Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (né Wesley; 1 May 1769 – 14 September 1852), was an Anglo-Irish army officer and statesman who was one of the leading military and political figures in Britain during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, twice serving as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

[8] The exact date and location of Wellesley's birth is not known, but biographers mostly follow the same contemporary newspaper evidence, which states that he was born on 1 May 1769, the day before he was baptised in St. Peter's Church on Aungier Street in Dublin.

[24] Despite his new promise, Wellesley had yet to find a job and his family was still short of money, so upon the advice of his mother, his brother Richard asked his friend the Duke of Rutland (then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland) to consider Arthur for a commission in the Army.

[44] Though the campaign was to end disastrously, with the British army driven out of the United Provinces into the German states, Wellesley became more aware of battle tactics, including the use of lines of infantry against advancing columns, and the merits of supporting sea-power.

Quoting Forrest, At this point (near the village of Sultanpet, Figure 5) there was a large tope, or grove, which gave shelter to Tipu's rocketmen and had obviously to be cleaned out before the siege could be pressed closer to Srirangapattana island.

The commander chosen for this operation was Col. Wellesley, but advancing towards the tope after dark on the 5th April 1799, he was set upon with rockets and musket-fires, lost his way and, as Beatson politely puts it, had to "postpone the attack" until a more favourable opportunity should offer.

Every illumination of blue lights was accompanied by a shower of rockets, some of which entered the head of the column, passing through to the rear, causing death, wounds, and dreadful lacerations from the long bamboos of twenty or thirty feet, which are invariably attached to them.Under the command of General Harris, some 24,000 troops were dispatched to Madras (to join an equal force being sent from Bombay in the west).

[54] Lewin Bentham Bowring gives this alternative account: One of these groves, called the Sultanpet Tope, was intersected by deep ditches, watered from a channel running in an easterly direction about a mile from the fort.

I never saw a man so cool and collected as he was ... though I can assure you, till our troops got the order to advance the fate of the day seemed doubtful ..."[91] With some 6,000 Marathas killed or wounded, the enemy was routed, though Wellesley's force was in no condition to pursue.

[93] A further successful attack at the fortress at Gawilghur, combined with the victory of General Lake at Delhi, forced the Maratha to sign a peace settlement at Anjangaon (not concluded until a year later) called the Treaty of Surji-Anjangaon.

In the waiting room, he met Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson, already a known figure after his victories at the Nile and Copenhagen, who was briefly in England after months pursuing the French Toulon fleet to the West Indies and back.

General Dalrymple then signed the controversial Convention of Sintra, which stipulated that the Royal Navy transport the French army out of Lisbon with all their loot, and insisted on the association of the only available government minister, Wellesley.

[111] Simultaneously, Napoleon entered Spain with his veteran troops to put down the revolt; the new commander of the British forces in the Peninsula, Sir John Moore, died during the Battle of Corunna in January 1809.

Instead, Lord Wellington first slowed the French at Buçaco;[123] he then prevented them from taking the Lisbon Peninsula by the construction of massive earthworks, known as the Lines of Torres Vedras, which had been assembled in complete secrecy with their flanks guarded by the Royal Navy.

When troops failed to return to their units and began harassing the locals, an enraged Wellington wrote in a now famous despatch to Earl Bathurst, "We have in the service the scum of the earth as common soldiers".

[138] After taking the small fortresses of Pamplona, Wellington invested San Sebastián but was frustrated by the obstinate French garrison, losing 693 dead and 316 captured in a failed assault and suspending the siege at the end of July.

Soult's relief attempt was blocked by the Spanish Army of Galicia at San Marcial, allowing the Allies to consolidate their position and tighten the ring around the city, which fell in September after a second spirited defence.

[121][146] He received some recognition during his lifetime (the title of "Duque de Ciudad Rodrigo" and "Grandee of Spain") and the Spanish King Ferdinand VII allowed him to keep part of the works of art from the Royal Collection which he had recovered from the French.

Marching through a hail of canister and skirmisher fire and severely outnumbered, the 3,000 or so Middle Guardsmen advanced to the west of La Haye Sainte and proceeded to separate into three distinct attack forces.

Wellington and Blücher met at the inn of La Belle Alliance, on the north–south road which bisected the battlefield, and it was agreed that the Prussians should pursue the retreating French army back to France.

[183][184] The electoral upset dramatised the issue of the Oath of Supremacy – the sacramental test that effectively barred Roman Catholics from Parliament (denying O'Connell his seat) and from higher offices of the judiciary and state.

Following the rebellions of 1798 and 1803, in which France had colluded, he grew more cautious, suggesting that if political distinctions between Protestants and the Catholic were abolished "all will be Irishmen alike", equally anxious to secure their country's independence.

[185] However, in the willingness of Ireland's enfranchised forty-shilling freeholders to defy their landlords and vote for emancipation candidates, Wellington recognised a "vast demonstration of populist political organisation, and clerical power" more challenging than a separatist conspiracy.

[215] Wellington retired from political life in 1846, although he remained Commander-in-Chief, and returned briefly to the public eye in 1848 when he helped organise a military force to protect London during the year of European revolution.

[220] Kitty died of cancer in 1831; despite their generally unhappy relations, which had led to an effective separation, Wellington was said to have been greatly saddened by her death, his one comfort being that after "half a lifetime together, they had come to understand each other at the end".

[226][205] Although in life he hated travelling by rail, having witnessed the death of William Huskisson, one of the first railway accident casualties, his body was taken by train to London, where he was given a state funeral – one of a small number of British subjects to be so honoured (other examples include Lord Nelson and Sir Winston Churchill).

[234] Most of the book A Biographical Sketch of the Military and Political Career of the Late Duke of Wellington by Weymouth newspaper proprietor Joseph Drew is a detailed contemporary account of his death, lying in state and funeral.

[245] Military historian Charles Dalton recorded that, after a hard-fought battle in Spain, a young officer made the comment, "I am going to dine with Wellington tonight", which was overheard by the Duke as he rode by.

While he is said to have disapproved of soldiers cheering as "too nearly an expression of opinion",[247] Wellington nevertheless cared for his men: he refused to pursue the French after the battles of Porto and Salamanca, foreseeing an inevitable cost to his army in chasing a diminished enemy through rough terrain.

[214] In 1824, one liaison came back to haunt him, when Wellington received a letter from a publisher, John Joseph Stockdale, offering to refrain from issuing an edition of the rather racy memoirs of one of his mistresses, Harriette Wilson, in exchange for money.