The East India Company gave Wellesley a sword worth one thousand guineas, for his services, and William Pitt made him a knight. In 1805 he returned to England with his brother, now _Marquis_ Wellesley. In that year he became a member of the House of Commons. In 1806 he was again engaged in hot work. He married Elisabeth Pakenham, daughter of Lord Longford and sister of the general who fell at New Orleans; and was then sent on the Copenhagen expedition. England, dreading that Napoleon, who now bestrode Europe like a colossus, would lay hands on the fleet of Denmark for the purposes of invasion, resolved, with the promptness and decision which distinguish her in difficult emergencies, to lay hands on it first. An armament under Lord Cathcart and Admiral Gambier went for the ships, and receiving a refusal bombarded Copenhagen in the most terrible manner; while Sir Arthur Wellesley manœuvred and beat the Danes on shore. In the midst of a general conflagration of the city the fleet was surrendered and carried away. All Europe--Napoleon and the French particularly--cried out against this high-handed business. It is still a great theme of discussion at historical societies in England, where it is not yet decided. We have now come to the Peninsular War. Napoleon had declared all Europe in a state of blockade and forbade the nations to trade with England. But they would trade. He then resolved to take the coast kingdoms of Spain and Portugal into his own power; and seized his opportunity. In 1807, in consequence of the household quarrels of the imbecile Spanish Bourbons, he marched his troops into Spain under pretence of assisting Charles IV. against his son Ferdinand. Charles was induced to abdicate. Napoleon sent for Ferdinand; and in April 1808, Charles, his queen, Ferdinand, Don Carlos and Godoy were together, in a room at Bayonne, in presence of Napoleon; all the family in his clutches! The queen abused Ferdinand in the most shocking manner for his conduct to his father, who, she said, was not his father, after all! The interview was a terrible one--the calm, imperturbable face of Napoleon looking sternly on. Modern annals do not furnish the painter with a finer historic subject. Napoleon took the father and son, sent them to separate prisons in France, and put his brother Joseph on the throne. But, as Delavigne says: “The hope was vain: stoled priests and belted chiefs Roused each the other up, and proudly woke To loftier thought the popular beliefs, And fired a nation’s spirit as they spoke.”