LITMIR.BIZ

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omitted all the vilification of Napoleon, which permeates all the series in a greater or less degree, because I have already given it in another work. It was gravely stated that his great grandfather was the keeper of a wine-shop, who, being convicted of robbery and murder, was condemned to the galleys, where he died in 1724. His wife, Napoleon’s great grandmother, was said to have died in the House of Correction at Genoa. “His grandfather was a butcher of Ajaccio, and his grandmother daughter of a journeyman tanner at Bastia. His father was a low pettyfogging lawyer, who served and betrayed his country by turns, during the Civil Wars. After France conquered Corsica, he was a spy to the French Government, and his mother their trull.” General Marbœuf was said to have been Napoleon’s father. He was accused of seducing his sisters, and his brothers were supposed to be a very bad lot. He massacred the people at Alexandria and Jaffa, besides poisoning his own sick soldiers there. There was nothing bad enough for the Corsican Ogre; they even found that he was the real, original, and veritable Apocalyptic Beast, whose number is 666. It is but fair to say that the majority of these accusations came originally from French sources, but they were eagerly adopted here; and, although they might be, and probably were, taken at their proper valuation by the educated classes, there is no doubt but the lower classes regarded him as a ruffianly murderer. “Boney will come to you,” was quite enough to quiet and overawe any refractory youngster, who, however, must have had some consolation, and satisfaction, in crunching, in sweetstuff, Bonaparte’s Ribs. It was all very well to sing —

      “Come, Bonaparte, if you dare;

      John Bull invites you; bring your Host,

      Your slaves with Free men to compare;

      Your Frogs shall croak along the Coast.

      When slain, thou vilest of thy Tribe,

      Wrapped in a sack your Bones shall be,

      That the Elements may ne’er imbibe

      The venom of a Toad like thee” —

      but there was the flat-bottomed Flotilla, on the opposite shore, which we were unable to destroy, or even to appreciably damage, and the “Army of England,” inactive certainly, was still there, and a standing menace. The Volunteers were fêted, and praised to the top of their bent. An old air of Henry Purcell’s (1695), which accompanied some words interpolated in Beaumont and Fletcher’s play of “Bonduca” or “Boadicæa,” became extremely popular; and the chorus, “Britons, strike home,” was married to several sets of words, and duly shouted by loyal Volunteers. The Pictorial Satirist delineates the Volunteer as performing fabulous deeds of daring. Gillray gives us his idea of the fate of “Buonaparte forty-eight hours after Landing!” where a burly rustic Volunteer holds the bleeding head of Napoleon upon a pitchfork, to the delight of his comrades, and he thus apostrophises the head: “Ha, my little Boney! what do’st think of Johnny Bull, now? Plunder Old England! hay? make French slaves of us all! hay? ravish all our Wives and Daughters! hay? O Lord, help that silly Head! To think that Johnny Bull would ever suffer those lanthorn Jaws to become King of Old England Roast Beef and Plum Pudding!”

      Ansell, too, treats Bonaparte’s probable fate, should he land, in a somewhat similar manner. His etching is called “After the Invasion. The Levée en Masse, or, Britons, strike home.” The French have landed, but have been thoroughly routed, of course, by a mere handful of English, who drive them into the sea. Our women plunder the French dead, but are disgusted with their meagre booty – garlic, onions, and pill-boxes. A rural Volunteer is, of course, the hero of the day, and raises Napoleon’s head aloft on a pitchfork, whilst he thus addresses two of his comrades. “Here he is exalted, my Lads, 24 Hours after Landing.” One of his comrades says, “Why, Harkee, d’ye zee, I never liked soldiering afore, but, somehow or other, when I thought of our Sal, the bearns, the poor Cows, and the Geese, why I could have killed the whole Army, my own self.” The other rustic remarks, “Dang my Buttons if that beant the head of that Rogue Boney. I told our Squire this morning, ‘What! do you think,’ says I, ‘the lads of our Village can’t cut up a Regiment of them French Mounseers? and as soon as the lasses had given us a kiss for good luck, I could have sworn we should do it, and so we have.”

      Well! it is hard to look at these things in cold blood, at a great distance of time, and without a shadow of a shade of the fear of invasion before our eyes, so we ought to be mercifully critical of the bombast of our forefathers. It certainly has done us no harm, and if it kept up and nourished the flame of patriotism within their breasts, we are the gainers thereby, as there is no doubt but that the bold front shown by the English people, and the unwearying vigilance of our fleet, saved England from an attempted, if not successful, invasion. Upwards of 400,000 men voluntarily rising up in arms to defend their country, must have astonished not only Bonaparte, but all Europe; and by being spontaneous, it prevented any forced measures, such as a levée en masse. The Prince of Wales, in vain, applied for active service; but, it is needless to say, it was refused, not to the colonel of the regiment, but to the heir to the throne. The refusal was tempered by the intimation that, should the enemy effect a landing, the Prince should have an opportunity of showing his courage, a quality which has always been conspicuous in our Royal Family.

      But before we leave the subject of the threatened Invasion, it would be as well to read some jottings respecting it, which have no regular sequence, and yet should on no account be missed, as they give us, most vividly, the state of the public mind thereon.

      Napoleon was at Boulogne, at the latter end of June, making a tour of the ports likely to be attacked by the British, and, as an example of how well his movements were known, see the following cutting from the Times of 4th of July: “The Chief Consul reached Calais at five o’clock on Friday afternoon (the 1st of July). His entry, as might be expected, was in a grand style of parade: he rode on a small iron grey horse of great beauty. He was preceded by about three hundred Infantry, and about thirty Mamelukes formed a kind of semicircle about him… In a short time after his arrival he dined at Quillac & Co’s. (late Dessin’s) hotel. The time he allowed himself at dinner was shorter than usual; he did not exceed ten minutes or a quarter of an hour. Immediately after dinner he went, attended by M. Francy, Commissary of Marine, Mengaud, Commissary of Police, and other municipal officers, through the Calais gates, to visit the different batteries erected there. As soon as he and his attendants had passed through the gates, he ordered them to be shut, to prevent their being incommoded by the populace. The execution of this order very much damped the ardour of the Corsican’s admirers, who remained entirely silent, although the moment before, the whole place resounded with Vive Buonaparte! The same evening the General went on board the Josephine packet, Captain Lambert, and, after examining everything there minutely, he took a short trip upon the water in a boat as far as the pier-head to the Battery at the entrance of the harbour, where he himself fired one of the guns; afterwards, he visited all the different Forts, and at night slept at Quillac’s Hotel.”

      They had a rough-and-ready method, in those days, of recruiting for the services, apprehending all vagrants, and men who could not give a satisfactory account of themselves, and giving them the option of serving His Majesty or going to prison. There is a curious instance of this in the following police report, containing as it does an amusing anecdote of “diamond cut diamond.” Times, the 7th July, 1803: “Public Office, Bow Street. Yesterday upwards of forty persons were taken into custody, under authority of privy search warrants, at two houses of ill fame; the one in Tottenham Court Road, and the other near Leicester Square. They were brought before N. Bond, Esq., and Sir W. Parsons, for examination; when several of them, not being able to give a satisfactory account of themselves, and being able-bodied men, were sent on board a tender lying off the Tower. Two very notorious fellows among them were arrested in the office for pretended debts, as it appeared, for the purpose of preventing their being sent to sea, the writs having been just taken out, at the suit of persons as notorious as themselves. The magistrates, however, could not prevent the execution of the civil process, as there was no criminal charge against them, which would justify their commitment.” Take also a short paragraph in the next day’s Times: “Several young men, brought before the Lord Mayor yesterday, charged with petty offences, were sent on board the tender.”

      But, perhaps, this was the best use to put them to, as idle hands were

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