Military career of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington Military career of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, (1 May 1769 – 14 September 1852), was one of the leading British military and political figures of the 19th century. Often referred to only as "The Duke of Wellington", he led a successful military career in India during the Fourth Anglo–Mysore War (1798–99) and the Second Anglo-Maratha War (1803–1805), and in Europe during the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815). Starting his career in 1787 as a commissioned officer in the infantry, before seeing his first action in the Flanders Campaign, Wellesley rose in rank by purchasing
Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley for many years with Hyacinthe-Gabrielle Roland, an actress at the Palais Royal. She had three sons and two daughters by Wellesley before he married her on 29 November 1794. He moved her to London, where Hyacinthe was generally miserable, as she never learned English and she was scorned by high society: Lady Caroline Lamb was warned by her mother-in-law, Elizabeth Milbanke, a noted judge of what was socially acceptable, that no respectable woman could afford to be seen in Hyacinthe's society. Their children were: Through his eldest daughter Lady Charles Bentinck, Wellesley is a great-great-great grandfather to Queen Elizabeth II.