Wellington’s best known title is the Iron Duke, and yet no man ever had less iron in him than he. It is true that he armed himself from head to foot with a mail which his enemies found impenetrable, but the gallant heart whose high courage carried him through so many dangers and difficulties was withal as tender as a woman’s.
When his last great fight had been fought and won, when the long tragedy of the Napoleonic wars was over, and the curtain had just fallen upon the tremendous climax of Waterloo, Dr. Hume, his physician, went to see him early on the morning of the 19th of June to tell him of the death during the night of his friend Gordon, and this is how he described the conqueror on the morrow of his greatest victory.
“He had, as usual, taken off his clothes, but had not washed himself. As I entered he sat up in bed, his face covered with the dust and sweat of the previous day, and extended his hand to me which I took and held in mine while I told him of Gordon’s death and of such of the casualties as had come to my knowledge. He was much affected. I felt the tears dropping fast upon my hand, and, looking towards him, saw them chasing one another in furrows over his dusty cheeks.”
This is a touching little picture of the one man in the world who has proved himself capable of grappling with and overthrowing the Corsican Colossus, and with it we may here bid him farewell. Waterloo was the last as well as the greatest of his fights. He had given the world peace. He had overthrown the most grievous tyranny that had threatened it for many a long century.
He had found Europe under the heel of France. He had conquered her conqueror; and yet it was he who, when terms of peace were being dictated in Paris, stopped his ferocious old ally Blücher from blowing up the Bridge of Jena, and got such concessions for France in the hour of her defeat and humiliation as none but the victor of the Peninsula and the hero of Waterloo could have done. Like all really strong men, he was merciful in his strength; and like all really great soldiers he looked upon his enemies as his friends as soon as he had soundly thrashed them.
With his after career as a politician and a statesman I have here nothing to do. His empire-making ended with the order that sent the whole steadfast British line streaming down from the rising ground which they had held so stubbornly all through that famous day. It is better to take leave of him here, for Arthur Wellesley was too good and too great a man for politics. He was the idol of the army he had created, but he didn’t know how to lead a mob.
THE ORDER THAT SENT THE BRITISH LINE STREAMING DOWN FROM THE RISING GROUND.
Seventeen years after Waterloo, to the very day, he was beset in London streets by a howling multitude of the very people he had served so splendidly.
If he had not found a refuge in the Temple and a bodyguard of Benchers, it is probable that they would have pulled him from his horse and torn him limb from limb. It is a sorry spectacle, although relieved by the quaintness of the vision of this unconquered hero of a hundred fights trusting for his life to a bodyguard of lawyers.