Wellington Lecture 2016 | Wellington, a Storied Life | UoS

Daniel Wellington lecture explores aspects of the life and one of the leading military and 19th century bernard cornwell that well-known author is delivering the 28th William lay willing to lecture Wellington a storied life Bernhard Cornell is the most successful and prolific historical novelist writing today he's the author over 50 novels published in 30 countries and in 28 languages and has sold over 20 million books around the world I think it's about twenty million three hundred now by the way so his non-fiction account of the Battle of Waterloo was a number-one bestseller and received rave reviews the independent wrote an account that is both vivid and scholarly readers new to the Waterloo campaign could hope for no better introduction and veterans will find fresh insights his most novel most recent novel the flame bearer is the tenth in the last Kingdom series all of which have been top ten bestsellers plus now a major bbc2 television series Barnard was born in London raised in Essex and worked for the BBC for 11 years before meeting Judy his American wife denied an American work permit what a mistake that was for them he wrote a novel instead much compensation there and has been writing ever since he and Judy divide their time between Cape Cod and Charleston South Carolina ladies and gentlemen it's my very great pleasure to invite Berner to present this year's Wellington lecture thank you your graces ladies and gentlemen Sir Christopher thank you for that introduction I feel a complete fraud I mean this is the Wellington lecture I'm not an academic I'm not an historian I'm a storyteller when I got the invitation I think I've said flattered to get the invitation that I said yes without thinking I thought oh god it's months away all sorts of things could happen before you know I mean Donald Trump might become president the world will change I may never actually have to deliver this lecture and then as he got nearer I got a Laura sent me an email saying we need a title for the lecture and I thought oh my god and what am I gonna say in a night and I did a storied life Wellington a store it covers a multitude of sins I still had no idea but then I thought well hang on a second I might not be an academic and I might not be an historian but I am for my sins a storyteller and sometimes we get to know people through the stories they tell and I hope to tell a few stories about the first Duke of Wellington tonight and I can actually say that some of them might even be true we laugh but in fact like every great man he collected stories about him and it's I call it the parson Weems syndrome some of you know parson Weems was the first man to write a biography of George Washington he wrote it in the middle of the 19th century and parson Weems faced a big problem which was he didn't really have any stories much to say about Washington's childhood he didn't know much about it so he made up a story and when I was at Primary School here in England it's one of the very first things I was taught about George Washington that his father came home and was angry that a cherry tree had been chopped down and he said who chopped down the cherry tree and young George piped up father I cannot tell a lie it was me it's a lie it never happened but yet that story goes around the world and it's still told of George why because it tells us the truth about George Washington and there are stories about the Juke which I really can't source and I think well I'm not sure that that is true but it does tell a truth about the first Duke I'm gonna annoy some of you tonight because I will probably keep calling him the Duke even when I'm telling stories or accounts before he ever became or reached that rank but it's just much simpler if we keep on talking about Sir Arthur and his lordship and then his Gracie it's just gonna get confusing he's the Duke and a very great man too here is a story about in which I don't know if it's true this may be a parson Weems story but it's actually I think it's my favorite story and I couldn't think where to put it so I'm going to put it right at the top in 1814 when he'd been appointed British ambassador to Paris to France an appointment that rivals intact only that of making Boris Johnson Foreign Secretary he was invited to a levy a reception and there's all sorts of important glorious grand people there among them are many many officers who had served Napoleon and many of them turned their back on him and a woman was offended by this and she apologized to the Duke and said I'm very sorry for their lack of courtesy and he said don't worry Madame I have seen their backs before and I love that sword and if it's not true it ought to be true really of course if we want to know what was he like and that's what I think I'm talking about tonight what was this great man like I think for the 29th lecture and and this I'm going to talk directly to Sir Christopher because he as a scientist his responsibility to make a time machine which we can send back let's say a couple of hundred years so we can actually ask the Dukes and questions that we would love to have answered which historians argue about especially military historians and I know you haven't given you much time you've only got a year to make this time machine kept busy you can probably send one person back for a day and they have to quit but who would you send I mean who you could possibly send you can't send a writer he hated writers I mean I can still almost feel the shuddering now there's a writer talking to you about the dude poets he despised but why you'd want to send a part I don't know a journalist well they will certainly ask questions but he thought all journalists were scoundrels you could perhaps send a military historian and that would make some sense because at least they'd ask the right questions but they could equally well upset him he could be very reticent I was very privileged early on when when I first went to the United States to meet the great Jack Weller and Jack for those of you don't know him wrote a brilliant trilogy on the first Duke Wellington in India Wellington in the printer and Wellington at Waterloo it they still stand up there wonderful books and Jack was this enormous Lee tall very very patriotic American he had a crew-cut and he lived in Princeton New Jersey and his home was a museum to the military I mean he went to the loo and there was an ak-47 hanging out and I was but I'm not making this up there was a rack of Baker rifles all greased and ready to go in case the Socialists came down the road he was quite extraordinary they were cannon out on the lawns when New Jersey passed a law saying you couldn't let off a firearm within 500 yards of a house they had to write in an accept for Jack Weller but he was a very very patriotic American very good man and I knew him quite well and I said to him one day Jack I said I I have a question for you I said here you are successful fascinated by the military but above everything I said you are proud to be an American you're a patriotic American yet you've devoted your life to the first Duke of Wellington and I said this may come as news to you jack that he wasn't American I said why and he thought for a few moments a few seconds and he leaned over the table and he said because I could have beaten him so I can't send a military historian because they're not going to get the answers they're going to end up arguing in fact as we shall see it's very obvious who we should send joanna lumley Johanna is gorgeous she's very very intelligent and she's the daughter of a soldier and many of the best stories about the first to come from the women he talked to he was very fond of women we'll talk about that a bit later there's nothing wrong with that his fondness for women but he often opened up to them I like that in him that he liked women he liked intelligent women so Sir Christopher next year I expect to see Joanna Lumley giving the 30th Wellington lecture having been back to the year 1820 thanks to your extremely clever work you've got a no-bail out of it I don't think you should be too worried about it what would you Anna say to us when she came back if indeed he even let her come back she would of course say what a great man he was as he himself said to lady Shelly it's a fine thing is it not to be a great man he be strode the 19th century like a colossus not just Britain and Europe too he is the most famous Briton of the 19th century he is an extraordinarily great man and we have a picture of him and it's a very daunting picture as he himself often said he had no small talk he could be very very daunting to meet so Walter Scott who was no shrinking violet and had great self-confidence having met the Duke said that he was formidable this is a picture we will have of him Frances Larpent who was his Judge Advocate General in the peninsula said that whenever he had to go and speak to the Duke he felt like a schoolboy being hauled in front of the headmaster he could be very frightening he could be very brusque a clergyman wrote to him in the 1830s with a question and got an answer and the clergyman felt offended and he wrote back to the Duke and said you have disrespected me got a letter back I know nothing of you nor ever heard your name therefore I could feel no disrespect towards you bang that's the end of that one he rejected adulation he didn't like it when his soldiers cheered him as he once said it veers dangerously towards an expression of an opinion and another keishon saying much the same thing if once you allow them to express an opinion they may on some other occasion hiss you instead of cheer you it was the Battle of sororal when he went to rescue Hill and you rode across the hill and the Redcoats have been having a very difficult time when we retreating and they saw him coming and they knew it was gonna be alright and they started cheering he said shut them up make them be quiet at the end of Waterloo Kincaid they started to cheer him because the battle was over and they were advancing he told them no be silent lads just go forward and take your victory he didn't like that adulation he didn't encourage it Larpent again wrote back to his wife to LARPers wife back in England and she said he has no heart that's a very very strong allegation of a man at Larpent knew well he has no heart this cold man this is the picture we've got so far could be haughty as well see it's not it's not an accurate picture it's also Larpent it tells the story they were in Portugal they're having a dinner and it was a very good tempered dinner people were enjoying themselves and then a report arrived that three men have been brought to the headquarters who've been caught in the act of looting and the Duke without missing a beat said hang them now and everybody was shocked now it's very very rare that you have a story about the first Duke of Wellington being outmaneuvered but this time he was outmaneuvered he did hang men some early with good reason he could not afford to have men plundering looting raping stealing murdering he had to keep the local population on his side thus it was hanged them now but they were upset so they said to John Hume who was the army surgeon of the dinner they said is there anything they knew as a friend of Wellington's they said is there any chance whatsoever that he might change his mind he didn't though he said but on the other hand three guys just died in the hospital two I'll get their bodies we'll put them in uniform and we'll hang them so they did they put them in the back in their red coats and they hung them from the tree and next morning the army marched out and they saw the looters hanging and it was a warning to them with the other three guys who were supposedly to be hung we're told shut up don't say a word go back to your units and be quiet but a year later the Juke found out that in fact his orders have not been obeyed and that the hangings were fake he didn't mind he actually laughed he thought because he said the warning was given that's all that matters he could be very brusque indeed when he became prime minister one of the sir Humphreys who had to deal with him and sir Humphrey believe me was alive then just as yesterday he said of the Prime Minister that when his decisions were questioned he looked staggered and with that air which he always has of a man very little accustomed to being contradicted so a difficult man a Treasury official another Sir Humphrey once said Tim it was quite impossible quite impossible to implement his Grace's suggestions of a new accounting system and the Duke looked at him and said if you can't accomplish it I will in a week I'll send you half a dozen pay sergeants he was a difficult man to deal with so there we have it heartless cold brusque let's say it's really not accurate it's also a very long way from the dreamy idle and shy lad who an Eton Contemporary remembered from school and by the way he never did say that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton it's a very great school he wasn't that happy there I don't think he would have ever tried to give it that accolade another contemporary described when not at all a book boy and rather dull his mother famously said of him I vow to God I don't know what I shall do with my awkward son Arthur describing this food for powder nothing else Lord Longford who eventually became his father-in-law rejected the first proposal of marriage by saying - then arthur wellesley your talents have seldom been displayed except in gaiety and music this is a long way this idle dreamy lad not a book person fond of music fond of gaiety in the dublin society it's a long way from the land that we've just described so we begin with the youngest son of an Anglo Irish aristocrat undistinguished academically socially shy with apparently no firm prospects it's very difficult to maintain that the first Duke of Wellington was a self-made man but he nevertheless had all sorts of obstacles in his path he did as his mother despairingly thought he might join the army and he did in the army find a place where his talents could find expression and people say well alright he just purchased his way up no the purchase system got him as far as major it didn't get him any further than that and it's true of course that his elder brother gave him opportunities in India which he wouldn't have had if it had not been for the family connection but on the other hand he more than justified his brothers faith his record in India is extraordinary he faced constant political opposition he also faced jealousy from within the army and here I have to bring to your attention P G Woodhouse I'm sure PG woodhouse is one of the great experts on the first troop of Wellington P G would Hearst once said it has never been hard to tell the difference between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine when in India he occurred the grievance of Sir David Baird a senior officer senior to Wellesley who became a great enemy of his wrote led his home to the War Office saying this this useless man he's only there because of the favoritism of his brother and then when Wells there was a point to the governor of staring up to act a filter start again staring up at an after the defeat of the Tipu Sultan Baird was furious absolutely furious because he thought he should have had the job in fact he shouldn't mad who was a very great soldier but he'd been the prisoner of the Tipu Sultan for over three years and he was kept in the dungeons of setting up a tan chained to another British prisoner when his mother heard about this she said oh I feel sorry for the poor man chained to my Davy he was a very angry man and not in the least bit tactful what Wellington had in spades as we shall see was not just tact but common sense he then when he gets back from India he's appointed over the head of two hundred generals who were senior to him in the list of the command in Portugal and this is all he's really required to do here is to defend Lisbon from Juna which he does brilliantly but of course the War Office being frightened of this man appoint two general senior to him as it were to babysit him and it is they who signed the convention of sintra now I'm going to assume that many I know that this is a sophisticated audience I can't explain all of the things but very briefly the convention of censure this is after the Jew he was not then the Duke of course but Arthur Sir Arthur Wellesley had defeated you know in two battles and he had saved Lisbon and Juno is basically simple he has surrendered then these two senior guys come in and they sit down at this beautiful town of sintra which is very close to Lisbon and they do a convention by which they agree to ship the French army back to France I mean this is an absolute nonsense I mean this is as if Field Marshal Montgomery's after El Alamein says well I tell you what we'll provide the shipping and we'll send you all back to Germany have a nice day and it caused an immense row and when Wellington got back to London he was hissed in the streets the newspapers lampooned him it seemed that his career was over and yet by the skin of his teeth he survived he did sign the convention of Centrum mainly because he was ordered to he didn't really have any choice there was a huge inquiry it was pretty close run whether his career might have ended there but on the other hand there was this record that he had the Battle of assay are gone Galgo rollick of Vomero he was the winner he's still not very well known he's still quite a junior general but he's a winning general and so they take the risk and they send him back to Portugal and so becomes so we find the six years that will turn him from a successful junior general into a legend into a great man he still faced political opposition the Whig politicians in London I think basically praying literally pray that he would fail because that would bring down the Tory government to let them into power he faced constant opposition from the opposition newspapers of the Whig newspapers there was a leader in The Examiner which wrote this is after a photo after Talavera there seems no reason for altering the opinion that happened what may the ultimate loss of the peninsula is certain this is after the great victory of a porter and one of the things that is curiousness is perhaps not the place to say it but nevertheless isn't well say it is that right to the end of his military career people said he was a defensive general you know he can defend he can't attack this is despite si despite a porter despite Salamanca despite vitória all of which are stunning attacking battles where he bamboozles humbugs turns the enemy defeats them utterly and yet still certainly the French said ah no he can't attack he's just a defensive general outmaneuver him and he'll beat him they never did they didn't know their man nor did the Whig politicians in London nor did the newspapers in London know their man by accident the British had appointed someone who in my opinion is certainly the greatest general of the 18th and 19th century and that does include Marlborough although we have to put Marlborough up pretty high I was much amused to find that some years ago when sort of supercomputers first came in that West Point decided to find out who was the greatest general ever true story so they programmed their computer and I think I can't remember now what what the what the parameters were but I think you had to have led at least 25,000 men at least five times into battle as that was it and so off it goes and it's you know the old taping and it's spat out the answer Duke of Wellington this won't do so they changed the parameters a little bit they tweaked it a bit I mean I hoping to get grant probably or MacArthur they ran it again spat out the answer Duke of Wellington okay we've got this one wrong boys let's do it again right and I mean they ran it five times and five times they got the same answer which point they decided the computer was probably wrong and I'm not saying that the computer it certainly wasn't wrong but he we've suddenly found one of the greatest generals in history why what made him such a great general it's not the coldness and the haughtiness of a man who can say hang them now it's not a man who has no small talk let's begin with one of his greatest virtues common sense he had the most immense amount of common sense very soon after he took command in Portugal he issued a general orders very simple order he said if you want to go into a church to look at it as a tourist take your hat off if you see the host being carried by you in the street stop salute stand to attention now this remembers at a time when Roman Catholicism was not popular in Britain when Roman Catholics were rather curious preachers when many many people have brought up in Britain to despise Catholics it's a totally sensible order why offend the Portuguese and Spanish the host was often carried through the street if a parishioner was dying the priest would carry the host through the street in order to give final unction and when that happened people stopped they took their hat off and they stood and bowed while as we used to when funerals went by in this country and all he was saying is you'll do the same if it goes past a guard post you turn out the guard and you salute the host it was a very small thing it's totally sensible because he was an extraordinarily sensible man he wasn't particularly religious I don't think he called him and he certainly thought he was a Christian and he was an Anglican but he would almost certainly have agreed with the Bishop of London who in the 1850s during an ordination sermon said above all gentlemen above all no enthusiasm he thought it important to attend church but as he said to someone I like to get there early to get it over with he told one army chaplain say as much as you like in five and 20 minutes I will not stay longer and then when accurate came to Strathfield say and rather nervously approached the tube and said it is is there anything your grace would like me to preach about yes about 10 minutes so I don't think that the the respect for that for the host came from an extraordinary devotion to Christianity I think he was if he was a very typical Anglican he was very pragmatic he didn't give a damn about uniform regulations and that was slightly unusual and he himself he knew full well that men on put on on campaign can't keep themselves smart I mean you simply can't and the Redcoats well the dye ran the moment you got into rain it ran and it gradually turned into a pale pink but then when it got frayed and torn it would be patched with local cloth and the local cloth was brown and one staff officer wrote back and said well not an army of red we're an army of brown the Duke didn't care as long as they turned up on the battlefield with the cartridge box full that was ok but what they looked like he didn't mind he himself dressed very simply again a staff officer writing to his wife saying he has a grey frock coat which is so threadbare that you can see the through it a white waistcoat and neckerchief grey trousers and a cocked hat sometimes an oilskin cape and sometimes a French dragoons cape so he didn't even mind putting on the enemy's uniform now I know that we have in this audience and riflemen you're very welcome this is for you because later in his career long after he'd ceased to be Jim was now politician he opposed what he saw as the increasing fashion in the army to get fancy uniforms and and he fought against it he if he quite liked units to become quite straightforward and simple because he said if you allow uniforms to become too fanciful he said you'll all end up like rifleman in their jacket Dandy jackets and I know there's some riflemen here you wear Jack a dandy jacket so that's what you do the common sense goes far beyond such small things as not worrying about the uniforms that the men wear there's a letter he wrote when he was in India and this is a letter that should have been read aloud to the British and American governments before the Second Gulf War because it makes such total sense he wrote back to his brother who was the governor-general we have added to the number of a number of our enemies by depriving of employment those who heretofore found it in the service of the Tipu and the Nizam we throw out of employment and of means of subsistence all who have hitherto managed the revenue and the government which is exactly what we did in Iraq we got rid of all the civil servants and we then wondered why fell into chaos history just goes on repeating itself Wellington sword happening in India and said stop it you've got to keep these people in their jobs they run the countries my favourite story of his pragmatic common sense he's told by lady Longford who I adore I adore her biography I'm not entirely sure this is true this might fall into the cherry tree category but I love this story so much that you're going to hear it one of his greatest campaigns is the campaign of Vitoria this is the man who can't attack and he sends his army on a big loop around the enemy's right through the gala thean mountains through places which it was thought armies couldn't March but he's a very thorough man and his sent word ahead his officers have ridden ahead and they have arranged with the landowners all through the mountains that they will have supplies ready the British will pay for these supplies but they must have the supplies ready and when the army reaches certain points they would send staff officers out and say ok please bring us your forage now bring us your grain now whatever it is that they were selling so sure enough they get to some point within the galifty lanterns and a staff officer rides off to see a great landowner and he says to the guy ok you know we've paid you we need the food now and then the staff officer goes back and the Juke says to him well what happened the man says well he's not sending the food well why ever not well it'd be claims to be an heiress to crap and he said I had to bow down to him he said I'm an English gentleman I do not bow to Spanish aristocrats Oh said the Duke we'll see about that get on his horse and rides off comes back now later shortly after that the forage begins to roll in and they said what did you do to him I know what what did you say oh I just Bob down I love that story I think it ought to be true because he would have thought it ridiculous to stand on your dignity and refuse to bow to somebody when the success of a campaign depended on it so maybe he did do that just right off there and Bob down to make sure that the army could keep marching and that story even if it isn't true illustrates something that was immensely important to him logistics he cared desperately about feeding his army this is not just because hungry soldiers and soldiers are less effective it's simply because he needs to keep them efficient he also needs to stop them stealing why do you need to stop soldier soldier stealing well because if you if they steal from the peasantry if they steal from the local people if they raid farms if they raid bakeries then you turn the local population into your enemy the French had done that ruthlessly and perhaps the biggest obstacle to any french victory in Spain was the hostility of the local people in the end just to send a simple message the French had to accompany it by full regiments of cavalry otherwise they would be ambushed by the time Wellington led the British Army into southern France a staff officer wrote and said any soldier can wander the roads of France all alone in perfect safety this is more than just common sense it's almost obvious you do not make an enemy of the people among whom you are campaigning which was why he was so ruthless when he did catch men plundering or looting the French were not nearly so particular there's a horrible letter from general boo go back to his sister an infamous letter in which he says you shouldn't worry about all these stories of convents being raped they enjoy it that's awful the Joop would never have a laugh I mean the dupe of it would have hated anything like that not just because it is cruel because it's a crime but because above all it's stupid why make an enemy of the people on whom you're going to defend he did know when to turn a blind eye yes he did ruthlessly executed and plunderers but he also knew when as it were not to do that as a famous occasion when a king's german legion trooper rode past with a bleating sheep over his saddlebow now the thing about the king's german legion was that there were very good troops and the duke knew that if in fact he made an example of this man it would certainly lower them around it would cause he just turned a blind eye I didn't see that it didn't happen and there's the famous story of the Irish soldier rushing across the across the hilltop there's the Duke in front of him he's carrying a beehive or was carrying honeycombs and the jukebox and where did you get that uh Your Honor it's just across the hill hurry there's some left and it touched his funny bone and he started to laugh well once you started to laugh you can't hang a man the man got away with it he was peculiarly fond of some of the Irish troops as he once said I don't know what they do to the enemy but by God they terrify me so to these qualities I think the common sense of pragmatism there's also the ability to work extraordinarily hard in those six years or the Peninsular campaign somebody once worked out that he wrote over 2 million words this is in letters home and in general orders that's the equivalent and not only throwing the French out of Spain and Portugal but also writing 16 full-length novels and I don't think I could write 16 full-length novels and - I certainly couldn't if I had to knock the French out of Spain and Portugal at the same time he worked incredibly hard in some ways this is not I mean every every other general said water loo had a chief of staff he didn't like having a chief of staff because he didn't trust anybody to do the work as well as he could do it himself which meant working long hours luckily he had the energy to do that and he took him mence detail I just I'm just before I came over I opened the volume of his general orders and at random found this one great care must be given when Rai is given two horses that they are not watered two hours before or two hours after they are fed now that's like general Montgomery writing a General Orders saying please remember to change the oil in the Bedford three-ton tracks and yet for him forensic he doesn't line we go down to this level of detail to keep the army efficient and this work great and his insistence on logistics on making sure that supplies reached his men making sure that supplies you bought from the local population were paid for it paid off for him and surely one of the greatest compliments paid to him was by sergeant wheeler who wrote after the Waterloo campaign if England should require the services of her army again let me have old nosey to command us our our interest would be sure to be looked into and we should always be as well supplied as the nature of the service would admit and I think the Jew could have taken that as a great compliment he was once asked what the greatest compliment I ever received was and he said this he was after the Battle of Alba Hara in 1812 and Marshall Beresford had fought that battle it was a terrible battle it was mismanaged sue the enemy said they were beaten of the British but did not know it it was a bloodbath it was horror but nevertheless it was a victory even it was a Pyrrhic victory Wellington Road south and arrived there a couple of days after the battle and he goes to a convent where the wounded the British wounded a lying and he goes into a room and it's fully you just have to try and imagine the horror of the scene of men dying the stench of blood and past the horror of it the groans and he himself said I didn't know what to say and he stands there almost tongue-tied not knowing what to say and then finally managed to stammer out a few words and he said men if I can't remember the regiment now we'll make it out men of the 57th I am sorry to see so many of you here and a voice piped up from the back of the room my lord if you had been here not so many of us would be here and he said that was the greatest compliment he ever received because his men knew that he did actually do his best to preserve their lives I mean the reverse slope and all he didn't always work it certainly doesn't work at his sieges where the men died in droves but they knew that he did and he had good reason not just out of humanity and he was a humane man but because he knows that the British Army is actually quite a small army one of the reasons he fought defensive battles is because they were less expensive in men than attacking battles if he lost too many men his army would eventually be winnowed down it's much like the British Army two weeks after d-day when there were no more reserves you had what you had and you had to get on with that so is it true that he despised his men scum of the earth is that the most famous thing he ever said he said it more than once I've always excused him because the famous occasion in which he called his men the scum of the earth was after the Battle of Vitoria in a vittoria as I'm sure some of you know they captured the French baggage train and not since Alexander cross the ISIS as such plunder been found I mean in your wildest dreams jewels gold this was the spoils of Spain taken from Madrid loaded on wagons and the French are so utterly defeated they flee they found mule tears using paintings Rembrandt's cut out of their frames using them as tarpaulins Wellington had been hoping to capture the baggage train he needed the money to pay his army but the army got there first and took it anyway as one rifleman said I became a rich man with a few whacks of my musket he was furious he called them the scum of the earth but he said it more than once another time he described his army as a rabble he's an equal-opportunity insulting during the great reform bill he said of the British public that people are rotten to the core when he paid them a compliment it was liable to be qualified he spoke about sergeants he said I'm convinced that is nothing so intelligent so valuable as that rank of men in the British Army then he added if you could get them sober which is impossible he would have disliked Richard Sharpe intensely because Sharpe came up from the ranks he said of officers up from the ranks they always take to drink and yet and yet one he knows his army a hell of a lot better than we do very few men joined that army for patriotism very few men grew up in Britain in the late 18th century and said gosh I want to be a soldier mum oh that's a good that's a good career you join the army out of desperation you joined it because the alternative was prison or worse you joined it because you had no alternative you joined it because you were Irish and there was no work and there was hunger they were a rabble but as he said it's amazing what we've done with them given discipline they became an extraordinary army and he knew it as he once said in the French speaking of French generals he said their soldiers always get them into scrapes he says mine get me out of scrapes and as he said to Thomas creevy in Brussels before Waterloo and creevy said your grace can we do it can we do it and they were standing in a park and there was a Redcoat gulping up at a statue and Wellington pointed to the man and said there it all depends on that article whether we do the business or not give me enough of it and I am sure and as he later wrote to his brother that best of all instruments British infantry so yes he could be scathing and rude and dismissive but he knew the value of his men and he was saved he got out of a scrape Waterloo because of the stalworth nature of that infantry the best of all instruments even vulcanized now who was not a friend of the British admitted they fought with superb bravery so was he so cold and heartless we mentioned the sieges after the siege of badda half the ditch outside the breaches and remember that only in sharps company two British soldiers get through the breaches it fell because of the success of a feint attack but if you're Richard sharp but you're attacking a breach you get through but it was horror it was a ditch of death in the morning there was steam rising up and it wasn't water it was blood the slaughter was horrible and general Picton found him next morning and he was crying Wellington was crying as picton wrote back home as copious a flood of tears as any woman and Wellington confirm this he wrote himself I could not help crying I bit my lip did everything I could to stop myself for I was ashamed that he should see it but I could not he said good god what is the matter he said in Welsh and good god man what is the matter he did weep after battles famously he wept after Waterloo when John Hume took him the butcher's bill the casualty list he held Humes hand and cried he was an extraordinarily emotional man his prayer after Waterloo was utterly sincere I pray for no more fighting you can no more imagine Napoleon making that prayer it's impossible Napoleon was a very great man but he was in love with war Wellington would have understood utterly what robert e lee meant when he said it is good that war is so terrible else we should love it too much he was herb Lee good at it but he was stricken by the casualties by what it meant by the death by the wounded remember that Waterloo was fought on a Sunday the last wound it would not carried away from the battlefields of the following Thursday he says we do what we can for them but God knows it is so little he really did not he was good at it but he did not like fighting it is again to his credit that on that dreadful afternoon of Waterloo when his line is being abraded when the French artillery and French skirmishes are biting into his men when there are no reserves left the Sun is going down and he knows there is yet another assault coming on his line and he rides along the line in the thick of the fighting and what does he say to the men he doesn't promise them glory he doesn't promise them plunder what he says again and again is look we win this we get peace I promise you a generation of peace that was his message that's why we're fighting were fighting to end fighting so we have peace I like that in him so you have an emotional man also a man who was extraordinarily generous always generous in later life he would always go out with a pocket full of guineas to give to veterans he would ask them a few questions to find out if they really were veterans who did you serve with what unit who was the commanding officer he gave generously to orphanages because he said I have made too many of them he gave two soldiers charities there's some nice story Sir William Allen painted a great painting of Waterloo which I believed your grace is still in absolu house it is a beautiful wonderful painting and he paid Allen and he paid him rather more than Allen expected and so William went to the to to Apsley house and he stood there and His grace began to count out banknote I'm gonna pay cash and so William said that perhaps his grace might prefer to draw a cheque upon his bank be easier your grace and the Duke looked at him and said do you suppose I'm gonna let Koontz his people know what a damned fool I've been paid for him a nice the story came in Strathfield say where a local farmer had to sell some land a man was it financially embarrassed it was a fire sale and the steward bought the land for I think eight hundred pounds if I'm right and went back and told the Duke that he'd bought this land and and crowed that they got a bargain and the Duke said him what do you mean it's a bargain he said well your grace that you know we paid eight hundred pounds for land that was certainly worth eleven hundred pounds but what the man had to sell would you counted out three hundred pounds instead in that case carry this to the late owner and never talked to me of cheap land again and so the man got his full value of the land that is honor and then you have the wonderful stories of Oliver I like a lover a lover of course was the Spanish liaison officer who was with Wellington throughout the peninsula he'd fought against the British at the Battle of Trafalgar I found a Scottish doctor who was at Trafalgar and a Waterloo Oliver volunteered to be with with the Duke of Waterloo out of friendship by that time he was the Spanish ambassador I think to them to the Netherlands and he had no business being at Waterloo and yet he shared the risk out of friendship for the Duke but in fact there was a whole regiment of Marines at ward at Talavera French Marines who were later converted to infantry and they were also at Waterloo so there's probably several hundred guys who have both Trafalgar Waterloo anyway that's beside the point Oliver who did become a great friend and we owe much of the success of the of the alliance to the friendship between Oliver and Wellington in later years became an exile he fell out of favor with the politicians at home when he came to London and he was penniless and the Duke wrote to his bank to Cootes Bank this is my friend and as long as I have any money at your house that in have it to any amount he thinks proper we all need friends like the first Duke of Wellington Oliver of course Cedric was asked about his memories of the Peninsular war what he dreaded most missable I used to ask what time do we leave in the morning and what is for dinner and he always got the same answer but she said he dreaded daybreak cold meat the Duke was not famous for his table we are almost done but I have to tell this storage is that's nothing whatsoever to do with the Duke of Wellington he was not the first I mean not the only Field Marshal British Field Marshal to serve a bad table at the Battle of El Alamein General von comer was captured and Montgomery invited him to dinner in his Caravan afterwards and an MP heard about this back in London and objected he got up in Parliament and said that this was fraternizing with the enemy and what did the Prime Minister have to say and Churchill got to his feet and he said I have to tell the Honourable gentleman that I too have had dinner with general Montgomery and I feel sorry for General Bob home the Juke like cold meat mutton I like mutton too I've actually run out of time I hope I paint a depiction I got one last thing to say before I finish guys I gather I might have to answer questions which could be terribly embarrassing but and that is his fondness for women sadly his marriage did not work kids he was of course a wonderful woman but she was not the right woman for him he liked intelligent clever women and kitty was domestic it was sad the marriage so there were many many women friends many many affairs he was discrete and he was a gentleman but I cannot resist telling you this the one of the women to whom he was most violently attracted was called Mary Anne Patterson she was one of three American sisters and she had been married to an American merchant Robert Patterson she was widowed and she came to England after Waterloo with her sisters where she became friends of the Duke yeah she took the three sisters to Waterloo and showed them the battlefield they've spoiled my battlefield he said he was violently not violent he was never a violent man with women he was extraordinarily attracted to Mary Ann Patterson became very upset when she became engaged to his elder brother one of his other women friends said mrs. Patterson had done pretty well for the widow of an American shopkeeper to marry a Marquess and a knight of the Garter the Duke actually disapproved of the match though he came to tolerated and he kept a portrait of Mary Ann Patterson for the rest of his life so what why pick that woman out of the many clever attractive intelligent women that he liked and to whom he taught well Mary Ann Patterson was the great-great granddaughter of a man called Charles Carroll Charles Carroll was the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence it was a signer which is a very fine thing to be in American history he was the last signer to die he lived to be 96 so what so the Duke liked Marianne who was the great great granddaughter of Charles Carroll of Baltimore well about eight years ago I played John Hancock in a musical which is rarely performed in England called 1776 I have no idea why you don't like that musical and this was in America so I played John Hancock and I took immense pleasure in saying to the cast you're all born in America except me I'm the only British born actor here and I am the only actor in this cast who is descended from a signer my great great great great great grandfather was Charles Carroll of Maryland now your grace I know this doesn't make me family quite but I just like the connection I've run out of time I think what I'm trying to say to you is it although we think of the Juke as a very great man and he was more people turned up to line the streets of London at his funeral and did for princess die and maybe not the greatest politician maybe a man who could be haughty diffident brusque he was not those things he was emotional generous probably as much as anybody else for surprised by the enormous Heights he reached I think above everything else is it the first Duke of Wellington and we are very lucky to have him in our history with an extraordinary great man honest man a good man and I am delighted that we still go on remembering him in this way ladies and gentlemen your grace thank you very much tremendous well ladies and gentlemen grace is that bernhard is very happy to take a few questions so I think we have a microphone or two to actually help us here so if you put your armor we'll get a microphone to you give you a chance to got a quit first question down here you can sing it out if you like I'll repeat it what would you like to talk to him about oh if it was the Christmas if so Christopher's time machine which he's gonna have ready he promises by next spring I'm working on it what would I talk to the Duke about I think there'd be there would be questions about I mean I'm afraid to say about his military career and he'd hate those questions I mean I can see myself being a sort of you know put down very peremptorily there's an immense amount of nonsense going around at the moment it perhaps that always has about how you know he didn't really win Waterloo I know the French poor darlings think they did I mean you don't look at the artistry on their fuentes de Norrell and there is the victory excuse me I mean they haven't quite got as far as putting Waterloo there I don't know I don't blame them I mean why not I mean it's you got to fill the thing somehow but you know I mean the the extraordinary stuff I mean recently a book came out called Waterloo the German victories you know as if as if Wellington really had nothing to do with it no because the accusation in that book was that was that Wellington deceived his prussian allies which is like nonsense it's I mean this was a man who knew how desperately he needed to win that campaign and the last thing you do that is by deceiving your allies it just doesn't work and nor did he I mean the whole accusation is a nonsense he really didn't like questions about about that sort of thing as he wrote to lady Shelley and I didn't like this quote he said I won the battle what more could they want I don't know I I think I'd probably I'd probably be overcome by shyness if I met the man so I'm going to send Johanna with the promise that she's going to come back yeah another question there I have always wondered about what makes a great man in history when he was a child now you mentioned many things but common sense was there anything in the childhood of of the Duke that triggered this common sense this is him to have was there anything in the childhood yes I mean obviously there was and I mean plainly there was the ability to work hard that the ability to take immense pains there's plainly a great deal of common sense it needed an opportunity and you know very often when you're young you don't have that opportunity to show your talents I mean it he at some point very early in his army career he realized that this was something he could understand and he watched people doing it very badly you know the Boxtel expedition he saw people doing things and he saw how not to do it and often that's a very useful thing to learn I don't know what I mean okay so he wasn't bookish I can't blame them for that I wasn't a bookish child either you know it's and his mother I think his mother was a fairly cold woman so I don't think we don't see much of him in childhood but it was obviously there the ability to work hard was there the ability to take pains the ability to make a judgment based on common sense and pragmatism is all there and thank goodness he was the square peg that found the square hole at the right time because the alternative would have been costly really I can't imagine any other general the period British juggle doing what he did but then that goes into alternative history so we don't learn to know somebody out there everyone talks about Waterloo but what would you say was his greatest battle oh other than Waterloo up his greatest battle well he when he was asked that he said essay and to say is an extraordinary battle he's hugely outnumbered he turns the enemy's flank it's very desperate I had the joy of going to assay and I mean it was you could kick the furrows and up would come the musket balls you can't do that at Waterloo I mean it's been you know it's being metal detected far too much you could still get them in the Pyrenees he he always said to say was his greatest victory I think most people would say that perhaps his greatest triumph or Salamanca I myself think Victoria is extraordinary a Porto is extraordinary I want even more extraordinary as that you still have people saying he's a defense general even to this day saying he's a defensive general that he really couldn't attack when I mean take si a Porto Salamanca Vittoria I think they are textbook examples of how to attack and destroy your enemy of course he's most famous for Waterloo because if you when you think about this if there had been no return from Elba if Europe had gone on from 1814 onwards and there'd been no Waterloo campaign no none of that had happened he wouldn't be nearly as famous as he is now Waterloo if you like was a moment in history which totally made the legend why well because you have this extraordinary thing that nobody would have doubted in 1814 1815 that the two greatest soldiers of the age when Napoleon and Wellington but most people would have put them in that order that Napoleon is the number one seed and Wellington's the number two and they'd never fought how do you think they didn't have that in their minds on the morning of June the 18th 1815 oh they did and Wellington I don't think was a man who'd been much swayed by that but he knew it and he's never lost a battle I'm about to fight the number one seed I think he wasn't aware of that he was and not only does he fight him but thanks to the intervention of the Prussians of the stal witness of the British they don't just defeat him they rout him there is no French army worth speaking of after Waterloo this isn't just a victory this is a huge rout he ends the Napoleonic Wars on that day on that Ridge he ends it that's the great achievement of that day he's fought greater battles in the sense battles that you can admire his tactics and his strategy and say gosh that was brilliant no the flank attacked by the 3rd division of Salamanca is wow you know it's it's beautiful I mean that's what Robert Ely was talking about when he did much the same thing of Fredericksburg and he watches his his strategy just unfolding and watch is the enemy being utterly defeated and of course it's an exhilarating moment you think Wellington wasn't exhilarated on the air appeals watching the French just collapse knowing that he devised it and it was his idea and he was doing it and robert e lee did the same thing he watched the Union Army being absolutely shattered and he said it is good the war is so awful else we would love it too much but at Waterloo although it is not the most glamorous battle even battles can ever be glamorous it's not a battle that excites the admiration because of the tactics and the strategy but it's a battle that ends a war and ends it like that and he did it and that made him unassailable because the other guy spent the next 11 X 6 years of his life saying all I'm a better general really wrote and received in Wellington made so many mistakes that were to do you should never should never afford what he did it was a stupid thing to do he was throwing away his army tremendous well I think and Vernon you've entertained us now and I think it painted some phenomenal pictures actually of the Duke of Wellington we're extremely grateful for having such a fantastic evening ladies thank you very much once again thank you just in the in the tradition we have here is gothis Norm Dicks now we have another tradition here at the Wellington lecture and that is actually to award the prop Wellington prize and this evening it gives me very great pleasure to invite constant Burbidge to join us and to invite the Duke to present the prize I'll hand over to His grace ladies and gentlemen vice-chancellor well it is one of the most important days in my calendar the annual Wellington lecture which is followed by the giving of the Wellington prize of course you will imagine how much I enjoyed Bernhard corporals lecture wasn't it fun for us all and so many things that I could add but just on Mary Ann Patterson her painting by Lawrence still hangs in the dining room at apse the house and we have a wonderful watch that was commissioned by Napoleon for his brother Joseph when he was just about to become king of Spain and mr. breguet in Paris took so long to make the watch that by the time it was ready Joseph was no longer king of Spain so the watch went into mr. brigade stock and was purchased for the Duke by General Paget in April 1814 and he must have really liked the watch and he must have really liked Mary Anne because he had let into an inner plate as it were inside the watch a miniature of Mary Anne based on the Lawrence portrait so he must have been very very keen very very key anyway ladies and gentlemen my duty now is to present this year the Wellington prize to constant Burbridge she's tackled a very difficult subject which is slavery in the late 18th and middle nineteenth century there is a Wellington subset in this subject because when Wellington was appointed British ambassador in Paris in August 1814 he was given the primary task by the British government to persuade the French to abolish slavery in the French colonies he didn't succeed but that was his primary task as ambassador arriving in Paris in in August and indeed Wilberforce wrote him several letters thanking him for his efforts to abolish slavery in the French colonies however this is an interesting piece of work difficult subject but very well presented I haven't read it all but I've certainly read some of it and it gives me great pleasure to present the Wellington prize to constant Burbridge well done you well sadly that brings us to the end of the evening and obviously I'd like to invite you all to the 29th lecture coming up next year I can't promise to up the time machine finished by then because I have the same problems at Duke the first Duke of Wellington heard and that is my paymaster maybe a little slow in paying me to do it but we'll do our best I hope to see you next year thank you very much

Channel: University of Southampton

Views: 14,322

Rating: 4.8439026 out of 5

Keywords: The University of Southampton, Southampton University, Duke of Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, Bernard Cornwell, A Storied Life, Novelist

Id: m75oD17lLLw

Length: 68min 29sec (4109 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 27 2016