Titans of History

WELLINGTON

1769–1852

Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.

Duke of Wellington, in a dispatch from Waterloo (June 1815)

Arthur Wellesley, duke of Wellington, was one of the ablest generals of his age, and—with Oliver Cromwell, Admiral Nelson and the duke of Marlborough—stands among the greatest British military leaders of all time. His victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo, which he described as “a damned nice thing—the closest run thing you ever saw,” was a clash of the two most brilliant European generals of their day.

Wellesley, who was born in Dublin to an Anglo-Irish aristocrat, the earl of Mornington, was not an exceptional young man, intellectually or physically. He gave up his one striking talent, for playing the violin, in 1793, burning his instrument in a fit of melodrama. He entered the army and relied on the patronage of his more successful eldest brother to rise through the officer ranks to the position of lieutenant colonel and head of his regiment.

Wellesley went to India in 1797, studying books on war and military tactics during the long voyage. The effort paid off. In 1802 he confronted a force of 50,000 French-led Maratha soldiers at Assaye. Through an unconventional choice of field positions and brave leadership in a bloody battle, Wellesley won against imposing odds. He later called it the finest thing he had ever done in the fighting line.

Returning home in 1805, Wellesley was knighted, married the short-sighted, timid Kitty Pakenham (with whom he was never happy) and was sent for brief stints of duty in Denmark and Ireland, where he distinguished himself further. But it was his departure to fight the French on the Iberian Peninsula in 1808 that almost ended his career: frustrated by shared commands with inept generals, he rashly signed a treaty with the French without reading its foolish terms. He was hauled before an inquiry and criticized—but survived to advise the secretary of war, Viscount Castlereagh, on how he would wage cheap but effective war. Castlereagh gave him the job that marked the start of Wellesley’s ascent to greatness.

Here, the British army had enough men to conduct defensive campaigns, and even to besiege large towns and castles, but insufficient strength to take advantage of these successes. He defeated the French at Talavera (for which he received a peerage, becoming Viscount Wellington), and managed to defend Lisbon from French attack by secretly building a network of fortifications. Despite a succession of British victories, at Vimeiro, Busaco, Almeida and elsewhere, Viscount Wellington was often frustrated in his ambitions to press on from Portugal into Spain.

By 1812 things had improved. Wellington fought his way to Madrid and persuaded the Spanish government to appoint him generalissimo of its own armies. By 1814 the French had been pushed back to their own border and he invaded Napoleon’s own country. Wellington made sure his armies were better organized and better supplied than the French. He imposed superior discipline on his troops, and he did his best to respect the religion and property of the Spanish people, valuable lessons learned in India. He described his troops as “the scum of the earth.” He had defeated Marshal Massena, perhaps the finest French general, but had never faced Napoleon himself and hoped he would never have to do so.

By now Wellington was the most famous man in England. He had won a dukedom, the ambassadorship to France, and the role as British representative at the Congress of Vienna. He was the recipient of honors from governments of Europe. But in 1815 he was to face the ultimate test of his military mettle.

Napoleon, who had abdicated and then been exiled to Elba in 1814, had escaped and begun to rally troops around him. Wellington was the only man in Europe considered worthy enough to command the allied forces against the emperor as he plotted to attack the Low Countries. Wellington was unimpressed by his own combined forces, calling them “an infamous army, very weak and ill equipped.” He also had little knowledge of Napoleon’s plans for the battlefield and was taken aback when French troops began to move on June 15, 1815. “Napoleon has humbugged me, by God!” he exclaimed; but when the two armies met on June 18, Wellington had arranged his forces into a defensive formation that was to prove extremely resilient against the waves of bludgeoning French attacks that Napoleon launched.

Throughout the long, hard battle, Wellington remained calm, though his Prussian reinforcements, under Marshal Blücher, arrived late and virtually every man of his personal staff was killed or wounded. “I never took so much trouble about any battle, and was never so near being beat,” he wrote afterward. But this victory, his last, was resounding, and Wellington was lauded right across the continent.

As a commander, Wellington was distinguished by his acute intelligence, sangfroid, planning and flexibility but also by his loathing for the suffering of battle. As a man, he was sociable, enjoying close friendships with female friends and a long line of affairs with high-born ladies and low-born courtesans, including a notorious French actress whom he shared with Napoleon himself. When one such courtesan threatened him with exposure, he replied: “Publish and be damned.”

After Waterloo, Wellington’s prestige gave him great influence on government. By the 1820s he had been drawn into partisan politics, not his natural territory, although he was at heart a Tory and a reactionary. He served, with difficulty, as prime minister (1828–30), but he secured an agreement on Catholic emancipation—political representation for Catholics, especially important for Ireland. However, his opposition to the clamor for parliamentary reform led him to resign the premiership. He was briefly prime minister again in 1834, holding every secretaryship in the government. In 1842 he resumed his position as commander-in-chief of the British army, a post he held until his death.

A million and a half people turned out to see his funeral cortège make its way to St. Paul’s Cathedral in 1852. “The last great Englishman is low,” wrote the poet laureate Alfred Tennyson.