thus ratings should go down in 1813+.
Jason

[iamspamus]

ORIGINAL: ktotwf

How could that be true, when towards the end of his career he was defeating Allied armies which outnumbered him 6-to-1? Manuevering a tiny, personally lead army, and fighting clever battle after clever battle in 1814 doesn't really fit with him using "brute strength" to win.

The idea that he somehow mentally declined can't be supported by the evidence - it was just that the same personality characteristics that caused him to be such a gigantic success also caused him to make his titanic errors.

If anything, he got better as a General - his Marengo campaign was mediocre, and a success almost by accident, and his Egypt campaign was a spectacular strategic failure.

So...no decline if the facts are looked at objectively.

He wasn't defeating allied armies at 6-to-1. The OVERALL stength may have been that, but he was beating localized forces. Even Leipzig with it's 500,000 was only 190,000 Fr vs. 330,000 allies. So, closer to 2-to-1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Leipzig

The idea of the "brute strength" is accurate. Early on with well trained troops, he could do various actions: outflank, holding actions waiting for other troops or whatever. Later, with all of the losses, he was forced to solely rely on the assault column or whatever you'd like to term it. This was a formation that poorly trained levy recruits could do. (Often used by the later Russians.) Mass them up and go. Nothing fancy. If you bust through the enemy, then you win. easy. Two problems were the British with their amazing firepower (which could actually stop a column) and the fact that everyone had seen the column for a while and could work to mitigate their effectiveness.

So, the "brute strength" argument is an objective look.

Jason