The War of Wars

by Robert Harvey

  The attack was highly successful and Tippoo was killed. Wellesley, who arrived afterwards, found his body. The British lost some 400 killed or wounded to 9,000 on Mysore’s side – largely the result of a rampage of atrocities committed by British troops on storming the fortress, which showed definitively that the Indians were not the only ones to perpetrate horrific cruelties on their opponents. Wellesley, to his credit, was horrified.

  Bernard apparently asked to be relieved of his command, as he was exhausted, although he later denied having said this. He was dismayed to find that he was to be replaced by his junior rival, the pampered governor-general’s brother who had played little part in the actual fighting. ‘Before the sweat was dry on my brow,’ he remarked, ‘I was superseded by an inferior officer.’ The failure to prevent the murderous rampage of his men, after the brilliant success of the assault, may have been the reason for his being relieved.

  Wellesley added to his personal unpopularity by rightly imposing a stern hand on his raping, murdering and looting soldiers, hanging four of them and flogging others. This episode marks another crucial step in his evolution as a personality: his ruthless disciplinarian streak had been born out of justifiable circumstances, and was aggravated by an enduring contempt for his own men, which caused their respect and fear of him as a commander to contain a streak of hatred as well – his attitude was much more typical of an upstart Irish officer than a traditional British patrician with a paternalistic streak towards his inferiors. In this Wellesley was way behind the thinking of enlightened soldiers like Burgoyne and Moore.

  For all his snobbery and disdain for the lower classes, however, Wellesley was genuinely moved by casualties among his own men and sought to minimize them – even if he did not hesitate for a moment to risk their lives if he thought it necessary. In this he was like his equally ruthless future adversary, Napoleon.

  He was appointed senior military officer in the region, a vast swathe of the subcontinent, while the main armies withdrew leaving a five-year-old Hindu prince nominally on the throne. The impecunious Arthur also secured some £4,000 in prize money. The young officer ruled his new fiefdom from the splendid comforts of Tippoo’s palace. He launched a campaign against the countryside bandits, in particular Dhoudiah Wauga, whose huge force was routed by a much smaller disciplined force commanded by Wellesley with far superior firepower in 1800.

  Mornington, after his long-distance success against Tippoo Sultan, had ascended ever higher up the ladder of pomposity. He was appointed an Irish marquess, which however infuriated him as supposedly inadequate to his merits – it was ‘a pinchbeck’ reward. Pitt wrote a conciliatory but firm letter in response. He concluded to this seeker after titles and rank:

  I have said nothing on the little intrinsic difference under the present circumstances between an English and Irish marquisate, because I conceive you look rather to the public impression than to the thing itself. But as far as in itself it may be an object, it will certainly not escape you that under the circumstances of the Union, the difference to any person already possessed of a British title is little more than nominal; scarcely extending further than to a question of style in the journals and debates of the House of Lords or of relative precedence as to four or five individuals; objects on which I do not believe such a mind as yours can set much serious value.

  When the new marquess appointed his younger brother to lead an expedition to Egypt Bernard, furious at being superseded yet again by the governor-general’s brother, stormed in to see the marquess and forced him to transfer the command. Arthur Wellesley, learning this, was for the first time furious with his brother. Wellesley flatly refused to act as second-in-command, a convenient excuse being provided by his catching ‘Malabar itch’, a painful condition which was rendered even more so by its cure – baths in nitric acid which actually dissolved the towels he used to dry himself. He was appallingly rude to his brother and corresponded coldly with his secretary. Only later was he to acknowledge the ‘evil consequences of all this to my reputation’.

  Indeed he was cordially loathed by most officers as a mediocrity who had achieved his position through his brother and manifested his family’s folie de grandeur. Fate, at least, was kind to him: the ship in which he was to have departed for Egypt sank with the loss of all hands.

  Wellesley’s fortunes were, however, about to change. In March 1803 he was assigned to take advantage of the divisions between the five great Maratha princes of central India to extend British rule. He was placed under the command of General Stuart with around 15,000 men and a force of 9,000 from Hyderabad under his personal command. He marched this large army a full 600 miles under his customary iron discipline, carrying its own supplies. The force reached Poona in mid-April to rescue the Peshwa Baji Rao, the ruler to the throne from which he had been deposed by another Peshwa, Jeswant Rao. Baji was to become a puppet of the British. This was the classic pattern of colonial expansionism.

  The other Maratha princes combined against the British, raising an army of about 15,000 infantry, 20,000 skirmishers and some 40,000 light cavalry. Wellesley, ordered by Stuart, decided to strike the first blow and seized the highly defended fort of Ahmednuggar in August. After much marching and countermarching, two British-led armies, under Wellesley and Colonel James Stevenson, managed to surprise the main Maratha force, now 200,000-strong, at Assaye near the rivers Kaitna and Juah.

  Wellesley decided to attack without waiting for Stevenson’s reinforcements in case the Marathas escaped. It was a precarious position. He moved due east along the Kaitna to what he believed was a ford between two villages, had to cross the river with his force in full view of the Marathas and draw it up in lines of battle. If the Marathas had attacked first, he would have been exposed with his small force unready for battle with its back to the river. As it was, the Maratha artillery commanded by German mercenaries, swung their guns around to fire upon the British. Once across, Wellesley placed his cavalry on the right and his infantry on the left in the narrow space between the two rivers. The British came under intense artillery fire.

  Infantry detachments under Lieutenant-Colonel William Orrock misread his orders and attacked the strongest Maratha position outside the village of Assaye to the north under intense bombardment. An eyewitness wrote: ‘The pickets and the 74th regiment were charged by a wonderful fine body of cavalry and infantry. The pickets lost all their officers except Lt Colonel Orrock and had only about 75 men left out of 400 men of whom only about 100 are likely to survive. Every officer of this corps except Major Swinton and Mr Grant the quartermaster were either killed or desperately wounded.’

  The result was that the Maratha line gave way in the south at its weakest point, under steady infantry attack, while it held in the north. Wellesley, without hesitating, ordered another attack with his sparse forces. This time the whole Maratha line broke and fled. Some 1,500 British and Indian forces had been killed or wounded to 6,000 Marathas.

  It had been a hard-fought battle against overwhelming odds decided by the greater discipline and steadiness under fire of the British-led force. Wellesley always considered it his finest battle and proof that old-fashioned linear tactics coupled with disciplined last-minute volleys followed by bayonet attacks could prevail. Wellesley’s brigade-major said of him: ‘The general was in the thick of the action the whole time, and had a horse killed under him. No man could have shown a better example to his troops than he did. I never saw a man so cool and collected.’

  Wellesley had two horses shot from under him. He had shown a lightning readiness to seize opportunities, a cool and decisive grasp of battlefield tactics and great courage. At last he commanded the respect of his brother officers.

  In November Wellesley set out again alongside Stevenson to take on two Maratha armies at Argaum. Again he staged a frontal attack, bringing his own artillery to bear. Under his disciplined volleys the enemy ranks gave way. This time it was a walkover – some 350 British casualties to 5,000 Maratha ones.

&
nbsp; He now set about bringing order to the area under his command. He himself showed a deep concern for the soldiers’ welfare, as well as enforcing discipline, sending bottles of Madeira to the sick and visiting them. He also visited his far-flung dominions. Water was always a problem:

  It was painful to see large bodies of men calling out for water and to have no water to give them. There are no springs to be found in that country; but the armies usually encamp near the dry beds of rivers, and there, by digging a little way into the sand, water of good quality is generally found. But sometimes this resource fails, and then both men and animals suffer greatly, or rush to any neighbouring village – for where there is a village there is water – and obtain the supply of its tank. But sometimes the tank is small and soon exhausted, and then, where scarcely anything remains but thick mud, one sees the men struggling and fighting in it for the last drop of water.

  He was yearning to return to England. ‘I don’t exactly see the necessity that I should stay several years in India in order to settle affairs . . . I look to England, and I conceive that my views in life will be advanced by returning there. I don’t conceive that any man has a right to call upon me to remain in a subordinate situation in this country, contrary to my inclination.’

  When Mornington was recalled to be replaced by the elderly Cornwallis, Arthur decided to call it a day too, knowing that his victories would not be enough to preserve him from the revenge of his brother officers in India under a new and less sympathetic governor-general. In March 1805, he returned with a knighthood from the British and a fortune of over £40,000. He was worn out bodily – ‘sallow and wan’ – but recovered his health aboard the enforced idleness of the long voyage home and bracing sea air. His motto had been ‘dash at the first fellows that make their appearance and the campaign will be ours’ – a strong echo of Nelson.

  The campaigns had aged him. The youthful jollity and japes were things of the past. He was a stern and incorruptible disciplinarian, refusing bribes from Indian princes, methodical and careful to a fault in his preparation. He arrived in England in September. The country had just emerged from the threat of French invasion, and was only a month away from the contradictory battles of Trafalgar and Austerlitz.

  At thirty-six, he was temporarily unemployed, being sent to command a brigade at sleepy Hastings. He was philosophical: ‘I have ate of the King’s salt, and therefore I conceive it to be my duty to serve with unhesitating zeal and cheerfulness, when and wherever the King or his government may think proper to employ me.’

  Although he had acquired a reputation for womanizing in India, on his return he was thrilled to hear that his old love Kitty Pakenham still longed for him. But she had aged too and had become religious and serious-minded. Wellesley resolved to seek her hand without first meeting her, now that he had established his position in society and earned significant wealth. But when he met her first after twelve years away he remarked to his brother, ‘She is grown damned ugly, by jove.’ Yet he stuck by his promise and married her in Dublin in April 1806. She was sweet, domesticated and narrow-minded, and despised by most of Wellesley’s newly glamorous circle. But she was devoted to him, at least to begin with, and he cannot have been an easy man to get on with – reserved, commanding and with a roving eye for other women. They had two sons.

  He secured election to parliament as part of the Grenville faction, his old friend Pitt having died. With the fall of Grenville and the accession of Portland he was offered the job of chief secretary for Ireland, which he dutifully fulfilled in that divided land until the summer of 1807, while pressing for another military command. At last he was given the job of carrying out the land operation on Lord Gambier’s expedition to Copenhagen to cut out the Danish fleet, a job he performed with spectacular efficiency. He was now a respected military commander with a string of distinguished engagements behind him. Yet he was far from being a household name.

  Wellesley now seemed destined for an extraordinary adventure: to travel with Francisco de Miranda at the head of the expedition to liberate Caracas. With the French invasion of Portugal, however, he was given a new assignment. In July 1808 he spoke to a good friend: ‘I am thinking of the French that I am going to fight . . . Tis enough to make one thoughtful; but no matter: my die is cast, they may overwhelm me, but I don’t think they will out-manoeuvre me . . . I am not afraid of them, as everybody else seems to be.’

  Behind him he left an undistinguished political career which chiefly revolved around defending his brother Richard from the inevitable charges of corruption, lavish expenditure and tyranny that had followed his return from India – just as similar changes had followed the incontestably more gifted Clive and Warren Hastings, but with better reason. In addition their brother William Wellesley-Pole was charged with covering up corruption in the Admiralty.

  Sir Arthur thus came from a clan that was distrusted by the public, and his appointment was greeted by a storm of opprobrium. Once again he was superseding senior generals: he had only just been promoted lieutenant-general. Even the King had serious doubts. His brother’s friend Lord Castlereagh had been instrumental in the choice. The expedition was limited in scope and small in size, and seemed as doomed as other previous British military adventures on the continent. It consisted of 9,000 men sailing on 12 July 1808 and arriving a week later at La Coruña (Corunna to the British) on the Peninsula that was to make his reputation.

  Arriving there he found to his dismay that the northern Spanish army under General Blake had been defeated by Marshal Bessières at Medina del Rio Seco. Meanwhile General Dupont with 15,000 men had just taken Córdoba in the south and General Masséna had just occupied Valladolid in the centre. The new ‘King’ of Spain, Joseph Bonaparte, entered Madrid with 4,000 troops to take up his throne just the day after Wellington first set foot on Peninsular soil. The news was all bad. Only the town of Zaragoza, it seemed, had held out. It appeared that everywhere the French were invincible, moving relentlessly forward to occupy the huge, rugged Spanish interior. What possible impression could Wellesley and his puny force make upon them?

  Wellesley’s force sailed disconsolately further south to Oporto in northern Portugal. He did not know that an astonishing thing was happening even as he sailed: Dupont had advanced beyond Córdoba to inflict a final defeat on the Spaniards, but the sullen people of the countryside had begun to resist the advance while others rose up behind him. After a few days the increasingly anxious general ordered a retreat in those sunbaked, impenetrable mountains. He was harried and ambushed on all sides. On 23 July he surrendered to the ragged Spanish ‘army’ of General Castaños.

  The first triumph in the Peninsular War had thus been achieved by the Spaniards themselves. They were a people oppressively misgoverned for centuries, whose social fabric was antiquated, unaffected by the economic and social revolutions that had taken place elsewhere in Europe, still living as peasants on harsh soils that barely afforded a living in many areas, the upper class grown rich on South American gold and silver and refusing to engage in the menial tasks of trade and industry. But the peasants were proud, and could be bitter fighters. Usually steeped in provincialism, with poor communications linking their enormous country, they had no knowledge of or interest in nearby provinces, but their swelling nationalism and resentment at the foreign invaders had reared its head for the first time.

  Wellesley knew nothing of this. Further south there was discouraging news: a Russian fleet was in the Tagus, which might be hostile, as well as several French vessels. He decided it would be safest to make a landing from the Atlantic some hundred miles to the north at Mondego Bay, and from there to march on Lisbon. Encouragingly, he learnt that the Portuguese countryside had also risen against the French, and that the latter occupied only the capital and a few strongholds to the west around the Tagus.

  When Wellesley’s men at last went ashore, they were joined by a force of some 4,000 men from Gibraltar led by General Sir Brent Spencer. But Wellesley also learnt to his c
hagrin that he was soon to be reinforced by an army of some 16,000 under three senior officers. Sir John Moore had at last extricated himself and his men from the clutches of the King of Sweden and was preparing to embark from England; before him General Sir Hew Dalrymple, an old buffer who had not seen active service for fourteen years, was to arrive with General Sir Henry Burrard, another amiable officer of limited intelligence. That had been the decision of the King and the Duke of York, who considered Wellesley too junior. Castlereagh wrote to him: ‘I shall rejoice if it shall have befallen to your lot to place the Tagus in our hands; if not, I have no fear that you will find many opportunities of doing yourself honour and your country service’. Wellesley promised to respect his seniors but said privately, ‘I hope that I shall beat Junot before any of them arrive, and then they may do as they please with me’.

  It was brave talk, yet he cannot but have feared that his first great opportunity was to be snatched away from him after his adventure had barely begun. Wellesley calculated that with the defeat of Dupont confirmed, the French armies in Spain would be too busy to threaten him from the east. He decided to move down along the coastal road to Lisbon with 12,300 British troops and 1,500 Portuguese, so that he could not be attacked from the east without possibility of evacuation and had naval support.

  He had little artillery and virtually no cavalry, but his men made good progress in the intense heat of a Portuguese summer through fertile and well-provisioned countryside. Junot had sent General Laborde with 4,000 men up the main road to Lisbon along the Tagus and instructed General Loison with another army across the river to reinforce him. On 15 August there was a first skirmish as the enthusiastic British advanced guard routed a French patrol, only to pursue it straight into the main French army: two officers and twenty-seven men were lost. Two days later Wellesley ordered a general attack on Laborde’s small army for fear that he would soon be reinforced by Loison.