Thus the performance of British intelligence during the Long War was far from impressive. In the case of French intelligence in Britain, it was negligible, except on three counts: the encouragement of Irish insurgents, which was a case of pushing at an open door; the infiltration of royalist émigrés in London; and the infiltration of French agents into Britain and Brussels before Waterloo which nearly secured a French triumph by lulling the British into a sense of false security.
The work of a number of extraordinary individuals redeemed the general inadequacy of British intelligence. Apart from Mackenzie, who discovered the secret element in the Tilsit treaty, the three giants of British intelligence warfare were Sir Sidney Smith, his close and tragic associate, Captain John Wright and Thomas Cochrane, the master of irregular naval warfare.
Smith in some ways presaged T.E. Lawrence: his exploits at Acre have been outlined, and on his return to England from that expedition he arrived in Turkish dress, turban, robe, shawl and girdle around his waist with a brace of pistols, according to The Times. A brilliant linguist, he became a rival of Nelson, who in his extreme vanity resented him. Curly haired, hook-nosed and weatherbeaten, he was to become an instant popular hero celebrated by his own hornpipe and dances.
The son of an impecunious naval captain distantly related to Pitt, Sidney Smith was born in about 1764. He joined his first ship at the age of thirteen in 1777, taking part in the Battle of Chesapeake Bay in 1781 and Rodney’s great victory in 1782. He then enlisted as a mercenary under the Swedes in 1788, fighting in two furious actions with the Russians, receiving a knighthood for his bravery.
The outbreak of war in 1793 found him in the pay of the Turkish navy. He chartered a ship, manned it with British sailors and arrived off Toulon, where he found Hood preparing to leave under attack from French revolutionary forces. Smith volunteered to burn the French fleet. The contemporary naval historian John Marshall described the scene:
Sir W Sidney Smith, and the officers immediately under his orders, surrounded by a tremendous conflagration, had nearly completed the hazardous services assigned to them, when the loud shouts, and the republican songs of the approaching enemy were heard at intervals amid the bursting of shells and firing of musketry. In addition to the horror of such a scene . . . the dreadful explosion of many thousand barrels of gunpowder on board the Iris frigate, in the Inner Road, will ever be remembered by those who were witnesses of the scene. The concussion it produced shook the houses in Toulon like an earthquake, and occasioned the sudden crash of every window in them; whilst the scattered fragments of burning timber which had been blown up, descending with considerable force, threatened the destruction of all the officers and men who were near the spot. Fortunately, however, only three of the party lost their lives on the occasion. This powder-ship had been set on fire by the Spaniards, instead of scuttling and sinking her, as had been previously concerted.
Sir W Sidney Smith having completed the destruction of every thing within his reach, to his astonishment first discovered that our perfidious allies had not set fire to any of the ships in the basin before the town; he therefore hastened thither with the boats under his command, for the purpose of endeavouring to counteract the treachery of the Spaniards; when lo! To his great mortification, he found the boom at the entrance laid across, and was obliged to desist in his attempts to cut it, from the repeated volleys of musketry directed towards his boats from the flagship, and the wall of the Battery Royale. He therefore proceeded to burn the Héros and Thémistocle, prison-ships, in the Inner Road, which he effected, after disembarking all the captives. This service was scarcely performed, when the explosion of the Montreal, another powder-ship, took place, by means equally unsuspected and base, with a shock even greater than the first; but the lives of Sir W Sidney Smith and the gallant men who served under him, were providentially saved from the imminent danger in which they were thus a second time placed.
Smith followed this up with raiding parties against the French in the Atlantic, before being captured in April 1796 and spending two years in the grim Temple prison in Paris before his famous escape; the heroic defence of Acre followed.
Smith was a close friend of the notorious Lord Camelford, cousin of both Grenville and Pitt, and had an affair with Princess Caroline, the abandoned wife of the Prince of Wales. In 1805 he was posted to serve under Nelson. Sir William Hamilton wrote: ‘Be assured that Lord Nelson now understands Sir Sidney well and really loves and esteems him; and . . . will give him every proof of it, if ever they should meet on service together . . . They are certainly the two greatest heroes of the age.’
Smith urged an attack on Boulogne using Robert Fulton’s torpedoes and William Congreve’s rockets. He reconnoitred the coast with General Sir John Moore, who displayed a soldier’s caution. Smith replied: ‘General Moore, I am persuaded, would do his utmost to realize any plan laid down for him . . . but he is too wary to undertake such a task voluntarily, though, of course, foremost when ordered to go to work. We go on, as usual, pleasantly and well together.’
On 1 October 1805 Smith set out in eight ships carrying Fulton’s primitive torpedoes, as well as catamarans equipped with some 500 rockets each. These craft were thought to be more stable on recoil than ordinary boats, which proved to be the very opposite of the case. They rolled so badly that most of the rockets hit the water. The torpedoes also proved ineffectual. The First Sea Lord, Lord Keith, fulminated: ‘We shall get our ships crippled, fail of success and at a great expense . . . To support this kind of warfare . . . will bring our judgment into disrepute and end in nothing but disgrace. The vessels employed upon it might be used to much more advantage in an attempt on the enemy’s fleet at Cadiz.’
In spite of his record for crazy antics, Smith was given command of a squadron of Collingwood’s Mediterranean fleet in 1806 where he accurately reflected on Napoleon’s megalomania: ‘Knowing Bonaparte as I know him, I can easily imagine his thirst to realize a speculation manqué on Constantinople and the route to India. He cannot fail to find it increase on being nearer to the capital of the Eastern Empire than he is to his own . . . All this he can do if he is not counteracted . . . it will be a giant’s labour to eradicate them from the Hellespont and Bosphorous if they once establish themselves there. I dare say I shall be looked to for the Herculean labour.’ The following year he took part in Duckworth’s assault on Constantinople.
He also successfully supervised the evacuation of the Portuguese court from Lisbon later in the year. Towards the end of the war he fought off Sicily and besieged Algiers. He lived his later life in Paris, ironically enough, surviving to the ripe age of seventy-five, dying in 1840.
Most poignant of all was the fate of the third great spy, Captain John Wright, Smith’s great friend. Wright had been imprisoned along with Smith at the Temple prison in 1798. After acting as a spy and liaison officer with royalists they had been captured while becalmed off Le Havre. Smith had nearly been executed before his spectacular rescue in 1800 by royalists under the direction of William Windham, head of the British secret service.
Soon afterwards Wright turned up in Paris to the disgust of the British ambassador, the able Lord Whitworth:
I fear he is too well known to be of any material service; and I will confess to your Lordship that I am not without apprehension that, in a moment of irritation like the present, it may be recollected that he was a prisoner here and that he escaped from prison. I cannot but help think a less remarkable person, however intelligent Captain Wright may be, might have been equally useful without the risk of adding another pierre d’achoppement to the many which we may expect to find in our way. I have, however, told him that he might remain here for the present and see his old friends, if they are willing under the present circumstances to renew their acquaintance – which I very much doubt.
Nevertheless Wright behaved with unexpected sensitivity. In August 1803 he performed his most spectacular mission, landing George Cadoudal, the wily planner of the assassination at
tempt on Napoleon in rue Nicaise, near Dieppe, and General Pichegru, another royalist plotter, ten days later. Wright reported directly back to Pitt at Fort Walmer on the Dover coast, which acted as a base not just for espionage but for shipping goods, supplies and guns to sympathizers in France.
Subsequently Wright was given command of a small squadron of spyships off the French coast, only to be wounded and captured. A week after the Battle of Trafalgar he was found dead, as we have seen, his throat slit, supposedly having committed suicide on learning of the French victory at Ulm.
Mackenzie, Smith, Wright and Cochrane: these were the fathers of British intelligence. Mackenzie’s intelligence was responsible for one of the most controversial episodes of the war; Smith was to perform spectacularly in a single military action, a series of minor naval ones, and supremely as an intelligence officer; Wright missed immortality only because of the failure of the plot against Napoleon. Cochrane became the second greatest sailor of the age. Such was the glamorous, secretive hit-and-miss world of the early cloak-and-dagger men. But the greatest of all perhaps were the legions of lowly men observing troop and fleet movements, at great danger to their lives, in an age when there were no telephone or satellite intercepts to allow them to do so without risk.
Chapter 57
PENINSULAR UPRISING
Napoleon, after his triumphal return to Paris from Prussia in the summer of 1807 and the reassertion of his authority, was getting restless. Bored by the capital, and neglecting the threat still posed by Britain, he looked to new areas of conquest. He conceived a dream of first sewing together a three-pronged alliance, supposedly against England, but in reality to add to his dominions. He would join the Russians and the Austrians and invade the Ottoman empire, thence march through Persia to occupy British India. A second offensive would be mounted to take control of Britain’s naval base in Sicily and thus ensure total control of the Mediterranean. (As a start, Reggio Calabria was taken on 2 February 1808 and Scylla, across the Strait of Messina, on 17 February). Thirdly he would occupy the Iberian Peninsula and from there launch an expedition across the Straits of Gibraltar and invade North Africa. Of the three, the last was to be pursued most vigorously. A variety of pretexts was trotted out: it was necessary to enforce the Continental System by taking over Britain’s last ally and major trading entrepot, Portugal, and therefore it was necessary to cross Spain. Spain also needed liberating from the Bourbons.
It seems clear that Napoleon simply wanted to add the plump prize of Spain, with its glittering South American empire, to his domains. First though, he needed to take Portugal and its rather poor – in those days – Brazilian colony, close allies of Britain. In September 1807 Marshal Junot and an army corps were sent to the Spanish border, with the demand that Godoy allow them to cross northern Spain to subdue Portugal. Godoy, cowardly and venal, agreed in exchange for his being given the huge slice of Portugal south of the Tagus as his personal kingdom.
The regent of Portugal, Prince João, was approached. He agreed to close his ports and declare war on Britain, but then prevaricated. Losing patience, Napoleon instructed Junot to invade Portugal on 12 October as João dithered. Junot crossed the rugged and sodden hills of northern Spain to Salamanca, which he reached on 12 November and then drove on towards Lisbon.
The British moved swiftly. Under the rival dual leadership of Canning and Castlereagh – Portland being a figurehead – Lord Strangford, the energetic British ambassador in Lisbon, Sir Sidney Smith in charge of a naval squadron, and the crusty Lord St Vincent himself had decided to make up João’s mind for him. St Vincent may have actually threatened to bombard Lisbon to persuade the Portuguese court to depart for Brazil – in those days little more than a tropical backwater – which they were deeply reluctant to do.
There followed a remarkable exodus. On 27 November 1807 the mad Queen Maria made an appalling scene on the quayside, refusing to embark because she believed she was being taken to die on the guillotine, like Louis XVI. She had to be coaxed aboard gently. Almost the entire court and nobility of Portugal were leaving Lisbon. With them the royal family took the crown jewels, the royal library, the royal silver, the royal carriages, a multitude of other belongings, and a huge personal retinue. About 10,000 Portuguese retainers and officials boarded some forty ships to make the long journey across the Atlantic to Brazil, escorted by British warships.
All were aboard, but there was no wind. On the 28th Junot reached Santarém, his progress held up by an incessant downpour and the resultant mud. The following day he had reached Cartaxo, but a slight breeze had by then enabled the ships to slip down the Tagus as far as the mouth of the estuary. The speed with which the Portuguese court moved took Junot by surprise. On the night he heard of it he leapt from his bed at Cartaxo and ordered 1,000 of his grenadiers down the rain-sodden road to Lisbon. The following day they reached the Bay of Bom Suceso at the tip of the Tagus estuary in time to open fire on the sails disappearing over the horizon. When news of the Portuguese court’s escape reached Napoleon he exploded in one of his more spectacular rages. Years later, in exile on St Helena, he described João as ‘the only one who ever tricked me’.
Napoleon was now determined to seize Spain itself, although as a vassal state it was much more conveniently governed through the puppet Charles and Godoy than directly by the French. Napoleon’s seizure of Italy, and in particular of Naples, as well as the punitive treatment of Prussia, were the moments at which French conquests ceased to be defensible and became merely acquisitive. The invasion of Spain was on another plane altogether. The Prussian annexation could be defended in theory as self-defence against an attacker, Naples as a pre-emptive strike against a British base. There was no such excuse for the invasion of Spain. It was imperial aggrandisement. And it was a terrible misreading of the country. Unlike Italy, so long supine before invading and occupying powers, as well as fragmented, Spain was the hub of a powerful global empire which even then was perhaps the world’s most extensive. Spain was in decline, certainly, and had no military ambitions in Europe, but it was a misjudgement to assume that it could simply be colonized and that its people would tamely accept this.
The turn of the tide against Napoleon therefore began in Spain in 1808, not with the invasion of Russia in 1812. He had embarked upon an impossible campaign of conquest against one of the proudest people on earth. Nor was it the British initially who mounted the greatest struggle against the Emperor: it was the Spanish and Portuguese themselves. Napoleon wrote contemptuously: ‘If this thing were going to cost me 80,000 men I wouldn’t do it; but it won’t take 12,000; it’s mere child’s play. I don’t want to hurt anybody, but when my great political chariot is rolling, it’s as well to stand from under the wheels.’
Napoleon, the supreme opportunist, as always took advantage of events as they occurred. Some 100,000 French troops crossed the Pyrenees. On 16 February the French, on a pretext, seized Pamplona, San Sebastian, Figueras, and Barcelona. Napoleon then ordered Murat, at the head of the invading army, to march on Madrid.
There is no doubt he had annexation in mind. But an uprising occurred on 17 March, known as the Tumult of Aranjuez, in which a column of dissident Spanish soldiers and peasants, furious at the corruption of the court and its supine pro-French policy, as well as the country’s economic crisis, marched against Godoy, who had to take refuge in a rolled up carpet to preserve his life.
The chief minister’s fall was followed by that of the King himself, who was forced by the mob to abdicate in favour of his twenty-four-year-old son, Ferdinand VII, a spiteful and cruel reactionary under the influence of his appalling aunt, the hunchback dwarf Carlota, who had married the regent of Portugal. Ferdinand loathed Godoy, who he believed was plotting to exclude him from the succession. All this provided the pretext for French intervention in Spain and its conversion from a quasi-colony of France into a full-blown one.
Ferdinand had, in fact, been conspiring secretly with Napoleon, and had been arrested by Godoy for treason,
but the Spanish people were unaware of this, and believed him to be an anti-French patriot by comparison with his parents and with Godoy. Napoleon moved swiftly: he travelled immediately down to Bayonne, where he arrested Charles IV as well as Godoy and Ferdinand, declaring that he would mediate between the warring factions. Ordinary Spaniards understood what that meant, and crowds attempted to decouple Ferdinand’s carriage from its horses in an effort to delay him; but the lantern-jawed prince took no notice, believing that he was Napoleon’s trusted ally and that his father and Godoy would be regarded by the French as enemies.
He arrived at Bayonne on 20 April, ten days ahead of his parents. There, to his astonishment, Napoleon took Charles’s side against him, insisting that the young King abdicate immediately, and threatening to arrest him if he did not. Napoleon wrote on May 1st:
I have just met the King and Queen, who are very glad to be here. The King received his sons with displeasure. All the Spaniards have kissed hands: but the old King appears to be very angry with them.
The Prince of the Asturias is very stupid, very surly, very hostile to France; with my knowledge of how to handle men, his twenty-four years’ experience makes no impression.
The War of Wars Page 63