Wellington the proposal seemed premature; he would prefer to wait till “the assembly had published its conduct by its acts”; for if the new chambers were to prove as intractable as the dissolved Chambre introuvable, the monarchy would not be able to dispense with its foreign tutors. To Castlereagh he wrote (December 11, 1816) that although he believed that the common people of the departments occupied, “particularly those occupied by us,” were delighted to have the troops and the money spent among them, among the official and middle classes the feeling
was very different. In view of the weakness of the king’s government, to reduce the army would be to expose the excitable elements of the population to the temptation of attacking it. “Suppose I or my officers were forced to take military action. Suppose this were to happen in the Prussian cantonments. The whole Prussian army would be put in motion, and all Europe
would resound with the alarm of the danger to be apprehended from the Jacobins in France.”[1]
The events of the next few months considerably modified his opinions in this matter. The new chambers proved their trustworthy quality by passing the budget, and the army of occupation was reduced by 30,000 men. Wellington now pressed for the total evacuation of France, pointing out that popular irritation had grown to such a pitch that, if the occupation were to be prolonged, he must concentrate the army between the Scheldt and the Meuse, as the forces, stretched in a thin line across France, were no longer safe in the event of a popular rising. But such a concentration would in itself be attended with great risk, as the detachments might be destroyed piecemeal before they could combine. These representations determined the allies to make the immediate evacuation of France the principal subject of discussion at the congress which it was arranged to hold at Aix-la-Chapelle in the autumn of 1818. Here Wellington supported the proposal for the immediate evacuation of France, and it was owing to his common-sense criticism that the proposal of Prussia, supported by the emperor Alexander and Metternich, to establish an “army of observation” at Brussels, was nipped in the bud. The conduct of the final arrangements with Messrs Baring and Hope, which made a definitive financial settlement between France and the allies possible, was left entirely to him.
On Wellington’s first entry into Paris he had been received with popular enthusiasm,[2] but he had soon become intensely unpopular. He was held responsible not only for the occupation itself, but for every untoward incident to which it gave rise; even Blücher’s attempt to blow up the Pont de Jena, which he had prevented, was laid to his charge. His characteristically British temperament was wholly unsympathetic to the French, whose sensibility was irritated by his cold and slightly contemptuous justice. Two attempts were made to assassinate him.[3] After the second the prince regent commanded him to leave. Paris and proceed to the headquarters at Cambrai.[4] For the first time the duke disobeyed orders; the case, he wrote, was one in which he was “principally and personally concerned,” and he alone was in a position to judge what line of action he ought to pursue.[5] His work in Paris, however, was now finished, and on the 30th of October, in a final “order of the day,” he took leave of the international troops under his command. On the 23rd of October, while still at Aix, he had received an offer from Lord Liverpool of the office of master-general of the ordnance, with a seat in the cabinet. He accepted, though with some reluctance, and only on condition that he should be at liberty, in the event of the Tories going into opposition, to take any fine he might think proper.
For the next three years “the Duke” was little before the world. He supported the repressive policy of Liverpool’s cabinet, and organized the military forces held ready in case of a Radical rising, It was his influence with George IV. that led to the readmittance of Canning to the cabinet after the affair of the royal divorce had been settled. It was only in 1822, however, that the tragic death of his friend Londonderry (Castlereagh) brought him once more into international prominence. Londonderry had been on the eve of starting for the conference at Vienna, and the instructions which he had drawn up for his own guidance were handed over by Canning, the new foreign secretary, to Wellington, who proceeded in September to Vienna, and thence in October to Verona, whither the conference had been adjourned. Wellington’s official part at the congress is outlined elsewhere (see Verona, Congress of). Unofficially, he pointed out to the French plenipotentiaries, arguing from Napoleon’s experience, the extreme danger of an invasion of Spain, but at the same time explained, for the benefit of the duke of Angouleme, the best way to conduct a campaign in the Peninsula.
Wellington’s intimate association for several years with the sovereigns and statesmen of the Grand Alliance, and his experience of the evils which the Alliance existed to hold in check, naturally led him to dislike Canning’s aggressive attitude towards the autocratic powers, and to view with Some apprehension his determination to break with the European concert. He realized, however, that in the matter of Spain and the Spanish colonies the British government had no choice, and in this question he was in complete harmony with Canning. This was also at first the case in respect to the policy to be pursued in the Eastern Question raised by the war of Greek independence. Both Canning and Wellington were anxious to preserve the integrity of Turkey, and therefore to prevent any isolated intervention of Russia; and Wellington seemed to Canning the most suitable instrument for the purpose of securing an arrangement between Great Britain and Russia on the Greek question, through which it was hoped to assure peace in the East. In February 1826, accordingly, the duke was sent to St Petersburg, ostensibly to congratulate the emperor Nicholas I. on his accession, but more especially—to use Wellington’s own words—“to induce the emperor of Russia to put himself in our hands.”[6] In this object he signally failed. He was, indeed, received in St Petersburg with all honour; but as a diplomatist the “Iron Duke”—whom Nicholas, writing to his brother Constantine, described as “old and broken (cassé)”—was no match for the “Iron Tsar.” As for the Greeks, the emperor said bluntly that he took no interest in “ces messieurs,” whom he regarded as “rebels”; his own particular quarrel with Turkey, arising out of the non-fulfilment of the treaty of Bucharest, was the concern of Russia alone; the ultimatum to Turkey had, indeed, been prepared before Wellington’s arrival, and was dispatched during his visit. Under stress of the imminence of the peril, which Nicholas was at no pains to conceal, the duke was driven from concession to concession, until at last the tsar, having gained all he wanted, condescended to come to an arrangement with Great Britain in the Greek question. On the 4th of April was signed the Protocol of St Petersburg, an instrument which—as events were to prove—fettered the free initiative not of Russia, but of Great Britain (see Turkey: History; Greece: History).[7]
After the death of the duke of York on the 5th of December 1826 the post of commander-in-chief was conferred upon Wellington. His relations with Canning had, however, become increasingly strained, and when, in consequence of Lord Liverpool’s illness. Canning in April 1827 was called to the head of the administration, the duke refused to serve under him. On the day after the resignation of his seat in the cabinet he also resigned his offices of master of the ordnance and commander-in-chief, giving as his reason “the tone and temper of Mr Canning’s letters,” though it is difficult to see in these letters any adequate reason for such a course (see Maxwell’s Life, ii. 199) The effect of his withdrawal was momentous in its bearing upon Eastern affairs. Canning, freed from Wellington’s restraint, carried his intervention on behalf of Greece a step further, and
- ↑ F. O. Continent; Paris: Wellington (No. 32).
- ↑ See the interesting letter of Lord Castlereagh to Lord Liverpool preserved in the Foreign Office Records (Congress, Paris, Viscount Castlereagh. July 7–20, 1815), dated July 8, 1815.
- ↑ Maxwell, Life, ii. 114 ff.
- ↑ Suppl. Despatches, xii. 326.
- ↑ Suppl. Despatches, ii. 335.
- ↑ Memorandum to Canning of January 26, 1826 (Well. Desp. iii.)
- ↑ An interesting account of Wellington’s negotiations in St Petersburg, based on unpublished documents in the Russian archives, is given in T. Schiemann’s Geschichte Russlands unter Nikolaus I. (Berlin, 1908), ii. 126–138.
