The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire (16 page)

The rumored city of gold was said to be in the jungles of Guiana, and Raleigh was committed to finding it, and carving an English colony off the Spanish Main. Raleigh set sail in 1595. On his way to El Dorado, he liberated
Trinidad's Indians from the hated Spanish (English imperialists have always had a taste for putting themselves at the heads of native armies to overthrow presumed oppressors; in this case, the capture of St. Joseph, Trinidad, also helped secure Raleigh's rear flank before he embarked for Guiana). The Indians celebrated their annexation to the great white queen and remembered Raleigh as a hero for generations after. They also confirmed for Raleigh the existence of El Dorado, and agreed to help him find it. Raleigh and a hundred Englishmen then rowed into the mysterious, humid, mosquito-heavy jungle, the swamp of the Orinoco delta. If one wants to understand the making of the British Empire one can see it here: why should a financially well-established forty-year-old man plunge into trackless jungle in search of gold and patriotic glory? The answer: that is what Englishmen did.

They could also be taken in by the locals. As they plowed the creeper-laden swamps to the mountain country where they presumed El Dorado to be, they were told stories of Amazons and a tribe of people who had their eyes in their shoulders and their mouths in their chests—stories that were met with merry, debunking guffaws when Raleigh dutifully reported them on his return to England. But the Indians apparently believed these stories themselves, for some volunteered to go with Raleigh to fight and take El Dorado. That fight did not happen, of course, but Raleigh did not leave Guiana without making preparations for another expedition. He even left behind a teenage member of his crew, whose task was to learn the Indian language. That, Raleigh thought, would be a great help when next he returned to Guiana—which, in the event, would be twenty years later.

In the meantime, he tried his own hand at singeing the beard of the king of Spain. The Spaniards appeared to be preparing another armada; Raleigh wanted to cut them off with a mighty preemptive strike of cutlass-wielding Englishmen, and his advice was taken. A great fleet was prepared to attack
the Spanish port of Cadiz. The Englishmen and their Dutch allies struck in June 1596, with Raleigh one of the fleet commanders. He was brave and intrepid and one of the most inspiring commanders in battle (his first sea action), but he was also badly wounded in the thigh (which gave him a permanent limp). He largely missed out on the month's worth of sacking that followed Cadiz's capture. Where others made a profit, Raleigh, in his own words, gained “naught but poverty and pain.”
⁷

After a botched attack on the Azores (botched by the Earl of Essex—a longtime rival, later executed for treason; Raleigh was once again gallant in action) he increasingly busied himself, of necessity, with business and parliamentary affairs. Business in Ireland was bad. The ever rebellious natives had despoiled his estates, and he eventually conceded there was little profit to be made in that soggy, contumacious island. In Parliament he proved himself a commonsensical and generous representative of the people's interests. But when his great patroness Elizabeth died Raleigh found himself in disfavor with the new king, James VI of Scotland, now James I of England. Raleigh was accused of involvement in a Catholic plot to overthrow the new monarch—a charge ludicrous on its face but potentially deadly in its consequences. Though he defended himself with wonderful rhetorical art, he was found guilty. His death sentence was suspended by the king who kept him imprisoned in the Tower of London for thirteen years.

These were not wasted years. Though life expectancies were shorter, men dreamed big in those days, and Raleigh still dreamt of gold mines in Guiana. His thoughts turned to religion too, and he became something of a moral philosopher, his philosophy deeply grounded in the Bible and a waxing Christian faith. He devoted himself to calculations mathematical and to conducting scientific experiments—chemical and medical mostly—and to writing a massive (and unfinished) history of the world, focused on the history recounted in the Bible, as well as the history of ancient Greece and Rome, and the history of England. The king's wife liked him and was wont to intercede for him, as did the king's son, to whom he became a sort of informal tutor and adviser.

For thirteen years, Raleigh was considered legally dead (though he was animated enough to father another son with his wife Bess). When he was finally resurrected, in 1616, it was to sail again for Guiana. But El Dorado would be his undoing. The sixty-two-year-old adventurer came down desperately sick, and his scapegrace but brave son Wat died leading his men into battle—a battle against Spaniards that it would have been politic to avoid, for the king of Spain demanded Raleigh's head for the outrage. As Raleigh was an already condemned man, it was an easy diplomatic solution for King James to put Raleigh on trial again, have him condemned, and this
time send him to the chopping block. Raleigh showed an impressive, Christian calm before the executioner—so much so that the axeman seemed paralyzed and unable to do his duty. Raleigh called out to him: “Strike, man, strike!” and the blade crashed down once, and then again to finish the job.

It was poor payment for a patriot, and a man of talent. But England has always been careless of these; sending out privately educated gentlemen to tame savage tribes, in which duty, Kipling noted in his poem
The Arithmetic of the Frontier
, “Two thousand pounds of education” could drop “to a ten-rupee jezail” bullet. The British Empire always trusted that more gallant, ingenious men would come springing up—and they did, and they were put to good use.

“My ugly boy Arthur is food for powder and nothing more.”

 

A
rthur Wellesley, the man who would become the “Iron Duke,” the 1st Duke of Wellington, was born in Dublin to a family that had come to England with William the Conqueror, and to Ireland with its subsequent Norman conquest. It was a noble family. His father was an earl and a member of the Irish House of Lords, his mother the daughter of a viscount. The Anglo-Irish aristocracy of which he was a part was bred to lead—especially to lead men into battle.

Arthur was sent to Eton, where he remained a rather lonely figure, an outsider in all except bloodlines. His mother then took him to Brussels to learn French. The one, and possibly only, talent he showed at this time was a facility with the violin, something he had inherited from his (now late) father. His eldest brother was in the Irish House of Lords and had a seat in Parliament at Westminster. His second brother was a former naval man elected to the Irish parliament. His younger brother appeared to have brains and piety sufficient for the church, and his youngest brother was aiming for an army career. Only Arthur seemed to be without prospects or ambition. This would change.

He spent a year at the French Royal Academy of Equitation at Angers, a finishing school for gentlemen and potential officers. When he returned home at the end of 1786, even his mother was impressed at his transformation—the awkward boy was now handsome, sometimes mischievous, sometimes reserved, and still to grow into his full dignity, but to his admirers at least he was a charming young man. The following year, before he turned eighteen, he was commissioned an infantry ensign. Soon promoted to lieutenant and stationed in Ireland, he became a member of the Irish House of Commons at the age of only nineteen.

In 1794, the future Iron Duke finally got what he wanted—overseas service and action. In preparation he had resigned his seat in the House of Commons and given up two of his vices: gambling and the violin (the latter, he said, took up too much of his time and was not a soldierly occupation
²
). He was utterly committed to excelling as an officer of infantry. He came to the Netherlands a twenty-five-year-old lieutenant colonel—his promotions accelerated by purchasing ranks, as was common in the case of young noblemen—eager to fight against the French revolutionaries who had overthrown the
ancien regime
(which he had come to respect from his schooling in France) and who had declared war on England. But the action he saw was cold and wet and taught him little more than that generals seemed to approach battlefields as absentee landlords—no one ever accused Wellesley of that.