He never forgot this, and probably never forgave it. Every one knows how, when Apsley House was threatened by a mob, he made ready to defend it in a businesslike and soldierly way. When the mob broke his windows he coolly ordered iron shutters and put them up. Afterwards, when the fickle tide of popular fancy had turned the other way, and the mob was wont to cheer instead of cursing him, he used to point to these shutters and laugh good-humouredly but seriously withal.
In one sense, however, it is hardly true that Wellington’s last fight was at Waterloo. The last time that he really made a display of his military capacity was in London. It was he who on the 10th of April, 1848, saved London from the Chartists. He never allowed a soldier to be seen, much less a weapon, and when it was all over, Sir John Campbell came to him and said:
“Well, Duke, it all turned out as you foretold.”
And this was the answer:
“Oh, yes; I was sure of it, and I never showed a soldier or a musket, but I was ready. I could have stopped them whenever you liked, and if they had been armed it would have been all the same.”
That was Wellington’s last victory—bloodless, and, therefore, since the enemy would have been his own countrymen, all the more glorious for that.
In the article on Nelson, I mentioned the well-known fact that the greatest soldier and the greatest sailor of their age met but once, and that Wellington so far gauged the character of the hero of Trafalgar as to describe him as “a very superior person.” In the spirit they not only met again, but they will live together in everlasting honour in the memory of the British people.
Their last resting-places are side by side, as they should be, in St. Paul’s Cathedral, and side by side their glorious memories will remain as long as the noble qualities which made them the greatest men, not only of their nation, but of the age which their great deeds made splendid, are held in honour—and that is the same thing as saying as long as the human race endures.