Excerpt from Military Memoirs of Field Marshal, the Duke of Wellington, Vol. 1 of 2 Seventeen years have passed since, upon the plain of Waterloo, the illustrious subject of this memoir crowned his military fame; and, by one surpassing victory, closed his vast, various, and splendid services in the field. Of all the wars in which he was engaged, peace, "the mother and the nurse of all that is good for man," was the blessed end! The difficulty of doing any justice in such narrow limits to the development of a military character so eminent and unrivalled as that of the Duke of Wellington, has been severely felt by the Author. To produce a closely digested narrative of his achievements, suitable for the general reader, is the object of these volumes. The task has been laborious; for the Author had to read, compare, and reconcile many and various relations of the events which he describes; and to extract and condense the facts which they contain. He owes full acknowledgments to the Histories of Colonel Jones, Mr. Southey, and Colonel Napier; and especial thanks to some private friends, for the kindness with which they have afforded him information. For the opinions, military or political, which may be expressed or implied in these volumes, as well as for their general style, the Author alone is responsible. The work being of a professional nature, that interference which is generally understood to fall within the province of an Editor, has not, in the present instance, been exercised by Dr. Lardner. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.