Under false colours

Author's Note

The years 1809-1811 mark the turning point in what, until 1914, was called the Great War. Trafalgar and Austerlitz matched the sea power of Great Britain against the land power of the Napoleonic French Empire. With Russia allied to France and the Continental System in place, Napoleon was in a commanding position. By 1809 Britain had begun the long slog of the Peninsular War in support of the Spanish insurrection and was also attempting to liberate Antwerp whose occupation by the French had been the cause of war in 1793. The resulting Walcheren expedition was a disaster: it formed the prime cause of Castlereagh's notorious duel with Canning and brought down the Portland ministry. By 1811, Napoleon's restlessness drove him out of this stalemate. Russia had been disregarding the embargo of trade with Britain, and the Tsar, his country's economy in ruins, finally formalized his intention to leave the Continental System by ukase on the last day of 1810. Worse, Napoleon's brother Louis, King of Holland, connived at its evasion and the Emperor annexed his kingdom in mid-1810.

On the other side of the Channel there had been bad harvests in 1809 and 1810, there were numerous bankruptcies and the Luddites were destroying industrial machinery. Both sides suffered from an unprecedented economic crisis in 1811.

However a confident Napoleon, who had secured his succession through his divorce of Josephine and subsequent Austrian marriage, thought his marshals able to deal with Spain, and had already decided to invade Russia. These events were monitored by the British on Helgoland.

This former Danish island was used as a diplomatic 'listening post' (from which access to Hamburg does not appear to have been difficult). The best known secret mission connected with Helgoland was that of the priest James Robertson whose extrication of Romana's Corps in 1808, left a detachment of sick hospitalized at Altona.

The island was also stuffed with British traders who bombarded the Foreign Office with petitions to build warehouses there. A number of facts suggest a secret mission had been under way at the time of Drinkwater's arrival and ended in failure. Captain Gilham and the Ocean were part of a convoy destined for a 'secret service' and the ships lay in Helgoland Road for months until the Ordnance Board wrote off their cargoes of military stores to Canning's Secret Service budget. The final fate of these ships is vague; they were either lost at sea 'or captured by the French near Calais'.

There are several intriguing references to the fact that the Grand Army, or part of it, supposedly marched to Moscow in Northampton boots, and it is highly likely that consignments of this nature passed through Hamburg or into Hanover, from whence came recruits for the King's German Legion.

Like Gilham, Colonel Hamilton and Edward Nicholas lived, and there is evidence that their relationship was sometimes strained. Reinke's charts still exist and McCullock, Browne and O'Neal are based on real people. At this time too, a report on the inadequacy of the Helgoland lighthouse was forwarded to London.

Fagan was an agent of Fouche's and a known go-between. Dieudonne of the Chasseurs-à-Cheval, provided the artist Gericault with a model for his spirited painting of An Officer of the Imperial Guard. He was destined to die in the Russian Campaign.

The rumours that passed through Helgoland in the winter of 1809, especially the news of Benjamin Bathurst, are all a matter of fact, as are the gale at the end of September, the west winds in the following March and the attack on Neuwerk in April 1810, when 'several American vessels were taken'.

Marshal Davout arrived at Hamburg in command of the Army of Germany in January 1810 and shortly afterwards shot a young man for the illegal possession of sugar loaves. The occupying forces were increased in March by stationing Molitor's Division in the outlying villages. This failed to stem the influx of imports and a furious Napoleon ordered the burning of all British goods discovered in the Hanse towns. The wily Hamburgers took to carrying luxuries past their guards in coffins. Herr Liepmann is my own invention but Nicholas refers to an influential person 'well-disposed to us', resident in, or near Hamburg, with whom a regular communication was maintained.

The fragility of Napoleon's Empire, exposed by Fouche's bold action in deploying an army to oppose the British invasion of Walcheren, was even more dramatically exploited by the republican General Malet who briefly took over the government in Paris during the Emperor's absence in Russia.

Lord Dungarth was not alone in perceiving it was the opposing might of the Russian army that was required to break the land power of Napoleon. Talleyrand had whispered as much to the Tsar at Erfurt.

It was Napoleon's claim that Tsar Alexander failed to exclude British trade which provided him with his excuse to invade Russia in 1812. He had long harboured the idea. The 'inexplicable rumour' of intended war between France and Russia reached Helgoland on 19 February 1810 and was reported to London by Edward Nicholas. Since the new ministry might consider Nicholas had exceeded his instructions, is it to be wondered at if he expressed an official doubt as to its truth and concealed his own part in its origin?