Graham's Magazine, Vol. XLI, No. 6, December 1852

Thine, dear,Monde Hedelquiver.

WELLINGTON

A MILITARY BIOGRAPHY—BY WILLIAM DOWE—Le tambour d’en Haut a bat le rappel.    Soult, Duke of Dalmatia.There’s a lean fellow beats all conquerors.    Dekkar.

The last survivor of those celebrated chieftains who flashed their swords and waved their crests on the great battle-field of Europe in the Napoleonic war, has gone to his place. Half a pound of indigestible venison has done what the hostile bayonets and bullets of the French and the Mahrattas failed to do, in a military career of twenty years. Arthur, Duke of Wellington, born in the same year with the greater Corsican, outlived him over thirty years, and died at Walmer Castle, on the 14th of September last. He witnessed a great many of the most extraordinary doings of the last half century, and was, himself – a great portion of them —quorum pars magna fuit. He hurried on the current of events which led to the fall of the great Mongol throne of Tamerlane and Arungzebe; and his hand gave the last bloody stroke which overthrew that of Napoleon.

Arthur Wesley or Wellesley – for the name seems to have been elongated, as a matter of dignity, like that of Abram of old – was born at Dangan, in Ireland, on the first of May, 1769 – a fortnight before Bonaparte saw the light upon the sheet of Gobelin tapestry which represented “the tale of Troy divine.” His grandfather was Garret Wesley, an Irish gentleman of good family, made Baron of Mornington by George II., in 1747. The Wesley family has given the world another great man. It is stated that John Wesley, the preacher, belonged to it; a man whose evangelical renown is as immortal as that of the soldier. The earldom of Mornington was not a wealthy one; and, after the death of her husband, the countess – mother of the British Gracchi (for the Marquis Wellesley was also famous) – brought up her four children, of whom Arthur was the youngest, in very narrow circumstances.

At an early age the latter, not having benefited much from his education, said he would be a soldier, and was sent to Angiers in France, where he studied the science of military engineering, under the famous Pignerol, about the time Napoleon was doing the same at Brienne. Great elements of future storms were at that moment fomenting in the kingdom of France! At the age of eighteen, Arthur Wellesley having returned home, got his ensigncy. By purchase and quick promotion, he was lieutenant-colonel in his twenty-fourth year. The first campaign he engaged in was as disastrous as his last was fortunate. The enemy was the same. In 1794 he joined the army of the Duke of York, then striving to drive the French republicans out of the Netherlands. But his royal highness was driven out himself in 1795. The soft young bishop of Osnaburg was not the man to cope with the fiery generals of the Convention. Thus ended Arthur Wellesley’s first campaign.

The scene now changes to India. From a mere foothold and factory, on the shore, the English had in half a century won, thanks to Lord Clive, a vast extent of territory round the three Presidencies of Bombay, Madras and Calcutta. A company of merchants had done all this – the East India Company – whose chartered monopoly existed up to 1814. At the close of the last century the empire of the Mongols had dwindled away, and the Mahrattas, a wild people who rose fifty years before, possessed a large portion of the appanage of the Great Mogul. This last was dozing out his life in the palace of his renowned ancestors at Delhi. His empire in falling had broken into pieces. The Mahrattas formed one of these, and another, was the kingdom of Mysore, made so famous by the usurpation and bravery of Hyder Alee and his son, the Sultaun Tippoo Saib.

In 1798 the Earl of Mornington went out to India as governor-general, and his brother, the colonel, accompanied him. Their earliest attention was given to Tippoo, who, from the table-land of Mysore made the Carnatic tremble at the name of his formidable cavalry. He was also in close connection with the French, and had given them repeated assurances that he would join his forces with theirs and annihilate the British power in India. Therefore, in March 1799, the Anglo-Indian army under General Harris, 37,000 strong, marched toward Tippoo, fully determined to put him out of the way. The advance was fiercely obstructed by the spahis of Mysore till, manœuvring and skirmishing repeatedly, the invading army had reached the walls of Tippoo’s capital, Seringapatam. Between the British camp and the city lay some ruined villages, an aqueduct and a grove of cocoas and bamboos, which were desperately defended, and taken with great difficulty and loss. After a month’s delay outside the city, the besiegers prepared to get into it, by storm, through a breach made in the wall. French troops and engineers in the pay of Tippoo made the siege of Seringapatam a formidable undertaking. But a forlorn hope, crossing a ditch under fire, scrambled into the breach, and, other troops following, Seringapatam was taken, resisting furiously. Tippoo had gone out early in the morning to the outer rampart, to look at the camp. While there, he was surprised to hear that the English were entering the breach. Calling for his carbine, he hurried with his guard to the place, and on the rampart met his soldiers running before the stormers. He bid them stop, with a loud voice, and ordered them to rush back again; at the same time he fired his carbine repeatedly on the English. But the fugitives went by, and left him with a small body of officers and attendants, still firing on the assaulters. At last he turned to fly from the rampart to the gate of the inner fort. Hurrying through this he saw the English within and received two balls in the breast. He fell from his horse, and was then dragged from the crowd and put upon a palanquin. The Europeans soon rushed in, and a soldier laying hold of the diamond-studded sword-belt worn by the sultaun, attempted to drag it off. A servant, as he was making his escape, turned and saw Tippoo make a sweep of his sword at the man and cut him on the knee, whereupon the latter put his piece to his shoulder and shot the sultaun dead through the temple. More carnage followed in this spot till at last the fort was won. When Tippoo’s palace and his sons were taken, the conquerors sought the chief himself; the cry went that he was dead; and that night, by torchlight, General Baird and his officers proceeded to search for the body in the gateway. About three hundred dead bodies were dragged away, and then the killedar of the palace recognized the half-stripped body of Tippoo. His splendid turban, jacket and sword-belt were gone. When dragged out, the body was so warm, and the open eyes looked so life-like, that Colonel Wellesley laid his hands on the heart and the wrist before he could believe it was a corpse. An officer present cut off from the right arm a talisman in fine flowered silk – inclosing an amulet of a silvery substance, and a piece of parchment with Persian and Arabic words. Napoleon also wore an amulet, said to be that of Charlemagne.

After the fall of Tippoo, the little grandson of the rajah whom Hyder Alee had deposed, forty years before, was put in his place, and held his throne in subserviency to the English. A Mysore chief named Doondhia still attempted to hold out, but Colonel Wellesley defeated and killed him.

Next came the Mahratta war. The chief of the Mahratta confederacy – the Peishwa – resided at Poonah, his capital; acknowledging, in a shadowy and nominal way the supremacy of the shadowy Mogul emperor, Shah Allum, who dozed away his life at Delhi. But the peishwa’s authority was over-shadowed by his powerful subject, Ras Scindiah, who wielded the military power of the Mahrattas to make war or peace with the English. The latter, now, either thought he had been assisting Tippoo, or feared he might be a troublesome neighbor in connection with the French; so they prepared to take advantage of events. Holkar, another Mahratta chief, having gone to war against Scindiah and thrown the kingdom into confusion, the poor peishwa ran away from Poonah and put himself under British protection. The case was therefore a clear one. In 1803 General Wellesley proceeded, at the head of an army, into the Mahratta territory and restored the peishwa. In the same year, Lord Lake marched northward to Delhi, drove out the French, who had there exercised a certain influence over Shah Allum and bringing forth that poor, blind monarch (one of his Mahratta rebels had scooped out his eyes with a dagger!) placed him on the imperial musnud of India, under British protection! Meantime, the Mahratta chiefs who would not submit to the Anglified fled pieshwa, were to be punished. Wellesley marched against Scindiah and the Rajah of Berar, and overthrew them at Assaye; and Lord Lake demolished the armies of Holkar. The whole peninsula of India was now virtually subject to the British.

The East India Company gave Wellesley a sword worth one thousand guineas, for his services, and William Pitt made him a knight. In 1805 he returned to England with his brother, now Marquis Wellesley. In that year he became a member of the House of Commons. In 1806 he was again engaged in hot work. He married Elisabeth Pakenham, daughter of Lord Longford and sister of the general who fell at New Orleans; and was then sent on the Copenhagen expedition. England, dreading that Napoleon, who now bestrode Europe like a colossus, would lay hands on the fleet of Denmark for the purposes of invasion, resolved, with the promptness and decision which distinguish her in difficult emergencies, to lay hands on it first. An armament under Lord Cathcart and Admiral Gambier went for the ships, and receiving a refusal bombarded Copenhagen in the most terrible manner; while Sir Arthur Wellesley manœuvred and beat the Danes on shore. In the midst of a general conflagration of the city the fleet was surrendered and carried away. All Europe – Napoleon and the French particularly – cried out against this high-handed business. It is still a great theme of discussion at historical societies in England, where it is not yet decided.

We have now come to the Peninsular War. Napoleon had declared all Europe in a state of blockade and forbade the nations to trade with England. But they would trade. He then resolved to take the coast kingdoms of Spain and Portugal into his own power; and seized his opportunity. In 1807, in consequence of the household quarrels of the imbecile Spanish Bourbons, he marched his troops into Spain under pretence of assisting Charles IV. against his son Ferdinand. Charles was induced to abdicate. Napoleon sent for Ferdinand; and in April 1808, Charles, his queen, Ferdinand, Don Carlos and Godoy were together, in a room at Bayonne, in presence of Napoleon; all the family in his clutches! The queen abused Ferdinand in the most shocking manner for his conduct to his father, who, she said, was not his father, after all! The interview was a terrible one – the calm, imperturbable face of Napoleon looking sternly on. Modern annals do not furnish the painter with a finer historic subject. Napoleon took the father and son, sent them to separate prisons in France, and put his brother Joseph on the throne. But, as Delavigne says:

  “The hope was vain: stoled priests and belted chiefs    Roused each the other up, and proudly woke  To loftier thought the popular beliefs,    And fired a nation’s spirit as they spoke.”

The haughty people of Spain ran to arms to expel the foreign garrisons. England loudly cheered on the furies of insurrection in the Peninsula, and sent Sir Arthur Wellesley, in 1808, with an army of 9000 men to coöperate with the Spaniards. When he reached Corunna he found that the Junta, relying upon the strength of the patriots, were not desirous to receive the troops. But they advised the general to proceed to Portugal and attempt to drive the French from that country, which they had likewise occupied. Sir Arthur proceeded to Mondego Bay, a little to the north of Lisbon, then garrisoned by the French. It was of this landing that Sir Walter Scott sung, in his “Vision of Don Roderick:”

    “It was a dread, yet spirit-stirring sight:    The billows foamed beneath a thousand oars,    Fast as they land, the red-cross ranks unite,    Legions on legions brightening all the shores.    Then banners rise, the cannon-signal roars,    Then peels the warlike thunder of the drum,    Thrills the loud fife, the trumpet’s flourish pours,    And patriot hopes awake and doubts are dumb,  For, bold in Freedom’s name, the bands of ocean come.”

Sir Arthur repulsed the French in the engagement of Rolica. He also beat them at the battle of Vimiera, during which Sir Harry Burrard, his superior in command, arrived on the ground; but left the honor of the day to Wellesley. Junot, Duke of Abrantes, then sent a flag of truce and offered to evacuate Portugal. The convention of Cintra followed, signed by Sir Hew Dalrymple, Sir H. Burrard and Wellesley, on the part of England; and the French army was sent home in British vessels. This treaty was vehemently denounced in England, and public opinion pelted the three generals. Byron alludes to the matter in Childe Harold:

  “Convention is the dwarfish demon styled    That foiled the knights in Marialva’s dome  Of brains, if brains they had he them beguiled    And turned a nation’s shallow joy to gloom.”

Byron was mistaken in supposing the treaty was signed in the house of the Marquis of Marialva. Another and a greater disaster was mourned, soon after, in England. Sir John Moore who had marched, at the close of 1808, at the head of a small army into the heart of Spain, where he was disappointed in the Spanish assistance he expected, and threatened with destruction by the victorious French armies who had taken Madrid, began his disastrous retreat of 250 miles toward the sea, and arrived, at last, at Corunna, where his harassed and tormented spirit found rest.

  “Slowly and sadly they laid him down    From the field of his fame fresh and gory;  They carved not a line, they raised not a stone,    But they left him alone with his glory.”

A couple of months after this event – in April 1809 – Sir Arthur Wellesley was at Lisbon, in command of the British and Portuguese armies. Marching rapidly northward he made the passage of the Douro in face of the enemy – one of the most remarkable achievements of the war – and entered the city of Oporto. The French fled away in such a hurry that Sir Arthur ate the dinner cooked for Marshal Soult. Following up his success immediately, he drove the marshal precipitately out of Portugal. In July, he crossed the frontier into Spain; where, having formed a junction with Cuesta – a respectable old general who always moved about in a carriage – he marched to Talavera. Here the allied armies met the French, under King Joseph, Jourdain, Victor and Sabastiani. The latter were the assailants in a series of brilliant and desperate movements; but they were boldly confronted and baffled by the admirable strategy of the English commander. The French fell back on the night of the battle. But Sir Arthur fell back in a week, and left all his wounded to the care of Mortier, at Talavera. Dreading that the junction of Soult and Ney might cut off his communication with Portugal, he retired to the frontiers of Spain by the Tagus.

Byron has celebrated or satirised Talavera in Childe Harold:

    “Three hosts combine to offer sacrifice;    Three tongues prefer strange orisons on high;    Three gaudy standards flout the pale blue skies;    The shouts are, France, Spain, Albion, Victory!    The foe, the victim, and the fond ally    That fights for all, but ever fights in vain,    Are met, as if at home they could not die,    To feed the crow on Talavera plain  And fertilize the field that each pretends to gain!”

Sir Arthur was now created Lord Wellington – though the English did not like to hear of the retreating movements. The French generals were victorious in Spain, and the year 1809 closed darkly on the hopes of the junta.

In the beginning of 1810, they were almost driven into the sea. Upon the shore of it the enemy besieged them in Cadiz. Lord Wellington was with the allied army on the frontiers of Portugal; and when Massena, having taken Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida, advanced upon the latter kingdom, the English general retired, but with his face to the marshal. In this attitude, he hurled back the French, in the brilliant affair of Busaco; and so continued to retire till he reached the sea, which, every where seems to wear a friendly face for the English. Here Wellington fortified himself within the impregnable mountain lines of Torres Vedras – extending thirty miles along the coast, from the Tagus to the mouth of the Sissandro. In this position he had the English fleet at his back. During his retreat he had laid waste Portugal – cleared the country of every thing that could support or assist Massena. The sufferings of the poor Portuguese – burghers and peasantry – were pitiable. But the French army suffered most. At the close of the year, weakened by want of provisions and desertion, Massena struck his camp and retired. In the beginning of March, Wellington quitted his mountain fortress and followed him. The country was extensively wasted by Massena in his retreat, and in April, 1811, the French were forced out of Portugal.

This year was consumed in a series of bloody and fruitless movements.

In the beginning of 1812, Wellington besieged and took Ciudad Rodrigo, and, on the 6th of April, he stormed Badajos – one of the most sanguinary affairs of the kind in modern warfare. Soult, who was advancing to relieve that fortress, retired on hearing of its fall, and, being followed by the allies, the great battle of Salamanca was fought in July. Marmont was defeated and lost his right arm; his dispatches to the minister at war were signed with his left hand. The blockade of Cadiz was now raised, at the end of twenty-one months, and the junta felt more at ease. Lord Wellington made a splendid entry into Madrid, and was hailed as the deliverer of the Peninsula. But it was not yet delivered. He pursued the French northward as far as Burgos, which place he besieged and tried to take by assault. But hearing that the French were greatly reinforced and fearing his communication with Portugal might be cut off, he raised the siege and retraced his steps in October, pursued in turn by Soult.

Then began the English retreat to the Douro; disgraceful as well as disastrous. The confusion, bad conduct, and insubordination of the army were extraordinary; it seemed completely demoralized by the reverse. The soldiers thought they were advancing to the French frontiers; instead of which, they were carried back again across Spain and Portugal. Thousands of the men deserted; and Wellington said his troops were “more ill-behaved and undisciplined than any army he ever read or heard of.” At the same time the Spanish general, Ballasteros, refused to listen to or obey him – a heretic foreigner – for which, on Wellington’s complaint, the Cortes cashiered and imprisoned him. The English general, leaving his army in Portuguese cantonments, went down to the junta at Cadiz, and there made such representations of the evils of a divided command, and told them so plainly his determination not to act without receiving the plenary powers he needed, that he was made generalissimo of the united armies of England and the Peninsula.

In 1813 the terrible effects of the Russian campaign began to be felt in Spain. French armies were withdrawn to fill the place of “those veteran hearts that were wasted” beside the Berezina. Wellington, the supreme chief, again advanced, and for the last time, from his base of operations in Portugal. But for this sea-washed position, he would have been driven out of the Peninsula long before. The giant Antreus, when overthrown, instantly recovered when he touched mother earth. Wellington, in his defeats, recovered whenever he touched the sea. He now turned his back upon it, and marched for the Pyrenees. From the frontiers of Portugal he followed the French, who retreated on Burgos. In June he beat King Joseph at Vittoria, and following the French to Pamplona, forced them to enter France by the Bidassoa and other points. But France was not to be invaded without a bloody struggle. Soult, who had received reinforcements from those terrific conscriptions with which Napoleon was decimating France, once more turned upon Wellington. He attacked and beat the English generals in several desperate engagements in the defile of Puerto Maya, and the pass of Roncesvalles.

Where Charlemagne with all his peerage fell,

By Fontarrabia.

The French fought desperately – as they were doing at the same moment, to protect the German frontiers of France against the Russians and Austrians. At the close of 1813, San Sebastian was besieged and taken; and the English soldiery rioted over the fallen city, with the most horrible brutality and license.

Napoleon now seeing his affairs desperate, took Ferdinand of Spain out of prison, and made a treaty of peace and friendship with him. But the Cortes refused to sanction it. In the beginning of 1814 Lord Wellington entered France, and dispatched General Beresford to Bourdeaux, which city he entered in triumph, accompanied by the Duc d’Angouleme. On the 14th of April was fought the battle of Thoulouse, in which Soult endeavored to oppose the progress of Wellington.

In the meantime, Napoleon, who had fought like a wild animal at bay, against the advance of the allies, was forced to abdicate at Fontainbleau, and go away to Elba. Returning thence to Paris, in the beginning of 1815, by one of the most daring and brilliant marches ever made by any soldier, he reached the Thuilleries, while the French princes hurried in consternation along the road to Ghent. At the end of three months the French emperor proceeded into Belgium to annihilate the nearest of his enemies – the Anglo-Belgian and Prussian armies, before the others should come up. It has been said Wellington was taken by surprise. This might have been so – as regarded the exact hour of Napoleon’s coming; but he was not disconcerted. He and many of his officers were at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball, in Brussels, when they heard of the sudden advance of the French.

  And then was mounting in hot haste; the steed,  The mustering squadron, and the clattering car,  Went pouring forward with impetuous speed,  And swiftly forming in the ranks of war;  As the deep thunder, peal on peal afar,  And near, the beat of the alarming drum  Roused up the soldier ere the morning star;  While thronged the citizens, with terror dumb,  Or whispering with white lips, the foe, they come, they come!

Meantime, the emperor, moving rapidly on Brussels, drove in the English at the battle of Quatre Bras, on the 10th, and the Prussians, at Ligny, on the 17th of June. But, on the 18th, he was checked by the memorable hollow squares of Waterloo. On that day was fought one of the most renowned battles of the world – the most decisive of modern times. In antiquity, the battles most resembling it seem to have been Platæa, where Mardonius and the Persians were overthrown, and the fight of Cannæ, in Italy, where the Napoleon of the Punic War prostrated the military strength, but not the republican courage of Rome. For nearly the entire day the British squares withstood the vehement cavalry charges of the French, and so rough-handled and weakened them, that when, toward evening, the Prussians came up in great force, the emperor’s army was wearied, and ready for a repulse. He ordered one more charge in column – that of his Young Guard – (the Old Guard was asleep in Russia) – headed by Ney. But it was broken by the firmness of the English guards. Wellington himself was with these last, and doubtless his presence gave them increased spirit and steadiness. The column – the last forlorn hope of empire – was struck and scattered by the musketry in front, and the flank charges of cavalry; and then the career of Napoleon was at an end. And, for one great tyrant beaten down, a dozen others, great and small, reigned in his stead – their unholy alliance sitting like an incubus on the rights and hopes of exhausted Europe.

After the return of the Bourbons, the Duke of Wellington remained for three years in France, at the head of the Army of Occupation. His residence in Paris was the Elysee Bourbon – that lately occupied by Louis Napoleon. He has been blamed for not saving the life of Marshal Ney, who had in 1814 sworn fidelity to the Bourbons, and, in 1815, gone back to the emperor. Byron, who was always fierce on the duke, says, addressing him,