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The Duke of Wellington was the most famous Briton of the first half of the 19th century. | 0:00:04 | 0:00:10 | |
His victory over Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815 | 0:00:11 | 0:00:16 | |
altered the course of history. | 0:00:16 | 0:00:18 | |
Waterloo, together with Trafalgar, | 0:00:18 | 0:00:21 | |
give Britain 100 years of domination. Britain becomes THE superpower. | 0:00:21 | 0:00:26 | |
Steely-eyed, lantern-jawed, for later generations | 0:00:26 | 0:00:30 | |
he came to embody the very essence of Britishness. | 0:00:30 | 0:00:34 | |
This one, I think, of Wellington is excellent. | 0:00:34 | 0:00:36 | |
You can see the determination. | 0:00:36 | 0:00:39 | |
You can see the Iron Duke. | 0:00:39 | 0:00:41 | |
But real men are not made of iron. | 0:00:44 | 0:00:47 | |
My heart is broken. | 0:00:47 | 0:00:50 | |
Next to a battle lost, | 0:00:50 | 0:00:53 | |
the greatest misery is a battle gained. | 0:00:53 | 0:00:57 | |
He's not just the stiff upper lip. | 0:00:58 | 0:01:00 | |
He's got all the sort of characteristics of someone | 0:01:00 | 0:01:04 | |
who's really quite complicated inside. | 0:01:04 | 0:01:07 | |
This is an intimate portrait of a hero, | 0:01:07 | 0:01:10 | |
seen through the eyes of those who knew him best - | 0:01:10 | 0:01:14 | |
the women he slept with... | 0:01:14 | 0:01:16 | |
"I am glad to see you are looking so beautiful," says he. | 0:01:16 | 0:01:20 | |
"May I pay you a visit?" | 0:01:20 | 0:01:22 | |
"When you like", say I. | 0:01:22 | 0:01:24 | |
..the intelligent, insightful women he chose to spend his time with... | 0:01:24 | 0:01:29 | |
He wishes to be the universal man. | 0:01:29 | 0:01:33 | |
It is incredible how his pride has a share has everything that he does. | 0:01:33 | 0:01:37 | |
..and through the eyes of the woman he was married to. | 0:01:37 | 0:01:41 | |
For your own dear sake, for Christ's sake, | 0:01:41 | 0:01:44 | |
do not use another woman as you have treated me. | 0:01:44 | 0:01:47 | |
General, politician, lover, wit, outsider - | 0:01:47 | 0:01:52 | |
the hero of Waterloo was far more complex than the public image, | 0:01:52 | 0:01:57 | |
and there was no more brutal observer of his inner drama than Wellington himself. | 0:01:57 | 0:02:02 | |
Would you believe that anybody could have been such a damned fool? | 0:02:02 | 0:02:06 | |
Drawing on his own vast, private correspondence, | 0:02:07 | 0:02:11 | |
as well as the diaries and memoirs of those around him, | 0:02:11 | 0:02:15 | |
this is the story of the flesh-and-blood human being | 0:02:15 | 0:02:19 | |
behind the iron mask. | 0:02:19 | 0:02:21 | |
In September 1805, the 36-year-old Arthur Wellesley, | 0:02:30 | 0:02:34 | |
as the future Duke of Wellington was then known, | 0:02:34 | 0:02:37 | |
arrived back in Britain from India. | 0:02:37 | 0:02:40 | |
The younger son of an Irish aristocratic family, | 0:02:43 | 0:02:46 | |
he'd spent the previous nine years fighting to expand the British Empire. | 0:02:46 | 0:02:50 | |
He came back from India very, very changed. | 0:02:53 | 0:02:58 | |
He went out as a very junior, very inexperienced officer. | 0:02:58 | 0:03:03 | |
He came back as Major General Sir Arthur Wellesley, KB - | 0:03:03 | 0:03:08 | |
Knight of the Bath. | 0:03:08 | 0:03:09 | |
He's become a man in India. | 0:03:09 | 0:03:12 | |
He's become a real soldier. | 0:03:12 | 0:03:14 | |
I think he came back from India a very confident, | 0:03:14 | 0:03:18 | |
almost arrogant figure. | 0:03:18 | 0:03:20 | |
Arthur Wellesley's victories in India | 0:03:20 | 0:03:23 | |
had established his reputation. | 0:03:23 | 0:03:25 | |
They had also made his fortune in booty seized from Indian princes. | 0:03:25 | 0:03:31 | |
He left behind a few debts to his tailor and that sort of thing. | 0:03:31 | 0:03:36 | |
And he came back with £40,000 | 0:03:36 | 0:03:40 | |
which is, in those days, you know, | 0:03:40 | 0:03:43 | |
quite a reasonable amount of money. | 0:03:43 | 0:03:46 | |
A huge sum of money, | 0:03:46 | 0:03:47 | |
and given that he was a relatively penniless younger son | 0:03:47 | 0:03:51 | |
of an aristocratic family, | 0:03:51 | 0:03:53 | |
all of a sudden he's got serious private means. | 0:03:53 | 0:03:57 | |
Arthur Wellesley was now on a personal mission. | 0:03:57 | 0:04:00 | |
When he comes back from India, he basically says that he's come back | 0:04:00 | 0:04:04 | |
for one reason alone, and that is to marry - and to marry Kitty Pakenham. | 0:04:04 | 0:04:08 | |
Like Arthur himself, | 0:04:10 | 0:04:12 | |
Kitty Pakenham was a member of the Anglo-Irish Protestant aristocracy. | 0:04:12 | 0:04:18 | |
He had originally proposed to her before going to India, | 0:04:18 | 0:04:22 | |
but was rejected by her family. | 0:04:22 | 0:04:25 | |
He proposed not once but twice in the 1790s | 0:04:25 | 0:04:28 | |
to a not particularly distinguished family, | 0:04:28 | 0:04:31 | |
no more distinguished than his own family in Ireland, | 0:04:31 | 0:04:34 | |
and both times he'd been turned down as effectively not good enough. | 0:04:34 | 0:04:37 | |
He gets not only a wounding refusal, | 0:04:39 | 0:04:42 | |
but a set of comments on his lifestyle. | 0:04:42 | 0:04:45 | |
"Well, you're a young, impecunious cavalry officer, | 0:04:45 | 0:04:48 | |
"you haven't got much prospects." | 0:04:48 | 0:04:49 | |
That must have really hurt. | 0:04:49 | 0:04:51 | |
and I think that's a major motivation in his coming back | 0:04:51 | 0:04:54 | |
and of vindicating himself. "Here I am, now I'm a general. | 0:04:54 | 0:04:58 | |
"Now I've got plaudits. Now I've got money. What do you think now?" | 0:04:58 | 0:05:01 | |
But 12 long years had passed. | 0:05:03 | 0:05:07 | |
Kitty was now entering middle age, | 0:05:07 | 0:05:09 | |
painfully aware she was no longer the young beauty | 0:05:09 | 0:05:12 | |
Arthur Wellesley had left behind, as she wrote to a friend. | 0:05:12 | 0:05:16 | |
I am very much changed | 0:05:19 | 0:05:21 | |
within these last three years, and you know it. | 0:05:21 | 0:05:24 | |
So much that I doubt whether it would be in my power | 0:05:24 | 0:05:27 | |
to contribute to the comfort or happiness | 0:05:27 | 0:05:30 | |
of anybody who has not been in the habit of loving me for years. | 0:05:30 | 0:05:35 | |
I think Arthur was still in love with the Kitty that he remembered. | 0:05:35 | 0:05:39 | |
He's clearly got this picture in his mind of this very pretty, | 0:05:42 | 0:05:46 | |
lively young girl he last saw when she was 21, 22. | 0:05:46 | 0:05:51 | |
Sensibly, Kitty had suggested they take time to become reacquainted. | 0:05:51 | 0:05:56 | |
"No need," Arthur replied, | 0:05:56 | 0:05:58 | |
and responded by brusquely proposing marriage. | 0:05:58 | 0:06:01 | |
Kitty accepted. | 0:06:01 | 0:06:04 | |
He's convinced it will be as it was before. | 0:06:04 | 0:06:08 | |
So, he doesn't go and see her. | 0:06:08 | 0:06:10 | |
KNOCK AT DOOR | 0:06:10 | 0:06:12 | |
And the first time he sees her is a few days before | 0:06:12 | 0:06:16 | |
they actually get married, in April 1806. | 0:06:16 | 0:06:20 | |
According to one account, | 0:06:23 | 0:06:24 | |
Arthur later confided his initial reaction to his brother. | 0:06:24 | 0:06:28 | |
'She's grown damned ugly, by Jove.' | 0:06:28 | 0:06:31 | |
The wedding nevertheless went ahead just a few days later. | 0:06:31 | 0:06:35 | |
It was a dreadful situation. | 0:06:35 | 0:06:38 | |
Out of perhaps pique, | 0:06:38 | 0:06:40 | |
he'd married the girl he was refused a few years earlier. | 0:06:40 | 0:06:44 | |
He married her, and then he found that she was, for his purposes, | 0:06:44 | 0:06:48 | |
far too inadequate, far too small for him, in a way. | 0:06:48 | 0:06:52 | |
He's grown in confidence enormously while he's been in India, | 0:06:52 | 0:06:55 | |
and hers seems to have drained away. | 0:06:55 | 0:06:57 | |
I wouldn't say that it took long for them to find out | 0:06:57 | 0:07:00 | |
they didn't have much in common. | 0:07:00 | 0:07:02 | |
Soon afterwards, Arthur was made Chief Secretary for Ireland | 0:07:10 | 0:07:14 | |
in a Tory government. | 0:07:14 | 0:07:15 | |
The couple moved into the secretary's official residence | 0:07:16 | 0:07:20 | |
in Phoenix Park, Dublin. | 0:07:20 | 0:07:21 | |
Kitty, who came from a large, affectionate family, | 0:07:26 | 0:07:29 | |
was delighted to be close to home. | 0:07:29 | 0:07:32 | |
Arthur's memories of childhood were very different. | 0:07:33 | 0:07:37 | |
Kitty's family, the Pakenhams, were a very warm, loving family. | 0:07:37 | 0:07:43 | |
And I think that warmth was something that was | 0:07:43 | 0:07:47 | |
entirely missing from Arthur's upbringing. | 0:07:47 | 0:07:50 | |
His father died when he was very young, he was only 12. | 0:07:53 | 0:07:58 | |
And his mother, left on her own with the children, | 0:07:58 | 0:08:01 | |
I think, really regarded Arthur as sort of rather tiresome. | 0:08:01 | 0:08:05 | |
He was the middle son, didn't seem to be good at anything. | 0:08:05 | 0:08:09 | |
Arthur also felt little sentimentality | 0:08:11 | 0:08:13 | |
towards the land of his birth. | 0:08:13 | 0:08:15 | |
Because a man is born in a stable, that does not make him a horse. | 0:08:16 | 0:08:21 | |
Whether Arthur ever uttered this famous put-down is disputed, | 0:08:21 | 0:08:24 | |
but it summed up his attitude. | 0:08:24 | 0:08:27 | |
For him, Ireland, like India, was a colony - a volatile, unstable one. | 0:08:27 | 0:08:34 | |
I think Arthur was very much an Irishman of the rather | 0:08:34 | 0:08:37 | |
embattled Anglo-Irish Protestant descendancy. | 0:08:37 | 0:08:40 | |
Ireland had suffered a terrible civil war in 1798, | 0:08:43 | 0:08:47 | |
a bloody rebellion, bloodily repressed. | 0:08:47 | 0:08:50 | |
And that gives him, I think, a horror, a fear of the mob, | 0:08:50 | 0:08:53 | |
and this is what makes him, I think, such a political reactionary. | 0:08:53 | 0:08:57 | |
I lay it down as decided that Ireland, in a view to military operations, | 0:08:59 | 0:09:04 | |
must be considered as an enemy's country. | 0:09:04 | 0:09:08 | |
No political measure would alter the temper of the people of this country. | 0:09:08 | 0:09:12 | |
They are disaffected to the British Government. | 0:09:12 | 0:09:15 | |
Arthur's Irish aristocratic background would | 0:09:17 | 0:09:20 | |
shape his political outlook throughout his life, making him | 0:09:20 | 0:09:24 | |
simultaneously an outsider, and a staunch Conservative. | 0:09:24 | 0:09:28 | |
And if Ireland tried his patience, so did his wife. | 0:09:31 | 0:09:35 | |
Left to run the household, Kitty struggled. | 0:09:35 | 0:09:39 | |
Kitty had never run a household, never lived on her own, | 0:09:39 | 0:09:43 | |
never had any money of her own. She was 33. | 0:09:43 | 0:09:48 | |
She didn't have any idea, really, how to be | 0:09:48 | 0:09:51 | |
the counterpart in this marriage to this efficient man. | 0:09:51 | 0:09:55 | |
He gave her money, gave her an allowance, | 0:09:57 | 0:10:00 | |
and she quite often used that allowance not for paying | 0:10:00 | 0:10:03 | |
the household expenses, which is what was the intention, | 0:10:03 | 0:10:07 | |
but to support impoverished members of her family or impoverished friends. | 0:10:07 | 0:10:13 | |
I believe I may have given away money very injudiciously, | 0:10:13 | 0:10:17 | |
perhaps sometimes, often, | 0:10:17 | 0:10:20 | |
to spare myself the pain of refusing. | 0:10:20 | 0:10:24 | |
When the Duke found that out, he was indeed very annoyed. | 0:10:26 | 0:10:31 | |
He just felt that that was deceitful of her, and irresponsible. | 0:10:31 | 0:10:35 | |
I am much concerned that you should have | 0:10:37 | 0:10:39 | |
thought of concealing from me any lack of money. | 0:10:39 | 0:10:42 | |
The conclusion I draw from your conduct is that you must be mad, | 0:10:43 | 0:10:47 | |
and that you must consider me a brute. | 0:10:47 | 0:10:49 | |
Once and for all, you require no permission to talk to me | 0:10:50 | 0:10:53 | |
about any subject you please. | 0:10:53 | 0:10:55 | |
All I request is that a piece of work may not be made about trifles. | 0:10:55 | 0:10:59 | |
And you may not go into tears, because I don't think them deserving | 0:10:59 | 0:11:02 | |
of an uncommon degree of attention. | 0:11:02 | 0:11:04 | |
He found out, was absolutely furious. | 0:11:06 | 0:11:09 | |
It wasn't really so much that she'd bailed out her brother he minded, | 0:11:09 | 0:11:12 | |
but it was the way that she'd concealed it from him. | 0:11:12 | 0:11:16 | |
And this was to be a bit of a pattern in their marriage, I'm afraid. | 0:11:16 | 0:11:22 | |
She was frightened of him. She was frightened of him. | 0:11:22 | 0:11:25 | |
With brisk efficiency, Arthur quickly fathered two sons. | 0:11:26 | 0:11:31 | |
The first, named after himself, born in 1807, | 0:11:31 | 0:11:35 | |
the second, Charles, born in 1808. | 0:11:35 | 0:11:39 | |
But it was soon clear he had a wandering eye. | 0:11:39 | 0:11:43 | |
HORSES APPROACH | 0:11:43 | 0:11:47 | |
CARRIAGE DOOR OPENS AND CLOSES | 0:11:47 | 0:11:48 | |
A high-class courtesan called Harriette Wilson would later reveal | 0:11:56 | 0:12:00 | |
she had an affair with Arthur during this period. | 0:12:00 | 0:12:03 | |
She described his somewhat unsubtle seduction technique. | 0:12:05 | 0:12:10 | |
He bowed, and said, "How do you do?" then wanted to take hold of my hand. | 0:12:10 | 0:12:15 | |
"Really," said I, withdrawing my hand. | 0:12:15 | 0:12:18 | |
"For such a renowned hero, you have very little to say for yourself. | 0:12:18 | 0:12:22 | |
"I understood you came here to try and make yourself agreeable." | 0:12:22 | 0:12:26 | |
"What, child?" said he. "Do you think that I have nothing better to do | 0:12:26 | 0:12:30 | |
"than to make speeches to please ladies?" | 0:12:30 | 0:12:33 | |
"This is indeed very uphill work," thought I. | 0:12:33 | 0:12:37 | |
He wore a broad red ribbon | 0:12:37 | 0:12:39 | |
and looked very like a rat catcher. | 0:12:39 | 0:12:42 | |
I think there can be little doubt that he had visited | 0:12:42 | 0:12:45 | |
Harriette Wilson in her professional capacity. | 0:12:45 | 0:12:48 | |
I think there can be little doubt about that! | 0:12:48 | 0:12:50 | |
He liked women. | 0:12:50 | 0:12:52 | |
He liked women a lot. | 0:12:52 | 0:12:54 | |
He's a bit of a Regency dandy, really. | 0:12:55 | 0:12:58 | |
He was a sexually very active man, | 0:12:58 | 0:13:00 | |
a man of his cast and a man of his time. | 0:13:00 | 0:13:03 | |
It's likely Arthur Wellesley already had two illegitimate sons | 0:13:05 | 0:13:08 | |
at the time he was married. | 0:13:08 | 0:13:10 | |
And throughout his life, he would display | 0:13:11 | 0:13:14 | |
an 18th-century aristocrat's attitude to sex. | 0:13:14 | 0:13:17 | |
But in 1808, his real yearning was to return to the battlefield. | 0:13:20 | 0:13:25 | |
Almost the whole of Europe at this point was under | 0:13:31 | 0:13:34 | |
the sway of the French emperor, Napoleon Bonaparte. | 0:13:34 | 0:13:37 | |
His Revolutionary Armies had driven the British from the Continent | 0:13:39 | 0:13:43 | |
and defeated the other major powers. | 0:13:43 | 0:13:46 | |
It was a moment of national peril, similar to 1940. | 0:13:48 | 0:13:53 | |
Pretty much all the other allies, | 0:13:53 | 0:13:55 | |
that is, the key allies - Russia, Austria and Prussia - | 0:13:55 | 0:13:59 | |
had been knocked out of the war. | 0:13:59 | 0:14:01 | |
Only Britain really is still in the ring against Napoleon. | 0:14:01 | 0:14:06 | |
Then, in 1808, there was an uprising against French rule in Spain. | 0:14:06 | 0:14:11 | |
For the British, it provided an opportunity. | 0:14:11 | 0:14:14 | |
And for the ambitious, restless Arthur Wellesley, | 0:14:16 | 0:14:19 | |
a chance to escape the desk job. | 0:14:19 | 0:14:22 | |
Wellesley was dispatched with a small army to assist the Spanish. | 0:14:26 | 0:14:30 | |
He would spend five years in the Iberian Peninsula | 0:14:33 | 0:14:36 | |
without once returning home to see his family. | 0:14:36 | 0:14:39 | |
While the cramped confines of his marriage magnified Arthur's faults, | 0:14:40 | 0:14:45 | |
the vast plains of Spain and Portugal provided the stage for his greatness. | 0:14:45 | 0:14:50 | |
His modest headquarters on the Spanish-Portuguese border | 0:14:53 | 0:14:56 | |
presented a stark contrast | 0:14:56 | 0:14:58 | |
with the grand chateaux favoured by Napoleon, | 0:14:58 | 0:15:01 | |
and the two men were very different commanders. | 0:15:01 | 0:15:05 | |
Napoleon tended to consider his soldiers as a dispensable item. | 0:15:07 | 0:15:12 | |
Wellington was very protective towards his soldiers, | 0:15:12 | 0:15:16 | |
and the principal reason for that is that he never enjoyed | 0:15:16 | 0:15:20 | |
the sort of resources in men or material that Napoleon had. | 0:15:20 | 0:15:24 | |
Although bolstered by Spanish and Portuguese troops, | 0:15:24 | 0:15:28 | |
he was often outnumbered, and never gave battle unless he had to. | 0:15:28 | 0:15:32 | |
The mark of a great general is to know when to retreat, | 0:15:32 | 0:15:36 | |
and have the courage to do it. | 0:15:36 | 0:15:38 | |
Wellesley made sure his troops were well fed without stealing. | 0:15:39 | 0:15:44 | |
He insisted on paying for everything. | 0:15:44 | 0:15:46 | |
I think he'd seen what French armies did, | 0:15:46 | 0:15:48 | |
and the anger and the hatred they left behind them, | 0:15:48 | 0:15:51 | |
and he made sure, as far as possible, that his troops behaved well. | 0:15:51 | 0:15:57 | |
Superb organisation, | 0:15:57 | 0:15:59 | |
meticulous attention to detail, | 0:15:59 | 0:16:01 | |
and a humane pragmatism - | 0:16:01 | 0:16:03 | |
these were the hallmarks of his command. | 0:16:03 | 0:16:06 | |
But for all the care he took of them, he was famously | 0:16:06 | 0:16:09 | |
contemptuous of the men who served beneath him. | 0:16:09 | 0:16:12 | |
The French system of conscription | 0:16:13 | 0:16:15 | |
brings together a fair sample of all classes. | 0:16:15 | 0:16:18 | |
Ours is composed of the scum of the earth, | 0:16:18 | 0:16:21 | |
the mere scum of the earth. It is only wonderful | 0:16:21 | 0:16:24 | |
that we should be able to make so much of them afterwards. | 0:16:24 | 0:16:26 | |
Unlike Napoleon, he had no great emotional rapport with his men. | 0:16:26 | 0:16:32 | |
The key word with Napoleon was glory, the wonder of being Emperor. | 0:16:32 | 0:16:36 | |
"Vive L'Empereur!" And he would glow, and his troops would glow | 0:16:36 | 0:16:40 | |
in this amazing relationship that they had with each other. | 0:16:40 | 0:16:43 | |
Wellington was quite different. | 0:16:45 | 0:16:47 | |
Wellington wanted his men to fear him and respect him. | 0:16:47 | 0:16:50 | |
He wanted his men to do what he told them. | 0:16:50 | 0:16:52 | |
He wanted them to be disciplined, | 0:16:52 | 0:16:54 | |
he wanted them to obey his orders. | 0:16:54 | 0:16:56 | |
That is the difference between the French and English soldier. | 0:16:56 | 0:17:00 | |
With the French, glory is the cause. | 0:17:00 | 0:17:03 | |
With us, the result. | 0:17:03 | 0:17:06 | |
His men may not have loved him, but they trusted him. | 0:17:08 | 0:17:13 | |
Through a succession of battles, he slowly moulded them | 0:17:13 | 0:17:16 | |
into an unbeatable force. | 0:17:16 | 0:17:19 | |
The French met their match. | 0:17:19 | 0:17:20 | |
Because these red-coated soldiers just didn't move. | 0:17:20 | 0:17:24 | |
They stood rooted to the spot, and that is, of course, | 0:17:24 | 0:17:27 | |
something that the Grande Armee had never encountered before. | 0:17:27 | 0:17:30 | |
By the summer of 1812, the British had driven the French into northern Spain. | 0:17:33 | 0:17:38 | |
On July 22nd, they confronted a French army | 0:17:43 | 0:17:47 | |
led by Marshal Auguste de Marmont outside the town of Salamanca. | 0:17:47 | 0:17:51 | |
In the battle that followed, Wellesley would show that, | 0:17:52 | 0:17:55 | |
although a cautious general, | 0:17:55 | 0:17:57 | |
when required, he could display flair, initiative and daring. | 0:17:57 | 0:18:02 | |
As dawn breaks on the 22nd, Marshal Marmont is standing here | 0:18:03 | 0:18:07 | |
with one of his divisional commanders, on this very spot. | 0:18:07 | 0:18:11 | |
He's looking at the hills behind me. | 0:18:11 | 0:18:14 | |
Wellington has actually hidden the whole of his army | 0:18:14 | 0:18:16 | |
behind that hill, but Marmont doesn't know that, | 0:18:16 | 0:18:18 | |
and what Marmont sees in the far distance is dust. A lot of dust. | 0:18:18 | 0:18:23 | |
This is Wellington's baggage train, | 0:18:23 | 0:18:25 | |
but he perceives this to be Wellington's army | 0:18:25 | 0:18:27 | |
continuing their westerly movement and not wanting to give battle. | 0:18:27 | 0:18:32 | |
Thinking the British were retreating, | 0:18:32 | 0:18:34 | |
Marmont dispatched a division in pursuit. | 0:18:34 | 0:18:37 | |
Wellington's command post is on that hill | 0:18:37 | 0:18:42 | |
in front of the village of Las Torres. | 0:18:42 | 0:18:46 | |
And it's about 1500 hours when, purportedly, | 0:18:46 | 0:18:50 | |
Wellington is watching what is going on to his front, | 0:18:50 | 0:18:53 | |
when he realises that that division has over-extended itself. | 0:18:53 | 0:18:56 | |
He realises this is his opportunity and in an instant, | 0:18:56 | 0:19:00 | |
he reacts. Purportedly, he's chewing on a chicken bone at the time | 0:19:00 | 0:19:04 | |
and he throws the chicken bone over his shoulder, shouting, | 0:19:04 | 0:19:09 | |
"By God, that will do!" Marmont is dead. He's made a fatal mistake. | 0:19:09 | 0:19:14 | |
He ordered his men to attack. | 0:19:14 | 0:19:16 | |
The French were taken by surprise. | 0:19:18 | 0:19:20 | |
In the words of one Frenchman, | 0:19:26 | 0:19:28 | |
40,000 French soldiers are destroyed in 40 minutes. | 0:19:28 | 0:19:32 | |
Salamanca helped establish Wellesley's reputation | 0:19:38 | 0:19:41 | |
as one of the greatest generals in Europe. | 0:19:41 | 0:19:44 | |
He was exultant. | 0:19:45 | 0:19:46 | |
I never saw an army get such a beating in so short a time. | 0:19:47 | 0:19:52 | |
I am afraid to state the extent of the enemy's loss. | 0:19:52 | 0:19:56 | |
What havoc in little more than four hours! | 0:19:56 | 0:20:00 | |
The people of Salamanca swear that my mother is a saint, | 0:20:00 | 0:20:03 | |
and the daughter of a saint, | 0:20:03 | 0:20:05 | |
to which circumstance, I owe all my good fortune! | 0:20:05 | 0:20:08 | |
Kitty was now living in London. | 0:20:15 | 0:20:17 | |
Her life could not have been more different. | 0:20:19 | 0:20:22 | |
Raising their two sons alone, | 0:20:22 | 0:20:24 | |
she kept a diary that revealed the tedium of her existence. | 0:20:24 | 0:20:28 | |
My time, I am conscious, is terribly dawdled away. | 0:20:29 | 0:20:34 | |
So uninteresting, so unvaried is my life | 0:20:34 | 0:20:38 | |
that to keep a daily journal is almost impossible. | 0:20:38 | 0:20:42 | |
And yet, by not doing so, I lose the pleasure of knowing | 0:20:42 | 0:20:47 | |
how he and I were employed at the same time. | 0:20:47 | 0:20:50 | |
She has this idea in her journal, | 0:20:51 | 0:20:54 | |
a rather lovely idea, in fact, of writing a journal | 0:20:54 | 0:20:57 | |
which will have her doings down one side and his down the other. | 0:20:57 | 0:21:02 | |
But the very, very sad thing is that those journals... | 0:21:03 | 0:21:07 | |
pretty much all of the right side is blank, | 0:21:07 | 0:21:11 | |
because she rarely got letters from him. He never confided in her. | 0:21:11 | 0:21:15 | |
He never told her what was going on. | 0:21:15 | 0:21:17 | |
Kitty's diary has never been published. | 0:21:17 | 0:21:20 | |
But it's still in the possession of the Wellington family. | 0:21:20 | 0:21:24 | |
Her diaries are just really heart-breakingly sad. | 0:21:24 | 0:21:29 | |
Or at least I find it heart-breaking, | 0:21:30 | 0:21:33 | |
thinking of her as my great-great-great grandmother. | 0:21:33 | 0:21:37 | |
At one point, she writes in her diary | 0:21:39 | 0:21:42 | |
just three words, "Alone and sad". | 0:21:42 | 0:21:44 | |
Alone and sad... | 0:21:44 | 0:21:47 | |
I fear indolence is again creeping about me. | 0:21:47 | 0:21:50 | |
I am fatigued by a regular course of insignificant operations | 0:21:51 | 0:21:55 | |
and dissatisfied with myself when idle. | 0:21:55 | 0:21:58 | |
I have nothing to say to this languid day. | 0:22:00 | 0:22:03 | |
I am tired. | 0:22:05 | 0:22:06 | |
This unvaried life fatigues, but must be endured. | 0:22:08 | 0:22:12 | |
So, ends a melancholy year. | 0:22:13 | 0:22:15 | |
Heaven spare me from such another. | 0:22:16 | 0:22:18 | |
She has the look of a woman who's battling with depression. | 0:22:20 | 0:22:24 | |
The languor that seems to come over her, the very opposite of what Arthur is going through. | 0:22:24 | 0:22:28 | |
The vigour that he seems to find in the field of action. | 0:22:28 | 0:22:32 | |
She, left behind, just dwindles, really. | 0:22:32 | 0:22:35 | |
Only in her two sons did Kitty find distraction | 0:22:38 | 0:22:41 | |
from her darkest thoughts. | 0:22:41 | 0:22:43 | |
My darling children, | 0:22:45 | 0:22:47 | |
may no degree of suffering tempt me | 0:22:47 | 0:22:50 | |
to forget my duty to you. | 0:22:50 | 0:22:51 | |
I little imagined the extent of my crime | 0:22:53 | 0:22:55 | |
when I so earnestly wished to die. | 0:22:55 | 0:22:58 | |
Her eldest, Arthur, he didn't remember his father, | 0:23:01 | 0:23:05 | |
but he was surrounded by busts or images of his father. | 0:23:05 | 0:23:08 | |
And there was one particular bust, | 0:23:08 | 0:23:11 | |
and he would go and rub the nose on the bust | 0:23:11 | 0:23:14 | |
and then he would sort of...touch his own nose. | 0:23:14 | 0:23:18 | |
And he would lament, he would say to his mother, | 0:23:20 | 0:23:24 | |
"My nose is such a time growing." | 0:23:24 | 0:23:28 | |
He wanted to be his father. | 0:23:28 | 0:23:30 | |
On October 7th, 1813, just a few months short | 0:23:32 | 0:23:36 | |
of his oldest son's seventh birthday, | 0:23:36 | 0:23:39 | |
Arthur Wellesley crossed the Bidasoa River into France. | 0:23:39 | 0:23:43 | |
A year earlier, Napoleon had been forced into his catastrophic | 0:23:47 | 0:23:51 | |
retreat from Moscow. | 0:23:51 | 0:23:52 | |
With British troops on French soil, | 0:23:54 | 0:23:56 | |
in the spring of 1814, he abdicated. | 0:23:56 | 0:23:59 | |
Wellesley had played a key role in his downfall. | 0:24:01 | 0:24:04 | |
Spain, in its way, though less spectacular, | 0:24:07 | 0:24:09 | |
I would submit, is as catastrophic | 0:24:09 | 0:24:12 | |
to the Napoleonic Empire as is Russia. | 0:24:12 | 0:24:14 | |
Something like a quarter of a million men | 0:24:14 | 0:24:16 | |
were held down in the Peninsula, who could have been fighting | 0:24:16 | 0:24:19 | |
in Central Europe because of Wellington's campaigns. | 0:24:19 | 0:24:21 | |
It was a vital element. | 0:24:21 | 0:24:23 | |
On May 3rd, 1814, Arthur Wellesley was made | 0:24:24 | 0:24:28 | |
Duke of Wellington by a grateful nation. | 0:24:28 | 0:24:31 | |
He entered Paris in triumph, | 0:24:36 | 0:24:38 | |
the saviour of Europe, | 0:24:38 | 0:24:41 | |
and quickly set about enjoying himself. | 0:24:41 | 0:24:44 | |
He was the most celebrated man, practically, in the world. | 0:24:45 | 0:24:49 | |
Every single woman in the land, | 0:24:49 | 0:24:52 | |
practically, was throwing themselves at his feet. | 0:24:52 | 0:24:56 | |
Did he have affairs? Yes, he had lots of affairs. | 0:24:58 | 0:25:02 | |
He was a bit naughty. I mean, he used his time in Paris | 0:25:02 | 0:25:04 | |
to have quite a bit of fun. | 0:25:04 | 0:25:07 | |
He rather prided himself on having a couple of mistresses | 0:25:07 | 0:25:10 | |
that Napoleon had had earlier on. | 0:25:10 | 0:25:12 | |
There's definitely something of the rutting stag going on here. | 0:25:12 | 0:25:16 | |
"I can prove that I'm more of a man than you | 0:25:16 | 0:25:19 | |
"because I'm going to take on all your old girlfriends." | 0:25:19 | 0:25:22 | |
One of Napoleon's mistresses that Wellington inherited | 0:25:24 | 0:25:27 | |
was the actress, Mademoiselle Georges. | 0:25:27 | 0:25:31 | |
His relationship with Mademoiselle Georges gives us the pleasing news | 0:25:32 | 0:25:36 | |
that when asked to compare, as lovers, Napoleon and Wellington, | 0:25:36 | 0:25:40 | |
that Wellington was very much the strongest and the best. | 0:25:40 | 0:25:45 | |
Wellington ran into an old acquaintance | 0:25:47 | 0:25:49 | |
while riding down the Champs-Elysees one day. | 0:25:49 | 0:25:52 | |
He quickly rekindled the friendship. | 0:25:52 | 0:25:55 | |
"I am glad to see you are looking so beautiful," says he. "May I pay you a visit?" | 0:25:55 | 0:26:00 | |
"When you like," say I. "I'll come tonight at eight o'clock." | 0:26:00 | 0:26:05 | |
His Lordship was punctual and came to me in a very gay equipage. | 0:26:05 | 0:26:09 | |
He was all over orders and ribbons of different colours, bows, | 0:26:09 | 0:26:12 | |
and stars, and he looked pretty well. | 0:26:12 | 0:26:16 | |
He kissed me by main force. | 0:26:16 | 0:26:18 | |
Wellington was made British ambassador and took up residence | 0:26:23 | 0:26:26 | |
in a house that had once belonged to Napoleon's sister. | 0:26:26 | 0:26:29 | |
He invited his wife Kitty to join him. | 0:26:34 | 0:26:36 | |
But Wellington's open philandering made hers a humiliating position. | 0:26:39 | 0:26:44 | |
He was perfectly prepared to almost insult his wife | 0:26:46 | 0:26:49 | |
by taking her to Paris and behaving very poorly even when she was there. | 0:26:49 | 0:26:55 | |
Friends of Wellington said, "You really shouldn't | 0:26:55 | 0:26:57 | |
"behave like that, it's a terrible thing to do to your wife." | 0:26:57 | 0:27:00 | |
He was extraordinarily insensitive to that, | 0:27:00 | 0:27:03 | |
more almost disdainful of his wife Kitty. | 0:27:03 | 0:27:07 | |
Was he cruel to her? | 0:27:07 | 0:27:09 | |
I think probably one would have to admit | 0:27:09 | 0:27:13 | |
that he had on occasions | 0:27:13 | 0:27:15 | |
been cruel to her. | 0:27:15 | 0:27:17 | |
Maybe many husbands have been guilty of this | 0:27:17 | 0:27:20 | |
over generations and centuries. | 0:27:20 | 0:27:22 | |
At this time, Wellington began to gather around him | 0:27:26 | 0:27:29 | |
a veritable harem of beautiful, aristocratic ladies, | 0:27:29 | 0:27:33 | |
far younger than himself, | 0:27:33 | 0:27:35 | |
united in their adoration of the great hero. | 0:27:35 | 0:27:39 | |
One of the best known was Lady Frances Shelley. | 0:27:41 | 0:27:43 | |
Wellington condescends to converse with me as a friend! | 0:27:46 | 0:27:50 | |
I hope my head won't be turned. | 0:27:50 | 0:27:53 | |
The other night, when the Duke was taking care of me after the opera, | 0:27:53 | 0:27:57 | |
the crowd made a way for us with the greatest respect. | 0:27:57 | 0:28:01 | |
The Duke turned towards me, and said in the gayest tone, | 0:28:01 | 0:28:05 | |
"It's a fine thing to be a great man, is it not?" | 0:28:05 | 0:28:10 | |
Equally devoted was political hostess Harriet Arbuthnot, | 0:28:13 | 0:28:17 | |
the wife of a close friend of Wellington's. | 0:28:17 | 0:28:20 | |
It is quite refreshing to be in constant | 0:28:23 | 0:28:25 | |
and habitual intercourse with a mind so enlightened, | 0:28:25 | 0:28:29 | |
so superior as his is, which is familiar with every subject | 0:28:29 | 0:28:33 | |
and which, at the same time, can find amusement in the most | 0:28:33 | 0:28:36 | |
ordinary occupations of life. | 0:28:36 | 0:28:38 | |
May God preserve him to us! | 0:28:39 | 0:28:41 | |
Intriguingly, it's likely that many of these relationships | 0:28:43 | 0:28:47 | |
were not sexual. | 0:28:47 | 0:28:48 | |
Curious man. A very curious man. | 0:28:50 | 0:28:53 | |
This incredibly powerful character, | 0:28:53 | 0:28:55 | |
who I think has an ambivalence about his relationship with women. | 0:28:55 | 0:28:58 | |
Some women are just there to be made love to and chucked aside, | 0:28:58 | 0:29:03 | |
and others are there to be friendly with and to be able to come out | 0:29:03 | 0:29:07 | |
with your inner thoughts and share deep, emotional feelings with. | 0:29:07 | 0:29:11 | |
I'm very struck by how important his friendships | 0:29:12 | 0:29:16 | |
with women were to him. | 0:29:16 | 0:29:19 | |
Women whose intellect he respected, he treated them | 0:29:19 | 0:29:24 | |
in a sense, as his equal. And I think that is quite unusual. | 0:29:24 | 0:29:28 | |
I mean, of course, the poor Kitty - | 0:29:28 | 0:29:31 | |
that was one of the problems. | 0:29:31 | 0:29:33 | |
She was lacking in confidence, | 0:29:33 | 0:29:35 | |
she wasn't that well informed about world affairs. | 0:29:35 | 0:29:39 | |
She was exactly the opposite of the sort of woman | 0:29:39 | 0:29:42 | |
whose company he enjoyed. | 0:29:42 | 0:29:44 | |
But Wellington's enjoyment of Paris | 0:29:45 | 0:29:48 | |
and the pleasure of female company was about to be rudely interrupted. | 0:29:48 | 0:29:52 | |
On February 26th, 1815, | 0:29:57 | 0:30:00 | |
Napoleon escaped from captivity on the island of Elba, off Italy. | 0:30:00 | 0:30:05 | |
Troops sent to arrest him, | 0:30:07 | 0:30:09 | |
joined him. | 0:30:09 | 0:30:10 | |
The newly restored French king fled. | 0:30:10 | 0:30:13 | |
Napoleon was back in power. | 0:30:14 | 0:30:16 | |
Wellington was in Vienna for the grand congress | 0:30:19 | 0:30:21 | |
that had been called to discuss the terms of the peace. | 0:30:21 | 0:30:24 | |
Once more, Europe turned to him | 0:30:26 | 0:30:28 | |
to lead the allied forces against Napoleon. | 0:30:28 | 0:30:31 | |
Wellington would now meet the French Emperor himself | 0:30:33 | 0:30:36 | |
on the field of battle for the first time. | 0:30:36 | 0:30:39 | |
The two armies met at Waterloo, | 0:30:48 | 0:30:51 | |
just outside Brussels, on June 18th, 1815. | 0:30:51 | 0:30:55 | |
For eight hours of savage hand-to-hand fighting, | 0:30:58 | 0:31:02 | |
the fate of Europe hung in the balance. | 0:31:02 | 0:31:05 | |
The present Duke retains an extraordinary memento | 0:31:08 | 0:31:11 | |
of that historic day. | 0:31:11 | 0:31:12 | |
A note, written by Wellington in the heat of the battle. | 0:31:14 | 0:31:18 | |
He sends this to Colonel MacDonald | 0:31:19 | 0:31:22 | |
in the Chateau d'Hougoumont, | 0:31:22 | 0:31:24 | |
which was an incredibly important position. | 0:31:24 | 0:31:28 | |
And he writes, sometime, I think, in the early afternoon, | 0:31:28 | 0:31:31 | |
"I see that the fire has communicated | 0:31:31 | 0:31:35 | |
"from the haystack to the roof of the chateau. | 0:31:35 | 0:31:40 | |
"You must, however, still keep your men in those parts | 0:31:40 | 0:31:45 | |
"to which the fire does not reach. | 0:31:45 | 0:31:49 | |
"Take care that no men are lost | 0:31:49 | 0:31:53 | |
"by the falling in of the roof or floors." | 0:31:53 | 0:31:57 | |
Incredible attention to detail, he'd obviously seen | 0:31:57 | 0:32:00 | |
with his telescope that roof of the chateau was on fire | 0:32:00 | 0:32:04 | |
and that, to me, completely embodies | 0:32:04 | 0:32:09 | |
the action during the battle. | 0:32:09 | 0:32:11 | |
The British managed to hold on to the chateau at Hougoumont. | 0:32:13 | 0:32:17 | |
But elsewhere on the battlefield, by early evening | 0:32:18 | 0:32:22 | |
they were facing defeat. | 0:32:22 | 0:32:24 | |
Then, at the last moment, Prussian reinforcements arrived. | 0:32:26 | 0:32:30 | |
The French were driven from the field. | 0:32:31 | 0:32:34 | |
Waterloo, together with Trafalgar, | 0:32:35 | 0:32:38 | |
give Britain 100 years of domination, | 0:32:38 | 0:32:41 | |
Britain becomes THE superpower. | 0:32:41 | 0:32:44 | |
This was the moment when Europe embarked on | 0:32:44 | 0:32:47 | |
100 years of virtual Continent-wide peace | 0:32:47 | 0:32:51 | |
because of the finality and totality of the victory at Waterloo - | 0:32:51 | 0:32:55 | |
terribly important. | 0:32:55 | 0:32:56 | |
But the victory came at a price. | 0:32:58 | 0:33:01 | |
The British and their allies | 0:33:01 | 0:33:03 | |
lost more than 22,000 men, dead and wounded. | 0:33:03 | 0:33:07 | |
Not for the first time after a battle, | 0:33:07 | 0:33:10 | |
the Iron Duke was traumatised. | 0:33:10 | 0:33:12 | |
While in the thick of it, | 0:33:14 | 0:33:17 | |
I am too occupied to feel anything, | 0:33:17 | 0:33:20 | |
but it is wretched just after. | 0:33:20 | 0:33:22 | |
It is impossible to think of glory. | 0:33:24 | 0:33:26 | |
Both mind and feelings are exhausted. | 0:33:26 | 0:33:29 | |
Next to a battle lost, | 0:33:31 | 0:33:33 | |
the greatest misery | 0:33:33 | 0:33:35 | |
is a battle gained. | 0:33:35 | 0:33:37 | |
Wellington would never fight another battle. | 0:33:41 | 0:33:44 | |
On returning to England, the Duke bought Apsley House in London | 0:33:50 | 0:33:54 | |
with the money awarded to him by a grateful nation. | 0:33:54 | 0:33:57 | |
In the foyer, he placed a large statue of the youthful Napoleon | 0:34:00 | 0:34:03 | |
that he had acquired in Paris. | 0:34:03 | 0:34:06 | |
The French were later outraged to discover | 0:34:06 | 0:34:09 | |
he was using it as a hat stand. | 0:34:09 | 0:34:11 | |
It would have been easy for Wellington to retire | 0:34:18 | 0:34:21 | |
from public life and enjoy the wealth and acclaim | 0:34:21 | 0:34:23 | |
his victories had bought him. | 0:34:23 | 0:34:25 | |
But he didn't. | 0:34:28 | 0:34:30 | |
I can't imagine that he would've, | 0:34:32 | 0:34:34 | |
for a moment, contemplated retirement. | 0:34:34 | 0:34:37 | |
He felt an overwhelming duty to perform public service. | 0:34:37 | 0:34:42 | |
Not yet 50, the Duke entered the murky world of politics, | 0:34:43 | 0:34:48 | |
joining the Tory government as Master of the Ordnance, | 0:34:48 | 0:34:51 | |
a senior military post with Cabinet rank. | 0:34:51 | 0:34:54 | |
He'd stepped down from his pedestal | 0:34:56 | 0:34:59 | |
and his vigorous sexual appetite quickly became a target | 0:34:59 | 0:35:03 | |
for Britain's robust tradition of satire and caricature. | 0:35:03 | 0:35:07 | |
'What a spanker! I hope he won't fire it at me!' | 0:35:07 | 0:35:11 | |
'It can't do any harm. He has fired it so often it is nearly worn out.' | 0:35:12 | 0:35:16 | |
At this time, he acquired a new female admirer - | 0:35:19 | 0:35:22 | |
Princess Lieven, the wife of the Russian Ambassador in London. | 0:35:22 | 0:35:26 | |
More combative than many of his other lady friends, | 0:35:28 | 0:35:31 | |
she would display a shrewd, insightful understanding | 0:35:31 | 0:35:35 | |
of the Duke's complex psychology. | 0:35:35 | 0:35:37 | |
He wishes to be the universal man. | 0:35:40 | 0:35:43 | |
It is incredible how his pride has a share in everything that he does. | 0:35:43 | 0:35:47 | |
It plunges him into despair not to be able | 0:35:49 | 0:35:52 | |
to do something or to do it badly. | 0:35:52 | 0:35:54 | |
It is a strange vanity. | 0:35:55 | 0:35:57 | |
Like Churchill 130 years later, | 0:35:59 | 0:36:02 | |
Wellington now found himself fighting a very different battle, | 0:36:02 | 0:36:06 | |
one for which his talents were less obviously suited. | 0:36:06 | 0:36:10 | |
He was returning to a country transformed | 0:36:15 | 0:36:17 | |
since his youth by the Industrial Revolution, | 0:36:17 | 0:36:20 | |
presenting a profound challenge | 0:36:20 | 0:36:23 | |
to his conservative outlook. | 0:36:23 | 0:36:24 | |
What you have is a society which is becoming increasingly urban. | 0:36:25 | 0:36:30 | |
Britain is no longer a predominantly agricultural country. | 0:36:30 | 0:36:34 | |
There's a tension here for Wellington in that he continues | 0:36:36 | 0:36:42 | |
to believe in the right, the duty and the obligation of landowners | 0:36:42 | 0:36:47 | |
to exercise dominant political influence. That never changed. | 0:36:47 | 0:36:51 | |
As Britain industrialised, | 0:36:53 | 0:36:55 | |
there were growing demands for an extension of the right to vote, | 0:36:55 | 0:36:58 | |
limited, at that time, to a small proportion of the population - | 0:36:58 | 0:37:02 | |
demands that had been fuelled by the experience of war. | 0:37:02 | 0:37:06 | |
If you can give a man arms and send him onto a battlefield, | 0:37:07 | 0:37:11 | |
why can't you give him a vote | 0:37:11 | 0:37:12 | |
and send him into the privacy of the ballot box? | 0:37:12 | 0:37:16 | |
That's the argument. You know, if a man can die for his country, | 0:37:16 | 0:37:19 | |
can't he have civil and political rights? | 0:37:19 | 0:37:21 | |
On 16th August, 1819, a crowd of around 70,000 gathered | 0:37:28 | 0:37:33 | |
at St Peter's Fields in Manchester to demand political reform. | 0:37:33 | 0:37:37 | |
Local magistrates called on the cavalry to arrest the speakers. | 0:37:40 | 0:37:45 | |
They charged the crowd, killing at least 11 people. | 0:37:45 | 0:37:49 | |
Among them, a veteran of Waterloo. | 0:37:49 | 0:37:52 | |
The massacre would become known as Peterloo, in ironic | 0:37:57 | 0:38:01 | |
remembrance of Wellington's famous victory four years earlier. | 0:38:01 | 0:38:05 | |
Wellington congratulated the magistrates in Manchester | 0:38:07 | 0:38:10 | |
on their actions. | 0:38:10 | 0:38:12 | |
Shaped by Ireland, scarred by memories of the French Revolution, | 0:38:13 | 0:38:18 | |
he had no sympathy with the radicals, | 0:38:18 | 0:38:20 | |
as he wrote to Harriet Arbuthnot. | 0:38:20 | 0:38:22 | |
It is very clear to me that they won't be quiet | 0:38:22 | 0:38:25 | |
till a large number of them "bite the dust", as the French say, | 0:38:25 | 0:38:29 | |
or till some of their leaders are hanged, | 0:38:29 | 0:38:31 | |
which would be a most fortunate result. | 0:38:31 | 0:38:34 | |
The following year, in 1820, government agents thwarted a plot, | 0:38:41 | 0:38:46 | |
known as the Cato Street Conspiracy, to murder the entire Cabinet. | 0:38:46 | 0:38:50 | |
Wellington's female admirers were horrified. | 0:38:53 | 0:38:57 | |
I have had such a fright about him and all those I love best | 0:39:01 | 0:39:04 | |
in the world, that I am now in a shake when I think about it. | 0:39:04 | 0:39:08 | |
How could such a plot be conceived against the Duke, | 0:39:08 | 0:39:11 | |
whom every English person ought to worship? | 0:39:11 | 0:39:13 | |
Wellington's own anger, though, was directed at his wife. | 0:39:16 | 0:39:20 | |
Strangely, | 0:39:23 | 0:39:24 | |
The Cato Street Conspiracy became | 0:39:24 | 0:39:27 | |
a reason for Wellington | 0:39:27 | 0:39:29 | |
finding fault with Kitty, | 0:39:29 | 0:39:33 | |
because one of the reasons that they used to justify | 0:39:33 | 0:39:38 | |
their actions was that he was so unkind to his wife. | 0:39:38 | 0:39:43 | |
And it absolutely infuriated him. | 0:39:45 | 0:39:49 | |
One thing he couldn't bear | 0:39:49 | 0:39:52 | |
is her confiding to others about any aspect of their life. | 0:39:52 | 0:39:58 | |
However he treated her, he expected her to be totally discreet. | 0:39:59 | 0:40:03 | |
Your whole family have complained of my conduct towards you | 0:40:06 | 0:40:09 | |
without reason. Your whole conduct is one of watching | 0:40:09 | 0:40:13 | |
and spying on me. | 0:40:13 | 0:40:15 | |
It really makes my life a burden to me. | 0:40:15 | 0:40:17 | |
If it goes on, I must live somewhere else. | 0:40:17 | 0:40:20 | |
It is the meanest, dirtiest trick of which anyone can be guilty. | 0:40:21 | 0:40:25 | |
By now, Kitty was spending most of her time at Stratfield Saye, | 0:40:32 | 0:40:37 | |
the country house in Hampshire | 0:40:37 | 0:40:39 | |
that Wellington had bought following the Battle of Waterloo. | 0:40:39 | 0:40:43 | |
She was distraught at what she regarded as unfounded allegations. | 0:40:45 | 0:40:50 | |
His letter provoked a rare outburst of anger. | 0:40:50 | 0:40:53 | |
I hope that I forgive you. | 0:40:56 | 0:40:58 | |
I would and I am sure I could have made you happy | 0:40:58 | 0:41:01 | |
had you suffered me to try, | 0:41:01 | 0:41:04 | |
but thrust from you, I was not allowed. | 0:41:04 | 0:41:08 | |
For God's - for your own dear sake - for Christ's sake, | 0:41:08 | 0:41:12 | |
do not use another woman as you have treated me. | 0:41:12 | 0:41:15 | |
Never write to a human being such letters. | 0:41:15 | 0:41:18 | |
They have destroyed me. | 0:41:20 | 0:41:21 | |
The couple now effectively lived separate lives, | 0:41:25 | 0:41:27 | |
Wellington staying mostly in London. | 0:41:27 | 0:41:31 | |
On the rare occasions he entertained in Stratfield Saye, | 0:41:33 | 0:41:36 | |
he had no hesitation in imposing his lady friends on Kitty. | 0:41:36 | 0:41:40 | |
I have been obliged to promise the Duke | 0:41:43 | 0:41:46 | |
to visit him in the country. | 0:41:46 | 0:41:48 | |
You have no idea how much it bores me. | 0:41:48 | 0:41:51 | |
So, it's always cold there and his wife is stupid. | 0:41:51 | 0:41:55 | |
What's to be done? | 0:41:55 | 0:41:56 | |
Homely and simple, | 0:41:58 | 0:42:00 | |
Kitty could not compete with the standards of fashionable London. | 0:42:00 | 0:42:04 | |
She is like the housekeeper and dresses herself | 0:42:06 | 0:42:09 | |
exactly like a shepherdess, with an old hat made by herself | 0:42:09 | 0:42:13 | |
stuck at the back of her head, and a dirty basket under her arm. | 0:42:13 | 0:42:17 | |
The Duke says he is sure she is mad! | 0:42:17 | 0:42:19 | |
She made his house so dull that nobody would go to it. | 0:42:21 | 0:42:25 | |
In 1822, Harriet Arbuthnot asked the Duke why he married Kitty. | 0:42:25 | 0:42:30 | |
Her diary entry for that day contains Wellington's only | 0:42:32 | 0:42:35 | |
recorded comments on what remains the central mystery of his life. | 0:42:35 | 0:42:40 | |
Would you believe that anybody could have been such a damned fool? | 0:42:40 | 0:42:44 | |
I was not the least in love with her. | 0:42:44 | 0:42:47 | |
I married her because they asked me to do it and I did not know myself. | 0:42:47 | 0:42:51 | |
I thought I should never care for anybody again | 0:42:51 | 0:42:53 | |
and that I should be with the Army. | 0:42:53 | 0:42:56 | |
In short, I was a fool. | 0:42:56 | 0:42:58 | |
I think Arthur really is rewriting history. | 0:42:58 | 0:43:01 | |
The truth is, if you look back to his letters of the period, | 0:43:01 | 0:43:05 | |
the letters of the time don't support the idea | 0:43:05 | 0:43:08 | |
that he was bumped into marriage. | 0:43:08 | 0:43:11 | |
They're all written by someone | 0:43:11 | 0:43:13 | |
absolutely in love in or in love with the idea of love, perhaps. | 0:43:13 | 0:43:16 | |
Observing Kitty at Stratfield Saye, Lady Shelley even mocked her | 0:43:18 | 0:43:22 | |
for her devotion to her two sons. | 0:43:22 | 0:43:25 | |
She was a slave of the boys when they came home for the holidays. | 0:43:27 | 0:43:32 | |
I have seen her carrying their fishing nets, their stumps, | 0:43:32 | 0:43:35 | |
their balls, their bats - apparently not perceiving how bad | 0:43:35 | 0:43:39 | |
it was for them to regard a woman, far less their mother, | 0:43:39 | 0:43:43 | |
as a simple drudge. | 0:43:43 | 0:43:45 | |
In consequence, her sons pitied, without respecting her. | 0:43:45 | 0:43:49 | |
It wasn't true. Kitty's two sons had always adored her. | 0:43:53 | 0:43:58 | |
It was their relationship with their father that was cold and distant. | 0:43:58 | 0:44:02 | |
By now the oldest, Arthur, was growing to manhood. | 0:44:06 | 0:44:09 | |
He later described his relationship | 0:44:12 | 0:44:14 | |
with the man whose title he would one day inherit. | 0:44:14 | 0:44:17 | |
My father never showed the least affection. | 0:44:21 | 0:44:24 | |
We were taught to go to his room first thing every morning | 0:44:24 | 0:44:27 | |
after we were dressed, and without interrupting his correspondence, | 0:44:27 | 0:44:31 | |
for we always found him writing, he would look up for a moment and say, | 0:44:31 | 0:44:36 | |
"Good morning." That was positively all the loving intercourse | 0:44:36 | 0:44:41 | |
that passed between us during the day. | 0:44:41 | 0:44:43 | |
In 1825, it looked briefly as if the Duke's philandering | 0:44:48 | 0:44:52 | |
and lack of interest in his own home and family | 0:44:52 | 0:44:55 | |
were about to catch up with him. | 0:44:55 | 0:44:57 | |
Wellington's old friend, the courtesan, Harriette Wilson, | 0:44:59 | 0:45:02 | |
had decided it was time to cash in. | 0:45:02 | 0:45:05 | |
She wrote a kiss-and-tell memoir, blackmailing a number | 0:45:06 | 0:45:09 | |
of her former clients to keep their names out of the book. | 0:45:09 | 0:45:13 | |
Legend has it the Duke responded with the famous words, | 0:45:14 | 0:45:18 | |
"Publish and be damned." | 0:45:18 | 0:45:21 | |
He was not prepared in any way to be blackmailed. | 0:45:21 | 0:45:25 | |
I think he was sufficiently confident of his own position | 0:45:25 | 0:45:30 | |
and probably had not done anything that was so unusual for the time. | 0:45:30 | 0:45:35 | |
Once again, the caricaturists had fun with the revelations. | 0:45:36 | 0:45:40 | |
But the public appeared uninterested. | 0:45:40 | 0:45:43 | |
His reputation doesn't seem to suffer from it at all. | 0:45:44 | 0:45:47 | |
The public accepted that a man of his type, | 0:45:47 | 0:45:50 | |
a man of his cast, | 0:45:50 | 0:45:52 | |
will do things like that. | 0:45:52 | 0:45:54 | |
The later Victorians wouldn't have approved at all, | 0:45:54 | 0:45:57 | |
but he got away with it at the time. | 0:45:57 | 0:45:59 | |
So little was the damage to the Duke's reputation | 0:46:01 | 0:46:03 | |
that just three years later, in 1828, he reached the pinnacle | 0:46:03 | 0:46:08 | |
of any political career - | 0:46:08 | 0:46:11 | |
appointed Prime Minister in a Tory government. | 0:46:11 | 0:46:14 | |
The job did not come naturally to him. | 0:46:17 | 0:46:20 | |
One man wants one thing and one another. | 0:46:22 | 0:46:25 | |
They agree with what I say in the morning, and in the evening | 0:46:25 | 0:46:28 | |
up they start with some crochet which deranges the whole plan. | 0:46:28 | 0:46:32 | |
I have been accustomed to carry on things in quite a different manner. | 0:46:32 | 0:46:36 | |
I assembled my officers, laid down my plan, | 0:46:36 | 0:46:39 | |
and it was carried into effect without any more words. | 0:46:39 | 0:46:43 | |
Wellington doesn't really ever accommodate | 0:46:44 | 0:46:48 | |
to the political mind-set. | 0:46:48 | 0:46:50 | |
Prime Ministers... Really, you have to manage your ministers. | 0:46:50 | 0:46:54 | |
You have to use an element of carrot and stick. | 0:46:54 | 0:46:58 | |
You have to work with them. He wasn't terribly good at that. | 0:46:58 | 0:47:00 | |
He was quite dictatorial. | 0:47:00 | 0:47:02 | |
Wellington quickly found himself confronted with the great issue | 0:47:04 | 0:47:08 | |
of the day - the growing clamour for reform of the electoral system. | 0:47:08 | 0:47:12 | |
It was a system which had hardly changed since the medieval period. | 0:47:14 | 0:47:20 | |
In a number of cases, parliamentary boroughs | 0:47:20 | 0:47:23 | |
were just owned by great landowners and could be bought and sold. | 0:47:23 | 0:47:27 | |
But Wellington remained firmly opposed to any change. | 0:47:29 | 0:47:33 | |
Not only do I think parliamentary reform unnecessary, | 0:47:35 | 0:47:39 | |
but it would be so injurious that society, | 0:47:39 | 0:47:42 | |
as now established in the Empire, | 0:47:42 | 0:47:44 | |
could not survive under the system, which must be its consequence. | 0:47:44 | 0:47:48 | |
I shall, therefore, at all times and under all circumstances, oppose it. | 0:47:48 | 0:47:53 | |
He genuinely believed that constituencies with a small | 0:47:55 | 0:47:59 | |
number of voters did actually ensure that the right people | 0:47:59 | 0:48:04 | |
were elected to the House of Commons. | 0:48:04 | 0:48:06 | |
He was mistaken, but I think he believed that | 0:48:06 | 0:48:09 | |
for perfectly reasonable reasons. | 0:48:09 | 0:48:12 | |
He sees reform as the road to revolution, | 0:48:14 | 0:48:18 | |
tyranny and worst of all, of course, civil war. | 0:48:18 | 0:48:21 | |
When the Duke repeated his implacable opposition | 0:48:21 | 0:48:24 | |
to reform in the House of Lords, there was outrage. | 0:48:24 | 0:48:27 | |
Even his friends were exasperated. | 0:48:28 | 0:48:31 | |
Why has the Duke pushed things to an extremity? | 0:48:31 | 0:48:34 | |
Why could he not have held his tongue? | 0:48:35 | 0:48:38 | |
You cannot conceive how universally he is blamed. | 0:48:38 | 0:48:41 | |
His peremptory declaration against any sort of reform | 0:48:41 | 0:48:45 | |
has dissatisfied the upper class, | 0:48:45 | 0:48:47 | |
aroused fear amongst the middle class and exasperated the populace. | 0:48:47 | 0:48:52 | |
Wellington's stance left him isolated | 0:48:54 | 0:48:56 | |
and led to the fall of his Tory government. | 0:48:56 | 0:48:59 | |
When the Whigs introduced their own reform bill, | 0:49:00 | 0:49:03 | |
it was rejected by the House of Lords. | 0:49:03 | 0:49:06 | |
The country teetered on the brink of disaster. | 0:49:06 | 0:49:11 | |
The immediate reaction was outrage | 0:49:11 | 0:49:14 | |
and violence in a number of cities. | 0:49:14 | 0:49:16 | |
Bristol was out of control for more than a week. | 0:49:19 | 0:49:21 | |
Nottingham and Derby, also. | 0:49:23 | 0:49:25 | |
Britain was, I think I'd say, close to revolution. | 0:49:28 | 0:49:32 | |
Wellington becomes a personal focus of hostility. | 0:49:32 | 0:49:35 | |
There's no doubt that he is seen as the arch anti-reformer | 0:49:37 | 0:49:41 | |
in this period. | 0:49:41 | 0:49:42 | |
You see his sort of historic reputation as the victor of Waterloo | 0:49:42 | 0:49:46 | |
under sustained assault. | 0:49:46 | 0:49:48 | |
Crowds made for Apsley House and broke the windows, | 0:49:50 | 0:49:53 | |
and they had to be defended with iron shutters. | 0:49:53 | 0:49:56 | |
Wellington was a man out of tune with the times. | 0:50:01 | 0:50:04 | |
And as revolutionary mobs swirled around his home, | 0:50:07 | 0:50:10 | |
inside, a private tragedy | 0:50:10 | 0:50:13 | |
was playing itself out. | 0:50:13 | 0:50:15 | |
Kitty was dying. | 0:50:15 | 0:50:17 | |
Kitty had some form of stomach cancer, we think, | 0:50:22 | 0:50:26 | |
and was pretty ill for the last two years of her life. | 0:50:26 | 0:50:29 | |
In those last weeks, finally, | 0:50:31 | 0:50:34 | |
Wellington became the devoted husband. | 0:50:34 | 0:50:37 | |
He sits with her and he holds her hand. | 0:50:42 | 0:50:45 | |
She feels up his sleeve to see if the armlet she'd given him | 0:50:49 | 0:50:53 | |
20 years ago is still there, and she finds it is. | 0:50:53 | 0:50:57 | |
He insisted that he had always worn it, | 0:50:59 | 0:51:01 | |
and that must have given her some comfort. | 0:51:01 | 0:51:04 | |
Kitty herself had never ceased to love the Duke, | 0:51:06 | 0:51:09 | |
as she wrote a few weeks before her death. | 0:51:09 | 0:51:13 | |
'With all my heart and soul, I have loved him | 0:51:13 | 0:51:16 | |
'straight from the first time I knew him - | 0:51:16 | 0:51:20 | |
'I was not then 15 - to the present hour.' | 0:51:20 | 0:51:23 | |
He remained her hero throughout her life. | 0:51:26 | 0:51:28 | |
I mean, this is the saddest... | 0:51:28 | 0:51:30 | |
He was her hero from the moment she probably first met him, | 0:51:30 | 0:51:34 | |
when she was quite young. | 0:51:34 | 0:51:36 | |
Kitty died in April 1831, aged 58. | 0:51:41 | 0:51:45 | |
At the very end, the Duke had done his duty to the woman | 0:51:50 | 0:51:53 | |
he'd been married to for quarter of a century. | 0:51:53 | 0:51:56 | |
But his comments about her to Harriet Arbuthnot | 0:52:02 | 0:52:05 | |
shortly afterwards were harsh. | 0:52:05 | 0:52:08 | |
The Duchess was one of the most foolish women that ever existed. | 0:52:08 | 0:52:12 | |
She spoilt my sons by making everything give way to them | 0:52:12 | 0:52:16 | |
and teaching them to have too high ideas of their own consequence. | 0:52:16 | 0:52:20 | |
She was in debt £10,000 at Stratfield Saye when she died, | 0:52:20 | 0:52:24 | |
and I discovered debts of another £10,000 or more. | 0:52:24 | 0:52:26 | |
The debts preyed upon her mind. She was constantly wretched about them. | 0:52:28 | 0:52:32 | |
Outside the iron shutters of Apsley House, | 0:52:38 | 0:52:41 | |
the country, too, appeared to be moving towards terminal crisis. | 0:52:41 | 0:52:44 | |
Wellington's stubborn opposition to any type of reform | 0:52:49 | 0:52:52 | |
looked likely to provoke what he had always most dreaded, | 0:52:52 | 0:52:56 | |
ever since his earliest days in Ireland - anarchy and civil strife. | 0:52:56 | 0:53:01 | |
Then, finally, | 0:53:04 | 0:53:06 | |
he pulled back from the brink. | 0:53:06 | 0:53:09 | |
He did, in the end, retreat on the point of | 0:53:09 | 0:53:13 | |
the Great Reform Bill and he... | 0:53:13 | 0:53:16 | |
In the end, the bill only carried | 0:53:16 | 0:53:18 | |
because he advised the House of Lords | 0:53:18 | 0:53:21 | |
to allow the bill to pass. | 0:53:21 | 0:53:23 | |
The gut opponent of reform gives way to the man who believes | 0:53:29 | 0:53:33 | |
above all else, in the sanctity of the King's government. | 0:53:33 | 0:53:37 | |
How is the King's government to be carried on? | 0:53:37 | 0:53:40 | |
That is the thing that wins the day for Wellington. | 0:53:40 | 0:53:43 | |
Like the great general he was, in politics as in war - | 0:53:46 | 0:53:51 | |
Wellington knew when to retreat. | 0:53:51 | 0:53:53 | |
In the end, he had little choice. | 0:53:55 | 0:53:57 | |
But over the remaining two decades of his life, | 0:53:57 | 0:54:00 | |
pragmatism and moderation would be his guiding principles. | 0:54:00 | 0:54:05 | |
Wellington is the living embodiment of this new idea | 0:54:05 | 0:54:09 | |
of conservatism. In other words, you maintain | 0:54:09 | 0:54:12 | |
the essentials of British society, | 0:54:12 | 0:54:14 | |
but where necessary, you reform abuses, where they are proven. | 0:54:14 | 0:54:19 | |
You don't stand in the way of change. | 0:54:19 | 0:54:21 | |
He was certainly not part of the "ultras", as they were | 0:54:23 | 0:54:26 | |
known in those days - the extreme right wing of the Tory Party. | 0:54:26 | 0:54:30 | |
He would not have been a supporter of Ukip, | 0:54:32 | 0:54:36 | |
or any of the right-wing elements of British politics today. | 0:54:36 | 0:54:40 | |
The Duke lived on into the age of photography. | 0:54:48 | 0:54:50 | |
A single image exists of him. | 0:54:52 | 0:54:55 | |
The first Duke on his 75th birthday | 0:54:55 | 0:54:59 | |
on May 1st, 1844, | 0:54:59 | 0:55:02 | |
went to the studio, Monsieur Claudet. | 0:55:02 | 0:55:06 | |
And his image was etched onto this plate, | 0:55:06 | 0:55:09 | |
and you can see, quite clearly, his features. | 0:55:09 | 0:55:13 | |
The great warrior's face is surprisingly benign. | 0:55:14 | 0:55:17 | |
Many of the portraits and images of the Duke | 0:55:19 | 0:55:22 | |
in the later part of his life | 0:55:22 | 0:55:25 | |
portrayed him as a rather gentle old man. | 0:55:25 | 0:55:30 | |
He loved children, not just his own grandchildren, | 0:55:30 | 0:55:34 | |
but children of friends. | 0:55:34 | 0:55:36 | |
And, in a way, I think that perhaps somewhere, | 0:55:36 | 0:55:41 | |
there was a real regret | 0:55:41 | 0:55:42 | |
that he hadn't experienced that with his own sons. | 0:55:42 | 0:55:47 | |
His heir, Arthur, continued to live in dread of the moment | 0:55:48 | 0:55:52 | |
when he would have to step into his father's shoes. | 0:55:52 | 0:55:55 | |
Think what it will be when the Duke of Wellington is announced, | 0:55:58 | 0:56:01 | |
and only I come in. | 0:56:01 | 0:56:03 | |
Wellington died in September 1852, aged 83. | 0:56:12 | 0:56:16 | |
Over a million people lined the streets for his funeral. | 0:56:21 | 0:56:26 | |
The traumas of the Reform Bill era were long forgotten | 0:56:26 | 0:56:29 | |
and he was once more the hero of Waterloo. | 0:56:29 | 0:56:33 | |
There is a massive funeral. | 0:56:35 | 0:56:36 | |
It was a huge outpouring of grief that probably wasn't seen again | 0:56:36 | 0:56:41 | |
for a public figure until Churchill's death in the 1960s. | 0:56:41 | 0:56:45 | |
Queen Victoria says, "We've lost more than a man, | 0:56:49 | 0:56:52 | |
"we've lost the very soul of this country." | 0:56:52 | 0:56:54 | |
And she wasn't the only person to hold that view. | 0:56:54 | 0:56:57 | |
The term the "Iron Duke" had been coined just a few years before | 0:57:05 | 0:57:09 | |
and over the coming decades, this was the image that would be | 0:57:09 | 0:57:12 | |
fixed in the public mind. | 0:57:12 | 0:57:13 | |
I think the Victorians, in many ways, | 0:57:17 | 0:57:19 | |
recast Wellington in their own self-image, | 0:57:19 | 0:57:22 | |
and he becomes the vision of that steely, blue-eyed, | 0:57:22 | 0:57:25 | |
lantern-jawed, unyielding hero. | 0:57:25 | 0:57:27 | |
And yet, when you look at the real, flesh-and-blood Arthur Wellesley, | 0:57:29 | 0:57:32 | |
was he's rather a different character. Men aren't made of iron. | 0:57:32 | 0:57:35 | |
Wellington remains an enigma. | 0:57:37 | 0:57:40 | |
Bluff and direct, he was capable of great sensitivity and kindness. | 0:57:40 | 0:57:46 | |
The sadness of his life was that these personal qualities | 0:57:46 | 0:57:50 | |
were so rarely displayed to those closest to him. | 0:57:50 | 0:57:54 | |
I don't think I could say that I'm proud of him as a person. | 0:57:54 | 0:57:58 | |
He won all the battles and he achieved what he set out to do, | 0:57:58 | 0:58:02 | |
but there were other casualties along the way. | 0:58:02 | 0:58:05 | |
I judge him to have been a bad husband | 0:58:07 | 0:58:11 | |
and an inadequate father. | 0:58:11 | 0:58:14 | |
But I have huge respect for him | 0:58:16 | 0:58:19 | |
in terms of how he conducted his public life. | 0:58:19 | 0:58:24 | |
Like many great men before and since, Wellington was not | 0:58:25 | 0:58:29 | |
always a great human being. | 0:58:29 | 0:58:33 | |
But he remains a British hero. | 0:58:33 | 0:58:35 |