by Jan Needle
NAPOLEON
THE ESCAPE
JAN NEEDLE
© Jan Needle 2015
Jan Needle has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 2015 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
Table of Contents
Historical Note
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Historical Note
“St. Helena! The very idea fills me with horror. To be relegated for life to an island within the tropics, at a vast distance from any continent, cut off from all communication with the world, and from all that it holds that is dear to my heart. That is worse than the iron cage of Tamerlane.”
Napoleon, on the frigate Bellerophon, 1815.
The Emperor Napoleon was possibly the greatest general who ever lived – even the Duke of Wellington insisted on that – and it was imperative he should never roam free again after his defeat at Waterloo. His earlier escape from the Mediterranean isle of Elba had led directly to that battle, so then the British exiled him to a tiny Atlantic outcrop 1,200 miles from the nearest land: St Helena. There, the mighty Bonaparte was left to rot his life away.
Napoleon, however, like many a dictator before and since, was revered almost as a god. Before he even reached St Helena in 1815 his Royal Navy ship Northumberland was harried by a privateer, and rescue plots were being hatched in several countries. His brother Joseph, then living in America, pledged thirty million francs to set him free, and when The Times announced he had escaped, dancing was reported in the streets of London. The French Revolution had, after all, brought in a popular new use for lamp-posts – gibbets for hanged aristocrats.
Strangest of all, given England’s official hatred for him, great men and patriots flocked to his cause. Lord Cochrane, the brilliant frigate captain known as the Sea Wolf (and model for Jack Aubrey in the O’Brian books) joined forces with the dictator of Peru to spring Napoleon to found a new Empire of South America, while innovators and men of science were keen to help as well. Robert Fulton, the American builder of the world’s first working submarine, collaborated with an Irish smuggler called Tom Johnson, who aimed to pluck Napoleon from the island and spirit him away beneath the waves. The dictator, whose wife had point-blank refused to share his exile, would leave an unknown number of illegitimate children behind.
St Helena was a hotbed of treachery and intrigue. One of Napoleon’s island mistresses was the wife of the Marquis de Montholon, who had been appointed by France to look after him, while his personal physician, an Irishman called O’Meara, might very well have poisoned him with arsenic.
The governor, Sir Hudson Lowe, hated him so passionately he finally declined to meet or talk with him, and when he died, refused to mark the tomb – while insisting that the body in it was indeed the dead dictator’s. Largely because of such intrigues, the truth of that assertion has never been confirmed beyond all doubt, although a corpse was later exhumed from it and moved to Paris.
When the grave next door, though – thought to contain the bones of Bonaparte’s servant Jean-Baptiste Cipriani – was opened some years later, it was empty. And Cipriani was reputed to be Napoleon’s double. Or even, possibly, his half-brother. So what really happened on St Helena…?
Chapter One
Samson Armstrong only overheard the plot to save Napoleon because he needed money. He was in the Trinco Tavern, fast by the Thames at Blackwall, secreted in a brick cleft built by his friend, the landlord, for the purposes of eavesdropping. It was halfway up a chimney, and it came damn near to killing him.
The first accent Armstrong tuned into from the babble down below was a French one, which in itself was enough to prick up his ears. The war was long over, certainly, but to say Johnny Crapaud was anything but hated in England’s capital would have been a marvel and a calumny. The first full word he picked out was even stranger. It was l’Empereur followed by the name Napoleon.
Armstrong, like many Englishmen, had good reason to hate the strutting booby who had cost his land so dear. Employed as a captain by the East India Company, his livelihood had been destroyed not only by the longest war in memory, but by the peace that followed. With the Corsican exiled to St Helena had come the slump. In the London River, ships swung rotting round their buoys in droves.
Samson Armstrong was a resourceful man, not given to self-pity. When he had seen which way the wind was blowing, he had gathered together what money he had scrimped up in the good times, sold every bit and bob he owned, and made an offer for the vessel he commanded. The Tamarind, built in India of teak, would last a hundred years – worms broke their teeth on that noble wood. He and his wife Eliza, though, almost broke their hearts surviving.
Thus, from cruel necessity, came the smuggling, and other bendings of the law. He used the “priest-hole” not for a fee, but on a sharing basis. The landlord also suffered from the mean ways of John Company – as the East India was called – and had tipped him off this gathering might yield pickings. John Company was immensely rich, and it kept its men immensely poor. In Blackwall it was immensely hated.
Once sold to Captain Armstrong, the Tamarind – a fast, lean brig, and armed with eighteen guns – was slandered by the company as a privateer or pirate to keep down her trading opportunities, and their lawyers tried to shift her off the Blackwall moorings; with no success so long as he could scrape his dues together. For crew he had men he could call upon when work was found – all of them quite happy to break heads.
The chimney nook was smoky and precarious, with a crackling wood fire in the hearth below, and the French words made Armstrong crane out so far he gulped down a bolt of smoke. Then, as he muffled his fit of choking, a raucous English voice cut through. It was a country voice, rough and angry.
‘L’Empereur?’ it shouted. ‘There is no empereur no more! Your Bonaparte is England’s now, stuck on a dungheap a thousand miles from shore, not on soft Elba guarded by a bunch of Latin lack-a-days! Mend your language, or this whole venture’s off!’
A cacophony rose up through the smoke, full of passion, incomprehensible. Samson heard Scottish accents, Irish, French, and Welsh. A clear English voice cut through them all at last.
‘For God’s sake, gentlemen! For the sake of sanity! If this scheme is to even have a chance, belay your passions! There is dignity at stake! The world is waiting on us!’
The Frenchman’s voice drove on again. It was cutting, thin with bitterness.
‘This Irishman wants forty thousand pounds,’ it said. ‘Forty thousand, for a little ship we have not even seen. The man is mad. The man is Irish. They are a nation that lives on dreams.’
‘They are not a nation,’ said someone else. ‘They are —’
‘Good Christ, sir, shut your mouth! We cannot descend to faction fighting! Draw in your horns! Please to use your brain!’
‘Talking of which brain,’ bore on the Frenchman, ‘it is not even a proper ship for all it costs so much. He says it goes beneath the water! He says it will come up on St Helena entirely unseen. It seems to me this man’s demented. And forty thousand pounds is —’
‘— not yours to quibble over! It is already
pledged, already gained, your share’s a fleabite anyway. Pay it, and the greatest general in the world is free again — how much is that worth to you? A groat? A florin? Nothing? Your stupidity is —’
‘And what do you know of underwater ships?’ another voice demanded. This one was Irish, verging on fury. ‘Tom Johnson is an honourable man. You, sir, from what I hear, are merely a … a … banker!’
In his alcove, Samson Armstrong was delighted. A full scale row, and — if Blackwall kept up its usual standards — blood mixed in the sawdust on the floor. He had been suffering since his livelihood had slipped away, vaguely bereft, and the thought of fighting filled him with a sudden joy. Could he get down to join it? He snorted with amusement. Only if he became a fall of soot…
Someone was talking in full-flown French now, too fast for Samson to follow easily, but claiming to be some sort of secret operator, an assassin. That, surely, in any language, was a murderer?
Then the calming English tones were in command once more and, strangely, rang familiar. He checked himself, concentrated to blot out the counter sounds. A cultured voice, voice of an officer. Could it be someone that he knew?
‘My dear Ledru,’ this voice said, ‘Mr Johnson is not merely honourable, but a man Napoleon holds in personal regard. Surely, in your tower of fine secrets, you know he demonstrated such a craft to the Emperor on the River Seine in person? Or were you a mere dog’s body in those days?’
This was insulting, but delivered so sweetly that the French spy came as close to laughing as he ever could.
‘Indeed ’tis so,’ he said. ‘In a part of the river it is my pleasure to swim in whenever I am at home. The results were inconclusive, but His Excellency did express himself impressed. Though Johnson, as I understood it, stole the concept off an American. A certain Monsieur Fulton.’
‘Did you say “stole” sir?’ said the furious Irishman.
‘A mistranslation,’ soothed the English officer. ‘Both men have since improved on their submarine designs, and have, in fact, collaborated. Speaking as an investor myself, in steam and other innovations, I consider they are at the leading edge. Their ideas will guide us to the future.’
‘I’ll drink to that!’ put in another man.
This was a voice Armstrong had not heard before, but it was full of bonhomie. It was rich, and redolent of plums and brandy, and it calmed the others down.
‘I’ll drink to that,’ it said again, ‘and I’d like to drink to all of us embarking on this fine adventure. Remember, gentlemen, our purpose. To the Irishmen amongst us, and to many of us English, Napoleon was the embodiment of the future we all crave. He brought destruction to the ancient houses and the older kingdoms of the continent, he tamed the Pope, gave succour to the common man. He was brought low by the genius of England it is true — but by God, that genius should now be used to set him free!’
‘English genius?’ the Hibernian grumbled. ‘Wellington is an Irishman, and that’s who brought him low.’
‘And Blücher was a Prussian, and many say the victory was to him,’ said another voice. ‘The truth is it was a mighty battle, and to reward the man who lost so narrowly by exile to a barren rock, is dishonour of the highest order. Whatever else, Napoleon Bonaparte deserves not this. His destiny might yet rise to even greater things.’
‘Greater things? He is a monster! Some say —’
‘Gentlemen, gentlemen, please.’ It was the English voice that Armstrong thought he knew. ‘Some say one thing, some say another, it was always in the nature of the man. But I abjure you, remember why we gathered here today. This Tom Johnson, be he great inventor or a hopeful rogue, has promised us a demonstration, that he can get Boney off his island against whatever odds. For God’s sake let us wait and see what happens.’
‘It will be marvellous,’ said an Irish voice.
‘Aye, marvellous like the time the Crapauds came to rescue you at Bantry Bay!’ a Scotsman mocked. ‘The year of the French, my hairy errse!’
‘Nor will this new Paddy come to save us now!’ another cried. ‘I will wager anything you like! Where is he, that is the question? He promised us a grand spectacular, the thundering of guns, a —’
At which point there came a huge explosion, maybe outside the tavern but maybe not. A shock that dislodged stones and soot all round Samson Armstrong in his nook, and damn nearly set him on fire in a whoosh of sparks and flame that burst up from the hearth below.
He had had his fall of soot.
Chapter Two
Tom Johnson had chosen the time and day for his demonstration with great care. The reward of forty thousand pounds — riches beyond the dreams of avarice to a man who’d spent too much of his life in debtors’ prisons — had already been received in part, and indeed been spent. The French spy Ledru, although a most unpleasant man, had impressed on him that money was no object, and had spoken the magic words ‘a million’ on more than one occasion. Now was the day of days. If this came off, and he and the submarine survived, the venture would be on.
‘You see, Arthur,’ he told his freezing crewman, ‘I have the gift of the gab, as don’t we all, we lucky sons of Erin? Call it the gab, call it the blarney, but I had to talk the hind legs off two donkeys to make this all happen. And let me tell you, Sunny Jim, it was the hardest job I ever done.’
Arthur Preece managed a small laugh, to show appreciation. He was cold, he was almost perished to the bone, and he didn’t think he could hold out alive for much longer.
‘Harder than that time we run the blockade to Dun Laoghaire in a summer tempest? Christ, Tom, we lost five men that time, five good men and a dog. I had to swim two miles against the tide just to get me feet on the ground.’
‘Away with you, that was easy. You come out of it, didn’t you? And didn’t I buy you a pretty sweet colleen to make it up to you? Sure, you’re always moaning Arthur. Hold your mouth and concentrate. Look there — that raggy schooner. That’s our target. That’s the one we’ll blow.’
He extracted a great turnip of a watch from deep inside his tarry jacket and stared at it. The submarine — the Wee Hobgoblin — was lighted inside by shaded candles, and the compartment the two men sat in was open to the London air. Her uppermost deck floated almost flush with the surface, and they were protected from lapping waves by a cockpit coaming. Preece controlled her with a single oar, a revolving paddle of Johnson’s own design which, all things considered, almost did the job. On the bigger craft they had constructed, there were steam engines, and up to eight men at oars that worked through piercings in the hull, made waterproof with soft leather grommets and pounds of tallow. Almost waterproof.
‘High water just five minutes since,’ said Johnson, stuffing the timepiece back again. ‘We fix the torpedo with the lanyard, trip off the timing clockwork, then let the ebb shoot us down the river like a filly at the Curragh of Kildare. ’Cause when it goes, it’ll kill every human fish for bloody miles around. We do not want to be among them fish, Arthur!’
Two minutes later, the submarine nubbed up to the schooner. She was a derelict, a victim of the postwar slump, waiting to sink and die like so many other honest toilers. She had no watchmen on board — watchmen had been priced out long ago — so the job was easy, muttered Arthur — no need to submerge. He got short shrift.
‘So you’re after dying, is it? Jaysus, you spalpeen, have you got no brain at all? They’ll be looking out for us, for all you know.’
‘I think I’m going to die of cold whatever happens, and who will that do good to? If they’re meeting at the Trinco, they’ll be drinking on a night like this, not looking out. Maybe they’ll stand us to a dram or six when the balloon goes up.’
‘Get off with you again, you fool. And if they are keeping watch, and seen us floating up the river like we have done, where’s the submarine in that? Where’s the worth of forty thousand pound?’
‘Seen us? This fog’s like bloody curdled milk, how would they spot us in a month of Sundays? Sure they won’t see us, T
ommy, sure they won’t!’
‘And you believe in fairies, Arthur, so check all the leaky places then pull the bungs out till we go down a bit. Need not be far, a couple of feet will be enough for this time. But if they have been looking they’ll expect us to go down, and so we will. Now, come below with me and take up position at the porthole. There she bubbles! And down we go…’
To be quite frank, neither man felt full of bursting confidence that the trick would go the proper way. Each time the submarine went under they had a tearing doubt over whether they would smell fresh air and see the sky again. Despite the brilliant American, Robert Fulton. Despite Johnson’s own hopeful insistence that men had been sailing boats beneath the waters since the times of Ancient Greece. But they clambered down the hatchway and pinned and screwed it tight behind them, and watched the weedy hull of the dying schooner as it slid past the thick glass they were staring through.
‘You did loop our bow-rope round her anchor warp? You did leave it slack enough to slide?’
‘I did, Captain. But talking of slack — should we not be standing still? Why is the tide dragging so strong at us? Hell, Captain, are your calculations gone awry?’
There was a note of panic in his voice, which Johnston stamped on heavily.
‘Damn you, coward! Just work to do your part! Manipulate the petard! Get that line around the anchor rope so I can spark the mechanism!’
It was a complex job, which required all their skill, operating their arms from inside canvas tubes protruding into the murky Thames, manipulating their fingers through thinner cotton bags, waxed and oiled for the flexing. And all the time the glass steamed over with their breath, and they wondered if they’d have enough air left to breath when they had to do the hard work of pumping water out.
‘If we’d brought the bigger one,’ said Arthur Preece, ‘we’d have had more men to row us out of this. We need more strength, Tom. Tom! I fear we cannot do this!’
