Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815)
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815)’
In The Copybook
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815)’
In The Copybook
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Stamford Raffles, Lieutenant-Governor of Java, urged London to bypass our European partners and trade directly with Japan.
On February 13, 1814, Stamford Raffles (1781-1826) in Java wrote to Lord Minto, former Governor-General of India, urging London to pursue a more vigorous trade policy with Japan. Previous trade links had employed Dutch agents, but Raffles believed that Britain would do better by trading directly rather than through European partners.
The night before the Comte de Lavalette was to be executed, his wife Émilie came to visit him with a proposal that left him speechless.
Antoine, Comte de Lavalette, had been Napoleon’s Adjutant, and his wife Émilie had been maid of honour to Josephine. After Napoleon’s fall, Antoine was arrested by the Ultra-Royalists and on November 21st, 1815, sentenced to death. He realised that hopes of a reprieve were an illusion when a female warder burst into his room weeping and kissed his Legion d’Honneur medal. Émilie had already reached the same melancholy conclusion.
In January 1807, newspapers breathlessly reported that Napoleon Bonaparte’s rampage across Europe was at an end — but was it true?
In January 1807, as Napoleon Bonaparte’s armies swept across the Continent building his French Empire, British newspapers printed a cheering story about how the Russians had inflicted a calamitous defeat on Napoleon. William Cobbett didn’t believe a word of it, and expressed his doubts in a masterly metaphor which made ‘red herrings’ into a household proverb.
Frederick Ponsonby’s involvement in the Battle of Waterloo began early, and it seemed to him that it went on for ever.
Early in the Battle of Waterloo on June 18th, 1815, the Union Brigade inflicted heavy losses on the French guns and then withdrew, shielded by Colonel William Ponsonby’s 12th Light Dragoons. But then 300 Polish lancers, French allies, rode up. There was a crush. The French fired indiscriminately. In minutes, Ponsonby had lost the use of his arms, his sword and his reins. Then with the flash of a sabre he was down.
When King George IV tried to divorce Queen Caroline with maximum embarrassment, her barrister warned that two could play at that game.
IN 1820, George, Prince of Wales (who had been Regent for his father since 1811) became King George IV. At once he began divorce proceedings against his estranged wife Caroline, who was living in Italy, and boasted he would expose her private life to public ridicule. Defence counsel Henry Brougham delicately reminded the House of Lords that George had a secret that would rock the monarchy — were it made public.
Facing defeat at the General Election of 1812, Henry Brougham stood before the voters of Liverpool and made a spirited defence of liberty’s record.
In the 1812 General Election, Henry Brougham (pronounced ‘broom’) was one of two Whig candidates hoping to represent Liverpool. On the night before they went to polls, he addressed supporters with a last-minute plea to redouble their efforts, reminding them that Parliamentary democracy, the abolition of slavery and even peace in Europe all depended on their determination to keep fighting for liberty.
Amid all the confusion of the Battle of Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington spotted a man in civilian clothes riding busily around on a stocky horse.
Benjamin Haydon was a respected nineteenth-century English artist and teacher, but his career was a constant struggle, blighted by debt and (in his eyes) betrayal. He died at his own hand in 1846. Haydon left behind a diary in which he recorded an anecdote set against the background of the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, on the authority of the Duke of Wellington himself.