Wellington: A Personal History

Exasperated as he was by inefficient subordinates, the Colonel was further troubled by the scandalous quarrelling of regimental officers, one of these quarrels resulting in a duel in which Colonel Henry Harvey Aston of the 12th was mortally wounded. There had followed a court of enquiry which had occupied hour upon hour of Colonel Wellesley’s time and kept him at work far into the night.

The General who was to command the army which Wellesley was so conscientiously helping to prepare for action was Lieutenant-General George Harris, a parson’s son who had trained as an artilleryman and had fought with distinction in the war in America where he had been wounded more than once. He was a good-natured man of no remarkable talents but deemed perfectly capable of conquering Mysore.

That Mysore must, indeed, be conquered was decided towards the end of 1798 after a lengthy, convoluted and entirely unsatisfactory correspondence between the Governor-General and the Sultan had merely widened the breach between the two men and failed to settle the question as to whether or not a representative of the King of England would be accepted in Seringapatam.

In General Harris’s army of some 50,000 men Colonel Wellesley was given a large command. As well as his own 33rd he was to have six battalions of the East India Company’s troops, four ‘rapscallion battalions’ of the army of Britain’s ally, the Nizam Ali of Hyderabad, which were accompanied by no fewer than 120,000 bullocks, and ‘about 10,000 (which they called 25,000) cavalry of all nations, some good and some bad, and twenty-six pieces of cannon’.

Wellesley was soon to decide it was, all in all, ‘a strong, a healthy and a brave army with plenty of stores, guns, etc.’, but he did not want the staff at Fort William in Calcutta to suppose victory was a foregone conclusion. They must be prepared for a failure; it was ‘better to see and to communicate the difficulties and dangers of the enterprise, and to endeavour to overcome them, than to be blind to everything but success till the moment of difficulty comes, and then to despond’.

He was somewhat despondent himself, not having felt very well of late in Madras and soon to be pulled down by another attack of dysentery. He was also rather short tempered: when his brother the Governor-General asked him whether he should join the expeditionary force himself, he responded curtly, ‘All I can say upon the subject is, that if I were in General Harris’s situation, and you joined the army, I should quit it.’

The Colonel was still feeling unwell when, on a moonless night on the outskirts of Seringapatam, the column which he was commanding entered a dense thicket of bamboos and betel palm where they came under heavy fire in the darkness. The men fled in all directions, stumbling into irrigation ditches, shouting to each other across the thick undergrowth as rockets exploded around them and musket balls whistled through the foliage. Several of them were captured, some later killed by strangulation or by having nails driven into their skulls. The Colonel, hit on the knee by a spent musket ball, unable to see anything in the blackness of the night, and despairing of the possibility of reforming the column, limped away to report the disaster in the camp where the fires were still flickering at midnight.

Some officers, disliking what they took to be Colonel Wellesley’s bumptious arrogance and jealous of his close relationship with the Governor-General, were not sorry to learn of his failure. His second-in-command was one of them. Captain Elers, in a book published after he had fallen out with Wellesley, reported that, having gone to make a report to General Harris, he was turned away at the tent by a servant who told him that ‘General Sahib had gone to sleep’. ‘Overcome with despair and in a state of distraction, Colonel Wellesley threw himself, with all his clothes on, on the table (at which a few hours before he had dined), awaiting the dawn of day.’

In fact, so General Harris noted in his journal, at about midnight Colonel Wellesley came to his tent ‘in a good deal of agitation to say he had not carried the tope [thicket]. It must be particularly unpleasant to him.’

It undoubtedly was so. Ashamed of a failure that he was to remember for the rest of his life, he bitterly blamed himself for entering the thicket in darkness without reconnoitring it first. He told his brother Richard that he was determined never to make such a mistake again. ‘Had Colonel Wellesley been an obscure officer of fortune,’ commented Captain Elers, ‘he would have been brought to a court-martial and perhaps received such a reprimand for bad management as might have induced him in disgust to have resigned His Majesty’s service.’

The next morning when the advance to Seringapatam was resumed Colonel Wellesley was late in starting off because of a message which failed to reach him. General Harris, accordingly, told another officer to lead the attack instead. This officer was Major-General David Baird, a tough, blunt Scotsman, twelve years Wellesley’s senior. He had never been an even-tempered man. As a young captain in the 73rd Highlanders on a previous campaign he had been wounded, taken prisoner and held captive by Tippu Sultan for three years and eight months; and, with the bullet still in his wound, he had been chained to a fellow prisoner. When the news reached his mother in Scotland that her son was treated in this way, she acknowledged the fact of his savage temper in an observation of maternal percipience. ‘God help,’ she said, ‘the puir child chained to our Davie.’

Age had not mellowed him. ‘He is,’ one of his officers declared, ‘a bloody old bad tempered Scotchman.’ He had no reason to regard Colonel Wellesley with benevolence. He considered that he should have been offered the command of the expedition to Manila which it had seemed likely at one time would be given to the far junior Colonel the Hon. Arthur Wesley; he also thought that he should have been given command of the Nizam of Hyderabad’s troops which had been assigned instead to the well-connected young Colonel and, in his disappointment, he had unwisely sent General Harris ‘a strong remonstrance’. Even so, according to his biographer, he demurred when the offer of superseding Wellesley was made to him. ‘Don’t you think, Sir,’ he said to Harris, ‘it would be but fair to give Wellesley an opportunity of retrieving the misfortune of last night.’* (#litres_trial_promo)

So Colonel Wellesley was given his chance; and over the next few days, his knee less painful, he made amends for the débâcle of that miserable night. Having driven the Sultan’s men from the wood, he successfully attacked one of Seringapatam’s defensive works, as the army settled down to the formalities of a siege. He was not, however, to lead the final assault, for this duty was assigned to General Baird so that he might take revenge for the privations and ignominy of his long captivity. Waving his sword and shouting, ‘Forward, my lads, my brave fellows, follow me and prove yourselves worthy of the name of British soldiers!’, he led his men over the walls and into Seringapatam where Tippu Sultan – having put to death as oblations various animals, including two buffaloes, a goat, a bullock and an elephant, as well as, so it was said, various women of his court – was found dead, shot through the temple.

6 The Governor of Mysore (#ulink_dd57fd69-b68e-55f6-a531-6fc98dab37c9)

1799 (#ulink_dd57fd69-b68e-55f6-a531-6fc98dab37c9)

‘I must say that I was the fit person to be selected.’

GENERAL BAIRD expected to be placed in command of the captured city in which much treasure had to be guarded and a terrified populace reassured. But he was not considered a suitable officer for the task. ‘He had no talent, no tact,’ Colonel Wellesley said later, while acknowledging his bravery and the regard in which he was held by his men. ‘He had strong prejudices against the natives, and was peculiarly disqualified from his manner, habits and temper for the management of them. Having been Tippoo’s prisoner for years, he had a strong feeling of the bad usage which he had received during his captivity.’ ‘I must say,’ Wellesley added, ‘that I was the fit person to be selected. I had commanded the Nizam’s army during the campaign, and had given universal satisfaction. I was liked by the natives.’

General Harris, who had not forgiven Baird for his ‘strong remonstrance’ over the command of the Nizam of Hyderabad’s troops, accepted that this was the case.

So, while Baird and his staff were having breakfast in the Sultan’s palace, news that he was not to be left in command at Seringapatam was broken to him by the Colonel himself who displayed on the occasion just that want of tact of which he accused the bluff Scotsman.

‘General Baird,’ he said to him, ‘I am appointed to the command of Seringapatam, and here is the order of General Harris.’

‘Come gentlemen,’ replied Baird, rising angrily from the table and ignoring Colonel Wellesley, ‘we have no longer any business here.’

‘Oh, pray,’ said the Colonel. ‘Finish your breakfast.’

Baird stormed from the palace and sat down to write a furious letter to General Harris which elicited another reprimand for once more displaying ‘a total want of discretion and respect’. Baird was told to go back to Madras. He stormed out of Seringapatam; but Colonel Wellesley had not yet seen the last of him.

As it happened it was just as well that Wellesley not Baird was appointed to command in Seringapatam; for the situation demanded talents and insights that the brave, blunt Scotsman did not possess. At first there was much looting and frantic selling of treasures and gold bars stolen from the late Sultan’s palace before order was restored by the hanging of four men and the flogging of others. Even then, the Colonel thought it would be best if most troops were withdrawn from the town since their presence, and their insatiable taste for plunder, occasioned ‘great terror and confusion among the inhabitants’, tending not only to obstruct the ‘settlement of the country’ but also to destroy the confidence which, he was pleased to say, the people reposed in him.

He had no particular affection for the Indian peoples in general. Indeed, not long after his arrival in Calcutta he had decided that the climate and the natives combined to make India a ‘miserable country to live in’, and he came to the conclusion that a man might well deserve some of the wealth that was brought home as a reward ‘for having spent his life here’.

The natives were ‘the most mischievous, deceitful race of people [he had] ever seen or read of. ‘I have not yet met with a Hindoo who had one good quality,’ he added, ‘and the Mussulmans are worse than they are. Their meekness and mildness do not exist.’

When he was offered two half-caste officers for the 33rd, he replied that they might well be ‘as good as others’, but he had been told that they were ‘as black as my hat’ and he declined to have them.

And when he heard that the Resident of Hyderabad was openly living with an Indian princess he delivered himself of the outraged opinion that it was ‘a disgrace to the British name and nation’. Yet he was well aware how unwise it would be to offend against Indian customs and susceptibilities, and was determined not to tolerate in Mysore any of the ‘dirty things’ which he had been told, soon after his arrival in India, were ‘done in some of the commands’.

On being informed that the Commander-in-Chief had issued an order for a search of the Sultan’s zenana for hidden treasure, he strongly disapproved of it and, in carrying out his instructions, took ‘every precaution to render the search as decent and as little injurious to the feelings of the ladies as possible’.* (#litres_trial_promo) In the same way, when the Abbé Dubois, who was making a vain attempt to convert Hindus to Roman Catholicism under the auspices of the Missions Etrangères, asked for the return of two hundred Christian women from the zenana, the Colonel, having satisfied himself that they were not ill-treated there, refused the request on the grounds that it was ‘not proper that anything should be done which can disgrace [the East India Company] in the eyes of the Indian world, or which can in the most remote degree cast a shade upon the dead, or violate the feelings of those who are alive’.

Throughout his administration in Mysore he displayed this concern for Indian feelings. He asked the headquarters in Madras for a chaplain for the British garrison; but the people of Seringapatam were to be left free to practise their religion in their own way, and to be governed by their own laws in separate Muslim and Hindu courts.

While the tenor of Indian life in Seringapatam was allowed to continue undisturbed, there was much for the British Governor to do. There were the Sultan’s tigers to care for; there was the reconstruction of buildings damaged during the siege and assault; there was the surrounding country to pacify; there were forts to inspect, punitive expeditions to control and punishments to ameliorate. There was advice to be given on the partition of the conquered state of Mysore and on the vexed question of the Marāthās’ frontier: ‘I recommend it to you not to put the Company upon the Mahratta frontier,’ he wrote, showing how well he had studied his texts on Indian affairs. ‘It is impossible to expect to alter the nature of the Mahrattas; they will plunder their neighbours, be they ever so powerful … It will be better to put one of the powers in dependence upon the Company on the frontier, who, if plundered, are accustomed to it, know how to bear it and retaliate, which we do not.’

The Colonel had personal problems, too. It was an expensive business being Governor. To be sure, he had his share of prize money which amounted to £4,000, a very welcome sum if hardly to be compared with General Harris’s £150,000. But his expenses were heavy, and he thought that people probably did not get quite as rich in India as was imagined in England. Indeed, he began to believe that he was ruined – certainly he was not yet able to pay off all his debts – and he enquired about the prospects of other more profitable appointments.

His brother, the Governor-General, offered him the opportunity of commanding an expedition against the Dutch in Java, where he would be sure to get more prize-money, if he could ‘safely be spared from Mysore’. But he did not think he could be spared from Mysore. Some of his troops were in the field; and who, after all, could replace him? British generals were, for the most part as he had so often said, ‘so confoundedly inefficient’. Besides, he was conscious that in Seringapatam he was rendering a ‘service to the public’; and that service was not yet completed.

Moreover, there was trouble to the north of Mysore where the warlord Dhoondiah Waugh, soi-distant ‘King of the Two Worlds’, was threatening the peace by assembling an army of warriors in the territory of the Marathas. In the middle of 1800, Colonel Wellesley marched out of Seringapatam with a large force to deal with him. He proved an elusive quarry. Rivers were crossed, forts stormed, forests encountered (though not entered until reconnoitred). But nearly four months had passed before Dhoondiah Waugh was brought to bay, and forced to face his pursuers who were able at last to mount an attack in which Colonel Wellesley, for the first and last time in his life, led a cavalry charge.

‘We have now proved (a perfect novelty in India),’ he reported with pride having sent the enemy scattering away, ‘that we can hunt down the lightest footed and most rapid armies as we can destroy heavy troops and storm strong fortifications.’

Soon there came an opportunity for the Colonel to demonstrate his prowess on a more prominent stage. The Governor-General, deeply concerned by the French threat, had been considering ways of dealing with it. Bonaparte, by now First Consul, had left his army in Egypt and on 14 June had overwhelmed the Austrians at Marengo. A British force was to be assembled in Ceylon with a view to an attack on the French in Egypt; and, despite ‘the great trouble’ that would be caused in consequence among the general officers in India, Colonel Wellesley was to lead it. ‘I employ you because I rely on your good sense, discretion, activity, and spirit,’ his brother told him, ‘and I cannot find all those qualities united in any other officer in India.’

Besides, in his brother’s opinion, Arthur should have been promoted long ago, and the fact that, now thirty years of age, and despite his distinguished services, he was still a colonel, reflected badly upon himself as Governor-General, just as the British Government’s fobbing him off with a mere Irish marquessate had done. Colonel Wellesley’s being ‘not only unnoticed but his promotion protracted so studiously’, the Marquess had written earlier, had led to ‘every Intriguer’ in India believing it ‘to be delayed for the express purpose of thwarting me’.

Seemingly undisturbed by the thought that older and more experienced generals in Madras and Calcutta would not take at all kindly to his appointment, Colonel Wellesley sailed for Trincomalee in Ceylon towards the end of 1800, leaving behind in Seringapatam, for the guidance of his successor, detailed notes on all manner of subjects from the administration of Mysore to the relevant features of its topography.

By the time Colonel Wellesley landed in Trincomalee, the proposal for an assault on French troops in Egypt by way of the Red Sea had been superseded by plans for an attack upon the French island of Mauritius. But differences with the naval Commander-in-Chief in the area led to the abandonment of Mauritius as an object of attack and its replacement by Java. Plans for an attack on the Dutch were, however, also abandoned when definite orders came from England for the implementation of the original operation, a landing on the southern Egyptian coast in the region of Suez and a march from there against the French in Lower Egypt.

Colonel Wellesley welcomed the opportunity to command such an expedition and was chagrined to learn that the Governor-General had been overborne by the army chiefs who had impressed upon him the impropriety of appointing – indeed the outrage to military tradition which would be occasioned by appointing – so junior an officer to the command over the heads of others so senior to him in rank and so much more seasoned by experience. The command was to be entrusted instead to General Baird.

Wellesley, who was already on his way to Egypt by way of Bombay, was furious on receipt of the new orders which placed him second-in-command and determined that, whatever orders he was subsequently to receive, he would endeavour to interpret them in such a way that they would not deny him this opportunity of advancing his career. The apologetic tone of his brother’s letter breaking the news and offering him the alternative of returning to Seringapatam did nothing to mollify him.

He wrote to Calcutta to express his indignation, angrily and unreasonably refusing to accept his brother’s reasons for what he took to be his degradation in the eyes of the world. He had not, he wrote, been informed of the possibility that he would be superseded. It was all very well for his brother to plead that he could not now employ him ‘in the chief command of so large a force’ which was now to proceed to Egypt ‘without violating every rule of the service’. How could the Governor-General think that General Baird would ever allow him to be of the smallest service to him? He stood ‘publicly convicted of incapacity’ to do more than equip a force to be led by others.

At first he decided he would return to Mysore rather than serve under Baird; but then he learned that Sir Ralph Abercromby had landed at Abū Qir Bay with some 15,000 men and had advanced on Alexandria. Wellesley, therefore, determined to leave Bombay immediately for the Red Sea, although General Baird had not yet arrived, since delay would entail the loss of the opportunity of cooperating with Abercromby in a pincer movement which would drive the French from Egypt. As soon as Baird appeared he would, of course, hand over the command to him, although, as he reported to the Governor-General’s office, this would much annoy him as his former letters would surely have shown. However, he had ‘never had much value for the public spirit of any man who does not sacrifice his private views and feelings, when it is necessary’. It was, therefore, his ‘laudable and highly disagreeable intention’ to obey his brother’s instructions.

As it happened, he was not able to obey them. He was suddenly taken ill and became feverish with a complaint known as Malabar Itch, a kind of ringworm, a ‘breaking out all over [his body] of somewhat of the same kind as venereal blotches’, which entailed an unpleasant treatment of nitric acid baths in Bombay.

When this drastic remedy, which burned the towels used to dry him, had at least partially cured him, he returned to Mysore, still deeply resentful of his brother’s first giving him an independent command, then removing it from him. The angry resentment continued for months, the few letters he wrote to the Governor-General at this time being formal in the extreme, hints of intimacy being limited to his correspondence with his brother Henry, from whom he was gratified to learn that he was considered ‘still top of the tree for character’, and that Henry had never heard any man ‘so highly spoken of, so generally looked up to’.

He corresponded also in a friendly manner with David Baird, with whom he had had companionable talks in Bombay before the General’s departure for Egypt, finding the Scotsman more sympathetic and understanding than he had expected, and ready to listen to what the Colonel had to tell him about Egypt, the Nile and the Nubian and Libyan Deserts, being not much of a reader himself. Accordingly he learned of Baird’s subsequent successes in Egypt without the rancour that continued dislike of the man might otherwise have aroused in him.

7 The Sultan’s Palace (#ulink_b74d6f59-5384-5c88-a540-4326fe925a66)

1800 – 1 (#ulink_b74d6f59-5384-5c88-a540-4326fe925a66)

‘If we are taken prisoner, I shall be hanged as brother to the Governor-General, and you will be hanged for being found in bad company.’

RECOVERED FROM the Malabar Itch, Colonel Wellesley returned to Seringapatam in more cheerful mood than his companions might have expected in so disappointed a man. But he was still not very well, one of them thought; and, although he was no more than thirty-two years old, his closely cropped, wavy, light brown hair, parted in the middle, was already touched with grey.