II WELLINGTON, AND THE STRUGGLE WITH [Arthur WELLESLEY, Duke of Wellington, born in Ireland, 1769; died Walmer Castle, September 14, 1852; educated at Eton and at Angers; entered Seventy-third Regiment as ensign, 1787; purchased lieutenant-colonelcy of Thirty-third Regiment, 1793; served in Holland expedition, 1794–95; 1796, in India with his regiment; 1803, major-general, commands in Mahratta War, victory at Assaye; 1805, in England; 1806, member of Parliament; 1807, Secretary for Ireland; 1808, in Portugal; 1809-13, chief in command in Peninsula, clears Portugal and Spain of the French; 1814, English Ambassador at Paris; 1815, defeats Napoleon at Waterloo; 1815, commander-in-chief of allied army in France; 1818, mastergeneral of the ordnance; 1822, represents England at Congress of Verona; 1828-30, Prime Minister; 1829, grants Catholic emancipation; 1834-35, Foreign Secretary; 1841, commander-in-chief. Buried in St. Paul's Cathedral.] In February, 1792, William Pitt, Prime Minister of George III., unfolding his annual budget in the House of Commons, declared, "Unquestionably there never was a time in the history of this country when, from the situation of Europe, we might more reasonably expect fifteen years of peace, than at the present moment." Yet within a twelvemonth after this utterance, apparently sincere, France and England were plunged into a war which lasted, with but one brief intermission, until 1815. It embroiled in succession nearly every nation in Europe. In France it provided a theater for the genius of Napoleon, who after conquering in turn the best soldiers of the continent, was to meet his match in the Duke of Wellington on the field of Waterloo. The first period of the war mainly antedates the century which we are considering. In 1793 the Convention, the revolutionary body which had taken the place of the overturned French monarchy, declared war on Holland and England. Pitt was still at the head of King George III.'s ministry, and the conduct of the war devolved upon him. Her insular position and powerful fleet rendered England safe from invasion, but her active participation in the military operations upon the continent was limited in measure and distressing in outcome. expeditions which she landed in the Netherlands were shockingly inadequate in numbers, and led by high-born generals without knowledge, talent, or experience. It is little wonder that they accomplished nothing except to feed the French contempt for English arms. The Successive coalitions were formed by the energetic Pitt with Prussia, Austria, and other nations to check the advance of the republican armies in which, after 1795, the figure of Napoleon Bonaparte leaped into prominence. His victories disintegrated these alliances, which had been cemented with English gold. At the same time his victories so strengthened his personal hold upon the army and the nation that he was able to make himself absolute master of France. The Peace of Amiens (March, 1802, to May, 1803) afforded the only breathing space in all these twenty-two years of warfare. Napoleon, now first consul, was soon to change that republican mask for the honest and ambi tious title of emperor. The hollowness of the peace soon became evident. Under its cloak French ships were building and French armies mustering in the channel ports for the invasion of England. The character of the strife had now radically changed. At the outset, ten years before, England had joined hands with the continental monarchies to check the spread of the liberal ideas which the French republican armies were carrying on their bayonets in a species of crusade in the name of liberty. But with the accession of Bonaparte to the throne of the Bourbons, England was plunged into a struggle for existence. Napoleon himself said that peace could never prevail in Europe so long as England had the power to disturb it, and all parties in England were resolved to combat to the last the establishment of a vast and menacing military despotism beyond the Straits of Dover. Pitt's It The genius of Admiral Nelson preserved the command of the narrow seas for England, and forced the Emperor to abandon his project of invasion which had aroused the English nation to unprecedented military activity. subsidies had again set the continental armaments in motion, but Napoleon's brilliant dash into Germany brought these to naught in the battle of Austerlitz, which destroyed the Third Coalition and brought Austria to terms. was this news that the great Prime Minister of George III. took so to heart. He survived the disaster but a few weeks. But the ministry of "All the Talents" took up his task with no thought of abandoning the struggle. The death of Fox soon broke up this administration, but those of Portland, Perceval, and Liverpool, which followed, were as dogged in their resolution to spend the last pound, and the last man, if need were, in ridding Europe of the conqueror whose existence England had now come to regard as a threat against her national independence. As his conquests added state after state to the territory in which his word was law, Napoleon developed new tactics against England. He conceived it practicable to crush that commercial and manufacturing power by excluding her goods from the markets of Europe. This "continental system" was inaugurated in November, 1806, by the Berlin Decree which closed the ports of Europe to British vessels, and declared a paper blockade against the British Isles. This policy he forced upon nation after nation, to which his conquests extended. England retaliated by the "Orders in Council," which declared a blockade against the French ports, and authorized the seizure of neutral vessels found trading with them. By a naval raid in September, 1807, the British swooped down on Denmark and carried off the Danish fleet to keep that weapon from falling into the Emperor's hands. Two months later, in anticipation of a British descent, French armies seized Portugal and entered Spain. Up to the entrance of the French into the Spanish Peninsula, the protracted hostilities had brought little advantage to the British arms except on the sea. It was the Peninsular War, precipitated by this fresh encroachment of Napoleon, which first gave a laurel to the English arms and prepared Wellington for Waterloo. Napoleon and the soldier who was to overthrow him were born in the same year. The babe whom the world was to know as the Duke of Wellington was christened in Dublin in May, 1769, by the name of Arthur Wesley. (In 1798 the older spelling of the family name, Wellesley, was resumed.) He was descended from English ancestors long resident in Ireland, and was himself the fourth son of the Earl of Mornington. The death of the Earl when Arthur was but twelve years old left the family in slender circumstances. Richard, the eldest son and successor to the title, had achieved high university honors, but Arthur was a slow student of everything save music and mathematics. After a brief residence at Eton he entered a higher institution at Angers, in France. His mother thought him worth nothing better than "food for powder, and at eighteen he obtained a commission as ensign in the Seventy-sixth Regiment of British Foot. Family influence and the purchase of his "steps" soon made him a lieutenant-colonel (1793) of the Thirty-third Foot. He had already been three years a member of the Irish House of Commons. where, however, he did not distinguish himself. England was now at war with France, and Colonel Arthur Wellesley's first foreign service was in 1794, when his regiment was sent to the support of the Duke of York, who was near the end of his ignominious campaign in the Low Countries. In March, 1795, he was back in England, disgusted with the incompetency of his superiors. Of the value of this experience he afterward said, "Why, I learned what one ought not to do, and that is always something." At the time, however, he was less philosophical, and after consulting with his wise elder brother as to the future possibilities of distinction in military life, he applied for a civil office under the Lord Lieutenant of England. Instead of droning out his life in a treasury clerkship, Wellesley found a more strenuous career abroad. In the autumn of 1795 his regiment was ordered to India, where |