1-628-774 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Duke of Wellington commanding at the Battle of Assaye, 1816. The Battle of Assaye occurred on 23 September 1803 near the village of Assaye in south-central India. It was one of the decisive battles of the Second Anglo-Maratha War. In 1814 Sir Arthur Wellesley, the 1st Duke of Wellington (1769-1852), commanded the victorious British forces in the Peninsular War (for which he was promoted to Field Marshal and made a duke) and in 1815 he inflicted the final defeat on Napoleon at Waterloo. Christened the 'Iron Duke', Wellington served as Prime Minister from 1828 to 1830, but his intransigent opposition to parliamentary reform led to him being compelled to resign. His death was marked by a grand funeral and the honour of a burial in St Paul's Cathedral alongside the other great British military hero of the Napoeonic Wars, Nelson. From The History of the War, from the Commencement of the French Revolution to the Present Time, volume I, by Hewson Clarke, published by T Kinnersley (London, 1816).