Jennifer Kloester Read online

  By the early nineteenth century British sea power was legendary and the exploits of admirals such as Nelson and victories like the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 merely served to consolidate Britain’s naval supremacy. During the Napoleonic Wars the number of sailors employed by the navy reached 114,000 (in 1812) of which a large number had been ‘pressed’ including young Ben Breane’s older brother in The Toll-Gate. In time of war the need for sailors above the number readily available was met by the press-gang which roamed the coastal districts looking for likely men, kidnapped them and delivered them to the nearest naval vessel. For those men or boys who elected to join the navy it could be an exciting, though arduous and dangerous, life.

  THE PENINSULAR WAR

  The Peninsular War lasted from 1808 until 1814 and was instigated by Napoleon Bonaparte’s desire to bring Britain to her knees by crippling her economically. Having failed to defeat Britain’s navy at Trafalgar in 1805, and abandoning his plans for an invasion, in 1806 the French Emperor imposed a blockade on all British ports (known as the ‘Continental System’), effectively banning all trade between Britain and the Continent. Portugal’s refusal to comply with the edict spurred Napoleon to march on Lisbon by way of Spain. With 100,000 troops in Spain to support the invasion he took the opportunity to seize the Spanish throne and install his brother Joseph as the country’s new king. The Spaniards rebelled and, at the instigation of Sir Arthur Wellesley (who later became the Duke of Wellington), the British sent an expeditionary force to Lisbon to aid both the Portuguese and the Spanish in their fight to push Napoleon’s forces out of the Iberian peninsula.

  Wellesley returned to England in October 1808 after the debacle of the Convention of Cintra but in April 1809 returned to the peninsula to take command of the British–Portuguese forces. Napoleon had returned to Paris, leaving his army in the command of his marshals, including Soult, Ney and Kellerman. Over the next three years the combined British, Portuguese and Spanish armies fought the French back and forth across the peninsula, but all the while steadily pushing east through Portugal and into Spain as Wellesley’s army won important victories at Talavera, Cuidad Rodrigo, Badajoz and Salamanca. In August 1812 the British entered Madrid and towards the end of the year the news of Napoleon’s disastrous retreat from Moscow helped to turn the tide. By mid-1813 Wellesley had taken the offensive and in June his army won a major victory at the Battle of Vittoria. The French counterattacked with some success but their offensive could not be sustained and on 7 October Wellesley crossed into France. Fighting continued for some months as, at his command, Napoleon’s army resisted the Allies’ advance towards the capital but on 30 March the Allies entered Paris and on 11 April, six years after his invasion of Portugal, Napoleon abdicated and the Peninsular War ended.

  THE PEACE

  Napoleon’s empire was in disarray after the catastrophe of the retreat from Moscow in 1812 and his disastrous losses at the Battle of Leipzig in October 1813. He was finally deposed in April 1814 after the Allies (Britain, Russia, Austria and Prussia) signed the Treaty of Chaumont and marched on Paris. On 11 April 1814 Napoleon abdicated and went into exile on the Island of Elba in the Mediterranean. In England the Peace was officially declared in June and was followed by two months of festivities, including the visit of the Allied Sovereigns, the procession to Guildhall and the official celebrations in Hyde Park.

  THE HUNDRED DAYS

  On 26 February 1815 Napoleon escaped from the island of Elba. The former emperor sailed for France landing at Antibes on 1 March and marched to Paris, gathering an army as he went. The period known as ‘the Hundred Days’ began with his arrival in the capital on 20 March where he received a tumultuous welcome and the news that the king, Louis XVIII, had fled. When the Allied forces of Britain, Prussia, Austria and Russia heard of Napoleon’s return to power they prepared for war and on 5 April the Duke of Wellington took command of the Allied armies in Belgium. The army was not the force it had been during the Peninsular Campaign but instead was comprised of so many inexperienced British and foreign troops that Wellington described it as ‘an infamous army, very weak and ill equipped’. As Napoleon marched his army north into Belgium Wellington did what he could to prepare for battle—demanding more troops and staff officers and undertaking regular reconnaissance expeditions to familiarise himself with the possible battlegrounds.

  By 6 June news came that Napoleon was on the march but the Duke remained calm and even gave his blessing to the Duchess of Richmond’s plans for a ball at her home in Brussels on 15 June. The ball went ahead, with Wellington and his staff in attendance, but during the evening word came that Napoleon had attacked and battle was joined. The Battles of Ligny and Quatre Bras took place on 16 June and led to a retreat by the British and Prussian troops the next day. The Prussian Field Marshal Blücher lost 16,000 men at Ligny and, although Wellington’s men had held their ground at Quatre Bras, he had lost nearly 5,000 soldiers—a fact which, coupled with the news of Blücher’s losses, impelled the Duke to withdraw and regroup. Although Blücher’s army had not yet rejoined Wellington’s forces, by the morning of 18 June in pouring rain the British and Dutch forces had established themselves on a ridge in front of Waterloo and prepared to meet Napoleon’s army. With the British and Prussian armies still separated, Napoleon was confident of an easy victory and, according to Wellington, ‘did not manoeuvre at all’. The battle lasted all day, with major attacks by the French on the farmhouses of Hougoumont and La Haye Sainte, and many times it looked as though the French had won. Wellington was everywhere throughout the battle, however, urging his men on, giving orders and at all times remaining unshakeably calm. At 6.30 p.m. the French had taken La Haye Sainte and it seemed a British defeat was inevitable, but for some reason Napoleon did not press home his advantage and, instead of a full force, sent only his Imperial Guard against the squares of British infantry. The British and Dutch rallied again and again, resisting every French attack. With the Prussian army beginning to come up at last, by evening the tide had turned and the French attack had turned into a rout. On the night of 18 June 1815, despite appalling losses, the Hundred Days ended in victory for the Allies. That same evening Wellington wrote a report of the battle with the heading ‘Waterloo’.

  MILITARY MEN

  Marshall Beresford, William Carr Beresford, 1st Viscount Beresford (1768–1854): Beresford joined the army in 1785 and rose through the ranks before being given command of the Portuguese army during the Peninsular War of 1808–14. In 1811 he defeated the French marshal, Soult, at the Battle of Albuera and in 1812 took part in the capture of Badajoz but was badly wounded in the battle of Salamanca.

  Gebhard Leberecht von Blücher, Fürst von Wahlstadt (1742–1819): A Prussian field marshal, throughout his long career Blücher saw active service in numerous battles and fought against the French several times. In 1813 he took command of the Prussian army and defeated Napoleon at Leipzig. Two years later on 16 June 1815 he suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the French at Ligny just two days before the battle of Waterloo. Blücher regrouped and won great renown among the English for his arrival on the field of Waterloo just in time to enable the Allies to vanquish Napoleon’s army.

  The Emperor Napoleon.

  Rowland Hill, 1st Viscount Hill (1772–1842): Hill was a career soldier and one of five brothers to join the army. He served in Portugal during the Peninsular Campaign and was knighted in 1812. He was one of Wellington’s staff during the 1813–14 push into France and with him again at Waterloo and was awarded a barony in 1814. Hill was made a viscount in the last years of his life.

  Napoleon I, Emperor of France (1769–1821): Napoleon Bonaparte was born in Corsica but educated in France where he won a scholarship to the military academy at Brienne before attending, at age fourteen, the Ecole Militaire in Paris. He had a moderately successful military career before his marriage to Joséphine de Beauharnais in 1796 (whom he later divorced to marry the Emperor of Austria’s daughter, Marie Louise) and her influence