The “Iron Duke” himself was a keen lover of the sport. Mr. Larpent, who was Judge-Advocate of the British forces during the Peninsular War, relates, in his private journal, some anecdotes which prove how hard a rider and good a sportsman the conqueror of Napoleon was. For his own personal service Wellington kept fifteen horses, and paid high prices for them; and when one reads of such galloping to and fro as Mr. Larpent records, one is not surprised at the number of the Duke’s stud.
Here is an extract from the journal which illustrates both the tireless energy and the keen sportsmanship of the Duke:—
“Lord Wellington is quite well again; was out hunting on Thursday, and being kept in by rain all yesterday, is making up for it to-day by persisting in his expedition to the Fourth Division. He was to set out at seven this morning for the review of General Cole’s division, on a plain beyond Castel Rodriques, about twenty-eight miles from hence; was to be on the ground about ten, and was to be back to dinner to-day by four or five o’clock. This is something like vigour, and yet I think he overdoes it a little; he has, however, a notion that it is exercise makes headquarters more healthy than the rest of the Army generally is, and that the hounds are one great cause of this.”
Of these hounds Mr. Larpent gives the following details: “We have three odd sorts of packs of hounds here, and the men hunt desperately. Firstly, Lord Wellington’s, or as he is called here, ‘the Peer’s’; these are foxhounds, about sixteen couples; they have only killed one fox this year, and that was what is called mobbed. These hounds, from want of a huntsman, straggle about and run very ill, and the foxes run off to their holes in the rocks on the Coa. Captain Wright goes out, stops the holes overnight, halloes, and rides away violently. From a hard rock sometimes the horse gets up to his belly in wet gravelly sand; thus we have many horses lamed and some bad falls. The next set of hounds are numerous. The Commissary-General, Sir R. Kennedy, is a great man in this way, and several others. And thirdly, Captain Morherre, that is, the principal man of this place, has an old poacher in his establishment, with a dozen terriers, mongrels and ferrets, and he goes out with the officers to get rabbits. Lord Wellington has a good stud of about eight hunters. He rides hard, and only wants a good gallop, but I understand knows nothing of the sport, though very fond of it in his own way.”
MONAUL PHEASANTS.
KOKLASS PHEASANTS.
The Duke, as most readers of Baily are no doubt aware, was a warm friend and admirer of that great king of the hunting field, Thomas Assheton Smith, whom Napoleon introduced to his officers as “le premier chasseur d’Angleterre.” And it was always a subject of regret to the hero of Waterloo that Assheton Smith had not joined the Army; “For,” said the Duke, “he would have made one of the best cavalry officers in Europe,” and he frequently remarked that many of his own distinguished cavalry officers in the Peninsular War owed their horsemanship to the example of Assheton Smith.