Although Napoleon blamed Wellington for his exile to St Helena it was not his choice. When there were calls for him to be executed, he was strongly against it. However, it was Wellington who saved Napoleon after Waterloo. “His whole life, civil, political and military, was a fraud’. Privately he criticised his military and political rule, referring to him as ‘Buonaparte’ to emphasise his non-French origins. Wellington in contrast famously said that Napoleon’s presence on the battlefield “was worth forty thousand men”. Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo brought to an end a remarkable career. On the morning of 18th June 1815 just before the battle of Waterloo Napoleon informed his generals that Wellington was a bad general and they had nothing to fear. Born in the same year, 1769, the two men took up their first commissions in the army around the same time.Īlthough Wellington spent nearly half of his career fighting the French and defeating them, Napoleon was scathing about Wellington’s abilities referring to him as the ‘sepoy general’, referring to his time in India.
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