by Roy Adkins
At this point the final decision on whether Napoleon should be exiled to St Helena or elsewhere had not been taken, and the newspapers were full of speculation. They also carried letters voicing strong opinions on the subject, and one that may well have been read by Napoleon was published by The Times on 26 July:What is to be done with him? Is he after all his crimes to be suffered to go unpunished; or in what way is he to be brought to justice? . . . What punishment can be just, if the condemning him to death be cruel? He has, for a long succession of years, deluged Europe in blood, to gratify his own mad vanity, his insatiable and furious ambition. It is calculated, that every minute he has reigned, has cost the life of a human being. He has desolated the earth in its fairest portions. He has not only darkened the palace and the crowded mart with terror and dismay, but he has carried unutterable distress into cottage, and the mountain solitude.23
Napoleon had carried on unlimited warfare with the aim of making Europe a French Empire, and while people were relieved and sometimes surprised to find he was a man, rather than a supernatural monster, many held him responsible for their personal loss and would never forgive him. To the British, just as Nelson would always be a hero, Napoleon would always be an ogre.
As soon as the Admiralty heard that Napoleon was on board the Bellerophon, they decided that the ship must be moved to Plymouth for extra security against any rescue attempt, and John Smart watched the ships depart: ‘The officer who had gone to London, must have travelled quickly, for on Wednesday morning, as soon after sunrise as the telegraph could work, instructions had been sent to Plymouth, and these had been forwarded to Brixham. The ships weighed anchor at once and sailed for Plymouth, no secret being made of their destination. Boney having gone, the world no longer found anything of interest at Brixham. The visitors left us, and I went back to school. But at Plymouth the Bellerophon was still a greater attraction than it had been with us.’24
Although the anchorage at Plymouth was more secure, it was also more accessible for the sightseers, and it became increasingly difficult to keep them at bay. For Napoleon, these few days in Torbay and Plymouth, appearing on deck for the people of the nation he had tried so hard to conquer, were his swansong. On 31 July a letter arrived with the official decision of the British government - exile to St Helena. Arrangements were made to transfer Napoleon to the Northumberland, and on 4 August the Bellerophon set sail from Plymouth along the south coast of Devon. The Northumberland met the Bellerophon off Start Point on 6 August, Napoleon was transferred and the next day he was sailing from Europe into exile for the last time.
Napoleon was not to escape from St Helena, as he had from Elba, and after a long illness he died on 5 May 1821. There has been controversy ever since as to whether he was assassinated by being poisoned over a long period of time, or whether, as the official report claimed, he died of stomach cancer. Despite investigations over the years that have supported the official view, it is unlikely that the mystery will ever be resolved conclusively.
Sir Sidney Smith, the man who had dogged Napoleon’s rise and fall, lived on into old age. After Waterloo he settled with his family in Paris, in part because the British government owed him a great deal of expenses, and until these were received he was in danger of being imprisoned for debt in Britain. It was a complaint all too familiar to senior naval officers and diplomats. At the end of 1815 he was invested with the insignia of a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath by the Duke of Wellington at a celebration dinner at the Élysée Palace in Paris.
Smith continued to lobby for help for Christian slaves in North Africa, and eventually the British government sent out a fleet of warships to deal with the main slavers’ base at Algiers. This was not commanded by Smith, as he had hoped, but by Sir Edward Pellew, who relied more on a show of force than Smith’s more delicate style of diplomacy. In August 1816, after the Algerian shore batteries opened fire on Pellew’s ships, they replied with such devastating broadsides that the town’s sea defences were wrecked. The ruler of Algiers released over one thousand slaves and promised not to enslave any more Christians. After this Pellew, who had already been made the first Viscount Exmouth, became the commander-in-chief at Plymouth - a post that he held from 1817 to 1821. He then effectively retired, although occasionally making his voice heard in Parliament, and lived in Devon until his death in January 1833.
Smith eventually received the money the government owed him, but by that time he was ensconced in the Parisian social scene and was happy to remain there. His wife Caroline died in 1826 and was buried near the grave of Captain Wright in the Père Lachaise cemetery. Smith lived on in Paris and was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath in 1838 by the young Queen Victoria. Two years later he died, at the age of seventy-six, and after a magnificent funeral he was buried beside his wife.
In the years that followed Waterloo, Smith was one of very few people who worried that Napoleon might return from St Helena. Most were happy to forget the French dictator and enjoy peacetime life, but even if Smith was no longer at the heart of the British intelligence network, he was a shrewd judge of politics. More than one plot was put forward to rescue Napoleon from exile, and Thomas Cochrane himself entertained an idea of persuading him to leave St Helena for South America. Cochrane had not served in the British Navy since his destruction of the French ships at Basque Roads and Gambier’s court martial. In 1813 he was falsely implicated in and then wrongly convicted of a stock exchange fraud carried out by one of his uncles and was imprisoned. If it had not been for this fraud case, Cochrane would have played a part in the war against America, as he was about to sail there as flag captain for his uncle, Alexander Cochrane, when he was arrested. After his release he returned to his seat in Parliament but continued to be outraged at the corruption both in government and at the Admiralty, and was tired of the English prejudice against Scots like himself, so he did not hesitate when offered a post in Chile.
In 1818 he was hired by the Chilean government to command its fleet during its war of independence from Spain. He had already organised the building of the first sea-going steam warship for the Chileans, but this was not yet complete, so in August he took passage with his wife on a sailing ship for Chile, planning to stop at St Helena and persuade Napoleon to become Emperor of South America. On the way news arrived that the Spanish were grouping for an attack and he was needed in Chile immediately, so the diversion to St Helena was cancelled. In August 1812, despite efforts from his relatives to marry him off to a rich heiress, Cochrane had secretly married a sixteen-year-old orphan from Essex called Katherine Barnes. The marriage was later questioned and they were married twice more in 1818 and 1825.
Cochrane’s success in Chile and then Peru, where he was accompanied by Katherine and their growing family, led other countries fighting for independence to seek his services, and after a brief time with the Brazilian navy he joined the Greek navy in 1827. Here he found he could do very little and returned to Britain the following year, having become the most famous admiral of the post-war years - the only British admiral since Nelson to achieve a global reputation. With a change of monarch and of government, Cochrane was rehabilitated into the navy and in subsequent years managed to clear his name and have his honours and position restored. He died in London in October 1860 at the age of eighty-five.
Cochrane was not the only one to be caught up in one of the plots to rescue Napoleon: in 1820 Tom Johnson the smuggler was hired to use a submarine to ferry him from St Helena to a ship waiting out to sea. The plot was discovered, and as Johnson took the submarine down the Thames so that another ship could tow it to St Helena, the vessel was captured by the British authorities and later destroyed. Johnson died in 1839 at the age of sixty-seven.
It was only a minority of senior officers who, like Cochrane, continued an active naval career as mercenaries. A few were kept on by the navy in peacetime posts, but the majority retired and occupied themselves with other pursuits. This was really only an option for those of the ran
k of captain and above, because half-pay for lieutenants and midshipmen was too meagre to live on. Lieutenant Hoffman, who had been a prisoner in France when Napoleon was exiled to Elba, wrote of his wartime naval service:The days of my youth have floated by like a dream, and after having been forty-five years in the Navy my remuneration is a hundred and eighty pounds a year, without any prospect of its being increased. If the generality of parents would take my advice they never would send one of their boys into the service without sufficient interest [influence with senior naval officers] and some fortune. If they do, their child, if he behaves well, may die in his old age, possibly as a lieutenant, with scarcely an income to support himself; and if he should under these circumstances have the misfortune to have married and have children, God, I hope, will help him, for I very much fear no one else will!25
In 1840 the Admiralty offered a special retirement rank of captain to the fifty most senior half-pay commanders under the rank of post-captain, and Hoffman was lucky enough to be one of them, so just nine years before he died he received his pay rise. Many other officers were not so fortunate. Even so, they were always better off than the seamen, who seldom had any income or pension to fall back on. For years they had been treated like children, told what to do at every hour of the day, and when allowed on shore for a short time they spent their money freely without any thought for the future. When peace finally came many ships were paid off and the newspapers made fun of the resulting antics of the sailors as they frittered away years of back-pay in a few days.
When the money ran out the sailors found circumstances had changed. The navy no longer wanted them, and there were far too few vacant places in merchant ships. Those who had a trade went back to it, but on land the majority were unskilled labourers, in competition with soldiers who were also redundant at the end of the fighting, at a time when many labourers were being laid off because their jobs could now be done by machines. Some of these men sailed for distant parts of the empire to seek a new life, but many were reduced to begging and crime. The situation was very similar in France, except that here sailors were vastly outnumbered by soldiers from Napoleon’s disbanded armies. Some sailors had been prudent with their pay, and a few had grown relatively rich from prize money and were able to lead a comfortable life. Robert Jeffery, who had been given £600 for agreeing not to prosecute Captain Lake for stranding him on a desert island, should have been among these. In 1818 he married a woman from a village near to his home of Polperro, but two years later he died of consumption.
After such a long conflict most people were content to look to the future, but a few revisited places they had known during the war, and one such was Donat Henchy O’Brien. In May 1827, nearly two decades after escaping from the French prison at Bitche, he set out for the Continent with his wife, young son and nurse in order to relive some of his memories. One of his first stops was the site of the Battle of Waterloo:At eleven o’clock we arrived at the inn of the village of Waterloo. This immense forest is said to cover sixteen thousand acres, one sixtieth of which is annually cleared to supply Brussels with fuel. I will not attempt to describe the varied and strong emotions that possessed and overwhelmed me on my traversing this mighty battlefield. I traced the positions of the two great hosts; marked the spots where the most deadly charges had been given; and where the cannon had done the most murderous work. Amidst my sorrows for suffering and sacrificed humanity, I confess that my heart glowed at the idea that it was here that the prowess, bravery, and genius of England had conquered the conqueror of the world; had annihilated revolutions; re-established monarchies; restored dynasties; and placed Europe once more on the basis of social order and international rights.26
He then moved on to visit ‘the grave of a gallant Hibernian, Colonel Fitzgerald (whom I had known as a détenu at Verdun), surrounded by several others who had on that occasion immortalised the British character, and covered themselves with glory; and in honour of whom memorials have been erected, with which the walls of the little church of the village are lined . . . We were told that Miss Fitzgerald continued periodically to visit the shrine of her lamented brother, and that her piercing and piteous cries made it a most afflicting scene to witness.’27
The next stage of O’Brien’s journey was part of the way along which the captured seamen were marched to their prisons, and he also tried to trace their escape routes. At Bitche they went to the best inn in the village, and just as they were preparing to visit the dreaded prison O’Brien saw that the landladysuddenly fixed her eyes on me with astonishment. At first, her brows were knitted, then her eyes were dilated, with all the expression of wonder; and at last she burst forth with an ejaculation, ‘Mon Dieu! je me souviens bien de vos traits, Monsieur; vous étiez un des aspirants de la marine royale anglaise;’ [My God! I recognise you, Sir. You were one of the midshipmen of the English Royal Navy] and after many other ‘mon Dieus,’ she came to the catastrophe of my having been a prisoner in Bitche, and of my having made an escape which nobody could account for, except on something like the ground of miracle.28
O’Brien took his wife round the prison, conducting her ‘to the exact point of the ramparts, from which my unfortunate companion [Lieutenant] Essel, in attempting to escape, had been dashed to pieces. Grief for the loss of a friend thus sacrificed in youth, and under such unhappy circumstances, strongly oppressed me.’29 Every detail was shown to his wife:And the sensation of a female’s mind may be conceived, when I pointed out the three lofty ramparts that I had scaled, and the point over which the rope was thrown, and by which I and my companions had descended to such an awful depth. Amidst serious matters the ludicrous often intervenes. Their brigadier [who was acting as guide] did not understand a word of English, and consequently, he knew not upon what we were talking; but our emphasis and earnestness aroused him, and he began to tell us a legend of a marvellous escape, effected by four English prisoners-of-war, who had scaled the three ramparts and got down to the glacis; and he added, that two of them were aspirants [midshipmen] of the British navy. And he concluded by shrugging his shoulders, and saying, that the English naval officers had the faculty of climbing and creeping ‘comme des chats [like cats];’ when I could not help laughing, but did not tell him that I was the very man who led the way on that occasion.30
In early July the travellers arrived at Verdun, but to O’Brien’s disappointment his old gaoler was away, particularly as he remembered one incident: ‘One day I asked this fellow, whether he imagined that there was any probability of the English prisoners being liberated from Verdun. He sarcastically answered, “Oh! qu’oui, certainement [Oh, for sure, certainly];” and he fixed our date of liberation when our ships of the line could sail over land, and batter down the tower and citadel. I should have liked to enjoy my revenge, by reminding him of his sarcasm, and of our having defeated his grand army, captured his Emperor, and destroyed his system and his power.’31
At the hotel O’Brien had to show his passport to the police: ‘They were civil, and asked me if it was true that I had once been a prisoner-of-war, and had escaped by scaling the walls of Verdun and Bitche. I replied in the affirmative, and they expressed their astonishment, and retired.’32 Before exploring the town he received a visit from an old friend, Dr John Graham, who had been surgeon of the shipwrecked Hussar. After the war ended he had remained in France, having married a Frenchwoman during his imprisonment. The subsequent tour of the town was tinged with disappointment: ‘I had expected to find in the old burying-ground of the English prisoners, tombs and epitaphs to many of my departed friends, but the site had been covered with stately edifices, and the bones of my countrymen had been removed, many years back, to a cemetery, aux faubourgs [in the suburbs] not far from Belle Ville. The mind is hurt at the desecration of the hallowed ground in which we have deposited the remains of those we loved and esteemed.’33
Eighteen years later, in the summer of 1845, Edward Boys went back to the Continent, because, he related, it was recommended that he should go to
the spa waters near Liège in Belgium for the benefit of the health of his children and to help his own rheumatism: ‘On arriving at Ostend, in a steamer, with about two-hundred passengers, we found the hotels so crowded, that it was necessary to proceed to Bruges, and there we took up our quarters at the Hotel de Commerce. Early in the morning, I enquired if anyone in the hotel knew of a Madame Derikre, who had formerly kept a public-house on the road to Blankenberg, called the “Raie-de-Chat,” and if she were still living; when I was told she had been dead about four years.’34
He wandered around Bruges, to see if he could recognise any of the streets and hiding places from the time when he and his companions were waiting to get back to England after having escaped from prison in Valenciennes. The next day he hired a carriage to Blankenberge on the coast:As we advanced into the country, the scenery became somewhat exciting, for I fancied I could recollect the very ploughed field where Hunter and I were chased by the gendarmes, when we were . . . reconnoitring, and had to plunge through a ditch, to escape into the wood. We soon reached the ‘Cat,’ under very different circumstances and feelings. As we entered the premises, almost everything became fresh in my memory; nothing seemed altered, except a new room at the side of the house . . . On enquiring after the former hostess, Madame Derikre, her successor told me she thought she had been living at Ostend about two years since; but a young man said he thought she had been dead about four years. We examined every part of the premises, and the very loft where I was so long concealed.35
He and his wife then walked to the beach and mounted the steps to the battery, from where ‘nothing seemed altered in the village, or in the surrounding country’.36 Returning to the hotel, they made copious enquiries, but could find no trace of the Derikre or Moitier family, until ‘an old man, in the stable department of the hotel, stated that he knew them, and that the wife had been dead about four years’.37 Boys refused to give up the search and went by train to Ostend, because the present landlady of the Cat thought she once lived there:The following morning, on my arrival, [I] engaged an intelligent commissioner, named Pierre, to assist me. Having communicated to him the object of my return, we first visited the vegetable market, then some of the public offices, but could learn nothing encouraging, for Madame Derikre had latterly been too poor and too insignificant to be known by the authorities by that name, as she was generally called by her maiden name, Madame Robert, which I did not then know . . . We were again told that Madame Derikre had been dead four years. The Commissioner now began to be weary of the search . . . but as the name was not common, I saw no reason as yet for abandoning all hope, and, therefore, determined to proceed and endeavour to find out where this woman was buried four years’ since . . . when halting, in earnest and somewhat audible conversation, on the bridge, a little decrepid old man, selling apples under a shed, rose and said, ‘Pardon me, gentlemen, but it occurs to me, it is not Madame Derikre you seek, but the old “frau,” called the “Aenglishe Reeker.”’38