The Great Duke [Hardcover]

Arthur Bryant (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 492 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd; 1St Edition edition (November 1, 1971)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0002119366
• ISBN-13: 978-0002119368
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 7 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,064,683 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An excellent military biography of the Duke of Wellington, January 15, 2005

By 

D. S. Thurlow (Alaska) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Great Duke (Hardcover)

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.