The Press.
London, England, 1858-02-06 00:00:00

.4110 ,

1858.

••• •
to some 30,000 men. Their commissariat•
WaR
lamentably inefficient His greatest trouble
appears to be a " deficiency of grain." 110
never could get too much grain fur men or
fodder for his bullocks. Soon after joining he
writes :
There was not a grain of rice to be got in the bazaar at
Arcct, and, after bullying and writing day and night, I have
got plenty in my camp, and have been able to go on for a
fortnight without drawing upon the public stores, contrary
to the expectation of everybody, and without putting the
public to the expense of a single shilling. This I shall
continue to do as long as the army may remain here. r
asked for assistance, and he sent me two Company's offi-
cers ; one of them, a brother of —, eo stupid that f can
make no use of him, and the other such a rascal that half
of my occupation consists in watching him, lest under the
authority of my name be should play tricks in the country.
At all events, they are not my personal staff; they have
their own duties, and can't assist me in doing mine; and
if they had not, I cannot trust them even to copy a letter
for me, as they would reveal its contents. Besides this,
they neither of them understand one syllable of the law
guage ; have never been even in a camp, much less on
service ; and I may say of them, as I do of —, that they
are an incumbrance.
The army now forming was under the coin.
mand of General Harris. Lord Mornington
at this period came down to Madras and pro-
posed to come up to camp. The colonel
expressed objections to the presence in the
camp of the Governor-General during active
operations were freely in a letter dated Camp,
Vellore, 29th January, 1799 :

My Dear Mornington,—l have just received a letter
from Henry, in which he has desired that I should give
you my opinion respecting the propriety and utility of your
joining the army and accompanying it during the
campaign.
I am entirely ignorant of the objects which you may
have in view in coining, which may certainly counter-
balance the objections I have to the measure; but it tip-
pears to me that your presence in camp, instead of giving
confidence to the general, would in fact deprive him of the
command of the army, and that scene would be acted over
again, probably in the presence of the enemy, which, to my
annoyance, I have so often witnessed at Madras. Every
thing which the general might think necessary will be
thwarted and canvassed, not by you probably, but by those
whom you will naturally wish to consult; the general's
own staff, and the principal officers of his army, who ought
to think of nothing excepting how his orders are to be
carried into execution, instead of their propriety, and in
what manner they shall thwart them if they should not
approve of them. All I can say upon the subject is, that if
I were in General Harris's situation, and you joined the
army, I should quit it.
In my opinion be is at present awkwardly situated, and
he will require all the powers which can be given to him to
keep in order the officers aho will be in his army. Your
presence will diminish his powers, at the same that as it is
impossible you can know anything of military matters,
your powers will not answer the purpose, which even those
which he has at present may, if you or Lord Clive are not
in the army.
This letter is a curious example of the impor-
tance he attached to the personal responsibi-
lity of an ocer. He never shrunk -
sonal responsibility himself, but from
then ho
demanded that power should accompany
responsibility.
Neither was Lord ClivP to come into camp.
" Lord Clive," he writes, " ought to be kept at
" Madras; and I know of no method of doing
" that so likely to succeed as your giving
" him some occupation there." Of the abilities
of Lord Clive he had no very high opinion.
"He is," he writes (1791), a mild, mode-
" rate man, remarkably reserved, having
" a bad delivery, and apparently a heavy
" understanding. He certainly has been
" unaccustomed to consider questions of
" the magnitude of that uow before him, but
" I doubt whether he is so dull as he appears,
" or as people here imagine he is ":
The truth is, he does not want talents, but he is very
diffident of himself; and now that he has begun to find
out that there is no conjuration in transacting the business
of Government, he improves daily, takes more upon him-
self, and will very shortly have less confidence and reliance
than he must have at present upon the opinions and
abilities of those who have long done the business of the
country.
The campaign opened early in March, 1799,
by the attack of l'ippoo upon Sedaseer ; on the
9th he was attacked in turn by General Stewart
with the Bombay army, and beaten. On that
thy Colonel Wellesley writes in high spirits.
The allusion to Sir John Malcolm is charac-
teristic of both'—

We are going on well ; have got Oodeadroog, Batin-
gerry, Anchittydroog, and Neilgherry. About thirty
thousand brtnjarries are with the army.
You have read Durnourier's account of his organising the
Poles; I am employed in a business of muoh the same
kind. My Pules light too, and that not badly, 1 assure you;
and if 1 can give them some pm* to distinguialt

from the enemy, I.don't despair of their being very useful.
Malcolm is indefatigable, and leads the life of a canister at
a dog's tail.
The total defeat of Tippoo at Mallevelly, where
Colonel Wellesley particularly distinguished
himself, rapidly followed, and the investment
of Seringapatam was the result. Here oc-
curved, on the night of the bth of April, 1799,
the well.known repulse the colonel met with
in his attack on the Sultaun-Pettah-tope.
Writing to his brother on the 18th of April, all
mortification at his repulse seems then to
have passed off. Indeed, he appears to have
attributed no particular importance to the
affair, except that it taught him a practical
lesson of war :
On the night of the sth we made an attack upon the
enemy's outposts, which, at least on my side, was not
quite so successful as could have been wished. The fact
was that the night was very dark, that the enemy expected
us, and were strongly posted in en almost impenetrable
jungle. We lost an officer killed, and others and some men
wounded (of the 33rd) ; and at last, as I could not find
out the post which it. was desirable I should occupy, I was
obliged to desist from the attack, the enemy also having
retired from the post. In the morning they re-occupied it,
and I attacked it again at daylight, and carried it with
ebbe and little loss. In the course of the night of the sth
and the (lay of the 6th the general was enabled to occupy
a 1 n,, of posts which gave complete security to his camp
till the Bombay army joined, at the same time that they
enable him to commence his operations for the siege with
athamage.
I got a slight touch on the knee, from which I have felt
no in !onvenience, on the night of the sth ; and I have
some to a determination, when in my power, never to
suffer an attack to be made by night upon an enemy who
is prepared and strongly posted, and whose posts have not
been reconnoitred by daylight.
With the capture of Seringapatam on the
4th of May, 1799, ended the Mysore war.
The whole country submitted to our
rule, and Colonel Wellesley, appointed Go-
vernor of Seringapatank and commander in-
chief of the army of occupation, entered upon
the administrative duties of his high post.
The present volume, which is only an instal-
ment, brings down events to June, 1800,
when Colonel Wellesley, after having admi-
nistered the Government of Seringapatam with
great success, was about to set out upon a cam.
paign to punish a rebel, Doondhia Waugh,
who had raised a powerful force and was
plundering the country. We shall return to
that particular period embracing his adminis-
tration of the government of Seringapatam
at a future opportunity, and meanwhile ex-
tract a few illustrations of the character-
istics of the Duke, and of his Indian expe-
rience, as exhibited in these interesting me-
moranda.

There is no trait in the character of the
Duke more remarkable than the immense im-
portance he attached to subordination, and, as
he enforced implicit obedience to orders, ho
ever exhibited due submission himself to su-
perior authority. A remarkable instance is
given in this volume. When the expedition
to Manilla, proposed by Colonel Wellesley, but
recalled at the moment of starting by Lord
Hobart, Governor of Madras, was on the point
of sailing, Major-General St. Leger in com-
mand issued an order " that the soldiers whet
"embarked should be placed under the direc-
" tion of the officers commanding the ships,
"in the event of their engaging the French fri-
" gates cruising in the Eastern Seas " Against
this Colonel Wellesley protested in the
warmest manner to Sir John Shore, then
Governor-General, but concluded his letter
wi►h the following passage :

However, sir, uneornfirtable as I feel it embarking
under such circumstances, I shall do every thing in my
power, and shall make those under me do everything in
their power, to forward the service ; and I hope that you
will find that those whose ambitious claims have been com-
plied with will du the same.

This is an exact illustration of the sincerity of
those principles he ever acted upon, viz., obe-
dience to the orders of his superior officer.
But rigid disciplinarian as he was, no one
knew better than the Duke, at all periods of
his career, to distinguish between those cases
which called for direct punishment and those
where an appeal to the honour of an officer or
aman might he made with benefit to the ser-
vice. Here is a case in point. A subaltern is
placed under arrest for disrespect to his supe-
rior officer. The ounamender•in-ohief at
Seringapatam writes privately to the colonel
of the offender's regiment desiring that is
letter may be shown to the prisoner;—