WELLINGTON.

A MILITARY BIOGRAPHY.

BY WILLIAM DOWE.

Le tambour d'en Haut a bat le rappel. SOULT, DUKE OF DALMATIA.
There's a lean fellow beats all conquerors. DEKKAR.

drive the French republicans out of the Netherlands. But his royal highness was driven out himself in 1795. The soft young bishop of Osnaburg was not the man to cope with the fiery generals of the Convention. Thus ended Arthur Wellesley's first campaign.

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

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

At an early age the latter, not having benefited much from his education, said he would be a soldier, and was sent to Angiers in France, where he studied the science of military engineering, under the famous Pignerol, about the time Napoleon was doing the same at Brienne. Great elements of future storms were at that moment fomenting in the kingdom of France! At the age of eighteen, Arthur Wellesley having returned home, got his ensigncy. By purchase and quick promotion, he was lieutenant-colonel in his twenty-fourth year. The first campaign he engaged in was as disastrous as his last was fortunate. The enemy was the same. In 1794 he

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

In 1798 the Earl of Mornington went out to India as governor-general, and his brother, the colonel, accompanied him. Their earliest attention was given to Tippoo, who from the table-land of Mysore made the Carnatic tremble at the name of his formidable cavalry. He was also in close connection with the French, and had given them repeated assurances that he would join his forces with theirs and annihilate the British power in India. Therefore, in March 1799, the Anglo-Indian army under General Harris, 37,000 strong, marched toward Tippoo, fully determined to put him out of the way. The advance was fiercely obstructed by the spahis of Mysore till, manœuvring and skirmishing repeatedly, the invading army had reached the walls of Tippoo's capital, Seringapatam. Between the British camp and the city lay some ruined villages, an aqueduct and a grove of cocoas and bamboos, which were desperately defended, and taken with great difficulty and loss. After a month's delay outside the city, the besiegers prepared to get into it, by storm, through a breach made in the wall. French troops and engineers in the pay of Tippoo made the siege of Seringapatam a formidable undertaking. But a forlorn hope, crossing a ditch under fire, scrambled into the

ran away from Poonah and put himself under British protection. The case was therefore a clear one. In 1803 General Wellesley proceeded, at the head of an army, into the Mahratta territory and restored the peishwa. In the same year, Lord Lake marched northward to Delhi, drove out the French, who had there exercised a certain influence over Shah Allum, and bringing forth that poor, blind monarch (one of his Mahratta rebels had scooped out his eyes with a dagger!) placed him on the imperial musnud of India, under British protection! Meantime, the Mahratta chiefs who would not submit to the Anglified pieshwa, were to be punished Wellesley marched against Scindiah and the Rajah of Berar, and overthrew them at Assaye; and Lord Lake demolished the armies of Holkar. The whole peninsula of India was now virtually subject to the

breach, and, other troops following, Seringapatam | thrown the kingdom into confusion, the poor peishwa was taken, resisting furiously. Tippoo had gone out early in the morning to the outer rampart, to look at the camp. While there, he was surprised to hear that the English were entering the breach. Calling for his carbine, he hurried with his guard to the place, and on the rampart met his soldiers running before the stormers. He bid them stop, with a loud | voice, and ordered them to rush back again; at the same time he fired his carbine repeatedly on the English. But the fugitives went by, and left him with a small body of officers and attendants, still firing on the assaulters. At last he turned to fly from the rampart to the gate of the inner fort. Hurrying through this he saw the English within and received two balls in the breast. He fell from his horse, and was then dragged from the crowd and put upon a palanquin. The Europeans soon rushed in, and a soldier laying hold of the diamond-studded sword-British. belt worn by the sultaun, attempted to drag it off. A servant, as he was making his escape, turned and saw Tippoo make a sweep of his sword at the man and cut him on the knee, whereupon the latter put his piece to his shoulder and shot the sultaun dead through the temple. More carnage followed in this spot till at last the fort was won. When Tippoo's palace and his sons were taken, the conquerors sought the chief himself; the cry went that he was dead; and that night, by torchlight, General Baird and his officers proceeded to search for the body in the gateway. About three hundred dead bodies were dragged away, and then the killedar of the palace recog-poses of invasion, resolved, with the promptness and nized the half-stripped body of Tippoo. His splendid turban, jacket and sword-belt were gone. When dragged out, the body was so warm, and the open eyes looked so life-like, that Colonel Wellesley laid his hands on the heart and the wrist before he could believe it was a corpse. An officer present cut off from the right arm a talisman in fine flowered silk-In inclosing an amulet of a silvery substance, and a piece of parchment with Persian and Arabic words. Napoleon also wore an amulet, said to be that of Charlemagne.

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

The East India Company gave Wellesley a sword, worth one thousand guineas, for his services, and William Pitt made him a knight. In 1805 he returned to England with his brother, now Marquis Wellesley. In that year he became a member of the House of Commons. In 1806 he was again engaged in hot work. He married Elizabeth Packenham, daughter of Lord Longford and sister of the general who fell at New Orleans; and was then sent on the Copenhagen expedition. England, dreading that Napoleon, who now bestrode Europe like a colossus, would lay hands on the fleet of Denmark for the pur

decision which distinguish her in difficult emergencies, to lay hands on it first. An armament under Lord Cathcart and Admiral Gambier went for the ships, and receiving a refusal bombarded Copenhagen in the most terrible manner; while Sir Arthur Wellesley manœuvred and beat the Danes on shore.

the midst of a general conflagration of the city the fleet was surrendered and carried away. All Europe -Napoleon and the French particularly-cried out against this high-handed business. It is still a great theme of discussion at historical societies in England, where it is not yet decided.

We have now come to the Peninsular War. Napoleon had declared all Europe in a state of blockade and forbade the nations to trade with England. But they would trade. He then resolved to take the coast kingdoms of Spain and Portugal into his own Next came the Mahratta war. The chief of the power; and seized his opportunity. In 1807, in conMahratta confederacy-the Peishwa-resided at sequence of the household quarrels of the imbecile Poonah, his capital; acknowledging, in a shadowy | Spanish Bourbons, he marched his troops into Spain and nominal way the supremacy of the shadowy under pretence of assisting Charles IV. against his Mogul emperor, Shah Allum, who dozed away his son Ferdinand. Charles was induced to abdicate. life at Delhi. But the peishwa's authority was over- Napoleon sent for Ferdinand; and in April 1808, shadowed by his powerful subject, Ras Scindiah, Charles, his queen, Ferdinand, Don Carlos and who wielded the military power of the Mahrattas to Godoy were together, in a room at Bayonne, in premake war or peace with the English. The latter, sence of Napoleon; all the family in his clutches! now, either thought he had been assisting Tippoo, The queen abused Ferdinand in the most shocking or feared he might be a troublesome neighbor in con- manner for his conduct to his father, who, she said, was nection with the French; so they prepared to take not his father, after all! The interview was a terrible advantage of events. Holkar, another Mahratta one-the calm, imperturbable face of Napoleon lookchief, having gone to war against Scindiah and❘ing sternly on. Modern annals do not furnish the

painter with a finer historic subject. Napoleon | rapidly northward he made the passage of the Douro took the father and son, sent them to separate prisons in France, and put his brother Joseph on the throne. But, as Delavigne says:

This year was consumed in a series of bloody and | leon was decimating France, once more turned upon fruitless movements.

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

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

Wellington. He attacked and beat the English
generals in several desperate engagements in the de-
file of Puerto Maya, and the pass of Roncesvalles,
Where Charlemagne with all his peerage fell,
By Fontarrabia.

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

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

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

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

In 1813 the terrible effects of the Russian campaign began to be felt in Spain. French armies were withdrawn to fill the place of "those veteran hearts that were wasted" beside the Berezina. Wellington, the supreme chief, again advanced, and for the last time, from his base of operations in Por- Meantime, the emperor, moving rapidly on Brustugal. But for this sea-washed position, he would sels, drove in the English at the battle of Quatre have been driven out of the Peninsula long before. | Bras, on the 16th, and the Prussians, at Ligny, on the The giant Antæus, when overthrown, instantly re- 17th of June. But, on the 18th, he was checked by covered when he touched mother earth. Welling- the memorable hollow squares of Waterloo. On ton, in his defeats, recovered whenever he touched that day was fought one of the most renowned battles the sea. He now turned his back upon it, and of the world-the most decisive of modern times. marched for the Pyrenees. From the frontiers of In antiquity, the battles most resembling it seem to Portugal he followed the French, who retreated on have been Platæa, where Mardonius and the PerBurgos. In June he beat King Joseph at Vittoria, sians were overthrown, and the fight of Cannæ, in and following the French to Pamplona, forced them Italy, where the Napoleon of the Punic War pros to enter France by the Bidassoa and other points. trated the military strength, but not the republican But France was not to be invaded without a bloody courage of Rome. For nearly the entire day the struggle. Soult, who had received reinforcements British squares withstood the vehement cavalry from those terrific conscriptions with which Napo- | charges of the French, and so rough-handled and

classes were proud of the old duke-such a distinguished champion and evidence of their military glory. Wherever he went, he was stared at or cheered. Riding along the streets of the West End, followed by a single groom, his stooping figure and white head were well known. Hats would fly off as he passed, and he always raised his finger to the rim of his own in return. He was one of the most regular attendants on his duties in Parliament, and mingled in all the amusements and ceremonies of the aristocracy, as if he was no more than one of themselves. His grow

weakened them, that when, toward evening, the Prussians came up in great force, the emperor's army was wearied, and ready for a repulse. He ordered one more charge in column-that of his Young Guard-(the Old Guard was asleep in Russia) -headed by Ney. But it was broken by the firmness of the English guards. Wellington himself was with these last, and doubtless his presence gave them increased spirit and steadiness. The column -the last forlorn hope of empire--was struck and scattered by the musketry in front, and the flank charges of cavalry; and then the career of Napoleoning years seemed to trouble his mind very little. was at an end. And, for one great tyrant beaten down, a dozen others, great and small, reigned in his stead-their unholy alliance sitting like an incubus on the rights and hopes of exhausted Europe. After the return of the Bourbons, the Duke of Wellington remained for three years in France, at the head of the Army of Occupation. His residence in Paris was the Elysee Bourbon-that lately occupied by Louis Napoleon. He has been blamed for not saving the life of Marshal Ney, who had in 1814 sworn fidelity to the Bourbons, and, in 1815, gone back to the emperor. Byron, who was always fierce on the duke, says, addressing him,

Glory like yours, should any dare gainsay, Humanity would rise and thunder, Nay! Wellington, when speaking to his intimate friends concerning the execution of Marsal Ney-which he undoubtedly could have prevented-merely said, "It was no concern of his." It never was part of Wellington's character to give way to any sentimental feeling. In 1818 his army left Paris; which occasion Beranger has signalized in one of the finest of his lyrics: La Sainte Alliance des Peuples: O peoples! forgetting all by-gone defiance, Join hands, for yourselves, in a Holy Alliance! The renown of Wellington was now only inferior to that of the late emperor. He was a prince, a noble, or a knight, in almost all the Europdan codes of honor;

His honorable titles

Would crack an elephant's buck,

Like Frederick the Great, he appeared to put aside all thoughts of senility and death, by the closeness of his attention to his daily duties and occupations of all sorts. He did not ponder on that "fell sergeant;" or, if he did, he probably thought of him as an old acquaintance he had seen somewhere in either of the two peninsulas-the Indian or the Iberian; a sergeant, in fact, who did duty under himself, along with the rest of the sergeants! Latterly, his son, Lord Charles, and his daughter-in-law, kept house for him in Piccadilly; and thus left the insouciant old militaire at liberty to attend all the galas of the court, and all the balls and reunions of Belgravia. On great court occasions, the stooping old warrior would be seen-something like Achilles in the disguise-dressed in the showy ceremonial costume of his rank or office, in the midst of all the pageantries of royalty. At festive parties he would generally remain among the latest guests, enjoy himself with as much apparent cheerfulness as any body present, and go home to bed, like an old rake, in the small hours of the morning. He liked the gayeties of fashionable life. He would stand godfather for noble infants at the font, and give away noble brides at the altar. He would also go to christenings, and eat caudle with infinite good nature; gratified, doubtless, by the homage that awaited him everywhere.

On the 18th of June, he gave yearly, at Apsley House, a grand entertainment to all those officers who had been at Waterloo. People said he should have discontinued it-seeing it tended to keep up illfeeling between England and France. But the feelings of the French were not worth respecting. They have as much levity and slavishness as their ancestry in the time of Louis Quatorze; a sad thing to say. The duke would interest himself in every thing considered important to society; and from his high character and his supposed influence with the ruling powers, at all times, he had crowds of volunteer correspondents in his time, asking all sorts of questions, and begging all sorts of interferences and favors. The first general sensation created by the Irish starvations at Skibbereen, in 1847, was pro

as Shirley says. Thenceforward he sat in the English House of Peers-a moderate politician, and a wealthy man. He had got a dukedom, and nearly a million and a half pounds sterling from parliament, and his pensions and other emoluments from successive offices he held were not less than £15,000 a year. In 1829, being First Lord of the Treasury, in Peel's ministry, he advised that the Catholics should be emancipated-as they were insisting on it so furiously. For this a good many Tory missiles were sent rattling about his laureled head. But he did not mind them; he had heard the rattling of more deadly things. During the agitation for reform, to which he had opposed himself, the London mob, induced by a letter addressed to the duke, and printed 1831, pelted Apsley House, situated at the corner of Hyde Park, and broke several of his windows. Instead of mending them he got iron shutters to them, and they have remained closed ever since-a tacit reproach to the commonality of the capiatl. But that gust soon blew over, and, latterly, Englishmen of all

in the London Times. He almost invariably sent an autograph answer to his correspondents, beginning: "F. M. the Duke of Wellington presents, etc.' His replies were succinct and ad rem; some very trenchant, and some, which we have seen, very

courteous.