The Story of Wellington

While the good folk of London were listening to the guns of the Tower and of the Park, which told of the Waterloo victory, and the joyful news was percolating to the smallest ha...

“_In the whole of my experience I never saw an army so strongly posted as the French at the battle of Toulouse. There ought to have been an accurate plan and description made of...

“_The history of a battle is not unlike the history of a ball. Some individuals may recollect all the little events of which the great result is the battle lost or won; but no i...

Owing to the failure of one of Wellington’s officers to occupy the Boialva Pass, Masséna was able to turn the British position, with the result that his advanced guard appeared...

Considerable energy was displayed by the troops in the siege operations at Badajoz, notwithstanding the persistent torrents of rain which soaked the men to the skin and filled t...

On his return from Copenhagen, Wellesley, never happy unless his mind was fully occupied, resumed his duties as Chief Secretary for Ireland. Special mention of the services he h...

The exacting nature of the campaign was beginning to tell on Wellington. “I certainly feel, every day,” he had written to the Earl of Liverpool on the 15th May 1811, “more and m...

“_We are not naturally a military people; the whole business of an army upon service is foreign to our habits, and is a constraint upon them, particularly in a poor country like...

The proverb to the effect that “History repeats itself” is not strictly true. The further we study the subject, the more we find that like causes do not necessarily bring about...

That disappointments are frequently blessings in disguise had already been proved by Arthur Wellesley. Unfortunately, it is easier to forget such a precept than to practise it,...

“I march to-morrow to follow Marshal Soult, and to prevent his army from becoming the _noyau_ of a civil war in France.” Thus writes Wellington to Sir John Hope on the 16th Apri...

Gathering clouds, dark and ominous, obscured the political horizon in the year 1769. The habitués of London coffee-houses discussed one of three things--“The Letters of Junius,”...

Soult, joined by Mortier and Ney, had some 50,000 men with which to face the victor of Talavera. Had Cuesta guarded the mountain passes as he was supposed to do, Wellesley would...

Bhonsla Rájá now became the immediate object of Wellesley’s attention. While proceeding in quest of him the General received envoys from Sindhia requesting an armistice. This wa...

With a mere handful of soldiers, Junot, big with ideas of a future kingship, and underestimating the strength and fighting powers of the enemy, left Lisbon and entered the field...

The potentialities of the new project were distinctly promising. After uniting with Cuesta, Wellesley was to follow the course of the Tagus and cut off Victor’s army of 33,000 t...

Pasquier, who had the privilege of knowing most of the generals of the Revolution and of the Empire, says of Masséna that he was “France’s first military commander after Napoleo...

Napoleon left Paris at dawn on the 12th June, and travelled to Laon. His troops were divided into the Army of the North, intended for the invasion of Belgium, which totalled a l...

When, in 1803, the short-lived Peace of Amiens came to an end, and Great Britain and France again resorted to the sword, Napoleon’s first feat of arms was the conquest of Hanove...

The pages of military romance teem with references to the disappointed lover who seeks to assuage his sorrow by active service. In actual life one doubts whether such things oft...