After his sons were born Sir Bernard spent much of his life in his study at Oakridge Court reliving the long years of war.
He committed everything to paper. Some sections he wrote in plain text but others, more sensitive, he painstakingly transcribed into his code. As he remembered those years he was acutely aware of how much could have gone wrong and how much could have gone better. There were times when he felt an uncomfortable pride in what he had achieved but more often he ended his days of reminiscence conscious that Chance, Fate and Providence had played a far greater part than he.
*
In the year 1802, with the Peace of Amiens signed, our political masters encouraged the populace in the view that the war was ended and the country safe. To anyone concerned with the security of the newly formed United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, however, it was known there was still much to fear. There seemed always to be campaigns in Hindustan, a dangerous young general in France, Napoleon Bonaparte, had made it his business to resurrect the war in Europe and the war the United States of America was waging against the North Africans was threatening to involve the English Navy.
I had been too long in the Americas. I had faced delay upon delay. My ship had taken five days longer than it should on the voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to Falmouth and the coach had had to divert south of Bodmin Moor, adding who knew how many hours to my journey.
It was nearly noon and we had still to cross the Tamar out of Cornwall when the coach veered sharply and come to an abrupt halt. I swore loudly in my frustration, I had thought my trying journey almost done.
As I jumped down onto the rutted track my first concern was to assess the situation; a tree blocking the road was frequently the prelude to an ambush. Robbery and murder were commonalities on the highways as there impoverished ex-soldiers made what living they could from unwary travellers. I judged that the falling of this tree was a natural event and since I could see no brigands waiting in ambush I returned my pistol to my pack.
Although I was, in appearance at least, a gentleman and had held my own in the best drawing rooms of society, the nature of my work was such that I was fit and strong and used to manual labour when it was necessary, but moving the obstruction seemed beyond my capability and the driver gave no help.
After I had travailed for some minutes I became aware of a figure discernible through the debris of the tree’s foliage and a voice, strong but unthreatening, offered assistance with simple sincerity. I accepted, sensing no danger. We heaved and hauled to remove the obstacle from the coach’s path and some minutes had passed before I was able to get a proper look at the man who had come to my aid.
I will never forget that moment.
Some would say it was chance, that these things cannot be ordered, but that morning Fate and Providence were not random, they had conspired to do what was right. They had conspired to put this man in my path.
Despite his strength he was of slightly less than average height. He was thin, but before his current obvious state of starvation I judged he would have been well built. His face, somewhat gaunt through hardship, was firmly featured; his mouth small, his lips almost womanly, his nose pronounced, his nostrils small, his hair straggly and thin, his forehead high, his eyes on the dark side of grey.
The likeness was extraordinary.
After more than a decade of war every man, woman and child in England thought they could recognise the man they called ‘Boney’ but the posters and the cartoons they saw were caricatures. Those images had not been designed to allow the populace to recognise the face of their country’s enemy, they had been drawn to instil fear or to poke fun and bore as little resemblance to the man himself as the many flattering official portraits.
But I had had conversation with First Consul, General Napoleon Bonaparte, I knew his true appearance, and this man, this starving wretch on a back lane in Cornwall, was his very doppelganger.
I had been involved with war since my voice was high and my chin bore little more than feathery down and there had been countless situations where my life, and the lives of others, had depended on the accuracy of my instant judgement. That more often than not my instincts had been sound meant that I not only still lived but had risen high in my career as intelligence agent for my adopted country.
In those first moments I had no idea in what manner this man could be used but I did know that I could not let him escape me. I suggested to him that we find an inn for some refreshment after our exertions. The men on the Admiralty Board who awaited news from America would have to wait some hours longer. The man made no immediate response and I suspected him wary of conversing with a gentleman, so I told him my name and that I simply wished to thank him for his assistance. He nodded slowly and joined me in the coach.
All my questions were answered apparently with honesty, but in the briefest of manners. He told me his name was Ennor Jolliffe. I judged him to be around thirty years of age. I asked if he had wife and children. He said none. I asked if he had parents or family. He said none. I asked if he had friends. He replied ‘I had one once but he is dead.’ I tried to take his measure. Was he simple or simply wary of a gentleman stranger who seemed to be showing too much interest in his person?
The inn in the village of Lostwithiel was a pleasant one, not crowded but used to dealing with any manner of traveller without warning, so food and drink were supplied in a private room with neither fuss nor delay.
I judged Ennor Jolliffe had been a soldier. Any man would see that he was down on his luck and had been sleeping in the hedgerows. He would not be anticipating the winter with any joy so might be amenable to being taken back into the service of his King.
Many ex-soldiers were ruffians, called the scum of the earth by the only man on whom I bestowed my unquestioning loyalty and respect. Was this Ennor Jolliffe scum or was he a man who could be trusted? I had that hour in that Lostwithiel inn in which to decide and within that hour I was sure Providence had provided a suitable character as well as a perfect visage.
I asked my question quietly, hoping that Jolliffe did not recognise how important his answer was to me. I asked him if he would agree to, once again, be in the service of the King.
He replied that there was no war. I said there was always war, our country always had enemies who wished us ill, here and overseas. When he asked whether he would join his old regiment I informed him that there were other ways to serve than to wear a scarlet uniform and bear arms.
I could see him wondering what it was I was asking of him and deciding that, whatever it was, it had to be better than walking the lanes of Cornwall waiting to die in the winter’s cold. His answer was a slow nod of his head.
The journey to London was a long one. We were to spend at least two days in each other’s company, and in that time I learned all I needed to about Ennor Jolliffe.
He was born, and lived the first twenty years of his life, in an isolated fishing village on the south-east coast of Cornwall. He was given no education because there was no need for him to read or write as from the age of four he lived and worked in the bakery owned by the woman he had always called Ma. Ma was not his mother, he told me, his mother’s name was Tegan and she had died giving him birth, but he had not known that for many years. He said he had always been called Ennor even though it was not a name, simply one of the many words for stranger in the language of Kernow.
I asked how he had come to be a soldier and he replied that he had made his mark on the recruiting sergeant’s list and drunk the cider without understanding what he was doing, but that he had left the village of his birth without regret.
He knew nothing about the wars that the army he had joined was fighting. The men he marched with talked of fighting frenchies, a savage people, they said, who had risen up against their betters and beheaded their king. Some had said they shouldn’t be fighting the French, they should be fighting with them and beheading the King of England, but Ennor Jolliffe said he had no quarrel with any man and would do as he was told. One lesson Ma had taught him was to obey every instruction given him. His comrades were disappointed that they did not go to France, instead his company marched to Portsmouth where it embarked on a ship headed for India.
When Ennor began his story he had spoken hesitantly but by the time we approached Exeter he had gained in confidence and spoke with surprising eloquence of how he had been befriended by a comrade who had been a schoolteacher before, to his eternal regret, taking the King’s Shilling whilst drunk after an argument with his wife. This man, whose name he made certain I knew was Edgar, had taught him to read and write during the long voyage and in the periods of inactivity that stretched between the battles they fought.
Without my prompting he talked of his three years in India, of how he had savoured the thrill of standing in a square shoulder to shoulder with others, how he had seen countless men dead and horribly maimed but how he had emerged from every battle unscathed and longing for the next action.
His voice changed as he talked of his career after India. When he returned to Europe the enemy was a very different one and his satisfaction with life ended when Edgar died. I suspected it had not been an easy death and there was much he kept to himself of the circumstances.
With the then recent declaration of peace Ennor was returned to England where, for the first time, he had to find his own way of surviving in the world. He and his comrades had been told to go back to their homes and families but they had no answer when he asked what if there was no home or family to go to. He had returned to his village because he had nowhere else to go.
As he told me of that he became agitated. He had been hounded by men he did not know and who believed him to be a stranger. Strangers, especially those with a military bearing, were not welcome as they would be the Revenue and Revenue Men were trouble. He had sought refuge in the Chapel and had talked to the Minister who had told him his mother’s name was Tegan and that she had been Ma’s daughter.
In the months that followed he had wandered the roads of Cornwall, earning money where he could but many times he was turned away. His supply of coins dwindled and by late September he was sleeping rough in the hedgerows.
He was grateful when he was arrested and held in the prison in Bodmin Town. There he was given food once a day and had a place to sleep out of the rain. He had no idea why he had been taken, nor did he know why, a week later, he was turned out. He was given no explanation and he expected none. He had had a lifetime of accepting the decisions of those in authority.
That morning Providence indeed had made our paths meet. Had the farmer he approached given him a day’s work he would not have been walking along the road west of the village of Lostwithiel. Had he branched to the right rather than to the left at a fork he would not have noticed the berries on the tree that looked as though they would go some way to relieving his hunger. Had he not spent those minutes foraging in the wood he would have passed the tree fallen across the road and my coach would have sped past him without my ever noticing him.
But Providence ensured that he was rejected by the farmer, and that he did turn left, and that he did spend time choosing the ripest berries so that when he rounded the corner in the narrow lane he did offer his help to the man standing beside a coach held up behind a fallen tree.
*
The hours passed as he talked of his history and, as I listened, I resolved to learn the man’s regiment, his record and the reason for his brief incarceration in Bodmin Gaol. He showed a private soldier’s readiness to obey orders without question and there was a native sensitivity and intelligence that could be harnessed. I was convinced that the man would be up to any task we had for him.
After we had changed horses at Blandford I began to consider more seriously how this man could be turned to my country’s advantage.
The peace would not last, of that I was certain. General Bonaparte was increasing his power and influence and his first action, once war was again declared, would be to invade Great Britain. Of all nations in the loose coalition that had made peace at Amiens only Great Britain had retained any semblance of resistance to France. I understood what many of my fellow-countrymen did not, that this peace had been contrived, not because differences had been resolved, but because the self-interested men in Parliament would no longer pay for war. They had cut the purse-strings and therefore fighting had had to be brought to an end. I believed then that only when they understood that General Bonaparte was bent on invasion of our islands would the penny-pinching self-servers in Parliament be prevailed upon to provide the funds to allow the country to defend itself against tyranny and revolution.
Anticipating the course of current conflicts was my responsibility and one that weighed heavily upon my shoulders. Although Great Britain and Ireland had the finest navy, military organisation and fighting men, it was my department, the highly organised network of intelligence gatherers, that was at the root of everything the army and the navy were tasked to do.
Inevitably the country would soon be at war again and in some way yet to be devised Ennor Jolliffe, a man of obscure beginnings, of no education but of remarkable physical appearance, would play his part in our winning of it. A transformation would be required, a detailed plan formulated and approved, a select group of men convinced and, no doubt, many arguments won, but by whatever means were required I was sure that Ennor Jolliffe would play his part in my country’s future victories.
*
By the time we were changing coach at Andover I had concluded that I could not trust so speculative, but potentially so important, a plot to members of my department. I would need the assistance of old friends.
Nine years before I had served in the Duke of York’s campaign in the Netherlands alongside a man then known as Major Arthur Wesley. The Major relied upon me to scout out valuable intelligences and we had developed an unlikely friendship as we were both considered to be foreigners by many of the men we fought alongside.
On many long nights in that campaign he talked of his ambitions for peace. He was confident victory would be assured in the current wars with the continental powers but his vision went beyond that. He talked of how England had been at war with the lands of France since recorded history began. The Major’s ambition was no less than to end the pattern of a thousand years. He persuaded me that peace would be soon restored to Europe and, once in place, must be preserved for generations to come. I absorbed his enthusiasm and we talked long into many nights of finding a way.
Upon our return to London the Major introduced me to one of his mistresses, Frances. She impressed me with her beauty and her intelligence and we stayed in close contact through the years Major Wesley spent in India.
As many members of Society did at the time, Frances travelled widely on the continent and she was not unique in making such close acquaintance of Joséphine de Beauharnais in the salons of Paris that she attended her marriage to Napoleon Bonaparte. I had unbridled admiration for Frances’ bravery and resourcefulness in providing me with the many snippets of gossip she gleaned on her visits to France, information that, I have no hesitation in recording, did no harm at all in the furtherance of my career.
In the years since our first meeting Frances had married and as Lady Frensham was restless and ready, I felt sure, for a new kind of adventure. I had no doubt she would give me every assistance. I knew Frances would be discreet and, despite being the mistress of several prominent men in the military and in politics, her primary allegiance, even before her husband, was to the man we both referred to as The Major, who remained in India amassing his considerable fortune and establishing the ascendency of his career.
As the coach carrying myself and Ennor Jolliffe sped through the well-constructed roads of Surrey I reflected that ten years had passed since those days in the Low Countries but I believed I could still rely upon the Major, now General Wellesley. He would quickly grasp the opportunity for what it was and would assist where only he could. Communication with India was difficult but I decided not to delay in writing to him, telling him of what the fates had provided. We had not yet defeated our enemies on the Continent but one day we would and General Bonaparte would be England’s prisoner. In a way I had yet to determine information and intelligence would be obtained that would achieve our ambitions for peace. I knew I could also rely on Lady Frances.
*
On entering Westminster I directed the coach driver to Frensham House.
I had thought my request would be the main topic of my conversation with Lady Frances but she had greater news. Bonaparte’s appetite for conquest had re-kindled, the peace was over and my priorities, of necessity, lay elsewhere.
In one hour I explained the outline of my plan and Lady Frances enthusiastically took up the challenge of the transformation of Mister Jolliffe. Within two hours of our arrival in Mayfair I set off to walk to Whitehall and Ennor Jolliffe left with Lady Frances for her country house on the Isle of Wight.
I learned later that the curriculum of education Lady Frances Frensham set out in preparation for whatever would arise was a wide-ranging one. Ennor Jolliffe was taught the manners required in the presence of people of different levels of society, his rudimentary abilities with pen and paper were enhanced, though the handwriting he was made to copy hour upon tedious hour was not in the classical style. The manner of his speech was changed, though his acquired accent was not in any way similar to that of English society. He found great difficulty with mathematics, though he excelled when learning the geography of the continents. He had a natural aptitude for the drawing and reading of maps and paid particular attention to the places he had been to in his years with the army. I was told that he spent many hours studying the coastline and topography of Saint Helena, an island he had visited on his voyages to and from India.
I did not ask how Lady Frances explained the ragged ex-soldier who joined her household but I have no doubt she concocted some clever story and to my knowledge no one ever questioned the identity of the man who lived under her protection for the twelve years that would pass before my plan could be executed.
For the first five years of Ennor Jolliffe’s transformation, I worked for the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte and his allies. My responsibilities took me to Northern Africa, to the Caribbean and to the Americas but whenever I returned to England I received reports from Lady Frances.
In any period of inactivity I concentrated my mind on perfecting my plan. As the years passed the details were refined, problems were recognised and solutions identified.
I had made the man I still thought of as The Major aware of the possibilities from the beginning and, although I had not managed to convince him that it could achieve success, he had instructed me to keep him informed of the protégé’s progress. Should a strategy with some chance of success become practicable The Major’s influence would be essential to ensure that funds were made available for the property purchases, the annuities and the bribes upon which the long term success of his plan would depend.
*
In the spring of 1807 I travelled to the Isle of Wight and had my first meeting with Ennor Jolliffe for nearly five years. I was impressed by the transformation and even more anxious to discuss my plan with The Major, who was now Sir Arthur Wellesley, the newly elected Member of Parliament for Newport on the Isle of Wight.
Without my knowledge Lady Frances arranged a picnic and of the six who spent an afternoon in enjoyment of the first warm sunshine of 1807 I suspect I felt the least comfortable. Sir Arthur, his wife Kitty, Lady Frances with Sir Robert and her protégé Ennor Jolliffe all conversed amiably about the weather and the views and the contents of the hampers while I was on tenterhooks, awaiting some solecism from the Cornishman. It seemed to me that I was the only one of our party aware that the Cornishman’s ability to be a convincing substitute for His Imperial Majesty was being tested in every movement he made and in every sentence he uttered.
I believe that Sir Arthur had doubted my plan could have any chance of success but in the course of that afternoon’s picnic I saw him become convinced, and in his conviction lay the seeds of our success.
As we rode back towards Newport Sir Arthur confirmed that he would give me his backing. He also, and I remember this clearly, gave me his word that I could depend upon his sponsorship for as long as was necessary.
He fulfilled his first promise. Without his assistance the plan would never have borne fruit. But many years after that sunny afternoon spent on the downs above Freshwater Bay he broke his word. His political ambitions overrode his obligations and he withdrew his support.
*
Sir Bernard, in his study in Oakridge Court, wrote page upon page of careful code.
He wrote of how within weeks of that afternoon picnic he joined the entourage of Sir Arthur Wellesley, who had relinquished his political positions to again head an army against European forces. Initially in Denmark but for the most part on the Iberian Peninsula, he was Wellington’s trusted spymaster-in-chief working directly for the newly promoted General. Sir Bernard wrote of his actions, most of which were irregular and more often than not without written orders.
He wrote of how he travelled more miles in Iberia than most men, losing count of the times he had ridden through the borderlands of Portugal and Spain, covering ground from Valladolid, Burgos and Vitoria in the north, to Badajoz and Gibraltar in the south, Coimbra in the west and Madrid and Cuenca in the east. He described the bands of irregular guerrilleros he worked with, whose approach to fighting the regular and well-trained Napoleonic troops reminded him of his early experiences of warfare against the British. For the duration of the campaign his job was always to gather intelligence and report first to Wellesley.
Sir Bernard described how, in those days, he and the General not only respected each other but also enjoyed each other’s company, achieving, despite their different circumstances, something of the camaraderie of the early campaigns in the Low Countries. He wrote of how their conversations had always returned to their abhorrence of the wars both accepted were necessary if the ambitions of the Emperor and the spread of Bonapartism were to be halted. Long hours were spent sharing views of the world that could be created after the war had been won.
*
Despite the dangers I faced in those years on the Peninsula my life was a straightforward one. Having no responsibilities for any other person I had no care for my own safety. I was not a brave man, I was simply one with little understanding of the consequences of many of my actions.
When our armies crossed the Pyrenees the advance into the enemy’s territory was swift and the General believed it would not be long before he would have Bonaparte under his control. In the summer of 1813 he ordered me to return to England, to refine the details of the plan in the light of current circumstances and be prepared to put it into action.
It was then that doubt began to prevail. Would the opportunity be rejected by those who had the power but lacked the will? Would the scheme be obstructed and the years of investment in Ennor Jolliffe wasted? Would the training which had continued for twelve years be sufficient? Once in his position would Ennor Jolliffe pass the closest scrutiny?
*
The months until the spring of 1814 were months of frustration.
We believed Napoleon to be defeated many times but still he fought on, unable to accept the inevitability of defeat. We believed our government had firm plans for the disposal of the man on the event of his capture but they dithered between parole, trial, assassination or exile. The resolve of those few men and women aware of my scheme was sorely tested as many times our plans were frustrated by circumstance.
All was set for Paris in April 1814 but Bonaparte abdicated before reaching the capital and was hastily, and in every right-thinking Englishman’s view unwisely, exiled to Elba.
Elba presented problems as, if we were to make our substitution, we would depend upon the cooperation of the Navy. Valuable months were lost as delays were contrived and excuses were manufactured by the Admiralty intent on establishing its independence of political control.
My eyes and ears in the exiled Emperor’s entourage had no knowledge of our scheme and their intelligence was not useful so it became necessary to place someone who knew what was planned close to the General to inform me of circumstances.
The ever-resourceful Lady Frances volunteered her services and she spent the summer and autumn of the year 1814 on Elba.
We could not have done what we did without the Frenshams. Their heirs and successors deserve to know the truth as much as do mine and Olivierre’s.
*
As Sir Bernard sat in the study at Oakridge Court writing of those times, only fifteen years before, it seemed to him that the events he described had not occurred to him and to the men and women he knew now, but in some way to other people.
He was not the man he had once been. His life had become one of provincial domesticity. One afternoon, as he stared through the window of his study, the thought occurred to him that it was more than twelve years since he had killed a man.
As he wrote of the actions of Lady Frances Frensham, of how she had successfully become the close confidante of the exiled Emperor, how she had borne him a son, Lewis, on her return to England, he found it difficult to see that courageous and selfless woman in the respectable, portly Lady Frances he now knew.
*
I arrived in Vienna on the last day of February 1815 and was ushered into the rooms of the newly ennobled Duke of Wellington. The Duke had recently been appointed Plenipotentiary at the Congress which was to determine the future of Europe and he was becoming increasingly impatient with the lack of progress. He spoke openly that day, as any man speaks to one he has known many years. He was not impressed by his fellow delegates at the Congress. He said they were concerned only with the drawing of lines on maps which would serve only to create future conflict and would solve nothing. With Napoleon on Elba, he protested, all urgency had gone from solving Europe’s continuing problems. He was, he complained, expected to attend balls every night which prevented the business of the day commencing any time before three in the afternoon.
I began my argument with direct criticism of his masters in government, which I knew the Duke would take well. He agreed that it had been a grave mistake to allow Bonaparte to be exiled with dignity to Elba, it was far too close to his homeland of Corsica and far too convenient for fashionable men and women on the European tour to visit.
He blamed the mistake of Elba on the politicians. He would not know that, when he became a politician, he would make many more, and worse, and with more lasting consequences.
Both the Duke and I had our spies on Elba. We both had received reports that Napoleon had plans for imminent escape. We understood that there were too many opportunities for escape even were the Navy inclined to patrol conscientiously, a situation neither of us had any confidence in. In truth, we both were well aware that the General was able to leave his island exile any moment he chose and we both understood how well he would be welcomed on his return to French soil. There was much that we both knew, and much we agreed upon, but my task that winter’s afternoon in Vienna was to inform the Duke on what he did not know.
He did not know the extent to which admiration of Bonaparte had spread in the fashionable salons and drawing rooms of England. The Duke asked for the names of those powerful voices in London’s most respected houses where Bonaparte was hailed as a hero, and he opened his eyes in surprise as the list was not a short one. He asked who were the members of the Parliament I reported as openly working for Bonaparte’s freedom and wrote the names hurriedly on the paper in front of him. In minutes Admirals and Generals, upon whose strength we still relied, were added to the list of those I reported as spreading pernicious treason.
At his request I described how many members of society and the political classes spoke openly of their admiration for a man who had stood against the privilege and excesses of the French Royal Family, drawing parallels with the over-indulgence then exhibited by our own Royal Family. I talked of the anger that was openly expressed about the treatment of a man who had been a legitimate Head of State. I reported how revolutionary talk was spreading in the cities and towns of the north. I impressed on The Duke that my agents were reporting open talk of revolution in London and the overthrow of the British monarchy.
The Duke asked whether talk of revolution and republicanism was not being exaggerated.
I gave further detail of respected men and women manipulating the power of the mob, of agitators already planted amongst the poor of the northern towns, of large numbers of men willing to take up arms against the rich and powerful, their ranks increasing most notably in those areas overrun by the new industries as unemployment and starvation spread.
I impressed on him the link between the rich and powerful Bonapartists in their mansions in Mayfair and the forces of disruption.
The Duke had been unaware of the dangers the spread of mechanisation brought to established order as manufacturers sought to maximise their profit. He, who had been concerned with every detail of the lives of men when they had been his army, had had no thought to their condition on their discharge. He had not thought of the effects on society of tens of thousands of men with no employment, no money to buy bread for their families and, worst of all, no hope of improvement.
When I fell silent once more he stood, turning away from me to look out over the gardens. From the set of his shoulders I was aware of his tiredness. When he spoke it was slowly and deliberately.
He talked of the recent decades of devastation that could only be justified by the preservation of our way of life, our system of government and our society. He turned back towards me and asked if I had anything positive to suggest.
I put forward the idea that the revolutionaries would be powerless without the leadership and the funding of the society Bonapartists I had described. Without those men and women revolutionary impetus would be lost and the threat would subside. When he demanded to know how I planned to have the Bonapartists abandon their plots I said only one word, ‘Bonaparte’, and I was rewarded with the Duke’s slow, narrow-lipped smile. ‘Our Cornish Bonaparte is soon to be on Elba?’ he asked.
I explained, with the confidence I felt at the time, that the very next day would see Bonaparte replaced. He would be on the Bellerophon heading for Genoa where I would join its company. The intention had always been to obtain intelligence that would enable us to preserve the fragile peace in Europe. That would not change. But I proposed an additional task. Bonaparte must be made to dictate letters to his supporters in England, instructing them to reverse the work of their agitators. Only Bonaparte, I argued, could stop Bonapartism and he must be persuaded that that was as of much importance as the intelligence he would provide.
The Duke put forward doubts and objections but I continued to argue that only Bonaparte himself and those who loved him could stop the tide of revolution in England, and if it became necessary we could take the two most influential Bonapartist houses into our confidence. We would tell the ladies that he was cooperating with us and in return he would have, within strict limits, his freedom. We would impress upon them that his life and happiness depended on their quashing all support of revolution and, most critically, on their silence.
When the Duke questioned whether women in their drawing rooms and salons of Mayfair had that power I was able to confirm that, without doubt, they had. When he questioned whether these rich and powerful women would agree to our terms I was able to confirm that, without doubt, they would.
I waited as the Duke weighed up all the information I had given him.
It was some minutes before he asked what would become of our Cornish Bonaparte on Elba. The General’s inner circle would be sure to suspect the switch and the charade would be exposed quickly enough. I argued that we could depend on the loyalty the General instilled in those close to him. Just as the Bonapartists in London would hold the secret fast, so would those who loved him on Elba. We would impress upon them that their Napoleon would be free, and alive, for only as long as they made no complaint. Should they let slip that the man ruling his little island was not the man he should be we would, without hesitation, assassinate the original.
Our greatest weapon, both in England and on Elba, was the love and loyalty held for their Emperor. Those who knew him best, those who were most committed to him as if to a feudal lord, would be his strongest protectors.
I remember The Duke’s final words to me, as I was dismissed from that interview. ‘All that is required of you, Lacey, is to persuade the man that seems to command the love and respect of all that he is to write letters at your dictation and then to spend his life disposing of the intelligence that made him the most feared man of our times.’ I could find no adequate reply.
My confidence in our plan had, however, been misplaced.
I was but three hours towards Genoa when my party was overtaken by a messenger with instructions to return to Vienna.
We were too late, I discovered. Napoleon had escaped Elba and was already in France. He had landed near Cannes and was heading north for Paris, attracting many followers as he went. I listened as the Duke informed me, his intelligence for once more timely than mine. Napoleon was gathering an army around him, becoming as strong as he ever was. His abdication would be annulled, he would return to the Imperial throne. England would once more be at war and there would be nothing to stop revolution from spreading through the towns and cities of England.
It took one hundred days and many bloody and hard-fought battles including those at Ligny, Quatre Bras, Wavre and outside the village of Waterloo to once again defeat Napoleon Bonaparte.
Those one hundred days changed many things including, and as I write these words ten years after the events I remain saddened by the thought, my relationship with the Duke.
In Vienna, five months earlier, the Duke had listened to my report with patience and understanding and had allowed me to act upon my own instincts and not his instructions. As I was ushered into his presence on the eighth day of July 1815, three weeks after the battle at Waterloo and six days after the battle at Issy, I at once recognised the change in his manner. He made no preliminary pleasantries, he did not look up from the papers laid out on his desk, he spoke without the bother of meeting my gaze. That, more than any of his words, indicated to me that there could no longer be any friendship between us.
Nor did he rely on my intelligence as he had.
It was he who told me what I already knew, that Napoleon had decided upon retreat to the United States of America, that safe passage had been requested for the small fleet that would carry him and his entourage across the Atlantic. It was he who told me what I already knew, that that request had been refused and that the blockades of ports on the Brittany and Aquitaine coasts of France were to be enforced most vigorously to prevent his escape.
Instead of waiting for my suggestions as to actions he gave me instructions as he had done in the earliest years of our acquaintance. He told me that if anything of our long-discussed plan were to come to fruition I was to act immediately. If I still believed that there was the threat of revolution in England and that peace was fragile in Europe I was to obtain Napoleon’s person under my control without delay.
He told me what I already knew, that many voices called for the assassination of Napoleon or his handing over to the Russians or Prussians who had vowed to put him to death. In England the sole topic of fashionable argument was whether Napoleon would be assassinated before he could be tried and executed. There was even talk of blasting his ship out of the water as he ran the blockade, as run the blockade all believed he would, so that there could be no grave to act as as an object of pilgrimage. One way or another the Emperor would likely soon be dead.
My instructions were to effect the switch immediately so it would be the Cornishman’s life, not that of the Emperor, which would be ended and we would not then lose all that we had planned to gain from Napoleon’s mind and memory.
I could not leave the Duke’s presence without venturing that Bonaparte had to be seen to survive for some months yet for his influence still to reign over his followers in England. I, somewhat boldly, argued that the Duke should argue, with those friends he had in government, for exile on an island in the South Atlantic such as Ascension or Saint Helena, so that both objectives of our plan might be fulfilled.
As I left the room the Duke called me back. I hoped, briefly, for a word of encouragement, instead I was warned not to fail as all knowledge of the scheme would be denied and I, Lady Frances, her husband and her son, as well as our Cornishman, would pay with our lives.
*
Events ran too swiftly for me to effect the switch on French soil. General Bonaparte was already making his way to l’Ile d’Aix off Rochefort on the Biscay coast where he had been misled that there was a weakness in the blockade. I had agents in his entourage and, faced with conflicting advice, he was persuaded to surrender to the English, placing his fate in the hands of the Prince and the Government. He was to relinquish himself to Captain Maitland on the Bellerophon, an irony since that was the very captain and vessel that had awaited his transfer from Elba.
A week later, in the late afternoon of the fifteenth day of July 1815, I arrived at Rochefort and was ferried by barge out to the Bellerophon. It was a little over five months since I should have joined that ship’s company in Genoa and the circumstances had changed. At Genoa Napoleon’s entourage would have been only a handful of men, but now there were dozens including secretaries, advisors and women who could only be described as camp followers. At Genoa I had had the long voyage through the Mediterranean, through the Straits and north along the coast of Portugal, in which to persuade Napoleon that cooperation was his only course of action. Now I only had the last part of that voyage, through the northern Bay of Biscay and across the Channel to England. In February the eyes of the world had not been on us, now, in July, we were at the centre of much political intrigue. My task seemed impossibly difficult.
*
Sir Bernard thought back to those days when he first made real acquaintance with the man who was to become his friend and neighbour.
They had not been easy days and the weight of the responsibility had weighed heavily on him. The successful conclusion to thirteen years of planning, the lives of himself and of others, the future security of his country and, he hoped, the continent and the wider world, depended on his ability to persuade the man who had recently been the most powerful in the world to cooperate.
As he sat in his study in Oakridge Court he allowed himself to smile ruefully. How, he asked himself, in the name of all that was holy, had he ever imagined he could succeed?
*
I spent much of that voyage in the cabin of the man we now referred to as The General. I had only seven days to explain the proposed arrangement and persuade him of its merits. I put much emphasis to the possibility of living his life largely as he wished. He asked many questions about the society he would keep and where and how he would live. I described what I knew of the properties that had been prepared for us on the Isle of Wight and painted, perhaps, too rosy a view of our retirement. He seemed surprised that we would be neighbours. It was then that I explained the conditions which were attached to British generosity.
I argued that although our war with France was now over Great Britain looks to our other enemies; the Russians, the Ottomans, and that those are also the enemies of France. ‘L’ennemi de mon ennemi est mon ami’ he quoted, and he seemed surprised that I was familiar with Sun Tzu’s treatise on The Art of War. In the hours we discussed the document, the General describing it as one invaluable in his success and I confirming that Sun Tzu’s thoughts on espionage and the importance of information had assisted in his downfall, I believe was sown the seed of a friendship between us.
‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend’ may be true, I allowed, but also one has enemies amongst friends and friends amongst enemies. I described the dangers to civil order created by his many supporters in our Parliament and wider society. I argued that Bonapartist revolution must not be raised in Britain and that part of the price of his freedom was that he should instruct his supporters that it was not the wish of Napoleon Bonaparte that England should take the French path.
In my efforts to acquire the General’s agreement I detailed the advantages of the life he would lead, but I also made the alternative clear.
He would be tried by military court and hanged even if he was not assassinated before that trial could be arranged. Revolution and anarchy would engulf Britain, which would be powerless to organise a fragmented Europe, the Austrian empire would be defenceless against the Ottomans and the Cossacks. European civilisation would be overrun as there would be nothing to stop the spread of the Islamic Empire. Christianity and the rule of Roman law would be obliterated. I was eloquent in my argument because I truly believed, and still believe, that this sequence of events would have occurred. I believed then, and still believe, that I did not overstate the case.
Sometime on that voyage the General remarked that I seemed to have experience in the administration of such arrangements as I proposed. I wondered at the time, and wonder still, what would be the impact on the political world, and on history, if the truth were known of who had not been who they appeared to be.
*
Whether by threat or persuasion the day before the Bellerophon anchored in Plymouth Harbour the General agreed our terms. But we came close to losing his cooperation in those last days of July through the stupidity and ignorance of the people.
Every day, from dawn to dusk, precariously loaded boatloads of Englishmen and women cluttered around the ship, every one straining to catch a glimpse of the monster who had threatened their country for twenty years and been responsible for the deaths and injury to so many thousands. The General initially played his part well, strutting just as the caricatures had painted him, his arm lodged inside his jacket, up and down the decks, but his patience was sorely tried and after one week he simply stood on the deck, gazing out past the harbour entrance, sullen and scowling.
In those days I took the opportunity to cross to the Isle of Jersey where I confirmed that references to one Monsieur Claude Olivierre had been placed in the Public Registry and I obtained all the necessary papers to establish Monsieur Olivierre as a citizen of Jersey.
In Westminster and Whitehall negotiations between the different factions in government were hard. The arguments for arrest and trial were pitched against exile. I heard only on the last day of July that the decision had been made and the outcome was as we most required. The Prime Minister, The Duke’s old friend Liverpool, had prevailed and it was decreed that there would be no trial. Napoleon would be transferred to the Northumberland in Plymouth Harbour and, without setting foot on English soil, an act that would make him subject to English Common Law, he would be transported to Saint Helena where he would be held for the rest of his life.
On the morning of the first day of August 1815 the General did not appear, as had become his routine, at breakfast on the Bellerophon. His valet, Bertrand, excused his master to the ship’s officers, saying he was unwell and would keep to his cabin for the day. A member of the crew was suspicious and arranged for a midshipman to be suspended from the deck to peer in at the windows of their prisoner’s cabin to ensure he had not dived into the sea. The midshipman reported that the General was, indeed, in his cabin but he was not seen by any man who knew him before he was transferred to the Northumberland for the voyage to Saint Helena.
Not one of the carefully chosen crew of the Northumberland had any reason to believe that the man who bore every resemblance to the Boney they had seen caricatured in the news sheets, the man who could one minute be completely charming and the next unutterably arrogant, the man who charmed women and sired a child on the voyage, was not the man his escorts, his secretaries, his doctors and all the others who had given up their lives to share their Emperor’s exile said he was.
*
Sir Bernard took no pleasure in remembering how the Duke had been in the years that followed. He had given his enthusiastic support once it appeared the scheme could succeed and he had reaped the benefits of that success as he embarked on his career as a politician.
Once the Duke had become Prime Minister however, he had been in a position to wipe history’s slate clean of any reference to what had occurred.