Arthur Wellesley

Yet he's widely known as the man who BTFOd Napoleon

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_career_of_Arthur_Wellesley,_1st_Duke_of_Wellington
Look at 'Battle record' stop cherrypicking

So Welly was a bottom?

Napoleon was still at a disadvantage and had to compensate for Blucher. Even in that situation, your man wellington could only procure a draw

>more than a quarter of a million men tied down in the Peninsula
>irrelevant
Okay m8

What are you talking about, even Napoleon admirers like Andrew Roberts admit the French were losing badly before the Blucher arrived.
It's not so much i'm an admirer of Wellington, it's just I'm embarrassed by how romanticized Napoleon is.
Spain and Russia were both invaded as part of Napoleon's design to unite Europe against the UK. In both frontiers, well in all frontiers the enemies of Napoleon were recipients of British aid and support. If you seriously think the Russians were Napoleon's primary adversary you're a moron.

Nothing. Anglo meme man that sat on his island doing nothing while everyone else defeated Napoleon.

Just like WW2.

This has got to be bait
Wellington was frequently active on the continent

>Spain and Russia were both invaded as part of Napoleon's design to unite Europe against the UK.

It merely makes Britain the cause of the Napoleonic Wars
It doesn't make Britain or Wellington good at war

Thought Napeleon hates that he had to divert troops and supplies to the Iberian peninsula?

>the French were losing badly before the Blucher arrived.

That's wrong tho
You mist've been watching this inaccurate Waterloo movies

The Prussians didn't arrive at the end, they arrived mid-battle, when the French were still at advantage

>was literally the most successful allied commander
>implying
Kutuzov's strategy destroyed Napoleon's army
Alvinczy was the first to defeat Napoleon fair and square
Von Osterreich-Teschen was so good he was literally considered the best of allied commanders by the whole coalition

Who?

>Wellington
>Anglo

Pretty sure Wellington himself stated that "just because a dog is born in a stable, does not make him a horse"

No, Daniel O'Connell said that *about* Wellington. Wellington himself proudly spoke of his descent from Gaelic royalty through his mother.

I'm wondering how a quote meant to slander and discredit Wellington has somehow become attributed to him. It's so bizarre.

>Daniel O'Connell rails against Wellington for daring to call himself an Irishman while being a Protestant and a soldier in the British army
>Wellington for his part called himself both English and Irish, had a conversational knowledge of the Irish language, and was very sympathetic to Ireland's social and economic problems during his time as Prime Minister
>centuries later, people take O'Connell's words and put them in Wellington's mouth, because like O'Connell they want to discredit the idea that Wellington was Irish
is this irony?

Just because an island beat a continent doesn't mean they're good at war.
Just because a country with half France's population and an army a quarter her size was able to defeat France in an offensive land war doesn't mean they're good at war
Just because the only time France can reasonably say they defeated the UK was the american revolutionary war in which they were supported by a sizable British population and 3 other major powers doesn't mean they're the Brits are good at war.
>Imperial guard retreats for the first time in their history
>Cavalry charges repelled immediately
"the French were still at advantage"

>Just because an island beat a continent doesn't mean they're good at war.
You mean that they allied a continent to defeat ONE country

>Just because a country with half France's population and an army a quarter her size was able to defeat France in an offensive land war doesn't mean they're good at war
Britain didn't defeat shit
Russia, Prussia and Austria did
Pic related

>Just because the only time France can reasonably say they defeated the UK was the american revolutionary war in which they were supported by a sizable British population and 3 other major powers doesn't mean they're the Brits are good at war.
France defeated Britain/England in plenty of wars
The US Revolution is the one one in which France defeated just Britain rather than "Britain's side" 'aka Britain + allies) cause it's the only war Britain ever fought without allies

>Imperial guard retreats for the first time in their history

This happened hours after the Prussian arrived, memelord

>Britain beat a continent

Haha great post, well mehmet friend
No, seriously, RUSSIA beat a continent

You'll notice that before 1812, faggot Wellington was hiding like pussy in Portugal, after having failed twice to make any advance in French-occupied Spain
It's only after the French army got annihilated in Russia that Wellingfag could start his slow and tedious advance through Spain (which now had its French troops drained out to fight the real war in the East)

>Just because an island beat a continent doesn't mean they're good at war.

Bongs are this deluded

>”got humiliated a fair amount of times”
>fought in 54 engagements, lost 7 (3 of which were skirmishes)
>tied up 165,000 to over 324,000 French troops (French troop strength varied depending on the year) with only 30,000 British troops

Pierre you are delusional

He was Anglo-Irish

>with only 30,000 British troops

Then how comes he had 80,000 troops in the Battle of Vitoria alone

And the 150,000 French troops were deployed all over Spain to suppress the insurgensy, they weren't there for Wellington alone (who was mostly hiding in Portugal at the beginning of the war anyway)

>with only 30,000 British troops
>British casualties in the Peninsular War = 35,630 dead and 32,429 wounded

Really amkes u think

>Then how come he had 80,000 troops in the battle of Vitoria alone

Vitoria was fought by Spanish, Portuguese and British forces. Even so, I believe my first post is somewhat misleading; Britain had 30,000 troops in the war at the beginning of the campaign. I believe they sent reinforcements later in the war, so my bad.

>150,000 French troops dispersed to deal with insurgency

It was closer to 250,000 by 1812. Wellington’s forces were necessary for staging sieges and city assaults, something the insurgency could not have done alone. Though that wasn’t my point; it doesn’t matter why the French troops were there, just that they were. Calling the theater irrelevant when it sapped a quarter of a million troops from Napoleon’s other efforts is simply illogical.

>I believe they sent reinforcements later in the war
When Wellington was still hiding in Portugal then

>Though that wasn’t my point; it doesn’t matter why the French troops were there, just that they were
Except those that were stationed in Southern or Eastern Spain to deal with the insurgency were mile away from Wellington
The total number of French troops in the Peninsular theater =/= the number of French troops Wellington faced

>Calling the theater irrelevant when it sapped a quarter of a million troops from Napoleon’s other efforts is simply illogical.
It was irrelevant compared to the other theaters
And a quarter of a million over the course of 6 years ain't really much by Napoleonic Wars standards

>Britain didn't defeat shit
>Russia, Prussia and Austria did
All literal former French allies.
All of those nations and a couple dozen more were kept in the war by the British Empire.
Regardless, just because the UK also utilized it's diplomatic, financial, naval and cognitive superiority doesn't mean they didn't win the terrestrial war too.
They literally did, Napoleon surrendered to them after Waterloo.

>France defeated Britain/England in plenty of wars
ahaha
I said the UK and you went back to Britain/England so you could include all the wars in which the English were outnumbered 4:1 or worse.
France never defeated the UK in any true sense apart from in the American Revolution - a war in which the UK faced fiercer odds and greater obstacles than France ever did.

All fair points. I must say I’m no expert on this time period, and I don’t know enough to dispute any of them. However, my few readings gave me the impression that Wellington was a good commander and superb logistician whose military prowess is often overshadowed by the (understandable) comparisons made between him and Napoleon. Though he may not have been able to pull off a victory like Austerlitz, Wellington was skilled in his own right, and could adapt to suit the conditions of a battle (I believe Napoleon is quoted, when Wellington positioned his troops behind the hill at Waterloo instead of atop it, to have said something along the lines of, “this man fights war in a new way”.

>All literal former French allies.

Yeah, and it's when they turned back against France that France was defeated, not while they were still "allied" (aka subdued) to it
All Britain did was hide until French domination crumbled as its Grande Army was annihilated in Russia

How exactly did Britain "hide"?
this is the most mongrol-born platitude on Veeky Forums.
Britain was where it's always been all Napoleon's life, 18 nautical miles from France. A swimmable distance.
Napoleon doubled the size of the US in selling Louisiana to finance the Armée d'Angleterre and devoted 2 YEARS to preparations but never set sail, do you know why? He was scared.
He marched half a million of his best men in the opposite direction and to their deaths trying to stack the world against the UK and failed.
He was scared of Germaine de Staël and kittens. He was scared of the justice Europeans might do give him so fainted in the strong but gentle arms of the British and was whisked away to a place where none of the mean bad men could hurt him.

Bongs make me cringe

>cringe
back to watching youtube compilations

>unite the two most powerful navies in Europe to invade small island
>fleet of said island demolishes your entire fleet in an afternoon
>spend rest of war trying to do increasingly desperate things to win just to avoid having to actually attack this 'nation of shopkeepers' directly
>meanwhile your fleet just gets bombarded in port for the next decade and half a million of your best men freeze to death in Russia because you can't sail 20 miles without getting BTFO
Apparently this is the British being humiliated

4 foot tall generals BTFO

That's Nelson and not Wellington

Yes

Just saying because this thread was supposed to be about Wellington

>Horatio Nelson †

BTFO

How will Britain ever recover ?!!11