The Regency Decade: 1814 Part 2: Peace at Last

Catherine Kullmann

Violettes 1815

The Napoleonic wars were over. On 5 April 1814, despatches arrived in London via Antwerp announcing the fall of Paris to the Allied armies. The news spread rapidly, carried by the stage and mail coachmen. Church bells rang and the populace poured onto the streets to celebrate. Soon premises all over Britain were illuminated, their windows displaying transparencies depicting the fall of the Corsican tyrant and celebrating peace and victory. On 9 April, the Times reported that Napoleon had abdicated. In subsequent negotiations, he was exiled to the island of Elba over which he was given sovereignty while his wife Marie Louise was made Duchess of Parma, Placentia and Guastalla. Napoleon was to receive an income of 2 million francs a year, and members of the Bonaparte family were promised pensions to be paid by the French government. He would return ‘with the violets’ i.e. in the Spring, he promised, and the modest flower became a symbol for the deposed Emperor. In this little engraving of a bunch of violets, the silhouettes (here outlined in blue) of Napoleon, Marie Louise and their young son were hidden.

On 20 April, fifty-nine-year-old Louis XVIII, brother of the guillotined Louis XVI, who had lived in exile since 1791, and in England since 1808, set out for London. He was met at the Abercorn Arms in Stanmore, some ten miles from the city, by a large delegation led by the Prince Regent and escorted in state in a procession led by one hundred Gentlemen on horseback and including six royal carriages, in the second of which sat the King and the Prince Regent. Onlookers along the route cheered the royal party, displaying laurels and white ribbons as they passed. Finally, the procession reached Grillon’s Hotel where the king was to lodge. On 23 April, hostilities were suspended between Great Britain and France and on the 24th the King set sail for France.

The Regent's domestic troubles continued, the populace siding with his estranged wife, the Princess of Wales. On 2 June, his daughter and heir, eighteen-year-old Princess Charlotte, was formally presented to her grandmother, the Queen, by the Tsar’s sister, the Grand Duchess of Oldenburgh. On his way to the Drawing-room, the Prince was beset by ‘the most dismal yells, groans and hisses’ so that the horses were put to their full speed to carry him through this ‘ungracious scene’. It was hoped that the princess would make a match of it with the Hereditary Prince of Orange but she refused, to her father’s wrath and the entertainment of the cartoonists of the day. Here he threatens his daughter's ladies while, on the right, the princess makes her escape to seek refuge with her mother. Advice and counsel was sought on all sides and public uproar only averted when she agreed, at five a.m. the following morning, to return to her home at Warwick House, but not before she signed a minute witnessed by the Duke of Sussex and the future Lord Brougham that she was resolved not to marry the Prince of Orange.

The Regent Kicking up a Row 1814

Some days later, the victorious Allied Sovereigns—the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia—accompanied by Major-General Blücher and other military luminaries, made a state visit to England. There followed almost three weeks of festivities. In between levées, royal visits and dinners, and nightly balls, they went to Ascot races. rode in the Park, went by water to view the dockyard and arsenal at Woolwich, had degrees conferred upon them in Oxford, saw the charity children at St. Pauls, visited Chelsea Hospital, attended a boxing exhibition by the most celebrated pugilists of the day, were escorted by one hundred Yeomen of the Guard to a banquet given by the City of London at the Guildhall, attended a Grand (Military) Review in Hyde Park and finally left for Portsmouth where there was a Naval Review in their honour. Here they were joined by the Duke of Wellington who had just arrived back in England after five years spent in pursuit of Napoleon.

The sovereigns left England on 27 June. The next day, in an unprecedented ceremony, the Duke of Wellington appeared in the House of Lords for the first time since being elevated to the peerage in August 1809, where the clerks read his patents as baron and viscount, earl, marquis, and lastly as duke. Peace had formally been proclaimed on 20 June and on 7 July the Prince Regent proceeded to St Paul’s Cathedral for a thanksgiving service. He was much hissed both going and coming. Despite this, he arranged for a Grand Jubilee to be held on 1 August to mark both the peace and the centenary of the accession of King George I, founder of the Hanoverian dynasty in England. The elaborate festivities included two balloon ascents,  a ‘Naumachia’ or mini naval combat on the Serpentine in Hyde Park between an English and a French Fleet, and grand fireworks from a castle or fortress especially erected in Green Park for the purpose. After the fireworks there followed ‘the Grand Metamorphosis of the Fortress into the Temple of Concord’.

On 9 August, the Princess of Wales who had not been invited to any of these celebrations, left England for the Continent, ‘weary of the petty persecutions and slights she had to undergo’.

Grand Jubilee 1814 Temple of Concord

Grand Jubliee 1814 The Fortress

7 July also saw the anonymous publication of a new novel, Waverley or ‘Tis Sixty Years Since. Set during the Jacobite uprising of 1745, it proved an instant success, the first edition of one thousand copies being followed in the same year by two further editions, together comprising four thousand copies. Waverley is frequently regarded as being the first historical novel in the western tradition. It was soon rumoured to be by the Scottish poet Walter Scott, but he insisted on preserving his anonymity, publishing succeeding novels as ‘by the Author of Waverley”. Eventually, although not a series or sequels, these became known as the Waverley novels.

Another publication later that year was The Life of Napoleon, a Hudibrastic Poem by Doctor Syntax that demonised the fallen emperor in mock celebratory verses. In this illustration, a parody of Fuseli’s Nightmare, the young Napoleon dreams of future glory.

Napoleon dreaming in his cell

Across the Atlantic, meanwhile, the war continued with the British army reinforced by a contingent lately arrived from France. On 24 August they attacked the Americans at Bladensburg, later entering Washington, as Harry Smith recorded in his memoirs ‘for the barbarous purpose of destroying the city’. He continued, ‘Admiral Cockburn would have burnt the whole but [General] Ross would only consent to the burning of the public buildings. I have no objection to burn arsenals, dockyards, frigates, buildings, stores, barracks etc., but well do I remember that fresh from the Duke’s humane warfare in the South of France, we were horrified at the order to burn the elegant Houses of Parliament and the President’s House.’

Harry, to his great delight, was sent home with despatches, making the crossing from the Chesapeake to Spithead in only twenty-one days. It was seven years since he had set foot in England, but uppermost in his mind was the reunion with his wife, Juana, from whom he had parted the previous May.

On 24 December the Treaty of Ghent was signed, formally ending the war between the United Kingdom and the United States.  However, it took some time for the news to reach the combatting armies. On 8 January 1815, the British attacked New Orleans and were defeated, but some hostilities continued until mid-February when both sides had ratified the Treaty.

The Regency Decade—1814, Part One: Frost Fair, Fake News & Fraud and the Fall of Paris

Catherine Kullmann

1814 was so eventful a year that one post cannot do it justice. This post takes us up to 31 March, the day Paris fell. Napoleon's days as Emperor were now numbered.

At the turn of the year, fog shrouded the British Isles. This later gave way to a bitter week-long cold spell bringing snow and ice. Supplies became scarce as roads remained closed,  and the price of coal soared. The Cambridge mail coach was snowed up and completely covered for almost eight hours. It took fourteen waggon-horses to drag it out. Amazingly, the passengers survived though ‘almost frozen to death’. There is no mention of the fate of the coachman—it is possible he continued the journey on horseback to deliver the mails and seek assistance.

At the end of January, the Thames in London froze to such a depth that a Frost Fair could be held.  All the usual entertainments of a fair—swings, book-stalls, drinking and eating booths, dancing, skittles, knock-em-downs, wheels of fortune, and gaming tables were soon to be found on the frozen river. Printers set up their presses, selling commemorative pieces printed ‘on the Ice’, to the thousands promenading on the central footpath or ‘City Road’. By the fifth of February, it was all over.

Frost Fair Thames 1814

Light craft and barges were imprisoned by the frost. When the thaw set in, blocks of broken up ice swept these inexorably down river, causing considerable damage and some loss of life.

On 21st February, news reached London that the Allies had secured a great victory over Napoleon who had been slain by the Cossacks and that the Allied Sovereigns (the Tsar of Russia and the King of Prussia) were in Paris. The price of Government Omnium stock rose sharply, only to fall again when it became apparent that there had been no victory and that the whole thing was ‘Fake News', a deliberate fraud by one Charles Random de Berenger who, having posed as the bearer of important despatches from France,  posted to London with horses decked with laurels.

Caught up in this Great Stock Exchange Fraud, as it came to be known, was Lord Cochrane, a renowned naval captain, Member of Parliament and eldest son and heir of the Earl of Dundonald, who had profited from the short surge in the price of omnium. Despite his protests that his stockbroker had acted on his standing instructions to sell Omnium if the price rose by one percent, he was convicted of complicity, fined a thousand pounds and sentenced to twelve months imprisonment in the Marshalsea. Before serving this sentence, he was to stand in the pillory for one hour. This last penalty was afterwards remitted but a devastating social pillorying followed. His name was struck off the Navy list, he was expelled from the House of Commons, his arms were taken down from his stall as Knight of the Bath and his banner torn down and kicked ignominiously out of Henry VII’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey.

Many believed Lord Cochrane innocent and in the subsequent by-election, he was re-elected to his seat in Parliament which he took the day he was released from prison. He continued to fight for the restoration of his good name and in 1832 received a ‘free pardon’; was restored to the Navy List, gazetted a rear-admiral and attended a levée at court. In 1847, his knighthood was restored and he was created a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath. He died in 1860. The day before his funeral, his banner was returned to Westminster Abbey where he is buried. In 1876, His grandson received a payment of £40,000 from the British government, based on the recommendations of a Parliamentary select committee, in compensation for his conviction which was believed to be unjust.

Lord Cochrane 1807 2

On 31 March, Ekaterina Pavlovna, the widowed Duchess of Oldenburg, arrived in England. She entered London in great state, travelling in the Prince Regent’s own carriage and escorted by the Duke of Clarence who had met her at Sheerness. Although her visit was said to be a private one, it was generally assumed that she had been entrusted with a political mission. As she travelled to Britain, the Allied Armies, led by her brother the Tsar and the King of Prussia were advancing on Paris. Following a two-day battle, Paris surrendered on 31 March and the same day the Allied Sovereigns triumphantly led their troups into the city.

The Russian Army enters Paris 1814

 

The Regency Decade Post Four: 1813—A Year of Change

Catherine Kullmann

Welcome back to my year by year look at the Regency decade. We have reached 1813. It began grimly with the hanging of fourteen Luddites at York on 14 January. Could things get any worse?

The UK had now been at war with France for ten years and with the United States for a year and a half. Food prices were rising, supplies were limited and there was a thriving trade in smuggling to and from France.  The Prince Regent declared Wednesday 10 March, “A Public Day of Fasting and Humiliation………..for imploring His [Almighty God’s] Blessing and assistance on His Majesty’s Arms, for the restoration of peace and prosperity to His Majesty and His Dominions’. On the day appointed, the Regent, his daughter, and the Dukes of York, Cumberland and Cambridge went to the Chapel Royal, St. James; the House of Lords to Westminster Abbey and the Commons to St. Margaret’s Westminister.

Presumably, this covered the humiliation part of the agenda. It is not reported for how long that well-known gourmand the Prince Regent fasted or with what plain dishes he chose to mortify himself.

Looking back, 1813 must be regarded as one of the culturally most significant years of the period. On January twenty-eight, a new novel by the author of Sense and Sensibility was published and with it, the history of the novel was changed forever. Over two hundred years later, Pride and Prejudice continues to fascinate readers everywhere. No-one who has read it is without an opinion on it—the characters are presented to us with all their failings and virtues and each will find his or her supporters in any discussion of the book. Perhaps it is this that accounts for its enduring popularity.

PP Elizabeth Darcy in Mr Collins Rectory Hugh Thomson

Elizabeth & Darcy in Mr Collins' Rectory

In the same month, the Philharmonic Society of London, now the Royal Philharmonic Society, was formed, its aim being “to promote the performance, in the most perfect manner possible of the best and most approved instrumental music“. Not content with the existing repertoire, they also commissioned new works, most notably in 1817 a new symphony from Ludwig van Beethoven, and were amply rewarded with one of the greatest symphonies ever written, his Symphony No. 9, the Choral Symphony whose final movement is a monumental setting of Schiller’s Ode to Joy.

But that was for the future. Now the beau monde was concerned with other things. Princess Charlotte, the Prince Regent’s only child and heir presumptive had just turned seventeen and it was time for her to ‘come out’ into society. It was expected she would be formally presented to her grandmother, the Queen, at the birthday drawing-room on 5 February and this led it to be “one of the most crowded drawing-rooms within recollection. The company began to arrive soon after twelve 0’clock and continued setting down until near four. The number of nobility and gentry assembled was so great that they had not all left St. James by half-past seven”. But the young princess did not appear. The Prince Regent had forbidden his wife to attend his mother’s court and Charlotte refused to be presented by anyone other than her mother. Stalemate!

By this time, the Prince Regent was at outs with his daughter as well as his wife. He was determined to treat Charlotte as a child until she married, not allowing her to replace her governesses with ladies-in-waiting or otherwise set up her own household. She was however permitted to attend the birth-night ball at Carlton House where she danced with her uncle, the Duke of Clarence, thirty years her senior. We can imagine how thrilled the seventeen-year-old Charlotte must have been by this treat.

Princess Charlotte of Wales 1816 2

Princess Charlotte of Wales

That summer, the Prince Regent also fell out with his previous favourite, the dandy and self-appointed arbiter of fashion, Beau Brummell. Stung by a deliberate cut by the Prince who ignored him at a fancy dress ball of which Brummell was a co-host, the dandy responded by enquiring of Lord Alvanley, who had been recognised, “Ah, Alvanley, who is your fat friend?” The prince not unnaturally took offence and the breach between the two men was never healed.

Almacks 1815 Beau Brummel

Beau Brummell

Meanwhile In the Peninsula Wellington’s army had left their winter quarters and were on the hunt. On 21 June, at the Battle of Vitoria, they decisively defeated the French army commanded by  Joseph Bonaparte who had been installed by his brother Napoleon as King of Spain.

In the ensuing rout, the King’s carriage and the French baggage train containing vast amounts of looted treasure were abandoned to the pursuing English army who in turn helped themselves liberally. The Marshall’s baton presented by Napoleon to General Jean Baptiste Jourdan was sent by Wellington to the Prince Regent while King Joseph’s silver chamber pot, another gift from the emperor, was appropriated by the 14th Light Dragoons (later 14th Hussars and now the King’s Royal Hussars), who to this day drink from it on regimental mess nights. The chamber pot became known as ‘the Emperor’ in honour of its August donor and the 14th subsequently was nicknamed ‘the Emperor’s chambermaids’.

The news of the victory at Vitoria was met with great rejoicing in England. On 20 July there was a great public fête in Vauxhall, at which Marshal Jourdan’s baton was displayed. The gardens were illuminated on a grand scale, bands played, there were three displays of fireworks and the whole closed with dancing which went on until 2 p.m. Tickets, excluding dinner, cost between three and ten guineas.

Presenting the Trophies

presenting the Trophies

On the Eastern front, Russia and Prussia had now allied with Sweden and Great Britain to combat Napoleon. The Emperor's new eastern campaign met with initial success but on 19 October the allies, now joined by Austria, trounced him at Leipzig. With over 600,000 combatants, it was the largest battle ever fought on European soil and would remain so until World War I.

Once again, Napoleon was forced to retreat to France. He was now hard-pressed on all sides. On 9 November, Wellington’s army crossed the Pyrenees and entered France. By the end of the year, The Netherlands had been liberated and the exiled Prince of Orange proclaimed Sovereign Prince. In December, his twenty-one-year-old son, Prince William, was presented to Princess Charlotte as a potential bridegroom.


Catherine Kullmann was born and educated in Dublin. Following a three-year courtship conducted mostly by letter, she moved to Germany where she lived for twenty-five years before returning to Ireland. She has worked in the Irish and New Zealand public services and in the private sector. She is married and has three adult sons and two grandchildren.

Catherine has always been interested in the extended Regency period, a time when the foundations of our modern world were laid. She loves writing and is particularly interested in what happens after the first happy end—how life goes on for the protagonists and sometimes catches up with them.

Her books are set against a background of the offstage, Napoleonic wars and consider in particular the situation of women trapped in a patriarchal society. She is the author of The Murmur of Masks, short-listed for the 2017 CAP Awards (Carousel Aware Prize for Independent Authors), Perception & Illusion and A Suggestion of Scandal, shortlisted for BooksGoSocial Best Indie Book 2018.

Interview with Richard Hacker, an author of Die Back

BooksGoSocial

This week, we're talking with Richard Hacker about his new book, Die Back.

 

 

Die HardTell us something unexpected about yourself!

I sing with a jazz vocal ensemble, so I usually spend a bit of time rehearsing music each day. And I like to draw—although I’ve only been at it for about a year. I also love to cook. I recently picked up a sous vide. You essentially cook the food in a bath of water at a regulated temperature. It does amazing things to meats. I even sous vide hard boiled eggs!

 

Why do you write?

I love to tell stories. I love to write. I love the craft of it. The complexity of it. When I came up with the story idea for DIE BACK, I felt compelled to tell it. But I think the origin for me was with my Dad. He was an avid reader. He visited the library every Saturday and would pick up at least a couple of books. I’d go along and get a stack too! He’d hang in his lounge chair on Sundays, watching football and reading. The books were always by his chair. When my daughter was little, they had a little game where he’d let her steal his bookmark. So, he inspired reading and reading inspired storytelling. Each time I opened a book I entered some magical place.

 

Where did you get the inspiration for your current book?

This might sound odd, but it started with a fountain pen. I was holding a fountain pen one day and my mind wandered to the power of words. Human beings have been naming things since the beginnings of language. It’s how we find our place in the world and in some cases I think, gives us a sense of control. Or at least the illusion of control.

 

So, what would happen if a character had a pen filled with alchemical ink that when he wrote the name and a date for someone living in the past, his consciousness would be transported into that person? What would he do with that astounding capability? And as with most technology, what if someone decided to use the alchemy to acquire power and control time itself? How would the protagonist fend off this attack on the time continuum and reality as he knows it? And then I put the fountain pen down, pulled at the laptop, and started writing.

 

What do you enjoy the most about your genre?

Fantasy gives a writer the freedom to let the imagination fly freely, creating whole new worlds. I think of my work as speculative fiction, combining genres in a creative fusion of fantasy, sci-fi, and historical fiction.

 

How would you describe your writing process?

DIE BACK is a complex story combining speculative and historical fiction, as well as being a fantasy/thriller. With so many details and twists and turns I had to work from an outline which got adjusted as I wrote. I also have a meta-structure in mind, which I think most novelist do. Maybe all not identical, but some key pegs to hang the story on. At the highest level I’ll know what my inciting incident will be, the first major plot point, the major reversal, the second major plot point, the climax, and the denouement. Of course, there’s lots more detail within those primary points. Technically I tend to use Scrivener for my initial draft and then pull it into Word for editing and formatting.

 

I’ve made a point of not having too much structure around my writing. I know for some writers, they need to write from 7-11 pm Monday through Friday at the desk in the back room of the apartment while drinking tea, and with a piece of chocolate. And it works for them. For me, I want—and do—write anywhere, anytime. I do more writing in the afternoons, but sometimes I write in the mornings. I write on my sofa, a desk in a back room, a standing desk, various coffee shops, and airplanes. For myself, I just don’t want to create any barriers. I don’t want to think ‘I can’t write now because I’m not at my desk’.

 

What do you think authors have to gain from participating in social media?

I'm on social media via a website, a blog, a Facebook author page and a Facebook book page, Goodreads, Instagram, and Twitter. I think the real challenge for authors these days is being discoverable. So every avenue we have open to us to allow potential readers to find us is a good thing.

 

What advice would you have for other writers?

Be persistent. When you’re writing a novel, edit, edit, edit. When you’re looking for an agent, pitch, pitch, pitch. When you’re marketing your book, sell, sell, sell. And of course, the nature of the beast is you have to do all of those things at the same time!

 

Be open to critique. Early on, I think it’s difficult for authors to hear critique because it feels so personal. I’ve just poured my heart onto the page and you’re telling me my protagonist is one-dimensional? Don’t take critique personally. Take a step back from it and see what truth there is for you.

 

Continually hone your craft by going to conferences and workshops, working with other writers.

 

Write, write, write. Write what you love to write Write what jazzes you. I think it leads to better writing and it’s a lot more fun.

 

How do you select your books’ titles and covers?

Titles are hard. Fortunately, my publisher has a good nose for titles. The early title of the book was The Geneologist, which made some sense because the protagonist’s father had a cover as a genealogist. But on the shelf, it looks like it’s going to be a story about a genealogist. Most readers won’t put fantasy/thriller and genealogist together.

 

DIE BACK is the kind of title that makes you go, what? I wonder what that is? Now I’m opening the book just to understand what DIE BACK means. In the novel, the protagonist, Addison Shaw, uses a pen filled with alchemical ink. When he writes the name and a date for someone living in the past, his consciousness enters that person’s mind. The only way from him to break the link is to die—a process he calls dieback.

 

The cover was a combination of me looking for an image that communicated the story and the publisher taking that image and completing the design. The image of a young man floating upward captures the idea of both the inking—when he uses the pen to enter the mind of someone in the past—and the dieback—when he dies to re-enter his own body. I think the publisher did a great job taking that image and then designing the front, spine, and back.

 

What's your next step?

Beyond letting readers know about DIE BACK, I'm looking at doing an audio book. We're currently looking for the voice talent. I’ve got a completed draft of the follow-on to DIE BACK—no title yet—and am hoping to publish in the Summer of 2019. I’m currently writing the third installment to the series as well, and that would hopefully come out in 2020. I also have a completed science fiction novel I’m probably going to self-publish just for fun. It’s called THE BIFURCATION OF DUNGSTEN CREASE. There’s no publication date set yet for that one. And I’ve got a couple of other story ideas I dabble with, waiting to see if one of them grabs my attention.

 

If you'd like to know more about DIE BACK, visit my website at www.richardhacker.com, subscribe to the blog (there's a drawing for a free signed copy of the book each month for new subscribers). And check out the book trailer and the Behind the Curtain blog posts that will give you a glimpse at the history and workings behind the story. You can pick up your copy of DIE BACK in paperback or Kindle ebook at the Amazon URL below.

 

What book do you wish you had written?

LOL. The next one. I am very happy with DIE BACK, so no regrets. And I've got the second installment almost ready to go. I don't tend to look backwards, but forwards at what's next. I've got a humorous sci-fi story just about finished, and two other novels at the beginning stages, as well as about a third of the way into the third book of the DIE BACK series.

 

How do you react to seeing a new review for your book?

Grateful. Reviews, especially on Amazon, have a significant impact on potential readers. I know when I'm looking for my next read, I'm much more attracted to something that has some activity around it than a book where there doesn't seem to be much interest.

 

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How A Love Charm Ensnared An Emperor

In The Sign of The Blood, two of the main characters, Juliana, a slave, and Sybellina, a Roman priestess, compete for the attention of Constantine, son of the Emperor of the West, a young man destined to become Constantine the Great.

The Sign of The Blood final version name at the bottom 2As the book opens Constantine is about to inherit his father's title and can have almost any woman he wants. He is 34 years old and a Roman Tribune, a senior military officer serving at the front lines. Household slaves will be available to him as well as the daughters of the wealthy.

How could a woman who wants his love, succeed?

The first thing I had to set aside as I wrote this story, was the idea that love was simply a matter of attraction or suitability. For most people living at that time, 306 A.D., the gods interfered and had to be placated, and humans could both read the future and influence it through spells, charms, and potions.

Often, such charms or spells were a way for people to imagine that they had a chance with someone, to give them the confidence to seduce someone, or to keep someone they already had.

If we think about how we pray to be loved, wear rings to signify relationship status, and spray ourselves with perfume to attract, we are not that far away from the mindset of spells, charms, and potions, though we like to fool ourselves that we are all very modern and rational in the age of the iPhone.

What you may not have done, however, is what Sybellina does in The Sign of the Blood. As one of the last priestesses of the slowly dying imperial cult, she is both a spy and an assassin, the 2nd and 3rd oldest professions. She is also a skilled practitioner in the arts of divination and dark magic. Anyone who has read the astrology predictions for their star sign can understand the attraction of knowing where you are headed, especially in times of danger. It really can make you strive harder if you believe in your destiny.

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But to steal the heart of an emperor's son who can have a different woman every hour, the challenge is extreme.

And it calls for extreme measures. Something involving blood and human flesh. Something that requires a sacrifice, to represent the sacrifice you would be willing to make to achieve your aim. A spell and a charm and a potion strong enough to make anyone believe in their destiny.

That could work, yes? It could certainly give you the confidence to make your move.

If you think I'm making this up, click through to The Greek Magical Papyri which include love spells and hocus-pocus meant to inspire confidence. If you believe in positive thinking you will understand the benefits of self-belief in everything, including matters of the heart.

2018 11 22 1106

Codex with magic spells, 5-6thC A.D. Museo Archeologico, Milan. Wikimedia Commons.

And if you want to know what was written on these charms or chanted as the blood flowed, remember your Virgil who said we could. “… tear love's cure-all from the forehead of a foal.”

Or consider the level of desire evident from the Louvre Doll curse tablet, “…do not allow her to eat, drink, hold out, venture out, or find sleep.”

I am sure you wouldn't use such tactics on the object of your affection, but if the future of an empire was at stake, you never know. And this was at a time when Christianity was being persecuted into annihilation and death loomed every day.

If you think I'm stretching things about the ancients belief in magic, have you read The Apology, where this Roman author states, “magical operations were indispensable scientific experiments.”

And before you dismiss all this as nonsense, consider these questions:

Did you ever feel, when you met a stranger, that you would meet again or had know them before?

And what would you do to hold onto the love of your life?

If you want to read what Sybellina does to get her wish to come true and how she enchanted Constantine, and how Juliana strikes back, you will have to buy The Sign of The Blood.

Laurence O'Bryan is the author of the puzzle series novels and now, The Sign of The Blood, the first novel in a new series set during the bloody and turbulent late Roman Empire.

The Regency Decade: Post Three – 1812 – A Year of War and Violence

1812 was marked by warfare and violence. In England, the Luddite protests continued, with machinery broken at Nottingham, Leeds, Bristol, Sheffield and Manchester to name but some of the areas affected. Troops were sent to Cornwall to put down riots among the miners who demanded reductions in the price of food. The Frame Breaking Act of 1812 made ‘machine breaking’ a capital offence and in May a Special Commission was set up to try captured Luddites.

On 11 May, the UK was shocked by the assassination in the lobby of the House of Commons of the Prime Minister, Spencer Perceval who was shot at point-blank range by John Bellingham who had a long-standing grievance against the government. When news of the murder reached Nottingham however, the Riot Act had to be read and the military called out to suppress the public celebrations of shouts, huzzas, drums beating, flags flying, bells ringing, and bonfires blazing.

Assassination of Spencer Perceval

In Spain, the army under the command of Lord Wellington first besieged and then successfully stormed the cities of Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz. Badajoz was taken on 6 April and subsequently sacked by the British army in what Sir Harry Smith in his autobiography describes as ‘A scene of horror I would willingly bury in oblivion. The atrocities committed by our soldiers on the poor innocent and defenceless inhabitants of the city, no words suffice to depict.’ He continues: ‘Yet this scene of debauchery, however cruel to many, to me has been the solace and the whole happiness of my life for thirty-three years. A poor defenceless maiden of thirteen years was thrown upon my generous nature.

The story of Harry Smith and Juana María de Los Dolores de León is one of the great love stories not only of the Regency but also of the nineteenth century. Married within a couple of days of their meeting in 1812, she devotedly followed the drum. She learnt to ride and kept up with the regiment on the long marches through mountainous Spain and over the Pyrenees into France. She accompanied him when possible on his overseas postings and they were rarely parted until his death in 1860. The town of Ladysmith in South Africa is called after her.

If you would like to know more about them, I highly recommend Georgette Heyer’s The Spanish Bride which draws heavily on the memoirs of Harry and other Riflemen to describe the first years of their marriage, up to and including the Battle of Waterloo, and for the rest, I refer you to Sir Harry himself whose autobiography written in a colloquial, anecdotal style is most entertaining. The portraits below were painted three years after their wedding in Paris in 1815, after the Battle of Waterloo.

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Portraits of Harry and Juana Smith

This was the age of the Romantic Poets—among others, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley and Keats, and it is interesting to see their heightened sensibility and emotional outpourings reflected in the memoirs of military men such as Harry Smith and his fellow rifleman, Sir John Kincaid. Kincaid also describes the arrival of Juana and her elder sister into the British camp at Badajoz and the sister’s impassioned appeal for protection for the younger woman. ‘Nor was it [the appeal] made in vain! Nor could it be abused, for she stood by the side of an angel! A being more transcendingly lovely I had never before seen—one more amiable I have never yet known……..to look at her was to love her; and I did love her, but I never told my love, and in the meantime, another and a more impudent fellow stepped in and won her.’

In March 1812 another romantic poet, the twenty-four-year-old Lord Byron, published the first two cantos of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and, as he described it, ‘awoke to find himself famous'.  His passionate verse and brooding, flawed hero appealed to feminine hearts while, as can be seen in the portrait below from 1813, he knew how to present himself in the most romantic light. He was perhaps the first popular heartthrob, idolised by innocent girls and society matrons alike. After meeting him for the first time, the married Lady Caroline Lamb described him in her diary as ‘mad, bad and dangerous to know’;  in other words irresistible to a woman known for her restless spirit and passionate enthusiasms, Soon the couple  embarked on a very public affair that was to both scandalise and entertain the polite world of the haut ton for several years.

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Portraits of Lady Caroline Lamb and Lord Byron

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, all was not well between the UK and its former colony and, on 18 June 1812, the United States declared war on the United Kingdom.

6 days later, on 24 June, Napoleon invaded Russia. On 14 September he entered Moscow. But what might have been supposed to be one of his greatest triumphs, turned out to be his downfall. The Russians had evacuated the city, withdrawing also the civic authorities but leaving behind them a small detachment charged with firing the city. Composed mainly of wooden buildings, Moscow was burnt almost completely to the ground. Napoleon was left with no choice but to retreat along the same route he had taken to reach the city and which had been denuded of supplies, including fodder for the horses. Starving, and wearing uniforms that were no match for a Russian winter, the Grande Armée suffered devastating losses. After almost ten years, the tide of war had turned.

 

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