The Dangerous Book of Heroes Read online

  The year 1812 would also see the battle of Salamanca in Spain, when Wellington’s Anglo-Portuguese force routed a French army of around 50,000. It was a triumph of maneuver as well as force. Wellington was watching the French positions when he saw a weakness in their lines as they moved. He shouted: “By God, that will do!” before ordering the attack.

  The defeated French marshal said that Wellington had maneuvered his men “like Frederick the Great.” The road to Madrid was open, and that battle, as no other, established Wellington as the most able general Britain could field, though his greatest victory was still to come.

  A new allied offensive in 1813 included the battle of Vitoria, where Wellington beat the army of Joseph Bonaparte. Seeing his men loot abandoned wagons after that battle, Wellington made one of his most famous comments: “We have in the service the scum of the earth as common soldiers.”

  By 1814, French forces had been forced to withdraw from Spain and Portugal and Wellington had crossed the Pyrenees to invade France, his men the first foreign troops to enter the country at the beginning of Napoléon’s downfall. Napoléon’s armies were in dis-array.

  The self-titled French emperor abdicated in 1814 and was exiled to the island of Elba. Before Wellington returned to England, he published a final word to his army, in which he wrote: “The Commander of the Forces, being upon the point of returning to England, again takes this opportunity of congratulating the army upon the recent events which have restored peace to their country and the world.”

  He was made a duke by a grateful nation, the highest order of nobility, to add to his previous titles of viscount, earl, and field marshal, among many others. The tyranny of France over Europe had been broken, and peace was possible at last.

  Wellington visited Paris for a time, where he met the abolitionist Thomas Clarkson. Clarkson found him well informed. Wellington had previously promised Wilberforce that he would do everything in his power to help abolish slavery. Wellington was in fact balked in this desire by those who had made fortunes from the trade. It would be many years before slavery was eventually abolished across the empire.

  Wellington attended the peace negotiations for the Treaty of Vienna in January 1815. It was still going on when he heard the news that shook Europe. Napoléon had escaped.

  In March, with the help of a French ship, Napoléon Bonaparte set foot in France once more. On news of his return, King Louis XVIII of France sent a regiment to intercept him before he could reach Paris. Famously, Napoléon threw open his coat to reveal his military decorations and said: “Let him who has the heart kill his emperor!” Instead, they cheered him and followed him back to Paris. The Hundred Days’ War began as he gathered 118,000 regular soldiers, 300,000 conscripts, and another 100,000 support personnel. Finally, he had the veteran Army of the North around Paris—another 124,000 men.

  Against him, Wellington had an Anglo-Dutch and Hanoverian force of 92,000 in Flanders and a Prussian army of 124,000 under Marshal Blücher. The Austrians had 210,000 men and an army of 75,000 more stationed in Italy. There was also a Russian army in the east of 167,000 mobilizing to march against this threat of another reign of terror. The stakes had never been higher, and only Napoléon could have tried to win against such odds. He might even have been successful if the commander facing him had not been the Duke of Wellington. Before Wellington left Vienna, Tsar Nicholas of Russia laid a hand on his shoulder and said to him: “It is for you to save the world again.”

  Napoléon’s only hope was to try to crush the armies against him one by one rather than allowing them to join forces. No one else could have done it, but he was a superb military tactician and, like Wellington, always kept a clear sense of the vast tapestry of units that made up a campaign area. His armies moved quickly into Belgium, but Wellington was also on the move and his allied force stopped one of Napoléon’s marshals at Quatre Bras, south of Brussels. As a result, the beleaguered Prussian forces were preserved after losing a battle at Ligny, where the French failed to follow up for lack of support.

  Wellington moved his forces to the south, taking command of the ridge Mont-Saint-Jean near a village named Waterloo. That night, June 17, it rained in torrents.

  The Prussian general, Blücher, had given his promise to Wellington that he would support and reinforce his men. His deputy, Gneisenau, was convinced that Wellington would be quickly routed by the French army and wanted to leave the area. Though Blücher was seventy-two years old and already wounded in previous fighting, he held to his word.

  On June 18, 1815, the French bombardment began. Napoléon had a force of around 74,000 compared with Wellington’s 67,000. His guns, known as his belles filles or “beautiful daughters,” hammered the allied force before his veteran troops marched forward to take the British-held ridge. They endured artillery fire themselves but climbed the ridge in the teeth of it, fighting with bayonets and rifles against Wellington’s men. The Earl of Uxbridge then smashed them with a cavalry charge over the ridge.

  Napoléon was by then aware of the approach of the Prussian forces under Blücher. He sent almost his entire reserve force of nearly fifteen thousand infantry and cavalry to hold that flank, keeping back only his elite soldiers, the Imperial Guard. They had never been defeated in battle, and their reputation made them a feared force on any European battlefield. It was a vital decision. Delaying the main attack on Wellington to repel the Prussians may well have lost Napoléon the battle.

  At the same time, Marshal Ney tried to break the British center with cavalry alone. Wellington responded with small square formations that were weak against infantry but almost impossible for a cavalry charge to shatter. Horses will not leap into a solid mass of men with bayonets.

  One British captain later recalled the French horse as an “overwhelming, long moving line, which, ever advancing, glittered like a stormy wave of the sea when it catches the sunlight. On they came until they got near enough, whilst the very earth seemed to vibrate beneath the thundering tramp of the mounted host. One might suppose that nothing could have resisted the shock of this terrible moving mass.”

  Massed artillery and musket fire poured into the French cavalry as they came close, driving them back again and again as the light faded. It was around that time that the Earl of Uxbridge had his leg smashed by grapeshot as he sat in the saddle by Wellington.

  “By God, sir, I’ve lost my leg!” he said in surprise.

  “By God, sir,” Wellington replied. “So you have.”

  Marshal Ney gave up his attempt to attack with cavalry alone and ordered French guns to fire grapeshot into the British squares, some of whom were beginning to run out of ammunition. The carnage was terrible and the British forces wavered. Napoléon saw the moment, felt victory in his grasp. His main reserves were still embroiled in battle against the Prussians on the flank. Yet his Imperial Guard had not fought that day, and they were fresh and straining at the leash. He sent them in at last, to break the British center.

  Their morale was high as they marched in three columns through a storm of skirmisher and canister fire. One of the columns smashed a British force of grenadiers, and then their own flank came under fire and they were charged down and routed. Another Imperial Guard column marched toward British Guard regiments under Colonel Maitland. They were lying on the ground to survive French artillery attacks. When Wellington saw the Imperial Guard closing on their position, he roared: “Up Guards and at ’em!”

  The British Guards met the French with massed volley fire and a bayonet charge. With the Fifty-second Light Infantry, who wheeled in line to attack their broken flank, the Imperial Guards and Napoléon’s last hope were smashed and broken. Famously, their bearskin hats were taken by the victorious regiments and are still worn by British Guards today. As the French soldiers ran in shock and terror, they shouted “La Garde recule!”—the Guard retreats.

  The Prussians attacked once more, coordinating with Wellington’s own counterattack. The French army collapsed and Napoléon withdrew from
the battlefield, returning to Paris where he would be forced to abdicate again and surrender. It had been his greatest gamble, and Wellington later said of Waterloo that it had indeed been a “close-run thing.”

  Copyright © 2009 by Graeme Neil Reid

  Napoléon was taken to the island of Saint Helena off the coast of West Africa, one of the most isolated British possessions in the world. He died there six years later, in 1821.

  Waterloo was Wellington’s last battle, as well as his finest hour. He spent some time in Paris before finally coming home. In England he was lionized as he returned to his career in politics. He also enjoyed hunting and shooting, though he was a terrible shot and managed on different occasions to hit a dog, a gamekeeper, and an old lady as she did her washing.

  Wellington represented Britain at an international congress in Verona in 1822 and took on various roles, such as Master General of the Ordnance, so was still connected to the military. He was part deafened from being too close to guns being tested, and he never recovered from the treatment, which involved a caustic solution being poured into his affected ear. He traveled to Vienna and Russia, where he met the tsar once more.

  In 1828, Wellington became prime minister and held his first cabinet meeting at his home, Apsley House in London. Interestingly, he had a statue of Napoléon at the bottom of the stairs there, where it remains today. Wellington used to hang his hat on it.

  He found the idea of a cabinet somewhat trying, saying, “I give them my orders and they stay to discuss them!” By then, he was close to sixty years old and had lost much of his youthful energy. Even so, he forced through a bill on Catholic emancipation, in the face of much opposition. The English people were still very wary of giving Catholics any rights whatsoever, and mobs threw stones at Wellington’s home, smashing the windows. He ordered iron plates to be put in place and carried on. For this action, rather than any military success, he became known as “the Iron Duke.”

  When the Earl of Winchilsea said that Wellington planned to infringe liberties and introduce “popery into every department of the state,” Wellington demanded satisfaction in a duel, which took place in March 1829. In the end, both men fired deliberately wide and the earl apologized to Wellington. At that time, dueling was illegal, and it was an extraordinary thing for a prime minister, even one with Wellington’s history, to undertake.

  The bill was passed and a reluctant king gave it royal assent. Wellington went on to assist in the creation of the Metropolitan Police in 1829. The continuation of that work would fall to his successor, Robert Peel, whose policemen were known as “bobbies” or “peelers,” nicknames that endure today.

  Wellington retired from political life in 1846. As Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, he spent part of his final years at Walmer Castle and died there in 1852 at the age of eighty-three. He was given a state funeral and finally interred in Saint Paul’s Cathedral, where his tomb lies in the room next to that of Admiral Nelson.

  Britain has since survived perhaps even darker moments and greater dangers than Napoleonic ambition, so that it is difficult to imagine the threat of foreign tyranny in those times. There is even a tendency to romanticize Napoléon in a way that Hitler has never been. Yet Napoléon wanted nothing less than the complete subjugation and destruction of British freedoms. Nelson stopped him at sea and Wellington stopped him on land. That is Wellington’s enduring legacy, far more than any marble tomb in London.

  Recommended

  Wellington: The Iron Duke by Richard Holmes

  Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London

  Alcock and Brown: Transatlantic, Nonstop

  When the First World War ended, the new world of aviation turned its attention from military to peaceful challenges. Flying an airplane in those glorious, dangerous, pioneering years meant sitting in a wooden cockpit open to the elements, with a wooden propeller in front and the wind roaring too loudly for speech. Both pilot and passenger were burned by the sun and soaked by the rain. Airplanes were called flying machines, stringbags, and birdcages, with fragile wings of wood and canvas. It was the closest thing possible to being a bird.

  When the Daily Mail offered a prize of ten thousand pounds for the first nonstop flight across the Atlantic Ocean by an airplane, “from any point in the United States, Canada or Newfoundland to any point in Great Britain or Ireland, in 72 consecutive hours,” there was much shaking of wise heads.

  The traditional first aeronautical challenge, the English Channel, had fallen as much earlier as 1785. In an Anglo-French effort by Jean-Pierre Blanchard and Dr. John Jeffries, a hydrogen balloon flew from Dover to Calais, but only by throwing all nonessentials out of the wicker basket—including Monsieur Blanchard’s breeches. Being British and realizing that the first crossing was also the first international flight, Dr. Jeffries retained his breeches.

  It was 124 years before an airplane crossed the channel. In a tiny 25-horsepower, home-built monoplane, Frenchman Louis Blériot flew from Les Baraques to Dover in 1909 to claim a Daily Mail prize of one thousand pounds. He very nearly crashed as he landed on the white cliffs, proving Australian flyer Charles Kingsford Smith’s observation “Flying is easy. It’s landing that’s difficult.”

  Dover to Calais is twenty-three miles, yet only ten years later the talk was of crossing the Atlantic Ocean nonstop: 1,880 miles at its narrowest. The Daily Mail first offered the prize before the war as an incentive to aviation, but with the advances made in airplanes—in particular by Britain and Germany—such a flight had entered the realms of the barely possible.

  By April Fools’ Day 1919, six contenders announced that they would attempt the crossing that year. There were five Brits and one Swede, but almost immediately Swede Hugo Sundstedt crashed his biplane during a test flight in America.

  Major John Wood was the first to fly, on April 18. He took off from Eastchurch, on the Isle of Sheppey in Kent, and flew westward across Britain in a two-seater seaplane named the Shamrock. Slung between the floats was a massive extra fuel tank. Twenty-two miles west of Wales, his engine seized and he was forced down into the Irish Sea. He and his navigator were picked up by a passing ship. Wood’s enterprise embraced the prewar spirit of aviation—adventurous, against the odds, glorious, and extremely dangerous. Disappointed, the flying major declared, “The Atlantic flight is pipped!”

  The remaining four transported their planes by ship to Newfoundland to fly west to east with the prevailing winds to reach Britain or Ireland. The intrepid flyers, engineers, and riggers assembled at Saint John’s, capital of Newfoundland, in early May 1919. The four teams were experienced aircraft manufacturers: Sopwith, Martinsyde, Handley-Page, and Vickers, proud names in the history of aviation.

  Sopwith Aviation Company chose for its pilot Harry Hawker, a lean Australian and the company’s chief test pilot. His navigator was Lieutenant Commander Kenneth “Mac” Grieve, Royal Navy. For the attempt, Sopwith chose its new biplane called Atlantic. It was powered by a single Rolls-Royce Eagle Mark VIII engine. At that time it was the most powerful air engine in the world. In the Atlantic, it produced a speed of 100 knots and a range of 3,000 nautical miles. After takeoff Hawker could ditch the Atlantic’s undercarriage in the sea to give an extra 7 knots of speed. Every knot might be needed. Hawker made two 900-mile test flights of the Atlantic in Britain, and the team was the favorite to succeed. As Hawker Company, Sopwith later produced the superb Hurricane fighter.

  Martinsyde Aircraft Company also chose a small airplane. Its Raymor, a two-seater biplane, was powered by a single Rolls-Royce Falcon engine. Cruising speed was 110 knots with a range of 2,750 nautical miles, making the Raymor the fastest entrant. Its pilot was Freddie Raynham, age twenty-six. Raynham’s navigator was Captain C. W. Fairfax “Fax” Morgan, a Royal Navy flyer. During the war he’d been shot down over France and used an artificial cork leg as a result. Fax was a descendant of the buccaneer Sir Henry Morgan. The Raymor was named after its pilot and navigator.

  Handley-Page Transport, Ltd., then produced t
he largest airplane in the world, the V/1500 bomber, and selected a three-man crew for its attempt. Overall commander was fifty-five-year-old Admiral Mark Kerr with a Handley-Page pilot and navigator. The V/1500 was powered by four Rolls-Royce Eagle Mark VIIIs. The fuselage of the V/1500 was even large enough to have an enclosed cabin. Handley-Page later produced the Victor nuclear-strike bomber.

  Vickers, Ltd., the last entrant, chose twenty-six-year-old Captain John “Jackie” Alcock, DSO, as pilot and Lieutenant Arthur “Teddie” Brown as navigator. Alcock was born in Manchester and Brown in Glasgow. They were both ex-RAF flyers, and both had been brought down during the war. Brown had a lame left leg to remind him of his crash. He was engaged but delayed the wedding when offered the position as navigator.

  Copyright © 2009 by Graeme Neil Reid

  Vickers chose its Vimy bomber for the Atlantic attempt, an aircraft named after the battle of Vimy Ridge. The Vimy was the second-largest aircraft in the world, 43½ feet long with a wingspan of 68 feet. A good-looking biplane—and good-looking airplanes are usually good-flying airplanes—it was powered by two Rolls-Royce Eagle Mark VIII engines. With its bomb racks and gunner’s equipment removed and two extra gas tanks filled into the fuselage, the Vimy had a cruising speed of 90 knots with a range of 2,800 nautical miles. Vickers later produced the brilliant Supermarine Spitfire fighter.

  The strong naval presence may seem odd now, but in 1919 the majority of air navigators were seamen. Both flyers and sailors navigate using the heavens and land features. Both use rudders, both use port and starboard, both use cockpits and cabins, and so on. The different airflows above and below a wing that “lifts” a plane into the air are exactly the same as the airflows in front and behind a sail that “draw” a vessel through the water.