Читать книгу The Story of Wellington - Harold Wheeler - Страница 9

When, in 1803, the short-lived Peace of Amiens came to an end, and Great Britain and France again resorted to the sword, Napoleon’s first feat of arms was the conquest of Hanover. Thus, at the very beginning of the second phase of the Great War, George III found himself not only minus his hereditary continental possessions, but deprived of a very useful base for those futile military excursions so beloved of the British Government.

That His Majesty received the tidings of his loss “with great magnanimity, and a real kingliness of mind,” may or may not be true. His ministers asserted that such was the case; considerations of policy would have precluded them from saying otherwise.

However this may be, two months after Sir Arthur Wellesley landed in England, that is to say, in November 1805, he was given the command of a brigade in an expedition to Hanover about to be undertaken by Lord Cathcart. The object was to rout the comparatively few French troops left to garrison the country, and to co-operate with Russian, Swedish, and Danish troops in ridding Germany of the common enemy. The surrender of Mack at Ulm, and Napoleon’s wonderful victory at Austerlitz, although it followed within a few weeks of Nelson’s signal triumph at Trafalgar,24 completely shattered this desirable object, just as the negotiations that followed put an end to the ambitious hopes of the Third Coalition. The recall of the troops before they had been able to carry out any of the objects of the diversion, beyond gaining some thousands of adherents to the rank and file, therefore became imperative, and was duly effected.

Sir Arthur Wellesley now spent a short time in command of his brigade at Hastings, and he was gazetted colonel of the famous 33rd Regiment, which post had become vacant on the death of the venerable Marquis Cornwallis, his brother’s successor in India. The next important event in his life, if not in his career, was his marriage to the Hon. Catherine Pakenham, thus consummating a romance begun many years before,25 and his single ambition apart from the Army. The ceremony was performed in Dublin on the 10th April 1806, the bridegroom being nearly thirty-seven years of age. One wishes it were possible to add that “they lived happy ever after.” Biography, the twin sister of History, tells us that it was not so, and Gleig suggests that a broken engagement with a second suitor, of which Wellesley was not informed on his return from India, was partly the cause.26 Two days after the wedding Wellesley was elected Member of Parliament for Rye, his main object in seeking political distinction being that he might defend his brother’s administration in India, where his system of making recalcitrant States subsidiary to England, whilst retaining their own rulers, was the subject of an embittered attack. The “high crimes and misdemeanours” alleged against Lord Wellesley were referred to from time to time, but on the 17th March 1808, the following motion was carried by 182 votes against 31: “That it appears to this House that the Marquis Wellesley, in his arrangements in the province of Oude, was actuated by an ardent zeal for the service of his country, and an anxious desire to promote the safety, interests, and prosperity of the British Empire in India.” This did not altogether end the unsavoury affair, for another unsuccessful attempt to incriminate the statesman was made some time later.

Sir Arthur was by this time Chief Secretary for Ireland, having been appointed in the previous year. Once again we see two members of this distinguished family holding prominent appointments, for Henry Wellesley became one of the Secretaries to the Treasury in the newly-appointed Portland ministry.

Barrington, whose acquaintance we have already made, relates an interesting anecdote of the soldier at this time. He met Lord Castlereagh, accompanied by a gentleman, in the Strand. “His lordship stopped me,” he writes, “whereat I was rather surprised, as we had not met for some time; he spoke very kindly, smiled, and asked if I had forgotten my old friend, Sir Arthur Wellesley? whom I discovered in his companion, but looking so sallow and wan, and with every mark of what is called a worn-out man, that I was truly concerned at his appearance. But he soon recovered his health and looks, and went as the Duke of Richmond’s27 secretary to Ireland, where he was in all material traits still Sir Arthur Wellesley, but it was Sir Arthur Wellesley judiciously improved. He had not forgotten his friends, nor did he forget himself. He said that he had accepted the office of secretary only on the terms that it should not impede or interfere with his military pursuits; and what he said proved true....”

Obviously his duties in Ireland bear no comparison with those he so successfully undertook in India, but following his own maxim, “to do the business of the day in the day,” he got through a vast amount of routine labour, frequently important, sometimes trivial. Under the former head we must put his investigation of the military defences of the island. It must not be forgotten that although the invasion of the United Kingdom by Napoleon was no longer a standing menace, there was always a likelihood of its resurrection, and Ireland was the danger zone.

The Peace of Tilsit, signed between France and Russia on the 7th July 1807, and between France and Prussia on the 9th of the same month, was a most serious blow to British interests. By a secret treaty the Emperor Alexander undertook to aid Napoleon against England if that Power refused to make peace within a certain period, to recognize the equality of all nations at sea, and to hand back the conquests made by her since 1805. As a bait—it really savoured of insult—Great Britain was to be offered Hanover. Should she refuse these terms the Autocrats of France and of Russia agreed to compel Denmark, Sweden, and Portugal to join them in a vast naval confederacy against Great Britain, and to close their ports against her. In addition, the reigning monarchs of Spain and Portugal were to be deposed in favour of the Bonaparte family. For his connivance in the matter Alexander was to be handsomely compensated in the Ottoman Empire and by territorial acquisitions in Western Europe.

Fortunately, or otherwise, according to the point of view, the British Cabinet was put in possession of certain facts regarding these plans. Canning, who was Minister for Foreign Affairs, realizing the responsibilities of his unenviable position, as also of that of his country, determined to forestall the plotters. He felt that some kind of arrangement with Denmark was essential, especially as the Prince Regent of Portugal had communicated news to the effect that Napoleon purposed to invade England with the Portuguese and Danish fleets. Canning suggested to Denmark that her fleet should be put in the safe custody of England until peace was restored. In addition, he promised a subsidy of £100,000, and the assistance of troops should Denmark be attacked. Mr F. J. Jackson was sent to open negotiations; the Prince Royal promptly vetoed them. “I stated plainly,” says Jackson, “that I was ordered to demand the junction of the Danish fleet with that of England, and that in case of refusal it was the determination of His Majesty to enforce it.”

Lord Cathcart was put in command of an army of 27,000 troops, the naval portion of the expedition being placed in the hands of Admiral Gambier. No sooner had Sir Arthur Wellesley heard of the project than he communicated with Castlereagh, then at the War Office and ever his staunch supporter, for an opportunity to take part. He was given charge of a division. On the 3rd August a formidable array of twenty-five sail-of-the-line and over fifty gunboats and transports appeared off Elsinore. Gambier and Cathcart were told by Jackson “that it now rested with them to carry out the measure prescribed by the British Government.” In a letter to his brother the diplomatist adds, “The Danes must, I think, soon surrender, for they are without any hopes of succour, are unfurnished with any effectual means of resistance, and are almost in total want of the necessaries of life, as far as I could learn or was able to see for myself during my few hours’ stay there.28 There were no droves of cattle or flocks of sheep; no provisions of any sort being sent in the direction of the city. No troops marching towards the town; no guns mounted on the ramparts; no embrasures cut, in fact, no preparations of any sort. What the Danes chiefly rely on is the defence by water. They brought out this morning several praams29 and floating batteries, and cut away one or two of the buoys.

“The garrison of Copenhagen does not amount to more than four thousand regular troops. The landwehr is a mere rabble, as indeed all levées en masse must be.

“The people are said to be anxious to capitulate before a conflagration takes place, which must happen soon after a bombardment begins, when, not improbably, the fleet as well as the city will become a prey to the flames.”

Jackson’s prophecy came true, but against his statement that the army disembarked at Veldbeck “in grand style,” we must set that of Captain Napier: “I never saw any fair in Ireland so confused as the landing; had the enemy opposed us, the remains of the army would have been on their way to England.”30 Wellesley’s first affray—it can scarcely be termed a battle—took place at Roskilde. Like almost everything connected with the expedition, Jackson has something to say about it, and that “something” in this particular instance is anything but complimentary. “Sir Arthur Wellesley,” he tells his wife, “has had an affair which you will probably see blazoned forth in an extraordinary Gazette. With about four thousand men he attacked a Danish corps of armed peasantry, and killed and wounded about nine hundred men, besides taking upwards of fifteen hundred prisoners, amongst whom were sixty officers. One was a General officer. I spoke to him this morning, for he and his officers are let off on their parole. The men are on board prison ships, and miserable wretches they are, fit for nothing but following the plough. They wear red and green striped woollen jackets, and wooden sabots. Their long lank hair hangs over their shoulders, and gives to their rugged features a wild expression. The knowing ones say that after the first fire they threw away their arms, hoping, without them, to escape the pursuit of our troops. In fact, the battle was not a very glorious one, but this you will keep for yourself.”31

Wellesley himself afterwards referred to the event as “the little battle at Kiöge,” and mentioned that “the Danes had made but a poor resistance; indeed, I believe they were only new raised men—militia.”32

The bombardment of Copenhagen began on the 2nd September 1807, and concluded three days later, when an armistice was granted in order that terms might be discussed. On the 7th, Copenhagen capitulated. The conditions imposed by Sir Arthur Wellesley, Sir Home Popham, and Lieutenant-Colonel Murray were that the British should occupy the citadel and dockyards for six weeks, and take possession of the ships and naval stores. Their troops would then evacuate Zealand. “I might have carried our terms higher … had not our troops been needed at home,” Wellesley writes to Canning. The various clauses were carried out, and fifteen sail-of-the-line, fifteen frigates, and thirty-one smaller vessels of the Danish fleet, as well as 20,000 tons of naval stores, were escorted to England. “That the attack was necessary,” says a recent historian, “no one will now deny. England was fighting for her existence; and, however disagreeable was the task of striking a weak neutral, she risked her own safety if she left in Napoleon’s hand a fleet of such proportions. In Count Vandal’s words, she ‘merely broke, before he had seized it, the weapon which Napoleon had determined to make his own.’”33 Dr J. Holland Rose disapproves, and points out that “In one respect our action was unpardonable: it was not the last desperate effort of a long period of struggle: it came after a time of selfish torpor fatal alike to our reputation and the interests of our allies. After protesting their inability to help them, Ministers belied their own words by the energy with which they acted against a small State.”34

Canning’s hope for an alliance with Sweden, in order to keep open the Baltic, was destined never to be fulfilled. Sir John Moore was sent to assist Gustavus in his efforts to resist the attacks of Russia, but the nation deserted the King, deposed him, and joined Napoleon. War speedily broke out between Sweden and Denmark, and also between the latter and Great Britain. The Czar’s overtures to England on behalf of France, as arranged at Tilsit, came to nothing. He was not anxious for them to have any other ending, so enraptured was he with Napoleon’s grandiloquent schemes. Enraptured? Yes, but only for a few short years.