We have already referred to his remarkable power of abstracting
himself from the work, no matter how engrossing, immediately in
hand, and concentrating his energies upon the details of some
entirely different business. Thus Napier relates that it was while
he was preparing to fight the battle of Salamanca that he had to
expose to the Ministers at home the futility of relying upon a
loan; it was on the heights of San Christoval, on the field of
battle itself, that he demonstrated the absurdity of attempting to
establish a Portuguese bank; it was in the trenches of Burgos that
he dissected Funchal's scheme of finance, and exposed the folly of
attempting the sale of church property; and on each occasion, he
showed himself as well acquainted with these subjects as with the
minutest detail in the mechanism of armies.
Another feature in his character, showing the upright man of
business, was his thorough honesty. Whilst Soult ransacked and
carried away with him from Spain numerous pictures of great value,
Wellington did not appropriate to himself a single farthing's worth
of property. Everywhere he paid his way, even when in the enemy's
country. When he had crossed the French frontier, followed by
40,000 Spaniards, who sought to "make fortunes" by pillage and
plunder, he first rebuked their officers, and then, finding his
efforts to restrain them unavailing, he sent them back into their
own country.
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