I might fight one any day I please." Upon this point we
can also happily quote more at large, from one of the
most striking of the letters in which the Duke has left
invaluable counsel to such leaders and captains as may
hereafter have the charge of the national honour and
defence. "The desire to be forward in engaging the
enemy is not uncommon in the British army; but
that quality which I wish to see the officers possess
who are at the head of the troops, is a cool, discriminating
judgment in action, which will enable them to
decide with promptitude how far they can and ought
to go with propriety; and to convey their orders and
act with such vigour and decision, that the soldiers
will look up to them with confidence in the moment
of action, and obey them with alacrity. The officers
of the army may depend upon it, that the enemy to
whom they are opposed are not less prudent than
they are powerful. Notwithstanding what has been
printed in gazettes and newspapers, we have never
seen small bodies, unsupported, successfully opposed
to large; nor has the experience of any officer realised
the stories which all have read, of whole armies being
driven by a handful of light infantry or dragoons."

It is not to be inferred from such passages as this
that the Duke would have discredited the grand
heroisms of the world; that the three hundred
Spartans at Thermopylæ, or the ten thousand Greeks
at Marathon, were, in his judgment, to be put away
among the fairy tales and legends; but simply that
such precedents as those are not to guide the conduct
in any of the plans or enterprises of life to which
judgment and prudence can be brought. The last
extremity finds ever its last resource, and it is not
one that any amount of forethought could provide.
Then, in that last extremity, what is ordinarily our
enemy takes the attitude of a friend, and the
passions become our servants. Then, but then only,
when prudence is mute, reason baffled, and all ordinary
resources of discretion and wisdom exhausted,
there needs to arise in the uttermost resort the
highest achievement of which humanity is capable,
bvit the very last on which a hero should rest or
speculate beforehand.

It was the characteristic remark of a Frenchman
on the Duke's despatches, that he could not find the
word glory in them from beginning to end. Indeed
it is not necessary to disguise the fact that they are
horridly dull reading for a man of lively temperament.
Should we turn to see what they talk about,
for example, a few days after that crowning battle of
Vittoria which crushed the Bonaparte dynasty in
Spain, we suddenly find ourselves contemplating a
sketch of the heroes of the day, the very reverse of
flattering. "We started with the army in the highest
order," says the Duke, "and up to the day of the
battle nothing could get on better; but that event
has, as usual, totally annihilated all order and
discipline. The night of the battle, instead of being
passed in getting rest and food to prepare them for
the pursuit of the following day, was passed by the
soldiers in looking for plunder: the consequence was
that they were incapable of marching in pursuit of the
enemy, and were totally knocked up. The rain
came on, and increased their fatigue; and I am
quite convinced that we have now out of the ranks
double the amount of our loss in the battle; and
that we have lost more men in the pursuit than the
enemy have, and have never in any one day made
more than an ordinary march. This is the consequence
of the state of discipline of the British army.
We may gain the greatest victories, but we shall do
no good until we shall so far alter our system as to
force all ranks to perform their duty."

This was at all times his argument. There is no
good in the greatest victories if we cannot look
beyond them, and guarantee the enjoyment of that for
which their sufferings and sacrifices have been undergone.
War for its own sake—war for glory's sake—
war unretrieved from its miseries by its highest
advantages—is the greatest curse a country can know.
Such was the Duke of Wellington's deliberate
judgment; and his labours to reform the army with this
view, that he might render it a nobler and more
effective instrument of war, were gigantic. They
embraced schemes of the largest and details of the
minutest kind, into none of which may we enter
here, further than to mark their progressive
results as page follows page in the despatches.
For example: "I have long been of opinion
that a British army could bear neither success nor
failure. The soldiers of this army have plundered
the country most terribly; which has given me the
greatest concern." Again: "We are an excellent
army on parade, an excellent one to fight; but we
are worse than an enemy in a country; and, take my
word for it, that either defeat or success would
dissolve us." Again: "I certainly think the army
is improved. They are a better army than they
were some months ago. But still these continued
outrages are terrible." Again: "It is an unrivalled
army for fighting, if the soldiers can only be kept in
their ranks during the battle; but it wants some of
those qualities which are indispensable to enable a
general to bring them into the field in the order in
which an army ought to be to meet an enemy, or to
take all the advantage to be derived from a victory."
Still that thought unceasingly recurs. We are not
here for the glory of fighting battles, but for the
gain we can achieve for our countrymen by fighting
them. It was not for the interest of this or of
that family, or dynasty, he was pouring out English
blood and treasure over the fields of Portugal and
Spain, but it was to destroy a system of tyranny
so wide-spread and monstrous as to emperil the
continuance of civilisation and happiness in every
land on the face of the earth.

Predominant throughout every letter of the Duke of
Wellington, private or public, is a sense of the absolute
necessity of crushing the Napoleonian system,
if liberty or civilisation were to be saved. "There
must be," he said, "a general resistance to the disgusting
and fraudulent tyranny of Bonaparte." Every
sacrifice was to be made for that, and every extremity
dared. "Yes," he writes, when one of the Austrian
Archdukes was proposed to be placed at the head of
one of the states resolved to throw off Napoleon, "but
he must understand that he must never lay down his
arms, even though reduced to be the head of a gang of
robbers, till he shall have attained his object."
In another letter he says, "Those who embark in projects
of this description should be made to understand,
or to act as if they understood, that having once
drawn the sword they must not return it until they
shall have completely accomplished their object.
They must be prepared, and must be forced, to make
all sacrifices to the cause. Submission to military
discipline and order is a matter of course; but when
a nation determines to resist the authority, and to
shake off the government, of Bonaparte, they must be
prepared, and forced, to sacrifice the luxuries and
comforts of life, and to risk all in a contest, which, it
should be clearly understood before it is undertaken,
has for its object to save all or nothing." It should
at the same time be remarked that the Duke of
Wellington, in speaking thus, had already thoroughly
convinced himself that the system was to be crushed,
if he could but get the needful seconding for his own
efforts. What possessed others with despair, put hope
into him. It was when he saw Napoleon at the
culminating point of his power, that he saw more clearly