‘One morning I was in his Lordship’s small apartment, when two officers were there, to request leave to go to England. A general officer, of a noble family, commanding a brigade, advanced, saying, “My Lord, I have of late been suffering much from rheumatism—.” Without allowing him time to proceed further, Lord Wellington rapidly said—“and you must go to England to get cured of it. By all means. Go there immediately.” The general, surprised at his Lordship’s tone and manner, looked abashed, while he made a profound bow. To prevent his saying anything more, his Lordship turned to address me, inquiring about the casualties of the preceding night[376],’ &c.
Hardly less humiliating to many of Wellesley’s subordinates than personal interviews of this kind, were the letters which they received from him, when he chanced to be at a distance. He had not the art, probably he had not the wish, to conceal the fact that he despised as well as disliked many of those whom the fortune of war, or the exigencies of home patronage, placed under his command. The same icy intellectual contempt which he showed for the needy peers, the grovelling place-hunters, and the hungry lawyers of Dublin, when he was under-secretary for Ireland, pierces through many of his letters to the officers of the army of Portugal. Very frequently his mean opinion of their abilities was justifiable—but there was no need to let it appear. In this part of the management of men Wellesley was deficient: he failed to see that it is better in the end to rule subordinates by appealing to their zeal and loyalty than to their fears, and that a little commendation for work well performed goes further in its effect on an army than much censure for what has been done amiss. When he has to praise his officers in a dispatch, the terms used are always formal and official in the extreme—it is the rarest thing to find a phrase which seems to come from the heart. The careful reader will know what importance to attach to these expressions of approval, when he notes that the names of subordinates whom Wellesley despised and distrusted are inserted, all in due order of seniority, between those of the men who had really done the work[377]. All commanders-in-chief have to give vent to a certain amount of these empty and meaningless commendations, but few have shown more neglect in discriminating between the really deserving men and the rest than did the victor of Salamanca and Waterloo. Occasionally this carelessness as to the merits and the feelings of others took the form of gross injustice, more frequently it led to nothing worse than a complete mystification of the readers of the dispatch as to the relative merits of the persons mentioned therein[378].
The explanation of this feature in Wellesley’s correspondence is a fundamental want of broad sympathy in his character. He had a few intimates to whom he spoke freely, and it is clear that he often showed consideration and even kindness to his aides-de-camp and other personal retainers; there were one or two of his relatives to whom he showed an unswerving affection, and whose interests were always near his heart[379]. Among these neither his wife nor his elder brother Richard, the great Governor-General of India, were to be numbered. He quarrelled so bitterly with the latter that for many years they never met. No doubt there were faults on both sides, yet Wellington might have borne much from the brother who started him on his career. But for him the position of Resident in Mysore would not have been given to so junior an officer, nor would the command of the army that won Assaye and Argaum have been placed in his hands. It is small wonder that the grievances and petty ambitions of the average line officer never touched the heart of the man who could be estranged from his own brother by a secondary political question.
It has often been noted that when the wars were over he showed little predilection for the company of his old Peninsular officers. Some of his most trusted subordinates hardly looked upon his face after 1815: he clearly preferred the company of politicians and men of fashion to that of the majority of his old generals. They only met him at the formal festivity of the annual Waterloo Banquet.
The remembrance of the countless panegyrics upon Wellington, not only as a general but as a man, which have appeared during the last sixty years, has made it necessary, if painful, to speak of his limitations. For two whole generations it seemed almost treasonable to breathe a word against his personal character—so great was the debt that Britain owed him for Salamanca and Waterloo. His frigid formalism was regarded with respect and even admiration: his lack of geniality and his utter inability to understand the sentimental side of life were even praised as signs of Spartan virtue. Certain episodes which did not fit in too happily with the ‘Spartan hero’ theory were deliberately ignored[380]. The popular conception of Arthur Wellesley has been largely built up on laudatory sketches written by those who knew him in his old age alone. He lives in our memories as a kind of Nestor, replete with useful and interesting information, as Lord Stanhope drew him in his Conversations with the Duke of Wellington. This was not the man known to his contemporaries in the years of the Peninsular War.
Yet there was much to admire in Wellesley’s personal character. England has never had a more faithful servant. Though intensely ambitious, he never allowed ambition to draw him aside from the most tedious and thankless daily tasks. When once convinced that it was his duty to undertake a piece of work, he carried it through with unswerving industry and perseverance, if not always with much tact or consideration for the feelings of others[381]. He was unsparing of himself, careless of praise or blame, honest in every word and deed. He was equally ready to offend his king or to sacrifice his popularity with the multitude, when he thought that he had to face a question in which right and wrong were involved. He was essentially, what he once called himself, using a familiar Hindustani phrase, ‘a man of his salt.’ In spite of all his faults he stands out a majestic figure in the history of his time. It is the misfortune of the historian that when he sees so much to admire and to respect, he finds so little that commands either sympathy or affection.
SECTION XIV: CHAPTER II
WELLESLEY RETAKES OPORTO
On arriving at Lisbon, Wellesley, as we have already seen, was overjoyed to find that the situation in Portugal remained just as it had been when he set sail from Portsmouth: Victor was still quiescent in his cantonments round Merida: Soult had not moved forward on the road toward Coimbra, and was in the midst of his unfruitful bickerings with the army of Silveira. Lapisse had disappeared from his threatening position in front of Ciudad Rodrigo, and had passed away to Estremadura. All the rumours as to an immediate French advance on Badajoz and Abrantes, which had arrived just as the new commander-in-chief was quitting England, had turned out to be baseless inventions. There were reassuring dispatches awaiting him from the English attachés with the armies of Cuesta and La Romana[382], which showed that Galicia was in full insurrection, and that a respectable force was once more threatening Victor’s flank. Accordingly it was possible to take into consideration plans for assuming the offensive against the isolated French armies, and the defensive campaign for the protection of Lisbon, which Wellesley had feared to find forced upon him, was not necessary.