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THE GREAT DUKE

BY

W. H. .^^iTCHETT, B.A., LL.D.
AUTHOR OP "how ENGLAND SAVED EUROPE "
"deeds that won the empire," etc.

IN TWO VOLUMES
VOLUME ONE

WITH A FRONTISPIECE, MAPS AND PLANS

LONDON
SMITH, ELDER isf CO., 15 WATERLOO PLACE
1911
[All rights reserved]

Printed by Bailahtyne, Hansos &' Co.
At the BaUantyne Press, Edinbui-gh

PROEM

" Hereafter, when the present generations of men shall have
become as remote as the early Greeks or the founders of Rome are
to us, it may be found that, in the range of poetry there does not
exist an epic, the foundations of which are better shaped for
artistic purposes than the story of Wellington's struggle with
Napoleon's power." — Hamley.
THE picture of Wellington which is most deeply
impressed on the general imagination is that
of a grey-haired, venerable figure, erect in spite
of eighty years, riding through the London streets,
with hand raised from time to time in soldierly
acknowledgment of signs of respect. He was the
oldest, as well as the most famous, soldier of his
generation. Kound " the good grey head that all
men knew" it seemed as if unknown years of
warlike experience — the dust and glory of in
numerable battles — gathered. It is not easy to
realise that Wellington was, in fact, almost the
youngest of all the great soldiers of history, and
that his active military career, when measured
against that of most of his rivals in fame, was
curiously brief. It closed in the dusk of that

viii PROEM
wild sunset at Waterloo, when he turned the head
of his tired horse and parted with Blucher on the
road near La Belle Alliance, with the tumult
and wreck of an overthrown army — the last of
Napoleon's veterans — all about him. He was then
only forty-six years of age, younger at the close
of his career as a battle-leader than Marlborough
was at the beginning of the campaigns which gave
him fame. For Marlborough was fifty-four years of
age when he won Blenheim ; and Kamilies, Ouden
arde, and Malplaquet were still years distant.
Wellington's active career as a soldier stretches,
roughly, through twenty-four years; and when set
in true perspective it falls naturally into three
periods of eight years each. The first runs from
1787, when he was gazetted as an ensign in the
73rd, to his return from Holland in 1795. He
had risen fast in regimental rank by family
influence ; but until he joined the Duke of York's
army at Antwerp, in July 1794, he had never
heard a shot fired in anger. He had mastered,
however, with characteristic thoroughness the
alphabet of the drill-ground. He knew how to
administer and handle a regiment. In the cam
paign that followed, when commanding the scanty
rear-guard of a defeated army, in slow retreat from
Malines to Bremen, through a long and bitter
winter, he learned what disaster teaches a soldier.
As he himself put it, long afterwards, with a certain

PKOEM ix
accent of angry scorn, " I learned more by seeing
our own faults, and the defects of our system, in
the campaign in Holland, than anywhere else."
But his experiences in the Low Countries sickened
Wellington of a soldier's career, and he was willing,
at the end of the campaign, to exchange all his
opportunities of fame in that stern field for a stool
in a public office in Dublin.
Then follows the second period of eight years
under Indian skies, from 1^97 to 1805 ; and these
were a real apprenticeship in the art of war on a
great scale. Within a month of his landing in
India, Wellesley — still only twenty-eight years of
age — was organising an army for a campaign.
Two years later he was in charge of one of the
columns converging on Seringapatam, commanding
the right wing of a force, on the Indian exaggerated
scale, " covering," as he himself says, " sixteen
square miles." Two years later he shattered the
Mahratta power at Assaye.
His career in India was exactly the training
which fitted him for the Peninsula. It was a train
ing in diplomacy and administration, as well as in
soldiership ; a drill in the art of commanding
troops diverse in race and speech and creed.
Above all, it was rich in the tonic of great re
sponsibilities. Long afterwards, Wellington, in a conversation
with Croker, put in order of value the knowledge

X PROEM
which goes to make a great captain : " One must
understand," he says, "the mechanism and power
of the individual soldier, then that of a company,
or battalion, or brigade, and so on, before one can
venture to group divisions or move an army."
Many commanders miss success because they have
not mastered what may be called the mechanics
of their profession. They do not know the pos
sibilities and limitations of the man in the ranks ;
they have not learned the secret of using their
tools swiftly and skilfully. Wellington said of
Moore, " He was as brave as his own sword ; but
he did not know what men could do or could not
do." " He was not of my school," he added signifi
cantly. Now, in his bitter watch on the Waal, splashing
under winter storms in the mire of Dutch roads,
and — later — in swift and exhausting marches under
Indian suns, Wellington learned perfectly what
the man in the ranks can do, and cannot do. He
learned, in minutest detail, how to handle a com
pany, a battalion, a brigade. He had attained the
perfect mastery of his tools.
The third period of eight years takes in the
Peninsula, and ends at Waterloo ; and Wellington
entered on that great and final stage in his career
as a soldier equipped in a signal degree for his
task, alike in mind and body and experience. But
he was only forty-six when he heard the last

PROEM xi
sullen gun fired in the last and greatest of his
battles. Well-nigh another forty years — years of
peace — had to pass before, " to the noise of the
mourning of a mighty nation," England's greatest
soldier was laid in the crypt of St. Paul's by the
side of her greatest seaman.
The chapters which follow give, in substance,
the history of these three periods, the whole
forming symmetrical stages in the development,
not only of a great soldier, but of a character of
historic scale and impressiveness. They are, it
may be added, progressive stages in a career
crowded with achievements in battle unsurpassed,
in many respects, in the history of war.
This is in no sense, it may be added, a formal
and complete " Life " of Wellington. He lived
thirty-seven years after Waterloo, and during all
that period he was an active and most influential
force in the national life. He was the foremost
man in England. His fame, indeed, filled all lands.
He was the counsellor of kings. His word made
and unmade Ministries. Yet he can hardly be
described as having a political career. He filled
great political offices. He was a member of many
Cabinets; once he was Prime Minister. Once,
indeed, for ten days, he concentrated in his single
person nearly every important post in the Cabinet.
And he brought to his public life great qualities
— scorn of falsehood, simplicity of character, in-

xii PROEM
flexible loyalty to duty — not always found in that
realm. He was, no doubt, an aristocrat to the
tip of his fingers, with both the merits and the
limitations of his type. In his political creed he
was a convinced and obstinate Tory. He hated
change. In a speech which he delivered in 1830,
he described the old pre-reform House of Commons,
built on a franchise which gave two members to
an old wall at Gatton, and no member whatever
to Manchester or Birmingham, as " yielding a
legislature which answers all the useful ends of
government to a greater degree than any legis
lature ever has done in any country whatever."
He went on to say that, if he had the task of
forming the legislature of any country, "he would
not undertake to say that he could invent such
a legislature as that Great Britain possessed, for
the nature of man is incapable of reaching such
excellence at once. But my great endeavour," he
added, " would be to form some description of
legislature which could reach the same results."
And yet he was the head of the Ministry
which repealed the Test and Corporation Acts,
and carried the CathoHc Emancipation Act ! The
explanation is to be found in the circumstance
that he had a political conscience, for which, in
the last issue, the nation counted for more than
the party. He was, in his own words, " the ser
vant of the Crown and of the people." There

PROEM xiii
ran, indeed, through all his politics a fine strain
of soldiership. He had " eaten the King's salt,"
and the King's Government must be carried on,
whatever happened to the party.
But his training as a soldier, it may be frankly
admitted, unfitted Wellington for political life of
the Parliamentary type, with its ideal of govern
ment by debate; its spirit of compromise; its
perpetual dance of " ins " and " outs." It specially
unfitted him for British politics during the thirty
years betwixt, say, 1 8 1 9, the year of the " Man
chester massacre," and of the Six Acts, and 1848,
the year that saw the collapse of the Chartist
agitation. That period was an era of political
transition. New classes were coming into political
existence ; new ideas were taking shape ; ancient
habitudes were being east off; national life was
finding new expression. The very centre of autho
rity in the State was being shifted.
Now, Wellington was, first and last, a soldier,
familiar with camps and marches; and he had
the limitations of the soldier. His ideal was not
freedom, but discipline. He was accustomed, not
to discuss, but to decide ; not to persuade or con
vince, but to command. He exacted obedience,
and he rendered it. " All I desire," he said,
"... all I have desired for many years past is
to see . . . the country governed." A good soldier's
hate of disorder bums in those words. But a

xiv PROEM
soldier's very virtues unfit him for public life con
ducted on Parliamentary methods. That system
needs other qualities and more pliant characters
than the camp and the battlefield yield.
If Napoleon had died in the ranks of his Old
Guard at Waterloo it would have been well for
his memory. St. Helena was a very sordid post
script to Austerlitz and Wagram. In the history
of the human intellect, what more tragical fall
can be discovered than that which is offered by
the spectacle of the brain which inspired the Code
Napoleon, occupied in its last years in the inven
tion of lying " memoirs," and in harrying poor
Sir Hudson Lowe ? And in that wild scene on
the Brussels road, when, leaning from his horse
in the darkness, Blucher threw his arms round
Wellington's neck, and cried, " Mein lieher kama-
rade" — if at that moment a bullet from some
retreating French soldier had ended Wellington's
life he might have held, not perhaps a more
enduring, but certainly a more picturesque and
more absolutely unshadowed place in the memory
of mankind. At least, he would have escaped the
broken windows of Apsley House.
Wellington's career as a soldier, however, has
the completeness of an epic. His story, from the
ensigncy in the 73 rd to the glory of Waterloo,
moves with the speed, rises to the climax, and has
the unity of an antique drama. And Wellington

PROEM XV
stands amongst the great captains of history almost
unique as a famous soldier, with none of the dan
gerous ambitions of a soldier. He explained in
later years the secret of the trust he won, both
in Portugal and Spain, by the fact that he was
visibly un conqu4rant sans ambition. " All the
world," he says, " knew that I desired nothing but
to beat the French out of Spain, and then go
home to my own country, leaving the Spaniards to
manage theirs as they pleased."
It might almost be said, indeed, that he was
not so much a soldier as a supreme workman,
with a good workman's hate of waste, his delight
in good instruments, his impatience of slovenly
work, his passion for making his task complete.
He was, above all things, whether in the camp or
on the battlefield, a great citizen, " the servant of
the Crown and people," to use his own phrase, and
with no ambition in discord with loyalty to either.
This is a career and a character worth studying.

CONTENTS

PART I
THE TBAININO OF A SOLDIER
CHAP. PAGE
I. EAKLT YEAES  3
II. BEGINNING SOLDIEESHIP  14
III. THE LEAGUE AGAINST THE EEVOLUTION . . .23
IV. IN THE NETHBELANDS ...... 33

PART II
UNDER INDIAN SKIES
I. A NEW FIELD  45
II. TWO GEEAT BROTHERS  54
III. THE DUEL WITH TIPPOO SAHIB .... 65
IV. A GEEAT ROBBEE-HUNT  77
V. THE MAHEATTA8  87
VI. A NEW CAMPAIGN  97
VII. ASSAYE  106
VIII. AFTER ASSAYE  1 19
IX. CLOSING YEARS IN INDIA  I2g
X. THB INDIAN DESPATCHES  135
XI. LEAVING INDIA  '47
XII. COPENHAGEN  • . 158
VOL. I. '"'" &

COjSTTENTS

CHAP, I.
II.
III. IV. V.
VI.
VII.
VIII. IX. X.
XI.
XII.
xm.

PART III
TBE PENINSULA
PAGE
A NEW FIELD OF WAE  169
THE FIRST FIGHTS  1 86
VIMIERO AND THB CONVENTION . . . .197
FRENCH AND BRITISH BATTLE-METHODS . . . 220
SOULT AND THE DOURO  229
SPANISH GBNEEALSHIP  250
TALAVBEA  263
A CHANGED POLICY  282
A NEW ANTAGONIST  293
BUSACO  308
THE LINES OF TORRES VEDRAS .... 323
MASSfeNA'S RETEEAT  339
FUENTES D'ONOEO  360

ARTHUR, FIEST DUKE OP WELLINGTON . . FrOtdispieCe
(From, a painting by Goya.)
(Reproduced by tbe kind permission of the Duke ot Leeds.)

MAPS AND PLANS
INDIA 1806 ....
BATTLE OF ASSAYE
MAP OF THB SPANISH CAMPAIGN
BATTLE OP VIMIERO .
BATTLE OF TALAVEEA
BATTLE OP BUSACO .
LINES OF TOEEES VEDRAS .
BATTLE OP FUENTES D'ONORO

To face 23. 51
V „ 107
„ „ 186
>. » 198
„ „ 264
» .. 308
11 » 326
>. » 363

LIST OF CHIEF BOOKS
CONSULTED
Napier's Peninsula War.
History of the Peninsula War. Professor Oman.
Life of Wellington. Brialmont and Gleig.
„ W. H. MaxweU.
„ „ Sir Herbert MaiweU.
„ „ Hooper (in Men of Action series).
Despatches of the Duke of WeUington.
Selection from the Indian Despatches of the Duke of
WeUington, edited by Sidney J. Owen.
Life of Sir Charles Napier.
Life of Sir WiUiam Napier.
Life of Sir George Napier.
The Connaught Rangers. Grattan.
Kincaid's Rifle Brigade.
Donaldson's Life of a Soldier (1825).
WeUington's Lieutenants. A. Innes Shand.
Sir A. Fraser's Letters.
RecoUections of the Peninsula.
With the 32 nd in the Peninsula.
WelUngton. G. Latham Browne.
WelUngton. Hamley.
A British Rifleman. Simmons.
A Private of the 92nd (1820).
Retrospect of Military Life. James Anton.
Rifleman Harris.
Life of Sir Thomas Picton.

X LIST OF CHIEF BOOKS CONSULTED
The DownfaU of Napoleon. MitcheU.
Campaign in the Peninsula. Sir Richard Hennigan.
Narrative of the Peninsula War. Sir A. Leith.
Raikes' Correspondence with WeUington.
Letters from the Peninsula. Warre.
Recollections of Military Service. Morris.
Private Journal of J. S. Larpent.
Life of Sir John Colborne.
Notes of a Staff Officer. Jackson.
Diary of a Cavalry Officer in the Peninsula. Lieutenant-
Colonel Tomkinson.
Croker's Correspondence.
GreviUe's Journal.
Waterloo. Houssaye.
„ Hooper.
„ Gleig.
Lord Seaton's Regiment at Waterloo.
The Waterloo Campaign. Lieutenant-Colonel Pratt.
The Waterloo RoU-caU.
A Boy in the Peninsula War. Edited by Julian Sturgis.
Autobiography of Sir Harry Smith.
Campaign of Waterloo. Ropes.
Waterloo Campaign. Mercer.
The Rise of WeUington. Lord Roberts.
The Cavahy at Waterloo. Lord Wolseley.
The WeUington Memorial. Major Griffiths.
Campaign of 1815. Captain Battye.
Personal Reminiscences of the Duke of WeUington. Gleig.
Characteristics of the Duke of WeUington. Earl Grey.
Words of WeUington. Sir William Fraser.
Personal Reminiscences of Wellington. The Earl of
EUesmere.
ConversationB with the Duke of Wellington. Earl
Stanhope.
Dictionary of National Biography.

PART I
THE TRAINING OF A SOLDIER

VOL. I.

THE GREAT DUKE

CHAPTER I
EARLY YEARS
"When Louis XVIII. was told that the eaine year which pro
duced Napoleon also produced Wellington, he said Providence
owed mankind tbat coinpen.sation. Kings have seldom infused
such deep meaning into their compliments."
ON the career of Wellington as a soldier there
lies a fame so splendid that every detail in
it becomes of interest, and Wellington himself is
set in a light which makes visible for all time
every aspect of his character, and almost every
wrinkle in his face. But a haze of what might
almost be described as absurd uncertainties hangs
about the beginning of his career.
Arthur Wesley — the name was changed later to
Wellesley — was the fourth son of Garret Wesley,
the first Earl of Mornington, born in 1769 — the year
of Napoleon's birth; but about the exact date and
place of his birth there is a helpless conflict of
authorities. His mother — whose testimony ought

4. THE GREAT DTJKE
to be final — said it took place on May i at Morn
ington House, 24 Merrion Street, Dublin. The
nurse who attended her protested it took place
at Dangan Castle, in Meath, on March 26. Bay
shaw's Magazine for May, 1769, gives the birth
day as April 29; the Freeman's Journal of the
period announces the birth as taking place on
May 6. The parish register at St. Peter's, Dublin,
records that "Isaac Mann, archdeacon, christened
Arthur, son of the Earl and Countess of Morn
ington, on April 30" — the day before, according
to his mother's testimony, he was born! It is
probable that the change in the calendar had not
yet been accepted by the ecclesiastical mind, and
the parish register gives us the date according to
the old style.
The Irish Parliament was once called upon to
settle the date of Arthur Wesley's birth. He
had been elected a member, and his election was
challenged, on the ground that he was under age;
but, as the petition was not pressed, the evidence
which would have settled this point, and saved
rauch expenditure of useless ink, was not heard.
A whole volume has been written on this subject
under the title of " Wellington, the Date and Place
of His Birth," and the conclusion is reached that
it took place on April 29, new style. Wellington,
himself, always regarded May i as his birthday.
The family name of Wesley was changed to

EARLY YEARS 5
what was held to be its original form, Wellesley,
in 1798,* and Arthur Wesley's genius in soldier
ship is supposed to find some explanation in his
Wellesley ancestry, for that line has an honourable
record in war. But, as a matter of fact, he was
a Wellesley only by name; there does not seem
to have been a drop of Wellesley blood in his veins.
A Garret Wesley, about 1728, finding himseK child
less, adopted Richard CoUey, his wife's nephew,
as his heir, on condition that he assumed the name
and arms of Wellesley. This Garret Wesley, in
search of a son denied to him by nature, showed
excellent judgment. At some earlier date he had
offered to adopt Charles Wesley, a son of the
Epworth Parsonage, the brother of John Wesley,
the founder of the Methodist Church ; and Charles
Wesley has won a fame by his hymns almost as
imperishable — if not as resounding — as that his
brother won as a religious reformer. One choice,
in a word, would have given Garret Wesley, as his
heir, one of the greatest hymn-writers in English
literature, the other choice put in the line of his
descent the greatest soldier in British history.
The CoUeys, the stock from which Arthur Wel
lesley sprang, were an English family, transplanted
as early as the reign of Henry IV. to Ireland ; and
' To escape the inconvenience of the use of two names, the
Wellesley form is used in these pages up to the point when a peerage
changed the name to Wellington.

6 THE GREAT DUKE
in their case, as in that of many other English
houses, the slow, if strong, Saxon nature seemed
to catch a pulse of quicker genius from the Irish
soil into which it struck its roots. The record of
the house in statesmanship, in law, and in soldier
ship is honourable. The father of Arthur Wel
lesley, the first Earl of Mornington, it is true,
showed no special gifts in any of these strenuous
fields. He was a musician, and, as far as he has
any fame apart from that his famous sons reflect
upon hiin, he won it in the realm of music. Some
of his compositions — glees such as " Here in Cool
Grot," and "Come, Fairest Nymph" — are still to
be heard in musical societies. The title of Doctor
of Music was conferred upon him in 1764 by Trinity
College, Dublin. But from this gentle father, who
spent his days in the invention of musical concords,
there sprung a very remarkable cluster of sons, who
took part in stormy scenes, and made contributions
of long-enduring value to British history.
The eldest son, Richard, would have shone in any
circle. His face, with its aspect of refinement, its
look of almost feminine charm — but with a scholar's
eyes, set beneath a brow of power — is one of the
most striking in the portrait gallery of his century.
He is one of the three men who, by statesmanship
and daring, built up the Indian Empire; and he
had a touch of brilliancy which neither of his
great compeers — Hastings nor Dalhousie — possessed.

EARLY YEARS ^
In some intellectual qualities — in range of vision,
and in the faculty for governing men — he is not
unworthy to stand by his younger and more famous
brother. The stately marble statue to his memory
which stands in Government House at Calcutta
was nobly earned.
The third son, William Wellesley-Pole, began his
career in the Navy, took to politics later as a
career, was Chief Secretary for Ireland, and held
a seat in Lord Liverpool's Cabinet. Another son,
Henry, afterwards Baron Cowley, served in the
Army, went as secretary with his elder brother to
India, and was ambassador, in tum, to Spain,
Austria, and France. He was offered, and declined,
the Governor-Generalship of India. When to these
three records is added that of Wellington himself,
it may be doubted whether, at that period, under
any other roof in the three kingdoms, there was
such a cluster of sons destined for great careers as
that which, in the seventies of the eighteenth cen
tury, gathered round the household table at Dangan
Castle, or at 24 Merrion Street, Dublin.
It may be added that all the Wellesleys had the
art of living long. They possessed tough bodies as
well as strong brains. Richard died at eighty-
two years of age; William Wellesley-Pole hved to
be eighty-two ; Henry to be seventy-four ; the great
Duke himself died at eighty-three. When we re
member that all these men bore the strain of great

8 THE GREAT DUKE
affairs, that upon the Marquis of Wellesley and the
Duke of Wellington, in particular, there was thrown
a burden of tasks and of responsibilities such as
few men have ever carried, and that each lived to
extreme old age, it is clear that they must have
possessed physical vigour of the finest sort. They
may certainly be added to the list of examples
which prove that hard work does not kill.
It cannot be said that the childhood of the future
victor at Waterloo was very happy, or his youth
rich in signs of promise. He had a loveless home,
a broken school life, an imperfect education. When
his father died he was not yet twelve years of age ;
his mother, a woman of high intelligence and strong
will, may have given her son something of her
strength of brain, but his childhood missed the
most sweet and gracious influence that can touch
a boy's nature — a mother's tenderness. Wellington
was not in the least inclined to self-pity, but in his
old age he said of himself, with a strange note of
bitterness, " No woman ever loved me." And smaller
men, over whose names Fame has never blown her
trumpet, would not accept all the glory Wellington
achieved if they had to pay for it the price of
that tragical divorce from the tenderness of a
woman's affection which Wellington declared to be
his own lot.
The family history of the Wellesleys, as a matter
of fact, does not always make edifying reading.

EARLY YEARS 9
Both the Marquis of Wellesley and his more
famous brother had unsatisfactory matrimonial ex
periences; but it is not easy to measure the loss
Arthur Wellesley sustained when his childhood
missed the touch of a mother's affection, with its
swift intuitions, wiser than all male wisdom, its
healing sympathy, its divine patience. His mother's
feeling towards the son who was destined to cover
the family name with glory was — if tradition is to
be credited — not far removed from aversion. The
slow, thick speech and dull manner of his early
days offended her taste. " I vow to God," she ex
claimed, " I do not know what I shall do with my
ugly son Arthur." In her brusque, unguarded talk
he was " the fool of the family." Her " ugly boy
Arthur," she decided, was fit food for powder. And
naturally, perhaps inevitably, the unloved boy, when
he reached manhood, had little affection to give to
an unloving mother.
It might perhaps be supposed that such a woman
would be a fit mother for a great soldier. For war
is a stern realm. One who is to win distinction in
it ought to have in his nature a strain of hard
ness like steel. Arthur Wellesley's boyish character
certainly escaped the enervation of tenderness. But
love has wholesome — not to say ennobling — functions
in the training of character, and Wellington to his
dying day showed the scars left by the failure of
his mother in affection. He was, says Greville, " a

ID THE GREAT DUKE
hard man." Lord Roberts, the most generous of
critics, who ranks Wellington as a war- captain
higher even than Napoleon, describes him as "re
served, unsympathetic, perhaps a little selfish." It
is the absence of the faculty for inspiring affection
amongst his soldiers which makes Lord Wolseley
deny to Wellington a place in the first rank of
the world's soldiers.
On the other side, of course, must be remembered
Napier's characteristic dedication of his immortal
work to Wellington. "It is," he says, "because I
have served under your lordship that I can under
stand what the soldiers of the loth Legion felt
for Csesar." But Napier himself was a soldier of
genius, and Wellington appealed to his intellect.
He could hardly interpret the feeling of the man
in the ranks. Wellington certainly inspired trust in
his soldiers ; but he had no spell to win their love.
This was one of his visible limitations as a general.
Arthur Wellesley's education, again, was of a
curiously planless and inadequate sort. His eldest
brother was sent, in turn, to Harrow, Eton, and
Oxford, and so acquired, and kept to the end of
his days, a scholar's tastes and a scholar's ripeness
of knowledge. He was passionately fond of litera
ture, a constant student of Dante, a good Italian
scholar, and in 1840 printed for private circulation
a book of Latin verso. He had, iu a word, the
best education of his day.

EARLY YEARS I I
Wellesley's education, on the other hand, is a
chapter of careless and unfinished experiments. He
was first sent to a preparatory school in Chelsea,
where, according to his own account, he "learned
nothing." For a short time he was at Eton, and
in the grounds of the famous school there is still
shown the spot where he fought with Bobus Smith,
the brother of Sydney Smith — and won his first
victory. As Bobus Smith tells the tale, he was
caught bathing, and was pelted from the bank by
young Wellesley. He threatened to get out and
thrash his tormentor, who dared him to fulfil his
threats. He got out, fought without dressing, and
was defeated in three or four rounds.
Arthur Wellesley's reputation at Eton was that
of an idle, dreamy, companionless lad. In 1784
Lady Mornington, whose means were straitened,
removed to Brussels, and for a year Arthur received
private lessons there from a French avocat, Mons.
Goubert. In 1785, when his mother returned to
England, he was sent to the French Academy at
Angers. It was not, as is commonly supposed, a
military school, and the victor of Waterloo owed
nothing to French military training received there.
At Angers he was ailing and sickly, and according
to Sir Alexander McKenzie, who was with him at
the French school, "young Wellesley passed most
of the time on a sofa, playing with a white
terrier." In after years McKenzie was astonished at

12 THE GREAT DUKE
the physical strength and endurance shown by
Wellington, remembering, as he did, the ailing boy
at Angers. "Ah," said the Duke, "that is due to
India. India effected .a total change in my con
stitution." ^
The head of the school, however, was an accom
plished engineer, M. Pignerol, and may be supposed
to have strengthened the bias of young Wellesley
towards mathematical subjects. In later years
Wellington was accustomed to say that his special
intellectual gift was one for quick and accurate
calculation, and if circumstances had not made him
a soldier he might have distinguished himself in
the realm of finance.
This is not a shining record, and when, late in
1786, a lad of seventeen, Arthur Wellesley left
Angers, and in a broken cabriolet de poste drove
through the streets of Paris on his way homeward,
and put up at " a mean sort of inn near the Palais
Royal," he was as poorly equipped in the matter of
education — except for his knowledge of the French
language — as any younger son of a noble house in
Great Britain. His single accomplishment was the
power to play the violin; his single pronounced
taste a delight in music; and neither the accom
plishment nor the taste pointed in the direction of
a soldier's career, or could be accepted as a si^n
1 " Reminiscences of the Duke of Wellington," by the Earl of
EUesmere, p. 102.

EARLY YEARS I 3
of martial qualities. In India, in fact, Wellesley
burned his violin, and never touched one in after
life, as he held the practice of playing the fiddle to
be incompatible with a soldier's business. To the
end of his days, however, his delight in music, a
legacy from his musical father, survived.

CHAPTER II
BEGINNING SOLDIERSHIP
"Unless a man works he cannot find out what he is able to
do." A CAREER had to be found for this plain-
looking, shy and awkward boy. In 1786 his
eldest brother wrote to the Duke of Rutland, then
Viceroy of Ireland, " Let me remind you of a younger
brother of mine. . . . He is here at this moment
and perfectly idle. It is a matter of indifference to
me what commission he gets, provided he gets one
soon." A commission in the artillery was offered,
but refused. On March 7, 1787, Arthur Wellesley,
not yet eighteen years of age, was gazetted to an
ensigncy in the 73rd Foot, a Highland Regiment.
His whole professional career, as measured by the
list of his exchanges and commissions, may be com
pressed into a dozen lines :
Ensign, 73rd Foot, March 7, 1787.
Lieutenant, 76th Foot, December 25, 1787.
Lieutenant, 41st Foot, January 23, 1788.
Lieutenant, 12th Light Dragoons, June 25, 1789.
Captain, 58th Foot, June 30, 1791.
Captain, i8th Light Dragoons, October 31, 1792.

BEGINNING SOLDIERSHIP I 5
*Iajor, 33rd Foot, April 30, 1793.
Lieutenant-Colonel, 33rd Foot, September 30, 1793.
Colonel (brevet). May 3, 1796.
Biigadier-General, July 17, 1801.
Major-General, April 29, 1802.
Lieutenant-General, April 25, 1808.
General, July 31, 181 1.
Field-Marshal, June 21, 1813.
A glance down that hst shows that his name, at
least, appeared on the roll of many regiments, and
that his rise was curiously rapid. He held a com
mission for a year and a half in infantry regiments,
then for two years in the 1 2th Light Dragoons. For
a little over a year he was again in an infantry
regiment — the S8th — then for nearly a year in the
:8th Light Dragoons. He had no experience in
artillery; while his great opponent. Napoleon, was
an artillery officer only ; and this fact perhaps helps
to explain the different use both these great soldiers
made of their guns. Napoleon was accustomed to
make a formidable use of his artillery in attack
He would concentrate an overwhelming gun-fire on
the point in the enemy's line on which he was about
to leap ; pulverise it, so to speak — and then launch
his columns at it. Wellington, as a rule, either in
defence or attack, scattered his guns along his whole
front, and used them only as an auxiliary to his
infantry fire.
Arthur Wellesley's advance in regimental rank
might well, for its speed, move the envy of all

1 6 THE GREAT DUKE
soldiers to-day. After only seven months' service
as an ensign, he became lieutenant ; he was captain
some three years later; became major when not
yet twenty-four years of age, and lieutenant-colonel
by purchase — the money being advanced by his
eldest brother — when he had been only six years in
the army, was hardly twenty-five years of age, and
had not seen a shot fired in battle.
To what did he owe that swift, unbroken rise?
He had seen no service, won no distinctions, and
given no sign of military qualities. The secret lies
in the influence of his eldest brother, who was the
friend of Pitt, had a seat in the House of Commons,
and held office as one of the Lords of the Treasury.
He had just been appointed by Pitt, indeed, a
member of the Board of Control for Indian
Affairs, and was in the innermost circle of politi
cal life.
It was an age when influence was supreme in
army affairs, and there are examples of military pro
motion in that period which are even swifter, and
have much less justification in reason than that of
Arthur Wellesley. Pakenham, afterwards Welling
ton's brother-in-law, was a major at seventeen, and
a lieutenant-colonel at eighteen. Colville had his
first commission as a boy of eleven, and was a captain
when twenty-one. Stapleton Cotton was lieutenant
at seventeen, and lieutenant-colonel of a cavalry
regiment at twenty-one.

BEGINNING SOLDIERSHIP I7
Family influence, again, in 1787 — when he was
only eighteen years of age — won young Wellesley
the post of A.D.C. to the Lord Lieutenant, and he
held that post till March, 1793. It was a bad school
for a young soldier — idle, extravagant, frivolous, and
not too pure. An A.D.C. to the Lord Lieutenant,
not nineteen years old, and with an income of only
£12$ a year, was plainly exposed to many risks.
But if Wellington's assertions in later years — in
spite of some well-known stories — m.ay be trusted,
he at least showed one surprising virtue: he kept
out of debt !
In April, 1790, when twenty-one years of age,
he was elected a member of the Irish House of
Commons for Trim, a family seat, and held it till
the dissolution in June, 1795. He possessed neither
then, nor at any other time, the gifts of an orator.
Sir William Fraser saysi that his tongue was too
large for his mouth ; and Wellington in after years
remedied this defect "by placing the point of his
tongue as low down as possible in his mouth."
This gave his voice a peculiar, cavernous sound.
It is certain that during his five years in the
Irish House of Commons Wellesley won no fame
as a debater or an orator.
But to this stage of his career belongs almost
the one gleam of tender sentiment discoverable in
it. The vice-regal court was gay and brilliant, and
» " Words of Wellington," p. 112.
VOL. 1. n

1 8 THE GREAT DUKE
one of its beauties was Catharine Pakenham, the
third daughter of Lord Longford. Arthur Wellesley
fell in love with her, and was accepted ; but the
prospective bride had no dower, and a youthful
A.D.C. could not marry on ;^I25 a year. Marriage
was plainly impossible, and the lovers — it may be
doubted whether, on either side, the flame was
very ardent — separated, with a vague understand
ing that in later years, and under happier circum
stances, they might be united.
Gibbon, the historian, it will be remembered,
tells how, finding himself under very similar cir
cumstances forbidden by parental authority to
marry, he "sighed as a lover, but obeyed as a
son"; and cynics ever since have argued that,
whatever may have been the quality of his filial
piety, his love was of a very tepid character. Arthur
Wellesley resigned his love — as he returned to
it again ten years later — with a dry common-
sense which seems to show that his affection for
Catharine Pakenham much resembled, in tempera
ture, that of Gibbon for Susanne Curchod.
Up to this point neither the performances nor
the prospects of the young soldier can be described
as brilliant. His story, indeed, is a catalogue of
failures. He had been an unloved son, an undis
tinguished school-boy, a silent member of Parliament,
a disappointed lover, a soldier who had been pushed
through many stages of promotion by family in-

BEGINNING SOLDIERSHIP 1 9
fluence, but who had never seen a shot fired in
anger, and whom nobody suspected of possessing
any military qualities. And yet already there were
some features in Wellesley's character that gave
promise of a successful career.
As a matter of fact, from the first Wellesley
took his profession as a soldier seriously. He once
told Croker that, within a few days of his joining
the 73rd as ensign, he had one of the privates
weighed, first in his clothes only, and then in
heavy marching order, in order to ascertain what
was expected of a soldier on service. Croker ob
served that this was remarkable forethought in so
young a man. " Why," replied the Duke, " I was not
so young as not to know that since I had undertaken
a profession I bad better try to understand it."
When he became major of the 33rd, all the
latent, practical energy of his nature awoke. "I
believe," he said in later years, "that I owe most
of my success to the attention I always paid to
the inferior part of tactics as a regimental officer.
There were very few men in the army who knew
these details better than I did; it is the founda
tion of all military knowledge. When you are
sure that you know the power of your tools, and
the way to handle them, you are able to give
your mind altogether to the greater considerations
which the presence of the enemy forces on you." ^
• Croker, vol. i. p. 337.

20 THE GREAT DUKE
That story, and the comments upon it, really
supply the key to one part, at least, of Welling
ton's surpassiQg gifts as a war-captain. Squadrons,
battalions, regiments, divisions are the pieces with
which a commander has to play on the chess
board of the battlefield the iron game of war;
and what player can escape defeat who does not
know how to handle his pieces? Wellington is
prosaic; his regiment was "the tool" with which
he had to work; his hand must be familiar with
it; but the mastery of his "tools" which he thus
early attained served him magnificently. No
great captain ever excelled him in the facility
with which he could move the forces under his
command. An army — horse, foot, and artillery —
was for him exactly what a rapier is in the hands
of a skilful fencer. And that touch of weighing
a private with, and without, his marching equip
ment showed that from the outset he reaUsed
how much of the success of great campaigns
depended on the endurance and strength of the
men in the ranks.
He never lost sight of what may be called the
physical side of warfare — the value of the com
missariat, the necessity for caring for the food,
the clothes, the health — the very boots — of the
men in the ranks. Many years afterwards, teUino-
the story of his Indian campaigns, he said, "If I
had rice and bullocks I had men, and if I had

BEGINNING SOLDIERSHIP 21
men I knew I could beat the enemy." " Rice and
bullocks" do not sound very formidable items in
a list of the appliances of war ; and yet everything
else, from the brains of the general to the thunder
of the artillery, and the charge of the bayonet-
line, go for little if " rice and bullocks " — or what
they represent — are neglected.
Another side of Arthur Wellesley's character,
too, was energetically, if silently, developed at
this period. He told Shaw Kennedy, in later
years, that "he had always made it a rule to
study for some hours by himself every day " ; and
it is plain that this habit dates from the time
when he was a youthful A.D.C. in Dublin. And
"study'' for him meant writing as well as reading.
It meant the concentrated application of his mind
to the mastery of one field of knowledge after
another. The lines on which he studied, too,
were determined by his profession as a soldier,
and by his place in the Irish House of Commons,
and these two impulses were not discordant. One
assisted the other. One of the most striking
features of Wellington's character as a general is
the care with which he always took political
forces into account in the campaign he was con
ducting; and alike in India and in Spain he had
to be a statesman as well as a soldier — sometimes,
indeed, almost more than a soldier.
That resolute habit of solitary study — the re-

2 2 THB GREAT DUKE
demption of a given number of hours every day
from society and pleasure, the concentration of a
powerful intellect and an unforgetting memory on
wisely selected topics — enriched Wellesley's mind
to a degree it is difficult to measure. It gave
him that power of intense and concentrated
attention — the faculty for dismissing all other
subjects for the moment, and bringing all his
faculties to bear on the single matter in hand —
which served him so splendidly throughout his
career. Perhaps no other youthful soldier at that
moment in the British army gave so many hours
of solitary study every day to the Uterature of his
profession and the knowledge of affairs as did the
future victor of Waterloo.

CHAPTER III
THE LEAGUE AGAINST THE REVOLUTION
" The sword is drawn, the scabbard thrown away. It is even as
Danton said in one of his all too gigantic figures, ' The coalesced
Kings threaten us, we hurl at their feet as gage of battle the
Head of a King.' " — Caeltlb.
IT is not difficult to guess the forces which stirred
the deeper nature of Arthur Wellesley, and made
him turn from the frivolities of the vice-regal
court, the parish politics of the constituency of
Trim, and the corrupt intrigues of the Irish
Parliament, to solitary study. He never shone
as a politician; but his whole career proves that
he had the wide vision, the power of discerning
the course, and assessing the energy, of great
movements, which is the mark of the statesman.
And, at that particular moment, the very air of
the world was shaken with the greatest event
in modern history — the French Revolution. The
mere comparison of dates is curiously suggestive.
In 1789, the year of the storming of the Bastille,
Arthur Wellesley was still a Ueutenant in the
1 2th Light Dragoons. He was a captain in the

24 THE GREAT DUKE
I Sth when France was proclaimed a repubUc and
Louis XVI. was beheaded. The same months
witnessed the dawn of the National Convention,
and the issuing of the Edict of Fraternity. How
could a young soldier, who, as after events
showed, possessed an intellect capable of measur
ing these strange forces, and was destined by fate
to play a supreme part in the mighty drama
just beginning, be unstirred by such events ? They
must have quickened every pulse in his blood.
The French Revolution, it will be remembered,
broke on the world in its earliest stage like a dawn
in summer skies. It represented the disappearance
of a social and political order of things on which
the human reason had long pronounced sentence,
and which the patience of mankind at last found
intolerable. France was only doing at the end of
the eighteenth century, and doing to the sound of
flutes, what England had done in the seventeenth
century, and done to the clash of armed hosts.
In this later and happier revolution across the
Channel, Englishmen persuaded themselves there
was to be no Cromwell, and nothing to correspond
with that tragic scene outside the banqueting
chamber in Whitehall, when a king's head fell
under the stroke of the axe. The wisest heads
in Great Britain imagined they saw the dawn of
a new heaven breaking upon a new earth. Fox,
it will be remembered, described the storming of

THE LEAGUE AGAINST THE REVOLUTION 2 5
the Bastille as "the greatest event that has hap
pened in the world — and the best." Even Pitt,
from the opposite pole of political opinion, declared
in 1790 that "the present convulsions in France
must sooner or later culminate in general harmony,
and then France will stand forth as one of the
most brilliant nations in Europe."
But revolutions in general, and French revolu
tions in particular, run fast, and in their later stages
they not seldom run in directions which their
authors neither contemplated nor desired. The
States-General vanished, and a sterner shape — the
National Assembly — took its place. This was
pushed aside in turn by still wilder forces, the
Jacobins and the Convention. There crept into
French politics in the eighteenth century more than
a strain of the ferocity of the Jacquerie of the four
teenth century. Then came the September massacres,
the execution of the Royal Family, the Terror. The
great Powers of Europe, as they watched the scene,
felt as a number of fat burghers might, who watched
from their front doors a powder-magazine taking
fire in the next street.
Austria and Prussia joined in a league to sup
press the Revolution ; huge armies gathered on the
Mouse; France was to be invaded. Then came
the proclamation of the Republic and the execu
tion of Louis XVL, his head — the severed head
of a king— was hurled, in Danton's oft-quoted

26 THE GREAT DUKE
phrase, " as a gage at the feet of the coalesced kings
of Europe." The famous Edict of Fraternity fol
lowed, in which revolutionary France undertook
to thrust its version of liberty on all European
nations by the argument of the sword. "All
governments," ran the Edict itself, " are our enemies ;
all people are our friends." It was a proclamation
of universal war. "The success of our Govern
ment," said St. Just, "means the overthrow of all
others." Republican France undertook to create
about itself a girdle bf sister republics. One clause
in the Edict of Fraternity proclaimed that France
" would treat as enemies of the people all who re
fused or renounced liberty and equality." Clearly
war was inevitable. France was flinging herself
like a shrieking Msenad on Europe.
The National Convention declared war with
England on February i, 1793; the answering de
claration by England was published, as if with hesi
tating reluctance, on February 11, ten days later.
All the advantages were on the side of revolutionary
France. Ideas are sometimes more formidable
weapons than bayonets, and France was armed
with terrible ideas. Its politics won for it allies
amongst the people of every land. Its armies had
the fervours of the Revolution in their very blood ;
and, as always happens in a nation lifted into some
high mood of passion, leaders were thrown up —
alike in administration and on the battlefield — of

THE LEAGUE AGAINST THE REVOLUTION 27
new daring and energy. The best marshals of
Napoleon — Victor, Lannes, Massena, Suchet — are
to be found amongst the soldiers of the Revolu
tion. The Committee of Public Safety had many
detestable qualities, and, set in the dry light of
history, is seen to be one of the most hateful forms
that despotism ever assumed. But, at least, it had
the functions of a nerve-centre — or of a flame-centre
— for the energies of revolutionary France. It gave
to all its armies a fire and an enterprise hitherto
almost unknown in European war.
The forces arrayed against France, from Bayonne
to Calais, ought to have ensured success by their
mere scale; and up to a certain point they did
succeed, until nearly all the frontier fortresses of
France were in the hands of her enemies. The
British flag flew above Toulon ; Brunswick, with an
army of 130,000, was within 160 miles of Paris.
But the allies failed, not merely broken by the
fury of French armies, led by such generals as
Pichegru and Hoche and Jourdan, but because
they turned aside to the pursuit of selfish ends.
They wanted to dismember France, and to divide
Poland, even more than to restore the Bourbons,
or to put down the Revolution. Great Britain
herself aimed to recover Dunkirk, the great naval
arsenal which commanded the Channel, and the
Duke of York, with 35,000 men, marched north
to besiege that fortress.

2 8 THE GREAT DUKE
No wonder that, led by incapable generals,
paralysed by divided counsels, and seeking selfish
and divided ends, the allies suffered defeat. The
English failed at Dunkirk, and were driven out
of Toulon. French armies overran the Rhine pro
vinces, and began to press the British and the
Austrians out of the Low Countries. The Duke
of York, who commanded the English forces, was
steadily driven back, and early in 1794 Lord Moira
was despatched, with the 33rd Foot as part of his
force, to reinforce him.
Some months earlier Wellesley, in his anxiety
to join an expedition being organised for foreign
service, had written to his brother, begging him
to "ask Mr. Pitt to desire Lord Westmoreland
to send me as major to one of the flank corps.
If they are to go abroad," he wrote, " they will
be obliged to take officers from the line, and
they may as well take me as anybody else. I
think it both dangerous and improper," he added,
"to remove any part of the army from this
country at present" — words which are a curious
proof that, even at this early age, he had a
vision of the general landscape; "but, if any
part of it is to be moved, I should like to go
with it, and have no chance of seeing service
except with the flank corps, as the regiment I
have got into as major is the last for service."
That request did not succeed ; but now the 33 rd

THE LEAGUE AGAINST THE REVOLUTION 29
itself was to form part of Lord Moira's force
and Wellesley naturally went with it.
It was in May, 1794, that Wellesley, who had be
come a lieutenant-colonel in the previous September,
sailed in command of the 33rd from Cork, as
part of the force despatched to strengthen the Duke
of York. He returned to England in March, 1795,
his first campaign thus lasting about ten months.
His biographers, with hardly an exception, pass
over this stage in his career in the briefest pos
sible manner, and plainly regard it as a meaningless
prelude to his real career, deserving only to be
forgotten. It is true that the campaign itself is
a page in a very ignoble history, and one which
the human memory would gladly forget. And
yet, regarded as a stage in Wellesley's evolution
as a great war-captain, no other period is more
fruitful than these particular ten months. It was a
training in disaster, and seldom disaster is richer in
instruction to a young soldier than even victory.
When some one compared Moltke with the great war
captains of history, he, with equal modesty and
truth, objected : "I have never," he said, " conducted
a retreat." Wellesley's career as a soldier ended
with one retreat — that from Quatre Bras to
Waterloo; it began with another, from Malines
across HoUand and North Germany to Bremen;
but that earUer retreat had no Waterloo at its
close.

30 THE GREAT DUKE
In the distance covered, and in length of time
— as well as in hardship and suffering — this retreat
exceeds that of Moore at Corunna. Moore's retreat
lasted only eighteen days, four of the eighteen
being occupied by a halt. The distance in a direct
line was only i6o miles. The retreat of the British
troops from Malines to Bremen was, in an air-line,
some 200 miles; in time it stretched — with long
pauses, it is true — through ten months. In severity
of climate it exceeds that under which Moore's
regiments went to pieces. There was no stern
divisional general like Craufurd to hold the rear
guard together; no brilliant cavalry leader Uke
Paget to shatter again and again the enemy's pur
suing horsemen; and no high-minded soldier like
Moore to act as an inspiration for the whole army.
Above all, there was no Corunna — a flash of
sudden, brilliant, and all-compensating victory — at
the end of it.
No sterner school for a young soldier than those
ten months of hunger and cold and hardship, of
broken roads and exhausting marches, of divided
leadership, and of a bankrupt commissariat — ^with
a hostile population on every side, and an enter
prising enemy in the rear — can easily be imagined.
The army of Flanders which harboured Corporal
Trim in its ranks lives in human memory largely
by the energy and diligence with which it swore;
and in 1794-5 ^^^ swearing of our unfortunate

THE LEAGUE AGAINST THE REVOLUTION 31
soldiers, as they splashed through Dutch swamps,
or shivered, hungry and ill-clad, on guard by
frozen canals, with generals they despised and
alUes they mistrusted, must have been loud and
deep, as well as constant.
The mere incidents of the campaign are scarcely
worth relating, for they are marked by the shock
of no great battle, and no gleams of generalship
are discoverable in them. There was plenty of
courage, of course, in the ranks; and, whenever it
came to plain fighting, the British private showed
himself worthy of the stock from which he sprang.
If any one desires to know why the word "Lin-
celles" appears on the brigade colours of the
Guards, and why a tune so French, and so revolu
tionary, as the " (Ja ira " is the regimental march
of the 14th, he must turn back to the dim records
of this campaign. In all the cavalry performances
of the British army, again, there is perhaps nothing
more dashing and completely successful than the
charge of the 15th Light Dragoons at VUlers en
Couche. But the allied armies in the Netherlands were
doomed to defeat by the double curse of divided
aims and inert leadership. They had against them,
it is true, only the ragged, iU-fed, half-disciplined
soldiers of the Revolution. But the Revolution
not only kindled a new fire in the blood of its
soldiers, it gave them daring leaders, and taught

32 THE GREAT DUKE
them an audacious strategy. It is true that the
generals were controlled by politicians, and French
poUtics were at that period of changeful, if very
strenuous, quality. This explains why French
strategy had wide gaps of mere slumber, and why
it took ten months to drive the British troops,
even under the Duke of York and his successors,
to their ships at Bremen. But strategy on the
French side had also volcanic bursts of energy, as
in the famous winter campaign of 1794, when the
touch of frost had turned canals and rivers into
ribbons of glittering ice, and Pichegru led his ragged
troops in tireless marches across the whole land
scape, and captured ships with his dragoons.

CHAPTER IV
IN THE NETHERLANDS
" There is no education like adversity." — DlSltABLl.
WHEN Lord Moira landed with his contingent
at Ostend, the alUes were in steady retreat
along the Scheldt, but were clinging, for the moment,
to Antwerp as a base. Moira was eager to join the
Duke of York at Malines, and pushed towards that
place along the great canal with the main body of
his force — a perilous movement, since it was a march
across the French front. Wellesley — who, being
the senior colonel, was in command of a brigade
of 3000 men, consisting of his own regiment, the
33rd, and two Highland regiments — was left to
settle matters at Ostend, and follow his chief. Here
was a young soldier, who had never seen a shot
fired in war, in command of a brigade, with an
enterprising enemy on his flank.
Wellesley judged, with sure insight, that the sea
route was both quicker and safer than that by
land. And he showed here, at the very first
chaUenge of responsibility, that essential quality of
a good soldier — confidence in his own judgment.
VOL. I. ^' c

34 THE GREAT DUKE
He embarked his brigade, sailed round by sea, and
up the Scheldt, and in this way reached the Duke
of York before his general.
The allied forces were driven steadily back on
their base at Antwerp ; butj French energy just then
suffering from a cold fit, they were able to cling to
that city till Septembet. Theii they were forced
to fall back in tum to Breda and to Bois le Due,
abandoning Belgium. The French tried to cut
the allied forces from the line of thei Mouse, and
siSized Boxtel, their most advanced post; thus turning
the right flank of the Duke of York, and making
his position Untenable. The Duke put two battalions
of the Guards, a dragoon regiment, with the 33rd
and the 44th, under Abercrombie, and directed him
to retake the village. The force started, but the
Guards and cavalty in advance fell into a trap,
a masked battery opened a suddeh and destructive
fire upon them, and they fell back, sharply pressed
by the French. Caught in a narrow lane, they lost
their formation, and the FreUch, never so dangerous
as when the fierce wine of victory is in their blood,
came on at a run. A serious disaster was in sight.
Wellesley, who commanded the rear-guard, here
had his first vision of actual battle, and it was one
which might well have shaken the nerves of an
older soldier. He saw — that rarest of spectacles ! —
the Guards in retreat, a broken mass, with the
British cavalry riding disorganised amongst them.

m THE NETHERLANDS 35
The best regiments in the British army, in a word,
were, for the moment, turned into a mob — and the
French were coming on exultantly in pursuit ! But
Wellesley was equal to the sudden crisis. He both
kept his own coolness and held his regiment steady.
He did even more — he handled it with a touch of
soldierly genius. He swung back the central files
of his line, let the broken tumult of Guards and
cavalry sweep through, then swiftly re-forming his
front, he checked and shattered the pursuing
French with steady volleys. It was a feat of arms
worthy of a veterauj and in a soldier so young was
a proof of great qualities.
The British still fell sullenly back. Winter lay
on the naked, unsheltered landscape, the most bitter
winter known for years ; but there was no rest for
the retreating columns. The frozen soil, with rivers
and canals congealed into solid ice, made rapid
movement possible, and the French, under Pichegru's
fierce leadership, drove the allies from their canton
ments on the Mouse to the Waal. Here there was
a pause in the campaign, and for four months — till
January, 1804 — the allied troops clung to that line.
Wellesley was left in command of the rear-guard,
a fact which shows the reputation he had already
won. The British headquarters were at Arnheim,
twenty-five miles distant, and he was cast on his
own resources. The conditions were trying. A
weak rear-guard, an alert foe, bitter weather, a

36 THE GREAT DUKE
hostile population, a bankrupt commissariat, and
helpless generals. During that whole period,
Wellesley records, he "only saw a general officer
once." He was only twenty-five; but he had already
begun to learn for himself the secret of good leader
ship. " I was always on the spot," he says. " I saw
everything, and did everything for myself." "We
turn out," he wrote at the time, "once, sometimes
twice, every night; officers and men are harassed
to death ; and if we are not relieved, there will be
very few of the latter remaining shortly. I have
not had the clothes off my back for a long time,
and generally spend the greater part of each night
on the bank of the river."
Here, at this early period, is that note of relent
less thoroughness which ran through WeUesley's
whole record as a soldier, and is one of his best
titles to fame. At headquarters, amongst his elderly
generals, there was nodding sloth and the drowsy
neglect of all duty. But this youthful colonel of
the 33rd, with his lean body, his hawk-like nose,
his steadfast blue eyes, his blunt fashion of speech,
"saw everything and did everything" for himself.
He was, to use his own phrase, "always on the
spot," and was more vigilant than his own sentries.
In his later years he was known as "the Iron
Duke," but there was a strain as of iron in his
conception of duty long before he became a Duke.

IN THE NETHERLANDS 37
Where did he learn that stern, tireless, unsparing
habit of thoroughness? Not in his untaught boy
hood; not as a purely decorative aide-de-camp at
the vice-regal court; not while yawning through
the debates in the Irish Parliament. It was in his
very blood. It was part of his genius as a soldier.
And for any soldier it is almost a better gift than
genius itself.
The Duke of York, meanwhile, had been recalled
to England, and Count Walmoden, a Hanoverian,
was in command. It was still dreadful weather, but
on January 16 the British columns had to begin
their retreat afresh. The roads were broken, the
days were short, the skies were black with in
cessant storms. The commissariat, always inefficient,
broke down; there was practically no medical de
partment. The sick were packed in waggons without
cover, and died in scores of mere cold. After a re
treat of eleven days a brief stand was made at
Deventer, but two days later the retreat began
afresh. The wasted and suffering columns at last
reached Bremen, and the survivors embarked for
England. No one gathered laurels in that loitering,
desperate, and ignoble campaign.
Yet the campaign itself, as the opening chapter
in Wellesley's career as a soldier, has some notable
features. His first campaign was on the same field
as his last, and against the same foes. When he
marched the 33rd into the British lines at Malines

38 THB GREAT DUKE
he was little more than twenty miles from Waterloo.
Only twenty miles — and twenty years — separated
him from that "first and last of fights"! Napoleon,
his great rival, was at that moment a young artillery
officer fresh from Toulon. How much, not only for
WeUesley and Napoleon, but Europe and the world,
lay hidden in those brief twenty years !
Wellesley's first sight of battle, again, showed
exactly the spectacle he was to see repeated on half
a hundred battlefields. It was a vision of the faces
of the charging French, and, drawn across the heads
of the attacking columns, a thin line of steadfast
British infantry. It was a picture in little of whole
campaigns. All the characteristics of Wellesley's genius as a
soldier are really visible in this ignoble campaign ;
and the experiences thus acquired were exactly
fitted to draw that genius into action, and equip
it with practical knowledga That stern watch of
four months on the Waal, the command of the
rear-guard of a retreating army, the bleak natural
conditions, the perplexities born of association with
foreign allies, and of dealing with a hostile popula
tion — all this was an education in vigUance, in
resource, in hardihood. Wellesley's first act of
independent command, indeed — his choice of the
sea route from Ostend to Malines — was significant.
It illustrates his gift for seeing the landscape, for
estimating distances, and solving the problem of

IN THE NETHERLANDS 39
reaching a critical point in the shortest possible
time, and with the least risk— all essential elements
in generalship. It showed, too, the coolness with
which he could form his own judgment, and the
courage with which he could act on it.
His first fight, again, in the lane at Boxtel was
characteristic. An untried soldier, in command of
a young regiment^that sudden vision of the picked
regiments of the British army tumbling back,
broken and disordered, on his front, might well
have proved too much for his coolness. But
Wellesley showed at that moment, what to the end
of his career was one of his most characteristic
gifts as a soldier, the power of swiftly handling
troops. To swing back the centre of his own line,
let the rush of broken troops through, and in
stantly re-form his front, was a cool and fine bit of
tactics. It was exactly — though on a smaller scale
— what, fourteen years afterwards, saved the battle
at Talavera. Some of the most brilliant incidents
in British warfare are supplied by exactly such
examples of the swift, cool, deadly handling of
a regiment, as though it were a sword, which
Wellesley showed at Boxtel. Oolborne's employ
ment of the 52nd, at Waterloo, is such an in
cident. Colin Campbell's use of his Highlanders
at Balaclava, again, when he swung back one half
of his slender line to meet the charge of the Russian
cavalry, was a movement which to those who

40 THE GREAT DUKE
watched it from the hill-top near, seemed exactly
like the rapier play of a clever swordsman — a
supreme example of the sure, swift, and effective
handling of a regiment in the presence of a sudden
peril. And Wellesley's use of the 33rd in the lane
at Boxtel deserves to be classed with these.
Throughout the campaign the failure in general
ship on the part of the allies was nothing less than
wonderful. A list of the performances of their
commanders, if drawn up in detail, would be a very
coraplete catalogue of all the military faults a good
soldier ought to avoid. "It was a marvel," said
Wellington himself afterwards, "that any of us
escaped. No one knew anything of the manage
ment of an army. A fellow called Hammerstein,
who was considered the chief authority in the
army on tactics, was quite an impostor." If the
Commander-in-Chief was at dinner when important
despatches arrived, the despatches — and not the
dinner — had to wait. They had not seldom to wait
till next day to be read.
This was a school which might well have ruined
a young soldier. But for Wellesley, with his native,
but as yet unsuspected, talent for war, these were
exactly the conditions which drew out all his
powera. As he kept his dogged and lonely watch
on the Waal, this lad, scarcely twenty-five years
old — and who only a few weeks before had been a
purely decorative A.D.C. in Dublin — was as almost

IN THE NETHERLANDS 4I
as entirely cast on his own resources as he was fifteen
years afterwards at Torres Vedras. On his frozen
guard through black nights and stormy days, and
for dreary months, he had to think, and resolve, and
act for himself.
He was asked long afterwards if his experiences
in the Dutch campaign had been of service to him.
" Why," he replied, " I learned what one ought not
to do, and that is always something." It is at least
one half of the secret of successful generalship.
When the much enduring British divisions
reached Bremen, Wellesley sailed in advance of
his regiment to Ireland, and one of his earliest acts
was to consult with his eldest brother as to whether
he should not give up the army. With a failure
of insight which, in a man so able, was nothing
less than wonderful, his clever brother advised the
future victor of Waterloo to apply for a post in
the Revenue, or on the Treasury Board. Wellesley's
letter to Lord Camden, who was now Lord Lieu
tenant of Ireland, is written in a curiously humble
tone. "Considering," it ran, "the persons who are
at present on those boards, and those who, it is
said, are forthwith to be appointed, I hope I shall
not be supposed to place myself too high in desiring
to be taken into consideration."
His application for a civil, instead of a military,
office is, he admits, " certainly a departure from the
line which I prefer"; "but," he added, with a

42 THB GREAT DUKE
certain touch of bitterness surprising in a soldier
whose own promotion had been so rapid, "I see
the manner in which military offices are filled, and
I do not wish to ask for that which I know you
cannot give me." And at the moment he made
this application, and a chair in an office under the
Revenue Board in Dublin seemed to fill the whole
horizon of his ambition, Waterloo was only twenty
years distant! The incident suggests a new com
mentary on the vanity of human wishes.
Wellesley, it may be suspected, was intellectually
disgusted by the folly he had witnessed in high
command through the campaign just ended. How
could any sane man be content with a service in
which drones commanded armies, and fools deter
mined the strategy of a campaign ? Wellesley's
application for a place on the Revenue Board failed
-^greatly to the advantage of the world at large.
But it is interesting to think how the whole course
of history might have been deflected if Wellington —
instead of smiting down Napoleon's marshals, one
after the other, on the great stage of the Peninsula,
and overthrowing Napoleon himself in the final
struggle at Waterloo — had been keeping distillery
accounts iu some little room in Dublin.

PART II
UNDER INDIAN SKIES

CHAPTER I
A NEW FIELD
"It is impossible to believe that the climate of the Ganges
Valley gave him suddenly a great intellect, a piercing insight, a
matured judgment, and the power of steady application. . . . The
man did not change, but he found more arduous work to be done."
— Hooper.
ARTHUR WELLESLEY'S application for civil
^ employment apparently did not even produce
an answer. He remained in command of the 33rd,
and late in 1795 the regiment received orders to
join the expedition against the French colonies in
the West Indies, just then on foot.
It was an Ul-planned and ill-fated adventure.
The squadron set sail in October, was whipped with
furious gales in the Channel for weeks, and finally
driven back, with half its transports dismasted, and
no less than seven totally wrecked. The whole
expedition was worthy of the administration which,
later, gave to British history the tragedy of the
Walcheren disaster. Most of the transports were
hospital or prison ships, which had just returned
from the West Indies. They were encrusted in filth
and tainted with every kind of disease. To crowd
45

46 THE GREAT DUKE
good troops on board such ships was little less than
a crime. An outbreak of sickness was certain. The
tempest itself was almost less cruel to the unfortu
nate soldiers than the British military authorities.
Edward Paget, who afterwards won high fame in
the Peninsular War, was in command of the 28th,
which formed part of the expedition. Like a good
soldier he loved his regiment, and he tells, in almost
broken-hearted accents, how he counted the bodies
of between 400 and 500 soldiers flung up on the
sands of the bay to the west of the Portland roads.
Arthur Wellesley observes a Spartan silence as to
his experiences in this unhappy expedition, with its
disease-infected transports, and climax of general
shipwreck. But it must have deepened his intel
lectual disgust with a soldier's career.
In April, 1796, the 33rd was ordered for service
in India. The regiment sailed, but Wellesley was
too ill to accompany it. Three months later he
sailed in a fast frigate, joined his regiment at the
Cape, and reached Calcutta in February, 1797. He
returned to England in March, 1805, his term of
service in India thus lasting a little over eight
years. Nothing can well be more striking than the con
trast betwixt the career of Wellesley in the Nether
lands and the part he played in India. In the
disastrous campaign in Holland he is one of a broken
host, ragged, ill-fed, storm-beaten, without leadership

A NEW FIELD 47
without a commissariat, creeping sullenly in defeat
across a frozen landscape. Wheh his sorely battered
regiment regains England Wellesley is ready to give
up a soldier's career. A stool in some Treasury
office in Dublin, with a modest salary, fills the whole
horizon of his ambition.
But in India, almost from the moment he steps
upon its soU, he is a man of distinction and influence.
He takes part in great affairs^ Two months after
he had landed in Calcutta he was organising the
equipment of an army; in less than two years he
was administering the kingdom of Mysore. Within
six years of landing, an almost unknown lieutenant-
colonel, he was commander-in-chief of the British
forces in the Mahratta campaign, and the victor of
Assaye. The contrast betwixt the inarticulate aide-
de-camp, with empty pockets, at the vice-regal court
in Dublin — or the inexperienced soldier, keeping his
frozen watch on the Waal — and the brilliant com
mander in India, negotiating treaties, administering
kingdoms, and winning history-making victories, is
startling indeed.
In his very able study of Wellington's career,
Hooper asks whether any one can believe that
"the climate of the Ganges valley'' suddenly gave
Wellesley a new inteUect. Did it endow him with
a range of vision, a breadth of judgment, a faculty
of leadership which he never before possessed ? But
India had a " climate '' — an inteUectual and poUtical

48 THE GREAT DUKE
atmosphere — which called into action, as with some
magic whisper, aU the latent powers of a great but,
as yet, undeveloped and unknown war-captain.
India was, for him, not only a new land, with
strange skies overhead, and men of alien blood and
strange speech aU about him. It was a field in
which he came into contact with new forces. It was
the meeting point of the East with the West. A
new empire was taking shape. He found himself, at
a breath, an actor in a great and swift-moving drama.
Napoleon long afterwards sneered at WelUngton
as " a Sepoy general." The term on his Ups was one
of contempt ; and yet " a Sepoy general " in India, in
the years betwixt 1795 and 1805, found an absolutely
unique field for the highest gifts both of the soldier
and the statesman. The British came to India as
traders, not as adventurers. They were eager for
fat profits, but careless — perhaps even suspicious — of
empire. But these traders found that in order to
buy and sell in security they must constantly be
ready to fight; so necessity made them soldiers.
They were so few that, in order to survive, they had
to play off one native State against another ; so they
learned to be diplomatists. They had to handle
kingdoms, if only as items in their balance-sheets;
so, in spite of themselves, they had to be statesmen.
And they built an empire, so to speak, incidentally,
and while thinking only of dividends.
In this way a handful of traders, men of a white

A NEW FIELD 49
race, found themselves, probably to their own half
disgusted astonishment, laying the foundations of
a great dominion amongst the coloured races of the
East. The discovery, no doubt, awoke in course of
time a strain of imperial pride in them. The sense
that they must dare and achieve on a great scale
crept, somehow, into the blood of every man of
British race in India, from the clerk in a Calcutta
office — CUve at first was only such a clerk — and the
swearing, hard-fighting private in a British regiment,
up to the Governor-General himself.
The system of government this company of traders
created was delightfully British and absurd, yet
curiously effective. The Governor-General at Cal
cutta had to serve two masters, each representing
a separate policy — the Board of Directors at India
House, anxious only about their balance-sheets;
and the Prime Minister in the House of Commons,
concerned for his majority. That such a system
survived, that it succeeded where Alexander failed,
and built up an empire which to-day is the envy of
the world and the wonder of history, is one of the
most remarkable events in human annals. But can
any one wonder that when Arthur WeUesley, with
his as yet unguessed faculty for war and for great
affairs, stepped on such a stage, and breathed such
an atmosphere, his powers took a range which a
hopelessly narrow environment had up to that
moment made impossible ? Tasks wore thrust upoij
VOL. I. D

50 THE GREAT DUKE
him in swift succession which were more than oppor
tunities of fame to a young and eager soldier. They
were an education, both in war and in statesmanship,
for a singularly powerful intellect. Eight years on
a field like India, at that particular stage of its
history, was for Arthur Wellesley an apprenticeship
of simply priceless value.
At the moment Wellesley reached India, even
so anxiously pacific a Governor-General as Sir John
Shore was contemplating an expedition against
Manilla, the capital of the Spanish settlements in
the Philippines ; an example of that obstinate, and,
in a sense, unconscious instinct which made Great
Britain, throughout the revolutionary wars, always
strike at the colonies of her enemies. Arthur
Wellesley had for his first business the organisation
of this expedition. It was exactly the task which
suited his genius; for perhaps no other soldier in
history better understood the business side of war,
or excelled him in the care and thoroughness of his
preparations for a campaign. He had learned in Hol
land that bravery in the ranks could not make up for
faUure in the commissariat ; and he applied that lesson
to his work in India with characteristic thoroughness.
The expedition sailed, it reached Penang, but was
recalled by the discovery of Tippoo's correspondence
with the French in the Isle of France, a perU so near
home that it forbade any foreign adventure.
The state of affairs in India at the moment was

."'"•"["'Sii^lisGaSvilghur R

.-¦Sa

-Or^Argamni Parurly )

Bombay ^1 ^hmadnaeur
(Dritish) f t»V^ o -^X ,
Poonah^

. f, ."oBudni'p'oor*^'
\AurungabaclS.

E R/A R)
Nk^pore
( Bjh o ii s 1 sj^^^.

D O MI i>n O N s '
D Jlyderabad

.vt

Boundary of Mahratta States 
British Possessions at the time
of Wellesley's landing 1797 
Territory conquered or ceded
between 1797 and the departure
of Wellesley from India in 1805...
States under British protection
at the end of 1805 

 ^

CEYLON

Emery Walker sc.

A NEW FIELD 5 I
very critical. British power was supreme in the
Ganges valley; but the Madras territory was a
mere coastal strip, and Bombay little more than a
seaport. The great Mohammedan empire, which
once dominated India, had fallen into a condition
resembling nothing so much as that of an exploded
planet, and its mighty fragments — Mysore, the
Deccan, and the Mahratta principalities — had
become independent powers. All were plotting
against each other, and aU, it may be added, were
more or less hostile to the British.
The Mahratta confederacy was the most power
ful combination of native states. It dominated
Hindustan proper — aU the country north of the
Nerbuddah ; and if it had been welded into unity,
either by a common policy or by the energy of some
single leader, it might have sent its fast-riding
horsemen eastward to Calcutta, westward to Bom
bay, and south to the sea, and buUt a new empire.
But the Mahratta confederacy was broken into
fragments by tribal feuds, by race hatreds, and by
the ambitions of quarrelling leaders. There re
mained the two great Mohammedan states to the
south, Mysore and the Deccan. The Nizam, who
ruled in the Deccan, was, for the British, an un
certain and worthless ally. Mysore, where Tippoo,
the son of Hyder Ali, reigned, was a deadlier, if
only because nearer, enemy to the British settle
ments than the Mahrattas.

52 THE GREAT DUKE
Tippoo Sahib was the ambitious son of a daring
father, in whose blood burned a flame of hate
against the British, hate bred of humiliation and
defeat. He had a certain touch of genius; but
there gleamed in his genius at least a spark of
insanity. He had built up patiently, and with
lavish expenditure, an army 70,000 strong, drilled
into efficiency by French officers, and he was sending
his emissaries far, and in every direction, in search
of alUes against the hated British. He tried to
bring the Mahrattas into league with himself, but
his chief hope lay in the French.
French adventurers, who sold their swords, and
their military knowledge, to the native princes, are
a picturesque feature in the Indian landscape of
that period. They were great in numbers, not
seldom had a real genius for war, and they consti
tuted a disturbing element of dangerous scale. De
Boigne had trained 20,000 good infantry for Scindia
at Agra and Delhi. At Hyderabad Raymond, a
soldier of a fine type, had organised and equipped
a corps 14,000 strong for the Nizam. Moreover,
the French Revolution had sent its far-running
echoes round the world, and even the slumbering
East stirred at the sound. The Mauritius, a French
colony, was within a few days' saU of the Indian coast.
When Napoleon sailed for Egypt, India found a place
within the wide horizon of his plans. His sure,
keen glance fastened itself on Tippoo as the most

A NEW FIELD 53
dangerous enemy to England. "I have arrived,"
he wrote to him, "on the borders of the Red
Sea at the head of a countless and invincible army
filled with the desire to deliver you from the yoke
of England. I am anxious that you should send
to Suez or to Cairo an intelligent person in whom
you have perfect confidence, that he may communi
cate with me. May the Almighty augment your
power and destroy your enemies."
What might not happen if French revolutionary
fire linked itself to Eastern fanaticism, or if some
French soldier of genius, with an army behind him,
landed on Indian soil ! That some detachment of
the armies of the Revolution might reach India
was a dangerous possibility. If French 4la/n, in a
word — the habit of swift and fierce onfall — were
acquired by the vast masses of the native armies,
then, indeed, British rule in India would become
difficult, perhaps even impossible.
When WeUesley began his Indian career, in brief,
two questions of the first scale were disturbing
Indian politics. One issue was whether the French
or the English were to be supreme in India ; the other,
whether the native states might not crystallise into
an overwhelming combination against the British.
And the two questions, at bottom, were one.

CHAPTER II

TWO GREAT BROTHERS

"Great jealousy will arise among the general ofiBcers in conse
quence of my employing you ; but I dd so because I rely upon
your good sense, decision, activity, and Spirit, and I cannot find
all these qualities united in any other oflScer in India who oould
take such a command." — LoED Moknington to his Beothee.
TOWARDS the end of 1797 Wellesley's elder
brother. Lord Mornington, was offered the
Governor-Generalship of India. Mornington was
one of the ablest men in a generation singularly
rich in statesmanship. He stood in the inner circle
of British politics, was the tfusted friend of Pitt, and
was himself the keenest of politicians. He hesitated
to accept the post in India ; it seemed to him Uttlb
better than a splendid banishment. Yet he had
been for some years a member of the Board of
Control, was familiar with Indian affairs, and prob'
ably no other man in Great Britain was so fitted
for the great position that had to be filled, or had
such a vision of its possibilities. Arthur Wellesley
strongly urged his brother to accept the offer; it
represented, he argued, "the fairest opportunity of
rendering material assistance to the public, and of

TWO GREAT BROTHERS 5 5
doing yourself credit." Mornington finally accepted
the post, and by that act wrote his name imperish-
ably on history.
Like his younger brother, Mornington had lofty
ideals of public duty. " I would not," he declared,
"accept this high station unless I were assured of
my possessing firmness enough to govern the British
Empire in India without favour or affection to any
human being either in Europe or Asia." Arthur
Wellesley himself told his brother he " expected
to derive no advantage from the new appointment
which I could not obtain if any other person
were Governor-General." Both men were abso
lutely sincere; yet the fact that his brother held
that great post secured to Arthur Wellesley oppor
tunities which otherwise would hardly have fallen
— or fallen so soon — into his hands.
It needs a certain perspective, born of distance,
to enable us to see the just scale of any character;
and brothers, if only because of their nearness to
each other, are not often able to form a true
estimate of each other's qualities. Mornington,
however, had that gift for judging men which is
one quality of a great ruler, and he realised, as
probably nobody else at that moraent did, the great
natural gifts of his soldier brother.
The two brothers, it may be added, were in many
respects curiously unlike. Each, indeed, was, in
a sense, the opposite, and so the complement, of

5 6 THE GREAT DUKE
the other. The elder was fiery, the younger cool;
the one shone in speech, the other in action.
Mornington, perhaps, was swifter in decision than
his brother, but Arthur Wellesley had an unsur
passed faculty for measuring the force required in
any adventure, forecasting all its difficulties, and pre
paring adequately for all chances. Lord EUesmere ^
insists that the two brothers represented quite un
like intellectual types. "If Virgil and Caesar," he
says, "Pope and Cromwell, had been brothers, the
contrast could hardly have been more striking."
The parallel, in a sense, is absurd. Lord Morning
ton and Virgil, or Pope, are contrasted — not agreed
— types; and Arthur Wellesley cannot by any
literary ingenuity be fitted to the outUnes of Csesar
or of Cromwell. Moreover, the two famous brothers
are not to be judged by any merely literary tests.
In statesmanship, in energy of will, in the power to
read all the elements of a difficult situation, and the
courage to deal with them, they had kindred genius.
The elder brother was in speech and look the
more brilliant of the two; but the younger had a
range and strength and depth of faculty which en
abled him to make a much more enduring mark
on history. And Great Britain was never better
served in India than when she had one Wellesley
at Government House in Calcutta, and another
commanding an army in Mysore.
* " Personal Reminiscences," p. 86.

TWO GREAT BROTHERS 57
Almost at the moment when Lord Mornington
assumed office it was discovered that Tippoo Sahib
was in communication with General Malartic, the
Governor of the Mauritius, then a French colony.
He issued a proclamation promising French assist
ance to Tippoo in his approaching war with the
British, and this fell into the hands of Lord Morn
ington. It showed that Tippoo was ready to swoop
down from his tablelands upon Madras, and was
sending his emissaries far in search of allies. The
peril revealed was great, and Mornington, with
his high courage and impatient temper, was not
likely to loiter in such a crisis. He instantly re
solved on war, and directed General Harris, then
Acting-Governor at Madras, to prepare for a march
on Seringapatam. But Sir John Shore, Morning-
ton's predecessor, who believed — in spite of all
history — that the British in India could be at once
inert and secure, had ceased either to anticipate
war or to maintain readiness for it. As a result,
the British mUitary establishments had fallen into
deplorable neglect.
Arthur Wellesley was a keen soldier, but he had a
cooler head and a surer judgment than his civihan
brother. He knew that war, at best, was an evil;
and he had seen in Holland what war means
when undertaken without preparation or competent
leadership. He bluntly told his brother that the
British forces were not ready for a campaign, and

58 THE GREAT DUKE
urged that Tippoo should be given the largest and
most tempting opportunities for disavowing his
alliance with the French. "There is every pro
babUity," he wrote, "that he will deny the whole,
and be glad of an opportunity of getting out of
the scrape. In the meantime," he added, "we
shall believe as much as we please, and shall be
prepared against all events." Arthur Wellesley, in
a word, felt sure that Tippoo, whose plans were
incomplete, would gladly use any device to secure
a longer interval for preparation; and this would
give the British, in their turn, time to prepare,
and they would make better use of the chance than
their foe.
Wellesley always had the eye of a good soldier
for the physical landscape. Even when riding to
hounds in his old age, he took in with a sure glance,
and kept in unforgetting memory, hill and stream,
road and hedge; and this is, for a soldier, one of
the most useful of gifts. But he had an eye as sure,
a vision as wide, a memory as tenacious, for what
may be called the political landscape, and India
called this great gift into exercise, and gave it an
unrivalled field. He could see in just perspective
the native states of India, and assess exactly the
degree of peril to the British power each repre
sented ; the near and immediate danger in the
Mysore; and, more remote, but in vaster and more
menacing outlines, the challenge of Mahratta power.

TWO GREAT BROTHERS 59
Thus he was exactly the counseUor his more im
petuous brother needed.
Mornington yielded to his advice, and the delay
thus secured was turned to instant use. Madras
was visibly the point threatened, and Wellesley was
sent there. He had no official appointment, but
by simple force of energy, and because he visibly
was the one man who knew what ought to be done,
and how to do it, he became the driving force in
all the preparations for war. He put the frontier
fortresses into an effective condition, organised a
great commissariat, pushed on the equipment of
every branch of the army, and did this with a stern
thoroughness unknown, till then, in Indian history.
Wellesley understood, almost by instinct, the
true law of Indian warfare: "To engage in hos
tilities," he wrote, " with anything short of the most
complete success — naraely, being able to invest
Seringapatam with good prospect of taking it — is
ruin." Cornwallis had failed, in his invasion of
Mysore, in 1791. He started late, was delayed by
having to capture its border fortresses, and em
barrassed by having to protect his convoys. But,
said Wellesley, " as we have now that iron frontier,
the fortresses, which we never had in our possession
in the last war, we shall escape these difficulties."
Meanwhile, one near and iraraediate danger had
to be met. The Nizam was an uncertain ally,
from the mere faithlessness of his character; and

6o THE GREAT DUKE
the forces organised for him by the French might
become, at any moment, a source of deadly perU.
The flank of the British columns advancing on
Seringapatam would lie open to their stroke.
Raymond, a soldier of genius, had organised and
equipped a discipUned force of 14,000 men. It
Avas more even than a corps d'armie; it was a
settlement, the germ of an empire. Territory had
been assigned for its support, foundries were estab
lished under skilled Europeans for the manufacture
of artiUery and muskets. The force carried French
colours, it had the cap of liberty engraved on the
buttons of every private. Malcolm was then
resident in Hyderabad, and he watched the growth
of this force with anxious eyes. In his despatches
he denounced it, with amusing wrath, as "a nest
of democrats." To permit it to exist would be to
imperil the future of Great Britain in India; but
to suppress it would need, he admitted, " uncommon
nerve" on the part of the new Governor-General.
He was prepared to judge Lord Mornington's insight
by the estimate he formed of this danger, and his
courage by the manner in which he dealt with it.
Lord Mornington was equal to the situation.
Raymond died just then, and a German officer.
Perron, succeeded to the command. He was a good
soldier, but lacked Raymond's briUiancy. The
Nizam had entered into an engagemeni to disband
his French regiments, but the task was too great

TWO GREAT BROTHERS 6 1
for his courage; the British themselves, he said,
must undertake it. Accordingly, two brigades
under the command of Colonel Roberts moved
quietly but swiftly to Hyderabad. On reaching
the city, no time was lost. One brigade was placed
at the rear of the French camp, betwixt it and the
river, the other was drawn up in its front; 1500
cavalry under Malcolm were placed on the right,
a smaller party of horse under Captain Greene
on its left. Colonel Roberts was instructed to
summon the French to unconditional surrender,
and if no answer came, at the end of half-an-hour,
to attack. Before Roberts had sent in his demand,
however, tumult broke out in the French carap.
The men were seizing their officers. No resistance
was attempted, and, without firing a shot, 14,000
French Sepoys piled their arms before the British
lines, and marched off. The whole cantonment,
with its arsenals and guns, its foundries and stores,
fell into British hands, and the famed French
corps of Hyderabad vanished like a shadow. The
storehouses in the cantonment were filled with
arms and clothing sufficient to equip a second
army of 12,000 men.
The stroke, aUke in its inspiration, and in the
swiftness and resolution with which it was accom
plished, resembles nothing so much as the seizure
of the Danish fleet at Copenhagen nine years
afterwards. It may, indeed, have suggested that

62 THE GREAT DUKE
stroke. It may be added that the battalions which
the French had trained with such care formed
the column under Wellesley's command in the
march on Seringapatam a few months later^
The Nizam made terms with the Governor-
General, consented to put his force into the hands
of British officers, and, as discipUne could not be
maintained without the regular payment of the
soldiers' wages, it was agreed that the revenues
of certain territories should be assigned for the
support of these troops. This was, in fact, the
principle of subsidiary alliances which, by the
treaty of Bassein, was later extended over the
whole of northern India.
The field was now clear for the inevitable fight
with Tippoo; and Wellesley's task at Madras,
preparing for the advance on Seringapatam, was
great and difficult. The magazines were almost
empty; the Sepoys, both in discipline and equip
ment, were unfit for active war ; there was no
commissariat, no transport, no hospital supplies.
General Craig, writing to Lord Mornington, said,
'¦ It is beyond dispute that for the lack of two
things — discipline and military knowledge — our
Indian empire has during the last four years
hung upon the slightest possible thread." Wel
lesley's energy and exactitude, his practical know
ledge, his passion for thoroughness in the minutest
details, his knowledge of what war raeant, and

TWO GREAT BROTHERS 63
on what the efficiency of an army depends, found
here an ample field for exercise. He had no
official position ; he was embarrassed by what he
called "that cursed institution," the military
board; but General Harris had sufficient wit to
recognise good work when he saw it, and sense
enough to support a good workman. Sometimes,
indeed, even Wellesley grew tired of his wrestle
with human stupidity and sloth. He writes to
his brother Henry, " I am heartily sick of the
business, and wish I were anywhere else." But
he allowed neither himself nor any one else to
flag. He humoured the caprices of the native
grain merchants, pricked the slowness of Madras
officials into energy, frightened the dishonest,
stirred the blood of the inert, taught method to
the stupid; so that when, at the end of January,
1799, General Harris rode into the carap, he
found what he declared to be "the best-organised
and disciplined army ever brought together in
India." Wellesley had urged his brother to come to
Madras in order to quicken the pace at which
preparations were being urged. The presence of
so raasterful a Governor-General, added to the
stern vigilance and tireless energy of Wellesley
himself, produced extraordinary results. But the
Governor-General proposed to visit the camp at
Vellore, where the force about to begin its march

64 THE GREAT DUKE
on Seringapatam was assembled, and to accom
pany the columns; and here the instinct of the
soldier in his younger brother broke out with a
touch of vehemence. An army can have but one
head — its commander-in-chief; and the presence
of the Governor-General would, as a matter of
fact, efface the commander. " If I were in General
Harris's situation," Arthur Wellesley wrote to his
brother, "and you joined the army, I should quit
it." The Governor-General accepted that blunt
warning, and allowed the army to begin its march
without the perplexity of his " assistance."

CHAPTER III
THE DUEL WITH TIPPOO SAHIB
" if the French teach their new mode of fighting to the soldiers
of the native states it will be impossible for us, with our scanty
numbers, to oppose them." — Wbllbsley.
' I 'HE force moving on Seringapatam numbered
¦I 35,000, with no less than 120,000 followers.
A corps of 6000, from Bombay, under General
Stuart, landed at Cannanore, and moved up the
Western Ghauts to Sedaseer, a high hUl-shoulder
whence Seringapatam was almost visible. The
contingent of the Nizam's troops numbered about
16,000 men. Harris attached to it the 33id, and
this gave Wellesley, as its colonel, the comraand
of the whole wing, much to the disgust of Baird,
who was WeUesley's senior in age and rank, and
was a good soldier. Why should a brigadier
coraraand only three regiments and a colonel
thirteen ? The arrangement was, no doubt, cruel
to Baird, but it gave a great opportunity to
WeUesley and was justified by the logic of
results. The force under Harris moved slowly, a vast
VOL. I. *s E

66 THE GREAT DUKE
creeping parallelogram — a coluran of infantry on
either flank — with guns, bullocks, elephants, carts,
coolies almost past count betwixt them. When
on the march there was a multitude in motion
which covered about sixteen square miles; and
for this vast host to struggle through the passes
in the Ghauts was a difficult task. The stragglers
grew into multitudes ; the baggage animals perished
in hordes, the army had to halt almost every
second day to gather itself into shape again.
"The faUure of the bullocks," Wellesley wrote,
"increased in so alarming a manner that in the
last march towards Bangalore, I had serious ap
prehensions that we should be obliged to take
post there and defer our operations till the en
suing season. The root of the evil lay in a
parcel of shop-keeping regulations under which
no great undertaking could ever prosper. The
first step taken was to abolish them all."^
Tippoo Sahib was being threatened by two con
verging columns, the main body under Harris,
and Stuart's force from Bombay; and Tippoo
had generalship enough to see that, occupying
a central position, he could fling himself on
either of the two columns before they effected
a junction. He made his choice, and leaped upon Stuart
on March 5, when Harris, with the main body
^ " Supplementary Despatches," ii. p. 207.

THE DUEL WITH TIPPOO SAHIB 67
and his enormous train, wa,s yet struggling through
the narrow valleys; but his stroke failed in re
solution. In place of flinging his utraost strength
on Stuart's scanty force, he raarched against it
with only 11,000 men. He caught three Sepoy
battalions separated by a belt of jungle from
the rest of the British force; but Colonel Mon
tressor, who was in command, kept his battalions
steady, and for five hours resisted all attacks, tUl,
just as ammunition was failing, the 77th and 75th
came up and swept Tippoo's columns into ruin,
with a loss of 1 500 men.
Harris, meanwhile, had reached the open country,
and on March 17 found Tippoo in his front, drawn
up on a range of heights at Mellavelly. Tippoo
was strong in cavalry — "the finest horsemen I
have ever seen," says Wellesley — and if he had
launched these agile swarms on Harris's columns,
cuoLiri^ off his stragglers, and giving no quiet
to his plodding infantry, he might have wrought
enormous mischief. Instead of this, he drew up
his force on a range of heights, entrenched him
self, and waited an attack.
Harris struck at him without delay. Wellesley
with the 33rd leading, advanced in echelon, turning
Tippoo's right flank, and the steady volleys and
the relentless advance of the 33rd were irresistible.
But Tippoo did not lack generalship. Wellesley's
movement seeraed to open a gap in the British

68 THE GREAT DUKE
centre, and Tippoo made a counter-stroke at this
point. His men rode to their attack with high
daring. Some of them, indeed, broke through
the intervals of the British line and reached
Harris, and there was an angry splutter of pistol
shots betwixt his staff and these daring horsemen.
Wellesley himself says that "Tippoo's troops
behaved better than they have ever been known
to behave. His infantry almost stood the charge
of the bayonets of the 33rd. . . . His light cavalry
are the best in the world. ... If Tippoo had had
sense and spirit sufficient to use his cavalry and
infantry as he might have done, I have no hesita
tion in saying that we should not now be here,
and probably should not be out of the jungles
in Bangalore." 1
But Floyd, with three regiments of horse, rode
at the enemy's column, broke it into fragments,
and, in spite of a rally on the part of Tippoo's
cavalry, the whole force was flung into confused
retreat. Wellesley had fought his first battle on
Indian soil, and had taken the measure of the
fighting quality of an Indian army under native
leadership. The road was now open to Seringapatam, only
twenty-eight miles distant, yet it took Harris's weary
and baggage-encumbered army five days to cover
that distance. Seringapatam stood on an island at
1 "Supplementary Despatches," ii. p. 280.

THE DUEL WITH TIPPOO SAHIB 69
the junction of the rivers Cauvry and Coleroon,
and had an aspect of Eastern mass and picturesque-
ness. It was of great strength, as Indian fortresses
go, girded with double walls and an immense
chain of massive works; but its defences lacked
the scientific perfection of a modern fortress. The
palace of the Sultan, and one of the most beautU'ul
mosques in India, showed, a forest of lance-like
minarets, against the sky above the line of the
fortifications. The forces of Tippoo Sahib amounted to over
70,000, but many of his levies were quite unsuited
for the defence of the city, and its actual garrison
consisted of 22,000 picked troops. On the walls
were mounted some 280 guns. Cornwallis, who had
besieged the city in 1791, had attacked the northern
front, and had failed, principally owing to the rise
of the river. Harris chose the southern front for
his attack. To establish his batteries, however, he
had to push back a Une of the eneray's outposts,
holding an aqueduct, a chain of ruined villages, and
a cluster of trees, from which they harassed the
British camp. General Baird, with a strong force,
had searched this line two nights before, and found
it empty, but the enemy re-occupied it after he
had withdrawn.
On the night of April 5, Harris directed Wellesley,
with the 33rd and a battalion of Sepoys, to attack
the wooded end of this line, while Lieutenant-Colonel

70 THE GREAT -DUKE
Shaw, with a battalion of the 12th and a Sepoy
battalion, moved out to seize a ruined village and
the aqueduct at the other end of the line. The
whole position, as it turned out, was strongly held
by the enemy. Shaw carried the village and aque
duct, but Wellesley's battalions lost their way, and
got out of hand. The night was black; the ranks
were broken by the trees through which the bat
talion had to force its way, and by tiny canals which
ran everywhere. In the confusion and darkness
Wellesley lost sight of his men ; twelve of the
Grenadier Company fell into the enemy's hands.
"At midnight," says General Harris, in his private
diary, " Colonel Wellesley came into my camp in
a good deal of agitation to say he had not carried
the tope." Wellesley's second in command. Major
Shea, brought the detachment back into camp. He
had offered his assistance to Shaw, and was told by
him that "the 12th did not require his help; he
had better follow his leader."
Wellesley, it seems, had lost his way, had stumbled
in the darkness amid the trees and the canals for
some hours, and when he reached his general's tent,
was almost exhausted. General Harris went into
another compartment of the tent for a few moments,
and when he returned Wellesley sat with his head
fallen forward on the table, sound asleep !
The next morning Harris directed that the out
posts should be assailed again, the attacking force

THE DUEL WITH TIPPOO SAHIB 7 1
being greatly strengthened, and Wellesley was in
orders to lead the assault. The fixed time came,
the men were in readiness, but Wellesley put in no
appearance. Harris was impatient, and called on
Baird to lead the attack, and the big Scotchman
was in the act of riding off towards the waiting
battalions, when Harris called him back, saying
that, upon reflection, he thought they must " wait
a little longer for Wellesley." Presently Wellesley
came hurrying up; the morning orders, it seeraed,
had not reached him. He at once took charge of
the attack, and the outposts were carried with ease.
It is clear that the attack on the previous night
was made without sufficient knowledge of the
ground. Wellesley himself had written to the
general, saying that he did not understand where
the post was to be established, and begged hira to
ride out in front of the lines and point out the
exact place. His own explanation of the incident
is that " the night was very dark, the enemy ex
pected us, and was strongly posted in an almost
irapenetrable jungle. ... At last, as we could not
find out the post it was desirable I should occupy,
I was obliged to desist from the attack." He adds,
"I have come to a determination never to suffer
an attack to be raade by night upon an enemy who
is prepared, and strongly posted, and whose posts
have not been reconnoitred by daylight." The
whole incident has been described as " Wellington's

72 THE GREAT DUKE
first failure"; and that an attack at night — on a
post which had not been reconnoitred, and whicli
was a tangle of trees, intersected with canals —
failed is not strange.
What was it shook a man of Wellesley's iron
nerves out of his composure? Certainly not the
failure of the attack, but the fact that he had lost
touch with his men, and came back without them.
He presented himself to his general as a commander
who had become separated from his men when
in the presence of the enemy. It was left to his
second in comraand. Major Shea, to bring the men
back. That is an incident which might well have
ruined the career of any officer. The twelve un
fortunate grenadiers, it may be added, met with a
cruel fate. Tippoo ordered them to be killed by
having nails driven into their skulls.
When the actual siege began the north-western
angle of the fortifications was chosen as the point to
be attacked, and the Bombay troops were sent over
the river to establish batteries there. The projecting
angle of the defences was thus smitten by a con
verging fire, under which ramparts and curtains
crumbled into ruin. On the night of May 2nd the
river was forded, and the breach explored by some
daring officers. The 4th was fixed for the assault,
and Baird was named for leader. Baird had known
strange experiences in the city. He had been
captured by Hyder Ali when the unfortunate force

THE DUEL WITH TIPPOO SAHIB 73
under Colonel Bailey was destroyed in 1784, and
had lain for nearly four years a prisoner in Seringa
patam. He had watched his fellow- captives go mad,
die of fever, or taken out to be poisoned or tortured
to death. He himself had endured humiliations
and hardships which might well have killed a man
of less heroic spirit and gigantic physique. And
now he was to be repaid for those four years of
suffering by leading the British attack on the city
in which he had endured so much.
The attacking force consisted of the flank com
panies of all the British regiments, with some
Sepoy battahons, the whole forming a force of about
4500 men. Baird packed his companies in the
trenches before daybreak, and kept them concealed
there till noon, when he knew Tippoo's troops would
be taking their siesta. At one o'clock, while the
white heat of the Indian sun was beating on the
drowsy city, the general and his staff, watch
ing from the British lines, saw the tall figure of
Baird himself leap from the trenches. " Follow me,"
he cried to the soldiers about him, "and show
yourselves worthy of the name of Englishmen."
The western face of the eneray's defences broke
into a sudden fury of musketry fire; but those
who watched saw the British, in loose order, splash
through the shallow river, and sweep up the breach,
till its ragged slope seeraed to be, as one observer
writes, " covered with a cloud of crimson."

74 THE GREAT DUKE
Baird had divided his attacking party into two
columns. One under Sherbrook was to sweep the
ramparts to the right, the other, led by Dunlop,
was to swing to the left as soon as the breach was
gained. Dunlop fell on the breach itself, but the
rush of the stormers was not checked. The two
columns, vieing with each other in the speed and
fury of their rush, gained the summit and swung
to the right and the left. An unexpected obstacle,
a deep foss, was suddenly discovered, stretching
across the angle of the fortifications, and for a
moment it seemed an impassable barrier. Baird,
however, had a soldier's quick eye. He saw a
stretch of scaffolding which had been erected
against a wall for the purpose of repairing a breach.
The planks and poles were seized and flung athwart
the foss, the storming party scrambled over the
slender, swaying bridge, and the sound of the tiring
swept inwards towards the heart of the city.
The "Asiatic Register" for that year says that
"when Dunlop fell, the forlorn hope was led by a
sergeant of one of the light companies named
Graham." He had mounted the breach, then,
pulling off his hat, he cried out exultantly, " Suc
cess to Lieutenant Graham ! " He believed he had
won a commission by being first up the breach.
He planted a flag on the broken stones, exclaiming,
" Hang 'em, I will show them the British flag," and
the next moment fell dead, shot through the head.

THE DUEL WITH TIPPOO SAHIB 75
Tippoo himself, when the news of the British
assault reached him, hurried to the point of danger,
and, taking his position behind a traverse which
commanded the approaches from the bridge, com
menced tiring on the attacking force. The rush of
the stormers swept him back till he was driven
into the covered gateway leading into the town.
Here a shot wounded him; he was caught in the
crush of the flying troops. The British stormers,
running up, opened a deadly fire on the crowd,
then they carae on with the bayonet. Tippoo's
attendants had placed their wounded master in a
palanquin, to carry him away ; but this, in the
panic and confusion, was cast down and abandoned.
A British soldier running forward saw Tippoo lying,
and, attracted by the glittering belt he wore, tried
to seize it. The wounded Sultan struck at the
raan with his sword and slightly wounded him,
whereupon the angry soldier levelled his musket
and shot him dead. His body was stripped alraost
naked, and lay there in the heap of the slain,
buried beneath many other dead bodies.
Meanwhile the city had fallen. Wellesley having
been left in command of the reserve had by
this brought up his men into the captured city.
A search was made for the body of the fallen
Sultan. The archway where he met his fate was
low and dark; torches had to be obtained, and at
last, buried beneath raany slain, was found the

•]6 THE GREAT DUKE
body of the most formidable enemy to the British
power in India. Wellesley himself stood by when
the body was discovered, and he has recorded that
so life-like was the expression of the dead monarch
that, not until he had put his hand on the wrist
and over the heart of the fallen Sultan, was he
satisfied that Tippoo was dead. About him, or
over him, lay seventy dead bodies in a space little
more than twelve feet long and four feet wide.
The prison where Baird, with his fellow-officers, lay
in irons for nearly four years was close to the
spot where the Sultan fell.

CHAPTER IV
A GREAT ROBBER-HUNT
" The destruction of tbis man is necessary to our tranquillity.
When the chase is once begun honour requires that we go through
with the business." — Wellesley.
THE siege had lasted scarcely a month ; the
British lost in the assault — killed, wounded,
and missing — only a little over 400 men and officers,
facts which show with what skill the operations had
been conducted. The booty was enormous. The
arsenal contained nearly a thousand guns; the
treasury was rich in gold and jewels.
Baird, meanwhile, returned to the camp to
report in person to the commander-in-chief, and
Wellesley, as the next senior officer, took over the
command of the captured city. He allowed it to
be plundered for hours; for on this point — as the
story of more than one siege in the Peninsula
showed — he held the doctrine that a certain amount
of license was to be allowed to soldiers who had
carried the breach of a hostUe city. "It is im
possible," he wrote to his brother, "to expect that
after the labour which the troops had undergone

78 THE GREAT DUKE
in working up to the place, and the various suc
cesses which they had had in those difficult affairs
with Tippoo's troops, in all of which they had come
to the bayonet with them, they should not have
looked to the plunder of the place." On the night
of the 4th, accordingly, unchecked license reigned
in Seringapatam. Scarcely a house in the town
was left unplundered. On the morning of the 5th,
however, Wellesley drew the reins of discipline
tight with a stern hand. He sent notes at brief
intervals to Harris, during that day, reporting the
state of things in the town. Here are some of
these brief meraoranda, written araid the turault
of a sacked city: " 10 A.M. Sth May,
" We are in such confusion still, that I recommend it to jou
not to come in till to-morrow, or, at soonest, late this evening."
" Half-patt twelve.
" I wish you would send the provost here, and put him under
my orders. Until some of the plunderers are hanged, it ia vain
to expect to stop the plunder." "3 P.M.
" Things are better than they were, but they are still very
bad ; and until the provost executes three or four people, it is
impossible to expect order, or, indeed, safety." " 6th May.
"Plunder is stopped ; the fires are all extinguished, and the
inhabitants are returning to their houses fast. I am now em
ployed in burying the dead, which I hope will be completed
this day, particularly if you send me all the pioneers.
" (Signed) Arthur Wklleslet."

A GREAT ROBBER-HUNT 79
Seringapatam had seven principal streets; and,
according to one story, Wellesley hanged a plunderer
in each one of these by way of warning. He was
confirmed in his charge of the city, an appointment
which moved Baird, who was hot-blooded by temper,
to new fury. He had protested in vain when
Wellesley had been put in command of Harris's
right column ; and now it seemed as if the soldier
who had actuaUy stormed the city was to be robbed
of his justly earned reward by the colonel who had
only commanded the reserve. "Before the sweat
was dry on my brow," Baird wrote, "I was super
seded by an inferior officer."
Wellesley himself, however, with that cool self-
assertion which he was capable of displaying, said
afterwards, "There were many other candidates
beside Baird and myself, all senior to me, and
some to Baird ; but I must say that I was the
fit person to be selected." "Baird," as he told
Croker years afterwards, "was a gallant, hard-
headed, lion-hearted officer; but he had no talent,
no tact. He had strong prejudices against the
natives, and was peculiarly disqualified from his
manners and his temper for the management of
them." He cherished a natural — and almost pas
sionate — resentment for the ill-treatment he had
received in Seringapatam from Tippoo, and Wellesley
suggested that the knowledge of this feeling induced
Harris to lay him aside. Lord Mornington, writing

8o THE GREAT DUKE
to Harris two raonths later, said, " If you had not
established hira (Colonel Wellesley) at Seringapatara,
1 should have done it by my own authority, because
I believe he is universally admitted to possess the
necessary qualifications for such employment."
Wellesley's record for the next three months as
governor of Seringapatam is nothing less than
splendid. The task exactly suited his genius. He
had to restore discipline amongst the troops, order
and confidence in the town ; to superintend the
collection and distribution of the plunder ; set trade
going in the bazaars, and advise as to the dispo
sition of the conquered territory. So quickly did
he re-es.tabhsh the reign of law in the captured
city, and win the confidence of its inhabitants, that
by the third day after "t^e assault the shops and
bazaars were opened, ^md trade, was as busy as
before the si«ge:,began,^i^nd much more secure.
For the ordereS^j'tits|Bie of British rule had taken
the place of an eastern despot's caprice.
On July 9, 1799, Wellesley was appointed to the
command of the forces in Mysore, and, practically,
the adrainistration of the whole kingdom fell into
his hands, the new Rajah being a child five years
old. His task was difficult. The war practically
dislocated the very structure of society. It had
arrested trade and set the roads swarming with
robbers; Tippoo's defeated and scattered forces had
forraed themselves into plundering bands under a

A GREAT ROBBER-HUNT Si
hundred light-riding captains. Not a few of the
border fortresses, too, yet remained uncaptured.
Wellesley's task was to restore social order on what
may be called Roman methods — building roads,
scattering robber bands, enforcing justice. He was
swift, stern, active, always in the saddle, making
his masterful will and energetic comraon-sense felt
everywhere. He gathered about him a band of
officers almost as tireless as himself, so that every
where justice grew swift-footed, and order began
to spread through Mysore. Wellesley, with his
curt speech, his direct methods, his quick, clean
handed justice, that could neither be bribed, nor
resisted, nor delayed, his scorn of pomp, his'syflple
diet, seemed to be the very antithesis of an Eastern
ruler ; and yet he quickly grew popular. Here, was
a new phenomenon, a ruler who took no bribes,
who knew no caprice, who worked harder than any
peasant, whose words, if they'^^re few, were to be
absolutely trusted.
Amongst the swarm of robber-captains evolved
from the debris of the campaign, however, was one
— Dhoondiah Waugh — who attained a swift and
evil pre-eminence, and adorned himself with the
magnificent title of " King of the World." He was
a nameless man, and began his career as a Mahratta
trooper under Hyder Ali, at whose death he set up
as a freebooter, on his own account, in the Mysore.
Tippoo Sahib found him troublesome, beguiled him
VOL. I. F

?52 THE GREAT DUKE
into his power, compelled him to tum Moham
medan, and then held him in captivity — the fierce
Mahratta spirit fretting, as may be imagined, in the
gloora of Tippoo's dungeon. In the general gaol
delivery which followed the capture of Seringapatam
by the British he was set free, and naturally betook
himself to his vocation as a robber again. He was
daring, adroit, hardy; knew every hiU pass and
jungle track in the country with the intimate know
ledge of a wild animal, and had the furtive habits
and the cruelty of a wild animal. He quickly
gathered about himself, principally from Tippoo's
broken cavalry, a small army of disbanded soldiers,
and made himself master of several fortresses.
In Indian history the freebooter of to-day might
easily become the founder of a dynasty to-morrow.
Why should not Dhoondiah Waugh conquer half
India, and become another Hyder Ali, or another
Holkar? The light-riding, flitting band of plun
derers under him threatened to become an army.
Wellesley, with his keen eye and sure judgment,
early saw the possibility of mischief in this free
booter. He writes on May 29: "He is certainl}'
a despicable enemy, but one against whom we have
been obliged to make a formidable preparation. It
is absolutely necessary to the peace of this country
that this man should be given up to us."
The " King of the World " was naturaUy careless
of all boundaries. He had secured right of asylum

A GREAT ROBBER-HUNT 83
across the Mahratta border, for there is an easy
affinity betwixt a robber-captain and a nation of
robbers; and Wellesley, after declaring again "the
destruction of this man is absolutely necessary to
our tranquUlity," adds that "when the chase after
Dhoondiah is begun, our honour would require that
we should go through with the business." But if
this involved chasing him across the Mahratta
border, plainly it might raise serious issues.
Wellesley at last undertook to hunt down the
"King of the World." He began the task on
June 15, and ran his prey to earth on September 10;
and the story of that three months' chase, tireless,
deadly, exhausting, makes a stirring tale. It was a
three months' duel betwixt trained and civihsed
intelligence and the hereditary craft of a jungle-
robber ; and the civilised brain won.
Dhoondiah was reported to have gathered about
hiraself a force of 5000 broken soldiers, wild
spirits impatient of discipline, but tireless riders,
and familiar with every wrinkle on the face of the
country. Wellesley organised a force consisting of
two brigades of cavalry and three of infantry. His
commission from the Governor-General ran: "You
are to pursue Dhoondiah Waugh wherever you may
find him and hang him on the first tree." But the
field was wide ; the south-west monsoon had broken
when the chase began, and the westem Ghauts were
streaming with rivulets tumbling into all the tribu-

84 THE GREAT DUKE
taries of tho Kistna, so that in every direction there
were flooded streams. When the rains were past
the hot season followed, and the business of chas
ing such a prey as Dhoondiah, across a field so vast
and under such weather conditions, was very trying.
WeUesley had organised three Ught columns — one
under his own command ; he drew his lines again
and again round the robber-chief he was hunting,
and kept up the pursuit with tireless vigilance. His
correspondence at the time shows with what shrewd
ness he read the mind of this Mahratta freebooter,
guessed his plans, and wore hira down with the
sleepless energy of his pursuit. Dhoondiah had se
cured several hill-fortresses, but these were for him
little better than snares, as they fixed him down
to definite points; and towards the end of July
Wellesley leaped on these fortresses one after the
other. On the last day of July, by a forced march
of twenty-six miles, he captured the whole of Dhoon-
diah's baggage and guns. Dhoondiah himself, how
ever, escaped, and the chase had to be renewed.
One of Dhoondiah's discontented followers deserted
him, and offered to bring the chase to an end by
assassinating his old chief. But Wellesley curtly
rejected the proposal. " To offer a reward in public
proclamation for a man's head, and to make a
private bargain to kill him," he said, "are two
different things. Often a comraander of troops will
do the one, but is bound to abstain from the other."

A GREAT ROBBER-HUNT 85
WeUesley learned by his failures. He writes to
Stevenson on August 30: "Our last operations
against Dhoondiah had this fault : we pushed hira
from the westward before we were prepared from
the eastward to stop him; and we raust take care
to avoid the sarae error in future. It is impossible
to expect to catch him, or to distress him, so as
to reduce his force by any dhect movement upon
his rear, because, in truth, he can march as far in
one day without distress as we can in two days by
making the greatest efforts." But Wellesley had
taught his sunburnt columns to march with a speed
hitherto unknown in Indian warfare. Again and
again they covered from twenty-five to thirty miles
a day ; and this, under an August, or a September,
sun in India, and over sandy plains, or through
jungle-clad hills, was a remarkable feat.
On September 10 WeUesley ran his prey to earth.
On the previous night he had pushed ahead of his
infantry and found that the "King of the World"
was in camp less than ten miles distant. The night
was black, the rain was falling, his squadrons were
exhausted, and Wellesley allowed them to rest
until an hour before the dawn; then he moved
out. Dhoondiah on his part was stirring early, but
not so early as his British pursuer. He was just
moving from his camp when he saw, breaking out
of the jungle in front and on either flank of him,
the lines of British horsemen. The freebooter had

86 THE GREAT DUKE
about 5000 horse with him, and held a strong
position; Wellesley had only four weak cavalry
regiments, numbering little more than a thousand
raen. He formed his horsemen in a single line, so
as to cover the whole front of the enemy, and
then rode straight on his prey.
The Mahratta was quick in decision; he could
not fly, he must fight ; he had a force of 5000
men, hard-bitten troopers, and he swiftly dis
tributed them for the coming fight. His men
knew they were cornered like rats, and for a
time they showed the fierceness of cornered rats;
but nothing could resist the British charge. The
line of galloping horse swept over the ridge held
by the enemy, broke and scattered them, and
followed in keen pursuit.
Amongst the dead bodies in the camp itself
lay that of the "King of the World." He had
fought his last fight. In one of the baggage
waggons was found his son, a boy four years old.
He was brought to Wellesley's tent, and it is
pleasant to know that the stern soldier, who had
hunted the freebooter down, took charge of the
lad, provided for his education; and when, two
years afterwards, he sailed for England, he de
posited ;f400 as a provision for the boy's future.

CHAPTER V
THE MAHRATTAS
" I offered you peace upon terms of equality, and honourable to
all parties. You have chosen war, and are responsible for all the
consequences." — Wellington to Scindia.
IN his administration of Mysore, Wellesley carae
into contact with many instances of malad
ministration, or of corruption, on the part of the
servants of the Company, and it kindled in him
a stern anger which found very terse expression.
" I intend," he wrote, " to ask to be brought away
with the array if any civil servant of the Company
is to be here, or any person with civil authority
who is not under my orders, for I know that the
whole is a system of job and corruption from
beginning to end, of which I and my troops will
be made the instruments."
Wellesley's share of prize-money in the Mysore
campaign exceeded ^^4000; by no means a bad
return for a carapaign of two months. For his
services agamst the "King of the World," again,
he was made a special grant of ;^4000. And yet,
curiously enough, he was impoverished, and almost
87

88 THE GREAT DUKE
reduced to bankruptcy, by the expenses of his
position. On June 14, 1799, he wrote to the
Governor-General: "About six weeks ago I was
sent in here with a garrison, consisting of about
half the army, and a large staff, and I have not
received a shilling more than I did at Fort
St. George. The consequence is that I am
ruined. ... I should be ashamed of doing any
of the dirty things that I am told are done in
some of the commands in the Carnatic, as I
believe I sufficiently proved at Wallajah-Nuggur ;
but if the Government do not consider my situa
tion here, I must either give up the command or be
ruined for ever. I assure you that since December
I have in some months spent five times, in others
four times, more than I received." ^
Lord Mornington, who had a proud standard
of honour, had refused to accept the sum of
;f 100,000 voted to him by the Court of Directors
as his share of the Seringapatam prize-money; a
shining contrast to Clive, who, it must be re
membered, accepted ;^ 160,000, and an annuity of
;^27,ooo a year for life, as a reward for placing
Meer Jaffer on the throne of Bengal. But he
was stung to sharp anger by the action of the
Court of Directors in issuing an order for the
reduction of Wellesley's allowance as Governor of
Mysore. "The Court," he wrote to the Prime
* " Supplementary Despatches," i. p. 246.

THE MAHRATTAS 89
Minister, "... has offered me the most direct,
marked, and disgusting personal indignity which
could be devised." The act of the Directors
seemed to imply that he had betrayed the public
interest to fill the pockets of his brother; and,
in his resentment, he tendered his resignation,
and only consented, after earnest entreaties, to
retain office till 1804.
In May, 1 800, Wellesley was offered the coraraand
of an expedition against Batavia. It appealed
strongly to his arabition and love of independent
comraand ; but he was engaged in the task of re
establishing order in the Mysore, and to give up
that task might mean injury to the public interest ;
and care for the pubUc interest was for him a sort of
religion. He put himself into the hands of Lord
Clive,^ and asked him to decide, on public grounds,
whether he ought to accept the offer; and Lord
Clive, naturally concerned for Indian interests,
decided against its acceptance. In October of the
same year Wellesley was appointed to the command
of a force of 5000 troops, which was to embark at
Trincomalee, for an expedition against the Mauritius,
or to form part of the movement under Abercrombie
against the French in Egypt.
While the destination of the force was still un
settled, Wellesley was busy at Trincomalee, completing
its organisation and equipment; and early in 1801
' Son of the famous Robert Clive, and then Governor of Madras.

90 THE GREAT DUKE
despatches reached Lord CUve, directing the ex
pedition to sail for Egypt. Lord Clive comraunicated
the news to Wellesley, and he, on his own authority,
at once embarked his force and sailed for Bombay.
It was a daring step. He was moving his troops
without instructions. But the act was wise, since
at Bombay the troops could be provisioned and
placed in transports with the utmost economy of
time. In the meanwhile, however, the miUtary
authorities seem to have reflected that the expedition
was on too great a scale to be placed in charge of
an officer of less rank than major-general, and Baird
had been nominated to the chief command, with
Wellesley as his second. Baird arrived in haste at
Trincomalee to assume charge of affairs, and found
that his troops had already sailed; and he was in
the mortifying position of a general without an
army. The Governor-General naturally, and officially,
shared in Baird's indignation. Wellesley, on the
other hand, keenly resented being superseded, and
placed second in command to an officer with whom
pleasant relations would be difficult. Many years
afterwards he wrote concerning the whole incident :
" I take the truth to have been that the general officers
of superior rank remonstrated [against a junior officer
being placed in command of the expedition]. This
was very right. I am not surprised at it. I never
was. But the Governor-General, having made the
appointment, ought to have had strength to adhere

THE MAHRATTAS 9 1
to it. It was of the unexplained supersession that
I complained. ... I considered myself, and believe
I was, very ill-used by the Government. In point
of fact, I had from that time no comraunication
with the Governor-General, until I negotiated and
signed the treaty of peace." ^
It was an additional grievance to Wellesley that
he had incurred great personal expense in prepara
tion for the expedition, and had gathered round
him a considerable staff; and these officers suffered
injury by the sudden transfer of the coraraand to
Baird. He wrote to Henry WeUesley : " I can easily
get the better of my own disappointment, but how
can I look in the face of the officers who, from a
desire to share my fortunes, gave up lucrative
appointments, and must go with one whom none
of them admires? I declare that I can't think of
the whole business with common patience."
Wellesley, however, was a good soldier, and pro
mised loyal co-operation with Baird; but he fell iU
with fever, and, later, had a troublesome attack of
what was called the Malabar itch. Mental vexation
was probably at the root of both aUments. Later
news showed that the expedition would probably
reach Egypt too late for active service, and Wellesley
gave up his post under Baird. As it happened the
Susanna, the transport in which he was to have
sailed, was lost on the voyage. But for that happy
* Apsley Honse MSS., quoted by Sir Herbert MaxweU, vol. i. p. 34.

gl THE GREAT DUKE
touch of the " Malabar itch " he might, instead of
the stately torab in the crypt of St. Paul's, have
found a naraeless and wandering grave in the Indian
Ocean. Baird sailed to Egypt, where he arrived just in
time to miss the battle of Alexandria ; and Wellesley
resumed his duties at Seringapatam — with Assaye,
though he knew it not, only six months distant.
When Tippoo Sahib fell, the one remaining peril,
alike to the British dominions and to the general
peace of India, was the great Mahratta Confederacy,
north of the Godavery. Its authority stretched
right across India, from the narrow strip of British
territory on the east coast of the Bay of Bengal, to
the Indus on the west, and north as far as the
Himalayas. The nominal head of the Confederacy
was the Peishwa, Badjee Rao, with his capital at
Poonah. He was, however, little more than a
shadow. The real strength of the Confederacy was
divided betwixt Scindia, Holkar, and the Rajah of
Berar, who ruled over an immense stretch of terri
tory betwixt Bengal and the Deccan. The Rajah
had a force of 20,000 good horsemen and 10,000
disciplined infantry. Scindia, with Agra and Delhi
as his strongholds, was of still greater strength, and
was able to put in the field a formidable army of
30,000 infantry, and 8000 cavalry, with guns, which
the French adventurer. Perron, had organised in the
rich stretch of country between the Jumna and the

THE MAHRATTAS 93
Ganges. Holkar had a force under his flag 80,000
strong, largely officered by French. Had these
three chiefs frankly united, and acted on a common
plan, they might have swept over India, and sub
merged all their rivals; but they were torn into
fragments by rival ambitions, by household quarrels,
and by unforgetting hatreds.
Holkar, the fiercest and most daring of these
chiefs, defeated his rivals in battle. The Peishwa
fled into British territory, and took refuge in Bassein,
whUe Holkar set up his stern rule in Poonah. All
the Mahratta chiefs appealed to the British for
alUance ; but the Peishwa, the most helpless of the
group, anticipated his rivals, and signed the famous
Bassein treaty with the Governor-General, "the
most momentous compact," as it has been called,
" ever concluded by the Anglo-Indian Government."
Under it Lord Mornington agreed to reinstate the
Peishwa at Poonah, and maintain him against all
attacks. The Peishwa placed his relations with all
other states under the control of the British
Government, undertook to employ no Europeans
hostile to the British, and agreed to assign terri
tory sufficient to meet the cost of a subsidiary
force to be commanded by British officers. The
terms were those already accepted by the Nizam,
and they formed the pattern of aU subsequent
treaties with the native states.
The treaty of Bassein certainly represented a new

94 THE GREAT DUKE
political ideal. Cornwallis had aimed at making
the East India Company one of a cluster of inde
pendent sovereignties in India. He trusted to the
race superiority of the British, their proved fighting
power, their settled continuous policy, for the main
tenance of a moral empire over the native states,
and the preservation of a general political equili
brium. The Company, he beUeved, would be able
to protect its allies, and hold in awe its enemies
by such intangible forces as these. Cornwallis him
self had broken the power of Tippoo, and reduced
his dorainions, and he hoped that object-lesson
would be of enduring value.
But that expectation was idle. Lord Mornington
found Tippoo a deadly and implacable foe, and he
had to destroy him. The Mahratta Confederacy
remained a standing menace to the peace of India,
and the treaty of Bassein was designed to meet it.
Mornington had a keener vision, as well as a more
daring spirit, than Cornwallis. He held that it was
not sufficient to create a British Empire in India;
there must be a British Empire of India ; and by
the treaty of Bassein he created a system of
subsidiary alliances, which broke up finally the
Mahratta Confederacy. It assured to British power
a supreme influence over the native states. It was
a final bar to French interference. It did not rob
the native states of their independence, but aimed
to make the British the supreme judge betwixt them.

THE MAHRATTAS 95
Scindia and the Rajah professed to accept the
treaty of Bassein, though the fiercer spirit of Holkar
rejected it; but it was certain that no dependence
could be placed on any of the Mahratta chiefs.
The British prepared to fulfil their agreement with
the Peishwa, and replace him at Poonah, but Scindia
and the Rajah joined their forces at Berhampore,
and from it they menaced the territories of the
Nizam. The general plan of campaign on the part of the
British was daring. If opposed to a European
enemy it would have been fatally rash, for it
scattered its detachments over a vast area. In the
north. Lake, with 14,000 men, was to deal with the
formidable army Perron had drilled ; a division
from Bombay, 7000 strong, was to watch Surat and
Baroda on the north-west ; an expedition from
Calcutta, under General Harcourt, was to invade
Cuttack. Three corps of reserve were detaUed,
one to guard Poonah, a second to keep watch on
the Kistna, a third to defend the valley of the
Ganges. In the south, Wellesley, with 23,000 men,
was to move upon the Nurbuddah, where the armies
of Scindia and the Rajah were concentrating. It
was a very spacious strategy, and Wellesley's brain
was chiefly responsible for it.
" The line in Mahratta affairs is taken," wrote
Malcolm on New Year's Day, 1803, "and it is the
most politic, as it is evidently the most just, pro-

96 THE GREAT DUKE
ceeding that could have been adopted. . . . There
can be no doubt of obtaining all that we can wish,
both for ourselves and the Nizam, at the same time
that we secure — what is the great object — the peace
of the Peninsula ; which, till that event takes place,
must be periodically disturbed by such freebooters
as Scindia and Holkar, whom nothing but the terror
of the British arras will ever cause to desist from
their ruinous incursions into the countries which
lie to the south of Nurbuddah."

CHAPTER VI
A NEW CAMPAIGN
" The man of long-enduring blood,
The statesman-warrior, moderate, resolute.
Whole in himself, a common good." — Tennyson.
WELLESLEY broke camp at Hurryhur on
March 9, and after a march of nearly 600
miles, covered in less than forty days, effected
a junction with Stevenson's troops on April 15.
One of Holkar's captains was holding Poonah, and
Wellesley's approach to that city enabled him to
judge of the character of Mahratta warfare. After
crossing the Kistna he wrote : " They have not left
a stick standing within a distance of 150 miles from
Poonah. . . . Excepting in one village I have not
seen a living creature since I left the neighbourhood
of Merrilah."
When within sixty miles of Poonah, Wellesley
learned that the Mahrattas meant to burn that
city before leaving it. At the moment the news
reached him he had completed a long day's march,
and his footsore infantry were exhausted; to save
the city seemed impossible. But it was exactly
VOL. I. w G

98 THE GREAT DUKE
such a crisis which brought out Wellesley's gift
for swift and daring action. He allowed his men
to rest for a few hours, then, selecting 400 of his
best mounted cavalry, he pressed on, without halt
ing, for thirty-two hours, till he reached the city.
The Mahrattas rode out of its gates on the news
of his approach, and that forced march saved
Poonah. The Peishwa was installed in his capital, and
Wellesley spent some busy weeks in preparing for
the campaign which he knew to be inevitable. He
refitted his artillery, gathered magazines for his
troops, constructed basket boats, enlisted a corps
of boatmen, and made his transport perfect. He
knew that in the coming struggle swiftness ot
movement and certainty of supplies were the con
ditions of success. "I have made," he wrote to
General Stuart, on January 2, " 150 wheels since I
came here." Wheels counted for almost as much
as bayonets in a campaign against Mahratta horse
men. Wellesley's position, meanwhile, was trying. The
Peishwa could not be trusted. He broke every
promise, withheld all assistance, and sent secret
information of Wellesley's plans to the Mahratta
chiefs. Scindia and the Rajah had joined forces in
Wellesley's front, and were evidently waiting, until
the rivers fell, to break in on the Nizam's frontiers,
and set in motion a vast campaign of plunder

A NEW CAMPAIGN 99
carrying on with Wellesley, meanwhile, that evasive
diplomacy in which Indian genius excels.
The problem for Wellesley was how to crush
Scindia and the Rajah without uniting against hira
self aU the fragraents of the Mahratta confederacy.
For the scale of the Mahratta power must be .
remembered. The Mahratta territories covered an
area of nearly a thousand miles square, the whole
of what is called Hindustan proper — that part of
India north of the Nurbuddah. It had a population
of nearly 40,000,000, of whom nine-tenths were
Mahratta in blood and Hindu in faith. If crystal
lised into unity by any wave of fanaticism, or set
in general movement by the impact of a suddenly
realised community of interest, and of perU, it
might well have taxed even British power to the
breaking point. Wellesley knew, too, jhat all the
lesser Mahratta chiefs were watching the struggle
betwixt the great powers, and waiting to join one
or the other, according as it seemed likely to be
victorious. For the Mahrattas, like Providence as
Napoleon interpreted it, were always anxious to
be on the side of the strongest battahons.
In the negotiations he conducted from Poonah,
Wellesley strained every nerve, and employed every
argument, to secure peace. "I am confident," he
wrote, "that our resources will not be found in
sufficient for this war; yet it is our duty to the
country to avoid it if we can do so with honour."

lOO THE GREAT DUKE
Ho was a great soldier. War, to him, meant a
career. But even to his soldierly judgment, peace
was a better thing than victory.
Early in July, Lord Mornington conferred on
General Lake, in Northern India, and on Wellesley
at Poonah, full political powers, and authorised
them to take any action necessary to maintain the
treaty of Bassein, and to protect the states for
whose safety the British had made themselves
responsible. It is unnecessary to dwell on Lake's operations
against Perron. They were brilliant and decisive
in the highest degree, for Lake, while not such
a master of war as WeUesley, had something of
his faculty for swift movement and fierce strokes.
The result of his campaign was the overthrow of
French influence, and the shutting of Southern
India against Scindia.
Wellesley, on his part, acted with equal decision.
He caUed upon Scindia and the Rajah to prove
the sincerity of their protestations of friendship by
retiring to Nagpore. " There appears," he wrote to
Scindia, "to be no occasion for assembling your
army, and joining it with that of the Rajah of Berar
on the Nizam's frontier." He offered to withdraw
his own troops to their usual stations as soon as
he had learned that Scindia had fallen back beyond
the Nurbuddah. But the Mahratta chiefs still
played an evasive game. They would retire to

A NEW CAMPAIGN lOI
Berhampore, they explained, when the British had
reached their stations in Madras, Seringapatam, and
Bombay. Wellesley's answer had the edge and
the impact of a sword-stroke : " I offered you peace,"
he wrote, " upon terms of equality, and honourable
to all parties. You have chosen war, and are re
sponsible for all the consequences." And he was
was not a man to use brave words without following
them up with swift action. He wrote these words
on August 6; on August 8 he was marching on
Ahmadnagar. He captured it on August ii, forraed
a junction with Stevenson on September 21, and
fought the battle of Assaye on September 23. The
mere dates show the energy of Wellesley's move
ments. In six weeks he had shattered the strength
of the Mahratta confederacy, and captured their
strongest fortress.
Wellesley's power to forecast events, again, is
shown by his letter to Lake of July 29. " My plan
of operations," he wrote, "is to attack Ahmadnagar
with my own corps, by the possession of which
place I shall secure communication with Poonah
and Bombay. . . . When I have finished that
operation, and have crossed the Godavery, I shall
then, if possible, bring the enemy to action.'' On
July 29, that is, Wellesley described with precise
accuracy what he would do — and did — on Sep
tember 23.
On August 8, Wellesley was in front of Ahmad-

102 THE GREAT DUKE
nagar. Wellesley himself describes it as, " excepting
Vellore, the strongest country fort that I have seen."
Colonel Welch, in his " Reminiscences," calls it " one
of the strongest in India," with lofty bastions and
a deep, dry ditch. It was armed with sixty guns.
It was evening when the British came in sight of
the fort. "We had not hitherto," says Welch,
"seen the face of an enemy, but now the walls of
both the pettah — the native town — and fort were
lined with men whose arms glittered in the sun."
There was no time to plant batteries. Wellesley
sent forward his stormers against the pettah, having
first pointed out to the leaders where they were to
fix their ladders.
The assault was gallantly led; but within ten
minutes five of the officers leading the first attack
ing party were killed or wounded, the ladders were
thrown down and broken ; the attack had failed.
Another attacking party had only two ladders; the
rush of the stormers broke down one; but, on the
other, the stormers, headed by Captain Vesey, forced
their way up. About 150 men had gained the
rampart when a cannon-shot smashed the ladder.
The fate of the stormers, thus cut off', might have
seemed hopeless; but they leaped down the inner
side of the wall, forced their way through the streets
to the central gate, against which another party
of stormers was battering on the outside, opened
it, let in their comrades, and the town was won.

A NEW CAMPAIGN I03
WeUesley himself told Gleig one striking incident
in the attack. He says :
" Having made the necessary arrangements beforehand, I let
loose the storming party. As I was watching the progress of
things, I saw an officer seize a ladder, plant it againat the wall,
aud rush up alone. He was thrown down on reaching the
summit, but jumped up at once, and re-ascended ; he was again
thrown down, and again re-ascended, followed on this occasion
by the men. There was a scuffle on the top of the wall, in
which the officer had to cut his way through the defenders, and
presently a whole crowd of British troops poured after him into
the town. As soon as I got in, I made inquiries about him, and
found that his name was Colin Campbell, and that he was
wounded. I sought him out, and said a few words to him, with
which he seemed greatly delighted. I liked lis blunt, manly
manner, and never lost sight of him afterwards." '
Campbell had his share in all the hard fighting
of those stormy days, from Vimiero to Waterloo,
and rose high. But it is the gUmpse we catch of
him through Wellington's eyes which makes him
an enduring memory.
The moment the town was won, Wellesley opened
fire with his guns on the fort, and the fire was so
fierce that negotiations for surrender were begun.
WeUesley announced that he would negotiate as
long as his opponent liked ; but raeanwhile his guns
should talk. He would not stop their fire for a
moment. The fort was surrendered. The capitulation gave the
victor ample stores and a secure line of advance, inter-
' Gleig, " Keminisoences," pp. 35, 36.

I04 THE GREAT DUKE
posed a barrier betwixt the Mahrattas and Southern
India, and had all the prestige of a successful first
stroke — of greater value to Wellesley, possibly, than
anything else Ahmadnagar yielded him. A letter
written by a Mahratta chief to a friend after the
assault on the pettah shows the impression a stroke
so swift and fierce had made on the Indian mind.
" The English," he says, " are a strange people, and
their general an extraordinary man. They arrive
here in the raorning, examine the walls, carry them,
have killed all the garrison in the place, and have
now gone back to breakfast. Who can resist such
men as these ? "
The fall of Ahmadnagar stirred the Mahrattas
into action, and Scindia and the Rajah put their
huge forces in motion. Wellesley, on his part, was
too good a soldier to waste time; no commander
ever better understood the value of swiftness in war.
Moreover, he was pricked into activity by anxiety as
to his supplies. He wrote on August 24 : " Twelve
days have elapsed since I took Ahmadnagar, and in
that time I have marched nearly fifty miles, and
have crossed the river Godavery, . . . but I tremble
for the want of the coraraon country grains for the
followers and cattle. . . . We have lost such numbers
of cattle by the length of our march, and starva
tion, that we have none to carry grain for our
followers." Even Wellesley's ingenuity of resource
was strained to the breaking-point by that con-

A NEW CAMPAIGN I05
stant and universal difficulty in Indian warfare,
the task of finding supplies, not only for the
armed forces, but for the innumerable followers
of an army.
But he contrived somehow to keep his troops in
perfect efficiency. "I never was in such raarching
trim," he writes to Malcolm, on September 6. "I
marched, the other day, twenty-three miles in seven
and a half hours, and all our inarches are now made
at the rate of three miles an hour."
Wellesley knew, too, the importance of striking
hard, as well as swiftly, at the enemy. "If we
begin," he wrote, " by a long, defensive warfare, and
go looking after convoys Avhich are scattered over
the face of the earth, and do not attack briskly,
we shall soon be in distress."
Meanwhile, Stevenson joined Wellesley at Budna-
pore. The Godavery had fallen, and was fordable
everywhere, and Wellesley feared that the Mahratta
horsemen would make a dash southward on Hy
derabad. Scindia, however, was bringing up his
guns and infantry, and Wellesley learned this with
grim satisfaction. Their guns would make the
march of Scindia's forces slow, and the infantry
would be, in Wellesley's words, "soraething solid
to go upon."

CHAPTER VII
ASSAYE
" This is he that far away
Against the myriads of Assaye
Clashed with his fiery few, and won."— Tenntson.
THE Mahratta horsemen and guns were under
stood to be on the river Kaitna, near Bokardun,
and between the hostile armies rose the chain of
heights that runs back frora the right bank of the
Poonah. There were two passes through the hills,
separated frora each other by a distance of eight
miles, and Wellesley had to choose whether he
should divide his forces — always a perUous step in
the presence of an enemy — and make use of both
defiles; or keep his army together and attempt
the passage by one defile only. But this plan
would leave the other pass open to be seized by
the enemy, who might thus evade his stroke. It
raeant delay, too, for it was irapossible for the
whole array to pass by one defile in a single day.
Wellesley took the raore daring course. He sent
Stevenson by the western pass, and himself took
io6

Battle of
ASSAYE
September 23, 1803
English Miles

Britlsfi  „....¦¦
Mahrattas.,..  ^k
Villages are shown thus:- O

ASSAYE 107
that to the east. The two divisions were to
unite on the northern slopes of the hUls, and fall
on both flanks of the Mahrattas.
On September 22 Wellesley set his forces in
motion through the defile. When he emerged from
the pass he found himself, with Stevenson stUl
out of sight, in front of the whole Mahratta army
— a force of 50,000 men — with 128 guns, drawn up
in a position of ideal strength. Their whole front
was covered by the Kistna, a deep streara, with
rugged banks: the Juab covered their rear; the
angle formed by the junction of the Kistna and
the Juah seemed to make an attack on their left
wing impossible. On the Mahratta right was their
magnificent cavalry, 20,000 horsemen. Assaye, a
fortified village, was on the Juah in the left rear
of the Mahratta lines. With a force consisting of
5000 men — only 2000 of them British — and 18
guns, Wellesley thus found himself in front of an
army ten times greater than his own, and holding a
position of what seemed enormous strength. Wel
lesley's force, too, had already marched twenty-tour
miles. His infantry were foot-weary ; his gun-teams
were alraost exhausted. It was a raoment to tax
to the utmost the genius and the courage of even
a great commander.
But Wellesley did not hesitate. The secret of
successful war in India, he knew, was daring and
instant attack. Perhaps he thought of Clive at

I08 THE GREAT DUKE
Plassey; but, if so, ho knew nothing of that pause
of agonising doubt during which both Clive's fame
and the fate of the British in India hung in sus
pense. In his despatch, Wellesley simply writes, "It
was obvious that the attack was to be no longer
delayed." He says nothing about the swift, anxious
balance of overwhelming risks which he raust have
made. His mind reached a decision so quickly,
and with such unclouded certainty, that all he
thinks it necessary to say is that it was " obvious "
that he must attack.
The plan of battle took shape in his quick brain
almost in an instant. He would strike at the left
of his enemy's line, where his infantry was drawn
up. The space betwixt the Kistna and the Juah
was so narrow that it would give no room for the
huge mass of Mahratta horsemen to charge, in
their tumultuous fashion, for the rescue of their
footmen and guns. But how was he to reach his
enemy ? His Indian guides assured him that there
was no ford across the Kistna. Two tiny clusters
of houses on either side of the stream, however,
caught Wellesley's sure vision. There must be
sorae coramunication, he guessed, between those
groups of houses on opposite sides of the stream.
When afterwards complimented on this guess, as
a stroke of tactical inspiration, he repUed, "No,
that was common-sense." But it was common-

ASSAYE 109
sense founded on a knowledge of human nature.
And, risking everything on the probability of
striking a ford at this point, Wellesley set his
tiny force moving across the whole front of the
enemy. The Mahrattas — a long front of serried battalions,
pricked with guns — the massed squadrons of horse
men on their right, with the great ditch of the
Kistna in front — here was a battle array such as
India had perhaps never before seen ; and yet across
that far-stretching and hostile front, gay with strange
colours, and gleaming with restless points of steel,
the little oblong of Wellington's men raarched with
steady tramp. It was a terrier going to attack an
elephant. It seeraed as if the Mahratta generals
had only to let their cavalry loose, and send them
across the river, to overwhelm the British.
But the enemy did not move. The British
kept on their deliberate and audacious march,
and the Mahrattas apparently failed to guess —
or guessed too late — the point towards which
Wellesley was striking. "For a length of time,"
says Wellesley in his despatch, "they did not see
my infantry or discover my design. . . . LuckUy
they did not occupy the ford; if they had I
must have gone lower down, and possibly have
been obliged to make a route across the river."
The river was reached; down the nearer bank
the infantry hurried; they splashed, battalions of

IIO THE GREAT DUKE
white faces and dark faces in turn, through the
stream, with the Mahratta guns thundering against
them. The swift current rose to their waists, but
it was a true ford, and the chain of broken com
panies — a thread of breathless men — clambered
up the steep ascent on the farther side. As
they gained the summit, every man's eyes turned
to the left. They saw the enemy's lines swinging
back at right angles to their original direction,
so as to form a barrier stretching from the Kistna
to the Juah. These dark-faced, French-drilled
thousands, it was clear, could raanceuvre ! The
movement was executed swiftly, and with pre
cision, and the Mahratta infantry stretched, a
living wall, across the whole interval betwixt the
two streams — a Uttle less than a mile — their
guns wheeling into place and opening fire.
But what the Mahrattas needed, at that moment,
was not the mechanical art of the drill-sergeant,
but the impulse of a courageous generalship.
They had not learnt the first lesson in soldier
ship — to attack. They should have flung them
selves on Wellesley's men as they clambered up
in disorder out of the river, and before they
had time to form. Instead of doing that they
remained on the defensive, and when the Kistna
was crossed, all the advantages of position on the
part of the Mahrattas were cancelled. The im
mense superiority of the Mahrattas in cavalry,

ASSAYE 1 1 I
too, was rendered useless. They had no roora to
charge. Their own infantry filled the whole space
betwixt the rivers. Nothing parted the two hosts
but a little stretch of level field, sprinkled with
bushes, and " the fiery few " of Tennyson's ode could
clash with Scindia's Mahrattas on equal terms.
Something more, indeed, than the advantage
of position was already lost to the Mahrattas.
That spectacle of 50,000 waiting to be attacked
by 5000 was in itself an admission that the 5000,
so startlingly inferior in numbers, were superior
in fighting quaUty to their enemies.
WeUesley's guns had by this time practically
tallen out of the fight — or, rather, had been
unable to reach it. Many of his bullock teams
were exhausted, others were shot. He had nothing
but his infantry and his scanty cavalry on which
to depend. His plan of battle was simple. He
would hold back his right — so as to keep it out
of the zone of fire from the village of Assaye —
and swing forward his left, thus pushing the
Mahratta line back upon the deep ravine beyond
the vUlage. " I knew," he wrote in his despatches,
"that the village of Assaye must fall when their
right should be beat."
But one of those blunders that are inevitable
in a battle marred this plan. The 78th High
landers and the Sepoys advanced with heavy
musketry volleys, and then charged with the

112 THE GREAT DUKE
bayonet. The first line of the enemy was broken,
the Mahratta guns were abandoned. The officer
commanding the leading troops on Wellesley's
right, however, failed to understand his com
mander's plan of holding back that part of his
line, and using it as a pivot from which to
swing forward his left. Or perhaps the tumult
of battle on his left had kindled the fighting
impulse in this officer's blood, for he led his
men straight on Assaye, coming within the flame
of its guns. It was a gallant blunder, but a very
costly one. The ground across which the 78 th
charged was swept like a glacis by the enemy's
fire. The 74th followed the lead of the 78th,
with the result that Wellesley's front was broken,
his second line uncovered, and the unfortunate
advance party, with the 74th Highlanders foUow
ing, found themselves in a hell of converging fire
which almost destroyed them. Of one company,
consisting of an officer and fifty men, all but six
of the rank and file were struck down. Every
officer of the 74th present, except the quarter
master, was either killed or wounded. WeUesley
said afterwards, "I do not wish to cast any
reflection upon the officer who led the piquets;
I lament the consequences of his mistake; but
I must acknowledge that it was not possible for
a man to lead a body into a hotter fire than
he did the piquets that day against Assaye."

ASSAYE I I 3
The Mahratta horse saw in the gap visible in
Wellington's Une their opportunity and came on,
their dark faces bent forward, in fierce charge.
Then WeUesley flung his scanty cavalry, the 19th
Light Dragoons and a regiment of native cavalry,
into the fight. The Light Dragoons and the brown-
faced Sowars rode side by side at a gallop, cheering
as they went, and cheered by the British wounded
lying thick in the track of the 74th. The charge
was driven furiously home; the Mahrattas could
not stand the shock of the British squadrons ; they
broke, and were driven off in a whirlwind of flight,
and the British cavalry, finely led, rode in upon
the enemy's batteries.
Meanwhile, in a curious fashion, the fight re
kindled in the rear of the victorious British left.
The 78th and the Sepoys had swept back the first
line of the Mahratta infantry, who abandoned their
guns. But the Mahratta gunners simply flung
themselves on the ground, and allowed the feet of
the charging British to trample over them. Then
they leaped up, swung their guns round, and opened
fire on the British line. Maxwell, who commanded
Wellesley's cavalry, re-formed his squadrons, and
he rode with them upon these " resurrection men."
There was great slaughter, and MaxweU himself
fell. The steady and overpowering advance of Wel
lesley's left by this time had flung back the Mahratta
VOL. I. "3 H

114 THE GREAT DUKE
infantry into the rough and deep ravine of the
Juah. They broke, and poured across the nullah,
a mob of fugitives. The 78th carried Assaye with
the bayonet, and by six o'clock the battle was over.
It began at three, and in that brief space of time
a great army had been shattered to fragraents, the
strength of the Mahratta Confederacy overthrown,
and WeUesley had won one of the most remarkable
victories in Indian history. The Mahrattas left 1200
dead on the field ; nearly their whole camp equipage,
with more than 100 guns, fell into the hands of
the victors. Of the British force, numbering 8000 —
of whom only 5000 took part in the actual fighting —
yg officers and 1778 soldiers were killed or wounded.
Every third man in the British ranks was hit.
The Mahrattas fought well. Wellesley himself
described the fight to Croker, afterwards, as "the
bloodiest for the numbers I ever saw." " If I had
not taken that sudden resolution to attack," he
added, " we were, I assure you, in a most dangerous
predicament." The picturesque feature of the battle
— the manner in which the captured guns, over
which the British line had swept, with levelled
bayonets, were turned against the rear of their
captors by the Mahratta gunners, proves — if proof
were needed— rhow bravely the enemy fought.
"The battle," wrote Wellesley again, "was the
most obstinate that I have ever seen, and which
I believe has ever been fought in India. . . .

ASSAYE 1 1 5
I have no language strong enough to express the
admirable conduct of the [British] troops. They
moved in the best order, and with the greatest
steadiness under the most murderous fire."
Sir William Fraser says that when Napoleon heard
of Assaye, he said, " This is the man with whom I
shall have to deal." The story hardly sounds true ;
and yet Napoleon, with his keen eye, could hardly
have glanced at the landscape of the fight at Assaye
without discovering in it the work of a great com
mander. Assaye has a more distinct physiognomy,
indeed, than perhaps any other of Wellington's
battles. It was, on any reading, a great battle ; in
some respects a greater battle than Plassey. Clive,
it is true, had only 4000 men against 50,000, while
Wellesley had 8000 against the same number. But
Clive knew in advance that one-half of the force
he was about to attack would desert their flags.
The mere arithmetic of the losses proves how much
sterner was the fighting at Assaye than at Plassey.
At Plassey the British losses only reached 50 ; at
Assaye the killed and wounded in the British ranks
rose to nearly 2000, more than one-third of the
number that actually took part in the fight.
Assaye, it must be repeated, was a great battle;
and it could be described, without challenge, as the
battle of a great general, if all that happened, say,
before three o'clock on the day of the fight could
be forgotten. But it is clear that whether he was

Il6 THE GREAT DUKK
surprised at Waterloo or not, Wellesley was certainly
taken by surprise at Assaye. He stumbled upon his
enemy unexpectedly. Wellesley himself apologises
for this by insisting on the difficulty of reconnoitring
an Indian army, with its fringe of light horse.
But an army of 50,000, with 128 guns, is a big
target ; and when known to be within striking
distance, Wellesley ought to have been sure as to
its exact position.
The list of things which a good general ought not
to do, but which, in this fight, Wellesley did, is, as
a matter of fact, both long and startling. He
divided his force in the presence of the enemy, so
that he had to fight a desperate battle with one-
half his army twelve miles distant. He brought
his raen to the actual shock of conflict weary with
a march of twenty-four miles, and with half his
guns incapable of coming into action. The march
across four miles of the enemy's front — the slow
tramp of tired troops across the face of an army
six times greater than itself — and within the stride
of its cavalry, was a mere terapting of fate. In
the fight itself, Wellesley attacked the enemy's guns
with infantry. He used up his own cavalry before
the fate of the battle was known. If war were like
a question in arithmetic, to be decided by abstract
rules, and with factors of unchanging value, then
Assaye ought to have been a defeat.
But Wellesley was in a position where rules could

ASSAYE I 1 7
not serve him ; and he showed that genius which
is above rules. " In all great actions," according
to his own words, " there is risk " ; and at Assaye
Wellesley had to balance the risks. Retreat prob
ably meant ruin; delay was a mere invitation to
disaster. Safety, not to say victory, lay in the
direction of instant attack. And, given the resolve
to attack, all that followed — the march across the
enemy's front, the desperate adventure of the ford,
the attack on the enemy's guns with the baj'onet —
followed necessarily. Wellesley's genius is shown
in his instant determination to attack, and in the
flash of inspired common-sense which made him
guess at a ford which his native guides assured
hira did not exist. Assaye, as Wellesley explains
it, was a battle won by a guess. "I fought and
won the battle, the bloodiest for the nurabers I ever
saw; and this was all by the coramon-sense guess
that men do not build villages without some means
of coraraunication betwixt them." And WeUesley
risked his army, and the fate of India, on that guess.
His title to fame — the proof of his genius as a
commander — is to be found in the fact that he
read with profound insight what may be called the
invisible factors of the problem. He assessed, and
assessed truly, the limitation of his enemies. They
would not guess his plan, or the point towards which
his tiny force was moving, till too late. They would
not have initiative enough to march to the ford,

Il8 THE GREAT DUKE
line the river bank with their guns, and make the
passage of the river impossible. And when the
actual shook of battle came, Wellesley knew that
the bayonets of his infantry would overpower the
Mahratta guns. Assaye, in a word, was won in the
cells of Wellesley's brain before a shot was fired.
The swift decision, the instant stroke, the clear, un
hesitating tactics, all gave a cumulative momentum
to the British force. It left WeUesley's 5000 men
no leisure to meditate on the 50,000 before them.
And the rriere fact that the British were attacking
gave them a moral superiority to their foes which
was final. "In war," said Napoleon, "what is
wanted is not men, but a raan." And Wellesley was
the raan wanted at Assaye. Had he not been there
it would never have been fought ; or, if fought,
would not have been won.
The Governor-Geiieral wrote to his brother in
alraost lyrical terms about the victory. " I declare
to you most sincefely that you have infinitely sur
passed all that I could have required from you in
my public capacity, and have soared beyond the
highest point to which all my affection, and all the
pride of my blood, could have aspired. . . . Your
battle is the equal in skiU and fortitude to any of
which the account exists in history. . . . Splendid,
matchless as was your victory on the 23rd, it was
not more than vfe expected from yon."

CHAPTER VIII
AFTER ASSAYE
" The Mahrattas have not left a stick standing at the distance
of 150 miles from Poonah. Excepting in one village I have not
seen a human creature since I left Merrilah." — Wellesley.
WELLESLEY lost no time after Assaye.
Stevenson, abandoning the pursuit of
Scindia's broken host, marched to lay siege to
Berhampoor and Asseghur; Wellesley meanwhile
covering these sieges, watching over his convoys,
and guarding the Nizam's froutier. Wellesley's
sieges in India, as in the Peninsula, were always
brief. The bayonet and the storming-party he held
to be more effective than the slow approach of the
engineers ; and the Indian fortresses, though of great
strength, were quickly captured. The business of
guarding his convoys was raore difficult, yet to
him it was vital. But Wellesley's greatest diffi
culty arose from the treachery of the Peishwa, who
broke every promise, betrayed every secret, em
barrassed every operation, and was, in the British
general's words, "our worst enemy under the guise
of our best friend." "Since the battle of Assaye,"
he wrote, " I have been like a man who fights with

tid THE GREAT DUKE
one hand and defends himself with the other."
Scindia, on his part, finding Wellesley's stroke so
swift that there was no escape from it, and his
vigilance so keen that he could not be tricked, and
tiring of a warfare which yielded no booty, sent in
an agent to the British headquarters, on November
6, asking for a suspension of arms with a view to
a treaty of peace.
Wellesley caught at the proposal. He feared
that Scindia, falling back on characteristic Mahratta
tactics, might let loose his swarms of horse upon
his communications, and so harass his supplies.
But a truce would shut them up in Scindia's own
territory, and make their support a burden. The
arrangement with Scindia, too, left the Rajah of
Berar open to attack, and without an ally, for
WeUesley sternly refused to suspend operations in
Berar, "I know very well," he wrote, "that this
cessation of arms is contrary to all rules, but under
existing circurastances I believe the violation of
these rules will be of more advantage to the public
good than the observance of them." The condition
of the truce was that Scindia should remove to
a position forty miles east of ElUchpoor.
By leaving the Rajah out of his arrangements,
Scindia separated his interests from those of his
ally, and destroyed all confidence betwixt thera,
if any existed. "So," wrote Wellesley, "the con
federacy becomes ipso facto dissolved." The terms

AFTER ASSAYE 121
WeUesley urged his brother to grant to Scindia
were daring, original, and profoundly wise. He
urged that Scindia should not be required to dis
band his troops. This would be simply to resolve
them into a flood of predatory bands, laying waste the
country, or to dismiss them as allies to the nearest
enemy of the British rule. The protected states
generally, he urged, should be compelled to main
tain their railitary power intact. This would secure
order, it would prevent thousands of soldiers de
generating into banditti, and it would not raean
any real peril to the British power. But Wellesley's
advice was too courageous for even his strong-brained
brother. Scindia, meanwhile, was disloyal to the truce.
He united his forces to those of the Rajah, and
this junction threatened the operations which
Stevenson had begun against Gawilghur. Wel
lesley moved promptly to cover Stevenson, and, on
the very day their forces were united, frora the
tower of Par ter ley Wellesley saw Scindia's horse-
raen, a mass apparently countless in number,
moving through clouds of dust towards their camp
on the plain of Argaum.
The British columns had marched twenty-six
miles already, day was wearing to its close, and
Wellesley resolved to camp. But the Mahratta
horsemen began to worry his piquets, and riding
out to the front Wellesley could see at a distance

122 THE GREAT DUKE
of about six miles the long lines of the oombined
Mahratta armies drawn up in battle array. He
must attack, or be attacked^ and he made his
choice without hesitation.
He put his tired troops in movement— fourteen
battalions of infantry, six regiments of cavalry, with
a swarm of 4000 irregular horse — about 18,000 in
all — and moved across the dusty plain towards the
enemy's position. The Mahratta front stretched —
a line of many-coloured turbans and glittering arms
— for five miles. Scindia's cavalry, a vast multi
tude of horse, held the right, the Rajah's forces
formed the centre and left. The whole force num
bered 40,000; the plain in front was broken with
garden enclosures, and cut up by watercourses.
Wellesley marched with his force in single column
until within reach of the enemy, then he threw his
infantry into line, with the cavalry in reserve, and
advanced to the attack, pushing forward his right
wing to turn the Mahratta left. The British moved
in silence, and with great steadiness. Suddenly
from right to left along the hostile front, with a
roll as of thunder, the Mahratta guns broke into
flarae. The raere sound shook three battalions of
Sepoys into instant flight, and Wellesley's line
was broken. These battalions had shown splendid
courage at Assaye, and had remained unshaken
under a much heavier fire than that which now
was smiting them ; but perhaps it was the memory

AFTER ASSAYE 1 23
of the terrible guns at Assaye which now swept
them away in panic. WeUesley himself galloped
amongst the flying raen, and with fierce gestures
and coramands arrested their flight, drew them
sharply into order again, and led them back to the
broken line. "But if I had not been there," he
says, " I am convinced the day would have gone
quite against us." " What do you think,'' he wrote
afterwards, " of nearly three entire battalions, who
behaved so admirably in the battle of the Assaye,
being broken and running off at the cannonade
which commenced at Argaum, which was not to be
compared to that of Assaye."
The British line fiow moved on again, and the
Mahratta guns fell silent. A vast mass of horse
men was drawing free from their infantry and getting
into shape to fling themselves on the British line.
"The pause, when the enemy's guns ceased firing,
and their cavalry advanced in front of them," says
Colonel Welch, who took part in the fight, " was an
awful one." One section of Scindia's cavalry, its
corps d'Slite, the " Arabs," as Welch calls thera, a
very iraposing body, " siUgled out our two European
regiments and charged them with tremendous shouts.
A struggle ensued in which we killed and wounded
about six hundred of these Arabs, and our corps
took eight standards." "These Arabs," Wellesley
says, " are undoubtedly the bravest troops I have
yet seen in the service of the native powers." But

124 THE GREAT DUKE
they flung themselves in vain on the unshaken line
of British bayonets. The Mahratta horsemen fell
back disordered and broken under the rolling
volleys of the British infantry, and finally rode oft'
in tumultous flight, disordering their own foot,
which up to this tirae had kept their formation
unbroken. But when once an eddy of retreat had
become visible in the huge mass of Scindia's army,
it crumpled up almost at a breath into general and
distracted flight, leaving thirty-eight pieces of cannon
on the field to the victors.
Three days after the battle, Wellesley moved on
Gawilghur, the strongest place of arms under the
Rajah's flag, and h"ld to be impregnable. It stood
in the heart of a tangle of hills, and Stevenson's
division had to drag their heavy guns and waggons
by ropes over thirty miles of rugged country to the
siege. The batteries opened fire on December 12th;
on the 17th the fortress was stormed. The Rajah
was already negotiating for peace while the siege
was in progress, but Wellesley refused to silence
his guns while terms of peace were being arranged.
Malcolm gives an interesting sketch of Wellesley
when he joined his camp after the victory of
Argaum. He found that months of campaigning
under Indian skies, the constant battle, not only
of guns and bayonets against Mahratta horsemen,
but of diplomacy against Indian subtlety and false
hood, had aged Wellesley. The strain of work

AFTER ASSAYE I 25
which he maintained himself, and enforced on his
staff", the seriousness with which he took aU duty,
had left its mark on the very physiognomy of his
headquarters. There was a grey sombreness, as
well as a Spartan simplicity, about it. The personal
staff' that gathered round their chief at table in the
evening consisted of exhausted men who had worked
at high pressure all the day. Wellesley himself
spoke little. He was brooding over the events of
the day and the problems of to-morrow. He had
a fashion of performing a sort of " sentry go " — a
solitary preoccupied tramp to and fro — in front of
his tent. So well known was this habit that the
natives had a term for it — the "chehel cudum" —
literally, the forty paces.
Malcolm, famUiarly known as " the boy " amongst
his associates, had an inextinguishable gaiety of
spirit, and the effect of his presence in Wellesley's
too serious headquarters is amusingly reflected in
his journal. Laughter is a better tonic for weari
ness than wine ; and laughter had become an almost
forgotten sound in the group of men, under the strain
of great affairs, round their chief. Malcolm joined
Wellesley himself in his " sentry go " every evenmg,
and his picture of the brooding mood and careworn
face of Wellesley at the end of the Mahratta
campaign helps to explain why, twelve months
later, the victor of Assaye declared that " nothing on
earth would induce him to remain longer in India."

126 THE GREAT DUKE
A treaty of alliance was signed by the Rajah on
December 7, and a sirailar treaty by Scindia on
December 30. These treaties gave Delhi, Agra,
Gwalior, and many other cities to the British flag ;
but the peace, as one incidental result, let loose
thousands of Scindia's horsemen as mere bandits
upon the unhappy country. They formed them
selves into bands, and any soldier who became con
spicuous for audacity quickly found himself at the
head of what was little less than an army. One
band rose swiftly into a bad pre-eminence. Its
stronghold was on the Deccan frontier. It ravaged
whole districts, and defeated one of the Nizam's
columns sent out against it, capturing all its guns.
If left unchecked, it promised quickly to require a
campaign for its overthrow.
WeUesley took the matter in hand with character
istic energy. He organised a picked force, consisting
of the 19th Light Dragoons, and three native regi
ments of cavalry, with a small force of infantry, and,
crossing the Godavery, set out in pursuit. The
country was difficult, the roads impassable, the
guides could not be trusted ; but Wellesley had an
instinct for guessing the routes and the hiding-places
of the Mahratta freebooters. Getting news of his
enemy's whereabouts, he made a forced march of
sixty miles in thirty hours, a third of it in the
darkness. "The night," he wrote, "was dark, the
road desperately bad, and my allies, like true

AFTER ASSAYE 127
Mahrattas, gave the enemy information." But
Wellesley reached the carap of the freebooters just
as they were moving out of it, and he hung upon
their tracks tUl he had destroyed them, "This,"
he wrote, " was the greatest exertion I ever saw
troops make in any war. The infantry was in the
attack, although we marched sixty miles between the
morning of the 4th and 12 o'clock noon of the 5 th
February." Many years afterwards, Wellesley told the story of
that chase to Gleig :

" 'i'he I'ellow," he said, " was growing formidable when I set
out in search of him. I was suffering at the time from boils,
a not uncommon complaint, by-the-bye, in India, and riding
was disagreeable, but I got upon my horse, and after a march of
sixty miles, ascertained that he had managed to put a river
between him and me, which the guides assured me was im
passable. We pushed on across a large plain, and presently saw
the river, which certainly had no bridges upon it, and looked
very much as if it were too deep for fording. I noticed, how
ever, that two villages stood directly opposite to one another,
looking like a single village with a stream running through, and
I said to myself, 'These people would not have built in thia
manner unless there was some means of communication from
side to side.' I made no halt, therefore, and found, sure
enough, that a very good ford allowed the inhabitants of one
village to visit their neighbours in the other village at all hours
of the day. We crossed by that ford, greatly to the di.sgust
of our guides, who intended the robbers to get away, and
overtaking the marauders, we attacked and dispersed them,
taking all their guns and baggage. I knew that, without guns,
and broken up as Ihey were, they would be cut to pieces in
detail by tlie armed villagers, and it was so."

128 THE GREAT DUKE
According to this story, it was the sudden
memory of the flash of insight to which he owed
the victory at Assaye — the incident of seeing two
villages on either side of a stream, and deducing the
existence of a ford — which enabled him to crush
this band of marauders ; but it is curious that twice
Wellesley should owe victory to such a guess.

CHAPTER IX
CLOSING YEARS IN INDIA
" I bave served the Company in important situations for many
years, and have never received anything but injury from the Court
of Directors." — Wellesley.
WITH the destruction of that band of free
booters Wellesley's career as a soldier in
India practically ended. There remained another
year of Indian experience, during which he resumed
his command in Mysore; but this period formed
a part of his lffe in India on which Wellesley hira
self always looked back with profound disgust.
He had fallen out of sympathy with his brother's
policy towards the native states; the strain of the
Indian climate was affecting his health. Some
deep instinct tumed his ambitions towards Europe.
He persuaded himself that his services in India
were not appreciated, and were inadequately re
warded, and he did not hesitate to say so, and to
say it with bitter emphasis. He watched the cam
paigns of Lake against Holkar with critical eyes,
and was profoundly disgusted with the disasters of
Colonel Monson's Ul-fated expedition.
VOL. I. "» I

130 THE GREAT DUKE
Monson, it will be remembered, one of Lake's
divisional commanders, had been left with a detach
ment 12,000 strong on guard at Molwah, 200 miles
frora Lake's headquarters. He was attacked by
Holkar, and instead of flinging himself upon his
enemy, Monson retreated. That retreat is one of
the raost tragical stories in Indian history. Of
his whole force not one raan in ten reached the
gates of Agra alive. " Holkar's pursuit of Monson,"
says Hooper, " is stUl remembered where Assaye
and Lasware are forgotten." Wellesley writes of
Monson's " retreats, defeats, disgraces and disasters,"
as "the greatest and most disgraceful to our raili
tary character of any that ever occured." It hap
pened because every method on which Wellesley
hiraself acted was forgotten, and every rule of
action which he taught as necessary in Indian
warfare was broken.
Wellesley's letters at this time are bitter with
discontent. "I do not conceive," he wrote to
Malcolm, "that any man has a right to call upon
me to remain in a subordinate position in this
country, contrary to my inclination, only because
it will suit his views, and wiU forward objects for
which he has been labouring." He would remain
in India, he protested, if the public good required
it, but he had come to believe that he could best
serve India by leaving it. Malcolm, writing to
Shawe, says, " He (Wellesley) appears plagued with

CLOSING YEARS IN INDIA I3I
a slow fever. He frets himself, which I never
knew him to do before. . . . He thinks he has been
shamefully used in not being put on the staff. . . .
He goes lean."^
Yet it was during this very period — a period on
which he was accustomed to look back with disgust —
that Wellesley wrote many of those great despatches
which have done almost as much for his fame as
his battles. The WeUington despatches as a whole,
frora 1794 to 1832, fill nearly 15,000 large octavo
pages. "They form," says Sir Herbert Maxwell,
"one of the most remarkable achievements frora a
single hand that ever were penned " ; and the Indian
despatches, in some respects, are the most inter
esting of the whole series.
Early in February, 1805, Wellesley finally deter
mined to leave India. Sir John Craddock, the
Comraander-in-Chief, urged him to reraain. "You
think about my staying in India," wrote Wellesley,
"like a man who has just corae out, and I Uke one
who has been here for seven years, involved in
perpetual troubles." He wrote to an agent to
secure his passage. He explained he did not care
a great deal about the price, nor about who the
captain was, or what the ship. He was offered,
however, a passage in H.M.S. Trident, and sailed
frora Madras in March, 1805, his departure being
raarked by a remarkable outburst of honours from
* "Life of Malcolm," vol. i. p. 300.

132 THE GREAT DUKE
representatives of' all races and creeds in India.
" I was feasted out of Bombay," he wrote, " as I
was feasted into it." Not the least reraarkable of
these expressions of regard was an address from
the native inhabitants of Seringapatam. "You are
entitled to our gratitude," it declared, "for the
tranquillity, security, and prosperity which we have
enjoyed under your beneficent administration. We
address our prayers to the God of all castes and
of all nations that He will grant you health, glory,
and good fortune."
Wellesley's career in India, Unked with that of
his brother, gave a new complexion to British
history in India. All the centres of French influ
ence in India — at Hyderabad, Seringapatam, Delhi,
and Poonah — were destroyed. The Peishwa, the
nominal head of the Mahratta confederacy, had
become little better than a British pensioner. Tip
poo had been destroyed; Scindia, Holkar, and the
Rajah of Berar had been brought under tribute.
A map of India showing the British dominions
when Wellesley landed in India, and a similar map
showing the same dominions when he left India,
are an amazing contrast to each other. In that
brief period, British territories had been increased
threefold in area and in wealth, British power
had been multiphed tenfold ; and to this result
Lord Mornington's brUliant gifts at Government
House contributed less than WeUesley's victories

CLOSING YEARS IN INDIA 1 33
in the field, and his diplomatic successes with the
native princes.
But the two Wellesleys did more than carry the
political fortunes of Great Britain in India to a
new height; they changed the very teraper of
British administration ; they purged it of that
taint of corruption which undeniably existed.
They created for it newer and loftier ideals. Both
Hastings and Clive accepted large sums as gifts
from native princes ; and smaUer men, with ex
amples so illustrious to corrupt them, feU into evil
habits. But WeUesley kept his hands clean, and
he required all his agents to be clean-handed. He
taught his officers to look upon the offer of a
bribe as an insult. Lord Mornington refused to
receive a grant of ;£¦ 100,000 from the Board of
Directors. Wellesley was offered by the Minister
of the Nizam a bribe of ;^7o,ooo for secret in
formation as to the treaty in progress, and rejected
the offer with a grim jest. He punished with the
sternest severity acts of oppression on natives,
" Truth-lover was our English Duke," says Tennyson
in that magnificent ode which is perhaps the great
soldier's noblest monument ; and in the atmosphere
of lying in which he lived in India Wellesley re
mained a truth-lover and a truth-speaker. "I
would wUlingly," he once wrote, " give GwaUor ten
times over, or aU the other fortresses in India,
rather than risk the loss of our reputation for

134 THE GREAT DUKE
scrupulous good conscience. . . . What was it that
kept me right amidst the embarrassments of the
war, and of the negotiations which foUowed it ?
British good faith, and nothing else."
Of the political value of these qualities in Wel
lesley's character it is difficult to speak too highly.
If Soult in Spain, Davoust in Holland, Massena in
Italy, or Loison in Portugal, had acted on Wel
lesley's principles, the course of history in Europe
might have been changed. On the other hand, if
Wellesley at Seringapatam, or at Poonah, had been
as hungry for plunder, as unreliable in word, and
as careless of huraan rights as some of Napoleon's
marshals, there might have been no British empire
in India to-day. The Wellesleys created a new
standard of justice, honour, and conduct in Indian
adrainistration, and the irapress of their high con
ception of duty is stUl felt in Indian affairs.

CHAPTER X
THE INDIAN DESPATCHES
" Truth-lover was our English Duke ;
Whatever record leap to light
He never shall be shamed." — Tennyson.
PERHAPS his famous "Despatches" are the
mirror which raost perfectly reflects Wel
lesley's character in India. In writing thera he
was creating an iraperishable literature without
knowing it. Of their unique quality, as literature,
there is no doubt. As a record of the thoughts
and methods of a great soldier, dealing with a
thousand problems of war in detail, there is nothing
else in English literature, or perhaps in the litera
ture of any other language, that has the range, the
vivid sense, the minuteness of practical detail, the
wealth of thought and knowledge to be found in
these "Despatches." The single missing element
in them is the quality of imagination; the sudden
iUuminating vision that sees the whole landscape
at a glance; the leap of thought which reaches a
conclusion without the help of the intermediate
processes. And that Wellesley did not know the
135

136 THE GREAT DUKE
value of his " Despatches '' is clear. He was filled
with astonishment in after years as he read them.
"I did not beUeve it possible," he wrote, "that a
correspondence which I preserved at first solely as
memoranda, and for reference, and afterwards from
idleness and the desire to avoid the trouble of
looking over the papers to see what raight be
destroyed, could ever be turned to a purpose so
useful." The India Despatches have a more personal
note, and give a more intimate revelation of Wel
lesley's character and mental habits than even the
Peninsula Despatches. He had less time for friend
ships in those later years; there were fewer with
whom he could correspond on terms of equaUty;
he was preoccupied with events on a great scale.
In the India Despatches we see his character and
genius in process of evolution. Of the India
Despatches Wellesley hiraself said, forty years
afterwards, "They are as good as I could write
now. They show the same attention to details, to
the pursuit of all the means, however smaU, that
could promote success." And certainly, as a picture
from the inside of a great general at work, these
despatches have immortal interest
He told Gleig that "we made war pretty much
as Alexander the Great seems to have done, and
as all men must do, in such a country as India
then was"; and if we can forget the differences

THE INDIAN DESPATCHES I37
of race and of weapons, and the twenty odd cen
turies betwixt, it is easy to iraagine Alexander and
his Greeks carapaigning in India very much as
Wellesley did, with the sarae swiftness of stroke,
the same wrestle with natural difficulties, the sarae
audacious attack on the raany by the few, the same
mastery of the men of a white race over men of
a dark race. "We had no pontoons," says Wel
lesley; "we crossed the rivers either by fords or,
when these failed us, by bridges resting upon in
flated skins." But always with Wellesley, as it must
have been with Alexander, there was the energy
of intellect, the daring, the scorn of differences in
numbers, the insight which taught him that on
such a field, and against such foes, the swift
courage which challenged all risks was safer, as
well as wiser, than the prudence which stopped to
weigh risks. His despatches are full of counsels
which breathe this spirit:
" If the rebels are in force, let a junction be formed, and then
not a moment lost in dashing at them, whatever may be their
force. If the rebels are not in strength, let the troops be kept
in constant motion in different directions, and let the alarm be
kept up. Then they will never be in strength." *
" We must get the upper hand, and if once we have that we
shall keep it with ease, and shall certainly succeed. But if we
begin by a long defensive warfare, and go looking after convoys
which are scattered over the face of the earth, and do not attack
briskly, we shall soon be in distress." '
1 " Indian Despatches," p. 146. " Ibid., p. 290.

138 THE GREAT DUKE
His method of dealing with the huge raasses of
horsemen, of which Indian armies are composed,
is described:
" Large bodies move slowly, and it is not difficult to gain in
telligence of their motions. A few rapid and well-combined
movements made indirectly upon them, but with a view to
prevent the execution of any favourite design, soon bring them
to their bearings. They stop, look about them, begin to feel
restless, and are obliged to go off."
Many of his despatches have an historic value
as shedding light on the state of India at the end
of the eighteenth century : " The whole of the
Mahratta territory," he wrote, " is unsettled and in
ruins. . . . Every man is a plunderer, and a thief,
and no man who can find anything to seize or
steal will cultivate the land for his subsistence." ^
" Conceive a country in every village of which there are from
twenty to thirty horsemen who have been dismissed from the
service of the State, and have no means of living except by
plunder. In this country there is no law, no civil government,
and no armies to keep these plunderers in order. No revenue
can be collected, no inhabitant can or will remain to cultivate
unless he is protected by an armed force stationed in his village.
This is the state of the conntries of the Peishwa and the Nizam.
. . . Habits of industry are out of the question. They must
plunder for subsistence, or be destroyed, or starve, or be taken
into the service of some of the allied Powers." ^
"It is curious to know," he writes again, "that
Scindia had English officers under his flag as weU
as French " ; and these renegades, after renouncing
1 " Indian Despatches,'' p. 268. ^ ibid., p. 467.

THE INDIAN DESPATCHES 1 39
the flag of their country, found no difficulty in
relaxing its standard of humanity. Some of the
wounded soldiers lying on the field at Assaye heard
an English officer in one of Scindia's battalions say
to another, "You understand the language better
than I do. TeU the jemidar of that body of horse
to go and cut up those European soldiers." And
this was done. "It is bad enough," is Wellesley's
coraraent, " that these gentleraen should serve the
enemies of their country, but it is too bad that they
should excite the savage ferocity of the natives
against their brave and wounded countrymen. I
shall send a list of names of the (British) officers
engaged on Scindia's side in this battle, and I will
request that the whole may be made public that
they may be held up to the execration of their
country and the world." ^
Soraetimes, in his despatches, Wellesley describes
the native chiefs in terms which for edge and
terseness suggest Tacitus :
" The Peishwa should be informed that, from the highest man
in State to the lowest, there is not one who will trust him, or
who will have any connection or communication with him,
except through the mediation and under the guarantee of the
British Government. . . . His country is, at this moment, a
dreary waste, overrun by thieves. The Peishwa is callous to
everything but money and revenge. His Highness is incapable
of conducting his government himself. He gives no confidence
or power to anybody, and has no person about him able to
conduct the common business of the country." ^
1 " Indian Despatches," p. 311. " Ibid., p. 365.

I40 THE GREAT DUKE
These despatches, it may be added, reveal all the
features of WeUesley's character, exactly as they
are discoverable on a later and more conspicuous
stage ; his saving coramon-sense, his scorn of opinion,
his loyalty to duty, his stubborn truthfulness, his
impatience of slackness, his final standard of conduct
as "a gentleman." His limitations, too, are there,
his sure self-confidence, his hardness, which forbade
easy friendships, and which perhaps explains why,
as he complained, " no woraan ever loved hira." He
is a soldier, first and last, but it is of the British,
not of the French, type. Civil law counts for hira
even more than the sword :
" I understand military law to be the law of the sword, and
in well regulated and disciplined armies to be the will of the
general. ... I long for the return of the civil government.
Although a soldier myself, I am not an advocate of placing
extensive civil powers in the hands of soldiers." ^
His hard and masterful common-sense again is
visible in such sentences as these :
" It is true that you have a formidable party against you, but
when you are to adopt any measure of consequence . . . never
take into consideration what that party may think, say, or do
upon the occasion. Do not allow yourself to think that they
exist, and do your duty as you would if they were where
they ought to be, and, I daresay, will be hereafter." "
" In all great actions there is risk which the little minds of
those who will form their judgment of yourself will readily
perceive. . . . But their remarks ought not to give you a
moment's uneasiness." °
1 " Indian Despatches," p. 128. * Ibid., p. 164. ' Ibid., p. 225.

THE INDIAN DESPATCHES 141
He is sensitive to aspersions on his character, and
yet, when duty requires it, he can cheerfully run the
risk of misconception. Thus he defends a rauch-
criticised act, the levy of a contribution on Berhara-
poor after its capture, on practical grounds :
" The Governor- General has trusted me to carry on an extensive
service here, and I can see that my duty to him requires that
I should omit nothing which can ensure its success. It would
have been no excuse to him, or to the world, if I had been
obliged to give it up for want of money, and yet I must tell you
that if it had not been for this money levied at Berhampoor
... I should not have been able to pay the troops in December.
... I know that to levy a contribution is common in India and
in Europe . ¦ . and that it would have been much more dis
graceful and disastrous to have lost the campaign through the
want of money than to have ensured in this manner the means
of gaining it. I believe I am as anxious as any other man that
my character should not suffer — I do not mean in the mouths
of common reports and scandal-bearers, but in the eyes of a
fair-judging people. I declare that I think I have done what
is right; but if the Governor-General thinks it was wrong,
it is easy to return the money to the people of Berhampoor.
However, if he does this he returns the money into Scindia's
pocket, for he will take it immediately." '
His recipe for good health in India is amusing.
"I know but one receipt for good health in this
country, and that is to live moderately, to drink
little or no wine, to use exercise, to keep the
mind employed, and, if possible, to keep in good
humour with the world. The last is the most
difficult, as you often observed there is scarcely
a good-tempered man in India."
> " Indian Despatches," p. 332. • Ibid., p. 542.

142 THE GREAT DUKE
The standard of honour revealed in the "De
spatches" is absolute. Wellesley flames out with
a noble anger against every form of corruption.
Bribes were coraraon, and there were great pre
cedents on the side of the bribe-takers; but to
one subordinate who reported an offered bribe,
Wellesley writes :
"In respect of the bribe offered to you and myself, I am
surprised that any man in the character of a British officer
should not have given the Rajah to understand that the offer
should be considered as an insult. . . . Inform him that I
and all British officers consider such offers as insults on the
part of those by whom they are made." '
He resents with a note of passion the action
of the Board of Directors in sending back to
India corrupt officials who had been dismissed
and sent to England. "As for my part," he
writes, " I have deterrained that as soon as I
find it is intended to introduce this new systera
of rapacity into this country I shall withdraw,
and I believe that every honest man who is not
obliged to stay will do the same. . . . They wUl
infallibly drive out of the country every man who
wishes well to the public cause and who prizes
his character." ^
Wellesley had a sufficiently keen sense of the
value of his work, but a sort of haughty self-
respect made him scorn to ask for office or
^ "Indian Despatches," p. 545. > Ibid., p. 514.

THE INDIAN DESPATCHES 1 43
its rewards. " I have received," he wrote, " more
rewards for military services than any raan who
serves, or than any man who ever served this
country. But I never solicited one, and if any
man had ever interfered between the Govern
ment and me to win such reward by solicitation
or even suggestion, I should not have considered
that raan my friend."^
Against rascality of every sort he had an iron
sternness. He tells the story of' some instances
of peculation araongst the officers of a certain
regiment, and sums up by saying, "I expect
shortly to have orders which will let rae know
whether these gentry are to be brought to a
court-raartial, or to be dismissed the service, or
to be hanged." Plainly, Wellesley would have
preferred the latter method.
Acts of oppression on the natives rouse him
to a fierce indignation. On the finding of a too
lenient court-martial dealing with such a case,
he writes : " I never can agree in the opinion
that this scandalous conduct is not unbecoming
the character of a British officer and a gentleman,
and I never can approve a sentence which can de
scribe it in other terms than those of the strongest
reprobation. . . . What wUl be the opinion of
British justice, honour, and protection if a gentle
man who has been guilty of such acts of oppres-
^ "Indian Despatches," p. 588.

144 THE GREAT DUKE
sion as Mr.  has himself acknowledged, is
suffered to go unpunished?"^
WeUesley's stubborn respect for truth is visible
in aU his Indian career. At one court-martial it
was found that the witnesses had been drilled by
the accused or his agents. Wellesley writes:
"Truth is the foundation on which the whole super
structure is built. Any method which tends to suppress or
pervert truth makes the administration of justice impracti
cable and brings it to an end." ^
The analysis of Monson's retreat, written to
Malcolm on August 24, 1804, ^^^ declared by Sir
Robert Peel to be "the best mUitary letter" he
had ever read. Sir Robert added — he was hardly
a judge — that he considered WeUington " the most
powerful writer in the English language." But Sir
Charles Napier, himself a great soldier, says that
letter decided him never to retire before an Indian
army; he owed the victory, he declared, which
gave Scinde to England to " the study of the words
and deeds of the great Master of war" — WeUesley.
In that historic letter WeUesley traces the
disaster, in the main, to two causes — Monson's
failure of forethought as to his supplies, and
faUure to attack his enemy, instead of waiting to
be attacked by him. "Even in retreat," he writes,
"it must be recollected that it is safe and easy in
proportion to the number of attacks made by the
' Indian Despatches," p. 627. » Ibid., p. 629.

1 <<i

THE INDIAN DESPATCHES 14S
retreating corps." " Attention to the foregoing
observations," he adds, "wiU, I hope, prevent a
British corps from retreating."
In his general advice as to the conduct of the
war with Holkar he insists, over and over again,
on the necessity of wisely organised and adequate
supplies. Then he enforces a daring policy. The
eneray raust never be allowed to attack a camp of
the British force.
" Move out to attack them. Do not allow them to attack
your camp on any account. If the enemy tries to cut off your
communications, beat up his cavalry camp as frequently as you
may hear of their situation. Do not allow the eneray to lie
near you with impunity, and you will soon clear the com-
municLition. ... If your provisions should fail you, and you
should hear that Holkar's infantry is near you, you ought to
attack them before you think of anything else." *
WeUesley is no sentimentalist. When discussing
the treaty with Scindia, he says :
" As for the wishes of the people, particularly in this country,
I put them out of the question. They are the only philosophers
about their governors that ever I met with, if indifference
constitutes that character."'
WeUesley himself — as these despatches make
clear — had an almost arausing certainty of self-
confidence. "Would to God," he writes, after the
story of Monson's retreat, " that I had come round
here in March, and Holkar would now have been
in the tomb of all the Capulets." *
> " Indian Despatches," p. 433. ' Ibid., p. 463. ' Ibid., p. 426.
VOL. I. K

146 THE GREAT DUKE
The whole picture offered by the Indian des
patches is that of a strong, masterful, and hard
character, impatient of waste and slovenliness, stern
in its scorn for every kind of baseness, severe in its
standard both for itself and others. Not, perhaps,
a lovable character, or one easy for other men
to work with ; but certainly noble and high. In
India, as surely as in the Peninsula, or as before
and after Waterloo, he was a tower of strength,
which stood "four-square to all the winds that
blew."

CHAPTER XI
LEAVING INDIA
"You are entitled to our gratitude for the tranquillity, security,
and prosperity which we have enjoyed under your beneficent
administration. We address our prayers to the God of all castes
and of all nations, that He wUl grant you health, glory, and good
fortune." — Address of the inhabitants of Seri-ngapatam to Wellesley.
WELLESLEY sailed from India, on his return
to England, in March, 1805. His ship
touched at St. Helena, and he spent some little
tirae there, an incident which, although Wellesley
hiraself was unconscious of it, perhaps helped to
deterraine, ten years later, the selection of that
lonely rock in the vast wastes of the Atlantic as
the prison in which Napoleon was to spend his last
days. The careers of those two great rivals in war
touch at odd points. In their earlier stages at
least they are in sharpest contrast with each
other. Napoleon was the master of Egypt when
his unguessed rival was only a lieutenant-colonel,
commanding the reserves in the trenches before
Seringapatam. He was winning Marengo, and
shaking the thrones of half the kings of the
world, when the soldier who was to finally over-

148 THE GREAT DUKE
throw hira was hunting down a Mahratta free
booter in the jungles of Mysore. He was First
Consul for life, and had the glory of a dozen victories
about his head, before Wellesley had won Assaye.
He had been crowned Emperor at Notre Dame
by a Pope when Wellesley, a discontented man,
was about to sail from India ; and he had re
ceived a new crown — that of Italy — at Milan while
Wellesley was rambling amongst the windy cliffs
at St. Helena.
What an interval parts the two figures — a " Sepoy
general," whose genius was unguessed even by his
own countrymen in England; and Napoleon, round
whom all the splendours of history seera to gather !
What has most impressed the imagination of the
world is the breathless haste of Napoleon's rise to
greatness. Only thirteen years separate Toulon,
where Bonaparte, an unknown artillery officer, was
in command of a battery, and Austerlitz, where
he overthrew two emperors. But, somehow, the
fact that Napoleon's career was nearly as short
as it was swift is forgotten. Less than ten
years lie betwixt Austerlitz and Waterloo. The
famous conference with the Czar at Tilsit in June,
1807, where kingdoms and provinces were shuffled
at his bidding like so many cards, was the cliraax
of Napoleon's career. And eight brief years part
the raft at Tilsit from the rock in the Atlantic.
Wellington's rise into fame, on the other hand.

LEAVING INDIA 1 49
if it was slower than that of his great rival, knew
no reflux. And it is surely one of the ironies of
history that — almost at the moment when Napoleon,
already Emperor of France, was being crowned King
of Italy at Milan — an English lieutenant-general,
whose narae was practically unknown in Europe,
but who only ten years later was to shatter
Napoleon's plans at Waterloo, was surveying a
splinter of rock in the Atlantic, and, unconsciously
even to hiraself, choosing it as his great rival's
prison and grave.
It is interesting to reflect that at one moraent
there was a possibility that Napoleon and Wellesley
raight raeet and measure their genius against each
other in India. Just when Wellesley was preparing
to leave India the hills above Boulogne were white
with the tents of the army asserabled for the in
vasion of England. But Thiers says that for four
weeks Napoleon hesitated betwixt casting that force
on the shores of England or despatching it against
India, " The overthrow of the British Erapire in
the peninsula of the Ganges," says Thiers, "pre
sented to him such important results that he was
tempted to risk his person and his array in an
effort to the full as hazardous as the descent on
the coast of England itself." In the end Napoleon
chose neither England nor India as the objective
of the magnificent host he had gathered on the
shores of the Channel. When Wellesley reached

ISO THE GREAT DUKE
England that great army was on its storray way
to Austerlitz— with Jena and Friedland beyond.
But that India always had a strange fascination
for Napoleon is certain. After his treaty with
Persia, he sent a coraraission of officers to examine
Persian harbours, with a view to the invasion of
India. A report was drawn up recoraraending the
Mediterranean route, with Cyprus as a base of
supplies, and giving the distances for the raareh
overland from Syria to the Ganges. "It is clear,"
says Rose, in his "Life of Napoleon," ^ "that even
when that restless genius was face to face with the
mighty forces on the Vistula his thoughts still
turned longingly to the banks of the Ganges."
If Napoleon had embarked the army at Boulogne,
and sailed with it for India, no doubt strange and
startling events would have followed. Waterloo,
for one thing, might have been fought ten years
earUer, say on the Nurbuddah — and with another
issue. For Napoleon, at the head of 50,000 French
veterans, with Murat to coraraand his cavalry, Ney
to lead his colurans of attack, and Berthier or
Lannes as his chief of staff, raight well have changed
the whole course, not only of Indian history, but
of the world's history. On the other hand, if
Napoleon had turned the stems of his transports
towards India, it is probable that Trafalgar would
have been fought at a little earlier date, and in
^ Vol. ii. p. I

LEAVING INDIA 151
quite new latitudes. Nelson was accustomed to
express his longing to "have Napoleon under his
lee in a gale " ; and certainly the Grand Army, say,
in a heavy sea off the Cape, all deplorably sea-sick,
and with Nelson and CoUingwood to windward,
would have supplied the conditions of a sea-tragedy
on the biggest scale.
Wellesley reaped a not too generous harvest of
rewards for his work in India. He had risen, it
is true, to the rank of lieutenant-general, he was
raade an extra Knight of the Bath, he had received
the special thanks of both Houses of Parliament,
and yet he was discontented. The scale of the
work he had done in India was unrecognised in
England; his great gifts as a commander were
doubted ; he was not a favourite in official military
circles. " The Horse Guards," as he himself said
afterwards, "never showed me any favour, and
thought little of an Indian victory; it was rather
a ground of suspicion than confidence. Because
I was an M.P. they thought I raust be a politician,
not a soldier; they looked on me as a sprig of
nobility come into the army for honours, but of
no use; they could not believe I was a tolerable
artillery officer. ... I have proved that they"
thought I could not be trusted alone with a
division." Wellesley raay have been right when he said
that the Horse Guards showed him no favour; it

152 THE GREAT DUKE
was certain, however, that the statesmen responsible
for the conduct of affairs in England quickly recog
nised his great gifts. Almost immediately on his
arrival from India he was consulted as an expert
about the detaUs of an expedition to Hanover. It
is to this period that Pitt's oft-quoted judgment
on Wellesley belongs. "I never met a military
officer," he said, "with whora it is so satisfactory
to converse. He states every difficulty before he
undertakes any service, but never after he has
undertaken it." This combination of the vision
which saw every difficulty, with the courage that
dared, and the genius that solved, all difficulties,
made Wellesley an adviser of priceless value to
the men who at that moment were carrying the
heavy and perilous burden of the fortunes of Great
Britain. When, a little later, Malcolm was urging
him to return to India, say, as Governor and
Commander-in-Chief at Madras, Wellesley wrote
in reply: "Men in power in England think very
little of India, and those who do think of it have
very little inclination that I should go there. . . .
I am employed in this country in much the sarae
way as I was in India; that is to say, in every
thing." On April lo, 1806, Wellesley found tirae to marry
his early love, Catherine Pakenham, third daughter
of the Earl of Longford. There may have been
an element of chivalry in the marriage, but on

LEAVING INDIA 153
WeUesley's side, at least, there cannot have been
any very ardent affection. And even the chivalry
was less than is generally supposed. The accepted
tradition is that Kitty Pakenham had lost all her
beauty during an attack of small-pox, and as a
consequence released, or offered to release, Wel
lesley from the vague, unwritten engageraent be
twixt them. Wellesley, however, so the story runs,
accepted a pock-pitted bride rather than break a
bond of honour, no matter how slender.
The story is romantic, but the facts hardly agree
with it, Wellesley had never written to Kitty
Pakenham from India, and those seven or eight
years of silence might weU have seemed the end
of all ties. But on his return to England some
gossip told him that Kitty Pakenham was still
unmarried, " What ! " said Wellesley, " does she
still remember me ? Do you think I ought to
renew my offer? I am ready to do it." He
wrote with business-like, if not lover-like, prompti
tude, and was told by his intended bride, with a
touch of half pathetic coyness, that it was so long
since they had met he had better come and see
her before committing himself; he might find her
aged and changed. But Kitty Pakenham had
suffered no loss of beauty. Her pretty face and
dainty complexion survived small-pox. They were
married ; she bore Wellesley two sons, and was
faithful to him as a wife; but though WeUesley's

154 THE GREAT DUKE
qualities were high in other fields, he had few of
the domestic virtues. He was too rauch pre
occupied with his career as a soldier — if not too
hard by nature — to make a tender husband. Nor
were the social habits of his day, or even the
traditions of his own family, of the sort which
generate a high and scrupulous standard of wedded
honour. In later years, as we have seen, WeUesley
complained, "No woraan ever loved me"; but most
men get at least as rauch love frora their woraan-
kind as they deserve; and this is true of the
husband of Kitty Pakenhara.
On April 1 2, two days after his raarriage, Wellesley
was elected raember of Parliaraent for Rye. His
imraediate task in the House was the defence of his
brother's Indian administration. Lord Mornington
was charged with "acts of tyranny, fraud, and
hypocrisy against Tippoo " ; of extravagance in
finance, of having increased with reckless expendi
ture the Indian debt, &c. Wellesley, with his sure
grasp of facts, his straightforward simplicity of
speech, his energetic coramon-sense, had no diffi
culty in refuting charges so wUd brought against
an adrainistration so splendid. During the few
years of office. Lord Mornington, to quote Alison,
" added provinces to the British Erapire larger
than France, extended its influence over territories
raore extensive than the whole of Germany, and
vanquished in succession four fierce and warlike

LEAVING INDIA 155
nations who could bring 300,000 men into the
field." This was certainly a record that needed
no apology.
Wellesley, meanwhUe, was busy with his work
as a soldier, accepting with characteristic loyalty
every task laid upon him. He became colonel of
the 33rd after being for ten years its lieutenant-
colonel. He was appointed to the command of a
brigade at Hastings, and brought its discipline and
equipment to a high standard. One of the in
cidents of this period is the solitary interview he
had with Nelson. The story of how the greatest
soldier and the raost famous seaman of the British
race met in a little waiting-room at the Colonial
Office, was told by Wellesley himself in a talk with
Croker,^ and is well known. Wellesley recognised
Nelson from the pictures of hira he had seen, and
by the looped sleeve of his uniforra, which showed
the loss of an arm. Nelson, in his impetuous
fashion, plunged into conversation with Wellesley
at once, without knowing who he was, and " talked,"
says Wellesley, "all about himself, and in a style
so vain and so silly as to surprise and almost
disgust me." Presently something Wellesley said
caught Nelson's quick intelligence, and showed him
that his interlocutor was an uncomraon man. He
went out of the room for a raoraent — "I have no
doubt," says Wellesley, "to ask the office-keeper
1 " Correspondence and Diaries," vol. ii. p. 333.

156 THE GREAT DUKE
who I was — and when he returned he was a different
man, both in style and speech. All that I had
thought charlatan style had vanished ... in fact,
he talked like an officer and statesman ; for the
last half or three-quarters of an hour I do not
know that I ever had a conversation that interested
me more." Would that sorae adequate Boswell
had been in that little room, and recorded the talk
between two such masters in the art of battle !
There were, no doubt, two sides to Nelson's
character, and in that interview Wellesley saw
thera both. His own nature had not the eraotional
range of Nelson's — the touch of irritable genius, the
strain of passion, the capacity for tenderness, as
well as for fire. Had WeUesley taken the sea
as his field, he could have fraraed the daring
tactics of Trafalgar, and have led down on to
Villeneuve's line in the Victory as splendidly
as Nelson hiraself. But he probably would not
have raade that dash on the Spanish three-
deckers by which Nelson broke his admiral's line
at St. Vincent ; and he certainly would never
have said, "Kiss me," to any epauletted Hardy
when he was dying. No wonder that what he
calls " the charlatan style " in Nelson at first
disgusted Wellesley's severe, and more reticent,
temper. At the moment these two famous men were
assessing each other in that dingy little room in

LEAVING INDIA 157
the Colonial Office, Trafalgar, it is curious to reflect,
was only a few weeks distant. How little either
of the two could have foreseen that a century
later a great poet would picture that little one-
armed seaman — as, with the tramp of great multi
tudes, the dead body of the other was carried to
be laid beside hira in the crypt of St. Paul's —
calling from his grave:
"Who is he that cometh, like an honour'd guest.
With banner and with music, with soldier and with priest,
With a nation weeping, and breaking on my rest 1 "

CHAPTER XII
COPENHAGEN
" No doubt it was a violation of the law of property. The law
which protects property is to be respected, but the law which
protects life supersedes it." — Hamley.
PITT died on January 3, 1806, and the "Ministry
of all the talents" carae into power. In 1807
the Catholic difficulty had broken afresh into
politics, and in an odd shape. Roraan Catholics
and Dissenters were forbidden by Act of Parlia
raent to hold comraissions in the array and navy,
and Ministers brought in a BUl to do away with
this injustice, and raake legal the grant of com
missions to any of the King's subjects. But
George IIL, with the narrow vision and unyielding
obstinacy so characteristic of him, refused his
consent to the measure. Ministers resigned, a
new Cabinet was formed by the Duke of Portland,
with Castlereagh at the War Office and Canning
at the Foreign Office, and Wellesley accepted the
post of Chief Secretary for Ireland. He was, as
a matter of fact, in sympathy with the very
policy which had driven the "Ministry of all the
isS

COPENHAGEN 1 59
talents" from office; but he was in politics in
tensely practical. He knew that, as a raatter of
fact, Roraan Catholics and Dissenters alike served
freely, both in the array and the navy; so he
looked on the objectionable law as a dead letter,
and held any new legislation to be unnecessary.
Wellesley held office as Chief Secretary for
Ireland for two years, and did the work — rauch
of it very dirty work — of that post with the
raethodical diligence — a diligence that knew no
scruples and asked no questions — of a good soldier
obeying orders. Seats in Parliament had to be
bought, members had to be bribed; and Wellesley
bought the seats and bribed the members with
entire composure. The King's Governraent had
to be carried on, and this was the accepted way
of doing it. He was a raan of action, not a
philosopher. Long before, he had told Malcolm,
"You see what is good and desirable, I see what
is practicable"; and upon this principle he carried
on his Irish duties.
But he always knew that his true career was
that of a soldier, and stipulated that his political
work should not stand in the way of any call to
active service. The office of Chief Secretary for
Ireland carried with it a salary of ;£'8ooo a year;
but " no political office," WeUesley wrote, " could
compensate me for the loss of the situation which
I hold in the army, and nothing shall induce me

l6o THE GREAT DUKE
to give it up." And in July, 1807, there came a
sudden call to active service.
The Treaty of Tilsit marks the cliraax of
Napoleon's career. He had overthrown in turn
the arraies of all the great Continental States;
the Czar had faUen under his spell, and was
pliant to his will, and it seeraed as if his plan
of subduing the land by the sea — of shutting all
European ports, that is, against Great Britain —
would succeed. The Treaty of Tilsit, if it had
been carried out, would, as a matter of fact, have
thrust Great Britain out of the comity of civilised
nations. Every port in the world would have
been sealed against British ships. And, menacing
as was the famous Treaty in its published form,
there were known to be secret articles which dis
quieted British statesmen still more profoundly.
These are no longer "secret," and they justify to
the full the dread which the mere whisper of
their existence created at the time. Napoleon
and the Czar bound theraselves to make common
cause in any war against any European Power
that either might undertake. The Czar was to
approach England, and require her to surrender
all the French colonies, with all the other conquests
she might have made, since 1805, and recognise the
equality of aU flags at sea. If England refused,
France and Russia were to declare war upon her,
and summon Sweden, Denmark, and Portugal to

COPENHAGEN l6l
close their ports against English goods, and join
the league against Great Britain. If any one of
these three countries refused, it was to be crushed.
Now, Denmark was a naval Power, with a for
midable array of ships, and British statesmen found
no difficulty in guessing that Napoleon intended
to seize the Danish fleet, and use it as a weapon
against Great Britain. And, if the fleets of Sweden,
Portugal, and Denmark were added to those already
under the French flag, England might well lose
the command of the sea. Her own shores would
lie open to invasion.
Napoleon had adroitly arranged that Russia should
postpone, till the end of the year, the final summons
to the British Government. This, he wrote, on July
6, 1 807, " will give five raonths in which the first exas
peration will die down in England, and she will have
time to understand the immense consequences that
would result from so imprudent a struggle." " The
conqueror," says Rose, "who had thrice crumpled
up the Hapsburg States, and shattered Prussia in a
day, might weU believe that the men of Downing
Street, expert only in raissing opportunities and
exasperating their friends, would not dare to defy
the forces of united Europe."^
But "the raen of Downing Street" had the
stubborn courage of their race; they knew they
were engaged in a struggle on which hung their
' "Life of Napoleon," vol. ii. p. 138
VOL. I. ^

1 62 THE GREAT DUKE
national existence; and they showed in this crisis
that they could plan as daringly, and strike as
swiftly, as Napoleon himself.
On July 15, Castlereagh leamed by a letter frora
Sir Robert Wilson, then at the Russian Court, what
were the secret clauses in the Treaty of Tilsit.
Four days later the British Cabinet had forraed their
plans for anticipating Napoleon. The Danish fleet,
it was certain, would be used as a weapon against
them ; they must grasp it first. Within little more
than a fortnight from Castlereagh's receipt of
WUson's letter an expedition, consisting of twenty-
seven ships of the line, with transports carrying an
army of 20,000 men, was on its way to Copenhagen.
Lord Cathcart was in command, with Sir David
Baird, Sir Harry Burrard, and Wellesley as generals
of divisions. Great Britain offered Denmark an
aUiance; the Danish fleet was to be handed over,
and kept as "a sacred pledge" till peace arrived,
Denmark, meanwhile, receiving a subsidy of ;£¦ 100,000
a year, and a pledge of arraed assistance in case she
should be attacked by France. These terms were
refused. The British fleet was off Copenhagen on
August 4 ; on the i6th the troops landed, and the
offer of alliance was renewed, with the warning that,
if rejected, the Danish ships would be seized as
mere prizes.
Copenhagen was ill-prepared for resistance, and
probably might have been seized at once, and almost

COPENHAGEN 163
without a shot. Lord Cathcart, however, undertook
a formal siege. He planted his batteries, and,
against WeUesley's strong advice, bombarded the
city. Wellesley's contribution to the carapaign con
sisted in the business of routing a Danish force,
chiefly militia, numbering 14,000, at Roskilde.
On Septeraber 5 the city capitulated, Wellesley
drawing up the terms; and by October 20 the
squadron was back in England, bringing with it
fifteen Danish line of battleships, nine frigates,
fourteen sloops, and a vast quantity of naval stores.
There may be doubts, still, as to the justice of
British policy in this matter ; though it was justified
at the time, and is still justified, by the law of selt-
preservation. All that England did was to snatch
up a weapon which Napoleon was on the point
of seizing and using against her. But whatever
views may be held as to the moral quality of the
transaction, there is no doubt as to its daring, nor
as to the swiftness and completeness with which it
was carried out. These "men of Downing Street,"
as Hooper says, " conducted that stupendous conflict
by land and sea in which they were engaged with
Roman tenacity, and to a Roman conclusion." In
the Copenhagen business, it may be added, they
acted with a swfftness and energy not often found
even in Roman annals.
Wellesley had joined the expedition to Copenhagen
pledged to return within three months, and resume

1 64 • THE GREAT DUKE
his post as Chief Secretary for Ireland. On his
return at the end of September he found that an
expedition to South America was on foot, and he
was at once consulted by the Cabinet in regard to
it. Great Britain was at war with Spain, and it was
part of her famUiar policy — the natural reward of
her command of the sea — to snap up one by one
the colonies of her enemies. A revolution had
broken out in the Spanish colonies, and General
Miranda, a representative of the revolutionary party,
was in London urging the assistance of Britain.
The conquest of Spanish America was a very tempt
ing bait ; it would avenge, for one thing, the disgrace
of Whitelock's failure at Buenos Ayres. Wellesley
was instructed to draw up a scheme for the expedi
tion, but his sober intellect suspected all revolutions.
As he hiraself said long afterwards, " I always had
a horror of revolutionising any country for a political
object. If revolutions in any country broke out of
themselves, well and good, but," said Wellesley, " do
not stir them up ; it is a fearful responsibiUty." ^
With characteristic loyalty to the instructions
of his superiors, however, WeUesley prepared
elaborate minutes — no less than fourteen are still
preserved — on the proposed expedition, covering
every detail, from the geography of the country
about to be invaded to the number of flints required
for the muskets of the infantry. Amongst aU his
^ Stanhope, p. 69,

COPENHAGEN I65
papers there are, perhaps, none that raore perfectly
reflect his characteristic genius for detaU, as well
as the power of forecasting imagination he possessed.
He seemed to have the faculty of seeing in advance
every detail of the landscape, and every character
istic of the people, their temper and habits, likely
to come within the sphere of operations.
A fleet of transports had assembled at Cork
for the expedition. The force consisted of 9000
raen, and Wellesley was to be in comraand. Had
that expedition sailed Wellesley might, no doubt,
have made his mark in South America as inefface
ably as he did in India, and to-day there might be
a South American Canada under the British flag,
and no Monroe Doctrine. But a sudden and dra
matic turn in events arrested the expedition, and
gave it a new destination. Napoleon was carrying
out his designs for turning Spain into a French
province, with a Bonaparte on its throne as king;
and that circumstance transformed Spain from
an enemy into an aUy. The very troops that were
about to saU for the purpose of depriving Spain
of her American colonies were the first to begin
those six memorable campaigns waged in the Penin
sula to save Spain itself from destruction.

BOOK III
THE PENINSULA

CHAPTER I
A NEW FIELD OF WAR
"I embarked very badly on the Spanish afiair, I confess. The
immorality of it was too patent, the injustice too cynical, and the
whole thing wears an ugly look now I have fallen." — Napolkon at
St. Helena.
WHEN set in the perspective of history, and
illuminated by aU the "secret" records and
correspondence since published. Napoleon's deal
ings with Spain, alike in their object and their
methods, become perfectly clear. His motive in
the whole business corresponded exactly to that of
a footpad who finds on a lonely road sorae elderly
and half-irabecile citizen believed to have jewels
in his pocket. It is possible, of course, to translate
Napoleon's Spanish plans into political terms, and
so make them almost respectable; but the moral
quality of the whole transaction, no matter how
politely described, reraains the same. Napoleon
wished to add another Kinglet to the circle of
dependent royalties about France which he was
creating. One Napoleon already reigned at Naples,
another in Holland, a third in Westphalia; why
should not a fourth be set up at Madrid? A
.69

I70 THE GREAT DUKE
Bourbon sat on the Spanish throne, and Napoleon
had what might be described as a Corsican feud
with all the Bourbons.
Spain, it must be remembered, had been for
eight years the docile ally of France. Her choicest
troops were sent to take part in French campaigns
under other skies ; Spanish ships were in the line
of battle at Trafalgar ; a subsidy of 4,000,000 francs
a month was drawn from the Spanish treasury
to fiU French pockets. But an ally, no matter
how humble, might, at some critical juncture of
affairs, develop an inconvenient desire for inde
pendence. If the flame of an insurrection broke
out in the Pyrenees, or if 100,000 Spaniards came
through the passes and invaded Southern France
while Napoleon was fighting, say, on the Vistula,
the result might be tragical
So Napoleon determined to make Spain a French
dependency, and the methods he adopted were, in
point of morality, on a level with the motives which
inspired them. Spain was invited to join France
in a felonious attack on Portugal, The treaty ot
Fontainebleau was siraply a conspiracy betwixt
France and Spain for the destruction of that un
happy kingdora. The Portuguese Government was
required to close its ports against British commerce
and to put its fleet under the control of France.
The demand was fraraed so as to make a refusal
certain, and a refusal, or even a request for some

A NEW FIELD OP WAR 171
variation in the detail of things deraanded, was to
be the signal for invasion. A French corps under
Junot was asserabled at Bayonne. It was to cross
the Pyrenees, be joined by various Spanish detach
ments, and march on Lisbon. Portugal was to be
dismembered. One-third of its territory was assigned
to Spain, another third was to forra a principality
for Godoy, the Spanish Prime Minister.
But when Napoleon invited Spain to join in
the plunder of an unoffending neighbour he hira
self proposed to use the crime as a trap for the
destruction of his confederate. "This Prince of
the Peace" (Godoy), he said, "is loathed by the
Nation. He is the rascal who wUl himself open
for me the gates of Spain."
Junot began his march on Lisbon, and divisions
of Spanish troops joined him, but the French, not
the Spanish, flag was hoisted on each Portuguese
town in turn. Meanwhile stUl other columns of
French troops, one following fast after another,
crossed the Pyrenees and moved, not on Lisbon,
but on Madrid. All the frontier fortresses of Spain
— Barcelona, Pampeluna, San Sebastian, where the
Pyrenees touch the Atlantic; Figueras, which
guards the pass along the Mediterranean — were
seized by clever tricks. Before Junot reached
Lisbon the French flag was flying on these strong
places, and 60,000 French troops were on the road
to Madrid.

172 THE GREAT DUKE
Napoleon, in a word, tempted Spain to join him
in robbing Portugal, and used the joint adventure
as an occasion for plundering Spain of its in
dependence. In view of the complete story to say
that the ethics of Napoleon resembled those of a
footpad is, on the whole, unjust to the footpad.
Napoleon himself, at St. Helena, looking back upon
the whole story, frankly recognised its wickedness.
"I embarked very badly on the Spanish affair, I
confess," he said. "The immorality of it was too
patent, the injustice too cynical, and the whole
thing wears an ugly look now since I have fallen." 1
If "the Spanish affair" had succeeded, both
Napoleon and history, it may be suspected, would
have taken another view of it. Certainly for
Napoleon, and perhaps for a good many historians,
failure is the last and worst of crimes.
What seemed at the moment almost to justify the
plot against Spain was the character of its govern
ment. It would not have been easy to find under
any roof in Europe a more despicable group than
that in the royal palace at Madrid — the serai-
irabecile king, with his receding forehead and his
slobbering mouth, the complaisant husband of a
wife with the morals of a harlot ; her lover, Godoy,
practicaUy the ruler of Spain; the son Ferdinand,
false, ignorant, superstitious. The air of Spain
would have been a Uttle sweeter had the whole
* Bose, " Life of Napoleon," vol. ii. p, 167,

A NEW FIELD OF WAR 1 73
group been dismissed into space. But a nation like
the Spanish, sensitive and proud, if superstitious, a
nation of 11,000,000, with a great history behind it
and at least some great qualities in it, cannot lightly
be used as a counter in a game betwixt rogues^ and
fools. Murat was at Madrid with 20,000 good French
soldiers, and it seemed probable that, by playing
off one shameful figure in the royal Spanish house
hold against another, all alike would be effaced,
when a sudden burst of popular feeling disturbed
the clever game of mingled force and fraud which
the French were playing. The Spanish court was
at Aranjuez. The whisper ran that Godoy was
about to carry off the King and Queen and put
them into the hands of the French. The mob rose,
stormed the mansion of the favourite, and gathered
round the palace clamouring for his head. The
terrified king agreed to strip Godoy of all his offices,
and later was persuaded, in a new paroxysm of
terror, to sign a short document of twelve lines
abdicating the throne in favour of his son.
But the prospect of a new king on the Spanish
throne, young, and — if only because he was un
known — not unpopular, disturbed Napoleon's plans.
On the morning after receiving the news of the
abdication of Charles IV., he wrote offering the
crown of Spain to his brother Louis, in Holland,
and, on his refusal, offered it to his elder brother,

174 THE GREAT DUKE
Joseph, at Naples. Meanwhile he refused to recog
nise Ferdinand as king, and Charles was persuaded
to withdraw his abdication on the ground that it
had been extorted from him by force.
With rauch ingenuity all the parties in the sordid
drama were beguiled into Napoleon's presence at
Bayonne. Charles was easily induced to sign a
document assigning aU his rights to the throne
of Spain and to the Indies to Napoleon, "the only
person in the present state of affairs who could re
estabhsh order," One pious condition was annexed.
The Roraan Catholic religion was to be the only one
recognised on Spanish soU. There was, " according
to the existing practice, to be no toleration for any
of the reformed religions, much less for infidels."
With this document in his pocket Napoleon, assisted
by the amazing father of Ferdinand, terrified that
unfortunate prince, in turn, into a resignation of
his claim to the Spanish throne. The dispossessed
Spanish royalties were despatched to France, with
a guarantee of sufficient pensions — to come out of
Spanish pockets; for Spain was to pay the price
of her own betrayal; and on May 24 there was
published in the Madrid Gazette a list, drawn up
by Napoleon hiraself, of 150 Spanish notabilities —
dukes and counts, ministers and judges, bishops and
priors — who were to assemble at Bayonne and
petition him to set Joseph Bonaparte on the throne
of Spain.

A NEW FIELD OF WAR 1 75
It was a clever garae. It was played with ruthless
deterraination, and had reached what seemed to be
a triumphant climax. The only factor Napoleon
had left out of his calculations was — the Spanish
people. On May 2 carriages were starting frora the
palace gates in Madrid, carrying Francewards the
various members of the royal household still in that
city. In one carriage, Don Francisco, the youngest
prince of the royal house, a mere lad, was placed
under the charge of a French aide-de-camp. At the
sight the watching mob broke loose, the coach was
torn to pieces, the French aide-de-camp was beaten
well-nigh to death with stones, and Madrid, almost
at a single breath, was in revolt. Scattered parties
of French in every street were kUled, there was
stubborn fighting at a dozen points.
But Murat had an array at his command; the
mob was suppressed with cruel slaughter, and
for a moment everything seemed quiet. " The affairs
of Spain," Murat wrote to Napoleon, "are going off
wonderfully well."
The news of the outbreak of May 2, however,
and of the slaughter which crushed it, crept slowly
through Spain, and then, one by one, the provinces
broke into revolt. Asturias was in flame by May
19, Galicia followed, then Aragon, Catalonia —
province after province — till two-thirds of Spain
had risen against the French. It was, it is true,
a rising, so to speak, in unrelated patches. The

176 THE GREAT DUKE
Spain of that day can hardly be described as having
any general national consciousness. Politically
the nation resembled nothing so rauch as one of
those forms of animal life which have no common
nervous systera. Each province was a separate
nerve-centre. But if this was, from one point of
view, the weakness of the rising, in another it
was its strength. The revolt had no single head
which could be reached and shattered with a blow.
Madrid was not Spain, in the sense that Paris
is France. The suppression of the rising in one
province left unaffected, and even undiscouraged,
the revolt of other provinces.
The geography of Spain, it may be added, gave
curious efficiency to those isolated risings. The
Spain of that period might alraost be described,
for military purposes, at least, as a roadless land.
Rivers that could not be navigated were crossed
by roads impassable to guns. The whole country
was serrated by mountain ranges, in whose wild
passes the march of a sraall army could be arrested,
and on whose naked and wind-blown summits a
big army would starve. Napoleon's vision for the
landscape, his genius for assessing aU the factors
of a great problem, failed him utterly in Spain,
He called the Spanish rising "an insurrection of
monks." He believed that the local revolts could
be put down by columns which, in strength, were
little better than itinerant police. His principle of

A NEW FIELD OF WAR 177
making war support itself — which worked sufficiently
well on the fat plains of Germany, or amongst the
vines of Italy — was expected to work equally weU
on the bleak and erapty tablelands of Spain.
"It was the Spanish ulcer," Napoleon said
bitterly in later years, "which destroyed me."
But at first he believed the ulcer to be a mere
harraless and accidental skin-irritation. He knew
better later, when Dupont, with 20,000 troops, sur
rendered at Baylen, when Moncey failed at Valencia,
and when Verdier had to abandon the siege of
Saragossa. Spanish armies, it is true, won few
victories, and Spanish generals were guilty of every
fault possible in war. But when Saragossa, a city
almost without fortifications, was held for two
months by citizens and peasants, against a French
army 15,000 strong, equipped with siege artillery,
then it became clear that the Spaniards could fight,
and that the Spanish revolt had in it forces which
might well tax even the genius of Napoleon to
overcome. Now the Spanish rising offered to England a
great opportunity, and two men at least — the two
keenest minds at that raoraent in Great Britain
— were able to see it. Pitt saw it with the vision
of a statesman ; Wellesley with the eyes of a soldier.
It was during a dinner, towards the end of 1805,
that, according to a well-known story, Pitt received
the news of the surrender of Mack at Ulm, with
VOL. I. M

178 THE GREAT DUKE
the added intelligence that Napoleon was marching
on Vienna. Sorae one at the table exclaimed that
" all was lost." " No," said Pitt, and he went on to
declare his faith that a national war would destroy
Napoleon, a war which would probably begin in
Spain. It was to the attack of Napoleon on Spain that
Pitt looked for the war which was to save Europe.
And Pitt's reading of the situation was profoundly
true. Hitherto Napoleon had been fighting with
the Courts and armies of Europe; he had never
had to meet the rising of a people. The French
Revolution represented, or believed itself to repre
sent, the cause of the people as against the kings ;
and Napoleon was, in a sense, its political heir.
But in Spain he was visibly using the armies of
France against the people; and using them not
to pull down a throne, but to set one up. He was
fighting, in a word, against all that the Revolution
meant. "Spain," says Napier, "was invaded be
cause she formed a portion of the great aristocracy
of Europe, and she was delivered because England
supplied that aristocracy with the means of winning
a triuraph over the results of the French Re
volution." But that sentence is only one of the
nuraerous instances in which Napier, in his ira-
raortal history, allows his politics to obscure his
vision of facts. It was the appeal of Spain to the
people of England — ^not merely to its aristocracy
— which proved irresistible.

A NEW FIELD OF WAR 1 79
WeUesley, on his part, looked at the situation
with the eyes of a great captain. Moore, the only
soldier of that period who approaches Wellington
in genius, told Castlereagh that Portugal was not
defensible against a superior force. " If the French
succeed in Spain," he wrote, "it will be vain to
attempt to resist them in Portugal. , , . The de
fence of Lisbon or of Portugal should not be
thought of," That memorandum was written on
November 25, 1808; on March 7, not four months
later, Wellesley wrote a history-making memorandum
to Castlereagh in which he gave an exactly opposite
opinion, Portugal, he said, could be defended, what
ever raight be the result of the contest in Spain,
Here was a strip of territory, 100 miles wide, with
a sea front of 300 miles; and, for a British force,
the sea was a secure base. As Wellesley read the
situation there were in it at least three certainties,
all of the first importance. It was certain that
the French could not hold Spain securely, with a
British army on their flank in Portugal; it was
equally certain that they could not strike effectively
at the British in Portugal across an unsubdued
Spain; it was certain, again, that while the British
held a threatening position on their flank, and
Spain was unsubdued, French armies must be em
ployed in the Peninsula on a scale which would
fataUy cripple Napoleon hiraself in central Europe.
It must be remembered that Napoleon had im-

l8o THE GREAT DUKE
posed on hiraself practically the task of garrisoning
all Europe, A force of 300,000 raen was encamped
between the Oder and the Vistula to overawe
Germany and to keep Russia steady. Another
army of 200,000 men was required in Italy as a
guard against Austria, The Spanish rising kindled
a war, wasting, ignoble, and inextinguishable, which
taxed the strength of an array varying from 200,000
to 400,000 men under sorae of Napoleon's best
raarshals. It was a war, too, which, under the
stroke of a British army from Portugal, was
always Uable to some sudden catastrophe deadly
to Napoleon's prestige.
It was this which made Spain the " ulcer " which
destroyed Napoleon ; and Pitt, from the statesman's
point of view, and Wellesley, from that of the
soldier, saw this long before Napoleon himseU'
guessed it. But, considered as a question of strategy,
it was Wellesley who first put his finger on the
flaw in Napoleon's plans. Fortune has its caprices
and its cruelties, but it also has its equities; and
it was in every way fitting that the British soldier
who, in 1 809, saw the vulnerable spot in Napoleon's
strategy, should six years afterwards, at Waterloo,
strike the final blow which brought Napoleon's
career to an end. For it may be safely said if
there had been no Peninsular War there would
have been no Waterloo.
The British Cabinet proposed, at first, merely to

A NEW FIELD OP WAR l8l
nourish the Spanish rising by a plentiful diet of
muskets and cash. The Spanish juntas themselves
believed this would be sufficient; with an heroic
faith in the efficiency of their ovm armies, they
declared there were Spaniards enough to drive the
French over the Pyrenees ; they needed nothing but
weapons and money. It was WeUesley's practical
genius, his gift for seeing, and his relentless sanity
in facing, the hard facts of the case which convinced
the Cabinet, at last, that assistance to Spain, to be
effective, must take the shape of an armed force.
It was accordingly determined to despatch on this
business the troops at that moment in the transports
lying at Cork, intended to saU for Araerica ; and it
was inevitable that Wellesley hiraself should be in
coraraand. Ministers stipulated, however, that he
should not give up his post as Chief Secretary for
Ireland; and it is probable that the mUitary
authorities, at least, jealous of a comraander so
youthful, and unconvinced by his Indian fame,
hoped that he would refuse the command offered
him with this condition. But no political office
could have held Wellesley back from the comraand
of an array proceeding on active service. In twenty-
four hours the whole business in London was settled,
and WeUesley hurried off to Cork,
His force consisted of 9505 rank and file, with
twelve guns. But the guns were without horses,
the cavalry counted only 346 sabres ; there was no

1 82 THE GREAT DUKE
comraissariat and no transport; hospital arrange
raents had been forgotten; the staff was whoUy
inexperienced. All this serves to show that the
British mUitary authorities, after having been at
war almost continuously for twelve years, had not
even yet mastered the alphabet of effective warfare.
That guns needed horses to draw them; that an
army could not exist without a commissariat, nor
a commissariat without means of transport ; that to
send troops into battle without making provision
for their wounded is cruelty — all this seems quite
obvious even to an untrained intelUgence. But in the
days, to quote Professor Oman, "when Frederick,Duke
of York, with the occasional assistance of Mrs. Mary
Ann Clarke, managed the affairs of the British array,"
even these rudiraentary rules of warfare were for
gotten, or ignored. Wellesley's force would have
been absolutely without transport, and his guns so
raany lumps of harmless iron, but that he extorted
permission from London, at the last moment, to
add two troops of the "Royal Irish Corps of
Waggoners" to his force. "It certainly was," said
Wellesley himself in after years, " a shabby enough
start, but it was quite of a piece with our military
policy of the time. The Governraent trusted me,
I believe, as much as it trusted anybody, but it
had no great faith in me as yet, and dreaded nothing
so rauch as throwing a large army ashore on the
Continent."

A NEW FIELD OP WAR 1 83
That mistrust of British generalship, on the part
of the British War Office, had many unpleasant facts
to justify it. In Egypt, it is true, under Abercrombie,
and in SicUy, under Stuart, some gleams of genius
for war had been visible amongst British com
manders; but with these exceptions, the whole
period of the war, whilst it had been rich in fame
for British fleets, has yielded no laurels to British
armies. The British private, indeed, kept the ancient
fighting power of his race. Even of his ill-equipped
force at Cork Wellesley says, " I raust adrait that
the men were adrairable, and admirably drilled ;
all that they wanted was experience." But "ex
perience " — or, rather, the wisdom born of experience
— was exactly the quaUty of which the military
authorities theraselves were tragically destitute.
The reader who, to-day, studies, with araazed eyes,
the contradictory and impossible instructions given
to Wellesley when he sailed for Spain, hardly knows
whether to sigh or to smile.
But the chief proof of folly on the part of the
British War Office is supplied by the fact that
three days after Wellesley's transports had weighed
anchor, and before he had reached Spain, he was
displaced in his command. Burrard was despatched
to supersede him, and Dalrymple to supersede
Burrard. It seemed as if the astonishing War
Office believed that abundance and variety in the
supply of generals would make up for the want

184 THE GREAT DUKE
of more prosaic equipment. It has to be admitted,
of course, that when the scale of the expedition
was changed, and from a detachment of 9000 men
it was to grow to an army of 30,000, then official
etiquette — if that alone is to count — required that
a senior officer should be placed in command.
The increase in the scale of the expedition was
the result of a policy of concentration which had
coramon-sense to recommend it. Half-a-dozen
tiny British armies were scattered over sea and
land, engaged on as many distracted adventures
with no coherent and intelligent strategy behind
them. These were now to be concentrated. Moore
was to bring his force of 10,000 men from Sweden
to Spain. Spencer's division, which had been
swinging for months, a mere grumbling human
pendulum, betwixt Lisbon and Cadiz or Ceuta,
was directed to join WeUesley. Reinforcements
under Anstruther and Acland were to saU from
England, The poUcy of concentration was wise; the foUy
in the choice of leaders, which made it useless,
was supplied by the military authorities. Sir Hew
Dalrymple was to be Commander-in-Chief, with
Sir Harry Burrard as second in command. Moore,
Hope, McKenzie Fraser, and Lord Paget, in com
mand of their respective divisions, were all to
take precedence of Wellesley. From being the
leader of the expedition he thus suddenly found

A NEW FIELD OF WAR 1 85
hiraself the junior of six other generals. On
active service, however, WeUesley always took a
noble reading of a soldier's duty. "Whether I ara
to comraand the army or not, or even to quit
it," he wrote to Castlereagh, " I shall do my best
to ensure its success."
But the choice of new leaders raade success
irapossible. The chief raerit of Dalrymple and
Burrard in official eyes seems to have been that
both Avere Guardsmen. Burrard had served in
America — a very bad school — and had won no
distinction there. Dalrymple was nearly sixty
years of age; he had served in the Netherlands
under the Duke of York — a stiU worse school than
America — and he reflected, with painful accuracy,
the loitering generalship of his type. The British
forces about to land in Spain had to meet arraies
and leaders trained in the school of Napoleon;
and in choosing a comraander for an adventure
so perilous to pass over a great soldier Uke Sir
John Moore, or to ignore a brilliant record like
that of Wellesley in India, in favour of raen
like Burrard and Dalrymple, was little less than
madness.

CHAPTER II
THE FIRST FIGHTS
" Boli;a was one of our most important affairs ; it was terrible
hard work to drive off the French. . . . Our men fought monstrous
well." — Wellesley to Lobd Stanhope.
IT was a daring adventure on which WeUesley
sailed. There were at that moment 140,000 French
troops in Spain, with 400,000 more, the veterans
of a score of victories, north of the Pyrenees,
ready to join them. These armies had Napoleon's
genius to shape their strategy, and marshals trained
in Napoleon's school to lead them; and Spain —
though British statesmanship may be forgiven for
not knowing it — while it offered an unrivalled
battlefield, could supply neither transport, nor food,
nor effective allies. And Wellesley's 9000 men,
with practically no cavalry, and only two troops
of the Royal Irish Waggon Guard to horse his
guns and do the work of the commissariat, was
stepping on this field to meet an array of foes so
forraidable. The expedition sailed from Cork on July 12, 1808,
but Wellesley pushed on ahead of his heavy trans-
186

'The Century Magazine."

^ Map of the
C.Gata SPANISH CAMPAIGN

EngUsh Miles
O 20 40 60 80190

Walker GfBoutQ.U s>

THE FIRST FIGHTS I»7
ports in a swift frigate, devoting his leisure hours
on board to the study of the Spanish language with
the help of a dictionary and a Spanish version of
the Book of Common Prayer, a book stUl preserved
as a relic. He must have had an unusual apti
tude for acquiring languages, for by the time he
reached Castile he says, "I was perfectly able
to understand the addresses of congratulation made
to me for some Uttle successes I had had about
Oporto."! The landing of the tiny force at Mondego Bay
was completed on August 3. If any one who
watched the troops falling into line on the beach
on that date had been told that their commander
would be sailing back to England two months
later, the fact would have been accepted as a
sufficient proof, either that the adventure itself had
failed, or that Wellesley had blundered signally as
a leader. It is sometimes forgotten that WeUesley
had not one, but two, terras of service in the
Peninsula. The first lasted not quite nine weeks.
It began with landing at Mondego Bay, August 3,
1808, and ended October 4, when he sailed for
England. The second lasted over five years; it
began when he reached Lisbon, in comraand of all
the British forces in Spain, on April 22, 1809; it
ended when he reached England, traveUing via
Toulouse and Paris, on June 23, 1814. The raost
* Maxwell, vol. i. p. 98.

1 88 THE GREAT DUKE
famous battles and sieges of the Peninsular War
are crowded into this latter period; but that first
brief carapaign of less than nine weeks, from which
Wellesley emerged practically to be tried by court-
raartial, was in sorae respects more visibly and
instantly successful that even the later and better
known chapter in railitary history.
The actual fighting coramenced with a splutter of
skirmishing at the outposts at Obidos on August 15;
it ended on the 22nd — only seven days later — with
Kellerman, one of the most brilliant of the French
cavalry leaders, riding into the British headquarters
to ask for a suspension of arms, and offer the
evacuation of Portugal, Roli9a was fought on
August 15, Vimiero on August 21. In five days,
that is, Wellesley twice defeated the French. In
less than three weeks from his landing he had
delivered a kingdom, and Portugal, with its capital
and fortresses, passed from under the French flag.
But for the fact that at the most critical moment
Burrard first, Dalrymple later, arrested Wellesley's
movements, the world might have seen the sur
render of a French army on a more startUng scale
than that of Dupont at Baylen,
Those who planned the expedition never dreamed
of a success so swift and complete ; yet — such is the
irony of huraan affairs — the effect of the campaign
was to set the United Kingdom in a flarae of anger,
and alraost wreck Wellesley's career !

THE FIRST FIGHTS 1 89
WeUesley's earliest discovery, after landing his
troops, was that his Portuguese allies were abso
lutely worthless, Freire had a force of 5000 men,
but most of them were without arms, all were with
out discipline, and Freire hiraself was wrong-headed
and irapracticable to a degree which would have
rendered even Napoleon's Old Guard, under his
leadership, useless for military purposes. He re
quired Wellesley to supply his force with arms, with
cash, and even with provisions, and he practically
claimed the right to determine the whole plan of
the carapaign, Freire marched as far as Leira with
the British, but when he reached that town he
seized the very stores of food which had been
pledged to Wellesley, and then declined to go
further, unless the British undertook to provide
rations for his entire force, Wellesley borrowed
some infantry and a couple of squadrons of horse
from hira, put the whole under the command of
Colonel Trant, and allowed Freire to wander off on
his own account,
Wellesley chose the coast road for his advance,
in order to keep touch with his transports, and
flrst got news of the French on August 14. Dela-
borde, a very capable leader, with a force of about
6000 men — reduced, later, to less than 5000 by
the detail of six corapanies to garrison Peniche —
was in his front, guarding the road to Lisbon.
Loison, marching at speed from Santarem, was

190 THE GREAT DUKE
on his way to join Delaborde, Junot's plan was
that both forces should unite and hold the road
to Lisbon against the British till, having gathered
all his fighting strength, he was ready for the
battle on which hung the fate of Portugal.
Leaving his heavy baggage at Leira, Wellesley
pushed on, and on the 15 th his leading detach
ments — sorae companies of the 60th and 95th
Rifles — clashed with the French outposts in front
of Obidos, The raen were eager, and ran in on
the French with such rash fire, and pushed thera
back so persistently, that they came within reach
of Delaborde's rear-guard, and were roughly
handled, losing two officers and twenty-seven rank
and file killed and wounded, " The troops," wrote
Wellesley, " behaved remarkably well, though not
with great prudence," Lieutenant Bunbury of the
95th was kUled, the first British officer to fall in
the long succession of Peninsular campaigns.
As Delaborde fell back, he reached a point where
he had to raake his choice betwixt perilous alter
natives. He was equidistant from Loison, who
was pushing on to join him, and Lisbon, which
he had to guard against Wellesley's advance. If
he raoved towards Loison, he left the road to
Lisbon open; if he feU farther back on the road
to Lisbon, he risked his coraraunications with
Loison. He elected to make a stand at Roli§a.
It was a gallant choice; for if Wellesley flung his

THE FIRST FIGHTS I9I
whole force upon hira, he would have to meet
the shock of 13,000 with only 5000. But both
Wellesley's generalship, and the fighting qualities of
the British soldier, were at that moment unknown
quantities, and Delaborde had just confidence in
himself and in his hardy veterans. The fight which
foUowed was, said Wellesley, " the fiercest and
most bloody for the number engaged I ever saw."
It is memorable as being the first in which French
and British tried their strength against each other
in the Peninsula.
The road to Lisbon as it approaches Roliga tra
verses a sandy plain, with wall-like lines of hiUs
on either hand. Roliga itself is the name of a
high ridge which lies across the plain like a rough
bar, touching the lateral hills at its extremities.
A mile behind it is a second, and stiU loftier, ridge,
with a narrower front, thick with scrub and scored
deep with ravines. Delaborde thus had two posi
tions. The first was strong; if driven from it,
the second might well be found almost impregnable.
He hoped to hold these positions till Loison joined
him, and together they would bar WeUesley's ad
vance on the capital tUl Junot brought up all his
forces, WeUesley's superiority of force determined his
tactics in this fight. He held back his centre,
whUe Trant, with some battalions of Portuguese
infantry, climbed the heights to the west, and

192 THE GREAT DUKE
Fergusson, with two brigades and six guns, pushed
over the hills to the east, thus turning both ex
tremities of the French ridge. The British army
resembled, in a word, a crab thrusting its two
claws round the flanks of Delaborde's position.
But Delaborde was a fine soldier; his men were
famUiar with battle, and had the cool adroitness
of veterans. He held his position till Trant and
Fergusson were showing on either flank, and the
skirmishers in the British centre were vexing his
front. Then his wary and quick-footed veterans
slipped from betwixt the tips of Wellesley's claws,
and fell swiftly back on the narrow, and much
raore difficult, position to the rear,
Wellesley followed patiently, and repeated his
tactics, thrusting out his claws afresh, and across
more difficult country, to turn the French flanks,
holding back his centre meanwhile until the turn
ing moveraents had their effect. But the eagerness
of his regiments disarranged his plans. The 9th
and 29th pushed forward from his centre up the
rugged front of the hill held by the French, and
when they were engaged it was necessary to sup
port them.
Four deep, water-worn gullies corrugated the
steep slope, each rough with stones, and matted
with scrub. The 29th and the 9th in support
should have taken the ravine to the right, but,
led by its too eager colonel. Lake, it not only

THE FIRST FIGHTS 1 93
pushed on too soon, and too far; it took the
wrong track. The inner ravine seemed to Lake
obviously the right one, since it ran Uke a gash
in the hUlside straight towards the centre of the
French position; and to a British soldier, what
better path could be wished than that which led
him by the shortest way to his eneray's front?
But the ravine narrowed as it clirabed to the
dimensions of a mere wrinkle. The track over the
water-worn rocks was fit only for goats ; it certainly
offered no space for a charging column of infantry.
It ran deep into the centre of the French position,
too, before it mounted, by a steep ascent, to the
crest, so that, upon the breathless, straggUng, per
spiring files in red, at the bottom of the ravine,
a deadly musketry fire was poured from either
flank and from the ridge ahead.
The dogged files pushed on, however, till they
reached the suramit, and as the men, breathless
and disordered, clambered out of the ravine they
tried to form. In front was a line of Swiss, who,
curiously enough, did not fire upon them, some of
them turning up the butts of their muskets, others
shouting they were friends. The spectacle for a
moment puzzled the British, and arrested their
rush. Then, before the broken files had shaken
themselves into order, there came a sudden shout
and the sound of running feet from the rear.
Some French companies, who had beeu firing down
VOL. I. N

194 THE GREAT DUKE
the ravine upon the flanks of the climbing British,
found they were likely to be cut off. They were
veterans; they fell at a word into column format
tion, and, splendidly led, ran in upon the disordered
line of the 29th, swept through it and over it,
killing its colonel. Lake, and carrying off in triumph
six of its officers and thirty of its rank and file.
The shattered 29th fell back for a little distance
down the slope, but re-formed, aided by the 9th,
and clirabed again to the summit.
Delaborde held his position gallantly. Three
times his veterans flung themselves upon the heads
of the British columns, as they eraerged from one
or other of the ravines, and pushed them back.
But the British were not to be denied. They came
on a fourth time, and broke through, now at one
point, then at another, along the crest, and made
good their footing. By this time, too, Wellesley's
" claws " were reaching for both ends of Delaborde's
position, but that adroit soldier cleverly slipped
free again.
His retreat was a flne bit of soldiership. Four
battahons formed his rear-guard, and two, in turn,
held back the pursuit while the other two doubled
to the rear. This was done again and again, some
squadrons of French horse helping the infantry by
riding in gallantly upon the leading files of the
British. A mile to the rear, the line of retreat
ran through a difficult pass. Here the French

THE FIRST FIGHTS 19S
commander's dainty tactics were no longer prac
ticable. The British were too close, and the pursuit
was too determined, to allow the pass to be held,
and Delaborde was roughly handled, and had to
leave three of his guns behind. But the whole
fight was a proof of the gallant Frenchman's skill.
He had held two positions, in turn, against an
enemy greatly superior in strength to himself, and
had escaped undestroyed.
It was a bloody fight. The forces actually en
gaged probably did not exceed 5000 men, but of
this number the French lost 700 in killed, wounded,
and missing ; the British nearly 500, Delaborde, by
a long night march, put himself beyond WeUesley's
reach, but the British had gained their end, and
the road to Lisbon lay open before them. Dela
borde himself was wounded. The colonel of the
29th, Lake, the son of Lake of Indian fame, was
a soldier of brilliant promise. He was standing,
bareheaded, in front of his regiment, waving his
hat and calling upon his men to follow, when he
was shot. The last word that passed his lips was,
" Forward," Junot, if not a great general, was, at least, a
daring and impatient soldier, and he realised that
the fate of Lisbon must be decided outside the city
itself. It hung on the result of a battle in the
open with the British, and he hurried to put his
fortunes to the test. He left a sufficient garrison

196 THE GREAT DUKE
to hold the city, made the best arrangement he
could with the Russian fleet, at that moment in
the Tagus, sent ahead his main body, and on the
night of August 15, started himself with the re
serve. He moved so fast that, on the afternoon
of the 17th, he heard far off araong the hills faint
pulses of sound — the distant thunder of the guns
at Roliga. Loison joined him on the same day,
Delaborde on the 19th; so that by the 20th, with
aU his avaUable force — roughly 14,000 men — more
than 2000 being cavalry — and twenty-three guns, he
was within striking distance of the British.

CHAPTER III
VIMIERO AND THE CONVENTION
" I am too much accustomed to receive blame for the actions of
others to feel much concern upon the subject, and I can only
endeavour not to deserve any for my own." — Wellesley.
WELLESLEY had halted after his fight with
Delaborde. He learned of the arrival off
the coast of reinforcements under Anstruther and
Acland, and he took up a position at Vimiero to
cover their disembarkation. This was a dangerous
and tedious business, as the surf breaks heavily
on the sands at the raouth of the Maceira; but
the troops landed, adding 4000 good infantry to
his strength, and this was worth waiting for.
Amongst the regiments were the 43rd and the 52nd,
forming part of what was afterwards the immortal
Light Division. On the moming of the 21st — the
day of the battle — the disembarkation was still
incomplete, but Wellesley had over 16,000 British
troops, besides Trant's Portuguese, nearly 2000
strong, under his hand. He knew Junot was
approaching at speed, and he chose his ground
for the coming fight. 197

198 THE GREAT DUKE
It was a long ridge, rough and steep, in outline
an obtuse triangle. The river Maceira, with its
narrow valley, breaks through the apex of the
triangle. On its bank, in the very throat of the
gap, stood Vimiero, a straggling village; in front
rose a solitary hill with a sharp ascent, its slopes
covered with vineyards and thickets. Wellesley
made this hill the key of his position, holding it with
the brigades of Fane and Anstruther. Fergusson's
brigade, with Trant's Portuguese, was drawn up
across the narrow valley behind the village. Wel
lesley had put his strongest brigades — those of
Hill, Nightingale, Acland, and Bowes — on the ridge
running back southward towards the coast, which
formed the right of his position. His left was
slenderly held, as he did not expect to be
attacked there; and Junot showed at least one
sign of good generalship — he struck at his enemy
where he was least expected.
Wellesley was busy arranging his line of battle
when he learnt that Sir Harry Burrard had arrived.
He came, characteristically enough, in the last and
slowest ship, at the tail of Acland's convoy, and
with his arrival the chance of commanding a British
army against one of Napoleon's chief lieutenants
seemed to slip out of WeUesley's hands. Sir
Harry Burrard, however, showed no signs of coming
ashore. His array, it is true, was falling into
position for battle, but even that circumstance

IVaiMr&Bouiallsc

VIMIERO AND THE CONVENTION 1 99
did not quicken the slow blood in that leisurely
general's veins, or hasten his raoveraents. Haste,
in Sir Harry Burrard's code of military ethics, was
an inconvenient virtue, if, not, indeed, a vice,
Wellesley went off through the surf to his new
general and put him in possession of the state of
affairs, Burrard listened, forbade any offensive
movement on the part of the troops, and then
announced that he was resolved to stay on board
ship for another night. The stern joys of battle,
the uncertain chances of victory, were not to be
allowed to rob hira of one raore corafortable night's
sleep. Meanwhile everything was to wait untU Sir
John Moore's force, 10,000 strong, arrived — or Sir
Harry Burrard had finished his slumbers. Wellesley
had to struggle back to shore through the heavy
sea, leaving his superior officer to the enjoyment
of peaceful repose.
But the question whether a battle should be
fought was settled, not by Sir Harry Burrard, or
even by Wellesley, but by Junot. That impatient
soldier knew that while he had no hope of re
inforceraents, delay might bring many to the
British, and he wasted no tirae. At midnight,
while Sir Harry Burrard, it may be hoped, was
weU on his second sleep, the British outposts caught
a far-off rumbling sound in the hills. It was not
thunder, nor yet the sound of guns; it was the
rattle of Junot's artillery and transport waggons

200 THE GREAT DUKE
crossing the long wooden bridge leading to the
village of Facaia. The news was carried in to
Wellesley, and his brigades were ordered to be under
arms, and in position, an hour before dawn.
There was a pause, however, in Junot's advance.
Like a wise soldier, he had halted to rest his men,
and let thera cook their breakfast. But by nine
o'clock, clouds of dust rising high from a fold in the
hiUs told that the French were coming. Presently
they broke out of the pass, deployed into a broad
front, with some cavalry squadrons leading, and
came steadily on. The British were puzzled to find
that Junot's columns were of an odd complexion.
The famUiar dark-blue tint had vanished; the
columns coming on to the beat of the drum were
of a dingy brown. It was sumraer tirae; the
French infantry wore white linen frocks, and carried
their blue uniform coats buttoned over their knap
sacks. Wellesley believed he had guessed the point at
which Junot would strike, and he expected to see
his battalions wheel to the left, so as to threaten the
right of the British position. But Junot had other
tactics. A bugle-call rang out, the cavalry squadrons
leading wheeled to the right and pushed northward,
a long column of infantry followed, while the main
body of the French halted in front of the isolated
hill, which formed the British centre. With one
sure glance, Wellesley read his opponent's plan of

VIMIERO AND THE CONVENTION 20I
battle. He intended to strike heavily at the British
centre, and, when the fury of battle was raging
there, would turn its left flank, and roll it back in
confusion. Wellesley stands high amongst the great soldiers
of all time for the sure judgment, the cool and
swift decision with which he met all the changing
fortunes of the battlefield. He watched the French
for a moment, then gave a quiet order. Instantly,
four of his brigades — those of Acland, Nightingale,
Fergusson, and Bowes — with six guns, were marching
at speed from his centre and right to the ridge on
the British left, and, as they moved below the hill-
crest, Junot could not see how the position on
which his right wing was about to hurl itself was
being strengthened. Yet Junot had at least a gleam
of a good soldier's insight. He guessed what
Wellesley would do. Brennier's division was march
ing at the quick-step to turn Wellesley's flank, and
Junot despatched another coluran under Solignac to
support Brennier. But this movement dislocated
the French line of battle. A wide gap stretched
betwixt the force Junot was holding in hand for
his stroke at WeUesley's centre and the brigades
with which he hoped to turn the British left. The
gap in his front, however, brought no counter-stroke
from Wellesley ; he had no cavalry, and was standing
on the defensive.
Junot struck swiftly and fiercely at Wellesley's

202 THE GREAT DUKE
centre. The attacking force consisted of two brigades
of infantry, with seven guns, Kellerman with four
battalions of Grenadiers being in reserve. The
French excel in attack; their tiraiUeurs ran for
ward, a fringe of daring skirmishers ; the battalions
followed in close and massive columns. Across
the track along which they came stood the 52nd and
97th, a long, thin, steadfast Une of red, hidden as
yet from the French by a fold in the ground. The
French attack was gallant ; their columns came up
the hill with loud shouts, and a venomous crackle
of musketry from the leading files. The British
batteries barked at them in vain. The skirmishers
of the 52nd and 97th were driven in; the charging
French broke into a tempest of exultant cries.
But as they reached the surarait of the low ridge,
the long line of red infantry came into sight. It
flashed into fierce volleys, and that wide and dreadful
front of fire brought the French to an instant stand
still As they halted, the extremities of the British
line swung forward so that the head of the French
attack was practicaUy shut within a sort of obtuse
triangle of flame. Nothing could stand against
these sustained and rolling volleys, and the French
coluran was swept in wreck and confusion down
the hill. Delaborde himself led in that charge,
and led it gallantly, and was again wounded.
Junot was an obstinate fighter. He rallied his
men, pushed his guns nearer the British position.

VIMIERO AND THE CONVENTION 203
and sent forward his columns again. But the
second attack failed in shorter time, and with even
more disastrous slaughter, than the first. WhUe
the combat, with its eddies of smoke and blasts
of musketry fire, was, for the second time, still
rolling down the hill, Junot struck once more, but
it was much in the spirit of a gambler who thrusts
his last coin on the table. Two battalions of
Grenadiers, veteran soldiers, formed his sole re
serve, and Kellerman himself took them into the
fight. Instead of climbing the front of the con
tested hill, he pushed past its flank, into the gap
betwixt it and the heights to the north, and here
for the moment the French found no dreadful line
of volleying infantry across their path, though the
fire from either flank was heavy. Acland, who
had the reserve of WeUesley's left wing, saw that
Kellerman was likely to break through, so he flung
some companies of the 95 th and of the 43rd on
the flank of the French column, and brought it
to a standstill. This gave tirae for the 43rd to
strike at its head. The fighting was fierce and
close, for the French were veterans, unaccustomed
to defeat; but the men of the 95th and 43rd were
not to be denied. After the battle, 120 French
Grenadiers were lying at this spot, slain with the
bayonet, a fact which shows how close was the
struggle, and how furious was the valour, on both
sides

204 THE GREAT DUKE
At last, out of the smoke and tumult, came the
wreck of Kellerman's broken column, and Junot
knew he had failed. He sent forward a dragoon
regiment to cover the retreat of his shattered
Grenadiers; Wellesley had only two slender
squadrons — 240 men in aU — of the 20th Light
Dragoons, but he launched these at the broken
French infantry and the cavalry covering their
retreat. Two squadrons of Portuguese horse started
in the charge with the British, but after galloping
a few paces drew rein, swung round, and rode to
the rear. The aoth, however, with Colonel Taylor
leading, rode home on the French dragoons, broke
through them into the retreating Grenadiers, and
cut them up cruelly ; nor did they draw rein until
checked by a stone wall ; then two French cavalry
regiments charged their flank and in turn broke
them up, their colonel, Taylor, being left dead on
the scene of the fight.
Junot's thrice repeated attempt to break through
Wellesley's centre had failed ; the story of his attack
on the British left remains to be told.
When Brennier judged that he had reached the
point where he could turn Wellesley's flank, he swung
his columns inward, and then found to his disgust
that a deep ravine, with steep banks, formed a
sort of dry ditch to the ridge on which the British
stood. He had to set his battalions again on the
march in search of a point where he could cross.

VIMIERO AND THE CONVENTION 205
The second French division under Solignac came in
due course to the sarae ravine, contrived in some
way to cross it, and proceeded to climb the slope.
They saw nothing before them but a few British
skirmishers. Just over the brow of the hill, how
ever, were the 36th, the 40th, the 71st, and the
82nd — drawn up two-deep. The men were lying
down, and the hUl-top seemed empty; but as the
heads of Solignac's battalions made their appearance
above the curving ridge, the British suddenly stood
up — a far-stretching line, overlapping the French
to right and left. At the word of comraand, that
menacing red Une carae swiftly on. From officer
to officer ran some brief order; the muskets rose
to a level ; a ragged edge of flame broke out along
the whole front, and the converging volley simply
tore the heads of the leading French battalions
into fragments. Then through the sraoke the
shaken French saw the British Une advancing — a
majestic two-deep front of over 2000 bayonets.
SoUgnac's veterans clung for a few desperate
moments to the hill-slope, then they broke away
down it in disorder, leaving their guns behind
them. The 36th and 40th pressed on the dis
ordered columns, but the 71st and 82nd drew to a
halt round the captured guns and the raen fell out
of their ranks.
At that moment Brennier, who, in his tum,
had crossed the ravine and climbed the ridge.

2o6 THE GREAT DUKE
and was now in search of the British line, made
his appearance on the hill summit above the two
regiments clustered about the captured guns. He
was a good soldier, he had four battalions of
infantry under his comraand, and he struck in
stantly. His men, in column formation, came
at the double down the hill, two squadrons of
dragoons riding with them in the charge. The
guns were recaptured in an instant, and the
British were driven back in disorder. They raUied,
however, the 29th frora the second line joined
thera, and Brennier's column was tumbled into
flight. It was a great moment for Wellesley when he
watched the last of Junot's coluran recoil, broken
and defeated, from his front. He had met one
of Napoleon's chosen commanders on equal terms,
and had both out-generalled and out-fought him.
When Brennier, wounded and a prisoner, was
brought to him, the single question the agitated
Frenchman asked was "whether KeUerman had
charged." That question told WeUesley's quick
mind the whole state of affairs with the French,
Kellerman commanded Junot's last reserve, and
Brennier wanted to know whether it had been
thrown to the fight. Kellerman had charged,
and been routed, and WeUesley knew that his
enemy had practically fired his last cartridge and
used his last bayonet and sabre. His forecasting

VIMIERO AND THE CONVENTION 2 07
genius read in a moment all the possible issues of
the victory. The day was early, there were 9000
British troops who, as yet, had not fired a shot.
Hill's brigade had only to be sent along the Lisbon
road, and Junot would be cut off frora the Torres
Vedras pass and frora Lisbon, and be thrust into
the tangle of wild hills about Santarem. He raight
be driven to surrender, and such a success would
give a new energy to public opinion in support
of the war in great Britain itself; the news would
run like fire through Spain and fan the rising
there to a new intensity. The event would be
felt in every carap and Court throughout Europe.
He turned eagerly to Burrard, who was by
this time on the field. "Sir Harry," he said,
"now is your time to advance. The enemy is
completely beaten, and we shall be in Lisbon in
three days." But in Sir Harry Burrard's opinion,
hurry was one of the most hateful things. The
army had done enough. Why should it do any
more ? At that moraent an aide-de-camp rode up
from Fergusson, reporting that Solignac's broken
columns were in a gap in the hills and could be
captured. But even that did not shake Sir Harry
Burrard's resolve to "do no more," and the troops
were ordered back to their quarters, leaving Junot
astonished at the absence of pursuit, and practi
caUy the entire British army, down to the youngest
drummer boy, swearing with disgust at the escape

208 THE GREAT DUKE
of their enemy. "There is nothing for us soldiers
to do here," said WeUesley bitterly to his aide-
de-camp, "except to go and shoot red-legged par
tridges." Sir Harry Burrard, having thus frozen victory
at the moment of its triumph, no doubt enjoyed
another comfortable night's repose. The next
moming Sir Hew Dalrymple appeared on the
scene, and Sir Harry's office as Commander-in-
Chief came to an end. It had lasted not quite
twenty-four hours, but during that brief period
he had achieved two remarkable results. He had
robbed the British army of the natural fruits of
its victory, and he had saved Junot's army from
destruction. Sir Hew Dalrymple was as slow-minded and as
leisurely as Sir Harry Burrard, and a good many
years older; so the habit of caution in him was
naturally stronger still, and caution, in Sir Hew
Dalrymple — where Wellesley was concerned — was
made more sensitive by jealousy. Wellesley was
called into the presence of the two generals and
required to explain his plans. It was like an
eagle trying to explain to two elderly barn-door
fowls its theory of flight. WeUesley proposed that
Moore with his force of 10,000 men should advance
to Santarem and turn the eastern flank at Torres
Vedras, while he, himself, turned its western ex
tremity; the two forces would then join hands

VIMIERO AND THE CONVENTION 209
before Lisbon. It was a daring plan, since it
involved the division of the British forces, but
Wellesley had not only mastered the geography
of the country, he read the mind of his opponent
and raade a just estiraate of his strength; so he
was sure of his plan. Junot would attempt no
second stroke ; he would probably cross the Spanish
frontier and endeavour to fight his way through
Spain to join Bessieres.
But Dalrymple sniffed with chilly contempt at
this reading of the situation. Wellesley, he was
persuaded, had acted with " great rashness '' already,
and would act stUl more " rashly " in future if not
controlled by more prudent minds than his own.
" In the first interview that I had with Sir Hew
Dalrymple," said Wellesley afterwards, "I had
reason to believe that I did not possess his con
fidence; nay, more, that he was prejudiced against
any opinions I should give hira."
In his own slow way Dalryraple prepared to move
on the 23rd, but explained that he would wait for
active operations against Junot until Moore joined
hira, which could not be till a week later. These
two reraarkable generals, in a word, arranged to
give Junot nine days in which to recover frora
his defeat, and prepare for the defence of Lisbon,
But whUe Dalryraple was slowly "getting ready"
to move, a piquet of Portuguese cavalry gaUoped
into the camp and reported the French army to be
VOL, I, ^

2 10 THE GREAT DUKE
approaching. The troops ran to arms, but the
French "army" dwindled as it drew near into a
squadron of French horse, with General Kellerman
riding at its head, carrying a white flag. He came to
propose a suspension of hostilities, for the purpose of
drawing up an agreement by which the French would
surrender Portugal. Kellerman's arrival, at all events,
showed that Wellesley had read the whole situation,
and the mind of his enemy, with perfect accuracy.
Had Junot been Massena, he would have held
on to Lisbon and Portugal, even after his defeat
at Vimiero ; but he had the defects of his tempera
ment. His courage was of the efi'ervescent order;
it was fierce, but was easily chilled. He moved
swiftly, and had struck at the British gallantly, but
his stroke had failed, and he was not of the stubborn
and dogged temperament that fights long against
disaster. If he could raake reasonably honourable
terms the surrender of Portugal seemed to him a
smaU price to pay to save his array, with all its
booty, frora the fate of that of Dupont. So KeUer-
raan came riding into the British headquarters
with his white flag, and a proposal for a convention.
He came, in his own words, to " see if he could get
the army out of the mouse-trap."
The envoy was astonished to find he had to deal,
not with the keen and masterful soldier who had
held the ridges of Vimiero so stubbornly, but with
a slow-minded general of the ancient school, in the

VIMIERO AND THE CONVENTION 211
person of Dalryraple. The quick-witted Frenchraan
soon read Dalryraple's limitations — his ignorance of
the situation, his reluctance to risk another battle,
his exaggerated sense of Junot's strength — and he
promptly enlarged his terms. The negotiations were
long and tedious, and as a result, the much-debated,
fiercely abused Convention of Cintra — as it is in
correctly termed — was drawn up. As Kellerman
was an officer of an inferior rank to himself,
Dalryraple desired Wellesley to sign the agreement.
Wellesley's cold reason approved of the substance
of the Convention. It was a gain to have the whole
of Portugal, with its capital and its fortresses, sur
rendered without a shot being fired ; but there were
clauses in the agreement to which he strongly
objected, and these were exactly the clauses which,
when they were published, made British opinion
furious. The Convention offended the Portuguese, since it
was concluded without reference to them, and it pro
foundly exasperated opinion in Great Britain. What
the Convention did not contain afironted British
sentiment as rauch as what it did. Dalrymple might
have required the exchange of British prisoners of
war in France for Junot's troops, or he might have
demanded that the French army should surrender
all the public and private plunder with which its
baggage was congested. Convents, churches, libraries,
art galleries, had been rifled by the French with

212 THE GREAT DUKE
tireless industry. Junot under the Convention was
entitled to send an officer to France with news of the
Convention to the Eraperor. This officer's baggage
was free from examination, and included the choicest
books and many valuable MSS. from the Royal
Library of Lisbon. Junot's own baggage was rich
in valuable specimens of natural history stolen from
the Public Museum. After the Convention was
signed, indeed, Junot plundered the Suprerae Court
of Lisbon, carrying off coin to the value of ;^2S,ooo,
made up of the moneys of litigants held by the court.
How did it come to pass that whUe Spanish troops
and generals had been able to compel the surrender
of a French army, British troops and generals had
allowed a defeated French army to sail away in
British transports, with flags, and guns, and the
plunder of a kingdom? Sir Hew Dalryraple's in
corrigible habit of loitering did him, at this moment,
great injury. The protests of the Portuguese
authorities against the Convention reached London
before the terms of the Convention itself; so that
the most objectionable clauses in it were at first the
only ones known.
With much trouble and delay, and many private
assassinations of French officers and soldiers by
the exasperated Portuguese, Junot's army was got
afloat, and carried with it much plunder, though
much was arrested in transit. It stUl numbered
over 25,000 good soldiers.

VIMIERO AND THE CONVENTION 21 3
After the Convention Dalrymple made a feeble
effort to find a use for WeUesley. He proposed to
send him into Spain as his agent; but Wellesley
declined the proposal. " Such an agent," he wrote,
"should possess the confidence of those who eraploy
him, ... He should be acquainted with the plans
of his employers, the means by which they pro
pose to carry thera into execution, , , , I certainly
cannot consider rayself as possessing those ad
vantages , , . and you must be the best judge as
to whether you hajve made up your own raind, and
are inclined to confide in me to the extent which,
in my opinion, would be necessary in order to derive
any general advantage from such a mission." As
WeUesley told the House of Comraons afterwards :
"From the first hour these officers landed, nay,
even before they landed, I clearly perceived that I
was not in possession of their confidence. I did
everything I could, however, to forward their objects,
though I differed from them in opinion." ^
Wellesley practically found himself unemployed,
and mistrusted, and on September 17 obtained
leave to return to England to attend to his duties
as Irish Secretary.
When he landed in London, public opinion against
the Convention was furious, and, to his astonish
ment and wrath, Wellesley discovered that he
himself was the chief object of public execration.
i " Despatches," iv, p, 138,

214 THB GREAT DUKE
He was hooted in the streets, caricatured in the
Press, attacked in the House of Commons. He
had fought two battles in seven days and won
them both, but this was forgotten. His signature
was on the hated Convention, and he was, for a
time, looked upon as its chief author, Wellesley,
as when the mob, raany years later, broke the
windows of Apsley House, bore hiraself with sUent
and haughty scorn, but his anger was deep. His
victories had been robbed of their natural fruit;
his plan of action had been rejected ; he had been
displaced in command by two elderly and slow-
minded generals; he was now threatened with the
fate of Byng, He had, as many instances in his
career show, a sufficient sense of his own value and
a capacity for unforgetting resentment, and if he
had possessed, say, Carlyle's gift of splenetic utter
ance, or if some railitary and sympathising Boswell
had listened to his private talk, and reported it, his
biography at this stage would make interesting Utera
ture, But Wellesley had a wise gift for silence,
WhUe the attack on him, however, was loudest
he suggested to Castlereagh that he might ride
in his carriage to the King's Levee. Castlereagh,
although a loyal friend, was a politician, with a
politician's sensitiveness to the shouts of the crowd,
and with some hesitation he advised his friend not
to attend the levee; "the crowd was violent," &c.
WeUesley — as he told the story afterwards to

VIMIERO AND THE CONVENTION 215
Croker— repUed that " at first I only proposed to
attend the levee as a matter of respect due to the
King, but now it becomes a question of self-respect
and duty to my own character." He insisted on
knowing whether this advice not to go to the
levee proceeded in any degree from His Majesty.
" I will go to the levee to-morrow," he added, " or I
wUl never go to a levee in my life."
In public aft'airs, however, Wellesley held that
private resentments had no place, and anger kindled
by personal injuries no office. A court of inquiry
was appointed; it consisted of six general officers,
with Sir David Dundas as president, and was in
structed to inquire into "the causes and circum
stances " of the Convention, as well as the conduct
of the generals; and Burrard and Dalrymple were
recalled to appear before it. Wellesley was character
istically honest in his statement to the court.
Burrard, he said, "had fair military grounds" for
arresting the advance of the British array at
Vimiero; but he declared his conviction that, "if
he had been allowed to follow up that battle,
there would have been no need of concluding the
Convention which had given so much offence.''
Dalrymple had shaken his head at the "rashness"
of his strategy. " I will ask this court," said
Wellesley, "what would have been said, and de
servedly said, and felt, of rae throughout the array
and the country, and by the Governraent by which

2l6 THE GREAT DUKE
I was trusted, if, with such a force I had hesitated
to advance upon the enemy." He defended with
overpowering strength of reason his plan of adopt
ing the line by the sea coast and depending for
suppUes upon the shipping. " The communication,"
he said, "was so short that it defended itself. I
was enabled to keep my force collected in one body,
and I had ray arsenals and magazines close to me
whenever I required to communicate with them."
But Wellesley was magnanimous to his opponents. He
defended that part of the Convention which accepted
the surrender of Portugal at the price of the escape
of Junot's array. It saved at least three months of
time and a tragical cost of life and suffering.
The seven generals came to a finding so de-
liciously vague that it was sent back to them for
re-consideration. In their final report they agreed —
but by a majority of only one vote — highly to
coramend Wellesley's manageraent of the army, and
his conduct of the two fights. They declined to say
whether or not the pursuit after the battle of the
2 ist could have been effective; they commented,
with mild severity, on the extraordinary arrauge
raent which gave the unhappy British array three
different commanders in twenty-four hours, and
ended by the healing statement that " unquestionable
zeal and firmness appear throughout to have been
exhibited by all three of the generals concerned,"
This finding was accepted, though the Cabinet,

VIMIERO AND THE CONVENTION 21 7
through the lips of the King, expressed its dis
approval of some clauses in the Convention, and
severely rebuked Dalrymple for failing to forward to
London till September 4 the terms of an armistice
which was agreed upon on August 22, This leisurely
general, it seems, loitered even in his correspondence
with the King. Wellesley, in a private letter at the
time, described the report as "an extraordinary
production.'' " Opinions, like colours," he said, " are
now matters of taste, and may in this view of them
be inconsistent with each other. But a court of this
description ought, if it touches facts, to state them
correctly." Byron, in some stanzas of "Childe
Harold," afterwards withdrawn frora publication,
expressed the more angry mood of public feeling
on the whole subject :
" But Mercy cloak'd the babes beneath her wing ;
And as they spared our foes, so spared we them ;
(Where was tbe pity of our sires for Byng ?)
Yet knaves, not idiots, should the law condemn ;
Then live, ye gallant knight, aiid bless your judges' phlegm ! "
WeUesley at this period must have felt that fate
was very cruel to hira. That a pair of drowsy
generals like Sir Harry Burrard and Sir Hew
Dalryraple should wreck his carapaign was cruel, but
it was the very irony of injustice that at the end he
should stand linked in public opprobrium with them
as having betrayed the honour of the British flag. The
injury to his own fame was bad, but partnership in
their ignominy was more exasperating still. He

21 8 THE GREAT DUKE
was fighting for his own professional existence before
seven elderly major-generals in a room at Greenwich
Hospital when he ought to have been commanding
a British army against the French in Spain, This
was an absurd anti-climax which was certainly not
in his calculation when he sailed in command of the
British forces from Cork.
Wellesley during the six weeks the court of
inquiry was in session must have often looked be
yond the venerable heads of the seven generals to
Spanish landscapes, which Napoleon was just then
fiUing with the thunders of his guns, and shaking
with the tread of his battahons. During the last
week of the inquiry, his thoughts may well have
turned, with a sort of stem impatience, to the
wild GaUcian hills where Moore's sullen regiments,
pinched with hunger, and whipped by storms, were
on their retreat to Corunna. Wellesley, perhaps,
was the one man in the three kingdoms who under
stood the strategy of Moore's campaign, and the
degree in which the fate of Spain hung upon it.
It was his own conception ; he probably understood
it better than even Moore himself. He had, at all
events, a greater faith in it, and he ought to have
been playing a part in it. Instead, he was fretting his
reserved and proud spirit while listening to Sir Hew
Dalrymple demonstrating the " rashness " with which
he had advanced to Roliga, and fought at Vimiero.
Burrard and Dalrymple found no further em-

VIMIERO AND THE CONVENTION 219
ployment, but Wellesley's figure was too masterful,
and his perforraances too notable, to be destroyed
by a passing burst of unjust public anger. The
keener minds of the nation, at all events, recognised
his genius. Walter Scott, in a letter to Lockhart,
written at the time, said : " I would to God Wellesley
were now at the head of the English in Spain.
His late examination shows his acute and decisive
talents for coraraand ; and although I believe in my
conscience that when he found himself superseded, he
suffered the pigs to run through the business, when
he might in sorae measure have prevented them,
" ' Yet give the haughty devil his due ;
Though bold his q^uarterings, they are true.' "
Perhaps the most gracious hght shed on Wellesley's
somewhat hard character is suppUed by a letter
which he wrote to Sir John Moore before leaving
Portugal. Moore and Wellesley belonged to different
schools in politics, and politics in those days counted
for much ; but WeUesley was too good a soldier not
to recognise Moore's great gifts. On September 17,
whUe stiU sore from his dealings with Dalrymple,
he wrote to Moore : " It is quite irapossible that we
can go on as we are now constituted. The
Comraander-in-Chief must be changed, and the
country and the army naturaUy turn their eyes to
you as their commander." He would use, he said,
every effort to get him appointed, and would gladly
serve under him.

CHAPTER IV
FRENCH AND BRITISH BATTLE -METHODS
" 'Tis strange that with this little army we are able to keep
them in check." — Wellesley.
WELLESLEY was accustomed to look back
on Vimiero with peculiar satisfaction. It
seemed to hira a model fight. In the report of
the action which he sent to Sir Harry Burrard
he said : " This is the only action that I have
ever been in, in which everything passed as it
was du'ected, and no mistake was made by any
of the officers charged with its conduct." He
could not say this of Roliga. The two fights, as
a matter of fact, were quite unlike each other in
character. At Roli9a, Wellesley was attacking, and
it is clear that his adroit opponent evaded his stroke.
Wellesley's combinations were too deliberate, not
to say too slow, to catch Delaborde's agile battalions.
The test of good generalship is to be strongest at
the point of contact with the enemy. Wellesley
had more than double the strength of Delaborde,
but less than one-half his troops took part in the
fight; and while he might have overwhelmed his

FRENCH AND BRITISH BATTLE-METHODS 221
opponent, he only succeeded in fighting him on
equal terras. This cannot be regarded as an ex
ample of successful generalship. Wellesley could,
on occasion, strike with lightning-like swiftness, as
he showed, for example, at Assaye, at the Douro, at
Salamanca, and at Vittoria, but there is no gleam of
that swiftness visible at Roliga.
At Vimiero, however, Wellesley was fighting on
the defensive. The French were attacking, and
WeUesley's generalship is shown in the certainty
with which he read Junot's plan of attack, and
the speed with which he carried his brigades from
the right wing, where they were out of the fight,
to his left wing, where they stood ready to crush
the French colurans as they clirabed the slope to
turn his left.
All the characteristic features of Wellesley's
generalship, in fact, emerge at Vimiero. He made
use of a new forra of battle, and one which ex
actly suited the British teraper. The Continental
generals delighted in display. As preparation for
battle, horse, foot, and artillery were spread out
in many - coloured parallelograms, all visible — to
the last man and horse and gun — on the slope of
a range of hUls, or on some vast plain. Who does
not remember the magnificent display of his army,
as many -tinted as a rainbow, which Napoleon
offered to the gaze of the unmoved British on the
morning of Waterloo ?

2 22 THE GREAT DUKE
Wellington's plan was to conceal his strength.
His brigades were hidden behind a hill- crest, in a
dip of the ground,, or under the screen of the
houses and hedges of a village. All the enemy
saw was a fringe of skirmishers, a few cavalry
pickets, and scattered clusters of guns. But when
the skirmishers were driven in, and the breathless
French battalions had just reached — and imagined
they had carried — the hostile position, then the
long, red line, steady and silent — but terrible —
suddenly broke into sight. In a moment it flamed
into shattering volleys. "At the end of the war,"
says Professor Oman, " the French raarshals grew
very chary of attacking any position where
Wellington showed fight ; for they never could tell
whether they were opposed by a raere rear-guard,
or by a whole army skUfuUy concealed."
It was exactly so at Vimiero ; Delaborde's column
striking at Wellesley's centre, and SoUgnac's breath
less battalions climbing the ridge to the left, had
no expectation of the long line of steadfast infantry
which awaited them till it was too late to escape its
destructive fire.
At Vimiero, in a word, Wellesley put his theory —
that in the shock of battle the line would always
beat the coluran — to the test, and found it held
good. It is absurd to say that Wellesley invented
the line as an answer to the attack of the column,
Stuart had used it brilliantly at Maida. It was as

FRENCH AND BRITISH BATTLE-METHODS 22 3
old as Prussian tactics in the wars of Frederick,
The French onfall in colurans of corapanies — with
a front of forty, or at the raost of eighty men, and
a depth of perhaps eighteen — ^was really preceded
by an attack in line, in the shape of a thick, far-
stretching spray of tirailleurs; and the French
excelled in this skirmishing attack. They ran
forward with great daring, and tormented, alraost
to the point of disorganisation, the battalions of
the enemy. Then the onfall of the solid columns
usually proved irresistible.
Now, Wellesley met this preliminary attack of
the French tirailleurs with an answering line of
light infantry; and the fighting betwixt these two
irregular fronts was coraraonly both obstinate and
bloody. At Barossa, for exaraple — which was
fought on Wellesley's methods, though it was not
one of his fights — the covering screen of light
troops lost fourteen out of twenty officers, and
more than half its rank and file ; and all this
before the coluran and the Une closed on each
other. Wellesley's plan was to hold off the French
tirailleurs with his light infantry till the French
columns were close up; then the skirmishers ran
back through the intervals, and the massive column
and the long, thin, steadfast line met in the shock
of a charge; and always the line beat the column.
As Professor Oman puts it: "800 raen m the
two-deep line which WeUington loved, could aU

224 THE GREAT DUKE
use their muskets, and thus pour 800 bullets
per volley into a French battalion of the same
strength; which, from its narrow front, could
only return, at most, 160." The men in the
centre of the French column invariably fired in
the air. If the coluran tried to deploy, as each
corapany struggled out from the mass, it was
shattered by musketry fire. Foy himself, in his
private journal, records that "for a set battle of
equal numbers on a limited front, the English
infantry could always beat the French. I keep
this opinion," he adds "to myself; I have never
divulged it." 1
It must be added that the British had a better
weapon than the French, and knew better how
to use it. The old Brown Bess carried spherical
bullets, twelve to the pound. It was deadly within
a range of 100 yards, and the coolness of the
men enabled them to use it with destructive
effect. The French musket was a smaller bore,
carrying bullets weighing seventeen to the pound.
It is easy to understand how the better musket,
the heavier bullet, and the wider front of fire,
corapletely overmastered the French attack in
column. At Roliga, Wellesley, for the first time, tried
his skill in war against generalship of Napoleon's
school. He found it cool, adroit, and daring,
' Diary of Foy quoted by Oman, vol. i. p. 112.

FRENCH AND BRITISH BATTLE-METHODS 225
columns and battalions being used as a good
fencer uses his rapier, with thrust and parry of
the cleverest sort. India had showed Wellesley
no generalship of this quality.
The opposing forces in this battle studied each
other's bearing and methods with keen curiosity,
and as though subtly conscious of the long struggle
betwixt the two nations, on a great field, which
was beginning. Foy tells how the French officers,
from the hiU crest, watched the British regiments
spread out on either flank and move on their
front with steady, unhalting, fate-like advance.
The Unes and parallelograms of red were broken,
sometimes, by the rough ground, but they fell
into perfect order again, and, careless of the wrath
of the French guns, or the galling musketry of
the French skirmishers, kept on their way.. These,
the Frenchmen realised, were not the uncertain,
undisciplined masses, mere crowds with guns, like
the Spanish armies with which they were familiar.
Rifleman Harris, who was a private in the 95 th,
and fought in the skirmishing line at Vimiero,
gives in his narrative a vivid description of the
appearance and behaviour of the French. He
was standing in the ranks of the light company
just before the battle began :
"As I looked about me," he says, "and just before the
commencement of the battle, I thought it the most imposing
sight the world could produce. Our lines glittering with
VOL. I. P

226 THE GREAT DUKE
bright arms; the stern features of the men, as they stood
with their eyes flxed unalterably upon the enemy ; the proud
colours of England floating over the heads of the different
battalions ; and the dark cannon on the rising ground, and
all in readine.ss to commence the awful work of death, with
a noise that would deafen the whole multitude."
Harris was with the skirmishers, and they were of
course driven back as the solid French column came
on, but the raen of the 52nd and 43rd, standing in
line, were disgusted to see their skirraishers driven
in. " As we fell back, ' firing and retiring,' galling
them handsomely as we did so, the men cried out
(as it were with one voice) to charge. 'D  n
them ! ' they roared, ' charge ! charge ! ' General
Fane, however, restrained their impetuosity. ' Don't
be too eager, men,' he said as cooUy as if we were
on drill-parade in old England. ' I don't want you to
advance just yet. Well done, 95th,' he called out, as
he galloped up and down the line ; ' well done, 43 rd,
52nd, and well done all ! I'll not forget, if I live, to
report your conduct to-day. They shall hear of it
in England, my lads.' "
Harris, again, watched the charge of the 50th, the
regiment which Charles Napier afterwards com
manded at Corunna.
" They dashed upon the enemy like a torrent breaking bounds,
and the French, unable even to bear the sight of them, turned
and fled. Methinks at this moment 1 can hear," he says, "the
cheer of the British soldiers in the charge, and the clatter of the
Frenchmen's accoutrements, as they turned in an instant, and

FRENCH AND BRITISH BATTLE-METHODS 227
went off as hard as they could run for it. Their Lights, and
Grenadiers, I, for the first time, particularly remarked on that
day. The Grenadiers were all fine-looking young men, wearing
red shoulder-knots and tremendous-looking moustaches. As they
came swarming upon us, they rained a perfect shower of balls,
which we returned quite as sharply."
What happened in the skirmishing line where the
clash was fiercer, and the fighting was resolved into
personal terras, is described with great aniraation.
Harris could do justice to the soldier-like aspect of
his enemies. "I still remember," he says, "the
pleasing effect afforded by the sun's rays glancing
upon their arms as they forraed in order of battle to
receive us," He watched the wild scene on the
crest, when the leading companies of the 29th were
destroyed. " We ourselves," he writes, " caught it pretty handsomely, for
there was no cover for us, and we were rather too near. The
living skirmishers were lying beside heaps of their own dead,
but still we held our own till the battalion regiments came up.
' Fire and retire ' is a very good sound, but the Rifles were not
over-fond of such notes. There were two small buildings in
our front, and the French having managed to get into them,
annoyed us much from that quarter. A small rise in the
ground close before these houses also favoured them ; and our
men were being handled very severely in consequence. They
became angry, and wouldn't stand it any longer. One of the
skirmishers, jumping up, rushed forward, crying, ' Over, boys !
Over ! Over ! ' when instantly the whole line responded to the
cry, ' Over ! Over ! Over ! ' They ran along the grass like
wildfire, and dashed at the rise, fixing their sword-bayonets as
they ran. The French light bobs could not stand the sight, but
turned about and fled, and, getting possession of their ground,
we were soon inside the buildings."

228 THE GREAT DUKE
Visiting these buildings after the fight, he says :
" A great many of the French skirraishers were lying
dead all about. I recollect that they had long,
white frockcoats on, with the eagle in front of their
caps. This was one of the places from which they
greatly annoyed us, and, to judge from the appear
ance of the wounded and dead strewn round, we
had returned the compliment pretty handsomely."
Harris gives us a glimpse — almost the first glimpse
— of Hill, perhaps Wellington's most trusted leader,
in the confusion of the fight, when the 29th were
being hard pushed. " Lord Hill," he says, " was near
at hand, and I observed him come gaUoping up. He
put himself at the head of the regiment, and restored
them to order in a raoment. It seemed to me that
few men could have conducted the business with
more coolness and quietude of manner, and in such
a storm of bullets as he was exposed to, I have
never forgotten him to this day,"
That " coolness and quietude " in such a scene, and
at such a critical moment, explains the value Welles
ley put on Hill as one of his divisional generals.
When Broke began his immortal duel with the
Chesapeake somebody proposed to him that the
British ship should blossom out into flags. "The
Shannon has always been a quiet ship," was Broke's
reply. And the " quiet "form of courage — self-coUected
and cool — is about the deadliest quaUty on the battle
field, and the most valuable asset of a battle-leader.

CHAPTER V
SOULT AND THE DOURO
" Alexander might have turned from such an adventure without
shame."— Napier.
IT was on November 25, 1808, that Moore wrote
that famous memorandum to Castlereagh in which
he declared that Portugal " was not defensible against
a superior force," and that "its defence was not to
be thought of." Less than eight weeks afterwards,
on January 16, Moore hiraself feU at Corunna; and
the meraories of that brUliant but ill-fated adven
ture gave weight to his judgraent. Great Britain
had risked — and lost — her best army and, it was be
lieved, her best general, on the field of the Peninsula,
and her statesmen and her people alike found little
that was terapting in that arena.
But less than eight weeks after Moore's death,
on March 7, Wellesley gave a judgment exactly
opposed to that of Moore. "Portugal," he wrote,
" may be defended, whatever the result of the con
test in Spain." Moore was a loyal and accom
plished soldier, "as brave," to use Wellington's
phrase, " as his own sword," but he lacked that

230 THE GREAT DUKE
vision for the whole landscape of the war which
Wellesley had. War is an uncertain business, but
looking through the dust and confusion of Spanish
affairs Wellesley discerned the essential facts. The
French could not hold Spain with a British array
in Portugal on their flank; they could not strike
effectively at the British across an unsubdued
Spain; and while a British force in Portugal kept
the Spanish insurrection alive. Napoleon would be
fatally handicapped on the European stage.
The final arguraent for maintaining the struggle
in Spain was that this would save Great Britain
herself becoming the field of war. Napoleon's
whole policy had for its objective the overthrow of
England. Trafalgar had been fought and lost ; but
Napoleon hoped to " conquer the sea by the land " ;
to shut every civilised port, that is, against British
coramerce, and build up a new naval combination
which would enable him to strike at the eneray he
most hated on her own soil. Wellesley urged that
they should fight the French in Spain that they
might not have to fight thera in Kent or Midlothian.
In his memorandum Wellesley assessed all the
factors of the problem with profound judgment.
A force of 20,000 British in Portugal — he afterwards
raised the number to 30,000 — aided by Portuguese
levies could hold their own against any French
force less than 100,000 strong. And the French,
he reckoned, could not gather that force against

SOULT AND THE DOURO 23 1
him without such concentration of their armies as
would give back nine-tenths of Spain to insurrec
tion. The whole history of the campaigns in the
Peninsula proves the truth of that judgment. The
French had to abandon territory to gather armies ;
and the necessity for putting down the insurrection
behind them made it impossible for them to con
centrate their armies long enough for an effective
campaign against Portugal.
Massena in 1810 made his stroke at the British
with a force not far short of the 100,000 which
Wellesley held to be the maxiraura of strength
the French could bring into the field against him ;
and the lines of Torres Vedras made even that
great effort vain. In 1809, after Talavera, and in
1 81 2, after Salamanca, the French, by surrendering
whole provinces to the Spanish, gathered for a
raoment a force which drove Wellesley back to the
Portuguese frontier; but the essential conditions of
the problera reraained exactly as Wellesley read
thera, and the history of the Peninsular War is the
fulfilraent in every detail of Wellesley's forecast.
Wellesley's claira to genius in war of the highest
order might almost rest upon the paper just de
scribed — ^formulating the scherae for using Portugal
as a safe base of operations against the French in
Spain, and on a letter to Castlereagh written on Sep
tember 5, 1808, in which he discusses the Spaniards
themselves as one of the factors in the struggle.

232 THE GREAT DUKE
He gives to Castlereagh an estimate of the value
of Spanish armies; and though as yet he had
never seen one drawn up in battle line, or on the
march, yet the history of the six carapaigns which
followed sustains to the very letter Wellesley's esti
mate. They are capable, he says, of brUliant flashes
of courage, but they lack steadiness. They are
without arms, ammunition, clothing, and military
equipment of every description. They may be
formidable and efficient in their own country, but
must not be reckoned upon out of it. In some
cases they will fight the French in equal nurabers,
and with success; in others a French battalion,
with cavalry and artillery, wiU disperse thousands
of them. Their fighting quaUty, in a word, has in
it a fatal strain of uncertainty.
But Wellesley was able to read, too, with clearest
vision, the mind of Napoleon, and to forecast the
steps he would take. The surrender of Dupont
at Baylen, the evacuation of Portugal by Junot,
would do more than sting Napoleon's pride; it
would so wound his prestige that he was certain
to make some immediate and overwhelming effort
to trample out the rising in Spain, and to drive
the British frora Portugal. He had 400,000 veteran
troops, farailiar with victory, available. He would
pour these through the Pyrenees on Madrid, and
would then sweep across southern Spain. What
could Great Britain do to arrest, or at least delay.

SOULT AND THE DOURO 233
that red tide of war? Wellesley, though he was
not a seaman, and lived a century before Captain
Mahan wrote his famous book, understood the value
of sea-power in war alraost as clearly as that shrewd
thinker himself. It would be possible, he argued,
to land a British force in the north of Spain —
say in the Asturias, and frora that position it could
strike at the flank and rear of the French advance
on Madrid, And with a British force, with its base
of supply at Corunna or Ferrol, threatening the
right flank of the French, it was certain that the
rush upon southern Spain, and upon Lisbon, could
be arrested. But Napoleon would have at his
command overwhelming strength, so that "for the
British army," wrote WeUesley, " we must have re
treat open, and that retreat raust be the sea." If
forced to their ships, say at Ferrol or at Corunna,
they could be brought round again to the Tagus.
A stroke from the Asturias upon the flank or
rear of the French advance to Madrid; a secure
retreat to the sea — this, it will be seen, was alraost
exactly the story of Moore's campaign two months
later. And the difference in military genius between
Moore and Wellesley may be measured at this very
point, Wellesley, months ahead and without exact
knowledge of the country, fraraed the plan of that
campaign. It was no doubt his letter to Castle
reagh which induced the British Cabinet to under
take the enterprise. But Moore himself, who carried

234 THE GREAT DUKE
out the plan, and usually gets the fame of it, neither
invented it nor believed in it.
In the "Life of George Canning and his Times,"
by Stapleton, it is told how, after Moore had re
ceived his final instructions frora Castlereagh, and
had taken his leave, he turned back, opened the
door, and said, "Remember, my Lord, I protest
against the expedition, and foretell its faUure,"
Castlereagh told this incident to the Cabinet when
it met. "Good God," Canning exclaimed, "do you
mean to say that you have really allowed a man
entertaining such feelings towards the expedition
to go and take comraand of it?" Perhaps, how
ever, it heightens the conception of Moore's fine
courage to know that, believing the campaign must
end in disaster, he yet carried it out with such
cool resolution.
But it is clear that WeUesley who planned that
carapaign had a sweep of genius beyond that of
the raan who predicted its failure; and Walter
Scott's estimate of the two men is true, "Moore,"
he wrote to Lockhart, " was rather an excellent
officer than a general of those comprehensive and
daring views necessary in his dangerous situation.
Had Wellesley been there," he added, " the battle
of Corunna would have been fought and won at
Somosierra." In this surmise, however, Scott was
certainly wrong, Wellesley, with Napoleon and
Ney marching to cut him off from the sea coast.

SOULT AND THE DOURO 235
would not have stopped that cold December raorn
mg to fight Soult at Sahagun. His original plan
mcluded a retreat as its climax, and Wellesley, the
most wary of leaders, would not have risked the
destruction of his army for the sake of a barren
victory over Soult. But in his general comparison
betwixt Wellesley and Moore Scott was right.
Moore lacked the daring and comprehensive views
of the younger soldier. The one factor of Moore's
campaigns which Wellesley did not realise was the
fashion in which a British array goes to pieces in
retreat. He knew that better after his own retreat
frora Burgos. Colborne, who was Sir John Moore's
military secretary, and shared in the hardships of
the famous retreat, wrote afterwards: "We can
stand to be shot at as well as, or better than, most
people; but we have not the military patience
with which our enemies are gifted."
The British Cabinet, with all its faults of adminis
tration, did not lack courage, and on April 2, 1809,
Wellesley was put in coraraand of a new expedi
tion to Portugal. George IIL, it is amusing to
learn, was strongly opposed to the scheme, and he
explained to Castlereagh, so late as October 3, 1 809,
that he " acquiesced in the appointment of so young
a lieutenant-general as Lord Wellington to the com
mand of the troops in Portugal," as he hoped the
tender years of the commander would " prevent any
considerable augmentation of his army." Castle-

236 THE GREAT DUKE
reagh, however, undertook to raise the British forces
in the Peninsula to a total of 30,000 men. Beresford
was already busy organising Portuguese levies ; and
on April 22, Wellesley landed at Lisbon to begin
the great work of his life. He had a generous
sympathy for Cradock, who comraanded the British
force in Lisbon, and stipulated that, if he found
that general engaged in active operations, he should
act on his own judgment as to the necessity of
superseding him. But when Wellesley arrived, the
situation was clear, and on April 27 he assumed
the direction of affairs.
The French forces in Spain at that moment
consisted of seven array corps, under generals
familiar with victory, and making, with their
scattered detachraents, a total force of 144,000
infantry and 29,000 cavalry. They held alraost
every fortress and every important strategic point
in Spain. Victor with 30,000 troops was within
eighteen marches of Lisbon. Soult with a force
nearly as great menaced the Portuguese capital
from Oporto. Wellesley, to meet such an array
of armed strength, had less than 30,000 good troops
— English and German — with a spray of Portuguese
levies half-drilled, Ul-armed, and of very uncertain
fighting value. But in thirty- six hours Wellesley
had formed his plan of campaign. It was to be
aggressive, audacious, and, above all, swift.
Victor at Merida was the nearer enemy, Soult

SOULT AND THE DUORO 237
at Oporto the more remote. But Victor had Cuesta
on his front; it was impossible to strike at him
without concerting movements with the Spanish
general, and this meant delay. Soult held Oporto,
a great city, with fertile provinces about it; and
Wellesley determined to strike at him first.
Five days were spent in organising his forces
and making provision for guarding Lisbon against
a possible advance by Victor; and on April 29
Wellesley started on his great adventure. His
British regiments were made up chiefly of drafts
from the militia, for Moore's war-hardened veterans
were stUl in English hospitals, and when they were
fit for service they were sent — most Ul-fated of soldiers
— to take part in the tragedy of the Walcheren ex
pedition. After providing for the detachraents which
were to watch Victor, Wellesley had for the dash on
Soult only 17,000 British and 7000 Portuguese troops.
Oporto, with a deep and swift river serving as a ditch,
was a strong railitary position ; and Wellesley with a
force so modest in scale and much of it so un
certain in quality, was undertaking to drive from
it one of the best of Napoleon's raarshals with an
army of veterans.
Soult had thrust out two strong detachments,
one under Loison at Amarante, to the north-east
of Oporto, the other under Franceschi on the Vouga,
to the south-east. His position resembled a triangle,
with Oporto as the apex, and Amarante and Vouga

238 THE GREAT DUKE
as the tips of the enclosing sides. Wellesley's plan
was to strike at Amarante with a column under
Beresford, drive back Loison, and so cut off Soult's
retreat northward. At the sarae time he made an
elaborate combination for striking the other tip
of the French triangle and destroying Franceschi.
While these movements were in progress, a French
officer, d'Argenton, made his appearance in the
British lines with news of a conspiracy amongst
Soult's troops. Wellesley listened to the tale, but
pushed on his divisions without pause. The French,
he knew, raust be beaten in the field if they were
to be driven out of Spain. Quarrels amongst them
selves would decide nothing.
The stroke at Franceschi faUed. The infantry
brigades marching at night to turn his flank fell into
confusion ; the alert Frenchman took the alarm and
fell back, covering his retreat by a succession of
cavalry charges. All day there were bursts of some
what harraless fighting betwixt the British and the
retiring French, but at dusk the latter reached the
Douro, and crossed it by a bridge of boats, which
was blown up after they were across. However, the
attack on Franceschi, though it failed, served a
useful end. It fixed Soult's attention on the lower
reaches of the Douro, and so gave Wellesley the
opportunity of making his dash across the river
upon Oporto itself.
Soult held the city with 13,000 good troops; he

SOULT AND THE DOURO 239
had collected every boat on the river and brought it
to the French side, and the stream, swift and deep and
broad, seemed impassable. His baggage and conva
lescents had been sent off, and the French general
contemplated a leisurely retreat eastward towards
Salamanca. This would give hira a province rich
in supplies, and bring him into touch with the
French forces in central Spain. Wellesley, in his
sober fashion, did not imagine that he could destroy,
or capture, Soult ; but he hoped to drive hira, with
a broken army, into the wild hill country beyond
Orense, and so cancel him as a factor in the war.
Wellesley pushed on with his central column,
making a wide swing eastward to escape the French
cavalry scouts, and on the morning of May 12,
his brigades were on the southern bank of the
Douro, directly opposite the city, but hidden from
observation behind the height on which stands the
Serra convent. Wellesley himself, with two or three
of his staff, clirabed to the surarait of the ridge. The
city with its quays, and convents, and tangle of
narrow streets, lay before him in the morning sun.
Through his glasses he could see, far down the
stream, the French vedettes, keeping vigilant watch
seawards. Infantry pickets were on guard at the
opening of the streets which led down to the river ;
a column of infantry with many waggons was form
ing up outside the north-eastern gates of the city.
Betwixt WeUesley's waiting battalions and the city.

240 THE GREAT DUKE
held by 13,000 French veterans, rolled the swift
current of the Douro, at that point 300 yards wide.
What chance was there of attack? "Alexander,"
says Napier, " might have turned from such an
adventure without shame."
But WeUesley was still studying the city through
his glasses. Opposite was a large unfinished build
ing, the bishop's seminary, the solid brick wall which
surrounded it running down to the river on either
side. It was unguarded. A couple of infantry
battalions could hold it against anything except
artillery. Its eastern face could be swept by a
battery of guns frora the farther bank. WhUe
Wellesley watched and brooded. Waters, his best
intelligence officer, carae up with a bit of good news.
A barber had just crossed the river from Oporto in
a little skiff. With the help of the prior of Amar
ante Waters secured the use of the barber's boat,
and — with one or two peasants — pushed out into the
stream. The boat with its tiny crew crept steadily
nearer the French bank, and with each stroke of
the oars Waters expected to see the flash of French
muskets. No musket shot, however, broke on the
quiet morning air. The bank was reached, and
four half-stranded barges were got afloat and tugged
laboriously to the southern bank.
This gave Wellesley the opportunity he wanted.
A brief order sent Murray, with two infantry bat
talions, a couple of guns, and two squadrons of the

SOULT AND THE DOURO 24 1
14th Light Dragoons, on the march to the ferry at
Avintas some miles up the river, with orders to
cross and move down the stream, so as to cover the
right flank of the seminary. Another order brought
three batteries of guns into the convent garden
where, concealed by the vines, they were trained
upon the left flank of the building. When all was
ready, Wellesley gave the quiet order, "Let the
men cross," and twenty-five of the Buffs, with a
subaltern, clambered into the first barge and pushed
off. Wellesley, with the group about him, watched
the boat as it approached the French bank. Success
or failure hung on its fortunes. It touched; the
soldiers with their officer ran up the bank into the
garden of the seminary and closed the big iron gate
opening into the road beyond. The other barges
were now crossing, and the little jets of red-coated
soldiers followed each other up the bank, and spread
themselves along the garden walls, piling up wood
and earth to make a bank from which they could
fire over the coping.
The barges carae back again, and yet again, were
crowded with soldiers, and sent across. Still there
was no sign of alarra from the French side. Soult
was in his bed asleep ; his staff were at their dinner ;
his vedettes were watching the lower reaches of the
river. On the third trip of the barges, Paget crossed
to take command at the seminary. Presently there
arose on the French bank a clamour of voices, the
VOL- L Q

242 THE GREAT DUKE
roll of drums, a splutter of shots, and almost in
stantly — for the French are quick in war — a line of
French tirailleurs, with solid infantry columns behind
them, came at the quick-step down the streets leading
to the seminary. At that sight, as if at a signal,
both banks broke into life. The British regiments
showed along the whole edge of the river, and
Sherbrooke raassed the Guards at the point where
the boat bridge, now broken, had once stretched
across it. The French opened artUlery fire on the
seminary, but they had not reckoned with the
British guns. From across the stream eighteen
pieces instantly poured a deadly flank fire on the
French. The first shot, from a five and a half inch
howitzer, burst over the leading French gun on the
opposite bank as it was in the very act of unlimber-
ing, and killed or wounded every raan and horse
attached to it. Under the stroke of a fire from
eighteen guns, not 400 yards distant, the French
battalions were swept back, a broken mass, into the
shelter of the houses. Again and again they tried
to cross that terrible belt covered by the British
guns, but in vain. The seminary could only be
attacked on its northern front.
By this time Paget, who was in command of the
seminary, had been severely wounded, and HiU took
his place. The chain of boats crossing the river
never ceased for a moment. The Buffs were all
across, other regiments were foUowing. Everything

SOULT AND THE DOURO 243
was going well for the British, except that Murray
raade no appearance on the farther bank. Delaborde,
who had waged so gallant a fight against Wellesley
at Roliga, organised a new and forraidable attack on
the serainary ; but the Buffs, nearly 1000 strong, held
the garden stubbornly. To strengthen the attack,
Soult now caUed up the brigades keeping watch at
the quays and the broken boat bridge, and this
gave the exultant Portuguese their chance. Hun
dreds of eager citizens poured out of their houses
and thronged the water's edge. In a few minutes
half a hundred boats were pushing across the stream.
The Guards, with the 29th, leaped into them, were
quickly rowed across, and went at a run up the main
street of the city, upon the flank of the French
attacking the seminary. In a cross street they fell
on one of Soult's reserve batteries, and promptly
shot down its horses and captured the guns.
By this time the whole city was in a turault of
excitement. The rabble were taking part in the
fight, if only in the way of killing the French
wounded. Soult found his position desperate, and
hurried his whole force out of the northern gates of
the city, in retreat. The broken mass — infantry
and guns tumbled together — swept northwards, and
Hill, flinging open the great iron gate of the seminary,
took out the Buffs in pursuit. At this moment
Murray, with two battalions of the Gerraan legion
and his two squadrons of the 14th, made his appear-

244 THE GREAT DUKE
ance, and the whole confusion and tumult of the
French retreat swept past his horses' heads. " The
opportunity," says Napier, " raight have tempted a
blind raan " ; but Murray watched the turbid huraan
tide flow past him without a sword stroke, or a
musket shot. General Charles Stewart, who had
been despatched by Wellesley in search of Murray,
at this moment galloped up. He cast one furious
glance at the escaping French, called on the nearest
squadron of the 14th to foUow him, and rode straight
into the flying raass. Delaborde and Foy were both
in the scrarable trying to re-form their men. Foy
was wounded, Delaborde was unhorsed and captured,
but a lucky shot brought down his captor and he
escaped. Some 300 French infantry were cut off
and captured, but Murray watched the whole struggle
with unmoved eyes, and gave no help.
Oporto was won, and Wellesley's staff sat down
to eat the dinner which their beaten foes had pre
pared. No troops, however, exceed the French in
the quickness with which they rally from a defeat,
and Soult, before an hour had passed, had organised
a rear-guard and was pushing on towards Amarante,
meaning then to turn the heads of his column
eastward and reach Salamanca. But the news met
hira that Beresford had driven Loison from Amarante,
and that route was sealed to the French. Wellesley
had outraarched his own supplies in pushing on to
Oporto, and he occupied the 1 2th and 1 3th in gather-

• SOULT AND THE DOURO ^45
ing his troops together, but he pushed on Murray
to Chaves in order to cut the French off from that
road. Soult's position was cruel. To the south was the
Douro, on both the east and the west the roads were
held by the enemy ; to the north stretched a barrier
of savage hills, which goats could hardly cross, still
less an army. But Soult was a good soldier, and an
emergency like this was only a challenge to his
genius. He ordered that everything which could
not be carried on the backs of men or horses should
be abandoned. The plunder of a whole province
had to be left behind ; the guns were disabled and
abandoned ; the very knapsacks of the infantry were
turned out to see that they contained nothing except
food and cartridges. The military chests, containing
;£'50,ooo in Portuguese silver, were opened, and the
French infantry as they passed were allowed to help
themselves. But the huge coins offered little temp
tation to men who were facing a series of desperate
marches across the Galician hills. The chests of
sUver were finally attached to a powder waggon, and
when the last files of the French had passed, a
match was applied, and the treasure was blown, a
far-spreading shower of silver coins, into space.
For three days, whipped by keen winds and blind
ing rain, the toiling French columns struggled across
the bleak hUls. On May 14, Soult got into touch
with Loison at Guymarens, and his array, 20,000

246 THE GREAT DUKE
strong, was again a unit. But Wellesley was press
ing on in pursuit ; and, more ominous still, Beresford,
guessing Soult's road, was pushing, without waiting
for orders, towards Chaves to cut off the French. In
spite of the wild weather, and with scanty rations,
Beresford's men reached Chaves on the night of the
i6th — just too late ; the French had slipped past
them. Soult's best line of escape was by the difficult
track which led to Braga, but if Wellesley knew, or
guessed, he had taken that road, it was possible to
bar it against him. Soult took once more to the
hUls, first requiring Loison's divisions to sacrifice
their baggage and guns, after the fashion of his own
troops. The track was wilder and the weather
rougher than even in the first stages of the retreat,
and at Salamonde Soult learned that the bridge at
Pontenova, by which his columns must cross, had
been seized by sorae Portuguese levies. They had
torn up the wooden floor of the bridge, broken down
its parapets, and built a barricade on the farther
side. The British in his rear, a broken bridge in front,
impassable hUls on either side ; at that moment it
seemed as if another Baylen — the surrender of a
whole French array — was certain.
But Soult was not Dupont, He picked out Major
Dulong, one of those daring soldiers, always to be
found in the French array, and bade him choose a
hundred grenadiers, seize the bridge, and save the

SOULT AND THE DOURO 247
army. The night was starless; a tempest of wind
and rain beat on the hill-sumraits and scuffled in
the hill-passes. But Dulong crept through darkness
and storm to the bridge, killed the sentinel, and,
foUowed by his grenadiers, crawled along one of the
great crossbeams. The rain beat on them, the river
ran hoarsely beneath, Sorae of the grenadiers fell
into the gulf and perished, but Dulong and his men
still pushed on. The fate of the French army hung
on those slippery beams. But the Cavada was
crossed, the Portuguese were surprised and bayoneted,
and the passage was won.
All night long the French sappers worked to
replace the flooring of the bridge, and with morning
the streara of ragged, foot-sore, famine-bitten infantry
began to cross. Before half the French were over
some squadrons of British cavalry carae on the
scene, but were held back by the French rear
guard. At a later stage in the pursuit, an officer of
Beresford's staff. Major Warre, rode ahead and
gathered a corapany of peasants to hold the
Saltador bridge against the French; and again
Major Dulong, with a little band of brave spirits,
broke through and found a way for the array. So
close was the British pursuit that, as the last
French files crossed the bridge, the guns opened
fire on them from the hill slope above. At
Pontenova the British pursuit ceased, but the

248 THE GREAT DUKE
scene as the French troops crossed the narrow
bridge, with its broken parapets, was tragical. The
struggling French thrust each other over the edge
till the torrent below was choked with men and
horses, and while darkness fell the British guns
were pouring shot and shell into the crowd.
On May 19, Soult's much-enduring columns
reached Orense. He had lost nearly 3000 men in
that flight across the hills, " From the 14th to
the 17th," says Napier, "the marches and en
counters of the two arraies were like the wheeling
and buffeting of vultures in the air, one coraraander
contending for victory, the other for safety."
Soult, by his energy and daring, saved the bulk
of his army, but he left behind him his guns,
his stores, his treasure, his sick. The sufferings
of Moore's regiments on their retreat to Corunna,
when Soult had been the pursuer, were amply
avenged. It is true that Moore's retreat lasted
twenty days, Soult's only nine; but the suft'erings
of Soult's men were greater on the whole than
those of Moore's columns. They had a wUder
country to cross; they encountered worse weather;
they lost everything except their weapons and
their eagles ; and they had no flash of compen
sating victory at the end of the flight.
Wellesley's feat, on the other hand, was nothing
less than splendid. It was only twenty-eight
days since he had landed, and in that brief period

SOULT AND THE DOURO 249
he had restored order and public confidence, barred
Victor's advance by his dispositions, raarched 200
mUes through rough country, smitten as with a
thunderbolt one of Napoleon's most famous
raarshals, and in nine days had driven hira, with
his army, out of a great city, and across four
ranges of mountains, and left him stripped of
all his equipment in the remotest corner of Spain,
and so cancelled out for a tirae as a force. And
he had done this with the loss, to his own force,
as killed and wounded, of only 300 men. Not
many feats of war can be named which surpass this.

CHAPTER VI
SPANISH GENERALSHIP
" My correspondence with General Cuesta has been a very curious
one, aud proves him to be as obstinate as any gentleman at the
head of an army need be. He would not alter his position, even to
insure the safety of his army, because it might be injurious to
himself." — Wbllbslet.
WHEN WeUesley landed at Lisbon on AprU
22, 1808, Portugal, as we have seen, was
threatened with invasion from two directions — by
Soult, with an army of 24,000 men from Oporto, and
by Victor, with an array of 30,000 frora Merida ; and
Wellesley had to decide against which of the two he
should strike. Happily for his fame, and for the
whole fortunes of England, he chose Soult. The
problem in that adventure was simple. Wellesley
could frame his own strategy; he had to put in
battle-line practically none but his own troops. But
when he moved against Victor, he lost the power of
independent action. He had to put his regiments
in battle-line with Spanish infantry, to frame a plan
of carapaign which would satisfy a Spanish general,
and to trust for the subsistence of his army to the
good faith of Spanish juntas. As a result his army

SPANISH GENERALSHIP 25 I
was brought nearer to absolute destruction than at
any other period during the war. If Talavera, and
not the passage of the Douro, had been the first
incident in Wellesley's operations, it may be taken for
certain there would have been no Peninsular War —
with what results on the general course of history it
is not easy to guess.
The raoveraent against Soult had succeeded
briUiantly, and Wellesley wasted no tirae. The
raoment his pursuit of Soult ceased, the heads of his
columns were swung round to the south, and they
began their march back to the Tagus. His brigades
carae by different roads, their objective being Abrantes,
and by June 1 1 raost of them had reached that point.
Wellesley had not quite 20,000 men avaUable for opera
tions against Victor, who had 25,000 men under his
imraediate command, with the possibility of being
greatly strengthened frora Madrid the moment it
was known the British were advancing. Napier is
angrily eloquent on the failure of the British Govern
ment at this stage to strengthen WeUesley's force.
"At the moment," he says, "when Wellesley was waiting im
patiently on the Tagus for the scanty reinforcements promised
him, a British army of 12,000 men was preparing to invade
Italy, whUe 40,000 of the flnest troops the nation could boast of,
and a fleet with power to overthrow all the other navies of the
world combined, were preparing for the Walcheren expedition.
The marine and land forces combined numbered more than
80,000 men, and those of the bravest. These were being sent
to perish in the pestilent marshes of Walcheren while Wellesley
was denied adequate reinforcements."

252 THE GREAT DUKE
But this is hardly a just statement of the situation.
Wellesley himself was no worshipper of big armies.
His practical sense taught hira that the bigger the
army, the greater was the difficulty of feeding it. He
wrote to Castlereagh on August 25 — after Talavera,
that is, was fought : " If we had had 60,000 men
instead of 20,000, in all probability we should not
have got to Talavera to fight the battle for want of
means and provisions."
At this stage Wellesley was certainly not " waiting
impatiently" for reinforcements. He had a quite
different challenge to his patience. WhUe his
columns were tramping on their way to Abrantes, he
was trying to agree upon a plan of campaign with
Cuesta, and he found the task well-nigh impossible.
There could not well be a raore coraplete contrast
than that presented by the figures and characters of
the two generals who, at this moraent, were required
to act together. Cuesta was old, obese, loitering,
stubborn ; so incapable of active movement that
he had not only to be lifted on his horse by his
attendants, but held there on either side by his
aides-de-camp. His temper was suspicious and fierce.
He might almost be described as a mere bundle of
furious passions — a passion of hate against the French,
a passion of jealousy against WeUesley, a passion of
suspicion against not only the junta, but against
almost every other general that held its coraraission.
" He did not want courage," is Wellesley's summary

SPANISH GENERALSHIP 253
of him, " nor sense either, but was an obstinate old
man and had no military genius."
WeUesley, on the other hand, lean, hardy, active,
with his ice-cold common-sense, his economy of time,
his habit of swift decision, his inflexible rule of doing
the work of each day within the day, his faculty for
silence, his stern sense of discipline, was, both in body
and intellect, the very antithesis of the Spanish
general. The task of agreeing on a comraon plan of
operation with such an ally raight well have taxed to
the breaking point even his iron patience.
By July II, however, a plan was agreed upon.
Wellesley was to march to Plasencia and join Cuesta,
who had a force of 36,000 troops, supposed to be
efficient, under his flag. Venegas, with an army of
23,000, was at the sarae time to threaten Madrid
from the south, so as to prevent the despatch of
reinforceraents to Victor. These two arraies, added
to that of Wellesley, made a combined force of 80,000
men ; but they were scattered over a wide area and
not under the control of a single will. Victor had
25,000 raen, the French iraraediately protecting
Madrid did not exceed 50,000, so that the opposing
forces were roughly equal, and the movement of
Venegas on Madrid was intended to leave Victor
isolated, to be crushed by the combined attack of
Wellesley and Cuesta.
This strategy was simple and plausible, but the
facts were in hopeless quarrel with it. Wellesley

2 54 THE GREAT DUKE
was risking the fate of his army and the fortunes of
the campaign on a cluster of assumptions, most of
which were entirely false. He could not foresee
that the junta, who promised abundant supplies to
his army, would leave it to starve; that Cuesta's
great army, when put into the fighting line with the
British, would prove almost absolutely worthless for
fighting purposes. Least of all could he foresee that
Venegas would have secret orders from the junta
not to advance on Madrid, so that the French forces
guarding that city would march to reinforce Victor.
Wellesley himself miscalculated seriously at
another point. He had left Soult's shattered army
without guns, equipment, or transport in the wilds
of Galicia, and believed that it might be practically
disregarded. In this he was mistaken. Napoleon's
genius had suddenly created a new situation. He
realised that the British army was the sole obstacle
to the triuraph of his policy in Spain, and he de
spatched instructions uniting the 2nd, 5 th, and 6th
corps, placing thera under the coraraand of Soult,
and directing him to abandon every other task and
join in the business of beating, hunting down, and
casting into the sea the British army. On June 30
Soult, then at Zamora, received a letter from
Napoleon, written at Ratisbon. " Wellesley," the
letter ran, " will probably advance by the Tagus
against Madrid. In that case, pass the mountains,
fall on his flank and rear, and crush him." Napoleon,

SPANISH GENERALSHIP 255
it will be seen, guessed Wellesley's route, and framed
a plan for his destruction, with a divination alraost
wizard-Uke in its completeness. As a result of that
order at the raoraent WeUesley was raoving frora
Abrantes to join Cuesta, Soult, with a force of 50,000
raen, was preparing to strike at his communications.
" None but great raen and fools," says Napier,
" are free from indecision in war ; the first because
they see clearly, the last because they see nothing."
Wellesley was a great soldier ; but he certainly did
not see the landscape of the war clearly at this stage.
He was moving amongst unknown perils. The one
happy circumstance was that the French generals
were in equal ignorance. On July 9, when the
British array had entered Plasencia, and was only
125 miles from Madrid, King Joseph wrote to his
brother that the British " had not yet made any
pronounced moveraent. It was uncertain whether
they would invade Galicia or remain at Lisbon."
Wellesley, on his part, wrote to Castlereagh that
"there were 125,000 French in the Peninsula, and
out of these only 70,000 " were opposed to him. At
that moment there were 253,000 French in Spain;
and not 70,000 but 170,000 good troops — taking
Napier's figures — were preparing to fall upon him.
WeUesley, in a word, to quote Napier, " was about to
engage himself in the narrow valley of the Tagus,
with 20,000 British and 40,000 Spanish troops, when
50,000 French were waiting for him at the farther

256 THE GREAT DUKE
end, and 50,000 others were hanging on his flank
and rear. The fate of the Peninsula hung by a
thread which could not bear the weight for twenty-
four hours."
Wellesley waited at Abrantes till June 27. His
regiments were almost worn out with the hard
marches and the rough weather of their pursuit of
Soult ; their pay was in arrears ; supplies of shoes
and clothing came in slowly ; the promised rein
forcements were delayed. No wonder the discipline
of the army was shaken. Wellesley, always disposed
to speak in severe terras of his own raen, was at this
moment in a bitter mood. " They are," he wrote to
Castlereagh, " a rabble who cannot bear success
any more than Sir John Moore's army could bear
faUure." On June 28, WeUesley's colurans were on the
march. He moved warily. Beresford kept guard
at the pass of Perales ; Cuesta had made himself
responsible for the pass at Banos, so that Wellesley
believed his flank to be secure. What he did not
know was that Banos was held by a mere handful of
Spanish infantry, with only twenty rounds of ammu
nition a raan, while Soult, with two army corps, was
preparing to strike at his communications.
On July 10, the British columns were at Plasencia,
Cuesta crossing the Tagus at Almarez, while Victor
fell back to Talavera. WeUesley's headquarters were
sixty railes, Cuesta's only forty miles, distant from

SPANISH GENERALSHIP 257
him. Wellesley had crossed the Spanish frontier
with very inadequate means of transport, and practi
cally no magazines. He trusted to Spanish promises,
and already these had been found to be worthless.
Victor, who acted on Napoleon's principle of making
war support war, had already in the same district
been brought to the verge of starvation. He wrote
to King Joseph on June 25 : " The ist Corps is on
the eve of dissolution, the men are dropping down
frora mere starvation. I have nothing, absolutely
nothing, to give them, and I am forced to fall back
on Talavera, where there are no more resources than
here." Wellesley Avas now moving across the same wasted
plains. He could not plunder after the French
fashion; he had to trust to Spanish good- will and
the purchasing power of money ; and both faUed
him. He had made contracts with local alcaldes for
250,000 rations of forage and provision, but none
came in. His regiments already were on half allow
ance, the army was in danger of perishing from
actual starvation, and Wellesley declared he would
withdraw from Spain altogether unless Spanish pro
mises were kept.
The difficulty of arranging with Cuesta the details
of an attack on Victor was great. The Spanish general
rejected scheme after scheme. Wellesley wrote
to Castlereagh on June 17 : " He is now refusing to
accept a plan which he himself suggested in one of
VOL. J. B

258 THE GREAT DUKE
his earlier letters, merely because that plan had been
taken up and advocated by his ally." "The ob
stinacy of this old gentleman," he wrote again to
Frere, " is throwing out of our hands the finest game
that any array has ever had."
On July IO, Wellesley rode over to the Spanish
camp at Almarez to bring matters to a decision.
He reached the Spanish lines after dark, and was
welcomed by the thunder of guns and a vast array
of torches.
" The torches," says Lord Londonderry in his " History of the
Peninsular War," " held aloft at moderate intervals, threw a red
and wavering light over the whole scene, while the grim and
swarthy visages of the soldiers, their bright arms and dark
uniforms, appeared peculiarly picturesque, as often as the flashes
feU upon them. Cuesta himself, an old man, preceded us, not
so much sitting upon his horse as held upon it by two pages, at
the imminent risk of being overthrown whenever a cannon was
discharged, or a torch flamed out with peculiar brightness. His
physical debility was so observable as clearly to mark his unfit
ness for the situation which he held."
Of the rank and file, Londonderry says :
" It would not have been easy to find a stouter or more hardy
looking body of soldiers, but it was easy to see from the attitude
in which they stood and the manner in which they handled
their arms that little or no discipline prevailed among them.
They were little better than bold peasantry, armed partially
like soldiers, but completely ignorant of a soldier's duty."
The interview that followed lasted four hours,
Cuesta could speak French but would not, from a
sullen and childish hate of everything " French " ;
Wellesley could not adequately express himself in

SPANISH GENERALSHIP 259
Spanish, and the Spanish chief of staff, O'Donoju,
acted as interpreter. With great fluency he would
interpret Wellesley's proposals to Cuesta, and the
fat, gloomy old man would simply open his mouth
to growl out a curt and sudden negative. It was
finally agreed that the two armies should move
forward in touch with each other; on reaching:
Talavera they would cross the Alberche, and attack
Victor. They did not guess that Venegas had let
Sebastiani slip from his front and that the French
man was marching at speed to join Victor. Still less
did they imagine that, when Venegas discovered
this, he would refuse to make that thrust at
Madrid which was the vital feature of the allied
plan of carapaign.
Wellesley, however, threatened with destruction
by mere famine, had warned both Cuesta and the
English Minister that he would not proceed beyond
the Alberche unless his wants were supplied.
On July 18, the two armies joined at Oropesa,
nineteen miles from Talavera. On the 19th they
were on the march for that place, the Spaniards
holding the right and moving along the high
road, the British marching on their left, crossing the
foot of the hills. At noon the French rear-guard —
2000 cavalry under Latour-Maubourg — brought the
Spanish columns to a stand. Cuesta pushed forward
15,000 infantry to support his cavalry, but still the
daring Frenchman held them in check, till some

2 60 THE GREAT DUKE
British cavalry made their appearance on the French
flank. " We found them (the Spanish)," writes Lord
Munster, "utterly incapable of coping with the
enemy's tirailleurs, who would drive them almost
into a circle. No men could have more carefully
avoided coming to close quarters than did the
Spanish this day." The British, it is clear, had
already begun to suspect the fighting powers of their
alhes. On July 23, Victor was in their front. The
Alberche was fordable in many places, the allies
were double in number to the French, and Wellesley
was eager to fight. " But when the details were to
be arranged," says Napier, "Cuesta went to bed."
He sent word at raidnight, however, that he accepted
the plan of operations, and the British, as agreed,
were under arras at three o'clock in the raorning,
but the Spanish columns faUed to arrive, and after
long waiting, Wellesley rode in search of his aUy,
He had driven to the outposts in a coach drawn by
nine mules, and Wellesley found hira sitting on a
pUe of cushions taken out of his carriage, the picture
of mental and physical inability. It was clear the
battle must be put off, but Wellesley urged an
attack in the afternoon. Cuesta, however, was
obstinate. There was to be no fighting tUl the
next day. "If he had fought when I wanted him
at Talavera," Wellesley said long afterwards, " I have
no hesitation in saying it would have been as great

SPANISH GENEIIALSHIP 26 1
a battle as Waterloo, and would have cleared Spain
of the French for that tirae." ^
In the afternoon Victor seemed to be moving,
and Cuesta came to his outposts to see for himself.
He was hoisted on to his horse by two grenadiers,
whUe an aide-de-camp stood on the other side to
conduct his right leg into the stirrup; then,
hunched up on his saddle, he rode down to the
river, stared at the enemy's lines, and once more
refused to attack tUl next morning. At daybreak
Victor was gone. He had seen the red-coated
regiments on the slopes of the hills, and discovered
that he was threatened by two arraies, not by one.
Cuesta was now eager to move on Talavera,
but WeUesley declared that without food he would
not set his regiments on the march. Cuesta pro
tested that the French were in fiight, and he
would follow them. " In that case," said Wellesley
dryly, "he will get himself into a scrape." The
Spanish advance guard pushed on till it suddenly
found itself in front, not merely of Victor's force,
but of Sebastiani's divisions, and the reserves of
King Joseph from Madrid — some 50,000 good
troops in all. Cuesta's advance guard was pushed
roughly back, and panic might have spread
through his whole force but for the spirit shown
by Albuquerque, who, with his cavalry division,
3000 strong, checked the French, whUe Cuesta's
^ Stanhope, 47.

262 THE GREAT DUKE
infantry in great confusion fell back towards the
Alberche. Sherbrooke with the Guards thrust
himself, at this point, across the path of the
French, and secured some respite to the disordered
Spaniards. Cuesta halted his columns on the bank of the
Alberche, and Wellesley urged him to cross the
stream, but the old general was furious, and more
obstinate than ever. " He would fight where he
stood," he declared. The French cavalry were
coming up; WeUesley, deterrained not to risk
Sherbrooke's regiments, was preparing to withdraw
them, and at last Cuesta consented to cross the
stream. But he boasted to his staff that he " had
first made the Englishman go down on his knees"
before he would yield to him.

CHAPTER VII
TALAVERA
"Throughout the day his (Wellesley's) bearing was that of a
general upon whose vigilance and intrepidity the fate of fifty
thousand men depended." — Napieb.
A BATTLE was now inevitable, and Wellesley,
with his matchless eye for "country," had
already chosen his position. He was himself with
Mackenzie's division and the light cavalry, which
formed the British rear-guard, when it was caught
by the alert veterans of the French advance,
WeUesley had just mounted the roof of a ruined
house from which he could get a view of the
country. The smoke from some burning huts
was driven by the wind over the strip of plain,
thick with scrub, which stretched to the river,
and, under cover of the sraoke, the French piquets
crossed the stream, crept undetected through the
scrub, surprised the British outposts, and with
a fierce rush drove them in. Wellesley himself
was almost caught. He told GreviUe long after
wards that "if he had not been young and active,
he must have been taken, for he had to leap from
263

264 THE GREAT DUKE
the wall of the ruined house on which he stood,"
It happened that the two English battahons
attacked were young soldiers, and the suddenness
of the French onfall threw them into confusion,
but the 45th, "a stubborn old regiment," and
some companies of the 60th Rifles, stood firm,
and the division fell back unbroken; but it had
lost some 400 men.
Wellesley's battle plan at Talavera was simple.
The front of the allies formed a line at right
angles with the Tagus; the Spaniards held the
town itself, and the ground, thick with trees and
enclosures, for a mile beyond it, their left resting
on a mound, upon which a battery of guns was
placed. Cuesta thus, with 32,000 men, held a
front of only a mile, covered by a convent, as
well as by ditches and breastworks, and his share
of the line was practically safe from attack.
The British held the line for a mile beyond the
Spanish left. Campbell's division, Sherbrooke
with the Guards, and the King's German Legion,
formed the centre of the line. It was absolutely
without cover, and open to both gun fire and
infantry attack. Mackenzie's battalions with
Anson's and Fane's cavalry were in support of
Sherbrooke; Donkin's brigade formed a second
line to the King's Gerraan Legion. HiU's division
held the left of Wellesley's battle-line, with a
rough hiU, the Cerro de Medellin, at its extremity.

/; 'alkererBoutalisc.

TALAVERA 265
and the Portina, a shallow stream, as a sort of
ditch in its front. This hUl was the vital feature
of the British defence. If seized by the enemy,
their whole line was open to its fire; and, by one
of those curious blunders, in which all battles
abound, the hill at first was very lightly held.
HUl's two brigades had halted half a mile behind
it. There were piquets, it is true, on the crest ot
the hill, and two battalions of the King's German
Legion on its slopes, but its summit was almost
naked. Victor was quick of eye, and familiar with the
ground. He knew the tactical value of the hill,
and, seeing it weakly held, made a daring and sudden
leap upon it. Ruffin's division ran forward with
Villatte's in support, while Lapisse's battalions fell
upon the Germans. It was nine o'clock when Ruffin
took forward his raen at the double. The night was
dark, and half-way up the slope the attacking force
stumbled across Low's brigade of the German Legion.
The men were lying down in line, with no sufficient
piquets thrown out in front, and the active French
ran in upon the Germans, swept over them, and
destroyed them as a military body almost at a
breath. Ruffin's leading battalion reached the crest
with hardly any opposition.
Hill, who had halted with his brigades, saw the
flash of musketry fire on the summit, and heard
the tumult of volleys and shouts. " Not having an

266 THE GREAT DUKE
idea," he Avrote afterwards, " that the enemy was so
near, I said to myself that it was the old Buffs as
usual making some blunder." He rode at speed
up the hill, and with his brigade-major, Fordyce,
pushed into the crowd at its top, calling loudly on
the men to cease firing. He found himself in a
crowd of French infantry! His brigade-major was
shot dead, an infantryman seized HiU's reins, but
he spurred his horse free, broke through the French,
and breathless, with his horse wounded, reached
Stewart's brigade. Hill knew the perU of the situa
tion, and he brought forward Stewart's men at the
double. The 29th foUowed, and the French were
driven, with hard fighting, and at the point of the
bayonet, from the crest of the hUl.
Lapisse meanwhile was coming up in support,
some of Ruffin's broken regiments re-formed on him,
and the fighting in the darkness for a time was both
furious and close. To those who watched from a
distance the black mass of the hill, shapeless in
the darkness, the red darting points of opposing
musketry volleys seemed almost to touch. But the
stubborn British outwore and outfought the gaUant
Frenchmen, and the hill remained in their posses
sion, but on its slopes lay 1800 dead and wounded
men. That night fight on the hiU set the keynote
of the stormy music of Talavera.
A Uttle earlier in the same afternoon some French
light horse had begun to " feel " the front of the

TALAVERA 267
Spaniards hidden in the olive groves, and some
infantry batteries joined in the cannonade which the
horse artUlery had already begun. The British guns
from the centre were answering the French fire
when, suddenly, from almost the entire front of the
line held by the Spaniards there broke out a tremen
dous salvo of musketry, though there was no enemy
within musket shot distance. A turault of voices
swept along the Spanish Une, and sorae 10,000
infantry set off in siraultaneous flight. "2000 of
them," Wellesley wrote to Castlereagh, " ran off not
a hundred yards from where I was standing who
were neither attacked, not threatened with an attack,
and who were only frightened by the noise of their
own fire. They left their arms and accoutrements
on the ground, their officers went with them." "I
have seen many curious sights in my life," said
WeUesley long afterwards, "but that is the only
time I saw 10,000 men running a race together."
There is a strange infection in panic. It seemed
to seize at a breath, and like a madness, two-thirds
of the Spanish army. Artillery men abandoned
their guns, the infantry threw away their arms;
whole regiments of cavalry were suddenly re
solved into gaUoping mobs. " The Spanish adjut-
aii<>-general," says Napier, "was foremost in flight.''
The rush of the crowd swept away everything in
its rear, including English comraissary clerks, pay
masters, and sutlers. The fugitives, however, found

268 THE GREAT DUKE
time as they ran to plunder the baggage of the
British array. "It is not to be concealed," says
Napier, " that some English officers disgraced their
uniform on this occasion." Some of the fugitives
did not halt till they got to Oropesa, twenty miles
distant, and Cuesta sent his cavalry to head the
fugitives in vain.
But the astonished French, who watched the
flight, had no troops to take advantage of the
gap in Wellesley's front. Part of the Spanish
line reraained firm, Wellesley brought up some
cavalry, and by degrees the panic died away.
Cuesta spent the night in chasing back his scattered
infantry, but when morning dawned, there were
still 6000 Spaniards missing. Next day the furious
Spanish general proposed to punish the defaulting
regiments by shooting every tenth man in their
ranks, and was actually carrying out this plan
when Wellesley interposed and stopped it.
The much contested hill on the British left was
now strongly held by the brigades of Stewart and
Hill and by battalions of the King's German Legion ;
and their piquets were thrust down the slope
towards the French so far that all night they
could hear the call of the French sentries answer
ing the challenge of the rounds. Again and again
the darkness of the night was broken by sudden
jets of red musketry-fire as the outposts of the
two armies jostled against each other. From the

TALAVEEA 269
centre of the British position, where the Guards
lay, a dreadful roar of musketry broke out at
raidnight. A false alarm had been given, and
the Guards fired volley after volley through the
darkness at some imaginary French coluran, killing
or wounding many of their own piquets. An
hour later, the portion of the line held by the
Spaniards flashed for many minutes continuously
with musketry fire.
On the French side the darkness for hours
was pricked with long lines of moving torches.
These eddied to and fro opposite the hill where
HiU's brigades kept stern watch, and the rattle
of gun carriages and wheels, the sharp crack of
whips, could be heard, Victor was marking out
the position of his batteries, and getting his guns
into place ready for a new attempt at dawn, to
carry the blood-stained hill, on which his men
had already suffered defeat. Again and again
through the darkness the cry "Stand to your
arms!" ran, a chain of stern, calling voices, along
the whole British front. It was a troubled night,
and brought a troubled dawn.
As the Ught grew slowly in the east, the British
sentinels saw that the French Unes were broken,
along the whole of their front, into square masses,
Uke the checkers on a draught-board. King Joseph
meant business early, and his regiments stood in
battaUon columns, ready for the attack. There

270 THE GREAT DUKE
were guns in the intervals betwixt the chequers,
and a spray of skirmishers spread in front of
each black square. Behind were long lines of
horsemen. This threatening landscape of horse
and foot and guns ceased at the point where the
Spaniards held the line. It was too strong for
attack; the whole strength of the French was to
be flung on the part where the British stood; and
there were 40,000 French against 20,000 red-coats.
The biggest square of French troops — black and
menacing — was opposite the hill on the extremo
British left, the key of the whole position, where
Hill kept guard.
Presently the French guns broke into thunder;
the damp morning air forbade the smoke to rise,
and it hung like a thick veil on the lower slopes
of the hill, so that Ruffin's quick-footed battalions
began their charge unseen by the British. Hill's
infantry on the crest knew the attack was coming
only when they saw their own skirmishers break
out of the smoke as they fell back. They were
in a stubborn mood and feU back slowly, firing
venomously as they retired. HiU was anxious to
get his front clear, and his bugles called shrilly
and often to bring his skirmishers in, but they
were not to be hurried. "It was," says Oman,
"one of the only two occasions on which Hill was
known to swear." "D  their filing," he cried,
" let them corae in anyhow."

TALAVERA 27 1
HiU's front at last was clear, and the French
could be seen coming on through the smoke.
Their artillery was scourging Hill's lines cruelly,
and he made his men lie down tUl the French
were within a hundred yards. Then he called
upon his six battahons to stand up on their feet
and advance. He was meeting 5000 men with
Uttle over 3500. But the French were in column,
the British in one far-stretching line, and the
volleys from so wide a front, sudden and sharp
as on a field day, literally smashed the head of
Ruffin's attack. His columns halted • and broke
into an angry musketry fire. HiU's regiments
moved quickly forward, but the broken ground
disordered them, and at points the fighting was
in groups and hand to hand. Sherbrooke, who
was watching the struggle, took a battalion of the
King's German Legion out of his left brigade, and
ran in with it upon the flank and rear of the
nearest French regiment. At the same moment
Stewart on the other flank gave his brigade the
order to charge with the bayonet. Nothing could
resist that double front of threatening steel points.
Ruffin's battalions lost all order and were swept
down to the foot of the hill. In forty minutes'
fighting they had lost 1300 killed and wounded.
The French guns barked against the British on
the hill for a while, and then the fire died down,
whUe the French generals held a consultation.

272 THE GREAT DUKE
Their stroke at the key of the British position had
failed again, and the three leaders — King Joseph,
Marshal Jourdan, and Victor — held angry dispute as
to the next step. While their generals wrangled,
the French regiments could be seen, with pUed
arms, cooking their breakfast, and from the hUl,
strewn with wounded and dying, many of the
British came down to the stream at its foot. The
thirsty French mingled with them there, and the
soldiers who, half-an-hour before had been wrest
ling together in one of the bloodiest fights in the
whole war, now chatted and laughed together,
while the piquets gathered up the wounded on
both sides.
The wisest head amongst the French generals
was that of Jourdan ; he knew that Soult was
moving to strike at Wellesley's communications:
the moment these were assaUed Wellesley must
fall back, and his counsel was to wait till, by the
appearance of Soult on his rear, WeUesley was
compelled to retreat. Victor, however, in a passion
at his repeated failure on the hUl, pressed for
another attack, simultaneously with an assault on
the centre of the British line. If that combina
tion failed, he said, "it would be time to give
up war."
It was finaUy agreed that Sebastiani's corps of
14,000 men should attack the British centre held
by the Guards, while Victor, with 16,000 raen,

TALAVERA 273
tried to carry the hiU and turn Wellesley's
flank. From the crest of the threatened hUl, Wellesley
watched with steady eyes the preparations of the
French for a new assault. He quickly guessed on
what points in his line this new tempest of war
would break. The cavalry brigades of Fane and
Anson, with some guns, were ordered up to guard
the flank of the threatened hill; from Cuesta a
battery of 1 2-pounders — heavier guns than any
possessed by the British — was borrowed and used
to strengthen the centre of the British line.
At two o'clock the French artillery broke into
fire along their whole front, and eighty guns were
playing upon the British, while only thirty-six
guns could reply. In some places the guns were
only 600 yards distant from the sorely-tried regi
ments on which they were firing. Grattan says
that the 88th, which did not fire a single musket-
shot, yet lost 136 in killed and wounded from the
French artillery. The new French attack began
with the advance of Leval's division, 4500 strong.
It charged with what Napier calls "infinite fury"
upon Campbell's position. The French came on
with such vehemence, and were so broken in order
by their rush over the rough ground, that they
seemed to the steady British lines like a confused
tumult of skirmishers. Carapbell's regiments stood
sternly silent tUl the French were almost at the
VOL. I. s

2 74 THE GREAT DUKE
touch; then they broke into a fierce shout. Their
muskets fell to the present, and a sustained volley
scorched the front and flanks of Leval's shaken
columns. It was plainly the moment for a charge.
Colonel Myers, of the 7th, seized the King's colour
of his regiment, and ran out in front, calling
" Come on, Fusileers ! " Nothing could withstand
that charge, Leval's battalions were broken and
driven back in rout over the French batteries
in their rear; and when Campbell's regiments,
breathless but triumphant, re-formed and fell back
to their line, they brought ten captured French
guns with them. In that brief and furious con
test the French lost nearly 700 men.
By this time Sebastiani was moving on the part
of the line held by the Guards. Sherbrooke had
eight battalions; the French attack consisted of
twenty-four battalions, and they carae on in more
steady and formidable order than Leval's men had
shown in their rush on Campbell. The shallow
brook in their front was crossed ; the level ground
was clear before them; they had only to run
in on the thin red line of the Guards, which
seemed too slender to stop their rush. Sher
brooke had issued strict orders that his men
were not to fire till the enemy were within fifty
yards; they were then to give a single volley and
charge. The British line was pricked and torn with

TALAVERA 275
musketry-fire, but it stood grimly sUent till the
French were within the prescribed fifty yards. Then
a sudden order, repeated in high-pitched answering
voices, ran down the line, and one rending and
shattering volley from the whole long front smote,
and seemed to destroy as with a blast of flame, the
heads of the French battalions. Some of Sebastiani's
regiments lost a third of their numbers under that
dreadful volley. Then the Guards charged, and
before the rush of that close-linked disciplined line,
dreadful with shining points of steel, the French
battalions, with aU order lost, were swept back across
the brook to the point at which they had started on
their charge, and beyond it.
The Guards were by this time out of hand with
the passion of their charge. Caraeron, a cool Scotch
man, had halted his brigade, but the other regiments
were pressing furiously on, and this made a gap in
the British line. The French reserves were moving
quickly forward; their batteries smote the flank of
Sherbrooke's disordered regiments, and some squad
rons of French dragoons rode in upon their right
flank. The Guards were checked ; they came back,
fighting as they retreated, but they were now in
mere tangled groups, and they swept Cameron's
men away in their retreat. More than 600 out of
Sherbrooke's 2000 men had fallen; the gap torn in
the British front seeraed wide and deep, and the
French, coming on with clamour of shrill and

276 THE GREAT DUKE
exultant voices, and sharp musketry volleys, threat
ened to wreck Wellesley's centre.
Mackenzie, a good soldier, brought up his brigade
quickly to cover part of the gap, and the broken
Guards swept through their intervals and rallied
behind them. "They were in a mood of good
humour and determination," says Lord Munster,
who saw them as they swept by, "even after such
dreadful losses " ; they re - formed coolly behind
Mackenzie's regiment, and broke into a loud
" Hurrah " as they commenced to take fresh ground.
Sebastiani, a fine soldier, attacked the new line
with great fury, before its formation was complete ;
Mackenzie himself fell, and out of his brigade of
2000, every third man was killed or wounded. But
nothing could shake his obstinate regiments, and
Sebastiani's division at last fell back. He had lost
all his four colonels, with more than eighty other
officers, and over 2000 rank and file.
It was a little farther to the left, however, that
the perU to the British was greatest. Cameron's
brigade and the two brigades of the King's German
Legion had suffered dreadful losses: in one of the
Gerraan brigades every second man had been killed
or wounded. Wellesley, however, had watched the
fight, and he brought the 48th, counting 700 bayonets,
at speed from the southern slope of the hill held by
Stewart's brigade, to the gap in the British centre,
just as the broken King's German Legion and

TALAVERA 277
Cameron's brigade carae turabling back. Wheeling
back by companies, the 48th let the broken Guards
pass, then they swung swiftly into line again and
checked the triumphant French with deadly volleys.
The French, once brought to a standstill, fell into
disorder ; the guns from a neighbouring battery tore
their flank; Lapisse himself was killed, and of his
division, 7000 strong, some 1800 men were down.
The British had lost even more in proportion to
their numbers ; but they doggedly held their ground
through the long tempest of fire beating on them,
and won after losing more than one-third of their
numbers. "There was," says Professor Oman, "no
such victory as this during the whole war, save
Albuera." In the meanwhile Victor was pushing forward his
divisions again to attack the hill on the British
left; the movement seemed to offer the chance of
a cavalry attack, and Wellesley ordered Anson's
brigade of hght dragoons to charge. Colonel Elley
led the 23rd Light Dragoons ; beside them rode the
1st German Hussars. The men were eager for the
fight; the ground was level, the French battahons
were falling hurriedly into squares to meet the lines
of galloping horsemen. But in the very rapture of
the charge, and when within 1 50 yards of the French
squares, Elley, riding two lengths ahead of his regi
ment, suddenly saw across his path a ravine fifteen
feet broad and ten feet deep. He was splendidly

278 THE GREAT DUKE
mounted, and cleared the great ditch with a leap.
Then he swung his horse round and threw up his
hand to stop his charging squadrons. But the front
line was already on the edge of the ravine. Some
cleared it with a desperate leap, some scrambled
over at various points, but many tumbled into it,
and the next line coming up at the gallop was piled
over them. The Germans struck the fatal ravine at
a point where it was even broader, though shallower,
than in front of the 23rd. According to a familiar
story, the colonel, Arentschild, drew rein on the
edge of the chasm crying, " I will not kill my young
mans," and so saved his regiment. Napier, who, of
course, was familiar with the gossip of the camps,
tells this story ; but Professor Oman, a later historian,
and who has the advantage of fuller evidence, says
this statement is " entirely disproved."
The Germans crossed the ravine, though with
severe loss; the troopers who had scrambled over
the ravine — the men of the 23rd and the Germans
— fell into rough order and rode at the French
squares. The Germans were repulsed, but suffered
small loss, and succeeded in riding back. The two
left squadrons of the 23rd charged a French square,
failed in their charge, and struggled back across the
ravine to the British lines. Elley and the two right
squadrons rode furiously past the infantry squares,
charged a brigade of French chasseurs, broke through
them, and dashed at a second line of cavalry. The

TALAVERA 279
regiment through which they had broken raUied,
swung round, and fell upon their rear. The men
of the 23rd, in the midst of an enemy five times
as numerous as themselves, were practically anni
hilated, but Elley with seven or eight officers
and troopers — more lucky than their comrades,
and, perhaps, better mounted — broke through and
escaped. Out of 450 raen of the 23rd who rode
in that charge, 207 were kUled, wounded, or missing.
At this point the battle practically came to an end.
The direct attack on the great hill was not to be
made until the British centre had been shaken;
but the French attack on that point had failed, and
though Victor's guns for hours searched the slopes,
and the crest of the hUl, with their fire, inflicting
cruel loss on the British regiments holding the
position, yet no infantry attack was made upon it,
and the charge of Anson's cavalry brigade had
wrecked the attempt to turn its flank.
Victor, a soldier of hot teraper, was eager for
new plans of attack, although every fourth man in
his battalions had been hit and the stubborn British
had not yielded an inch of ground. But Jourdan
had the caution that age teaches; King Joseph
was shocked with the slaughter in his divisions;
and, finally, it was resolved to fall back to the
position held on the 27th.
The battle was won, and 16,000 British mfantry
had defeated the utmost efforts of an army of

2 8o THE GREAT DUKE
26,000 French veterans. Those figures, indeed,
hardly do justice to Wellesley's soldiers. Sher
brooke's division, numbering 8000 bayonets, had
met and defeated the charge of the divisions of
Lapisse and of Sebastiani, numbering over 15,000;
but for their victory the British paid a dear price.
Their loss, in killed and wounded, amounted to
5365 ; that of the French was still heavier, and
reached 7268. Of the Spanish loss no retums were
published. It consisted chiefly of the "missing" —
the heroes who ran away at the beginning of the
fight — terrified with the sound of their own muskets,
and never returned.
The fate of great battles sometimes hangs on very
small events. Talavera may be said, in one sense, to
have depended on a jump. If Ruffin's tirailleurs
had been a little quicker, or Wellesley a little less
active, he would have been captured before the
battle began, and it is easy to imagine what would
have been the fate of the allied forces with Wellesley
gone and Cuesta left in command. But Wellesley
escaped by jumping from the wall of the Casa de
Salines, and whether Talavera should be a defeat
or a victory may be said to have hung on that leap.
When 10,000 Spaniards, again, suddenly took to
their heels and ran, it plainly only needed another
jostle of alarm to send the other 20,000 Spaniards
after them. If the French had only happened to
have a battery of guns, or a couple of regiments of

TALAVERA 2 8 I
cavalry at hand, that additional thrill of alarm
might easily have been comraunicated to the rest
of Cuesta's army, and Wellesley would have been
left with a broken battle-line, and half his army, to
meet the onfall of double his nuraber. Or if, again,
the French tiraUleur, who got his hands on HiU's
reins when that astonished general found himself in
the middle of the crowded French infantry on the
Cerro de Medellin, had held them, and Hill had
been shot or made a prisoner, the key of the British
position would have been lost, and with it the battle.
Three times, in a word, before the battle began, the
French missed an overwhelming victory, and the
British escaped irremediable disaster, by the most
trivial of accidents; on such small events, in war,
do great issues turn.

CHAPTER VIII
A CHANGED POLICY
" To great minds, great misfortunes are seldom unmixed evils.
Out of the nettle calamity they pluck the flower wisdom." —
Hamley. WHEN night feU at Talavera, the battlefield
was strewn thick with the dead and dying.
The plain and the hill slopes over which, for so many
hours, two armies had wrestled, were thick with dry
grass and shrubs, and, just as dusk was gathering,
a fire broke out, and over one-third of the field of
battle, strewn with the wounded and the dead, the
flames ran with fury, and many of the wounded
perished. When day broke on the 29th, the French had
faUen back across the Alberche, and, a little later in
the morning, Craufurd, with the Light Division — the
43rd, 52nd, and 95th — reached the field. Craufurd
heard, at Naval Moral, forty-three miles distant, of
the approaching battle. He left his baggage and a
few weakly raen behind, and in twenty-two hours
his force marched forty-three — Napier says sixty-
two — miles. Each man carried fifty pounds weight
282

A CHANGED POLICY 283
on his back. As they marched, they could hear the
cannon growing ever louder beyond the hUls ; they
met, in streams, Spanish fugitives — and some fugi
tives who were not Spanish — from the battlefield,
with tales of the utter destruction of the British
army; but Craufurd sternly pressed on, only to
reach the field when the long fight was over.
According to Maxwell, the Light Division used the
quick-step invented by Sir John Moore, three paces
walking, alternating with three paces running.
That footsore, but compact and hardy little force
of infantry was a welcome addition to Wellesley's
strength, and they were at once sent to the front,
to take charge of the outposts.
Wellesley spent three days coUecting his wounded,
and striving, with iraperfect success, to gather
supplies for his starving regiments, a business in
which he found scanty help from the Spanish ; then
he prepared to follow Victor. " We shall certainly
raove towards Madrid," he wrote to Beresford, on
July 29, "if not interrupted by sorae accident on
our flanks." That sentence proves that, by this time,
some hint of the war-cloud gathering on his flank
had reached Wellesley, Soult was in the field again,
and at a point which meant danger to his com
munications. But Soult, Wellesley believed, could
not bring against him more than 12,000 or 15,000
men. And yet, at that moment, 50,000 were con
centrating at Salamanca ! On the 30th fuller news

284 THE GREAT DUKE
came in, and WeUesley abandoned the idea of
marching on Madrid, and turned back to guard his
communications from Soult. He left his wounded
to the care of Cuesta, who undertook to strengthen
his position and hold it against all attacks.
On the night of August 3 Wellesley reached
Oropesa, with Soult only fifteen miles distant; on
the morning of the 4th, Cuesta's columns were in
sight from Oropesa! He had broken faith with
Wellesley once more; and, on the news reaching
him that Victor was advancing, abandoned the
British wounded, and hurried to join Wellesley.
On the 3rd, as it happened, both Soult and Wellesley
for the first time, got reasonably correct inforraation
as to each other's movements. Soult, from a captured
despatch, found that WeUesley, on the ist, was stUl
at Talavera, and, at that date, believed the force on
his flank not to exceed 12,000 men. Wellesley, at
the same moment, learned, from an intercepted des
patch, that Soult had at least 30,000 men.
Wellesley's position was Uttle short of desperate.
He had an army of 50,000 striking at his flank,
another of 25,000 was pressing on his rear. His
troops were exhausted; his allies were worthless.
But it was in exactly such a crisis that Wellesley's
greatness as a soldier — his coolness, his sure judg
ment, his swiftness of action — shone out. Cuesta,
with Spanish unreason and stubbornness, wished to
stand and fight, but Wellesley sternly declared the

A CHANGED POLICY 285
British array should go; and, says Napier, "that
declaration saved the Peninsula." At dawn he set
his baggage and guns moving towards tho bridge at
Arzobispo ; at noon his columns marched, and by
two o'clock the bridge was crossed. But Wellesley
was not yet safe. His peril lay in the fact that the
French advance-guard was at that moment nearer
the bridge at Almaraz than his brigades, and a well-
made road ran straight before it to the bridge.
Wellesley chose Craufurd, with the Light Division,
the quickest marchers in his army, and pushed them
across rough and almost roadless mountain country.
It was a close race, but Craufurd won. He reached
Almaraz, and had just finished destroying the bridge
as the leading files of Soult's cavalry came in sight.
Cuesta, with the Spaniards, reraained to guard the
Arzobispo bridge, whUe Wellesley pushed on to
Delay tosa. The French roughly drove the Spaniards
back from that bridge on August 8th, but they did
not follow the British. They were paralysed by
divided counsels, and supplies were failing them.
The campaign of Talavera was at an end, and
Wellesley announced his intention of faUing back
into Portugal. "I have fished in many troubled
waters," he said, " but Spanish troubled waters I will
never fish in again."
The campaign brought Wellesley some rewards.
He was raised to the peerage by the title of Baron
Douro of Wellesley, and Viscount Wellington of

286 THE GREAT DUKE
Talavera. So the name by which he is best known
in history came to him, and wUl be used in the
succeeding pages. The Spanish junta made him
captain-general, and he accepted the title while de
clining the salary attached to it. But he sternly
refused to join in further operations with the Spanish.
He estabUshed his headquarters at Jaraicego, thus
holding the great road to Lisbon. From this he
could easily cross the Tagus and strike at the flank
of any of the enemy's columns moving down the left
bank of that river. At the same time he covered
Cadiz, where the central junta, driven out of Madrid
and Seville, had taken refuge. All through the
sumraer heats he held that position at an enormous
cost of suffering and loss from disease to his army.
It is true that from August 20, 1809, to February 27,
1 8 10 — the date of the first skirmish in the new
campaign — a period of six months, not a shot was
fired from a British musket. Wellesley was acting
on his declared policy of taking no part in the Spanish
campaign. He was, during these months, brooding
over the sterner campaign, against a yet mightier foe,
which lay before him. " But," says Napier, " it was
not Talavera; it was the position maintained by
Wellesley on the Guadiana, which, in the latter
part of 1809, saved Andalusia from subjection."
From his camp, Wellington watched Spanish
armies, one after another, overthrown by the French
tUl in the final disaster of Ocana, on November 19,

A CHANGED POLICY 287
the last of the Spanish forces almost ceased to exist.
An army of 46,000 infantry and 6000 cavalry " was
dispersed," says Colborne, who was present, " in fifteen
mmutes." A sullen, inextinguishable guerilla war
fare StiU smouldered, and it needed 70,000 French
soldiers to hold Spain in subjection; but organised
warfare was, for the moment, at an end.
On January 15, 18 10, Wellington recrossed the
Tagus. The crossing of that stream marked a
decisive epoch in the Peninsular War. The policy of
combining operations with the Spanish armies and
of striking directly at the great mass of the French
had faUed, and was abandoned. The war had now
to be fought in a new field, and take a new shape.
There were six campaigns in the Peninsular War,
but the struggle itself was a unit. It might be de
scribed as one vast game of chess, with two kingdoms
as the board, the armies of France, Spain, Portugal,
and Great Britain as pieces, and the players — though
half Europe parted them — ^were Wellington and
Napoleon. The stake was not simply the deliverance
of Spain and Portugal, or even the security of Great
Britain ; it was the fate of Europe. Wellington had
won the first moves in the game. He had driven
Junot out of Portugal; he had chased Soult, with
the loss of his guns and equipment, frora Oporto;
he had defeated Victor and King Joseph at Talavera.
But Napoleon was a terrible antagonist. His combi
nations, even before Talavera was fought, put Soult

288 THE GREAT DUKE
on Wellington's flank with three army corps, while
Victor stood in his front with 30,000 men. Wellington
escaped that combination, but the whole condition of
the game was changed by the discovery he made of
the unreliability of Spanish promises, and the worth
lessness of Spanish armies. Wellington knew the
vast resources at the command of his opponent ; he
knew, too, the ruthless energy and the commanding
genius with which those resources would be employed
against him. Napoleon had won the battle of
Wagram ; a treaty of peace in central Europe was
sure to follow, and Napoleon would be free to pour
his veterans into Spain. How could Wellington best
meet the storm of war about to break upon him ?
It is probable that he was the only man who believed
that it would be still possible to hold Portugal against
the utmost strength of France. And it was still
certain that while Portugal was held, Spain was un
subdued, and " the Spanish ulcer " remained open.
Wellington was called upon to advise the British
Cabinet on the whole situation, and Lord Liverpool's
letter of October 20, 1809, shows how faint was his
hope of ultimate success. His chief anxiety was to
ascertain "how far the British army would be en
dangered, and its embarkation likely to be pre
vented, if the French penetrated in force into
Portugal." "I am convinced," Wellington wrote
in reply, "we could embark after defeat"; but he
did not believe that ultimately he would be

A CHANGED POLICY 289
defeated. "My opinion is that the enemy ought
to make the possession of Portugal their first
objective; but," he added, "they can be resisted,"
and successfully resisted; and he proceeded to
formulate with great precision the price Great
Britain must pay for maintaining the contest.
The British army must be kept at an effective
level of 30,000 men — later he raised the estimate
to 35,ooo--but the cost of sustaining the army in
Portugal, exclusive of the hire of transports, was
only ;£^5oo,ooo more than it would cost if in
quarters in England. Portuguese finances must
be nourished by an increased subsidy, 10,000 more
Portuguese should be taken into English pay.
With an army of 30,000 good troops, a Portuguese
subsidy of ;^ 1,000,000 a year, and absolute authority
in Portugal itself, Wellington believed he could
resist any force Napoleon could direct against him.
There was a fine modesty as weU as high courage
in Wellington's estimate. War has its uncertainties ;
he might faU and have to embark. "But if we
do go," he wrote, "1 feel a little anxiety to go
like gentlemen out of the hall door, particularly
after all the preparations I have made to enable
us to do so, and not out of the back door, or by
the area."
It was a cool, daring, yet reasoned calculation;
and if it showed great genius on WeUington's part
thus to assess all the factors in a problem so
VOL. I. T

290 THE GREAT DUKE
tremendous, and measure the exact conditions of
success, it also showed high courage on the part
of the British Cabinet that they ventured both
their own political existence and the fortunes of
England on the unsupported judgment of their
chosen general.
WeUington's new plan began with the reorgani
sation of Portugal itself. He would revive the
ancient military laws and enact the levy en masse
of the ordenanza, a famiUar and ancient device in
Portuguese history, a recognised signal that the
nation was in peril, and aU citizens were called to
arms. Wellington did not hope to prevent the
invasion of Portugal. Napoleon, he calculated,
would launch across the Portuguese frontier an
army of 100,000 men, and against this force Wel
lington proposed to use famine as a weapon. His
own bitter experiences in the Talavera campaign,
and the knowledge he had gained of the unfriend
liness of Spanish geography to great armies, prob
ably suggested this device to him. It was certain
that the invading French army would destroy
everything in their path, and would extract out
of the destruction they inflicted upon the country
the means of subduing it. On Wellington's plan
— which required the towns and villages to be
abandoned, the crops to be burnt or carried off,
the mills and bridges to be destroyed, the fields
laid Tfaste — the injury to Portugal would not be

A CHANGED POLICY 29 1
greater than that a French invasion would inflict ;
but that very injury would be turned into a
weapon against France, and into a means of
deliverance for Portugal,
The last . feature in Wellington's plans, their
crown and keystone, was the creation of the lines
of Torres Vedras, He would turn 500 square miles
of wild hills into a natural and impregnable citadel
round Lisbon itself. Such a stupendous fortress,
with a wasted country, which yielded no supplies
to the attacking force, in front, the Tagus held by
the British fleet as its base, and 30,000 British
troops as a garrison, was a conception which had
never yet emerged in war. It was conceived, and
executed, in such secrecy, and wrapped in such
profound silence, that not only the French, but
even Wellington's own troops, and the British
Ministry itself, were in ignorance of its existence.
The genius which, so long in advance, and with
such perfect secrecy, created a mountain fortress
on such a scale must have been of the very first
rank. That triple shield of scarped mountains
drawn round Lisbon was a fit reflex — an expression
in concrete terms — of the brain which constructed it.
When the last army of Spain had been scattered
at Ocana, and Napoleon had overthrown Austria
at Wagram, and made peace on his own terms, then
the lists were set, and the trurapets blown, for a
supreme trial of strength betwixt Napoleon and the

292 THE GREAT DUKE
one foe yet unsubdued across the Portuguese frontier.
Wellington wrote his forecast of the issue in sober
words, which history has fully verified ; * and he sus
tained his pohcy by a quite final argument : " If we
cannot persevere in carrying the contest on in the
Peninsula or elsewhere on the continent, we must
prepare to make one of our own islands the seat of
war, , , , If Bonaparte cannot root us out of this
country, he must alter his system in Europe, and
give us such a peace as we ought to accept,"
' Vide infra, p, 329.

CHAPTER IX
A NEW ANTAGONIST
" Massena was an old fox ; he took no risks. He gave me more
trouble than any of them." — Wellesley.
NOW that every other foe had left the arena,
Napoleon turned to smite fiercely, and with all
his strength, at Spain. It was the one field Avhere
his arms had faUed. One French array had sur
rendered at Baylen; another had returned ignobly
to France in British transports, having capitulated.
Moore's thrust at his communications had arrested
Napoleon himself in his march on southem Spain ;
Wellington had driven Soult in ruin from Oporto,
and overthrown Victor and King Joseph at Talavera.
This was more than a wound to the prestige of
Napoleon's arms. It stung his personal pride. It
disquieted his strategic instinct as a soldier. For a
British army in Portugal was the point of a sword
menacing the flank of the Grand Army in central
Europe. In July, 1809, before the news of Talavera had
reached him. Napoleon, writing from Schonbrunn,
gave orders for the preparation of a great force for

294 THE GREAT DUKE
service in Spain. On October 7, after the peace
with Austria was signed, and writing from Vienna,
he directed that 100,000 men should be coUected
between Bayonne and Orleans, and announced that
he himself would lead this array into Spain. He
appointed Soult raajor-general. "Until I arrive,"
he said, "you shall be responsible. I wish rayself
to enter Lisbon as soon as possible." And " at the
raoraent he displayed himself beyond the Pyrenees,"
Napoleon informed his corps legislatif, " the leopard
in terror will seek the ocean to avoid defeat and
death." In Napoleon's rhetoric, " the British leopard"
was a timid beast, always prepared to commit suicide
when it was whispered that the French were about
to arrive.
But in 1810, Napoleon found another occupation.
He had divorced Josephine, and his marriage with
an Austrian archduchess made such an adventure
as a campaign in Spain for the moment impossible
to him. On April 17, 1810, he appointed Massena
" commander-in-chief of the army of Portugal," and
charged hira with the task of " driving the British
out of Lisbon."
Napoleon had in a supreme degree the art of
choosing fit instruments, and Massena was, on Wel
lington's own testimony, the ablest of the French
generals. " He had the best military head amongst
all Napoleon's captains.'' "Soult," he told Croker,
" was an excellent tactician, but did not quite under-

A NEW ANTAGONIST 295
stand the field of battle. He knew how to bring his
troops to the field, but not so well how to use thera
when he had brought thera up." But Massena, to
quote Wellington again, "was an old fox; he took
no risks. He gave me more trouble than any of
them, because where I expected to find him weak,
he generally contrived somehow that I should find
him strong."
Massena was fifty-two years of age, and had won
fame as a soldier while Napoleon was only an
artillery officer at Toulon. He was an Italian by
birth, a Jew by race, with the intellectual gifts,
and more than the vices, of the worst exaraples of
both types. He had the morals of a thief; his
licentiousness was bestial ; he was a trickster to his
finger-tips. But he was a great soldier, swift to
seize, as the battle of Zurich proves; obstinate to
hold, as his defence of Genoa witnesses. Wellington,
who read with unerring instinct the qualities of the
general opposed to him, was accustomed to say in
after years that when Massena was in front he
never permitted hiraself to take the risks that he
accepted readily when in the presence of any other
of Napoleon's marshals.
Napoleon put under Massena's comraand a force
of 130,000 raen, of whom 86,000 were available for
immediate service in the field, and in its ranks were
included 15,000 of the Young Guard. The total
French forces in Spain, in September 18 10, amounted

296 THE GREAT DUKE
to no less than 353,000, but the task of holding
down Spain, and of maintaining communications
with France, explains why Massena, for the pur
pose of striking at Wellington, had only 86,000
under his immediate command, and some 40,000
in his second line. When he began his advance
into Portugal on September 16, indeed, he had only
72,000 effective troops in his columns. Wellington
at that moraent had 49,000, of which only 25,000
were British.
When Napoleon placed this formidable army
under Massena, he prescribed for him a plan of
carapaign in which, curiously enough, all the
famUiar principles of Napoleon's own methods were
inverted. Massena was not to move swiftly, or
attempt any brilliant strategic feats. It was to be
a campaign of delay. He must not enter Lisbon
too soon, "as it would be difficult to feed the city
with its immense population." He "could spend
the summer months," Napoleon wrote on May 29,
"in taking Ciudad Rodrigo, and then Almeida."
He "need not hurry, but can go methodically to
work." Massena, in a word, was to take no risks.
Like Strafford, he was to be "thorough," and he
was to use all the deliberation that thoroughness
required. French arms in Spain could hardly sur
vive another failure. The movements of all the
French forces in Spain were made subsidiary to
Massena's great adventure. Meanwhile, Spain was

A NEW ANTAGONIST 297
divided into a sort of French version of the
Heptarchy. Each district was held by a separate
corps, and held down and administered with stern
severity. The general situation at that moment was very
remarkable. One great Power in Europe after
another had abandoned the conflict with Napoleon.
Great Britain alone remained in arms against the
master of the civilised world. In Spain only a
guerilla warfare was maintained. In Portugal the
royal family had fled to America, and that strip
of coast looking out on the Atlantic was nothing
more than a field of battle chosen for strategic
reasons by Great Britain. "In the midst of this
tempest," says Hooper, "Wellington and the army
he comraanded were the only forces erect, compact,
and undaunted."
But that is a very inexact description of the
situation. There were many doubts as to the power
to resist Napoleon, both in the British Cabinet and
amongst WelUngton's own staff. The chief anxiety
of Ministers was to whether the British army could
"escape" frora Spain. It was Liverpool himself^ —
at that moment Secretary of State for War — who
wrote that " the re-embarkation of the army would
probably begin about September." WeUington him
self complained sternly of the letters written by
many of his own commanders, letters that breathed
doubt and not courage, and that abounded in pre-

298 THE GREAT DGKE
dictions of failure. It is hardly an exaggeration
to say that the one absolutely cool head, the one
sure judgment, the one clear courageous spirit in
the path of Napoleon's strategy, was to be found
in Wellington himself.
Massena's first business was to capture the for
tresses which stood in the line of his approach to
Portugal. He began the siege of Ciudad Rodrigo
early in June, and it fell on July 11. It was
gallantly held, and its commander, Herrasti, appealed
to Wellington again and again for help, " 0, venir,
Luego ! Luego ! Luego ! a secorrer esta plaza " — " Oh,
come now ! now 1 now ! to succour this place." But
Wellington had a clear vision of the relative sizes
of things. He had warned Herrasti that he would
not sacrifice the campaign to save a fortress, "I
must leave the mountains and cross the plains, as
well as two rivers, to raise the siege. Is it right
to risk a general action to raise the siege of Ciudad
Rodrigo? I should think not," Picton put the
situation even more expressively. "If we attempt
to relieve the place," he wrote, "the French will
drive us out of Portugal, while if they get posses
sion of it they will lose time, which is more im
portant to thera than Ciudad Rodrigo. But they
have got to find this out."
Massena won his second fortress, Almeida, more
cheaply than the first, A lucky bomb exploded
the magazine of the place, and, as with a breath,

A NEW ANTAGONIST 299
the castle, the cathedral, and the whole central
portion of the town disappeared in dust and smoke.
Five hundred of the garrison perished at a breath,
and nothing remained but to surrender the ruins
to the French. Massena's course was now clear
for the raareh on Lisbon.
While Massena was clearing the ground for his
advance by besieging Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida,
Wellington employed Craufurd — the soldier he could
best trust on such a task — with the famous Light
Division, to watch the French movements, and
report the first sign of an advance. And as a com
mander of outposts Craufurd was unsurpassed. He
was at once a fiery Scot and a scientific soldier, a man
of brilliant abilities, but of veheraent temper, and, it
may be added, of many misfortunes. He was five
years older than WelUngton, eight years older than
Hill, and yet was only a junior brigadier-general.
But Wellington knew Craufurd's gifts, and charged
him with a great task.
Craufurd had to keep watch on a front of forty
miles against a French array six tiraes his own
strength, and commanded by Ney ; yet he was never
surprised ; he never lost an outpost, and never failed
to keep WeUington informed of the latest movement
on the part of the enemy. He flung his cavalry
piquets so far out, and knitted thera together by an
organisation so perfect, that it was as though the
whole of Massena's front were touched with sensitive

300 THE GREAT DUKE
antennge, so that every moveraent in the French
camp sent an answering vibration back to Welling
ton's headquarters. " The Light Division itself," says
Napier, "was kept at so high a pitch of efficiency
that seven minutes sufficed, even in the middle of
the night, to put it under arms, and fifteen minutes'
notice, night or day, brought it in order of battle,
to its alarra posts, with its baggage loaded and in
position." For four months Craufurd maintained his
watch with this perfection of vigilance. Wellington's
school certainly bred fine soldiers.
Craufurd's hot temper was no doubt too much for
his cool head in the end. He had kept "a weak
division for three months within two hours' march
of 60,000 men, appropriating the resources of the plains
entirely to himself." But in defiance of orders he held
his position too long on the farther side of the Coa,
until Ney, the quickest of Napoleon's generals, struck
at him with 24,000 infantry, 5000 cavalry, and 30
guns. Craufurd escaped after one of the most
picturesque and bloody fights in the whole war ; but
it was with the loss of over 300 in killed and wounded,
Ney himself losing 1000 men. "I am glad to see
you safe, Craufurd," said Wellington, when he met
him after the fight. " Oh, I was in no danger, I assure
you," was Craufurd's reply. " But I was from your
conduct," said Wellington. Craufurd's sole comment
as he walked away was, " He is d  d crusty to-day."
It was uncertain whether Massena would advance

A NEW ANTAGONIST 30I
on Lisbon by the north or the south bank of the
Tagus, The southem bank offered the easier approach,
but when traversed, it left the invading army on the
wrong side of the estuary of the Tagus, which, for
twenty miles inland from Lisbon, expands into a tidal
lagoon from four to eleven miles broad. The northern
bank offered the more difficult road, but led clear
into Lisbon, Wellington, with his uncanny power of
reading the mind of his antagonist, wrote in October
1809, " The enemy wUl make his main attack by the
right of the Tagus, but he will employ one corps on
the left of the river. The object will be, by raeans of
the corps south of the Tagus, to turn the position
which we shall take against the corps north of that
river, to cut off from Lisbon the corps opposed to
him, and destroy it by an attack on the front and rear.''^
That would have been ideal strategy, but no serious
movement was made on the south of the Tagus
untU — when Massena had already begun to fall back
from WelUngton's Unes — Soult moved in that
direction. But Wellington had, from the first, to guard
against both branches of this strategy. He wrote
to Hill on December 18, 1809, "I shall form two
principal corps, both consisting of British and
Portuguese troops, the larger of which will reach
to the north-west, and I shall comraand rayself,
the other wUl be for the present upon the Tagus,
^ "Despatches," vol. v. p. 235.

302 THE GREAT DUKE
and hereafter it may be moved forward to
Alemtejo," and he offered this command to Hill.
His iraraediate business was to watch Reynier, who
with a strong force was far down south threatening
Abrantes. Reynier was a formidable enemy, clever
in tactics, fierce in stroke, and HiU's post was one
that needed cool judgment and sleepless vigil
ance. He was to keep touch with Reynier, yet
not be entangled in a fight with him. If Reynier
slipped frora his front to join Massena he was in
stantly to rejoin Wellington. Wellington, indeed,
had thought out every contingency, and supplied
Hill with a set of instructions to raeet each as it
arose. As one of HiU's brigadiers told hira with
a laugh, "he was given the choice of acting in
eleven different situations."
The post would perhaps have suited no other of
Wellington's generals except HiU. Picton, slower
in brain than Hill, but a hard fighter, would have
come short of Wellington's instructions; Craufurd,
with his strain of impatient genius, would have
gone beyond them ; and both would probably have
sought a battle on their own account. But it was
HiU's supreme merit, in Wellington's eyes, that he
never forgot his instructions, and he never ex
ceeded them. He exactly understood his cora-
mander-in-chief s mind. Reynier was never suffered
to get too far from him, so as to escape notice,
or too near to him, so as to involve the risk of

A NEW ANTAGONIST 303
a battle; and when finally Reynier turned the
heads of his columns northward, plainly to join
Massena, Hill, without further orders, pushed at
speed to the Mondego, joined Wellington, and was
in time to put his division into the battle-line on
the hill at Busaco.
Wellington's arrangements were now complete.
He had a line of posts from Almeida to Castel
Branco, and on whatever road the French ad
vanced, the moveraent was instantly reported.
Wellington, at Celorico, on the Mondego, kept
vigUant watch till Massena's strategy became clear.
A great army moves slowly, and Massena, a wary
commander, covered his front with a cavalry screen,
and hid the secret of his route from his vigUant
foe as long as possible. By September 15, it was
clear, however, that Massena had chosen the right
bank of the Tagus. There reraained the further
question : which side of the Mondego would he
take ? There were two routes — one by Celorico,
another by Vizeu. Both were difficult; that by
Vizeu was almost impassable; and Wellington had
to hold the moveraent of his troops suspended till
he knew what choice his eneray had made. Not
till the 17th was it clear that, trusting to bad
maps, and misled by the ignorance as to their own
country of the Portuguese officers on his staff,
Massena had taken the route by Vizeu. "There
are many bad roads in Portugal," said Wellington.

304 THE GREAT DUKE
" but the enemy has decidedly taken the worst in
the whole kingdom,"
Vizeu itself, a town with a population of 9000,
no doubt tempted Massena by the possibility it
offered of yielding supplies, for already the French
general was raaking the discovery that, in the
sterile and savage country through which he was
raoving, starvation was a deadlier perU to a great
array than the guns and bayonets of its enemies.
Wellington's plan of leaving nothing but a naked
countryside to the French was proving effective.
It is true that it was carried out only imperfectly.
Had his instructions been obeyed, not a goat or
a fowl, not a flask of wine or a grain of wheat,
would have been left for Massena's hungry columns.
Every bridge was to be broken, every miU de
stroyed, every river cleared of boats. The towns
would have been left empty, the farms deserted;
the French would have found themselves marching
through a desert. But it is difficult to sweep a
whole countryside clean of food and life in this
heroic fashion. The Portuguese in many cases
hid their stores instead of destroying them, and
the French, pricked by hunger, grew amazingly
ingenious in the business of their discovery. StiU,
Wellington's policy was sorely troubling his enemy.
Massena already, although he had hardly ex
changed a shot with the British, was suffering
almost as much damage as a lost battle might

A NEW ANTAGONIST 305
have inflicted. He could not horse his guns, and
had to abandon one-third of his artillery. The
policy of living on the country broke down. He
decided he must carry a minimum supply of
fifteen days' food with him, and there was the
utmost difficulty in getting transport for even this
scanty supply.
The state of the roads — or rather the absence
of any roads on the route now taken — astonished
and exasperated the French. Massena exploded
day after day in furious letters to Berthier. "It
is impossible,' he wrote, "to find worse roads
than these. They bristle with rocks, the guns
and train have suffered severely, and I must
wait for them. I must leave them two days at
Vizeu when they corae in to rest themselves, , . .
Sir, all our marches are across a desert, not a
soul to be seen anywhere, everything is abandoned,"
The story of how his guns struggled along the
thread-like, rocky, and almost impossible track
to Vizeu, and beyond it, is told in much distressful
literature on the part of French historians.
The course of Massena's advance now led him
down the narrow valley betwixt the right bank
of the Mondego and the Cararaula Sierra. Here a
steep ridge, a lofty hog's-back of dull red granite,
its front like the frowning and battered wall of
some vast and ancient castle, stretched from the
river to the mountains, a distance of nearly nine
VOL, I. U

3o6 THE GREAT DUKE
miles. Busaco, with its gapped and splintered
front, shaggy with heather and furze, was an ideal
position for a defensive fight. It was, it is true,
no part of Wellington's original plan to fight a
battle at this stage of operations. His plan was
to fall back to the great Unes at Torres Vedras,
drawing the French as far from their base as
possible, and then to watch while Massena's
famine- wasted battalions spent their strength in
vain on those vast defences. But Busaco was a
singularly strong position. That stern granite wall
might be successfully held against any direct
attack ; it might be turned ; it could not be
carried. A vigorous, offensive stroke, Wellington
always held, was a wholesome feature in a retreat.
A successful fight would act like the tonic of
some stern wine on his mixed army. It would
be a pledge to the Portuguese that the retreat
towards Lisbon did not mean the abandonment
of the campaign. It would secure araple tirae
for carrying out the difficult policy of sweeping
the country of all supplies, which was an essential
feature of Wellington's plans. The French, more
over, would be taught a useful lesson as to the
fighting quality of the British.
Wellington, in a word, felt much as Jervis did
when he saw the Spanish three-deckers under
his lee at Cape St. Vincent. " A victory," he said,
thinking of political opmion in Great Britain,

A NEW ANTAGONIST 307
"would be very useful just now." And Busaco,
like the battle off Cape St. Vincent, was fought
rather for political than for railitary reasons.
"Croakers about useless battles will attack me
again about that of Busaco," wrote Wellington a
week after the battle, "but I should have been
inexcusable if, knowing what I did, I had not
attempted to stop the enemy there. ... It has
removed an impression which began to be very
general that we intended to fight no more, but
retire to our ships, and it has given the Portu
guese a taste for an amusement to which they
were not before accustomed, and which they would
not have acquired if I had not put thern in a very
strong position."

CHAPTER X
BUSACO
" Sept. 27th : An ill-omened day, which was to behold one of the
most terrible reverses which the French army ever sufEered." —
Mabbot. THE ridge on which the great fight took place
is forraidable, not for its height, but for its
front, rough and steep, shaggy with scrub, corru
gated with tiny ravines, and scarred with jagged
precipices. The ravine which parts it from the
opposing hills is, at the centre, profound in depth,
but very narrow. It stretches, east and west, from
the river to the Sierra, a distance of nine mUes,
and this, in the days when quick-firing guns and
long-range rifles were unknown, was, by its mere
extent, a dangerous front for an army of 50,000
men to hold. Four or five roads climbed the
ridge, but only two of them were fairly good, and
by these two the French attacked. One is on the
left centre of the British position, the principal
road from Celorico to Coimbra. It crosses the
ridge close to the convent on its summit. Farther
to the east is the road running to Palheiros, by
308

-FRENCH IN MARCH
aSTH. SEPT.

Sardao

/; -aiur ^Boitialisc,

BUSACO 309
which Reynier sent his columns. It crosses a
depression in the ridge. Wellington evidently
regarded these two roads as the vulnerable points
in his position, and had put his best fighting
divisions about them. Craufurd with the Light
Division was on the left of the road leading by
the convent, Spencer with the Guards on the
right. The right of Picton's division touched the
left of Leith's just where the road to Palheiros
crossed the ridge. In the centre, where Craufurd's
men stood, a narrow guUy runs like a wound into
the face of the hiU; the road clings to its flank
and curves round its head. Here the guns of the
Light Division were placed within a semicircle
of boulders, the gaps forming natural embrasures,
so that the road could be swept with deadly effect.
Wellington's other divisions were distributed
along the range. Hill holding the right. Cole the
extreme left. Immediately about the convent
the ridge is flat topped, and Wellington brought
up some squadrons of dragoons and placed them
in the rear of the Guards. They might ride in
with good effect on the heads of the French
columns if they succeeded in gaining the summit
of the ridge. The ridge narrows to almost a knife-
edge farther to the right, but a rough country
path runs, parallel with the ridge, a few hundred
yards down the reverse side of the slope, and this
made it possible for reinforcements to be sent from

3IO THE GREAT DUKE
one part of the line to the other unseen by the
enemy, Sorae sixty guns were distributed in
tiny clusters of pieces along the whole front. By
10.30 on the 26th, Wellington had all his regi
ments in position.
As the story of the battle is generally told, Ney,
with the French advance-guard, reached the British
position early in the afternoon of the 25 th, and
before three o'clock 40,000 French infantry were
drawn up in raasses near the two roads we have
named, while their skirmishers were busy disputing
with the British pickets on the wooded slopes of the
great hUl. Ney, so the tradition runs, with the
keen eye of a great soldier, saw that the ridge was
only half occupied by the British, and would have
attacked, but his commander-in-chief was twenty
miles to the rear ; so a great chance was missed.
But Oman, with the patient and convincing industry
of the student, has examined all the Uterature on
the subject, including the French archives, and
proves beyond doubt that it was only on the morn
ing of the 26th Ney examined the British position.
It was true he wished to attack it then, but at that
moment Wellington had every man in line, while
not half the French army was in position.
All through the afternoon of the 26th Mass6na's
huge army was slowly coming into sight. The
British, watching from the far-stretching broken
summit of the ridge, saw the countless files of tho

BUSACO 3 I I
French, their bayonets glittering in the sun, come
through every valley, down the tiny tracks of the
hUl slopes and through the blackness of the forest.
Then came the guns, the baggage waggons, long
lines of mules with packs, flocks of sheep and goats.
"It seeraed," says Leith Hay, who watched the
sight, "like the raigration of a people rather than
the raareh of an army." If a vision of the scale of
Massena's army could have chilled the iraagination
of the British regiraents, the spectacle that evening,
as the hills were throwing their long shadows over
the gloomy ravine at their feet, might have served
the French general's plans better even than the
muskets of his gallant battalions the next morning.
But the British soldier is hardly to be thrown into
a panic through his imagination. Wellington's in
fantry, for the first time, saw, spread out at their
feet, the great force which the genius of Napoleon
had despatched for their overthrow, and they ex
changed rough jests with each other as they watched
the sight. Their slender knotted line of red-coated
regiments, they were sure, would not break even
when such a mass of armed strength was flung
upon it.
The night fell, keen and cold, on the hill crest;
black in the depths of the ravine below. In the
valleys, and on the hUl-slopes opposite the darkness
was pricked with innumerable camp fires, and all
through the night Wellington's outposts could hear.

312 THE GREAT DUKE
almost like the murmur of the sea, the confused
noises of the great French camp as they floated up
frora the valley.
All the French critics since, with the cheap
wisdom that coraes after the event, hold that
Massena, instead of sending his battalions up the
rough front of the great hill, should have done on
the morning of the 26th, and before the battle, what
he did late that night when the battle was lost. He
should have pushed past WeUington's left flank by
the road to Coimbra. Marbot relates how he tried
to suggest this plan to his commander-in-chief, and
asserts that in the council of war held to settle
details for the battle, this plan was urged by
Massena's chief of staff; but Massena put it aside.
" It is the first time that Wellington seems ready
to give battle," he said, " and I ought to profit by
the opportunity."
Massena's battle-plan had the merit of a certain
massive simpUcity. He resolved to strike at
Wellington's front at two points, and put a whole
army corps in each column of attack. Reynier had
charge of the left column ; Ney of the right. The
attacks, curiously enough, were not to be simul
taneous. Ney was only to move when he saw that
Reynier had reached the crown of the hill and estab
lished himself there ; then Ney was to strike. Ney
was to move along the road which led past the
convent. Reynier was to climb the track which led

BUSACO 3 1 3
from San Antonio de Cantaro to Palheiros. His
attack was to be in two colurans — the left consisting
of fifteen battalions, or 8000 men ; the right of
eleven battalions, or 6500 men. Ney's attack was
on the same plan, and was as massive in scale.
Massena knew that Wellington's regiments, scattered
along a front of nearly nine miles, must make a very
thin thread indeed, and the infantry of an entire
French army corps, daringly led, and flung in one
shattering column on a single point in that slender
line, would surely break it. And when two such
attacks, at as raany points, were hurled against that
line, how could it escape being torn to fragments ?
Massena had yet to learn the resisting power of a
line of British infantry.
The morning of the 27th broke heavy with mists.
There was a stern hush on the long hill crest where
the British regiments were already standing drawn
up for battle; but far down, out of the mist that
hid the depths of the ravine, there carae all the
noise of an army preparing for attack — the call of
trumpets, the faint pulse of beaten drums, and every
now and again the shrill, clear sound of the fife.
The British outposts had been thrust low down
the hillside and were hidden in the mist, and now
the sudden rattle of muskets under that roof of
fog told that the French attack had started, and
Massena's tirailleurs were contending with the British
outposts. Reynier came on in two huge columns —

314 THE GREAT DUKE
one on the narrow track itself, the other to the
right of it. All the battalions were in coluran
formation, with a front of one company only. The
roughness of the hillside, the sharpness of the
skirmishing, soon broke the steady contour of the
disciplined human mass, so that when it came clear
out of the mists, "the assault," to the watching
British on the summit, to quote Oman, " seemed to
be delivered by a string, or succession, of crowds
crossing the hillside diagonally,"
The leading column, splendidly led, came on with
great resolution, and was presently smitten by the
fire of the light companies of some of Picton's
regiments which had been thrust a little down the
slope. Owing to the contour of the ground, or the
fire of these companies, Reynier's leading battalions
swung to their left, and Grattan, in his " Adventures
with the Connaught Rangers," says that this move
raent took them out of sight of the 88th which held
the surarait immediately above them, and WaUace
made a corresponding move with his regiraent to his
right. The roll of rausketry from the French attack,
mixed with the clamour of voices, deepened, but
still the fold of the hill prevented Wallace seeing
what was happening. He knew that there was a
space of unoccupied ground to his left, for luck had
led Reynier's column up to what was perhaps the
weakest point in Wellington's whole line. Betwixt
the 88th and the next regiment, the 45th, there was

BUSACO 3 1 5
nearly half a mile of unoccupied ground. Wallace
then sent the captain of his Grenadier Corapany
on the run to see what was happening beyond the
shoulder of the hill.
" In a few moments Dunne returned almost breathless ; he
said thu rocks were filling fast with Frenchmen, that a heavy
column was coming up the hill beyond the rocks, and that the
four companies ot the 45th were about to be attacked. Wallace
asked if he thought half the 88th would be able to do the
business. ' You will want every man,' waa the reply. Wallace,
with a steady but cheerful countenance, turned to his men, and
looking them full in the face, said, ' Now, Connaught Rangers,
mind what you are going to do ; when I bring you face to face
with those French rascals, drive them down the hill — don't give
the false touch, but push home to the muzzle."
The French were breathless as the result of their
clirab. They had gained the actual crest of the
hill; they had only to hold it. Their officers were
shouting and gesticulating in the effort to get them
into formation. But Wallace was an officer of the
finest type ; he threw the 88th into column and took
it forward at the double till the French came in
sight. Part of Merle's column had seized a cluster
of rocks, and Wallace, with quick decision, detached
three companies to clear the French from that
strong position. He had caught up four companies
of the 45th who were firing on the French column,
and was about to charge. To his right, however,
was a battalion of Portuguese infantry who were
firing into space, on general principles, and their fire
^ Grattan, p. 33,

3l6 THE GREAT DUKE
swept the ground over which Wallace must lead
his men. He sent one of his officers running
to teU the Portuguese to cease firing, but the un
fortunate officer himseK was killed by a Portuguese
buUet. There was no time for delay. Wallace jumped
from his horse, called on his men to follow him, and
with Gwynne of the 45th on one side of him, and
Captain Seaton of the 88th on the other, ran forward
at a charging pace into the midst of the terrible
flame in his front. Less than four battalions were
attacking eleven. Wellington himself, with Beres
ford, watched the attack of the 88th, and Beresford,
according to a famUiar story, broke into exclama
tions of protest against the rashness of the stroke.
But the rush of the 88th and the 45th caught the
French, disordered by climbing the steep hiU, and
before they had recovered their order. The rolling
volleys of Wallace's men were deadly, and when
they ran in vehemently with the bayonet, the huge
French column swayed for a moment, and then dis
solved into a mere mob, and went down the slope
shattered and wrecked. " WeUington, at this point,"
says Grattan, " turned to Beresford, and tapping
him on the shoulder, said, 'Look at them now,
Beresford.'" Reynier's other column had been checked and
broken by the fire of the 74th and of some Portuguese
battalions, added to the grape from a battery of

BUSACO 317
guns which tore it almost to pieces. But Foy by
this time was bringing up the third section of
Reynier's attack. He had only seven battalions,
whUe Merle had eleven, and as his files advanced
the broken wrecks of the whole eleven swept past
them in a tumult of flight, with WaUace's red-coats
hanging on their rear. The sight might well have
chilled the 6Uim of Foy's battalions. But they were
veterans. They swung a little to the right, and
though smitten with a cruel fire on their flank,
and tormented with the musketry of the British
skirmishers, pressed swiftly up the hill till they
reached the crest. The weight of the charging
French swept back the right wing of the 45 th and
some Portuguese battalions, and broke roughly
through Wellington's line. For the second time a
French column had gained the hill, and Foy's rush
was more menacing than that of Merle.
But Cameron with the 9th and the 38th moved
swiftly up; he sent the 38th running to hold the
reverse edge of the crest against the French, and
then charged their flank with the 9th. The long
red line moved swiftly, with a succession of volleys
that rang deep and sharp like the blast of artillery
fire. When within twenty yards of the French, by
this time sorely shaken with such a fire, Cameron's
men closed on them with the bayonet. The effect
was overwhelming. "The head of my column,"
says Foy, " fell back to its right ; despite my efforts

31 8 THE GREAT DUKE
I could not get them to deploy. Disorder set in,
they raced down-hill in headlong flight. The enemy
pursued us half-way to the foot of the hiU."
It is not often a French general tells the story of
his own defeat so frankly, but Foy had the honesty
as well as the courage of a good soldier. His attack
was more obstinate and more nearly successful than
that of Merle, but it was very costly. Merle's
division of eleven battalions lost in kUled and
wounded 1041 men. Foy's column of only seven
battalions lost 978, a loss proportionaUy still heavier.
The tactical failure in Massena's arrangements
becomes visible at this point. Reynier's battalions
twice gained, and for a moment held, the crest, but
there was half-an-hour's interval in time betwixt the
two attacks, and they reached the crest at points
a considerable distance from each other. The
interval in time, and in distance, betwixt their
charges did not perhaps rob them of success, but it
certainly lessened their chance of succeeding.
Ney's attack was as formidable in scale, and as
resolute in spirit, as Reynier's, but it was defeated
as completely, and in even less time. He waited
tUl he saw the head of Reynier's column on the
actual crest of the hill, and then he moved, Loison
leading his right column, Marchand the left. As
they climbed the hill the columns took opposite
sides of the deep ravine which ran into the centre
of the hill, and Loison's ill fate led him to that point

BUSACO 319
of the line held by Craufurd with the Light
Division. That fine soldier had placed the 9Sth and
a Portuguese battalion — 1300 rifles in all — low down
the slope of the hill in skirmishing order ; he kept
the 43rd and the 52nd, with a Portuguese regiment,
lying down in a hollow behind the lip of the crest.
The French column stubbornly, but with great
loss, tore its way through the British skirmishing
line, crept past Ross's guns, which flashed upon them
from a cluster of broken rocks on their flank, and
at last reached what they believed to be the crest
of the hill. Standing on the sky-line by the side of
a little windmill Craufurd had watched the gallant
coluran force its way up to the summit. The
impulse of victory ran through their ranks; the
crest seemed empty — they had almost reached it,
their leading files were pushing over it. At that
moment Craufurd waved his hat and called out,
" Now, 52nd, revenge the death of Sir John Moore !"
Then over the crest the long red line of the 52nd
and 43rd suddenly broke upon the vision of the
astonished French. It came swiftly on, a menacing
spectacle. With fine courage, however, the French
stood their ground, and the head of the column
opened a murderous fire on the advancing hne.
But without check or pause Craufurd's Une came on,
till at a distance, according to one spectator, of " not
more than five yards," it thrice poured a tremendous
volley into the French. Then came the charge, the

320 THE GREAT DUKE
fierce push home of a stretch of 2000 bayonets.
And torn almost to fragments, the French column,
with a dreadful tumult of sound, was flung down
the hill. Reynier had brought twenty-two bat
talions into the actual fight and they had been
simply wrecked, losing more than 2000 killed and
wounded, and aU this as the result of their conflict
with eleven battalions of Wellington's force — only
6000 of these being British. The killed and wounded
in Ney's battalions araounted to 2456.
What was the secret of the success of the British
infantry ? In this close, swift, and bloody contest
forty-five battalions in all attacked twenty-four
battalions, and the twenty-four won ! It would be
false to say that the French attack faUed in courage.
No onfall could have been raore resolute and gallant,
or raore finely led. The proportion of officers kUled
and wounded in this fight was higher than in any
during the whole Peninsular War, a proof of the
daring leadership shown in both attacks. It would
be absurd, again, to say that the British exceed the
French in courage. They have a different kind of
courage — cooler, more stubborn, and less likely to
be affected through the imagination. The 88th, for
example, ran in upon the flank of Merle's battalions
without being in the least discouraged by the fact
that they were attacking a number nearly three
times as great as their own. But the French
suffered the disadvantage of being without tbe

BUSACO 321
assistance of their artillery ; they were breathless
and disordered by their climb. The fight on the
crest in each case was a duel betwixt the line and
the column; and if the French had the advantage
in mass, the British had a deadly advantage in the
extent of their front, and, as a consequence, of their
fire. In each case, too, the British attacked exactly
at the psychological moment. When the French
had gained the surarait, exhausted, and broken in
order, by their climb, then the sudden appearance,
the swift advance, the measured volleys, the bayonet
charge of a disciplined line wrecked the column.
It was Foy himself, long afterwards — perhaps re
membering that desperate fight on the rough edge
of Busaco, when he saw his splendid regiraents
hurled, as if with the stroke of a meteorite, down the
long slope by the charge of the 9th — who wrote in
words we have already quoted, that, " for a set battle
with equal numbers on a Umited front the English
infantry was better than the French." ^
The gains of Busaco were clear and great. For
one thing the Portuguese regiments, so long and
patiently trained by Beresford, stiffened by British
discipline, and with a thread of British officers
running through them, proved for the first time
their fighting value. The losses of the British and
Portuguese in the fight were exactly equal, the
number killed in each case being 626. To this day
1 Quoted by Oman, vol. i. p, 116.
VOL, I. X

322 THE GREAT DUKE
in every Portuguese barracks Busaco is remembered
with pride ; there for the first time soldiers of their
race showed theraselves fit to stand in battle-line
with the British, A sraall railitary post is still
raaintained on the ridge at Busaco, and the flag is
hoisted on each anniversary in honour of that far-off
victory. At Busaco, too, Massena was taught for the
first time the fighting value of the British soldier
and he never forgot the lesson. Though he lay
for a month within sight of the lines of Torres
Vedras he made no attempt to carry them; and
no doubt it was the recollection of seeing his massive
columns recoil in disorder down the rough slope
of Busaco that prevented him from assaulting those
yet more formidable lines round Lisbon, The fight
on Busaco saved any fighting at Torres Vedras,
The political effect of the fight, it may be added,
was great. It gave new courage to pubhc opinion
both in Great Britain and Portugal.

CHAPTER XI
THE LINES OF TORRES VEDRAS
" I am in a situation in which no mischief can be done to the
army, or to any part of it ; I am prepared for all events ; aud if I
am in a scrape, as appears to be the general belief in England,
althongh certainly not my own, I'll get out of it." — Wellesley.
MASSENA attempted no second attack on Wel
lington's position. All through the afternoon,
untU dark fell, there was a splutter of skirmishing be
twixt the British and French outposts ; and, early on
the moming of the 28th, Massena's cavalry was doing
what it ought to have done two days earUer — exploring
both flanks of the Busaco range to discover whether
it might not be turned. A comparatively easy road
was found past its northern end, running by Boialvo,
and opening an easy approach to Coimbra. On the
afternoon of the 28th the French skirmishers were
active again on the foot of the ridge, but Wellington's
keen eye saw that the French were busy digging
trenches along their front and flanks, whUe heavy
columns from the French rear were moving east
ward. Massena was turning the British position,
and Loison, with the rear-guard, was standing fast,
3«3

324 THE GREAT DUKE
while the main body marched away. Wellington
might have fallen on the French rear-guard, or have
struck at the columns raoving past his flank, but
either course had its perils, and might wreck his
whole strategy — his stand against Massena behind
the great Unes of Torres Vedras, where the French
would find famine to be their deadliest foe.
Wellington would not run the risk of making his
great hUl-fortress outside Lisbon useless, by risking
an unnecessary battle before he reached it.
Wellington accordingly resumed his retreat, and
Massena pushed on without check to Coimbra. It
was a city of 40,000 people, and when, on the night
of the 28th, news came that Wellington was aban
doning Busaco, and that in three days the French
advance-guard would reach the city, there were still
30,000 people in the streets. The flight from that
city was one of the most picturesque, if tragical,
scenes in the war. The roads leading to Lisbon were
crowded for miles with flying multitudes, most of
them women and children. To the hungry and
footsore French regiments, when they reached the
city, the spectacle of a great town, empty, indeed, of
inhabitants, but with every door open, and rich in
every kind of supply, was irresistible, and the leading
brigades dissolved, almost in a moment, into plun
dering, lawless crowds. Discipline vanished; the
privates threatened to shoot their officers, who
attempted to restrain them. Junot's corps is said

THE LINES OF TORRES VEDRAS 325
to have destroyed in four hours suppUes which
would have maintained the whole army for alraost
as raany weeks,
Coimbra was, for the French, a temptation and a
trap. It was not till October 2 that Massena began
his pursuit of the British again. He retained
Coimbra as a kind of base, left there his wounded
from Busaco, and the baggage and guns he could not
take with him. On the 7 th, four days after Massena
had marched, Trant, the most enterprising of all
Wellington's officers in coraraand of the Portuguese,
" rushed " Coirabra, capturing raore than 4500
prisoners, raost of thera wounded men, with the
whole of Massena's hospitals and baggage, greatly
to the wrath of his whole army, and to the un
measured fury of Napoleon hiraself.
Meanwhile, with a constant succession of cavalry
skirmishes, Massena's columns had pressed on
Wellington's rear, till on October 10 the last files
of Craufurd's division, which formed his rear-guard,
disappeared from the sight of the pursuing French,
behind a fold of the great hill range. On the fol
lowing morning Montbrun, who coraraanded Mas
sena's cavalry, carae in sight of a long scarped
hillside, pricked with redoubts and strongly held,
which forbade further advance. He sent back word
to Massena that he had corae upon a vast line of
fortifications, running from the bank of the Tagus
westward : and this was the first hint the French

326 THE GREAT DUKE
got of the famous lines of Torres Vedras. Not
till October 14 did Mass6na himself come up to
stare at the barrier which checked him at the
very moment he beUeved Lisbon to be in his grasp.
His most trusted officer, Pelet, tells the story of
how, instead of a landscape of gently rolling hills,
they saw mountains hewn into vast fortifications,
deep ravines thick with abattis, a road passage
only a few paces broad and commanded by heavy
batteries on front and flank.
The famous lines might almost be described as
the most formidable defensive position known in
the history of war. Wellington, with his foreseeing
genius, had planned thera a year before. When he
landed in the Peninsula in April, 1809, he reaUsed
at once the need for some stronghold, within touch
of his ships, which might be held against the
utmost force that could be brought against it.
Such a stronghold must be drawn round Lisbon;
and the geographical position of the city gave
Wellington exactly the opportunity he wanted,
Lisbon stands on a point of land betwixt the
Atlantic and a vast tidal estuary, and so is, in fact,
a peninsula, A few mUes to the north is a triple
line of hills stretching from the sea to the estuary.
On October 20, 1809, Wellington wrote a raeraor
able despatch to Colonel Fletcher, chief of his
engineering staff, directing him to prepare a scheme
for constructing on these hills a double line of

Walker &rBoutall sc

THE LINES OF TORRES VEDRAS 327
trenches and redoubts stretching from water to
water. There was to be an inner line — the citadel
of the whole scherae of defence — an entrenched
camp designed to cover an embarkation, if this
were found to be necessary. Twenty-four miles to
the north of Lisbon stretched the second line of
defence ; the outer line was originally intended as
an outwork, to hold an advancing enemy in check
while the raain position was taken up, but this, in
time, was strengthened till it became well-nigh im
pregnable, and so was held permanently.
" The famous lines," says Professor Oman, " were
one of the cheapest investments in history." The
engineering staff employed numbered only eighteen ;
the labour was supplied by the Lisbon militia regi
ments who received fourpence a day extra for their
services, by hired peasantry, from 5000 to 7000
in nuraber, who were paid a shilling a day, and
later by conscription of the whole district for forty
mUes around. The peasantry worked in gangs of
frora 1000 to 1500 men, each in charge of an
engineering officer, and under a total staff of over
seers consisting of about 150 non-commissioned
officers. The cost of the work was about ;^ 100,000;
and for this modest sum some fifty miles of fortifica
tions, including 150 forts, manned with 600 guns,
had been created.
The defences were of every possible kind. Rivers
were dammed, and the approaches to the foot-

328 THE GREAT DUKE
hUls for miles were turned into impassable swamps.
The narrow ravuaes were choked with abattis ; across
one great ravine a loose stone wall, sixteen feet thiok
and forty feet high, was raised. Along the summit
of one hill for a space of three miles stone walls,
six feet high and four feet in thickness, were piled.
At one point the hill front was scarped for two
thousand yards so as to make a precipice which
could not be climbed. In general plan the lines
consisted of closed earthworks dotted along the two
ranges of hills. At certain points the earthworks
expanded to the scale of fortified camps, and the
whole was knitted together with every kind of de
fence. The earthworks were so related to each
other that the whole front was swept by a cross-fire,
and all the approaches to the outer line had been
denuded of cover tUl it was clear as a glacis. Alto
gether fifty-three mUes of defences were constructed,
and the whole was linked together so perfectly that
a raessage could be sent along the whole front in
seven minutes. " Rome," says Napier in his emphatic
way, " never raised greater works in the time."
The works theraselves, it is to be noted, had
their own garrison, coraposed of some 20,000 raen
of what raay be called the second line — Portuguese
gunners, picked companies of Portuguese militia,
2000 British marines, &c., with some 8000 Spanish
troops brought up by Romana. This left WeUing
ton's field army, by this time 60,000 strong, drawn

THE LINES OF TORRES VEDRAS 329
up at advantageous points within the lines, and
ready to strike at any of Massena's colurans that
broke their way through. Wellington knew the
value of the sea as a base. His troops, comfort
ably housed, drew araple suppUes frora the fleet
lying off Lisbon. "With the sea open to me," he
wrote, "and tonnage enough in the Tagus I can
never be in danger. Every day that we can
manage to hold our own in this country is an
immense gain to us and a great loss to the
enemy. . . . The first serious check which Bona
parte raeets with will give the signal for a general
rising against hira."
It is curious, however, to know that Wellington
hiraself believed that the one serious perU to the lines
came from the sea. " The only real danger to me
was from the sea; and I have often wondered that
Bonaparte did not raake a desperate effort to gain
the coraraand of the estuary of the Tagus. There
were, to be sure, nine chances to one against his
succeeding. But the game which he played was
worth risking even these odds to win. If by a
sudden burst he could have got possession of the
Tagus, and kept it for a week, we raust have
starved. However, I had pretty weU provided
against that also. We had heavy batteries which
commanded the roadstead; and Belem and the
other forts were well armed." And this five years
after Trafalgar !

33° THE GREAT DUKE
Massena studied long and with angry eyes the
great lines of fortified hiUs that barred his approach
to Lisbon. Then he turned with fury upon his
Portuguese advisers. "You told me," he said,
"that I should find the country easy as far as
Lisbon, and look!" "Ah," they replied, "it is
that devU of a man who has placed his batteries
everywhere.'' "But," said Massena, "that devil
of a man did not create the mountains." "No,"
they adraitted, "but he has turned the raountains
into fortresses."
Massena was too good a captain to wreck his
army by flinging it upon such a formidable posi
tion. But if he was too wary to attack, he was of
too stubborn a temper to retire; and for a month
he lay sullenly in front of Wellington's lines,
sending his cavahy far out, meanwhile, in search
of supplies. That in a district which WeUington
beUeved had been swept clear of food, he succeeded
in keeping an army of 60,000 alive for a whole
month, is an amazing proof of his obstinacy, and
of the plundering capacity of his troops.
But Massena paid a tragical price for that month's
sullen watch before the scarped and embattled hUls
that arrested his march on Lisbon. The weather
was bitter; his hospitals were crowded; his dead
multiplied ; discipUne was fatally relaxed ; a con
stant stream of deserters flowed into the British
lines. It seemed during those distressful weeks as

THE LINES OF TORRES VEDRAS 33 1
if the proud and gallant array which Massena had
led across the Spanish frontier would perish of
mere famine. And the French spread suffering, as
well as endured it. Their foraging parties, pricked
with hunger, did incredibly cruel things araongst
the unhappy peasantry. " The scenes of raisery in
the country ravaged by the French," says Torakinson
of the 1 6th Light Dragoons, in his "Diary of a
Cavalry Officer," " are beyond anything I ever saw,
and if the enemy continue long in their present
position, half the people of the country wUl be in their
graves." Wellington had his own troubles, but his army,
in sheltered cantonments, and drawing abundant
supplies from the transports lying in port, was
under very cheerful conditions, and he was able
to watch the French camps with stern satisfaction.
He knew how suffering was wasting Massena's
strength. "Every day they stop there," he wrote,
"is a gain to us."
The " Cavalry Officer " above quoted gives a curi
ously interesting picture of life and adventure on the
British outposts during those stern days. All the
desertions, it seems, were not from the French
caraps into the British lines; in sorae inexplicable
fashion there was a tiny trickle of runaways from
the British regiments to the French.- "Since we
have been in the lines," he writes, "many of our
infantry have passed over ; seven from the Fusiliers

332 THE GREAT DUKE
went off in one night, and these from one of the
best regiments in the service." But he has more
cheerful incidents to relate. A perpetual skirmish
ing went on betwixt the British cavalry piquets
and the scattered detachments of hungry French
searching the country for food, and in the hurly
burly of personal combats the British established
a complete mastery. "The spirit of capturing and
attacking the enemy's parties," Tomkinson writes,
"is very great, and the only fear is not falling in
with them, the men not regarding their numbers.
A sergeant and two dragoons to-day took eighteen
infantry." Here are some examples of the exploits of the
British cavalry piquets still worth recording: —
" Sergeant Lirldle of Cocks' squadron was sent from Alquentre
with four men on patrol round by Eio Mayor. He fell in with
an officer and fifteen French infantry and attacked them, when
they all surrendered. Sergeant Baxter was sent on patrol from
the brigade with four men to the left. He met with an infantry
piquet of the enemy's, stationed in a house with their arms
piled in front, and got so near unobserved that he thought he
might get to the arms before they could take them up. He
galloped forward ; they had time to turn out, and gave him a
volley, wounding one of his men. It was too late to turn back ;
he persisted in his charge, rode up to the enemy, who laid down
their arms, he killing one man. In all, forty-one men and an
officer, which number he marched in. Sergeant Nichols, of
Captain Cocks' troop, took sixteen infantry with six men, on the
right — though I think they were glad to find an English party
to save them from the peasantry."
MeanwhUe WeUington himself was beset with

THE LINES OF TORRES VEDRAS 333
exasperating difficulties. His strategy was not even
yet understood by the Cabinet he represented, and
public opinion in England had fallen into a des
pairing mood. " Nobody could believe," says Gleig,
"that a handful of men, forced into a corner
within twenty miles of Lisbon, would be able
many days to hold its ground against the united
strength of the French empire." It was at the
very moment, indeed, when WeUington's profound
and masterly policy had arrested Massena's advance,
' and the fortunes of the campaign had reached their
turning-point, that Lord Liverpool wrote to a corre
spondent telling hira that "the re-embarkation of
the army would probably begin about September,"
The Portuguese understood Wellington's strategy
no better than the English Prirae Minister, They were
naturally disquieted by the long retreat of WelUng
ton. It suggested another Corunna. The presence,
too, of a great army under a formidable captain
like Massena, within twenty-five miles of Lisbon,
seemed a raenace of overwhelming significance.
The policy of sweeping the districts through which
the French must pass of all supplies, though it had
been carried out so imperfectly as partially to fail in
its effect on the enemy, disordered Portuguese finances,
and gave the authorities a pretext, if not a justifica
tion, for abandoning the first duties of government.
The pay and supphes of the Portuguese army failed,
and failed so persistently, and with such disastrous

3 34 THE GREAT DUKE
effects, that in six months the Portuguese batta
lions lost 4000 by death, 4000 by discharges, and
no less than 10,000 by desertion. Some of the lead
ing men in Portuguese affairs, notably Principal Souza,
vexed WelUngton almost beyond endurance with
perpetual intrigues. They obstructed his plans, be
trayed his correspondence, encouraged disobedience
to his orders, and spread the report that he was about
to abandon the country. His strategy was assailed ;
they devised an insane substitute for it, and clamoured
for it to be carried out, till at last even WeUington's
patience gave way. In the whole of his corres
pondence there is perhaps nothing which shows more
clearly how great was the strain upon him, and how
nearly he had reached the limits of endurance, than
some of his letters at this period.
In one to M. Forjas, dated September 7, 1810, he

" In order to put an end at once to these miserable intrigues
I beg that you will inform the Government that I will not stay
in the country, that I will advise the King's Government to
withdraw the assistance which Hia Majesty affisrds us " — if, in a
word, certain practices are not dropped.
He writes a month later :
"Do me the favour to inform the Regency, and above all,
the Principal Souza, that ... I will not suflfer them, nor any
body else to interfere with the conduct of military operations.
... I am responsible for what I do and they are not. As for
Principal Souza, I beg you to tell him, from me, that I have
had no satisfaction in transacting the business of this country
since he has beeu a member of the Qovernment ; that, being

THE LINES OF TORRES VEDRAS 33 5
embarked in a course of military operations, of which I hope to
see the successful termination, I shall continue to carry them on
to the end ; but that no power on earth shall induce me to
remain in the Peninsula for one moment after I shall have
obtained His Majesty's leave to resign my charge, if Principal
Souza is to remain either a member of the Government or to
continue at Lisbon. Either he must quit the country or I will :
and, if I should be obliged to go, I shall take care that the
world, or Portugal at least, and the Prince Regent, shall be made
acquainted with my reasons." '
Now Principal Souza was, after all, an insignificant
person. He could irritate, no doubt, like a mosquito ;
but he was only a mosquito. And that Wellington
should in this way put himself, and the British army,
and a great policy on which hung the future, not
only of Great Britain, but of Europe, in the scales
against " Principal Souza," is a proof that he had his
share of the weakness of human nature. There were
points at which even his patience, cold as ice and
hard as steel, gave way. And with him, as with
smaller men, anger disordered his vision; he no
longer saw the relative sizes of things.
Wellington, it may be added, who was too good a
soldier not to understand the vulnerable points in his
own position, was disquieted by Soult's operations on
the other side of the Tagus. Soult's performances
amongst the Spanish divisions on whom he fell
resembled those of a lean and hunger-bitten leopard
araongst a nuraber of fat sheep. In fifty days he
captured four fortresses, invested a fifth, killed
1 " Despatches," vol. vi. p. 93,

336 THE GREAT DUKE
or dispersed 10,000 men, and made 20,000 prisoners,
A little later, and by a very shameless act of treachery
on the part of the Spanish commander, he captured
Badajos, and thus robbed the British of their one
strong place of arms on the Spanish frontier. To
undo that infamous act of a Spanish general the
British forces had later to pay the price of the
awful slaughter of Albuera, and all the furious
bloodshed of the storming of Badajos on the night
of April 6, 181 2.
It must be remerabered that, in addition to the
actual business of war — the task of maintaining the
efficiency and directing the movements of his own
troops, and watching the tactics of his opponents —
there fell upon Wellington a daily burden of work,
political, diplomatic, and financial, sufficient to tax
to the breaking-point the nerves and brain of any one
not endowed with an almost miraculous capacity for
sustained industry. He had at once to conduct a
campaign, regulate the affairs of a kingdom, match
his wits against comraanders trained in Napoleon's
school, control an army made up of troops of three
nations, soothe Spanish suspicions, hush Portuguese
disquiets, and satisfy the demands of a Cabinet in
England. He could not have done this if he had
not possessed a body almost incapable of fatigue,
and an industry swift, methodised, concentrated, in
a degree almost without precedent.
He possessed in a singular degree the power of

THE LINES OF TORRES VEDRAS 337
concentrating his whole mind on an unending suc
cession of wholly unlike subjects. Lord Morley has
said that hard work consists in saying "Yes" and
"No" in quick succession to an indefinite number
of questions; and Wellington had to be saying
"Yes" and "No" through all his waking hours to
questions coming, in three or four different languages,
from every quarter of the compass, and on which
hung almost greater issues than life and death.
The fate of a campaign, or even of a nation, hung
upon them. He had the useful faculty of being able
to do with less sleep than raost men, and the still
more useful faculty of being able to sleep at wUl.
His skill in husbanding time araounted to genius.
Gleig, who had close personal knowledge of his
habits, thus describes Wellington's methods : " He
rose early, wrote letters and despatches tUl break
fast-time; saw the heads of departments then, and
arranged with them the details of the day; then,
returning to his bedroom, continued his general cor
respondence till two in the afternoon. Unless very
hard-pressed with business, he would then get upon
horseback, and ride to the outposts, or wherever else
he conceived that his presence might be necessary.
At six he dined — almost always with guests more or
less numerous round him; and at nine, or there
abouts, usually withdrew again to his own room.
There he continued at his desk tUl midnight, dis
cussing all that variety of topics which gives its
VOL. I. T

338 THE GREAT DUKE
peculiar interest to his public correspondence; and
having done this, he slept." And he slept, it may
be added, with the deep, undistressed slumber of
a child. In the meanwhUe the lines of Torres Vedras were
profoundly, and in a degree unrealised at the
moment by WelUngton himself, affecting Napoleon's
whole policy in Spain. They may even be said to
have saved the crown of King Joseph, an end,
certainly, never contemplated by Wellington and
his engineers. On October 12, 18 10, Napoleon
wrote a despatch announcing his resolve to unite
Biscay, Navarre, Aragon north of the Ebro, and
Catalonia — the whole left bank of the Ebro, in a
word — to France; Portugal, by way of compensa
tion, was to be made a Spanish province, A month
later he wrote that all this was to take effect only
"when the French army had entered Lisbon, and
the English had taken to their ships " ; in the mean
while the scheme was to be kept profoundly secret.
But King Joseph declared he would abdicate if this
policy was carried out ; the stubborn British declined
to " take to their ships " ; the lines of Torres Vedras
remained not only uncaptured, but unassailed ; and
so Napoleon's designs remained unannounced. "It
was the lines of Torres Vedras," says Professor
Oman, "which saved King Joseph from abdication
and Spain from dismemberment,"

CHAPTER XII
massena's RETREAT
" ' Ah,' said Massena when he met Wellington afterwards at
Paris, ' you have made me pass some bad moments,' ' He declared
to me,' said Wellington, ' that I had not left him one black hair on
his body ; he had turned grey, he said, all over, I answered that I
thought we had been pretty even, . . , ' No,' he said, ' how near
yon were to taking me sometimes ' — which I was," — Stanhope.
MASS^lfeNA clung with heroic stubbornness to
the front of Wellington's lines for a month,
but by November lo his hospitals, and the wrecks
of his transport train, were falling back. On the
night of the 14th his columns were in movement.
His peril was that Wellington might strike at his
rear-guard and crush it, and the disposition of his
forces made that peril deadly. Junot's corps was
thrust forward, like the point of a spear, into
Wellington's front, and he might have been attacked
on either flank and destroyed. But Massena's genius
shone in moments of perU. " If," says Napier, " he
committed errors early in the campaign he now
proved himself a daring, able, and pertinacioTis
comraander. He awoke, and made war hke a great
man, more formidable with reduced means, and in
3»

340 THE GREAT DUKE
difficulties, than he had been when opportunity
was rife and numbers untouched.^
A piece of singular good luck marked the begin
ning of the French retreat. A fog crept up from
the marshes, or blew in from the sea, and lay over
all the roads by which Massena's columns had to
move. He placed dragoons at every cross-road to
keep his infantry from wandering, and the British
outposts, though broken sounds as of a raoving host
came through the fog, could see nothing, and sus
pected nothing. At ten o'clock on the raorning of
the 15th the fog suddenly lifted, and then the British
outposts discovered that the familiar French piquets
had vanished. In the front of the Light Division
the French had stretched a line of dummy sentinels,
raen of straw, topped with old shakos; and, seen
frora a little distance, the deception was perfect
untU it was noticed that these "sentries" never
moved. Massena had tricked Wellington, and he fell
back in something of the mood of an angry bear,
ready to tum upon his pursuers, until he reached
Santarem, a mountainous ridge stretching for some
three mUes at right angles to the Tagus, with a
lower range of hiUs in front, looking on an expanse
of level country, turned by the winter rains into
a marsh. The only approach to the French lines
was by a narrow causeway, running like a thread
* Napier, vol. iii. p. 72.

massena's retreat 341
across the swamp, and barred at the further end
with heavy batteries of guns. It was a most
formidable post. Wellington, pursuing late and
slowly, found when he reached the French posi
tion, that Massena had turned his own policy
against hira ; he had practically set in his path
a rainiature version of the lines of Torres Vedras !
The position of the two armies was thus reversed ;
Wellington had to be the assailant, and Massena
was unassailable. In his new position, too, Massena
escaped the look of defeat. He still seemed to
threaten Lisbon, though it was with nothing better
than a phantom siege. He was able to draw
supplies from a wider area, and frora districts less
exhausted by the ravages of his own columns, and
he confronted Wellington in a position difficult
to turn and dangerous to attack. "When he was
in front of Torres Vedras," said Wellington of
Massena long afterwards, "I always found him
where I did not wish to find him.'' That was
certainly true of Massena at Santarera.
Wellington, however, wisely refused to attack.
" I have no doubt," he wrote, "... that I ara strong
enough to beat the French, but by exposing my
troops at this inclement season to the rains of
even three days and nights I am sure to bring
sickness amongst them." This policy, no doubt,
disappointed the impatient spirits in the British
army, and it made yet more furiously discon-

342 THE GREAT DUKE
tented the Portuguese authorities. "But it may
be shown," says Napier, "that both S^^^f^-
Mass6na in taking up his new position, and Wel
lington in refusmg to attack it — "acted wisely
and like great captains."
As to Massena's wisdom, however, in holding
on, even at Santarem, WeUington doubted. He
wrote to Lord Liverpool on November 26: "I
am convinced that there is no raan in his senses
who has ever passed a winter in Portugal who
would not recommend them to go now, rather
than to endeavour to maintain themselves upon
the Zezere during the winter.'' But Massena was
of too stubborn a genius to be persuaded — even
by the argument of crowded hospitals and dwind
ling regiments — to fall back from a position which
he believed he could hold against the British; and
which, whUe he held it, kept both the hopes, and
the whole plan, of his campaign aUve.
While standing at bay at Santarem, Massena,
whose communications had long been uncertain,
despatched Foy, an adroit and daring soldier, with
a battalion of good infantry and some cavalry to
carry despatches to Paris. With great difficulty
and through raany perUs Foy found his way across
Spain, gave the news to such French corps as
he touched of Massena's position, with orders to
march and reinforce him, and reached Paris on
November 21. Napoleon put him through the

MASSENA S RETREAT 343
alembic of a fierce cross-examination, striding mean
while up and down his study.
"Why the devil did Massena thrust himself into that muddle
at Busaco? Even in a plain country columns do not break
through lines, unless they are supported by a superior artillery
fire. And the disgrace at Coimbra, where he has let his
hospitals be taken by 1 500 ragged rascals ! To lose your
hospitals is as disgraceful as to lose your flags ! In a regularly
organised country — England, for example — Massfea would
have gone to the scaifold for that job. The English are full
of courage and honour : they defend themselves well. Massena
and Ney did not know them, but Reynier, whom they had
beaten twice or thrice (Alexandria and Maida), ought to know
them I Wellington has behaved like a clever man ; his total
desolation of the kingdom of Portugal is the result of syste
matic measures splendidly concerted. I could not do that
myself, for all my power. Why did not Massena stop at
Coimbra, after Busaco ? " " Because," faltered Foy, " suppos
ing he had done so, your Majesty would have reproached him
by saying, 'If you had only pushed straight on Lisbon the
English would have embarked.' " " Very possible, indeed,"
replied the Emperor, breaking into a broad smile. "Well,
I wanted to drive them into the sea ; I have failed. All
right ; then I will have a regular campaign in Portugal and
use them up. I can wear them down in the nature of things,
because England cannot compete in mere numbers with me."
Napoleon added a naive confession that his
Spanish arithmetic was hopelessly wrong; "but
for all that," he added, "I don't repent of what
I did; I had to smash up that nation, sooner or
later they would have done me a bad turn." His
shrewd genius approved of Massena's stand at
Santarem. "As long as Massena stays in position
opposite Lisbon nothing is lost; he is still a terror

344 THE GREAT DUKE
to the English, and keeps the offensive. If he
retreats I fear great disaster for him." He con
cluded by saying, "AU the hope of the EngUsh
is in that army of WeUington's. If we could
destroy it it would be a terrible blow to them."
But neither the genius of Napoleon nor all the
courage of his armies availed to "destroy" that
army. Massena clung to his lines on the inclement
hills at Santarem from November 1810 till March
1 811. He maintained his army, that is, for nearly
six months in a country supposed to be incapable
of sustaining it for fifteen days ; a striking evidence
of his obstinate genius. By the end of February,
however, his position was no longer tenable. Soult
showed no sign of either joining hira, or of com
pelling WeUington to fall back, by striking at
his communications with Lisbon. But Massena
clung to his hunger-bitten camp at Santarem till
his array was almost at the point of dissolution.
Half his guns had to be abandoned for lack of
horses; his haggard battalions had fallen almost
to the mood, and condition, of brigands as the
result of their incessant expeditions in search of
food, A French army, however, has great raUy-
ing power, and Massena's stern energy restored
discipline as soon as his columns were on the
march. Yet, late as Massena moved, he missed
a great opportunity by moving too soon. Had

massena's RETREAT 345
he held on at Santarem only ten days longer,
Soult would have fallen in with his strategy, and
struck at Lisbon through the Alemtejo, arresting
Wellington's pursuit and compelling him to fall
back for the defence of the Portuguese capital.
Massena's immediate object, when he began the
second stage of his retreat, was to take up a position
beyond the Mondego, seize Coimbra, and so secure
the high road to Oporto, and the line of the Douro.
Beyond this there was the dream of great reinforce
ments, which would raise his force again to 70,000
men, and a new advance against Lisbon, but this
tirae by both banks of the Tagus. To escape frora
Santarem he had to make a flank march, with all
his sick and baggage, across the front of Wellington,
and he effected this with fine skill. He destroyed
rauch of his aramunition and baggage, disabled the
guns he could not carry off, and secretly moved
his sick and baggage towards Thomar, Then Ney,
with the 6th Corps and a strong cavalry force,
suddenly took up a position near Peiria, as if
threatening a new advance upon Torres Vedras,
and while Wellington was standing on guard against
this stroke, Massena's columns, on the night of the
5th, followed the sick and baggage on the road to
Thomar, destroying the bridges on the streams
behind them. Loison and Reynier raoved on con
verging lines towards the same point, and the
Mondego was gained with a four days' start of

346 THE GREAT DUKE
WelUngton. Massena, at the end of a period so
trying, carried off his wasted force with a consum
mate skill which proved how great a captain he was.
But Wellington had learned some lessons in his
own long retreat on Lisbon, and he now turned them
against the French. He was, if not in a more daring
mood, yet under conditions which made a raore
daring strategy possible. His army was eager for
action; the sense of success ran like wine in its
blood ; it had been reinforced ; the state of the
weather made marching easy; and Wellington
pushed his columns forward, resolutely, and at
speed, thrusting Massena's right wing back by per
sistent flank marches. The country was full of
strong positions ; " every viUage," says Napier, " was
a defile." Ney held Massena's rear-guard, a post
which exactly suited his genius as a soldier. But
Wellington never missed his thrust. He constantly
out-marched the French, and threatened the passes
in their rear ; and position after position had to be
abandoned. Massena found that Coimbra was out of his reach.
He was pushed back with such energy and skill
that he could make no stand behind the Alva. For
three weeks after he began his retreat from Santarem,
he could make no stand, till he reached Celorico,
and still about that town were the camps from
which, in September 1810, he had set his invading
array in raovement down the Mondego on their

M ASSIGN a's RETREAT 347
raareh to Lisbon. That WelUngton could thus con
tinually dislodge an array of French veterans, with
Massena to shape its strategy, and Ney to comraand
its rear-guard, was a fine proof of his genius in
war. He had under him at last, as he hiraself
clairaed, " an array that could manceuvre."
It may be added that as the British followed on
the track of the retreating French they found the
whole country scribbled over with characters of
suffering and ruin. Massena's foraging columns
were ruthless. Here is a single incident described
by Napier : —
"In an obscure place among the hills, a large house was
discovered filled with starving persons. Above thirty women
and children were already dead, and sitting by the bodies were
fifteen or sixteen living beings, of whom only one was a man,
and all so enfeebled as to be unable to swallow the little food
that could be oflfered to them. The youngest had fallen first, all
the children were dead, none were emaciated, but the muscles of
their faces were invariably drawn transversely, giving a laugh
ing appearance unimaginably ghastly. The man seemed most
eager for life, the women patient and resigned, and they had
carefully covered and arranged the bodies of the dead I " •
That dreadful picture, looked at even in the long
perspective of a century, can still thrill the heart
with pity.
The retreat was marked by sorae bloody combats.
On the loth Massena crossed the Sovre by the
bridge of Pombal, Ney holding the bridge. But the
riflemen of the Light Division, by a daring charge,
^ Napier, vol. iii. p. 113.

348 THE GREAT DUKE
carried the bridge, and drove the French from the
castle and town with such fire that Massena was
compelled to continue his retreat all night. On the
1 2th Ney checked the pursuing British with a fine
stroke of soldiership. He had the village of Redinha.
The position was difficult. There was a narrow
bridge, a long defile coraraanded by some rugged
heights, and Ney had so disposed his rear-guard that
a fight seeraed certain, and the French were in
strength. Wellington held back his stroke till his
main body came up, then launched a forraidable
attack. His preparations were corapleted,
"Three cannon shots were fired from the British centre as
a signal, and a splendid spectacle was presented. The woods on
the flanks seemed alive with troops, and thirty thousand infantry
were stretched in three lines of battle across the plain bending
in a gentle curve, and moving onwards while the horsemen and
guns, springing forward simultaneously from two points,
charged under a general volley from the French, who were
instantly shrouded in smoke : when that cleared away no enemy
was to be seen. For Ney, while keenly watching the progress
of this magnificent formation, had opposed Picton's foremost
skirmishers wdth his left, and covered by their fire, had with
drawn the rest of his people, with such rapidity as to gain the
viUage before even the cavalry could touch them." '
The vUlage was in flaraes, but a dismounted
howitzer had been left in one of its streets. Ney
knew the importance of keeping the spirit of his
regiments high at the beginning of a new stage in
a long retreat. He turned, and in person charged
through the burning streets and carried ofi" that
1 Napier, vol. iii, p. ii6.

MASSI^NA's RETREAT 349
worthless bit of iron. The British guns were
thundering on him ; the Light Dragoons of the 3rd
Division, " chasing like heated bloodhounds," with
their prey in sight, were over the river almost as
soon as the French, but Ney escaped, and his gallant
stroke kindled the courage of his battalions to a yet
more daring temper.
At Casal Noval the too eager British narrowly
escaped disaster. Craufurd had gone to England on
leave, and Erskine, almost the most unfit man in the
army to command such hard-fighting regiments, was
in charge of the Light Division. Sir Harry Smith
in his autobiography calls him bluntly " a short
sighted old ass." George Napier describes him as
" the laughing-stock of the army." Wellington,
when he knew Erskine was appointed to the Light
Division, wrote to Colonel Torrens, miUtary secretary,
with undiplomatic bluntness ; '' I have received your
letter announcing the appointment of Erskine . . .
and ... to his array. The first I have generally
understood to be a madman ; I believe it is your
own opinion that the second is not very vrise ; the
third, I believe, wUl be a useful man." ^ Wellington
had set in moveraent an elaborate combination for a
crushing stroke at the French. Picton was to turn
thefr left flank; Cole was to attack Reynier when
the turning movement had taken effect ; the main
body was to strike. But Erskine, at an early hour,
1 "Supplementary Despatches," vol, vi. p, 552.

350 THE GREAT DUKE
heard through the mist which lay on his front the
dull sounds of a moving multitude, concluded the
whole French army was in retreat, and sent the
5 2nd forward in a hurry and without an advance-
guard. In the perplexity of the mist the regiment passed
the French outposts ; the rest of the Light Division
was following. Suddenly a roar of musketry and
the deep thunder of heavy guns broke out. The fog
lifted and the 52nd was seen on the slope of the hiU,
and engaged without support in the midst of Ney's
corps, and shut round in a circle of rausketry fire.
Charles Napier says the regiraent looked " like a red
pimple on the face of the country which was black
with French raasses." The Light Division had to
extend its skirraishing front to correspond with
Ney's attack, and the French were so enormously
superior in numbers that the whole of the division
was drawn out in one thin irregular thread, sharply
attacked at every point, and Picton had to send the
60th Rifles to extend their front.
The French kept up a close and deadly fire, but
the obstinate British line, though often bent back,
could not be torn. In desperately fighting clusters
the files kept touch with each other. Cole and
Picton were now pressing into the fight on the
French left ; other British divisions were coming up
with cavalry and guns ; and Ney, covering his rear
with a cloud of light troops and horse artiUery, feU

MASS:gNA'S RETREAT 35 I
back, fighting ridge after ridge. The pursuit
quickened, the fight grew closer, and Ney's order
was roughly broken, till he reached the strong posi
tion of Miranda de Corvo, which Massena held with
his main body.
WiUiam Napier, with some corapanies of the 43rd,
gives a picturesque account of the struggle, and
shows it to have been so fierce that even some of the
famous 43rd shrank from following their leaders.
'' With two companies I suddenly found myself in the midst
of the enemy, but I arrived just in time to save Captain Dobbs
of the 52nd, and two men who were cut oflf from their regiment.
The French were gathering fast about us, we could scarcely
retreat, and Dobbs agreed with me that boldness would be our
best chance ; so we called upon the men to follow, and, jumping
over a wall which had given us cover, charged the enemy with a
shout which sent the nearest back. But then occurred the most
painful event that ever happened to me. Only the two men of
the 52nd followed us, and we four arrived unsupported at a
second wall, close to a considerable body of French, who rallied
and began to close upon us. Their fire was very violent, but
the wall gave cover. I was, however, stung by the backward
ness of my men, and told Dobbs I would save him, or lose my
life, by bringing up the two companies ; he entreated me not,
saying I could not make two paces from the wall and live. Yet
I did go back to the first wall, escaped the fire, and, reproaching
the men, gave them the word again, and returned to Dobbs,
who was now upon the point of being taken ; but again I
returned alone ! The soldiers had indeed crossed the wall in
their front, but kept edging away to the right to avoid the
heavy fire. Being now maddened by this second failure, I
made another attempt, but I had not made ten paces when a
shot struck my spine, and the enemy very ungenerously con
tinued to fire at me when I was down. I escaped death by
dragging myself by my hands — for my lower extremities were

352 THE GREAT DUKE
paralyzed— towards a small heap of stones which was in the
midst of the field, and thus covering my head and shoulders.
Not less than twenty shots struck this heap." ^
The three Napiers were aU of the same heroic
temper. In this same fight George Napier had his
arm broken by a buUet, while carrying his mortally
wounded subaltern off the field, under a heavy fire.
And it was after this fight that Charles Napier, in
hastening up, with his dreadful Busaco wound
unhealed, to the front of the army, met the two
litters carrying his brothers, of whom he was in
formed that William was wounded mortally. This
is related in the "Life of Sir Charles Napier," by
Williara Napier hiraseK.
" Combat followed combat, the Light Division led in pursuit,
and Charles Napier, with his wound still bandaged, rode above
ninety miles on one horse, and in one course, to reach the army.
His regiment being with the main body, he heard each morning
the ever-recurring sound of the light division's combats in front,
and had hourly to ask of the wounded men if his brothers were
living ? Thus advancing on the 14th March he met a litter of
branches, borne by soldiers and covered with a blanket. What
wounded officer is that ? Captain Napier of the 52nd, a broken
limb. Another litter followed. Who is that 1 Captain Napier
of the 43rd, mortally wounded — it was thought so then.
Charles Napier looked at them and passed on to the fight in
front 1 "
On the 15th another bitter fight took place at Foz
d' Aronce. Night was falling, thick with clouds and
rain, and the British advance-guard, weary with a
1 "Life of Sir W. Napier," pp. 55-6.

mass6na's retreat 353
long march, halted, and were beginning to light
fires, when Wellington rode up. Massena had de
stroyed most of his baggage, and pushed on through
the defile ; Ney, with his usual audacity, barred the
road, his force consisting of a brigade of horse, some
batteries of guns, and ten or twelve battalions of
infantry, Wellington studied Ney's force keenly
for a moment, and then struck at him fiercely
and suddenly, Picton's division ran at his left, the
Light Division charged his right, and some batteries
of horse artillery, galloping forward, opened fire on
his centre. Ney's battalions were tumbled together,
and swept in confusion towards the river. Many
missed the narrow fords, and were swept into the
deep current. Of the French loss of 500, raore than
half were drowned, and Ney was taught to dread his
opponent's stroke.
On the i6th Wellington halted. He had saved
Coimbra, turned his formidable antagonist out of
every strong position, and driven him behind the
Alva. Wellington knew by this time that Badajos
had fallen, thanks to Spanish treachery, and that his
right and rear were open. His regiments were worn
with fatigue; he had outmarched his supplies; but
he was bent on pushing Massena back stUl further.
He sent three of his divisions over the wild country
of the upper Alva, carried the Light Division across
that river on improvised rafts, above Marcella ; and
Massena had to begin his retreat anew, destroying
VOL. I. z

354 THE GREAT DUKE
part of his remaining baggage and ammunition, and
abandoning his foraging parties, of which more than
800 were swept up by Wellington's cavalry. On the
2 ist, harried and shaken, Massena reached Celorico,
the point from which he had started on his great
campaign of invasion.
But his sullen energy still survived. He was
stubbornly reluctant to cross the Spanish frontier.
This would give a still blacker aspect of retreat and
ruin to his whole campaign. He conceived the bold
idea of leaving his sick in Almeida, countermarching
through Sabugal, getting into touch with Soult, and
threatening — or seeming to threaten — an attack on
Lisbon from the left bank of the Tagus.
But his authority had been shaken by the long
retreat with its many disasters. His generals dis
puted his commands. Ney, Drouet, Montbrun, Junot,
Reynier, were soldiers with the temper of adventurers,
and with ambitions of their own; and they were
united in a common jealousy of Massena. Portugal
Avas hateful to them. They were tired of their
campaign with famine ; the British, they found, had
uncomfortable gifts of hard fighting, and there was a
touch of generalship in Wellington for which warfare
with Spanish armies had spoiled them.
At Miranda the dispute betwixt the French
generals grew fierce. Massena's orders were evaded,
or only half obeyed. Ney, of a fiercer spirit than
his feUows, bluntly refused to join the march on

MASSl^NA'S RETREAT 355
Coria, and set his columns in movement in an
independent direction. Massena, however, was a
dangerous chief to cross, and Ney was summarily
deprived of his comraand, and left to make a belated
and useless appeal to Napoleon, while Loison was put
in his place.
On March 22, Massena attempted to carry out his
new and daring policy of moving on Lisbon again by
the left bank of the Tagus; but Wellington gave
him no opportunity. His stroke was too close and
swift. The light division of the cavalry passed the
Mondego at Celorico, and three divisions of infantry,
with two cavalry regiments, on the 29th, moved across
the shoulder of the Guarda hills. Massena found
that his communication with Almeida was broken,
and his position untenable. During the next few days
two great captains, in difficult country, were smiting
at each other, or evading each other's stroke, by
swift marches, sudden advances and retreats; but
Wellington both out-marched and out-fought his
wary opponent.
On April 3, a clever combination to attack and
crush Reynier, who held the right of the French
position at Sabugal, was spoiled by Erskine. A fog —
common at that period of the year in a district so
mountainous — lay on the whole scene of action ; and
Erskine launched the first brigade of his division,
under Beckwith, into the fog on a wrong course, and
at the wrong time.

3 56 THE GREAT DUKE
Beckwith, as a good soldier, obeyed orders; the
river on his front was crossed, four companies of the
Rifles climbed the steep hill, thick with wood, the
43rd following. Rain began to fall, it grew heavier
every moment ; and Beckwith — though he did not
know it — with a single battalion, and four companies
of Rifles, was attacking Reynier's whole corps of 12,000
infantry, with cavalry and guns. Through fog and
rain and forest, made venoraous with the fire of
French skirmishers, Beckwith struggled to the top
of the hiU. At that moment the weather cleared.
Battahons of the French, thick and black, were on
his front, two French howitzers, from a little distance,
disputed the crest of the hiU with him, and were
tearing his scanty ranks with grape, whUe yet other
battalions threatened both flanks. " The company I
was leading," says Major Simmons, "pounced upon
a column, and came literaUy within twenty yards of
it before we could see it. Guess my astonishment.
The most hideous yell assailed my ears, the French
drumming, shaking their bayonets, and calling out,
'Vivel'Empereur!'"! Beckwith's single advantage was that, as against
the French infantry, he held the summit of the
hiU, though he shared this advantage with the
French guns, " Three columns of the enemy," says
Major Simmons, " moved forward with drums beat
ing and the officers dancing Uke madmen, with
» " British Rifleman," p. 176.

massena's RETREAT 357
their hats frequently hoisted upon their swords.
Our men kept up a terrible fire; they went back
a little, and we followed. This was done several
times."! Hopkins, with a flank company of the
43rd, ran out to the right, seized a tiny and rugged
eminence close to the French guns, and command
ing the path by which the French battalions were
advancing to roll up Beckwith's slender Une; and
three times in succession, with deadly voUeys and
fierce charges, he broke the head of the chmb-
ing French column. By this time two battalions
of the 52nd, marching towards the sound of
the firing, reached the crest, and came into
the British line. "Beckwith," says Napier, "blood
streaming from a wound in his head, rode among
the skirraishers, praising and exhorting his men in
the loud, cheerful tones of a man sure to win his
battle." A company of the 52nd captured, by a
sudden rush, one of the howitzers, and the hill was
cleared once more of the French. The British
skirmishers had formed a hne behind a low stone
waU, and with their fire checked the advance of
Re3niier's battalions. But a squadron of French
dragoons, who had struggled up the hUl, rode up
to the wall with what Napier calls "incredible
daring," and, leaning from their saddles, fired their
pistols over it. It was a dangerous manceuvre to
try, and especially with the skirmishers of the Light
1 " British Rifleman," p. 162.

358 THE GREAT DUKE
Division. A sharp volley slew nearly every French
horseman. A strong column of French infantry by this time
was coming up the face of the hill at the pas de
charge, with furious beating of drums, their officers
leading, deterrained to retake their guns. These,
however, were covered by the fire of the 43rd, and
so deadly were their volleys that no French soldier
could reach those coveted pieces of iron and Uve.
Reynier had brought into the fight his whole
reserve of 6000 infantry, with horse and guns,
determined to trample out that tiny cluster of im
pertinent British, holding the summit of a hiU in
the very centre of his lines. But the 5th Division
were now coming at the double across the bridge
of Sabugal. A moving patch of red in the forest
on Reynier's right showed that the third division,
under ColvUle, was about to break into the fight,
and Reynier hastily fell back, leaving Beckwith
with his stubborn infantry in possession both of
the howitzers and the hill.
Round these two guns lay 300 dead bodies. In
that hour of close and bitter fighting the British
lost in killed and wounded some 200 men, the
French lost nearly 1500. Wellington described the
fight at Sabugal as " one of the most glorious
actions British troops were ever engaged in." It
certainly was an amazing proof of the fighting
quality of the raen in the ranks; but, it may be

MASSENA S RETREAT 359
added, it served to Ulustrate the stupidity of, at
least, some of their generals. Looking back on the
whole of the manoeuvres betwixt March i6 and
April 7, Wellington wrote to a friend: "We have
given the French a handsome dressing, and I think
they will not again say we are not a manoeuvring
army. We may not manceuvre so beautifully as
they do, but I do not desire better sport than to
meet one of their columns en Tnasse with one of
our lines. The poor second corps received a terrible
beating from the 43rd and 5 2nd on the 3rd " — in the
fight at Sabugal.

CHAPTER XIII
FUENTES d'oNORO
" Errors may have been committed — all generals commit errors —
but this successful campaign renders him one of the first of
his time. I regret that Bonaparte was not here in person." —
Sie C. Napiee.
THE logic of Sabugal was too stern and urgent
for Massena. He was now in fuU retreat for
Ciudad Rodrigo, and on AprU 15 he crossed the
frontier and re-entered Spain. The failure of the
great carapaign which was to drive the British into
the sea was complete. When Massena began his
march on Lisbon he imagined that he had only
to meet Wellington in some great pitched battle
and overthrow him, and Lisbon would faU. But
Wellington evaded his stroke. The country through
which he passed was empty both of inhabitants
and food ; his enemy was invisible and impalpable.
Instead of having to overthrow an army, he had
to fight a famine. And Massena found, as other
captains in Spain have found, that hunger is a
more deadly enemy than batteries of guns or lines
of charging infantry.
Massena had entered Portugal with an army
360

FUENTES d'oNORO 36 1
65,000 strong; at Santarem reinforcement to the
number of 10,000 had joined hira. During his
seven months' invasion of Portugal he had fought
only one battle, that of Busaco ; the rest of the
actual fighting consisting of a succession of petty
combats aU save one — that at Sabugal — of minor
importance. Yet it was with a sorely wasted array
of 45,000, with half its guns and nearly all its
baggage lost, that Massena re-crossed the Spanish
frontier. The march on Lisbon had cost the
French 30,000 men. Wellington's Fabian policy
was triumphant. And the result of the campaign
of 1 8 10 was more than the defeat of a single
array. It broke, finally, the offensive power of the
French armies in Spain. When Massena's troops
turned their backs on Torres Vedras, they began
a retreat which practically ended at Waterloo.
Massena now fell back to Salamanca, to re-
equip his array and to wait for reinforcements.
WeUington, on his part, was shaping the plan for
a great campaign. He would blockade, or besiege,
both Alraeida and Ciudad Rodrigo, and then
march boldly into Spain and open comraunications
with Valencia and the English army in Sicily,
seizing Madrid, separating the French forces in
the north and south of Spain, and organising a
new base on the Mediterranean — a plan which, if
successfully executed, "would have surpassed,"
says Napier, " Marlborough's march to Blenheim."

362 THE GREAT DUKE
Affairs to the south, however, claimed attentioa
Beresford was managing his campaign badly. He
had attempted a quite inadequate siege of Badajos,
and become entangled in operations which, later,
reached their climax in the dreadful fight at
Albuera, with the result of wrecking WeUington's
plan of carrying the war into Spain, and detaining
the British army for more than a year on the
Portuguese frontier.
WeUington, leaving Spencer in charge at head
quarters, had come south, and was in Beresford's
camp when he learned that Massena was moving
once more. He had been joined by two divisions
of the 9th corps, and by Drouet with a force of
11,000 infantry and cavalry, and had marched with
a huge convoy for Ciudad Rodrigo. WeUington
instantly started, and, on the 28th, rode into the
British headquarters, greatly to the joy of his
troops, who, "would rather see his long nose in
the fight," writes Kincaid, "than see a reinforce
ment of 10,000 men any day." To maintain the
blockade of Almeida he must fight, and yet he
had a force of only 33,000 men as against Mas
sena's 40,000, while the French counted 5000
cavalry against his weak brigades of a Uttle over
1200. WeUington's position stretched for five
miles betwixt the Turones and Duez Casas, a deep
ravine covering his front. His right was weak, as
a long stretch of level country lay open to the

Battle of
FUENTES D'ONORE
Sth. May, 1811.
m^ Allies

Walker &Boutatt se.

FUENTES D'oNORO 363
French cavalry, and his line of retreat across the
bridge of the Coa at Castello Bom might be seized.
The 1st and 3rd Divisions were posted in, or near,
the vUlage of Fuentes d'Onoro.
The battle which foUowed stretched through two
days, and in its course there were some moments
of great perU for the British. On May 3, Loison
made a resolute attack on Fuentes, which was
held by five battalions of the ist and 3rd Divisions.
The French, in the fire of their rush, carried the
lower parts of the village, but the British clung
stubbornly to an old chapel and sorae houses on
the high ground at the end of the little town.
The vUlage was built of granite with walls of the
same material intersecting it in every direction.
"As a result," says Major Simmons, with a curious
choice of adjectives, " the contest became amusing
and enlivening, and was supported on both sides
with great bravery." The French, however, had
an overwhelraing superiority in nurabers, and the
British were hard pressed until the 24th, 71st, and
79th, coraing up at the double, flung themselves
into the %ht, and drove the French through the
vUlage and over the streara beyond it.
Night brought respite, and the piquets of both
arraies mingled in very friendly fashion on the
banks of a little . stream of water which passed
through the town. Says Simmons, in his "British
Rifleman," " We gave some badly wounded French-

364 THE GREAT DUKE
men to the picquet, and the officer allowed sorae
of ours to be given up. The French officer said
to me, 'This place is appropriately named the
Fountain of Honour.' God knows how many of
our friends on both sides have drunk deep of its
waters, and with to-morrow's dawn most Ukely
raany more will do so. The remainder of the
night," Simmons added, "was occupied in knock
ing down many an honest man's garden waU, and
making a strong breastwork to fire over as soon
as the day dawned." On the 4th Bessieres joined
Massena with 1500 cavalry and a battery of the
Imperial Guard, and the two French generals rode
along the whole of the British front studying its
position. The level country to the right was
dangerously open to cavalry, but at a little distance
was a rugged eminence commanding the roads
leading to the bridges in the British rear; and
WeUington for once yielding to advice — and to bad
advice — had accepted Spencer's suggestion and
extended his right wing so as to take in this
hill, making his line of battle seven miles in
length, A line so long, so open to attack, and so
slenderly held, plainly offered great opportunities
for attack.
On the 5 th, the tempest of battle broke over
the British. The village was again attacked with
fresh fury. Drouet flung his regiments into the
fight with such energy that the British were

FUENTES D'ONORO 365
driven from the lower town; two companies of
the 79th were captured ; Caraeron, who coraraanded
the regiment, was slain ; and the hard-pressed
British with difficulty held on to the craggy height
on which stood the old chapel. But Massena
struck his heaviest blow at the British right.
The whole of the 6th Corps, supported by nearly
5000 cavalry, crossed the Duez Casas, and broke
through WeUington's line, cutting off the hill at
the extremity. The British cavalry was over
whelmed; Ramsay's battery of horse artUlery was
cut off and disappeared araid the landscape of
galloping horseraen. Here was a whole battery
of British guns lost ! Napier tells in raatchless prose
the incident which follows :
" A great commotion was observed in their main body ; men
and horses were seen to close with confusion and tumult
towards one point, where a thick dust and loud cries, and the
sparkling of blades, and flashing of pistols, indicated some
extraordinary occurrence. Suddenly the multitude became
violently agitated, an English shout pealed high and clear, the
mass was rent asunder, and Norman Ramsay burst forth, sword
in hand, at the head of his battery, his horses, breathing fire,
stretched like greyhounds along the plain, the guns bounded
behind them like things of no weight, and the mounted
gunners followed close, with heads bent low and pointed
weapons, in desperate career." '
A squadron of the 14th Dragoons, riding out,
charged the pursuing French horse, and brought
Ramsay in. General Charles Stewart, a better
1 Napier, vol. iii. p. 1 50.

366 THE GREAT DUKE
soldier than general, joined in the charge and
took the French general, Lamotte, in combat.
Norman Ramsay escaped, but the British cavalry
were driven back, and the Light Division fell into
squares in order to sustain the rush of the galloping
horsemen. WeUington's right wing was now in ruins; he
must contract his front if the army was not to be
destroyed. And yet, to draw back his scanty in
fantry across two mUes of plain, over which 5000
French cavafry were riding in triuraph, was a very
perilous adventure. Houston, with the 7th Division,
crossed the Turones and moved along the left bank
to Freneda, while the Light Division, keeping to the
other bank, fell back slowly over the plain in squares.
" There was not,'' says Napier, " during the whole
war a raore perUous hour," The two British divisions
were parted by the Turones, The plain was covered
with carap followers, baggage, country people, broken
detachments, and stray piquets. Through all this
confusion the squares of the Light Division moved,
tiny quadrangles, edged with steel, that every now
and again suddenly reddened with the angry flame
of musketry fire. The French horse rode round the
squares, and again and again attempted to charge
them. But the grim human quadrangles kept on
their steady march, and the French horse never
dared to ride home. Loison might have broken up
their march with his infantry, 6000 strong; and if

PUENTES d'ONORO 367
Montbrun's cavalry had ridden in upon them their
escape would have been impossible. But Loison did
not move. Craufurd's veterans were too steady and
formidable to encourage attack. They got into
touch with Houston's division again at Freneda, and
Wellington's front was re-formed.
The fight StUl raged in the vUlage, but Wellington
was able to pour in reinforcements, and, when dark
ness fell, the unconquerable British stiU held the
crag on which the chapel stood, while the French
had sullenly withdrawn across the stream.
The night passed quietly. When morning broke
Wellington was busy entrenching his position, while
Massena was sending his wounded to the rear. He
made no movement to attack, but hung sullenly in
Wellington's front, loth to retreat, but not daring
to renew the fight. On the Sth his main body had
fallen back, but his outposts were still in sight of
the British lines.
Two days later he crossed the Agueda. His stroke
had faUed, his great army broke up, and Massena
was removed from his command. He was guilty
of what was to Napoleon the unpardonable sin of
not succeeding. In a campaign of nine raonths he
had achieved nothing. The unconquerable British,
instead of being driven to thefr ships, were on the
Spanish frontier, and the whole structure of French
power in Spain was shaken to its base. Massena
throughout the campaign had shown many of the

368 THE GREAT DUKE
qualities of a great commander, but his genius was
rebuked by that of a greater captain than himself.
It would be unfair to say that he had faUed by
his own fault. If Soult had carried out Napoleon's
strategy, and struck at Lisbon while Wellington was
pushing Massena back at Celorico, the whole cam
paign might have been restored. If Bessieres had
brought his full strength up to Massena's help there
would have been 10,000 raore good troops in the
French line of battle at Fuentes. Wellington him
self, writing of Fuentes, described it as " the most
difficult fight I was ever concerned in, and against
the greatest odds. We had very nearly three to one
against us engaged, above four to one of cavafry;
and moreover our men had not a gallop in them.
... If Bony had been there, we should have been
beaten." ^ But if Napoleon's generals had been loyal
to each other the British array, even without
Napoleon's presence, raight have suffered a disas
trous overthrow in that battle.
The news of the disappearance of Massena, it is
worth recording, was brought to WelUngton in the
early morning as he was shaving. "Ah," said
WelUngton, razor in hand, " gone are they ? I
thought they raeant to be off. Very weU " ; and he
concluded his shaving. Great success, like great
perU, had no power to shake his fron coolness.
The campaign in the north closed with one dra-
' " Supplementary Despatches," vol. vii, p, 176.

FUENTES d'ONORO 369
matie incident, Almeida was practically abandoned
to its fate by Massena ; but a French soldier contrived
to get through the British lines and carry to its
commander, Brennier, an order to evacuate the
fortress. Brennier mined his principal bastions,
destroyed his guns, by placing one across the muzzle
of another, and firing several at once with heavy
charges, so that the trick deceived the besiegers.
At midnight on the loth, he sprung his mines, broke
out with his garrison in solid column, and passed
through the besieging British with admirable cool
ness and skill. Some companies of British infantry
hasily summoned hung upon his skirts for a time
and pelted his rear-guard with volleys. But Brennier
was a good soldier. He pushed on swiftly and in
silence, escaped the forces cluXching at him on either
side, beat off' the charges of some dragoons, and
reached Reynier's corps.
It was a gallant feat, and as successful as gallant.
It was in connection with this incident that Wel
lington wrote : " I begin to be of opinion that there
is nothing so stupid as a gallant officer. They had
about 13,000 men to watch 1400 . . . and they
allowed the garrison to slip through thefr fingers and
to escape. . . . There they were sleeping in their
spurs even, but the French got off'." *
The bridge by which Brennier reached Reynier
should have been occupied by the 4th Regiment
1 " Supplementary Despatches," vol. vii. p. 520.
VOL. I. 2 A

37° THE GREAT DUKE
under Colonel Bevan, but it was found unguarded.
Erskine, who received the order, directing it to be
occupied, did not send it to Bevan till ten hours
after it had come to his hands. Bevan, stung
beyond endurance by the shame which had fallen
upon him, committed suicide; but the real fault
was with Erskine.
Ten days after Fuentes d'Onoro, on May i6,
Albuera was fought. No battle in the whole war
reflected greater honour on the men in the ranks,
or less honour on the general in command ; and no
battle, it may be added, had less justification in
reason. Beresford, as far as personal courage was
concerned, would have been in his proper place as a
private among Cole's fusiliers. He could have stood
in the haU of bullets as grimly, and charged the
huge French colurans as fiercely, as any one of them.
But if he had the courage of a good soldier, he
certainly had not the mind of a great general. He
engaged in the fight without sufficient reason and
fought it without intelUgible plan. He won the
fight, thanks to the energy of his chief of staff',
Colonel Hardinge, and to the amazing courage of his
infantry, but he won it at a cost of 7000 men.
" With smaller loss," says Napier, " Wellington had
fought two great battles and several minor actions ;
had baffled Massena, and turned 70,000 men out of
Portugal." Defeat at Albuera would have shattered
British policy in Spain ; victory practically achieved

FUENTES d'oNORO 371
nothing, except perhaps to stamp on the imagination
of French soldiers a long-enduring respect for the
fighting quality of the stubborn British infantry.
Wellington's summary of Albuera is amusing :
"The battle of Albuera," he wrote, "was a strange concern.
They were never determined to fight it ; they did not occupy the
ground as they ought ; they were ready to run away at every
moment from the time it commenced till the French retired ; and,
if it had not been for me, who am now suffering from the loss and
disorganisation caused by that battle, they would have written
a whining report upon it, which would have driven the people in
England mad. However I prevented that." '¦
Nothing, indeed, shows the value of Wellington to
the British cause, as a commander, than the state
of affafrs at this exact moment. Spencer in com
mand in the north, and Beresford in the south, were
no match for French generalship. Says Charles
Napier, " . . . . Take Lord Wellington away and we
are general-less. . . . When Lord Wellington is in
the south, we in the north grow frightened lest the
French should advance ; when he is here, things go
wrong in the south. He has to fly backwards and
forwards . . . and does the journey in five days
Hard work this for body and mind."
* "Supplementary Despatches," vol. viii. p. 478.
END OF VOL. I.

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embodies the result of his researches.*
Second and Revised Edition. With a Map and 40 Full-Page
Illustrations. Demy Svo. 1 2$. 6d. net.
Chota Nagpore: a Uttle-known Province.
By F. B. Bradley-Birt, I.C.S.. F.R.G.S.
Author of ' The Romance of an Eastern Capital.' &c.
WorlJj—* The author's account brings out the details of Indian life in a manner that
could not be surpassed for clearness and local colour.'
London : Smith. Elder & Co.. 15 Waterloo Place. S.W.

Recent Biography,

A Memoir of * The Great EngUsh Tribune.'
With Portraits and Facsimiles of Lettetf. Medium Svo. 10s. 6d.

John Bright : a Monograph.

net.

By R. Barry O'Brien.
Author of ' The Life of Lord RusseU of KiHowen.*
Wilh a Preface by the Right Hon. Augustine Birrell, M.P,

Morning Posi. — *i Perhaps the aost char
acteristic feature about diia biMik ia ita tone oi
rctreshiatf anJ uaeapccCa^eaaJour ¦ • . «
it is highly laudatory aod appreciative.*
Daily Chronicle.—* Mr. O'Brieu haa put
m» uoder a debt of trttitude for hia story of
tbe tfreat Tribune's career.*

Daily News. — ' This most appreciative
aod eaioyable mODotfrapk, Mr. O'Brien hai
written a book likely to appeal to all who are
interested in cnneat polities.*
Freeman t Journal, — 'The hook ia a
delight to rend, an illuminative study of a
fi|{ure of peculiar simplicity and charm.*

With Portraits. Large post Svo. 7s. 6d» net.
The Romance of a Great Singer:
A Memoir of Mario.
By Mrs. Godfrey Pearse and Frank Hird.

Observer. — ' An account of the greatest
ainfer of his day, with many aneedotea of
himaelf and Griaio, whom he married in 1856.*

Evening SlanJard* — ' The story of aa
unusual and varied career ... a large
number of the foremost persooalittea of the
Europe of half a century aijo pass through
these pages.'

With Photogravure and Half-tone lUustrationi. Medium 8vOi 15*. net
Sir Woodbine Parish,
K.C.H., F.R.S., and Early Days in Argentina.
Written by the Hon. Nina L. Kay Shuttleworth.

Financial Times. — * The work gives an
interesting picton of die period ... a sound
piece of work, aod with its appendices forma
a valuable eontribntioa to biographical
literature*'

Ohseroer, — ' Sir Woodbine Parish's moat
interesting experiences. The memoir gives
BO interesting account of the foundBtion and
early history of the Argentine Republic,*

With a Frontispiece by H, W. Stagg and 10 Portraits. Crown Svo.
^t top. 6i.

Fighting Admirals.

By John Bamett.
Author of ' The Prince's Valet,* * Geoffrey Cheriton,* * Eve ia Earnest,* &c

SiamdarJ* — * Mr. Barnett writes
raal cntfaosiasm and eooaiderablc abili^*
Tkert could be oo better Christmas pTesent
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kind consideration of Britisb Uoelea.'

Yorkshire Ohseroer, — ' The aathor givaa
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Second Edition,
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1 he Last Qailey : impressions and Tales.
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Lfuerpoo/ Coun'er.—' Certain critical episodes io history . , . "The Last Galley"
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Deep Sea Plunderings.
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SPECTA TOR,—" There is something in the book to please almost
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Told in the Dog W^atches.
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The Men of the Merchant Service. Being
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ACADEMY.—" A book that is bulged with seacraft, and resembles
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The Log of a Sea Waif: Being the RecoUecUons
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The 'Way they have in the Navy.
Third Impression. Crown Svo, paper covers, is, ; cloth,
IS, 6d,
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NOVELS BY I?. R. CROCKETT.

THIRD IMPRESSION. With la FuU-page IUustrations. Crown Svo. it,
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Dall7 Express.—*^
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mance of hot and passionate
hearts.' Outlook. —' The adventures
Are as ** hairhreadthy " as tht
mind of romancist could desire ;
the " thrills " are on every
page.'

vigorous and stirring story,'

THE

SHYER SKULL.
THIRD
IMPRESSION.
Crown Svo. Os,

DaUy Mall.^' A remarkably
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successful of Mr. Crockett's re
cent essays in romance. . . . FuU
of colour, fire, and movement.'
Christian World. — * WeU
invented, well knit, of cumulative
interest, told with a vtrve worthy
of Crockett in his best days.'

SECOND IMPRESSION. With a Frontispiece. Crown Svo. 6*.
LITTLE ANNA MARK.

Dally Chponlele. — ' Mr.
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breathe.'

LITTLE
mk MARK.
SECOND
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Crown Svo, Ss,

Dally Express.— ' One ol
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FOURTH IMPRESSION. With 8 FuU-page Illustrations. Crown Svo. Sf.
THE BLACK DOUGLAS.

Speaker. — ' A book which
Sips tbe imagination In a
oroughjy satisfactory fashion.'
Aeademy,— *A stirring story
of fighting, and loving, and
vengeance.' Black and White.— 'A fine
vigorous story, full of hard fight
ing and brave deeds.'

THE
BL&CKD0U6US. FOURTH
IMPRESSION.
Croum Svo. 6»

_ Yorkshire Post.— 'A hrfl-
liant piece of worlc ; one of the
hest stories we have met.*
Christian World. -'The
story is from beginning to end a
most tlirilling one.'
Dally Chronlele. — 'Out
does any of the work ^we^ ha v.
yet seen from him of this kind,'

FIFTH IMPRESSION. With 8 Full-page Illustrations. Crown Svo. 6s.

THE RED AXE.

Daily News. —
¦troctcd ; it is

,„« WeU con-
¦u iu.b«u , ¦¦. M always picturesque,
uid we pass from sensation to
¦ensation without pause.'
Speaker. — ' An admirable
•tory, told with sustained vigour
and^l.'

THE RED AXE.
FIFTH
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Crown Svo. 6a.

SpMtatOr. — ' The story teems
with incidents of aU sorts, and
tt ouiics the reader along, keenly
interested and fuU of sympathy
fcom the first page to the last.
It is a thoroughly good and in-
MnstingnoveL'

FOURTH IMPRESSION.
CLEG KELLY,

CLEG KELLY.
FOURTH
IMPRESSION.

Black and White. — ' A stir
ring story of brave men and
women.' Daily Chronicle.— 'A story
rousing enough, set in a scene at
once fresh, original, and pic-
turesqne.'

Crown Svo. 6t.
ARAB OP
THE CITY.
Daily Cliponicle.— * If eref
there was an ideal character in
fiction it is this heroic raga
muffin.'

Westminster Gazette. —
' Cleg Kelly is from first to last
a wholly delightful and ^tima-
lating figure.'

thoroughly good «ul m- ^^^ ,„„_ «,. a w^ouya^^nuo. «.a
ignoveL  ^__  ° mb*—^ ^
Londoo : SMITH, ELDER, & CO., IS Waterloo Place, S.W.

SMITH, ELDER, & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS.
2nd Edition. In 2 vols. Demy Svo. 351. net.
FIFTY YEARS OF NEW JAPAN.
Compiled by COUNT SHIGENOBU OKUMA, late Prime Minister
of Japan, and Minister for Foreign Affairs, and others. Edited by
MARCUS B. HUISH, Vice-Chairman of the Japan Society.
DAILY NElVS.-^TiM monumental account of national change and de>
velopment is likely to have a permanent interest for tbe serious reader. It will be
a necessary work on the shelves of every library — probably it will be the standard
work on nodem Japan— for many a long day.'
With a Frontispiece in Colour and 24 pages of Illustrations.
Large post Svo. Is. 6(i. net.
WITH MULAI HAFID AT FEZ.
By LAWRENCE HARRIS, F.R.G.S.
DAILY GRAPHIC— 'Th, full story of Mr. Harris's adventures reads more
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With 20 pages of Illustrations and a Sketch Map,
Demy Svo. lis. 6d. net.
THROUGH PERSIA J^-^na^sS".'-'
By F. B. BRADLEY-BIRT, I.C.S., F.R.G.S.
Author of ' Chota Nagpore,' ' The Story of an Indian Upland.'
'The Romance of an Eastern Capital,' &c.
X>.,4/Z.l'i»f/;ti?OJt.—' The book isfull of interest. . . . Persia, the country
of poets and proud kings, of shrines and gardens and desert, ia always fascinating,
and it is ^rarely one {^ets a so plain and uncoloured account ofthe country as one
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THE STORY OF THE THAMES.
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New and Cheaper Edition. Large crown Svo. $s. net.
With 2 IUustrations by LORD LEIGHTON, P.R.A., and a Portrait
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A WEEK IN A FRENCH COUNTRY
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Recent Publications.

Large post Svo. 7i. 6d. neL
Stocks and Shares.
By Hartley Withers, late City Editor oi The Morning Post
Author of 'The Meaning of Money.' Sth Impression.
. iVorld.—' " Stocka and Shftrca " la 'attracting a lot of ootic* in the City. It ia lull of
uformation tor both apeculalor and invcator, and ia written with a britfhtneai and humour diat
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Financial News,— A delightful work. Mr. Hartley Withera " knowa*' hia aubject
wi^ intimacy ; he writes with a faacinatmfl freshneaa wliich diaguisea dry technicalitiea tod
makea readioft a sheer enjoyment.'
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Jtut Published. Demy Svo. IDs. 6d. net.
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Great and Greater Britain.
The Political, Naval, Military, Industrial, Financial and
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With 19 Illuitrations. Demy Svo. t2i. 6<1. nel.
The Child's Inheritance.
Its Scientific and Imaginative Meaning —
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London.
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un

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