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.
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
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.
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
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.
