by Tom Anderson
A list of recorded events when the drum was heard to beat:
When the Mayflower left England in 1620 to found the American colonies;
At the exact moment when, thousands of miles westward, King William IV was assassinated by Prince Frederick’s American Riflemen in 1749;
As soon as Modigliani set foot on English soil at the French invasion of England in 1807…[66]
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From: “Albion’s Peril: The Invasion of England” by Sir Hubert Pendleton (1951)—
Reports of the drumbeat echoing through the halls of Buckland Abbey found their way swiftly to Plymouth, where the semaphore tower was soon clicking and clacking away, sending the news eastward to Portsmouth. The Admiral of the Fleet, James de Sausmarez (a Guernseyman) was a Royal Navy man, and thus prone to take the Drake superstition seriously. Orders were flying even before reports of the actual invasion began to flow westward from Folkestone. Sausmarez ordered the defences of Chatham put on high alert and the mobilisation of all gun hulks where possible. He also demanded additional troops from the British Army forts in Kent to protect Chatham from land. This put the forts’ commanders in a quandary; London was not part of the semaphore system, but it was near enough that it would be hard to justify not consulting with their superiors before following the Admiral’s wishes, particularly considering the bad blood between the services.
The British Army’s response was therefore, along with everything else, confused: some of the Kentish forts sent men to pursue Modigliani’s force, while others did not, believing that to do so would be to leave the coast defenceless from further French reinforcements. Altogether about an equal number of British soldiers marched as the Italians they were chasing, though Sauvage’s disinformation campaign meant that most of them thought they were hugely outnumbered.
Soon Sausmarez’s second demand, in the form of a hastily scribbled fifth-hand note, had crossed the desk of the Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, Prince Thomas Cecil, the Duke of York…
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Oh the Grand Old Duke of York
He had ten thousand men
He marched them up to the top of the hill
And he marched them down again.
And when they were up they were up,
And when they were down they were down,
And when they were only halfway up
They were neither up nor down.
*
From: “Albion’s Peril: The Invasion of England” by Sir Hubert Pendleton (1951)—
Prince Thomas was not the best man to be commanding the British Army. His presence in the post was an unintended consequence of a complicated series of political deals worked out by King Henry IX in an attempt to smooth the path of some of the more controversial legislation of the Fox ministry. The Duke was the son of Frederick William, George III’s now-deceased younger brother, and therefore cousin to King Henry. A somewhat popular figure with reactionary interests in the Lords and the rest of the establishment, his father had even taken his middle name from the Cecil family (who possessed the earldom of Salisbury and had served in many governments since Queen Elizabeth’s time). The Duke had posed a potential threat to the King, who unlike his ancestors at least did not have a son old enough to argue with him yet. In order to prevent this becoming an issue, Prince Thomas had hastily been kicked upstairs.
This was only one of countless deals which Henry had made to improve the position of liberal peers in the House of Lords, and now it would come back to haunt him. Under Fox the position of Commander-in-Chief had widely become seen as a sinecure, for war was not in the offing and besides, power was usually devolved to lesser officials such as the Master-General of the Ordnance. Except in unimaginable cases like the present one.
The Duke was not strictly incompetent, but he lacked experience and imagination in the field of war. He was a politician and a bureaucrat first and foremost. War was something that happened a long way away, causing displeasing numbers in a ledger due to its cost and then perhaps pleasing ones if it won new profitable colonies or trade rights. If one was hot-blooded enough, one might ride off to see it oneself, but that was strictly optional. Having a European army brought to home was new, incredible. So the Duke overreacted and trusted in Sausmarez’s judgement.
Accordingly, the garrison in Gravesend – including its artillery – was quickly ordered to march east to Chatham and protect the docks from the doubtless numberless French hordes heading their way…
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Row, row, row your boat
Gently down the stream
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily
Life is but a dream!
*
From: “Albion’s Peril: The Invasion of England” by Sir Hubert Pendleton (1951)—
In reality of course there was no raid on Chatham. What ships were there in the dockyards, half-completed or damaged, hastily in the process of being crewed to try to scrape a new fleet together, were never threatened. All the men who had been moved to defend the fort had nothing to defend against. The Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, responsible for the Kentish militia, wore himself out galloping up and down the North Downs, arranging a defence that was unneeded. All the defensive chains stretched across the Medway and the Swale, the gun batteries, all wasted.
Meanwhile, slightly further north, the mouth of the Thames beckoned. Hoche enjoyed a reputation for audacity. It was time once more to show the world why…
Tilbury Fort had been built out of a confiscated monastery by Henry VIII’s men in 1539. It had been repeatedly modernised since then, while the other defences of the Thames had been allowed to fall into decay, including its sister fort across the river at Gravesend – a fort which was, in any case, now undermanned. Reports of the approach of the French were still confused, but Colonel Robert Saunders, the commander of the fort, knew that many steamships could only mean one thing. He ordered his gun crews to rig for battle, and they began heating hot shot. It was the great advantage that stationary gun emplacements had over ships – the latter could not heat shot safely on board, the fire risk being too great. And of course red-hot cannonballs were a very effective weapon for setting fire to masts and rigging. The steamships lacked much in the way of these save for auxiliary power, but they were still wooden and vulnerable.
Saunders was correct up to a point. The fort’s thirty-eight-pounders destroyed no fewer than eleven of Hoche’s steamships, a grievous blow, and the guns mounted in the war hulks stationed across the Thames accounted for another three. The fort’s guns’ score was helped not only by hot shot, but also by Britain’s secret weapon, hail shot.[67] However, Hoche also had a trick or two up his sleeve; several of his steamcraft were bomb-ships fitted with the experimental asbestos-protected mortars that meant they could safely heat and fire hot-shot in situ, replying to the fort’s barrage. And just while Saunders was coping with this shock, Hoche brought up La Tempête, the sister ship to the lost L’Enfant de Tonnere. The screeching rockets worked their magic once more, panicking British soldiers who would have coolly stood up to a much more dangerous volume of cannon fire, and the fort fell to a determined escalade by a thousand French elite troops who Hoche landed on the north bank – and, characteristically, led personally.
Tilbury Fort fell, though not without inflicting grievous losses on Hoche’s elite. Hoche himself suffered a broken arm and the loss of two fingers on his right hand, but impatiently insisted this be rapidly bound up so he could continue. He ordered those British troops who had surrendered be quietly executed – not to spread terror, as Modigliani did, but simply because the French were moving too rapidly to be encumbered with prisoners. Still, Hoche paused there for a brief moment. Though he had not witnessed it himself, he knew about the magic of L’Épurateur, the iconic scene which Hébert had spun into the rise to power of Robespierre and Lisieux had continued to draw upon. So he sought to repeat it, sending a signal to the people of England as assuredly as L’Épurateur had sent one to those of France, years before.
Hoche hauled down the Union Jack flying above the fort, not without help thanks to his arm, and hoisted two flags to replace it. At first they looked identical, both the Bloody Flag of the French Latin Republic.
But then a careful observer might note with mounting horror that the lower of the two flags bore the upside-down symbol, not of a fleur-de-lys, but three lions… and the motto, Hail the Revolution! Death to the King! was in the said King’s own English.
By hoisting that flag, Hoche had declared his intentions. The English Germanic Republic was born.
And then, leaving a skeleton garrison in the Fort, Hoche returned to his fleet. Lepelley, a veteran of navigating the rivers and canals of France, guided them up the Thames, silencing the desultory defences further upriver, until they came to the first real barrier stretching across the Thames.
It was known as London Bridge.
Hoche signalled for La Tempête and the hot-shot bomb ships.
*
London Bridge is falling down,
Falling down, falling down,
London Bridge is falling down,
My fair lady.
Chapter #68: Gunpowder, Patriotism and Plot
From: “Albion’s Peril: The Invasion of England” by Sir Hubert Pendleton (1951)—
After London Bridge had been brought down by the French attack, Admirals Surcouf and Lepelley swiftly ran their ships aground on the northern bank of the Thames; witnesses said that the French steam-galleys, despite being reduced in numbers by Parker’s attack and the Tilbury Fort, seemed to fill the whole Pool of London. Certainly they covered it with a blanket of choking black smoke, presaging what was to come and unintentionally confusing reports of their arrival.
Eight hours earlier, the first messenger from the semaphore station at Dungeness had arrived in London, his horse dying under him, clutching the hastily scribbled code message beneath his arm. His name was John Belvoir, preserved in the hauntingly tragic English ballad The Ride of John Belvoir.
After a swift decoding at the Admiralty, the message had been forwarded straight to the Prime Minister, its shocking contents kept secret from the population at large…
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From: “Fatal Hesitation: The Foxite Ministry” by Sir Arthur Rumbelow (1912)—
…History has perhaps been unkind to Fox when it has remembered his response to the Belvoir Document as confused disbelief. It is true that Fox had a rose-tinted vision of Lisieux’s French Latin Republic, but one must also make allowances for the fact that the attack had been so sudden, so swift. Unannounced, destructive, incredible. Even the most cynical Prime Minister would have struggled to adapt to such circumstances.
Fox called an emergency cabinet meeting to discuss the matter at Number 10 Downing Street. Within ten minutes, both Richard Burke and Charles Bone had walked out in disgust, unsatisfied with Fox’s attitude that, at worst, they had to wait and see. Handing in their resignations as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Chancellor of the Exchequer – swiftly followed by Burke’s friend Frederick Dundas as Secretary at War – they immediately went to Grenville’s[68] and formed a swift pact as a triumvirate. Previously, Bone had been at odds with Burke, the Corsican being more of a radical by nature and the two disagreeing over the place of the Anglican Church in British society – Burke cautiously supported Catholic emancipation but was adamant that the primacy of the Church of England should be maintained (also the King’s view) while Bone, like Fox, wanted full religious disestablishment. However, the circumstances meant that it was what united rather than divided them that came to the fore – their mutual mistrust of the French. Bone had already fled one French invasion of his original homeland. He would not see his adopted one face the same fate.
The trio broke their oath of secrecy and spread rumours of the Belvoir Document around Grenville’s, then split up and did the same at White’s to inform the conservative opposition and Macall’s to wider society.[69] An hour later, they rendezvoused at the Palace of Westminster to find both Houses stuffed with virtually all the MPs and peers who had been within range of the rumour and a clamouring crowd filling Palace Yard outside. Some of the Foxite loyalist MPs instead left Grenville’s to go to Ten Downing Street, where they told the Prime Minister of what was going on.
The account of Matthew Dalton, the Paymaster General of the Forces, is the only one that survives. He records that Fox put his head in his hands and audibly groaned “as though, through this effusion, he exorcised the demon that would ever and anon apologise and rationalise the actions of Monsieur Lisieux”. Then, with a dark new purpose in his eyes, Fox said that he would go to the Palace. The Home Secretary, Richard Sheridan, pointed out that the crowd outside blocked the way and suggested calling up troops from Horse Guards to clear the way. Fox gave him a furious look and launched into one of his typical bursts of brilliant oratory, of which sadly only Dalton’s half-remembered fragments are available to us: “would that man be a hypocrite, who would rail against the excesses of arbitrary power and the sellsword that vanquishes the frail flower of liberty in time of peace and plenty, yet would cower behind the redcoat at the first sign of opposition? No, sir!”
Fox, Dalton, a chastened Sheridan, and the other remaining Cabinet members thus went to the Palace with only their Parliamentary Private Secretaries. However, Fox first had a quiet moment alone with his housekeeper, the widow Pauline McGarrity, in which he spoke of certain new… arrangements that might prove necessary in view of the… present crisis. Purely coincidentally, of course, her brother Captain Patrick McGarrity was a member of the 90th (Royal County Down) Regiment of Foot and therefore happened to be presently assigned, with the rest of his men, to the Board of Ordnance’s headquarters – the Tower of London…
…after successfully negotiating through the crowd by climbing atop a literal soapbox and delivering a short speech that declared that all their questions would soon be answered, Fox and the Cabinet finally entered Parliament and found that the House of Commons’ crowd was rather trickier to dissuade. The level of shock in the rumours – which had inevitably become exaggerated even above the reality, with some claiming the French had conquered Scotland – was such that some peers even broke strict parliamentary protocol and came into St Stephen’s Chapel[70] to hear Fox’s response. The Strangers’ Gallery creaked beneath the weight of more peers and as many passing Londoners who had managed to get past Black Rod.
Fox stood at the dispatch box and visibly showed dismay as he found himself facing, not the usual notional opposition leader Sir Charles Drummond (in practice, the conservative opposition remained fragmented into several factions) but Richard Burke. “Let the right honourable gentleman speak!” Burke shouted, stilling the catcalls from the opposition backbenches – and the government’s.
The Prime Minister spoke. Again, sadly, no complete record of his speech survives, but all who witnessed it and spoke of it afterwards claim it was the finest example of even his high standard of rhetoric. Fox spoke plainly of the Belvoir Document and the other rumours that had reached London, candidly adding everything the government knew for sure about Admiral Parker’s defeat off Dungeness, and concluded with the following: “In my heart, I do not believe that the guardian of French liberty would consent to such a heinous act…” (murmurs of outrage rise from backbenches) “…but who knows what has happened in Paris? Men change, so do governments. Understand this only,” and his voice began to rise to a crescendo over the discontent, “if any among us truly believe that a French army marches towards us even now, then let that man take all he can carry and flee cravenly to his distant estate, or his bolt-hole in Yorkshire; I, for myself, will see things through to the end. If indeed, as some of the honourable gentlemen – hah, and the noble lords – see fit to claim in such admirably operatic tones – this crisis is due to my stewardship, then on my head be it. I shall not flee from the consequences.” He sat down.
Burke stood up. “And speaking for myself, let the right honourable gentleman know t
hat I would sooner go down in history as a craven than be unremembered by virtue of the fact that all the history books have gone up in smoke. Absolute proof we have not, but the risk we cannot afford to take. Gentlemen, let us flee to our erstwhile Yorkshire bolt-hole, as the right honourable gentleman has seen fit to put it, before we may cease to be capable of movement in any direction, on account of being six feet beneath the earth.” He sat down.
Fox rose once more, swaying slightly where he stood, though whether it be from tiredness, emotion, or port, none can be certain. “And what of the people of London, of England, by whose will we stand here today? Shall they be abandoned to the honourable gentleman’s hypothetical Hunnish horde?”
Burke paraphrased scripture in response: “But when ye shall see the abomination of desolation, then let them that be in London flee to the mountains”.
