Old Kirk Braddan Church and Cemetery

Old Kirk Braddan Church and Cemetery

(Or how I can find a Napoleonic connection literally ANYWHERE)

I’ve mentioned before on this blog that I have something of a passion for old churches. One of my favourites is Kirk Braddan; not the newer Victorian building which houses the current congregation although that is very attractive. Inevitably though, I’m drawn to the older church next door. It’s no longer used regularly but services are still held there occasionally. For me, it has the atmosphere of the period I love most. It also has one or two interesting Napoleonic tombs.

I found myself at Old Kirk Braddan earlier this week when I had an hour to kill before meeting my editor and it wasn’t worth going home first. I went initially to explore the ancient churchyard, which I love, especially at this time of year when the snowdrops and crocuses are just coming into bloom. Once there, I couldn’t resist popping into the church. It’s quiet and very lovely, with the slightly musty smell that I associate with old buildings that are seldom used.

 

There has been some form of religious worship on this site for fourteen centuries and stones from the first Celtic Keeill (Chapel) can be dated back to around 400 AD.  Old Kirk Braddan was rebuilt on the site of an older church in 1777 and is dedicated to Saint Brendan or Braddan.  Unlike many other eighteenth century churches, it was never updated during the Victorian era and retains its original box pews, gallery and a three decker pulpit, with a lectern, minister’s pew and pulpit above. It remained the parish church until 1876 when it was replaced by the new church.

The church contains a number of Celtic and Norse crosses from the period 800-1265, which were found around the parish.  Several of these bear a ring chain design which is associated with the sculptor, Gaut, son of Bjorn, who came from the island of Coll in the Hebrides and settled on the Isle of Man. Gaut is considered one of the best carvers of his time which was between 950 and 1040 AD. One of the crosses bearing his designs has been translated as “Gaut created this and all in Mann”. His carvings are of a style seen in many Celtic and later Scandinavian crosses.

Beyond the Manx crosses, towards the altar, there’s an impressive memorial up on the wall, looking surprisingly elaborate for such a simple church.

 

 

 

Sacred to the memory of the Honourable Richard Murray
Son of the late Lord Henry Murray
Nephew to the late John Duke of Atholl
and formerly Lieut. Col. of Her Majesty’s Coldstream Guards.
Having honourably served his country in India
And subsequently on the continent of Europe under
Field Marshal the Duke of Wellington.
He retired to the Isle of Man
where he was elected a Member of the House of Keys,
and in that capacity long and zealously exerted himself
to promote the welfare of the Island.
He departed this life October 16th 1843, aged 55 years.

Also to the memory of his son Richard Green Murray
Who died February 15th 1856 aged 15 years

This monument is erected by his Widow, as a small
but sincere token of regard for the memory
of a most considerate husband, and a most amiable child.

For I know that thou wilt bring me to death;
and to the house appointed for all living.
Job xxx.23

It appears that Richard Murray was first married to Catherine Bacon, the daughter of John Joseph Bacon,  in 1811. After she died in 1817 he remarried in 1819 to Margaret Tenison, daughter of William Barton Tenison of Lough Bawn, Co. Monaghan. Margaret died in 1864 and her monument is on the opposite wall to that of her husband and son.

Naturally the sight of Wellington’s name in a local church was enough to get me excited. I’ve not been able to do much research yet about Richard Murray’s career in the army, but I will get back to you all once I’ve done so. It feels satisfyingly familiar though, to be reading the memorial to one of Wellington’s officers in my home town, where if there is a memorial at all, it tends to be for the navy rather than the army. Hugh Kelly would fit in here whereas Paul van Daan would be a bit of an anomaly.

I was aware of another memorial in the churchyard which is known locally as the Atholl monument. Since Murray was the name of the local Dukes of Atholl I went scrambling around among the overgrown graves. It took some time because the place is beautiful; a tangle of greenery dotted with moss covered stones. This is no modern, neatly laid out graveyard, but a piece of history. Many of the graves are sadly difficult to read but one or two are clear enough to give an indication of the long history of Kirk Braddan. 

 

The Atholl monument turned out to be a large obelisk in the centre of the churchyard in honour of Lord Henry Murray, fourth son of John 3rd Duke of Atholl who was born in 1767 and died in the December of 1805. Lord Henry was the Lieutenant-Colone Commandant of His Majesty’s Regiment of Royal Manx Fencibles.

Henry Murray was appointed Colonel of the newly formed Royal Manx Fencibles in September 1795. In 1786 he married Eliza Kent and they had one son and five daughters. In 1796 the regiment was deployed to Derry because of unrest which led to the the Irish Rebellion of 1798 and in June of that year Murray ordered the burning of Ballymoney in reprisal for the rebellion. In February 1802 he went to Bath to recover from an attack of gout and later that year, following the Peace of Amiens, his regiment was disbanded. From 1804 Murray acted as Lieutenant-Governor and Deputy to his brother, John Murray, 4th Duke of Atholl, in his role as Governor of the Isle of Man.

Henry Murray died only a year later. His monument in Kirk Braddan Churchyard bears the inscription “This sincere testimonial of affection and deep regret for their commander and their friend is erected by the officers of the Regiment.” It was an age when tombs were expected to express sentimental feelings, but there is something rather touching about that very simple sentiment. Henry Murray was only thirty-eight when he died and may well have been a popular commander of the short-lived Fencibles, however unpopular he made himself in Ireland. Richard, his son, would have been seventeen when his father died and it is probable that an army career felt inevitable for him.

In researching this post I discovered that one of Henry Murray’s daughters made a marriage that really brought me close to my comfort zone in the Peninsular War of the early nineteenth century. In 1829 Amelia Jane Murray (usually known as Emily) married General Sir John Oswald. She was twenty-nine and he was a widower of fifty-eight who had previously been married to her cousin.

I’m very familiar with Oswald from the Peninsular War Saga. Oswald was born in Fife and educated in France, which meant he spoke good French and had close connections with the French aristocracy. Understandably he loathed the excesses of the French Revolution and wasn’t much keener on Bonaparte’s Empire. He served in the West Indies, the Netherlands, Malta, Italy, Egypt, the Adriatic and finally the Peninsular War under Wellington. He had a distinguished military career and his two marriages into the family of the Duke of Atholl clearly gave him a long connection to the Isle of Man.

In book eight of the Peninsular War Saga which I’m currently writing, Oswald is about to have a difficult time at the siege of San Sebastian. I’m delighted I’ve found out about this now as it will give me a different sense of connection to the man. Incidentally, his second wife had a distinguished career of her own as a Victorian artist who specialised in fairies – a terribly Manx thing to do. I’d heard of her many times and seen her work but I had no idea she was married to one of Wellington’s generals. It’s like discovering that two old friends know each other.

Back out in the churchyard, I wandered around admiring the snowdrops and making up stories in my head about some of the older graves. I wish more of them were legible.  There are no neat paths laid out between the stones in this graveyard. It’s a little sad but also very beautiful compared to the neat rows of stones in a modern cemetery. As I was on a historic tour there was one more grave I wanted to see, also from my era but very different. Fortunately this one is well labelled now and the inscription very plainly copied.

“An African slave of St Helena died the 28th of May 1822 aged 18 years. Born a  slave and exposed in early life to the corrupt influence of that unhappy state, he became a model of truth and probity for the more fortunate of any country or condition. This stone erected by a grateful Master to the memory of a faithful servant who repaid the boon of Liberty with unbounded attachment.”

I know no more than that about Samuel Ally and his master and thus far I’ve not made an attempt to dig any further. Perhaps there is nothing more to find. I like the fact that this grave is marked and easy to find in Kirk Braddan Churchyard though. One one level it’s a rather lovely tribute from a master to a young servant. On another, it’s an important reminder of the significant involvement of the Isle of Man in the slave trade. There are probably a lot more such reminders scattered around the island. I’m fascinated by the topic and if I ever managed to drag myself to the other side of my two Napoleonic war sagas I’d like to find out more about it. There’s one book that I’ve found so far, which is informative but a bit dry and I know the museum has produced some material but I have a feeling there’s a lot more to be discovered.

With time running out, I made my way back to the car, careful not to trip over a fallen gravestone in the tangle of grass and plants. I love ancient churches and graveyards and I’ve a feeling there are a few more I’ve not yet properly explored on the island so expect further posts. I especially love those which would have been here, an important part of island community life when my Manx sea captain and his wife first met in 1806 or returned to visit in 1811. Standing in these quiet places imagining those people gives me a very real sense of history.

Waterloo 2022: the Battlefield Tour

Waterloo 2022: the Battlefield Tour

It’s taken me a few weeks to put together a description of the full day’s tour of the Waterloo Battlefield, partly because events rather took over once I got back to the UK but mostly because I needed a bit of distance before trying to describe the day.

Once again I’m not going to attempt to put together a battlefield guide of my own, based on Gareth’s incredible tour. He’s written so much about the battle himself that it would be utterly superfluous. My recommendation is that people who want to know more go away and find his books. I’ve recently read his Waterloo: myth and reality which is a brilliant overview of the campaign, pointing out some of the enduring myths and stories over the years and sifting through the evidence to suggest what the truth might be. It’s very readable and is a great place to start.

Number One London Tours did an excellent job of managing the various walking abilities of its tour members and the bus moved around the battlefield with us to enable those needing a rest to hop on and off. Some of us walked the whole way. One of the first things I really noticed, being on the ground at Waterloo is that the battlefield is far more undulating than it looks from photographs or from the top of the Lion’s Mound. Crossing from the left to the right of Wellington’s lines before walking down to do the same with the French lines, it’s very clear that commanders, officers and men really couldn’t see what was happening in different parts of the battlefield.

Features of the landscape like the covered way which is still partly visible, waist and head-high crops and surprisingly steep ridges help the story of the battle unfold far more easily than looking at maps. Gareth had maps a plenty though, to demonstrate each stage of the fighting as we reached it, starting from Papelotte and moving around the various parts of the field. He had also brought a copy of his fantastic Waterloo Archive Map Book which includes a large collection of contemporary sketches and maps but also artists impressions of the battlefield and surrounding countryside. I probably don’t need to tell you that I’ve already ordered a copy.

Interspersed with clear, easy to understand descriptions of troop movements and the various attacks at different stages of the battle, were the individual stories from both Gareth and Kristine about the men who fought, suffered and died at Waterloo. I’ve seen many of these accounts before but hearing them read out on the ground where the action took place gave them a whole new meaning.

Despite a lot of development on and around the battlefield, Waterloo reminds me of Salamanca in that it’s still very easy to get a sense of the countryside as it must have been on that wet morning in June 1815 when Wellington deployed his mismatched army along the ridge at Mont St Jean and hoped that the Prussians would arrive. We walked over the same fields as the British, the Dutch and Belgian, the French and Prussians.  It was a beautiful sunny day, not at all the right atmosphere for ghosts, but it was surprisingly easy to imagine the crash of guns, the squeal of terrified horses and the tramping of thousands of feet.

It was also horribly easy to imagine the aftermath, with dead and wounded strewn across the field. Injured men staggered towards anywhere they might find help and too many of them fell by the wayside. The memorials to the different armies and regiments as well as to a few individuals which are scattered around the battlefield highlight the poignant truth that most men who died at Waterloo had no marked grave, no memorial and quite possibly may not even have been buried at all.

 

Lieutenant-General Charles Alten

I’ve not reached the Battle of Waterloo with my fictional regiment yet, but throughout this tour names have been mentioned of men I know about, have read about and have written about as real people. Picton’s death, Charles Alten’s serious injuries and poor Juana Smith’s mistaken belief that her beloved Harry lay dead on that grisly field somehow have a new meaning now. Entwined with them will be the fate of my fictional characters, who over the past five years have become utterly real to me. I still don’t know myself what happens to them all on the bloody field of Waterloo but whether they live or die, I don’t suppose any of them will be the same afterwards.

The Prussian Memorial

We ended our tour of the battlefield with a walk up to the Prussian memorial at Plancenoit and with a drink at Le Gros Velo, sitting in the sunshine opposite the church. It isn’t the same church that was there in 1815. That one was destroyed during the battle but it has been rebuilt on the same site and there are several memorial plaques on the walls. I can remember going to Badajoz back in 2017 and discovering that sometimes, in a place where great tragedy and suffering occurred, it’s what isn’t left behind that affects me more powerfully than what is.

 

For our last evening we had a farewell dinner at Les Deux Sil, the Italian restaurant on the edge of the battlefield. It was a lovely meal and a lovely evening with a real sense of camaraderie. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed getting to know these people and hope to meet some of them on future trips.

When we emerged, it was dark. Kristine had bought some flowers and a few of us walked up towards the Lion’s Mound which is lit up at night. It looked spectacular and despite all the jokes about it spoiling the battlefield, it felt like a fitting memorial that night, not to the Prince of Orange or Wellington or to any of the other individual commanders but to the thousands of anonymous men and animals who died on that field two hundred and seven years ago.

We placed the flowers on the edge of the field, not on any particular monument but just on a spot where any man might have fallen and stood quietly, listening on a phone to John Tams singing Spanish Ladies, a haunting folk song. A version of that song existed in 1815 and might have been sung by the campfires by men who did not survive that day. It seemed an appropriate memorial to the ordinary soldiers and the perfect way to end Waterloo 2022: the Battlefield Tour.

 

The house used by the Duke of Wellington in Brussels in the run up to the Battle of Waterloo

I’d like to thank Gareth Glover and Kristine Hughes Patrone from Number One London Tours as well as all my fellow tourists for making this a fascinating but also very moving experience. I’ve come home with pages of notes and loads of ideas about how the 110th infantry might fit in to the battle on the day. It would be so tempting to jump ahead, but I’m not going to. My lads had to go all the way through that war, so I’m going with them every step of the way.

Waterloo 2022: Wellington Napoleon and Mont Saint Jean

The Wellington Museum

Waterloo 2022: Wellington Napoleon and Mont St Jean

 

Today’s tour started at the Wellington Museum which is housed in Wellington’s Headquarters in Waterloo itself. I’m going to digress from being a tour guide here now and mention the fact that having been round the various museums here, I am quite grateful that there is in fact a Wellington Museum at all.

I’ve seen various commentaries online about the huge local concentration here on Napoleon rather than the Allied commanders. People who complain about this are generally mocked for being Wellington groupies and undoubtedly in some cases that’s true, but it is striking, particularly in the various gift shops. I think it might have improved very slightly since I came four years ago in that it is now possible to buy one Wellington item in the main gift shop but that is completely overwhelmed by the vast amount of Napoleon memorabilia. Personally I don’t really need any more souvenirs but the difference is striking.

I have no idea whether there’s something political about this, whether it’s considered Napoleon was the most important person at Waterloo given that he was an Emperor or whether they just don’t think Wellington or Blucher memorabilia will sell.  I do think it should probably be redressed, but if it’s a marketing decision then I guess that’s a good enough reason. All the same, Napoleon as a dog was a bit much for me.

 

Not the best likeness, but it gets the point across…

The Wellington museum is a poignant reminder of the human cost of battle. Wellington’s staff had done surprisingly well through the long years of the Peninsular War but his luck ran out at Waterloo. This was where Kristine’s knowledge of the people came into its own and the excerpts from Wellington’s letters were very emotional. During the years I’ve been writing the Peninsular War Saga, I’ve got to know some of these young men as if they were my own fictional characters and it was surprisingly painful to think of Alexander Gordon’s death and Fitzroy Somerset’s agonising operation to amputate his arm. There’s a lot of information about Wellington through the various sites, but in this house I found it much easier to imagine Wellington the man, struggling to write the early part of his Waterloo dispatch while receiving news of the death and wounding of his friends.

Across the busy road from the Wellington Museum is the elaborate church which was there at the time of the battle and used, like many churches, as a hospital to receive wounded men. Those of you who have followed me for a while know that I have a thing about old churches and this one was particularly peaceful, with a number of memorials to the men who fought and died during the Waterloo campaign. Memorials at this time tended to be paid for either by the family of the dead man or by subscription through the various battalions and regiments, so not surprisingly more of them relate to the wealthier regiments. Very few of the memorials even mention the NCOs and enlisted men apart from this one in the church, which may well be the first of its kind.

 

After lunch we moved on to Napoleon’s Headquarters in the farmhouse of Le Caillou, where Napoleon and his staff spent the night of June 17, 1815. The museum collection is spread over five rooms  and tells the story of the Emperor’s actions in the hours before Waterloo. There are a number of artefacts relating to Napoleon, though Gareth queried whether some of the furniture was authentic given that the Prussians reputedly set fire to everything on their way through after Napoleon’s departure. Still, it gives a good sense of how the farm might have looked at the time.

In the garden outside the farmhouse are one or two memorials. There is also an ossuary, which is a small building intended to serve as the final resting place of human bones. Ossuaries are often used where burial space is scarce but in this case it has become a depository for bones found on the battlefield over the years. I’ve seen photos of this but found the real thing unexpectedly moving.

 

Mont Saint Jean today

The final stop of the day was the medical museum, located at Mont Saint Jean, which was situated at the back of Wellington’s lines and became the main field hospital. We hit a slight problem here as it turned out the museum and attached bar had just moved over to winter opening hours and were closed. Fortunately Gareth’s local knowledge saved the day and after a short wait we were allowed to go in to the museum for a brief tour.

 

 

Mont Saint Jean is not for the faint hearted. The suffering of the wounded of both armies must have been indescribable, and Gareth read a distressing description of bloody bodies and severed limbs covering the ground outside the farm. There are vivid descriptions of the various wounds and operations performed and information about individual surgeons and their experience of the campaign. 

There are also exhibits of medicine and surgical kits from the era and the uniforms worn by the medical staff. One or two models give an idea of the state of Mont Saint Jean as the wounded continued to pour in. I’ve always thought that the astonishing thing about surgery and medicine in the army at this time is how many of the operations actually succeeded and how many men survived their wounds. Survival would not have been improved by the invariable practice of bleeding a wounded man. It has sometimes occurred to me that once the initial operation was over, a shortage of surgeons might well have meant that a man would be bled less often which could improve his chances of survival…

After one of the shorter days with Waterloo 2022: Wellington Napoleon and Mont Saint Jean we went back to the hotel early for dinner and drinks, as we needed to get ready for the next day and our battlefield tour. For me this was going to be the highlight of the week and the main reason I came on this tour. This week has gone so quickly and I’ve learned so much, it’s been a joy. I should also mention that the group were fantastic and really good company.

Waterloo 2022 – Quatre Bras and Ligny

Waterloo 2022 – Quatre Bras and Ligny was one of the days I was most looking forward to. I’ve previously done a whistle stop tour of some of the Waterloo museums, but I’ve never been to either of these sites. I’ve also read nothing about them other than a brief mention at the beginning of many books on Waterloo. I was well aware of the significance of both of these actions in the rest of the campaign but other than that, I knew very little.

At some later stage, when I get to it, I’ll do a proper post on the whole campaign. These posts aren’t designed to tell you what happened on those days in 1815 but to describe my own experience of touring the battle sites with Number One London Tours led by Gareth Glover and Kristine Hughes Patrone.

The windmill at Fleurus

Our tour today began in Fleurus, a town to the south-west of Ligny.  Napoleon arrived at Fleurus with his staff and escort on the morning of the battle and reached the Fleurus windmill. He apparently ordered his engineers to build an observation platform by knocking out part of the roof and climbed up to survey the situation for himself. Throughout the tour, Gareth returned regularly to the issue of how much of the battlefields could actually be seen by the various army commanders. Napoleon remained well-back from the fighting for most of the day, while Wellington was positioned further forward, and in his usual manner, moved around the battlefield at different times.

Chateau de la Paix

We next moved on to the Chateau de la Paix, which is now used as local government offices. After his victory over the Prussians at Ligny on 16th June, Napoleon retired that evening to the Chateau in Fleurus, while his troops camped in the surrounding area. During the night Napoleon shut himself off from the outside world for as long as he could. He was inactive for almost eleven hours while the Prussians escaped. They were bloodied and much depleted but still effective enough to march to support Wellington at Waterloo.

The Napoleon room in the Chateau de la Paix

The room occupied by Napoleon in the Chateau has been reconstructed with period furniture. Our local guide Laurent was an excellent storyteller with a great sense of humour and he talked about the battle, the aftermath and what might have gone wrong for Napoleon. He and Gareth agreed with the possibility that treatment for a severe case of haemorrhoids might well have affected Napoleon’s behaviour that night and could possibly have affected some of his decisions. For anybody wanting to visit the Chateau, you have to book in advance and details are on their website. If all the guides are this good, I strongly recommend it.

Our next visit was to the small but very good museum in Ligny. It covers both Ligny and Quatre Bras and gave a very good sense of what happened on 16th June in these small villages and towns as the French inflicted a bloody defeat on Blucher’s Prussians and fought to a stalemate against Wellington’s Allied army. I was shocked at the extent of the casualties at both battles. Somehow I’d always had the vague impression that these were just skirmishes ahead of the main battle, but they clearly weren’t. All three armies were weakened by what happened on this day and it must have had an effect on what happened at Waterloo.

French ambulance wagon, much coveted by Anne van Daan…

From my own perspective, I was delighted to find a French flying ambulance wagon in the courtyard outside the museum. Anybody who has read the Peninsular War Saga will know that Anne van Daan has been persecuting Wellington about ambulance provision for three books now and if he wasn’t so fond of her he’d probably have strangled her. I’ve read about these and seen pictures but it was great to meet the real thing.

Memorial to the Duke of Brunswick, killed at Quatre Bras

We made our way up to Quatre Bras. There’s very little to see there, as the original farmhouse has been pulled down and there’s a lot of building in the area. Gareth did a good job, pointing out those sites and memorials around both battlefields which can still be seen. Even with limited access he managed to give a clear picture of what happened in both battles and had a wealth of personal accounts to read of what happened to individuals on the day.

 

 

 

Auberge du Roy d’Espagne, Genappe

We drove through Genappe, looking at the routes taken by the various armies and stopped for a photo opportunity at the Auberge du Roy d’Espagne. This former inn was used at different times by the Duke of Wellington, Prince Jérôme Bonaparte and Marshal Blücher, who stayed at the inn after Waterloo and reputedly left it in Napoleon’s sedan. There is a picture of the Prussian generals celebrating their victory at Waterloo, but the inn also housed the wounded French General Guillaume Philibert Duhesme who died there on June 20, two days after the battle, probably while the Prussians were still celebrating in the next room.

Blucher’s window at the Auberge du Roy d’Espagne from the outside…
And a painting of the same window from the inside. Though it doesn’t look the same, I suspect some artist’s license here…

Another long day on the tour, with moving accounts from both Gareth and Kristine about the battles and their aftermath. Tomorrow is museum day, with visits to the Wellington and Napoleon museums, the church in Waterloo and the Mont St Jean medical museum.

Waterloo 2022 – the Waterloo Museum and Hougoumont

Waterloo 2022 – the Waterloo Museum and Hougoumont and we don’t hang about on the Number One London Waterloo tour. Having been picked up by the coach at the station in Brussels, we drove straight to the Lion Mound and the attached Waterloo Museum.

 

 

The museum gives an excellent overview of the history of the French revolution, Napoleon’s rise to power and the various coalitions and wars which led inexorably towards the Waterloo campaign. There are fabulous displays of weapons and uniforms from troops on both sides of the campaign, maps and models depicting the events of 1815 and the famous Waterloo Panorama which was painted in 1912 by Louis Dumoulin, and occupies a circular building. It is 110 metres in circumference and 12 metres high  and the soundtrack plunges you into the midst of the battle. Despite, as Gareth assured us, a number of inaccuracies, it’s genuinely impressive and I’m glad we managed to see it before it closes for restoration later this month.

Teaching time at the top of the Lion’s Mound, once Gareth had his breath back…

The Lion’s Mound was erected in 1826 at the request of William I, King of the Netherlands. It has a huge lion at the top that symbolises the victory of the various monarchies. There are 226 steps up and an excellent view over the battlefield. Along with many other people, I’d heard that the building of the Lion’s Mound had profoundly affected the shape and layout of the battlefield. Gareth’s clear explanation of exactly which part of the field was dug out to create the mound made it clear that the changes were relatively minimal. 

 

 

The chapel at Hougoumont

Our next visit was to the farm of Hougoumont which was the scene of fierce fighting throughout the battle. A spectacular film show shows scenes from the story of the struggle for Hougoumont and although many of the buildings were destroyed in the fire which consumed the defences or were taken down after the battle, Gareth’s explanations gave an excellent explanation of how the Allied troops fought to hold on to the farm through several French breaches of the defences throughout the afternoon. In particular, he ran through the various stories about the different French incursions and exploded one or two popular myths very convincingly as far as I’m concerned. 

Memorial to the British Army at Hougoumont

I’ve visited Hougoumont before and found it very moving, but without a guide it’s difficult to visualise the progress of the battle and the original layout of the farm. Gareth carried a selection of maps and a copy of his fantastic Waterloo atlas to help his explanations. This had the dual effect of giving me a clear picture of the fight for Hougoumont and of causing me to order a copy of the book as soon as I could. 

 

 

 

Martin’s Hotel

We were all tired and very hungry by the time we arrived at Martin’s Hotel in Waterloo. Before dinner, Gareth gave a short talk about the background to Waterloo which set up the next few days visits. It was a long day and we needed an early night ready to tackle Quatre-Bras and Ligny the following day. We’re all learning a huge amount about the story of the Waterloo Campaign, the various myths which have grown out of the story and the work done by different historians to discover the most likely scenario.

 

From my own perspective as a writer of fiction, I’m hoping not only to learn a lot about the various battles of the campaign but also to begin to get a sense of how my own fictional battalions and characters are going to fit into it. Already I’m beginning to visualise the scale of the battle and the sheer horror of the casualties. I’m a few books away from Waterloo but I’m scribbling frantically in my notebook for future reference. I think this will be a tough one to write.

We’re lucky enough on this tour to have not only Gareth, with his encyclopaedic knowledge of the various military sources about the campaign but also Kristine who has an astonishing knowledge of the social history of the period and in particular the various civilians in Brussels at the time. As Gareth read accounts from officers and men involved in the battle, Kristine gave us excerpts from her wonderful book, giving us a poignant picture of those waiting anxiously for news of the outcome and of their loved ones on the battlefield.

Tomorrow we’re off to Ligny and Quatre Bras…

The Combat at San Millan

Church in San Millan de San Zadornil

The Combat at San Millan

I’ve been driven off course during my writing of book seven of the Peninsular War Saga this week by the tangled story of the Combat at San Millan. Having emerged from the other end with enough of a grasp of events to write the chapter, I decided to prolong the distraction a little longer by sharing the story in a blog post, since this is a really interesting example of how I use research to put the books together. It’s also an example of how important it is to me to find a variety of sources if I possibly can, and how challenging it can be to come up with a coherent account.

Lieutenant-General Charles Alten

The Combat at San Millan was a small action fought by Lieutenant-General Charles Alten’s Light Division on 18th June 1813 during the march on Vitoria. To give a brief summary, Alten’s division was ordered to march across the hills via La Boveda towards the village of San Millan with the intention of outflanking General Reille’s corps at Osma. At San Millan, they unexpectedly encountered General Maucune’s division which was on its way to join up with Reille’s main force. After a short, sharp fight, Reille’s forces retreated before the Light Division, leaving behind approximately 400 dead, wounded and prisoners and the entire baggage train.

My usual first source for any battle that I’m about to write is Sir Charles Oman’s epic History of the Peninsular War. Generally speaking, he can be relied upon for a straightforward account of who did what, and where and when. Once I’ve got the sense of what happened from Oman, I will search any other histories, published letters and memoirs from the period which might cover that action for further details which can be incorporated into my fictional account.

In the case of San Millan, there are a number of different accounts, but as I began to plan out the action and to work out the best way to weave in my fictional brigade it was clear that not all these agreed. As I went on, I became more and more confused.

There were two brigades in Alten’s division in 1813. To avoid confusion I will leave out the fictional exploits of Paul van Daan and his men at this point.

Sir James Kempt

The first brigade was led by Major-General Sir James Kempt and consisted of the 1st battalion of the 43rd foot, the 1st battalion of the 95th rifles, five companies of the 3rd battalion of the 95th rifles and the 1st Portuguese caçadores.

The second brigade was led by Major-General John Ormsby Vandeleur and consisted of the 1st battalion of the 52nd foot, the 2nd battalion of the 95th rifles and the 3rd battalion of the Portuguese caçadores.

Under normal circumstances, the Light Division would march in brigade order with Kempt’s men at the front.

According to all sources, the first to encounter the French were the cavalry scouts attached to the Light Division, the hussars of the King’s German Legion. After chasing away the French cavalry patrols, the KGL reported back to Alten, who ordered in the first troops. This is where it becomes confusing.

Sir John Ormsby Vandeleur

Oman says that Vandeleur’s Brigade was at the head of the British column and were sent in to attack immediately, the 95th and Portuguese caçadores in the front line and the 52nd in support. Macaune initially stood to fight, knowing that his second brigade with his baggage train was approaching. Shortly afterwards, Kempt’s brigade made an appearance and began to deploy to the left of Vandeleur’s at which point Macaune gave the order to retreat through the village. Macaune’s second brigade then appeared with the baggage in the rear and were attacked, by Kempt’s brigade, while Vandeleur’s men continued to pursue the first brigade through the village.

Tim Saunders and Rob Yuill in their recently published Light Division in the Peninsular War 1811-1814, give the same account of the French presence at San Millan, but give Kempt’s brigade as being the leading brigade. They say that Wellington arrived immediately on the spot as the cavalry was giving Kempt the information and immediately directed the 1st and 3rd battalions of riflemen, supported by the rest of Kempt’s brigade, to attack the French. They then go on to say that the 52nd along with the 1st and 3rd caçadores attacked and cleared the village. Meanwhile, Vandeleur’s brigade, which had been some distance behind Kempt’s came forward and the 43rd and second 95th were deployed across the valley. This account goes on to say that Kempt’s brigade continued the pursuit of the French 1st brigade through the village while Vandeleur’s brigade chased the 2nd brigade into the hills.

We now move on to English Battles And Sieges In The Peninsula by Lieut.-Gen. Sir William Napier. Napier gives a very brief summary of the battle but does not separate out the different brigades or battalions apart from the fact that the first attack was by riflemen followed by the 52nd. He says the rest of the Light Division remained in reserve. He then describes the 52nd’s fight on the hillside and says that the reserve were chasing the French who then came up behind the 52nd. Reading between the lines, it appears that Napier views Vandeleur’s Brigade as the reserve, but does not give any explanation as to why the 52nd, which was part of Vandeleur’s Brigade, seemed to have been fighting with Kempt’s Brigade.

There is enough agreement between Napier and the more recent history of the Light Division to suggest that Saunders and Yuill agree with his interpretation of events. To move on to another earlier history, I looked at J W Fortescue’s History of the British Army. Fortescue describes the skirmish in volume 9 and once again agrees with the role of the German hussars. In his account, Alten received the news of the presence of the enemy and sent forward the Rifles from Kempt’s Brigade.

At this point, Wellington arrived. He sent the rest of Kempt’s Brigade (i.e. the 43rd and 1st caçadores) along with the 3rd caçadores from Vandeleur’s Brigade in support. This is interesting. There is no information about how much time elapsed between Alten’s first orders and Wellington’s arrival and secondary orders, but what seems clear is that by this time, Vandeleur’s Brigade was close enough for Wellington to give orders to send in both battalions of Portuguese. What is also interesting is that Fortescue does not mention the 52nd being sent in with them.

Fortescue then goes on to describe one of the notable parts of the skirmish:

“While this fight was going on , Macune’s second brigade suddenly emerged from a rocky defile, where upon Vandeleur’s brigade instantly flew upon their left flank. The unhappy French made for a hill a little way to their front; but the Fifty-second, who were stationed beyond this hill, turned about and raced them for the summit . A rude scuffle followed , but the bulk of the enemy…made their escape through wood and mountain to Miranda del Ebro.”

This account seems to suggest that the 52nd were already stationed upon the hill when the rest of their brigade chased the French up the hill. Does this mean they had already been stationed there before the sighting of the French second division? Or were they placed there when Vandeleur’s brigade first came up as part of the reserve? It’s not clear from this.

Another history of the Rifle Brigade was written in 1877 by William Henry Cope. It’s old, but I found some of the details delightful and they’ll definitely be finding their way into the book. With the usual early agreement about the actions of the German hussars, Cope goes on to say that Colonel Barnard, who commanded a battalion of the 95th in Kempt’s brigade led the first attack. This definitely seems to disagree with Oman’s account of Vandeleur’s brigade leading the attack, and makes more sense, as Kempt’s brigade should have been in the lead. 

While Cope gives no specific details about the 43rd or 52nd, he does state that  the second brigade of the Light Division (Vandeleur’s brigade) came up to San Millan at the same time as the rear brigade of the French rear-guard and that Vandeleur’s brigade attacked them.

Moving on to published memoirs and letters, we start with A Light Infantryman with Wellington: the letters of George Ulrich Barlow, edited by Gareth Glover. Barlow was in the 52nd and gives a very brief summary of the battle. He describes the incident with the 52nd atop the hill and says they were too winded to pursue successfully but gives no specifics of any other battalions or where they were.

William Surtees was a quartermaster in the 1st battalion of the 95th. He confirmed that his battalion was the first into the attack, and describes the attack on the French first brigade as being conducted by Kempt’s brigade. His description then goes as follows:

“The first brigade of the enemy being thus beaten, retreated along the great road in the direction of Espeja, leaving their second brigade and all their baggage to their fate. These latter being pressed by our second or rear brigade, and seeing us in possession of the village, and the road they had to pass, immediately broke in all directions, and dispersed themselves in the mountains over the village, each man making the best of his way. This their baggage could not do, and it consequently fell into the hands of the captors, an easy and valuable booty; but although my brigade, by beating and dispersing the enemy at the village, had been the principal cause of its capture, yet those whose hands it fell into had not the generosity to offer the least share of it to us, but divided it amongst themselves.”

This very clearly states that the first attack was made by Kempt’s brigade and the second attack upon the baggage by Vandeleur’s brigade which came in later. There is no mention of the 52nd coming in earlier and fighting with a different brigade.

Andrew Francis Barnard

John Kincaid was another rifleman who wrote several entertaining accounts of his service in the Peninsula. His account of San Millan is brief. He served in Kempt’s brigade under Andrew Barnard.  He described being part of the first attack, and chasing the French. He also complains that Vandeleur’s brigade got all the baggage even though his brigade had done most of the fighting.

While his account of the action in his memoirs is limited, there is an interesting letter from Kincaid, which was written many years later to W S Moorsom after the publication of his Historical record of the Fifty-second Regiment (Oxfordshire Light Infantry) from the year 1755 to the year 1858. I’m indebted to Gareth Glover once more for providing me with this letter along with several other accounts of the combat all of which are due to be published by him over the course of the next year. Kincaid complains to Moorsom that his account gives undue credit to the actions of the 52nd, ignoring the contributions of the rest of the battalions, particularly the 95th.

This letter sets out far more clearly than any of the other accounts, the timing of the skirmish. According to Kincaid:

“We all arrived on the hill above San Millan, at the same time, we were about half an hour there before our battalion was ordered to attack the Brigade of Maucune’s Division, which was on the road below. It was probably half an hour later before the 52nd attacked the 2nd brigade of that division, which at the time our attack was made, had not arrived within sight. I must therefore submit to you whether your description does not leave it to be inferred by those unacquainted with what took place, that there had been only one brigade of Maucune’s Division near San Millan, and that it had been attacked and dispersed by Vandeleur’s Brigade but as the other brigade of that same division had been defeated but a few minutes before by our old 1st battalion I think.”

Until Gareth provided me with this letter, I’d never come across Moorsom’s history. I was delighted to find that it is available online, courtesy of the fantastic HathiTrust website and it is clearly destined to become a regular source for my research. Like Kincaid, Moorsom is very useful for the timing of the combat. His account reads as follows:

“The following day the Light Division crossed that river at Puente Arenas, and on the 18th it suddenly came upon two brigades of Maucune’s division, which, being in observation, and proceeding from Frias to Osma, had quitted the high-road, and were moving along a small ridge of hills to the right of the road near the village of San Millan, with a large interval between them, and thus crossed the route of the division. The brigades of the Light Division were separated on the march, some distance apart; and as soon as the enemy were discovered, General Alten halted the division to reconnoitre, and a considerable delay took place before the first brigade (in which were the 43rd and 1st battalion 95th Rifles) were allowed to attack.

“As soon, however, as the force and intentions of the enemy were ascertained, Colonel Barnard led his battalion of the 95th Rifles down the hill, with three companies in skirmishing order among the brushwood, and three in reserve: on this the enemy at once threw out a body of skirmishers to meet the 95th, and put his column to a running pace to escape the flank fire which the first brigade now opened on him and which was kept up for some miles, inflicting on him a severe loss.

“Meantime the second brigade of the Light Division found Maucune’s rear brigade encumbered with baggage, and so far behind its comrades of the leading brigade that the action was entirely a separate affair without concert on the part of the French. On this being perceived, the 2nd battalion of the 95th, immediately extending in the brushwood, commenced a fire on the rear of the French, while the 52nd, pushing on at double quick along the flank of their column, as soon as they had gained a sufficient advance, charged upon it, and took three hundred prisoners and a great quantity of baggage, the remainder of the enemy dispersing among the mountains.”

Despite Kincaid’s complaints, I actually think Moorsom sets out the roles of the various brigades and battalions very clearly; in fact I wonder if he may have adjusted a more biased account for a later edition because he seems to give full credit to all concerned in this excerpt. It also solves many of the problems of the previous accounts that I’ve mentioned above. It seems clear that General Alten did not send in his men quite so precipitately as suggested, and in fact waited until both his brigades had arrived on the hills above San Millan. That would give Lord Wellington time to make his appearance. It also sounds far more like the meticulous Alten to me. 

Moorsom is also very specific that the 43rd and not the 52nd was with Kempt’s Brigade, and it was that brigade which was sent to attack the French first brigade which was waiting in and around the village. Most of the fighting seems to have been done by the riflemen, with the 43rd ready in support. This left Vandeleur’s Brigade, including the 52nd, in reserve and they only became involved in the fight when the French second brigade with the baggage train made its unexpected appearance.

As an interesting aside, Moorsom’s account, written as a regimental history in the mid-nineteenth century, makes no mention at all even of the existence of the two Portuguese battalions even though they were an integral part of the Light Division, and both Oman and Fortescue agree that they were sent into battle very early on by Lord Wellington himself. He also fails to mention the role of the Spanish division who continued the pursuit of the French into the hills. Clearly Moorsom preferred to ignore the multi-national nature of Wellington’s Peninsular command. 

An account by William Freer of the 43rd (courtesy of Gareth Glover) confirms Moorsom’s suggestion that the 43rd remained ready in support, leaving most of the fighting to the riflemen:

“We were not brought into play, but were kept in reserve dreading another [column] coming from the same point which would (had we been all pursuing) have been an inconvenience.”

Gareth Glover also provided me with an account by William Rowan of the 52nd, which makes it easy to see how some of the confusion of the various accounts may have come about. Rowan describes the combat thus:

“We then crossed the River Ebro and on the 18th (my birthday) we had a stirring affair, when our brigade unexpectedly and to our material surprise, near the village of San Milan cut in between the two brigades of a French division on route to Vitoria by a road that crossed the one on which we were marching our regiment; immediately wheeled into line and dashed at one of the brigades as it attempted to form on some high ground to our right. It did not however, want to receive us, but after a desultory fire it dispersed in all direction among the hills. We pursued for some time, taking several hundred prisoners and capturing all the baggage.”

The tone of Rowan’s account suggests that the 52nd flew into action the moment the French were sighted, and contradicts the measured account given by Moorsom. However, when you read it carefully, Rowan agrees that the 52nd’s attack was in fact made on the second brigade and the baggage, which most accounts agree did not even appear until after Kempt’s brigade was engaged fighting the French in the village. Rowan was definitely only interested in his own regiment’s part in the affair and does not mention any of the other battalions involved.

Which brings me very neatly to my own part in the Combat at San Millan. As a writer of historical fiction, it isn’t my job to decide which historian has it right and which doesn’t. In order to write a believable story, I need to choose the accounts that seem most likely, weave in my fictional regiment, and allow the historians to pick apart the rest. The list I’ve given is probably by no means complete. More accounts are being discovered all the time, and historians such as Gareth Glover do an amazing job of editing, publishing and interpreting them for their readers.

I already know the part I want Paul and his men to play at San Millan, and I’m going to go with the accounts of Moorsom and Kincaid. Their detailed timings are very useful and the delay before the initial attack gives me the opportunity to introduce a ‘Wellington moment’. In the face of so much conflicting evidence, I’m going to fall back on the most likely scenario which is that Kempt’s brigade, with the 43rd, was sent in first leaving Vandeleur’s brigade to deal with the second French brigade when it turned up. I will also borrow some of the individual stories from the other accounts, because they’re fun.

The enormous amount of information that needed to be sifted for an account of a small fight at San Millan makes it easy to understand why there are so many books written about a huge battle such as Waterloo. I’m going to end with a quote from Wellington. There are so many quotes attributed to him, but this one, or at least a version of it, seems more reliable than most. It also sums up very nicely what I’ve learned from researching battles for historical fiction.

“The history of a battle, is not unlike the history of a ball. Some individuals may recollect all the little events of which the great result is the battle won or lost, but no individual can recollect the order in which, or the exact moment at which, they occurred, which makes all the difference as to their value or importance.” (Letter to John Croker, 8 August 1815, as quoted in The Waterloo Letters (1891) edited by H. T. Sibome)

Now let’s see what Major-General Paul van Daan makes of the Combat at San Millan…

Book Seven of the Peninsular War Saga, An Indomitable Brigade, is due to be published this November.

For those interested in my ramblings on writing, history and Labradors, I’m on Facebook and Twitter, so please like, follow and join in the fun.

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Once again I’d like to thank Gareth Glover for generously providing me with several as yet unpublished sources for this post. There is a full list of the sources I’ve used here but I’d recommend you have a look at Gareth’s website and watch out for future publications as there are still many more unpublished Peninsular War memoirs to come, and they’re all fascinating.

Sources

Cope, William Henry     The History of the Rifle Brigade (the Prince Consort’s Own) Formerly the 95th, Chatto and Windus, 1877)

Fortescue,  J W    A History of the British Army (Volume 9), Naval & Military Press, 2004

Glover, Gareth (ed)    A Light Infantryman with Wellington: the letters of George Ulrich Barlow,  Helion and Co, 2018

Glover, Gareth (ed) Unpublished account of Henry Booth (43rd)

Glover, Gareth (ed) Unpublished account of William Freer (43rd) 

Glover, Gareth (ed) Unpublished account of Surgeon Gibson (52nd)

Glover, Gareth (ed)    Unpublished letter from John Kincaid to W S Moorsom 

Glover, Gareth (ed) Unpublished account by William Rowan (52nd)

Kincaid, John    The Complete Kincaid of the Rifles,  Leonaur, 2011

Maxwell, W H (ed)    Peninsular sketches; by actors on the scene, H.Colburn, 1844

Moorsom, W S (ed)    Historical record of the Fifty-second Regiment (Oxfordshire Light Infantry) from the year 1755 to the year 1858, R Bentley, 1860

Napier, Lt-Gen Sir William     English Battles And Sieges In The Peninsula (Extracted From His ‘Peninsula War.’) John Murray, 1855

Oman, Sir Charles     History of the Peninsular War (Vol 6), Naval & Military Press, 2017

Surtees, William    Twenty five years in the Rifle Brigade,  William Blackwood, 1833

The Wellesley Family: Historical Scandals

The Wellesley Family: Historical Scandals

The Wellesley Family: Historical Scandals, arose from my long-time interest in Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, who is a significant secondary character in the Peninsular War Saga.

During my books, we follow Wellington through his early career in India and then on through the long years of the war in Spain and Portugal. We also follow him through his elevation to a knighthood, then a series of peerages, to when he becomes Duke of Wellington. Through my novels so far, he has been known as Lord Wellington, and for simplicity, that is how I’ll refer to him in this post. To confuse matters further, the family changed their name from Wesley to Wellesley during Wellington’s younger years. I’m going to use the more familiar Wellesley during this post. I’m also going to call the rest of the siblings by their first names, to avoid having to keep changing their various titles as they are elevated through the peerage. Because the Wellesley boys did very well for themselves.

Wellington was unusual among military commanders, in that he did not go home to England throughout the six years of the Peninsular War. It was a matter of choice, because he could perfectly well have done so during winter quarters, but it was very typical of Wellington to assume that if he left the army for even a short time, they would never manage without him. Wellington took micro-management to a whole new level.

His dedication means that in fictional terms, I’ve never really had reason to spend any time with the rest of his family. There is a brief mention of his wife in Dublin in book one, and we meet one of his brothers, Henry, in a short story. But in general, the rest of the Wellesley brothers and sisters were off living their lives. There was a good deal of correspondence between the family, both professional and personal. Richard, the eldest brother was a politician who held office during those years while Henry was a diplomat at the temporary Spanish court in Cadiz. The Wellesley brothers had varied and interesting careers, but they also had varied and interesting personal lives. Given the amount of scandal which happened in this one family, I can’t help wondering what went awry in their early years to make it so difficult for them to maintain good relationships.

The Wellesleys were born into an aristocratic Anglo-Irish family. Their father was Garret Colley Wesley, 1st Earl of Mornington and their mother was the Hon. Anne Hill-Trevor. The marriage was reportedly happy, despite his lack of financial sense and the couple had nine children, most of whom have some historical significance. Mornington died at the age of only forty-six leaving his family in financial difficulties, which led them to sell most of their Irish estates.

Two of the Wellesley’s children, Arthur Gerald and Francis did not survive into adulthood. Another daughter, Mary Elizabeth died unmarried at the age of twenty-two. The rest went on to marry and to have generally successful public lives. Four of the five brothers were elevated to the peerage, and all married at least once. Not all of those marriages were successful, however. The story of the Wellesleys, with its scandals, divorces, and duels, would make an excellent soap opera.

Richard Wellesley, second Earl of Mornington

Richard Wellesley succeeded his father as Earl of Mornington but he did not make the traditional marriage expected of a Peer. Instead, he lived with a French actress called Hyacinthe-Gabrielle Roland. The couple had three sons and two daughters and Richard finally married her in 1794. Hyacinthe joined him in London, but the marriage was not a success. Hyacinthe was shunned by polite society because of her irregular union with Richard as well as her relatively humble origins. She never learned to speak English and was probably very lonely, and at some point during their marriage, the couple separated and lived apart.

Hyacinte Gabrielle Roland
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=150197

In addition to Hyacinthe, Richard had a teenage mistress by the name of Elizabeth Johnston, with whom he had two children. One of them, Edward, was born in 1796 just two years after Richard’s marriage, and later became his father’s private secretary.

Hyacinthe died in 1816 and nine years later Richard, who was by then sixty-five years old, married a young widow by the name of Marianne Patterson who was thirty-seven. Marianne was the daughter of a wealthy American merchant and it is possible that her fortune was part of her appeal for Richard, who was always short of money. There were rumours that the couple were already lovers before the wedding, and there had also been gossip linking her name with Wellington. Certainly she and Wellington were close friends, and he tried to persuade her not to marry Richard. Despite this, the marriage seems to have worked well and Richard finally found marital peace in his later years.

William Wellesley-Pole, third Earl of Mornington and first Baron Maryborough

William was the second of the surviving Wellesley brothers and served in the Royal Navy. In 1781 he inherited the estates of his godfather, William Pole on the condition that he change his name. William later inherited the Earldom when his elder brother died with no legitimate son.

William was married in 1784 to Katherine Elizabeth Forbes, the daughter of an admiral. The couple had four children and were said to have the only happy marriage of the four brothers.

Lady Anne Wellesley

Anne was first married at the age of twenty-two to Henry FitzRoy, son of the first Baron Southampton. The couple had two daughters and FitzRoy sadly died after only four years of marriage, in Lisbon of consumption. When Anne’s brother Henry came to Lisbon to escort Anne back home after the death of her husband, their ship was captured by the French and Anne and Henry were prisoners until Anne was released and Henry escaped the following year.

Four years later Anne made a second marriage to Charles Culling Smith, a politician and courtier, with whom she had two more children.

Frederica, Duchess of York

Anne was First Lady of the Bedchamber to the Duchess of York. There is a story that the Duke of York came home to Oatlands unexpectedly one day to find his wife and Charles Culling Smith in bed together. There was no public scandal, because the King insisted that the matter be hushed up. There was contemporary gossip about the affair, but it would seem that if it happened, it was very successfully hushed up indeed. Personally, I am doubtful about this one.

Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington

Wellington was the third of the Wellesley brothers, and apparently in his youth was the least promising. His mother could see no hope of great things from her son and encouraged a career in the army as the best she could do.

Wellington was a young and impecunious officer when he met the Honourable Catherine ‘Kitty’ Pakenham in Dublin. The couple apparently fell in love, but her family rejected his proposal on the grounds that he was the third son of a large family with limited prospects. Wellington withdrew and became absorbed in an increasingly successful military career, while Kitty became engaged to Galbraith Lowry Cole, the second son of the Earl of Enniskillen.

The couple did not meet again for ten years. During that time a lot had changed. Wellington had intimated that he still felt his attachment to Kitty, and that may have been the reason she broke off her engagement to Cole. She was also ill during this period and by the time she and Wellington met again, she was thin, pale and in poor health which was apparently a considerable shock to him. Nevertheless, the couple married in 1806 and had two sons.

The marriage was not a success. Kitty tried hard to please her sharp-witted, decisive husband, but was unable to do so. They had little in common and very quickly began to live separate lives. Kitty doted on her sons and adopted children while Wellington pursued his career. He went to the Peninsula in 1808 and then again in 1809 and did not return until 1814. By then, the gap between them had widened still further. Kitty’s interests were all domestic; Wellington was a public figure.

This did not mean that Wellington was without female company. There were rumours of flirtations and possible more with several married women during his time in India. Back in England, he conducted an affair with a famous London courtesan by the name of Harriette Wilson, whose later attempt to blackmail him apparently brought the very typical Wellington response of “Publish and be damned.”

Little is known of Wellington’s love life during his time in the Peninsula, although rumours suggested that he kept a mistress at headquarters during 1810. Possibly the gossip arising from that either taught him to avoid such relationships or to be more circumspect about them, because there do not seem to be any other such rumours through the rest of the war.

At the end of the war in 1814, Wellington was appointed ambassador to France and moved to Paris. During this time, he apparently had affairs with two women who had previously been lovers of Napoleon, an actress called Marguerite Georges and an opera singer named Giuseppina Grassini. Kitty joined him for a time but returned to London while Wellington attended the Congress of Vienna. After Napoleon’s escape brought war again in 1815, Wellington moved to Brussels to command the Allied forces.

There was a lively social scene in Brussels in the run-up to Waterloo, and scandal once again followed Wellington although much of this was probably no more than gossip. Lady Capel complained that Wellington “has not improved the morality of our society” due to his tendency to invite ladies of doubtful character to his parties. There was a reputed affair with Lady Frances Wedderburn-Webster, but she and her husband later brought a successful libel action against the St James Chronicle for printing the story. Wellington also developed a close friendship with Lady Georgiana Lennox, who was the twenty year old daughter of the Duchess of Richmond.

During the years following Waterloo, gossip continued to follow Wellington. His name was linked at different times with Lady Frances Shelley, Lady Caroline Lamb, Lady Charlotte Greville and his future sister-in-law, Marianne Patterson. It is impossible to know how many of these, if any, were actual affairs and how many were close and affectionate friendships. What is certain is that Wellington was capable of both. He seemed to be a man who liked the company of women, particularly intelligent and attractive women.

Mrs Harriet Arbuthnot was typical of this. Harriet was married to Charles Arbuthnot, a politician more than twenty years older than her, and was previously a close friend of Lord Castlereagh before he committed suicide in 1822. Harriet and Charles were Tories, and both became close to Wellington. Harriet and Wellington exchanged letters on a regular basis, and she frequently acted as his hostess and social secretary, particularly after Kitty’s death in 1831. Harriet was a diarist, and her observations have contributed greatly to our knowledge of Wellington as a man. Wellington was devastated at her early death of cholera in 1834. He and Charles Arbuthnot remained close, and Charles went to live with Wellington after Harriet’s death. There were undoubtedly rumours about Harriet’s relationship with Wellington, but these do not seem to have been taken seriously and very few people believe that they were anything more than close and devoted friends.

Angela Burdett-Coutts

In his later years, Wellington continued the tradition of having close female friends, but he gave no sign of wanting to remarry, and took care, on the whole, to be circumspect about his relationships. He was close to Angela Burdett-Coutts, who apparently wanted to marry him, but Wellington seemed to prefer friendship to scandal. If there were liaisons, he kept them very quiet.

The Revd and Hon. Gerald Valerian Wellesley

The next of the Wellesley siblings was a churchman, who became Rector of St Luke’s, Chelsea and a prebendary of Westminster Abbey. In 1802 he married Lady Emily Cadogan and the couple had two children.

By 1818 however, the marriage had gone badly wrong. Emily is said to have had an affair initially with the Marquess of Anglesey and then to have discarded him for Lord Wallscourt, who was still in his teens and half her age. There is some doubt as to the exact date of the ending of Gerald’s marriage, and possibly because of his position in the church, he did not formally seek a divorce. It seems likely, however, that the scandal did not help Gerald’s repeated unsuccessful attempts to become a bishop.

The Hon. Henry Wellesley later first Baron Cowley

The Cadogan family was also involved in the marital scandal of the final Wellesley brother’s marriage. Henry Wellesley had a successful diplomatic career, but he was as unfortunate as the rest of his family in matters of the heart.

In 1803 Henry married Lady Charlotte Cadogan, who was the sister of Lady Emily Cadogan, the wife of his brother Gerald. The couple had three sons and a daughter. However, in 1808, Charlotte began an affair with Lord Paget. He was forty and she was twenty-seven. When Henry Wellesley became suspicious and confronted his wife in 1809, Charlotte left her family and placed herself under Paget’s protection.

The scandal was huge. Both couples were divorced, with Henry being awarded £20,000 in damages from Paget, a step which seems bizarre to us, but was common at the time. Paget and Charlotte were married in 1810 and Paget’s former wife Caroline soon married the Duke of Argyll.

Lord Uxbridge

The scandal blighted Paget’s career for some years. He was a talented cavalry officer but was unable to serve in the Peninsula under Wellington because of bad blood between the two families. His younger brother, Sir Edward Paget did, however, even acting as Wellington’s second-in-command. By the time of Waterloo, Wellington was obliged to accept him as cavalry commander. By then Paget had succeeded to the title of Lord Uxbridge and lost his leg during the engagement.

As mentioned above, Uxbridge apparently went on to have an affair with Emily Wellesley, wife of Gerald Wellesley. The date of this is unclear, but Emily was his wife’s sister, and was married to the brother of the man he had cuckolded in 1809 which makes the whole thing extraordinarily tacky.

In March 1809, Charlotte’s brother Henry Cadogan challenged Paget to a duel, accusing him of having dishonoured his sister. The two men fought on Wimbledon Common. Paget deliberately fired wide, and honour was considered satisfied. By the time Paget embarked on an affair which helped to ruin his other sister’s marriage, Cadogan was dead, fighting bravely under Wellington at Vitoria.

In 1816 Henry married again, this time to Lady Georgiana Cecil, daughter of the Marquess of Salisbury. The two families were already close, and Henry’s second marriage appears to have been happy.

The Wellesleys were not the only family in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century to become embroiled in scandal, but they do seem to have been unusually prone to it. While only one of them was formally divorced, all but William seem to have been unhappy one way or another. Richard and Wellington lived apart from their wives for many years and conducted extra-marital affairs very openly. Henry went through a painful divorce. Gerald was never formally divorced but was separated from his unfaithful wife. Anne’s second husband was rumoured to have been unfaithful with a member of the royal family.

It is hard not to speculate why the Wellesleys found marriage so difficult. Their parents apparently had a reasonable happy union, but their father died early, when Richard was only 21 and Henry was 8. Possibly the ensuing financial hardship made the boys focus on success and money, which gave them less time for their wives. Perhaps they were simply unfortunate in the choices they made. Or perhaps there was something in the Wellesley temperament, which made them impatient, critical, and difficult to live with. Certainly in the case of Wellington there is some evidence of that.

Whole books have been written about the life and loves of the Duke of Wellington. His brothers and sister are less well known to popular history, but were significant characters in their era. This post is a light-hearted look at the best-known scandals surrounding the Wellesley family, but there was a great deal more to them than that, and I recommend any of the books below for people wanting to know more. From the point of view of a historical novelist, the Wellesleys were an interesting family and definitely one with enough historical scandals to fill a novel or two in their own right.

 

Bibliography:

Wellington: the path to victory   Rory Muir   (Yale, 2013)

Wellington: Waterloo and the fortunes of peace (Yale 2015)

Wellington: the years of the sword  Elizabeth Longford (Smithmark, 1996)

Wellington: pillar of state   Elizabeth Longford (Harper 1972)

The Duke of Wellington and Women by Shannon Selin

There is a book entitled Architects of Empire: the Duke of Wellington and his brothers by John Severn (University of Oklahoma Press, 2007) which I didn’t manage to get hold of in time to write this post, although it is mentioned in some of my other sources and I would like to read it at some point.

I’ve given a specific link to a blog post by Shannon Selin about the Duke of Wellington and his relationships with women, but I highly recommend reading some of her other posts about Wellington, because they are all excellent.

 

George William Bryant: a good life

Me and my Dad

George William Bryant: a good life

I wanted to write a post about my Dad on what would have been his birthday, as I wrote one about my Mum, Iris, on hers, but this time I hesitated. I adored both my parents equally, but coming to write this, I’m uncomfortably aware that I don’t know as much about my Dad’s early life as I do about my Mum’s.

I wonder about that. Was it because I was less close, as a child, to his family and therefore didn’t hear all the childhood tales which were part of my growing years in the East End? Or was it simply the difference between them as people, where my Mum talked freely and openly and ALL THE TIME while my Dad was more of an observer, watching the females take the limelight with great affection and appreciation. Afterwards, I decided it was silly anyway. I know loads about my Dad; not necessarily the accurate details about the streets he lived on and the schools he attended, but all the important things about the man he was.

George William Bryant was born on 9th November 1929 in Southwark, the eldest son of George and Elizabeth Bryant. Like Mum’s family, they were very much working class, and living close to the Thames, the occupations on the various birth, marriage and death certificates in the family reflect the importance of the river in their lives. My great-grandfathers were both porters and waterside labourers and my grandfather was a furnace-man in a metal working factory, a relatively well-paid occupation for a young man. It was also lethal, and a lifetime’s exposure to dust, high temperatures, and chemicals left him with damaged lungs which eventually led to his death.

Dad, Bill and Tom, around 1998 I think.

My grandparents lived in Jamaica Road in Bermondsey when my father was born, and never moved far away from there. They always lived in rented flats and raised four sons, George, William, Johnny and Tom, in similar cramped conditions to my Mum’s family across the water.

My Dad’s childhood stories were all about the river. He could remember swimming in the Thames with his brothers, fishing with his Dad and mudlarking along the banks with his friends. The river was special to Dad, and in later life he passed on something of that reverence and affection to my Mum and then to us. The sight of the Thames on a visit to London still touches my heart in a very special way and I know I got that from him.

Like most London children, Dad was evacuated during the war. His father was in the army, and as Tommy was still a very young baby, his mum was able to go with them to a farm in Kent. I don’t know as much detail as I do of my Mum’s evacuation days, but I do know that my father loved living in the country, and it was a love that stayed with him all his life.

Like my Mum, Dad left school at fourteen. I don’t know much about his schooling, apart from the fact that during evacuation, it didn’t really happen at all. For most of his life, Dad was self-conscious about his lack of education. It gave him a determination to make up for it as an adult. Like Mum, he was a voracious reader, and introduced me to all his favourite thrillers and war stories. From his bookshelves, I devoured Alistair Maclean, Neville Shute and Douglas Reeman. He loved military and naval history and through him I discovered CS Forester, Patrick O’Brien and Bernard Cornwell. He also read non-fiction history, especially biographies, and he was utterly devoted to Charles Dickens. Somewhat eccentrically for a working-class boy from Southwark, he had a passion for beautiful looking books as well, and one of his only personal extravagances in later life were several bound sets of his favourite authors, which he would read on a regular basis.

National Service

Dad’s early jobs were in the building trade, interrupted by National Service in the army. When he came out, he went back to building and decorating. He doesn’t seem to have been much of a planner in those days, living at home, paying rent to his parents and the rest of his pay on enjoying himself. He liked going to the pub and going to dances, and had a big group of friends and a love affair that broke his heart. He was still suffering when his best friend, a lad named Bobby Mooney, started trying to get him together with a friend of his fiancee, a girl from the East End who had just come out of the Land Army. My Dad resisted for a long time, but he was best man at Bobby and Violet’s wedding where Iris Taylor was maid of honour, and meeting her changed everything.

George and Iris Bryant

My parents courtship was less straightforward than it should have been, as my Mum was involved in a long-distance relationship with a young German, a former POW who had settled near Cambridge, a story I’ve told elsewhere. She always used to tease my Dad, saying that she eventually chose him for his good looks. Actually I think she may have had a point, he looked like a film star.

With marriage, came the need for more financial security, and my Dad took a job as a railway porter. Eventually, encouraged by my Mum, who had all the confidence in him that he lacked for himself, he applied to what was then the Post Office and later became British Telecom, and trained as a telephone engineer. The money was less to start with, but got better as he obtained more and more qualifications. It was also a very steady job, and made it possible for them to start a family.

Dad with his girls. And yes, I am the little chubby one…

My Dad loved fatherhood. He was the most involved father out of all my friends families. Growing up, I had no idea how unusual he was, in a generation where raising children was still women’s work. He was there at every crucial point of my upbringing, taking turns with nappies, bottle feeding and bathing as if it was the most natural thing in the world. As we grew older, he became an expert in managing shift work so that he could be home early enough to take us to the park, or swimming, or to play tennis. I spent more time with my Dad than any of my friends.

My parents were poor at times, in a way we find difficult to understand now, but they were good managers. They never owned a house, but saved their money and made sure we had everything we needed, and as we grew older, and money became more available, we had holidays and days out and although we never toured the world, I have so many happy memories of exploring castles and climbing rocks and paddling with him.

But there was more to Dad than just a father. He had interests and hobbies and for a shy man, he loved people. A self-taught but talented amateur artist, I can’t remember a time when he didn’t have a sketch book with him, and his paintings and drawings adorned our walls. He was very fit, a powerful swimmer, probably from his boyhood, growing up by the river, and a very good tennis player. I’ve never known where he learned that, but he used to play with my uncle every weekend through the summer.

Dad was also a very spiritual man. I don’t know if church featured much in his childhood, but we were raised in it, and so much of my young days centred around church activities at St Paul’s in Old Ford. Dad was a church warden and a member of a lot of church groups. As a child, singing in the choir and acting in the nativity plays, going to church was so natural to me that I never really gave much thought to Dad’s faith, but as he grew older and moved to different churches and different activities, I had a better understanding of him. His was a gentle faith, which took into account difference. He never argued religion, never really talked much about it at all. It was just part of who he was.

Dad also loved to fish, and as we lived within easy reach of the canal, and several lakes, he spent many happy hours sitting peacefully with his rod. He made friends fishing, especially after his retirement, and when I went home on visits, he would always find an excuse to take a walk along the tow path, especially after I had the children, proud of his family and wanting to show us off to all his friends, including the lock keeper.

Music was another important part of Dad’s life. He never learned to play an instrument, although he could pick out a tune on a piano very well, but he adored classical music, and introduced it to my sister and I from a very early age. We had an enormous old gramophone in a cabinet in our living room, and Dad built up a treasured collection of classical albums. He loved Schubert and Mozart and Chopin, but his absolute favourite was Grieg, and the sound of that piano concerto makes me feel as though I’m in a room with him to this day.

Dad was a devoted husband, who visibly adored my Mum, even while teasing her about her eccentricities. They shared a lot of interests, including history, dancing, and going for long walks. Other pastimes, they did separately, and I’ve always thought it might have been one of the reasons their marriage was so successful that they were never joined at the hip but both had other interests and other friends.

I had no idea how badly my Dad longed for grandchildren, until I presented him with two, quite late on. He was involved from the start, drove me mad during both pregnancies by trying to wrap me in cotton wool, and became a beloved Papa (my son couldn’t say Grandpa, so that became his name) to both of them, babysitting whenever he could, reading endless stories and spending hours drawing and painting with them.

Dad was a very physically fit man, and the news that he had prostate cancer in his seventies, was a shock although we were not especially worried at the start. The disease progressed with horrible speed, and the quality of care received was hampered by his stubborn reluctance to allow my sister and I to get involved until it was too late. For Dad, it was his job to take care of us, not the other way around, and when he finally caved in and agreed to move closer to one of us, he had too little time left.

He came to the Isle of Man. From the day we first moved here, Dad fell passionately in love with the place, and was on a plane three or four times a year to spend as much time with us as he could. A city boy, he had always yearned to live in the country, and especially by the sea, and I think he would have made the move much sooner if my Mum had not been so firmly devoted to London. We found him an apartment overlooking the sea, and although he had only a few months left to live, it gave him pleasure to sit in the big bay window and watch the waves and the seagulls swooping over. He loved the slower pace of life of the island, and it was a grief to me that he wasn’t able to enjoy it for longer.

Dad died in Nobles Hospital on 13th June 2007, just after the end of TT. I sat with him in his room on the day before he died, watching The Quiet Man with John Wayne. It was one of his favourite old movies, and I’d watched it with him so many times throughout my childhood. I didn’t know then it would be for the last time, but it still made him laugh out loud.

When my sister and I were going through his things after his death, there were so many things that made us laugh and cry, because they were so typical of him. There was a mountain of artwork and artists materials, and my daughter still uses a lovely wooden refillable watercolour set belonging to him. There were more coats than a man could wear in one lifetime. Dad spent his life searching for the perfect coat, and he very clearly never threw one away. There was a huge collection of classical music CDs and old movies on DVD.  We found paperwork, neatly filed, telling the story of several adoptions, including a boy at an orphanage in Burma who still wrote to my Dad, who had funded his schooling and an elephant in a sanctuary in South Africa. After his death, we adopted a koala saved from wildfires in Australia and named it George Bryant in his honour. He’d have liked that.

George William Bryant is buried with my Mum on a windy hillside in Braddan, with horses grazing in the neighbouring field. I go up there regularly to take flowers to them both, and in good weather I sit for a while and enjoy the quiet. Dad would have been happy he was buried near us, he was more interested in people than places, and he wanted to be where we were.

I remember him as a quiet man, who tended to take a back seat in his very noisy family, but a man of principle, who would say what he wanted and wasn’t afraid to express a controversial opinion if he thought it was the right thing to do. A generous man, he would give both time and money to anybody in need. After his death, we received letters from all over the world, and discovered that for years he’d been an active member of a local International Club which was run through his church for overseas students and young people working in London, and he had friends in China, Indonesia and various parts of Africa who cared enough to write expressing their sorrow at his death. He was an animal lover, devoted to his various pets over the years, and supporting wildlife charities. And he was a family man, who loved his wife, his daughters and his grandchildren.

Happy ninety-first birthday Dad. I wish you’d lived long enough to hold my first published book in your hands, you’d have been so proud, but you read enough to know what I was writing and you loved it. You also had a lot to do with why I write what I do. Your life touched so many people, and they remember you as a good man. That’s not a bad epitaph.

Sir Edward Codrington

When I decided to write a post on Sir Edward Codrington for the latest Historical Writers Forum blog hop, I can honestly say that I hadn’t really taken on board, that the title of the blog hop was going to be “My favourite historical character” or I might have chosen somebody else. Codrington is by no means my favourite. Anybody who has read my books will know that the Duke of Wellington tops my list, with honourable mentions for General Robert Craufurd and General Charles Alten. However, I’ve already written blog posts on all of these, and I wanted to do somebody different.

I introduced Codrington and his wife in This Blighted Expedition, and he is going to be an important character in the next book in the Manxman series, This Bloody Shore, which will be out during the second half of next year. And having spent some time reading his published memoirs, as well as looking into his career, I admit, that while Codrington isn’t my favourite, I do like him. So what’s the problem?

The problem, dear reader, is that Edward Codrington was a slave owner. But we’ll come back to that later.

 

Edward Codrington was born in 1770, a youngest son in an aristocratic family. His mother died the same year, possibly giving birth to him, and his father died when he was five, leaving him to the care of an uncle by the name of Bethell. He was educated at Harrow for a short time and entered the Royal Navy in 1783 at the age of thirteen.

Codrington served in the Mediterranean, off the United States and in home waters, until 1793 when he was promoted to lieutenant. By this time, he seems to have been under the patronage of Lord Howe, who was possibly an acquaintance of his uncle, and he was chosen as signal lieutenant in the Channel fleet and served on HMS Queen Charlotte in the battle of the Glorious First of June. Having distinguished himself during the battle, he was promoted to commander in October 1794 and then post-captain in April 1795 at the age of 25. He commanded HMS Babet and then HMS Druid in the Channel and off Portugal, and took part in the capture of a French vessel carrying troops to assist the rebels in Ireland in 1797.

This was followed by a period on land and on half-pay. This was not unusual as there were always more captains than ships to command. Patronage was vitally important and Lord Howe, Codrington’s patron, died at his home in London in 1799. Codrington did not waste his time on land, however, and was married in 1802 to Jane Hall, a young woman from Kingston, Jamaica. The Codringtons had three sons and two daughters and appear to have been a devoted couple. In 1810, Codrington wrote to his wife:

“To be a hero one needs not to be a bad husband, most certainly; but I fear that, in order to obtain the lofty situation from which heroism can be adopted practically, in the mode of external warfare to which the sons of England are subject in these times, a man must possess none of those yearnings after his wife and children which interfere with all my official proceedings. And therefore, my dear Jane, never expect that your weak, loving husband will become a hero, a Nelson, until some other Lady Hamilton shall, by her wicked influence, utterly quench those feelings of father and husband which are now his pride and his consolation. My only resource will be, if ever I should become an admiral and Commander – in – chief, to petition that my wife may be allowed to accompany me as my secretary; – and therefore prepare yourself for this contingency!”

Pocock, Nicholas; The Battle of Trafalgar, 21 October 1805: End of the Action; National Maritime Museum; http://www.artuk.org/artworks/the-battle-of-trafalgar-21-october-1805-end-of-the-action-175342

In 1803 the Peace of Amiens ended and England was once more at war with France. Codrington was back at sea, initially in a series of small frigates, and finally in 1805,  in HMS Orion, a ship of the line. Codrington fought at the Battle of Trafalgar on 21 October. The Orion attacked the French ship, the Swiftsure, forcing her to surrender, made an unsuccessful attack on the Spanish flagship and then attacked the Intrepide along with several other English ships.

For the following few years, in command of HMS Blake, Codrington fought in the Mediterranean alongside the Spanish, commanding a squadron to harry the French along the coast. He was then called to take part in the disastrous Walcheren expedition in 1809, and it was at this point, researching This Blighted Expedition, that I first came across him. Codrington and his wife would have been only a few years older than my fictional navy couple, Hugh and Roseen Kelly, with children of a similar age, and a friendship seemed like a good plot device. In Codrington’s published memoirs is a vivid description of Jane’s terrifying ordeal during the shipwreck of HMS Venerable when she travelled to visit him in Walcheren, and in the novel, Roseen accompanies her.

After Walcheren, Codrington returned to Spain’s eastern seaboard. He was very involved when Tarragona was besieged by the French army, bringing in reinforcements, guiding cannon launches against the enemy and trying to assist the garrison. When the city fell, he performed a daring rescue operation on the beach, under fire from enemy guns and rescued more than 600 people, going to the trouble to personally reunite families who were separated during the evacuation. Codrington also showed a willingness to intervene in political matters when he spoke against the disarming of the local Catalan militia.

Codrington’s distinguished service was rewarded when he was promoted to Rear Admiral of the Blue in 1814, while serving off the coast of North America as Cochrane’s captain of the fleet. He was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1815, a rear admiral of the Red in 1819, and a vice admiral in 1821. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1822.

Tragedy struck the family some time in 1821 or 1822 when Codrington’s son Edward,  a midshipman aboard Cambrian was drowned in the Mediterranean. He was taking a cutter to Hydra when a squall overturned the boat, drowning Edward, a merchant, and three crewmen.

In 1826, Codrington was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet and sailed for Greek waters in 1827, with orders to impose a peaceful solution on the chaos of the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire. Codrington was in command of a combined British, French and Russian fleet, and had been told to find a diplomatic solution. Diplomacy does not seem to have been Codrington’s strong point, and although he appears to have been under the mistaken impression that the Ottomans had broke an agreed truce, I suspect that the suffering of the local population would have been enough to set him off anyway. On 20 October 1827, in an action which very clearly exceeded his orders, Codrington destroyed the Turkish and Egyptian fleet at the Battle of Navarino.

After the battle Codrington went to Malta to refit his ships, then in May 1828, he sailed to join the French and Russian fleets on the coast of the Morea to attempt to force the capitulation of the governor, Ibrahim Pasha, who was employing brutal tactics to suppress rebellion in the area, desolating the countryside and sending thousands of the inhabitants into slavery in Egypt, intending to replace them with Muslim settlers from Africa.

On 22 June, Codrington received the news that he was to be recalled, probably to account for his actions. Before his successor could arrive, however, the three admirals agreed that Codrington should travel to Alexandria to persuade Mehemet Ali to recall Ibrahim Pasha. With typical disregard for the probable terms of his recall, Codrington went, and the evacuation of the Morea was settled in the treaty 6 August 1828. A French expeditionary force landed, and in October 1828 Ibrahim Pasha evacuated the country.

After his return home, Codrington mounted a spirited defence of his actions, and was fully exonerated and rewarded by the grant of the Grand Cross of the Bath, although there is no doubt that the British government was embarrassed by his intervention. It was considered that his action had further weakened the Ottoman Empire, which was seen as a bulwark against the ambitions of Russia.

Codrington spent the rest of his career close to home. He commanded a training squadron in the Channel in 1831 and became a full admiral in 1837. He was an MP between 1832 and 1839, when he became Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth until 1842. His beloved Jane died in 1837.

Codrington died in London on 28 April 1851. He was survived by two sons, both of whom achieved distinction in the British armed forces. Sir William Codrington was a commander in the Crimean War and Sir Henry Codrington  became an Admiral of the Fleet. His daughter Jane, married Sir Thomas Bourchier and was responsible for the publication of Codrington’s memoirs. There was another daughter, Elizabeth, but I’ve not  yet been able to find out much about her, so I’m wondering if she died young.

Codrington was buried in St Peter’s Church, Eaton Square, then in 1954, the remains were reburied at Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey. Plaques to his memory can be found in St Paul’s Cathedral and All Saints Church, Dodington, close to the family home and there is an obelisk dedicated to the memory of Codrington and his officers who fought at Navarino at Pylos, in Greece. Numerous roads are named after him in Greece, and stamps with his image have been issued.

That was Sir Edward Codrington the hero. He was brave, intelligent and not afraid to put his own life and reputation on the line in order to do the right thing. He was well-liked and had many friends. He was a devoted husband, who adored his wife. He was compassionate, as demonstrated by his personal quest to reunite mothers and babies separated during the evacuation of Tarragona.

And he was a slave owner.

I’ve spent some time trying to find out more about this aspect of Codrington’s life. There is no doubt whatsoever that the Codringtons, the Bethell and the Hall families were plantation owners, slave owners and an integral part of the high-ranking families who made fortunes from the human misery of slavery in eighteenth century Britain. It’s much harder to establish the actual personal involvement of each individual member of every family to the institution of slavery. From my little outpost on the Isle of Man, especially in the middle of a pandemic, my research facilities are limited. Having said that, thanks to the fantastic website run by The Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slave-ownership at UCL, I’ve been able to find out a surprising amount about Sir Edward Codrington’s family, and I’m going to follow this up with another blog post, since that has been a whole different research rabbit hole.

Here’s what I know so far about Sir Edward Codrington and slavery. On 5th October 1835, under the terms of the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, Codrington was awarded government compensation of £2588 6s 6d for the 190 slaves he had owned at the Rooms plantation on Antigua, and who had been freed under the terms of the act. The plantation was part of an inheritance shared by his siblings, from his uncle, Christopher Bethell in 1797.

Sir Edward’s memoirs and published letters are very quiet on the subject of slavery. Most of the references I could find, concerned his horrified indictment of the Ottoman practice of taking Greek prisoners into slavery in Egypt, but there is no hint in any of his letters that he drew any parallel with the slaves he owned in Antigua. This is probably not surprising, since most of these letters were of a professional and highly public nature and Codrington was fighting for his career after Navarino.

The only reference I could find to plantation slavery, is in a letter to his wife, dated February 1806. It seems that Codrington sent Jane an article from the Edinburgh Review which he hoped she would read.

“As I see no marks whatever, I fancy you did not look over the (article in the Edinburgh Review on) the Examen de l’Esclavage; which I lament, because that brutal publication has called forth from these gentlemen an investigation into the merits of the slave trade, and some reasoning on its merits and consequences, which I think well worthy the consideration of the planters. A new system must take place sooner or later in that part of the world; and I am fully convinced that it would be much better for it to originate with the most interested; and I think also, that they would find their advantage in anticipation, instead of waiting till the necessity of the case runs away with all the credit which might be due to the measure.”

The book to which Codrington refers was “Examen de l’esclavage in général, et particulierement de l’esclavage des Nègres dans les colonies françaises de l’Amérique” which was published in 1802. I’ve not yet managed to read it, given that my French takes a while and a lot of patience, but as far as I am able to judge, it is written from an abolitionist standpoint. Britain was in the process of abolishing the slave trade, if not yet slavery itself, and it is interesting to see that Codrington was engaging with the debate in a way that suggests that he saw abolition as both desirable and inevitable. This was a very different standpoint to his brother, Christopher Bethell-Codrington, who in the same year rejected pressure from constituents to support the abolition of the slave trade, and continued to oppose abolition right to the bitter end.

However, whatever doubts Edward Codrington may have entertained about slavery did not cause him to free the slaves he owned in Antigua. Slaves they remained until emancipation, and Codrington accepted government compensation along with the other slave owners of the British Isles. I find myself wondering if Codrington ever visited the West Indies. There is no mention of it in his published memoirs. Did he ever even see the men, woman and children he owned, or was he, like so many others, an absentee plantation owner, who took the revenue and gave no thought to the misery behind it?

In 2009, the Greek Ambassador unveiled a blue plaque at the former home of Sir Edward Codrington in Brighton, and local newspapers spoke of Codrington as a hero. In 2020, the plaque was removed after local protests, in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests following the death of George Floyd.

So who was Edward Codrington – compassionate war hero who risked his life and reputation for the citizens of Tarragona and the freedom of Greece or a man who made money from the misery of black African slaves? The truth is, of course, that he was both

My fictionalised Ned Codrington needs to encompass all aspects of his character as far as I can discover them. I’d no idea what I was taking on when I decided to include him in my novels, but he’s there now. I already have a sense of how he might be, and I’m looking forward to getting to understand him better.

There is undoubtedly more to know about Codrington, and one day I’d like to try to find out. Perhaps lurking in some archive that I don’t currently have access to, there is evidence that he did speak out openly against slavery during his lifetime. Or perhaps there is evidence that he was the opposite, a man actively involved either in the trade or the running of his plantation, greedy for profit and careless of the lives he ruined. Perhaps, and this would be my guess, Codrington didn’t spend much time thinking about it at all. Antigua was a long way away, and it must have been so easy for a man with a burgeoning career and a growing family to make use of that extra income and ignore where the money came from. I’ll let you know if I find out more. What I do know, is researching this blog post has given me an entire raft of new ideas for the future of the Manxman series.

I wonder what Codrington would have thought of the removal of that blue plaque, if he could somehow see it? I think he might have been surprised that it was there in the first place, Codrington didn’t strike me as a man chasing fame. But he was a man who valued his good name and I think he’d have been sad that a hundred and sixty-nine years after his death, his reputation seems to have been tarnished not by active cruelty but by indifference. 

Sources

The Memoir of the Life of Edward Codrington vols 1 and 2, edited by Lady Jane Bourchier available online here.

The Centre for the Studies of the Legacies of British Slave Ownership at UCL available online here.

The History of Parliament Online, a work in progress, but available here.

Historic Hansard available here.

Don’t forget to watch out for the rest of the Historical Writers Forum October Blog Hop. Author Jen Wilson is up next with her take on Mary, Queen of Scots on Tuesday October 13th.

You can buy the first two books in the Manxman series on Kindle or in paperback over on Amazon.

An Unwilling Alliance: the story of the Copenhagen campaign of 1807

This Blighted Expedition: the story of the Walcheren campaign of 1809

Book three of the series, This Bloody Shore will be published in 2021.

If you have any comments or questions or just want to say hello, please feel free to join me on facebook, twitter or instagram, I always love to talk to readers.

The Story of the Peninsular War Saga

An Unconventional Officer - love and war in Wellington’s armyThe Story of the Peninsular War Saga is based on readers’ questions over the three years since the publication of An Unconventional Officer, the book which launched the series and introduced Paul van Daan to the unsuspecting reading public. I’ve just revisited that book, as I’m in the process of re-editing the whole series for paperback.

This is something I’ve been intending to do for several years, but I’ve continually put it off. Researching and writing the books is much more fun than the boring technical details of formatting and re-editing, and somehow I always delay this job until after the next book. My readers, who are an enthusiastic lot, make this far more difficult by constantly screeching for more in the series. However, after the very successful launch of book six, a number of people contacted me asking when the series would be available in paperback as they wanted to be able to buy them as gifts for friends and family who don’t use kindle. This made a lot of sense.

I also found myself in the unusual position of being unsure whether to move on with book seven or to write book three in my linked Manxman series. It seemed to make sense to do some reading for both, before making a decision, while working with Heather, my editor, to make the books as perfect as possible before launching the paperback editions. It also felt like a good time for me to look back over the past three years at both the story behind the story, and at my own development as a writer.

I get a lot of questions sent to me by e-mail and messenger and I try, if possible, to reply. When I was trying to write this post, I looked back over both questions and answers, and decided this was a good way of structuring the article, so I’ve reproduced some of them here, often with extended answers.

***

  1. What made you want to write about the Napoleonic Wars?

I first got interested in the Napoleonic wars at University, although I never actually studied them then. I did a course on the history of South Africa, and was introduced to a larger than life character by the name of Sir Harry Smith. As background reading, I got hold of his autobiography and read about his younger days fighting under Wellington in the Peninsula. That led me on to Georgette Heyer’s fabulous novel about Harry and his Spanish wife Juana, and also to other Peninsular War memoirs like Kincaid.

I was completely hooked. I already had ambitions to write historical novels, and I’d thought of various different periods including the English Civil Wars, which I studied at Uni, or the Anglo-Scottish conflicts in the sixteenth century. I also really wanted to write a novel set in nineteenth century South Africa. But the Napoleonic Wars seemed to me to be an excellent setting for a series.

I messed around with a lot of ideas for all of these over the next few years, but I was also busy getting my degrees, finding jobs and getting on with life. I wrote several books of various types during this time, none of which stood a hope in hell of getting published, and even scribbled down some ideas for the Peninsular War Saga. Then in 1993 a TV series began, starring Sean Bean. That led me to read some of the Sharpe novels, and I decided that with Bernard Cornwell doing it so well, and a lot of other authors publishing similar books off the back of his success, there was no chance that anybody was going to pick up a series by an unknown writer who also happened to be a woman.

2. Was An Unconventional Officer your first book?

Written or published? The answer is no and no. I tried to get an agent and a traditional publishing contract for many years before the advent of Kindle and self-publishing, and I wrote a number of different books on advice from people in the industry. I was usually told that as a woman, I should write romance, and that my best chance was with Mills and Boon, so I tried both historical and contemporary with a lot of very positive comments, but no success.

By the time I decided to publish independently, I was sick of the whole thing. I had four completed historical novels that I was reasonably happy with, none of which, I was told, were ‘marketable’. An Unconventional Officer was one of them. I still really wanted to write the full series, and I was already almost at the end of book two, with two more fully researched and planned out, when I made the decision to go for it, egged on by my husband.

Because the publishing process was new to me, and I had literally NO idea how to market my books, I decided to publish the three ‘standalone’ novels first to see how they went. So I published A Respectable Woman, A Marcher Lord and The Reluctant Debutante fairly close together, before being brave enough to put An Unconventional Officer out there. Later on, I re-edited The Reluctant Debutante, in order to link it in with the Peninsular War Saga and wrote a second Regency to go with it.

3. How did Paul van Daan come about? Is he based on a real historical person?

Paul isn’t based on a real person, although he has characteristics of a number of different people. 

There’s definitely something of Harry Smith in there, and I’ve deliberately included Harry and Juana in the books as minor characters. Smith was a flamboyant character, very full of himself, and a favourite of Wellington’s despite not being of the social class most generally favoured by his Lordship. He also had a much adored young wife who shared all the dangers of life on campaign with him, and I don’t think anybody would believe me if I said that idea didn’t make its way into the Peninsular War Saga.

With regard to Paul’s care for the welfare of his men, I’ve taken some of that from Rowland ‘Daddy’ Hill although I can’t really imagine any of Paul’s lot nicknaming him ‘Daddy’. But in terms of his eccentric style of managing his men and his aversion to flogging, I got the idea from a rather fabulous book called The Letters of Private Wheeler.

William Wheeler of the 51st wrote a series of letters which began with his early days in the regiment, shortly before embarking on the disastrous Walcheren campaign in 1809 and run through to 1828. They are an amazing source of information on the life of an infantryman during this period and I use them all the time. They also introduced me to Wheeler’s first commanding officer, an eccentric gentleman by the name of Lt-Colonel Mainwaring. Wheeler gives several different anecdotes about the colonel, but this gives the flavour of the man.

“It is the general custom of most regiments to shut up the gates, and confine the men to Barracks when under orders for Foreign service. Not so with us. Colonel Mainwaring does not approve of this plan. When he received the order, the gates were thrown wide open that the good soldier might make merry and enjoy himself, at the same time adding that if there should be any poltroons in disguise among us they might be off, it was only the good soldiers he wished to take with him. We were going to reap laurels, therefore he should not hinder the good soldier from enjoying himself for the sake of keeping a few good for nothing fellows. If any such had crept into the Corps, they would only cover the regiment with disgrace. The confidence reposed in us was not in one singe instance abused, not one man having deserted.”

With regard to the practice of flogging, Wheeler tells us that:

“Lt-Colonel Mainwaring is a very humane man. He is no advocate for the cat o’nine tails. I have more than once heard it remarked that if he could not stand fire better than witness a flogging, he would be the worst soldier in the army.”

Over the years I have had one or two reviewers complaining that Paul van Daan’s attitude to discipline is unrealistic and could not possibly have existed at this period. Colonel Mainwaring is my answer to that one. He probably wasn’t the only one, but he is certainly my favourite.

4. Why is Paul half Dutch?

I’m amazed this question hasn’t been asked more often. The answer is very simple and has nothing to do with the Peninsular War Saga. As I mentioned above, before I wrote An Unconventional Officer, I wrote another book which was set in South Africa in the early to mid-nineteenth century. The main character was a young Boer from an Anglicised family who was partly educated in England, and who served under Sir Harry Smith, and one of the themes of the book was his struggle to come to terms with the conflicting parts of his heritage. The character’s name was Paul van Daan. At a certain point it became clear that book was never going to be published for a number of reasons, but I rather fell in love with him, so I decided to transport him back in time to the Peninsular War. I had every intention of changing the surname and making him English, but it just didn’t work, he was too well established in my head. So I gave him a Dutch father instead.

5. How did you come up with Anne’s character and is she based on anybody real?

Anne isn’t really based on any one person. I wanted my heroine to be able to fit into the period and into army life, so I gave her a background which I thought made that possible. I wanted a hard-headed, practical woman who was very intelligent, and very adaptable. The daughter of a Yorkshire mill owner sounded down-to-earth, but because I also wanted her to have the social skills to shine at headquarters, I gave her a well-born stepmother who taught her to ride and to manage a large household. I also deliberately made her quite young, to give her that adaptability. 

When I first wrote the books, Anne was not traditionally beautiful. I re-thought that, and decided that it would be more of a contrast for a girl with the wow-factor to turn out to be more interested in keeping accounts and learning how to sew up battle wounds than she is in fashion and parties. I also wanted Anne to have her own friendship with Wellington, to bring out his softer side, so she needed to combine both beauty and brains.

6. A lot of heroes in other books, like Sharpe, are known for moving from one woman to another? Why did you decide to give your hero a wife and a steady family life?

I thought it would be more interesting. Partly it was the Harry and Juana factor, but mostly it was because I wanted to be able to write from both a male and a female perspective, and the only way I could really do that was by giving my leading man a leading lady.

7. How much research do you do for each book?

How long is a piece of string? I do an enormous amount of reading. I know the period details fairly well by now, so I don’t have to keep checking things like uniform and commanding officers every five minutes, but I do need to do detailed research into every campaign, and I also like to find contemporary accounts like Wheeler’s as they are a fabulous source of anecdotes that I can weave into my fictional storyline. I wrote a post about my research and note taking for anybody who is interested in learning more.

8. Who are your favourite real characters in the books?

Wellington has to be top of the list, he is the gift that keeps on giving. I’ve spent so much time reading his correspondence by now, I feel as though I know him really well. Of course that’s just my personal version of Wellington, but it is based on a lot of research.

I really like both the Light Division commanders, Craufurd and Alten. They are totally different personalities, but I’ve given each of them their own character in the books and I love their different relationships with Paul. Harry and Juana Smith are favourites, of course, and because of Heyer’s book, The Spanish Bride, so many of my readers recognise them. And I’m a little in love with Colonel Andrew Barnard, a man who genuinely knew how to enjoy himself in the middle of a campaign.

 

9. Do you already know which characters are going to make it through the war?

Some. Not all. I’ve made no secret of the fact that Paul and Anne make it, and there are a few spoilers scattered through my short stories and the Regency romances. But there are some names you won’t hear mentioned in those.

10. Are you going to write the books all the way through Waterloo, as Bernard Cornwell did?

If I don’t get run over by a bus, I promise I am. I’m about halfway through now, maybe a little more, as I’ve not yet decided how I’m going to split up the Pyrenees campaigns, they’re terribly all over the place.

11. Are you going to write any more books after Waterloo? Will they be about Paul van Daan?

I’m going to write until I can’t write any more. Whether that will follow Paul, or pick up some other characters in other campaigns, or even take a look at his children, I don’t know yet. I just hope I live a long time, I’ve got so many ideas.

12. What made you start writing the Manxman series?

Local pressure. I live on the Isle of Man and I was always being asked in local interviews, if I would ever write a book set on the island. The Isle of Man was more suited to a book about the navy than the army, so I began An Unwilling Alliance as a standalone novel. Then I remembered that Paul van Daan had been at Copenhagen and thought I could give him a small cameo role. Then he took over a third of the book. Then I realised I needed to know what happened to Hugh Kelly and Alfred Durrell next.

13. Will Hugh Kelly and Paul meet again during the war?

I think so. Almost certainly. I know where Hugh will be for the next couple of books, but there’s a book after that which could very easily bring the two series together, and I think I’ll write it.

14. Why did you decide to publish independently?

I couldn’t get a publisher for the stories I was writing because I was told nobody wanted to read that kind of book any more. I couldn’t stop writing, and it proved impossible to swap genres, I just couldn’t manage it. I resisted for a long time, because I felt as though it was ‘vanity publishing’. But eventually, I figured that even if only a few people read them, it was better than having half a dozen completed books sitting on my laptop doing nothing.

It turned out that the agents and publishers were wrong, and there was very definitely a market for this series.

15. What advice do you have for aspiring novelists?

Don’t wait as long as I did. By all means try the traditional route, and keep doing so if that’s what you want. But if you’ve written something you’re proud of, make it as good as you know how, take all the advice you can, and then go for it. If nobody buys it, all it has cost you is some time.

16. Have you ever written any non-fiction or contemporary fiction?

I’ve written some articles and blog posts for people. And I made a couple of attempts at writing contemporary romances for Mills and Boon. They were pretty awful.

17. Will you write any more Regency romances?

A Regrettable Reputation (Book Two of the Light Division Romances)I’m sure I will. Before I started the Manxman series, my intention was to intersperse the Peninsular books with the Regency series. But I’ve decided that I can’t manage three series on the go, plus regular short stories. Besides, writing books set after the war meant that I was at risk of introducing too many spoilers. I will go back to them, however.

18. Will any of your other books have sequels?

Well as I just said, I think I’ll continue the Regency series. And I have ideas for sequels to both A Respectable Woman and A Marcher Lord. 

In A Marcher Lord, I’d like to follow up the story of Jenny’s cousin. And I’d also like to take the characters forward into the period of Mary, Queen of Scots reign. I think that would be fascinating.

I actually started writing a sequel to A Respectable Woman, following the fortunes of Kit and Philippa’s grown up children. Their adopted son Alex is definitely an army man, and I suspect one of their daughters to be a bit of a radical politically. I think I will come back to that.

19. What are your plans for future books?  How many are you going to write in both series?

The Peninsular War Saga will go through to Waterloo, and I quite fancy doing a book set during the period of the Army of Occupation. I also have a real yen to write a novel set during the Congress of Vienna, but that will not feature Paul, as I am not taking him into the middle of a pack of diplomats, it would end in murder.

The navy books will probably continue beyond the war, and I’d like to feature the war of 1812 with the USA. I might even do some of the land battles featuring the second battalion. There are a few other campaigns like Bergen op Zoom that I wouldn’t mind looking at.

20. How long does it take you to write a book?

Six months to a year, depending on how much research and what else is going on in my life. This year has been tricky, with the pandemic, it’s been hard to concentrate and I’ve had a house full of people working at home, but once these paperbacks are up and running, I’d like to try to speed up a bit.

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And there we have it – the story behind the Peninsular War Saga in twenty questions. Thanks so much to all of you who have written to me over the years to find out more about the books and my writing. Keep the questions coming, I love hearing from you, and I’d be very happy to make contact on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram or you can e-mail me at info@lynnbryant.co.uk or leave a comment below.

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