The Sun.
London, England, 1852-11-18 00:00:00

THE WELLINGTON SUN, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 18, 1852.

the Commander-in-Chief was asleep, sat down before
one of the tables, and, leaning his head upon his
arms, soon slumbered soundly under the influence
of extreme exhaustion. Captain Mackenzie, the
next in authority, on proceeding soon afterwards
to head-quarters, for the purpose of announcing the
repulse of his soldiers to the Commander, is said to have
found his superior officer sleeping in the midst of these
exigent circumstances. Whether in punishment for this
apparent indolence at a moment of such extreme emer-
gency, or chagrined possibly at the total failure of the
night's expedition, General Harris selected General
Baird Tor the renewal of the assault upon the following
morning, instead of entrusting the task, as he had done
over night, to the abilities and energies of Colonel
Wellesley. The latter, however, was ultimately allowed
to resume his position as the leader of the enterprize, in
consequence of the magnanimous request made to that
effect by General Baird, and the selection was speedily
justified by the seizure of the coveted tope of the Sul-
taunpettah ! About noon on the 4th of May, the in-
vading army having been exactly one month before the
ramparts of the capital of Tippoo, after a furious
struggle and a terrible carnage, the city was finally cap-
tured, and our banners fluttered in triumph from the
towers Of Seringapatam. Here it was that Colonel
Wellesley discovered, under a heap of slain and dying,
the breathless body of the son of Hyder Ali—the Tiger
of Mysore.
Immediately upon the defeat and death of Tippoo
Sahib, the young Colonel of the'33d Regiment was left
in command of the conquered territories, and before the
July of 1799 had elapsed, was formally installed in the
capital of the province as the Governor of Mysore and
of Seringapatam. Entrusted with the responsibilities
of the civil as well as the military administration, Ar-
thur Wellesley, displayed such unusual skill in the con-
duct of the affairs of finance, of coinage, and of exchanges,
besides revealing extraordinary activity in repairing roads,
opening up new communications, and showing a gene-
ral aptitude for public business—that his brother,
the Earl of Mornington, was led once to exclaim
I believe Arthur's great • strength to be rather
in the civil than in the military line 1" That his genius
as a captain, however, very marvellously surpassed his
undoubted ability as an administrator, was speedily
demonstrated by fresh' exploits, in the course of which,
he overcame on the lOth of September, 1800, the for-
midable adventurer, Dhooniah Waugh, and otherwise
prepared the popular mind for his subsequent achieve-
ments in the first war against the Mahrattas.
Prior to these, his crowning victories in Hindostan,
Colonel Wellesley, after declining the military command
of a projected expedition against Batavia—a command
placed at his disposal by Lord Mornington—was in-
volved in a complicated web of arrangements, which
threatened at one time to carry him prematurely from
the shores. of India, conducting him up the Red Sea
and across the desert,• so as to enable him to join his
auxiliary troops to the British forces dispatched into
Egypt, under the command of Sir Ralph Abercrombie.
Fortunately, as it happened, Wellesley was not required
by events to quit the scene of his first successes until
after he had eclipsed them himself by others ,of yet
greater magnitude.. Appointed during a brief interval
to the command of some 5,000 troops in Ceylon—at
Trincomalee—he was subsequently superseded for having
proceeded with his army (without sufficient authority), to
Bombay. At this latter place, he was ultimately com-
pelled, on the 25th of March, 1801, to disembark, in
consequence of a sudden attack of fever—an attack
which thus prevented him from taking part as second in
command under General Baird, in the expedition that
soon afterwards setsail to carry what proved in the end
superfluous assistance to the Egyptian army of the brave
but ill-fated Abercrombie.

Recalled upon his recovery to his temporarily aban-
doned command in Mysore, he soon found himself in-
volved in the perils of a deadly war with-the Mahrattas.
His allies among the groupe of chieftains, were the old
Peishwa, and the younger but more prudent Guicowar.
His enemies in the same direction, were the Rajah of
Berar, Holcar, and Scindiah. Hostilities, after being
warded:43ff for some time, were at length, in the Novem-
ber of 1802, found to be inevitable. Whereupon, in the
February of 1803, Arthur Wellesley (who had been
promoted to the rank of Major-General in the April of
1802) was called from his administrative occupations at
Mysore, to conduct a campaign, for the first time, with
the supreme authority of Commander-in-Chief. Scarcely
10,000 men, including both natives and Europeans, con-
stituted the army with which he set out for the conquest
of the terrible and dreaded Mahrattas. Ghooklah, one
of the chiefs of these Mahrattas, speaking of this same
body of invaders, and referring especially to Wellesley
as its commander, wrote thus, says Colonel Nichols, to
his friends at Poonah :—" These English are a strange
people, and their General a wonderful man. They came
here in the morning, looked at the Pettah walls, walked
over it, killed all the garrison, and returned to breakfast !
What can withstand them ?" Nor was Ghooklah mis-
taken—the English showing themselves indeed a "strange
people," and their General proving himself, in truth, " a
wonderful man"—when, on the 23d of September, Ar-
thur Wellesley, with 4,500 men, routed the grand army
of Scindiah (an army of 50,000 combatants, and 100
pieces of cannon) hard by the village of Assaye.
victory which, it has been observed without ex-
aggeration, surpasses the glory won by Clive at
Arcot, and at Plassey—Scindiah having been, in
fact, a foe in all respects more powerful than
either Chunda Sahib or Suraj-a-Dowlah. During
the havoc which marked this memorable strug-
gle, General Wellesley had two horses killed under him,
while, close beside him, his orderly's head was torn
away by a cannon ball.
Such was the crowning victory by the force of which
historians have deempd that our sway in the Oriental Pen-
insula was consolidatBd. Such was the " foughten field "
from which our hero carried back with him to England
the last laurcls he had reaped with his good sword, on the
soil of the Asiatic Cotitinent. Such was the final token of
prowess with which—now newly created a Knight of the
most honourable Order of the Bath—SirArthurWellesley
inthe September oflBos, after nine years'absence, returned
homewards to receive, immediately after landing upon
our shores, intelligence that thanks had been awarded
to him by the King and by the Parliament.