What a tempestuous world do we live in! Yet terrible as Buonaparte is in every point of view, I do not fear him so much as those domestic mischiefs - Burdett, Cochrane, Wardle, and Cobbett. I hope, however, that the mortification Cochrane, &c, have lately experienced in their base and impotent endeavours to pull down reputations which they found unassailable, will keep them down a little.69
Not all the opinions were on Gambier's side. There was one, addressed by a French prisoner to his captor, which merited at least some respect. "The French admiral was an imbicile" he admitted, "but yours was just as bad. I assure you that, if Cochrane had been supported, he would have taken every one of the ships. They ought not to have been alarmed by your briilots, but fear deprived them of their senses, and they no longer knew how to act in their own defence."70
The opinion was, of course, that of Napoleon during his long exile on St Helena.
There remained only the vote of thanks. The parliamentary session of 1809 was over by the time of Gambier's acquittal, so that the vote was postponed until the opening of the next session in January 1810. Cochrane tried to forestall the ministers by demanding in the Commons that the minutes of the court-martial should be produced before the House. This would have enabled him to debate their contents, as well as the conduct of the trial and the way in which evidence had, allegedly, been manufactured or suppressed. Cochrane promised to prove that the charts of Stokes and Fairfax must be false. Moreover, since Gambier himself had at no time been closer than seven miles to the guns of the French fleet - let alone within range of them - on what conceivable argument was he entitled to a vote of thanks ?
The ministry had had six months to prepare for this onslaught and, once again, they deflected Cochrane's attack with the greatest ease.
First of all, they amended Cochrane's motion so that it asked for the "sentence" of the court-martial, instead of the minutes of the proceedings, to be produced before the House. The amendment, which was carried easily, had the effect of reminding the world that Gambier had been acquitted, without detailing any of the evidence or argument leading up to that verdict. Whatever disquiet there might have been in the press, the ministry was master in its own house.
There was, of course, the added consideration that whatever Gambier had done, or not done, the government needed the vote more than he did himself. Despite the misgivings of the more liberal Whigs and the Radicals, their numbers were, as Cochrane admitted, "nothing compared to the organised masses in power, or eager to place themselves in power". When the members of the Commons had passed through the lobbies, 161 had approved the vote of thanks and only 39 had opposed it.71
Something of Cochrane's tarnished reputation as a naval hero survived, and he still claimed the loyal support of many Radicals. But to the majority of his contemporaries he had suffered a considerable humiliation at the hands of the Admiralty and of those whose power he had sworn to curb. In reality, his plight was worse than he knew. His career as a Royal Navy captain was over. Morton Pitt's vision of the Order of the Bath and his other honours being stripped from him was prophetic, as the high adventure of the Gamo and Fort Trinidad was darkened by the public drama of disgrace. The most extraordinary events of his life lay ahead, deeds performed where all the world could see, in countries which were mere names to most of his compatriots. But for the immediate future, the many enemies he had made in the government and the Admiralty were triumphant over him. For several years, at least, the courage required of him was of a higher order than any he had so far shown.
6
"Announce Lord Cochrane's Degradation"
THE displeasure of the Admiralty and the ministers over Cochrane's behaviour was quickly and clearly shown. In the very month of Gambier's court-martial, the first troops and ships of the so-called Walcheren expedition crossed the Channel. Their object was the destruction of French ships in the Scheldt, and the seizure of three arsenals and dockyards: Flushing, Antwerp, and Terneuse. Under the Earl of Chatham and Sir Richard Strachan, a total of 40,000 troops, 35 sail of the line, 5 smaller ships, 18 frigates and 200 attendant craft was to be employed.
Cochrane first urged the Admiralty to undertake an invasion of the Biscay islands instead. In default of this, he argued in favour of an attack on the Scheldt, using the same weapons as at the Basque Roads, rather than the cumbersome invasion fleet with its 40,000 troops. Their Lordships were not interested. Off the Kentish coast, the great armada rode at anchor. A more impressive display than the fine ships with their cheering men would have been hard to imagine. True, the Earl of Chatham, as Master General of the Ordnance, was not much qualified by experience to command such a force, but the court and the ministry had favoured him.
With his plans rejected, Cochrane was prepared merely to serve as captain of the Imperieuse, since the frigate was to form part of the expedition. To his dismay, he was informed that he had been superseded in his command. There was no further employment for him in the Royal Navy. During the bitter months which followed the court-martial he was left to draw his own conclusions as to his future prospects. At Walcheren, the expeditionary force, badly led and appallingly provisioned, lost half its men in the fever-infested islands of the Scheldt estuary. The nation mocked its leaders.
Great Chatham with his sabre drawn,
Stood waiting for Sir Richard Strachan;
Sir Richard, longing to be at 'em,
Stood waiting for the Earl of Chatham.
In three months, 11,000 men were prostrate with dysentery. There was one hospital ship and no proper medicine. The water was so foul that every drop had to be shipped from England. Medical authorities knew the islands as breeding grounds of fever, but no one consulted these authorities before the expedition sailed. As for the military initiative, its advantage of surprise had been lost by anchoring the great armada off the Kent coast as conspicuously as though for a royal review. In consequence, Flushing was taken in the first attack, and then nothing more was accomplished. After months of sickness and misery, the English invalids disembarked at the Kent ports again, bringing the "Walcheren sickness" with them. Cochrane reflected that a French fleet, inferior in strength to that of the Aix Roads, had evaded a force infinitely more powerful. The Portland government fell, scapegoat for the humiliations of the Scheldt. The reputation of the navy fared worse than that of the army, as Byron later described it in the fourth stanza of Don Juan, discussing "heroes".
Nelson was once Britannia's god of war,
And still should be so, but the tide is turn'd;
There's no more to be said of Trafalgar,
'Tis with our hero quietly inurn'd;
Because the army's grown more popular,
At which the naval people are concern'd;
Besides, the prince is all for the land service,
Forgetting Duncan, Nelson, Howe, and Jervis.
The faces of the new ministry were familiar enough, its leader, Spencer Perceval, having been Cochrane's opponent while Chancellor of the Exchequer. Cochrane turned to his own affairs, withdrawing to Portman Square to perfect his secret war plans at his uncle Basil's house. He soon crossed swords with the Hon. Charles Yorke, the new First Lord of the Admiralty. When it was known that Cochrane proposed to attack the new ministry in the Commons, Yorke informed him that he could have his command of the Imperieuse again, if he sailed that week. Cochrane reacted indignantly, and Yorke thereupon dismissed him observing that, "It is neither my duty nor my inclination to enter into controversy with you." In any case, scientific warfare occupied Cochrane's time. In March 1812, he revealed to the Prince Regent his array of secret weapons and well-laid plans. While Napoleon remained undisputed master of most of Europe and Wellington struggled onward through the Peninsula at stupefying cost, Cochrane saw total victory within his grasp. To the Prince Regent in his fairy palace beside the sea at Brighton, he offered triumph over France in a matter of weeks at the cost of virtually no British casualties. He was not drifting into the deceptions of lunacy but had, at last, t
urned his father's example as a scientific innovator to practical use. As the taste of the civilised world turned from the minuet to the quadrille, Cochrane had conceived the principles and demonstrated the techniques of poison gas and saturation bombardment.1
His scheme appeared, at first glance, so preposterous that he made no attempt to convince the Admiralty or the ministry to begin with. All too easily, they would have found means to dismiss him as a fool as well as a villain. Instead, he drew up a "Plan for the Destruction of the Naval Power of France", and addressed it to the Prince Regent directly on 2 March 1812. It was simply argued but carefully detailed, including diagrams of the weapons and their methods of use. Against such forms of warfare there could be no resistance and little form of defence. The world would wake one morning to find the British army, with naval support, in control of the entire coast of France. A military blow would thus be delivered which would infallibly cripple the power of Napoleon to continue the war. His surrender might be expected within a few weeks as the British overran France itself.
The proposal needed to be carefully and tactfully introduced, if Cochrane were not to be disregarded as a madman. He justified it to the Prince with massive understatement.
On the first blush of the proposition, it might, by some persons be considered as speculative and visionary, and even Your Royal Highness may probably regard it as extravagant and improbable; but, I confidently trust, there will be no difficulty in removing such impression from Your Royal Highness's mind, as the plan calculated to sustain it, is of the simplest kind and founded on the known principle that, the expansion of ignited powder is in the line of least resistance.2
The first part of Cochrane's secret plan was to replace the conventional bombardment of enemy ports by a close-range attack of such intensity that every ship in the harbour or anchorage would be destroyed or crippled. Indeed, as he promised the Regent, he could "destroy them in the strongest lines of defensive anchorage". Conventional bombardment of dockyards was a long-range attack of doubtful accuracy. Mortars had the best range, but their short squat barrels were anchored at an angle of 45 degrees. Even their range could only be adjusted by using a stronger or weaker charge to fire them. For the Royal Navy to sail in at close quarters was not only dangerous but involved a technical problem which was not always easy to overcome. The closer the battleships came to the harbour, the more effectively the harbour mole or walls screened their targets from them. Cochrane asked only for the use of three old hulks in order to conquer this difficulty and saturate the harbour at Flushing with a devastating storm of 6000 shells, raining down on the helpless French fleet within a matter of minutes. He would "in an instant overwhelm Flushing . . . dismount the cannon, and destroy the Ships to which they may afford protection".3
Flushing was, of course, only the first of many targets. Within a matter of days, Toulon, Brest, and the great anchorages of France would be a graveyard of burnt and half-submerged ships.
How were the attacks to be carried out ? In an illustrated appendix to his plan, Cochrane revealed the design of his "Temporary Mortars or Explosion Ships". The old hulks would first have their sides reinforced and braced by extra timbers. The bottom of the hull would be filled in with old cannon and iron embedded in clay. These precautions would ensure that the force of any explosion went upward and not through the bottom or sides of the vessel. Above the clay there must be a layer of gunpowder the length and width of the ship. Above that there would be a thinner layer of junk wadding, and finally the ranks of shells and carcases. This huge mortar would then be packed round on either side by old mooring chains and cables.4
The explosion ships would be guided to their targets during the hours of darkness and anchored at a convenient distance from the mole or outer fortification. These barriers, which made close bombardment so difficult for conventional ships, were no impediment to Cochrane's "temporary mortars", since their whole purpose was to lift shells up and over the defences. As he explained to the Prince Regent, "The Explosion Vessels would be invisible in the darkness of the night, until the Shells and Carcases, rising in the air, and spreading as they fly, should scatter devastation on all around."5
It was true that the mortar was fixed in one position and could not itself be adjusted. But Cochrane had found a remedy for this by means of shifting the ballast of the vessel so that it could be made to list further towards its target, thus angling the mortar to do the most damage. He had perfected this "so as to give the largest Carcases and Shells a sufficient, but not more than a sufficient momentum to plunge through the Decks of large Ships, and lodge in the holds of those of a smaller Class".6
To forestall his critics, Cochrane also revealed that he had undertaken a "confidential trial" in the previous year with the aid of Sir John Stuart. He had converted a wine pipe into a mortar, using only three pounds of powder for each shell. In the resulting explosion, it had bombarded an area 230 yards across with 8-inch shells. By a logical extension, three old hulks, of which there was no shortage in English yards, would saturate an area half a mile square with 6000 missiles. The attack would be swift, devastating, and decisive in its psychological effect on the enemy. Because of the intensity which Cochrane envisaged, it might well have been the Regency equivalent of a nuclear weapon.
Yet that was only the beginning of the plan. The destruction of the French fleet and coastal fortifications would swing the balance of the war in England's favour, but it was a mere preparation for the decisive blow. The next appendix to Cochrane's proposals showed the construction and mode of operation of "Sulphur Ships", or, as he called them more familiarly, "Stink Vessels".
His inherited enthusiasm for chemistry had led Cochrane to experiment in the manufacture of a gas which might be used for military purposes. The most promising was a mixture of vapour given off by burning charcoal and sulphur. The effect of the gas was, as Cochrane politely put it, to destroy "every animal function". Had the Spanish been possessed of such a weapon before 1808, he demonstrated how they might have taken the fortress of Gibraltar without firing a shot. "Had Lord Nelson understood the principles now submitted to Your Royal Highness, he could have destroyed the Danish Fleet without the loss of a man."7
The hulks which were to be used for the gas attacks, or to release "volumes of noxious effluvia", as Cochrane termed it, were intended for use against Flushing and Cherbourg, in the first instance. "If conducted at a proper time to a fit situation," said Cochrane, "their effect is inevitable." Once again, a bed of clay was to be laid at the bottom of the ship, with the charcoal on an upper deck so that air would circulate between the two layers and aid the coal in burning steadily but not too fast. Above the charcoal, the sulphur compound was laid. With the wind blowing inshore, the sulphur ships would be driven broadside-on against the mole or wall, and the gas or vapour would roll inland like a thick yellow fog. As it engulfed the dockyard and defences, perhaps already shattered by saturation bombardment, the enemy would be faced with the choice of suffocation or precipitate retreat. As the gas moved inland, carrying all before it, the wind would clear the air around the burnt-out stink vessels. The British troops might then occupy the fortifications at their leisure.8
It was never suggested that Cochrane's plans were in the least preposterous. Indeed, the secret committees appointed to consider them in the nineteenth century feared only that they might fall into the hands of other nations. As late as 1895, his Victorian biographer, J. W. Fortescue, wrote:
Wherein this plan consisted it is impossible to say, for its secret is still buried in the archives of the War Office; but it is generally supposed to have had its root in some new and appalling explosive.9
The details of the "secret weapons" were not divulged until the end of the nineteenth century, when the papers were deposited in the British Museum, and Cochrane's offer to Palmerston of even more elaborate devices was outlined in the posthumous publication of the latter's correspondence in the Panmure Papers in 1908. Cochrane kept his original promise to the Prince
Regent never to divulge the plans of the weapons "except for the honour and advantage of my own country".10
To Cochrane, in 1812, the possibilities of the new weapons seemed awesome. Wellington had reached Badajoz, but he was two years and hundreds of miles from the French frontier. Napoleon, driving the Russian armies back to Borodino and thence to Moscow, held the initiative. But what if the secret weapons were used? The French would wake one morning to find their Channel ports in the hands of the Royal Navy, their fleet sunk, and the invading English army already on the road from Normandy to Paris. The power of Napoleon would be destroyed at its root.
The lessons of the Western Front in 1914-1918 may make such optimism seem naive. No one who has read such accounts as Robert Graves's Goodbye To All That needs to be reminded how effectively the British gas-companies devastated their own front fine as the wind briefly but capriciously changed direction. The risk of failure, even of disaster, in 1812 was considerable, yet the gamble might have been justified. Cochrane had already proved his ability to command an attack with conventional weapons. With his secret devices and a much smaller number of men than had been squandered in the Walcheren affair, he might well have done decisive damage to the defences and morale of France.11
Shock, rather than admiration, was the reaction of some of the Regent's advisers on examining the ingenious proposals, as men who remembered the elegance and propriety with which many of the European battles of the eighteenth century had been fought. At Fontenoy in 1745, for instance, as the red and blue ranks of the two armies faced one another with the decorum of a ceremonial parade, silent and still before the opening of the battle, it was said that a group of French officers had crossed to the English lines and said gallantly, "Messieurs les Anglais, fire first!"
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