Self Help by Samuel Smiles (desktop ebook reader txt) 📖

30,000 cavalry.

But so brilliant a victory did not in the least disturb his

equanimity, or affect the perfect honesty of his character.

 

Shortly after this event the opportunity occurred for exhibiting

his admirable practical qualities as an administrator. Placed in

command of an important district immediately after the capture of

Seringapatam, his first object was to establish rigid order and

discipline among his own men. Flushed with victory, the troops

were found riotous and disorderly. “Send me the provost marshal,”

said he, “and put him under my orders: till some of the marauders

are hung, it is impossible to expect order or safety.” This rigid

severity of Wellington in the field, though it was the dread,

proved the salvation of his troops in many campaigns. His next

step was to re-establish the markets and re-open the sources of

supply. General Harris wrote to the Governor-general, strongly

commending Colonel Wellesley for the perfect discipline he had

established, and for his “judicious and masterly arrangements in

respect to supplies, which opened an abundant free market, and

inspired confidence into dealers of every description.” The same

close attention to, and mastery of details, characterized him

throughout his Indian career; and it is remarkable that one of his

ablest despatches to Lord Clive, full of practical information as

to the conduct of the campaign, was written whilst the column he

commanded was crossing the Toombuddra, in the face of the vastly

superior army of Dhoondiah, posted on the opposite bank, and while

a thousand matters of the deepest interest were pressing upon the

commander’s mind. But it was one of his most remarkable

characteristics, thus to be able to withdraw himself temporarily

from the business immediately in hand, and to bend his full powers

upon the consideration of matters totally distinct; even the most

difficult circumstances on such occasions failing to embarrass or

intimidate him.

 

Returned to England with a reputation for generalship, Sir Arthur

Wellesley met with immediate employment. In 1808 a corps of 10,000

men destined to liberate Portugal was placed under his charge. He

landed, fought, and won two battles, and signed the Convention of

Cintra. After the death of Sir John Moore he was entrusted with

the command of a new expedition to Portugal. But Wellington was

fearfully overmatched throughout his Peninsular campaigns. From

1809 to 1813 he never had more than 30,000 British troops under his

command, at a time when there stood opposed to him in the Peninsula

some 350,000 French, mostly veterans, led by some of Napoleon’s

ablest generals. How was he to contend against such immense forces

with any fair prospect of success? His clear discernment and

strong common sense soon taught him that he must adopt a different

policy from that of the Spanish generals, who were invariably

beaten and dispersed whenever they ventured to offer battle in the

open plains. He perceived he had yet to create the army that was

to contend against the French with any reasonable chance of

success. Accordingly, after the battle of Talavera in 1809, when

he found himself encompassed on all sides by superior forces of

French, he retired into Portugal, there to carry out the settled

policy on which he had by this time determined. It was, to

organise a Portuguese army under British officers, and teach them

to act in combination with his own troops, in the mean time

avoiding the peril of a defeat by declining all engagements. He

would thus, he conceived, destroy the morale of the French, who

could not exist without victories; and when his army was ripe for

action, and the enemy demoralized, he would then fall upon them

with all his might.

 

The extraordinary qualities displayed by Lord Wellington throughout

these immortal campaigns, can only be appreciated after a perusal

of his despatches, which contain the unvarnished tale of the

manifold ways and means by which he laid the foundations of his

success. Never was man more tried by difficulty and opposition,

arising not less from the imbecility, falsehoods and intrigues of

the British Government of the day, than from the selfishness,

cowardice, and vanity of the people he went to save. It may,

indeed, be said of him, that he sustained the war in Spain by his

individual firmness and self-reliance, which never failed him even

in the midst of his great discouragements. He had not only to

fight Napoleon’s veterans, but also to hold in check the Spanish

juntas and the Portuguese regency. He had the utmost difficulty in

obtaining provisions and clothing for his troops; and it will

scarcely be credited that, while engaged with the enemy in the

battle of Talavera, the Spaniards, who ran away, fell upon the

baggage of the British army, and the ruffians actually plundered

it! These and other vexations the Duke bore with a sublime

patience and self-control, and held on his course, in the face of

ingratitude, treachery, and opposition, with indomitable firmness.

He neglected nothing, and attended to every important detail of

business himself. When he found that food for his troops was not

to be obtained from England, and that he must rely upon his own

resources for feeding them, he forthwith commenced business as a

corn merchant on a large scale, in copartnery with the British

Minister at Lisbon. Commissariat bills were created, with which

grain was bought in the ports of the Mediterranean and in South

America. When he had thus filled his magazines, the overplus was

sold to the Portuguese, who were greatly in want of provisions. He

left nothing whatever to chance, but provided for every

contingency. He gave his attention to the minutest details of the

service; and was accustomed to concentrate his whole energies, from

time to time, on such apparently ignominious matters as soldiers’

shoes, camp-kettles, biscuits and horse fodder. His magnificent

business qualities were everywhere felt, and there can be no doubt

that, by the care with which he provided for every contingency, and

the personal attention which he gave to every detail, he laid the

foundations of his great success. {26} By such means he

transformed an army of raw levies into the best soldiers in Europe,

with whom he declared it to be possible to go anywhere and do

anything.

 

We have already referred to his remarkable power of abstracting

himself from the work, no matter how engrossing, immediately in

hand, and concentrating his energies upon the details of some

entirely different business. Thus Napier relates that it was while

he was preparing to fight the battle of Salamanca that he had to

expose to the Ministers at home the futility of relying upon a

loan; it was on the heights of San Christoval, on the field of

battle itself, that he demonstrated the absurdity of attempting to

establish a Portuguese bank; it was in the trenches of Burgos that

he dissected Funchal’s scheme of finance, and exposed the folly of

attempting the sale of church property; and on each occasion, he

showed himself as well acquainted with these subjects as with the

minutest detail in the mechanism of armies.

 

Another feature in his character, showing the upright man of

business, was his thorough honesty. Whilst Soult ransacked and

carried away with him from Spain numerous pictures of great value,

Wellington did not appropriate to himself a single farthing’s worth

of property. Everywhere he paid his way, even when in the enemy’s

country. When he had crossed the French frontier, followed by

40,000 Spaniards, who sought to “make fortunes” by pillage and

plunder, he first rebuked their officers, and then, finding his

efforts to restrain them unavailing, he sent them back into their

own country. It is a remarkable fact, that, even in France the

peasantry fled from their own countrymen, and carried their

valuables within the protection of the British lines! At the very

same time, Wellington was writing home to the British Ministry, “We

are overwhelmed with debts, and I can scarcely stir out of my house

on account of public creditors waiting to demand payment of what is

due to them.” Jules Maurel, in his estimate of the Duke’s

character, says, “Nothing can be grander or more nobly original

than this admission. This old soldier, after thirty years’

service, this iron man and victorious general, established in an

enemy’s country at the head of an immense army, is afraid of his

creditors! This is a kind of fear that has seldom troubled the

mind of conquerors and invaders; and I doubt if the annals of war

could present anything comparable to this sublime simplicity.” But

the Duke himself, had the matter been put to him, would most

probably have disclaimed any intention of acting even grandly or

nobly in the matter; merely regarding the punctual payment of his

debts as the best and most honourable mode of conducting his

business.

 

The truth of the good old maxim, that “Honesty is the best policy,”

is upheld by the daily experience of life; uprightness and

integrity being found as successful in business as in everything

else. As Hugh Miller’s worthy uncle used to advise him, “In all

your dealings give your neighbour the cast of the bank—‘good

measure, heaped up, and running over,’—and you will not lose by it

in the end.” A well-known brewer of beer attributed his success to

the liberality with which he used his malt. Going up to the vat

and tasting it, he would say, “Still rather poor, my lads; give it

another cast of the malt.” The brewer put his character into his

beer, and it proved generous accordingly, obtaining a reputation in

England, India, and the colonies, which laid the foundation of a

large fortune. Integrity of word and deed ought to be the very

cornerstone of all business transactions. To the tradesman, the

merchant, and manufacturer, it should be what honour is to the

soldier, and charity to the Christian. In the humblest calling

there will always be found scope for the exercise of this

uprightness of character. Hugh Miller speaks of the mason with

whom he served his apprenticeship, as one who “PUT HIS CONSCIENCE

INTO EVERY STONE THAT HE LAID.” So the true mechanic will pride

himself upon the thoroughness and solidity of his work, and the

high-minded contractor upon the honesty of performance of his

contract in every particular. The upright manufacturer will find

not only honour and reputation, but substantial success, in the

genuineness of the article which he produces, and the merchant in

the honesty of what he sells, and that it really is what it seems

to be. Baron Dupin, speaking of the general probity of Englishmen,

which he held to be a principal cause of their success, observed,

“We may succeed for a time by fraud, by surprise, by violence; but

we can succeed permanently only by means directly opposite. It is

not alone the courage, the intelligence, the activity, of the

merchant and manufacturer which maintain the superiority of their

productions and the character of their country; it is far more

their wisdom, their economy, and, above all, their probity. If

ever in the British Islands the useful citizen should lose these

virtues, we may be sure that, for England, as for every other

country, the vessels of a degenerate commerce, repulsed from every

shore, would speedily disappear from those seas whose surface they

now cover with the treasures of the universe, bartered for the

treasures of the industry of the three kingdoms.”

 

It must be admitted, that Trade tries character perhaps more

severely than any other pursuit in life. It puts to the severest

tests honesty, self-denial, justice, and truthfulness; and men of

business who pass through such trials unstained are perhaps worthy

of as great honour as soldiers who prove their courage amidst the

fire and perils of battle. And, to the credit of the multitudes of

men engaged in the various departments of trade, we think it must

be admitted