Duke of Wellington

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, was the British general who defeated the French in Spain and Portugal and, with the Prussians, beat Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815. Born into the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, he first made his name in India, and after his fighting years he became a leading Tory politician, serving as prime minister from 1828 to 1830 and as the army's commander-in-chief until his death in 1852.

Wellesley, originally spelled Wesley, was born on 1 May 1769, probably in Dublin, the sixth of nine children of the Earl of Mornington. He did poorly at Eton, and his mother despaired of her "awkward son". After a spell at a French riding academy at Angers, he was commissioned as an ensign in 1787 and served as aide-de-camp to the lord lieutenant of Ireland. Turned down as a suitor for Kitty Pakenham in 1793, he burned his violins and took up soldiering seriously, buying his way to lieutenant-colonel of the 33rd Foot. His first campaign, in the Netherlands in 1794 and 1795, ended in retreat, but taught him, he said, what not to do.

In 1797 he went to India, where his elder brother Richard soon became governor-general. In the war of 1799 against Tipu Sultan of Mysore, he took part in the capture of Seringapatam and then governed the conquered territory. Promoted to major-general, he fought the Maratha Empire, and on 23 September 1803 won a hard-fought victory at Assaye, where his despatch counted British losses of 428 killed and 1,138 wounded. He later called it the best battle he ever fought. Back in London in September 1805 he had his only meeting with Horatio Nelson, weeks before Trafalgar.

After serving at Copenhagen in 1807, Wellesley was sent to Portugal in 1808, the start of the Peninsular War, part of the wider Napoleonic Wars. He beat the French at Roliça and Vimeiro but was briefly recalled over an armistice signed by his superiors. Returning in 1809, he drove Marshal Soult from Porto, fought at Talavera and was made Viscount Wellington. In 1810 he halted Masséna's invasion behind the secretly built Lines of Torres Vedras, which forced the starving French to retreat. In 1812 he stormed Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz, where he wept at the sight of the dead, and routed the French at Salamanca. His rout of Joseph Bonaparte's army at Vitoria in June 1813 brought him a field marshal's baton. He then pushed into southern France, and in May 1814, after Napoleon's abdication, he was made Duke of Wellington.

When Napoleon returned from Elba in 1815, Wellington took command of an army of British, Dutch and German troops in the Netherlands, some 73,000 strong. On 18 June, south of Brussels, he held a ridge against repeated French attacks while the Prussians under Blücher arrived on the French flank. When the Imperial Guard's last assault was repulsed, the French army collapsed. The Battle of Waterloo ended Napoleon's rule for good. Wellington then commanded the allied army occupying France until 1818.

Back in Britain he joined Lord Liverpool's cabinet, became commander-in-chief in 1827 and prime minister in January 1828. Although a Tory, he pushed through the Roman Catholic Relief Act of 1829, which allowed Catholics to sit in Parliament, to avert unrest in Ireland after Daniel O'Connell won a by-election he could not take up as a Catholic. His refusal to consider parliamentary reform brought down his government in November 1830, and he opposed the Reform Act of 1832, and crowds smashed the windows of his London home. He acted as caretaker prime minister for a few weeks in 1834 and later served under Robert Peel.

Wellington retired from politics in 1846 but remained commander-in-chief. He died at Walmer Castle in Kent on 14 September 1852, aged 83, and after a state funeral was buried in St Paul's Cathedral.

Our 1800 map shows the Maratha Confederacy he fought in India, and our 1815 map shows Europe as redrawn after Waterloo, with the United Kingdom among the victorious powers.