Duke of Wellington
Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, never lost a battle and beat Napoleon at Waterloo. Born in Dublin in 1769 into the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, he was regarded as the family's failure — his mother called him food for powder — and was sent to a military academy in France after Eton. His commissions were bought. He made his reputation in India from 1797 under his brother the governor-general, winning at Assaye in 1803 against odds he later called the hardest fighting he had seen. He was sent to Portugal in 1808 and commanded there for six years. His method combined the reverse slope — keeping infantry out of sight behind ridges so that French artillery could not find them and their columns met a line of muskets at close range — with meticulous logistics, a paid supply system rather than requisition, and the Lines of Torres Vedras, three belts of fortifications that stopped Masséna's army in 1810 and starved it. He drove the French out of Spain through Salamanca and Vitoria and invaded southern France by 1814. At Waterloo on 18 June 1815 he held a ridge and the farms of Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte through repeated infantry, cavalry and artillery attacks until Blücher's Prussians arrived, calling it the nearest run thing he ever saw. He was twice prime minister, passed Catholic emancipation in 1829 against his own convictions to avoid civil war in Ireland, and opposed parliamentary reform so firmly that mobs broke his windows. He was contemptuous of his own troops and looked after them. He died in 1852.
- Lived: 1769 CE – 1852 CE
- Nationality: British
- Roles: military_leader, general, statesman
