Men Who Have Made the Empire

by George Chetwynd Griffith

How far his Lordship was justified was speedily shown when in 1793—which the historical reader will note was the date of the driving out of the English and Royalists from Toulon by the well-directed guns of Citizen Buonaparte—he was given the command of the 33rd Foot. A few months later the 33rd was officially recognised as the most effective regiment on the Irish establishment.

The next year Lieutenant-Colonel Wesley saw his first active service. It was not an encouraging experience, but it was sufficient to show the sort of stuff that the future Iron Duke was made of. The allied armies in the Netherlands, with the English under the Duke of York among them, were retreating after a series of disasters before the triumphant onrush of the French legions.

Near the town of Boxtell the retreat began to get uncomfortably like a rout. Horse and foot were getting mixed up in a narrow lane and the French, seeing this, were getting ready to charge into them; whereupon Colonel Wesley planted his men skilfully across the mouth of the lane and, when the French charged, the well-drilled 33rd stood so steadily and used their muskets with such deadly precision that the French thought better of it and the pursuit stopped there and then.

That was the young Colonel’s first experience of actual war. It was also the first check the French had so far received in the Netherlands, which is also significant in the light of after events.

After that he commanded the rear-guard in the retreat to the British transports at Bremen. He did his duty as well as the hopeless carelessness and incompetency of those over and above him permitted. “It was a perfect marvel,” he said afterwards, “how a single man of us escaped,” from which it will be gathered that British military genius and discipline were somewhat at a discount during the campaign which we may regard as the prelude to the stupendous struggle which was to culminate on the field of Waterloo.

When Colonel Wesley got home he did a very curious thing. He asked to be allowed to resign his commission and to be given some post, however humble, in the Civil Service. It is easy to see from his letter of application to Lord Camden that he was utterly disgusted with the Army, or rather with the way in which it was mismanaged. He also felt, as he distinctly says, that he had in him the makings of a successful financier, and certainly if great business capacity, instantaneous knowledge of men, unequalled power of organisation, and absolutely tireless energy are the principal requisites for commercial success, Arthur Wesley might have died a millionaire.

Happily, however, Lord Camden refused to grant his request. No doubt the Earl of Mornington had something to say about it and good officers were quite rare enough just then to make the abilities of the Colonel of the 33rd fairly conspicuous. Soon after this he had an attack of yellow fever in Ireland, probably by infection, which very nearly killed him. Just at this time too, that is to say the end of 1795, an expedition was organised to the West Indies and the 33rd were to form part of it.

It is interesting to us with our wind-defying monsters of steel and steam to learn that the squadron tried for six weeks to get out of the Channel and then had to come back. By this time the destination of the expedition had been changed from the West to the East Indies. The Colonel of the 33rd was too ill to sail with his regiment. A swift frigate enabled him to overtake it at the Cape; but for all that he was nearly thirteen months before he got to Calcutta.

Arthur Wellesley, as he now began to sign himself, although nothing more in the eyes of his comrades and commanders than a Colonel of Foot who was a good disciplinarian and a promising soldier, had now entered that theatre on the stage of which he was to play a brilliant part to a world-wide audience.

Nearly thirteen years before Warren Hastings had finished his work and gone home to take his reward in impeachment and ruin. The brilliant administration of Lord Cornwallis and the less conspicuous rule of Sir John Shore were now to be followed by a double command which was to extend, complete, and crown the great work of empire-making in the East which had begun when Robert Clive left his desk to go and capture Arcot.