Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

• 1. Introduction

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  Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, was born in Dublin in 1769 as the sixth of nine children, and died in 1852 holding the rank of Field Marshal and the position of Commander-in-Chief of the British Army. His mother once described him as her "awkward son Arthur," a young man who showed so little promise in his teens that she moved the family to Brussels simply because they could no longer afford to stay in England. That unpromising boy would go on to defeat Napoleon at Waterloo, serve twice as Britain's prime minister, and become one of the most celebrated figures in the history of the British Isles. How did a debt-ridden Irish aristocrat, rejected by a woman's family as a man of no prospects, become the soldier who ended the Napoleonic Wars? What did two decades of campaigning in India, Portugal, and Spain teach him that no other British commander of his era possessed? And what happened when the warrior turned statesman?

• 2. The Awkward Son

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  Garret Wesley, 1st Earl of Mornington, was an accomplished composer elevated to his earldom in 1760 partly in recognition of his musical and philanthropic achievements. His son Arthur inherited none of that early sparkle. At Eton, where Arthur studied from 1781 to 1784, loneliness made him hate the place. The famous quotation attributed to him, that "The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton", is almost certainly false: his documented misery there makes it implausible he felt any affection for the school, and Eton had no playing fields at the time anyway.

  In 1785, with the family short of money after his father's death four years earlier, Arthur and his mother relocated to Brussels. She fretted openly about his prospects. In 1786 he enrolled in the French Royal Academy of Equitation in Angers, and the change was dramatic. He became a skilled horseman and learned to speak French, a skill that would serve him in ways no one yet imagined. When he returned to England later that year, his mother was astonished by his improvement.

  His route into the army came through family connections rather than merit. His brother Richard asked their friend the Duke of Rutland, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, to consider Arthur for a commission. On the 7th of March 1787, he was gazetted ensign in the 73rd Regiment of Foot at ten shillings a day as an aide-de-camp, twice what an ensign normally earned. His early Dublin duties were mostly social: attending balls, entertaining guests, advising on protocol. He gambled, borrowed, and transferred between regiments several times. He also reluctantly entered politics, winning election as MP for the rotten borough of Trim in the Irish House of Commons in 1789.

  The romantic setback that reshaped his ambitions came in 1793. Wellesley proposed to Kitty Pakenham, daughter of Edward Pakenham, 2nd Baron Longford, described as full of gaiety and charm. Her brother Thomas, 2nd Earl of Longford, refused him on grounds that Wellesley was young, in debt, and without prospects. Devastated, Wellesley burned his violins and resolved to pursue a military career in earnest. He purchased a majority in the 33rd Regiment that same year, and then a lieutenant-colonelcy in September.

• 3. Forged in India

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  Wellesley arrived in Calcutta in February 1797, and within a year his elder brother Richard had been appointed Governor-General of India. That family connection put Arthur in positions of command that outpaced his seniority and generated resentment among officers who ranked above him. It also placed him at the centre of the campaign against Tipu Sultan of Mysore.

  The war exposed him to a form of warfare unlike anything in Europe. At the Battle of Sultanpet Tope on the 5th of April 1799, he led a night attack into a grove and was driven back in confusion by Tipu's rocket troops, losing his way in the dark and sustaining a glancing blow to his knee from a spent musket-ball. It was a humiliation, but one that became a rule: he resolved "never to attack an enemy who is preparing and strongly posted, and whose posts have not been reconnoitred by daylight". The next day, with better intelligence, he retook the position without a single man killed.

  The rockets Tipu's forces used were a genuine military innovation. A young British officer named Bayly described them: "So pestered were we with the rocket boys that there was no moving without danger from the destructive missiles." Some burst in the air like shells. Others, called ground rockets, struck the earth and bounded forward in a serpentine path until their force was spent. Their bamboo poles measured twenty or thirty feet, and when they passed through a column the lacerations were catastrophic. The rockets had a range of about 1,000 yards.

  Seringapatam fell in May 1799. Wellesley was the first to confirm Tipu Sultan's death, checking his pulse. He then spent the coming days appalled by the looting and drunkenness of his own men. Several soldiers were flogged and four were hanged to restore order. Aged thirty, he stayed behind as the new Governor of Seringapatam and Mysore while General Harris withdrew the main force.

  The Second Anglo-Maratha War in 1803 produced the battle Wellesley would later call the best he ever fought: Assaye, on the 23rd of September. Receiving intelligence that the main Maratha army was camped between two rivers, he attacked immediately rather than wait for Colonel Stevenson's smaller force to rejoin him. He crossed the river Kaitna and drove his infantry forward in lines. Two horses were shot from under him; he had to mount a third. British casualties came to 428 killed, 1,138 wounded, and 18 missing. Some 6,000 Marathas were killed or wounded. An officer present wrote: "The General was in the thick of the action the whole time... I never saw a man so cool and collected as he was."

  Military historian Richard Holmes observed that India taught Wellesley discipline through drill, the use of diplomacy to build alliances, and the vital importance of a secure supply line. He also developed a respect for intelligence-gathering through scouts and spies. When he finally left India in 1804, having amassed a personal fortune of £42,000 largely from prize money, he remarked: "I have served as long in India as any man ought who can serve anywhere else." On the voyage home he stopped at Saint Helena and stayed in the same building where Napoleon would later live in exile.

• 4. One Meeting with Nelson

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  In September 1805, Wellesley was back in England and not yet widely known to the public. He went to the office of the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies to request an assignment and found himself waiting in the same room as Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson, already famous for his victories at the Nile and Copenhagen.

  Nelson opened the conversation and Wellesley found it, as he recalled some thirty years later, "almost all on his side in a style so vain and silly as to surprise and almost disgust me." Nelson then stepped out to ask who the young general was. When he returned, his manner changed entirely. He spoke about the war, the colonies, and the geopolitical situation as between equals. Wellesley remembered that second conversation as one of the most interesting he had ever had.

  The two men never met again. Seven weeks later, Nelson was killed at his victory at Trafalgar. Wellesley married Kitty Pakenham, who had waited for him, on the 10th of April 1806, the ceremony performed by his brother Gerald in St George's Church, Dublin. Their two sons, Arthur and Charles, were born in 1807 and 1808. The marriage was unhappy almost from the start. Kitty grew depressed; Wellington pursued other partners. They spent years apart, Kitty at their country home Stratfield Saye House, Wellington at Apsley House in London. Kitty's brother Edward Pakenham served under Wellington throughout the Peninsular War, and Wellington's affection for him helped ease the tension between the couple, until Pakenham was killed at the Battle of New Orleans in 1815.

• 5. The Peninsular Crucible

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  Wellington left Cork on the 12th of July 1808 bound for the Iberian Peninsula with 9,000 men. The Peninsula was the one theatre of the Napoleonic Wars where Britain and its Portuguese allies had mounted serious resistance against France. At the battles of Roliça and Vimeiro in 1808, Wellington defeated the French, only to be superseded in command immediately after Vimeiro. General Dalrymple then signed the controversial Convention of Sintra, which required the Royal Navy to transport the French army out of Lisbon along with all their loot. Wellington had signed the preliminary armistice but not the convention itself, and was cleared at the subsequent Court of Enquiry.

  Given command of all British forces in Portugal, Wellington arrived in Lisbon on the 22nd of April 1809 aboard HMS Surveillante after narrowly escaping shipwreck. In the Second Battle of Porto, he crossed the Douro river in a daylight coup de main and drove Marshal Soult's troops from the city. Advancing into Spain, his alliance with the Spanish general Cuesta quickly became a source of friction. After the Battle of Talavera on the 27th of July, Wellington discovered that Cuesta had abandoned his 1,500 British wounded to the French. Wellington's fury was barely suppressed.

  The most innovative moment of the Peninsular campaign may have been the Lines of Torres Vedras. When Marshal Masséna invaded Portugal in 1810 with a newly enlarged French army, Wellington did not simply retreat. He had secretly ordered the construction of massive earthworks across the Lisbon Peninsula, the flanks secured by the Royal Navy. The French, baffled and starving, retreated after six months without having broken through. British opinion had been negative beforehand, with voices calling for evacuation of Portugal entirely.

  By 1812 Wellington was storming fortresses. Ciudad Rodrigo fell in a rapid winter assault. Badajoz fell in the night of the 6th of April after a month's siege. Standing over the dead in the breaches afterward, Wellington wept openly. He was made Marquess of Wellington on the 18th of August 1812, and when he routed the French at Salamanca and liberated Madrid, his standing in Britain was unrivalled.

  The battle that ended the war in the Peninsula was Vitoria, on the 21st of June 1813, where Wellington personally led a column against the French centre while three other columns under Sir Thomas Graham, Rowland Hill, and the Earl of Dalhousie encircled the flanks. King Joseph Bonaparte's army was destroyed. Beethoven later made the battle the subject of his orchestral piece Wellington's Victory, Opus 91. In his despatch to Earl Bathurst after British troops broke ranks to loot the abandoned French wagons, Wellington wrote in fury: "We have in the service the scum of the earth as common soldiers." When his temper cooled, he added the qualification that it was "really wonderful that we should have made them to the fine fellows they are." The promotion to field marshal came the same day.

• 6. Waterloo

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  On the 26th of February 1815 Napoleon escaped from Elba. Wellington left the Congress of Vienna and arrived in the Netherlands to take command of an Anglo-Dutch-German force alongside the Prussians under Field Marshal Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher. Napoleon's plan was to destroy each allied army separately before the Austrians and Russians could reinforce them.

  The French invaded in June. Napoleon defeated the Prussians at Ligny and Marshal Ney fought Wellington to an indecisive result at Quatre Bras. Wellington chose his ground carefully: the north ridge of a shallow valley on the Brussels road, just south of the small town of Waterloo. It was a position he had noted the previous year as favourable for a battle. On the 17th of June, torrential rain fell, slowing movement for both armies. Sunday the 18th was the day of the battle itself, the first time Wellington and Napoleon had ever faced each other directly. Wellington commanded approximately 73,000 troops, 26,000 of whom were British, with roughly 30 per cent of that British component being Irish.

  The battle opened with a French diversionary attack on the farmhouse at Hougoumont. After a barrage of 80 cannons, Comte D'Erlon's I Corps advanced through the Allied centre. An Allied division under Thomas Picton met them head-on; Picton was killed. Lord Uxbridge launched two cavalry brigades that drove D'Erlon's men back down the slope and captured two French Imperial Eagles, but the charge overreached and the British cavalry were cut apart by French horsemen sent in by Napoleon.

  At around 16:30, Marshal Ney misread the movement of British casualties to the rear as the beginning of a retreat and launched a massed cavalry charge without infantry support. He was displaced from his horse four times that afternoon. The French horsemen repeatedly attacked the British infantry squares but could not break them. Ney eventually organised a combined-arms assault, but it was too late to be decisive.

  The crisis came after 18:00, when Ney finally seized La Haye Sainte and moved horse artillery to within short range of Wellington's centre. The 27th Inniskilling Regiment was nearly destroyed by canister fire. The 30th and 73rd Regiments suffered such losses that they had to merge into a single square. Wellington's line was close to breaking.

  At 19:30 Napoleon sent forward the Imperial Guard: five battalions of the Middle Guard, not the elite Old Guard. Roughly 3,000 Guardsmen marched through canister and skirmisher fire. To the west, 1,500 British Foot Guards under Peregrine Maitland had been lying down to avoid French artillery. As the Chasseurs approached, Maitland's men stood and fired at point-blank range. A bayonet charge broke them. The 52nd Light Infantry wheeled onto the flank of the third prong and poured fire into it. The word spread through the French lines: "La Garde recule. Sauve qui peut!" Wellington stood up in the stirrups of his horse Copenhagen and waved his hat to signal a general advance.

  Wellington and Blücher met that evening at the inn of La Belle Alliance on the road that divided the battlefield. It was agreed the Prussians would pursue the French back to France. On the 28th of June 1815, ten days after the battle, Wellington wrote to the Duke of York recommending that a medal be given to every non-commissioned officer and soldier who had fought at Waterloo, saying he was convinced it "would have the best effect in the army." The Waterloo Medal was authorised and distributed to all ranks in 1816.

• 7. Soldier Turned Statesman

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  The army of occupation Wellington commanded in Paris after 1815 consisted of troops from Britain, Austria, Russia, Prussia, and five smaller European states. It was never required to intervene militarily and was dissolved in 1818, ending his last active military command. He returned to domestic politics as a Tory.

  In 1818 Prime Minister Lord Liverpool invited Wellington to become Master-General of the Ordnance, a position he held for over eight years. He increased the efficiency of the Board of Ordnance, prepared a defence plan for Canada, and supported the establishment of the Ordnance Survey of Ireland. He was Governor of Plymouth from the 9th of October 1819. In foreign policy he travelled to St Petersburg, arriving on the 2nd of March 1826, to attend the funeral of Tsar Alexander I and negotiate directly with the new emperor Nicholas I. The result was the Protocol of St Petersburg, a plan to resolve the Greek War of Independence through Anglo-Russian mediation.

  Wellington became prime minister in January 1828, at first declining to live in 10 Downing Street because he found it too small, moving in only when his own Apsley House required renovation. During his tenure he was largely instrumental in founding King's College London. The largest political test of his ministry arrived quickly. In July 1828 Daniel O'Connell, the champion of Catholic emancipation, defeated William Vesey Fitzgerald in a County Clare by-election but could not take his seat in Parliament because of the Oath of Supremacy, which effectively barred Roman Catholics from elected office. Wellington, who as an Irish MP had broadly favoured easing the Penal Laws, guided the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829 through Parliament, a measure that removed those legal disabilities. He oversaw that passage against the fierce opposition of Protestant hardliners and against his own instincts about stability, calculating that the alternative was a far more dangerous confrontation.

  He opposed the Reform Act 1832 and stepped down as prime minister in 1830. He remained one of the leading figures in the House of Lords until his retirement in 1846, and held the position of Commander-in-Chief of the Forces until his death on the 14th of September 1852. The Waterloo Dispatch he wrote in 1815 and the 1842 Memorandum on the Battle of Waterloo, a response to Carl von Clausewitz's strategic analysis of the campaign, remained significant documents in British military history long after his death.