FOR THE INVASION. 273 reading of liis precepts. Now, one of the Duke's theories was, that an officer commanding an army on foreign service owed obedience to the Secretary of State — obedience close akin to that which a military subordinate owes to his military chief. If this precept were to be narrowly construed, a Secretary of State who conveyed the wishes of the Government to a general commanding forces abroad would be in danger of finding that he had shut out from his counsels the one man in all the world who could best advise him ; and the lela- tions of the Austrian generals with the old Aulic Council at Vienna would have to be adopted as a guide, instead of being valued as a warning. Against this doctrine, understood in its narrow sense, the Duke of Wellington's whole military career in Europe was an almost unceasing rebel- lion ; and it would be hard to find an instance in which he suffered his designs to be bent awry by the military opinions of the Home Government. During the Peninsular War he did not surely pass his time in obeying the Home Government, but rather in setting it right, and in educating it, if so one may speak, for the business of carrying on war.*
- The fierce, wilful, and contemptuous way in which the
Duke of Wellington dealt with a Secretary of State who ven- tured to think he might take him at his word, and make him obey his wish, must be familiar to every reader of the De- spatches ; but I may refer to the specimen which will be found in Sir Arthur Welleslcy's letter to Lord Castlereagh of the 5th
- f September 1 808. I mean the passage beginning ' In respect
' to your wish that I should go into the Astiirias, to examine VOL. IT. S CHAP. XVL
