Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

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Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1 May 1769–14 September 1852) was an Anglo-Irish soldier and statesman. He rose to prominence during the Peninsula War and became a national hero in England after the Napoleonic Wars, during which he led the victorious Anglo-Allied forces at the Battle of Waterloo. He would later be elected Prime Minister of the United Kingdom on two separate occasions.

Contents 1 Sourced 1.1 Notes of Conversations with the Duke of Wellington, Stanhope 2 Attributed 3 Misattributions 4 External links

Sourced

• I don't know what effect these men will have on the enemy, but by God, they terrify me.
  • On a draft of troops sent to him in Spain, 1809

• Uxbridge: I have lost my leg, by God!
  Wellington:"By God, and have you!"
  • Hardy, The Dynasts, Pt.III.VII.viii
    • Said at the Battle of Waterloo, after Lord Uxbridge lost his leg to a cannonball

• Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.
  • Dispatch from the field of Waterloo (June 1815)

• Hard pounding this, gentlemen; let's see who will pound longest.
  • Sir W. Scott, Paul's Letters (1815)
  • At Waterloo

• There is no mistake; there has been no mistake; and there shall be no mistake.
  • Wellingtoniana (1832)

• It has been a damned nice thing — the nearest run thing you ever saw in your life... By God! I don't think it would have done if I had not been there.
  • Creevey Papers, ch. x, p. 236
  • On the Battle of Waterloo

• All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don't know by what you do; that's what I called 'guessing what was at the other side of the hill'.
  • Croker Papers (1885), vol.iii, p. 276

• I believe I forgot to tell you I was made a Duke.
  • Postscript to a letter to his nephew Henry Wellesley, 22 May 1814

• I never saw so many shocking bad hats in my life.
  • Sir William Fraser, Words on Wellington (1889), p. 12
  • On seeing the first Reformed Parliament

• You must build your House of Parliament on the river: so... that the populace cannot exact their demands by sitting down round you.
  • Sir William Fraser, Words on Wellington (1889), p. 163

• We always have been, we are, and I hope that we always shall be, detested in France. [1]

• Because a man is born in a stable that does not make him a horse.
  • Longford, Wellington--The Years of the Sword, p.129
  • Wellington's thought on his being born in Ireland.

• I have no small talk and Peel has no manners.
  • G. W. E. Russell's Collections and Recollections,, ch.14

Notes of Conversations with the Duke of Wellington, Stanhope

• I used to say of him [Napoleon] that his presence on the field made the difference of forty thousand men.
  • November 2, 1831

• The only thing I am afraid of is fear.
  • November 3, 1831

• Ours is composed of the scum of the earth—the mere scum of the earth.
  • November 4, 1831
  • Speaking about the British Army

• My rule always was to do the business of the day in the day.
  • November 2, 1835

• They wanted this iron fist to command them.
  • November 8, 1840
  • Of troops sent to the Canadian frontier in the war with America

Attributed

• I don't care a twopenny damn what becomes of the ashes of Napoleon Bonaparte.

• If you believe that you will believe anything.
  • In reply to a man who greeted him in a street with the words "Mr Jones, I believe?"

• It has been a damn nice thing — the nearest run thing you ever saw...
  • Said after the Battle of Waterloo

• Night or the Prussians will come.
  • Said during the thick of the Battle of Waterloo

• Ours is composed of the scum of the Earth — the mere scum of the Earth.
  • On the British Army Infantry

• Publish and be damned.
  • Allegedly written when the courtesan Hariette Wilson threatened to publish her memoirs and his letters

• Up Guards and at them again.
  • Often mis-quoted as "Up Guards and at 'em." Said at the Battle of Waterloo

Misattributions

• The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton
  • Attributed to the Duke, but unfounded.
  • The Dukes of Wellington have denied the quote and its first use appears so long after events and in a French source (Montalenbert 1856).

External links

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fr:Arthur Wellesley