If you walk down the Charles & James Street at the Fort, you would find a ruined mansion at the corner. The only thing that keeps the mansion from going to pieces is a great banyan tree that has lovingly embraced it and is holding  it together.  THAT was the house where he lived in the late 1790s. He was not THE famous Wellington then. He was just young Colonel Arthur Wellesley, trying to make a mark in the world.

It was in India that he honed his military skills. He participated with distinction in the Anglo-Mysore Wars and the Anglo-Maratha wars. He gained a reputation for emerging victorious out of desperate situations where the enemy had numerical superiority, AND with minimal losses. By the end of his tenure in India he had become a Major-General and had been knighted. After years of tough military campaigns, he deserved a rest. On his way back to England in 1805, he stopped for a brief vacation at St. Helena, off the West African coast. There, he stayed at the Briars cottage belonging to a friendly British merchant named William Balcombe. This cottage, as we shall soon see, was to become famous in history.

Years passed. Wellington’s army was now busy fighting Napoleon Bonaparte’s French armies all over Europe. Napoleon derogatorily called Wellington the “Sepoy* General” — an insult to his military service in India, meant to contemptuously dismiss him as an unworthy opponent. The French press gleefully published it. But that  glee was short-lived.

In 1815, the British and Allied forces under Wellington’s command decisively defeated Napoleon’s army at Waterloo.  Wellington victoriously marched to Paris and commandeered the Elysee Bourbon, which was the official palace of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. Napoleon was exiled to St. Helena and placed under house-arrest in Briar’s Cottage, which belonged to the Balcombes: the very place where Wellington had enjoyed a pleasant holiday some years back. The irony was not lost on Wellington. He wrote a letter to the British commander at St. Helena, “You may tell Bony ( a dismissive way of addressing Bonaparte) that I find his apartments at the Elysee-Bourbon very convenient and that I hope he likes mine at the Balcombes.” THE SEPOY FROM FORT ST. GEORGE HAD THE LAST LAUGH!

For more stories like this join us on one of trails in Chennai. Discover more about Colonial Madras on the British Blueprints trail.

*Note: Sepoy is derived from the Urdu word Sipahi, meaning soldier. The word is usually used to denote soldiers of the Indian Army.