and that he is forced to keep himself clean and smart, as a soldier ought to be.’11
Visitors to headquarters were sometimes astonished by the amateurish, almost disorderly look of the place. Not only did officers walk about in a variety of clothes, some smart in their regimental uniform, others dressed in an individual manner which would have horrified their King had he seen them at a levee. The whole atmosphere, so a German commissary recalled, was ‘strikingly’ informal. ‘Had it not been known for a fact, no one would have suspected that [General Wellington] was quartered in the town. There was no throng of scented staff officers with plumed hats, orders and stars, no main guard, no crowd of contractors, actors, valets, cooks, mistresses, equipages, horses, forage and baggage waggons, as there is at a French or Russian headquarters. Just a few aides-de-camp, who went about the streets alone and in their overcoats, a few guides, and a small staff guard; that was all. About a dozen bullock-carts were to be seen in the large square of Fuente Guinaldo, which was used for bringing up straw to Headquarters; but apart from these no equipages or baggage trains were visible.’12 What was not to be missed, however, was the Commander-in-Chief’s marquee which enclosed the tent in which he slept. This ‘large Marquee’ also served as ‘a sitting and dining room’, wrote his cook, James Thornton. ‘The gentlemen of the staff had a tent each … I had a round tent to sleep in, the Butler one also, my two Assistants had one between them, the Duke’s footmen and all the staff servants had one tent for two servants, all the servants’ tents were round ones, the gentlemen’s small Marquees.’13 The cooking was done ‘in a Room made with poles and a Tarpolain … There was a mound of earth thrown up, and niches cut round this in which we made fires and boiled the saucepans. We had a larger niche cut out for roasting. We stuck a pole in that and dangled the meat. When it rained hard, they had nothing but cold meat and bread.’14
Thornton’s cooking, the General had to concede, was not very good: ‘Cole gives the best dinners in the army; Hill the next best; mine are no great things.’15 However, the wine at Wellington’s headquarters was better than that at any other; much of it, including champagne, being sent out from England.
Sometimes the General was seen walking up and down in the company of one or other of the staff or with another General or perhaps a civilian visitor; and the conversation would range over all manner of topics, not all of them military, politics perhaps, or that night’s theatricals, or the prospects for next day’s hunting, for he still allowed himself his hunting days and kept a pack of hounds, known as The Peers’ ’, which had been brought out for him by two aides-de-camp, Lord Tweeddale and Lord Worcester. Indeed, as often as he could he went hunting in the uniform of the Hatfield Hunt, a black cape and sky-blue coat, which Lady Salisbury had given him, chasing after the quarry – which once turned out to be a load of salt fish – not much caring what the hounds ran so long as he could ‘enjoy a good gallop’, tumbling off often enough to give a Guards officer grounds for commenting, ‘He will certainly break his neck someday.’16
August Schaumann remarked how different he appeared on one of his hunting days when compared with his demeanour in times of stress in battle when, although always in control of his emotions, he ‘seemed like an angry God under whose threatening glance every one trembled’. By contrast, on his hunting days, when Schaumann ‘often used to meet him with his entourage and a magnificent pack of English hounds’, he was ‘in the best of spirits, genial and sans cérémonie; in fact, just like a genuine country squire. No one would have suspected at such moments that he was the Field-Marshal of three nations.’17
He was liable at such times to dash off at any moment, even in the middle of a conversation. The Spanish General Castaños was once much surprised to have an ‘earnest conversation’ with him interrupted in this way when a ‘brace of greyhounds in pursuit of a hare’ passed close to them as they rode along together ‘under a fire of artillery and accompanied by a numerous staff’. The instant Wellington observed the hare and greyhounds, he ‘gave the view hallo and went after them at full speed, to the utter astonishment of his foreign accompaniments. Nor did he stop until he saw the hare killed; when he returned and resumed the commander-in-chief as if nothing had happened.’18
The air of informality which pervaded headquarters was deceptive. The General worked hard, unwilling to leave much to his second-in-command – an appointment he chose not to recognize – though more willing to do so when Sir Brent Spencer went home and was succeeded by the more trustworthy Sir Thomas Graham, the future Lord Lyne-doch. He kept himself fit and expected his hardworking staff to keep fit too. He needed little sleep and grew impatient with those who pleaded the necessity of more. He was up at six o’clock, having been in bed for no more than six hours, sometimes for only three. He was at his desk writing until nine o’clock when he had breakfast, a spare, plain meal as all his meals usually were since he had such scant interest in food and was little concerned if he passed twenty-four hours without eating anything at all other than the crust and boiled egg he sometimes stuffed in his pocket when riding out of a morning.*19
The Duke’s abstinence often upset the Spanish aide-de-camp at his headquarters, Miguel Ricardo de Alava y Esquivel, later Spanish Ambassador in London, who, as he confessed, grew to dread those days when the General was asked what time the staff were to set off in the morning and what they were to have for dinner, since Alava knew that ‘the Peer’ would reply, as he never failed to do, ‘At daylight. Cold meat.’ The Spaniard held those four words ‘en horreur’.20
After breakfast the General received in turn the heads of the various departments of the army, making it clear that he preferred them to speak without recourse to notes, since hesitation while they were looking at them clearly annoyed him and made him ‘fidgetty’.21 He then mounted one of his horses, upon which he expended large sums of mopey, and rode off to inspect an outpost or to see a divisional commander. At six he dined, ‘never alone, nor with members of his personal staff exclusively about him’, wrote the Rev. G.R. Gleig, son of the Bishop of Brechin, at that time an officer in the 85th. ‘Everybody recommended to his notice [who happened to be passing through] was sure to receive an invitation … The conversation was most interesting and lively. The Duke himself spoke out upon all subjects with an absence of reserve which sometimes surprised his guests … He was rich in anecdote, most of them taking a ludicrous turn, and without any apparent effort put the company very much at their ease.’22
About nine o’clock he would order coffee which was accepted as a signal for breaking up; and he then returned to his writing table where he studied papers and resumed his correspondence, remaining at work far into the night.
Occasionally there were performances in a makeshift theatre and evenings of great jollity.23 On one memorable occasion, during a lull in fighting, a grand party was given to celebrate Lowry Cole’s investiture with the Order of the Bath. Wellington lent his plate for the dinner which was followed by a dance attended by forty ladies and 200 officers and other gentlemen guests. The band of the 52nd played tirelessly. The wine ‘both at dinner and supper having circulated freely’, at about two o’clock in the morning ‘a number of Spanish officers insisted upon carrying Lord Wellington round the room in a chair. He suggested that they should begin with the person of highest rank present, and named the Prince of Orange [one of his aides-de-camp]. The Prince was immediately seized, and General [Sir John Ormsby] Vandeleur, coming up to remonstrate, was seized in like manner. Each was placed in an arm-chair, and hoisted on the shoulders of four bearers. The inevitable consequence soon followed. The bearers had not taken many steps before they with their burdens came down.’24
The Advocate-General thought that there were rather too many of these parties. ‘Great dinners’ were held on the anniversaries of victories and on the birthdays of members of the Royal Family, indeed on any occasion considered worthy of celebration. ‘The Commander-in-Chief’s victories and successes will soon ruin him in wine and eating,’ Larpent thought, ‘and if he goes on as he
