Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, (1 May 1769 – 14 September 1852), was an
Anglo-Irish soldier and statesman, 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 14 in the BBC's poll of the
100 Greatest Britons.