The Barbed Crown

Chapter 22





Walmer Castle was the spy headquarters for Britain’s secret struggle against Napoleon. If the French were inventing a modern national police under Napoleon, the British were inventing a modern espionage service under William Pitt, the sickly, alcoholic, and valiant prime minister. Walmer was one of his personal homes, through his family title as lord warden of the Cinque Ports. His castle looked strategically across a rocky beach at France, and so had become the wartime workplace of General Edward Smith, director of spies. This Smith was the uncle of Sir Sidney, who in turn happened to be a cousin of Pitt. On a rainy April 8, 1805, I was seated at a massive oak table in a low-ceilinged room facing not just that cozy trio but Spencer Smith, Sidney’s brother who’d gathered intelligence in Germany, and Colonel Charles Smith, another brother who led a garrison nearby.

Catherine would call it breeding; Franklin, nepotism.

Sidney Smith, as was his flamboyant custom, was wearing Turkish robes and a turban he’d been given while advising the Ottomans against the French. An ostrich plume floated above, a curved dagger jutted from his waist sash, and his cavalry boots had been replaced with pointed slippers. None but Pasques and I paid this bizarre getup the slightest attention.

Joining the Smith cabal was Admiral Home Riggs Popham, another ambitious Englishman who’d organized coastal militia and a new signal system for the navy. Slim, lithe, and restless, he had the insouciant flair of an aristocrat, treating espionage as a grand game.

Smuggler Tom Johnstone was there, too, matching in height, if not in bulk, my companion Pasques. All were turned to hear three inventors, however.

One was Colonel William Congreve, who was adopting the rockets of the Maharajal armies in India as a possible new sea weapon in Europe. Like all inventors, he was happy as a hound to have a receptive audience.

A second was my old friend Fulton. Unable to win French financial backing to complete his work, he’d come to Britain to sell his ideas to the other side.

I was the third.

Fulton had greeted me warmly. We’d gone adventuring amid the Barbary pirates and used his plunging boat to rescue Astiza and Harry. “Ethan, you disappeared from France two years ago. I feared you dead!”

“I had to look for my son again, Robert. After a sojourn in the West Indies I was returning to France just as you were departing. We didn’t meet because I had to sneak about. Now here we are on the same side.”

“All roads lead to Walmer Castle. Tell me, did you see my boat Vulcan in Paris? Sweet little craft with paint-box colors that chugs on steam. I think the idea holds great promise, but the French let me try her just once before concluding she wasn’t fast enough upstream. By thunder she’s faster than a sailboat when wind and current are adverse!”

“I poked about.”

“Is she still steamable?”

“With a little work.” I kicked Pasques so he didn’t reveal we’d sent Fulton’s toy thrashing into a Seine riverbank. Robert might forgive me for the loss of one of his boats, but I doubt he’d be happy with two.

Congreve I didn’t know. Balding and muscular, he had the rugged build of a day laborer and the peddler fire of the missionary. Like Fulton, he was a tinkerer who wanted to revolutionize warfare.

We stood when Pitt arrived.

“Sit, sit.” At least there wasn’t just Napoleon’s one chair.

The prime minister, a decade older than Napoleon, was nonetheless “the younger” because his father had held office before him. This son had first led the nation at the astonishing age of twenty-four, a maturity at which my idea of governance didn’t extend much beyond keeping my mistresses from learning of each other. Being precocious grinds on you, however, and now, at forty-five, “honest Billy” looked worn out. Two international coalitions and a royalist conspiracy against Bonaparte had all failed. Having quit in 1801 after feuding with King George over Ireland, Pitt had been called back to power shortly after I landed in France. Now he was facing England’s greatest challenge since the Spanish Armada.

His nation was hysterical at the possibility of invasion; erecting semaphores; stockpiling wood for signal bonfires; building small coastal forts called Martello towers; and digging canals, trenches, and ramparts. More than thirty miles of fortifications had been started around London. Plans had been made to evacuate the government. Troops of old men drilled with pitchforks.

Nursemaids had a new ogre to frighten children with. The latest rhyme:

Baby, baby, naughty baby,

Hush you squalling thing I say;

Hush your squalling or it may be,

Bonaparte will pass this way.

Baby, baby, he’s a giant,

Tall and black as Rouen steeple,

And he dines and sups, rely it,

Every day on naughty people.

So our conspiracy was to save England from that cannibal, Bonaparte. The castle itself was a fine place for intrigue. Four semicircular battlements jutted from a central keep, the edifice looking like a gigantic clover plopped into a moat. Hodgepodge additions had created sleeping quarters with modern paneling and a central sky-lit atrium. Window glass filled old gun ports, and Oriental carpeting and four-poster beds gave the bastion a homey feel. While militarily obsolescent, Walmer was a splendid hideaway for plotters, assassins, spies, and secret weapons. Rumor was that its cellars held not just agents of questionable loyalty, such as me, but trunks of gold to pay saboteurs and scoundrels. I’d wandered about to test the truth of that story, so far without success.

Now Pitt called us to order. “Gentlemen, we must defeat the French at sea, not on the farms of England. We must take the war to them, not wait for their blows to fall on us. Boney has gained thirty ships of the line through alliance with Spain. Until Austria, Russia, and Prussia march against him in a Third Coalition, we stand alone.”

Sidney Smith spoke up. “The information obtained by my agents enabled us to foil the French naval trap detailed in Talleyrand’s papers. That has bought us time.”

I was annoyed he didn’t give me credit.

“Yes, but there’s a terrible new development that must be kept secret by all of you,” Pitt replied. “Our spies in Paris whose reports came through instead of being confiscated”—he glanced at me—“have reported that Admiral Villeneuve’s fleet slipped out of Toulon at the end of March. As we all know, the gravest threat to England is for the French Mediterranean fleet to link with the French and Spanish Atlantic fleets to achieve temporary naval superiority in the Channel. If that happens, Napoleon can invade.”

“Surely Nelson is on Villeneuve’s tail,” General Smith said.

“So we pray, but as yet we have no word. I don’t envy Nelson’s task. The sea is a vast place to hide in, and the availability of Spanish ports immensely complicates his search. If he fails, we lose the war.”

“Which means that was a costly four million Spanish dollars you stole back in October,” I couldn’t help interjecting, since I was grumpy from my troubles. The British navy had greedily intercepted a Spanish treasure convoy off Cadiz several months back when the two nations were still at peace, pushing Spain into an unhappy alliance with Napoleon.

“We’re dealing with the strategic situation as it is, Ethan, not as it might be,” Sidney Smith reminded, yanking my leash. “You of all people should know the futility of dwelling too long on opportunities lost. And I’ll note that Commodore Moore captured one hundred fifty thousand ingots of gold and twenty-five thousand sealskins, helping balance the millions Bonaparte received from your nation for its purchase of Louisiana.”

I resented the comparison. “And had to pay Spanish captain Alvear thirty thousand pounds for blowing up nine members of his innocent family on a neutral ship, the Mercedes.” It wasn’t diplomatic, but the British bullied everyone at sea. I was lonely for my wife, newly poor, and hadn’t received proper thanks.

“A litigation which is none of the affair of an American agent who has debt and legal troubles of his own,” Smith snapped.

I wasn’t helping myself, I knew. “Sorry. I think out loud sometimes.”

“You should be in Parliament,” Pitt quipped, to relieve the tension. Everyone laughed.

“There are actually intriguing opportunities in South America now that we’re at war with Spain,” Home Popham spoke up. “The Spanish colonies are restive and might be encouraged to revolt, becoming new trade partners. I might lead an expedition there myself.”

This was a larger picture than I’d contemplated. Maybe there was method to English madness after all.

“Sir Sidney recommends you as a tireless warrior when pressed,” Pitt said to me with a politician’s practiced charm. “And all of us regret the entry of Spanish ships into the war, Mr. Gage. The question for today is what to do about it, or, rather, how to cripple the French before they can make an effective alliance.”

“The Dagos will bloody hell wish they’d never tangled with Nelson,” Johnstone put in.

“Agreed, if Nelson can force battle. But can modern invention make such a clash unnecessary?” Pitt wanted to get to the point. “Colonel Congreve?”

The soldier straightened. “Prime Minister, you may recall that a quarter century ago, the Indian sultan Tippoo defeated the East India Company at the Battle of Pollilur with rockets. They hit our power stores, and our ammunition blew up. In the Indian wars as a whole, rockets have caused more British casualties than any other weapon. Their explosions kill up to three men at a time. The rockets’ long bamboo tails thrash through our ranks.”

I recalled Tippoo. Napoleon had planned to link up with this Indian patriot after conquering Egypt. The British killed the sultan before alliance could be made, but without Tippoo Napoleon might never have invaded Egypt, I might never have accompanied him, and Astiza might never have experienced my charm. The world is indeed small.

“Rockets were also used by the Irish rebel Robert Emmet in his failed revolt a couple of years ago,” Congreve went on. “I began my own experiments at the Royal Arsenal. In effect, rockets provide an explosion without having to bother with a cannon to deliver it. They’re cheap, simple, and terrifying. If launched in great numbers at the French fleet anchored at Boulogne, they could set it on fire. I’ve devised a black powder propellant in an iron tube with a fifteen-foot tail. Thousands of these cheap weapons might engulf the invasion fleet in chaos and havoc.”

“Here, here,” Sidney Smith said.

“Sounds like the devil’s brew,” Johnstone seconded.

“Mr. Fulton?” Pitt said.

“My inventions complement those of Colonel Congreve,” my American friend said. “The French rejected them as immoral, but why blowing someone up with a torpedo is less moral than slaying them with a cannonball, I’ve never understood.”

“Here, here,” repeated Sir Sidney.

“My primary device has already seen active service against the Tripoli pirates. I call it a torpedo, after the Latin word for the jolt from an electric ray. A charge of gunpowder is drifted against enemy hulls and triggered by clockwork. Tide and current do most of the work. In one design, two torpedoes are attached to a rope that drifts down on an enemy mooring line. As the anchor cable catches this rope, the bombs will float past to lodge on either side of the hull of the ship. Then the explosions go off, cracking the hull like an egg. As we break the French line, more torpedoes can be floated through the gaps. The carnage should be extraordinary.”

“Here, here,” Smith said again.

“It sounds a trifle unfair,” Popham objected. “Sinking ships without using a ship?” He was a naval officer, after all.

“Bloody brilliant,” Smith rejoined. “Clandestine, silent, invisible, and deadly.” His uncle and brothers nodded. I wouldn’t want to face off against his clan in a vendetta.

“Setting ships on fire and letting them drift down on enemy fleets has been used since ancient times,” Pitt pointed out. “This only adds technological precision to the idea. But drifting mines are hardly the most ingenious part of Fulton’s scheme. Explain, Robert.”

“While some of my torpedoes can be released from British warships to float with tide and current, I suggest another group be aimed precisely with what I call a catamaran.” Fulton stood and whisked a cloth off an easel. Underneath was a diagram of an invention I hadn’t seen before.

“This craft has two sealed pontoons with the torpedo suspended between. Weighted with lead, the contraption is almost entirely submerged, making it hard to see or sink. Two helmsmen steer with a paddle, aiming for specific ships and specific mooring cables. As they near the target, one yanks a lanyard to set the clockwork ticking, releases the torpedo, and they paddle the catamaran away.”

“Paddle where?” Popham asked. I admired such practicality.

“To English ships waiting offshore. It will take pluck, of course, but the doughty rogues who steer this weapon might turn the tide of war.”

All the Smiths turned to look at me. I hastened to speak up. “Damned clever, like all Yankee ingenuity. As an American myself, I’ll direct the attack from a quarterdeck, given my knowledge of the French port. I can study the charts, observe the weather, and make calculations off the tide tables.”

“Tide tables!” Sidney Smith laughed. “I know you too well to think you’d be content with that, Ethan. Nor would I trust your arithmetic. No, no, this is the perfect job for you and your giant friend, Pasques. Doughty rogues indeed! And you both speak fluent French, in case you’re hailed by suspicious lookouts. By God, I’ll wish I was with you, paddling toward the entire French navy and army with blackened face and dark little cap, lonely spearhead for the might of England, unleashing a positive cataclysm of rockets, mines, and cannon fire.”

“You can take my place,” I offered hopelessly.

“Alas, I’m chained to high command. But you can unleash a hideous new way of warfare. Not quite sporting to sneak in like that, but effective, what? Yours will become a peculiar kind of glory, but glory nonetheless.”

“I’ll slip you so close we’ll smell their damned snails,” Johnstone added.

“It is the garlic one smells,” Pasques contributed.

I cleared my throat. “Sir Sidney, I thought you didn’t trust me after my poor performance as a spy in France?”

“Which is why I know you’re burning to prove yourself, Ethan. Sign on to make this work, and your friend Robert there gets a lucrative contract from the admiralty to build more of his devil machines.”

“Bully for him.”

“Sign on, and history turns a new chapter.”

“History will flip its own pages without any help from me.”

“Sign on,” he said, looking at me intently, “and you’ll win passage to Venice to find your wife and son.”