Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (/m/02c4s)

Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, KG, GCB, GCH, PC, FRS, was a British soldier and statesman, born in Dublin, Ireland belonging to the Protestant Ascendancy, and one of the leading military and political figures of 19th-century Britain. His defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 put him in the top rank of Britain's military heroes. In 2002 he was number 15 in the BBC's poll of the 100 Greatest Britons. Wellesley was commissioned as an ensign in the British Army in 1787. Serving in Ireland as aide-de-camp to two successive Lords Lieutenant of Ireland, he was also elected as a Member of Parliament in the Irish House of Commons. A colonel by 1796, Wellesley saw action in the Netherlands and in India, where he fought in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War at the Battle of Seringapatam. He was appointed governor of Seringapatam and Mysore in 1799 and as a newly appointed major-general won a decisive victory over the Maratha Confederacy at the Battle of Assaye in 1803.