"_There is no mistake._"--The Duke of Wellington's reply to Mr.
Huskisson, "There is no mistake," has become familiar in the mouths of
both those who remember the political circumstances that gave rise to
it, and those who have received it traditionally, without inquiring into
the origin of it. You may perhaps think it worthy of a "Note" that this
was not the first occasion on which the Duke used those celebrated
words. The Duke (then Earl of Wellington) in a private letter to Lord
Bathurst, dated Flores de Avila, 24th July, 1812, writes in the
following easy style:
"I hope that you will be pleased with _our_ battle, of which the
dispatch contains as accurate an account as I can give you. _There
was no mistake_, everything went on as it ought; and there never
was an army so beaten in so short a time."
The whole letter is well deserving of insertion; but my object is simply
to draw attention to the occasion on which the Duke first used the
sentence now so well known.