Napoleon: The Escape (Kindle Single)

by Jan Needle

And while the Navy crowed over its intelligence success, and the decoy ashes of the Wee Hobgoblin, Tom would continue preparing his two bigger underwater craft — driven both by sail and steam — for delivery to a chartless spot twelve hundred miles from Africa.

  After Samson and Eliza had finished talking, they fell to sleep like tired babies. They dreamed of money beyond the dreams of avarice, and of a wonderful new life to come. Outside above the greasy Thames, the smell of smoke and slaughter still hung in the air.

  Chapter Seven

  Admiral Cockburn had indeed taken Napoleon to St Helena in the Northumberland, and stayed on as governor there for many months. He it was who had set up the regime of security, involving eleven ships of the Royal Navy ploughing the seas around the island summer and winter, tempest or calm. He it was who had set up 500 cannons to overlook the landing points, he it was who had positioned the enormous guard force of 2800 men. This to secure an island barely bigger than the Isle of Wight, with hardly one good harbour to its name.

  Despite the rocky start to their relationship, Cockburn and Napoleon had at last got on. Any seamen presented with the conquered hero’s train of baggage and requirements would perhaps have balked at first. All his main officers brought their wives and children, each family had a cook and major domo, and the wine they drank could have drowned a good-sized frigate.

  When they were at sea, Napoleon made it very clear he thought he was still an emperor, and as such commander of the ship and every personage on board. Their battle grew quite fierce. “The Emperor” required this, “the Emperor” required that, “the Emperor” would brook no argument. Cockburn, a far-sighted man, decided on firm-handed compromise. Napoleon got half the cabin for his use, his entourage could behave as if they were merely on a pleasure cruise, French became the official social language. But the protocol of day-to-day was English Navy. There was to be no argument.

  There was, of course. Napoleon instructed his officers to leave their heads uncovered on the quarterdeck, or indeed at any time and anywhere it suited them. Instead of drinking coffee sociably at the end of meals, he jumped rudely to his feet and took a turn upon the upper deck, accompanied by women and sometimes, God forbid, by children. Cockburn never remonstrated directly, but he let it be known the Emperor — and he deigned to call him that occasionally, if tongue in cheek — was not a gentleman. Which meant that he was held in low esteem.

  His lack of English mores was never more obvious than in the world of games. Cards and gambling were nightly pastimes, and Napoleon delighted in playing vingt-un — to win. This amused Cockburn, but riled some of his junior officers to the point of fury. Napoleon’s French opponents made very sure they lost, and — more strangely still — watched their master cheat quite blatantly, and never challenged him.

  ‘Astonishing!’ wrote Cockburn to his friends in England. ‘But the oddest thing is this: the General picks up his winnings with great satisfaction — but next morning gives the money back! No word of apology or admission, it is just the thing he does, because he can’t bear to be beaten. Corsican? French? He certainly ain’t an Englishman!’

  By the end of the long voyage though — sixty-seven days — Cockburn thought Napoleon had become more reconciled to exile than many of his party, and was grateful for the concessions he’d been granted.

  ‘I did a detour by the Canary Islands just to let him feast his eyes on land,’ he wrote, ‘and in his company I spoke naught but French. In his own language he was more open with me than perhaps was wise, but all I really learned was that he hates the English. This was no surprise, but amusing in that he told me towards the voyage end that he liked me. I own I warmed to him as well, quite strongly. But he is wonderfully arrogant, and remained full of his own importance. So hurt was he when he saw the outline of his final home, that I felt a pang of genuine regret.’

  The sight of Napoleon taking his first look at St Helena was burned into Cockburn’s memory, and a key to the sympathy he felt for him. Delivering the once-great man to the ‘little speck of nothingness’ rubbed in the contrast between their lives and futures cruelly. The English captor had predicted the time they would raise the island to within a minute, conjuring the land quite literally out of nothingness. A wonderful feat of navigation — but Cockburn was going to sail away again. Napoleon was not.

  ‘Truly,’ he wrote, ‘nothing could possibly have been less prepossessing, more horribly forbidding, than this isolated, burnt-up, barren rock, which promises neither refreshment or pleasure. The stupendous, terrific cliffs but ill accorded with the feelings of the man we call our guest. Had I been Napoleon, I fear that madness would not have been too far away. I feared and felt for him.’

  When Cockburn left the island some months later, to take command of the Cape Station, his replacement was a different proposition, and one whose sympathy Napoleon could never hope to win. Far from attempts at understanding, Sir Hudson Lowe took an approach he thought was far more “British”. Despite the virtual impossibility of escape from the island fortress, he was morbidly obsessed his captive might be spirited away.

  This had led to many clashes, fed by rumours from England, Ireland, France and South America that movements were afoot, with millions of money poured into them. Long before Tom Johnson’s submarines had left the Thames, St Helena received intelligence of a vessel coming from England underneath the waves, and in case it might be true, the prisoner was ostentatiously escorted to the governor’s headquarters in James Town under a boisterous and over-sized armed guard.

  On the Corsican’s arrival, noting his look of brooding rage, Lowe rubbed it in deliberately by having two of his followers arrested for daring to wear a form of uniform. One of them was Louis Marchand, his unofficial bodyguard, which drove Napoleon almost apoplectic.

  ‘How dare you, sir!’ he said in English. ‘That man is my valet! That so-called uniform is what a valet wears! Are you completely mad?’

  Sir Hudson Lowe was not noted for the coolness of his temper; in fact he boasted that in a shouting match he would beat ‘a jumped-up Johnny Frog hands down.’ He thrust his face so close to Napoleon’s that his spray of spittle was as inevitable as it was deliberate.

  ‘No, sir! No, sir! No!’ he shouted. ‘The question is, sir, how dare you, sir! Only the English may dress in uniform, as I am sick of telling you! Next time, Monsieur, will be the last! You will obey me!’

  He was taller than Napoleon — who, notably, was dressed in full dress uniform — and he drew himself full height to emphasise the difference. The Corsican had his own techniques. He fixed Lowe like a basilisk, and concentrated all his venom into his eyes. They were dark and glittering, and at night-time, it was said, could give off beams of light.

  ‘I am not “monsieur”, I am the Emperor,’ he said. Now he spoke in very rapid French, which he knew would leave Sir Hudson floundering. This was not the man Cockburn had been. This was an idiot.

  ‘Do you say Emperor?’ roared the governor. ‘There is no man on this island who bears that title. I have no record of such a man or rank. Do you understand?’

  Napoleon spoke yet more rapidly for several minutes, with extravagant gestures and his eyes displaying the gamut from annoyance to plain ridicule. And finally he laughed.

  ‘Did you understand that, sir? Admiral Cockburn, I must say, spoke French like a gentleman, and called me Excellency to boot. If you will not accept me as the Emperor of France, I decline to enter into conversation with you.’

  The governor was puce.

  ‘You can speak English, sir, so you will speak English, then! You will abide by my island’s rules in every last respect! Or otherwise…’

  Napoleon smiled but did not speak. Otherwise what? his eyebrows asked. Will you maroon me on an island in the wild Atlantic?

  The governor had produced a sheaf of papers. He waved them vigorously.

  ‘Clear the office. Go on, quicker, quicker, quick. Guards — outside the room, with pieces cocked. I am quite safe alone because he says h
e is a gentleman. Prisoner — there is another madcap plot to set you free. I have news of it in these despatches.’

  Napoleon seemed unimpressed. He moved forward quietly and sat down without permission from the governor, who twitched with nascent anger, then let it go. His doctor had told him to avoid the choler — and port wine. In truth, his two addictions.

  When both men were seated, they seemed almost calm. The Englishman allowed himself a sigh.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yet another plot. Sir, I —’

  Napoleon interrupted him.

  ‘I am the Emperor of France. I am not your “sir”, Sir Hudson.’

  ‘There is no emperor on this island, and that’s the end of it. I am expressly forbidden to use the word, it is a forbidden nomenclature. I can call you sir, which is polite, or I can call you nothing. I can call you General, if you will, that is my last concession. Not a lot, but the best that I can offer in this accursed place. It is, sir, a most signal generosity.’

  This was, perhaps, a flash of humour from this most humourless of men, and Napoleon chose to acknowledge it as such.

  ‘Accursed is the very word, Monsieur, le mot juste. But I promise you I have no plans to leave.’

  Lowe flapped his papers.

  ‘Eighteen sixteen, your first attempt,’ he said. ‘That was less than a year after you arrived here. And was not the convoy that brought you harried by a privateer?’

  Napoleon shrugged. His pushed a lock of hair back from his forehead.

  ‘You know more than I do, Governor,’ he said. ‘Are you certain it is not fantasy — spies have to make their money somehow, n’est-ce pas? Eighteen sixteen, you say? Then it has taken that ship a good long while to get here! Excuse me. Une plaisanterie.’

  ‘It is not a joke,’ Lowe said snappily. ‘That was the first year we knew about, then came 1817, followed by 1818! What do you say to that?’

  ‘It seems inevitable,’ said Napoleon drily. ‘Even the Revolution failed to disrupt the calendar for very long. I beg your pardon. I must try to be serious. 1818, we’re up to there already? How time marches on.’

  ‘Indeed it does,’ said Sir Hudson testily. His patience was running out. He was here to confront his prisoner, not jest with him.

  ‘It is not a joke,’ he repeated. ‘Good God, sir, according to the London Times you were seen in France six months ago! What’s more —’

  He bit off the words. When the Times reported Napoleon had escaped, there had been near-riots. Under no circumstances must the man know that. He felt the eyes bore into him. The general was amused.

  ‘In France six months ago and now I’m in your office. Just what, pray, is the essence of your fear?’ he asked. ‘The whole damn business is a nonsense, governor. The fantasies of men who dream of wealth. Or drink too much, peut-etre?’

  ‘Then listen to this!’ The governor fumbled with a paper and began to read.

  ‘“The boat will be in the shape of an old cask, but so constructed to be seaworthy, and both boat and sails will be painted to correspond with the colour of the sea, and when the Emperor and one more which will be requisite is all ready, you must bear away before the wind for the ship. You may calculate the ship distance about 14 miles at starting from the island.

  ‘“It will depend on circumstances which port in the United States his Majesty will land at, but he may depend upon the most cordial and fraternal reception. The Empress and King of Rome will be there before him, and a great many of his faithful subjects headed by the Marshals and Ministers. There is not the least doubt but the exalted hero will have greater fleets and armies than ever before. God preserve you in his holy keeping.”’

  ‘The Empress?’ Napoleon’s voice was tired but amused. ‘That must seem unlikely, monsieur, even to you.’

  Sir Hudson Lowe was pleased. He saw the chance for a little taunting. Everybody knew that the great man’s second wife had refused to join him even when he’d gone to Elba, so very close to France. And when he had been sent to St Helena, her refusal had been absolute. She swore that they would never meet again.

  ‘Oh no, forgive me General. Milady would hardly care to be so close to you, would she? And Joséphine, of course, is dead. Broken-hearted, as I understand it, when you spurned her for her barrenness.’ He paused, assessing Napoleon’s level of hidden anger. ‘Although she had had brats by other men, indeed.’

  ‘Your words are filthy, sir. You talk of brats by other men, of bastards, and you an English gentleman. Your words are filthy.’

  Another taunt sprang to Sir Hudson’s lips.

  ‘My words may be filthy, but what of your deeds, mon générale? Have you not fathered one bastard child already on this island? Is that then not what is called a little brat? And if there were not others, was that not then the merest fortune? Or do you normally choose whores well versed in the witchcraft of still-birth?’

  The Corsican, who could be volatile enough to overwhelm an army, was also a master of control.

  ‘My affair with Lucia Balcombe was of utmost purity. I engaged in it with open eyes and open heart, to assuage the grief of loss of Joséphine. Had I been free I would have married her, but the English state in any way ripped her from me, and deported her in exile from my sight.’

  ‘I do not believe you,’ said the governor. ‘I —’

  ‘You are the English state,’ said Napoleon. ‘It was you that had the girl sent off. And all her family. It was you who ruined lives, not me.’

  ‘That is a calumny. My duty is to the island and the English Crown. You wish to convert St Helena into a nest of spies. By breeding them if need be, or spiriting them in ships that float beneath the water. Again, sir, there is the vile and heady reek of witchcraft!’

  Napoleon watched the governor through hooded eyes. The man, he guessed, had exhausted his small store of reason. He wondered if it was a problem of the drink, or boredom — on this ‘accursed island’ maybe both. He wondered if Lowe had actual evidence of the Tom Johnson plot, but doubted it entirely. He was a blowhard.

  ‘I knew before I met you that some Englishmen were fools,’ he said levelly, ‘but I must thank you heartily for filling in the lacunae in my knowledge. I am an Emperor and you will not accept that; so be it. But I am not a gutter-lout or street-urchin either, to go round debauching maids. Your countrymen are rough and have no manners, that is well-known. But consider, sir, how many men I’ve killed, and try to rehabilitate your vulgar little country’s reputation before you join them. That’s all I ask of you. Some small imagination.’

  He stood then, and shouted for a guard. Lowe was transfixed; this fellow’s impudence was boundless.

  ‘You threaten me?’ he choked. ‘You dare to threaten me with death? And then you dare to call my guards? My guards! Soldiers, in here immediately! Chain up this man! Put him in irons! He threatens me with death!’

  They entered at an amble, and some of them dared to even share a smile with Bonaparte. He walked up to them, hands thrust out as if for shackles, but they did not cuff his wrists. In a body they turned back to the door and marched. Outside, Lieutenant Fitzgerald — an Irishman — ordered the main guard to present arms and beat their drums.

  ‘Ah,’ said Napoleon. ‘You salute me do you? That, citoyens, is against all orders.’

  ‘But certainly we salute you, Monsieur l’Empereur,’ Lieutenant Fitzgerald replied. ‘All of us.’

  Sir Hudson Lowe sat silent and abandoned. Another confrontation with the monster was at an end. But what of the future? How long could this go on? A submarine was unbelievable. But he believed.

  Chapter Eight

  Wars are breeding grounds for spies, and when wars are over the damage has been done. Although Captain Armstrong dropped Tamarind down-river from John Company’s wharves the day after the explosion, men noted her departure, and wondered why.

  He took her to a secret place, a creek on the lowest reaches of the Thames, with scrubby woodland for protection and neither house nor settlement nearby. He was
guided there by Arthur Preece, who had been waiting by the main companionway when Samson emerged next morning shortly after dawn. The visitors had gone, and Eliza, still bright-eyed with hope, was cooking breakfast on the stove.

  ‘Good morning, sir,’ said Preece. ‘Don’t worry, sir, it is Tom Johnson sent me. I am his man, sir, my name is Arthur Preece.’

  Samson made a quick recovery.

  ‘The dead man, I suppose? Well well, you seem quite happy in it, as Captain Johnson said you would be. I’m Armstrong, by the way, the skipper of this brig. Are you prepared to tell me how you did it?’

  ‘Ah well, I shouldn’t worry too much about that, sir. He has his ways, does Mr Tom. I’m to take you where we keep the submarines. The little one got buggered by the Navy men, ham-fisted louts. They would not know perfection if it bit them on the arse.’

  Eliza, who had been listening within the passageway, came into the fresh air and stared. Preece, an odd-looking man, all cuts and bruises and dirty filthy rags, took off his scrap of headgear and made a bow.

  ‘Top of the morning to you, Missus-Honey. Preece is the moniker but you must call me Arthur if you will. I am a married man these few weeks or so, and I do not bite. Although, to talk of which, a bite of bread and bacon would fill the aching void. And captain, sir — if I may make so bold — we need to get below from off the deck. ’Tis not only walls have ears round Blackwall this jolly morning.’

  Eliza responded with a sort of joy to all this. Her life had been one of gruelling worry for long enough, and the men she’d met the night before, the money that she’d seen change hands, had transformed her. She hustled Arthur down below, threw on more rashers, brewed more tea, and listened to the new part of the story.

  It was sketchy, and Preece was a master of evasion. He had much humour however, and told her it was an Irish thing, perfected over years to keep the English guessing. The upshot was Samson should collect a trusted crew, and they should drop down the river later in the day. By the time they would have reached their anchorage, friendly darkness would be moving in to shroud their secrecy. There they would meet with Johnson once more, and probably Lord Cochrane, and see the marvels that they would use to do the job.