The Great Duke: Or, the Invincible General

by Arthur Bryant

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• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0002119366
• ISBN13: 9780002119368
• Release Date: January 1971
• Publisher: Not Avail
• Length: 492 Pages

Customer Reviews

An excellent military biography of the Duke of Wellington

Arthur Bryant's "The Great Duke" is an excellent and well written military biography of the Duke of Wellington. Even informed students of Wellington's career should enjoy Bryant's pleasurable writing style. Bryant follows Wellington's development from his youth in Ireland through his early military experiences, to India, the Peninsular War, and in an epilogue, the Battle of Waterloo. Bryant pays the most attention to Wellington's time in Portugal and Spain, where he came of age as a great commander. Wellington emerges from this portrait as a military professional in the most modern sense, a master of logistics, intelligence, and tactics, able to translate the strategic goals of the British Government into practical operational-level campaign planning. Bryant's Wellington has a keen sense of the practical limits of his forces, Britain's only major expeditionary force, deployed days by sea from the British Isles and employed in a theater of war where it was typically outnumbered by French forces. Bryant describes Wellington's success in the Peninsular War as based on his disciplined use of his forces, his painstaking approaches to logistics and intelligence, his effective diplomacy with his allies, and above all, his ruthless application of common sense. He consistently stands apart from his French opponents in Spain in his insistance on seeing the situation as it was and in refusing to indulge in grandiose anticipation. Although the author comes to praise his subject and not bury him, the Duke does not escape criticism. For example, Wellington often had little patience with his subordinates; his reluctance to trust and empower his generals meant that he had to run virtually every battle in person. This book is highly recommended to the serious student of the Duke of Wellington and of the Napoleonic Wars.