The Scum of the Earth Read online

  But by then the die was cast. Wellington had replaced Castlereagh in early 1815 at the Congress of Vienna, which was busy carving up the map of Europe when Napoleon escaped. From the moment Wellington put his signature to the declaration there could be no accommodation with Napoleon, said the Whig MPs: it meant war.

  Whitbread said he felt ashamed that the name of Wellington had been attached to the Vienna declaration outlawing Napoleon: ‘While they proclaimed death to Buonaparté and vindicated assassination, by their own abandonment of treaties, they were the direct authors of this new war.’ He accused Wellington and Liverpool of ‘plunging Great Britain into a war that, if not otherwise terminated, must, in the opinion of all thinking men, be soon abandoned, from a deficiency in our very physical resources’. Hansard, the official Parliamentary report, records other Whig MPs shouted ‘hear hear!’ after Whitbread said he wished the Commons and the county would weigh the alternatives, before plunging into a new war.

  Sam Whitbread was the handsome son of the founder of the brewery. He bore a striking resemblance to Jane Austen’s dashing Mr Darcy but would soon suffer a bloody end. He was unusually outspoken but few of his friends, like Creevey, knew he was also deeply depressed by debts of more than £25,000 on the Drury Lane Theatre. It all became too much for him. On 6 July, less than a month after Bonaparte’s final defeat at Waterloo, Whitbread committed suicide by slashing his own throat with a razor.

  But Sam Whitbread had not been a lone voice. Whitbread did not know it, but Wellington’s older brother, the Marquess of Wellesley, was privately airing his misgivings about the prospect of war. And they were cogent, practical reasons why Britain should not go to war against the resurgent Bonaparte. Wellesley had advanced Arthur’s military career in India when Richard was its governor-general. He had been the Foreign Secretary in the government of Spencer Perceval. But when Perceval was shot dead in the Commons – the only British prime minister to be assassinated – by a deranged businessman nursing a grudge over his debts, Wellesley refused to serve in the Cabinet of Perceval’s successor, Lord Liverpool.

  Liverpool – Britain’s most underestimated prime minister (Disraeli called him an ‘arch mediocrity’) – remained in office until 1827 and held the Tory Party together throughout one of the most turbulent times in Britain’s long history. This curtailed Richard’s ministerial career and reduced his influence over both Liverpool and his brother. Even so, it was a remarkable fact that he secretly lobbied against the war. His reasons were more practical than the Whig MPs’.

  I stumbled across Richard Wellesley’s opposition to the war in a long-forgotten memorandum attached to the Ninth Volume of the Duke of Wellington’s despatches after his death by the Duke’s son, Arthur Richard Wellesley, the 2nd Duke of Wellington. The 2nd Duke revealed that in 1815 Prime Minister Lord Liverpool had told the Duke of Wellington he had information, upon which he could rely, that the French nation was decidedly against Bonaparte, and that he was only supported by a military conspiracy, which might easily be put down if the allies mounted an immediate attack on him. The Marquess of Wellesley bluntly told Liverpool – and his brother the Duke – this ‘was a fallacy’ and even if it were true, it would take at least three months for the Duke to get his army ready. In the meantime, said the Marquess, they ought to look for a negotiated way out:

  Three months of military inactivity must inevitably take place on our side, and it is unwise to forego the possible advantage of negotiation in that interval, if it had no other object than to ascertain the real inclination of the French people, and whether they might not be disposed to choose a government, with or without Bonaparte, which would be agreeable to themselves and promise tranquillity to Europe …

  A far bigger objection to war, said Wellesley, was the state of Britain’s finances. His greatest objection ‘to plunging into a new war, independently of the exhausted situation of this country’, was that he could not foresee any benefit that could be expected by England, ‘even in the event of complete success.’ Wellesley warned that a military victory would leave Britain having to keep an occupying force in France for months, perhaps years to come, in order to keep King Louis XVIII on the throne. Britain could ill-afford the bill for such a victory, he said. In that, he was proved right. But the victory at Waterloo was so complete that many have forgotten there were doubters before the battle. Professor Michael Rowe, Senior Lecturer in European History at King’s College, London, told me:

  With the benefit of hindsight, the outcome of the Waterloo campaign of 1815 looks like a foregone conclusion.

  However, it is worth bearing in mind that such an outcome was by no means obvious to statesmen in the weeks following Napoleon’s daring escape from Elba and triumphal return to Paris in March 1815.

  The challenges confronting the new anti-Napoleonic coalition that quickly came into being were formidable. Not least of these was the fact that the largest coalition armies – the Austrian and Russian – would take a considerable time to deploy, thereby affording Napoleon time to strike pre-emptively at the weaker British and Prussian forces available in the Low Countries …

  The memorandum also points to the wider problems that would arise even in the event of a military victory over Napoleon. Not least of these was the probability that the Bourbons could only be re-imposed on the French people through the long-term commitment of considerable military force by the coalition, a scenario that according to Wellesley was hardly in the interests of a war-weary Britain.

  It is all remarkably similar to the problems that faced the Americans and their allies after the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan in the early twenty-first century. And it proved to be highly prescient. Britain had to pay for an occupying force to remain in Paris to shore up the French Crown. However, Richard Wellesley and the Whig critics of the war had not calculated on his brother securing such an utterly decisive victory over Napoleon that it would bring an end to the new Napoleonic war in a day.

  At 46, Wellington had never expected to have to climb back into the saddle to go to war again against Napoleon. He had been enjoying a comfortable life as a revered war hero, a respected diplomat, and a supporter of the Tory government under Lord Liverpool with a seat in the House of Lords.

  Wellington had returned to Britain in 1814 as a national hero after a final victory against Marshal Soult at Toulouse. Napoleon was forced into exile on the mountainous Mediterranean island of Elba. It was near his native Corsica and he was allowed to preside over it and its people with the laughable title of ‘Emperor of Elba’. It seems astonishingly naïve that the allied governments believed the conqueror of Europe would settle for life as the emperor of an island that at one point is only 2½ miles across, but there was no attempt to imprison Napoleon on the island under lock and key. The island was patrolled by the Royal Navy and a British Army officer, Sir Neil Campbell, was ordered to keep an eye on him, but was away from the island – possibly visiting his mistress on mainland Italy – while Napoleon sailed away with his personal bodyguards. Campbell had a long list of battle honours behind his name, including the capture of Martinique and Guadeloupe, the Siege of Ciudad Rodrigo, the Battle of Salamanca, and was severely wounded in a cavalry charge in France in 1814 by a Russian hussar who mistook him for the enemy. He commanded the 54th West Norfolk Regiment of Foot at Waterloo but inevitably became known as ‘the man who let Boney go’. He was rewarded in the way that the army knows how: he was sent to the ‘white man’s grave’ of Sierra Leone in 1826, where he died a year later – causing indignant fury in the press.

  While Napoleon secretly plotted his return, Wellington basked in the afterglow of a long, successful military career that seemed over in 1814. He was garlanded with honours and financial rewards for ending Napoleon’s tyranny and liberating Portugal and Spain from France. He was lionised in London, feted at banquets and balls in his honour, and showered with glittering prizes by Britain’s grateful allies. Capping them all, the Prince Regent bestowed on Sir Arthur Wellesley a title t
hat was grander than the five he already possessed: he was made the 1st Duke of Wellington.* Fashionable Regency ladies flocked to his court. They included Frances, Lady Shelley, an excitable 27-year-old married heiress, who kept a gossipy journal about the sayings of the great and not-so-good. She confided to her journal she was so overwhelmed to be in the Duke’s presence, she was struck dumb: ‘I must admit that my enthusiasm for this great soldier was so great that I could not utter a word; and it was with the greatest difficulty that I restrained my tears.’

  Whatever attracted the ladies, it was not the Duke’s sparkling wit. He set about conquering a woman like a military campaign. He paid 100 guineas to an intermediary for an introduction to Harriette Wilson, a high-class Regency courtesan and suggested another 100 guineas for Harriette if he was ‘successful’ in breaking down her defences. She took the money but complained about his lack of charm in her ‘kiss-and-tell’ memoirs:

  Most punctual to my appointment, Wellington made his appearance. He bowed first, then said, ‘How do you do?’ then thanked me for having given him permission to call on me; and then wanted to take hold of my hand. ‘Really,’ said I, withdrawing my hand, ‘for such a renowned hero you have very little to say for yourself. I understood you came here to try to make yourself agreeable?’ ‘What child!’ retorted the Duke. ‘Do you think that I have nothing better to do than to make speeches to please ladies?’

  Despite this awkward introduction, Wellington stayed, paid her bills, and remained one of her part-time lovers for many years. Frances, Lady Shelley felt that a light had gone out of London society when the Duke accepted the offer of a plum diplomatic post as the British Ambassador in Paris, in the autumn of 1814, but several of his female admirers followed him to the French capital.

  Wellington took over the Paris house of Pauline Borghese, Napoleon’s sister, rumoured to be another of his conquests, as the British Embassy. He paid her 870,000 francs on behalf of the British taxpayer, for the Hotel de Charost in the rue du Faubourg St Honoré that today, with its great couture houses, is said to be the most fashionable street in the world. It is still the official residence of the British Ambassador, and the equally elegant house next door, No. 35, with French windows opening onto tree-shaded gardens, was added in 1947, and is now the British Embassy, used for hosting more public events. They are shielded from the outside world by discreet black doors on the narrow street, which give no clue to the graceful houses and gardens beyond, to which I can testify, having been there to cover a visit by Tony Blair for a British ‘cool Britannia’ trade fair.

  Throughout his life, Wellington liked to give dinners for a large number of guests (it was a custom, he said, that had been acquired with his officers in the army), and he was soon surrounded by beautiful female admirers at banquets, balls, the theatre, and riding in the boulevards of Paris. His Irish aristocratic wife Kitty, Catherine Packenham (the family name of the Longfords), had never loved the limelight and though devoted to Arthur, found it impossible to play the role of the grand society hostess he wanted; she had captivated him as a young man, but as his star rose, she shrank into the background and they became estranged.

  In London, Wellington was lampooned for his sexual liaisons by the great Georgian satirical cartoonists such as Isaac Robert Cruikshank. One showed him sitting astride a cannon to the alarm of two ladies – one says: ‘What a spanker! I hope he won’t fire it at me.’ Her friend says: ‘It can’t do any harm … he has fired it so often it is nearly worn out.’2

  Soon the real cannons would be firing again.

  Wellington lampooned for his womanising: The Master of Ordnance Exercising his Hobby by Robert Cruikshank (© Trustees of the British Museum)

  In Paris in December 1814 there was growing unrest among the Bonapartists at the emperor’s exile, while Wellington’s presence at the head of the foreign occupying force became a cause of worry back in Whitehall. Lord Liverpool became increasingly alarmed for the Duke’s safety and looked for something that would get him away from Paris. The prime minister offered Wellington the command of the British forces in North America, where Britain was engaged in a war against the newly independent United States of America (it was called the War of 1812, although it dragged on into 1815). It was a colonialist campaign ostensibly to protect Britain’s possessions in Canada, but it developed into a bitter struggle over sea power mixed with a desire for revenge for the loss of Britain’s American possessions. In 1814 the British carried out a punitive raid on Washington, the only attack in history on the American capital by a foreign power. Redcoats torched the White House as the President, James Madison and his wife, fled to safety. British troops burned down both houses of Congress, the State Department, the War Office, and the Treasury. The British forces there included some of Wellington’s battle-hardened regiments from the Peninsular campaign in Portugal and Spain, but with poor leadership they had suffered a number of reverses.

  Wellington wisely turned down the offer to lead his old regiments again – the war with America was practically over and a peace deal was signed a month later.* Instead of heading to America, Wellington agreed to go to Vienna to replace Castlereagh at the Congress, where the brilliant Austrian diplomat Metternich was acting as the Maitre d’ of the talks with the four major powers – Britain, Austria, Russia, Prussia – and Bourbon France, represented by the sinuous Charles Maurice Talleyrand, to put flesh on the bones of the 1814 Treaty of Paris. This restored the throne to Louis XVIII and broadly returned France to the lands it held in 1792, before the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars began.

  It was not a conventional conference, and never met in plenary session. The horse-trading was done by the delegations in separate state-rooms of an Austrian palace. The Russian Tsar, Alexander, was using the post-Napoleon peace talks to annex most of Poland for Russia (a strategic ambition that was realised by Stalin in 1945 at the end of the Second World War). Britain formed a secret alliance with Austria and France (Talleyrand wheedled his way in) against Russian expansionism over Poland, short of war against the Tsar – Earl Bathurst, the Secretary of State for War, wrote to Castlereagh on 27 November 1814, to warn him that the Prince Regent did not want to spark a new Continental conflict against Russia.

  When Wellington arrived in Vienna in January 1815 and asked what had been achieved, Prince Metternich bluntly said, ‘Nothing’. It probably suited Wellington. The Duke and Metternich were both against radical reform and shared a belief that after the turmoil of the Napoleonic Wars, what Europe needed was a return to stability and the status quo ante – the restoration of the legitimate monarchs of Europe to their thrones, and the old balance of power in Europe maintained, as if the turmoil caused by the upstart Napoleon Bonaparte had never happened.

  France was stripped back to its pre-1792 possessions, the Netherlands gained Belgium, Prussia gained Saxony, Russia swallowed part of Poland (though Wellington and Metternich prevented it swallowing it all), and Metternich created the German confederation under Austrian influence (sowing the seeds for a future war with Prussia). Meanwhile, Britain emerged with an enlarged empire and the lucrative colonies in the Cape, South Africa, Ceylon, and Tobago.

  The Congress was criticised for being too conservative with its redrawn map of Europe, but it was another ninety-nine years before a British soldier was called upon to fire a gun in anger on the Continent, when the Kaiser launched an attack on France through Belgium, a few miles down the road from Waterloo.

  Wellington’s approach to diplomacy was rather like his approach to women: he wanted to tackle it head-on. He was uncomfortable with the duplicity of diplomacy as practised by the scheming French foreign minister, Prince Talleyrand,* who had survived the Terror of the French Revolution, the Empire of Bonaparte, and the Restoration of the Bourbon monarchy.

  The negotiating tables of the Congress were kicked over on 7 March, when Wellington received a secret despatch from Lord Bathurst saying Bonaparte had escaped. The Russian Tsar Alexander laid his hand on the Duke’s s
houlder and told him: ‘It is for you to save the world again.’

  Wellington wrote to Castlereagh on 12 March. I found his original letter in the Wellington archive. He wrote:

  My Lord, we received on the 7th March a despatch from Lord Bathurst giving an account that Bonaparte had quitted the island of Elba with all his infantry officers and about 1,200 troops on the 26th February. I immediately communicated this account to the Emperors of Austria and Russia and the King of Prussia and the ministers of the different Powers and I found one sentiment – to unite their efforts to support the system established by the Peace of Paris [the restoration of the Bourbon Monarchy to the Throne]. The sovereigns and all the persons appointed here are impressed with the importance of the crisis which this circumstance occasions in the affairs of the world.3

  Wellington asked the arch-plotter Talleyrand, who knew Napoleon, what he thought Bonaparte would do next. Talleyrand told Wellington: ‘He’ll go anywhere you like to mention, except France.’

  Talleyrand was brilliant at political intrigue but he was no military genius. Napoleon – the imperial eagle – had landed in France a week earlier, on 1 March, on the beach at Golfe-Juan, and was already marching north to Grenoble through the mountains of Provence.** When he reached the town of Gap on 5 March, he promised his followers: ‘The Eagle with the national colours, shall fly from steeple to steeple until it reaches the towers of Notre Dame!’