does not seem to have occurred to either Las Cases or his Master: :-nor in truth to any French writer that we have seen, except to M. Lamartine,* feebly, and more fully to M. Alphonse de Beauchamp, in their respective histories-the author of an article on the Duke's Dispatches in the Revue des Deux Mondes for September, 1839 (said to be M. Loëve Weimar), who seemed willing to treat it as fairly as the prejudices of his readers would allow—and now M. Maurel, who, bolder than the reviewer, examines it more frankly, and from a wider and higher point of view, as a statesman and a moralist. Fortune, Luck, Accidentsuch, in the philosophy of all other French historians is the chief, and in most of them the only explanation of a gradual and unbroken series of successes which--not merely by their number and continuity, but by their concatenation and the obvious identity of the principle that pervades them-could no more be the effect of mere chance than the great operations of the natural world-which offer, as we see, various phases and are subject to occasional disturbances-but, on the whole, bear unquestionable evidence of one great and invariable principle of order and action.

In the very motto of his work M. Maurel protests against this flattering unction for the amour propre blessé of his countrymen. 'Nullum numen abest si sit PRUDENTIA: sed te

Nos facimus, FORTUNA, deam, cœloque locamus?'

Which may be rendered,

'FORTUNE's an idol, to whose share is given

Results that PRUDENCE draws, in truth, from heaven.'

Even M. Thiers, who has something of a name to risk, and who labours to make an étalage of his candour, cannot get out of that vulgar ornière, and in the face of those immortal Dispatches which he pretends to have read, he persists in placing chance as the first ingredient of the Duke of Wellington's successes. We need not go far for examples. In the first three passages of his so-called History' in which the Duke makes his appearance, he is accompanied by this imaginary deity-who predominates over all the other elements of success which M. Thiers condescends to allow him.

This was Sir Arthur Wellesley-since celebrated as much for his good Fortune as for his great military qualities.'-Hist. du Con. et l'Emp., ix. 172.

Sir Arthur's expedition to Portugal in 1808 was, it seems, intended at first for Spain, but, on consideration, he resolves to disembark near the Tagus

* See Quarterly Review,' vol. xc., p. 562.

'to

'to avail himself of the occasions which Fortune might offer him, and of the chance of striking some lucky stroke,' &c.—ib. 175. To this, like the pedant who lectured Hannibal on the art of war, M. Thiers adds that Sir Arthur's military movements were all rash and wrong, but that he was induced to hazard them from a jealous impatience to do something brilliant before he should be superseded by the senior officers that were daily expected (ib. 175); and these assertions he ventures to accompany with distinct professions of familiarity with the Dispatches, in which, had he read them, he must have seen the clearest proofs that Sir Arthur's disembarkation in Portugal was no result either of accident or of second-thought-that the first object of the instructions under which he himself sailed from Ireland, and the rendezvous prescribed from the outset for all the different detachments that were to compose his army, was the Tagus; and that, as to his having rashly hurried into action from selfish jealousy, the very same Dispatch, from the Government at home, which announced that he might be superseded by a senior officer, directed him

'to carry his instructions into execution with every expedition that circumstances will admit, without awaiting the arrival of the LieutenantGeneral.'-15th July, 1808, Desp. iv. 18.

Again when Wellesley wins the battle of Vimieiro-entirely -as Field-Marshal Thiers thinks-through the rashness and blunders of Junot, who ought to have thrown him into the sea' and precipitated him over the cliffs into the abyss' (le jeter dans la mer-précipité dans les flots de l'abîme, ib. 182) in front of which he had taken up his very injudicious position-when, we say, he had won this battle, which he ought to have lost, M. Thiers's only remark is, that

'he was always lucky throughout his brilliant career.'-ib. 185.

Thus, on his very first appearance on the scene, prejudging— and by anticipation discolouring-the whole of that brilliant career' which the reluctant Historian must by and bye deal with in detail, as being from first to last the creature of patronizing Luck. If his wry-mouthed candour allows Wellesley certain

*We have heard, indeed (though we cannot ourselves vouch for the fact), that M. Thiers, when last in England, confessed that his acquaintance with the Dispatches was but slight, and even recent. Its slightness we never doubted, and that, such as it may be, he acquired it recently, is additionally confirmed by his long and pompons narration of the affair at Roliça, in which he asserts that the English lost from 1200 to 1500 men killed-tues. The Duke's official return, which we need not say is scrupulously correct, and accounts for every man, is 71 men and 4 officers killed. There is not a page of all this portion of M. Thiers' work that does not exhibit the same style of fanfaronnade, on which we think even he could not have ventured if he had read the Dispatches.

'great

'great military qualities'-to wit, 'good sense and firmness -it is only to sharpen in the next line a sneer at his want of genius (ib. 175).

And again :

The slow and steady English soldier was the natural instrument of the narrow but wise and resolute mind of Sir Arthur Wellesley.'— ib. 177.

The narrow mind' of the Duke of Wellington!-and this written sixteen years after the publication of the Dispatches!

It is in answer to the strain of M. Thiers, and to the still more flagrant malevolence of minor scribblers, but, above all, of the great father of lies-Buonaparte himself-that M. Maurel takes a nobler as well as a more philosophical review of the whole life of the Duke of Wellington. He asks whether fortune, unaccompanied by prudence and genius, could have fought its way through eight campaigns, of various characters, but of uninterrupted successes -in Portugal, Spain, France, and Flanders-from Vimieiro in 1808 to Waterloo in 1815. Who else, he asks, of the privileged few who have influenced the destinies of mankind, can present himself to posterity, proof in hand, and say,

'Hence I set out-this was my object-here is my result, and these are the ways by which I arrived at it? I do not forget what I may have owed to fortune,-which must always have a great share in these matters-but here is what I have done to limit and contract that share. I lay before you-without reserve-my hopes, my projects, my plans, my means, my victories, and the reasons of my victories. Judge them and me!"

'Such an appeal would have something theatrical, and not at all suitable to the character of Wellington; but it would nevertheless be exactly true for the Dispatches are the real summary of his military life. He might have spoken thus without depreciating friends, without offending enemies, without departing from the most rigid and modest truth: but he has done the same thing in a still better taste. He has left these memorials of his life as a legacy to history, in their strict chronological order, in their exact original state- he has not suppressed a line-nor added a word of commentary-nor a word of argument nor a word of accusation nor a word of justification! A number of the letters are in French; and though these contain many striking thoughts and happy expressions, there are many incorrectnesses of style: nothing would have been easier than to have removed these faults without altering the sense, or even diminishing the force of the expression. Wellington would do no such thing. . . If he has written bad French it must remain bad French. He chooses to appear what he is and nothing else. This literary good faith is but another form of the same uncompromising probity that distinguished him as a public officer and a private man. Even this trifle-if anything could be trifling where good faith is concerned-is his final

homage

homage to that devotion-that enthusiasm for truth, and that undeviating abhorrence of falsehood, that were the rule of his whole life.'—p. 66.

Some pages later M. Maurel give us a résumé of some of his principal exploits, with a view of showing how little chance and how much genius must have had to do with so great a number of campaigns and battles, spread over so many years, so diversified in circumstance, but all identical in their triumphant issues.

In his seven peninsular campaigns he passed through all the diversity of trials that fortune could create. He made defensive war, and triumphed. He made a war of positions and surprises, and triumphed. He then adopted the offensive on a larger scale, and still he triumphed. -He had made the boldest advances without involving himself in any risks. He had made long and difficult retreats without suffering any disaster. He fought battles of the most different characters-with a superiority of numbers-at Vimieiro, the 21st August, 1808; at Oporto, the 12th May, 1809; at Vitoria, 24th June, 1813; at Nivelle, 10th November, 1813; at Toulouse, the 10th April, 1814-and all were victories. He fought-with equal numbers-at Salamanca, 22nd July, 1812; at Pampeluna, 28th July; at St. Martial, the 31st August, 1813; at Orthez, the 28th February, 1814—and all were victories.-He fought with an inferiority of numbers-at Talavera, 28th July, 1809; at Busaco, 27th September, 1810; and at Almeida (Fuentes d'Onor), the 3rd and 4th May, 1811-and all were victories.'—p. 109.

We should, of course, have questioned the 'superiority' and 'equality' attributed to the Duke's army in some of these battles-but M. Maurel saves us that trouble by one general statement, which really brings all the cases under the last category:

'When I say that he had the superiority of numbers, it is only just to remark that except at Vimieiro-we are not speaking of English troops, but of the aggregate of Germans, Portuguese, and Spaniards, regular and irregular, which were from time to time under his orders. The English were everywhere and necessarily very inferior in number to the French. The truth is, that from 1808 to 1813 Wellington never had 30,000 English under his orders-and this was at a period when the imperial armies deluged the whole Peninsula with not less than 350,000 men. Struck by this enormous disproportion of forces, Wellington himself said to his friends, 'Tis strange that with this little army we are able to keep them in check. In 1813 the English contingent reached 40,000; but this was the army reinforced for the invasion of France.'-p. 110.

We may here mention that we have been allowed to see and to make extracts from a few MS. Notes, made, from time to time, by an early and intimate friend of the Duke's, of some of his conversations. Several of these Notes appear to us to afford interesting confirmations of some of the most striking points in

M. Maurel's

M. Maurel's view of his character, and we think that this is a time and an occasion in which it would be hardly justifiable to withhold them from the public. We have been, however, restricted to the production of such only as bear on our present purpose.

We find in these MS. Notes the Duke's own estimate of the relative numbers in some of the principal battles :

What was the real number of your army and the enemy in some of your great battles?

‘Duke.--- Talavera was the only one in which I had a superiority— but that was only by reckoning the Spaniards-at all the others I had less. At Salamanca I had 40,000, and the French not much more, perhaps 45,000. At Vittoria I had many thousand less, 60,000 to 70,000. At Waterloo the proportion was still more against me; I had less than 60,000-perhaps about 56,000 or 58,000; Buonaparte had near 80,000. The whole army in the South of France under my command was considerably larger than the force under Soult at the battle of Toulouse; but actually employed in that operation I had less than he; and he was posted behind works which we had to storm? -MS. Note.

In following the course of the Duke's life, M. Maurel shows that 'his growth, so far from resembling the fruits of chance, was at once gradual and rapid. His first experience was in an humble rank and in adverse circumstances-he served as a subordinate officer in the disastrous campaigns of Flanders and Holland in 1794-5. There he witnessed a series of reverses and retreats, which afforded no doubt, to that calm yet inquisitive mind, lessons which he turned to his future profit.'-(p. 100). But, not content with the public lessons which he might thus receive, he was a remarkable instance of diligent self-instruction.

'He added to his natural gifts a most indefatigable and intelligent application to his duties. It was his habitual practice to enter-to descend-into the most minute details of the service. "The regiment of Colonel Wellesley," says Lord Harris in 1799, " is a model regiment for equipment, for courage, for discipline, for instruction, and for good conduct, it is above all praise!"--p. 102.

Of the early disposition-which M. Maurel reasonably supposed the Duke's mind to have had to acquire professional instruction, we find in the MS. Notes a most remarkable instance -one, indeed, to which, if told of or by any man but the Duke, we should hardly, we own, have given implicit faith :—

"D. of W.-Within a few days after I joined my first regiment I caused a private soldier to be weighed-first, in full marching order, arms, accoutrements, ammunition, &c., and afterwards without them. I wished to have some measure of the power of the individual man, compared with the weight he was to carry and the work he was

expected