ient, persevering, and
sagacious. No careful student of the art of war, _no foreign military
critic certainly_, has ever classed him among the greatest generals, or
thought his campaigns worth studying seriously.

Gneisenau at Waterloo utterly mistrusted him, as has been shown, and
the feeling must have been created by Wellington himself. If half
the myths about him were true, they would be worth publishing as the
unwritten history of a great man with many faults. Of him Gleig, who
shared in the general admiration of him, is quite plain-spoken as to
his personal coldness.

“Though retaining to the last a warm regard for his old companions in
arms, he entered very little with them, after he became a politician,
into the amenities of social life. We have reason to believe that
neither Lord Hill, nor Lord Raglan, nor Sir George Murray ever visited
the duke at Strathfieldsaye, nor could they, or others of similar
standing, such as Lord Anglesey, Sir Edward Paget, and Sir James Kempt,
be reckoned among the _habitués_ of his hospitable gatherings in Apsley
House. The circle in which he chiefly moved was that of fashionable
ladies and gentlemen.”

The gallantry of Norman Ramsay’s battery at Fuentes d’Onoro met with
no praise from this imperturbable chief. Mercer’s unquestionably cool
and brave work with his battery at Waterloo was barely noticed by
his general. Mercer himself, in no very complimentary spirit, says
of his share in the great fight: “One day, on the Marine Parade at
Woolwich, a battalion coming up in close column at the double march,
Lieutenant-Colonel Brown, who stood near me, remarked, ‘That puts
me in mind of your troops coming up at Waterloo, when you saved the
Brunswickers.’ Until this moment I never knew that our having done so
had been remarked by anybody. But he assured me it was known to the
whole army; and yet the duke not only withheld that praise which was
our due, but refused me the brevet rank of major; and, more than that,
actually deprived me of that troop given me by Lord 