The Duke of Wellington: the man who beat Napoleon

The Duke of Wellington is often credited with never losing a major battle. He did suffer smaller defeats and setbacks, but he won the one that mattered most. Cautious, sharp-tongued and utterly calm under fire, he wore down Napoleon's marshals in the long Peninsular War and then, on a muddy ridge in Belgium, met the emperor himself and ended the Napoleonic Wars. Britannica sums up the arc of his life: twice at the summit of fame, with a period of unexampled odium in between.²

Early life

Arthur Wesley (the family changed the spelling to Wellesley in 1798) was born in Dublin on 1 May 1769, the fifth son of the 1st Earl of Mornington, a family of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy. His father died in 1781, leaving the family short of money, and the withdrawn boy did not shine at Eton. He was taken away and schooled in Brussels and at a military academy at Angers in France. His mother saw little in him; in a remark both Britannica and the National Army Museum quote, she called him "food for powder and nothing more." He had wanted to be a musician.³

Commissioned at eighteen, in 1787, he served as aide-de-camp to the viceroy of Ireland and from 1790 to 1797 sat for the family seat of Trim in the Irish Parliament. At 24, in debt, he proposed to Catherine (Kitty) Pakenham and was turned down. He gave up heavy gambling and threw himself into his profession, buying the lieutenant-colonelcy of the 33rd Foot. His first campaign, in Flanders in 1794 and 1795, was a failure, and he learned, in Britannica's words, from his superiors' blunders. His first action came at Boxtel on 15 September 1794, at the head of the 33rd, in an army already in retreat.⁴

India and Assaye

In 1796 he sailed for India, where his eldest brother, Richard, soon arrived as governor-general. He led the 33rd at Malavelly and at the storming of Seringapatam in 1799, in the war against Tipu Sultan of Mysore, and became governor of Mysore. Promoted major general in 1802, he commanded against the Marathas, and on 23 September 1803 won at Assaye the first great victory of his career, the one he later considered his best battle. Argaum and the capture of Gawilghur followed, and he negotiated the peace himself.⁵ › The Battle of Assaye, 1803

Napoleon later dismissed him as a mere "sepoy general." It was a mistake. India taught him everything he later showed in Europe: decision, common sense and attention to detail, the care of his soldiers and their supplies, good relations with the civilian population, diplomacy with allies and the gathering of intelligence. He came home in 1805 with a knighthood.⁶

The next years were a disappointment: an abortive expedition to Hanover and a brigade at Hastings. In 1806 he married Kitty Pakenham after all and entered Parliament as member for Rye, then served as chief secretary for Ireland. In 1807 he defeated a small Danish force during the expedition to Copenhagen.⁷

Portugal, 1808 to 1811

When Portugal rose against Napoleon in 1808, Wellesley, now a lieutenant general, was sent to help. He did not mean to be, as he put it, "half beaten before the battle began," the usual fate of armies facing the French. At Roliça and then at Vimeiro on 21 August his "thin red line" of British infantry beat General Junot's columns, the tactic that became his trademark: a line held on the reverse slope of a ridge, out of the enemy's sight and artillery fire until the moment it fired. Two senior generals then arrived and signed the Convention of Sintra, which shipped Junot's army home. The public outcry brought Wellesley before a court of inquiry. He was cleared.⁸

In 1809 he persuaded the government that Portugal could still be held. Landing at Lisbon, he surprised Marshal Soult, took Oporto and chased the French back into Spain. A joint advance on Madrid with the Spanish failed despite a narrow victory at Talavera on 27 and 28 July, which brought him a peerage as Viscount Wellington. Outnumbered, he fell back on Portugal, beating Marshal Masséna at Bussaco on 27 September 1810 on the way.⁹

Behind him lay his secret: the Lines of Torres Vedras, fortifications he had built across the Lisbon peninsula. Masséna's army halted in front of them in a countryside stripped bare, and in March 1811 it left Portugal. The victory at Fuentes de Oñoro in May confirmed the defensive, scorched-earth strategy and his soldiers' trust in him. His men called him "Nosey"; his officers called him "the Beau," for his slim figure, his perfectly cut civilian clothes, his wavy brown hair and blue eyes.¹⁰

Spain, 1812 to 1814

In 1812 his slowly growing army was finally strong enough to take the Spanish border fortresses, Ciudad Rodrigo in January and Badajoz, by storm, in April. On 22 July, at Salamanca, he showed that he could also maneuver and attack in the open, defeating "40,000 Frenchmen in 40 minutes," and on 12 August he entered Madrid. The siege of Burgos failed that autumn, and the army retreated to Portugal once more.¹¹ › 22 July in military history: the Battle of Salamanca, 1812

In May 1813 he went into Spain for the last time. After a dash across the peninsula he caught the French at Vitoria on 21 June, personally leading one column against their center, routed them and captured all their baggage. His troops looted it instead of pursuing, and Wellington called them "the scum of the earth." The victory brought him a field marshal's baton. He took San Sebastián and Pamplona, crossed the Pyrenees, and on 10 April 1814 stormed into Toulouse; Napoleon had abdicated four days earlier. Wellington was made a duke, and Parliament voted him a fortune to keep up the title, £500,000 according to Britannica, £400,000 according to the government's history of its prime ministers.¹²

Waterloo

With Napoleon on Elba, Wellington became ambassador in Paris and then took Castlereagh's place at the Congress of Vienna. On 1 March 1815 Napoleon landed in France. Wellington took command of an allied army in Belgium, a mix of British, Dutch, Belgian and German troops he himself called "infamous"; of its 31,000 British soldiers, most had never been under fire. On 16 June Napoleon beat the Prussians at Ligny while Marshal Ney held Wellington at Quatre Bras. Wellington fell back to a ridge south of Mont-Saint-Jean, with Blücher's promise to come to his aid.¹³ › Battle of Quatre Bras, 1815

On 18 June he had about 68,000 men and 156 guns against Napoleon's 72,000 men and 246 guns. Most of his army stood behind the ridge, sheltered from the French guns, with three strongpoints in front. The château of Hougoumont held all day. A great infantry attack on his left center was thrown back, but the British heavy cavalry that broke it charged too far and was cut up. In the afternoon massed French cavalry rode again and again at his infantry squares, which held. Toward six o'clock the farm of La Haye Sainte fell and the center wavered, but by then 45,000 to 48,000 Prussians were arriving on Napoleon's flank at Plancenoit. At about seven the Imperial Guard advanced between Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte, halted under British fire, wavered and broke.¹⁴ › The Battle of Waterloo, 1815

The National Army Museum quotes his words during the battle: "Hard pounding this, gentlemen; let's see who will pound longest." The museum puts the losses at nearly 40,000 French killed, wounded or captured and 22,000 allied. In Brussels after the battle he told Thomas Creevey that it had been "a damned serious business" and "the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life." He wept for the fallen: "I hope to God that I have fought my last battle," he said. He had.¹⁵

How he commanded

Wellington's method was defensive, patient and thorough. He chose ground that hid his infantry behind a crest and let the enemy come to him; he guarded his supply lines and his naval link to Britain with obsessive care; he fortified Portugal and stripped the land in front of the enemy; and he gathered intelligence everywhere. He was not only a defender: at Salamanca he struck an army on the march, and at Vitoria he led a column into the attack himself.¹⁶

He ruled his army with what he himself called an iron hand, and his contempt for drunken looters was famous. Yet he cared for his soldiers and their supplies, and he was happiest among his staff, his "military family." He never lost his nerve, and he never let pride stop him retreating, whether on the battlefield or later in Parliament.¹⁷

The political duke

After Waterloo he commanded the allied army of occupation in France until 1818, opposed a punitive peace and came home with the field marshals' batons of six foreign countries. In 1819 he joined Lord Liverpool's Tory cabinet as master general of the ordnance. He was no party man, but the unrest of the postwar years, the Peterloo Massacre among them, tied him to the party of order. In 1827 he resigned with Robert Peel rather than serve under George Canning, and on 9 January 1828 King George IV asked him to form a government.¹⁸

His greatest political victory went against his own instincts. After the Irish Catholic leader Daniel O'Connell won the Clare election, he feared civil war in Ireland unless Catholics were allowed to sit in Parliament. He spent six months converting the king, Peel and most of the Tories, and in April 1829 Catholic Emancipation became law. Along the way he fought a duel in Battersea with the Earl of Winchilsea, an ultra-Tory critic; both men deliberately missed. On parliamentary reform he would not move. On 2 November 1830 he declared himself against any reform at all, lost a Commons vote on the 15th and resigned.¹⁹

The reform crisis made him hated. Mobs twice broke the windows of Apsley House, his London home, and the iron shutters he put up helped create the image of the "Iron Duke." In May 1832, with the country close to upheaval, he led his peers out of the Lords so that the Reform Bill could pass. In 1834 he was asked to form a ministry again, held office briefly as caretaker, and insisted that Peel should be prime minister, serving under him as foreign secretary.²⁰

Last years and death

He sat in Peel's cabinet as minister without portfolio from 1841 to 1846, led the Tory peers away from fatal clashes with the Commons, and in 1846 helped Peel repeal the Corn Laws. He kept the chief command of the army for his last ten years, too long, Britannica judges, since he was past the reforms it needed. In 1848 he organized the defense of London against the Chartist rally at Kennington Common, and his calm handling prevented violence.²¹

He died after a stroke at Walmer Castle in Kent, his official residence as Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, on 14 September 1852. Queen Victoria called him "the greatest man this country ever produced." He was given a monumental state funeral, the last heraldic one in Britain, and was buried in St Paul's Cathedral, next to Nelson.²²

Legacy and memory

His reputation has swung. In old age he was idolized as the Great Duke. After his death he was rated an overcautious general and, by some, Britain's worst prime minister of the century. Today, Britannica writes, his military genius and his character as an honest, selfless politician are widely appreciated. Some historians object to the title Iron Duke, since he was neither cold nor hard-hearted, and his favorite saying was "I am but a man."²³

He is everywhere in British memory: in Apsley House, known as "Number One, London," in the Wellington Arch at Hyde Park Corner, even in the Wellington boot. His campaigns are still studied in military academies. And for all the statues, he left the clearest verdict on war himself, in a line the National Army Museum quotes from after Waterloo: "nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won."²⁴

Read more about his great rival, Napoleon Bonaparte, the two men compared in Napoleon vs Wellington, his first great battle at Assaye, the other greatest British commanders, or what happened on 21 June, the day of Vitoria.