The Story of Wellington

by Harold Wheeler

But he found time to join in a few fêtes in honour of the Restoration, including a magnificent ball given by Sir Charles Stewart, the British Commissioner to the Army of the Allies, where monarchs were plentiful and Society beauties abundant. “It was in the midst of this ball,” the Comtesse de Boigne relates, “that the Duke of Wellington appeared for the first time in Paris. I can see him now entering the room with his two nieces, Lady Burgers[79] and Miss Pole, hanging on his arms. There were no eyes for any one else, and at this ball, where grandeur abounded, everything gave way to military glory. That of the Duke of Wellington was brilliant and unalloyed, and a lustre was added to it by the interest that had long been felt in the cause of the Spanish nation.”

He had only been in Paris six days before he set out for Madrid, viâ Toulouse, “in order to try whether I cannot prevail upon all parties to be more moderate, and to adopt a constitution more likely to be practicable and to contribute to the peace and happiness of the nation.” He had made the proposal, and the Allies had eagerly accepted it. When he started on his journey he was the Duke of Wellington,[80] and it was additional cause of satisfaction to him to know that peerages had been conferred on Beresford, Hill, Cotton, Hope, and Graham, “my gallant coadjutors.” He stayed at Toulouse for a couple of days, attending to details connected with the army, and again continued his journey, writing dispatches, notes of condolence, a letter requesting permission to accept the Grand Cross of the Order of St George from the Czar, and so on.

Napoleon had released Ferdinand VII on the 13th of the previous March, and the king was now back in his capital. “I entertain a very favourable opinion of the King from what I have seen of him,” Wellington writes from Madrid on the 25th May 1814, “but not of his Ministers.” This opinion of Ferdinand must be taken as referring to the man and not to his methods, for he had already assumed the part of a despot to so alarming an extent that civil war was feared, hence the Duke’s journey. “I have accomplished my object in coming here”; he says in the same letter, “that is, I think there will certainly be no civil war at present.” But seven days later he communicates with Castlereagh in a minor key: “I have been well received by the King and his Ministers; but I fear that I have done but little good.”

He left a lengthy memorandum in the hands of his Catholic Majesty, full of excellent advice, and bereft, as he said, of “all national partialities and prejudices.” Commerce, the colonies, domestic interests, and finance are all touched upon in a sane, straightforward way, obviously with the intention of promoting “a good understanding and cementing the alliance with Great Britain,” but valuable quite apart from any motive that might be construed as selfish. As Wellington says in the preamble, “The Spanish nation having been engaged for six years in one of the most terrible and disastrous contests by which any nation was ever afflicted, its territory having been entirely occupied by the enemy, the country torn to pieces by internal divisions, its ancient constitution having been destroyed, and vain attempts made to establish a new one; its marine, its commerce, and revenue entirely annihilated; its colonies in a state of rebellion, and nearly lost to the mother country; it becomes a question for serious consideration, what line of policy should be adopted by His Majesty upon his happy restoration to his throne and authority.” Had Ferdinand taken Wellington’s well-intentioned advice to heart, Spain might have risen from her ashes. The old abuses cropped up, the Inquisition was re-established in a milder form, and troops were sent across the seas to perish in a futile endeavour to recover the Transatlantic colonies of a once glorious empire.

After returning to Paris to make arrangements for the embarkation of the British cavalry at Calais, the Duke sailed for England. When he landed at Dover on the 23rd June 1814, a salute from the batteries of the Castle welcomed him home. “About five o’clock this morning,” says a contemporary writer, “his majesty’s sloop-of-war, the Rosario, arrived in the roads, and fired a salute. Shortly afterwards, the yards of the different vessels of war were manned; a salute took place throughout the squadron, and the launch of the Nymphen frigate was seen advancing towards the harbour, with the Duke of Wellington; at this time the guns upon the heights and from the batteries commenced their thunder upon the boat leaving the ship; and on passing the pier-heads his Lordship was greeted with three distinct rounds of cheers from those assembled; but upon his landing at the Crosswall, nothing could exceed the rapture with which his Lordship was received by at least ten thousand persons; and notwithstanding it was so early, parties continued to arrive from town and country every minute. The instant his Lordship set foot on shore, a proposition was made, and instantly adopted, to carry him to the Ship Inn: he was borne on the shoulders of our townsmen, amidst the reiterated cheers of the populace.”

London went wild with excitement when he arrived, and at Westminster Bridge the mob took the horses from his carriage and dragged it along in triumph. On the 28th he took his seat for the first time in the House of Lords. He must have appeared a fine figure as, clad in his Field Marshal’s uniform under a peer’s robes, he was introduced by the Dukes of Beaufort and Richmond. The Lord Chancellor expressed the sentiments of the House, but refrained from attempting to state the “eminent merits” of his military character, “to represent those brilliant actions, those illustrious achievements, which have attached immortality to the name of Wellington, and which have given to this country a degree of glory unexampled in the annals of this kingdom. In thus acting, I believe I best consult the feelings which evince your Grace’s title to the character of a truly great and illustrious man”; and the Duke replied, in a short speech, attributing his success to his troops and general officers. A little later a deputation from the Lower House waited upon Wellington to offer him the congratulations of the Commons, and he attended in person to return thanks. The whole House rose as he entered. After a short speech the Speaker made an eloquent and touching address.

“It is not ... the grandeur of military success,” he said, “which has alone fixed our admiration or commanded our applause; it has been that generous and lofty spirit which inspired your troops with unbounded confidence, and taught them to know that the day of battle was always a day of victory; that moral courage and enduring fortitude which, in perilous times, when gloom and doubt had beset ordinary minds, stood nevertheless unshaken; and that ascendancy of character which, uniting the energies of jealous and rival nations, enabled you to wield at will the fate and fortunes of mighty empires....

“It now remains only that we congratulate your Grace upon the high and important mission on which you are about to proceed, and we doubt not that the same splendid talents, so conspicuous in war, will maintain, with equal authority, firmness, and temper, our national honour and interests in peace.”

Wellington was made a Doctor of Laws by the University of Oxford, as Nelson had been before him,[81] he received the freedom of the City of London in a gold casket, and a magnificent sword—in a word, he was the country’s Hero.

The time at his disposal was short and fully occupied, for he left London on the 8th August for Paris, travelling by way of the Netherlands, where he inspected the frontier from Liège along the Meuse and the Sambre to Namur and Charleroi, and thence by Mons to Tournay and the sea with a view to determining how Holland and Belgium, now united into one kingdom, could be placed in an adequate state of defence for future service should circumstances dictate. He also noted some of the most advantageous positions, including “the entrance of the forêt de Soignes by the high road which leads to Brussels from Binch, Charleroi, and Namur,”—in one word, Waterloo. He realized that there were more disadvantages than advantages, but “this country must be defended in the best manner that is possible,” even though it “affords no features upon which reliance can be placed to establish any defensive system.”[82]