A Set of Lies

by Carolyn McCrae

  As he wrote of the actions of Lady Frances Frensham, of how she had successfully become the close confidante of the exiled Emperor, how she had borne him a son, Lewis, on her return to England, he found it difficult to see that courageous and selfless woman in the respectable, portly Lady Frances he now knew.

  *

  I arrived in Vienna on the last day of February 1815 and was ushered into the rooms of the newly ennobled Duke of Wellington. The Duke had recently been appointed Plenipotentiary at the Congress which was to determine the future of Europe and he was becoming increasingly impatient with the lack of progress. He spoke openly that day, as any man speaks to one he has known many years. He was not impressed by his fellow delegates at the Congress. He said they were concerned only with the drawing of lines on maps which would serve only to create future conflict and would solve nothing. With Napoleon on Elba, he protested, all urgency had gone from solving Europe’s continuing problems. He was, he complained, expected to attend balls every night which prevented the business of the day commencing any time before three in the afternoon.

  I began my argument with direct criticism of his masters in government, which I knew the Duke would take well. He agreed that it had been a grave mistake to allow Bonaparte to be exiled with dignity to Elba, it was far too close to his homeland of Corsica and far too convenient for fashionable men and women on the European tour to visit.

  He blamed the mistake of Elba on the politicians. He would not know that, when he became a politician, he would make many more, and worse, and with more lasting consequences.

  Both the Duke and I had our spies on Elba. We both had received reports that Napoleon had plans for imminent escape. We understood that there were too many opportunities for escape even were the Navy inclined to patrol conscientiously, a situation neither of us had any confidence in. In truth, we both were well aware that the General was able to leave his island exile any moment he chose and we both understood how well he would be welcomed on his return to French soil. There was much that we both knew, and much we agreed upon, but my task that winter’s afternoon in Vienna was to inform the Duke on what he did not know.

  He did not know the extent to which admiration of Bonaparte had spread in the fashionable salons and drawing rooms of England. The Duke asked for the names of those powerful voices in London’s most respected houses where Bonaparte was hailed as a hero, and he opened his eyes in surprise as the list was not a short one. He asked who were the members of the Parliament I reported as openly working for Bonaparte’s freedom and wrote the names hurriedly on the paper in front of him. In minutes Admirals and Generals, upon whose strength we still relied, were added to the list of those I reported as spreading pernicious treason.

  At his request I described how many members of society and the political classes spoke openly of their admiration for a man who had stood against the privilege and excesses of the French Royal Family, drawing parallels with the over-indulgence then exhibited by our own Royal Family. I talked of the anger that was openly expressed about the treatment of a man who had been a legitimate Head of State. I reported how revolutionary talk was spreading in the cities and towns of the north. I impressed on The Duke that my agents were reporting open talk of revolution in London and the overthrow of the British monarchy.

  The Duke asked whether talk of revolution and republicanism was not being exaggerated.

  I gave further detail of respected men and women manipulating the power of the mob, of agitators already planted amongst the poor of the northern towns, of large numbers of men willing to take up arms against the rich and powerful, their ranks increasing most notably in those areas overrun by the new industries as unemployment and starvation spread.

  I impressed on him the link between the rich and powerful Bonapartists in their mansions in Mayfair and the forces of disruption.

  The Duke had been unaware of the dangers the spread of mechanisation brought to established order as manufacturers sought to maximise their profit. He, who had been concerned with every detail of the lives of men when they had been his army, had had no thought to their condition on their discharge. He had not thought of the effects on society of tens of thousands of men with no employment, no money to buy bread for their families and, worst of all, no hope of improvement.

  When I fell silent once more he stood, turning away from me to look out over the gardens. From the set of his shoulders I was aware of his tiredness. When he spoke it was slowly and deliberately.

  He talked of the recent decades of devastation that could only be justified by the preservation of our way of life, our system of government and our society. He turned back towards me and asked if I had anything positive to suggest.

  I put forward the idea that the revolutionaries would be powerless without the leadership and the funding of the society Bonapartists I had described. Without those men and women revolutionary impetus would be lost and the threat would subside. When he demanded to know how I planned to have the Bonapartists abandon their plots I said only one word, ‘Bonaparte’, and I was rewarded with the Duke’s slow, narrow-lipped smile. ‘Our Cornish Bonaparte is soon to be on Elba?’ he asked.

  I explained, with the confidence I felt at the time, that the very next day would see Bonaparte replaced. He would be on the Bellerophon heading for Genoa where I would join its company. The intention had always been to obtain intelligence that would enable us to preserve the fragile peace in Europe. That would not change. But I proposed an additional task. Bonaparte must be made to dictate letters to his supporters in England, instructing them to reverse the work of their agitators. Only Bonaparte, I argued, could stop Bonapartism and he must be persuaded that that was as of much importance as the intelligence he would provide.

  The Duke put forward doubts and objections but I continued to argue that only Bonaparte himself and those who loved him could stop the tide of revolution in England, and if it became necessary we could take the two most influential Bonapartist houses into our confidence. We would tell the ladies that he was cooperating with us and in return he would have, within strict limits, his freedom. We would impress upon them that his life and happiness depended on their quashing all support of revolution and, most critically, on their silence.

  When the Duke questioned whether women in their drawing rooms and salons of Mayfair had that power I was able to confirm that, without doubt, they had. When he questioned whether these rich and powerful women would agree to our terms I was able to confirm that, without doubt, they would.

  I waited as the Duke weighed up all the information I had given him.

  It was some minutes before he asked what would become of our Cornish Bonaparte on Elba. The General’s inner circle would be sure to suspect the switch and the charade would be exposed quickly enough. I argued that we could depend on the loyalty the General instilled in those close to him. Just as the Bonapartists in London would hold the secret fast, so would those who loved him on Elba. We would impress upon them that their Napoleon would be free, and alive, for only as long as they made no complaint. Should they let slip that the man ruling his little island was not the man he should be we would, without hesitation, assassinate the original.

  Our greatest weapon, both in England and on Elba, was the love and loyalty held for their Emperor. Those who knew him best, those who were most committed to him as if to a feudal lord, would be his strongest protectors.

  I remember The Duke’s final words to me, as I was dismissed from that interview. ‘All that is required of you, Lacey, is to persuade the man that seems to command the love and respect of all that he is to write letters at your dictation and then to spend his life disposing of the intelligence that made him the most feared man of our times.’ I could find no adequate reply.

  My confidence in our plan had, however, been misplaced.

  I was but three hours towards Genoa when my party was overtaken by a messenger with instructions to return to Vienna.

  We were too late, I discovered. Napoleon
had escaped Elba and was already in France. He had landed near Cannes and was heading north for Paris, attracting many followers as he went. I listened as the Duke informed me, his intelligence for once more timely than mine. Napoleon was gathering an army around him, becoming as strong as he ever was. His abdication would be annulled, he would return to the Imperial throne. England would once more be at war and there would be nothing to stop revolution from spreading through the towns and cities of England.

  It took one hundred days and many bloody and hard-fought battles including those at Ligny, Quatre Bras, Wavre and outside the village of Waterloo to once again defeat Napoleon Bonaparte.

  Those one hundred days changed many things including, and as I write these words ten years after the events I remain saddened by the thought, my relationship with the Duke.

  In Vienna, five months earlier, the Duke had listened to my report with patience and understanding and had allowed me to act upon my own instincts and not his instructions. As I was ushered into his presence on the eighth day of July 1815, three weeks after the battle at Waterloo and six days after the battle at Issy, I at once recognised the change in his manner. He made no preliminary pleasantries, he did not look up from the papers laid out on his desk, he spoke without the bother of meeting my gaze. That, more than any of his words, indicated to me that there could no longer be any friendship between us.

  Nor did he rely on my intelligence as he had.

  It was he who told me what I already knew, that Napoleon had decided upon retreat to the United States of America, that safe passage had been requested for the small fleet that would carry him and his entourage across the Atlantic. It was he who told me what I already knew, that that request had been refused and that the blockades of ports on the Brittany and Aquitaine coasts of France were to be enforced most vigorously to prevent his escape.

  Instead of waiting for my suggestions as to actions he gave me instructions as he had done in the earliest years of our acquaintance. He told me that if anything of our long-discussed plan were to come to fruition I was to act immediately. If I still believed that there was the threat of revolution in England and that peace was fragile in Europe I was to obtain Napoleon’s person under my control without delay.

  He told me what I already knew, that many voices called for the assassination of Napoleon or his handing over to the Russians or Prussians who had vowed to put him to death. In England the sole topic of fashionable argument was whether Napoleon would be assassinated before he could be tried and executed. There was even talk of blasting his ship out of the water as he ran the blockade, as run the blockade all believed he would, so that there could be no grave to act as as an object of pilgrimage. One way or another the Emperor would likely soon be dead.

  My instructions were to effect the switch immediately so it would be the Cornishman’s life, not that of the Emperor, which would be ended and we would not then lose all that we had planned to gain from Napoleon’s mind and memory.

  I could not leave the Duke’s presence without venturing that Bonaparte had to be seen to survive for some months yet for his influence still to reign over his followers in England. I, somewhat boldly, argued that the Duke should argue, with those friends he had in government, for exile on an island in the South Atlantic such as Ascension or Saint Helena, so that both objectives of our plan might be fulfilled.

  As I left the room the Duke called me back. I hoped, briefly, for a word of encouragement, instead I was warned not to fail as all knowledge of the scheme would be denied and I, Lady Frances, her husband and her son, as well as our Cornishman, would pay with our lives.

  *

  Events ran too swiftly for me to effect the switch on French soil. General Bonaparte was already making his way to l’Ile d’Aix off Rochefort on the Biscay coast where he had been misled that there was a weakness in the blockade. I had agents in his entourage and, faced with conflicting advice, he was persuaded to surrender to the English, placing his fate in the hands of the Prince and the Government. He was to relinquish himself to Captain Maitland on the Bellerophon, an irony since that was the very captain and vessel that had awaited his transfer from Elba.

  A week later, in the late afternoon of the fifteenth day of July 1815, I arrived at Rochefort and was ferried by barge out to the Bellerophon. It was a little over five months since I should have joined that ship’s company in Genoa and the circumstances had changed. At Genoa Napoleon’s entourage would have been only a handful of men, but now there were dozens including secretaries, advisors and women who could only be described as camp followers. At Genoa I had had the long voyage through the Mediterranean, through the Straits and north along the coast of Portugal, in which to persuade Napoleon that cooperation was his only course of action. Now I only had the last part of that voyage, through the northern Bay of Biscay and across the Channel to England. In February the eyes of the world had not been on us, now, in July, we were at the centre of much political intrigue. My task seemed impossibly difficult.

  *

  Sir Bernard thought back to those days when he first made real acquaintance with the man who was to become his friend and neighbour.

  They had not been easy days and the weight of the responsibility had weighed heavily on him. The successful conclusion to thirteen years of planning, the lives of himself and of others, the future security of his country and, he hoped, the continent and the wider world, depended on his ability to persuade the man who had recently been the most powerful in the world to cooperate.

  As he sat in his study in Oakridge Court he allowed himself to smile ruefully. How, he asked himself, in the name of all that was holy, had he ever imagined he could succeed?

  *

  I spent much of that voyage in the cabin of the man we now referred to as The General. I had only seven days to explain the proposed arrangement and persuade him of its merits. I put much emphasis to the possibility of living his life largely as he wished. He asked many questions about the society he would keep and where and how he would live. I described what I knew of the properties that had been prepared for us on the Isle of Wight and painted, perhaps, too rosy a view of our retirement. He seemed surprised that we would be neighbours. It was then that I explained the conditions which were attached to British generosity.

  I argued that although our war with France was now over Great Britain looks to our other enemies; the Russians, the Ottomans, and that those are also the enemies of France. ‘L’ennemi de mon ennemi est mon ami’ he quoted, and he seemed surprised that I was familiar with Sun Tzu’s treatise on The Art of War. In the hours we discussed the document, the General describing it as one invaluable in his success and I confirming that Sun Tzu’s thoughts on espionage and the importance of information had assisted in his downfall, I believe was sown the seed of a friendship between us.

  ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’ may be true, I allowed, but also one has enemies amongst friends and friends amongst enemies. I described the dangers to civil order created by his many supporters in our Parliament and wider society. I argued that Bonapartist revolution must not be raised in Britain and that part of the price of his freedom was that he should instruct his supporters that it was not the wish of Napoleon Bonaparte that England should take the French path.

  In my efforts to acquire the General’s agreement I detailed the advantages of the life he would lead, but I also made the alternative clear.

  He would be tried by military court and hanged even if he was not assassinated before that trial could be arranged. Revolution and anarchy would engulf Britain, which would be powerless to organise a fragmented Europe, the Austrian empire would be defenceless against the Ottomans and the Cossacks. European civilisation would be overrun as there would be nothing to stop the spread of the Islamic Empire. Christianity and the rule of Roman law would be obliterated. I was eloquent in my argument because I truly believed, and still believe, that this sequence of events would have occurred. I believed then, and still believe, that I did not o
verstate the case.

  Sometime on that voyage the General remarked that I seemed to have experience in the administration of such arrangements as I proposed. I wondered at the time, and wonder still, what would be the impact on the political world, and on history, if the truth were known of who had not been who they appeared to be.

  *

  Whether by threat or persuasion the day before the Bellerophon anchored in Plymouth Harbour the General agreed our terms. But we came close to losing his cooperation in those last days of July through the stupidity and ignorance of the people.

  Every day, from dawn to dusk, precariously loaded boatloads of Englishmen and women cluttered around the ship, every one straining to catch a glimpse of the monster who had threatened their country for twenty years and been responsible for the deaths and injury to so many thousands. The General initially played his part well, strutting just as the caricatures had painted him, his arm lodged inside his jacket, up and down the decks, but his patience was sorely tried and after one week he simply stood on the deck, gazing out past the harbour entrance, sullen and scowling.

  In those days I took the opportunity to cross to the Isle of Jersey where I confirmed that references to one Monsieur Claude Olivierre had been placed in the Public Registry and I obtained all the necessary papers to establish Monsieur Olivierre as a citizen of Jersey.

  In Westminster and Whitehall negotiations between the different factions in government were hard. The arguments for arrest and trial were pitched against exile. I heard only on the last day of July that the decision had been made and the outcome was as we most required. The Prime Minister, The Duke’s old friend Liverpool, had prevailed and it was decreed that there would be no trial. Napoleon would be transferred to the Northumberland in Plymouth Harbour and, without setting foot on English soil, an act that would make him subject to English Common Law, he would be transported to Saint Helena where he would be held for the rest of his life.