Wellington: A Personal History. Christopher Hibbert

in India to sit drinking bumpers of claret at camphor-wood dinner tables under gently swishing punkahs and passing the mouthpiece of hookahs to the wives of Company officials on lamplit verandas. There was talk of an attack on the Pacific colonies of Spain which had recently come into the war on the side of France, or upon the Dutch, now also England’s enemies, in Java, and Wesley hoped that if such an assault were to be mounted, he might be given a command in it, perhaps the chief command. Yet, as a recent arrival in India, he did not want to appear too importunate. So, when it was suggested he might command such an expedition, he demurred, proposing the name of another more senior officer, with the proviso that if anything should prevent that officer taking it, he would be prepared to accept the command himself, ‘taking chance,’ as he told his brother Richard, ‘that the known pusillanimity of the Enemy’ and his own exertions would ‘compensate in some degree’ for his lack of experience. ‘I hope,’ he added, not troubling to hide his low opinion of them, ‘to be at least as successful as the people to whom Hobart [Lord Hobart, Governor of the Presidency of Madras] wishes to give command … Of course, the Chief Command of this expedition would make my fortune; going upon it at all will enable me to free myself from debt, therefore you may easily conceive that I am not very anxious for the conclusion of a peace at this moment.’⁸ As though to confirm his qualifications as commander, he sent Sir John Shore a résumé of what was known of the places which were to come under attack and information he had gleaned about the harbours where the expeditionary force might be put ashore.

      His hopes, however, were not to be realized; he was not given the chief command but went instead as commanding officer of the 33rd with orders to land them at Manila in the Philippines, and then launch an attack across the Sulu and Celebes Seas and through the Straits of Makassar upon the Dutch garrison in Java. But the expedition was as inconclusive as the 33rd’s attempted crossing of the Atlantic in 1795.

      It got off to an unfortunate start: a young clergyman, the nephew of a friend of William Hickey, appointed by Colonel Wesley at Hickey’s request as chaplain of the 33rd, turned out to be ‘of very eccentric and peculiarly odd manners’. A day or two out of Calcutta he got ‘abominably drunk’ and ‘gave a public exhibition of extreme impropriety, exposing himself to both soldiers and sailors, running out of his cabin stark naked into the midst of them, talking all sorts of bawdy and ribaldry, and singing scraps of the most blackguard and indecent songs’. Overcome with remorse when sober, he took to his bunk and, though kindly assured by Colonel Wesley that his behaviour was ‘not of the least consequence’, that no one would think the worse of him for ‘little irregularities committed in a moment of forgetfulness’, ‘that the most correct and cautious men were liable to be led astray by convivial society’, and that ‘no blame ought to attach to a cursory debauch’, the poor young clergyman remained inconsolably penitent, refused to eat and ‘actually fretted himself to death’.⁹

      A week or so later the entire expeditionary force was recalled. There were reports of spreading unrest in British India, while Napoleon Bonaparte, appointed to the command of the French Army of Italy, was triumphantly justifying the trust the Directory in Paris had reposed in him. There had, besides, been mutinies in the British Navy at Spithead and the Nore which were so serious in the eyes of the First Lord of the Admiralty that the Channel Fleet was now ‘lost to the country as much as if it was at the bottom of the sea’. It had consequently been decided in Calcutta that the British forces in the East must be concentrated, and the 33rd brought home forthwith across the Indian Ocean. So it was that before long Colonel Wesley – who had planned his regiment’s part in the expedition with characteristic care and attention to detail – was once more back in India in the company of William Hickey.

      But, having been denied the opportunity of distinguishing himself, he felt even less inclined to fritter his afternoons and evenings away at dinner tables or to be satisfied with the undemanding routine of regimental life. He found time to study his books on Indian affairs and even produced a long and detailed refutation of a work that had recently appeared entitled Remarks upon the Present State of the Husbandry and Commerce of Bengal. He also became a familiar figure in the corridors of both Fort St George, where Lord Hobart exercised his authority as Governor of the Presidency of Madras, and Fort William, the headquarters of the Governor-General of India.

5 The Tiger of Mysore

       1799

       ‘Had Colonel Wellesley been an obscure officer of fortune he would have been brought to a court-martial.’

      SHORE’S DAYS as Governor-General were now coming to an end. As the recently created Baron Teignmouth, he sailed home in March 1798, leaving the Government in the hands of the Commander-in-Chief, General Sir Alured Clarke, until his successor arrived in India.

      This successor, whose ship, carrying a huge quantity of his baggage, docked at Calcutta on 17 May 1798, was the thirty-seven-year-old Richard Wesley, Earl of Mornington, soon to be created Marquess Wellesley of Norragh in the peerage of Ireland. The Marquess insisted upon that spelling of the family name which his brother Arthur now adopted, as did Henry whom the new Governor-General had brought out as his Private Secretary.*

      The Marquess, stately and patrician, long desirous of a marquessate, did not consider an Irish title at all adequate; nor did he hesitate to inform Mr Pitt, the Prime Minister, of his feelings in the matter. But he was well satisfied with his appointment which was, indeed, in his estimation, ‘the most distinguished situation in the British Empire after that of Prime Minister of England’.¹ He was also satisfied that he had ‘firmness enough to govern the British empire in India without favour or affection to any human being either in Europe or Asia’.²

      As though prompted by this assertion, his brother Arthur hastened to assure him that even he would not expect to derive any more advantage from his close relationship to the Governor-General than he would had any other person been appointed.³ All the same, he offered his services to Richard who, anxious though he was to avoid all imputations of nepotism, employed him as an unofficial Military Secretary, seeking his advice on matters that might well have been supposed the province of the staff of the Commander-in-Chief, and receiving in return detailed papers and memoranda on all manner of subjects of which Colonel Wellesley had taken the trouble to inform himself, from strategic considerations to fortifications and supplies, even to such problems as the methods which should be employed in the collection of adequate numbers of bullocks.

      The Colonel’s energetic activity led him to step on a number of sensitive toes. He much offended General St Leger by opposing his scheme for the creation of an Indian Horse Artillery, bluntly pointing out that there were insufficient horses for such an establishment: bullocks were the answer. He was also on extremely bad terms with Lord Hobart, Governor of the Presidency of Madras, whom he had much annoyed by openly opposing the appointment of General John Braithwaite to the command of the abortive expedition to Manila. Hobart had given the command to Braithwaite on the grounds that he was the senior officer and would be well supported by a reliable staff and a good army. ‘But he is mistaken,’ Colonel Wellesley objected, ‘if he supposes that a good, high-spirited army can be kept in order by other means than by the abilities & firmness of the Commander-in-Chief.’⁴ Colonel Wellesley’s forthright criticism of the Governor’s decision had resulted in his receiving in reply such a letter as, ‘between ourselves’, he indignantly told his brother Richard, ‘I have been unaccustomed to receive & will never submit to’.⁵

      It was considered ‘most unfortunate’ that there should be quarrels and disagreements like these in high places when affairs in India were in such a critical state.

      The area of the sub-continent administered by the British authorities was a very small proportion of the whole. There were still enormous princely states from Oudh in the north to Mysore and Travancore in the south with the sprawling territories of the Mārāthas and the Nizam of Hyderabad between them. Relations between these states and the East India Company were very uncertain, while French influence in India was still strong. There had been persistent