Wellington's Right Hand: Rowland, Viscount Hill

by JoannaHill (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2013

  $9.18

  General Rowland Hill, 1st Viscount Hill of Almarez was imaginative, brave - and perhaps more surprisingly for the period in which he lived an d fought - compassionate towards those under his command. He was a man who frequently led from the front in some of the deadliest battles of the Napoleonic Wars. Hill was given his own 'detached' corps and fought his way through Spain, Portugal and France, winning battles against the odds - such at St Pierre, where he defeated the redoubtable Marechal Soult when outnumbered two to one. When ministers at home asked that Hill be allowed to leave the Peninsula and lead an army elsewhere, Wellington dismissed the idea with 'Would you cut off my right hand?' Hill fought at Rolica, Corunna, Talavera, Bussaco, Almarez, Vitoria and Waterloo. He succeeded the Duke in 1828 as Commander-in-Chief. Based upon the Hill papers made available to Joanna Hill - the General's great, great, great niece - and a wide range of other primary sources, Wellington's Right Hand is an important addition to the literature of the Napoleonic age and in particular to that of the Peninsular War.