Letter from the Duke of Wellington to the British Foreign Office (1809)(wellsoc.org)
47 pointsby backuprestore7 hours ago7 comments
  • delichon5 hours ago
    Likely apocryphal. It isn't in the massive official "Despatches of Field Marshal the Duke of Wellington" and the exaggerated, humorous style is not characteristic.
  • cjs_ac4 hours ago
    Why would Wellington have to answer to the Foreign Office for the administration of the forces under his command when that was the responsibility of the War Office?
  • ggm3 hours ago
    Entertaining if fictive. His comments to his army and his own role in the victory are I hope better attested to.
  • BigTTYGothGF4 hours ago
    There's no way that's not a joke written many decades or more later.
  • RobotToaster5 hours ago
    Technically from Sir Arthur Wellesley, he wasn't made duke until 1814.
  • TacticalCoder2 hours ago
    > Tis of no matter your Highness, I have seen their backs before

    Don't know whether that's true or not (that the Duke of Wellington said that) but... One year later (1815), he handed the french's arses back to them big, big, big, times at Waterloo.

    Basically the battle of Waterloo (a few kilometers away from where I was born) is considered the time when the UK overtook France as the world's number one superpower.

    Since then both have only ever been falling in the rankings and it doesn't look like that fall is going to stop anytime soon but that's another topic.

    • jemmyw2 hours ago
      > is considered the time when the UK overtook France as the world's number one superpower.

      But unlikely a result of said battle, rather the instability of politics in France.

      Us British oft think of Waterloo as a great victory, although the circumstances, participants and objectives were pretty nuanced. Wellington himself rejected congratulations and thought battle to have very high cost.

    • B1FF_PSUVMan hour ago
      > superpower

      That's an anachronism, from the 19th to mid-20th century there were just "great powers", not perfectly matched but considered to be in the same class. The Ottoman empire falling off the league ("sick old man") was a bit of a shocker.