Wellington and Waterloo

by Foster, R E

  The earliest version of the Wellington-Uxbridge exchange was John Wilson Croker’s. Greville’s memoirs were still appearing when the three volumes of Croker’s diaries and correspondence appeared in 1884–1885. He became Wellington’s friend following his appointment as the Duke’s deputy as Irish Chief Secretary in 1808; they last met on 2 September 1852. Staunchly Tory in his politics, Croker was best known as a writer, in particular for the Quarterly Review. His great fault was what Gleig called his ‘excessive self-appreciation’. In 1836, for example, he was recorded laying ‘down the law after dinner to the Duke of Wellington, and according to custom asserting the superiority of his own information on all subjects having even flatly contradicted the Duke, who had mentioned some incident that took place at the battle of Waterloo’. When he further insisted that the Duke was wrong about percussion cups, Wellington seized the moment for a memorable put-down: ‘My dear Croker, I can yield to your superior information on most points, and you may perhaps know a great deal more of what passed at Waterloo than myself, but as a sportsman, I will maintain my point about the percussion cups.’503

  Fortunately, Croker’s overbearing ego was redeemed by his Irish charm. It also meant that he was rarely, as so many were, overawed by the great man. He is consequently a source for many of the best-known Wellington anecdotes and the first or sole source for some of them. These include Wellington’s burning his violin as a young man, his view that Assaye was his finest achievement and his meeting with Nelson. Croker also secured from the Duke his version of one of the most celebrated Waterloo lines, ‘Up, Guards, and at ’em!’ The words were not his, Wellington assured him, a view confirmed by the son of the man to whom they were supposedly addressed, Sir Peregrine Maitland. They had already been too long part of Waterloo mythology, however, for such conclusive denials to make any difference.504

  Books more explicitly about the Duke included Earl Stanhope’s 1888 Notes of Conversations with the Duke of Wellington 1831–1851. Known as Viscount Mahon until 1855, Stanhope held minor political office under Peel and later helped found the National Portrait Gallery. He first encountered Wellington in 1831 and their subsequent meetings owed much to the fact that the family home of Deal Castle was close to the Duke’s favourite summer residence of Walmer Castle. From October 1831, Stanhope took it upon himself to record details of their conversations ‘either on the same day or at the furthest the day after the conversation which they record; and I have never noted anything when not quite sure of remembering it exactly.’505 Unlike Greville, Stanhope eschewed political gossip in favour of what he termed ‘history’. For all this, the book is a little disappointing. He was markedly deferential to his subject and often relied on other guests such as FitzRoy Somerset and Hardinge to draw Wellington out. Moreover, approximately half of what he records covers a relatively short time span between May 1837 and the end of 1840. Much of this merely confirms what had already appeared in Greville and Croker, and of the fifteen references to Waterloo only two or three amount to anything substantial. Stanhope nevertheless records for us the authentic voice of Wellington. We hear his estimation of Napoleon’s being equivalent to 30,000–40,000 soldiers in an army, as also his less-than-complimentary verdict that soldiers in the British Army were scum who enlisted for drink, and maxims such as, ‘My rule always was to do the business of the day in the day.’ Perhaps the most important detail for which we are indebted to Stanhope was Wellington’s confirmation, in November 1840, both of the venue and the substance of his meeting with Blücher on the evening of 18 June near La Belle Alliance.506

  The other great memorialist of Wellington’s later years was Lord Francis Egerton, from 1846 Earl of Ellesmere. Earlier proof of his devotion to the Duke, whom he first met in 1818, was his marrying Charles Greville’s daughter on Waterloo Day 1822.507 Their daughter, who edited Personal Reminiscences of the Duke of Wellington in 1904, described it as a ‘sort of Diary and Book of Reminiscences etc, etc’. It is, in fact, far more about Waterloo than its title suggests, though it did not reveal anything especially new. Rather, like Stanhope, it confirmed some of the Duke’s comments about the battle that were already in the public domain, for example his contention that with his army from the Peninsular War he would have made short shrift of Napoleon. Also reproduced were Wellington’s memoranda on Waterloo drawn up for Egerton’s use in preparing his articles for the Quarterly Review in the 1840s. These had previously appeared out of context in the Supplementary Despatches. There was some original material in the form of table talk from the mid-1840s, though this needs to be treated with caution. In 1845, for instance, Egerton records that Wellington told him that, ‘The French had not the ghost of a chance till they carried La Haye. It was their only success and came too late to be of consequence.’508 This was a far cry indeed from the close run thing of 1815.

  One of the original sources for the latter, the most famous of all Wellington’s comments about Waterloo, is contained in The Creevey Papers. Creevey was an eccentric Foxite-Whig and gossip. Serendipitously, he had gone to Brussels for the sake of his wife’s health in autumn 1814. He met Wellington there the following April. His account of the Hundred Days was written up in 1822. There is no doubt that in doing so, he was guilty of at least some embellishment: the account is assured; contemporaries recalled him as having been in a panic. But there is no reason to doubt the substance of what he says. Above all, he tells us how he enjoyed a personal meeting with the Duke at his Brussels headquarters on the early afternoon of 19 June. To him, therefore, posterity is indebted for confirmation of Wellington’s conviction that Blücher had been ‘damnably licked’ at Ligny, the bravery of his men, especially the Guards defending Hougoumont, and the idiom that would become part of the English language:

  He made a variety of observations in his short, natural, blunt way, but with the greatest gravity all the time, and without the least approach to anything like triumph or joy – ‘It has been a damned serious business,’ he said. ‘Blücher and I have lost 30,000 men. It has been a damned nice thing – the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life.’509

  Though it was long known that Creevey had interesting papers, and even his incautious friend, Charles Greville, thought it premature to publish them before 1840, it is remarkable that they only appeared in 1903.

  Such a cornucopia of new and original published material inevitably gave rise to a new generation of Wellington biographies and Waterloo histories as the century drew to a close. Amongst the former, the best was that by the Conservative MP, Sir Herbert Maxwell. It was made the more authoritative for his having been allowed access to Wellington’s unpublished papers at Apsley House for the years after 1832. He devoted fewer than forty pages in his 1899 two-volume tome to Waterloo. They did not attempt to argue that the Duke was infallible and Maxwell cites without comment the Waterloo Despatch as proof that he ‘made honourable acknowledgement of what he owed to his faithful ally’. The most original part was an appendix which transcribed Lady Salisbury’s notes of her 1836 conversation with the Duke about Waterloo in which he denied feeling exultation and confirmed the truth of his improbable meeting with Creevey.510 Distinguished amongst the histories was John Codman Ropes’s 1893 The Campaign of Waterloo: A Military History. Ropes was an American lawyer who turned military historian when his brother was killed at Gettysburg. His main focus was Napoleon, ‘to explain […] the complete defeat in a very brief campaign of the acknowledged master of modern warfare’. Ropes’s conclusion was that the outcome was more to be explained by French errors than the merits of their opponents. Had Grouchy intercepted the Prussians ‘Napoleon would have been able to employ his whole army against that of Wellington, and would have defeated it’. Wellington indeed was censured for delaying the order to concentrate at Quatre Bras: ‘this […] was not only uncalled for, but […] gravely imperilled the success of the allies’.511 Ropes was also amongst the first writers in English to take account of a short letter found in Prussian archives in 1876 from Wellington to Bl
ücher. It was written south of Quatre Bras at Frasnes on 16 June at 10.30am. Not amongst Wellington’s published papers, it suggested that his forces were sufficiently assembled as to be capable of providing imminent assistance at Ligny. Some Prussian writers saw this as a deliberate falsification on Wellington’s part in order to ensure that his ally stood and fought. Ropes rejected the charge but did conclude that Wellington had been badly served by his subordinates as to the precise disposition of his army.512

  One of Britain’s most famous soldiers, Sir Garnet Wolseley, agreed with Ropes on the latter point – ‘one that very closely concerns our national honour’ – in his 1895 The Decline and Fall of Napoleon. He too though, was quite critical of Wellington’s conduct, especially before 16 June, and concluded that ‘the honest historian must admit that it was the splendid audacity of this Prussian move’ born of Blücher’s loyalty to Wellington, ‘that determined the fate of Napoleon’s army at Waterloo’. His Despatch, which he judged, contained ‘an unusual number of mistakes’ (albeit the result of incomplete information as opposed to anything more sinister), gave him ‘abundant reasons for wishing his official account of the battle and of the operations which preceded it to be accepted as final and without question’.513

  Perhaps perversely, it was another great late-Victorian soldier, Field-Marshal Lord Roberts, who saw fit to re-state the case for the Duke’s infallibility. In The Rise of Wellington (1895), like Wolseley’s book a series of essays which had first appeared in Pall Mall Magazine, Roberts asserted that during the Waterloo campaign, ‘a feat almost unequalled in the annals of war’, ‘Napoleon made many mistakes, Wellington made none’. He had therefore been ‘greatly underrated as a commander’. However, Roberts’ book proved offensive to Wellington devotees by advancing the further suggestion that the Duke had been ‘somewhat overrated as a man’. He ventured the astute observation that the accepted public image of Wellington as a slave to duty obscured the reality that ‘there appears to be no instance in his military career of his adopting a course where his duty was opposed to his own interests, or of his being called upon to sacrifice the latter in order to carry out the former’. His root objection to him as a man, however, was that he ‘did little or nothing to promote the welfare of his soldiers, or to make the nation understand what a debt of gratitude it owed them’.514

  It was surely Roberts she had in mind when Lady Rose Weigall decided to publish Lady Burghersh’s correspondence with the Duke in 1903. Lady Burghersh was both her mother and Wellington’s niece. Her aim was clearly to rehabilitate her great uncle’s character, which, she complained, had recently been unjustly represented ‘as hard, stern, and unsympathetic’. For this reason, she also included a brief memoir of the Duke, written by Lady Burghersh soon after his death, which emphasised his kindness to servants, fondness for children and his generosity. Lady Rose was not concerned with his military reputation, which she felt to be intact: most of the letters date from after 1830 and include next to nothing on Waterloo.515 The same motive, of wanting to defend Wellington from the old charge that he was cold and unfeeling, seems to have dictated the timing of the publication of the Reverend G. R. Gleig’s reminiscences. Gleig had written them, clearly prompted by the likes of Croker and Stanhope, in the mid-1880s, but with the express instruction that they should not appear until well after his death (1888). His daughter published them in 1904 but only after having had the proofs sanctioned by the third Duke. They emphasised the first Duke’s love of hunting, music, and his prodigious memory.516 Twentieth-century writers would have much to draw upon and debate.

  The Weekly Dispatch had written on Wellington’s death that, ‘Many among our readers will have to talk of the subject of this article to satisfy the interest of children’s children; the best proof of the sincerity of present praises is our belief that his name will be spoken to children’s children with increased reverence and affection.’ Half a century later, there was some evidence that the paper’s prediction had been borne out. Growing up near Walmer, a future Wellington biographer, Richard Aldington, recalled that elderly people regularly spoke deferentially of ‘The Duke’, ‘The old Duke’ and ‘In the old Duke’s time’ without the need for further elaboration. Similarly, Harry Boland of the Inner Temple wrote that, ‘It is undoubted that every fresh fact which comes to light about the Duke goes still further to establish the nobility of his character.’ A retrospective in The Times on New Year’s Eve 1900 judged Wellington the ‘greatest of modern Englishmen’.517

  The reality was that though still high, Wellington’s personal reputation had inevitably fallen since his funeral. This was partly because Wellington the man, much as Lord Roberts insisted, was popularly believed to have been insensitive, particularly towards those who had served under him. Comparison to Nelson is instructive here. Immediately after Waterloo, the Duke’s popular reputation had exceeded Nelson’s; at the time of his death it was still at least comparable. In the second half of the century, however, the popular tide moved strongly in favour of the more charismatic admiral. The fate of their respective London memorials mirrored the pattern. Whilst Trafalgar Square with Nelson’s column became a much-loved landmark, Wellington’s statue at Hyde Park Corner remained controversial. In 1884, despite some opposition, Parliament sanctioned its removal as part of a scheme to ease traffic congestion. In August, Pickford’s duly transported it to Aldershot; it was officially re-inaugurated at Round Hill near the Royal Garrison church on 19 August 1885.518 Perhaps even more telling was a Sotheby’s auction of 1904. Wellington’s letter of 19 June 1815 to Sir Charles Flint in which he first referred to Waterloo as a battle of giants sold for an impressive £101. The same anonymous buyer paid a world record £1,030 for Nelson’s last complete letter to Lady Hamilton.519

  The dent in Wellington’s reputation between 1852 and 1900 was also partly the product of a reaction to his politics. These were largely, because controversial, conveniently ignored at the time of his funeral. Wellington left no obvious political legacy. The more able Peelites, such as Gladstone, whose careers survived the 1846 Corn Law split, morphed into what became the Liberal Party during the 1850s. They could hardly claim the Duke as their political inspiration. Neither could Derby and Disraeli, the Conservative Party’s leaders down to 1880, for they had broken with Peel and Wellington in defence to Protection. The generation after Wellington’s death, moreover, was to be dominated by Liberal governments and two fresh extensions of the franchise. Wellington’s name politically was, above all else, popularly identified with opposition to Reform. Even the Duke’s strongest advocates in the half century after his death found his political career problematic. Sir William Fraser asserted quite openly that he had been wrong to pursue it. Many biographers consequently either stopped in 1815 or devoted relatively little attention to it. It was unfortunate in this respect that the Supplementary Despatches stopped at 1832 for the Duke’s best political service was rendered after that date. A few scholarly writers, such as Sir Charles Parker and Sir Herbert Maxwell, pointed out this fact, the former noting how Wellington had helped avoid a constitutional clash between the two houses of Parliament, the latter that ‘it was his influence in Opposition which mainly operated to prevent sweeping political change becoming a vast and destructive convulsion’. But their arguments simply did not percolate into a popular consciousness ingrained with Wellington as anti-Reformer.520

  Wellington’s reputation as a warrior indelibly associated with Waterloo fared better. Though new conflicts intervened, the memory of what he and his men had achieved may have dimmed but it still shone. Whilst Wellington may not have been comfortable with the fact that the battle was now more fully appreciated as an allied victory, it was still remembered as a predominantly British one. As such, it remained the point of reference for any subsequent British military engagement down to 1900. And though popular celebrations of Waterloo Day had ceased by the 1870s they still had echoes in the great end-of-century celebrations of monarchy and empire in 1887 and 1897. Memen
toes of the Duke were not uncommon in Diamond Jubilee exhibitions, whilst a parade of veterans in Boston the same year was headed by someone who had acted as a boy-assistant to surgeons in the 14th Dragoons at Waterloo.521 Rightly or wrongly, the inference was that without Wellington and Waterloo there might have been neither empire nor monarchy.

  As the new century dawned, however, there was a clear recognition that warfare was changing. Speaking at the United Services Institute in 1901, Major-General C. E. Webster estimated that modern weaponry would necessitate armies of Waterloo size fighting in an area nine times as large. Britain’s position in the world was changing too. In 1900, with the Second Boer War ongoing, the Bishop of Southwark said that, ‘It was a hackneyed saying that the battle of Waterloo was won in the playing fields of Eton.’ He thought that race and character would determine the fate of twentieth century conflicts. A fortnight later a Mr Verney thought that the Battle of Colenso had been lost there and that professionalism must replace amateurism in the army.522 Within a decade or so, with the battle’s centenary approaching, a new conflict would prompt contemporaries to reassess once more Wellington and Waterloo.