The best stories in my childhood always started with the words “It was a dark and stormy night…”
But history relates that it really was a dark and stormy night on Sunday 20th February 1814. Sunset fell shortly after 5.20pm in the afternoon. The day had been bitterly cold, windy and misty; and the night followed suit, so the weather was truly a pathetic fallacy for the human drama that was about to unfold.
Two locals, John Marsh and Thomas Gourley were disturbed later that evening, as they shared a pipe in the Ship Inn by the sound of a voice demanding a post chaise carriage to London.
Dover at this time was on constant alert for news from the Continent. Napoleon had been defeated in his disastrous Russian campaign in 1812, and again at Leipzig in October 1813, but was still at large with significant forces in Northern France. While no-one in England seriously feared an invasion, Napoleon at the head of an army was nonetheless a potent threat. Indeed, Napoleon had thoroughly trounced the Coalition forces led by Blücher on six occasions in battles across Northern France in the previous 3 weeks. So, at this stage, Britain waited news of Napoleon’s next move with something like breathless anticipation.
The source of the knocking turned out to be a stranger, dressed in a soaked greatcoat over an unusual-looking, battle scarred and very muddy uniform, who stated that he was Lieutenant-Colonel du Bourg, just arrived from France with the most important news that had to be delivered immediately to Admiral Foley, Commander of the south coast naval forces at nearby Deal.
Had they looked more closely, some of the surprised Dover residents, who had gathered at the disturbance, might have noticed that the battle-stained uniform was in fact streaked with boot-black; and they would have been even more surprised some minutes earlier to have seen the stranger standing in the nearby millstream throwing water over his coat to simulate a sea-soaked Channel crossing.
But unaware of these details, the locals provided Du Bourg with the wherewithal to write to Admiral Foley, and his letter set out the stunning news that Napoleon had been defeated in battle: “Bonaparte was overtaken by a party of Sachen’s Cossacks who immediately slayed him and divided his body between them. General Platoff saved Paris from being reduced to ashes…an immediate peace is certain” he wrote.
Du Bourg’s letter was delivered to Admiral Foley at 3am, but the poor weather prevented its transmission to London via the primitive telegraph system then available. Nevertheless, the sensational news started to spread by word of mouth, across and inland from the south coast, even at this early hour. And Du Bourg left for London personally, changing horses and carriage several times before arriving in the capital early on Monday 21st.
While Du Bourg was en route, two gentlemen claiming to be French officers of the pre-Napoleonic Bourbon government appeared in Dartford, with even more lurid details of the demise of the Emperor, also demanding transport to the capital.
The combined effect of the overnight rumours and the arrival in the early morning of two separate parties with news of impending peace created pandemonium among Londoners and on the Stock Exchange. Large crowds gathered outside the Mansion House hoping for an official announcement from the Lord Mayor. In the course of the day government stocks – gilts – rose in value by an astonishing 20 per cent.
Inevitably, as the day wore on with no further corroboration of this dramatic turn of events, suspicion mounted and disappointment grew. It was confirmed later in the afternoon that Napoleon was in fact alive and that Lieutenant-General Baron Sachen’s Cossacks had been engaged elsewhere. Gilt prices fell sharply and many investors caught up in the frenzy of the morning lost large sums of money.
In the investigation that followed it transpired that only four individuals had sold gilts on that Monday – Sir Thomas Cochrane (10th Earl of Dundonald, a distinguished Naval hero, MP and member of the Order of the Bath), Andrew Cochrane Johnstone (ex-Governor of Dominica, MP for a rotten borough in Cornwall and Thomas’s uncle), Richard Butt (a stockbroker) and John Holloway (a wine merchant).
These four owned almost £1m in holdings of gilts – equivalent to £50m million today – at the start of the day’s trading, most of which had been purchased the previous Friday. They could have made profits of between £5 and £10m in today’s money on their trading, if things had gone well; as it was they only netted about £0.5m – this was long before the days of best execution rules!
The four of them, and du Bourg, whose real name turned out to be Charles Random de Beringer, were tried at the Old Bailey on eight counts including that they:
“…did conspire and by diverse false and subtle arts, devices, contrivances, representations, reports, and rumours to occasion without just and true cause a rise and increase in the prices of the public Government Funds … and sell and cause to be sold for them divers other large parts of the said Government Funds at higher and greater prices than said parts would otherwise sell for with a wicked and fraudulent intention to thereby cheat and defraud … all his Majesty’s subjects who should contract for or purchase part of the said public Government Funds … of diverse large sums of money…”
They were found guilty, fined, placed in the public pillory at the front of the Royal Exchange and sent to prison for 12 months in the first ever successful prosecution in the English courts for market manipulation.
The Cruikshank cartoon – April 1st 1814
Two sets of double stocks face each other, the farther ends converging so that the occupants are sufficiently close to play cards at a table placed between them. The principal pair, Lord Cochrane (left) and de Beranger (right) throw dice. Cochrane’s seat is a huge thistle; he wears naval uniform with a star, cocked hat, and knee-breeches. Beside him is a grappling iron. De Beranger has huge black moustaches, indicating his Prussian nationality; he wears a cocked hat in which is a large olive-branch, a green military coat; his left hand rests on a sabre, with which he supports himself. His legs are in tattered stockings; his large jack-boots lying on the ground in front of the stocks.
Next to Cochrane sits his uncle, Andrew Cochrane Johnstone, wearing a tam-o’-shanter. In his pocket is a paper: ‘Motion Princess Wales Cock John’. His vis-à-vis, Butt, wears a barrel over his coat from neck to waist, with holes for the arms. Under his hand is a paper: ‘Oxford 18th Feb To my Secretary Mr Butt [signed] F. Burdett’. They play cards with sly but pleased concentration. The other two throw dice with a reckless swagger.
In the foreground (left) a procession of animals makes its way to a pond inscribed ‘Fleet Ditch’ (left) on which two ducks are already swimming. A bull enters the water, followed by two ‘lame ducks’, one using a stick, the other, wearing hat and wig, using crutches. They walk over papers inscribed ‘Consols’ and ‘Omnium’ [twice]. They are followed by a bear on its hind-legs walking on ‘Scrip’, at whom a duck quacks.
On the right is a bench inscribed ‘Kings Bench’ with four occupants: a duck, a bear, a man (in back view), a bull, which is dressed as a man, and sits on the end of the seat facing another piece of water inscribed ‘Sinking Fund’ (right). This is much agitated by a man (or bull) who has plunged in head first, leaving hind-quarters inscribed ‘Honor’ and legs waving in the air; the creature wears breeches and boots, the feet of which are formed of cocked pistols.
In the middle distance (left) a bull with a man’s face and branded ‘J B’ [John Bull] has tossed a little Napoleon high in the air so that he is about to fall on the spear of a grimly expectant Cossack. Behind these figures is a rocky pinnacle with a ladder and gibbet on its summit. The top of the gibbet is hidden by a cloud, from which dangles a noose surrounding the stalk-like neck of a grotesque mannikin wearing spurred boots, who looks down at the gamblers through an eye-glass, saying, “Ha! ha! Neck or Nothing.”
From behind the side of the hill appears an empty pillory, the holes in which represent a grinning face looking towards Cochrane; missiles and a cat are flying round it, with the words ‘Peep boo’. On the right a post-chaise with four galloping horses and two postilions is dashing down a hill (right to left); a man (Ralph Sandom) leans out, wildly waving his hat and shouting “Death of Bounaparte!!” The chaise, inscribed ‘H. Humbug & Co North Fleet’, and horses are decked with branches of laurel; behind it are tied large bundles of ‘Dispatches’.