Download or read book Feeding Wellington s Army in the Peninsula written by Gareth Glover and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2024-01-30 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transcribed for the first time from Commissary General Tupper Carey's handwritten journals, this is the first of two volumes which cover the lively career of a Commissary who served throughout the Peninsular war and Waterloo campaign. Written with vivid detail, these journals offer a truly unique window into the life of a Commissary and the campaigns in which he served. Although a civilian and greatly discouraged from putting himself in mortal danger, Tupper was often to be found watching the fighting from some nearby vantage point and often describes the actions he witnessed, particularly where it affected his own charge, whether a battalion, a brigade or even later an entire division. Interspersed with these primary roles, he was often seconded to form supply bases in the rear of the army, or to hastily remove or destroy stores when threatened by enemy advances. He also talks freely about fellow officers, and being a private journal written simply for the eyes of his immediate family, he is not shy in giving his honest opinions of both his subordinates or indeed his superiors. This first volume covers Tupper's early life, joining as a clerk and his early years as a Commissary up until the spring of 1813, just before the Duke of Wellington launched his troops on that memorable campaign, designed to drive the French back out of Spain, across the Pyrenees. Also detailed are Tupper's role in the Corunna campaign, The Border War, Battle of Salamanca and the Siege of Burgos. The rest of Tupper’s incredible career will be covered in the second volume.
Download or read book Wellington s Peninsular Army written by James Lawford and published by Osprey Publishing. This book was released on 1973-06-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At the beginning of the Napoleonic period, the British Army's record left something to be desired. During the Peninsular War (1808-1814), however, Wellington led and trained an army that never knew a major defeat on the field. Even Wellington himself described his army as "able to go anywhere or do anything." This book examines the formidable British Army which played an integral part in stalling Napoleon's advance, focusing on the staff, infantry, cavalry, artillery and sieges and sappers. Numerous illustrations, including eight color plates, vividly depict the weaponry and uniforms of Wellington's Peninsular Army.
Download or read book Wellington in the Peninsula 1808 1814 written by Jac Weller and published by Frontline Books. This book was released on 2012-03-30 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This classic account of Wellington s tactics and strategy in the Peninsular War is one of the best single-volume works ever written on the epic campaign. Jac Weller covers all the battles with the French in which Wellington was involved. Talavera, Busaco, Salamanca and Vitoria are among the famous battles that he brings to life once more, with the aid of meticulous research, extensive visits to and photographs of the battlefields themselves, and an unwavering ability to cut a clear path through tangled military events. Wellington in the Peninsula brilliantly demonstrates how a great commander finally achieved victory after six years of battle against Napoleon s army.
Download or read book Wellington s Two Front War written by Joshua Moon and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2012-09-13 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sir Arthur Wellesley's 1808–1814 campaigns against Napoleon's forces in the Iberian Peninsula have drawn the attention of scholars and soldiers for two centuries. Yet, until now, no study has focused on the problems that Wellesley, later known as the Duke of Wellington, encountered on the home front before his eventual triumph beyond the Pyrenees. In Wellington's Two-Front War, Joshua Moon not only surveys Wellington's command of British forces against the French but also describes the battles Wellington fought in England—with an archaic military command structure, bureaucracy, and fickle public opinion. In this detailed and accessible account, Moon traces Wellington's command of British forces during the six years of warfare against the French. Almost immediately upon landing in Portugal in 1808, Wellington was hampered by his government's struggle to plan a strategy for victory. From that point on, Moon argues, the military's outdated promotion system, political maneuvering, and bureaucratic inertia—all subject to public opinion and a hostile press—thwarted Wellington's efforts, almost costing him the victory. Drawing on archival sources in the United Kingdom and at the United States Military Academy, Moon goes well beyond detailing military operations to delve into the larger effects of domestic policies, bureaucracy, and coalition building on strategy. Ultimately, Moon shows, the second front of Wellington's "two-front war" was as difficult as the better-known struggle against Napoleon's troops and harsh conditions abroad. As this book demonstrates, it was only through strategic vision and relentless determination that Wellington attained the hard-fought victory. Moon's multifaceted examination of the commander and his frustrations offers valuable insight into the complexities of fighting faraway battles under the scrutiny at home of government agencies and the press—issues still relevant today.
Download or read book Wellington s Headquarters written by S G P Ward and published by Pen & Sword Books. This book was released on 2017-05-30 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wellington's Headquarters is an essential introduction to the administration of the British army in the early nineteenth century. It offers a fascinating insight into the structure and operation of the Duke of Wellington's command during the Peninsular War. S.G.P. Ward's classic study, first published over sixty years ago, describes the complicated tangle of departments that administered the army, departments which had grown up haphazard and survived virtually unchanged until the time of the Crimean War. Wellington adapted the existing system in order to turn it into an efficient instrument in the war against Napoleon, despite clashes of responsibility and personality that frustrated him and impaired the army's performance on campaign. Chapters cover peacetime and wartime administration, the relationships of the staff officers, the supply and maintenance of the army in the Peninsula, the gathering and interpretation of intelligence, the organization of the army on the march and the sometimes tense relations between Wellington and his subordinates. The study raises the quartermaster general's department to its proper position, and discusses Wellington's attitude to the 'chief of staff' system which was then favored on the continent. The result of this lucid and absorbing survey is an enhanced understanding of the system that had evolved to administer the British army two hundred years ago.
Download or read book Wellington s Army in the Peninsula 1808 1814 written by Michael Glover and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the eighteenth century there was no love lost between Britain and her army. Edmund Burke had laid down that 'an armed and disciplined body is, in its essence, dangerous to liberty.' Admitting, without enthusiasm, that they had to have some kind of army, it was provided with a system of control ostensibly designed to ensure that it could not menace civil liberty -- a complex system which led to Wellington's victory over the French because he was able to manage the administrative hydra in England. His self-set task was 'to do the best I can with the instruments that have been sent to assist me.' Michael Glover unravels the web of complexity over which the commander and his forces won a notable victory -- as well as the French. He describes the recruiting of officers and other ranks, the achievement of advance by purchase, all the services, and how these component parts worked in together. He demonstrates how this machine operated in action and rounds off his account with a portrait of Wellington himself.
Download or read book The Lines of Torres Vedras written by John Grehan and published by Casemate Publishers. This book was released on 2015-11-30 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “This is a well-researched, well-written, closely argued and fascinating contribution to the historiography of the Peninsular War.”—The Spectator In 1809 French armies controlled almost every province of Spain and only Wellington’s small force in Portugal stood between Napoleon and the conquest of Iberia. The French invaded Portugal in the summer of 1810, but found their way blocked by the most extensive field fortifications the world had ever seen—the Lines of Torres Vedras. Unable to penetrate the Lines, the French were driven back into Spain having suffered the heaviest defeat yet experienced by Napoleon’s armies. The retreat from Portugal marked the turning point in the Peninsular War and, from the security of the Lines, Wellington was able to mount the offensive campaigns that swept France’s Imperial armies back across the Pyrenees. The Lines of Torres Vedras is an authoritative account of the planning, construction and occupation of the Lines and of the battles, sieges and horrors of the French invasion. It is also an important study of Wellington’s strategy during the crucial years of the war against Napoleon. “Essential reading for every Peninsula enthusiast, this is recommended highly.”—Military Illustrated
Download or read book Spying for Wellington written by Huw J. Davies and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2018-11-08 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Intelligence is often the critical factor in a successful military campaign. This was certainly the case for Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, in the Peninsular War. In this book, author Huw J. Davies offers the first full account of the scope, complexity, and importance of Wellington’s intelligence department, describing a highly organized, multifaceted series of networks of agents and spies throughout Spain and Portugal—an organization that was at once a microcosm of British intelligence at the time and a sophisticated forebear to intelligence developments in the twentieth century. Spying for Wellington shows us an organization that was, in effect, two parallel networks: one made up of Foreign Office agents “run” by British ambassadors in Spain and Portugal, the other comprising military spies controlled by Wellington himself. The network of agents supplied strategic intelligence, giving the British army advance warning of the arrival, destinations, and likely intentions of French reinforcements. The military network supplied operational intelligence, which confirmed the accuracy of the strategic intelligence and provided greater detail on the strengths, arms, and morale of the French forces. Davies reveals how, by integrating these two forms of intelligence, Wellington was able to develop an extremely accurate and reliable estimate of French movements and intentions not only in his own theater of operations but also in other theaters across the Iberian Peninsula. The reliability and accuracy of this intelligence, as Davies demonstrates, was central to Wellington’s decision-making and, ultimately, to his overall success against the French. Correcting past, incomplete accounts, this is the definitive book on Wellington’s use of intelligence. As such, it contributes to a clearer, more comprehensive understanding of Wellington at war and of his place in the history of British military intelligence.
Download or read book Wellington and the Lines of Torres Vedras written by Mark S. Thompson and published by From Reason to Revolution. This book was released on 2021-08-15 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book describes plans to defend Lisbon from invaders during the Peninsular War 1807-1814. Three different nations considered this challenge. First the French after their invasion of 1807. Second, the Portuguese after the French were ejected in 1808 and third, the British after the French were ejected in 1809.
Download or read book Death to the French written by C. S. Forester and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2022-08-10 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Death to the French" is an absorbing historical novel about the Peninsular War. It narrates the experiences of a British soldier, Rifleman Dodd, who gets separated from the army, joins the guerrillas and becomes their leader to avoid being caught by the French. The soldier and the story of his adventures is fictionalized, but the events are somewhat based on real historical events.
Download or read book A Commanding Presence written by Ian Robertson and published by Spellmount, Limited Publishers. This book was released on 2008 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The many battles fought by Wellington have always excited interest and controversy. Almost all of the fighting on land between British and French troops during the Napoleonic period took place in Portugal and Spain, and so the extended struggle became known as the "Peninsular War." Few are aware that Wellington's armies were actually engaged with the enemy less than 10 per cent of the time. Much of the campaign was spent finding food and drink for man and beast, and withstanding the severe physical conditions encountered in the Peninsula. The unforgiving climate and mountainous terrain materially affected Wellington's strategy, and it was his commanding presence that enabled the many logistical problems to be over come. In this new study, Ian Robertson draws on many vivid first-hand accounts of campaigning life and places the several stubbornly fought actions in their proper context.
Download or read book The Great Waterloo Controversy written by Gareth Glover and published by Frontline Books. This book was released on 2020-12-02 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the Battle of Waterloo reached its momentous climax, Napoleons Imperial Guard marched towards the Duke of Wellingtons thinning red line. The Imperial Guard had never tasted defeat and nothing, it seemed, could stop it smashing through the British ranks. But it was the Imperial Guard that was sent reeling back in disorder, its columns ravaged by the steady volleys of the British infantry. The credit for defeating the Imperial Guard went to the 1st Foot Guards, which was consequently honored for its actions by being renamed the Grenadier Guards. The story did not stop there, however, as the 52nd Foot also contributed to the defeat of the Imperial Guard yet received no comparable recognition. The controversy of which corps deserved the credit for defeating the Imperial Guard has continued down the decades and has rightly become a highly contentious subject over which much ink has been spilled. But now, thanks to the uncovering of the previously unpublished journal of Charles Holman of the 52nd Foot, Gareth Glover is able to piece together the exact sequence of events in those final, fatal moments of the great battle. Along with numerous other firsthand accounts, Gareth Glover has been able to understand the most likely sequence of events, the reaction to these events immediately after the battle and how it was seen within the army in the days after the victory. Who did Wellington honor at the time? How did the Foot Guards gain much of the credit in London? Was there an establishment cover-up? Were the 52nd robbed of their glory? Do the recent much-publicized arguments stand up to impartial scrutiny? The Great Waterloo Controversy is the definitive answer to these questions and will finally end this centuries-old conundrum.
Download or read book To War with Wellington written by Peter Snow and published by Hachette UK. This book was released on 2010-09-16 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The seven-year campaign that saved Europe from Napoleon told by those who were there. What made Arthur Duke of Wellington the military genius who was never defeated in battle? In the vivid narrative style that is his trademark, Peter Snow recalls how Wellington evolved from a backward, sensitive schoolboy into the aloof but brilliant commander. He tracks the development of Wellington's leadership and his relationship with the extraordinary band of men he led from Portugal in 1808 to their final destruction of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo seven years. Having described his soldiers as the 'scum of the earth' Wellington transformed them into the finest fighting force of their time. Digging deep into the rich treasure house of diaries and journals that make this war the first in history to be so well recorded, Snow examines how Wellington won the devotion of generals such as the irascible Thomas Picton and the starry but reckless 'Black Bob' Crauford and soldiers like Rifleman Benjamin Harris and Irishman Ned Costello. Through many first-hand accounts, Snow brings to life the horrors and all of the humanity of life in and out of battle, as well as shows the way that Wellington mastered the battlefield to outsmart the French and change the future of Europe. To War with Wellington is the gripping account of a very human story about a remarkable leader and his men.
Download or read book Waterloo Archive written by Gareth Glover and published by Frontline Books. This book was released on 2010-01-30 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first groundbreaking volume of a new series, acclaimed Napoleonic scholar Gareth Glover brings together previously unpublished material relating to the Battle of Waterloo. The range and unique nature of much of the research will intrigue and fascinate enthusiasts and historians alike. The wealth of hitherto unseen British material contained in Volume I includes: a series of letters written by a senior officer on Wellington's staff to Sir Thomas Graham immediately following the battle; the letters of a member of the Wedgwood family in the Guards at Waterloo; the journal of Sergeant Johnston of the Scots Greys, detailing all his experiences, including a very rare transcript of his own court martial; and letters from eminent surgeons including those of Hume, Davy and Haddy James who recall their harrowing tales of the horrific wounds suffered at Waterloo. In addition to these letters and journals, this volume will include 21 original line drawings created by Cavalié Mercer to accompany his famous book on his experiences at Waterloo, but which was never published. Subsequent volumes will include French, German, Dutch and Belgian material that has never been translated into English before.
Download or read book In the Words of Wellington s Fighting Cocks written by GAUD NCIO MOIS S (. ROBERT, BURNHAM) and published by Pen & Sword Military. This book was released on 2021-11-30 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The literature of the Peninsular War is rich with vivid source material - letters, diaries, memoirs, and dispatches - but most of it was written by British soldiers or by the French and their allies. As a result the history and experience of the Portuguese forces - which by 1812 composed close to half of Wellington's Army - have been seriously under-represented. That is why this pioneering book, which publishes for the first time in English the after-action reports written by the commanders of Portuguese battalions, regiments and brigades, is so important. For these detailed, graphic firsthand accounts give us a fascinating insight into the vital contribution the Portuguese made to the allied army and shed new light on the struggle against the French in the Iberian Peninsula.The authors provide an introduction tracing the history of the Portuguese Army prior to the Salamanca campaign of 1812, while tracking its organizational changes and assignment of commanders from 1808 to 1814. They include detailed notes on the after-action reports which set them in the context of each stage of the conflict.
Download or read book The Duke of Wellington and the Supply System During the Peninsula War written by U.s. Army Command and General Staff College and published by Createspace Independent Pub. This book was released on 2014-07-13 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Napoleon's invasion of the Iberian Peninsula brought Spain, Portugal, and Britain into a close, if sometimes uneasy alliance. When an expeditionary force led by General Sir Arthur Wellesley, later the 1st Duke of Wellington, disembarked in Portugal in August 1808, the British Army had been at war with France for five years. If the experience gained during campaigns on five continents had sharpened the efficiency of the Commissary Department, whose staff supplied and transported its rations, Wellington might not have complained after only one week in Portugal: I have had the greatest difficulty in organizing my commissariat for the march. The logistic challenges faced by the Duke of Wellington during the Peninsula War were daunting. The role logistics played in deciding the outcome of the war in the Peninsula as well as detailing the needs of the troops is important in understanding how the war was conducted. The procurement, transport, distribution, and payment of supplies for the use of the Anglo-Portuguese Army during the Peninsula War played a direct role in determining its final outcome.
Download or read book Feeding Wellington s Army from Burgos to Waterloo written by Gareth Glover and published by Pen and Sword Military. This book was released on 2024-07-30 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transcribed from Tupper Carey's journals, vividly details his experiences and observations as a Commissary General during the Peninsular War, Waterloo campaign, and post-war occupation in France. Transcribed for the first time from Commissary General Tupper Carey's handwritten journals, this is the second of two volumes which cover the lively career of a Commissary who served throughout the Peninsular war and Waterloo campaign. Written with vivid detail, these journals offer a truly unique window into the life of a Commissary and the campaigns in which he served. Although a civilian and greatly discouraged from putting himself in mortal danger, Tupper was often to be found watching the fighting from some nearby vantage point and often describes the actions he witnessed, particularly where it affected his own charge, whether a battalion, a brigade or even later an entire division. Interspersed with these primary roles, he was often seconded to form supply bases in the rear of the army, or to hastily remove or destroy stores when threatened by enemy advances. He also talks freely about fellow officers, and being a private journal written simply for the eyes of his immediate family, he is not shy in giving his honest opinions of both his subordinates or indeed his superiors. This volume covers the period from the launch of Wellington’s great advance into Spain in 1813 until the end of the war in 1814, the Waterloo campaign of 1815 and the Army of Occupation in France from 1815 to 1818, when Tupper became arguably the most important Commissary working for the Duke of Wellington.
