Trafalgar

by Nicholas Best

  Lieutenant John Lapenotiere enjoyed his fifteen minutes of fame as the man who had brought the Trafalgar dispatches to the Admiralty. He was presented with a valuable sword by Lloyd’s Patriotic Fund and invited to meet George III to give him an eyewitness account of the battle. Promotion and his gratuity of £500 proved more elusive. Lapenotiere had to write several times to William Marsden to remind him of the Admiralty’s obligations. He got his reward in the end, but not without a struggle.

  Henry Blackwood had been hoping for promotion to a ship of the line on the morning of Trafalgar. Two captains had left vacancies when they went home for Calder’s court martial. In the event, Blackwood remained with his frigate and later delivered Villeneuve to England, which at least enabled him to attend Nelson’s funeral. He became a baronet in 1814 and retired as a vice-admiral.

  Several Trafalgar veterans subsequently fought at Waterloo as well. Two British midshipmen took commissions in the army and one sailor fought as a colour-sergeant. They were joined by General Miguel de Alava, nephew of Rear-Admiral Alava, who had been aboard the Principe de Asturias at Trafalgar, but later served as aide-de-camp to the Duke of Wellington after Spain had switched sides. As Spanish ambassador to Holland, Alava witnessed the battle from Wellington’s headquarters and dined alone with him afterwards.

  Perhaps the oddest story of all was that of Major Antoine Drouot of the French artillery. He escaped from Trafalgar with Admiral Gravina and then joined the Grand Army. After surviving the retreat from Moscow, Drouot was promoted to command the Imperial Guard at Waterloo. He survived Waterloo as well, but gave up fighting after that, retiring to a quieter life as president of the Agricultural Society in Nancy.

  William Nelson became very grand after his elevation to the peerage. ‘Never mind the battle of Trafalgar,’ he told his wife, in front of a scandalised audience. ‘It has made me an earl and thee a countess.’ Parliament gave him the money for a 3,400-acre estate near Salisbury and a pension ‘in perpetuity’. The pension continued to be paid to the Nelson family until 1947.

  Emma Hamilton went into a spiral of despair after Trafalgar. The codicil to Nelson’s will was never honoured. She lived in reduced circumstances for the rest of her life, fleeing to Calais in 1814 to escape her creditors. She died there on 15 January 1815 and was buried in the local cemetery. It is said that all the British ships at Calais flew their flags at half-mast on the day of the funeral, and all the ships’ captains attended the service.

  William Pitt died on 23 January 1806, only two weeks after Nelson’s funeral. His spirit had been broken by the disasters at Ulm and Austerlitz. ‘Roll up that map,’ he told his staff bitterly. ‘It will not be wanted these ten years.’ Pitt died a failure in his own eyes, but had succeeded in his primary aim of diverting Napoleon’s army away from England.

  Lord Melville deserved some of the credit for Trafalgar after initiating a massive ship-building programme as First Lord of the Admiralty. His trial for high crimes and misdemeanours was held in May 1806. Melville was acquitted on all ten charges, but never held public office again.

  Sir John Moore continued to fight the French and was killed at Corunna in 1809, as was Major Stanhope, Lady Hester’s favourite brother.

  Upset by these two deaths, as well as Pitt’s, Hester Stanhope left England for good in 1810 and settled eventually in the Lebanon. Dressed as a Turkish man, she liked nothing better than to smoke a pipe and surround herself with slaves and stray cats. She died in 1839.

  Robert Fulton continued to experiment with torpedoes, but lost the British government’s support after Trafalgar. He demanded a large sum to keep his designs secret, but was rebuffed. Undaunted, he returned to the United States in the autumn of 1806 and turned his attention to building steamboats instead.

  Field Marshal Mack was stripped of his rank after Ulm and sentenced to two years in prison.

  HMS Victory returned eventually to Portsmouth and is still there, still commissioned in the Royal Navy. Equipped with a new set of masts, she flies the flag of the commander-in-chief, Naval Home Command. She last saw action in the Second World War, when she was hit by a German bomb. The portrait of Emma Hamilton that hung in Nelson’s cabin on the morning of Trafalgar hangs now in the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich.

  England and France remain as close as ever, and as far apart. Since Napoleon’s youth, the French system of government has embraced one Terror, two empires, three monarchies, five republics, a directorate and a Vichy. The British continue with their monarchy.

  And Napoleon? As Pitt had forecast, it took another ten years to bring him down. After his defeat at Waterloo he fled south, pursued by troops from several nations calling for his immediate execution. If the Prussians caught up with him, they were planning to shoot him in the same moat at Vincennes as he had shot the Duc d’Enghien. His only hope of escape was to reach the coast before them and take passage to America.

  On 2 July 1815, two weeks after Waterloo, Napoleon arrived at Rochefort on the Bay of Biscay. The provisional government formed after his abdication wanted him off French soil without delay. Napoleon was ready to sail to America, but the way was blocked by the Royal Navy, which refused to guarantee him safe passage. The navy’s orders were to bring him to England instead.

  Bowing to the inevitable, Napoleon surrendered to the British. They had a long tradition of harbouring political refugees – Napoleon’s brother Lucien had been in England since 1810. He decided to put his faith in British justice and throw himself on their mercy.

  On the morning of 15 July, Napoleon and his retinue were received aboard HMS Bellerophon – the same Bellerophon that had fought so bravely at Trafalgar. The deck where Captain Cooke had died and Lieutenant Cumby had grappled with French boarders now played host to Napoleon and his staff, with their wives and children, to the number of thirty-three people in all. There was no room for a further seventeen, who were taken aboard the Myrmidon instead.

  It was an exciting moment for the Bellerophon’s crew. Napoleon was the most famous man in the world, the tyrant they had been fighting all their adult lives. Now here he was, being rowed towards their ship.

  Bosun Manning, an Irishman from Limerick, stood ready to pipe him aboard. ‘Manning,’ a midshipman told him, ‘this is the proudest day of your life.’

  Manning nodded happily.

  ‘Along with the great Napoleon, the name of Manning, the bosun of the Bellerophon, will go down to posterity. And as a relic of that great man, permit me, my dear Manning, to preserve a lock of your hair.’ The midshipman pulled out some of Manning’s whiskers and fled before the bosun could catch him.

  Napoleon appeared soon afterwards, preceded up the ship’s side by General Bertrand. The ex-Emperor wore his trademark black hat and a greatcoat buttoned to his chin. The British recognised him at once, even though he looked nothing like the evil dwarf of the cartoons. He carried himself with the easy assurance of someone long accustomed to command.

  ‘Napoleon Bonaparte is about five feet seven inches high,’ reported Lieutenant Bowerbank, ‘rather corpulent, remarkably well made. His hair is very black, cut close, whiskers shaved off; large eyebrows, grey eyes, the most piercing I ever saw.’

  Others thought him only five foot two, so short that he walked on tiptoe to look taller. All agreed, though, that Napoleon had a pot belly and all were mesmerised by his eyes. They were like a hawk’s, according to another officer. It was a characteristic he shared with Hitler.

  Climbing to the quarterdeck, Napoleon removed his hat and addressed Captain Frederick Maitland in French. ‘I have come to throw myself on the protection of your prince and your laws,’ he announced.

  Maitland bowed and led Napoleon to his cabin. He was lending it to him for the journey to England. They chatted for a while and Napoleon asked to meet the other officers. ‘Well, gentlemen,’ he told them, ‘you have the honour of belonging to the bravest and most fortunate nation in the world.’ He then went on a tour of the ship.

  Napoleon h
ad never been aboard a British warship before. Many years earlier, back in the days when his elder brother was still called Giuseppe and his younger brother Luigi was only a baby, little Nabulione Buonaparte had dreamed of being a British sailor. As a child, he had seen Royal Navy ships in Corsica and had been impressed by their smartness and efficiency. He had fantasised about joining the Royal Navy and fighting to liberate Corsica from France. But fate had dictated otherwise. Napoleon had learned French instead and gone to military school on the mainland.

  He still admired the Royal Navy, though. He stood on deck as the Bellerophon got under way, watching everything that was going on. ‘What I admire most in your ship,’ he told Maitland, ‘is the extreme silence and orderly conduct of your men. On board a French ship everyone calls and gives orders, and they gabble like so many geese.’

  At dinner that night, he discussed Trafalgar with the British and spoke approvingly of Nelson. Napoleon owned a bust of the admiral and had had the words ‘La France compte que chacun fera son devoir’ (the French equivalent of ‘England expects . . . ’) prominently displayed on every French man-of-war after the battle. He saw the fight between the two nations as a struggle between a whale and an elephant.

  The Bellerophon headed for England and reached Torbay on 24 July. The country looked very beautiful to Napoleon. As soon as the ship had anchored, a number of rowing boats set out from Brixham to sell fruit and vegetables to the crew. But the Bellerophon had orders to keep Napoleon’s presence a secret, in case anyone tried to rescue him. The rowing boats were seen off by sentries with muskets. Those that returned were threatened with violence if they didn’t stay away.

  One or two persisted, however. Some schoolboys with bread to sell circled the ship, but were driven back towards her by the tide. They spotted a sailor at one of the lower gun ports trying to attract their attention without alerting the sentry. He furtively dropped a black bottle into the water. The boys waited until it had drifted well clear of the Bellerophon before retrieving it and reading the message inside.

  ‘We have got Bonaparte on board.’ As messages go, it could hardly have been more electrifying. The boys didn’t waste a moment. They turned their boat round at once and raced back to shore with the news. The Bellerophon’s secret was out.

  Before long, she was surrounded by sightseers, paddling furiously from shore in every boat they could find. The Bellerophon was overwhelmed. None of the boats was allowed alongside, but there were far too many to chase away. And it was no good pretending Napoleon was not on board. People had seen him through the stern windows.

  Around 3 p.m., he came on deck to meet his public. He wore a green Chasseur uniform with red facings, white waistcoat and tall boots. This was the man who had set Europe aflame for a generation, the man who by one calculation had caused someone else’s death for every minute of his self-appointed reign. The mere mention of his name was enough to make children sit up and behave, because he would come down the chimney and get them if they didn’t. The British hated him particularly because they held him responsible for that newest and most outrageous of government impositions – a tax on income to pay for the war. Napoleon was the devil incarnate to the good people of Brixham. They gave him a cheer as he appeared at the ship’s side.

  Napoleon took off his hat and bowed. He was delighted with his reception. He had convinced himself that the British would take him to their hearts. Caesar would have paraded him in chains through the streets, but Napoleon was expecting to receive the Order of the Garter from the king before buying a country house somewhere, under discreet guard, to begin work on his memoirs. English girls were nice, too. He had noticed lots of pretty ones in the boats around the Bellerophon. ‘What charming girls!’ he kept saying, as he bowed to them. ‘What beautiful women!’

  But it was not to be. The British wouldn’t even allow him ashore. He would have legal rights, once he was ashore. Their European allies wanted to put him up against a wall and shoot him without further ado. In England, though, seven centuries of common law stipulated that Napoleon must have a fair trial first. He had committed no crimes on English soil and there was no guarantee that he would be found guilty even if he had. Napoleon had his share of admirers in Britain, people who could see in meritocracy rather than aristocracy the kernel of a good idea.

  The Bellerophon was ordered to Plymouth while the authorities discussed what to do with him. The harbour was safer at Plymouth, full of warships to prevent a rescue attempt. The Bellerophon arrived there on 26 July.

  Once again she was surrounded by sightseers. Every inn for miles was swamped as people came from far and wide to view the ogre. At the height of the excitement, it was calculated that 10,000 people lay in a thousand different boats around the ship, waiting for him to show his face. Several drowned in the crush. The Bellerophon’s crew hung notices over the ship’s side detailing his progress: ‘At Breakfast’, ‘In Cabin With Captain Maitland’, ‘Writing With His Officers’. The one they were all waiting for was ‘Coming On Deck’.

  He was not impressed when they mentioned St Helena to him. He felt betrayed. Napoleon was a guest of the British, not a prisoner. He had voluntarily subjected himself to British law. How could they send him to St Helena when he didn’t want to go?

  St Helena it was, though. The Bellerophon was ordered to transfer Napoleon to the Northumberland for the journey. It had to be done quickly, because there was a lawyer in a boat waving a writ for Napoleon.

  The entire ship’s company formed up on the Bellerophon’s deck to see him off. It was a poignant moment. Those Frenchmen not going with Napoleon were in tears. The British were subdued as well. The crew of the Bellerophon had fallen under Napoleon’s spell during his twenty-four days on board. They recognised a leader of men when they saw one.

  The Northumberland sailed for St Helena on 11 August 1815. Napoleon got a glimpse of France next day. ‘Adieu, land of the brave!’ He removed his hat. ‘Adieu, France! Adieu!’ He never saw his country again.

  After his death in 1821, he was buried on St Helena and remained there until 1840, when his body was repatriated to France for reinterment at Les Invalides in Paris. Nicolas Soult and Emmanuel Grouchy were among the marshals from the old days who joined almost a million Frenchmen watching the procession. Napoleon’s coffin had been opened after his exhumation and his body was reported to be in good condition, although his nails had continued to grow after his death.

  There was no mention of his penis, which was said to have been removed after his autopsy in 1821. It was very small, according to the report. Something described variously as a mummified tendon, a maltreated strip of buckskin shoelace or shrivelled eel, or a short length of dried leather in a blue morocco box has since been sold several times at auction. When last heard of, it was the property of an American urologist who bought it to spare Napoleon further indignity. If it really is his penis, and if it really is only an inch long and shaped like a grape, then it might explain why Napoleon felt such a pressing need to fight the whole world.

  EPILOGUE

  In the autumn of 1804, when they were still poised to invade England, the men of the Grand Army clubbed together to build a monument to Napoleon at Boulogne. It was to be a column 160 feet high, topped by a statue of the Emperor in imperial dress, looking down across the vale of Terlincthun towards the British Isles in the distance. Marshal Soult laid the foundation stone on 6 November 1804.

  For various reasons, the column was not completed until 1841, shortly after Napoleon’s reinterment at Les Invalides. On 15 August that year – his birthday – a crowd of dignitaries gathered for the formal inauguration of the statue. The ceremony was solemn and dignified, marred only by the discovery that somebody had been there in the night and scratched the word ‘Waterloo’ across Napoleon’s left eyeball. The ceremony went ahead anyway and the statue was hoisted into position. Napoleon was placed magisterially on his column, looking down across the natural amphitheatre of Terlincthun, where he had sat on Dagobert’s thr
one all those years ago, handing out Légions d’honneur to his troops before the invasion of England.

  The place has changed remarkably little since Napoleon’s time. A modest obelisk marks the site of his throne, surrounded now by crisp packets and old Coca-Cola bottles. The Calais train clatters across the valley floor and there are council flats and a trailer park further up the hill. A Commonwealth War Graves cemetery stands to one side. Otherwise, though, Terlincthun remains the same as ever, a natural amphitheatre of green, bordered at the edge by the sea and a view of England beyond.

  It was here that Julius Caesar stood on the cliffs in 55 bc, looking at the island of Britannia on the horizon. Here, too, that Napoleon laid his plans. And it was here also, on a lovely day in May 1940, that a line of sinister grey figures appeared on the crest of the hill around Napoleon’s column and swept down rapidly across Terlincthun towards the sea.

  The figures were German. They were descended from the rough forest tribes that had given Caesar so much trouble (they called him ‘Kaiser’ in their own ungainly tongue). They had since emerged from the forest, swarmed and multiplied, moving ever outwards in their quest for more living space. Now they had reached the sea.

  As the Germans hurried across Terlincthun, others were sweeping towards Boulogne from the south, encircling the town in a classic pincer movement. Their leader was General Heinz Guderian, a man well versed in the art of war. There were not enough French troops to stem their advance. A battalion each of the Irish and Welsh Guards had arrived by sea the day before, to reinforce the garrison, but it was all too little, too late. Boulogne could not be held. The order was given for the British troops to withdraw again twenty-four hours after they had arrived. On the evening of 23 May, British destroyers moved into Boulogne under gunfire to take them off from the pier.

  It was a terrifying experience. As well as being dive-bombed by Stukas, the destroyers came under attack from tanks and snipers in the town. The Germans were firing at them across open sights. Aboard HMS Keith, Captain David Simpson did what so many captains at Trafalgar had done and ordered his men below to reduce casualties. He himself was the last man on the bridge. He was about to join the rest when he fell dead, shot through the chest by a German sharpshooter. He was the same age as Nelson when he died.