The passage of the Douro foiled the French commander, and compelled him to retire. After various complicated movements, the rival armies confronted one another at Talavera, where a dreadful conflict issued in victory to the British. The British, unsustained by proper support, through the negligence of the English government, and the irrational conduct of the Portuguese, were compelled to fall back. Before doing so, Wellesley accomplished another grand feat—the execution of the lines of Torres Vedras. This defensive position was skilfully selected, and as skilfully fortified. Such was the secrecy and celerity observed in the construction of the works, that the French had learned nothing of their existence, numerous as were their spies, and the English army generally knew as little of it as the French. When the moment arrived for the execution of his project, the English general retired behind these lines, in the face of an overwhelmingly numerous enemy, who gazed with wonder upon the impregnable defences which were presented to their view.
Before, however, the British accomplished their retreat, one more victory testified their greatness in battle, and the superiority of their chief. The English took post on the heights of Busaco. The French attacked the position, and were repulsed. Having entered the lines of Torres Vedras, the British awaited the advance of the grand army which was to drive them into the sea. Massena advanced in his pride and his power, but recoiled from the task of storming such well-prepared positions. Having waited long enough, without being able to make any impression upon the English lines of defence, to bring disease, discouragement, and scarcity of provisions upon his own army, he retired, harassed in his retreat by the exulting English. While Wellesley was thus engaged in personally superintending the defence of Lisbon, by maintaining the fortified lines thrown up between the Douro and the sea, he was also occupied with general plans for ultimately driving the French out of the Peninsula, directing operations in places at a distance from his head-quarters, and carrying on a laborious correspondence with the Portuguese and British civil authorities, and even with the Spanish patriots. When Massena was driven into Spain, Wellesley’s first care was the reconquest of the frontier fortresses. Almeida, Ciudad Rodrigo, and Badajoz, fell into the hands of the British general, then Lord Wellington. His successes were, however, obtained with great difficulty and loss of his soldiers, through the inadequate supply of material to his army by the home authorities. Every fortress which was not strategically abandoned by the French, was won by the skill of the general-in-chief, and the recklessness of life shown by his soldiers, in spite of the want of almost every appliance proper for an army. The sieges which Wellington prosecuted to a successful result “will always reflect immortal honour on the troops engaged, and will always attract the strongest interests of an English reader; but which must, nevertheless, be appealed to as illustrations of the straits to which an army may be led by want of military experience in the government at home. By this time the repeated victories of Wellington and his colleagues had raised the renown of British soldiers to at least an equality with that of Napoleon’s veterans, and the incomparable efficiency, in particular, of the Light Division was acknowledged to be without a parallel in any European service. But in those departments of the army where excellence is less the result of intuitive ability, the forces under Wellington were still greatly surpassed by the trained legions of the emperor. While Napoleon had devoted his whole genius to the organization of the parks and trains which attend the march of an army in the field, the British troops had only the most imperfect resources on which to rely. The engineer corps, though admirable in quality, was so deficient in numbers, that commissions were placed at the free disposal of Cambridge mathematicians. The siege trains were weak and worthless against the solid ramparts of Peninsular strongholds. The intrenching tools were so ill made that they snapped in the hands of the workmen, and the art of sapping and mining was so little known that this branch of the siege duties was carried on by drafts from the regiments of the line, imperfectly and hastily instructed for the purpose. Unhappily, such results can only be obviated by long foresight, patient training, and costly provision; it was not in the power of a single mind, however capacious, to effect an instantaneous reform, and Wellington was compelled to supply the deficiencies by the best blood of his troops.” *
* “Memoir of the Duke of Wellington.”
The terms in which this illustrious man complained of the incompetency of the government at home are instructive to those who, in the present generation, contend for reform. “I do not receive one-sixth part of the money necessary to keep so great a machine in motion.” “The French army is well supplied,” he wrote on one occasion, “the Spanish army has everything in abundance, and we alone, on whom everything depends, are dying of hunger.” “I am left entirely to my own resources,” he wrote in 1810, “and find myself obliged to provide, with the little which I can procure, for the wants of the allies, as well as for those of the English army. If I yield, God help me, for nobody will support me.” This sorrowful language was too true, for so utterly corrupt was the English administration, that in order to save themselves from public odium, they would have ruined him. A distinguished reviewer of one of the memoirs of his grace thus comments upon the treatment which he received:—“From the inadequate supplies of money sent to him from his government, he had to create a paper-money of his own, and to increase his supplies by opening a trade in corn with America. When he complained of the attention which the home government paid to the criticism of some of his officers, they replied that these officers were better generals than he; they compelled him to send back the transports on which, in the event of a defeat, the safety of his army depended; and on one occasion Lord Liverpool gave instructions to an officer of engineers at Lisbon of which Wellington knew nothing, and which began with these words, which were also news to him:—‘As it is probable that the army will embark in September, &c.’” So much was the duke dependant on his own resources that, being unable to prevent the departure of some of his generals, he was often obliged to discharge himself, on the same clay, the duties of general of cavalry, leader of the advanced guard, and commander of two or three columns of infantry. His want of material was such that at the siege of Badajoz he had to employ guns cast in the reign of Philip II., and, for lack of mortars, he had to mount his howitzers upon wooden blocks; while at Burgos he was obliged to suspend the attack till a convoy of ammunition should come up, which had been expected for six weeks. He was even obliged to complain of his army. “We are an excellent army on parade,” he said, “an excellent one to fight, but take my word for it, defeat or success would dissolve us.” The discipline was by no means perfect. After the battle of Vittoria the soldiers obtained among them by way of booty about a million sterling; many regiments disbanded themselves, and some three weeks afterwards the commander-in-chief had to announce that there were still 12,500 marauders among the mountains absent from duty.
Notwithstanding every impediment which the lazy, conceited, and impracticable character of the Spaniards, the want of civil organization in Portugal, and the ignorance and incapacity of his own government could interpose, Lord Wellington, in a series of campaigns, and of great and sanguinary battles, drove the French from Spain, followed them into France, defeated them at Bayonne, Orthes, and Toulouse, and only paused in his career of victory upon the announcement of the allies entering Paris, and the abdication of Napoleon.
The policy and conduct of the Duke of Wellington during the occupation of France by the allies were stern, but just and wise. He was inflexible in carrying out the objects of the allies, but temperate and equitable in curbing the vindictive propensities of the allied chiefs and armies. He met the great continental sovereigns and generals in Paris on a footing highly honourable to himself and his nation; his influence preponderated in their counsels, and he received more marks of deference than any other man of the times and the occasion.
On his return to England, his name and person were surrounded by honours. He received in the House of Lords at once the recognition of all the steps of the peerage—they had been conferred upon him in his absence. He was the idol of the court and the aristocracy, and to a considerable extent of the people. The escape of Napoleon from Elba led to the British and Prussian campaign in Belgium, which involved the sanguinary battles of Quatrebras and Waterloo, in the former of which Ney sustained a terrible repulse from Wellington, and in the latter Napoleon was utterly defeated and put to flight, and the way to Paris opened for the conquerors. Once more the duke occupied France with his armies, and with still greater opportunity than at the close of his previous campaign for displaying the eminent qualities which he possessed in the council, as well as in the field. After the peace, and the banishment of Napoleon to St. Helena. Wellington obtained an extraordinary influence in the councils of successive British sovereigns, and became one of the most active and potential politicians in Europe. His career of war had closed—a new public race was run by him, in which his countrymen were less disposed to regard him with favour. How he fulfilled his new destinies is still matter of discussion. The tory school of politicians, to which he belonged, consider him as having in a great measure forsaken his party, and lowered the standard of his principles. Liberal politicians regard him as having struggled to maintain class interests contrary to the convictions of his great mind, and in subservience to the interests and prejudices of his “order.” His country generally has, therefore, not given him credit for the highest order of statesmanship, but reveres his memory as that of a man who served the country and the crown with fidelity, and who studied the national honour in all things. Probably the following estimate of his political capacity, position, and services, is as accurate as any ever given to the public:—“By a destiny unexampled in history, the hero of these countless conquests survived to give more than one generation of his countrymen the benefit of his civil services. Such an ordeal has never before been endured by any public character. Military experience does not furnish the fittest schools of statesmanship, especially when the country to be governed is that of a free, intelligent, and progressive people. But, if the political principles of the great man who has now departed were not always reconcilable with the opinions and demands of modern advancement, they were at least consistent in themselves, were never extravagantly pressed, never tyrannically promoted, and never obstinately maintained to the hindrance of the government or the damage of the state. In estimating Wellington’s politics it must never be forgotten that he was a politician of 1807, and that he descended to us the last representative of a school that had passed. If he was less liberally-minded than the statesmen of his later days, we may fairly inquire how many of his own generation would have been as liberal as he?”
In 1822, the duke appeared at the allied conference at Vienna, the object of which was to put down the rising demand on the continent for constitutional government. Spain was intensely agitated, and its imbecile monarch was afraid to resist any longer the call for free institutions, so loudly and unanimously made by his subjects. The continental sovereigns viewed the slightest approach to political freedom with alarm. The restored Bourbon government of France took the lead in the policy of repression, and demanded the countenance of the continental powers, and of England, for an invasion of Spain, to support the king in trampling out the last spark of liberty among his subjects. Mr. Canning was minister for foreign affairs in England. He instructed the Duke of Wellington to resist the proposal of France, and to insist upon non-intercession. Either his grace performed his part inadequately, as was generally believed in England, or the continental sovereigns, having used England for the destruction of Napoleon, were agreed to thwart her influence, and make no concessions to her opinion, for they unanimously supported the project of a French invasion of Spain. This event took place, inflicting upon the Spanish people more indignity, disdain, and injury than the invasions by Napoleon had done. The British government talked much and did nothing. “The Holy Alliance” took no notice of the indignant orations in the British parliament, the protests of the ministry, and the explanations of the duke. A French invasion overthrew liberty in Spain within little more than ten years of the date when a British army had driven out the French in the name of liberty, independence, and non-intervention. The Spaniards never believed that the duke was free from some participation in this aggression, and his popularity, such as it was at the close of the war, was never regained in that country. The event also deprived the Spaniards of all confidence in professions of non-intervention and respect for national independence in England. They did not believe that her powerless protests were sincere, but regarded her as having made the previous war in the Peninsula for a policy exclusively her own—the suppression of the popular and imperial elements in France. The Duke of Wellington, in his place in the house of peers, declared that he had faithfully carried out Mr. Canning’s instructions, but that the allied courts were unmoved by arguments or protests.
In 1826 the duke was sent by his sovereign on an especial embassy to St. Petersburg. He was not favourably impressed with the Emperor Nicholas or his people. He regarded the whole policy of Russia as faithless and aggressive, and only friendly to England as far as she might be made, through the false representations of the Russian diplomatists, unconsciously subservient to the territorial aggrandisement of Russia, especially in the direction of Turkey. The Emperor Nicholas himself the duke learned to regard with distrust, mingled with personal contempt for his duplicity.
At home, the duke was the object of innumerable honours. A mansion was erected for him, called Apsley House, at Hyde Park Corner, £200,000 was voted to purchase for him and the inheritors of the title, the estate of Strathfieldsaye, in Hampshire, which is entailed, on condition of the noble owner, for the time being, annually presenting a tri-colour flag to her majesty, on the 18th of June, the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo. These flags have been since accumulating, and hang in the armoury of Windsor Castle, with similar trophies commemorative of the battle of Blenheim, rendered by the heirs of the great Duke of Marlborough.