Henry Hunt and Napoleon: "the first of men, the most wonderful man that ever existed!".

Henry Hunt, radical leader (1773-1835)

Henry Hunt, or "Orator" Hunt as he was known, was the most famous and the most feared of the radical campaigners for universal suffrage in the years after Waterloo. A gentleman farmer from the South of England, he was an unlikely leader of the unrepresented working class. Hunt had been a Loyalist in the early years of the revolutionary wars, and had joined the local yeomanry, but like his fellow reformer William Cobett had become radicalised by the long war, which he saw as being exploited by a corrupt class of placemen, contractors, sycophants and stock-jobbers. (1)

In 1812 Hunt campaigned for Parliament in Bristol with the slogan "Hunt and peace", and asserted that "we have been at War against liberty for the last 20 years." (2) Troops were called in to restore order, which Hunt saw as a sign that the country was nearing military despotism. Hunt's campaign was supported by Cobbett who argued in a letter to the electors that the Government should accept the offers of peace proposed by the Emperor of France. (3)

Like Hazlitt and a number of Whigs and Radicals, Hunt welcomed the return of Napoleon from Elba in 1815 and was totally opposed to the resumption of war : "the most unjust repression." (4) Hunt believed that the power of choosing a sovereign in France as in England ultimately lay with the people, and that it was totally wrong for foreign powers to try to restore the unpopular Bourbons.

Seeing it as a war against liberty, Hunt was like many radicals and some Whigs, not disposed to celebrate Waterloo as a great British victory.

The mind quite sickens at the recital of such a horrid slaughter of human beings, for the sole purpose of gratifying the malignant passions of a few tyrants, who had sworn to annihilate the very spirit as well as the substance of liberty. (5)

In his memoirs he emphasised that Napoleon's forces were greatly outnumbered, and that his defeat was due solely to the late arrival of Prussian troops under Bulow and Blucher.

Not surprisingly Hunt was among the many critics of the decision to exile Napoleon on St. Helena, and was scathing about the failure of the more reform-minded Whigs to speak out against this. He later described the bill legalising Napoleon's imprisonment as "a hateful and foul blot upon the statute book of England".(6)

Hunt's pre-eminent position among the radical leaders after the war was cemented by his acceptance of the invitation to chair mass meetings organised by the Spencereans at Spa Fields in November and again in December 1816. The Spencereans had revolutionary roots and aspirations far removed from those of Hunt, and like Thomas Paine had hoped that Napoleon would invade and promote a revolution in England.

In January 1819 Hunt was invited by radical leaders to Manchester. In the course of his stay he attended the theatre, and a number of red coated officers temporarily ejected him from his box during the singing of the national anthem, amidst a cacophony of "Hunt and Liberty" from the gallery, and patriotic calls from the more expensive seats. (7) This visit marked the beginning of a long association with the radicals in the north of England which lasted until his death.

The Spencereans also invited Hunt to chair the meeting at Smithfield in July 1819, originally planned to be on the anniversary of the French Revolution. At this meeting the resolutions were seconded by a northern radical leader, Rev Harrison, a dissenting minister from Stockport.(8)

The following month Hunt was in Manchester again for the meeting at St Peter's Fields, almost immediately known as the Peterloo Massacre. Accused of participating in a conspiracy to overthrow the Government, Hunt and four others were in 1820 convicted on a lesser charge of "seditious intent", for which he was imprisoned for 30 months, a year longer than any of the others convicted with him. This harsh sentence and the abnormally severe conditions under which he was held in Ilchester gaol was a reflection of the fear he instilled in the ruling classes.

Hunt was in prison when he heard of the death of Napoleon, to which he responded forcefully in a letter to his supporters.

Memorial to Henry Hunt that used to stand in Ancoats, Manchester

In later years Hunt served as the M.P. for Preston (1830-33), and opposed the 1832 Reform Bill, which fell far short of the universal suffrage for which he and the post-war radicals had campaigned. After his death a memorial was erected in the grounds of Rev. Scholefield's chapel in Ancoats. The Chartist leader Fergus O'Connor was present at the laying of the foundation stone, which significantly took place on August 16th 1842, the anniversary of Peterloo. (9) The monument fell into disrepair and was demolished in 1888, but in 1908 a bronze portrait medallion of him was unveiled in Manchester's Reform Club, the home of the Liberal elite in the city. On the demise of this club in the 1980's the plaque was apparently moved to the local Museum of Science and Industry, where it is no longer on display.

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1. Belchem 'Orator'Hunt, Henry Hunt and English Working Class Radicalism, Oxford 1985. p. 3
2. Belchem p. 42
3. "The terms offered by the Emperor of France are fair; they are, indeed, such as I never expected to see obtained at the close of a negociation; they would, if accepted of, leave us in possession of all our conquests, of all the Islands in the West Indies; of the exclusive fishery of Newfoundland; of the Cape of Good Hope and the French Settlements in Senegal; of the French and Dutch Settlements in the East Indies; of the Isles of France and Bourbon; in short, they would leave us in possession of about 40 millions of conquered people, while France herself would not possess above 17 or 18 millions of conquered people. And, which is never to be forgotten, they would leave in our hands, the island of Malta itself, which, as you well know, was the avowed object of the war. - Cobbett 3rd Letter to the Independent Electors of Bristol, 11 August 1812 , reproduced in Hunt vol 3.
4. Belchem p. 46
5. Hunt Memoirs Vol 3.
6. Belchem p. 47
7. Belchem p. 109.
8. There were 19 resolutions in all. The final resolution condemned the British Government's treatment of Napoleon, another resolution supported the removal of disabilities on Roman Catholics. The Rev. Harrison said he thought that the resolutions should be adopted by every county, town, village and hamlet in the country. Each resolution was apparently greeted with great applause, although there were a few dissents to the resolution on removing disabilities on Roman Catholics. The Rev. Harrison was arrested at the end of the meeting for remarks he had made at a previous meeting in Stockport, for which he was later convicted and imprisoned, along with another radical leader Sir Charles Wolseley. Manchester Observer , July 31, 1819.
9. Katrina Navickas Protest and the Politics of Space and Place, 1789-1848 , (Manchester University Press, 2016), p.192

Manchester 1821: a toast to the Immortal Memory of Napoleon Bonaparte

The Plaque Commemorating Peterloo

The Smithfield meeting in July 1819 passed a resolution opposing the British Government's imprisonment of Napoleon on St. Helena. Although Henry Hunt was the main speaker at both meetings it is perhaps unlikely that the Manchester meeting, held a few weeks later, would have passed the same resolution had it been allowed to proceed peacefully. The meeting at St. Peter's Fields took place under very threatening circumstances, and had been postponed a week because it was declared illegal. So those who organised it were determined to show that it was an orderly, peaceful meeting, solely concerned with a legal campaign to reform the House of Commons.

Within a week though it was given the name "Peterloo," an ironic reference to the "killing fields" of Waterloo which had toppled Napoleon and put the hated Bourbons back on the throne of France.

Two years later, on Thursday August 16th 1821, with Hunt still serving a thirty month prison sentence for his part in the meeting, "Peterloo" was commemorated in Manchester with a march to St Peter's Fields, and then to a chapel in Hulme where 9 children were christened with the name "Henry Hunt"!(1)

The following Monday, the day on which the meeting had been held, some 300 people attended a dinner in the Union Rooms at George Leigh Street. As well as toasts to Hunt and a number of radical leaders including Sir Charles Wolseley, Major Cartwright and William Cobbett, there was one to Thomas Paine, one to the late Queen, "Caroline of Brunswick, the injured Queen of England", and one to the "immortal memory of Napoleon Buonaparte." (2)

From prison, Hunt addressed a letter to his supporters, noting with satisfaction this commemoration of the bloody, never-to-be-forgotten, never-to-be-forgiven, SIXTEENTH OF AUGUST 1819.

A Contemporary account of Peterloo, with a portrait of Henry Hunt

Hunt began his account by linking Napoleon and Queen Caroline, whose attempted marriage annulment by the Government and then exclusion from her husband's coronation made her a very popular symbol of resistance to the Government of Lord Liverpool in 1820-1821.

"It is scarcely two months since, in the Seventeenth Number of My Memoirs, I had to record the death of one of the bravest men that ever lived - Napoleon Buonaparte, late Emperor of France. I have now the melancholy task of recording the death of one of the bravest women that ever breathed, "CAROLINE OF BRUNSWICK, THE INJURED QUEEN OF ENGLAND." Napoleon's remorseless gaolers were Caroline's implacable persecutors, even to death! His gaolers and her persecutors are our never-ceasing deadly enemies; the enemies of rational Liberty; the enemies of all that is praiseworthy, amiable and noble in human nature!"

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1. The chapel they attended was Christ Church in Hulme, one of a small local sect known as the Bible Christian Church, which was founded in Salford by William Cowherd. Out of this church began the vegetarian movement in the UK and later the US. Church members also had to abstain from alcoholic drink. The pastor at Hulme was Dr Scholefield, who on this occasion spoke to the large congregation on the 94th Psalm: The Lord is a God who avenges. O God who avenges, shine forth. Rise up, Judge of the earth; pay back to the proud what they deserve. How long, Lord, will the wicked, how long will the wicked be jubilant?
2. Apparently only water was drunk at this dinner Hunt, who seems to have been rather egotistical, assumed it was a result of his advice not to drink highly taxed liquors. Letter to the Radical Reformers, Male and Female, of England, Ireland and Scotland; August 24th 1821.

Napoleon’s Representative on Earth : "I am the keeper of the empty tomb"

To the Saints, Michel Dancoisne-Martineau, the Honorary French Consul and Curator of the French Properties on St. Helena, is simply “THE Frenchman”, but to many tourists he is, along with Jonathan the 185 year old tortoise that resides at Plantation House, one of the curiosities of the island.

Apparently French visitors just want to meet him, and often have little or nothing to say. Those from the English world seem to be more loquacious, sometimes telling him how much they disapprove of the work he has done at Longwood House. Michel recounts in detail one such meeting with three British visitors in 2016. The first, a Hong Kong resident, asked him what Napoleon would have thought of Brexit, and said that now it would no longer be politically incorrect to quote Lord Nelson: "you must hate a Frenchman as much as you hate the Devil." He also added that it would now not be necessary to follow the dictatorial directives of Brussels. "Delivered with such arrogance" said another who now resides in Port Elizabeth, with the approbation of the third, the only one to live in the UK!

The title of the book was given unwittingly by a man Michel met at the Castle in Jamestown, the centre of Government on the island. The man, whom Michel did not know, voicing the typical contempt of the Saints for officialdom, said that they all perfected the art of seeming indispensable even when they were only in charge of the broom cupboard. But Michel he said excelled them all: he had received the Légion d'Honneur for looking after an empty tomb!

Michel Dancoisne-Martineau and Inger Tyrrell, in Les Invalides, a non-empty tomb. (April 2016)

This is a fascinating read for anyone interested in St. Helena, but more than that, it provides a frank account of Michel’s own amazing story. Napoleon once was reported to have said “What a novel my life has been.” Michel could justifiably say the same. Growing up as the youngest and eighth child in a poor, conservative, religious farming family in Picardy, Michel knew nothing about Napoleon other than a nursery rhyme, although curiously he played as a child in the ruined fortress at Ham, from which the future Napoleon III and the Count de Montholon had escaped in 1846. It was Michel's meeting with Gilbert Martineau that changed his life.

Although an agricultural student, Michel had developed an interest in literature, and particularly in Lord Byron. So he wrote to Gilbert, the author of a recent biography of Byron, they corresponded a few times, and eventually they met. Apprised of Michel's very unhappy childhood, within a few hours of their meeting Gilbert astonished Michel by saying he would like to adopt him. Then, as later, Gilbert was distressed to find that others suspected his motives, but as he protested to Michel, "I want a son, not a lover". He also wanted someone to take over from him on St Helena. He had reached retirement age, and after some four years nobody had applied for the job!

So Michel was adopted, and soon succeeded his adopted father as French Consul and Curator of the French Properties, a job which he has filled with distinction and increasing confidence over 30 years. His aim was to make Longwood a place of memory, not a museum of the greatness of France, which he felt it had become in Gilbert's time. With some satisfaction he claims that after a century of indifference, ordinary Saints have now become aware of the importance of the years of exile and the death of Napoleon on their island.

A young Gilbert Martineau

The book affords an interesting insight into Gilbert Martineau. A proud Gaullist who had moved in the highest intellectual circles in Paris in the decade after the second world war, Gilbert was determined to maintain French prestige on St Helena. A recluse for whom appearances were all important, he remained on the island for some 40 years, interspersed with lengthy trips back to his home on Ars-en-Ré, an island he loved. For many years Gilbert's life on St Helena was shared by his parents. His mother died on the island, and his father died at breakfast the day after they arrived back in France with her embalmed body.

Gilbert was apparently respected by many Saints for being able to contact the recently dead, and claimed to be in touch with Lord Byron, and through him to spirits on the "other side". After Gilbert's death Michel consigned his ashes to the Atlantic, close but not too close to St Helena, the island to which he had dedicated his life and to which he was irrevocably attached, but which at the same time he actually hated.

Michel clearly differed from Gilbert on many things, but his love and admiration for him shines through: his intellectual sophistication, his verve, his presence, his art of living, the scars he bore, his elegance. Whether he or anyone else ever got close to Gilbert is another matter.

There is much in the book about the changes to St Helena over the 30 years, and many anecdotes about locals and about expatriates and the hostility of a number of the latter to the French presence on the island. Unlike Gilbert, Michel has mixed freely with ordinary Saints, and it was their relaxed, accepting approach to life, the ambient amoralism, that attracted him to the island. He writes openly about his bisexuality, and among the most surprising encounters was his seduction at the age of 19 by a 71 year old Countess, a friend of Gilbert's whom he assures us was still very beautiful and looked at least 20 years younger! He writes also of the sexual mores on St Helena, and of the tolerant and at times rather surprising reception he has received, living in an openly gay relationship on an island which has still not legally accepted same-sex marriage.

The very last sentence in the book, which does not translate easily into English, acknowledges Michel’s mother who confirmed all the awful details of his early life. Elle le fit avec un simplicité et une aisance dont je luis d'autant plus reconaissant que je ne lui en soupçonnais pas l'aptitude.*

Michel's book has already gone into a second printing in France. It is a pity that it is unlikely ever to be translated into English. Whether it will succeed in Michel's aim of making him less of an object of curiosity is I fear rather unlikely.
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* My best effort at a very loose translation: She did so with a simplicity and ease which made more impression on me because I did not think she was capable of it.

1815: Napoleon's Abolition of the Slave Trade

Pro-Napoleon propaganda produced by William Hone in 1815

William Hone(1780-1842) was a satirist, a writer and a bookseller whom the authorities tried to silence in the years after Waterloo. His acquittal in three trials in 1817 proved highly popular, and a public collection was made on his behalf. Among those publicly contributing were the Duke of Bedford and his son the Marquis of Tavistock. Like many reformers and Foxite Whigs, Hone was highly sympathetic to Napoleon.

This piece, in the British Museum Collection was dedicated to Sir William Wilberforce, and to the memory of Charles James Fox, "who abolished the slave trade in England". It reminded readers that Napoleon, "by a stroke of his pen," had abolished the slave trade in France.

In the same year Hone wrote Buonapartephobia, a satirical piece attacking the editor of the Times, Sir John Stoddart, "Dr Slop", a staunch Tory, for his vitriolic articles about Napoleon.

Imperial Exile: The Napoleon Diaries

Imperial Exile by James Hartley, now published on Kindle

Everybody around him at Longwood wrote their accounts of Napoleon's exile, but until now we have not heard from the man himself! Only joking! This is a work of fiction!

Some time ago I was in correspondence with James Hartley about the book he was then writing on Napoleon and St. Helena. It turned out to be a rather long labour of love?, and James has now decided to publish it on Kindle. I understand that it is going live tomorrow, which happens to be Napoleon's 248th birthday!