by TCW | Oct 3, 2019 | Napoleonic history
The last (probably) of my posts inspired by the conference on “War and Peace in the Age of Napoleon” is a revival of a post that first appeared here in July last year. It’s about the fight for Hougoumont, virtually a battle within the larger battle of Waterloo. The first clash of troops in the battle took place at Hougoumont and fighting continued there right up until the French army broke at the end of the day. It is widely regarded as one of the most important strategic points of the battle with Wellington claiming that its defence was crucial to his success.
Hougoumont was the subject of Charles Esdaile’s presentation at the conference. Charles enjoys attacking peoples’ established ideas – he’s practically the definition of a “revisionist historian” – and he argued that Hougoumont, far from being the key to the battle, was a practically irrelevant sideshow. I can’t resist reposting my original piece on Hougoumont that made much the same argument more than a year ago.
If you want to see a very short video of the place that I made when I visited (before writing the article) it’s at https://youtu.be/V_LT31i1fjY
Hougoumont
Although Hougoumont lay some way ahead of the main British lines, it was not occupied as an advance position. It was seen as part of Wellington’s overall defensive strategy, protecting the west of his line or, as Wellington put it in his dispatch, because it “covered the return of that flank”.
Prior to the battle, Wellington had been convinced that Napoleon would swing round to the west, threatening the British supply lines that ran through to Ostend. So concerned was he that he left a substantial force to guard the supply lines against the attack that never came, reducing the number of men available to him at Waterloo. Wellington’s conviction that Napoleon would attempt to attack his right flank seems to have influenced the decision to occupy Hougoumont. It wasn’t a stupid idea: Napoleon often used flanking movements in battle. In this case, though, Wellington seems to attach more importance to Hougoumont than could really be justified. The British right was, as Wellington’s dispatch said, “thrown back to a ravine”, which already offered substantial protection. [Charles Esdaile pointed out that Wellington had also covered that flank with a considerable amount of artillery.] Also, there was quite a lot of woodland in that area and this would have impeded the advance of blocks of infantry moving in formation, as was required to engage effectively in early 19th century military conflicts. Not for nothing do we talk about “the field of battle”. Armies needed large open spaces to manoeuvre, so flanking attack on the West was unlikely to be a particular danger.
Nonetheless, Wellington had four companies of the Brigade of Guards occupy the chateau (probably around 400 men).
Hougoument was a substantial building – or, more realistically – complex of buildings. The photo below shows the farm as it is today and gives you some idea of the size of the place.
When the Guards arrived at Hougoumont (driving out a few French who they found exploring the place) it was dominated by the fortified castle, with a small tower, that stood in the centre of the complex, adjoining the chapel (the small white building that still stands there).
The photo above is taken from what were then formal gardens, beyond which was an orchard. From the point of view of the soldiers defending the place, the important thing is that this land was surrounded by a brick wall, which still stands.
During the night before the battle, the British troops did what they could to improve the defences. Loopholes were made in the walls and fire steps constructed. Charles Esdaile points out that there may well have been loopholes there already, as Hougoumont had featured in the War of the First Coalition in 1794, but the Coldstream Guards are supposed to have been ordered to make loopholes and I suspect they would have done so even if something remained from another battle 20 years earlier. Guards regiments are like that – they reckon soldiering done by other regiments is automatically inferior.
Since 1815 much of the wall has fallen down and been rebuilt and the “loopholes” we see today are 20th (or 21st) century additions designed to appeal to the increasing number of visitors to the site.
Loopholes in the garden walls.
One gate – the northern gate that was closest to the British lines – was left open, but the others were barricaded shut.
Between Hougoumont and the French lines there was a wood and there was concern that this could provide cover should the French attack. Early in the morning, about a thousand German troops were sent to reinforce the defenders, many of them taking up their positions in the wood and the orchard within the farm walls.
Although the troops were stood to from dawn, for hours nothing happened while Napoleon positioned his men. Not all of the French forces were ready by late morning, but Napoleon decided that he needed to start an attack. When, rather late in the morning, Napoleon finally opened his attack, he did not drive toward the British centre, but ordered an assault on Hougoumont.
The French assault was led by Napoleon’s brother, Jerome, who attacked with five and a half thousand men. The attack was almost certainly a feint, designed to draw Wellington’s forces from the centre to defend his right flank while Napoleon prepared his main assault.
The result should have been a foregone conclusion and, indeed, the French succeeded in driving the German troops out of the wood, but they then had to attack across the strip of open land to get to the garden wall. This area was well covered by British musket fire through the loopholes, while the French for unable to return any effective fire against soldiers in a well protected position.
[Since I wrote this, there has been new work done at Hougoumont tracing the location of all the musket balls in the area. This suggests that the French followed a path through the wood in their initial attack, which meant that they were bunched quite tightly together. This was probably a significant element in the failure of the assault. Had they advanced through the wood in skirmish order, they might have succeeded.]
What had started as a diversionary attack had now gained a momentum of its own. Frustrated by his inability to take the place defended by such a relatively small force, Jerome Bonaparte threw more and more troops into the fight, which became a separate conflict – effectively a battle within the wider battle of Waterloo.
Eventually the French forces took possession of the wood and of the orchard, but the British still held the farm buildings – two courtyards with the substantial Gardener’s House, a great barn, the chapel and, of course, the chateau itself.
The Gardener’s House
Despite their repeated efforts, the French were unable to enter the farm complex. They came under fire from the loopholes in the walls, from the windows of the houses and even from the roofs where British soldiers had stationed themselves to fire down on the enemy below.
French losses were terrible. The plaque below marks the point at which a French general died at the foot of the garden wall, very close to one of the main entrances the courtyard.
Closing the gates at Hougoumont
The north gate remained unbarricaded, allowing the evacuation of wounded troops towards the Allied lines. The fighting continued outside the farm too, and troops retreating from the French would use the north gate to gain the cover of the farm buildings when they were driven back. Eventually a small French force swung round past the worst of the fighting and attacked the farm from the north. They are supposed to have been led by one Sous Lieutenant Legros, known as L’Enfonceur, or ‘the smasher’ on account of his size and strength. It’s likely that this man was more myth than history, especially as he was supposed to have fought at La Haye Sainte as well. Certainly, though, some brave Frenchman did manage to force open the gate. About thirty to forty French troops forced their way into the courtyard and, with the rest of the French force close behind them, it looked as if Hougoumont would fall.
‘Closing the Gates at Hougoumont’ by Robert Gibb (painted 1903)
Ten of the defenders threw themselves against the gates and forced them closed. All the French soldiers who had forced their way into the courtyard were now trapped and every single one of them was killed except, so the story goes, for a drummer boy who was spared.
The incident was presented as crucial to the defence of Hougoumont (which it probably was) and to the outcome of the battle. This is because Wellington remained convinced that the defence of Hougoumont was a central part of his strategy and that its fall would precipitate an Allied defeat. As already noted, this is extremely unlikely. Hougoumont was a diversionary attack that had, by now, grown completely out of control. Nonetheless, the closing of the gates became one of the defining legends of Waterloo, celebrated to this day.
Memorial to the defenders of Hougoumont. The inscription, ‘Closing the Gates on War’
refers to the century of comparative peace in Europe that followed the battle
Even now, the north gate, though barred, was not barricaded, the defenders being anxious to keep their lines of communication with the main Allied force open. By one in the afternoon, the defenders had fought off three large-scale attacks and were running low on ammunition. An officer broke out of Hougoumont and found a Private Joseph Brewster of the Royal Waggon Train in charge of an ammunition cart near the British line. The lane leading to Hougoumont was now under heavy musketry fire from French skirmishers, but the waggon was galloped under enemy fire into Hougoumont, providing the ammunition needed to continue the defence.
The miracle of the chapel
The assault on Hougoumont was unusual for the French, in that it was not supported by artillery. The farm was screened from French artillery by the forest and, although some round shot did strike the buildings, there was little effective use of French artillery during the morning. The British, by contrast, were able to use artillery placed on the ridge to bombard French troops approaching Hougoumont, which was a significant factor in its defence.
In the afternoon the French did succeed in bringing howitzers up within range of the buildings. They started using carcass projectiles (early incendiary shells) and soon both the chateau itself and the great barn were on fire.
Wellington, observing the smoke and flames from the ridge, sent orders that the men were to stand firm.
‘I see that the fire has communicated from the hay stack to the roof of the chateau. You must however still keep your men in those parts to which the fire does not reach. Take care that no men are lost by the falling in of the roof, or floors. After they have fallen in occupy the walls inside of the garden; particularly if it should be possible for the enemy to pass through the embers in the inside of the house’.
The British had put many of their wounded in the shelter of the chateau and the adjacent chapel. Most of those in the chateau died and the flames were spreading to the chapel. There was a crucifix above the door of the chapel and the flames reached the foot of the crucifix, burning one of the legs. At this point the fire died and the chapel still stands. The men who had been sheltering there, too badly wounded to flee through the flames, were saved. It was hailed as a miracle, although a cynic might point out that there was little in the chapel to feed the flames.
The crucifix has been much restored over time, although the head, with its fine carving, remains the original. In 2011 it was stolen and remained missing until 2014 when it was found and restored again. It now hangs back in the spot where watched over the wounded in 1815.
Although all the significant buildings within the farm when now destroyed by fire, the British continued to resist and, despite further waves of French attacks (including one in which a dozen or so French infantrymen actually made it into the courtyard) Hougoumont held on.
Fighting at Hougoumont continued until the general retreat of the French with the arrival of the Prussians and the end of the battle. The Allied force defending Hougoumont, probably never exceeded three thousand troops, with another three thousand in close support, but by their stubborn defence, they exhausted the strength of no less than thirteen thousand French troops.
Did Hougoumont matter?
The importance of Hougoumont in strategic terms was almost certainly overestimated by Wellington. Napoleon had never seen it as a strategically important goal. He had no intention of attacking the British right flank and, in any case, he could simply have outflanked the farm had he really wanted to do so.
Tactically, Hougoumont may well have made a difference. The considerable number of French troops who ended up committed to this “battle within a battle” was not available for the main assaults, where they might have had a significant effect.
Hougoumont’s main importance, though, was in its contribution to the legend of Waterloo – the idea that a vastly outnumbered force of British soldiers was able, by their heroic resistance, to see off Napoleon and the French. This rather plays down the contribution of the Nassau and Hanoverian soldiers who defended the place alongside the British. It did, though, contribute to the myth of British military prowess that allowed Britain to ‘punch above its weight’ for a hundred years and, arguably, longer. Whether this was an entirely goods thing is for the reader to judge.
Sources
An excellent account of the defence of Hougoumont is available on the website of ‘Project Hougoumont’ which was set up initially as part of the project to restore the farm and which now seeks to knowledge of the battle and ongoing research on the history of the Waterloo. The web address is https://projecthougoumont.com
On that site you can find an excellent paper by Alasdair White: “Of Hedges, Myths and Memories : A historical reappraisal of the château/ferme d’Hougoumont, Battlefield of Waterloo, Belgium.” I am grateful to Alasdair for his comments on this article, which were very helpful. It is impossible, in a short piece like this, to provide anything more than an overview of the battle. Anyone wanting more detail could do a lot worse than read Alasdair’s paper which is also available at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333683103_Of_Hedges_Myths_and_Memories_A_historical_reappraisal_of_the_chateauferme_d’Hougoumont_Battlefield_of_Waterloo_Belgium
I also benefited hugely from my visit to the farm and from the museum and materials presented there.
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Burke may well not have been at Waterloo, either, but, as you probably realise, the events taking place around him all really happened as described.
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by TCW | Oct 1, 2019 | Book review
The subtitle of Messengers is ‘Who We Listen To, Who We Don’t, And Why’. In a world that has given us Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, learning the answer to this question seems worth the effort involving reading the book, but having finished it I’m not sure that I’m any clearer.
This is a pop psychology book with all the strengths and weaknesses of that genre. It starts out with a lot of anecdotes – some mind-blowingly banal (somebody who tweeted something on the same day that Barrack Obama tweeted something very similar got millions fewer re-tweets) and some quite fascinating (employees of an Indian entrepreneur with a caring management style offered to work for nothing when her business was in trouble).
Anecdotes, though, obviously don’t make up a convincing argument so the book quotes lots of psychological experiments, some by the authors and some from other sources. The problem with this approach is that you have to take an awful lot on trust. I’m sensitive to this because my degree was in Experimental Psychology and I’m aware that very small differences in the way an experiment was conducted can have quite profound influences on the outcome. It’s difficult to be confident in the results of an experiment which has been reported in a few short paragraphs. This is an inevitable problem with this kind of book and does not reflect badly on the authors, but it does mean that if you accept their arguments you will trust the research and if you don’t you will (probably at least sometimes justifiably) dismiss the research. In fairness, research studies are well footnoted and you can follow them all up, but it is unlikely that the non-specialist reader that this book is clearly aimed at will ever do that. You have to take a lot on trust and, ironically, one of the main messages of the book is that humans are terribly bad at judging when they can take stuff on trust and when they should be more sceptical.
Leaving these reservations aside, what does it tell us? Very crudely put, it suggests that we pay more attention to the characteristics of the messenger than we do to the characteristics of the message. We like leaders to be tall and square jawed, or empathetic and caring. It’s an analysis that explains the appeal of Donald Trump. He is a classic alpha male – bombastic, dominant, and pugilistic. Some of this, according to the book, is innate. He was born with a face shape that is associated with dominance. (There is a photograph that illustrates how facial height to width ratio is calculated, enabling this to be quantified.) Some of it may have been learned over his lifetime: the way he stands, the amount he gestures with his arms, the deep timbre of his voice. Perhaps it’s significant that when comedians who do not share his political approach mimic him they tend to emphasise the speech mannerism where his voice can suddenly move into quite a high register. Or perhaps it’s not – the authors don’t mention this.
That’s part of the trouble. Human behaviour is complex. Few people are consistent. Boris Johnson is often compared to Donald Trump, but untidy blonde hair is not the attribute that the authors think is important. On the attributes they do think important – posture, vocal mannerisms, etc – Boris is almost the antithesis of Trump. He bumbles on, waffles and, to a degree, charms – but he hardly fits the stereotype of an alpha male.
In fairness to the authors, they do acknowledge the complexities that underlie many of the behaviours they analyse – but perhaps still not enough. So, for example, at one point they write:
[Apologies] are … immensely powerful social tools, critical to the repairing or re-establishing of relationships. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd provided a formidable demonstration of this when, in the course of a four minute speech in February 2008 he issued a public apology for the way in which indigenous Australians had been treated years before he himself had achieved public office. He recognised, he said, that he needed to “apologise for the laws and policies of successive parliaments and governments that have inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians”.
Much later, in a separate discussion of apologies, the authors point out (in line, as it happens, with my own review of the literature1) that an apology is only likely to be affected if it is “made quickly… made sincerely. And it needs to be made in a way that shows remorse and commitment to change in the future.” Kevin Rudd’s four minute speech could not possibly have met these criteria and yet the authors explicitly link it to “the highest satisfaction rating of any Australian Prime Minister”.
Obviously there is more going on than can be covered in one relatively short volume. In fact some of the simplifications border on the absurd. At one point the book argues that an experiment showed that facial features are so crucial that “a glance at the faces of candidates running for election was all that was needed to make an informed, and largely accurate, estimate of who would (and indeed did) win.” Whilst what a candidate looks like can be a significant factor, the suggestion that facial appearance can be used to accurately predict the outcome of real elections would, if true, suggest that the selection of legislators by popular ballot is an idea that needs to be reviewed. Personally I am not suggesting that we abolish democracy, but that we view statements like this with grave suspicion.
There is usable, and indeed valuable, stuff in this book. It does no harm for us to be reminded how much we allow irrelevant assessments of people’s social class, dominance, or empathy to affect what should be rational judgements. This can even extend to favouring loan offers which are accompanied by a photograph of an attractive woman rather than an attractive interest rate. There are practical lessons to be learned, too. My wife does some university lecturing and I have passed on the information that lecturers who make more arm movements whilst speaking are perceived as better teachers by their students. In the new world of university education, where student assessment is critical to career advancement, I can confidently predict a fair amount from arm waving next term.
Overall, though, I found this an irritating book – neither an easily read series of anecdotes nor a serious academic study, it repeatedly overpromised and underdelivered. If, however, you honestly believe that you would never form your initial (and surprisingly firm) view of somebody based on the logo on their polo shirt, then perhaps you need to read it.
Note
- In a previous life I did a major review of complaints behaviour for (of all places) the Cabinet Office. Williams T and Goriely T (1994) Complaints: Literature Review, Cabinet Office
by TCW | Sep 27, 2019 | Napoleonic history
Like last week, this week’s blog is a result of my attendance at the recent conference on ‘War and Peace in the Age of Napoleon’ held at King’s College London. It’s basically a summary of the final presentation. That seems worth doing because it was a fun way to end two days of heavy historical analysis with a fascinating attempt to get inside the head of Napoleon by having his behaviour examined by a team of psychiatrists whose day job is treating American servicemen. It was presented by Dr Edward J Coss, who is a professor of military history at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College.
Napoleon being dead, Dr Coss decided that any diagnosis of his mental state should be based on the closest he could get to actual observation of the living subject, so he looked for things that Napoleon had written himself or statements made by witnesses who directly quoted the man. In this way he gathered a substantial corpus of what could be treated as primary source material on his subject. He then gave this mass of quotations to practising psychiatrists engaged in the treatment of American servicemen.
Coss was expecting to find symptoms of PTSD. Napoleon had been almost constantly engaged in warfare for 17 years. He was a general who (contrary to the way the English tend to think of him) often led from the front and was exposed to danger directly and saw the effects of warfare on his men for all that time. Coss stated that it’s rare for anybody engaged in conflict over a period of years not to suffer from PTSD, so this seemed the most obvious thing to look for.
To his surprise, none of the psychiatrists considered that there was any evidence of PTSD, but, in their professional view, Napoleon did show signs of other attitudes and behaviours which are nowadays classified as psychological illness.
The psychiatrists said they saw clear evidence of narcissism. This is a condition characterised by
- a strong sense of self-importance (grandiosity)
- fantasies of power, success, brilliance
- the notion that the individual is special and not as other people
- the need for excessive admiration
- a sense of entitlement
- the tendency to interpersonal exploitation
- a lack of empathy
- envy
- arrogance
There were interesting illustrations of such behaviours cited. For example, at Jaffa Napoleon touched the bubos of soldiers suffering from plague. While some people see this as evidence of his trying to show sympathy with the dying men, the psychiatrists suggested that it was more likely (as Napoleon was not a notably sympathetic character) that he touched them to show that he could not die of plague like ordinary people – he was, indeed, special.
Napoleon at Jaffa
I must admit that I was not entirely convinced. Napoleon was the single most powerful man in the world, ruler (effectively dictator) of a huge empire. A sense of self-importance and, indeed, entitlement seems, in the circumstances, quite reasonable. As to the fantasies of power, it is difficult to see how any fantasy could exceed the reality of his position. On the other hand, his early behaviour in Corsica (where he was heavily involved in local politics and rather over-reached himself as a very young man) did suggest that he had a sense of self-importance even then.
It does seem that Napoleon was big on admiration. He did like a certain amount of bowing and scraping, and Kamil Szadkowski’s paper on his court (officially established in 1804) gave a lot of fascinating detail on just how incredibly expensive and elaborate it was. But the court was part of a political strategy designed to establish his rule in France as being as legitimate as that of other rulers. Lacking the “divine right” of hereditary rulers, it was essential that the panoply of state was at least as impressive as that of other countries. It’s likely that Napoleon enjoyed the admiration (who wouldn’t?) but it’s not necessarily a symptom of a psychological pathology.
Self-important? Me?
I was also sceptical at the suggestion that Napoleon lacked empathy. It is said that he never showed real sympathy for those who were injured under his command. It is, of course, impossible to know for sure but the suggestion that he lacked the ability to form wholehearted emotional relationships is dubious. Even if you discount his relationship with Josephine (which was, at best, erratic) as a young man he did fall desperately (and rather pathetically) in love on more than one occasion. The suggestion that he was always cold and distant does not fit with many of the details of his life.
Much as, contrarian that I am, I was happy to take issue with individual pointers toward narcissism, eventually I was worn down by the sheer quantity of evidence. In any case, the psychiatric diagnosis relies on positive indicators of only five of these characteristics, and the psychiatrists had no trouble in agreeing that he was, indeed, a narcissist. Interestingly, according to Coss, narcissists are considered by psychiatrists to be “inwardly fragile”. Certainly Napoleon was prone to attacks of fury when crossed, often alternating with periods of sulking. He also famously attempted suicide on two occasions. It seems quite possible that under the bluster, the arrogance, and the spectacular displays of power, there was a sad little boy who had never had a good relationship with his father and who really, really needed his mum.
Napoleon was plagued with depression on Elba
But that was not all. We all know that Napoleon was moody and the psychiatrists volunteered the suggestion that he was clinically depressed – or perhaps bipolar. There was also a suspicion that by the end of his rule he may have been suffering a degree of brain damage. He twice injured his head falling from horses, on one occasion having a brief loss of consciousness. Nowadays he would have been encouraged to take it easy for a while, but in those days the suggestion that you “get back on the horse” was interpreted pretty literally. It is possible that some of his behaviour was the result of concussion-induced brain damage.
For me, the least surprising finding was the suggestion that Napoleon was a sociopath. Given that sociopathy is often linked with high performance in a corporate culture (so the incidence of sociopathy in CEOs is often quoted as being about 20%), I would be quite surprised if Napoleon had not had a sociopathic personality.
If the French army had had psychiatrists back in the day, could Napoleon have been treated? Well, brain scans could have looked for evidence of neurological damage, although as nobody did anything about it the time it’s unlikely that any effective treatment could have been given years later. The depression might have responded to drug treatment, but narcissism and sociopathy, according to the psychiatrists involved in the study, are almost impossible to treat.
It was a hugely entertaining presentation and may well give us a better understanding of Napoleon’s mind, but does it help us understand his rule? Honestly, I suspect not – except in so far that it reminds us that underneath that famous bicorn hat was a real person who had his personal strengths and weaknesses, his ups and his downs. By the time of Waterloo, he was quite sick. (He may well have picked up an illness during his Egyptian campaign that was never to entirely leave him. He is widely believed to have been suffering from piles at Waterloo and, whether or not the psychiatric diagnosis is accurate, he certainly seems to have had emotional issues by the end of his rule.) He was, it is fair to say, not at his best. When people ask why, for example, he allowed the cavalry to charge without close infantry support, we should consider the possibility that he was just having a really bad day.
Picture credits
Napoleon abdicated in Fontainebleau, 4 April 1814 by Paul Delaroche (1845)
Napoleon at Jaffa is a detail from Bonaparte visitant les pestiférés de Jaffa by Antoine-Jean Gros (1804)
Napoleon I on his Imperial Throne by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1806)
Napoleon on Elba is an anonymous painting from the early 19th century
A word from our sponsor
My interest in the Napoleonic era stems from the research that I’ve done for my books about James Burke. Burke was real person and although most of his adventures are fictional a lot of research goes into making the backgrounds authentic. Eventually it gets to the point where I spent more time writing stuff like this than I do writing fiction. (I am working on a non-fiction account of the background to Waterloo, if anyone knows a publisher who might want it.) Nobody pays me for writing these blog posts, although I do now accept donations if anybody wants to buy me a coffee. What I would really appreciate, though, is if you bought one of books. They are all available on Kindle and cost £2.99 or less.
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by TCW | Sep 20, 2019 | Napoleonic history
I’m returning to a favourite theme of mine – that the events of 1815 have had a direct impact on the world of today, though not necessarily in the way that many people think. This week’s ramblings were inspired by lectures at the conference on ‘War and Peace in the Age of Napoleon’, particularly those by Eamonn O’Keeffe, Joseph Cozens, and Robert Poole.
The French Wars continued for over 20 years and are often said to mark the start of the modern concept of “total war”. The wars impacted across society, with the militarisation of much of the economy. In some areas, a phenomenally high proportion of men joined the volunteers: in Lancashire it was 32%. Even women’s fashion took on a military flavour, with some women dressing in clothes that reflected the uniforms of the regiments that they (through family or geographical links) were associated with.
In many ways, the war had an increased social impact with demobilisation. Suddenly 300,000 soldiers and sailors returned to civilian life. While, for the first time, some of them were paid pensions, money was only given to those who had served 14 years or more or been injured. Three quarters of demobilised soldiers got no pension and for most of those who did the amount was not sufficient to live on.
The end of the war marked the beginning of a period of “General Distress”. The economy was staggering under the weight of war debt. Food prices were high, shortages exacerbated by exceptionally poor harvests in 1816. Wages were low and many of those discharged from the forces were unable to find employment.
Unsurprisingly, the years following the war saw popular unrest and protests, especially in the northern industrial towns which were particularly hard hit by the recession and which were not properly represented in Parliament.
The period saw what Cozens called “the militarisation of protest”. Marchers organised in columns and were often drilled in their marching by ex-soldiers. Demonstrators marched behind bands, often ex-military men. They marched with banners which had often been ceremonially presented by women supporters, modelling the presentation of military colours and, as with military colours, the marchers were urged to defend the banners. Police and military units breaking up demonstrations (as at Peterloo) would often target the banners, trying to seize them just as they would try to capture the enemy’s colours in war.
Parliamentary elections might not have involved many actual voters, but they did involve the general population with marches and rallies, often taking on the character of holidays. Processions (with banners) were often led by military bands. In theory, serving soldiers could not lead political processions, but this ban was widely ignored.
Bedford Town Election (1832); The Higgins Art Gallery & Museum, Bedford
According to O’Keeffe’s presentation, this increased militarisation of political events was accompanied by an increased use of military language in campaign rhetoric: opponents would be put “under siege”, there would be “volleys” of arguments against them. O’Keeffe says that this language was seen occasionally in the 18th century, but became commonplace after 1815.
The links with today’s political rhetoric are obvious and often the subject of negative comment in the press and elsewhere. For example, here’s the Guardian after Joe Cox was killed in 2016:
On the morning of the referendum result, Farage celebrated a victory that had been won “without a single bullet being fired”. When Thomas Mair, Cox’s alleged killer, appeared in court on Saturday 18 June, he gave his name as “death to traitors, freedom for Britain”. Not two weeks later, the term “traitor” was being used by some of Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters as a standard term of abuse for anyone deemed disloyal. It appeared on the front page of the Morning Star, and in endless tweets and Facebook posts…
Meanwhile, as the Conservative party has remade itself, the Daily Mail and the Sun have returned to business as usual: Traitor Gove, Knifing of Boris, First Blood to Theresa. In the Mail on Sunday, Rachel Johnson wrote of Michael Gove as a “Westminster suicide bomber”, and professed her hope that she would again dine with his family “when the bleeding bodies of the fallen are removed from the smoking battlefield of this campaign”. The Guardian and Observer were susceptible, too. On a Friday, a prominent headline in the comment pages referred to the “reek of death” hanging over the Labour party; two days later, another referred to its “stench”.
Nor have MPs themselves proved immune. One Conservative, Ben Wallace, said that Gove was “Theon Greyjoy or will be by the time I am finished with him” – a reference to a Game of Thrones character who is castrated.
At the other end of the political spectrum the Daily Telegraph writes:
Three new intellectual magazines backed will appear on news-stands this autumn as the right and centre-left engage in a battle [stress added] of ideas.
There are many criticisms that this type of language coarsens political debate and may lead to violence. I have seen similar arguments in American academic publications, but British commentators frequently suggest that this is a particularly British (or English) concern. The oppositional style of British politics is often compared adversely with the approach taken in other European countries with the horse-shoe-shaped architecture of their parliaments and their predisposition to coalition government.
Of course, other European nations were also militarised during the Napoleonic wars, although it could be argued that their experience was different from that of the British because
- except for the French, all the other nations had periods of peace while Britain had only the short Peace of Amiens and
- other nations had to adapt to the reality of occupation, while the British were able to view war in terms of absolute victory.
Cozens’ paper did discuss attitudes to demobilised soldiers and argued that public attitudes were very ambivalent. Soldiers were simultaneously seen as brave, loyal and organised yet, at least potentially, as criminal, subversive itinerants. To the extent that they were viewed positively, the militarisation of politics makes sense and may well have been more pronounced in Britain than elsewhere in Europe.
So can we blame the Napoleonic wars for the violence of the fault lines that have appeared in British political life 200 years later? It’s not at all clear that we can. O’Keeffe’s research does not allow a direct comparison of the post-war picture with the language prior to the conflict. There is also no evidence that the problem (if it is a problem) is more marked in Britain than elsewhere. Indeed, there seems more academic research supporting the idea that political discourse is underpinned by the language of war in the United States than in Britain. On the other hand, would be dangerous to dismiss the argument altogether. O’Keeffe’s research does definitely show a very high level of militaristic imagery in the years following the Napoleonic wars. Peterloo, in particular, was held at the time to threaten rebellion simply because of the use of banners, drilling, and marching in columns.
As we start new political campaigns, denouncing opponents as traitors and ordering our supporters to target vulnerable opponents, we can see what might be the last traces of the language of the politics of 1816. And as protesters march under banners, albeit to steel bands rather than military music, we are seeing a tradition that goes at least that far back.
Does the language and style of modern politics and street activism really originate in the chaos of the General Disaster of 1815-1819? I honestly don’t know, but it’s a fascinating thought and one that I hope academics like O’Keeffe will turn their minds to.
Acknowledgements
I’m very grateful to the organisers of the ‘War and Peace in the Age of Napoleon’ conference at King’s College, London, and especially to Eamonn O’Keeffe for his paper: “An Evil of Long Standing”: martial musicians, partisan performances and the militarization of British electoral spectacle. Details of his work are available at https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/people/eamonn-okeeffe
A word from our sponsor
My interest in the Napoleonic era stems from the research that I’ve done for my books about James Burke. Burke was real person and although most of his adventures are fictional a lot of research goes into making the backgrounds authentic. Eventually it gets to the point where I spent more time writing stuff like this than I do writing fiction. (I am working on a non-fiction account of the background to Waterloo, if anyone knows a publisher who might want it.) Nobody pays me for writing these blog posts, although I do now accept donations if anybody wants to buy me a coffee. What I would really appreciate, though, is if you bought one of books. They are all available on Kindle and cost £2.99 or less.
Thank you.
by TCW | Sep 17, 2019 | Book review
This is the second of M J Logue’s books about Major Russell and his young wife, Thomazine, and I’m happy to admit that I’m a fan. What I love about books is the characters and their relationship. Essentially these are love stories for grown-ups. This is still more true of A Deceitful Subtlety than the first book, An Abiding Fire, for the Russells are now settled in the Chilterns, concentrating on the rearing of sheep and raising a family. Respectability beckons, though theirs is still a passionate relationship.
It still felt odd, to be quite as bare as an egg – without even your shift – in the middle of the afternoon. Thomazine would have thought she would grow used to it by now, but it seemed not. No matter how much she found herself tangled up in bed sheets in the middle of the day, it still felt wicked.
We follow their falling outs and their making up, their misunderstandings and their struggles to iron out the wrinkles in their relationship. There are more of them than usual, for Thomazine is pregnant and moody and her temper is not helped by the sudden appearance of a woman who may, or may not, be an old flame of her husband’s. When husband and old flame have to journey to Bruges, Thomazine goes too, braving sea-sickness and the funny foreign ways of the Dutch so that she can keep an eye on her man.
There’s a nice sense of ‘foreignness’ to Bruges and an interesting picture of the English émigré community there, though I got little sense of what Bruges itself was like, which is sad as much of the town (a UNESCO World Heritage site) still stands and its beauty deserves to be celebrated.
Why are they in Bruges? I’m honestly not quite sure. There is a notional reason, but as with much of the plot, it didn’t quite make sense. This is, to be honest, not a book you read for its plot. In fact, I was completely bemused about a lot of it (no details because of spoilers) until I read the very long and fascinating historical note. It’s clear that Logue has researched her period extremely well, but if you don’t already have a definite grip on some minor characters of the time, you’ll likely have no idea what’s going on for much of the book. Who is William Scot and why are we looking for him? The historical note explains, but in the novel itself we are just constantly assured that he is a man of mystery.
“I would have said to you that there was not a man in this city about whom I did not know something, even if it were only that he keeps a second household in lodgings off the Mariastraat, or favours this tailor over that. I know nothing at all about Mijnheer Scot, and that troubles me. No one speaks of him, no one at all. He is like a man with no face, you know? He is alive, he breathes, so much I know. But no one speaks of what he is as a man.”
This does leave rather a hole where one of the main characters should be – an irritation that becomes more marked as it turns out that another person we meet is a fascinating historical character who is lost in a rather insubstantial sub-plot. It does raise questions though – like why are people so concerned about a man of very little importance while showing so little interest in somebody of real significance and – probably more relevantly to a writer – somebody that the reader will have heard of?
No matter. In some books the slightly rickety plot would be a real problem, but fans won’t be reading it for the plot. We want to know if Thomazine’s pregnancy will end safely, or if the scheming minx who started this all off will have her wicked way with Russell. (She won’t, of course, but will Thomazine believe this?) We may even end up caring about the latest addition to the cast – a rather repulsive small black dog who I fear we are all destined to come to love.
If all the domesticity gets a bit cloying (I didn’t think so, but it’s possible someone might), be assured that there is violence and sudden death and even torture (though of an anonymous individual in what are literally “noises off”). You may be confused at times, but you won’t be bored and you will (I hope) lose yourself in the love story.
And did I mention that Logue just writes really well? I show my age by caring about this in a world of plot-driven stories where no sentence runs to more than fifteen words and the vocabulary is deliberately unchallenging. Here, for no reason at all, she is describing a bit of excitement while they are penning their sheep to be shorn. If you’ve ever watched (or tried to help) as sheep are penned up, this will have a horribly familiar ring to it.
A chalky-blue butterfly settled briefly on Thomazine’s wrist, its threadlike legs tickling her hot skin, and she smiled down at it. Had she not been looking down, her eyes would not been caught by the old bellwether. A cunning villain, that sheep, with eyes as yellow and knowing as the Devil’s and twelve years of malevolent experience under his fleece. His witless ladies were milling and bleating in panic, but he’d been here before, that one. His baleful slotted eyes met Thomazine’s.
And he was out, the hell-spawned eunuch, forcing his scrawny besmottered flanks through the meagre gap in the hurdles. Where he went his ladies followed, and suddenly there was a flood of pounding hooves as the rest of the flock went with him.
If you don’t love those paragraphs, this probably isn’t a book for you. But if you do, you’re in for a treat.
