Customer Reviews

Wellington: A Military Life

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Gordon Corrigan's "Wellington-A Military Life" tries hard to find a new niche in the substantial literature about the First Duke of Wellington. "Wellington" is not a standard biography in that Corrigan doesn't spend a lot of pages on Wellington's life away from the military. Nor is it a battle history of Wellington's campaigns, although these are sketched at varying levels of detail in the course of the narrative. Nor is it an operational or strategic level history of the Napoleonic Wars in the manner of Oman or Chandler.

Corrigan's approach is to depict Wellington as a military officer in the context of the British Army and of the wars of his time. It seems clear from the narrative and the footnotes that the author is very familiar with the British Army of Wellington's time and of our own. The focus is on Wellington's development as a officer through his experiences in Ireland, Flanders, India, the Peninsula, and the final Campaign of the Hundred Days. Corrigan provides much contextual discussion on the ways in which the British military establishment did its business in that day and age. Corrigan's prose is solid, straightforward, and unvarnished. His narrative is interesting and seems to cover all the major points in an already well-plowed field.

It seems clear that Corrigan admires Wellington as a military leader, and the narrative makes the case that Wellington was an exceptionally professional and succcessful military officer, even by the battle-hardened standards of his time. The intent to package Wellington's long military career into a single volume of moderate length means many details must be glossed over and some controversies bypassed, but the author does provide some interesting items for consideration. For example, he asserts that there is no definitive proof that Wellington was ever unfaithful to his wife. This statement is possibly correct in the narrowest sense, although it flies in the face of both a wealth of anecdotes and the judgment of other historians. For another example, Corrigan dismisses much of the academic controversy over the respective generalships of Wellington and Napoleon at Waterloo, by noting that each was ultimately responsible for the conduct of the army each led. Wellington fought a hands-on battle on ground of his own choosing in coordination with his Prussian counterpart; Napoleon gambled much and delegated much, and paid the price.

Corrigan offers short but effective bio's of some of the officers with whom Wellington served. His discussion of Sir John Moore, for example, is more nuanced than the usual hagiographic comments; Corrigan brings out Moore's challenges with higher authority, although he does not give full credit for the beneficial strategic results of Moore's aborted campaign in Spain in late 1808, which probably distracted Napoleon from completing the military conquest of Spain.

Corrigan's biography of Wellington is a very serviceable one volume history for the general reader and for the military professional looking for a straightforward narrative.