Wellington As A Human Resources Manager



Wellington As A Human Resources Manager

|Norman Brenner | |

|Department of Management Sciences | |

|The George Washington University | |

|Washington DC | |

|nbrenner@gwu.edu | |

| |

ABSTRACT

An example of a very successful career founded partly upon a talent for managing human resources (HR) is that of Sir Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769-1852). Wellington was arguably the most successful soldier that the British Isles have ever produced. But he did not achieve his unbroken series of victories (culminating with the Battle of Waterloo in 1815) by luck or military "genius" alone. Rather, he was a superlative manager who prepared his victories long in advance by meticulous attention to detail, scrupulous planning, and masterly allocation of his limited resources.

In more recent times, there has been much published research on good HR practices. This article will examine whether and how Wellington applied these principles in the management of his human resources, and leave for another place his equally skilful manipulation of materials, intelligence and psychology

Keywords

Human resources, Dukeof Wellington, military management, British Army.

BRIEF REVIEW OF HR RESEARCH

Two well known articles have prescribed principles for good HR. Behling suggests that just two characteristics of employees are the major determinants for their performance--their intelligence and their character. Pfeffer & Veiga list seven practices of successful organizations: employment security, selective hiring, decentralization and self-managed teams, compensation contingent on performance, extensive training, reduction of status differences, and sharing information.

OVERVIEW OF THE BRITISH ARMY IN WELLINGTON’S TIME

The focus will be on Wellington’s years in command fighting the French in Portugal and Spain, from 1807 through 1814, slighting his long apprenticeship in India before, and his defeat of Napoleon afterward. Excluding the specialized services, the human resources available to Wellington can be divided into five areas: the common soldiers (“enlisted men”), junior officers, senior officers, allied troops and the local population. Here is a brief overview of each group.

Enlisted Men

The British soldier of the Napoleonic War period was, in theory, a volunteer. In fact, most accepted army service only as a punishment--an alternative to exile, prison or hanging. Even those who joined of their own free will were often unemployable in civilian life, being unskilled or alcoholic. In his famous angry dispatch of 1813 after Vitoria, Wellington called them "the scum of the earth, enlisted for drink…but it is wonderful what fine fellows we have made of them".

Junior Officers

The junior officer ranks (sublieutenant through lieutenant colonel) served to carry out the orders of senior officers, and to enforce discipline upon the enlisted men.

Senior Officers

Senior officers, from colonel upwards, were promoted solely by merit and by seniority. However, the most senior commanders were appointed directly from London, and Wellington had to take what he was given.

It is important to emphasize that, because of the British fear of coup d'état, there was no unified command structure over the components of the British Army. The infantry and cavalry were the responsibility of the King's son, the Duke of York, while various other high officials controlled the artillery and engineers, and the services for supply, transport, intelligence and planning. To quote Glover, "Wellington's task was 'to do the best I can with the instruments that have been sent to assist me'. ... His victory over the French was possible only because he was able to manage the administrative hydra in England."

Allied Troops

Wellington was both cursed and blessed in his allies. The Spanish army remained in being throughout the war, but was always fragmented, frequently defeated, and rarely cooperative with him. The Portuguese army, by contrast, consisted of a mass of recruits abandoned by their officers. So Wellington was able to remold the Portuguese troops to his specifications, while the Spanish remained merely surly co-combatants.

Local Population

When the French army invaded Spain in 1807, the bulk of the Spanish population resisted strongly against the French, rallying to patriotic and religious themes. Irregular partisan bands, called “guerrilleros”, sprang up, fighting the French to occasional effect. This "guerrilla" or "little war" so stirred the British that they took the unprecedented step of landing support troops in the Iberian peninsula, under the command of Wellington.

COMPARISON OF WELLINGTON’S BEHAVIOR TO HR MODELS

Intelligence and Character

Since virtually all of his junior officers, and a good many of his senior officers, came to his command without the slightest vestige of officer training, Wellington was forced to assign them based on his normally shrewd estimation of their native talents, as well as their capacity to follow orders. One of his best appointments was that of his friend Beresford to command the Portuguese troops; Wellington selected him for his talent as an intelligent and strong-willed drillmaster.

Too many officers considered bravery, prowess and the upholding of British honor to be their highest duties, and following orders to be in second place. Wellington did his best to disabuse them, by frequent trials for breach of military discipline, including dueling.

The enlisted men were winnowed for those capable of taking on the role of independent light troops, as described below.

Employment Security

Both men and officers enlisted for the duration of the conflict. Only wounds or violation of the military code would release them sooner from the army. Even when one of his top generals, Craufurd, unwisely pursued the enemy against orders and lost a number of men, Wellington forgave him, saying "I do wrong if I accuse a man who I believe has meant well, and whose error was one of judgement, not of intention."

His men’s confidence in his leadership derived from their success in battle, and this was the fruit of his unceasing supervision of every detail. As Private Wheeler wrote in a letter quoted by Davies: "With Old Nosey in command, we could be certain of two things. First, we should always be well supplied with rations. Second, we should be sure to give the enemy a damned good thrashing. What can a soldier desire more."

Selective Hiring

As explained, Wellington had relatively little hand in selection of the soldiers who served under him, much less of the civilian population or guerrilleros. Wellington applied the political influence he had to discourage unsuitable senior appointments (and his influence increased as the war went on), but too often he was sent officers like General Erskine, who, though a fair cavalryman, habitually ignored orders (as once when he preferred to play cards all night), and was manic/depressive to boot.

He took especial care with his allies. The Spanish troops he generally used only on the defensive, partly because they were poorly trained, but even more because he could not rely upon the Spanish officer corps--aristocratic, proud, overconfident and uncooperative. However, he was fortunate to be able to draft the Portuguese population without the Portuguese officers, many of whom had fled to Brazil at the beginning of the war. By promoting volunteer British officers to command and train them, and brigading them with his own British units to steady them in battle, he was able to bring them rapidly up to the British level of competence.

The criteria for enlisting junior officers were, to modern eyes, woefully inadequate. Basically, they had to be able to read and write orders, and had to evince an "air of command". Typically, they were drawn from the middle and upper classes, just as most common soldiers were drawn from the lower. However, there was no military training of any kind for officers, and sometimes even the carrying out of orders could not be guaranteed.

Another problem was that junior officers could rise in rank through the purchase of higher positions, without any display of competence. (Wellington himself had risen to Lt. Colonel at the age of 24 through the liberal outlay of family funds.) Although only about 20% of officers participated in the purchase system, it created a significant number of inadequate place-holders. But it could not be abolished, as that would have caused a massive loss of invested capital. Instead, numerous regulations were issued to moderate, though not abolish, this harmful practice. Wellington tried to ignore unsuitable officers, and promoted and placed in command only those of proven merit. However, as Oman notes, there were occasional examples of able but impoverished captains in their fifties and even one he found who had attained the age of sixty. Only the battlefield deaths of higher ranking officers could permit such worthies to advance, despite Wellington's best intentions.

Extensive Training

Wellington molded the behavior of his soldiers with a mixture of whips and carrots. On the one hand, a strict code of military behavior forbade disobedience, cowardice, rapine. The punishments, from flogging through hanging, were publicly and regularly carried out. On the other hand, Wellington exerted every effort to ensure regular pay and rations for the men, adequate shoes, clothes and bedding. During battle, he was abstemious of his men's lives; he never engaged in speculative, sacrificial charges like Napoleon. Just before Waterloo, he was reviewing the troops of his Prussian allies, and he pointed out that they could save many lives if they stationed the soldiers on the back face of ridges, shielded from the French artillery, rather than where they were placed, on the front faces. "Ah", replied the Prussian commander, "but that is how they show their bravery!"

Normal tactics of the time called for the men to stand in rigid lines under the watchful eyes of drill sergeants, and fire and reload their muskets in unison. Wellington was part of an enlightened minority of British Army commanders in believing that soldiers (some at least) could be trained to carry out their duties without such heavy oversight. Following the lead of the late General Sir John Moore, Wellington selected about 10% of his enlisted men and trained them to act as independent agents, who would roam the battlefield and fire on targets of opportunity. He further innovated by arming them with rifles, which were far more accurate than the normal musket. These so-called "light" units were enormously effective, especially in picking off French officers and artillerymen. The corresponding French light troops were doubly inferior, because they represented only about 5% of available French manpower, and because they were denied the use of the rifle, which Napoleon had deemed too slow in reloading for battlefield use. Eventually, Wellington had an entire Light Division of such troops, and they were the élite force of his army. Today, of course, Wellington's treatment of soldiers as thinkers rather than automata is the norm in most armies.

The Portuguese Army had disintegrated during the first French invasion, in 1807, and Wellington made the momentous and correct decision of rebuilding it, using British officers to retrain the Portuguese recruits. Further, he brigaded each Portuguese fighting unit with two British units, initially so that they would not run away. He deliberately provoked the Battle of Busaco in 1810, partly to slow the French attack towards Lisbon, but also to give the green Portugese troops a chance to fight their maiden battle in defense of their homeland. The battle was won, and the morale of the Portuguese troops soared. Eventually, they achieved full parity of performance with the British soldiers. In addition to the regular Portuguese troops, Wellington trained a Portuguese militia, who proved invaluable in holding the static defenses around Lisbon.

Wellington gathered around him a personal staff of highly competent officers, selected and trained by him out of the pool of random material sent down from London. His Quartermaster General, George Murray, built and operated the highly successful "conveyor belt" of oxcarts which carried supplies from Lisbon out to the field. (It was modeled on the one Wellington had used back in India.) Similarly, Wellington selected Dr. James McGrigor to be the head of his Medical Service, and George Scovell to be the head of his intelligence unit. All proved to be outstanding officers.

Wellington was always very short of combat engineers, partly because there was neither a pension nor a purchase system for its officers, so it tended to attract only lesser talent. Still, although he was never able to besiege enemy fortresses with ease, he did use his engineers in a massive feat which saved his campaign--the building of the earthworks lines which surrounded Lisbon and repelled the third and final French invasion of Portugal, in 1810.

Decentralization and Self-Managed Teams

Wellington was of two minds about decentralization. He devoted careful attention to organizing his army in units and sub-units under capable leaders, but gave them only tactical freedom under his highly specific strategic direction. As explained, the light troops constituted about 10% of all of Wellington's soldiers, and were highly and effectively trained to operate with minimal supervision. He also gave a lot of attention to supporting the bands of Spanish guerrilleros who roamed the countryside, wreaking havoc on French troops and their sympathizers. He gave them monetary support, occasional strategic direction, and received from them much valuable intelligence on the French army.

Wellington also reorganized at much higher levels, by forming divisions (of about 5000 men each) out of the regiments (1000 men) which were the normal peace-time organizational unit. Much depended on finding able general officers to lead them, and as the Peninsular war went on, Wellington was able to field only six divisions under capable generals. Even these, he rarely gave independent commands to. An attempt to organize his cavalry into two divisions failed, because seniority would have automatically placed the incompetent (and mad) General Erskine in command of one.

Normally, Wellington kept all his troops together under his direct command. By contrast, the French soldiers in Spain were divided into four or five independent forces, denominated the Armies of the North, South, East, etc., and which were directed at long distance by Napoleon himself back in Paris. (This was one of the many French mistakes which led to their ultimate defeat in Spain.) Had the French troops ever combined, they would have outnumbered Wellington by at least three to one.

However, in 1811, an unusual simultaneous attack by two French armies on two widely separated fortresses guarding the eastern frontier of Portugal with Spain made it necessary for Wellington to divide his forces. He appointed his best subcommander, Beresford, to guard the southern fortress while he guarded the northern. For insurance, he personally rode south for a week almost unaccompanied to give Beresford his final orders, and then rode back north to rejoin the main body. The two battles of May 1811, Fuentes de Oñoro in the north, and Albuera in the south, were both extremely bloody, and nearly lost by the English. Only less than optimal French leadership saved Wellington from the near-fatal error of dividing his meager forces.

Again, in 1813 at Sorauren, Wellington spread his troops in a broad line to guard all the mountain roads through the Pyrenees from France. But two of his subcommanders unwisely retreated in the face of a surprise attack, and this threatened to unravel the entire British right flank. Time was of the essence, but no reinforcements were available. So he galloped by himself to take direct tactical command of the waverers. As he approached the hill on which they clustered, the Portuguese contingent spotted him first. They began shouting his Portuguese title like a battle slogan: "Douro! Douro! Douro!" Then the British soldiers realized who was joining them and they took up the chant: "Nosey! Nosey! Nosey has come!" The simple act of showing that he was taking personal command restored heart to his men; they counterattacked under his orders and the French fled.

Compensation Contingent Upon Performance

Wellington was generous in awarding battlefield promotions, provided the recipient had followed orders. In his after action reports, Wellington was often brutally honest in assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the troops who had just fought. He made a very public example of the heroic Captain Ramsey, who had charged his artillery unit out of a French trap in 1813: because Ramsey had also committed minor violations of orders, his promotion to Major was held up for two years. A small proportion of enlisted men were promoted to the lower officer ranks, but Wellington generally disapproved of this, on the theory that character was more important in the long run than mere bravery. Loot was an occasional compensation. Twice, his troops broke discipline after victories (at the Siege of Badajoz and the Battle of Vitoria), and engaged in frantic pillaging. Wellington permitted it for a short time, as a partial reward to his hard-run troops, and then forcefully put a stop to the chaos.

Reduction of Status Differences

To the contrary of this principle, Wellington, the son of an Earl and an aristo to his fingertips, constantly emphasized the difference in status among his ranks. The great divide between officers and men was considered natural, partly since it reflected the social structure at home in Britain, and partly because officers had to have a modicum of education. Still, he constantly mixed with his officers at mealtime and the odd social occasion, and frequently showed himself to the men, riding among them and engaging in banter. His men, enlisted and officers alike, respected and believed in him deeply, calling him “the Peer”, though they never truly loved him. (By contrast, the jovial and beloved General Hill was known as "Daddy Hill" by his men.)

Sharing Information

Wellington did not believe in bringing underlings or allies into his confidence. As a rule, he shared strategic plans only with a handful of his top commanders, Craufurd, Hill and Beresford mainly. Normally, he issued orders in precise, concise format, and expected them to be executed speedily and accurately. On one occasion, Wellington ordered some senior commanders to move their troops by a roundabout route. They decided to take a shortcut instead, only to be blocked by an inconvenient French force. Wellington caught up with them, and shepherded them home, saying, "You see, gentlemen, I do know what I am talking about." This was Wellington's major weakness, as he always commanded and rarely explained, on the belief that he himself was far and away the best military thinker in his army.

The sharing of strategic and tactical plans with his Spanish allies foundered at the very first attempt, when General Cuesta refused to join his attack at Talavera in 1809. (It is a legend however that Cuesta excused himself by saying that he could not possibly fight on a Sunday!) Thereafter, Wellington confined himself to working with lower-ranking Spanish commanders, to whom he could simply issue orders. Even the guerilleros, when issued strategic orders to divert this or that French Army Corps away from the intended site of Wellington's attack, could not always be trusted to carry out their tasks.

However, with the local population, Wellington strained to the utmost to maintain friendly relations. In comparison to the French, who requisitioned food from villagers at bayonet point, Wellington always paid for his supplies with gold, or brought his own by wagon train from Lisbon. While the French sought to frighten the people into submission with atrocities, Wellington strictly forbade looting, rape and religious disparagement, and enforced public punishment of such crimes. He sent money to the guerrilleros fighting irregularly against the French, and received in return much valuable military intelligence, which the guerrilleros had got by ambushing French couriers. It was the norm throughout the campaign that Wellington knew exactly the location of his French enemies while they were totally in the dark as to his.

CONCLUSION

Two of the HR principles do not apply in this wartime situation (Employment Security and Selective Hiring). Of the remainder, with the notable exceptions of Reduction of Status Differences and Sharing Information, Wellington acted in almost intuitive agreement with the modern commonly accepted principles of HR. He came by them through his own observations of what worked, as he had received only scanty formal schooling prior to his military service. As in many other fields, the actions of self-taught geniuses have become the codified rules taught in academies.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Orlando Behling, "Employee selection: Will intelligence and conscientiousness do the job?", Acad. Mgt. Exec., Feb. 1998

Godfrey Davies, Wellington and his Army, Blackwell, Oxford 1954

Michael Glover, Wellington's Army in the Peninsula, David & Charles, London 1977

Sir Charles Oman, Wellington's Army, Arnold, London 1912

Jeffrey Pfeffer and John F. Veiga, "Putting people first for organizational success", Acad. Mgt. Exec., May 1999

Jac Weller, Wellington in the Peninsula, Nicholas Vane, London 1967

Draft: 2004 Oct 27; 2012 Jan 16

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