[ARTHUR WELLESLEY, Duke of Wellington, born in Ireland, 1769;
died Walmer Castle, September 14, 1852; educated at Eton and at
Angers; entered Seventy-third Regiment as ensign, 1787; purchased
lieutenant-colonelcy of Thirty-third Regiment, 1793; served in
Holland expedition, 1794-95; 1796, in India with his regiment;
1803, major-general, commands in Mahratta War, victory at Assaye;
1805,in England; 1806, member of Parliament; 1807, Secretary for
Ireland; 1808, in Portugal; 1809-13, chief in command in
Peninsula, clears Portugal and Spain of the French; 1814, English
Ambassador at Paris; 1815, defeats Napoleon at Waterloo; 1815,
commander-in-chief of allied army in France; 1818, master-general
of the ordnance; 1822, represents England at Congress of Verona;
1828-30, Prime Minister; 1829, grants Catholic emancipation;
1834-35, Foreign Secretary; 1841, commander-in-chief. Buried in
St. Paul's Cathedral.]
In February, 1792, William Pitt, Prime Minister of George III.,
unfolding his annual budget in the House of Commons, declared,
"Unquestionably there never was a time in the history of this
country when, from the situation of Europe, we might more
reasonably expect fifteen years of peace, than at the present
moment." Yet within a twelvemonth after this utterance,
apparently sincere, France and England were plunged into a war
which lasted, with but one brief intermission, until 1815. It
embroiled in succession nearly every nation in Europe. In France
it provided a theater for the genius of Napoleon, who after
conquering in turn the best soldiers of the continent, was to
meet his match in the Duke of Wellington on the field of
Waterloo.
The first period of the war mainly antedates the century which we
are considering. In 1793 the Convention, the revolutionary body
which had taken the place of the overturned French monarchy,
declared war on Holland and England. Pitt was still at the head
of King George III.'s ministry, and the conduct of the war
devolved upon him. Her insular position and powerful fleet
rendered England safe from invasion, but her active participation
in the military operations upon the continent was limited in
measure and distressing in outcome. The expeditions which she
landed in the Netherlands were shockingly inadequate in numbers,
and led by high-born generals without knowledge, talent, or
experience. It is little wonder that they accomplished nothing
except to feed the French contempt for English arms.
Successive coalitions were formed by the energetic Pitt with
Prussia, Austria, and other nations to check the advance of the
republican armies in which, after 1795, the figure of Napoleon
Bonaparte leaped into prominence. His victories disintegrated
these alliances, which had been cemented with English gold. At
the same time his victories so strengthened his personal hold
upon the army and the nation that he was able to make himself
absolute master of France.
The Peace of Amiens (March, 1802, to May, 1803) afforded the only
breathing space in all these twenty-two years of warfare.
Napoleon, now first consul, was soon to change that republican
mask for the honest and ambitious title of emperor. The
hollowness of the peace soon became evident. Under its cloak
French ships were building and French armies mustering in the
channel ports for the invasion of England. The character of the
strife had now radically changed. At the outset, ten years
before, England had joined hands with the continental monarchies
to check the spread of the liberal ideas which the French
republican armies were carrying on their bayonets in a species of
crusade in the name of liberty. But with the accession of
Bonaparte to the throne of the Bourbons, England was plunged into
a struggle for existence. Napoleon himself said that peace could
never prevail in Europe so long as England had the power to
disturb it, and all parties in England were resolved to combat to
the last the establishment of a vast and menacing military
despotism beyond the Straits of Dover.
The genius of Admiral Nelson preserved the command of the narrow
seas for England, and forced the Emperor to abandon his project
of invasion which had aroused the English nation to unprecedented
military activity. Pitt's subsidies had again set the continental
armaments in motion, but Napoleon's brilliant dash into Germany
brought these to naught in the battle of Austerlitz, which
destroyed the Third Coalition and brought Austria to terms. It
was this news that the great Prime Minister of George III. took
so to heart. He survived the disaster but a few weeks. But the
ministry of "All the Talents" took up his task with no thought of
abandoning the struggle. The death of Fox soon broke up this
administration, but those of Portland, Perceval, and Liverpool,
which followed, were as dogged in their resolution to spend the
last pound, and the last man, if need were, in ridding Europe of
the conqueror whose existence England had now come to regard as a
threat against her national independence.
As his conquests added state after state to the territory in
which his word was law, Napoleon developed new tactics against
England. He conceived it practicable to crush that commercial and
manufacturing power by excluding her goods from the markets of
Europe. This "continental system" was inaugurated in November,
1806, by the Berlin Decree which closed the ports of Europe to
British vessels, and declared a paper blockade against the
British Isles. This policy he forced upon nation after nation, to
which his conquests extended. England retaliated by the "Orders
in Council," which declared a blockade against the French ports,
and authorized the seizure of neutral vessels found trading with
them. By a naval raid in September, 1807, the British swooped
down on Denmark and carried off the Danish fleet to keep that
weapon from falling into the Emperor's hands. Two months later,
in anticipation of a British descent, French armies seized
Portugal and entered Spain.
Up to the entrance of the French into the Spanish Peninsula, the
protracted hostilities had brought little advantage to the
British arms except on the sea. It was the Peninsular War,
precipitated by this fresh encroachment of Napoleon, which first
gave a laurel to the English arms and prepared Wellington for
Waterloo. Napoleon and the soldier who was to overthrow him were
born in the same year. The babe whom the world was to know as the
Duke of Wellington was christened in Dublin in May, 1769, by the
name of Arthur Wesley. (In 1798 the older spelling of the family
name, Wellesley, was resumed.) He was descended from English
ancestors long resident in Ireland, and was himself the fourth
son of the Earl of Mornington. The death of the Earl when Arthur
was but twelve years old left the family in slender
circumstances. Richard, the eldest son and successor to the
title, had achieved high university honors, but Arthur was a slow
student of everything save music and mathematics. After a brief
residence at Eton he entered a higher institution at Angers, in
France. His mother thought him worth nothing better than "food
for powder," and at eighteen he obtained a commission as ensign
in the Seventy-sixth Regiment of British Foot. Family influence
and the purchase of his "steps" soon made him a lieutenant-
colonel (1793) of the Thirty-third Foot. He had already been
three years a member of the Irish House of Commons where,
however, he did not distinguish himself.
England was now at war with France, and Colonel Arthur
Wellesley's first foreign service was in 1794, when his regiment
was sent to the support of the Duke of York, who was near the end
of his ignominious campaign in the Low Countries. In March, 1795,
he was back in England, disgusted with the incompetency of his
superiors. Of the value of this experience he afterward said,
"Why, I learned what one ought not to do, and that is always
something." At the time, however, he was less philosophical, and
after consulting with his wise elder brother as to the future
possibilities of distinction in military life, he applied for a
civil office under the Lord Lieutenant of England.
Instead of droning out his life in a treasury clerkship,
Wellesley found a more strenuous career abroad. In the autumn of
1795 his regiment was ordered to India, where he arrived in
February, 1797. A year later his already famous brother Richard,
Lord Mornington, came out as Governor-general. The brothers were
sincerely devoted to each other, and co-operated cordially in the
important operations which followed. The English possessions in
India were then limited to the coast regions, the kings and
princes of the states of the interior being variously bound to
the East india Company by treaty engagements. The news of the
victorious progress of the French arms in Europe lost nothing by
repetition in the bazaars of Hindustan, and emissaries of France
were not wanting to stir the native princes against England.
Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt in 1798 revealed his intention to
attack England through her Indian realm. In February, 1799, the
Governor-general declared war against Tippoo, Sultan of Mysore, a
powerful prince, who had been plotting in the French interest.
The younger Wellesley had contributed much to the efficient
organization of the army which was to invade the Sultan's
territory, and after the fall of Seringapatam he distinguished
himself by his firm and orderly administration of the conquered
domain. In 1802, the year of the Peace of Amiens, he was made a
major-general. When the news of the treaty with France reached
him, his opinion was emphatically expressed: "It establishes the
French power over Europe, and when we shall have disarmed we
shall have no security except in our own abjectness." The
conquest of Mysore left only the Mahratta confederacy undominated
by British authority. These states, a vast domain in western and
central India, having quarreled among themselves, applied to the
British for aid. General Wellesley secured the close alliance of
one party, and as commander-in-chief, took the field against the
others. On the 23rd of September, 1803, he found himself with
seven thousand five hundred men in the presence of the Mahratta
host of fifty thousand men with one hundred and twenty-eight
guns. Retreat was difficult, speedy reinforcement impossible. The
young major-general determined an attack immediately, and
handling his little army with great skill and intrepid courage,
he routed the enemy in the great victory of Assaye, which broke
the Mahratta power. For his exploits he received the thanks of
King and Parliament, and was dubbed a Knight of the Bath.
General Sir Arthur Wellesley returned to England in 1805, after
seven years absence in India. On his way he touched at the Isle
of St. Helena, and took note of its beautiful scenery and
salubrious climate. Doubtless the impression then made was
recalled ten years later, when it became necessary to select a
safe residence for his defeated foe. To one who expressed
surprise that a man of his solid achievement should receive but a
subordinate post as that to which he was assigned on his return
to England, General Wellesley said, "I am NIM MUK WALLAH, as we
say in the East. I have eaten of the King's salt and therefore I
conceive it to be my duty to serve with zeal and cheerfulness
when and wherever the King or his government may think fit to
employ me." This expression explains his lifelong attitude toward
the crown. He considered himself its "retained servant."
It was two years before his talents were properly utilized.
Meanwhile he was member of Parliament and secretary to the Lord
Lieutenant of Ireland. The Peninsular War was his opportunity.
Napoleon had sent Marshal Junot to Lisbon with an army to seize
the country and force it into his continental system, the royal
family retiring to Brazil as he advanced. At almost the same
time, by a series of conscienceless machinations, he had
compelled the King of Spain to abdicate, and had occupied Madrid
and the fortresses of the northern provinces. In spite of popular
risings against the French, Napoleon made his brother Joseph King
of Spain. At once revolt flamed out among the common people, and
the insurrection spread through both kingdoms, and was accepted
in England as an invitation to come to their relief.
Pitt had foreseen amid the shadows of the defeat of Austerlitz
that the Iberian Peninsula might be the final field of resistance
to Napoleon, and now events had brought his successors to the
same view. It was accessible by England's ocean highway, its
people were high-spirited, and impatient of foreign domination,
and a successful campaign there would threaten the French flank.
In June, 1808, an expedition was dispatched to the aid of the
Spanish and Portuguese insurrectionists, and the command was
given to Lieutenant-General Sir Arthur Wellesley. The night
before he left London he said to the friend who interrupted his
reverie, "Why, I am thinking of the French. . . . 'Tis enough to
make one thoughtful. But no matter; my die is cast. They may
overwhelm me, but I don't think they will out-manueuver me. . . .
I suspect all the continental armies were more than half-beaten
before the battle was begun. I at least will not be beaten
beforehand."
The qualities which fitted this officer for the heavy work in
hand were those which had been developed and tested in India. He
was, first of all, a worker of surpassing industry and the
closest application. Where others were brilliant, he was
thorough. No commander ever left less to chance or to the
inspiration of the moment. He prepared for his campaigns by
subjecting his troops to the most thorough drill and by providing
them properly with all the munitions of war. His troops were
shaped by incessant care and pains into a perfect weapon, the use
of which he perfectly understood. Further than this, his
experience in India, where conditions had made him the
responsible administrator of vast native states, made him the
right man to conduct a campaign in the peninsula, where, between
the French and the Nationalists, civil administration had fallen
into great disorder, and where all sorts of extraordinary tasks
devolved upon the British representative. His management of his
uncertain allies, the guerrilla chiefs, and his relations with
the revolutionary "juntas" called for qualities as rare as those
which defeated one after another of Napoleon's marshals and
finally worsted the great captain himself. Thoroughness of
preparation, the ability to see things as they are, to wait
patiently, decide promptly, and act with energy--these are
perhaps simple military virtues, but they bring success, and they
were in high degree the possession of the young Indian officer,
who was now to undertake a difficult campaign in a foreign
country. The event proved that with such qualities a general may
compass the most difficult tasks, though he may be "cold" in
temperament, and incapable of kindling in the breasts of his men
that passionate personal devotion which some hold to be the true
test of a great soldier.
Wellesley disembarked his expeditionary force in August, at
Mondego Bay, a hundred miles north of Lisbon, which Junot held
with twelve thousand men. Junot advanced to meet the English, and
at Vimiero Wellesley met and defeated the first of Napoleon's
marshals. Before the close of the day the arrival of a superior
officer terminated Wellesley's command. He had, however,
inflicted such a blow that Junot was glad to sign a convention
which permitted him to evacuate the kingdom. Wellesley returned
to England.
In the spring of 1809 Wellesley was back in Lisbon. He had
persuaded the government that Portugal could be defended and made
the base of operations which should eventually clear the entire
peninsula of the French. They had intrusted the chief command to
him, and now left him free for four years to press his campaigns
to the Spanish capital, and thence to the Pyrenees and beyond
upon the very soil of France itself.
He was watched by two French armies. Soult was at Oporto in the
north, and Victor far up the Tagus Valley, between him and
Madrid. By an unexpected movement, having surprised Soult and
sent him headlong beyond the frontier, Wellesley crossed the
border in quest of Victor. The armies clashed at Talavera, in the
last days of June, in one of the most stubbornly contested
engagements of the war. The English kept possession of the field,
and, though Joseph Bonaparte congratulated his soldiers upon the
glory of the "victory," he knew in his heart, as his greater
brother told him to his face, that the battle was a French
defeat.
Conditions were not yet suited for an advance into Spain, where
the French were gathering in enormous force, with instructions
from Napoleon to "advance upon the English, pursue them without
cessation, beat them, and fling them into the sea." To insure his
forces against the execution of this mandate Wellesley
constructed a crescent of earthworks about Lisbon, "the lines of
Torres Vedras," within which he might take refuge, and under
cover of which, as a last resort, his forces might be safely re-
embarked for retreat. The veteran Massena was selected by the
Emperor to drive the English out of Portugal. As he advanced, in
the summer of 1810, Wellesley retired before him, and just when
the pursuer believed the game was his, he was confronted by the
impregnable lines of Torres Vedras, whose position and strength
was all unsuspected. All winter Massena hovered about the hole,
but the fox was safe in his earth, and in the spring the old
hound again turned his face toward Spain, with the English on his
trail.
For another year the English general, who, in honor of Talavera,
had been raised to the peerage as Viscount Wellington, was
engaged in reducing the French garrisons, and forming into useful
auxiliary troops the raw Portuguese who had risen against the
invader. The capture of the fortress of Ciudad Rodrigo (January,
1812) opened the road to Spain. So important was this point that
the captor was rewarded for it with an English earldom, a Spanish
dukedom, and a Portuguese marquisate. In early summer
Wellington's army took the offensive on Spanish soil. Marshal
Marmont's army at Salamanca in the north was his first objective.
The clash came on the 22nd of July. On the second day of the
battle of Salamanca the English infantry crushed the weakened
center of Marmont's line, the marshal was wounded, his army
hurriedly retreated. On the 12th of August the English were in
Madrid. The Bonaparte King fled from his capital, whose citizens,
intoxicated with joy, crowded around the English general, hung on
his stirrups, touched his clothes, and throwing themselves on the
earth, blessed him aloud as the friend of Spain!
The work of deliverance was by no means complete. Wellington's
army was small, and the support of the Spanish auxiliaries was
not to be counted upon. Though the Emperor was in Russia, some of
his best marshals and a powerful army were opposed to the English
in Spain. It was only the most skilful management, in which
caution and audacity were blended, that brought Wellington safely
out of his dangerous position in Spain, and allowed him to retire
to winter quarters on the Portuguese frontier. The effect of the
campaign upon the Spaniards had been to give him the chief
command of the national forces. England realizing that the
general whose coming had been so long awaited was found at last,
made Wellington a marquis, and voted him the thanks of the Lords
and Commons and one hundred thousand pounds, besides sending him
the reinforcements of cavalry which he needed for his broad plan
of operations for the next campaign.
The winter of 1812-13, which Wellington devoted to his
comprehensive preparations, saw the disastrous retreat of
Napoleon from the snows of Russia. From that blow he never
recovered, and thenceforward he could do little to support his
eagles in the peninsula. The recall of Soult further weakened the
resistance. In May, Wellington bade farewell to Portugal and
recrossed the Spanish frontier, advancing on Madrid from the
northwest. The King and his army retired toward France.
Wellington overtook them at Vittoria (June 21) and fought them,
capturing their guns, baggage, and Spanish plunder, though Joseph
and the main French army escaped northward through the passes of
the Pyrenees.
Soult came posthaste from Dresden to resume command. He found the
army of Spain encamped on French soil, led it through the passes
again, but the English could not be dislodged. In October an
English general for the first time since Napoleon came to power
stood on French soil at the head of an invading army. Soult,
forced away from Bayonne, fell back on Toulouse, where Wellington
dealt him another blow on April 14, 1814. That blow was the last.
Just one week earlier Napoleon, driven back from the Rhine to
Paris by the allied armies on the northeast, had abdicated the
throne which had cost so much blood and treasure.
Wellington visited Paris and Madrid, and then returned to London.
Five years earlier he had left England as Sir Arthur Wellesley;
he came back Duke of Wellington. His own remark upon his
campaigns contrasts strangely with the spirit of the Frenchman,
whose best generals he had out-manoeuvered and overwhelmed. He
was "a conqueror without ambition," he said. "All the world knew
that I desired nothing but to beat the French out of Spain and
then go home to my own country, leaving the Spaniards to manage
theirs as they pleased." England lavished honors upon the hero of
the Peninsular War. Parliament thanked him, granted him four
hundred thousand pounds. He carried the sword of state on the
occasion of the peace celebration in St. Paul's Cathedral. London
banqueted him in Guildhall.
For a summer and a winter the Duke represented England at Paris
and Vienna where the states of Europe were wrangling over the
restoration of the continent to its antebellum condition. When
Napoleon escaped from Elba and was welcomed to Paris by his
former marshals, Europe turned to Wellington to deliver her from
the new peril. On the 25th of March, 1815, Austria, Russia,
Prussia, and Great Britain formed the Quadruple Alliance, binding
themselves to maintain the treaty recently signed at Paris, and
not to lay down arms until "Buonaparte should be placed
absolutely beyond possibility of exciting disturbance and
renewing his attempts to possess himself of the supreme power in
France."
The Duke arrived at Brussels on the 4th of April to take command
of the allied army. Instead of the grand armies of the Quadruple
Alliance he found a composite force of some twenty-five thousand
English, Dutch, Belgians, Brunswickers, and Hanoverians. The
Prussians had thirty thousand men within co-operating distance.
In comparison with the thoroughly disciplined army which he had
developed and wielded so skilfully in the peninsula this force
cut a sorry figure. The field-marshal's bitterest complaint was
that his government had not even provided him with the admirable
staff which five years of service had made so familiar with his
methods and desires. On the very verge of the campaign he wrote,
"I have an infamous army, very weak and ill equipped, and a very
inexperienced staff." While the armies of Austria and Russia were
advancing upon France the Emperor was setting an enormous force
in the field. It was his purpose to fall upon the army on the
Belgian frontier before the other allies could enter France. For
the invasion of Belgium he selected one hundred and twenty-five
thousand men. Prince Blucher, commanding the Prussians, now had
as many men, while Wellington, his ally, commanded some ninety-
three thousand, of whom barely one-third were British. Five-
sixths of the British infantry had never been under fire.
Napoleon's plan was to thrust his army between Blucher and
Wellington and defeat them in succession. On the evening of June
15th, news was brought to the Duke at Brussels that the enemy had
passed the frontier and were engaging the Prussian outposts. He
at once gave the necessary orders for the advance, and after
midnight showed himself at the now famous ball of the Duchess of
Richmond. At eleven the next forenoon he was at QuatreBras, where
his army was engaged in beating off an attack by Marshal Ney,
while Blucher was being pounded by Napoleon a few miles to the
eastward at Ligny. Both the allies retreated, but instead of
separating as Napoleon hoped and believed, they retired along
converging lines, the English to Waterloo, the Prussians to
Wavre, the positions being connected by a roadway. Through the
rain of Saturday, June 17th, Wellington disposed his sixty-nine
thousand men and one hundred and fifty-six guns on both sides of
the Brussels highway, along which Napoleon advanced on the morrow
with seventy-two thousand men and two hundred and forty cannon.
The action opened near noon on the 18th, the French making a vain
effort to carry the Château of Hougomont on the British right.
Next an army corps was hurled at the center, only to be stopped
by Wellington's cavalry with appalling loss. In the afternoon the
Emperor delivered a series of cavalry attacks upon the allied
center. Twelve thousand horsemen thundered up the gentle slope
past the English guns, only to break against the bayonet-hedged
squares of the infantry. At the end of eight hours' fighting the
French center had advanced to within sixty yards of the British
position, but the line still held, and Blucher's Prussians were
rapidly coming up on the right flank. Marshal Grouchy having
failed to prevent this fatal manoeuver, Napoleon shot his last
bolt, sending Ney with the Old Guard against the British right.
But "the bravest of the brave had fought his last battle," and as
his ten battalions were flung back in disorder, Wellington gave
the word to his whole line to advance. The rush of his reserves
of horse scattered the remnants of the tired and disheartened
host. The wreck of the grand army drifted back over the border,
and the dispirited Emperor, having risked everything in one bold
experiment and lost, hastened to Paris, and after a vain attempt
to rally the nation once more about his standard, abandoned hope
and sought refuge on board the "Bellerophon," British man-of-war
(July 15, 1815). At nine o'clock in the evening of the memorable
day of Waterloo, Blucher and Wellington met. The grizzled
Prussian kissed the grave Englishman on both cheeks in the
exuberance of his joy. Without the timely support of his Germans,
that day might have had another ending.
Waterloo was the last act of the Napoleonic struggle. The Emperor
went into exile at St. Helena to fret against his prison bars and
curse his keepers. Wellington had already exhausted his country's
sources of honor. All that Parliament could do was to present the
fine estate of Strathfieldsaye to him and his heirs on condition
of presenting a French tri-color flag to the sovereign at Windsor
on each anniversary of the 18th of June.
Wellington was above all a soldier, but for the remaining thirty-
six years of his lifetime his country had little employment for
the sword. Yet the esteem in which he was held, not only for his
military achievements, but for his honesty and common sense, made
him a conspicuous figure in public affairs for most of his long
life. After Waterloo he remained in France, where his moderation
saved Paris from the vengeance of the continental commanders. Of
the allied army of occupation which remained in France until
1818, Wellington was commander-in-chief. As head of the
commission which passed upon the foreign claims for damages
arising from the protracted wars, his fairness again saved France
from her rapacious creditors.
His work on the continent done, Wellington returned to England to
enter the public service as a member of Lord Liverpool's cabinet.
In 1822 he was sent to represent Great Britain at the Congress of
the Powers at Verona, where he frustrated Russia's intention of
interfering in the affairs of Spain. In 1826 he was sent to
Russia on a special mission from Canning to secure the consent of
the new Czar to English intervention in behalf of the insurgent
Greeks. On the death of the King's brother, the Duke of York, he
became commander-in-chief of the army. Disagreement with Canning
led him to withdraw from that premier's cabinet in April, 1827,
but in the following January (1828), he himself became Prime
Minister, with Robert Peel as Home Secretary. With all his Tory
loyalty to the Church his administration broke its ancient
monopoly. In 1828 he allowed the Test and Corporation Acts to
pass, opening the way for Protestant dissenters to hold civil and
military office. In 1829 he concluded that relief of the Roman
Catholics of Ireland from their political disabilities could no
longer be postponed. Peel had been even more reluctant than his
chief--a native of Ireland--to reach this decision, but the
growing power of the "Catholic Association," the popular
organization which the agitator O'Connell had called into
existence, compelled immediate action. The King was reluctantly
brought to see the expediency of the act, which, when proposed by
Pitt a generation before, had so stiffened the neck of his
father, George III. Perhaps no minister whose prestige was less
than that of the hero of Waterloo could have won the consent of
the Hanoverian monarch, whose dynasty had been brought to England
for the defense of the Protestant faith. The bill for the
emancipation of the Catholics slid easily through the Commons,
though the stiff old Tories who had counted Wellington as of
their number voted solidly against it. Even the Lords failed to
make the expected resistance, and accepted the measure by a vote
of two to one despite the known preference of the court and
clergy, and a bombardment of Protestant petitions. One peer had
thus predicted the result to Macaulay, who was in doubt as to how
the Duke would explain the bill and justify his change of front:
"0, that will be simple enough. He'll say, 'My Lords! Attention!
Right about face! Quick march!' and the thing will be done." King
George tried to slip out of his pledges, but the Iron Duke held
him fast, and the 13th of April, 1829, the act became a law. It
is the chief monument of the Wellington administration.
Against the next great question, the reform of Parliament, he set
himself resolutely, expressing his opposition in such
unmistakable terms as to forfeit at once his office and his
popularity. The London mob stoned his windows, but could not
change his attitude toward legislation which he thought
pernicious to the welfare of his country. He carried on his
opposition when the reform bills began to come up from the
Commons into the Peers' chamber. On the 18th of June, 1832, the
seventeenth anniversary of Waterloo, he was pelted with stones
and dirt by a yelling mob in the streets of London, and only
saved from rougher handling by two old soldiers who walked at his
stirrups and held back the ruffians until the police came to the
rescue. The Reform Bill had already become a law, Wellington and
his irreconcilable friends, perceiving the futility of further
obstruction, absenting themselves from the chamber rather than
vote contrary to their consciences. Even after the reformed
Parliament had come into existence this arch aristocrat could see
nothing but evil in the outlook. He complained that the House of
Commons "had swallowed up all the power of the state," and he was
not far wrong. Still his loyalty to the crown, and his
determination that the government should be upheld kept him from
merely factious opposition and made him a useful servant of the
nation. The leader of the majority in the House of Lords, he
declined to use his position to thwart the purposes of the
popular House. "I do not choose," he said, in 1834, when the Poor
Law Bill was up, "I do not choose to be the person to excite a
quarrel between the two Houses of Parliament. The quarrel will
occur in its time; and the House of Lords will probably be
overwhelmed. But it shall not be owing to any action of mine." It
was in this year that a singular occurrence showed his unique
place in the confidence of King and nation. In November the King
dismissed the Melbourne ministry and called on the Duke to form
another. The latter perceived that no Tory but Peel could manage
the Commons, but Peel was then traveling on the Continent. The
Duke accordingly undertook to carry on the government alone until
that leader's return. And for five weeks he was the cabinet,
holding all the high offices--Treasury, Home, Foreign, and
Colonial--himself, so as not to embarrass his successor by making
appointments. The Whigs raised a great outcry against this one-
man power, but the people rather admired the industry of the
veteran who rose at six o'clock in the morning and went the
rounds of the departments performing the routine duties with the
greatest industry and fidelity and steadily refusing to use his
enormous power and patronage for personal or factional rule. Sir
Herbert Maxwell, the Duke's latest biographer, has attempted to
describe the Duke's political creed by coining a term. He was not
"an impracticable Tory," as the Reformers would name him, nor yet
a mere "Tory opportunist," as sterner Tories would have it. "He
was a possiblist rather than an opportunist, prepared to resist
change as long as possible, but to give way rather than throw the
power into the hands of those (Radicals) who, he honestly
believed, would wreck the realm."
Wellington was foreign secretary in Peel's first cabinet (1834-
35), and commander-in-chief in the second (1841-46). His lifelong
political theory is well exemplified by his words when notified
by the Prime Minister, in November, 1845, of his intention to
suspend the Corn Laws, an act most offensive to his party and
social class. "My only object in public life is to support Sir
Robert Peel's administration of the government for the Queen. A
good government for the country is more important than Corn
Laws." In much the same words the aged leader addressed the House
of Lords in behalf of Peel's Corn Bill, and though bitterly
opposed to the measure, they accepted his guidance and gave the
bill their assent. In 1848 there were many who believed that the
country was on the brink of a revolution. The Chartist agitation
was culminating in the presentation of the great petition to
Parliament, and half a million men were to escort it from
Kennington to Westminster. Wellington was nearing his seventy-
ninth birthday, but the government turned to him to organize the
defense of the capital against mob violence. The old warrior-
blood warmed in his veins, and he amazed the ministers by the
clearness of his plans and the energy and decision with which he
carried them out. Though the affair passed off without
disturbance, being at all times under police control, so thorough
were the Duke's preparations as to have made a successful
revolution impossible.
To his latest year the Duke continued to attend the sessions of
the Lords, and his opinions were listened to with respectful
attention. It was fitting that his last speech there should have
been in a military debate, and that in urging the value of
militia organization, he should have drawn upon his experience
with the raw Hanoverian levies in the Waterloo campaign. This was
in the summer of 1852. On the evening of the 13th of the
following September he retired in his usual condition of health.
The next morning he was seized with sudden illness and did not
live the day out.
Enough has been said in this brief sketch of his public career to
show that the Duke of Wellington, though among the greatest of
English soldiers, cannot rank high among English statesmen,
although he served his country in the highest offices. If read in
detail the record of his career in the Cabinet and in the House
of Lords would confirm the reader in the opinion that his only
sure title to greatness rests in his military career. It has
often been said that, had he died in the moment of victory as did
Nelson, it would have been happier for his fame. But it must not
be forgotten that the years of his political action were those in
which England was passing through the stages of a social and
political revolution, in which the democracy was rising to power
and the landed aristocracy was losing prestige and privilege.
That this revolution was accomplished without such a convulsion
as marked this struggle in other European kingdoms may have been
due, in some degree at least, to the fact that the leader of the
aristocratic Party was held in honor by the masses of the nation.
Moments of exasperation there were when the bitterness of popular
feeling against the obstructionists in the House of Lords vented
itself upon the Duke, but the prevailing feeling toward him was
one of pride in his military achievements and confidence in his
honesty. As McCarthy has well said, "His victories belonged to
the past. They were but tradition, even to middle-aged persons in
the Duke's later years. But he was regarded still as the
embodiment of the national heroism and success--a modern St.
George in a tightly buttoned frock coat and white trousers!"