by Peter Snow
His private life remained tainted by various affairs and the continuing emptiness of his marriage to Kitty. But it was touching that this man, who so seldom gave way to emotion, drew close to his wife as she succumbed to disease towards the end of her life. He was with Kitty when she died in 1831, and he later remarked that it was strange that two people could be together for so long and understand one another only at the end. Much later in life Wellington himself offered a wry comment on his unfulfilled love life, when it was put to him that he must have inspired a lot of admiration and enthusiasm from women in Britain and abroad. ‘Oh yes, plenty of that! Plenty of that!’ he replied. ‘But no woman has ever loved me: never in my whole life.’
Wellington long outlived the other two commanders at Waterloo. Blücher lived another four years and died a national hero in Prussia at the age of seventy-six. Napoleon made an abortive bid to get the Prince Regent to grant him exile in Britain, but was promptly shipped off to the South Atlantic island of St Helena. He spent much of his time there telling his attendants how he should have won the Battle of Waterloo and why Wellington should have lost. He died, in melancholy delusion, in 1821. Many of his marshals lived to a ripe old age: Masséna died comparatively young at fifty-eight, but Grouchy lived to be eighty-one, Marmont seventy-eight, and Soult, who served as minister of war from 1830 to 1834, died at eighty-two. Ney, the greatest turncoat but the bravest of them all, was executed by French firing squad in Paris three weeks after Waterloo. He was granted his last wish – that he himself could give the order for the soldiers to fire. Wellington interceded with Louis XVIII on his behalf but was rebuffed.
Those who had served with Wellington suffered starkly contrasting fates after the war was over. Some went on to greater things. Fitzroy Somerset, without his right arm after Waterloo but with an impeccable record as Wellington’s ADC, ended his career more controversially as Lord Raglan, Commander in Chief in the Crimea, who had to take much of the blame for the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava in 1854. He died frustrated by his failure to storm Sebastopol in 1855. Harry Smith became a general too; with Juana at his side, he fought to expand the British Empire in India and Africa. Juana outlived him by twelve years and died in 1872.
Fred Ponsonby recovered from his wounds, nursed by his mother Countess Bessborough and his sister Lady Caroline Lamb, when she could tear herself away from the parties in post-war Brussels. ‘The lance pierced the lungs,’ Caroline wrote to her elder brother, Lord Duncannon, ‘he has been terribly trampled upon and hurt, entirely black and scratched and cut all over the body.’ Somehow Ponsonby survived his wounds and married Emily, the daughter of Earl Bathurst, the Secretary of State for War. He became a major general at forty-two, and was appointed governor of Malta in 1826. He was delighted to discover that a French officer he received one day at his residence was none other than the man who had given him a tot of brandy and treated him so kindly as he lay critically wounded on the battlefield of Waterloo. Fred and Emily Ponsonby had six children, and one of them, Henry, became private secretary to Queen Victoria. Fred Ponsonby died in Dorset in the year of her accession, 1837, and from then until Lady Emily died forty years later a deputation from her husband’s old regiment brought her a bouquet of flowers on each anniversary of Waterloo.
Of the riflemen, George Simmons somehow recovered from his wounds and rejoined the regiment. John Kincaid recalled Simmons’s ‘riddled body held together by a pair of stays’. Simmons lived long enough to be awarded the General Service Medal that was finally given to all the surviving Peninsular veterans. It was a shameful contrast to the recognition given to the survivors of Waterloo who received a commemorative medal soon after the battle. Simmons, who had survived both, died in 1858, aged seventy-two. Jonathan Leach, like William Grattan of the 88th, who accused Wellington of neglecting the men he had fought with, also highlighted the injustice done to the Peninsular veterans. ‘Ere many years elapse, if the names of Vimeira, Talavera, Salamanca, Vitoria etc etc should be partially remembered, the actors in those scenes (with a few exceptions) will be entirely forgotten.’
Ned Costello, typically, didn’t settle down until he had been through a whole set of extraordinary adventures. He fell for a Frenchwoman, discovered that she was betrothed to the Frenchman whose life he had spared at Badajoz, but didn’t allow that to stop him running off with her. Costello’s commanding officer, Jonathan Leach, helped him pay the woman’s passage to England, but the couple were so badly off that she went back to her family in France. Costello rejoined the army and found himself promoted to lieutenant and posted back to Spain. He ended a yeoman warder in the Tower of London.*
William Lawrence took home a French wife to his beloved Dorset and together they managed to live on his pension of nine pence a day. Thomas Garrety got home to Ireland to find his family convinced he had died at Badajoz. Thomas Todd, back in Edinburgh, was soon so broke that he set off to look for work in Spain and South America. Tom Morris was eventually discharged from the army he loved. But ‘like an old warhorse I still prick up my ears at the sound of the bugle or drum and occasionally in the dark and silent hour of night would busy memory bring before me some of the horrible scenes of carnage in which I have been engaged’. The last surviving veteran of Waterloo, Private Morris O’Shea, died in Canada in 1892.
Wellington’s men had nothing but praise for the way he had led them repeatedly to victory. A year after Waterloo William Wheeler wrote, ‘If England should ever require the service of her army again, and I should be with it, let me have “Old Nosey” to command. Our interests would be sure to be looked into, we should never have occasion to fear an enemy.’ For all his faults, which were not many – arrogance and insensitivity and a total refusal to delegate were hardly major failings – Wellington deserves to be numbered, with Marlborough a century earlier, among the greatest commanders of all time.
On 18 June 1852, thirty-seven years to the day after the Battle of Waterloo, a large crowd of people gathered outside the Duke of Wellington’s mansion, Apsley House at Hyde Park Corner – its address was No. 1, London. Britain’s most revered old soldier and statesman, now aged eighty-three, was to host his annual Waterloo Dinner. ‘A strong body of police’, reported the Morning Chronicle, ‘were in attendance to prevent obstructions to the traffic … and we are happy to say that not the least confusion took place. The popular favourites received their customary ovations from the crowd. Viscount Hardinge and Sir Harry Smith were cordially welcomed, but the loudest demonstration of favour appeared to have been reserved for Field Marshal the Marquess of Anglesey [the now one-legged former Earl of Uxbridge] who was enthusiastically cheered.’ At exactly half-past seven the Duke and the Prince Consort [Prince Albert] led a column of Wellington’s old companions in the field into the Waterloo Chamber, still decked with the paintings taken from Joseph’s coach at Vitoria. The table was laid with ‘sumptuous magnificence … The Portuguese silver plateau, a superb piece of workmanship, with its hundreds of emblematical figures, adorned the great length of the table … and silver gilt statuettes of the Duke and of Napoleon … the chandelier that lit the gallery was a gift from Czar Alexander of Russia.’
Eighty-five diners sat around the table, nearly all of them – except Lady Emily Ponsonby, Fred Ponsonby’s widow, survivors of Waterloo. Among them were Lieutenant General Lord Fitzroy Somerset, Lieutenant General Lord Seaton (formerly Colonel Colborne, who had led the 52nd against the Imperial Guard), Lieutenant General Sir George Scovell (the decoder of Napoleon’s ciphers), Lieutenant General Sir Hew Dalrymple Ross (who, as a captain back in 1809, had led the first Royal Horse Artillery Troop, the Chestnut Troop, which supported Craufurd’s fighting retreat across the Côa in 1810 and followed Wellington from the Peninsula to Waterloo), General Sir Peregrine Maitland (commander of the Guards at Waterloo) and Captain John Kincaid, by then a well-known diarist.
After dinner the Prince Consort rose to toast the Duke. He spoke of his ‘delight and satisfaction in seeing our illustriou
s host in such excellent health and spirits on the present occasion’. All rose to drink Wellington’s health, and the band played ‘See the Conquering Hero Comes’. Wellington then invited his guests to raise their glasses ‘to the memory of those who fell at the battle of Waterloo’. Then one by one he toasted each of the key units: ‘the cavalry that fought at Waterloo, coupled with the name of the Marquess of Anglesey’. Anglesey thanked the Duke and to great cheers and applause praised him for all he had done. Then one by one, with responses from each of them, Wellington went on to toast ‘the Foot Guards at Waterloo and Sir Peregrine Maitland’, the ‘artillery at Waterloo associated with the name of Sir Hew Ross’, the infantry and Lord Seaton, the staff officers, the King’s German Legion and the Prussians, coupled with the name of the man who had been his liaison officer with Blücher, Viscount Hardinge. Finally, Wellington singled out one ‘gallant soldier and valued officer’ who had ‘just returned from a recent arduous and difficult service’. The man he chose to make so much of was none other than his old companion Harry Smith, by now a general and a knight, who together with his still-devoted wife Juana, had just completed a particularly taxing time as governor of Cape Colony. They had been a hugely popular couple with the colonists, who named two towns after them – Harrismith and Ladysmith.
It was the last of Wellington’s Waterloo dinners. Nearly three months later, on 14 September 1852, Arthur, Duke of Wellington died. Harry Smith was one of the pallbearers in the funeral cortège, which wound through the streets of London to St Paul’s Cathedral watched by more than a million people. Not long before Wellington died someone asked him if there was anything in his long career that he could have done better. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I should have given more praise.’
Author’s Note
I was inspired to tell the story of Wellington and his men by the unprecedented variety of written memories of those who took part in this great military enterprise. Their clarity, honesty and wit make this 200-year-old story as real and as readable as if it had happened today. I have listed in the Bibliography all those who provide the most vivid accounts. The Notes refer to these works by their author’s name. Most of them are available in the British Library, the London Library or the library of the National Army Museum, as are all the volumes of the Duke’s own despatches. Many accounts have now become easily accessible in recent paperbacks from publishers such as Pen and Sword, Greenhill and Leonaur, and many have been digitised online. I have referred to these newly printed versions where they exist, and have always mentioned (in the Bibliography) the original title, publisher and date of publication of each book for those who prefer to handle the leather-bound early editions. I have satisfied myself that these modern publications are accurate reprints of the originals.
I owe a special debt to Laura Ponsonby, a direct descendant of Major General Sir Frederick Ponsonby, whose account of his breathtaking escape from death at Waterloo has always captivated me. Keen to retell his story I looked up the name Ponsonby in the London telephone directory. Laura’s was the first number I tried, and I struck gold. She generously invited me to her family home, the Priory at Shulbrede in Sussex, and showed me the little red book in which Emily Ponsonby wrote down the story her husband Fred dictated to her, too disabled by his wound to write himself. Madeleine Bessborough kindly allowed me to use her picture of Fred Ponsonby being revived by a chivalrous Frenchman as he lay near death on the battlefield at Waterloo. Janet Gleason, author of An Aristocratic Affair, directed me to a mass of memoir and correspondence that provided a striking insight into the aristocracy that spawned so many of Wellington’s officers. The fragile manuscript diaries of Rifles officer Jonathan Leach are preserved at the Royal Green Jackets Museum in Winchester, as are the letters of General ‘Black Bob’ Craufurd. Lieutenant General Sir Christopher Wallace, the Museum’s Chairman, Curator Christine Pullen and the encyclopaedic Ken Gray have been tireless in providing material and pictures.
At Jane Luard’s house in Gloucestershire I was delighted to find some sketches tucked away among the pages of her ancestor John Evan Luard’s journal of his experiences in the 4th Dragoons. Special thanks too to the National Army Museum, whose staff went to great lengths to lay hands on documents and pictures that have enriched this book – in particular Michael Ball, Julian Farrance, Pip Dodd and Danu Reid. I have had prompt help in obtaining manuscripts from Alyson Stanford at the Northern Ireland Public Record Office, from Colin Gibson who looks after the Raglan Papers at the Gwent Record Office, from the National Archives in Kew and from the British Library, where Dr Arnold Hunt, Curator of Historical Manuscripts, gave me invaluable help in deciphering a letter from Lord Castlereagh. Dr Gregory Fremont-Barnes of the Department of War Studies at Sandhurst cast his expert eye over my chapters on Waterloo. The team who look after the Wellington papers at the University of Southampton were always helpful, as were Paul Evans and Mark Smith at the Royal Artillery’s Firepower Museum. I had useful help from Mike Galer of the Museum of the 9th/12th Royal Lancers in Derby and from Bobby Collins, an expert on the history of the 12th Light Dragoons. Ken Timbers told me enough about Napoleonic War artillery to fill several books. Stephen Cotton lent me his bound copies of his ancestor Sir Stapleton Cotton’s memoirs. Captain John Cornish helped me establish the whereabouts of Joseph Bonaparte’s famous chamber pot. Nick Haynes, in Spain and Portugal, and Graeme Cooper in Belgium gave me exhaustive battlefield tours. Alyn and Lizzie Shipton, who produced a radio programme on the Peninsular War that I presented with my son Dan, were kind enough to provide me with all their research material. Andrew Green, another friend and radio producer, and a frequent visitor to the Newspaper Museum in Colindale, has unearthed many a press account of the political tussles at home over Wellington’s war. I am grateful too to Frances Carver and her fellow enthusiasts in ‘Waterloo 200’, who are determined, like me, to remind the world of its debt to the Iron Duke and his army.
The Wellesley family have been unfailingly courteous and enthusiastic about yet another invader of their magnificent homes at Apsley House and Stratfield Saye. My thanks for their advice and hospitality to the (8th) Duke and Duchess of Wellington, to their son Charles, Marquess of Douro, and to their daughter Jane Wellesley, who has written her own history of the family. Kate Jenkins and Josephine Oxley have been tireless points of contact on Wellington memorabilia.
Among the many modern biographies of Wellington I have found Elizabeth Longford’s Wellington: The Years of the Sword, Christopher Hibbert’s Wellington: A Personal History and Richard Holmes’s brisk but trenchant Wellington: The Iron Duke the most valuable commentaries on his life and personality. Holmes’s Redcoat is a superb commentary on what a soldier’s life must have been like 200 years ago. Charles Esdaile’s and Jac Weller’s studies of the Peninsular War are also essential reading. Dr Michael Crumplin, a medical man himself, has been a generous and authoritative source of information about the treatment of wounds and diseases in the Peninsular War, and his book Men of Steel: Surgery in the Napoleonic Wars is full of harrowing pictures of the injuries soldiers suffered.
The book would never have been written without the encouragement of my agent, Julian Alexander, and the enthusiasm and inspiration of Roland Philipps, my redoubtable editor and, when he had time, Managing Director of the publishers, John Murray. He and his team, in particular Victoria Murray-Browne and Anna Kenny-Ginard, provided the ultimate professional back-up to my race to meet the deadline. I am hugely grateful to them, to my cartographer Rodney Paull and to my meticulous picture researcher Juliet Brightmore, whose knack of choosing the right mix of illustrations was a priceless asset. The book’s copy editor, Peter James, must be the best in the business and I was delighted to have him on board.
Finally, of course, my family. They’ve not only had to live with a hermit these past two years. They’ve read the text exhaustively and commented on it rigorously. Dan, my son, has established himself as one of the best authorities on eighteenth-century warfare with his book on Britai
n’s battle for North America, Death or Victory. Nearly every conversation I’ve had with him has begun with a question about muskets or military discipline. My journalist wife, Ann MacMillan, managing editor of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in London, is the best judge I know of when a narrative goes off the rails. She and her sister, Margaret MacMillan, the historian, who is already a legend for her book Peacemakers and who has been a matchless editorial guide, have constantly dragged me back from the heat of battle to tell the human story of Wellington and the men who fought with him.
Notes
The authors’ names refer to their alphabetical listing in the Bibliography.
I have used the following abbreviations:
NA
The National Archives, Kew, London
RGJ
Royal Green Jackets
W
Wellesley/Wellington
WD
Wellington, Dispatches
WO
War Office
WSD
Wellington, Supplementary Despatches
Introduction
‘I don’t know’: Maxwell, vol. 1, p. 4
‘The general was in the thick’: WSD, vol. 4, pp. 184–6
‘a damned fool’: Arbuthnot, vol. 1, p. 168
Chapter One: First foothold
‘caused some awful breakages’: Leach, p. 33