William Hazlitt: "I would like to live to see the downfall of the Bourbons"

William Hazlitt (1778-1830) essayist, romantic and political radical

Hazlitt is little read nowadays, but there has in the past decade or so been a revival of interest in him, particularly among those on the intellectual left. One recent writer, Duncan Wu, has described him as the first modern man and Tom Paulin gave him the accolade of "Liberty's Brightest Star" (1)

One would not guess from reading most encomiums about Hazlitt that Napoleon had no greater supporter in England, not even Lady Holland.

Whilst Lady Holland devoted much time, money, energy and influence in an endeavour to improve Napoleon's comfort on St Helena, Hazlitt, demonised by the Tory press, short of money, like all radicals facing the prospect of imprisonment or deportation in the years of popular discontent and state repression after Waterloo, devoted much of the last years of his life to the writing of a multi volume biography of his hero, a work described later by his dutiful son as "my father's last, largest, and upon the whole, greatest work." (2)

Hazlitt came from a middle class, rationalist, dissenting background. His father was an Irish Unitarian Minister, a fearless radical and a strong supporter of American freedom who had taken his family to spend four years in America after the War of Independence. Hazlitt's mother, Grace Loftus came, like Tom Paine, from an East Anglian dissenting family. Like all dissenters Hazlitt was barred from entering Oxford or Cambridge, but like many received a far superior education in a unitarian academy. Tom Paulin situates Hazlitt firmly in this radical tradition,

the Hazlitts were what were known as 'Real Whigs'. Intellectually, they were the descendants of the Commonwealthmen who briefly made England a republic in the middle of the 17th century. They are in a line of descent from Milton, Harrington and Algernon Sidney, and they carry proudly the scars of the battles those men fought (3)

It is no surprise to find that many brought up in this dissenting tradition, like Lord Lever later on, were prone to have a more favourable view of Cromwell and Napoleon than the Tory historians whose different prejudices have shaped our understanding. For Hazlitt like other radicals such as Henry Hunt and Cobbett, the choice was clear, Napoleon for all his faults was the only force standing between the "legitimate kings" and their ancient prey, mankind. In a letter to a publisher Hazlitt declared

I thought all the world agreed with me at present that Bonaparte was better than the Bourbons, or that a tyrant was better than tyranny." (4)

Napoleon's return from Elba was to Hazlitt

a blow in the face of tyranny and hypocrisy, the noblest that ever was struck. (5)

Similarly,

The plea that the French, in siding with Bonaparte, would prefer war and despotism to peace and liberty is a singular one.(6)

and Napoleon's trimphal march on Paris in 1815 was

.. the greatest instance ever known of the power created by one man over opinion .. it was one man armed with the rights of a people against those who had robbed them of all natural rights, and gave them leave to breathe by charter .. Buonaparte seemed from his first landing to bestride the country like a Colossus, for in him rose up once more the prostrate might and majesty of man, and the Bourbons like toads or spiders, got out of the way of the huge shadow of the Child Roland of the Revolution. (7)

After this Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo could be seen only as a great disaster for mankind and for the cause of liberty. The restoration of the Bourbons and the Divine Right of Kings was an abomination, and Hazlitt and fellow radicals could not see how it could be described as anything else. (8)

In one of his essays Hazlitt outlined what he believed a true just peace would look like: an independent Poland, opposition to the subjugation of Norway by Sweden, immediate abolition of the slave trade, Austrian relinquishment of "unjust aggrandisement in Italy", "Saxony should not share a fate similar to Poland", and concessions should be made by England regarding her exclusive claims of maritime supremacy, "found to be rather galling to the feelings of other nations." (9)

Like other radicals Hazlitt regarded the imprisonment of Napoleon after Waterloo as a stain on English history and the English character.

It is peculiar to the English to consider their enemies as self-convicted criminals(10)

Hazlitt saw this as revenge by those whose only merit was "being born to power" on all those who would challenge them.

The next thing (had not Sir Hudson answered the purpose equally well) to have caged Bonaparte with a baboon to 'mow and chatter at him;' or to have had him up to the hallberts not pulling off his hat to the governor or his aide-de-camp; and there are people to be found who would have approved of this treatment mightily.(11)

So, having completed his major work on his hero Napoleon, having witnessed the fall of the hated Bourbons in the July Revolution, but fearing that things would as in 1815 "go back again", Hazlitt died in Soho on 18th September 1830, his last words apparently being, "Well, I've had a happy life." (12)
------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Tom Paulin, "Liberty's Brightest Star",The Guardian 6 June 1998
2. Preface to The Life of Napoleon, dated May 1st 1852.
3. Paulin, Guardian, 6 June 1998. Also Tom Paulin, William Hazlitt's Radical Style (Faber 1998)
4. Augustine Birrell, William Hazlitt, (1902, reprinted 1970)
5. Life of Napoleon Vol IV p.100 Vol IV Second Edition.
6. Life of Napoleon Vol IV p. 101
7. Life of Napoleon Vol IV p.119
8. Christopher Salvesen, "A Master of Regret" in William Hazlitt ed. Harold Bloom, (NY 1986)
9. Political Essays 1818 by William Hazlitt, pp 74-5. Interestingly he called for the abolition of the slave trade, but not of slavery itself.
10. William Hazlitt, Life Of Napoleon, Vol IV p. 249
11. Life of Napoleon Vol IV p.264
12. Birrell pp 219-220

Hazlitt's Political Essays: Bonaparte and Müller

Johannes von Müller (1752 – 1809)

"The Celebrated Historian of Switzerland" - William Hazlitt.

There can have been fewer gloomier years in British history than those that followed Waterloo.

Faced with huge debts from financing the long wars with France, rising food prices, popular distress and industrial unrest, the British ruling classes felt far from secure.

Habeas Corpus was suspended in 1817, and the government took over the reading rooms to try to control the influence of Cobbet's radical journal The Political Register.

Critics of the government lived in fear of imprisonment or transportation.

In this climate of fear and repression the indefatigable supporter of the principles of 1789, William Hazlitt, prepared his political essays. These appeared in 1819, the year of the meeting of parliamentary reformers at St Peters Fields in Manchester. This "massacre" was henceforth to be remembered as Peterloo - an ironic reference to the killing fields of Waterloo.

Amongst the essays which Hazlitt reproduced was an extract from the papers of the Swiss historian Johannes von Müller, describing a meeting with Napoleon in 1806.

Hazlitt's reasons for including this are fairly clear: he was forlornly trying to counter two decades of British propaganda which had both belittled and ridiculed Napoleon as an upstart and as the "little corporal", and also somewhat paradoxically had portrayed him as a cloven hoofed monster. Müller's account of Napoleon did not fit easily into established British views of the Corsican ogre. I think it is fair to say that it still doesn't - as recent headlines about the "deluded Emperor" should indicate.

Müller's account of the meeting, and particularly his comparison of Napoleon with Frederick the Great, whom he had also met, is I think worth reading. I have not come across it in any other printed work.

On the 19th May I was informed by the Minister Secretary of State, Maret, that at seven o'clock of the evening of the following day I must wait on the Emperor Napoleon. I waited accordingly on this Minister at the appointed hour, and was presented. The Emperor sat on a sofa: a few persons whom I did not know stood at some distance in the apartment.

The Emperor / began to speak of the History of Switzerland; told me that I ought to complete it; that even the more recent times had their interest. He came to the work of mediation, discovered a very good will, if we do not meddle with any thing foreign, and remain quietly in the interior. He proceeded from the Swiss to the old Greek Constitution and History, to the Theory of Constitutions, to the complete diversity of those of Asia, (and the causes of this diversity in the climate, polygamy, &c.) the opposite characters of the Arabian (which the Emperor highly extolled), and the Tartarian Races (which led to the irruptions that all civilization had always to dread from that quarter, and the necessity of a bulwark): the peculiar value of European culture (never greater freedom, security of property, humanity, and better laws in general, than since the 15th century); then how every thing was linked together, and in the inscrutable guidance of an invisible hand; and how he himself had become great through his enemies: the great confederation of nations, the idea of which Henry the 4th never had: the foundation of all religion, and its necessity; that man could not well bear completely clear truth, and required to be kept in order; the possibility, however, of a more happy condition, if the numerous feuds ceased, which were occasioned by too complicated constitutions (such as the German), and the intolerable burden suffered by States from excessive armies.

A great deal more besides was said, and indeed we spoke of almost every country and nation. The Emperor spoke at first in his usual manner; but the more interesting our conversation became, he spoke in a lower and lower tone, so that I was obliged to bend myself quite down to his face; and no man can have understood what he said (and therefore many things I will not repeat) - I opposed him occasionally, and he entered into discussion. Quite impartially and truly, as before God, I must say, that the variety of his knowledge, the acuteness of his observations, the solidity of his understanding (not dazzling wit), his grand and comprehensive views, filled me with astonishment, and his manner of speaking to me, with love for him. A couple of Marshals, and also the Duke / of Benevento, had entered in the mean time; he did not break off. After five quarters, or an hour and a half, he allowed the concert to begin; and I know not, whether accidentally or from goodness, he desired pieces, which, one of them especially, had reference to pastoral life and the Swiss (Rans des Vaches). After this, he bowed in a friendly manner and left the room.

Since the audience with Frederick (1782), I never had a conversation on such a variety of subjects, at least with any Prince: if I can judge correctly from recollection, I must gve the Emperor the preference in point of solidity and comprehension; Frederick was somewhat Voltairian. Besides, there is in his tone much firmness and vigour, but in his mouth something as attractive and fascinating, as in Frederick. It was one of the most remarkable days of my life. By his genius and his disinterested goodness he has also conquered me. (1)

------------------------------------------------------------
1. pp 122-123 The Selected Writings of William Hazlitt. Volume 4 Political Essays ed Duncan Wu, London 1998.

Sir Thomas Reade - "the noisiest filibuster of them all" (Walter Runciman)

Reade, Sir Thomas, (1782-1849). Deputy Adjutant-General in St. Helena.

The only son of William Reade, a surgeon of Congleton Cheshire, and Hannah, his second wife.

His mother died when he was two and his father when he was eleven. He was articled to a Congleton Attorney, but ran away and enlisted at the age of 16 (1799). Within a few days he received a commission, probably purchased by a member of his family.

He served in Holland, Egypt, Malta, Naples, Sicily, Spain, in the almost forgotten campaign in America (1814), and finally under the command of Hudson Lowe in Genoa. He was knighted in 1815 at the age of 33.


St Helena and The Captivity of Napoleon

Reade was a faithful supporter of the policies of Sir Hudson Lowe towards Napoleon, and indeed, as Arnold Chaplin commented, "he often thought Lowe too lenient in his administration." Apparently Lady Lowe, not the most supportive of wives perhaps, frequently referred to him as "the real Governor."

Among his many tasks was that of monitoring the letters between Dr Verling and Mme. Betrand. Chaplin was critical of his and the British Government's conduct in this matter:

But although the British officials in St. Helena rightly blamed O'Meara for making Madame de Montholon's illness the occasion of jokes in letters to Sir Thomas Reade, they did not, apparently, see any indelicacy in Sir Thomas reading and commenting on gynaecological details concerning Madame Bertrand's illness.(1)

Sir Thomas appears to have met Napoleon only three times: April 17th, May 27th, and October 4th, 1816. He is most probably better remembered for a most famous failed meeting when in September 1819 he turned up at Longwood demanding proof that the reclusive ex-Emperor was indeed still in residence. In one of the most absurd episodes among many contenders, Sir Thomas banged on the door bellowing at the top of his voice, "Come out, Napoleon Bonaparte. We want Napoleon Bonaparte." Suffice it to say that Sir Thomas failed to carry out the implied threat to break the door down, and retreated without having seen the Emperor.

On an earlier occasion Napoleon refused to see Sir Thomas Strange with the riposte, "Tell the Governor that those who have gone down to the tomb receive no visits, and take care that the judge be made acquaintance with my answer."
The redoubtable Sir Thomas Reade responded,

If I were Governor, I would bring that dog of a Frenchman to his senses; I would isolate him from all his friends, who are no better than himself; then I would deprive him of his books. He is in fact nothing but a miserable outlaw, and I would treat him as such. By G--! it would be a great mercy to the King of France to rid him of such a fellow altogether. It was a piece of great cowardice not to have sent him at once to a court martial instead of sending him here." (2)

The generally negative picture of Sir Thomas which emerges from reading Chaplin, Runciman and Watson is confirmed by Gorrequer's diaries, to which they did not have access. Gorrequer clearly disliked him greatly, and gave him the nickname Nincumpoop, which requires no elaboration. The following extracts, absent from the best known narratives of the captivity and, allowing for Gorrequer's prejudices, do not show Sir Thomas in a very favourable light.

"His encouraging Mach to persevere in sending felucca [the ship] to Ethiopia in the present state of its crew, and the consequences notwithstanding his advice of the contrary. But even the lives of men were of no consequence to him, Nincumpoop, as long as he could only carry his point and show his influence over Mach. That fellow did not care a damn about men's lives to attain his object. His telling such downright lies the preceding evening about Major B------" (3)

"Ninny [Reade] wrote to Mach: 'My opinion is still that he [Napoleon] will get better.' Though Medico 20th [Dr. Arnott], the great oracle, had the preceding day reported him dangerously ill. His opinion, indeed!" (4)

"Sultana and Ninny endeavoured to make the public believe the followers were delighted at Bony's death, affecting to say they were delighted." (5)

"Tresorier of ship coming home told Ego that he never heard a man so abused as he heard Ninny; he seemed to have made an immense number of enemies; he had been at a party of 8 or 9 persons, every one of whom had some heavy complaint against him, and who seemed to be exasperated against him; so bad indeed that he at last took Ninny's part." (6)

Albert Benhamou probably summed it up nicely in a comment made on one of my recent blogs: "Hudson Lowe was feared at St Helena, while Thomas Reade was hated."

Postscript

A bachelor during his time on St Helena, it appears that he fathered a child by a slave. This was not unusual among the leading families on St Helena, as we know from the efforts of the Rev Boys to shame them by entering the names of the fathers of such children in the church baptismal records,

The child, a boy named John, lived only a few months.


On September 8th 1824 Sir Thomas married Agnes Clogg of Longsight Lodge, Manchester in the Collegiate Church (now Manchester Cathedral). He was in the same year appointed His Britannic Majesty's Agent and Consul-General in the Regency of Tunis, a post he held until his death in Tunisia in 1849. A memorial was erected to him in Congleton Church.

During his time in Tunisia he became involved in the excavation and study of Carthage and other Roman antiquities, and he assembled a valuable collection of objects.
Presumably Sir Thomas would have become acquainted with the Bey's Palace:

"On the walls were portraits of Napoleon and paintings of his battles. On his book shelves figured a book on Napoleon’s reign the Bey had ordered to be translated into Arabic." (7)

One wonders what he made of that.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
1. Chaplin, A St Helena Whos Who London 1919, pp 97, 117-118. To another scholar of the Captivity, George Leo de St. M. Watson, he was simply "..an undistinguished Captain in a foot regiment (via the Lancashire Militia), pitchforked for the time being into a local Lieutenant-Colonelcy .." Polish Exile with Napoleon p 32. Watson also commented that "everybody at St. Helena was 'on the make' .. Lowe was the exception : he entertained too freely. But his D.A.G. made up for it. Reade had a talent for stepping into snug little berths - like that of 'Vendue Master" (whatever it may be) at £300 a year in October 1818 - when their occupants were invalided home; and he was never averse from huckstering in horseflesh and the like. " pp 67-8, and finally he commented ironically on Reade's unpopularity: "Alarm House, where Reade cultivated rurally that prime Doric way which made him such a favourite with English and French alike" p. 32
2. Hazlitt, commenting on a similar speech by Sir Thomas was scathing: "Oaths, malignity, meanness, abuse, right, and duty are blended in as fine a confusion as one would wish. Such were the persons sent out to represent the boasted heroism and generosity of the English nation and government!" Hazlitt, Life of Napoleon Vol IV, 2nd Edition, p. 261
3 28th August 1818, Gorrequer p. 87
4. 27th April 1821,Gorrequer p. 226
5. Gorrequer p. 260
6. Gorrequer p. 262
7. Abolition of Slavery in Tunisia

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.

________________________________________
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

Went the Day Well? Witnessing Waterloo

Waterloo has long been a cornerstone of English/British nationalist mythology.(1) The dust had hardly settled on the field of battle and the bones buried before tourists started to arrive to witness the scene of the nation's great triumph over Napoleon.

.. the fame of all the past will for ever be overshadowed by the lofty image of Britain as she now exists, seated on the summit of an era destined to be supreme over all others in the world's annals. .. It would absolutely seem as if Bonaparte had returned from Elba only for the purpose of elevating still higher than it was the renown of Britain. (2)

In Went the Day Well David Crane has disassembled the mythology and provides a snapshot of a Britain which had "the most barbaric penal system in Europe" whose soldiers put up with "the gallows the lash and the firing squad" for "the freeborn Englishman's right to be hanged for stealing a sheep, and a Britain in which the great mass of people were worse off in 1815 than when the war had started in 1792." (3)

It was a Britain whose army officers were a caste, commissions were bought and there was an "atmosphere of privilege, deference and noblesse oblige," which contrasted with the French "liberty, equality and fraternity" (4) A surgeon who attended the wounded on the field of battle was struck by the "defiant, impenitent anger of the French wounded and dying". (5) The British army by contrast was driven less by patriotism and a defence of high ideals, but was "a world of its own, its own rituals, its own codes of honour, and its own loyalties" (6)

Crane devotes much attention to the fate of poor Eliza Fenning , a servant girl whose execution in June 1815 shortly after Waterloo became a cause célèbre, with 10,000 attending her funeral, and whose name was blackened by a Government which saw "every protest as part of a wider conspiracy". (8)

In June 1815 as the battle with France approached, thousands queued in Piccadilly to see Lefèvre's portrait of Napoleon. On the day that news of the victory arrived in London, Charles Grey, future Prime Minister, was apparently telling everyone who would listen that the world needed the genius of Napoleon. In public the Whigs who had been critical of Government conduct since the beginnings of the Peninsula war were silenced, although privately not reconciled to the restoration of the Bourbons and the defeat of the forces of liberalism on the continent.

Across the country celebration was subdued because of sorrow at the number of casualties. The soldiers themselves did not share the elation of the propagandists: "what three days have I passed, what days of glory, falsely so called and what days of misery to thousands" wrote one officer; another wrote regarding a query about the conduct of the cavalry in battle "I have not been able to collect all the particulars .. I am sure it will be said or sung by all the partisans of the British Government and all the Tories of the United Kingdom for months and years to come, for further details, therefore, I shall refer you to the Gazette. " (7)
Also here are opponents of the war: Hazlitt who hated Tories, their placemen and pensioners, and "the mental servitude into which the nation had sold itself"; John Cam Hobhouse, one of Napoleon's greatest admirers, waiting on the Swiss-French border for news of his brother, who as he feared was killed at Waterloo; the British soldier who thought it strange that "two of the most civilised nations, ranked foremost in every department of knowledge, science and art, found no other way of settling their differences." (9) Then there is the army officer serving in Paris after Waterloo, who wrote that the French people well knew that any who insulted their king would be bayoneted by the British army, "and this will account for the sudden change in their loyalty ..from their Idol Napoleon (properly named) the Great to an old bloated poltroon.(11)

Crane's final chapter provides a discussion of the myth itself:

A profoundly Protestant sense of 'election' had lodged deep in the English psyche for centuries, and Waterloo came as the ultimate confirmation of that belief, the triumphant demonstration .. of Britain and her Empire's special place in God's unfolding purpose .."

----------------------------------------------------------
1 . In fact a later Briton might almost be forgiven for not realising that Blucher and the Prussians were even there, let alone that they made the decisive intervention in the battle. Only 36% of Wellington's troops at Waterloo were British (and that does not include the Prussians under Blucher's command), and the majority of the British troops were Scottish and Irish. See The Independent article on the myths of Waterloo.
2. Chester Courant , 1st August 1815
3. David Crane Went the Day Well? Witnessing Waterloo (London 2015) p. 94, 306
4. Crane pp 63
5. Crane p. 254.
6. Crane page 301
7. Crane pp. 229, 255
8.Crane p.288
9. Crane p. 113
10. Crane p. 309

Castlereagh and the Defeat of Napoleon

Viscount Castlereagh: "the prim smirking aspect of a haberdasher" - Hazlitt

With a reputation for being cold and calculating, Castlereagh was perhaps the most hated of all English politicians. A member of the Irish Ascendancy, playing a key role in crushing the rebellion in 1798, his alliance with the reactionary rulers of Russia, Prussia and Austria and his defence of the repressive domestic policies of the Liverpool Government after the Peterloo Massacre, soured his reputation among those who had hoped that the world was on the verge of a more enlightened era.

Two of the greatest romantic poets led the condemnation. Shelley most famously in his Masque of Anarchy,

I met Murder on the way –
He had a mask like Castlereagh –

whilst Byron exhorted passers by to piss on his grave. (1) His death by his own hand in 1822 was for many a cause for celebration.

As Foreign Secretary from 1812, Castlereagh was the architect of the alliance that finally brought about Napoleon's defeat. He always had a clear view of British interests and of the aims of the war against Napoleonic France: on the continent a balance of power and access for British commerce, at sea British hegemony. Despite the impression nurtured by the loyalist press, the object of the war was not the removal of Napoleon from power. This in time caused some dissension in the Cabinet, as well as with the Prince Regent who not unnaturally favoured the restoration of the Bourbons at a time when his throne did not feel too secure.

Castlereagh's view was that if Napoleon retained the support of his subjects, and if a peace which satisfied Britain's objectives could be reached with Napoleon still in place, and that was a big if, then Britain should not support a continuation of war to overthrow him. Such a policy would have risked civil war in France and dissension amongst the allies, with Russia, no friend of the Bourbons, favouring Bernadotte or a weak Revolutionary Government, Austria favouring a Regency of the Empress Marie Louise on behalf of her son Napoleon II, and Britain not wanting either.

Increasingly Britain's war aims narrowed down to an insistence that France give up Antwerp and the River Scheldt, vital to Britain's security and hegemony at sea, an aim not necessarily shared by its continental allies. Castlereagh had been fixated on Antwerp and the Scheldt since at least 1797, and it was this alone which caused Britain to veto the Frankfurt proposals brokered by Metternich in December 1813 under which Napoleon would have given up Italy, Spain, Germany and Holland, but not all of Belgium.

In February 1814 a letter from the Prime Minister Lord Liverpool to Castlereagh revealed the tensions in the Government, but also perhaps a deference to Castlereagh, the dominant member of the Cabinet:

The only material point on which we differ with you is as to the overthrowing of Buonaparte. we incline to the view that this event may be desirable whatever might be the immediate result of it.

No Government, be it what may, could be so bad for Europe as Buonaparte; .. I admit, however, that if France continues to support Buonaparte, we must make peace with him, and that we ought not to look to his destruction by any means which, in progress, will tend to separate the allies. (2)

In the event, Napoleon's refusal of the terms of the Treaty of Chaumont in March 1814 got Castlereagh and the British Government off the hook. A pro-Bourbon party emerged in France, led by Talleyrand, Napoleon's former Foreign Minister, a confidant of the Czar and the recipient of substantial British secret service funds. On 19th March 2014 Castlereagh was instructed by the Cabinet not to sign any treaty with Napoleon.

Unwilling to recognise Napoleon's title as Emperor of Elba or anywhere else, and sharing the concerns of Talleyrand and the Bourbons about the nearness of Elba to France, Castlereagh did not become a party to the Treaty of Fontainebleau. (3) With France subdued and Napoleon on Elba, he was then able to devote his energies to the peace treaty at Vienna, later to earn him the admiration of that twentieth century practitioner of realpolitik, Henry Kissinger.

An interesting glimpse into Castlereagh's views after Napoleon's return from Elba is given by John Quincy Adams, American diplomat and future President. Only a week before the battle of Waterloo, at a dinner also attended by Lord Liverpool, Castlereagh showed Adams a snuff box bearing a miniature picture of Napoleon which he had bought at Vienna from the court painter Jean Baptiste Isabey. Adams noted that the general opinion of those at that dinner was that Napoleon would shortly take refuge in America; for as to another island of Elba, that was out of the question. That experiment would not be tried a second time . (4)

At the dinner Castlereagh told him of Napoleon's wish to come to England at the time of the Fontainebleau Treaty to which he (Lord Castlereagh) had objected, as he could not have been answerable for the safety of his person here. Adams was perhaps surprised at the moderate tone in which Castlereagh spoke about Napoleon. Rather curiously Castlereagh said he had

much rather that he should have come back and be as he now is, than that he should have lost his life under the protection of the allies. Lord Castlereagh said he had never seen him, though he had felt a curiosity to see him, but the only opportunity that he had ever had for it was at the time of the Treaty of Fontainebleau, and then he had abstained from delicacy.(5)

A strange interlude, and perhaps we should be wary of taking at face value the comments of diplomats when socialising together, particularly when we remember that only a year earlier the British navy had set fire to the Capitol and the White House. Whatever Adams' opinions of the French Revolution and Napoleon, the United States was known to favour a strong France and for obvious reasons to oppose British naval hegemony. Also we have the benefit over those who attended the dinner in that we know the outcome of the Battle of Waterloo! Despite the large military imbalance in favour of the allies which would surely ultimately have led to his defeat, dealing with a temporarily victorious Napoleon would have put a strain on Castlereagh and the British Government at home as well as on the continental alliance.

Castlereagh's comments about Napoleon's safety probably reflected awareness of plots the Bourbons made against him whilst he was on Elba. The concern may appear to sit uneasily alongside modern claims that Castlereagh was in 1804 involved in a plot to assassinate Napoleon.(6) But the key words are under the protection of the allies . Napoleon's murder on Elba would have done damage to the British Government at home and on the continent, irrespective of who had done it. Napoleon's assassination as Emperor in 1804, if all evidence of the British Government's complicity could have been destroyed, would have been another matter altogether, as any advocate of realpolitik would readily understand!

---------------------------------------------------
1. This seems to have been written in 1820 before Castlereagh's death.

Posterity will ne'er survey
A nobler grave than this:
Here lie the bones of Castlereagh:
Stop, traveller, and piss.

It was first published in Lord Byron's Works , 1833, xvii. 246. In this edition the last two words were replaced by * *.
2. Quoted in Rory Muir, Britain and the Defeat of Napoleon 1807-1815 (1996) p 318.
3. Sir Charles Webster, The Congress of Vienna 1814-1815 First published by the Foreign Office in 1919, Reissued 1934, pp 17-31,36-40. Nicolson, Congress of Vienna (London 1946) p118.
4. June 11th 1815. Memoirs of John Quincy Adams: Comprising Portions of His Diary from 1795 to 1848, Volume 3 J.B. Lippincott & Company, 1874, pp 219-220. Isabel attended the Congress as part of the French delegation and was commissioned to paint a portrait of the gathering.
5. Adams reported Castlereagh as saying he thought his [Napoleon's] speech to the legislative Assembly, this day received, was a very good speech; that it noticed in moderate terms the capture of a French frigate in the Mediterranean, but pretended that it was hostility in time of peace. Adams pp 219-220
6. For details of this plot, which formed a backdrop to the murder of the Duke d'Enghien, see Andrew Roberts, Napoleon the Great London 2014 pp 333-334

Sir Hudson Lowe and Antonomasia - A Review

Sir Hudson Lowe, Victime of St Helena by Michel Dancoisne-Martineau

This book, one of a series of 12, is only available from the Longwood House souvenir shop on the island of St Helena. It contains parallel French and English text, as well as numerous pictures, newspaper cuttings and historical documents. The author rivals Napoleon in his capacity for hard work, and has over the years done a tremendous amount of research on his subject, rather more than is normal for such a book, as the 369 footnotes testify.

From relatively humble origins, Lowe received the job of guarding the most illustrious person of his age, and probably of many ages, and this gave him an inflated sense of his own importance. He came to believe that he was at least Napoleon’s equal, and perhaps his superior. With an undistinguished military career, Lowe had gained for himself a reputation for good foreign language and writing skills. His promotion was based on his abilities as an administrator and an observer, on his loyalism and obedience, and on the fact that nobody of suitable rank could be found to carry out such an assignment.

The author provides an apt judgement on why Sir Hudson Lowe was such a good choice for the Lord Bathurst and the British Government.

“.. the man Bathurst needed to subject Napoleon to the petty restrictions, even humiliations, he wished to inflict on him, without exposing himself to the opprobrium of opposition and history. Two centuries after the events, the appointment of a civil servant reputed to be meticulous, undiscerning, quarrelsome, vain, petty, zealous and stubborn looks like a fool’s bargain. If one had to decide who was to blame, one should probably look to those who invited him to the table of the great and powerful.”

Flier for Exhibition at Plantation House, St Helena, cut short by decision of the present Governor's wife!

The book reveals a sound knowledge of the British or more accurately English society from which Lowe sprang: a highly ordered, corrupt society dominated by a small oligarchy, ruthless in its suppression of dissent and desirous of turning back the ideas of the French Revolution of which Napoleon had become the symbol. It correctly identifies Lowe as an ultra-loyalist Tory, whose political views would have been reinforced by his association with the absolutist continental rulers to whom he was often attached during the wars against Napoleon. He was in short the most loyal of subjects of George III and the Prince Regent, and of the aristocratic world in which he thought he had secured a foothold. In his entourage on St Helena he sought people with similar views to himself, and was most suspicious of those known to be sympathetic to the Whigs and to Napoleon.

The study takes issue with those who see Lowe as a vindictive gaoler as well as those who see him as the victim of cruel manipulation by Napoleon and his entourage. It paints a picture of a well meaning but flawed man, appointed to a job for which he was not suited, who let his sudden promotion rather go to his head, and who was never able to free himself from the delusions acquired from his appointment. Much of the material is new, particularly for the period after his return from St Helena when Lowe was never able to get a senior position that matched the St Helena appointment, and had to withstand increasingly unpleasant and often public shows of unpopularity, which the author describes as “mobbing”.

The most astonishing revelation of this study was the amount of wealth that Lowe gained from his five years in charge of Napoleon, despite losing a significant amount from fraud. As this book explains, this helped reinforce the delusion which was a feature of his conduct both on St Helena and after. In 1824 he continually changed his mind as to whether to accept the post of Governor of Antigua, and his frequent changes often appeared to be related to decisions of the local Assembly to lower and then raise the salary. Despite not taking the job he still submitted an account for £302 for expenses, around £27,000 in 2018 money! The author also reveals Lowe’s attempts to get back-pay from the East India Company as well as pay for the year after he left the island. The Company resisted, but for some reason the British Government in the person of Lord Bathurst acceded to his wishes.

Perhaps the most telling and amusing part is the account of his ten months long ostentatious overland journey with his family from Paris to Ceylon to take up his appointment as Lieutenant Governor, in the forlorn expectation that he would shortly thereafter receive the appointment as Governor. During the whole of this trip Lowe basked in the temporary title the Govt had given him of Lieutenant General of His Gracious Majesty, but he was not always as well received as he wished in the capitals of Europe. In Vienna the Emperor Franz refused to see him, and Metternich encouraged him to leave the city where Napoleon’s son then resided!

Among the belongings auctioned after his death was a lock of the King of Rome’s hair, the subject of over 1000 pages of correspondence while he was on St Helena, which had supposedly been destroyed. There were also other articles bearing inscriptions “N” and “Emperor” which would have got anyone severe penalties had they been written by anyone on the island during Lowe’s term as Governor.

Finally, I have learned a new word from this book, antonomasia, the use of a proper name to describe the characteristics of a person. According to Hazlitt (1826) a “Sir Hudson Lowe” is someone who appears

“ so much the creatures of the head and so little of the heart, they are so cold, so lifeless, so mechanical, so much governed by calculation, and so little by impulse …”.

Such was Lowe’s reputation that the term was even used in the House of Commons during Lowe’s lifetime.

This is an important, well researched book. It is a pity that it is so difficult to obtain.

ps. I also learned that Sir Hudson Lowe was a couple of centimetres shorter than Napoleon! The British propaganda about Napoleon's height is a subject I have often referred to over the years!.

The Pen is Mightier than the Sword: St Helena, March 1820

Front cover, "The political house that Jack built", 1819

In March 1820 a naval surgeon named McKenzie arrived on St Helena with a copy of the The political house that Jack built. (1) This pamphlet which was published by William Hone in the wake of the August 1819 Peterloo Massacre in Manchester, was to run to several editions and sell 100,000 or so copies.

McKenzie had, so he claimed, intended to show the pamphlet to Sir Thomas Reade, before giving it to an English resident on the island. Unfortunately he left it in a shop, and two British army officers found it and reported him to Sir Hudson Lowe.

Lowe immediately sent McKenzie aboard his ship and held him prisoner for 7 days, threatening to send him back to England and force him out of the Navy. Luckily for him there was no ship leaving for England, and so at the end of his confinement he was able to beg Lowe for forgiveness and secure his release. (2)

Hone was a fierce defender of the freedom of the press who had faced three separate trials on three days in December 1817, one of which was for libelling the Prince Regent.(3) He was acquitted in each trial, to great popular acclaim. Henceforth he was regarded as almost immune from prosecution whilst other radical journalists frequently found themselves in prison, and William Cobbett exiled himself in North America to avoid the same treatment.

Ruffians are abroad

William Hone was a friend of Hazlitt, and like him and many others did not subscribe to the Loyalist narrative about Napoleon. One of his earlier pamphlets had been Buonaparte-phobia (1815), which satirized the exaggerated anti-Napoleonic language of The Times , whose editor was henceforth referred to as Dr Slop.

The frontispiece of The "Political House that Jack Built" (top) carried a cartoon of Wellington, putting his sword on the scales of justice. The Waterloo man, as Hone described him, had been recruited into the Cabinet in late 1818, and his appointment was seen as a sign that the Government was prepared to use military force to put down those calling for reform. The Manchester massacre seemed to confirm this, and it almost immediately became known as "Peterloo".

These are THE PEOPLE all tatter'd and torn,
Who curse the day wherein they were born,
On account of Taxation too great to be borne,
And pray for relief, from night to morn;
Who, in vain, Petition in every form,
Who, peacably Meeting to ask for Reform,
Were sabred by Yeomanry Cavalry, who,
Were thank'd by THE MAN, all shaven and shorn,
All cover'd with Orders--and all forlorn;

The Man of course was the Prince Regent, a Whig in his youth, who had turned against his former political friends and had publicly thanked the troops who broke up the reform meeting in Manchester.

George Cruikshank's caricature of the Prince Regent

 
THE DANDY OF SIXTY, who bows with a grace,
And has taste in wigs, collars, cuirasses and lace;
Who, to tricksters, and fools, leaves the State 
and its treasure,
And, when Britain's in tears, sails about 
at his pleasure:
Who spurn'd from his presence the Friends of his youth,
And now has not one who will tell him the truth;
Who took to his counsels, in evil hour,
The Friends of the Reasons of lawless Power; 

In the poem Hone looked to leading Whigs to save Reform from Wellington and the repressive Tory Government:

This WORD is the Watchword--the talisman word,
That the WATERLOO-MAN's to crush with his sword;
But, if shielded by NORFOLK and BEDFORD's alliance,
It will set both his sword, and him, at defiance;
If FITZWILLIAM, and GROSVENOR, and ALBEMARLE aid it,
And assist its best Champions, who then dare invade it?

It is no wonder that a pamphlet such as this was not welcomed on St Helena at this time. Lowe and Reade were fierce Loyalists, determined to keep opposition newspapers off the island and especially from Longwood House, and naturally suspected anyone who showed any Whig or worse still Radical sympathies. On St Helena where the Governor's word was supreme, there was no recourse to the law to protect press freedom or individual liberties.
-------------------------------------------------
1. Jack was a synonym for John Bull. "This is the house that Jack Built" is a traditional English nursery rhyme.
2. The Morning Chronicle, May 20, 1820.
3. See also this post on Hone.