The Marquess Wellesley, K.G - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1893 edition. Excerpt: ...In February, 1801, he sent an expedition to the Red Sea under the command of General Baird, and wrote to the Sherif of Mecca, the Imam of Senna, and the Sultan of Aden, calling upon them to join in expelling the French from the East. The expedition is interesting not for its results, which were trivial, but as showing the width of Wellesley's schemes, and the daring character of the statesman who, hedged by difficulties in the East, was not content with the defensive--for which an exhausted treasury might plead--or even with an active policy within the vast peninsula which he dominated, but took the offensive, and mingled in what was in reality an European war, by calling in the tributary East to redress the threatened balance of the West. This movement was part, indeed, of a more extended policy. Wellesley had projects that included the Cape, the Isle of Bourbon, the Mauritius, the Philippine Islands, Ceylon. The Cape, he saw, was an 'outpost of India,' and he required it to assist not only in defence but in defiance. The naval force of the French islands inflicted a constant series of losses upon British trade. In February, 1801, Wellesley stated that British property worth over two millions had been carried into Port St. Louis since the beginning of the war. He planned the capture of the Mauritius, and would have placed the island in direct relation to the Indian defences. Everything here depended upon the swiftness of the action; and Admiral Rainier, a martinet of the most pedantic school, who had already, on another occasion, acted without Wellesley's orders in such a manner as seriously to embarrass his schemes, now refused to move without the express command of the King in the usual form. Wellesley's letter to the Admiral1 is a...