by Tom Anderson
Churchill therefore virtually vanished from history, until the crucial moment of crisis came with the invasion of England in 1807. By this point Churchill had mended as much of his financial troubles as he was likely to in his lifetime and had fathered three sons who would leave their own mark on history, for better or for worse. As he inspired them with stories he had begun to relive his own youthful ambitions, becoming Colonel of the Oxfordshire Yeomanry and cultivating friendships with the leaders of the local regular regiments. Unlike many peers leading yeoman units, who were generally convinced that they were all the next Alexander and the rules and regulations of the redcoats merely got in the way, Churchill was (uncharacteristically for him) quite humble and respectful of the regular army, if occasionally somewhat resentful at the fact that they had had the exotic adventures that he had always desired.
One important link he made was with Colonel Douglas Moore, commander of the 54th (Oxfordshire) Regiment of Foot, whose home depot was not far from Woodstock. At first the two might seem unlikely friends. Moore was the younger brother of Sir John Moore, a noted innovator in military tactics, while Churchill (though this is often overlooked by biographers) was at first crustily conservative in his military thinking, overly reliant on both textbooks and the now obsolete brilliance of the ancestor he hero-worshipped.
The younger Moore had also fought alongside Rochambeau’s Royal French in India, being present at the storming of Seringapatam in 1801, and inheriting his command of the regiment after the former colonel was killed by a Mysorean rocket in the battle. In contrast to Churchill’s reflexively anti-Papist attitudes, Moore argued that, in the face of the bravery he had witnessed from the Royal French, in the current world situation it was better for ‘all men of Christian character’ to hang together against ‘the heathen foe, the foremost personification of which is not the Hindu, nor the Muslim, nor even the Chinee, but rather the Jacobin’. “And his only begotten son, Mister Fox,” Churchill retorted, but nonetheless seemed thoughtful.
Around 1804 or so the friendship between the two, though certainly of the combative kind, was strong enough that Churchill decided to have his own yeomanry benefit from being trained alongside the 54th. There were naturally tensions over this, not least because no-one expected the yeomanry ever to actually be called out, particularly in sleepy Oxfordshire. Furthermore, the men – mostly minor nobles and fifth sons doing it for a lark – resented being trained alongside the grizzled, tanned veterans of the 54th, many of whom still espoused the virtues of Indian cuisine and other such heathen notions. Churchill nonetheless put his foot down, revealing for perhaps the first time both his formidable temper and confrontational leadership style, and got his way. By 1806, the Oxfordshire Yeomanry was considered the finest in the country, to the extent that the Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports himself travelled all the way to the county to observe Churchill’s methods in order to apply them to his own men. Sadly, the elderly Earl of Tankerville died not long after his return, and his replacement as Lord Warden was far less forward-thinking; if those ideas had been taken on board, it is certainly arguable that the Muster of the Ports might have been able to do more against Modigliani’s onslaught.
Even as 1807 dawned, Churchill (like the vast majority of his contemporaries) did not see a French invasion at all likely. Instead he encouraged such intensive militia training with the claim that England might face revolution from within, revolution which would have to be bloodily put down. “Some may believe that we lie safe from a Robespierre because a Lisieux sits in Ten Downing Street,” wrote A Concerned Gentleman, “but that makes Cromwellian acts more likely, not less.” It is certainly nothing more than the smoke and mirrors of Whiggish iconography to claim that Churchill really had any prophetic notion of a French invasion. It is only his response to this attack which is open to analysis.
When the shocking news came of the fall of London to the Guerre d’éclair, Churchill, like local peers and magnates all across the South of England, faced a terrible choice. Should they hold firm and fear that the French army – whose numbers were still unknown – would pick off each isolated, disunited county yeomanry and local regiment one at a time? Or should they abandon their homes, their possessions, perhaps even their families and flee northward to Fort Rockingham, there to reconstitute the Government and make a more organised stand?
Churchill, it is said, spent no more than five minutes in thought before concluding that the second option was the right one – no, not the right one, but the only one. “We gain nothing to throw our lives away as such,” he told Moore, who was edging towards making a stand. “The French outnumber us. They are vile but that does not mean they cannot fight; your brother knows that all too well, sir. They will surround us, and they will kill us. Mayhaps, happily we shall kill some of them as well. It makes no difference. Enough will remain to swarm over our land and bring wrack and ruin to England. All that will result from a stand is perhaps an epic poem, and what worth is that if no civilised country remains that can read it?
“No, sir: we must make our stand elsewhere. The fate of this blessed plot stands upon a knife’s edge, and with it the fate of the world itself. To throw away our lives for nothing, when our few men might tip the balance of the greater army with which we must ultimately face the enemy… that would not simply be inglorious treachery to our happy nation, but to all that is good and civilised within the race of Man. If we are to do so, we should count ourselves lucky if history merely forgets us, rather than reviling us alongside Lisieux as we would deserve.
“So, Colonel: what shall it be? As always, I await your command.”
Naturally, Moore was rather convinced by Churchill’s command of oratory. No matter the controversy – no matter how betrayed Oxonians, after all this talk of how superb their defenders were, found themselves being abandoned and openly spat on the marching redcoats’ shoes in the street – no matter the cost, the 54th marched northwards, meeting the Great North Road and heading on to Doncaster. And with them came the Oxfordshire yeomanry, led by Churchill himself.
This decisive action meant that they happened to be the first major army group from the south to reach Fort Rockingham after those escorting the surviving parliamentarians from London. And thus the pivot of destiny turned on so small a thing…
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From: “Albion’s Peril: The Invasion of England” by Sir Hubert Pendleton (1951)—
…constitutional situation after the Fall of London was highly unclear and unprecedented. The King was dead. His heir was safe and his succession unambiguous, but he was out of reach in the Empire of North America. This, coupled to the death of the Prime Minister and much of Parliament, meant that who exactly was leading what was left of the Kingdom of Great Britain was very much open to debate.
The provision of Fort Rockingham, and the fact that Richard Burke reached it within 48 hours of leaving London after using several teams of horses,[86] was probably responsible for the fact that the Kingdom did not immediately fragment or immediately fall under a military dictatorship. Though only part of Parliament survived, enough elected MPs were around to provide at least the impression of a constitutionally appropriate government. Furthermore, there were also enough peers to make up a Privy Council – which, in interregnal situations such as this, temporarily held the power of the monarch until he could be crowned.
Burke was an astute politician, but was woefully unsuited for such a direct leadership role. He could quite happily have followed in his father’s footsteps and run a war a long way away with ships and paid-off European allies. But the idea of having Frenchmen on British soil, breathing down his neck, was simply one he found it difficult to wrap his head around. He was not alone. Many of the parliamentarians and other great men of the kingdom were in shock. Oh, the idea of a French invasion had been mooted and speculated about before, usually in concert with the Jacobites in the last century, but confronting the reality was very different. The usual rhetoric about standing tall on the impermeable isla
nd meant little when miles upon miles of British soil had already been given up to the terrifying enemy by default.
Into this argumentative power vacuum stepped the Duke of Marlborough, John Spencer-Churchill. Mutually disliked and shunned by Parliament during the Fox years, for better or for worse his dark predictions now seemed vindicated. Churchill stepped up to the crease and, by virtue of charisma, confidence and a new kind of political rhetoric, managed to convince enough of the survivors to restore the office of Regent and Lord Protector – and to install himself in it. In the wake of the epic failure of Fox’s policy, an uncertain British people were willing to turn to any kind of government providing it was clear, definite and decisive. Churchill’s reactionary Whig-Toryism seemed as good as any rallying cry.
The rump Parliament, usually meeting in Doncaster’s Mansion-house, naturally had a conservative bent as it was Fox’s allies who had mostly stayed behind in London, unable to countenance that such a French invasion was taking place. Although Burke became Prime Minister by default of a national government, his former Liberal bloc was diluted by the large number of Tories and conservative Whigs, who had spent decades in opposition to now suddenly find themselves in possession of power. Furthermore, even the more liberal members of Parliament had been shocked by the invasion into hasty action, with the result that a generally authoritarian series of policies – usually intended to curb the kind of fragmentation that had been feared, along with ‘treasonous and collaborationist activities’ – were swiftly passed. These were followed by calls for all the army regiments in the Kingdom to leave their depots and reassemble in southern Yorkshire and northern Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, the region known in ancient times as Southumbria. Churchill’s plan was simple: he would gather together all the military force in Great Britain and then throw it at the French before they could secure their foothold, trusting in the tactical skill of men like Douglas Moore to turn this very basic strategy into a war-winning move. As before, his skill was not in being a great strategist himself, but in choosing men who were.
Burke considered Churchill’s plan to be an audaciously risky gamble, but reluctantly accepted that the alternative of sending troops out piecemeal would only result in them being annihilated one regiment at a time by the numerically superior French. Far more controversial was the fact that this effectively abandoned half of England to the French. This led to what is sometimes known as the Harrying of the South, as Modigliani’s men turned to la maraude in order to facilitate their advance north and west into the kingdom. In this dark period, though it lasted only a few months compared to the years of suffering much of Europe went through, English Kleinkriegers arose in imitation of their German, Spanish and Italian counterparts, making raids and attacks on Modigliani’s forces. In exchange, English towns and villages met with the same brutal treatment that had scarred Bavaria, though not even Modigliani ever matched Lascelles’ excesses. The burning of Hatfield in Hertfordshire, where Lord Salisbury made his last stand before his ancestral home of Hatfield House surrounded by town militiamen and yeomanry, is only the best known of these depredations.
Stories of the terror behind the enemy lines naturally provoked action in the Free North. The Earl de la Warr, Michael Sackville-West, was roused as one half of the French force, led by General Gabin, left the ruins of Hatfield and advanced from Hertfordshire into Cambridgeshire. De la Warr, like many in the nobility, was an alumnus of Cambridge University and found the thought of the French torching such a house of learning to be so ghastly that it was worth taking action over. As Colonel of the 14th (Bedfordshire) Regiment of Foot, he did exactly what Churchill had counselled against and threw the unprepared regiment into a defence of the city, even as the 30th (Cambridgeshire) themselves sullenly withdrew under orders. Gabin’s army annihilated de la Warr’s at the Battle of Cambridge on May 18th and then indeed laid waste to the city. Ironically they had been drawn to a small, off the main roads university town which might otherwise not have drawn direct attention from the French. Though many records and valuable documents were destroyed, however, and the city looted, Cambridge escaped the kind of devastation de la Warr had feared. Gabin’s men were somewhat more disciplined than Modigliani’s (who were, meanwhile, out to the southeast burning Maidstone after routing the Duke of York’s circumvented force). Furthermore, being in the middle of the Fens, the city was frankly too soggy to burn. From this we receive the modern phrase ‘to do a Delaware’, meaning to rush in out of emotion and in the end only quicken the fate you feared. This unflattering appellation is one which the eponymous province of the Confederation of Virginia has always understandably rather resented, having taken its name from a far earlier member of the de la Warr family.
The Cambridge incident prompted Sir Lyell Brotherford, the previously indecisive colonel of the 56th (West Norfolk) Regiment of Foot, to act. He approached his patron the Bishop and Count Palatine of Ely (Philip Matthews) and informed him that he was withdrawing his troops to Fort Rockingham, as Churchill’s command had declared. Matthews’ response was to calmly take out a pistol and shoot him dead. After Brotherford’s major was elevated in response to his superior’s “unfortunate fatal aneurysm”, Matthews ordered the dismantling of Cornelius Vermuyden’s works; fenlanders and soldiers worked alongside each other to block up the Bedford Rivers and disable the windmill pumps, leading to the rapid re-flooding of the Fens. This did untold economic damage and reflooded much reclaimed land, but also restored the boundaries of the Isle of Ely and provided the ultimate defence against Gabin’s French. On being confronted with this to the north and the equally impassable Norfolk Broads to the east, Gabin was forced to halt his advance and focus on securing Suffolk and Essex. Matthews’ unorthodox plan made him something of a cult hero and he was identified with the old Lincolnshire legend of the Tiddy Mun, the bog spirit who controlled the fens and had attacked the Dutch when they had drained them over a century before…
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From: “War in the Channel – How the War was Won” by Joseph K. van Staten (Royal New York Press, 1968)—
The nature of the war changed when Admiral Jervis’ Mediterranean Fleet assembled at the Channel Islands and, in cooperation with elements of the Royal French Navy that Leo Bone had maintained, attacked the Republican French steam fleet resupplying the invasion force in the Channel. The Jacobins had already suffered some losses after Admiral Parker’s four ships of the line had defeated Villeneuve off the coast of the Netherlands and returned to destroy several transports before being smashed to pieces by the huge bow guns of the Surcouf-class steam-galleys. Now, however, they faced a much larger fleet. For two days, the British and Royal French scoured the channel. Jack Jervis, always known for his temper, was now the spirit of rage incarnate out of shame and frustration that the Royal Navy had failed in England’s hour of need. That fury drove him to give no quarter against the Republican French – not that any was asked for. The crux of this bitter policy came when Jervis, in the face of shouted down protests from his helmsman, personally steered his flagship HMS Saturn to ram a damaged Republican steam-galley and crush the smaller ship under her keel, no matter what damage this did to the hull. In the end the Saturn survived.
The tide changed again in favour of the Republicans with a lull in the wind on 2nd June and for a time the British and Royal French sail fleets were sitting ducks. Jervis paced the deck in apoplectic rage in the knowledge that his second largest ship, Aegyptus, had been helplessly immobilised by the lack of wind as she was chewed to pieces by the steam-galleys’ guns. Then the French’s only remaining rocket-ship, La Tempête, returned from up the Thames to take on the Saturn as her sister ship had the Mirabilis.
But the allies were saved with the implausibly filmish appearance, finally sallying forth from Lowestoft after several initial problems and delays, of Britain’s own experimental steam-fleet. The ‘Whistler’ project ships were under the command of Commodore Frederick Keppel, grandson of the disgraced Admiral Augustus Keppel wh
o had lost the Battle of Trafalgar in 1783. He was finally ready to restore his family’s honour. The ‘Whistler’ ships were undeniably less advanced than the refined French Surcouf class, but the Republicans were now damaged and suffering from having been continuously in the choppy Channel (a far cry from the Mediterranean for which they had been designed) for months on end. Not a few ships had been lost simply due to being overturned. Boilers had burst from long-term use and erratic maintenance. La Manche reared her treacherous head.
And so Keppel charged into battle and for the first time, the Republican French faced an enemy who had duplicated their innovations. Lepelley’s flagship L’Otarie was one of the first ships to succumb to the British – not from a great technical innovation but simply from being boarded, in tactics not unlike those that had been used by the original galleys in classical antiquity. Admiral Fabien Lepelley died ignominiously on some anonymous Royal Marine’s bayonet, and with his loss the Republican fleet – highly dependent on its system of centralised orders from the flagship via flags and semaphore – came apart. Admiral Surcouf was also present, but on the edge of the battle, and made the decision to make a ‘tactical withdrawal’ when Keppel brought up HMS Dragon and it turned out that the Royal Navy had also observed their former captain Horatio Nelson’s use of the weapon in the attack on Mahon. Dragon’s rocket attack not only fired two more Republican galleys but heralded the return of the wind, and with the sail fleets ready once more, the great Republican fleet that had done the impossible and invaded Britain was virtually annihilated.
