Duke of Wellington Biography

Duke of Wellington

(Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington; Dublin, Ireland, 1769-Walmer Castle, Kent, England, 1852) British military and politician.He entered the army in 1787 and years later served in India, where his brother Carlos-the Marquis of Wellesley-was governor (1796-1805).And, also following his brother, he entered politics as a Conservative deputy in the House of Commons in 1805, and served as Secretary for Ireland in 1807.

The Duke of Wellington (detail of a portrait of Goya)

In 1808 he was placed in command of the army that Great Britain sent to Portugal to fight against the French occupation of the Iberian Peninsula.In that same year he had to return to England to answer before a court for having allowed the withdrawal of the French general Jean Junot after defeating him around Lisbon.He was declared innocent and authorized to continue the direction of the Spanish War of Independence (1808-1814), which the English called the Peninsular War.

The fate of the war was unfavorable to him until 1810.But, after containing the French advance towards Lisbon in Torres Vedras (1811), he began a victorious offensive towards the center of the Peninsula, counting on the support of the autochthonous guerrilla, which weakened the military position of the French: took Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz, defeated Auguste Marmont in the battle of the Arapiles, occupied Madrid (1812), persecuted José I Bonaparte towards the north until inflicting two new defeats in Vitoria and San Marcial (1813), he crossed the Pyrenees and, already in French territory, definitively defeated Jean de Dieu Soult in Toulouse (1814).

His advance was simultaneous to that of the German and Russian troops that culminated in the Battle of Leipzig; and both allied successes determined the fall of Napoleon and the restoration of the Bourbons, both in Spain (Ferdinand VII) and in France (Louis XVIII).In 1815, Napoleon's unexpected return to power during the Hundred Days Empire forced his enemies to form a new coalition and send an army under the command of the Duke of Wellington, who finally defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo (1815 ).

His military services to the Crown during the Napoleonic Wars earned him successively the titles of Count, Marquis (1812) and Duke (1814) of Wellington.Later he carried out diplomatic missions; He participated in the Congress of Vienna (1815) and, as a member of the cabinet chaired by Liverpool, in those of Aix-la-Chapelle (1818) and Verona (1822).He was prime minister in 1828-30 and later minister in the governments of Robert Peel (1834-35 and 1841-46).

From those positions and that of commander-in-chief of the army, he had an undeniable influence, all the more so since the young Queen Victoria adored him.His political stance was ultra-conservative, since he considered that the English Constitution was perfect and did not need any reform (that is why he opposed, for example, the electoral reform of 1832).He was the last general to have real political power in the UK.

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