Catherine Kullmann
Oct 29, 2019 | Action & Adventure, Historical, Political, Regency, Uncategorized
View of Brussels
I must apologise for the delay in continuing with this series. To quote Rabbie Burns, and as today’s post shows, “The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men/Gang aft a-gley.”
At the end of 1814, we left the exiled Napoleon on Elba. Across the Atlantic, on January 8th 1815, American forces defeated the British in the Battle of New Orleans, the last major battle of the War of 1812. On January 21st, the mortal remains of the guillotined Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI were transferred in a sombre procession to the royal crypt in Saint-Denis. The restoration was complete. The map of Europe could be re-drawn again and the victorious allies agreed to meet in Vienna to discuss the new borders.
Meanwhile, thousands of Britons had decamped for the Continent. Their reasons were mixed; some simply wished to travel again while others hoped to leave their massive debts behind and live abroad on an ‘economical plan’. They soon established their own enclaves in Brussels and Paris where they continued to live the same life as they had at home, mixing with the same people and founding such bulwarks of English society as clubs and libraries where they could be sure to remain among themselves.
At the beginning of March, with trade with the European continent open again, Britain’s ruling classes looked to protect the interests of the landowners by introducing the Importation Bill. This was the first of the so-called Corn Laws, designed to prevent the importation of cheap foreign grain, thus keeping their incomes at war-time levels. They happily ignored the fact that as a result, the price of bread would be at an artificially high level, a fact that did not escape the poorer classes. In the ensuing riots, the windows of White’s club were broken and parliament had to be surrounded by a protective cordon of soldiers.
All rioting ceased when the news reached England that Napoleon had escaped from Elba and was marching towards Paris. He had indeed returned with the violets. The Importation Bill became law without further ado and Europe awaited the next developments with bated breath. A contemporary source summarised Napoleon’s progress as follows:
A Conversation between Two Gendarmes, modelled on THE TIMES:
First Gendarme: What is the news?
Second Gendarme: Ma foi! the news is short.
The tiger has broken out of his den.
The Monster was three days at sea
The Wretch has landed at Frejus
The Brigand has arrived at Grenoble
The Invader has entered Lyons
Napoleon slept last night at Fontainbleu
The Emperor enters the Thuilleries this day.
On March 19th, Louis XVIII and his family hurried away from the Tuilleries, only some hours before the Emperor’s triumphant return. The English who had flocked to Paris now as hastily left it, many heading for Brussels.
The allies, happily ensconced in Vienna, were caught wrong-footed. Armies recently dismissed were hastily recalled and on April 5th the Duke of Wellington arrived in Brussels to take command, initially of the British forces but soon, as Commander-in-Chief, also of the army of the United Netherlands. Enriched and enlivened by the influx of officers, the Brussels social whirl continued alongside the preparations for war. Would Napoleon sally across the French border to attack the allied forces or would he remain in France, daring them to invade?
The Duchess of Richmond appealed to Wellington himself for advice as to whether her ball, planned for June 15th, might go ahead. “Duchess, you may give your ball with the greatest safety, without fear of interruptions” was his reply.
Byron captures best what happened next:
There was a sound of revelry by night,
And Belgium's capital had gathered then
Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright
The lamps shone o'er fair women and brave men;
A thousand hearts beat happily; and when
Music arose with its voluptuous swell,
Soft eyes looked love to eyes which spake again,
And all went merry as a marriage-bell;
But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like a rising knell!
Did ye not hear it?–No; 'twas but the wind,
Or the car rattling o'er the stony street;
On with the dance! let joy be unconfined;
No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet
To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet.
But hark! that heavy sound breaks in once more,
As if the clouds its echo would repeat;
And nearer, clearer, deadlier than before!
Arm! arm! it is–it is–the cannon's opening roar
Napoleon had ‘humbugged’ him, as Wellington admitted to the Duke of Richmond, sending Ney to attack the British and Dutch-Belgian forces at Quatre Bras while he himself forced the Prussians to retreat at Ligny. But even as the wounded from these encounters were brought to Brussels, the Allied and French armies marched towards Waterloo, a small village south of Brussels on the far side from Brussels of the Forest of Soigné.
Overnight, regiments assembled on the Place Royale before marching out of Brussels, past the long procession of farm carts coming to market as usual. As one observer put it, After the army was gone, Brussels indeed seemed a perfect desert. Every countenance was marked with anxiety or melancholy—every heart was filled with anxious expectations….At about three o’clock [on the 16th], a furious cannonading was heard.
From then until the evening of the 18th, the residents of Brussels were torn between the hope of victory and fear of defeat. Some fled immediately towards Antwerp while others remained but prepared for instant flight. One after the other, the dreadful reports arrived: The Prussians had retreated, the Highland regiments that had been piped out of Brussels only that morning had been slaughtered, Wellington had been defeated; the French were at the gates…Every hour only served to add to the dismay.
On the night of the 17th, a violent thunderstorm came on, followed by torrents of rain which during the night, when the army were laying unsheltered upon the field of Waterloo, never ceased a single moment. On Sunday [the 18th] the terror and confusion [in Brussels] reached its highest point.
Meanwhile, on the plain of Waterloo, Wellington and Napoleon set out their armies as calmly as a grandmaster might dispose of his chessmen were he allowed a free hand in their positioning. It was mid-morning before the battle commenced, perhaps because the ground was too wet to allow the artillery to move its guns. But soon about two hundred thousand men were engaged in deadly combat. The battle waged all day until, near sunset, the invincible Imperial Guard was forced to retreat causing the surviving French to flee. The battle was over, the allies under Wellington had won the day, Napoleon was finally defeated, but at what cost?
The story of the battle is too well known for me to go into it in depth here. I have done this in my novel, The Murmur of Masks. For now, let us leave the last word to Byron.
The earth is cover’d thick with other clay,
Which her own clay shall cover, heap’d and pent,
Rider and horse,—friend, foe,—in one red burial blent!
Catherine Kullmann
Jul 22, 2019 | Featured, Historical, Non Fiction, Regency
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.
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’.
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.
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.
Catherine Kullmann
May 29, 2019 | Historical, Regency
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.
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.
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.
