Civil War Questions

Q1.

Societies strict rules about who is allowed to move up in the ranks of the army seriously impaired their being many qualified leaders. The nobles that were leading the army were not always the most qualified for the job. They did not base moving up in the ranks by skill or intelligence, which probably caused a lot of armies to miss out on some great leaders. One example of a leader who could have lost battle for an army was Prince Rupert. He was a good leader and when his men were on the battlefield they were a strong force. However, Rupert had a tendency to chase people for miles off a battlefield, leaving the rest of the army shorthanded. He was not a good enough leader to instill the discipline in his troops to stay on the battlefield. Another example of poor planning as a leader was Burgoyne when he was marching towards Albany. A smarter leader would have realized that the baggage train that he had was way to big. He did not need all the firepower that he brought, and it was slowing them way down. All the Americans had to do was to make his route hard to cross by dropping down trees and ambushing him. If moving up in the ranks of the army was based on skill, intelligence, and seniority then some of these blunders may have gone differently and the world as we know it could be a different place.

Q2.

Wellington had an old fashioned army, but in no way did that make them incapable of putting up a good fight. Napoleon made a few mistakes in this battle as well. He intended to split up Wellington from the Prussian force. He thought he accomplished this and figured the Prussians were days away from the battlefield. This was a miscalculation for Napoleon. Another mistake he made was waiting hours for the battlefield to dry up. This let the Prussians get ever closer to the battlefield. Even with the Prussians at the battle it was still very even of a battle. Then Napoleon decided to charge with only his cavalry. This proved to be a costly error. Wellington troops knew how to defend against cavalry with their square formation. Wellingtons troops held strong and Napoleons cavalry retreated which caused a mass retreat of Napoleons army essentially losing the battle for him.