Wellington had a short while preceded him. He began his work of the government of India with much vigour, and carried it out, until his recall in 1805, with great energy. The Marquis Wellesley, for such he was made in 1799, reduced the forces of Tippoo Saib, parted that chief's dominions, raised the revenue of the East India Company from seven to fifteen millions, quelled the Mahrattas, and compelled Scindia and the Rajah of Berar, make peace. On his return from India, the Marquis was received with much approbation by the government and by the East India Company. His rule, on the whole, though expensive, was wise and just; and, after all allowance has been made for the splendid military genius of his brother, which served so effectually to support his own measures, it cannot be doubted that his government marked the beginning of a better era of British rule in India. In 1808 he was sent as ambassador to Spain, but was recalled next year, and made Secretary of State for Foreign affairs. Under Lord Liverpool's government he gave his hearty support to the claims of the Roman Catholics, which, on his becoming Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland in 1821, created much bitterness and animosity against him by the Protestant community of that country. An Insurrection Act was deemed necessary before the rioters could be quelled. After a short recess from the cares of government during the Grey ministry, the Marquis was again appointed in 1833 to the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland, but resigned on Sir Robert Peel coming to power in 1834. Except the office of lord-chamberlain, which Marquis Wellesley filled for a short time under the second Melbourne ministry in 1835, he never afterwards was appointed to any public employment. He died at his residence in London on the 26th of September 1842, in the 83d year of his age. Besides a number of occasional pamphlets written by his lordship, a quantity of Despatches, &c., were published after his death, purporting to be written by him while governor-general of India, in 5 vols. in 1836, and in 1 vol. in 1838.

WELLSBOROUGH, a market town of England, in the county and 9 miles N.E. of Northampton, 67 N.W. by N. of London. It stands on an eminence above a rivulet flowing eastwards into the Nen; and consists of a number of streets diverging irregularly from the marketplace, and lined with houses generally well built of red sandstone. The church, a large and handsome edifice, with a tower and spire, is in several different architectural styles. It is richly ornamented, and has some ancient carved work. The Independents, Wesleyans, Baptists, and Quakers have places of worship in the town. There are several free schools, National, British, and infant schools, a mechanics institute, and various charities. The manufacture of boots and shoes was formerly carried on here to a large extent, and though this has somewhat fallen off, it still forms the principal employment of the people. Some trade in corn, cattle, and cheese is carried on. Wellsborough derives its name from the mineral springs near it, one of which was formerly in high repute, and was drunk by Charles I., who resided here for some time in 1626. Pop. of the parish (1851) 5061.

Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of. If the settlement of a family for several centuries in a particular country entitles its members to consider themselves natives of the soil, Arthur, Duke of Wellington, unquestionably might regard himself as an Irishman; for on both sides he was descended from stocks which, if radically English, had been long transplanted, and had spread and flourished in the sister kingdom, retaining few tendrils of connection with the land whence they came, and intertwining themselves closely in the great growth of the Anglo-Irish nation, as distinguished from the compound Irish nation in the same island formed out of the more ancient inhabitants and those descendants of the earliest English settlers, who alike adhered to the Church of Rome. In fact, Arthur Wellesley was in one sense as Irish as Burke, and more so than Goldsmith or Swift. But in no respect could he be regarded as one of those Anglo-Irish who, in violent political animosities, and in national peculiarities, were said to be ipsissimis Hibernis Hiberniores. He was of a race which, in literature, in science, in art, in the senate, and in the field, have singularly illustrated the land to which, at all events, they owed their birth, whilst serving the country to which they owed allegiance. He had no political sympathies either with the descendants of the old Lords of the Pale, or with the mass of the population, which, for the want of a better or more popular name, may be called Celtic; and his mind, trained in the doctrines, or at least the practices, of the ascendancy school, was thoroughly imperialized even in youth.

It was probably about 1535 that two young gentlemen from Rutlandshire, named Walter and Robert Cowley, or Colley, or Coolley, migrated, to advance their fortunes, to the kingdom of Ireland, and there, somehow or other, they appear to have got such landed possessions as enabled them to educate their descendants for the learned professions and for the service of arms, as we find several of that name, hitherto unknown, cropping out here and there, in subsequent years, in local history. No antiquarian with whose works we are acquainted has ascertained with whom Walter Cowley married; and the Duke of Wellington would have given little encouragement to such investigations; for he seems to have been singularly indifferent as to the history of his progenitors. We know, however, that of Walter Cowley was descended a great-granddaughter, who wedded Garret Wesley, a gentleman of Meath, descended from an English family which came from Sussex in the latter part of the fifteenth century, and which seems to have thriven in Ireland. There were no children born of this marriage, and Garret Wesley, in default of issue, adopted the nephew of his wife, one Richard Cowley, and made him heir to his estates, on condition that he assumed the name and arms of the Wesley family. That the possessions thus acquired in 1728 by Richard Cowley Wesley were not inconsiderable, or that his political services were of importance, we may conclude, from the fact that in 1747 he was elevated from a seat in the Irish House of Commons to the peerage by the title of Baron Mornington; but there is reason to believe that his activity and zeal as a Hanoverian had more to do with his honours than the extent of his fortune; for his son, also named Garret, who succeeded him, could not boast of any large property. The second Baron Mornington displayed the same political bias as his father, and rendered similar services; so that, having strengthened his position in 1759 by a marriage with Anne the daughter of Arthur Hill, Viscount Dungannon, he also was advanced in the peerage, and in 1760 was created Earl of Mornington. Perhaps he was in some degree indebted to the musical ear of George III. for the advancement, insomuch as the earl was a composer of no ordinary merit, and excelled in the species of composition which was most pleasing to the king. In no other way does he appear to have benefited by the royal favour, as his means were scarcely adequate to maintain the large family which grew up around him in the style suited to their position. Three Wellington's sons had been born to him, when, on a day yet undetermined, in 1769, Arthur Wesley was brought into the world.

In reference to the controversy, or rather difference of opinion, which has arisen on that question, it is permitted to observe, that the circumstances relied on to fix the 1st May as the date of Arthur Wesley's birth, do not seem to us to weigh against the evidence that it occurred earlier in the year, towards the end of the month of April. It is said that his mother long afterwards declared her son Arthur was born on 1st May. To this it may be rejoined, that, as opposed to the entry in the register of St Peter's, Dublin, such an assertion is no valid reply, as it is not unfrequent for mothers to forget the dates of such events. To the inference to be drawn from the fact that the duke supported his mother's declaration, it may be urged, that he obviously followed a statement which may have been erroneous. Whether he was born at Dangan Castle, in the County Meath, or at Mornington House, Dublin, he was assuredly baptized by Isaac Mann, archdeacon, according to the register, on 30th April 1769, in St Peter's, Dublin.

It has been attempted to argue, that the change of new for old style may have led to confusion in the register; but if so, the good dean was a man of extraordinary obtuseness, for the change had long taken place, and the dates in the register preceding the entry would have corrected the error, or the whole register is erroneous. However that may be, of the duke's early life we know very little. When Arthur Wesley was twelve years old he lost his father; but it may be questioned if, independently of his years, he felt the blow in all its real severity, because he had been exiled to a private school in England whilst he was a mere child, and little care seems to have been bestowed on him at home. His mother, a harsh, determined matron—at least to him—believed the slender, blue-eyed, hawk-nosed, and rather sheep-faced boy, was hopelessly deficient in mental ability; and conceiving she had discharged all a mother's duty to him, when, out of her slender resources, she gave him a short residence at Eton, Lady Mornington finally despatched him to the military college at Angers, that he might be fitted "to become food for powder."

For several years he studied under Pigneron the great engineer, but we have no trace of his progress; and in March 1787 he became an undistinguished ensign in the 73rd regiment. His promotion was rapid, for in less than a year he became lieutenant in the 76th regiment, from which he was moved into the 41st—not then as now a so-called Welsh battalion—regiment of foot. From that regiment he exchanged into a cavalry regiment, the 12th light dragoons, as a subaltern; but he did not long remain in that rank, for on 30th June 1791 he got his company in the 58th regiment, and in 1792 he changed his company of foot for a troop in the 18th light dragoons, and in another year or so obtained his majority in the 33rd regiment, to the command of which, as lieutenant-colonel, by purchase, in which he was aided by his brother, he attained in September 1793.

Already aide-de-camp to the Marquis of Camden, the Lord Lieutenant, whose court in Dublin was at that period both brilliant and expensive, Arthur Wesley, in 1790, on coming of age, took his seat for the family borough of Trim, and for three years danced at court balls, flirted with the women, drank and gambled with the men, and voted with his party, as a lively young military and aristocratic Whig member of the Irish House of Commons might have been expected to do. One serious attachment fixed his affections. Among the court beauties, Catherine Pakenham, third daughter of the Earl of Longford, was conspicuous. Arthur Wesley sought her hand, but Lady Longford would not consent to bestow her daughter on the young soldier, and Lieutenant-colonel Wesley was obliged to make up his mind to accompany his regiment on Wellington's foreign service, and to hope for more prosperous times. He was, indeed, it is said, indebted to the kindness of some Dublin tradesmen for the means of leaving the country, when the 33rd regiment was ordered to proceed as portion of Lord Moira's force to the Low Countries, to strengthen the army of the Duke of York, who, worsted by the republicans, and by his own incapacity, as well as by the false position of the allies, had been forced to fall back towards Maastricht, after the loss of his original position at Oudearde.

Colonel Wesley sailed with the 33rd regiment from Cork in June 1794, and, according to orders, occupied Ostend, which soon became untenable owing to the defeat and retirement of the allies, so that the garrison was compelled to embark and sail round to Antwerp, whilst Lord Moira marched with the main body of his troops, pursued and harassed by the French, to join the Duke of York near Ma-lines. Scarcely had the 33rd regiment reached Antwerp, when the whole garrison of the place was ordered out to reinforce the Dutch under the Prince of Orange, who had been driven from Fleurus by the republicans; and there, although not actively engaged, Arthur Wesley saw, twenty-one years before his crowning victory, the enemy whom he was to meet so often, and at last to crush decisively in the field of battle. The inactivity of the French, mainly caused by the profound folly of the Committee of Public Safety, subsequently gave the allies a respite of nearly two months, and it was not till September that the British troops in front of Antwerp began to fall back towards the north, followed by the enemy. In an unsuccessful attack made by Abercromby with the guards and a considerable force of infantry on Bockstel, Wesley displayed such energy in checking the republicans, that he attracted the attention of General Dundas, who soon afterwards procured for him the command of a brigade, which had the difficult task of covering the rear of the retreating army. It was in disaster and something like disgrace, for the gallantry of our soldiers only seemed to develop more strongly the inability and ignorance of their leaders, that Arthur Wesley made his first essay of arms. From the Meuse the Duke of York fell back upon the Waal, which he crossed in October; in December he returned to England to take the command of the army, but happily not in the field, and General Walmoden continued the retrograde movement to the Leck, whilst the Dutch on all sides began to give in their adhesion to the republic. In January 1795, the English army crossed the Leck, and after a continuous retreat, which has been likened to the miserable flight from Moscow, and in which our soldiers endured in their wintry marches nearly all the wretchedness which their descendants suffered in the camp before Sebastopol in 1854—drew breath at Emden, and reembarked for England in the spring. Such grimness was there in that aspect of war, that the resolute and gallant young soldier, whose good conduct was almost the sole redeeming point of the campaign, was nigh disgusted with his profession. He was probably more than disgusted with the presumptuous inefficiency of the government, with the utter incapacity of the generals, and with the stupendous blunders and mismanagement of the authorities. Certain it is, at all events, that after his return on the 25th June 1795, he wrote from Trim to Lord Camden, asking him for a civil employment at either the Irish Revenue or Treasury Boards. "It certainly," he says, "is a departure from the line I prefer, but I see the manner in which the military offices are filled; and I don't wish to ask you for that which I know you cannot give me." He alludes to necessities which are scarcely intelligible, unless they were of a pecuniary nature, or referred to his engagement with Lady Catherine Pakenham. But well may the Rev. Mr Gleig raise up his hands in astonished Wellington speculation at the consequences of Lord Camden's acquiescence! It is impossible to follow him through all the mazes of conjecture. The fact remains, that the favour of letting Arthur Wesley become a civilian was asked and was refused, and he was compelled to remain in the army. An attempt to send out an expedition from Southampton under Admiral Christian, to act against the French West Indies, in 1795, having been rendered abortive by violent storms, Colonel Wesley, whose regiment had formed a portion of the land-forces embarked for the purpose, had not long returned from shipboard to his quarters at Poole, ere he received orders to proceed to India. His state of health at the time appears to have been by no means robust, for he was not able to go out with the 33rd; but he followed and overtook it at the Cape, and landed at Calcutta in February 1797.

At that time India was a glorious field for the soldier, European or native; and bold adventurers, sword in hand, fought their way to fame and fortune, and jostled each other on the road to the gold pagoda tree. The traces of French influence were fast becoming obliterated by the tramp of our victorious Europeans and their Sepoy battalions. Duplex, Labourdonnais, Lally Tallendall, Bussy, had been obliged to yield to Clive, to fortune, or to the folly of their own government; and the French generals who were engaged in training the armies of the native princes of India, perceived with apprehension the rise of British power, which threatened to engulf them. Tippoo Sahib, the sultan of Mysore, animated by a hatred to England, which was founded perhaps on the fact, that Lord Cornwallis had compelled his father, Hyder Ali, to sign away half his kingdom, rather than on any affection for the French, who were prodigal in promises which they took few steps to redeem, was preparing a powerful army for a purpose which we could little affect to misunderstand, even if we were ignorant of the intrigues of France, whilst the Nizam of the Deccan, with a French force at Hyderabad, and troops disciplined by French officers at his command, was burning with indignation against us, because the Indian government had deserted him in his war with the Mahrattas. Lord Mornington had arrived in India as governor-general, soon after his brother, bringing with him experience of Indian affairs acquired at the Board of Control under Lord Melville, and qualities which, as the result proved, admirably suited to insure him success in the difficult part he had to play. Colonel Wesley (who was still and for a short time afterwards, known by this form of his name, although his brother had just adopted the spelling by which it is better known, and called his family Wellesley), had already been engaged on an expedition which was intended to act against the Spanish settlement at Manilla, but which had not proceeded further than Pulo Penang etc it was recalled by the governor of Madras, now thoroughly alarmed by Tippoo's preparations.

The young colonel had been scrutinizing with the eye of a statesman, clearly and closely, the aspect of affairs in the country wherein he was to develop his extraordinary capacity for command. No more remarkable proof of his ability and industry could be pointed to than the four volumes of supplementary despatches and papers which he wrote in India between 1797 and 1805. Let those who think it is easy work to command armies, and that fortune has at least as much influence as conduct in war, read those papers, and they must admit that the wonderful diligence, the extensive research, the laborious inquiry, the vast variety of knowledge, statistical, geographical, political, and military, displayed in Colonel Wellesley's letters, and the pains he took to insure success in all his operations, are of an extraordinary and unusual character. Let us see any young officer of twenty-eight years of age writing such papers at present, and we may confidently rely on it that in an hour of need we have a great commander at hand. We may indeed affirm, that there have been very few officers in the British army who ever exhibited in such a conspicuous manner their fitness for command and their love of their profession, or who set to work with such zeal to make themselves masters of the situation, as Colonel Wesley did on his arrival in India. He was not insensible to the value of dinners and dinner-giving; and it is curious to observe how he exhorts his brother to indulge in that practice at Calcutta, and how he prepares himself to take the field with "a soup-tureen and plates for twelve guests" at Madras; nor does he forget, with something of a national bias, to evince considerable solicitude about his supply of potatoes. "Send all my things," he writes to Henry Wellesley, "as soon as you can, particularly my potatoes."

His advice on all matters referring to the extension of British and the depression of French influence in India, leaves the stamp of wonderful thought and reflection on the part of one so young. The fame of the victories of republican France had reached the ears of Indian monarchs, and they eagerly sought the assistance of men like Raymond and Peron to drill their battalions on the European model. It was above all things necessary for the British government to destroy or neutralize the power of the formidable armies which the native independent states were thus collecting together, and the system on which it acted led to the inevitable dreary misgovernment and final absorption of the states on which it was forced. By the pressure of treaties, of promising offers of alliance, and other influences, the princes were induced to accept into their service corps of troops under British officers, and to assign the revenues of certain territories for their pay, and the French officers were sent away, and the regiments they had trained were reduced or disbanded. Thus the army of the Nizam under M. Peron was dealt with, and one great danger removed from us; but as long as Tippoo Sultan, our bitter enemy, was at the head of an army which he was strengthening every day, and was in communication with Napoleon at Cairo, it was evident our position was exceedingly insecure. Scindia and the Peishwa indeed promised us they would not make common cause with Tippoo, but Napoleon had already conceived the idea of rousing them to attack us, and if the French proved successful, there could not be much reliance placed on the promises of the Mahrattas. Whilst Lord Mornington was seeking in vain to procure from Tippoo any explanation of his intentions or of his intrigues with France, the news of the battle of Aboukir arrived, and removed from the minds of the British government in India great cause of anxiety. In order to direct the operations which appeared to be inevitable with greater vigour, the governor-general had come down to Madras; and Wellesley, who had been for some time at Fort St George without any active employment, was placed in temporary command of the force which the government was making ready to take the field, and in the organization of which he displayed great ability and skill. Tippoo not only refused to comply with the governor-general's demand that he should explain why he had despatched emissaries to the French at Bourbon, but he repeated the offence, and positively declined to receive at his court any English ambassador, as a medium of communication between the two governments.

Tippoo, whatever his intentions might have been, had done that which no European power in India could brook and live. Our forces were prepared, and on 25th February

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1 The first letter in the Duke's Supplementary Despatches, signed Wellesley, is dated 19th May 1798; and the present Duke, the editor, in a footnote observes, that Lord Mornington's family adopted the ancient spelling of their name at this time. Wellington 1799, their march was directed on Mysore, and proceeded slowly and laboriously towards the position occupied by the sultan.

With the promptitude which was characteristic of his family, as compared with the hesitation of other Asiatic princes, Tippoo, turning to the west, attacked the Bombay column under Stuart on 6th March, but received a severe check at Sattaseer, and was obliged to retrace his steps. Somewhat disheartened by the failure, but anxious to destroy the meshes of the net which was closing round him, he marched towards the east, and threw himself between Seringapatam and the army of General Harris, who on 27th March found himself in front of the enemy, who was posted in a favourable position at Mallavally. Whilst the commander-in-chief with the right wing was engaged with the enemy, Colonel Wellesley was directed to execute a turning movement on Tippoo's right—that fatal flank movement which no Asiatics can understand or resist. By the admirable conduct of their leader, this wing, advancing by echelon, forced its way steadily through the cavalry of Mysore; till at length, by the aid of murderous volleys of musketry, Wellesley threw their right into such confusion, that Floyd, with the true coup-d'oeil of a cavalry leader, saw the moment for a charge, hurled his squadrons on the disordered masses, and in a moment turned disorder into defeat, and quickly converted discomfiture into a headlong rout. The enemy, who left upwards of 2000 on the field, fell back on Seringapatam. Harris effected a junction with Stuart's column, and having thus increased his army to 35,000 men and 100 guns, on 5th April sat down before that famous fortress, which was defended by 22,000 men and 240 pieces of artillery. In order to clear his front, the general directed Baird to sweep a tope—a cultivated grove which lay between his lines and the walls of the place—which was done without opposition, but the Mysoreans occupied it next day, and Colonel Wellesley was ordered to repeat the operation, and to occupy the position. Night attacks are always hazardous, and British soldiers do not like them. Wellesley appears, according to the very words of the often quoted despatch to General Harris, to have reconnoitred the position, and to have had an explanation in front of the spot of what the general wished to do. He led on the 33d and a native regiment to the assault, whilst Shaw made a combined attack on the flank. The enemy received them with a severe fire. Our troops became disordered in the dark, and retired, leaving prisoners in the hands of the enemy, who were put to death with brutal cruelty by Tippoo next day, and Wellesley himself, who was hurt in the knee, had some difficulty in finding his way back to camp, when he went to the general, with "a good deal of agitation, to say he had not carried the tope," in which, however, Shaw had established himself. Next day the tope of Sultanpetah was occupied; but Wellesley came, he says, to "a determination never to suffer an attack to be made by night on an enemy who is prepared and strongly posted, and whose posts have not been reconnoitred by daylight." Established on the ground, our lines were rapidly traced, batteries erected, and fire opened, with such effect that Tippoo endeavoured to gain time, under pretence of opening negotiations; but we knew the man, and rejected them. Inevitable as fate, our trenches closed and zigzagged onwards, bastions and curtains crumbled away before the fire of our batteries, the enemy made no sorties to prolong their existence. On 2d May, one of the principal magazines of the place exploded, and destroyed much of the works, as well as of the moral power, of the defenders; and, on 4th May, Baird led 2500 British troops—more than were actually sent against the Redan—and 1800 natives, to the breaches. In spite of a desperate resistance, in which Tippoo fought like a common soldier, the breaches in the fausse-braie, and the wall, and the first Wellington line of defence, were carried, and the entrance to the town was effected. Tippoo, twice wounded, and fighting like a Tipper hero, was thrown down amid a heap of dead and dying men slain, and One of our soldiers, seeing the glitter of precious stones on Seringapatam's sash, sought to pull it from his body, but Tippoo took it, gathered up all his strength, and raising himself on one hand, cut the soldier across the knee. In an instant the European's musket was pressed to the brow of the Sultan, who fell dead, open-eyed and glaring defiance, amidst the corpses of his soldiers in front of his palace-gate. Seringapatam, with enormous treasure, estimated at the value of L20,000,000 by one of the prize-agents, fell into the hands of the captors, never to leave them more. A scene of plunder and violence, in which our soldiery, native and European, revelled in the wildest license and excesses, was only terminated by the active measures of Wellesley, who was appointed commandant of the place, and who restored order, as he says himself, on the 5th May, "by the greatest exertions, by hanging, flogging, &c., in the course of the day." His share of the plunder was L7000 in money, and 3000 pagodas in pearls; and he at once proposed to apply it to pay his brother the sum he had advanced for the purchase of his lieutenant-colonelcy, but Lord Mornington generously refused. His appointment, in its results, more than justified his brother's partiality, and his powers of administration, his diplomatic skill in dealing with the armed chiefs of Mysore who still held out, his moderation in victory, were not less conspicuous than the military qualities which had already fixed on the youthful colonel the eyes of India.

Nor was it less to his honour that he advocated a clement and generous policy in dealing with the vanquished, and that he advised a liberal pension to be given to the sons of Tippoo, and fair treatment to be extended to the leaders of his court and of his armies. In May 1800, Wellesley, as Repress commander of the troops in the Mysore territory, found it a robber-necessary to march out against a leader of robber-hordes, named Dhoondiah Waugh, who exhibited considerable address and daring in his plundering operations, and who moved with such celerity, that Wellesley was obliged to march at the rate of 30 miles a day in order to get near him. At last, after months of most arduous pursuit, in which Dhoondiah doubled through the three or four columns of troops which were after him, very much as Tantia Tope passed by his pursuers in the latter part of the Indian rebellion. Wellesley, on 10th September, fairly ran him down. Putting himself at the head of his dragoons, who probably did not muster 1200 sabres, he led a charge in single line against 5000 cavalry under Dhoondiah in person, overthrew them utterly, and directed the pursuit, in which many hundreds of the enemy were cut down, Dhoondiah being among the slain. Soon after that gallant action, the Indian government gave him the command of a column of troops destined to proceed from Bombay to Egypt. Subsequently they appointed Sir David Baird, and offered him the post of second in command, which his sense of public duty led him to accept, notwithstanding the annoyance he must have experienced; but he was seized with fever ere the expedition sailed, and did not participate in the scanty honours in Egypt. That which might have appeared to him a considerable misfortune, in reality afforded him the opportunity of placing his Indian reputation on an elevated and solid basis.

The first of the Mahratta wars broke out. Scindia, the Mahratta restless and enterprising chief, animated by French intrigues, wars, and confident in a splendid army disciplined by Frenchmen, obstinately refused to come to terms with the Company's government, and was known to be aiming at their destruction. Hostilities were actively proceeded with, and Lake destroyed the Mahratta power in one direction, as Welles- Wellington ley assailed their hosts in another. On 9th August he reduced the strong fort of Ahmednagar, which gave him an excellent base of operations; and, on 23rd September, after a long day's march, he suddenly found himself in front of Scindia's army, drawn up along the river Karuna, with the left on Assaye, and the right at Bakerdown. Wellesley had not only miscalculated his distance from the enemy, but he was in error as to the force with which he was about to engage, and the position they occupied. Somewhat surprised, but not in the least disconcerted, when he discovered that 50,000 men, with 128 guns, were before him, after a rapid reconnoissance he resolved on attacking Assaye, although he had only 1500 Europeans, and about 7000 native troops, with 17 or 18 guns. The English infantry, undeterred by the storm of shot from the enemy's artillery, which soon drove our guns off the field, advanced in perfect order, threw themselves on the enemy with the bayonet, broke them instantly, and moved down on the guns, which were taken possession of by the Sepoy battalions. But the Mahrattas, as our troops rushed past to consummate their victory, got from under the guns, or rose from the ground, where they had feigned to be dead: at the same moment that the artillery attacked the rear, the Mahratta cavalry, for the first time, menaced the disordered line of our battalions with a charge on the flank. On that occasion, Wellesley, who lost two horses under him in the field, undoubtedly won Assaye twice over, displaying the same brilliant personal courage that he had exhibited in the cavalry charge on Dhoondiah Waugh's forces. He got together the 78th regiment of infantry, placed the 7th regiment of Indian cavalry on their flank, and led them straight at the mass of the enemy, who were rallying around the guns, and under cover of the cavalry, and routed them utterly. The Mahrattas lost 98 guns, and about 6000 men killed and wounded. Our own loss, in proportion to the numbers engaged, was very great,—44 officers and 365 men killed, 126 officers and 1841 men wounded, attesting the power of the terrible cannonade to which the British were exposed; and Wellesley might well call it "the most obstinate" he had ever seen, and believe that no fiercer fight had ever been fought in India. Scindia soon afterwards proposed a suspension of arms, which was granted; but with that extraordinary disregard of even the outward forms of treaties and armistices which marks the conduct of Asiatics, he suddenly carried his troops over to the Rajah of Berar, with whom we were actually engaged in hostilities. Wellesley fell upon the enemy, who were drawn up in front of the village of Argum, on the evening of 29th November 1803. The armies of Scindia and the Rajah amounted to 40,000 foot and horse; the former being upon the right, and the infantry of the latter, with the guns, being on the left. Wellesley's army consisted of 14 battalions, about 20 squadrons of regular cavalry, and 4000 irregulars. He threw the first line of his right upon the enemy's left, which resisted strenuously; his sepoys regiments fell into disorder, and the day was nearly lost, when Wellesley in person rallied his men. The cavalry of Scindia, repulsed in a charge, were forced back on their infantry, and seized by a panic, and unable to resist the advance of the British infantry, the enemy abandoned the field, leaving their camp, 38 guns, and all their equipage and transport, in the hands of the victors, whose cavalry pursued them throughout the night. The rapidity and certainty of these successes appalled the fickle and torpid minds of Scindia and of the Rajah. The latter indeed entered into a treaty with Wellesley, and Scindia followed his example at the close of the month; the result being, that Delhi, Agra, Gwalior, Ahmednagar, and the surrounding districts, yielding revenues of three crores of rupees, were delivered over to the Company. In order effectually to prevent any organization of troops by foreign adventurers, it was stipulated at the same time that no European should be permitted to enter the service of the native princes unless he was allowed to do so by the Company.

Scarcely had Wellesley concluded his labours in that direction ere he was obliged to take the field again, in order to put down a horde of horsemen, who were moving about the country of the Nizam in such strength, that they wasted and plundered it in spite of the efforts of the native troops. After very fatiguing marches, such as no British troops had ever known in India, Wellesley was able to overtake and disperse their flying column, and to draw their teeth very effectually; and though he did not inflict on them any severe loss, they gave no further trouble in the Deccan.

But his health now began to give way, and his complaint was probably aggravated by the annoyances which were created by the Peishwah's reluctance to assist him in the organization of the Mahratta army, which Wellesley was determined to conduct in such a way as to render it very little to be feared by the Company. He obtained leave of absence, and, quitting the Deccan, arrived at Calcutta in August; but ere he took his passage homewards, the Nizam gave the Indian Government reason to believe that it required a vigilant eye and a firm hand in his territory, and Wellesley proceeded to Serinapatan by the orders of the governor-general. There he was prostrated by fever; but in February 1805, having restored the district to comparative tranquillity, and having regained his health sufficiently, he was enabled to gratify his longing for a larger field of service and his natural ambition, as well as to get away from the endless disputes which were raised by the native courts as to the true meaning of his treaties. It must be observed also, that he was by no means satisfied with the conduct of the Company, and that the feud which seemed inevitable whenever officers of the royal army were obliged to deal with the Court of Directors had broken out in his case with considerable bitterness. Wellesley sought to be made general of division; the Court refused; nay more, they actually would not ratify his appointment to Fort St George made by General Stewart. Nor was Lord Mornington more happy in his relations with the Company, who laid to his door the cost and anxiety of these incessant wars, and he was as anxious as his brother to leave the scene in which he had played such a distinguished part. As a reward for his services, the king nominated him a supernumerary Knight of the Bath ere he left India; and on 10th March Major-General Sir Arthur Wellesley left the continent where, as executor of his brother's policy, and as a soldier who carried out in the Wellesley field the plans in which he was part adviser in the cabinet, sails for he had increased threefold the territories to which, in no England, equal period since their first marvellous spring from the seat of the trader to the throne of the monarch, had the East India Company made such vast increment. With more than Clive's success, although the results were not so great when judged by the comparative status of the British power at the two epochs, Wellesley had acquired a reputation to which no stain of duplicity or foul play could be attached. It would indeed be well for England if, on the great day when her conduct may be arraigned by history at the bar of posterity, she could point to the career of Arthur Wellesley in India and say, "By his words and deeds shall I be judged, for all those who governed and fought for me were as he was." In the first year of his residence he formed a harsh opinion of the natives of India, which, as he never repeated it, we may imagine his better knowledge led him to doubt; and it was at the close of his Indian experiences we find him uttering these noble sentiments:—"I would willingly give Gwalior and all the fortresses in India ten times over, rather than risk our reputation for scrupulous good faith and the honourable advantages we have ac- Wellington quired in war." When the envoy of the Nizam, desiring to ascertain what would be the share of the plunder assigned to his master, offered him L70,000 for his assistance in obtaining the information, Colonel Wellesley asked him quietly, "Can you keep a secret?" "My lord, certainly." "Then so can I," replied the British general.

Whilst he was engaged in consolidating the vicarious rule of England, even in encounters much more serious than those by which so much had been gained in earlier days, and in negotiations which were equally conspicuous for the ability and honesty with which they were conducted, the most formidable enemy of the mother country was revolting in his vast mind schemes which, if successful in Europe or in the East, would have blighted the fruit of Wellesley's labours, and have deprived him of his last and greatest triumph. Napoleon was, in fact, debating whether he would hurl his Grand Army upon the shores of England, or tempt fortune in the regions where Alexander conquered, at the time that Wellesley was destroying the Mahratta confederation. But the meeting was reserved for other years. When Wellesley arrived in England in September 1805 the French were marching once more to meet Europe in arms; and in November he sailed as brigadier-general to Holland with Lord Cathcart's ill-advised expedition, only to hear the echoes of the guns of Austerlitz, which announced that the effort to make a diversion was too late. The safety of our shores had once more to be consulted, and Sir Arthur Wellesley was appointed to command the brigade at Hastings, which he raised to a considerable degree of efficiency. In April 1806 he married Lady Catherine Pakenham, his old love when he was a gay young aid-de-camp in the Irish court. She had been attacked by small-pox immediately after his departure for India, and she wrote to tell him that her beauty was gone, and that he was a free man; but Sir Arthur Wellesley, the famous Indian soldier, had returned to his country to claim the hand of his betrothed, and her hand was freely given. After a short interval of comparative obscurity, and, we doubt not, happiness, Sir Arthur was returned to parliament, just in time to contribute materially by his simple, straightforward answers, and by his knowledge of the facts, to the successful defence of Lord Mornington against the charges brought by Mr Paul and Lord Folkestone of extravagance and corruption. Paul died by his own hand after a debauch in a gaming-house, and Lord Folkestone's incalculatory motion was defeated by a considerable majority. When the Portland administration was formed after the death of Mr Fox in 1806, Sir Arthur Wellesley was selected to fill the office of chief secretary in Ireland under the Duke of Richmond, and he was at once plunged into the stormy politics which were the result of the agitation for Catholic emancipation; but he had not been more than a few months engaged in the struggles in which his political ties and his personal convictions made him a decided partisan, ere he was called upon to act once more in a military capacity, as general of a division of infantry under Lord Cathcart, in the expedition against Copenhagen.

We shall not now re-open the question, which jurists have vainly agitated, in reference to the abstract right of the expedition, particularly as historical justification can be found for the operation in a more specific and substantial shape than that of mere success. It is strange, however, that some writers and publicists, who have survived the influences of the hour, should pretend that the Danes themselves, as opposed to the Crown Prince, were in favour of our razia on Copenhagen. Arthur Wellesley, in his despatch to Lord Hawkesbury, dated 21st August (1807), published in the exceedingly valuable supplementary despatches edited by the present Duke of Wellington, says distinctly, "We are very unpopular in the country, and derive but little resource or assistance from it, and that little is procured with difficulty." (P. 5.) "The troops," he adds, "have behaved very well in all the little affairs which they have had, and tolerably well in other respects." That testimony is repeated again and again; and it is some satisfaction to us to find that the general who commanded the British troops was exceedingly glad when the capitulation, which was, in a considerable measure, the result of his own active operations in the field, put an end to the contest, which can scarcely be called a war, and which assuredly added no glory to our arms, although it may have somewhat tarnished the failing lustre of our diplomatic reputation. When he got home, in a spirit of something very like irony, he wrote to Lord Cathcart that the English ministry had become less anxious to occupy Zealand, as soon as they found out it could be retained with greater facility, and that "the country is delighted with your conquests." In fact, the tenor of his correspondence and of his acts enables one to judge what was the Duke's opinion of the whole affair, and to coincide in the judgment of M. Brialmont, that the horrors of the bombardment of Copenhagen, and the subsequent excesses in the place, affected him to such an extent, that the predilection he evinced in his sieges for very desperate assaults instead of bombardments was due to his experience of 7th and 8th August 1807. The fruits of the long years of military toil and experience which had been planted at Angers had nigh been nipped by the unkindly Dutch frost, but had survived to receive the full rays of the Indian sun, were at last to be gathered by a bold and cautious hand, as the first offerings of Fortune to England and her arms since Marlborough had departed. Scarcely had we commenced the development of our scheme of aggression against Denmark, than Napoleon met us by a "contre-coup" in the Peninsula. In September 1807 he prepared to take a signal vengeance for the secret treaty in which the Portuguese ambassador had joined the representative of Russia and the Prince of Peace, with the design of making war on France the moment that she could be attacked with impunity. He called on the Prince Regent to join the confederation against England, and to place the Portuguese fleet under the French flag, in the endeavour to close the Mediterranean to the fleet of the regicide republic. The Regent was willing to yield that point; but he resisted the demand to confiscate the merchandise and seize the persons of all British subjects in Portugal. The Emperor was in no mood for delay. The convention signed at Fontainebleau, says M. Brialmont, bears date the 27th October. But ten days before, Junot was ordered to use all the rights the convention would have bestowed, and the French troops were on the march for Portugal, through Spain, long ere its provisions were ratified.

Junot had already crossed the Bidassoa, and the Prince Regent of Portugal endeavoured to obtain, by immediate concession of all the points demanded of him, the forbearance of Napoleon; but the latter had settled his plans, and was not to be propitiated. He pursued his great designs, and persevered till the glorious storm of the Spanish insurrection scattered his policy to the winds. On November 12, Junot marched from Salamanca, and eighteen days afterwards entered Lisbon, which the house of Braganza, faithful to its sordid instincts, quitted without a blow, and with full coffers. But although Napoleon might have been right in the axiom, that a nation brutalized by the monks and the Inquisition could not be formidable, he was wrong in supposing that Spain, after many years of the worst form of government, and the most degrading formulas of religion had utterly lost the sacred fire of national life, and the animating principle of the chivalry which had roused her people to shake off the yoke of invading races in times gone by. Inspired by the great successes in Spain, which had over- Wellington whelmed the French in a series of disasters, which, if temporary, were not the less astonishing; the Portuguese established a junta at Oporto, the first acts of which were to solicit the aid of England, and to make common cause with the Spanish national leaders. Our government was at the time busy in organizing those miserable little expeditions which have brought on our arms the only shame and discredit ever attached to them,—such as those to Quiberon, to Walcheren, and to Carthagena. Moore had been wasting his energies with a paltry contingent in Sweden. Spencer was busy doing nothing, according to orders, at Gibraltar; but on 12th July there was actually a force of 12,000 men despatched from Cork, under the command of Sir Arthur Wellesley, for the occupation of Cadiz, or the seizure of Lisbon, or for any other object the caprice of the ministry might dictate. Ere Wellesley had fairly landed in Portugal, Sir Hew Dalrymple, however, received orders to follow and supersede him, and at the same time Moore, whose military reputation was undoubted, was placed under the command of Sir H. Burrard.

On 9th August, Wellesley, having effected his landing without opposition, at the head of less than 14,000 men, began his march towards Lisbon, between which and his army Laborde had thrown himself with about 5000 men, whilst Loison, with 7000, made a flanking movement on the left flank of our force, but at too great a distance to give us serious uneasiness. In fact, Loison seems to have been desirous of preventing our march towards the interior. The advance-guard and reconnoitering parties of the British came in sight of the French outposts on 15th at Ovios, and attacked and drove them back on their main body, which was strongly posted at Roliça. The next day was spent in obtaining information, and in a careful advance, and on 17th Sir Arthur fell on Laborde's corps with impetuosity, but met with a very gallant resistance, from far inferior numbers, which was only overcome after some loss on our side. Meanwhile Junot, alarmed for his position in Lisbon, had taken up ground with all his available troops on the heights at Torres Vedras, and presented a force of 16,000 good troops and 21 guns to his enemy. Wellesley had meanwhile been reinforced by a small corps of English, which raised his force rather in excess of the French corps, and he resolved to force his way between Junot and the sea with one portion of his army, whilst he occupied the attention of the enemy on the heights by a demonstration in their front with the remainder. But unluckily the operations of the cabinet at home had now time to make themselves felt in the field: an ill-wind, which blew good to the French, brought Sir Harry Burrard to the coast, and he at once gave orders to suspend all offensive preparations, and to halt till the reinforcements arrived which were expected under Sir John Moore. Wellesley, superseded and annoyed, sought to change the resolution of the general, and warned him that, if he did not attack the French, they would be very certain to attack him. In effect, Junot at once came down from his position, and on 21st August engaged the British at Vimiera with great vigour.

Our troops behaved admirably, and, notwithstanding the determined gallantry of the enemy, repulsed them with loss in their repeated onslaughts. If Wellesley had been allowed to throw the battalions which were still fresh on the flank of the enemy, as he proposed, Junot would have been cut off from Torres Vedras, and would have lost Lisbon; but Sir Harry Burrard absolutely forbade any attempt of the kind. That feeble general was not, however, to have the monopoly of mismanagement, for the third commander of the government choice had by this time made his appearance, and Sir Hew Dalrymple, who had been previously raised to the command, superseded Sir Harry Burrard. Junot, much alarmed by the intelligence which reached him of the defeats and distress of the French in Wellington Spain, humiliated by his severe check at Vimiera, and apprehensive of the appearance of the British fleet before Lisbon, sent in proposals for a suspension of arms, which led to the unfortunate Convention of Cintra, in the negotiations previous to which, Wellesley, backed by the British admiral, in vain sought to open the eyes of his chief to the real state of the French army. Wellesley, who as signatory of the treaty, incurred public odium, which has been rarely more unjustly bestowed, left Portugal, better known and more unpopular than when he landed there, and returned to his duties in Ireland, and to his seat in parliament; but he was filled with forebodings, founded on his knowledge of the incapacity of the generals he left behind him, and the formidable nature of the difficulties with which they would have to contend in the obstinacy of their open foes, and the inefficiency of their native allies. It was determined by the British government that our generals should be directed to advance from Portugal with the British troops stationed there in occupation, and to commence a series of joint operations against the French, to complete their expulsion from the Peninsula, and 7000 men were sent to land at Corunna under Sir David Baird, whilst Sir John Moore was ordered to march with 21,000 men to pick up this corps, and with the whole force of 28,000 British troops to make an effective demonstration on the right and centre of the French line. But whilst we were deliberating, Napoleon was acting. No sooner had he heard the news of the reverses of his arms, than battalion after battalion, squadron after squadron, and battery upon battery, was hurried into Spain, and, in November, 150,000 French soldiers were assembled along the Ebro. When all was ready, Napoleon put himself at their head, fell upon and destroyed every Spanish force which stood in his way, and, on 4th December, stood as conqueror in the palace of the Bourbons at Madrid. Moore had only just reached Salamanca when those events occurred; but as Napoleon lost no time in sending masses of troops against that isolated corps, as soon as he made an onward movement towards Saldanha, the English general was forced to conduct his memorable retreat to Corunna, and Spain was left apparently in the hands of the French, from whom it seemed to have been so entirely emancipated only a few weeks before. The Spaniards, indeed, still held Saragossa in glorious defence; Andalusia was unconquered; and Craddock, with some 10,000 British, was still in Portugal; but Napoleon, having nearly done his work, drew a plan of operations for finishing the details of it, which seemed perfect. Soult was to march down from Galicia on Portugal, whilst Victor, with a strong corps marching from Elvas, and Lapisse with another from Almeida, should advance so as to surround the scanty battalions of the English, and force them to flee to their shipping, or to lay down their arms. Nothing impeded the march of Soult, and he occupied Oporto with ease; but M. Thiers seems to have good reason when he attributes to that general some of the gravest of military sins; and his reputation has always appeared to us greater than his deeds. He hesitated to cross the Douro; he wanted to hear from his generals; and he was apparently so secure of his prey, that he did not hasten to close upon it. Whilst he hesitated and waited, the wind was wafting to the shores of Portugal once more the Sepoy general, who was destined, ere he left the Peninsula, to carve the British name indelibly on the annals of its history, and to open the Spanish cancer which ate away the military reputation of France, the lives of her best soldiers, and the very heart of the empire itself. The British nation, violently capricious as any Athenian democracy, had been so elated by the easy successes of the troops in Portugal, and by the early successes of the Spanish patriots, that they were inclined to consider any treaty by which a trace of the French in the Peninsula was permitted to exist. Wellington something like a national dishonour, and they were loud in complaint against the Government, when suddenly the armies of France swept through Leon and Castile, and the news of the retreat of Moore came to appal the timid. The popularis aura changed at once, and it was with difficulty the government could obtain support in the courageous resolve to form a treaty with the Spanish provisional government, and to embark such a force to participate in the struggle on the soil where we had already won honour without profit, as would give substantial aid to the Spanish people. The part played by Sir Arthur Wellesley was by this time well understood, and his firm convictions, his military capacity, the clearness of his judgment, and his energy and sagacity, had secured him a consideration in the councils of the ministry, and a weight with its individual members, to which his years, or even his services, great as they were, scarcely would have obtained. He confidently asserted that the state of affairs was not hopeless, although a quarter of a million of French troops flooded the Peninsula, and overthrew every symptom of resistance and every landmark of national life. His Indian experiences possibly suggested the recommendation to government to send British officers to drill and organize the Portuguese levies. But he was not so foolhardy as to despise his enemy, and he accordingly stipulated that an army of not less than 30,000 British soldiers should be sent to Portugal to co-operate with the native forces, which Beresford was appointed to command. He at once resigned the Irish secretaryship and his seat in Parliament; he hastened the flagging movements of the government, superintended every detail, watched over every department of the expedition as soon as he was named to lead it; and on his arrival in Lisbon, on 22d April 1809, he lost not a moment's time in taking measures to avert the blow which was impending over Portugal. Inspired by his arrival, remembering his previous successes, his vigour and military qualities, the patriots at Lisbon took heart, and seconded all his efforts to put his troops in a state of efficiency. Soult heard of the arrival of the British under their young general, at the very moment that he was in perplexity respecting the movements of the columns intended to co-operate with him; but he was strongly posted at Oporto, and his communications were open with Ney. Having after a little delay satisfied himself of the exact position of the enemy, Wellesley adopted the extraordinary resolution of attacking Soult by leading his troops across the Douro in face of the enemy. But, in order to shake Soult's confidence, he despatched Beresford with a strong column to manoeuvre against the enemy's left, whilst he advanced upon Oporto with 24,000 men. Soult was prepared, as he conceived, against any attempt of the kind; but in order to ensure the safety of his corps, he detached Loison, with 6000 men, to cover his retreat in case of accidents. Then removing the floating bridge, sweeping all the boats over to his own side of the river, he awaited the advance of the British with the huge wet-ditch of the Douro, nearly a thousand feet broad, in his front. It is a strange observation, but it is one, nevertheless, the truth of which will be admitted by students of military history, that the passage of a river has rarely been successfully resisted: apparently it is a most formidable defence; in reality it is readily bridged over by daring, skill, and resolution. All these qualities were possessed by Arthur Wellesley. Whilst Soult was, it is said, enjoying from his quarters the discomfiture of the English, very much as Bainie Madhoo might have laughed at Lord Clyde when he came to the banks of the Gogra, Sir Arthur, with his keen coup d'œil, on 12th May was surveying the shores of the rapid river. He perceived a stone building on the other bank, at a point which a bend in the course of the stream in some measure screened from the observation of Soult. Could he occupy that building, it would cover the passage of his men till they were sufficient in strength to hold their Wellington own! How to do that was the difficulty. But fortune was not unkind to one who knew how to take advantage of her favours. Among the reeds by the bank of the river a little boat lay hid. Colonel Waters, one of those men who are sometimes found whenever a gallant action of enormous importance is to be done, was at hand, and he at once crossed over in the boat to the other side, "cut out" some large barks drawn up under the north shore, and returning with them, afforded means of transport for seventy or eighty men across the Douro, for the immediate occupation of the coveted building. Once established, Wellesley hurried over men as fast as he could, and brought up his artillery to cover their landing. Soult, discovering the success of this movement on his flank, despatched battalion after battalion to drive the intruders into the river; but our men were in occupation; boats were found all along the bank; the British threw themselves over in masses, and were enabled to make an offensive movement against Oporto, which the French barely attempted to defend, and in the evening we were masters of the place; and Sir Arthur was, it is affirmed, entertaining his staff at the very excellent dinner provided by Soult's famous chef de cuisine, for his master. Soult, who suffered greatly in his retreat, joined Ney with little more than half his original force; whilst Wellesley was obliged to halt at Oporto in order to get his army in order for the next stroke, which he intended to deal with a heavy hand. Although we were in a friendly country, and England was rich enough to subsidize half Europe, so miserable was our commissariat, and so chronic our home mismanagement, that the British soldiers were destitute at times of wholesome food, of shoes, of clothing, and of pay. Sickness broke out among them, and in a short time more than a fifth of the army was in hospital. The want of discipline among the men and their scandalous excesses had much to do with the sufferings of the troops. "The army," writes their chief, "believes terribly ill, and they are a rabble who cannot bear success any more than Sir John Moore's army could bear failure." There were no less than 250,000 French in the Peninsula, but they were split up into detachments and garrisons, and the largest force in the field consisted of about 28,000 men, under Marshal Victor, whom the obstinacy of Cuesta saved from the blow Wellesley had prepared for him by turning his position at Torre Mocha, and thus cutting him off from Madrid. Soult, however, had received the command of three corps d'armée, and he prepared to threaten Wellesley's communication with Lisbon with one portion of his force, whilst he held Beresford and the Spaniards and Portuguese in check, and vigorously besieged Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida with the remainder. Under these circumstances, Wellesley would have to decide on passing the Tagus, and, having effected his junction with Cuesta, to attack Victor. If that course were undesirable, he could open the road by Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida, with the aid of the Portuguese and Spaniards, securing his flank and rear, or, finally, he could direct his course upon Madrid at once. Although he had much difficulty in providing mules and transport, and considerable anxiety to contend with on other accounts, Wellesley, who was scarcely aware of the enormous concentration of the French on the left of the Tagus, where Ney and Soult had effected a junction, resolved on the bold step of invading Spain; and with that object steps were taken in time for the assemblage of the army at Placencia.

Early in July, Wellesley, with 22,000 British, began his march in the direction of Madrid; on the 8th he stood fast at Placencia, and soon afterwards joined the Spaniards, 56,000 strong, under the old, obstinate, and incompetent Cuesta at Oropesa. Victor, meantime, had been rein- Wellington forced by all the troops which Joseph Bonaparte could collect, and covered the capital; whilst large columns of French troops were hastening down the valley of the Tagus on our flank. On the 28th July, after a severe encounter the preceding evening, Joseph Bonaparte attacked the allies at Talavera. He showed considerable judgment in marching to meet the enemy, though the result might have been very different had he acceded to Soult's request not to fight till the principal corps under the Marshal's command should have arrived near Placencia. He had further reason to believe, when he resolved to fight, that Soult would certainly be close in rear of the English.

Jomini is good enough to admit that the battle "established the fact that the English infantry was fit to contend on equal terms with the best in Europe;" but that the terms were by no means equal must be admitted when it can be proved that 16,000 hungry English soldiers, of whom many were recruits and militiamen, withstood and finally beat back the attacks of nearly 30,000 of the best soldiers in the French service. It is true there was no flight on the part of the enemy, but their onslaughts were repulsed with great slaughter, and they left 17 guns on the field, as well as upwards of 7000 killed and wounded.

The miserable infatuation of Cuesta, the imbecility or criminal inactivity of Venegas, the loss of the pass of Banos, and the approach of Soult, decided Sir Arthur, as the only means of extricating his army from the difficulty out of which the victory of Talavera had not taken it, to retreat again into Portugal, and by some rapid, fortunate, and well arranged combinations and marches, he fell back on Merida, Badajoz, and Lisbon, leaving the Spaniards to their fate, and regarding them with a disgust and indignation which determined him never to trust British soldiers in line with them again. He had been taught, indeed, that with such allies active offensive operations against the powerful armies of France were, if glorious in individual action, singularly destitute of political success. The Spanish army made an attempt to liberate Madrid, but they were speedily taught to feel the value of their allies, and their own inefficiency, for on 5th November, Mortier, with a force not one-half their strength, attacked them at Ocaña, and at one blow fairly annihilated them, and swept them off the face of the country; and on the 28th, del Parques' corps shared the same fate at the hands of Kellermann. Wellesley thus permitted the Spaniards to form an opinion of their own value when unassisted, and was soon exposed to their importunity and to the clamour of the press at home, in consequence of his attitude.

Sir Arthur Wellesley was, nevertheless, created Baron Douro of Wellesley, and Viscount Wellington of Talavera, and of Wellington in the county of Somerset; but the government lent him but lukewarm support in his earnest proposals for the effective prosecution of the war, which was now assuming gigantic proportions. Furious with anger on the receipt of the intelligence that Joseph had been defeated at Talavera, Napoleon directed that nine corps under the most famous marshals and generals of France should be assembled in Spain, and at one time had all but put himself at their head, but he was prevented by the preparations for his marriage, and for the more stringent enforcement of the great continental blockade. He fondly believed that Massena would drive the English into the sea, and the opening successes of the war, which gave the French Ciudad Rodrigo and Almeida as good bases of operations, seemed to promise that fortune would at last flee from other fields to light on her once favoured but long neglected eagles, which in Spain had uniformly quailed before the despised leopard. The campaign of 1810 opened, indeed, under circumstances which seemed to promise no good result. Wellington beheld with unequaling eye the storm which was gathering. With all disposable reinforcements, and with the aid of Beresford's Portuguese, Wellington his whole force consisted of about 120,000 men; of whom 40,000 were in reserve and in garrison. The flower of the French army, under their world-famed marshals, was before and around him in more than twice his greatest strength. His plans were soon taken, and speedily acted upon. Whilst the French were slowly advancing from the north, Wellington having moved towards the Mondego, was with extraordinary energy directing the construction of the famous lines at Torres Vedras, to which Massena's corps was pursuing him. In vain Lord Wellington besought the Portuguese government to stop the march of the enemy by laying waste the country and devastating the crops,—acts of which either great patriots or servile populations are capable could not be imitated by the Portuguese, and the sacrifices which Sidney Smith considered beyond the comprehension of English farmers, and which history tells us were offered by Russian peasants on the altar of their country at the behest of the Cossack, could not be expected from a race of effete constitutionalists. It was evident that the French could depend on the resources of the country whilst they were in pursuit, and that if anything were to be done in the way of depriving them of natural magazines, the British army could alone be relied on for the work. In order to show the enemy that it was not from disorganization, fear, or incapacity to cope with him in the open field, Wellington resolved to make one stand in the face of his foes, and give them a knock down blow ere he retired to his stronghold. Ere his arrangements were quite complete for the defence of the position he had selected on the Sierra de Busaco, he was confronted by Ney with 40,000 men on 25th September; but Massena, who seemed to suffer from a sort of paralysis that smote all the great marshals of France when they found themselves in front of the Anglo-Irish general of Sepoys, was afraid to attack till the 27th, and the delay gave the "Hindoo captain" the invaluable opportunity of concentrating the whole of his troops, and filling up the gaping blanks in the line of his defence. The attack of the French, gallantly delivered on a position so strong that even Ney then again and Junot declared it ought not to be assailed, and so far on the testified to the skill with which it was chosen, was utterly defeated with great and disproportionate loss. Massena next day made a masterly flank march by the sea, believing that the English would find no tenable position, and that if once Wellington was compelled to move at all, he could only find refuge in his ships. No proof of the value of popular sympathies in war can be more striking than the fact, that Massena was utterly ignorant of the great works which had been going on for nearly a year at Torres Vedras. He was unacquainted with the tactics of his enemy, nor was it until he began to advance in the footsteps of the British general, and found the country deserted, and the population departed, that he began to appreciate the sagacity and determined resolve by which that masterly retrograde movement was governed. Besides, Wellington hanged his disorderly soldiers, and thus checked plunder, whilst the French permitted it to pass unpunished, and thus saw their resources wasted under their eyes, and prepared with their own hands the cup of bitterness and want which they were obliged to drink.

One regrets that among the numerous publications of self-memoirs which is characteristic of French literature, there is no autobiography of Massena, which records his feelings when he found himself in front of the frowning lines of Torres Vedras.

In one month Massena gave up the game. Scarcely had his rear-guard removed off the ground, than Wellington issued from his lines and hung upon him, perhaps with more caution than enterprise, for every mile of his masterly retreat. Massena has been blamed for not attempt- Wellington was determined to dislodge or turn his enemy, but all the proposals suggested with that view are susceptible of easy confusion. In fact, the lines were inexpugnable, and the position in itself was admirable. On 14th November, the French quietly fell back upon Santarem, where they showed such a strong front that Wellington, whose policy was now thoroughly Fabian, in spite of the vindictive opposition he encountered at home and abroad, did not consider it expedient to force them to fight a battle. Massena was reduced to great straits for the want of provisions, and, toward the end of February, was so destitute of everything of which an army is in need, that he was obliged once more to continue to retreat, and to fall behind the Mondego, just as Soult might reasonably have been expected to have relieved him. On 5th March the Prince of Essling recommended his retrograde movement, and with Ney in command of his rear-guard, which was frequently engaged with the British, exhibited abilities worthy of his best days, but not superior to that of his great antagonist, till, on 9th April, he passed the Portuguese frontier. In his anxiety to reorganize his army, and to save Ciudad Rodrigo, the French general took up his position at Salamanca; and thus gave Wellington an opportunity of making a demonstration against Almeida, of which he was not slow to avail himself, for he at once invested it with part of his troops, and, with the remainder as a covering army, took up his ground in front of the Coa, with his left on the Almeida road. Massena, to relieve the place, wheeled round and, on 6th, made an impetuous attack upon the British at Fuentes d'Onoro, which was unsuccessful, though it cost much life on both sides. Almeida at once fell into our hands, and Wellesley thus closed up one of the passes into Portugal. Massena, the victor of Zurich, the spoiled child of victory, the idol of the army, was superseded in disgrace by the Duke of Ragusa. These operations were attended with an enormous accession of reputation to the British army, and of lustre to the general who led them, but not with any increase of either personal comfort, confidence, or popularity to him who was restoring in the remote Peninsula the balance of European power. The Opposition, headed by the prince, who was afterwards George IV., were incessant in their attacks, and in ignorant, if not offensive, depreciation; and the heart of Wellington was doubtless steeling itself more and more against the flabby edge of what was calling itself public opinion, till it assumed the condition in which it presented its surface to what would have been sometimes a wholesome incision. Not that he was quite indifferent to those assaults: he felt them however, only when he saw that the ministry from whom he expected and claimed support had not the moral courage to stand up for the man who was winning immortal honour for his country.

Before Wellington could venture to proceed with offensive operations against the French in Spain, it was necessary for him to open his communications, and to free his rear and flanks of the fortified places which afforded to his enemy cover and support. Chief among these was Badajoz, which Soult had taken early in his proceedings, and had strongly garrisoned. Beresford was directed to invest, and retake the fortress; but Soult, on 10th May, made a tremendous effort to defeat the attempt, and it was only by the most extraordinary gallantry, by the most dogged courage, that at a great loss of life Beresford was enabled to win a glorious but very sanguinary victory at Albuera. Wellington arrived soon after to take command of the besieging army, but not even his genius could fit it for a work to which, in all respects, except readiness to fight and to die, it was utterly unsuited. As it was in the early Crimea, so was it then. The trenching-tools would not trench, the cutting tools would not cut, the spades would not dig, the shovels would not shovel; there was no transport, the guns were of small calibre, old fashioned, weak, and averse to battering; the engineers were without experience. The French defended Wellington the place with brilliant courage. Wellington, twice repulsed from the breaches of Badajoz, was compelled to raise the siege Wellington on 10th June, and to turn his arms against Ciudad Rodrigo on repulsed at the northern frontier, where, taking up post in a strong post-Badajoz, at Guinaldo, he established a blockade of the ill provisioned garrison. It would seem as if Fortune, indeed, were at this time almost inclined to fly from her favourite. True, he could be in no great straits as long as Torres Vedras was open to him, and the sea connected his position with England; but Soult, reinforced, was watching his old enemy on the south of Portugal; Marmont, with 30,000 men in line, lay between Toledo and Madrid; Castile and Leon were strongly occupied; and, in face of all this, Wellington had been beaten at Badajoz. The moment Marmont heard of the danger of Rodrigo, he collected 60,000 men, and after some affairs at El Bodon Aldeaponte, in the month of September, threw a reinforcement and abundance of provisions into the place in face of Wellington, whose blockade was raised without the possibility of his preventing it. Indeed, he was in a most hazardous position; for, whilst Marmont, with a magnificent army of 60,000 men, lay within a few miles of him on one occasion, the British general had less than 16,000 men collected together, and might have been destroyed at Fuente Guinaldo. But it was one of the great advantages which we possessed in this struggle, and on which sufficient weight has not always been laid by our writers, whilst it has been a little exaggerated by French military historians, that the sympathies of the people were so far in our favour, the French could never obtain any trustworthy information in reference to our strength or position. Marmont imagined the whole British army was before him, and contented himself with the success of his attempt to victual and strengthen Ciudad Rodrigo, and Wellington, with activity and secrecy, assembled the scattered portions of his force, till he was restored to security in his position; and having put his army into cantonments for the winter on the line of the Coa, terminated the campaign, the close of which was marked by Hill's surprise, and defeat of the French at Arroyo de Molino. The failure of his attempt on Badajoz had attracted attention, and had been traced to its real cause. Steps were taken at home to obviate the recurrence, as far as possible, of such discreetable reverses. A first class siege train was sent to Lisbon, money was sent out, and equipment and material of all kinds; and while the French, supposing that Wellington could attempt nothing further for the year, were retired to their winter quarters, their indefatigable adversary was labouring night and day to accomplish the reduction of the fortress they believed to be quite secure. With the utmost secrecy he prepared a bridge to throw across the Aguena, on the opposite bank of which stands Ciudad Rodrigo, and brought up the deepened channel of the Douro the siege-train which had been shipped at Lisbon, so as to induce the enemy to think it was meant for Cadiz. His transport was all in readiness. In the second week in January 1812, he crossed the Aguena, and sat down before the astonished garrison of Rodrigo; and on 19th the place was stormed, in spite of a stormy fierce resistance, which cost us many valuable lives. Ciudad Having secured his prize by this brilliant feat, Wellington Rodrigo turned his attention once more to the capture of Badajoz.

Wellington's popularity again rose with fine weather. He was created earl, and was voted £2,000 a year in England; a grandee of the first-class and Duke of Ciudad Rodrigo in Spain; and Marquis of Torres Vedras in Portugal, where he was already marshal, general, and Count of Vimiero. The interference of Napoleon, now thoroughly alarmed, became more mischievous, in proportion as it relieved his officers of responsibility, and coerced their independent action. Marmont was ordered, in spite of his strong Wellington opposition, to assume the offensive in Beria, and to occupy the Asturias. Wellington, relieved by the withdrawal of the French from the valley of the Tagus, marched through the Alentejo, and arrived at Elvas on 11th March, and on 17th with 18,000 men, exclusive of Hill's corps, invested the famous Philippion. The resistance was stern and desperate, but the place fell after one of the most bloody assaults ever delivered, in proportion to the men engaged, on the morning of 7th April, the glory of the victors being tarnished by the excesses of the troops, who for three days revelled in every species of license, notwithstanding the efforts of their chief and of their officers.

Having obtained these extraordinary successes, the development of Wellington's military policy now became more obvious, and his first steps showed whether he was tending in pursuance of the plan long laid down for his guidance by his own sagacity and long-sightedness. Portugal was free, and its gates were in his hands; his communications were open,—Spain lay before him, and already Andalusia had echoed back the shouts of Hill's victorious soldiery, and the alarmed footsteps of the French. With equal confidence and audacity, Wellington conducted his army into Spain, and, as he advanced, Marmont, who had a mania for field-days and manoeuvres, and camp-work, made curious retrograde and sidelong marches, picking up, however, detachments and scattered corps on every side, till he had collected nearly 50,000 men, with whom he advanced to preserve Salamanca. The antagonists eyed each other keenly, and neither seemed disposed to enter hastily on a contest of which the results would be so important. But Marmont prided himself on the skill with which he handled troops, and probably despised the capacity of his opponent in that respect, although in other qualities he had now made himself respected by the best generals in Europe.

At the very moment that the wise persistency of Wellington was bearing such signal fruits, and that their vigorous growth was daily overshadowing and blighting French influence, power, and prestige in the peninsula, the emperor, intent on the invasion and humiliation of Russia, was withdrawing some of the best of his troops for that magnificent but disastrous project. Wellington had nevertheless no ordinary difficulties to encounter; and the heart-breaking indifference of the people for whom he was fighting was aggravated by the deficient organization of his own army, the opposition of most powerful parties at home, and the want of adequate funds.

On 17th June Wellington crossed the Tormes and entered Salamanca, which Marmont evacuated the previous evening, leaving adequate garrisons in the forts, who made a vigorous defence against the English, and thereby enabled Marmont to collect about 25,000 men, with whom he attacked Wellington on the 20th. On the 22d he was reinforced by about 11,000 men, and repeated his demonstrations; but neither his efforts to dislodge Wellington or to relieve the forts were successful, although the resistance of the latter delayed the allies for ten days, and enabled the French to concentrate their various corps, which, at the outset, had been scattered far apart. At last, on 22d July, after much manoeuvring and marching, sometimes within musket-shot of each other, the two armies met at Arapiles, near Salamanca—Marmont with 42,000 men and 74 guns, Wellington with 43,000 English, 3500 Spaniards, and 60 guns; and after a contest which is described by M. Brialmont as "brief and murderous," the French were beaten at all points, and fairly driven off the field, with the loss of 6000 men, 11 guns, 2 eagles, and 6 standards; whilst the English lost 5444 men, and were so far exhausted that they could not enter on the pursuit of the routed enemy with the vigour which might have been desired.

The battle of Salamanca put an end to all doubts that Wellington envy, jealousy, or ignorance, could affect to entertain in reference to the strategical ability of Lord Wellington. The hand of France was palsied by the stroke, and Spain half slipped from her grasp. The French marshals were stricken with astonishment, mingled with something like fear; and their councils, never very cordial or unanimous, were now more distracted than they had ever been, at the very moment when they required the most sincere co-operation in the wisest plans they could devise. Whilst they were disputing, Wellington was acting. The road to Madrid was open before him; and he entered the capital with his victorious army, as Joseph was fleeing from the irritated population whom he affected to consider as his subjects. The king betook himself to Suchet, who was preparing to effect a junction with the remains of Soult's corps d'armée in Valencia; whilst Clausel had rallied Marmont's army, and had thus collected an army which was at least equal to the English in Old Castile. Having secured Madrid, and made all his preparations with his usual foresight, Wellington took the field again and marched upon Valladolid; but Clausel was not disposed to risk another battle, and retired cautiously as his redoubtable antagonist advanced, exhibiting in his retreat proofs of the most signal capacity. With the prescience which distinguished the emperor's view of the contingencies of war, he had given orders early in the Spanish campaign to strengthen the fortress of Burgos, which commanded the road to Bayonne, and was used as one of the principal depots of the French armies. Wellington found the place in his path; and although he would gladly have avoided it, the necessity of his position forced him to undertake a siege, for which his army was little qualified. In effect, the defence was exceedingly vigorous; the attack was not of the highest order. Five weeks were lost in operations which are not thought by foreign critics to have checked at all the credit of our engineers; and still the beleaguered held out, with the bravery which, it must in fairness be admitted, the French garrisons exhibited on all occasions. The news came meanwhile, that Soult was marching with 70,000 men on his old prey, now left almost defenceless; for Hill had only 20,000 men to defend Madrid, whilst Soult threatened the rear of the British with a corps which far exceeded all Wellington's disposable forces. There seemed no mode of escaping these difficulties but the unwelcome surrender of Madrid for a time, and the withdrawal of the British from their unsound military position to the lines of the Agueda. Hill effected his junction with his chief without molestation; and the army, which had suffered severely in moral as well as in physical strength, in consequence of the check at Burgos, and the result of the subsequent retreat, took up its quarters for the winter, in no very amicable mood towards its chief, who had rebuked their excesses, and the want of discipline of their officers, in no measured terms. Wellington took the opportunity now afforded to him of visiting the Cortes, then sitting at Cadiz, where they were blockaded on the land-side by a French corps, which was rather of observation than of attack. He was received with every mark of honour, was decorated with the order of the Toison d'Or, and was invested with powers, which were practically uncontrolled, over the Spanish troops. The Portuguese created him Duke of Vittoria. The king of England elevated him to the rank of marquis; and the parliament gave him a grant of L100,000, with part of which he purchased the estate of Wellington, which was supposed to have belonged to the Colleys in times gone by; and he received permission to wear the crosses of St George, St Andrew, and St Patrick, in augmentation of his arms. Reinforcements also were poured in from England, notwithstanding a bitter and illiberal opposition from a few men like Sir F. Burdett; and the tremendous disaster which had befallen the arms of France Wellington in the snows of Russia animated the country with the hope that the contest in Spain could not long be protracted by a chief whose position would impose on him the necessity of withdrawing every soldier he could rally to his standard to defend his own frontiers.

The campaign of 1813 was opened by Wellington at the end of May with 200,000 men of all nations and arms, and he knew how much was expected at his hands by the magnitude of the favours conferred on him, for he was now a Knight of the Garter and Colonel of the Blues.

The French had made the greatest preparations to resist any attempt of the British to cross the Douro, and to oppose them at every step, if they succeeded in doing so, as well as to harass them by means of constant assaults, in case they moved towards Salamanca. But Wellington rendered all their precautions and plans abortive by turning their right with his left wing, whilst his right moved round and effected its junction with the rest of the army in rear of the French positions. It was hazardous to have divided his force, but fortune was favourable, and the French, as if conscious that the evil genius which had hovered over their eagles in the retreat from Moscow was now about to visit them in Spain, exhibited little of their usual energy and activity, and prepared for the great struggle which they knew must come without much spirit or confidence. It approached at last, and at the battle of Vittoria, on 21st June, Wellington gave a death-blow to the French in Spain. The enemy lost 7000 killed, wounded, and prisoners; 151 guns, their military chests, their plunder and baggage, and a spoil which for some days disorganized the victorious army. The Prince-Regent sent to the conqueror the baton of an English marshal, in return for the staff of Jourdain, which was found on the field. The British loss amounted to 5000. Not indeed that Napoleon, in the advent of his supreme hour, thought of giving up so splendid an appanage without an effort. On the contrary, whilst Wellington, with that rarest quality in generals who in other things are greatest, was profiting of his victory by the pursuit and pressure which forced the French army to retreat so rapidly that at times they might almost be said to be in full flight, Napoleon selected Soult once more to try the strength of his arm against his invincible antagonist, and handing over to him the choicest of the troops which remained to him, prepared with extraordinary resolution to give to the world the most convincing and astounding proofs of his own marvellous genius in the hopeless contest which he was about to maintain with the coalesced hosts of Europe.

Soult's first attack was vigorous. The mountain-passes of the Pyrenees became the scenes of fierce encounters, and the silence and solitude of river-pierced glens were disturbed by the roar of cannon and the rattle of musketry.

St Sebastian, most gallantly defended by the French, who repulsed more than one assault with great loss to Graham's corps, was now covered by the allies, who occupied all the gorges of the mountains in scattered divisions, when Soult, on 16th July, in obedience to the emperor's orders, made an offensive movement, and, on the 28th, fought the sanguinary but unprofitable battle of Sauroren, which was followed by a series of many able dispositions on the part of the English general, the result of which was to force Soult to retreat from his commanding position. In nine days serious encounters, almost worthy of the name of battles, took place between the two armies, which cost the allies 7000 and the French 13,000 men. St Sebastian, after a defence of extraordinary gallantry, fell, after nine assaults, on 31st August, and, on 7th October, Wellington executed one of the most brilliant strategic operations ever performed by any general, by crossing the Bidassoa with seven different columns in the face of Soult and of his army, posted in a most admirable position. But his successes were imbibed by the ingratitude and lying malignity of his enemies, and of the anti-English party in Wellington Spain and in England, even at the moment when the Prince-Regent, elated by his successes, proposed that he should move his whole army by sea to Belgium, in order to invade France with the allies from the northward. Never, perhaps, was the robust et ex tripex of his iron character more severely tested; never was the patience of any general more severely tried by popular clamour and national ingratitude. It was not till 10th November that Wellington, with 100,000 men and 95 guns, was in a position to commence an offensive movement against Soult's lines, which were held by upwards of 65,000 veteran troops. The result of the action on the Nivelle was, that the French were driven from their position with the loss of 4300 men, 51 guns, and their principal magazines, and that after some subsequent affairs they were obliged to take up new ground, resting on their entrenched camp at Bayonne.

The campaign in the Pyrenees must have been one of the most exciting episodes of Wellington's life, for this reign la chasse a Francais into their own country could scarcely have been anticipated so speedily. At one time we see the English chief on a mountain top, where his presence is greeted by the thundering shouts of his soldiery. Soult, whose features Wellington can distinguish as he rides along the hill-side nearly opposite, hesitates in the attack he is about to make with every chance of success, till he learns the cause of the cheering, and the English reinforcements come up meantime, and the danger is averted. Again, we behold Wellington peering down on the masses of his unsuspecting enemies, embayed, as it were, in a deep valley, the outlet of which the allies are rapidly closing up. Soult and his army seem to be almost in his grasp. Suddenly three red-coated soldiers appear in the gorge of the valley, and are at once pounced upon by the French cavalry, and carried before their chief; in a few moments the French are streaming out of the trap, and the deep-laid plan is destroyed by the indiscipline of three miserable plunderers.

Once again, Wellington is to be seen, seated on the ground in a little glen, poring over his maps, and, totus in illis, a group of French horsemen dash at him, and the English general has just time to get into his saddle and ride for liberty and life, pursued by their bullets. These passes were indeed the gates by which he could keep watch and ward over the Peninsula he had saved by his genius; but he resolved not to leave a hostile fortress in his rear before he entered France, in spite of the powerful representations addressed to him to induce him to depart from his resolution. The fall of St Sebastian, and the conclusion of the armistice between the allies and France, promised him greater liberty of action, but Suchet was still holding his own with great skill and courage in Catalonia, and Pamplona was in the hands of the enemy, though blockaded closely by the Spaniards, so that the garrison were all but starving. Wellington, who must have witnessed with concealed, but much and well justified satisfaction, how far his victories in Spain were regulating the whole course of political action between Europe and France, was at last induced, as we have seen, to throw into the scale the moral weight which would be gained in an actual invasion of the French territory. There never was an army with such long-standing animosities to gratify kept in such order,—though it was composed, he declared, of "the greatest blackguards on the face of the earth." He hanged some of his men for acts of plunder; officers were tried and cashiered by his orders for misconduct; and his general orders culminated threats which it was well known would not be empty words, against soldiers and officers who should be guilty of oppressing the inhabitants of France. It is to be regretted that there were never wanting deserters from our army, who kept Soult well informed of all Wellington's movements; but when he was attacked and forced back on Bayonne, he Wellington seems to have been surprised, to a certain extent, by the vigour of the attack. In order to save France as far as possible from the misery her troops had inflicted on nearly every country in Europe, Wellington, ere he advanced, sent back most of the Spanish troops to the other side of their own frontiers. Active operations were suspended by the inclemency of the weather, but, on 14th February 1814, Wellington crossed the Adour below Bayonne, and, on 27th, drove back Soult from Orthez, and would probably have routed him utterly, but that he was struck from his horse by a spent ball as he was directing the pursuit. It was the 27th March ere the allied army found itself before Toulouse; but the floods and rains, which swelled the Garonne and its tributaries, prevented military operations till the close of the first week in April, and on 10th was fought the very desperate battle, which some foreign writers would contend to have been indecisive, although Soult, on the next night, abandoned the city, his position, the wounded, his heavy artillery, and his stores, and never halted till next night, when he drew up at Carcassonne, 22 miles from Toulouse. There is no need here to refute the calumny urged against the two generals, that each was aware of the abdication of Napoleon, or might have inferred it from the intelligence they had received ere the battle began, and that they sacrificed so much life to their evil passions. History has disposed of the falsehood. The war was at an end!

And Wellington stood at the head of a conquering army on the soil of France. That army had been formed in the furnace of battle, under the eye and by the hands of one who may be said to have been its creator. The materials were the undisciplined militia and recruits of England, Ireland, and Scotland, and the courage and soldierly qualities of the races from which they sprung. By its efforts it had secured for Great Britain a position which all her naval successes could never have won in the councils of Europe. It was Wellington, and his army which gave dignity and force to Castlecragh at the congress of sovereigns, and which caused his voice to be heard in their tents with attention and respect. It was that army and its chief which employed for years the best soldiers and the best generals in France, and finally overwhelmed them with defeat. It was that army and its leader which for five years deepened and widened the Spanish ulcer which ate into the heart of France, and which, as it were, like a consuming rust, destroyed the vast machinery of conquest which had been contrived and put together by the subtlest brain and most cunning hand for war the world has ever seen.

The mission, as it is called, of that wonderful force, which had been so hardened and tempered in warfare that it could go anywhere and do anything, was now over. The allies were in Paris; Napoleon was on his way to Elba. The Peninsular army was broken up, never to be reconstituted. Some battalions were sent to be shot down ingloriously by hidden foes from the shelter of cotton bags at New Orleans; others to garrison pestiferous settlements, and to languish in remote colonies, to the arid plains of India, or to the frontier-posts of Canadian waste and lake. The man to whose genius, capacity for command, and consummate military character, they had by a vast expenditure of blood, and by unsurpassed exhibitions of courage and endurance, given the fame and the success due to such rare qualifications, had now become almost the moderator of the councils of Europe, senates, and emperors; kings and nations turned their eyes on him with respect and admiration; and statesmen hung upon his words. Far into the remotest corners of distant lands his name had penetrated, and victories which sounded uncoolly in the ears of Cossack and Tyrolese, were familiar on the lips of the soldiers of Russia and of Austria, who found some little consolation for their own disasters in the thought that the French were not invincible. Great, however, as was Wellington's success, and large as were his honours, the crowning glory of his life was yet to come, whilst the army which had done so much, with a strange perversity on its own part, and on that of the country, sought for years in vain any mark of the nation's recognition of its service. The sagacity, political knowledge, and discrimination of Wellington had visited Paris been so remarkably displayed in his management of Spanish affairs, and in his correspondence, that the ministry requested him, the instant he arrived in England, from the head of his army to proceed as the ambassador of England to the court of France; indeed, as early as May 4, 1814, he had gone up from Toulouse to Paris, and had made the acquaintance of some of the most remarkable men in the capital; scarcely had he repaired to his post ere the state of affairs required his presence at Madrid, where the influence of his personal character, and the soundness of his judgment, were amply tested in composing the disputes at that unhappy court, and interposing between the follies and imbecility of the monarch, and the angry turbulence of his subjects. But the Bourbons have had great opportunities and great servants only to neglect both, and the Duke of Wellington left Madrid with no confidence in the results of his good counsel to the king of the realm, in which he was not only a peer, a proprietor, but an actual restitutor rei. Having, on his way back from Spain through France, broken up his army at Toulouse in a simple order of the day, the Duke returned to England, where, if his stern nature, rather contemptuous of popularity, and the breath which more poetical temperaments consider the best filling stuff for heaven-soaring balloons, could have been satisfied with the most enthusiastic reception, he must have enjoyed complete contentment. On 28th June, however, he received those constitutional marks of favour, to which he was not and could not be indifferent. At one sitting he became developed in the House of Lords through all the stages of the peerage, as baron, viscount, earl, and marquis, to the highest title of honour; and the Duke of Wellington claimed, as Lord Eldon said, on his first entrance to the House, all the dignities which the crown could confer.—"If his merit was not great," he said, "his gratitude was unbounded;" and on 1st July he attended the House of Commons on an occasion quite unexampled in our history, to return thanks for the honour done to him by the House, in having deputed a committee to congratulate him on his return home, which he did in a speech remarkable for simplicity and good taste, and not unworthy of the admirable and eloquent reply of the speaker, who, in conclusion said, "This country owes you the proud satisfaction, that amid the constellation of great and illustrious warriors who have recently visited our country, we could present to them a leader of our own, to whom all by common acclamation acceded the pre-eminence, and when the will of Heaven and the common destinies of our nature shall have swept away the present generation, you will have left your great name and example as an imperishable monument, inciting others to like deeds of glory, and serving at once to adorn, defend, and perpetuate the existence of this country among the ruling nations of the earth." And this ere Waterloo was won! It is one of the most crucial proofs of the fineness of temper of the man which never changed colour when tested by cold or tried by fire, that he was as little heated by the breath of flattery as he had been chilled by the blasts of indifference and neglect.

In August, the Duke in proceeding towards Paris to execute the functions of ambassador at the court of France, to which he had been appointed, took occasion, in company with three engineer officers, to examine the frontier line of the Netherlands; and in the course of his survey, he certainly pointed out the position of Waterloo as one which Wellington should be occupied to cover Brussels in case of a French invasion.

For five months Wellington remained at Paris, every week of which was marked by some earnest work, by honest and disregarded counsels to France or Spain, and by unproductive attempts to inspire the Bourbons with notions of moderation and forbearance. Of the people of France he formed an opinion, which, if not politically correct, was peculiar and forcible. He believed they never could go on without "the plunder of the world," and that they could not endure the prospect of a peaceable government. In order to restrain that indomitable spirit of homicide, Wellington always recommended the continued action of the grand alliance. The sagacity of man is microscopic. The grand alliance, indeed, performed its mission; but we now (1860) see France ruled by the representative of the family and of the traditions of the empire; and we have scarcely yet learned to decide whether an entente cordiale, an entangling alliance, or an open war with our great antagonist, would be most grateful to the prejudices, or hurtful to the interests of England, which has already aided France in giving a tremendous blow to Russia; and has supported her by her sympathies in a war which has deprived Austria of the fairest portion of her dominions.

His duty done, the Duke of Wellington was accredited to Vienna as the representative of England at the famous Congress, of the no less famous settlement of which little now remains, except the memory and the practical proofs of its unsoundness. But the progress of the work was on that occasion rudely interrupted. The eagle had broken loose from Elba, eager for prey and for vengeance, fanning with his pinions the air still heavy with the smoke of battle and tainted with human blood. The vultures and foxes quarrelling over their spoil broke up in dismay. But there was at their congress one who was not to be daunted by the terror of any foe, and who ardently longed for the opportunity of measuring himself against the most tremendous antagonist that ever marshalled a battle-field.

Austria was clamouring for Poland; Berlin was anxious to swallow all Saxony. England, France, and Austria, were actually driven into a secret alliance to resist the armed violence of those states who had never won an inch of ground or a particle of honour from France in a fair battlefield; and Murat, encouraged by Russia, had seized on a portion of the States of the Church, and seemed resolved to brave the anger of Austria as the Congress drew to its close. On the 8th March the startling news reached Vienna that Napoleon was marching upon Paris. On the 20th the Bourbon was a fugitive, and the Corsican sat once more on the throne of France. But the Alliance still lived. The name of Bonaparte was a talisman to shake every legitimist government to the foundation, and to reopen the fountains of fear and misery which had flowed over every country of Europe. If Napoleon desired peace, he would have desired it in vain. The Castlereaghs the Metternichs, the Nesselrodes of the day had vowed eternal hostility to the Empire—they could not recognise the fact, Europe has been forced to admit, that the principles on which the Empire was founded must exercise their influence as long as France is a nation. They were bent only on destroying the eagle that had fluttered their dovecots from the Rhine to the Neva. They determined to maintain the treaty of Paris at every cost; and Wellington deserves no great credit for predicting that Napoleon must fall under the cordial united efforts of the sovereigns of Europe. Under the impulse of the common terror, these sovereigns turned their eyes on one man as their only champion. The Duke of Wellington was entreated to take the command of the armies of England, the Netherlands, and Prussians in the Low Countries, which would be supported as speedily as possible by the legions of Austria and Russia. He arrived in Brussels on 5th April, and was for Wellington some time in doubt whether he should begin an offensive movement upon France, or await the development of the designs of his mighty antagonist. On both sides the preparations for the struggle were vigorous, though it must be admitted that labour, time, and money, were all thrown away on the defensive works undertaken by Wellington's orders, to delay the march of the French, inasmuch as Bonaparte selected a line of attack by which his opponent did not expect him. Never had Napoleon given such proof of indomitable resolution and self-reliance, as when he set out cheerfully and confidently to try his fortune against the world in arms. Schwartzzenberg was to throw 200,000 Austrians across the Rhine, and move towards the old battle-ground between Chalons-sur-Marne and Paris. The Russians were to make for the same points, with every disposable man. The Prussians under Kleist were to operate against the line of the Meuse; the Austrians and Italians from Italy were to move northwards from Lyons, and then join the main body under Schwartzzenberg. Blucher's Prussians and Wellington's army, consisting of English, Dutch, Belgians, Brunswickers, and Hanoverians, were intended to move down on the enemy from Liege and Courtrai towards Lahn; whilst the Bavarians, the Wurtemburghers, and the Bade troops operated from the Black-forest, as circumstances might direct. Napoleon anticipated the invasion of France by marching at once upon the Anglo-Prussian army in Belgium by the line of the Sambre. Although Wellington thought such an offensive movement rather improbable, he had by no means excluded it from the category of possibilities; but it must be acknowledged he did not act as if he thought Napoleon would move in the direction he actually took. It was three o'clock on the 15th June when general Van Mijff, great general informing the Duke, as he was seated at table with the Prince of Orange, that the French had attacked the Prussian outposts, and that the whole army was immediately afterwards ordered to march to its left. The regret which Colonel Hamley expresses, that the Duke never stated his reasons for thinking that the allied right was the proper point for Napoleon to have attacked, must be shared by all who study the history of that brief and most momentous campaign.

As a strategical fight, Waterloo does not rank very highly. The Duke had no great opinion of it; and Napoleon's sole object seems to have been to overwhelm the British and the allies by brute force before the Prussians could come up. The Duke did not care for military criticism upon his manoeuvres or his position; and as he declared subsequently, "historians and commentators were not necessary." Indeed they were not, if the results of the struggle are alone to be considered. And what were they? Let us hear them from the lips of the chief actor:

"The battle, possibly the most important single military event of modern times, was attended by advantages sufficient for many such armies as the two great allied armies engaged. The enemy never rallied; Bonaparte lost his empire for ever; and the peace of Europe and of the world was settled on the basis on which it rests at this moment."

The immediate results, indeed, were those which Wellington claimed for this—"the first and last of fields!—king-making victory!" But recent events have greatly deranged its political sequences. The 18th June 1815 must, however, rank among the most important dates in the world; it is the mark which stands highest above the flood of time which rolls over the events of the last century, and the first half of that in which we live.

For the second time in two years France submitted to the forces of coalesced Europe, and to the effects of self-exhaustion. The conquerors were vindictive. Paris had capitulated; its garrison had been sent to the south of the Wellington Loire; Napoleon had no longer even an Elba. But the sovereigns were implacable, the diplomats were bitter, and the policy of dismembering the tremendous body which had dealt such fearful blows at every vested interest, at every sacred notion, at every divine right; which had, with a stroke of its hand, annihilated military reputations, systems, thrones, principalities, and powers, was openly favoured by those whose political vision was blinded by the glare of success. Wellington opposed their views, though it can scarcely be urged as a proof of either his sagacity or his high moral sense, that he took Fouché into his favour, and forced him on the reluctant ministry of Louis XVIII. as a state necessity, for which there was no real necessity whatever. Of all the allied generals, indeed, Frenchmen had and have less reason to complain of Wellington than of others, for not only did he respect the principles of national life, but he tempered the severities and miseries of a hostile occupation by the most rigid discipline, though he was not able to induce the Austrians, Russians, or Prussians, to imitate the example set to them by the English soldiery. A stanch no Popery and Protestant ascendancy man in Ireland, the Duke was in France, at that period, the actual enemy of the Protestants, whom he regarded as the friends of Bonaparte and the enemies of royalism; thus exhibiting another phase in the practical side of his character, which indeed abounded in appearances which were rather to be viewed by the rays of expediency than by the lights of fixed principle. In reference once to the two grave charges which have been preferred by many foreign writers, and some English enemies, against the Duke, the execution of Marshal Ney, and the so-called spoliation of the museums of the Louvre, there is little necessity to reopen the pleadings. Whilst the fate of Ney must be regretted, his offence must be admitted. Whether the Duke could have saved him or not, we may be permitted to utter a sentiment of something like a desire that he had used his influence in favour of a man who, with all his great faults, had been worthy of such intercession.

Although the Duke of Wellington now seemed to have reached the culminating point in his career, the anxiety and annoyance to which he was exposed whilst he commanded in Paris and at Cambrai were almost insupportable. The affair of Lavallette, the conspiracies in Belgium, Cartillon's attempt at assassination, the endeavour to set his house on fire, repeated attacks from the press, and considerable difficulties in preserving the relations between the army of occupation and the people,—were proofs of ill-will and sources of trouble, which must have rendered his visits to England very agreeable relaxations, and have caused him to hail with satisfaction the evacuation by the allied armies of the soil of France.

When, in September 1818, the Emperors of Austria and Russia, and the King of Prussia, met at Aix-la-Chapelle, the Duke of Wellington was appointed to proceed, in conjunction with Lord Castlereagh, to represent the wishes of England in reference to the French question. It cannot be said that Great Britain exhibited any hostility to the French nation on that occasion, still less that the great captain was actuated by any unfriendly feelings towards the country whose soldiers he had so often met in battle. It had been originally arranged that the armed occupation of Paris was to last for five years, and the Duke of Wellington, as far as his own individual interests were concerned, must have been inclined to urge that the agreement should be carried out, inasmuch as his position, whilst he was commander of the foreign troops in France, was little less than regal, whilst his pecuniary emoluments were enormous; but he acted with perfect independence of any personal considerations, and he threw his weight into the argument in favour of the immediate evacuation of France. For nearly four years the duke enjoyed such repose as his active mind and nature could bear; but in Wellington 1822 he was deputed to appear at Verona, where a European Congress was sitting to consider the affairs of Spain. The liberal party, incensed by the bigoted refusal of Ferdinand VII. to grant constitutional privileges to his subjects, and by his disregard of vows and promises, were rapidly organizing a formidable agitation, which the monarchy could not withstand without extraneous aid. It was from republican France that those ideas of liberty and equality and personal rights had been imported, and it appeared therefore a proper task for monarchical France to use her arms to suppress the liberal struggle in Spain. In vain the duke opposed the violent reactionary policy on which the Congress determined to act, and sought to convince the absolutists of the fatal tendency of their projects, and of the madness of reviving French influence, no matter on what side, in the Peninsula. He was doomed not only to find his arguments disregarded at the Congress, but to find his conduct assailed in parliament in violent debates, wherein the Opposition maintained that the duke had either disregarded Mr Canning's instructions when he consented to the intervention of France, or that Mr Canning had committed a gross breach of duty, and had disgraced England by his acquiescence in the plan of pacifying Spain by French bayonets.

The school in which the Duke had been trained was not one in which the masters were mere doctrinaire professors, or in which the text-books were abstract theses on the rights of man or on the theories of government in its relations to the governed. Although he had been associated with what was called the liberal party in Spain and in Portugal, he had no real sympathy with any movement which disturbed the divine calm of the status quo. To revolutionary France, to her leaders as to the revolution, its results, its consequences, and its master, he had an intense aversion; and it was an accident in the nature of things not at all sympathetic to him which placed his battalions by the side of the Spanish bands who were fighting for a doubtful constitutionalism. His active and energetic correspondence with the members of his own party in England, and with the chief of the Holy Alliance abroad, affords abundant indications that he received with very great apprehension the spread of what might be regarded as French principles in Great Britain, whilst his early associations rendered such a development still more obnoxious to him in his native country. The Irish Roman Catholic element was, perhaps, in his mind the most dangerous and unconstitutional ingredient in the caldron of reform, which was beginning to boil over, when it seemed as if the successes of the arm with which he had crushed the last exposition of the French sentiment of 1793, had created and raised an effectual barrier to its extension. To the support, thorough and honest, which the bent of his mind induced him to give to the established order of things, he added the stronger agency of personal feeling and strong antipathies.

His honours accumulated year by year. Waterloo Bridge was opened by the Prince Regent, with a salute of 202 guns. Apsley House was built for him at the cost of the nation by Wyatt. For twenty years the Duke had no statue; but up to the present time there is not one of Marlborough. The Hyde Park Achilles was the result of a subscription made by the ladies of England in 1819-21; and it was erected in 1822, the same year in which the famous shield was presented to him by the city of London. In 1818 he was made master-general of the ordnance; in 1819 he became governor of Plymouth; in 1820 colonel of the Rifle Brigade; and when he died, the Duke of Wellington was field-marshal in the armies of England, Austria, Russia, and Prussia. But with his honours his popularity by no means increased. There had Wellington been a riotous and disaffected spirit generated among the people; conspiracies were discovered; *Habeas corpus* was suspended; open insurrections actually broke out; Peterloo was a hapless parody of civil war; and the Six Acts and Cato House conspiracy were ominous signs of the temper of the times. The French revolution had strengthened the hands of the so-called Tories so much, that the early struggles for Catholic emancipation and reform seemed Quixotic and hopeless; but the people were gaining strength, and the consciousness of their power gave an intemperance to their language and their acts which, after the struggle was over, would have shocked them.

For ten years Lord Liverpool's cabinet and principles had governed without change, and there was no sign of relaxation of the old policy till Mr Canning became colonial secretary in 1822. The king was not liked; he was believed to have been treacherous to his old liberal associations and friends, and to put his trust in a policy of mere repression. The prosecution of the queen raised the outcry against the ministry to a storm, and the Duke of Wellington, who as a cabinet minister had agreed to the measure, came in for a full share of the public indignation. A cordial feeling and mutual appreciation existed between him and Sir Robert Peel, who became home secretary in 1822; but there was certainly no cordiality on the Duke's part towards George Canning, and when he was appointed premier the Duke resigned his offices of master-general of the ordnance and commander-in-chief. Nay more, he moved the amendment in the Lords to the bill sent up by Canning and Huskisson as the first installment of the settlement of the corn-law question. In four months Mr Canning, tortured by candid friends, open enemies, lukewarm support, and vindictive opposition, had died. Goderich's short ministry was called into existence only to expire, and the Duke on its dissolution was sent for by the king, and requested to undertake the task of forming a government. He had only eight months before, in answer to some hints that he was agitating for the honour, declared his conviction to the Lords that he was quite unfit to be premier, and he now laid himself open to some ill-natured remarks in consequence of his accepting the post notwithstanding his declaration. He fell on troubled days.

He was, by no means what is called a statesman in advance of his time. On the contrary, he was essentially a politician who looked at the immediate effect of measures, and at the questions of the day as they appeared to him at the moment. Though it could not be said that the Whig principles of his ancestors had left no trace of their existence, seeing that his hostility to the Catholic claims was shared by many of the most forward of that party, the Duke was eminently a conservative statesman, to whom movement was in itself an evil; and his feelings were those of the great bulk of Englishmen, in spite of the activity of the reform party, and their aid to the agitators for Catholic Emancipation in Ireland. But notwithstanding the firmness of his character, and the obstinacy of his political opinions, the Duke was so completely aware of the necessities of his position as a British minister, that he did not hesitate to meet fate, and avert its blow, by running in the highway alongside it. He felt the force of necessity without any attempt either to dissimulate his fears or his convictions, or to sacrifice the machinery of the government of the day in opposing an idle resistance.

When Lord John Russell carried the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts in the House of Commons by a majority of forty-four, the Duke, to the astonishment of some of his friends, the indignation of others, and the joy of his enemies, accepted the situation, and calmly made himself master of it by carrying these very bills through the Upper House, in spite of the opposition of some of his own colleagues, with whom, on the representation of Mr Canning, the Duke could not entertain any cordial or sympathetic relations.

For two years the Duke maintained his position. To detail the events of his administration would be to write an abstract of the history of England for one of the most important epochs in its history. At home and abroad great questions presented themselves. Surrounded by difficulties, and aggravated by the fierce personal spirit which pervaded politics, the influence of which led the Duke once more into the field, and induced him to fight a duel with Lord Winchilsea. Times not less stormy followed. The Duke was an opponent of reform, when the heart of the active majority of the nation was set upon it. He proposed to recognise Don Miguel, whilst he resisted the Catholic claims, and the admission of the Jews into parliament and of dissenters into the universities; and his support gave firmness and resolution to the party with which he acted. Although he found himself unable to form a ministry, when requested to do so in 1832, on the defeat of the government by Lord Lyndhurst, he felt less hesitation in monopolizing for the time nearly all the offices of state, in November 1834, on the resignation of Lord Melbourne, till Sir Robert Peel could return from Italy to constitute a short-lived administration. It is needless to criticize the acts of his political life. On such questions as Catholic emancipation, the reform bill, the corn-laws, if the Duke was the oracle of expediency, he, like oracles of old, suffered violence, and spoke on compulsion the "logic of facts." The iron mouth could be coerced by one "open sesame;" and when the Duke "felt it to be his duty" to do a thing, all arguments and considerations were as an idle breath. By the advice of the Duke, whom the Queen consulted in any emergency, Sir Robert Peel, formerly routed by the ladies of the bedchamber, was called in, with greater success, to occupy the position of prime-minister in 1841. Her Majesty requested the Duke to take the command of the army, of which Lord Hill's ill health rendered him incapable, and in that office he continued till his death. His active political life ceased. His speeches were always listened to with respect; his presence gave dignity to the highest assembly in the world; his nation learned to be proud of him with a pride in which there was reverence; he was the friend and councillor of his sovereign. In his later days he had some alarming illnesses; but after a time he was seen as usual riding down from the Horse Guards to the House, and his speeches appeared in the papers at longer intervals, when some great public question connected with his own grave problem was under discussion. In August 1852 he went down to Walmer Castle, where he expected some guests, and on the 13th September he was engaged in preparing for their reception with unusual activity and energy. Next day he complained of difficulty of breathing, which did not yield to the medical means employed. His illness increased; he became speechless and insensible; and ere the evening he had passed peacefully away.

And so, looking out, as it were, from one of the ancient watch-towers of the English coast, died Arthur Wellesley, who had been so long "the living oracle of a just and patriotic expediency," as he had been the breathing statue of English victory. He was gone at last; and the historic period, so often vaguely indicated in the phrase, "while the duke lives," had received its definite boundaries. He had fought the great fight, after which it might be said indeed, "The land had rest for forty years;" and had lived so long before the people—though not of them—that even whilst they recognised the perishability of flesh and blood, they scarcely thought of the Iron Duke as of a mortal. He had become, as it were, statuesque, monumental, medieval. He lived to be a being of an age gone by. He was a mammoth of the old battle world; one who had fought WELLS, a seaport town of England, in the county of Norfolk, on an inlet of the German Ocean, 33 miles N.W. by N. of Norwich. It consists of two principal streets; and has a large church in the later English style with a lofty tower; places of worship for Wesleyan and Primitive

a market-town of England, Shropshire, near the foot of the Wrekin, 11 miles E. by S. of Shrewsbury, and 142 N.W. by W. of London. It consists of narrow streets; but most of the houses are neat and well built. There are two good modern churches and places of worship for Wesleyan and Primitive Methodists, Independents, Baptists, and Roman Catholics; National and free schools; a market-house; dispensary; almshouses; and a prison. Most of the inhabitants are employed in coal and iron mines, quarries, smelting furnaces, iron and glass works. Wellington has also malt-houses, corn-mills, and a considerable trade in timber. In the vicinity are mineral springs, much resorted to by visitors. Population (1851) 4601.

a market-town of England, Somersetshire, near the right bank of the Tone, 7 miles W.S.W. of Taunton. It consists of two principal streets, crossing at right angles; and has recently been much improved by paving, and the removal of old houses. The parish church is a fine Gothic building, containing among other monuments the magnificent tomb of Sir John Popham, who was chief justice under Queen Elizabeth. Wellington has also a chapel of ease, and places of worship for Baptists, Independents, Methodists, and Quakers; National schools, and almshouses. The manufacture of woollen stuffs is carried on to some extent here; and the coal-mines and limestone-quarries in the vicinity give employment to many of the inhabitants. The Duke of Wellington derived his title from this place; and on a hill to the south is an obelisk commemorating the battle of Waterloo. Population (1851) 3926.