was but twelve years old left the family in slender
circumstances. Richard, the eldest son and successor to the
title, had achieved high university honors, but Arthur was a slow
student of everything save music and mathematics. After a brief
residence at Eton he entered a higher institution at Angers, in
France. His mother thought him worth nothing better than "food
for powder," and at eighteen he obtained a commission as ensign
in the Seventy-sixth Regiment of British Foot. Family influence
and the purchase of his "steps" soon made him a lieutenant-
colonel (1793) of the Thirty-third Foot. He had already been
three years a member of the Irish House of Commons where,
however, he did not distinguish himself.

England was now at war with France, and Colonel Arthur
Wellesley's first foreign service was in 1794, when his regiment
was sent to the support of the Duke of York, who was near the end
of his ignominious campaign in the Low Countries. In March, 1795,
he was back in England, disgusted with the incompetency of his
superiors. Of the value of this experience he afterward said,
"Why, I learned what one ought not to do, and that is always
something." At the time, however, he was less philosophical, and
after consulting with his wise elder brother as to the future
possibilities of distinction in military life, he applied for a
civil office under the Lord Lieutenant of England.

Instead of droning out his life in a treasury clerkship,
Wellesley found a more strenuous career abroad. In the autumn of
1795 his regiment was ordered to India, where he arrived in
February, 1797. A year later his already famous brother Richard,
Lord Mornington, came out as Governor-general. The brothers were