At an early age the latter, not having benefited much from his education, said he would be a soldier, and was sent to Angiers in France, where he studied the science of military engineering, under the famous Pignerol, about the time Napoleon was doing the same at Brienne. Great elements of future storms were at that moment fomenting in the kingdom of France! At the age of eighteen, Arthur Wellesley having returned home, got his ensigncy. By purchase and quick promotion, he was lieutenant-colonel in his twenty-fourth year. The first campaign he engaged in was as disastrous as his last was fortunate. The enemy was the same. In 1794 he joined the army of the Duke of York, then striving to drive the French republicans out of the Netherlands. But his royal highness was driven out himself in 1795. The soft young bishop of Osnaburg was not the man to cope with the fiery generals of the Convention. Thus ended Arthur Wellesley’s first campaign. The scene now changes to India. From a mere foothold and factory, on the shore, the English had in half a century won, thanks to Lord Clive, a vast extent of territory round the three Presidencies of Bombay, Madras and Calcutta. A company of merchants had done all this--the East India Company--whose chartered monopoly existed up to 1814. At the close of the last century the empire of the Mongols had dwindled away, and the Mahrattas, a wild people who rose fifty years before, possessed a large portion of the appanage of the Great Mogul. This last was dozing out his life in the palace of his renowned ancestors at Delhi. His empire in falling had broken into pieces. The Mahrattas formed one of these, and another, was the kingdom of Mysore, made so famous by the usurpation and bravery of Hyder Alee and his son, the Sultaun Tippoo Saib.