Wellington On Napoleon Quotes

Napoleon built his campaigns of iron and when one piece broke the whole structure collapsed. I made my campaigns using rope, and if a piece broke I tied a knot

But shouldn't they still act like children? They aren't normal. They act like--history. Napoleon and Wellington. Caesar and Brutus.

Anyone who clings to the historically untrue—and thoroughly immoral—doctrine that ‘violence never settles anything’ I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.

Sirs, if it were not for that one red spot I would have conquered the world!!!

In 1819 the proudest man in all of England was, without a doubt, the Duke of Wellington. This was not particularly surprising; when a man has twice defeated the armies of the wicked French Emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte, it is only natural that he should have a rather high opinion of himself.

Was it possible that Napoleon should have won that battle? We answer No. Why? Because of Wellington? Because of Blucher? No. Because of God.

Was it possible that Napoleon should win this battle? We answer no. Why? Because of Wellington? Because of Blücher? No. Because of God.

Wellington was even harsher, calling Lowe ‘a very bad choice; he was a man wanting in education and judgment. He was a stupid man, he knew nothing at all of the world, and like all men who knew nothing of the world, he was suspicious and jealous.

Napoleon’s final nemesis, the Duke of Wellington – that self-appointed epitome of the English grandee – is reputed to have rebuffed a man who called him ‘Irish’, with the withering reply: ‘Just because a man was born in a stable, it does not make him a horse.’ Napoleon

After the Battle of Waterloo, Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington—who managed to defeat Napoleon by the skin of his teeth—surveyed the blood-soaked cornfields of Belgium and wrote in a letter, “Nothing except a battle lost can be half as melancholy as a battle won.

Might it have been possible for Napoleon to win this battle? We answer no. Why? Because of Wellington? Because of Blucher? No. Because of God. For Bonaparte to be conqueror at Waterloo was no longer within the law of the nineteenth century. Another series of acts was under way in which Napoleon had no place. The ill-will of events had long been coming. It was time for this titan to fall. The excessive weight of this man in human destiny disturbed the equilibrium. This individual alone counted for more than the whole of mankind. This plethora of all human vitality concentrated within a single head, the world rising to the brain of one man, would be fatal to civilization if it endured. The moment had come for incorruptible supreme equity to look into it. Probably the principles and elements on which regular gravitation in the moral and material orders depend had begun to mutter. Reeking blood, overcrowded cemeteries, weeping mothers–these are formidable plaintiffs. When the earth is suffering from a surcharge, there are mysterious moanings from the deeps that the heavens hear. Napoleon had been impeached before the Infinite, and his fall was decreed. He annoyed God. Waterloo is not a battle; it is the changing face of the universe.

Was it possible that Napoleon should have won that battle? We answer No. Why? Because of Wellington? Because of Blucher? No. Because of God. Bonaparte victor at Waterloo; that does not come within the law of the nineteenth century. Another series of facts was in preparation, in which there was no longer any room for Napoleon. The ill will of events had declared itself long before. It was time that this vast man should fall. The excessive weight of this man in human destiny disturbed the balance. This individual alone counted for more than a universal group. These plethoras of all human vitality concentrated in a single head; the world mounting to the brain of one man,—this would be mortal to civilization were it to last. The moment had arrived for the incorruptible and supreme equity to alter its plan. Probably the principles and the elements, on which the regular gravitations of the moral, as of the material, world depend, had complained. Smoking blood, over-filled cemeteries, mothers in tears,—these are formidable pleaders. When the earth is suffering from too heavy a burden, there are mysterious groanings of the shades, to which the abyss lends an ear. Napoleon had been denounced in the infinite and his fall had been decided on. He embarrassed God. Waterloo is not a battle; it is a change of front on the part of the Universe.

The survivors of that confusion would surely be bemused by the argument that Waterloo really was not that important, that if Napoleon had won then he would have still faced overwhelming enemies and ultimate defeat. That is probably, though not certainly, true. If the Emperor had forced the ridge of Mont St Jean and driven Wellington back into a precipitate retreat, he would still have had to cope with the mighty armies of Austria and Russia that were marching towards France. Yet that did not happen. Napoleon was stopped at Waterloo, and that gives the battle its significance. It is a turning point of history, and to say history would have turned anyway is not to reduce the importance of the moment it happened.

one result of Napoleon’s destruction was a great increase in British power. For a century after Waterloo Britain enjoyed global pre-eminence at a historically small price in blood and treasure. Russian pride and interests sometimes suffered from this, most obviously in the Crimean War. In the long run, too, British power meant the global hegemony of liberal-democratic principles fatal to any version of Russian empire. But this is to look way into the future: in 1815 Wellington and Castlereagh disliked democracy at least as much as Alexander I did. Under no circumstances could Russian policy in the Napoleonic era have stopped Britain’s Industrial Revolution, or its effects on British power. Moreover, in the century after 1815 Russia grew greatly in wealth and population, benefiting hugely from integration into the global capitalist economy whose main bulwark was Britain. In the nineteenth as in the twentieth century Russia had much less to fear from Britain than from land-powers intent on dominating the European continent.

Eighteen centuries have now passed away since God sent forth a few Jews from a remote corner of the earth, to do a work which according to man's judgment must have seemed impossible. He sent them forth at a time when the whole world was full of superstition, cruelty, lust, and sin. He sent them forth to proclaim that the established religions of the earth were false and useless, and must be forsaken. He sent them forth to persuade men to give up old habits and customs, and to live different lives. He sent them forth to do battle with the most grovelling idolatry, with the vilest and most disgusting immorality, with vested interests, with old associations, with a bigoted priesthood, with sneering philosophers, with an ignorant population, with bloody-minded emperors, with the whole influence of Rome. Never was there an enterprise to all appearance more Quixotic, and less likely to succeed! And how did He arm them for this battle? He gave them no carnal weapons. He gave them no worldly power to compel assent, and no worldly riches to bribe belief. He simply put the Holy Ghost into their hearts, and the Scriptures into their hands. He simply bade them to expound and explain, to enforce and to publish the doctrines of the Bible. The preacher of Christianity in the first century was not a man with a sword and an army, to frighten people, like Mahomet,—or a man with a license to be sensual, to allure people, like the priests of the shameful idols of Hindostan. No! he was nothing more than one holy man with one holy book. And how did these men of one book prosper? In a few generations they entirely changed the face of society by the doctrines of the Bible. They emptied the temples of the heathen gods. They famished idolatry, or left it high and dry like a stranded ship. They brought into the world a higher tone of morality between man and man. They raised the character and position of woman. They altered the standard of purity and decency. They put an end to many cruel and bloody customs, such as the gladiatorial fights.—There was no stopping the change. Persecution and opposition were useless. One victory after another was won. One bad thing after another melted away. Whether men liked it or not, they were insensibly affected by the movement of the new religion, and drawn within the whirlpool of its power. The earth shook, and their rotten refuges fell to the ground. The flood rose, and they found themselves obliged to rise with it. The tree of Christianity swelled and grew, and the chains they had cast round it to arrest its growth, snapped like tow. And all this was done by the doctrines of the Bible! Talk of victories indeed! What are the victories of Alexander, and Cæsar, and Marlborough, and Napoleon, and Wellington, compared with those I have just mentioned? For extent, for completeness, for results, for permanence, there are no victories like the victories of the Bible.

Napoleon Bonaparte was born on August 15, 1769 in Ajaccio, Corsica. His parents, Carlo Buonaparte and Letizia Ramolino, had had three children before him, but only one survived. To no one’s surprise, the couple was thrilled by the arrival of a happy, healthy baby—they had endured so much hardship in the past. At

By the time the settlers and pioneers of America reached the West Coast, they had gone through many dramatic landscapes, but nothing quite prepared them for the size of the California redwoods. The giant trees led to many disputes, including the very name that should be applied to them. In 1853, British botanists proposed to name the trees Wellingtonia gigantea and called them “Wellingtonias” in honor of the Duke of Wellington, who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. They justified the name on the grounds that the greatest tree in the world should bear the name of the greatest general in the world. Fortunately, the Americans resisted this choice and supported instead a native American name. Conservationists felt that so great a tree should not be named for a military general. They proposed instead the name Sequoia sempervirens, “evergreen Sequoia,” in honor of the man who invented a way of writing the Cherokee language and worked hard to promote literacy among his people. Both the coastal redwoods and the giant redwoods of the Sierra Nevada bear the genus name Sequoia, in honor of one of the greatest Indian intellectuals and leaders of the nineteenth century.

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woman could resist both the advances of an English earl and a French artist? It was as clever as any military strategy ever devised by Wellington or Napoleon. No, his plan was still sound.

What has chance ever done in the world? Has it built any cities? Has it invented any telephones, and telegraphs? Has it built any steamships, established any universities, any asylums, any hospitals? Was there any chance in Cæsar’s crossing the Rubicon? What had chance to do with Napoleon’s career, with Wellington’s, or Grant’s…? Every battle was won before it was begun. What had luck to do with Thermopylæ, Trafalgar, Gettysburg? Our successes we ascribe to ourselves; our failures to destiny.

What has chance ever done in the world? Has it built any cities? Has it invented any telephones, any telegraphs? Has it built any steamships, established any universities, any asylums, any hospitals? Was there any chance in Cæsar's crossing the Rubicon? What had chance to do with Napoleon's career, with Wellington's, or Grant's, or Von Moltke's? Every battle was won before it was begun. What had luck to do with Thermopylæ, Trafalgar, Gettysburg? Our successes we ascribe to ourselves; our failures to destiny.

Brent Nosworthy’s excellent work on Napoleonic battle tactics concluded that ‘at close range, artillery was generally unable to inflict a greater number of casualties than competent well-led infantry occupying the same frontage’. The complications of providing that intimate level of artillery support

How to describe Lord Wellington? How can such a thing be necessary or even possible? His face is everywhere one looks – a cheap print upon the wall of the coaching inn – a much more elaborate one, embellished with flags and drums, at the top of the Assembly-room staircase. Nowadays no young lady of average romantic feeling will reach the age of seventeen without purchasing at least one picture of him. She will think a long, aquiline nose infinitely preferable to a short, stubby one and consider it the worst misfortune of her life that he is married already. To make up for it she fully intends to name her first-born son, Arthur. Nor is she alone in her devotion. Her younger brothers and sisters are every bit as fanatical. The handsomest toy soldier in an English nursery is always called Wellington and has more adventures than the rest of the toy box put together. Every schoolboy impersonates Wellington at least once a week, and so do his younger sisters. Wellington embodies every English virtue. He is Englishness carried to perfection. If the French carry Napoleon in their bellies (which apparently they do), then we carry Wellington in our hearts.

History records that there was only one Napoleon at the battle of Waterloo — and that he was too small for his job. The fact is there were two Napoleons at Waterloo, and the second one was big enough for his job, with some to spare. The second Napoleon was Nathan Rothschild — the emperor of finance. During the trying months that came before the crash Nathan Rothschild had plunged on England until his own fortunes, no less than those of the warring nations, were staked on the issue. He had lent money direct. He had discounted Wellington's paper. He had risked millions by sending chests of gold through war-swept territory where the slightest failure of plans might have caused its capture. He was extended to the limit when the fateful hour struck, and the future seemed none too certain. The English, in characteristic fashion, believed that all had been lost before anything was lost -— before the first gun bellowed out its challenge over the Belgian plains. The London stock market was in a panic. Consols were falling, slipping, sliding, tumbling. If the telegraph had been invented, the suspense would have been less, even if the wires had told that all was lost. But there was no telegraph. There were only rumors and fears. As the armies drew toward Waterloo Nathan Rothschild was like a man aflame. All of his instincts were crying out for news — good news, bad news, any kind of news, but news — something to end his suspense. News could be had immediately only by going to the front. He did not want to go to the front. A biographer of the family, Mr. Ignatius Balla, 1 declares that Nathan had " always shrunk from the sight of blood." From this it may be presumed that, to put it delicately, he was not a martial figure. But, as events came to a focus, his mingled hopes and fears overcame his inborn instincts. He must know the best or the worst and that at once. So he posted off for Belgium. He drew near to the gathering armies. From a safe post on a hill he saw the puffs of smoke from the opening guns. He saw Napoleon hurl his human missiles at Wellington's advancing walls of red. He did not see the final crash of the French, because he saw enough to convince him that it was coming, and therefore did not wait to witness the actual event. He had no time to wait. He hungered and thirsted for London as a few days before he had hungered and thirsted for the sight of Waterloo. Wellington having saved the day for him as well as for England, Nathan Rothschild saw an opportunity to reap colossal gains by beating the news of Napoleon's 1 The Romance of the Rothschilds, p. 88. 126 OUR DISHONEST CONSTITUTION defeat to London and buying the depressed securities of his adopted country before the news of victory should send them skyward with the hats of those whose brains were still whirling with fear. So he left the field of Waterloo while the guns were still booming out the requiem of all of Napoleon's great hopes of empire. He raced to Brussels upon the back of a horse whose sides were dripping with spur-drawn blood. At Brussels he paid an exorbitant price to be whirled in a carriage to Ostend. At Ostend he found the sea in the grip of a storm that shook the shores even as Wellington was still shaking the luck-worn hope of France. " He was certainly no hero," says Balla, " but at the present moment he feared nothing." Who would take him in a boat and row him to England? Not a boatman spoke. No one likes to speak when Death calls his name, and Rothschild's words were like words from Death. But Rothschild continued to speak. He must have a boatman and a boat. He must beat the news of Waterloo to England. Who would make the trip for 500 francs? Who would go for 800, 1,000? Who would go for 2,000? A courageous sailor would go. His name should be here if it had not been lost to the world. His name should be here and wherever this story is printed, because he said he would go if Rothschild would pay the 2,000 francs to the sailor's wife before

1815 Napoleon defeated by Wellington at the battle of Waterloo.

A Christian statesmen serving the Ottoman Empire in 1852 would have had a number of reasons to invoke the career of the Duke of Wellington. The recently deceased Wellington was an Anglo-Irish and yet rose from that disadvantaged background to become a military and diplomatic leader defending the British Empire in India and against Napoleon. Representing Britain at the Congress of Vienna, Wellington was conservative in a time of changes and challenges for England and for the European system of politics. Wellington had apparently managed to reconcile the contradictions and challenges of his position and earn a shining reputation in life and in death as a defender of the British Empire. Stephanos Vogorides, the Ottoman Christian statesman who invokes Wellington here, was almost an exact contemporary of his. [...]. He encountered perhaps even more profound challenges than Wellington, struggling to no avail to reconcile his position as an Orthodox Christian serving not the Russian or even Greek state but the Ottoman state, in the midst of the conflicts growing more intense by the day in the early 1850s.

With the thirty-foot miniature of Helm’s Deep, complete with the Hornburg keep, Deeping Wall and polystyrene cliffsides recently constructed with Lee’s assistance, Jackson went out and bought 5,000 1/32nd scale plastic soldiers. ‘Sort of Medieval guys with pikes,’ he reports happily, having cleaned out Wellington’s toyshops. A poor soul spent two weeks laboriously gluing them down in groups of twelve to blocks of wood so the director could move formations of Uruk-hai around like Napoleon.

That was the real triumph of the revolution, Napoleon thought with a slight nod. A man might rise as high as any on the basis of merit alone, and not because of some accident of birth. That was why France would win, in the end. For what nation could hope to stand against a nation of men free to pursue their ambitions?

In his preparations for the battle of Waterloo Napoleon contrived to produce a grand slam of mistakes. It is surprising that his great name as a captain has survived the lengthy checklist of errors he committed that day, or that Wellington should have gained such a great reputation for taking advantage of opportunities that were virtually handed him on a plate.

Leaning against the side of the house, I breathed rather in the manner copyrighted by the hart which pants for cooling streams when heated in the chase. The realization of how narrowly I had missed having to mingle again with this blockbusting female barrister kept me Lot's-wifed for what seemed an hour or so, though I suppose it can't have been more than a few seconds. Then gradually I ceased to be a pillar of salt and was able to concentrate on finding out what on earth Ma McCorkadale's motive was in paying us this visit. The last place, I mean to say, where you would have expected to find her. Considering how she stood in regard to Ginger, it was as if Napoleon had dropped in for a chat with Wellington on the eve of Waterloo.