Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/523

Rh WELLINGTON 497 perfect acquaintance with French feeling was strikingly proved in the despatch which he sent home on learning of Napoleon s escape from Elba. &quot;He has acted,&quot; he wrote, &quot; upon false or no information, and the king (Louis XVIII.) will destroy him without difficulty and in a short time.&quot; Almost before Wellington s unfor tunate prediction could reach London, Louis had fled beyond the frontier, and France was at Napoleon s feet. The ban of the congress, however, went out against the common enemy of mankind, and the presence of Wellington at Vienna enabled the allies at once to decide upon their plans for the campaign. To Wellington and Bliicher was committed the invasion of France from the north, while the Russians and Austrians entered it from the east. Pre parations were pushed forward, and it was supposed that the war would be opened by an attack upon Alsace about the middle of June. Wellington, with 35,000 English troops and about 60,000 Dutch, Germans, and Belgians, took his post in the Netherlands, guarding the country west of the Charleroi road. Bliicher, with 120,000 Prussians, lay between Charleroi, Namur, and Liege. In the meantime Napoleon had outstripped the preparations of his adversaries, and by the 13th of June had con centrated 130,000 men on the northern frontier about Philippeville. It now became known to the allied leaders that large French forces were near at hand, but Wellington believed that Napoleon himself was still in Paris, and still expected that the war would be opened by a forward movement of Schwarzenberg into Alsace. He was, more over, strongly of opinion that, if Napoleon did take up the offensive on the north, he would throw himself upon the west of the English line and endeavour to cut the English off from the sea. Persuaded that the danger lay rather towards the coast than at the centre of the Anglo-Prussian line, he kept his forces farther westward than he would have done if he had known Napoleon s real intentions. Although the French advance on the centre became evident at the front on the morning of the 14th, it was unknown to Wellington till the afternoon of the 15th (after the Prussians had been driven out of Charleroi) that the French had made any movement whatever. How it was that the advance remained unknown to Wellington for twenty-four hours has not been explained ; had he learnt of it at once, he would probably have been able to reach Ligny with sufficient force to turn the Prussian defeat into a victory and to end the war at one blow. Commencing his concentration eastwards twenty-four hours too late, he was unable to fulfil his design of assisting Bliicher. Ney, getting a start on the Brussels road, kept the English occupied at Quatre Bras daring the 16th, while Napoleon was dealing with the Prussians at Ligny, though the ultimate defeat of the French at Quatre Bras, and Napoleon s own failure to follow up his victory at Ligny by a rapid pursuit, rendered it possible for the allies to effect two days later the combination which they had failed to effect at Ligny. On the morning of Sunday, June 18, Wellington, assured of Blucher s assistance, awaited Napoleon s attack on the memorable plain of Waterloo. How, at the head of 30,000 English and 40,000 mixed troops, he withstood the onslaught of the French army, and ultimately, in union with Bliicher, swept them from the field, needs not to be recounted here. Ending his military career with one of the greatest achievements in history, Wellington suddenly became, from the peculiar circumstances of the moment, the most influential politician in Europe. The czar and the emperor of Austria were still at Nancy when Paris surrendered. Wellington had reason to believe that Alexander bore so hostile a feeling towards Louis XVIII. that, if matters were not settled before the arrival of the czar at Paris, the Bourbon dynasty might not be restored at all. He there fore took affairs into his own hands, and concluded an arrangement whereby the regicide Fouche, at that moment the most powerful man in Paris, was accepted as the minister of Louis XVIII. The difficulties which might otherwise have been thrown in the way of this monarch s return to the Tuileries by the troops or by the populace of Paris were thus removed; and when Alexander arrived he found Louis XVIII. already in possession. The negotiation with Fouche was not a dignified episode in Wellington s life ; he stooped, however, to a somewhat humiliating expedient in order to avert substantial mischief. The next manifestation of his personal ascend ency was of a finer kind. The conditions of peace with Condi- France had to be determined by the allies; and, while the tions of czar urged that France should be left with undiminished P eace - territory, Prussia demanded, as a guarantee against re newed aggression, the annexation of Alsace and Lorraine. The British cabinet at first inclined to the Prussian view. Wellington, however, argued strongly for the opposite policy. He urged that the Bourbon dynasty would be hopelessly discredited if its second restoration were ac companied by the loss of the border provinces ; that the allies had in their proclamations distinguished between the cause of Napoleon and the cause of the French people; and that the French people, by refraining from offering any general resistance, had shown their practical accept ance of this distinction and so entitled themselves to the advantages held out in it. Wellington s arguments brought the English Government round to his own view, and so turned the balance in favour of the czar s policy of forbearance and against the annexations demanded by Prussia. The policy which he thus successfully advocated has naturally been condemned by most German statesmen and historians ; but its justification is to be found in the long continuance of the peace of 1815, a continuance which would hardly have been possible if the recovery of Alsace and Lorraine had been added to the other motives which, during the next thirty years, repeatedly brought France to the verge of war. Peace being concluded, Wellington was appointed commander-in-chief of the joint army of occupation, by which it was stipulated that France should be watched for the next five years. The administrative duties attaching to this post, and the reconstruction of the military frontier of the Netherlands, were, however, but a small part of the work now imposed upon him. In conjunction, and some times in rivalry, with the representatives of the other powers, he observed the course of French politics, coun selling King Louis XVIII., checking to the best of his ability the extravagances of the count of Artois and the ultra-royalist party, and advancing the financial negotia tions with Messrs Baring which enabled the French Government to pay the indemnities due from it, and thus rendered it possible for the powers to reduce the period of occupation from five to three years. When this re duction was first proposed, Wellington had not been con fident of its wisdom; he subsequently became convinced that it might be granted with safety, and at the congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818 he supported the proposal for the immediate evacuation of France, though this cut short by two years his own tenure of an office of almost unparalleled influence and emolument. Returning to England, he sank into the comparative insignificance of master-general of the ordnance, with a seat in the cabinet. For the next three years he was little before the world ; but in 1822, on the death of Castlereagh, he was sent in the place of this minister to represent Great Britain at the congress of Verona. The main question before the Congn ss congress was the policy to be adopted with regard to ofVerona. XXIV. 63