The publication of Wellington in India completes the trilogy of Jac Weller's books appearing in trade paperback, with Wellington at Waterloo and Wellington in the Peninsula now being available.
All who have read the books have held them in high regard, and found them most enjoyable. Jac Weller and his books were commented upon in On Wellington: The Duke and His Art of War edited by Andrew Uffindell:
- 'I first met [the Wellers] many years ago when they came to stay with my father when Jac was starting his research of our papers prior to writing his great trilogy of books on the Great Duke's military career. Subsequently I saw them frequently, here or on 'Wellington' occasions elsewhere. They were a charming couple – mildly and delightfully eccentric – who constantly surprised me with the breadth and unexpectedness of their interests. ... As Jac's books were published he was kind enough to give me copies, and these accompanied me whenever I visited the Great Duke's battlefields in India, the Iberian Peninsula, and finally Waterloo. I have always maintained that, from a military point of view, Jac's books were unsurpassed in giving a clear account of events as they unfolded, including a detailed picture of the units and weaponry involved on both sides. Jac was well qualified to do this as he was an expert on the weapons of the period. ... Jac was a very remarkable man: a distinguished military history expert, a fine athlete in his youth, a weapons expert and an adviser on the subject to governments, and above all, an articulate and fascinating writer.'
'Jac Weller was a man of immense, boundless energy and enthusiasm. A bull of a man with eighteen-inch calves, as a football player he excelled not because of his size – he was not the biggest on the team – but by dint of energy, intelligence, and his ability, as he said, always to be 'up for the game'. ... There was more still to Jac Weller, though, than his energy and warmth. When he related some battles, as he would at times after dinner, tears would come to his eyes and a catch to his throat. As fascinated as he was with weapons, as much as he appreciated brilliant strategy and victory, what most gripped him amidst the carnage and awfulness of war was the willingness of one person to lay down his life for another, or the sacrifice of a ship that ensured the safety of the fleet.'
'But of all their many activities, the Wellington trilogy stands out supreme. ... Jac and Cornelia went to Portugal and Spain in the late-1950s as part of their studies of NATO forces and small-arms. They had taken with them maps and other information from Sir Charles Oman's A History of the Peninsular War and Sir John Fortescue's History of the British Army, and followed the war on the actual ground. Jac observed later that 'we have never written about a battle that we had not walked over and carefully studied topographically.' The Wellers soon became thoroughly familiar with Wellington's Peninsular battlefields. Jac wrote in 1959:
- True understanding of the Duke's genius comes quickly when you stand on a height above Sula at Busaco or on the Lesser Arapile at Salamanca. You can get greater appreciation of the valour of the British infantry as you carefully trace out the position of the 57th at Albuera, or follow the route of Craufurd's Light Division at Fuentes de Onoro, than you can from books alone. It is all easily done; almost every farm road of battle significance is still in use. Spain and Portugal are hard, lean and colourful. The little villages still bear not only the same names, but also the scars of the early nineteenth-century battles fought near them. You need only the maps in Fortescue, Oman or Napier to find your way about and understand what happened.
Spain and Portugal were poverty-striken, certainly in those days, but the people were welcoming. In Portugal, remembered Jac, 'the army was so extremely friendly to me. They were able, for instance, to supply me free with maps of battlefield areas long before Spain produced even a master map that I could buy.'
On their return, the Wellers wrote a long article called 'In Wellington's Peninsular Footsteps'. A publisher read this and offered a contract for a book. Thus was born Wellington in the Peninsula, 1808-14. This was the reason why the trilogy did not appear in chronological order. In many ways, this was a good thing, for the Wellers had much experience by the time they tackled the most difficult book, on India.
If it had a fault, the Wellington trilogy was too uncritical of the Duke. But this approach made for a readable and vivid evocation of the pressures, trials and triumph of high command in war. For the Wellers sought to follow the conflicts as far as possible through Wellington's eyes alone. Thus, readers would have available only the information that Wellington knew at the time. The Weller's approach was a valuable corrective to the traditional accounts which used hindsight and an artificial, omniscient viewpoint.
'I never thought of writing about two sides at once,' Jac said. 'I was just writing about one man and I tried not to give the reader any idea of what else there was. I just wanted them to know what the Duke knew at some particular time.' This approach certainly worked; John Keegan wrote in The Face of Battle (London 1976) that Weller's three books on Wellington 'convey a powerful sense of character.'
The Wellers made scores of friends as they worked on their trilogy and as their fame grew. The Seventh Duke of Wellington did all he could to encourage them ... A great British historian, Captain Sir Basil Liddell Hart, also opened many doors for them. ... Wellington at Waterloo was originally published in 1967. Waterloo is one of those epic battles people always want to read about. Thus historians will always write about it. But the true Waterloo classic can be counted on the fingers of a single hand and Jac's version is simply indispensable. 'I consider this an excellent work and have read it with great interest,' wrote Brigadier Peter Young. 'In my opinion it is a tour de force.'
Bernard Cornwell, creator of the Richard Sharpe historical novels, generously acknowledged his debt. 'Even the Duke might have approved of Jac Weller's Wellington at Waterloo,' he wrote. 'Whenever I found conflict among my sources, and felt unable to clear the matter from my own research, I relied upon Jac Weller's interpretation and I doubt he let me down.'
Wellington in India was the last volume of the Wellington trilogy. First published in 1972, it reappeared in 1993. Jac had a personal interest in India, for his British grandfather, Dr John Weller, worked there as a physician in the nineteenth century for a company building a railway. Like Jac himself, Dr Weller was a superb athlete and a crack shot. The Wellers explored Wellington's Indian battlefields in 1968 and may still remain the only military historians to undertake such a study. The tour yielded many insights and enabled the Wellers to revise the accepted version of events. For example, they found that the hill-fort of Gawilghur was so large that most of its defenders would easily have been able to flee when it fell to Arthur Wellesley on 15 December 1803. Previous accounts had claimed that the stormers massacred the entire garrison.'
A review just received, from First Empire, about Wellington in the Peninsula says:
- 'Weller performed comprehensive research for these books, which has stood the test of time and makes these volumes as valid and useful today as they were when first published, making them classic works.'
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