NAPOLEON’S LOST FLEET
Laura Foreman and Ellen Blue Phillips
Book Review
This
book was written by two journalists - not historians - and it shows. I have
been reading books about Napoleon for over 45 years and I have heard of neither
of them. Now I know why. This book is a great disappointment. Despite the title
they talk much more about Nelson than Napoleon. They are very hostile to Napoleon
from the start - calling him ‘Bonaparte’ throughout (always a dead giveaway) and
denouncing him and criticizing him at every opportunity, whereas they call
Nelson ‘the hero’ and pretend right was always on his side. Belated they give
Napoleon credit for his part in the growth of Egyptology but then they try to
say even his part in that was limited.
This is terrible character
assassination - the authors have no conception of the massive beneficial effect
Napoleon had on the history of Europe and the history of the world. They fail
to place him amongst his peers - never once comparing him to the other rulers
of the period. From the beginning they accuse him of being little more than a
warmonger bent on bathing his hands in blood. It is pathetic, asinine and
puerile, a one-dimensional study of someone they simply cannot understand.
Even to put Nelson in the
same strapline as Napoleon is ridiculous. Napoleon pacified France and stopped
thousands of Frenchmen from killing each other; he made peace with the Catholic
Church and let French peasants keep the land they gained after the Revolution; he
allowed hundreds of exiled nobles to come home; he introduced a national school
system; stabilized the finances; had countless roads and bridges made - and he
gave equal rights to all the Jews in his Empire - something no other ruler in
European history had ever done.
What did Nelson do for anyone
else? Everything Nelson did he did
for himself no matter how he tried to wrap himself in the British flag. He was
one of the most egocentric people ever to have lived. Even the far from modest Wellington
thought Nelson was a bighead. He whined when his career periodically nosedived,
felt very sorry for himself and scandalized society with his love life. He even
disobeyed orders to remain with Emma Hamilton and his infatuation with her was
partly the cause of his massacre of French prisoners and his brutal hanging of Admiral
Caracciolo in Naples in 1799.
Nelson was guilty of mass murder and so heartless he would not even
allow the family to have the Admiral’s body after he had hanged him from the
yardarm. Even the two journalists have to admit that Trafalgar did not change
the political situation the way it has often been claimed. It was gold from the
Bank of England that got Austria and Russia to attack France in 1805. (They
obviously know nothing of the fact that in early 1805 Napoleon wrote to the
Prince Regent asking for peace). How many Jews did Nelson save? Nelson was
psychologically incapable of moderation or compromise unlike Napoleon who even
offered Cadoudal a place in his army - a man who had tried to murder him. And
he allowed all those émigrés back - many who had clearly been his former
enemies. There is just no comparison between the two. Billions have heard of
Napoleon and Alexander, precious few of Horatio.
The blurb calls the two authors
‘gifted storytellers’. And how! They quote Bourrienne ad nauseam - a man who
was twice sacked for embezzlement by Napoleon and who simply cannot be trusted
with anything he says. General John Elting spent over twenty years researching
his magisterial Swords Around A Throne.
This is what he says on the subject: ‘In preparing this book I have used
original sources whenever possible but have ignored the alleged memoirs of
Louis Bourrienne, Paul Barras, Clare de Remusat, Laure Permon, and Miot de
Melito, which are mendacious and worthless.’ (p. 735).
This is what our ladies say of
1798: ‘Although the rest of Europe was only beginning to be aware of him, an
extraordinary man would come to embody the threat of France - and relentlessly
magnify it… With Egypt behind him, he would wage a kind of world war for
fifteen years… Only the island of Britain, mistress of the seas, would
implacably defy him.’ (p.25). No taking side there then!
England and France had been at
war for decades, long before Napoleon was even born and our American
journalists would be well advised to remember that one of the things that
bankrupted France and helped presage the Revolution was the support give by her
to the revolting American Colonies as they strove for independence. Without
French help - especially that of De Grasse’s navy - Washington would have never
had become the first President. But then - everything
is Napoleon’s fault.
When they mention Josephine they
of course take her part against Napoleon. The reason she liked her lover
Hippolyte Charles was because he was: ‘a dashing young Hussar with a happy
nature, who - unlike her nearly humorless husband - made her laugh.’ (p.39) So
it was obviously Napoleon’s fault that she committed adultery only days after
her marriage. Napoleon was head over heels in love with Josephine, he was
utterly besotted - it was far more than she deserved. No wonder he was devastated
and jealous of her infidelities. But this also reminds me of what H.G. Wells
wrote in his The Outline Of History
Volume Two: ‘It would be difficult to find a human being less likely to
arouse affection… Laughter is one great difference between man and the lower
animals, one method of our brotherhood, and there is no evidence that Napoleon
ever laughed.’ (p.499). Leaving aside the fact that this was written by a
balding pot-bellied middle aged man with a squeaky voice who was cheating on
his wife with Rebecca West - who he treated abysmally too, (and he was another
‘great storyteller’) here are some answers to the lie that Napoleon never
laughed: ‘Some horse-grenadiers came by with twelve fat pigs they had found; we
charged them with our sabers and took all their pigs. The Emperor laughed. He
divided them; six for us and six for the horse-grenadiers.’ Captain Coignet (p.123). ‘From our
bivouac I could see the Emperor distinctly and he saw all our movements. By the
light of the pine logs I shaved those of my comrades who needed it most. They
each sat down on the rump of a dead horse, which had been there long enough for
the intense cold to freeze it as hard as stone… Perched on top of his bundles
of straw, the Emperor watched this strange spectacle, and burst into peals of
laughter. (p. 141).
After Waterloo Napoleon was sent to the
hellhole of Saint Helena in the midst of the vast South Atlantic. He had lost
everything: his freedom; his empire; his wife; his son - and he would soon lose
his health affected by the dismal climate and slowly poisoned with arsenic by
Montholon. Yet this is what young Betsy (Lucia Elizabeth Abell) said about him
when she met him on the island. First her alarm: ‘Most of the newspapers of the
day described him as a demon; and all those of his own country who lived in
England were of course his bitter enemies; and from these two sources alone we
formed out opinion of him.’(Napoleon and
Betsy p.47). But this is her account of when she played a game with him:
‘Not knowing the French term (if there be any) for blindman’s buff, I had
explained before to the emperor the nature of the operation to be gone
thorough. He laughed at my choice, and tried to persuade me to choose something
else, but I was inexorable; and seeing his fate inevitable, he resigned himself
to it with a good grace, proposing we should begin at once… Whether accidently,
or by Napoleon’s contrivance, I know not, but I was the first victim, and the
emperor, taking a cambric handkerchief out of his pocket, tied it tightly over
my eyes, asking me, is I could see. “I cannot see you,” I replied; but a faint
gleam of light did certainly escape through one corner, making my darkness a
little less visible. Napoleon then taking his hat, waved it suddenly before my
eyes, and the shadow and the wind it made, startling me, I drew back my head:
“Ah, leetle monkee,” he exclaimed in English, “you can see pretty well.” (ps.67-68).
Napoleon loved children and was
always very tolerant with them. The young midshipman George Home mentions this
when he saw the Emperor on the Bellerophon
in 1815 with the children of his companions in exile. Betsy says that at times
it was as if he was a child himself. Napoleon never forgot the human touch and
could cast away the pretensions of emperor at the drop of his hat.
Our literary lasses than describe
Napoleon: ‘Silent, sullen, small, with stringy hair and an unhealthy yellow
pallor, he was hardly noticed at first’. He was actually five feet six
according to Captain Maitland on HMS
Bellerophon who actually met him in the flesh. He was five feet two in French feet. A French foot was
three-quarters of an inch longer than its English equivalent. This aspect of
size had always been used to demean and dismiss Napoleon. He was actually
taller than their one-armed saviour Admiral Nelson. But they of course are
completely ignorant of this as they are of so many things.
On the way to Egypt Napoleon’s
fleet took Malta. Many years before Napoleon was even born Clive of India
established the British in a powerful position in the subcontinent and the
British with their massive navy took more islands than anybody. But, of course,
this was okay because they were not Napoleon. They do begrudgingly admit that
as well as ‘falsely claiming that his attack had been provoked because the
knights had supported French émigrés… he also freed knights’ galley slaves and
reorganized the government, hospitals, churches, and monasteries.’ (p.61) Every
time they parade the negative and give it flags and a marching band before
suffering a peep of any good he might have done.
But it is very different when
they turn to Nelson. They say that when he was fifteen and suffering from
malaria; ‘he had a feverish vision that altered his life forever. A “radiant
orb” beckoned to him, he later wrote, and “a sudden glow of patriotism was
kindled within me, and presented my King and Country as my Patron. ‘Well, then,’
I exclaimed, ‘I will be a hero
and, confiding in Providence, I
will brave every danger.’ ” (p.84) These are actually the ravings of a
self-obsessed lunatic who put himself at the centre of the universe throughout
his life. They then add that he was a ‘young man of no more than average
height.’ Nelson was about 5 feet four to five feet six according to the latest
research, slightly smaller than Napoleon but there have not been two hundred
years of propaganda describing him as a dwarf.
When the authors talk about
the pressgang in England they remark that; ‘France drafted her seamen, but mass
conscription in England in Horatio Nelson’s day was unthinkable, so protective
were Britons of the individual liberties they had acquired over the centuries.’
This is risible. There was virtually a caste system in England as rigid as that
in India at the time. The ordinary man had very few ‘rights’ whatsoever. In
Volume Two of his Britannia’s Realm,
Richard Woodman describes how the Royal Navy repeatedly pressed merchant seamen
even when they were not supposed to. It was pointless pressing men who were not
sailors - it had precious little to do with their supposed ‘liberties’. The
Unitarians, a nonconformist religious sect of which William Hazlitt was a
member, were persecuted for their beliefs and in 1819 at Peterloo mounted
militia hacked down ordinary members of the public with their swords -
including an ex-soldier who had fought for his country at Waterloo. The British
governments under Pitt and Liverpool were notoriously repressive. Only the
aristocrats and royalty mattered in the minds of the British Cabinet and
Wellington was dead set against extending the franchise to ordinary people.
Of Nelson’s disastrous failure in
1797 during the raid on Tenerife, where he lost many of his men and his own arm,
the writers ooze: ‘But the British saw in his frail, battle-ravaged, but still
erect frame their own national image: gallantry against all odds. He was the
living symbol of their pride and hope, and they took him to their hearts as
they had no other hero.’ (p.107) They completely fail to mention that for most
of his time as general, First Consul and then as Emperor, Napoleon was idolized
by French peasants and virtually worshipped by his soldiers. One is inclined to
think they are trying to yank the wool over our eyes. Their partisanship is
excruciating.
But there is more to come. In 1798 they claim;
‘Napoleon had assembled a huge armada… Now friendless in Europe but for the
tepid support of Portugal, vulnerable England had to discover where the blow
was aimed. Her very survival might depend on it.’ (p.115) More unmitigated and
melodramatic tosh. Napoleon was going to Egypt because he knew it was virtually
impossible to attack England via the Channel because of the might of the
British navy. An indirect campaign was the only option open to him.
Their most egregious attack upon
Napoleon personally is made on page 120. The journalists describe how the
British and French fleets in the Mediterranean got to within 30 miles of each
other: ‘Had he known this, Nelson could easily have overtaken it and had in his
gunsights not only the French fleet but also a thirty-thousand army - and
Napoleon himself. Within a few days a blood-drenched future might have changed
for Europe.’ In other words our illustrious hacks are saying that the
responsibility for the whole of the French Revolution, and the fevered reaction
of the divine right courts of Europe to an attack upon their rights and
privileges, rest solely upon Napoleon’s shoulders. This is puerile drivel.
Napier, who fought with
Wellington against the French in Spain, states in his massive account of the
campaign that the war was basically about ‘privilege’ - that the courts of
Europe were terrified that the nascent ideas of democracy and human rights
might spread to their own countries. This was why the British Government did
not even deign to reply to Napoleon’s peace offerings in early 1805. And it was
why the Allies ignored Napoleon’s plea for peace after his return to France
from Elba. Napoleon did not want a war in 1815. The Allies not only wanted a war
they wanted to blame Napoleon personally and so they proscribed him as an ogre
and terror who had to be eliminated at all costs. Most of the so-called Napoleonic Wars were started by the
British. France was attacked in 1805 by the Austrians and Russians in the pay
of the Bank of England; Napoleon was attacked by the Prussians in 1806, the
Russians in 1807, the Austrians in 1809 and the Allies in 1815 - in wars mostly
funded by the British. Without the machinations of the ultra-reactionary, elitist,
aristocratic, oligarchic and corrupt British Government - who repeatedly tried
to assassinate Napoleon - there would have been a very good chance for peace
once the land based monarchies had come to terms with the French Revolution.
The English historian Walter Runciman states that had the arrogant British
Cabinet reacted favorably to Napoleon’s peace-feelers there could have been
peace between the two countries. But of course there could not be peace because
the terrified divine right courts personalized the French Revolution in
Napoleon himself.
But our two journalists have not
the historical knowledge to see this.
In Egypt itself Napoleon found
the situation much different to what he had expected. Talleyrand had assured
him that the Turks in Constantinople could be won over - but then Talleyrand
did absolutely nothing to bring this to fruition. Thus Napoleon decided to
attack the Ottoman army in Syria before they attacked him. Then in 1799 occurred
the event that is counted as the blackest mark against Napoleon. As General
Michel Franceschi states: ‘On March 3 at Jaffa, matters began to become
serious. Conforming to local custom, Bonaparte sent an emissary to the military
commandant to offer to spare the lives of the garrison in exchange for its
immediate surrender. In case of refusal, the French would not grant quarter.
This was the merciless and unique rule in force during the war.’ (p.45) It was
in fact standard practice throughout Europe at the time as it had been for
centuries. However, instead of complying, the messenger’s head was cut off and
displayed on the ramparts of the fortress. Franchesci adds: ‘This barbarous
provocation was obviously not of a nature to encourage mercy. Matters were
displayed in stark simplicity: there would be no quarter on either side.’
Recalling how French stragglers
had been butchered and the hundreds of soldiers killed in the Cairo
insurrection, the French responded in kind and there was awful slaughter. The
same thing was later to happen in Spain - horrors on one side lead to horrors
from the other. Francheschi says that: ‘At least the officers attempted to
limit and block the more extreme actions, conforming to Bonaparte’s
instructions. Among many others General Robin did not hesitate, at the risk of
his life, to take his sabre to his own soldiers in order to halt such debaucheries.’
(ps. 45-46) He goes on: ‘The last to resist had taken refuge in the citadel,
their fate already sealed by their previous refusal to capitulate. Just before
they would have been destroyed, Bonaparte nonetheless sent Eugene de
Beauharnais and another aide de camp, Crozier, “to calm as much as possible the
furor of the soldiers.” As soon as these two were recognized by their
distinctive insignia, the besieged asked to surrender to them, on condition
that their lives should be spared. Listening only to their better nature, and
in defiance of the death sentence implicitly pronounced against the combatants,
these two officers accepted their surrender and conducted them to the French
camp./ This was an appalling misunderstanding! Bonaparte had sent his aides
solely to save the women, children, and old people and not to make an exception
concerning combatants.’
An attempt to quell the slaughter
had left Napoleon in an impossible situation. If he allowed the combatants to
live it would be taken as a sign of weakness and encourage even more fanatical
resistance in the future. And there was simply not enough food for the 2,500-3,000
mainly Albanian prisoners. Furthermore, about 300 of them had already been paroled
once and yet rejoined the conflict in defiance of the usual convention. If he
let them go they would either die in the desert or else rejoin the enemy army.
It was a terrible dilemma. Under the circumstances Napoleon was extremely
reluctant to decide their fate by himself so he held three councils of war with
his senior officers before the final decision was made. Thus: ‘Bonaparte was
forced to execute them in cold blood, fulfilling a death sentence that would
have been applied without moral dilemma if it had occurred in the heat of
action.’ (p. 46)
This is rightly discussed
in every English history book - a bloody massacre in time of war. What is
seldom even mentioned is that in 1807 the British navy attacked neutral
Copenhagen and murdered 2,000 civilians in their beds, using Congreve rockets,
weapons of mass destruction, for the first occasion against ordinary members of
the public. And at the same time Wellington was slaughtering clog-wearing
neutral Danish militia. Why is this unconscionable action, prompted by Canning,
not likewise decried at every opportunity? If anything it was worse because it
was a cold-blooded pre-planned atrocity against a neutral civilian population.
The journalists return to the attack on
page 162 stating that: ‘Well aware of the value of status and income, he formed
his own aristocracy as well. Leading it were his own quarrelsome and avaricious
siblings, for in true Corsican fashion, Napoleon trusted only his family.’ In
fact Napoleon allowed the émigrés to return as part of the healing process
after the Revolution. He wanted to try and restore some sort of normality to
the country and as already mentioned, aristocrats were the norm in the rest of
Europe. As for his own brothers and sisters, as Walter Runciman has said, they
were much better rulers than the appalling reactionary specimens in charge in
England, Russia, Prussia, Austria and Naples. The Prince Regent for one was an
womanizing alcoholic and drug addict who spent millions upon his own palaces
and pleasures and held the ordinary British subject in utter contempt.
The hacks are in full flow on
page 164 stating fallaciously that in 1812 the French army was abandoned:
‘Their emperor left them behind to dash for Paris, fearing for his throne.’
Bourgogne states that their were British spies amongst the retreating French
army and that most of the men realized once they had returned to Vilna that
there was little more Napoleon could do there and that it was in the best
interests of everyone for him to return to the French capital. In the words of
Sergeant Bourgogne: ‘Many of the foreigners took advantage of this circumstance
to blame the Emperor, but the step he took was a perfectly natural one, as,
owing to Malet’s conspiracy, his presence was necessary in France, not only for
the administration, but to organize a new army.’ (p.159)
Despite their view that
Nelson was virtually Christ’s Second Coming, on page 170 they are forced to
mention his private little massacre at Naples in 1799: ‘Nelson annulled the
terms of the truce. In so doing, he callously overrode a fellow officer’s word
of honor and also opened the door for a grisly series of executions. The
hangings went on for days.’ Unlike their treatment of Napoleon where they get
their retaliation in first, criticizing him copiously before acknowledging that
he did any good at all, with Nelson they wait 170 pages before describing his
egomania and brutality. On page 172 they also admit people: ‘were even more disgusted
by the cold disdain that he displayed, even in public, toward his wife, a woman
who had never wronged him in any way.’ They are far more lenient in their
account of Josephine who, despite being a good time had by all, was worshipped by
a love struck Napoleon who treated her with kindness and gave her millions of
francs even after he had divorced her. But of course they don’t mention that.
At the end of the book
there are four full pages in a chapter entitled The Immortal Memory about Nelson’s funeral, two full pages about
Emma Hamilton and a mere paragraph about Napoleon’s sad demise upon Saint
Helena. Throughout this book the two journalists portray Napoleon in a bad
light and try to make Nelson shine like some weird one-armed supernova with a
halo to boot. Napoleon did do good things for other countries and for other
people: Nelson did everything for himself. Their bibliography is also very
sparse, especially in relation to Napoleon. The only saving grace about this
book are the pictures and images, but the one thing it isn’t is objective
history.
© 2016 John Tarttelin (M.A. History)
A Souladream Production
Bibliography
1. Abell Lucia Elizabeth Napoleon and Betsy (Fonthill Media
Limited 2012 UK)
2. Bourgogne Adrien The Retreat From Moscow Translated by J.W. Fortescue (London The
Folio Society 1985)
3. Coignet Jean-Roch Captain Coignet (Leonaur UK 2007)
4. Elting Colonel John R. Swords Around A Throne (Weidenfeld &
Nicolson, London 1989)
5. Foreman Laura and Phillips Ellen Blue Napoleon’s Lost Fleet (Discovery Books,
London 1999)
6. Franceschi General Michel Bonaparte in Egypt (International
Napoleonic Society, Montreal 2006)
7. Franceschi General Michel & Weider
Ben The Wars Against Napoleon (Savas
Beatie, New York 2008)
8. Home George Memoirs of an
Aristocrat And Reminiscences of the Emperor Napoleon (Forgotten Books 2012)
9. Tarttelin John The Real Napoleon: The Untold Story (Amazon, Createspace 2013)
10. Woodman Richard Britannia’s Realm Volume Two
In Support Of The State: 1763-1815 (The History Press, Stroud,
Gloucestershire 2009)
