Trafalgar

by Nicholas Best

  Napoleon Bonaparte. The man from nowhere who now sat on a throne and called himself an emperor. The English were terrified of him as they had been terrified of nobody else for a very long time. All along the Channel coast, from Eastbourne and Hastings to Dungeness, New Romney, Folkestone, Dover and Margate, they cast anxious eyes towards France and asked themselves the same question over and over again. When was Bonaparte going to come?

  CHAPTER 3

  NAPOLEON LAYS HIS PLANS

  The fireworks at Boulogne had to be postponed because of the rain, but only for a day. At 9 the following evening, thousands of people returned to the cliff tops to watch the fun. It began with a loud bang, followed by a wonderful display of bombs and rockets exploding over the sea. At the end, a row of 15,000 soldiers fired a magnificent feu de joie into the air, their weapons loaded with Roman candles instead of musket balls. The people of Boulogne remembered the spectacle for years to come.

  Napoleon watched the display from his pavilion on the cliff above the town. He had built it near the ruins of the Tour d’Ordre, a Roman lighthouse very similar to the one that still stands at Dover. It was close also to the telegraph signalling station that kept him in touch with Paris. The pavilion had a small bedroom at one end, but consisted mostly of a council chamber with a painted ceiling depicting an eagle hurling a thunderbolt at England, under Napoleon’s direction. The chamber had a map of the Channel on the wall, and a green baize table for conferences. The room boasted only one chair, for the Emperor’s exclusive use. Everyone else had to stand.

  The pavilion also housed a powerful telescope, four feet long and a foot wide, that stood by the window on a mahogany tripod. On a clear day, it gave Napoleon an excellent view of Dover Castle across the Channel. He spent a lot of time looking that way, scanning the shores of England, so near across the water, and yet so far as well.

  It was in the pavilion that he worked on his invasion plans. Napoleon’s main headquarters was an eighteenth-century chateau at Pont-de-Briques, a few miles outside Boulogne on the Paris road. There, his staff ran to five generals, eleven aides-de-camp and thirty other officers, all of them at work on the invasion of England. To these were added a constant procession of ships’ pilots, harbour masters and other seafaring men who came to see him in the less formal pavilion above the town, each with something to say about the feasibility of the invasion. Napoleon heard them all, sometimes in silence, sometimes with sharp questioning. But the more he heard, the less he liked what they told him.

  It was not as easy as it looked, invading Britain. The sailors could see all sorts of practical difficulties that had not occurred to the military men on Napoleon’s staff. The wind for one thing, the tide for another. The impossibility of getting out of harbour in a hurry, with so many ships packed closely together. The need for a calm crossing and an unopposed landing, to prevent the troops getting their powder wet when they stormed ashore. The need for resupply from the sea, if the English burned their crops and drove away their livestock, as they almost certainly would. It was a mammoth undertaking, throwing an army across the Channel, not to be attempted lightly. The potential for disaster was endless.

  Wind was a major factor. Even a light breeze could upset the invasion barges, as Napoleon had already seen. What they needed was a calm day – several calm days – to allow the barges to be rowed across the Channel while the English watched impotently, powerless to intervene. Either that or a good dose of winter fog, so that the barges could slip across unnoticed in the gloom.

  Tides were a serious problem, too. A whole invasion fleet could not be embarked on one tide. It would require five or six, which meant the first soldiers would have been at sea for three days before the rearguard caught up. They would still have the Channel to cross, and surprise would have been lost because the Royal Navy would have sent word back to England as soon as it saw what was happening.

  Even getting out of harbour was an issue. Down at Cadiz, it sometimes took three days to reach the open sea, and that was with room to manoeuvre. Boulogne and the other invasion ports were so tightly packed with landing craft that they would not enjoy that luxury. Once the barges did emerge, there were sandbanks to negotiate, and unpredictable coastal currents. Caesar had had trouble with the currents off the English coast. Napoleon would too.

  He was no sailor, as his detractors never tired of pointing out. Admiral Decrès had counselled vehemently against the flat-bottomed barges, observing that what looked good on the Seine would be less impressive in the middle of the Channel, with a lot of seasick soldiers clinging on for dear life. But Napoleon saw everything in military terms. If you wanted to move a force from A to B, you gave the order and it was done. If you wanted them back again, back they came. He had little sympathy with admirals bleating about wind, or the lack of it, shaking their heads and saying that ships couldn’t be moved just anywhere if the weather wasn’t right. He found it hard to understand that the sea was a law unto itself, beyond anyone’s control.

  Yet he was not deterred. The invasion had to go ahead. Britain was France’s only enemy. Once the British were defeated, there would be peace again – on Napoleon’s terms. The invasion would be managed somehow, and then the world would belong to France. Any setbacks in crossing the Channel would be more than compensated for by the splendid prospects that beckoned thereafter.

  His admirals had grave doubts, but didn’t voice them as loudly as they should have done. Like most dictators, Napoleon was short-tempered and did not warm to nay-sayers. He sometimes threatened to hang his admirals if they didn’t do what he wanted. It helped to concentrate their minds. And anyway, the invasion was perfectly feasible. There were problems, certainly, but they could be overcome. There was no situation that could not be remedied with a little ingenuity. That was what admirals were for.

  The work had been going on for years. The fishing port of Boulogne had originally been quite unsuitable for the launching of an invasion fleet. But the harbour had been widened and deepened, with a great basin dug out and lined with stone to accommodate the landing craft. A breakwater had been installed, and a sluice. All being well, Boulogne would now be able to launch 300 vessels on a single tide. Similar work had been done at Étaples, Ambleteuse and Wimereux, further along the coast. The task had been laborious, the expense vast. The cost had been met by the sale of Louisiana, recently wrested from Spain, to the United States.

  The invasion fleet was being assembled too, though not as swiftly as Napoleon wished. It was the despair of the sailors on his staff. Not only were the barges flat-bottomed, but they also had low gunwales for easy disembarkation. The soldiers could get out easily, but so could water get in. Even on a flat sea, the keel-less barges were virtually unmanoeuvrable in anything but a following wind. They were just the thing for running the troops ashore once the French reached England – but how many of them would survive the journey across the Channel?

  The escort vessels were little better. The first troops ashore were to be provided with covering fire by prames – shallow-draught corvettes armed with twelve heavy cannon. But the prames too were unstable in heavy seas, as were the chaloupes canonnières, little more than floating gun platforms without a keel. The bateaux canonniers were more seaworthy, but could not traverse their guns. The whole boat had to be pointed towards the target. And all of these different craft were so heavily weighed down with cannon that the strain on their hulls was unacceptable.

  With hindsight, Napoleon might have done better to build steam ships instead – the technology existed. A steam-powered ironclad could have towed any number of landing craft across the Channel without any need for a breeze. But the French still thought in terms of wooden ships and sail, as did the English across the Channel. Steam power had yet to catch on.

  Or he could have dug a tunnel. All the labour that had gone into digging out Boulogne and the other harbours could have gone into burrowing under the sea, pushing forwards from Calais to the English coast. Plenty of people in England thought N
apoleon was doing precisely that. Cartoons had been published in London, not all of them fanciful, showing the French army creeping along a Channel tunnel, ready to burst out at Dover and take the English by surprise.

  He could have built a bridge, or a series of floating forts. He could even have come by air, as individual balloonists already had. The French inventor Jean-Charles Thilorier had proposed the construction of a huge balloon, capable of carrying 3,000 troops at a time. Napoleon had commissioned him to produce a quarter-scale model, but Thilorier had been defeated by the practicalities, although he clung stoutly to the theory.

  So an invasion fleet it was, and the work continued apace – not only in Boulogne, but in all the ports from Étaples to Ostend. The total number of ships amounted to 2,293, a massive logistical headache for the harbour masters involved. The flotilla was divided into six divisions, of which only two came from Boulogne. The others were based at Wimereux, Étaples, Ambleteuse and Calais. No two divisions were the same. Some were to carry assault troops, some cavalry and reinforcements, others baggage and artillery. Some of the troops were Dutch, some Italian. In all, there were upwards of 150,000 men to be fed, trained and kept busy to prevent them from becoming bored and disruptive. The work went on around the clock.

  Nobody worked harder than Napoleon himself. Fifteen hours a day was quite normal for him. His step-daughter Hortense observed him during her visits to the Pont-de-Briques chateau:

  Work occupied Napoleon entirely. He neither rested by day nor by night, everything was subordinated to his work. His hours of sleep were no more fixed than those of his meals. He always lunched alone, we only saw him at dinner. On the days when he was preoccupied with some problem, nobody dared interrupt him for fear of encroaching on a serious thought or of receiving a rebuke.

  Fifteen minutes was usually enough for Napoleon to grab a bite to eat. Sleep never lasted more than a few hours a night. He was always up again at six.

  But this was his moment and he was determined to seize it. The British were wide open to attack, as he kept pointing out to his staff:

  A nation is very foolish, when it has no fortifications and no army, to lay itself open to seeing an army of 100,000 veterans land on its shores. This is the masterpiece of the flotilla! It costs a great deal of money, but it is necessary for us to be masters of the sea for six hours only, and England will have ceased to exist.

  Years later, looking back on his career, he revisited the subject again:

  London is but a few miles from Calais; the English army, scattered along the coast, could not unite in time to cover the capital. Of course this expedition could not be attempted by a mere corps d’armée, but its success was almost certain with 150,000 men presenting themselves before London within five days of their landing. Flotillas were the only means by which these 150,000 men could be landed in a few hours, and possession gained of all the shallows . . . Only ten hours would be needed for landing 150,000 disciplined and victorious soldiers upon a coast destitute of fortifications and undefended by a regular army.

  True enough. A day of calm weather and Napoleon would be master of England. But the autumn equinox was approaching – with its winds and storms – and the fleet wasn’t fully operational yet. If they didn’t sail soon, the invasion would have to be postponed, perhaps until the following year. And if they waited that long, who could say what might happen in the meantime?

  While Napoleon’s staff worked round the clock, the men of the Grand Army watched and waited, wondering when their day would come.

  They were a tremendous army, as everyone agreed. Upwards of 80,000 of them were grouped along the cliff tops between Calais and Boulogne, with the rest accommodated at various locations inland. The Boulogne troops were commanded by Marshal Soult, still only in his thirties and known throughout the army as a hard taskmaster. He had built up a highly professional staff, selected on merit, and exercised his troops three times a week for twelve hours at a stretch. The men admired him for his courage, which was exemplary. Soult had been badly wounded during the Italian campaign while leading from the front. They appreciated that in a commander.

  Ney too was a legend to his men. He commanded the camp at Montreuil. They called him the ‘Red Lion’ because of his hair, or the ‘bravest of the brave’ because of his unfailing courage. Ney was none too bright, but could always be seen in the thickest of the action. Every regiment under his command had a schoolroom for the officers, where they were required to discuss tactics and swap ideas. Ney might not be clever himself, but he understood the need for professionalism in others. It was mandatory for the officers under his command to have a firm grasp of their work and approach it in a proper manner.

  Davout commanded the Ambleteuse camp under strict discipline. Marshal Jean Lannes, his head bent towards his left shoulder as the result of a wound, commanded at Wimereux. All of them were highly professional officers, risen on merit. They knew their business, and they had the trust of their men. Napoleon could not have asked for better commanders to lead his troops across the Channel. A junior officer admired them unreservedly:

  I do not believe that there existed at any period, nor in any country, such an excellent military school as there was at the Boulogne camp. The general who had command of it, the generals under his orders, and the troops which it comprised were all drafted from the pick of the French army, and the greatest general that had ever appeared, Napoleon Bonaparte, used to come himself frequently to inspect those old troops and the young fighting men who were being formed under those excellent models.

  The men were in splendid form. Those who had fought in Egypt or Italy never tired of telling the tale. Those who had seen no action longed to emulate them. They trained hard, practising embarkation and disembarkation, leaping in and out of their landing craft, learning to jump into the sea and wade ashore without losing formation or getting their powder wet. They learned how to lead their horses aboard the barges and how to bring the heavy artillery ashore. They practised the drill again and again, going through the motions repeatedly until they could almost have done it in their sleep. They practised sometimes under cannon fire, their own batteries shooting above their heads to give them a feel of what it would be like. They practised until they felt there was nothing they didn’t know about seaborne assaults and how to conduct them.

  The exercises were realistic in every detail, terrifyingly so to some of the younger men:

  During a practice attack, I sniffed the scent of powder for the first time and received my baptism of fire. I hate to admit it, but I was really frightened! The terrible reality of danger, the brutality of cannon balls, bullets flying, corpses lying around would make any recruit’s heart beat faster. But we soon got used to it. A searching look from the veterans, a scornful smile, above all the fear of ridicule, banished all nervousness and we ended up encouraging danger.

  The men were feeling good. They lived well too. The camp at Boulogne was a model of its kind. The men had lived in tents at first, but these had swiftly been replaced by permanent wooden huts, walled with mud in the local style and roofed with thatch. It was alleged that artefacts from Caesar’s army and William the Conqueror’s had been dug up on the spot where Napoleon’s tent had been pitched – an encouraging omen for the troops. Each hut was whitewashed and accommodated fifteen men much more comfortably than in barracks. There were metalled roads around the camp, named after the Grand Army’s victories. There were gardens, villas for the officers, tree-lined walks and carefully maintained flower beds. Meals were regular and filling, announced by bugle three times a day. The men complained constantly about the food, but what happy army doesn’t?

  They were kept busy from morning until night, as soldiers have to be if they aren’t fighting. When not training, or digging out the harbour, or building huts, or repairing boats, they were on barrack duty, gardening or tending poultry, tidying up the camp and keeping it in good order. There was always something to do. Their leisure time was organised as well – fencing, ho
rse racing, foot races along the sands, with Napoleon himself distributing the prizes. Some of them made tiny yachts on wheels and ran them along the beach. They were allowed dances occasionally, the younger and prettier soldiers taking the girls’ parts in fisherwomen’s caps, dancing the quadrille to wild music. There were, of course, no real girls allowed in the camp. The army’s commanders knew better than that.

  The real girls lived not far away, in a place just outside Boulogne nicknamed ‘Happy Valley’. Despite the army’s best efforts, there were thousands of them, doing ten times more damage than the enemy ever would. During his Italian campaign, Napoleon had decreed that any woman caught near the army would be painted black, paraded through the camp and then expelled. The decree had been enforced for all of two weeks before he had given up in despair. Wherever the army went, a flock of women always followed, ready to tend to the men’s needs. After all, the lads needed their washing done, didn’t they, and their sewing?

  So the girls lived in Happy Valley and the soldiers visited them there, not all of them carrying laundry. The officers kept well away, pursuing their own adventures in Boulogne or else at Pont-de-Briques, near the Emperor’s headquarters, which was out of bounds to the other ranks. There were days for officers at certain brothels and days for the men. The girls worked with a will. Madame Forty Thousand was the star, beloved of the army, but there were plenty of others. The police expelled them regularly, with orders never to set foot in Boulogne again. Somehow, though, they always managed to return.

  The provost marshal was busy, too, keeping military discipline in the town. It was difficult, with so many young men full of drink and looking for trouble. Rivalry between the regiments was intense. The Grenadiers considered themselves the finest troops that ever lived and offered to fight anybody who disagreed. The cavalry accepted the challenge, as did the infantry of the line. They all looked down on the artillery and the engineers, dull technicians in dull uniforms. The artillery and the engineers stood their ground, hitting back for the honour of their corps. Gangs from every regiment and corps thronged the streets at night, cheerfully insulting each other and seeking any excuse for a brawl. Many still wore their hair in old-fashioned cadenette plaits and responded violently to any mockery. The military police did their best, but it was impossible to keep the gangs apart. Blood was often spilt when they met, and bones broken. Sometimes there was rape and murder too. Armies are difficult to manage when they’re not in action. All those young men, in such a small town – there was bound to be trouble.