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The leading Wellington historian’s fascinating reassessment of the Iron Duke’s most famous victory and his role in the turbulent politics after Waterloo.
For Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington, his momentous victory over Napoleon was the culminating point of a brilliant military career. Yet Wellington’s achievements were far from over: he commanded the allied army of occupation in France to the end of 1818, returned home to a seat in Lord Liverpool’s cabinet, and became prime minister in 1828. He later served as a senior minister in Peel’s government and remained commander-in-chief of the army for a decade until his death in 1852.
In this richly detailed work, the second and concluding volume of Rory Muir’s definitive biography, the author offers a substantial reassessment of Wellington’s significance as a politician and a nuanced view of the private man behind the legend of the selfless hero. Muir presents new insights into Wellington’s determination to keep peace at home and abroad, achieved by maintaining good relations with the Continental powers and resisting radical agitation while granting political equality to the Catholics in Ireland rather than risk civil war. And countering one-dimensional pictures of Wellington as a national hero, Muir paints a portrait of a well-rounded man whose austere demeanor on the public stage belied his entertaining, gossipy, generous, and unpretentious private self.
“[An] authoritative and enjoyable conclusion to a two-part biography.” —Lawrence James, Times (London)
“Muir conveys the military, political, social and personal sides of Wellington’s career with equal brilliance. This will be the leading work on the subject for decades.” —Andrew Roberts, author of Napoleon and Wellington: The Long Duel
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780300198607 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Yale University Press |
| Publication date: | 08/11/2020 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 745 |
| Sales rank: | 482,782 |
| File size: | 6 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Wellington
THE PATH TO VICTORY 1769â?"1814
By RORY MUIR
Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS
Copyright © 2013 Rory MuirAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-300-18665-9
CHAPTER 1
An Unsettled Childhood (1769–88)
In later life the Duke of Wellington came to be regarded as the embodiment of aristocratic privilege, but this reflected his part in the politics of the 1830s rather than his own upbringing. As the younger son of an Irish peer he was clearly not among the under-privileged in eighteenth-century society, but even so his early life was marked more by obscurity and dependence than wealth and deference.
This obscurity extends even to his date of birth. His family always maintained that he had been born on 1 May 1769, his father giving this date to the Office of Arms as early as 1779. However two independent contemporary sources suggest that he was born a little earlier: the baptismal register of St Peter's Anglican Church, Dublin, records that he was baptised on 30 April, and a newspaper published a few days later states that he was born on 29 April. It seems unlikely that they are both mistaken.
His family had been in Ireland since the reign of Queen Elizabeth, but had only begun to rise to prominence in 1728 when Richard Colley (his grandfather) had inherited considerable estates from his cousin and adopted their surname of Wesley (which was also spelt Wellesley). In 1746 Richard was elevated to the Irish peerage as Lord Mornington and spent vast sums creating a magnificent pleasure garden at Dangan Castle. When he died in 1758 his title and estates passed to his only surviving son, Garret Wesley, Wellington's father. Garret Wesley was passionately fond of music, and was himself a composer and a talented performer on the violin and harpsichord. In 1764 he graduated as a doctor of music and shortly afterwards he was appointed first professor of music at the University of Dublin. He was also the leading spirit in organising aristocratic musical events, often on the pretext of raising money for charity. Possibly because of this, he preferred town to country life; he appears to have neglected the gardens at Dangan, and, in 1769, he leased an imposing mansion in Merrion Street – the most fashionable address in Dublin. He does not seem to have played any prominent part in politics, and yet, on 26 August 1760, he was elevated two steps in the peerage, becoming Viscount Wellesley of Dangan Castle and Earl of Mornington. He had married, on 6 February 1759, Anne Hill, the daughter of Arthur Hill, who in 1766 was created first Viscount Dungannon. Anne's uncle was a prominent and successful politician who rose to become Marquess of Downshire and played an important part in Lord North's government. It is possible that Garret Wesley owed his elevation in the peerage to Downshire's influence.
Lord and Lady Mornington had nine children between 1760 and 1773, of whom two died young and a third as a young adult. Five sons and one daughter remained, and four of the five sons received peerages in their own right. The children were (using the later, more familiar, spelling of their surname):
Richard Colley Wellesley, born 20 June 1760, who bore the courtesy title of Viscount Wellesley from October 1760 until he inherited his father's titles in 1781;
Arthur Gerald Wellesley, named after his maternal grandfather, who died, aged six or seven, in 1768;
William Wellesley, born 20 May 1763, who was adopted as his heir by his cousin, William Pole, and inherited his estates in Queen's County in 1781, adding Pole to his name. Created Baron Maryborough, 17 July 1821;
Francis Wellesley, who died aged three on 10 March 1770;
Anne Wellesley, born 13 March 1768, who married the Hon. Henry Fitzroy (fourth son of Lord Southampton) on 4 January 1790. He died of consumption in Portugal in 1793 or early 1794, and on 9 August 1799 she married Charles Culling Smith, who served as under secretary at the Foreign Office when Lord Wellesley was Foreign Secretary (1809–12), but whose career was otherwise undistinguished;
Arthur Wellesley, born 1769, the future Duke of Wellington;
Gerald Valerian Wellesley, born 7 December 1770, who went into the Church, became Prebendary of Durham and would have risen higher if it had not been for the unhappy state of his marriage to Lady Emily Cadogan;
Mary, 1772–94;
Henry, born 20 January 1773, who became a diplomat and was created first Baron Cowley on 28 January 1828.
The Wesley children did not grow up together; Richard was sent to Eton when Arthur was only three, and before Henry was even born, and for much of their childhood they were widely dispersed, with Anne apparently spending much of her time with her maternal grandmother Lady Dungannon. Nonetheless, close bonds of loyalty and affection mixed with sibling rivalry bound them together. For more than thirty years Richard was the undisputed leader of the pack, seeking places and preferment for Arthur and his other brothers, and expecting loyalty, obedience and submission in return. Secure in his own superiority, he patronised them insufferably, and it was not for many years that they began to wonder if his assumption of superiority was really justified. Eventually the family ties loosened as the surviving brothers and sister made places for themselves in the world, married and established other connections. But throughout life it remained one of the most important networks in their lives; when friendships, affairs and working alliances faded or atrophied, brothers remained brothers, inescapable and infuriating though they were.
Surprisingly little is known about Wellington's childhood, mainly because he seldom talked about it in later life. Only his first seven years were spent in Ireland, for by 1776 Lord Mornington had moved his family to London. The young Arthur attended the Diocesan school at Trim, and in London he was sent to Brown's Seminary, King's Road, Chelsea. Nothing more is known of his early education, but there is some evidence that his health was poor, while G.R. Gleig (an early biographer who knew the Duke in later life) formed the impression that he was 'a dreamy, idle and shy lad'.
On 22 May 1781 Lord Mornington died at Chelsea, aged only forty-five. We know nothing about Arthur's reaction to his father's death, but it must have contributed to the disruption of a childhood that was already unsettled and short of emotional support. Arthur's brother Richard, still a few weeks short of his twenty-first birthday, became head of the family, although Lady Mornington naturally retained the dominant voice in the affairs of her younger children. Lady Mornington was not yet forty, a strong-willed, rather hard woman who appears to have felt little affection for her son Arthur, although the evidence for this is necessarily fragmentary. Later, her correspondence with her younger children was far from intimate; in 1801, when Arthur had been out of England for five years, Henry apologised for opening a newly arrived letter from their mother to Arthur saying: 'If the enclosed letter had been from any person but my Mother I certainly should not have opened it, but I know that her letters never contain anything which might not be published at Charing Cross, & I was anxious to know something about her health.'
A few months after his father died, Arthur Wesley, accompanied by his younger brother Gerald, was sent to Eton. Richard Wesley had shone there, establishing a reputation as a fine classical scholar and acquiring such an abiding love of the school that when he died in 1842 he was buried in the college's chapel. William Wesley also went to Eton and performed creditably although without rivalling Richard's triumph. Arthur failed miserably. He was a pupil there from 1781–84 and thereafter seldom returned, and never spoke of it with affection. He did not attribute the victory of Waterloo to its playing fields (that quip was invented by the French journalist and politician the Comte de Montalembert after Wellington's death), and on one occasion even refused to make a token contribution to its building fund. He won a schoolboy fight with Robert 'Bobus' Smith, and is said to have been flogged for his share in a disturbance, while a contemporary recalled that he was 'not at all a Book boy, and rather dull'. He was, almost certainly, miserable, displayed no academic aptitude, and made no lasting friends. Years later, in 1817, his mother related that Arthur 'was so poor a scholar, so inept and so unwilling, that the masters of Eton advised her (she had early been left a widow with the care of that numerous family) to take him from that school'.
The only glimmer of light to emerge from these years concerns his holidays, which were partly spent with his grandmother Lady Dungannon at Brynkinalt in northern Wales. Here a fight with the son of the local blacksmith, Hughes by name, in which Arthur Wesley was soundly thrashed, established the basis of a friendship. In later years Hughes delighted in recalling 'that Master Wesley bore him not a pin's worth of ill will for the beating, but made him his companion in many wild a ramble'. Few things in Wesley's childhood sound as attractive as wild rambles through the Welsh hills with a local friend.
Wesley was withdrawn from Eton at the end of the school year in 1784, and sent to study with a tutor, the Rev. Henry Michell, at Brighton for a few months. Evidently the experiment was a success, for years later Wesley employed Michell's grandson, the Rev. Henry Michell Wagner, as tutor to his own sons. But, like so much else in Wesley's childhood, it was not to last; Lady Mornington decided to spend 1785 in Brussels, apparently for the sake of economy. Arthur accompanied her, together with John Armytage, the second son of a Yorkshire baronet who had been a friend of the late Lord Mornington, and who had also died recently. The two boys – Arthur turned sixteen that year, and Armytage was a few months older – studied under a French lawyer, M. Louis Foubert. According to G.R. Gleig, 'They were neither of them much given to hard work, but they mixed in the gaieties of the place', while Armytage's own account, on which Gleig draws, states that 'Arthur Wesley was extremely fond of music, and played well upon the fiddle, but he never gave indication of any other species of talent'. In 1815 Wellington was delighted to find that M. Foubert was still alive, and placed a guard on his house to ensure that he was not disturbed by the soldiery. He appears to have met Armytage only once in later life, at the Doncaster races in 1827. After their year in Brussels, Armytage took up his commission as a cornet in the Royal Horse Guards, and stayed in the army for a few years until he married an heiress. This enabled him to live the life of a country gentleman near Northampton where he hunted, shot and patronised the turf. But his greatest pleasure was in driving the mail-coach from Northampton to Barnet and back again, almost every day. (He was not alone in this; many wealthy men acted as unofficial, amateur coachmen in these years, when the turnpikes had improved the roads and skill at driving 'four-in-hand' was something of which to boast.) He had no regrets, telling Wellington: 'Yours has been the more glorious career of the two, but mine I suspect has not been the least agreeable.' He may well have been right, and perhaps, if life had treated the young Arthur Wesley equally generously, he too might have been happy to settle for a life of country sports and coach-driving. It seems unlikely, but his character was still unformed, and there was no sign as yet of the appetite for hard work and incessant activity that was to become so pronounced in him a few years later.
Lady Mornington later acknowledged that Arthur 'was always good-natured, frank [and] popular', but she was annoyed that at Brussels 'he continued incapable, from idleness and want of any disposition to apply, of redeeming his character in point of scholarship'. Her daughter-in-law (William's wife Katherine) recalled her saying: 'I vow to God, I don't know what I shall do with my awkward son Arthur.' Her conclusion was that he was 'food for powder, and nothing more'; and so the decision was made to send Arthur Wesley into the army. It was not his choice and, if John Armytage can be believed, 'his own wishes, if he had any, were in favour of a civilian's life'. But as yet he had no control over his own destiny, and towards the end of 1785 his brother Richard, Lord Mornington, approached the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, the Duke of Rutland, seeking a commission for Arthur.
Richard Wesley was a success. His brilliant career at Eton had been followed by an equally brilliant career at Christ Church. He had won the Chancellor's Prize for a Latin ode on the death of Captain Cook, and he had made a number of friendships with rising young men, none closer or more important than that with William Grenville, brother of the Marquess of Buckingham and cousin of William Pitt the Younger. By 1785 Pitt was already Prime Minister (aged twenty-six, one year older than Mornington), and Grenville was a junior but influential minister. Mornington now counted both as close friends and was clearly marked as a coming man; he was a member of the British House of Commons, as well as the Irish House of Lords, and exuded talent and self-confidence. Securing a junior commission in an unfashionable regiment would usually have presented little difficulty to so well-connected a figure, but the American War had left a considerable backlog of deserving cases, while Mornington was never particularly good at turning his ability and connections into concrete advantages. Rutland evaded his repeated requests with practised dexterity, and Arthur Wesley remained a civilian for another sixteen months.
Lady Mornington was returning to Britain after her year in Brussels, and saw little point taking Arthur home with her. With no place for him in the British army an alternative had to be found, and one soon presented itself: he would spend a year or two at the Royal Academy of Equitation at Angers in Anjou. There his manners and his French would be polished, and he would learn some of the basics of being an officer. There was nothing odd in a young Englishman (or Irishman, for that matter) completing his education at a French military school in 1786; there were a number of British students, and the Academy was by no means wholly military in character. According to the later recollections of another student, General Sir Alexander Mackenzie of Fairbairn, Arthur Wesley 'was ailing and sickly' while at Angers, 'too much so to take much part in the bodily exercises, riding, fencing, etc, which, I believe, were the principal part of the instructions at this school. He passed most of the time on a sofa, playing with a white terrier'. The dog's name was Vick, and it 'followed him everywhere', but unfortunately we know nothing more of it; not even whether Wesley was able to take it home with him when he left France. However we do know that while Wesley may have neglected his studies, he was introduced into local society and attended dinners given by the Duc de Brissac – where he was scandalised to observe that the host was given better food and wine than his guests. Despite this disillusioning experience, he developed a deep respect for the ancien regime in France which was to prove important in later life. He was well treated by the commandant of the Academy, the Duc de Serent, and his wife; and in 1815, in Paris, greeted the Duchesse with reverence, telling Lady Shelley that it was in her 'society he had passed the happiest part of his life, and to whose matronly kindness he owed more gratitude than he could ever repay'.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Wellington by RORY MUIR. Copyright © 2013 Rory Muir. Excerpted by permission of Yale UNIVERSITY PRESS.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations vii
List of Maps x
Preface xi
Prologue 1
Part I Obscurity and Dependence 3
1 An Unsettled Childhood (1769-88) 5
2 Coming of Age in Ireland (1788-93) 12
3 Love and War (1792-96) 27
Part II India and Independence 43
4 Arrival in India (1796-98) 45
5 Mornington and the Indian Scene 56
6 Seringapatam (1798-99) 65
7 The Mysore Years (1799-1802) 88
8 The Restoration of the Peshwa (1802-03) 106
9 The Maratha War(1803) 126
10 Farewell to India (1804-05) 150
Part III War, Politics, Fame and Controversy 167
11 Return to England (September 1805-March 1807) 169
12 Chief Secretary for Ireland (1807) 189
13 Copenhagen (July-September 1807) 208
14 Dublin and Westminster (October 1807-July 1808) 221
15 Vimeiro and Cintra (July-September 1808) 234
16 The Cintra Inquiry (September-December 1808) 264
17 Politics, Scandal and Wellesley s Return to Portugal (January-April 1809) 283
Part IV Adversity and Triumph in the Peninsula 299
18 Oporto (April-May 1809) 301
19 Talavera (June-August 1809) 318
20 Misery on the Guadiana (August-December 1809) 345
21 Preparing for the Storm (December 1809-June 1810) 358
22 Busaco (July-September 1810) 377
23 Torres Vedras (October 1810-February 1811) 394
24 The Pursuit of Massena (February-April 1811) 407
25 Fuentes de Onoro (April-June 1811) 416
26 Ciudad Rodrigo (July 1811-January 1812) 436
27 Badajoz (February-April 1812) 446
28 Salamanca (April-July 1812) 458
29 Madrid and Burgos (July-November 1812) 478
30 Life at Headquarters 493
31 Vitoria (December 1812-June 1813) 517
32 The Pyrenees (July-September 1813) 537
33 Crossing the Frontier (September-December 1813) 553
34 Toulouse and the End of the War (January-April 1814) 566
Epilogue 590
Online Commentary 592
Digest and Chronology of Wellington's Life and Career to 1814 594
Endnotes 599
Bibliography 675
Index 712
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