Henry William Paget (May 17, 1768 – April 29, 1854), 2nd Earl of Uxbridge, 1st Marquess of Anglesey, more generally known as Lord Uxbridge, was a British officer who served as Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Cavalry at the Battle of Waterloo on June 18, 1815.
One of the strangest objects in the collections of the Wellington Museum in Waterloo is, without doubt, Lord Uxbridge's prosthetic leg.
A typical Middle Class family
Henry William Bayly was born in 1768 into a London family without particular luster or wealth. He was the son of Sir Nicholas Bayly and Miss Paget daughter of the Baron of the same name, relative of the Earl of Uxbridge and of good nobility. A year later, his father inherited the small barony and changed its name to "Paget". When he was twelve, his parents inherited from the Earl of Uxbridge 5,000 hectares of mining land in England and Ireland. This heaven-sent fortune enabled Lord Paget to place his son in the best schools. Henry attended Westminster School and then Christ Church College in Oxford. In 1790, at the age of 22, he entered the Commons where he occupied the seat of Carnarvon and then that of Milborne Port until 1810.
An admired rider
It was in 1793 that he began his military career when his father offered him the 80th Regiment of Staffordshire Volunteers, at the head of which he fought in Flanders (1794). In 1799 he returned to Flanders but this time as commander of the 7th Light Dragoons.
He earned a reputation as a bold and capable cavalry leader early in the Spanish War of Independence under the command of Sir John Moore. He won several difficult battles, including those at Sahagun and Benavente, while covering the disastrous retreat of British forces towards La Coruña. He also took part in the sad Walcheren expedition in 1809.
Henry William Paget did not take part in the second part of the war in the Iberian Peninsula, led by the Duke of Wellington. This was due to private events, which soon became the elements of a terrible scandal.
A "love at first sight"
In 1808 Paget, returning from Spain, was attending a musical evening given by his father at Uxbridge House when his eye fell on Lady Charlotte Wellesley, the wife of Arthur Wellesley's younger brother, Duke of Wellington, Henry Wellesley. He immediately fell madly in love with her. However, he was already married as he married Lady Caroline Villiers with whom he had eight children. Henry Wellesley who then exercised the functions of Secretary to the Treasury, seems to have noticed nothing very particular since he estimated that this brilliant cavalry officer would be the ideal man to accompany Lady Charlotte in the horseback rides that the doctors had prescribed for her. . Lady Charlotte and Lord Paget dated and horseback riding only stopped when she became pregnant.
It seems that it was Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, who, one of the first, began to suspect their relationship since in a note he explains that "about this time Mr. Wellesley [his brother] noticed Lord Paget's extraordinary attention to Lady Charlotte and remonstrated with her about it… At the end of the Parliamentary session of 1808 [in July] Mr. Wellesley moved [from Berkeley Square] to Putney Heath and , from that time until Lady Charlotte's return to London in February 1809, Mr. Wellesley had every reason to believe that there had been no meeting between Lady Charlotte and Lord Paget1. Henry Wellesley thought wrong since the two lovers had remained in contact. Paget had been back for some time in Spain, but when he returned they were seen walking together in Green Park, which at that time was much wilder than it is today, and the valet who escorted Lady Charlotte often got along order to move away a little so as to leave some privacy to the two lovers.
A terrible scandal
Lady Caroline, the wife of Lord Paget, naturally ends up learning the cause of the rumor that surrounded her. She did not seem, at the time, to conceive much bitterness about it, extramarital relations not then constituting a scandal in themselves3. But in the case of Paget and at the dawn of romanticism, the matter was more serious:it was really about an intense passion. There came a time when Henry wanted to set the record straight:he had an extremely clear conversation with his wife.
At the same time, for his part, Henry Wellesley, to add to his misfortune, was bedridden because of a rather serious liver disease. Nevertheless, one evening he got out of bed, intending to go to his wife's room. He found the door double-locked and he clearly heard the sounds of papers being moved. Convinced that she was writing to Paget, he forced her entry and wanted to force her to confess. Despite Lady Charlotte's strong denials, he lost his temper and shouted that there was no longer any question of them continuing to live under the same roof. The next day, as usual, she went to Green Park, where, as usual, the valet was asked to move away a little. The servant never saw his mistress again:she had simply disappeared! Lady Charlotte was hosted by a friend of her lover who only met her in secret.
Although this affair presents all the aspects of a somewhat forced vaudeville, it seems that its actors were very deeply affected by it. Old Lord Uxbridge was so outraged that he threatened to break up with his eldest son and even promised to give the lovers a good beating. Lady Charlotte was considered a kind of Messalina who had separated a man from his family and everywhere she was showered with compliments such as:"Cursed witch", "Abominable damned hellhound" or "Stinky polecat". ! “She had left her husband on Monday, and on Friday we were talking about it in the streets and even – what a horror! – in the rabble. The most charitable people claimed that Lady Charlotte was nothing but a hysterical nymphomaniac with inordinate sexual demands.
The scandal was universal as it involved the most prominent families in the kingdom, one of England's most admired soldiers and the sister-in-law of another. The press reveled in it and reported that Wellesley intended to kill Paget in a duel while he was bedridden, or that Sir Arthur Wellesley had run after the couple on the road to Oxford and seriously injured the "kidnapper of the wife." of his sick brother. None of this was accurate. In March 1809, the noise made around this affair redoubled:the partisans of the ridiculed husband still increased the tone. The threats of duels were piling up to the point of moving the Bow Street court. As far as he was concerned, Paget refused all duels but loudly asserted that if any member of the Wellesley family or that of his wife wanted to kill him, he would not deny him his door.
In mid-March, the two lovers came to decide to separate for a month, but this separation lasted a week, and when Paget returned to the "libidinous arms" of Char, he received a new cartel from Henry Cadogan, the brother of his wife, to which he did not respond any more than to the others. Cadogan insisted and finally won his duel. Paget didn't even aim at his opponent saying he didn't want to add to his in-laws' unhappiness any more.
The end of the story was less dramatic:Paget and Char both ended up divorcing, moving in and getting married. As for Lady Caroline, she was wedded to the Duke of Argyll, although this marriage raised an outcry in Scotland. The huge wave that the melodrama had aroused subsided just as quickly. By the end of 1811, the Paget children did not appear to have been seriously traumatized by the whole affair and divided their time between their mother and father. Later, the children in Paget's two beds were found to get along remarkably well with each other. Nevertheless:we did not receive Lady Charlotte in the world.
Uxbridge at the head of Wellington's cavalry
We can guess that, under these conditions, it was not without a certain frown that, in 1815, Wellington saw the Earl of Uxbridge arrive in Brussels. To tell the truth, Wellington would have liked Lord Combermere, who had been under his orders in India and Spain, to come and command his cavalry. Unfortunately, Combermere was not available and the Horse Guard preferred to appoint the Earl of Uxbridge who was very much in favor with the Prince Regent. While the press and good English society imagined that a clash was bound to arise between the duke and the kidnapper of his sister-in-law, nothing like it happened.
All the duke showed was a bit of coldness. Sir William Fraser dared, one fine day, to put the question to Wellington, who answered him with a hint of cynicism in his own way:“Oh no! I haven't forgotten anything... I'm afraid that's not all. Lord Uxbridge has a reputation for running off with just about anybody...I'll try to make sure he doesn't do that with me. "Let us add that if the Duke had had the slightest doubt about Uxbridge's military qualities, he would have evaporated following Uxbridge's brilliant behavior during the retreat of June 17, 1815. Contrary to what several authors report, the scene in which the Earl of Alava is said to have played the role of interpreter between Wellington and Uxbridge is legendary.
"My Lord, I believe I have lost a leg. .."
It was Lord Uxbridge who, at the Battle of Waterloo, led the famous heavy cavalry charge against the 1st French Infantry Corps on June 18, 1815. Early in the evening, Uxbridge received shrapnel in the leg above the knee. Some historians, such as Hamilton-Williams, even claim that the Duke did not receive news of Lord Uxbridge's accident until late that evening, before writing his dispatch to Minister Henry Bathurst in which Wellington writes:"The Earl of Uxbridge, after having fought successfully all that difficult day, was wounded by one of the last shots fired, which I fear will deprive His Majesty of his services for some time. »
Lord Uxbridge was quickly evacuated from the battlefield and brought to Waterloo in a house, which today bears the number 214 of the chaussée de Bruxelles, where he had established his lodgings the evening before and which was then inhabited by a certain Paris. . This house, located a little north of the church, was nicknamed the “Château Tremblant”. However, the building was not that old:it must have been built around 1750 and served as the home of Jean-Baptiste Pâris, who was the general guard of the Soignes forest. The surgeons examined the wound and concluded that it was necessary to amputate. “Good, gentlemen,” Uxbridge concluded. I thought so myself. I put myself in your hands and if this leg needs to be cut off, let it be done as soon as possible. A little before or a little after the operation, the Count wrote to his wife:
“Dearest Char, be brave:expect bad news; I lost my right leg. Only a miracle could have saved her and, for you and for the dear children, I took the best chance of saving her life. God protect you all. »
After consenting to the amputation, he refused to allow himself to be tied up, as was customary in such cases, did not utter the slightest complaint during the operation and contented himself, at one point, with pointing out that the instruments surgeons weren't very sharp. When the operation was over, he declared:“I have had my day… For forty-seven years, I have been a “beautiful”. It would not have been right to continue to compete with young people any longer. A short time later, Uxbridge was transferred to the hospital established by the Marquise d'Assche in her hotel in the rue Ducale in Brussels. The marquise herself says that she was present when the stretcher on which the injured man was lying was brought in and that he had this thought:"Look, marquise, I will no longer be able to dance with you without a wooden leg... »
Uxbridge amazed everyone with how quickly he recovered from his injury. When Lady Charlotte received her husband's message, she rushed to Brussels. Although good London society had deliberately turned its back on him, Char had kept very solid acquaintances in circles of power:it was the Prince Regent George IV himself who put the royal yacht at his disposal to reach the continent. Shortly after, Uxbridge was created 1st Marquess of Anglesey. His sister, Lady Caroline Capel, who had been in Brussels since 1814, wrote on this occasion to her mother, the Dowager Countess of Uxbridge, that she was very happy that her brother had benefited from this honor but that she could not Can't help being a little sad that the title of Earl of Uxbridge might be reduced to second place. But at least it would have the advantage that “this woman” (Lady Charlotte) no longer bears the same name as the Dowager Countess “so pure, so virtuous and so precious”. In Brussels, the sister and the wife of Anglesey spent their time avoiding each other, but when they met, remained extremely polite.
Lord Anglesey's convalescence continued to progress and, as he could not sit still, he was often found hobbling in the park in Brussels although, by his own admission, crutches were unbearable to him. By July 6, Anglesey and his wife were in Ostend, ready to embark for England on a ship placed at their disposal by the Admiralty.
The strange fate of a leg
The owner of Château Tremblant collected the severed leg and buried it “pietifully” in his garden, even growing a few flowers on the mound, according to some, a willow according to others. According to Carlo Bronne, a plaque was affixed on which it was inscribed:"Here is buried the leg / of the illustrious, brave and valiant Earl of Uxbridge, lieutenant general of the British H.M., / commander-in-chief of the English, Belgian cavalry and Dutch, / wounded on June 18, 1815 / at the memorable battle of Waterloo. »
Jacques Logie is more or less of the same opinion:"On an old well which still exists in front of the house, a plaque was sealed to recall the memory of the leg of the illustrious and valiant Earl Uxbridge... who by his heroism contributed to the triumph of the cause of the human race”. Adkin adds that other epitaphs were written, including one, in fact, by the poet Robert Southey. These epitaphs were obviously never engraved.
In a paragraph in the Gazette of December 31, 1838, we learn that Lord Anglesey returned to the place of his torture and that, guided by Sergeant Cotton, he visited the "grave" of his leg. He demanded, it seems, to eat at the table that had been used for his amputation… Which proves that in 1838, his leg had still not left the garden of “Château Tremblant”. It is Jacques Logie who explains to us that a storm uprooted the willow and brought the bones to light. The heirs of Pâris would then have exhibited them in a kind of shrine “where visitors could, for a fee, contemplate some bones connected by a very dirty cord to a boot. In an article by Léon Van Dormael15, the place where the leg had been buried was marked with a stone "framed by two inscriptions, one of which commemorates the visit made on 20 May 1821 by the King of Prussia and the other that made by King George IV of England on August 1 of the same year. Other authors mention that the stone “is flanked:on the right, by an English inscription, inviting foreigners to visit the establishment of M. Paris (Establishment / including several / interesting and curious / souvenirs of the battle / of Waterloo, fought on / the 18th of June 1815); on the left, two inscriptions recalling that he received a visit:on October 1, 1821, from George IV, King of England, and, on September 20, 1825, from the King of Prussia, Frederick III, accompanied by his three sons. »
The glass cage where the bones were exhibited was not in the Wellington Museum, as Damamme maintains, for the sufficient reason that it did not exist - it was not inaugurated until 1955 - but in a room in the " Tremblant Castle”. It was there, it seems, that in 1876 she received a visit from Lord Uxbridge's son, General George Paget, who, as a worthy son of his father, had, during the Crimean War, taken part in the bloody and legendary charge of the light brigade in Balaklava. The visitor was horrified at the use made of his father's remains and moved heaven and earth to put an end to the scandal. We do not really know why the Belgian government refused to return the bones to the family. Eventually, in 1880, a compromise was reached and the remains of Lord Uxbridge's leg were buried in the old Waterloo Cemetery and when it fell into disuse, all trace of it was lost.
It is therefore quite wrong that Frings writes that "As for the leg, it was dug up and brought back to England, to be buried there with Lord Uxbridge, on his death in 1854." Damamme takes up this version while disguising the truth by writing:“His leg, piously collected and buried in his garden by the owner of the premises, was subsequently transferred to the Wellington Museum in Waterloo. In the years 1877-1878, it is said that an Englishman, visiting the museum, stopped in front of a glass frame under which are exposed bones and a boot. He is told that these are the remains of a famous Wellington general, Lord Uxbridge. Anger of the visitor, who is none other than the son of the chief of the English cavalry. Returning to England, he wrote to the Belgian ambassador in London to tell him of his indignation. Shortly after, a diplomatic note arrives in Brussels prohibiting the exhibition of these glorious remains, which are buried in the cemetery of Waterloo. They are now replaced in the museum by one of the prostheses worn by Uxbridge. »
Lord Lieutenant in Ireland
Lord Uxbridge, now one-legged, and nicknamed in the troupe "One-Leg", remained in the service of Her Britannic Majesty and was made a Knight of the Order of the Garter in 1818. Following the Battle of Waterloo , Wellington and the Marquess of Anglesey, as he was now called, were completely reconciled and when the Duke agreed to form the government in 1828, Anglesey was offered the perilous office of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, which was proof , if not of friendship, at least of trust.
As soon as he entered Downing Street, the Duke had to face a very serious problem in Ireland. In a by-election in Clare, voters had chosen an extremist autonomist, Daniel O'Connell, but he was refused entry to the Commons because he was a Catholic, which brought Ireland to the brink of revolution. Wellington thought that the issue could be gradually defused through a concordat [ref. necessary] because, according to him, the Catholic Church was out of control until it was officially recognized. Now, with Clare's election, O'Connell's Catholic Association could not only control all the elections in Ireland, but instigate riots until a solution was found. George IV, fiercely hostile to Catholics and influenced by his brother, the Duke of Cumberland, an Anglican even more bigoted than him, absolutely refused to consider the slightest step forward towards Catholics. The majority that had emerged in the Chamber sent the king into an indescribable fury and there was no longer any question of dissolution. Wellington had great difficulty in explaining that the government, in this case, would lose more seats in Ireland than it would gain in England and that a stalemate would therefore be reached.
Wellington, in a memorandum addressed to the king, indicated the main lines of the policy he proposed. In particular, it was a question of allowing the government to appoint and pay Catholic priests, which provoked an outcry from the Anglican bishops. By dint of insistence and persuasion, the duke will end, on January 15, 1829 only, by obtaining from the king the permission to be able to discuss the Catholic question.
Meanwhile, the Duke of Cumberland opposed Wellington to the point that the latter came to complain officially. The Duke of Clarence, another brother of the king, was openly pro-Catholic, but his whims as Lord High Admiral had to be curtailed by the government and he conceived such resentment that he resigned from office. so that he was temporarily of no help in Wellington. "Between the king and his brothers, the government of this country has become a real heartbreaker..." wrote Wellington on August 26, 1828 to the Minister of the Interior Robert Peel who, although favorable to the Duke's Catholic projects, absolutely wanted to resign. He had to be persuaded that his presence in the government was absolutely essential if we wanted to succeed.
The whole affair was to be conducted in the greatest secrecy and it was decided to keep the King out of the negotiations while the Lord Lieutenant in Ireland was left in the dark. But the Marquess of Anglesey had gradually made himself the most ardent advocate of Catholic emancipation. Indiscretions made public the secret negotiations he was conducting with the Catholics. There followed a rather heated exchange of letters between the Lord Lieutenant and the First, which on 28 December came to threaten to relieve him of his duties. Anglesey did not accept the reprimand and put his foot in the dish by making public, a few days later, his comments on a letter that Wellington had addressed to Bishop Curtis, primate of the Catholic Church. In response, Wellington "resigned" Anglesey who thus saw himself sidelined.
On February 5, 1829, the king's speech in parliament called for new powers in order to be able to restore his authority in Ireland and, in this light, called for a review of the political disqualification of Catholics. Wellington did not linger on and as early as February 10 a bill dissolving the Catholic Association was introduced, and when this bill was passed Peel introduced another removing the disqualifications. The two projects were voted on by a large majority and received royal assent on April 13. It was a personal victory for Wellington. But the Emancipation Act had been passed thanks to the votes of the Whigs and despite the opposition of many Tories. It had been necessary to fight against the most conservative and against the intrigues of the royal coterie. Fifteen years later, the duke still spoke of this period, "the most painful of my long life". A heavy atmosphere of slander surrounded him and Lord Winchilsea, a staunch opponent of emancipation, even came to accuse the Duke of dishonesty. The Duke challenged Winchilsea to a duel and the two met at Battersea, but the Duke aimed wide and Winchilsea fired in the air and then apologized.
The falling out with Wellington which followed Anglesey's "resignation" as Lord Lieutenant seems to have been quite long but was forgotten by 1846, since in that year Wellington, who had again become Commander-in-Chief of the Army in 1842, on the death of Lord Hill, had him named Field Marshall at the age of 80! In 1852, the Marquess of Anglesey followed the Duke's coffin, carrying the baton of the victor of Waterloo.
Two years later, Henry William Paget, 1st Marquess of Anglesey also died, aged 86.