society; but again yielding to the impulses of his restless genius, he
once more attacked Europe, vanquished her in three battles--Austerlitz,
Jena, and Friedland--set up and threw down kingdoms, placed the crown
of Charlemagne on his head; and when kings came to offer him their
daughters, chose the descendant of the Cæsars, who presented him with a
son that seemed destined to wear the most brilliant crown in the
universe. He advanced from Cadiz to Moscow, where he was subjected to
the greatest catastrophe on record, rose again, but was again defeated,
and confined in a small island, from which he emerged with a few hundred
faithful soldiers, recovered the crown of France in twenty days,
struggled again against exasperated Europe, sank for the last time at
Waterloo, and having sustained greater wars than those of the Roman
Empire, went--he, the child of a Mediterranean isle--to die on an island
in the ocean, bound like Prometheus by the fear and hatred of kings to a
rock.
This son of a poor Corsican nobleman has indeed played in the world the
parts of Alexander, Hannibal, Cæsar, and Charlemagne! He possessed as
much genius as the greatest among them; acquired as much fame as the
most celebrated, and unfortunately shed more blood than any of them. In
a moral point of view, he is inferior to the best of these great men but
superior to the worst. His ambition was not as futile as that of
Alexander, nor as depraved as that of Cæsar, but it was not as
respectable as Hannibal’s, who sacrificed himself to save his country
the misfortune of being conquered. His ambition was that usual with
conquerors who seek to rule after having aggrandized their native land.
Still he loved France and cherished her glory as dearly as his own.
As a ruler he sought what was right, but sought it as a despot, nor did
he pursue it with the consistency or religious perseverance of
Charlemagne. In variety of talents he was inferior to Cæsar, who, being
compelled to win over his fellow-citizens before ruling them, had to
learn how to persuade as well as how to fight, and could speak, write,
and act with a certain simple majesty. Napoleon, on the other hand,
having acquired power by warfare, had no need of oratory, nor possibly,
though endowed with natural eloquence, could he ever have acquired it,
since he never would have taken the trouble of patiently analyzing his
thought in presence of a deliberative assembly. He could write as he
thought, with force and dignity, but he was sometimes a little
declamatory like his mother, the French revolution; he argued with more
force than Cæsar, but could not narrate with his extreme simplicity or
exquisite taste. He was inferior to the Roman dictator in the variety of
his talents, but superior as a general, both by his peculiar military
genius and by the daring profundity and inexhaustible fertility of his
plans, in which he had but one equal or superior (which we can not
decide)--Hannibal; for he was as daring, as prudent, as subtle, as
inventive, as terrible, and as obstinate as the Carthaginian general,
with one advantage of living at a later period. Succeeding to Hannibal,
Cæsar, the Nassaus, Gustavus Adolphus, Condé, Turenne, and Frederick, he
brought military art to its ultimate perfection. God alone can estimate
the respective merits of such men; all we can do is to sketch some
prominent traits of their wonderful characters.
DUKE OF WELLINGTON.
BY ARCHIBALD ALISON.
[Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, third son of the Earl of
Mornington, born 1769, died 1852. Previous to taking command of the
British armies in Spain against the French, Sir Arthur Wellesley
had achieved great distinction and the rank of major-general in
India. Shortly after his appointment to the Spanish command as
lieutenant-general in 1808, he was raised to the peerage as
Viscount Wellington; and his brilliant success against Napoleon’s
most eminent marshals stamped him as one of the first soldiers of
the age. In 1815 Wellington was placed at the head of the English
forces and their allies, to meet Napoleon in that last convulsive
struggle which ended with the battle of Waterloo. Made
field-marshal and duke for his eminent services, Wellington
afterward signalized his capacity for civil administration as
little inferior to his military skill, and as premier displayed the
most wise and liberal statesmanship.]
The name of no commander in the long array of British greatness will
occupy so large a space in the annals of the world as that of
Wellington; and yet there are few whose public characters possess, with
so many excellences, so simple and unblemished a complexion. It is to
the purity and elevation of his principles in every public situation
that this enviable distinction is to be ascribed. Intrusted early in
life with high command, and subjected from the first to serious
responsibility, he possessed that singleness of heart and integrity of
purpose which, even more than talent or audacity, are the foundations of
true and moral courage, and the only pure path to public greatness; a
sense of duty, a feeling of honor, a generous patriotism, a
forgetfulness of self, constituted the spring of all his actions.
He was ambitious, but it was to serve his king and country only;
fearless, because his whole heart was wound up in these noble objects;
disinterested, because the enriching of himself or his family never for
a moment crossed his mind; insensible to private fame when it interfered
with public duty, indifferent to popular obloquy when it arose from
rectitude of conduct. Like the Roman patriot, he wished rather to be
than appear deserving. “Esse quam bonus malebat, ita quo minus gloriam
petebat eo magis adsequebatur.” Greatness was forced upon him, both in
military and political life, rather because he was felt to be worthiest,
than because he desired to be the first; he was the architect of his own
fortune, but he became so almost unconsciously, while solely engrossed
in constructing that of his country. He has left undone many things, as
a soldier, which might have added to his fame, and done many things, as
a statesman, which were fatal to his power; but he omitted the first
because they would have endangered his country, and committed the second
because he felt them to be essential to its salvation.
It is the honor of England, and of human nature, that such a man should
have risen at such a time to the rule of her armies and her councils;
but he experienced with Themistocles and Scipio Africanus the mutable
tenure of popular applause and the base ingratitude of those whom he had
saved. Having triumphed over the arms of the threatened tyrant, he was
equally immovable in the presence of the insane citizens; and it is hard
to say whether his greatness appeared most when he struck down the
conqueror of Europe on the field of Waterloo, or was himself with
difficulty rescued from death on its anniversary, eighteen years
afterward, in the streets of London.
A constant recollection of these circumstances, and of the peculiar and
very difficult task which was committed to his charge, is necessary in
forming a correct estimate of the Duke of Wellington’s military
achievements. The brilliancy of his course is well known; an unbroken
series of triumphs from Vimiero to Toulouse; the entire expulsion of the
French from the Peninsula; the planting of the British standard in the
heart of France; the successive defeat of those veteran marshals who had
so long conquered in every country of Europe; the overthrow of Waterloo;
the hurling of Napoleon from his throne; and the termination, in one
day, of the military empire founded on twenty years of conquest. But
these results, great and imperishable as they are, convey no adequate
idea, either of the difficulties with which Wellington had to contend,
or of the merit due to his transcendent exertions. With an army seldom
superior in number to a single corps of the French marshals; with troops
dispirited by recent disasters, and wholly unaided by practical
experience; without any compulsory law to recruit his ranks, or any
strong national passion for war to supply its wants, he was called on to
combat successively vast armies, composed, in great part, of veteran
soldiers, perpetually filled by the terrible powers of the conscription,
headed by the chiefs who, risen from the ranks, and practically
acquainted with the duties of war in all its grades, had fought their
way from the grenadier’s musket to the marshal’s baton, and were
followed by men who, trained in the same school, were animated by the
same ambition.
Still more, he was the general of a nation in which the chivalrous and
mercantile qualities are strongly blended together; which, justly proud
of its historic glory, is unreasonably jealous of its military
expenditure; which, covetous beyond measure of warlike renown, is
ruinously impatient of pacific preparation; which starves its
establishment when danger is over, and yet frets at defeat when its
terrors are present; which dreams, in war, of Cressy and Agincourt, and
ruminates, in peace, on economic reduction.
He combated at the head of an alliance formed of heterogeneous states,
composed of discordant materials, in which ancient animosities and
religious divisions were imperfectly suppressed by recent fervor or
present danger; in which corruption often paralyzed the arm of
patriotism, and jealousy withheld the resources of power. He acted under
the direction of a ministry which, albeit zealous and active, was alike
inexperienced in hostility and unskilled in combinations; in presence of
an opposition which, powerful in eloquence, supported by faction, was
prejudiced against the war, and indefatigable to arrest it; for the
interests of a people, who, although ardent in the cause and
enthusiastic in its support, were impatient of disaster and prone to
depression, and whose military resources, how great soever, were
dissipated in the protection of a colonial empire which encircled the
earth.
Nothing but the most consummate prudence, as well as ability in conduct,
could with such means have achieved victory over such an enemy, and the
character of Wellington was singularly fitted for the task. Capable,
when the occasion required or opportunity was afforded, of the most
daring enterprises, he was yet cautious and wary in his general conduct;
prodigal of his own labor, regardless of his own person, he was
avaricious only of the blood of his soldiers. Endowed by Nature with an
indomitable soul, a constitution of iron, he possessed that tenacity of
purpose and indefatigable activity which is ever necessary to great
achievements; prudent in council, sagacious in design, he was yet prompt
and decided in action. No general ever revolved the probable dangers of
an enterprise more anxiously before undertaking it, none possessed in a
higher degree the eagle eye, the arm of steel, necessary to carry it
into execution.
By the steady application of these rare qualities he was enabled to
raise the British military force from an unworthy state of depression to
an unparalleled pitch of glory; to educate, in presence of the enemy,
not only his soldiers in the field, but his rulers in the cabinet; to
silence, by avoiding disaster, the clamor of his enemies; to strengthen,
by progressive success, the ascendency of his friends; to augment, by
the exhibition of its results, the energy of the government; to rouse,
by deeds of glory, the enthusiasm of the people.
Skillfully seizing the opportunity of victory, he studiously avoided the
chances of defeat; aware that a single disaster would at once endanger
his prospects, discourage his countrymen, and strengthen his opponents,
he was content to forego many opportunities of earning fame, and stifle
many desires to grasp at glory; magnanimously checking the aspirations
of genius, he trusted for ultimate success rather to perseverance in a
wise, than audacity in a daring course. He thus succeeded during six
successive campaigns, with a comparatively inconsiderable army, in
maintaining his ground against the vast and veteran forces of Napoleon,
in defeating successively all his marshals, baffling successively all
his enterprises, and finally rousing such an enthusiastic spirit in the
British Empire as enabled its Government to put forth its immense
resources on a scale worthy of its present greatness and ancient renown,
and terminate a contest of twenty years by planting the English standard
on the walls of Paris.
THE END.
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