Talk:Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

From Wikiquote

Jump to: navigation, search

I've edited the "won on the playing fields of eton" quote to unfounded. The Dukes of Wellington have denied the quote and its first use appears so long afterwards events and in a French source (Montalenbert 1856) it's difficult to give it any credibility. No accademic source can site a genuine providance.

[edit] Give me night or give me Blucher

I have altered the quote "Either night or the Prussians will come." (Said during the thick of the Battle of Waterloo, as quoted in The True Issue, and the Duty of the Whigs: An Address Before the Citizens of Cambridge (1856) by Joel Parker, p. 26)

to "Give me night or give me Blucher" (Prayer during Battle of Waterloo at about 5.45 pm on 18 June. The Military Maxims of Napoleon by Napoleon Bonaparte, David G. Chandler, William E. Cairnes ,p. 143)

Because although the first quote is correct Joel Parker said that Wellington said. Joel Parker was a politician and not an historian and he said it 40 years after the event and at a political rally not in a historical text. So the quote is more likely to be a paraphrasing than that of the The Military Maxims of Napoleon. The quote is sometimes given the other way around "Give me Blucher or give me night" but of the sources I could find the above seemed the most reliable. --Philip Baird Shearer 12:35, 23 October 2008 (UTC)