His next continental journey was in 1826, when he was sent on a special mission to Petersburg on the accession of the Emperor Nicholas, with the object of arriving at a satisfactory settlement of the projected Russian attack on Turkey over the Greek difficulty. In this he was not entirely successful, for after events proved that he had only succeeded in staving off the evil day.
On the death of the Duke of York in the following year, Wellington was appointed Commander-in-Chief, retaining his other office, which controlled merely the artillery and engineers.
A month later Canning became Prime Minister, and the Duke was asked to continue as a member of the Cabinet. This request he not only declined, but surrendered his two important offices as well. Mutual suspicion seems to have been the cause of this unexpected event, certainly not jealousy, for Wellington said that he should be “worse than mad if he had ever thought of it for a moment,” the “it” referring to his possible appointment as First Lord of the Treasury. Canning did not live long to enjoy the sweets of office, for he died on the following August, and was succeeded by “Prosperity” Robinson, otherwise Lord Goderich, who resigned at the beginning of 1828.
The Duke, once again Commander-in-Chief, was sent for by George IV, and requested to form a Ministry. He obeyed with the instinct of a soldier when ordered by his superior officer, rather than as a keen politician about to have his highest ambition gratified. Wellington was a Tory, and the political freedom of the Roman Catholics and the reform of Parliament were the burning questions of the hour. The Duke was uncertain as to the practical utility of either, but he was not prepared to go against the known wishes of the nation so far as the religious question was concerned. After navigating a sea of difficulties, the Roman Catholic Relief Bill passed both Houses in the early days of 1829. One of his opponents, the Earl of Winchilsea, charged Wellington with “breaking in upon the Constitution of 1688 in order that he might the more effectively, under the cloak of some outward show of zeal for the Protestant religion, carry on his insidious designs for the infringement of our liberties, and the introduction of Popery in every department of the State.” The Premier requested an apology, which was not forthcoming, whereupon the former demanded “satisfaction,” in other words, a duel. Sir Henry Hardinge for Wellington and Lord Falmouth for Winchilsea were the respective seconds.
The meeting took place in Battersea Fields.103 “Now then, Hardinge,” said the Duke, “look sharp and step out the ground. I have no time to waste. Don’t stick him up so near the ditch. If I hit him he will tumble in.” The signal was given to fire. Noting that his opponent did not level his pistol on the command being given, the Duke purposely fired wide, and an instant afterwards Winchilsea fired in the air. The latter then produced a written sheet which he called an apology, which had to be altered before it met with Wellington’s approval. “Good morning, my Lord Winchilsea; good morning, my Lord Falmouth,” cried the Duke as he saluted with two fingers, and, mounting his horse, cantered off.
The Duke had a most thankless task during his administration, so much so that we find him writing, “If I had known in January 1828, one tithe of what I do now, and of what I discovered one month after I was in office, I should never have been the King’s Minister, and so have avoided loads of misery. However, I trust God Almighty will soon determine that I have been sufficiently punished for my sins and will relieve me from the unlucky lot which has befallen me. I believe there never was a man who suffered so much for so little purpose.”
He had almost as much trouble with the King as had Pitt with George III, and many of his old supporters were indignant with him over the Relief Bill. Wellington vehemently opposed Parliamentary Reform in the face of public opinion, with the result that his Ministry rode to a fall in November 1830.
Two months before he had taken part in the opening ceremony of the Manchester and Liverpool Railway, the first line to cater for passenger traffic in the British Empire. He rode in one of the two trains which made the initial journey, and the fact that they both went in the same direction was the cause of a lamentable accident which deprived one of Wellington’s friends of his life. The incident occurred at Parkside, where the engines stopped to obtain a supply of water. While the trains were at a standstill, Mr Huskisson, formerly President of the Board of Trade, got out of the carriage in which he had been travelling and sought Wellington. A minute or two later the train on the opposite line started. One of the open doors knocked him down, and his right leg was crushed by the locomotive. The Duke and several others ran to the injured man’s assistance, but his injuries were such that he only survived a few hours.
Wellington was succeeded as First Lord of the Treasury by Earl Grey, whose Government was speedily defeated by the Reform Bill which it introduced being rejected by the Lords. Riots broke out in London and the provinces; William IV “was frightened by the appearance of the people outside of St James’s”; the celebrated Dr Arnold wrote that his “sense of the evils of the times, and to what purpose I am bringing up my children, is overwhelmingly bitter.” The King implored the Ministers not to hand in their resignation, the House of Commons carried by a large majority a vote of confidence in the Government, and the nation showed that it bitterly resented the action of the Lords. There was an attempt at compromise, but the concessions were so trivial from Wellington’s point of view that he declined to take part in the negotiations. After further angry scenes in the following session Grey resigned on the 9th May 1832. It was during this trying period of our national history that the window-panes of Apsley House were stoned and the Duke’s life was threatened.104
Once again the King requested Wellington to form a new administration, and several meetings were held with that idea in view, but to no purpose. He had to confess that the task was absolutely impossible: “I felt that my duty to the King required that I should make a great sacrifice of opinion to serve him, and to save his Majesty and the country from what I considered a great evil. Others were not of the same opinion. I failed in performing the service which I intended to perform....” Several resident members of Oxford University, including Professor the Rev. John Keble, impressed by the Duke’s devotion, raised funds for the purpose of a bust to commemorate his self-denying conduct. This appreciation of approval greatly pleased Wellington, who announced his intention of sitting for Chantrey, the celebrated sculptor, or whoever else the committee might choose, “with the greatest satisfaction.” When Grey resumed office the Reform Bill was read for a third time and passed, a number of peers having declared “that in consequence of the present state of affairs they have come to the resolution of dropping their further opposition to the Reform Bill, so that it may pass without delay as nearly as possible in its present shape.” Wellington quietly left the House. He was no more kindly disposed towards the Irish Reform Bill, and subjected it to a fire of criticism which did not, however, preclude it from passing.
One of the most remarkable events of the Duke’s crowded life occurred in November 1834. When Earl Grey resigned in July 1834, on which occasion his opponent made a graceful speech to the effect that there had been no personal hostility in his opposition, the retiring statesman recommended Lord Melbourne as his successor. This suggestion met with the King’s approval, but the reign of the new Administration lasted only until the middle of the following November. His Majesty sent for Wellington at six in the morning. The latter refused to form a Cabinet, and recommended Sir Robert Peel, who was then in Rome. The Duke promised to carry on the Government during the interim, with the result that he held the offices of First Lord of the Treasury, Home Secretary, Foreign and Colonial Secretary, and Secretary at War for nearly a month. On Peel’s return he appointed his industrious ally Foreign Secretary, a position he held until the following April, when the Government resigned. In 1841, in Peel’s second Administration, he occupied a seat in the Cabinet, without office, and in the following year he was created Commander-in-Chief for life by patent under the great seal.
During the Chartist agitation Wellington was asked who was to command the forces in London, where a riot was expected. He answered, “I can name no one except the Duke of Wellington.” He organized the arrangements with his usual thoroughness, disposing his troops to keep them out of sight, and taking prompt measures to protect important public buildings. Fortunately the excitement died down, and armed force was not required.
The Duke frequently spent several hours a day at the Horse Guards. “Speaking from the experience which I had of him,” says General Sir George Brown, G.C.B., “I should say that the Duke was a remarkably agreeable man to do business with, because of his clear and ready decision. However much I may have seen him irritated and excited, with the subjects which I have repeatedly had to bring under his notice, I have no recollection of his ever having made use of a harsh or discourteous expression to me, or of his having dismissed me without a distinct and explicit answer or decision in the case under consideration. Like all good men of business, who consider well before coming to a decision, his Grace was accustomed to adhere strictly to precedent; to the decisions he may have previously come to on similar cases. This practice greatly facilitated the task of those who had to transact business with him, seeing that all we had to do in concluding our statement of any particular case was to refer to his decision or some similar one.”
“Everybody writes to me for everything,” he once remarked to Stanhope. “They know the Duke of Wellington is said to be a good-natured man, and so at the least they will get an answer.” The Earl, astonished at the amount of the Duke’s correspondence, ventured to say that his host might expect to be allowed some rest and recreation while he was at Walmer. “Rest!” cried the Duke. “Every other animal—even a donkey—a costermonger’s donkey—is allowed some rest, but the Duke of Wellington never! There is no help for it. As long as I am able to go on, they will put the saddle upon my back and make me go.”
Georgiana, Lady De Ros, who was a frequent visitor at Walmer Castle and at Strathfieldsaye, relates an incident which has a direct bearing on this point. “Wellington,” she says, “would tell a story against himself sometimes, and amused us all quite in his latter days by the account of various impostures that had been practised upon him; for years he had helped an imaginary officer’s daughter, paid for music lessons for her, given her a piano, paid for her wedding trousseau, for her child’s funeral, etc., etc. At last it came out that one man was the author of these impostures, ‘and then,’ the Duke said, ‘an Officer from the Mendicity Society called on me and gave me such a scolding as I never had before in my life!’”
In a book inscribed as “A Slight Souvenir of the Season 1845–6” we find a delightful little glimpse of “the hero of a hundred fights” as a country gentlemen. “What can be a finer sight than to see the Duke of Wellington enter the hunting field?” the author asks. “Not one of those gorgeous spectacles, it is true, such as a coronation, a review, the Lord Mayor’s Show, or a procession to the Houses of Parliament—not one of those pompous Continental exhibitions called a chasse, where armed menials keep back the crowd, and brass bands proclaim alike the find and finish; but what can be a finer sight—a sight more genial to the mind of a Briton—than the mighty Wellington entering the hunting field with a single attendant, making no more fuss than a country squire? Yet many have seen the sight, and many, we trust, may yet see it. The Duke takes the country sport like a country gentleman—no man less the great man than this greatest of all men; affable to all, his presence adds joy to the scene. The Duke is a true sportsman, and has long been a supporter of the Vine and Sir John Cope’s hounds. He kept hounds himself during the Peninsular War, and divers good stories are related of them and their huntsman (Tom Crane), whose enthusiasm used sometimes to carry him in the enemy’s country, a fact that he used to be reminded of by a few bullets whizzing about his ears.”
Wellington was now the trusted friend of Queen Victoria, who ever held him in the highest esteem. He was one of the first persons, perhaps actually the first,105 outside the Royal family and the medical attendants to see the baby who afterwards became Edward VII. According to one account he was met outside Buckingham Palace by Lord Hill, who was informed “All over—fine boy, very fine boy, almost as red as you Hill.”
Two days after the first anniversary of the birthday of Edward Albert, Prince of Wales, the Queen and the Prince Consort, accompanied by the Royal children, journeyed to Walmer Castle to pay the Duke a visit. An even greater honour was reserved for the veteran warrior, for on the birth of her Majesty’s third son on the 1st May 1850, it got noised abroad that the infant was to be called Arthur, “in compliment to the Hero of Waterloo.” The present Duke of Connaught is thus a living link with Wellington. “I must not omit to mention,” the Queen writes exactly a year later, “an interesting episode of this day, viz., the visit of the good old Duke on this his eighty-second birthday, to his little godson, our dear little boy. He came to us both at five, and gave him a golden cup and some toys, which he had himself chosen, and Arthur gave him a nosegay.”
The day was also that on which the great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace was opened. “The Royal party,” says Queen Victoria, “were received with continued acclamation as they passed through the Park and round the Exhibition house, and it was also very interesting to witness the cordial greeting given to the Duke of Wellington. I was just behind him and Anglesey [on whose arm he was leaning], during the procession round the building, and he was accompanied by an incessant running fire of applause from the men, and waving of handkerchiefs and kissing of hands from the women, who lined the pathway of the march during the three-quarters of an hour that it took us to march round....”
Although the Duke never courted popularity, seemed indeed to shun it and to regard the satisfaction shown by some of his colleagues in the plaudits of the multitude as a sign of weakness, there can be little doubt that he felt a glow of inward pleasure, however slight, when he reflected on the good feeling displayed towards him in the closing years of his long and well-filled life. Apt to be somewhat cynical on occasion, and to think that the times were “like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh,” he was neither censorious nor vindictive. Nelson preached the gospel of Duty, but Wellington lived it and sacrificed everything to it.
Brougham, as champion of Parliamentary Reform, was an opponent of Wellington, but in middle age he took up an independent position, and has left in his “Historical Sketches of Statesmen who flourished in the Time of George III” a magnificent testimony of the Duke’s worth.
“The peculiar characteristic of this great man,” he writes, “and which, though far less dazzling than his exalted genius, and his marvellous fortune, is incomparably more useful for the contemplation of the statesman, as well as the moralist, is that constant abnegation of all selfish feelings, that habitual sacrifice of every personal, every party consideration to the single object of strict duty—duty rigorously performed in what station soever he might be called to act. This was ever perceived to be his distinguishing quality; and it was displayed at every period of his public life, and in all matters from the most trifling to the most important.”
Regarding the Reform Bill, Brougham says that Wellington’s conduct “during the whole of the debates in both sessions upon that measure was exemplary. Opposing it to the utmost of his power, no one could charge him with making the least approach to factious violence, or with ever taking an unfair advantage.... After the Bill had passed, the same absence of all factious feelings marked his conduct.”
The Duke’s modesty, his good sense, candour and fairness, love of justice, hatred of oppression and fraud are touched upon by Brougham, who closes his brief acknowledgment of his subject’s virtues by quoting a remark made by Lord Denman, “the greatest judge of the day.” It is that of all Wellington’s “great and good qualities, the one which stands first, is his anxious desire ever to see justice done, and the pain he manifestly feels from the sight of injustice.”
On the morning of the 14th September 1852 the victor of Waterloo had a paralytic stroke at Walmer Castle. At six o’clock his valet entered the Duke’s room to call him, but he complained of not feeling quite well and sent for an apothecary. In the evening he was lying dead on his camp bedstead. We are apt to use the phrase “full of years and honour” rather too glibly perhaps, but it is intensely apposite when applied to the great Duke. He was eighty-three years of age, and as for honour a glance at the following list of distinctions bestowed upon Arthur Wellesley will make the fact self evident:
He was Duke of Wellington, Marquis of Wellington, Earl of Wellington in Somerset, Viscount Wellington of Talavera, Marquis of Douro, Baron Douro of Wellesley, Prince of Waterloo in the Netherlands, Duke of Ciudad Rodrigo in Spain, Duke of Bennoy in France, Duke of Vittoria, Marquis of Torres Vedras, Count of Vimiero in Portugal, a Grandee of the First Class in Spain, a Privy Councillor, Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, Colonel of the Rifle Brigade, a Field Marshal of Great Britain, a Marshal of Russia, Austria, Prussia, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands; a Knight of the Garter, the Holy Ghost, the Golden Fleece; a Knight Grand Cross of the Bath and of Hanover, a Knight of the Black Eagle, the Tower and Sword, St Fernando, of William of the Low Countries, Charles III, of the Sword of Sweden, St Andrew of Russia, the Annunciado of Sardinia, the Elephant of Denmark, of Maria Theresa, of St George of Russia, of the Crown of Rue of Saxony; a Knight of Fidelity of Baden, of Maximilian Joseph of Bavaria, of St Alexander Newsky of Russia, of St Hermenegilda of Spain, of the Red Eagle of Bradenburg, of St Januarius, of the Golden Lion of Hesse Cassel, of the Lion of Baden; and a Knight of Merit of Würtemburg. In addition, Wellington was Lord High Constable of England, Constable of the Tower and of Dover Castle, Warden, Chancellor and Admiral of the Cinque Ports, Lord-Lieutenant of Hampshire and of the Tower Hamlets, Ranger of St James’s Park and of Hyde Park, Chancellor of the University of Oxford, Commissioner of the Royal Military College, Vice-President of the Scottish Naval and Military Academy, the Master of Trinity House, a Governor of King’s College, a Doctor of Laws, and a Fellow of the Royal Society.
The motto on Wellington’s escutcheon, Virtutis fortuna comes—“Fortune is the companion of valour”—was exemplified in his long and eventful career, and perhaps the following words, once used by him in a dispatch, suggest how keen was his sense of responsibility: “God help me if I fail, for no one else will.” With true British inconsistency the nation spent £100,000 on the funeral of him whose habits were of Spartan simplicity, but with more appropriateness the body of the Conqueror of Napoleon was placed next to that of the Hero of Trafalgar in the crypt of St Paul’s Cathedral.
And so these two great Warriors sleep together. They were worthy of England; may England be worthy of them.