Britain Against Napoleon

by Roger Knight

  * Eighty-two of these magnificent swords were presented (Comfort, ‘Lloyd’s Patriotic Fund’; Swords and Dirks, passim). In the French Revolutionary War swords had been presented by a more informal committee of City interests, founded in 1793, to encourage the capture of privateers, though naval officers who had quelled a mutiny during the disturbances of 1797 were also awarded a sword (Wood, ‘Swords’, pp. 189–91).

  * It was not until 1848 that the government recognized the contribution of seamen with the award of the Naval General Service medal.

  † Lloyd’s also donated £40,000 to the newly founded Naval Asylum, supported by individual donations from City merchants, for orphans of seamen killed in the war. The private sector led the government, although the asylum was enlarged and eventually given an annual parliamentary grant. The Naval Asylum became part of the Royal Hospital School in 1825 (Green, Navy and Anglo-Jewry, pp. 78–81, 86–7).

  ‡ Some areas and industries in France benefited considerably from Napoleon’s Continental System. The shift of industry away from the Atlantic coast to the Rhine saw a growth in river traffic and industry, especially in the production of wool, cotton and silk textiles. Present-day Belgium and Alsace prospered. The transit of goods through Antwerp increased at the expense of the Netherlands: between 1807 and 1809 the volume of imports into Cologne from Holland fell by 87 per cent. The growing of sugar beet as a substitute for colonial sugar was encouraged by the French government (Crouzet, ‘Blockade and Economic Change’, pp. 571, 586–7; Aaslestad, ‘Continental System’, p. 116; Ellis, Continental System, p. 257).

  * By 1812 only soldiers, travellers and food were transported on the Elbe at Hamburg. The textiles trade collapsed and most dockworkers were unemployed. Hamburg had 435 sugar refineries; only forty survived annexation. The plight of the Netherlands was worse (Aaslestad, ‘Continental System’, pp. 124–5).

  * From 1810 to 1813 Bordeaux received 181 licences and 607 American permits; the corresponding totals for Hamburg were 68 and 5 (Marzagalli, ‘Continental Blockade’, pp. 28–9).

  † In 1809 and 1810 the total of wheat exported to Britain from the French Empire was 1,497,616 quarters, out of a total from all sources of 2,023,112 quarters (Galpin, Grain Supply, p. 191).

  * It was later claimed that lack of specie was responsible for altering the expedition’s objectives. Had more cash been available it would have been sent to north Germany (Gray, Perceval, p. 339, quoting Parliamentary Papers, 1810 (12): Reports of Commons Select Committee, Vol. VII, pp. 231–2).

  † The question of whether a naval officer should benefit from the carriage of ‘public treasure’ had been much debated, and in 1801 had been stopped by the Admiralty. In 1807, however, it issued a partial repeal, and a ‘gratuity’ of a half of 1 per cent of the value of the specie was allowed to the captain (Lewis, Social History of the Navy, pp. 333–5). In late 1811 the senior officer at Rio de Janeiro, also a source of specie, proposed to the first lord of the Admiralty that warships carrying specie should be sent at regular intervals from Brazil, but the supply of specie remained disorganized (Vice-Admiral Michael de Courcy to C. P. Yorke, 4 Nov. 1811, NMM, YOR/3).

  * Wartime inflation exacerbated unemployment distress, and there is good evidence that wheat and other commodity prices reached a high point in 1812–13, suggested by one analysis as 62 per cent above the levels in 1792, and by another as 90 per cent, though all agree that inflation fell back after the war. The average price of wheat increased in each decade: at 47.9s. per quarter between 1781 and 1790; at 63.5s. between 1791 and 1800; at 84s. between 1801 and 1810; at 87.5s. between 1811 and 1820; at 59.4s. between 1821 and 1830 (Deane and Cole, Economic Growth, pp. 15–16; Hilton, Dangerous People, p. 7).

  * The complexity of Herries’s task was outlined in his letter of 1822 to George Harrison, which accompanied the final statement on the subsidies. The subsidies were paid

  by an arrangement entirely new which consisted principally in providing the Specie required for these Services thro’ a single and confidential agency, by means of which it was collected with greater certainty and more economy; and much of the difficulty and embarrassment which had arisen in this branch of the Public Service was removed. The details of this arrangement embraced every mode by which foreign currencies could be obtained for British money or Credit, such as the purchase of Specie in all the markets of the world; the conversion of Bullion into coin at our own and at foreign mints; the coining of foreign money in England & the purchase of bills of remittance in such a manner as to conceal they were for a Public Account; the negotiation of British paper on the Continent at long date to avoid pressure upon the Exchange, etc., etc.

  (Sherwig, Guineas and Gunpowder, p. 329, quoting 28 Feb. 1822, TNA, Audit Office, AO 3/1088)

  * A line of signal stations along the 29-mile length of the Torres Vedras defences could carry a message from one end to the other in seven minutes. Local intelligence was coordinated by a number of Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking intelligence-gathering officers, the most celebrated of whom was Major Colquhoun Grant of the 11th Foot, who was skilled at purchasing cattle outside the lines, then driving them in small groups at night through the French outposts (McGrigor, Wellington’s Spies, pp. 122–4; Burnham, ‘Observing Officers’, pp. 74–5).

  * In all, Napoleon lost 175,000 horses during the retreat from Russia. Replacing them in 1813 was to prove more difficult than finding more manpower, for, unlike the Russians, who had unlimited supplies of horses from the Steppes, the French supply was finite. Some French cavalry units had no horses at all in the following year’s campaigning (Lieven, Russia Against Napoleon, pp. 257, 306–7).

  * Castlereagh had to reassure his stepbrother, Brigadier-General Charles Stewart, adjutant-general to Wellington: ‘I can see you are all angry with us, that we do not protect you from Newspapers and Opposition Nonsense. I wish to God we could. The Army as well as the Govt suffers from the press – but be assured we do you Justice, and don’t suppose we expect you to fly’ (5 Aug. 1809, HRC, Londonderry MSS).

  * Between Bathurst’s appointment in June 1812 and the end of the war in 1814 he exchanged over 500 letters with Wellington (Thompson, ‘Bathurst’, p. 159).

  † Wellington was quite extraordinarily critical of everything around him. His brother William Wellesley-Pole wrote to him in Aug. 1809, warning that ‘You are not saying enough in praise of your officers.’ Wellington did not take his elder brother’s advice, writing back to him in Sept. 1810: ‘The Army was and indeed still is, the worst British Army ever sent from England. The General Officers are generally very bad and indeed some of them a disgrace to the service’ (Davies, Wellington’s Wars, p. 123, quoting 22 Aug. 1809, Gwent Record Office, RP MS B/93; 5 Sept. 1810, A/34).

  * The Portuguese government and army, supported by the British, became well organized, with an efficient Commissariat system. Portugal was not self-sufficient in cereals and depended upon imports from America. The Portuguese Army developed an effective transport system of ox carts, beasts of burden and small coastal and river vessels. As the war moved north, away from Portugal, capability had to increase. By 1813 the Commissariat required 54,891 draught oxen; by 1814, 67,782; and by 1815, 76,306 (Moreira, ‘Contracts and the Role of the State’, pp. 216–17).

  * Between 1808 and 1814 in the Peninsula 8,178 British officers and men were killed, 37,765 wounded and 6,156 went missing. The chance of an officer being killed was 6.5 per cent, and of being wounded 29 per cent. For enlisted soldiers the percentages were 5.2 and 18 respectively. The chances of disease or accident were 3.6 per cent for officers and for enlisted men 11.3 per cent (Burnham and McGuigan, British Army Against Napoleon, pp. 213–14).

  * Warrender, who joined the second Lord Melville’s Admiralty Board in Oct. 1812, was a talented amateur musician and a generous host, earning the nickname ‘Sir George Provender’. Admiral Sir Joseph Yorke, brother of C. P. Yorke, was a jovial, quirky extrovert, who once woke up the Commons by beginning a speech: ‘Mr Speaker, it
has long been a disputed point among philosophers which is the greatest of two evils, “a smoking chimney or a scolding wife”’ (Barrow, Autobiography, p. 320).

  * The United States relied on a period of residency, while other countries defined citizenship by place of birth. Differing interpretations of the nationality of many of those seamen sailing under the flags of both countries meant that they could be claimed by either side as their own (Rodger, Command of the Ocean, pp. 565–6; Bickham, Weight of Vengeance, pp. 34–5).

  * After the action the Chesapeake was commissioned as a prize by the Royal Navy, saw little action and was sold in 1819, when she was broken up and her timbers used for constructing a mill in Wickham, Hampshire, still standing today and called the ‘Chesapeake Mill’.

  * Many hours of debate took place on the ‘bullionist’ question – whether Britain should return to gold rather than have paper credit – while the troubled marriage of the prince regent and Princess Caroline of Brunswick had again emerged as an issue, coupled with the perennial problem of royal finances.

  * In Jan. 1812, on the North American station, there were twenty-three British warships crewed by 3,015 seamen. By Mar. 1813 the figure was sixty ships and 14,300 seamen (NMM website, based on Admiralty List Books, TNA, ADM/8).

  * Of 1,242 badly wounded after the battle of Toulouse, 88 per cent walked out to convalesce or to rejoin their units. William Beatty, the Victory’s surgeon at Trafalgar, reported in Jan. 1806 that nine of the eleven who lost limbs during the battle had survived, and only six of his 102 convalescents had died (Crumplin, ‘Surgery in the Royal Navy’, p. 88; Brockliss, Nelson’s Surgeon, p. 122).

  † There can be no doubt of the utility of the census in calculating the potential strength of British manpower for fighting the war (Cookson, Armed Nation, pp. 95–9). The militia lists of 1804 show that there were 562,601 men between eighteen and thirty without children. If evenly distributed this would mean that there were 46,000 men of the ideal recruitment age of twenty (Linch, Wellington’s Army, p. 150).

  * Between 1808 and 1815 the army raised 117,275 men. The militia recruited 108,246, of whom 94,179 eventually transferred to the regular army (Linch, Wellington’s Army, pp. 60–61). The West Essex Militia, which arrived in Dublin 500 strong in September 1813, soon after provided 300 volunteers for the regular army; the regiment had originally been embodied in 1803 with 700 recruits from balloting (West Essex Digest of Services, TNA, WO 68/257).

  * These riots were of considerable size. From Sheffield on 19 June 1812 Lieutenant-Colonel Lany of the East Devon Militia wrote to the newly appointed home secretary, Lord Sidmouth:

  Yesterday, being market day, an immense mob, principally women, assembled; and by a sudden rush emptied the market in a few minutes of all it contained. They next proceeded to all the shops where flour was sold, demanding flour at 3s. per stone, which had been selling, during the last fortnight, for 7s. … The 15th Hussars and ourselves have been constantly on duty since yesterday morning. I am sorry to say these lawless proceedings continue today; and parties are gone into the country to attack the mills, but are followed by dragoons … The Riot Act has just been read to at least 5,000, and Lord Fitzwilliam gave them five minutes to disperse, when, as they did not obey, the hussars charged down the street and cleared it immediately. We now have orders to fire if we meet with the least resistance. Thousands were added today to their numbers from the country … No lives have, as yet, been lost.

  (Pellow, Sidmouth, Vol. III, p. 88)

  * The classic study by Francis Abell gives a figure of 122,000 (Abell, Prisoners of War in Britain 1756–1815 (Oxford, 1914), pp. 117–18). An overall figure for 1793–1815 of a quarter of a million is given by Patricia Crimmin (‘Prisoners of War and Port Communities’, p. 17). It is difficult to obtain a figure at a particular time since the very detailed Registers are cumulative, but ‘safe’ averages of prisoners on ex-98-gun ships, for instance, can be calculated at about 700, and 600 for 74s (e.g., Glory, ex-98, Ganges, ex-74, Prisoner of War Registers, TNA, ADM 103/137, 103/150).

  † A reward of £100 for his capture was put out, though without success, but the two smugglers who had taken Philippon to France were caught, as was the landlord of the Red Lion Inn, who was also the local postmaster. They were sentenced to two years in gaol and to stand in the pillory at Rye; as The Times put it, ‘as near to the spot from where the French prisoners embarked so that they could see the coast of the country they favoured’ (Crimmin, ‘Channel’s Significance’, p. 76).

  * Liverpool’s prisons contained no prisoners of war after 1803, although they had been in use in the eighteenth century. The proximity to Ireland and the vulnerability of the port to French attack might have been responsible for this decision (Lloyd, Prisoners of War, p. 244).

  * Though this American victory came too late to affect the treaty, it created in American minds the belief that the United States had won the war (Bickham, Weight of Vengeance, p. 266).

  * This was not the first time that Hardenberg had been in London. He was not Prussian, but from Hanover, and had entered the service of George III. In 1778 he had come to London in the hope of becoming the Hanoverian envoy in England, but had to resign because his wife began a scandalous affair with the prince of Wales, now, of course, the prince regent. Hardenberg then entered Prussian service (Zamoyski, Rites of Peace, pp. 54–5).

  * Bentham took his fourteen-year-old son George, who wrote: ‘My father … though no longer in Office, was privileged as being the chief author of the most important establishments in the Yard, and was officially present among those who attended upon the Sovereigns[; he] had taken my brother, myself and Philip Abbot in the day before – we spent the night in the Office of the Master of the Wood Mills, and awaited in those Mills the Imperial and Royal Party. Alexander, on learning who we were, said some very civil things to us to our great gratification’ (Coad, Block Mills, pp. 101–2).

  * Transparencies were pictures made with translucent paints on materials like calico, linen or oiled paper, and lit from behind by candles. They were often produced in the eighteenth century at times of national rejoicing (Richard D. Altick, The Shows of London (London, 1978), p. 95).

  * In 1818 the prince regent ordered ‘the grand circular room in the gardens of Carlton House’ to be transported to Woolwich, where it was re-erected with a lead roof and a central support. It was used to display war trophies and artillery models. Known as the Woolwich Rotunda, it fulfilled this function until recent years, although at the time of writing it now lies empty (Crook and Post, King’s Works, pp. 318–19).

  * The Austrian government spent 30 million florins on the Congress and its entertainments, which nearly bankrupted the country. The affairs of the major participants and the exploits of courtesans have become legendary. The dissolute exploits of Charles Stewart became the talk of Vienna, though his stepbrother Castlereagh, accompanied by his wife, was one of the few who was not distracted by the affairs, gossip and continuous parties. By the end of Jan. 1815, the British delegation had consumed 10,000 bottles of wine (Zamoyski, Rites of Peace, pp. 298–323; Bew, Castlereagh, pp. 373, 375).

  * When the news reached London on the same day, Lord Bathurst’s house near Portland Place had its windows broken, and the same happened the next day to Castlereagh’s house in St James’s Square. The crowd was protesting at the discussion of the Corn Laws in parliament (Harvey, Collision of Empires, p. 175, quoting the Annual Register (1815), p. 23).

  * British troops numbered 24,000, of whom 5,800 were cavalry and 3,000 in the Royal Ordnance in specialist roles. The Hanoverians consisted of 3,300 King’s German Legion and 14,500 other troops, while Brunswickers contributed 6,000 and Nassau 2,900. The Dutch numbered 17,200 (Collins, War and Empire, p. 359; Davies, Wellington’s Wars, p. 225).

  † An undergroom described the process of offloading horses from a transport on to the beach near Ostend on 1 June: the ship swung forty horses in slings from the yards into the sea in one and a half hours, a ra
te achievable only after many years of practice, before the ship returned to England for more:

  We had scarcely got safe on shore before we saw our horses swinging in the air, so that we were obliged to go again into the sea up to our middles to catch them as they came on shore. Two sets of slings were kept in use, so that while one horse was swimming between the ship and the boat having the slings taken off, another was swinging over their heads. It made the horses very fresh after such a long confinement … fancy between 20 and 30 ships discharging a somewhat similar cargo to the Scipio’s, all on the beach, the luggage thrown together in all directions, numbers of horses running loose …

  (Chandler, ‘Undergroom at War’, pp. 217–18)

  * Henry Dundas was an exception, for he had a naturally strategic mind. The rapid building of barracks in 1792 bears all the hallmarks of Dundas thinking things through, and all the decisions to do so were taken at his house in Wimbledon. He wrote policy and strategy papers on why Britain needed to trade with, rather than conquer, Spanish America in a long cabinet memorandum of 31 Mar. 1800, and on the potential effects of an escape of the blockaded French Fleet, 14 July 1804 (Hattendorf et al., British Naval Documents, pp. 344–50n, 350–51). His final contribution, in the last year of his life, was a long exposition in the Lords on the need to increase naval troop transports, rather than use smaller merchant ships.