Cochrane (22 page)

If every English coastal town from Dover to Torbay had been at the mercy of the French fleet, the signal stations burnt, the militia routed, and local commerce threatened, this would have been comparable to the effect of Cochrane on the French coast, from Marseille to the Pyrenees, in August
1808.
Day after day, the log of the
Imperieuse
recorded the bare details.
"7
.00
boats ret
^d
having destroyed the Telegraph, a battery of
2
Brass
24
pdrs & Burnt the Barracks." More specifically, Cochrane aimed at "diverting troops intended for Catalonia, by the necessity of remaining to guard their own seaboard". With evident satisfaction, he added, "It is wonderful what an amount of terrorism a small frigate is able to inspire on an enemy's coast."
¹²

Apart from signal stations and customs houses, the marines from the
Imperieuse
were occupied in burning French merchant vessels, whose crews had beached them and fled at the sight of the frigate. Yet the signal stations were the principal target. As the French militia retreated before the muskets and bayonets of Cochrane's marines, they saw the red-coated "lobsters" fall indiscriminately on the building and its contents, setting fire to everything within reach. When the attack was over and the marines had embarked on the frigate again, the defenders crept back to search the debris. With relief they found half-burnt pages of official documents. Cochrane's uniformed ruffians had not known the value of such papers and had destroyed signal codes which would have been beyond price to the British commanders.

As a matter of fact, Cochrane and his men knew perfectly well what they were about. The half-burnt pages had been carefully left to reassure the French. All the vital details of the French semaphore system were first abstracted, allowing Cochrane to make a present to Lord Collingwood of the enemy's secret code. In consequence, a British frigate cruising within spy-glass range was able to pass on the movements of French naval vessels before they were known to their own commanders-in-chief.
¹³

Cochrane's audacity and the superb ease with which he handled his frigate were repeatedly illustrated in these local attacks on the French coast. By
10
September, for instance, he had worked his way to Port Vendre near the Spanish frontier. His log shows that he was now joined by H.M.S.
Spartan
commanded by Captain Jahleel Brenton. A column of French infantry, with an advance guard of cavalry, was marching towards the village from Perpignan on its way to reinforce the garrisons in Spain. Even with the support of the
Spartan,
there was no hope of fighting the entire column as well as the shore-batteries by which Port Vendre was defended.

He assembled the ship's boys from the
Imperieuse
and the
Spartan
and, as though it were all a great practical joke, ordered them to dress in the scarlet uniforms of marines. They were then put into boats and rowed towards the Spanish side of the town, in full view of the advancing column. The white-uniformed squadrons of the French cavalry put spurs to their horses and charged through the quiet streets in a tumult of dust, in order to reach the place and repel the invaders before they could establish a defensive position ashore.

Cochrane watched them go, and then brought the
Imperieuse
in to bombard the town at close range. The French batteries on the cliffs were unable to depress their guns sufficiently to fire on the frigates without hitting their own men in the streets. For an hour the bombardment continued until the beach was masked under a pall of blue-grey gunsmoke in the warm stagnant air. Using this as a screen, Cochrane then put ashore his real marines, landing them in the chaos of half destroyed buildings and fires burning beyond control. The redcoats disappeared in the smoke and the debris, heading for the cliffs, and presently there came the first sounds of a French shore-battery being demolished.

The main body of the French infantry was still advancing towards the town but was too far off to intervene. The cavalry squadrons had reached the shore, where the other "marines" were expected to land, but found nothing except several small boats, filled with ships' boys in oversized uniforms, bobbing about offshore. As the horsemen collected their wits, the first sounds of demolition reached them from Port Vendre. They turned and began to gallop back. Captain Brenton and his officers on the quarterdeck of H.M.S.
Spartan
foresaw catastrophe. The cavalry would return in ample time to cut off the marines from the two frigates, turning audacity into folly.

But the officers of the
Spartan
were about to witness a superb example of what Brenton afterwards called the "ready seamanship . . . displayed by Lord Cochrane upon this occasion". The cavalry were out of sight during most of their return gallop, but there was one stretch of coast where they would appear at full length, their white uniforms picked out against the rock behind them. The two frigates were cruising offshore at three knots with no conceivable means of engaging cavalry. Then, as the horsemen appeared against the rock, the
Imperieuse
responded to a sudden order. The anchor splashed down and, to Brenton's disquiet, she began to swing at the anchor cable, almost across the bows of the
Spartan.
As she turned in this arc, her starboard side turned, briefly, parallel with the shore. With perfect judgement of range and precisely at the moment when the cavalry was at full stretch and the ship's side facing them, every gun roared out in a hoarse cannonade and a bank of rolling smoke. When the smoke cleared, those on the quarterdeck of the
Spartan
saw that the squadron of cavalry had virtually ceased to exist. A few dismounted figures were scrambling clear of the debris but, as a military formation, it had been totally destroyed by the terrifying accuracy of Cochrane's fire.

There was puzzlement afterwards as to how this precision of angle, range, and timing had been achieved. Brenton, who saw it all, admitted that no captain on any quarterdeck in the world would have been able to coordinate such an attack. But Brenton had also been able to see that Cochrane was not on his quarterdeck. He had directed the whole operation from the masthead, which most Royal Navy commanders regarded as a place climbed to only by common seamen or by junior officers as a punishment. The marines destroyed such French shipping as they could find in harbour and returned with three wounded. The damage to the ships was confined to torn rigging.
¹⁴

The tactical value of such attacks was unquestioned, but their effect on French morale was of still greater consequence. The name of the
loup des mers
was only too well known to the inhabitants of the French Mediterranean coast and to their armies in Catalonia. Lord Brougham recalled a visit to the Tuileries after the war had ended. When he mentioned the name "Cochrane", there was "a general start and shudder" among the French leaders, an instinctive reaction of fear which was quite different to the chivalrous admiration bestowed upon such reputations as those of Nelson or Wellington.
¹⁵

Lord Collingwood shared few of the reservations over Cochrane expressed by St Vincent or Keith. As the
Imperieuse
continued to harry the French coast during September
1808,
Collingwood received news of the exploits on board his flagship, H.M.S.
Ocean,
which was cruising off Toulon. Writing to Wellesley Pole, Collingwood confirmed that Cochrane had not only pinned down French regiments which were otherwise intended for the Spanish war, he had actually obliged the French to withdraw
2000
troops from the garrison of Figuras in order to defend their own coasts from his attacks. "Nothing can exceed the zeal and activity with which his lordship pursues the enemy," wrote Collingwood. "The success which attends his enterprises clearly indicates with what skill and ability they are conducted." But as Cochrane's fame spread from official reports to more popular literature there was an even more important point to make, as Sir Walter Scott explained.

Lord Cochrane, during the month of September
1808,
with his single ship, kept the whole coast of Languedoc in alarm. . . . Yet with such consummate prudence were all Lord Cochrane's enterprises planned and executed, that not one of his men were either killed or hurt, except one, who was singed in blowing up a battery.
¹⁶

Cochrane's care and concern for his men was one of his noblest characteristics, earning him personal loyalty and their confidence in his fighting abilities. He had also informed the French who became his prisoners in Catalonia that war was not an excuse for "extermination", and their conduct towards the Spanish population was all the more reprehensible as the action of a civilised nation.

Early in October, the
Imperieuse
returned to Gibraltar. The frigate had been able to undertake cruises of unusual length as a result of Cochrane's unorthodox manner of replenishing food and water. Water was the greatest problem to other captains. However, when the casks of the
Imperieuse
ran dry off Marseille, Cochrane set sail for the mouth of the Rhone at full speed, relying on his reputation to send the enemy running in all directions. He sailed up the river to the point where the fresh water was "pure", lowered the studding sails from the foretopmast over the side, having sewn them up as water bags, and pumped the water aboard from them by using the fire pump. He also attempted to round up a herd of cattle from the river bank but the animals set off inland at speed and, after a chase of three miles, the crew of the
Imperieuse
gave up the pursuit. Throughout this expedition, Cochrane treated the Rhone as though it were as much his territory as the Thames or the Medway might have been. His supreme control of the situation is ample confirmation of the reports of Collingwood and the eulogies of Scott.
¹⁷

At the end of October, the
Imperieuse
sailed from Gibraltar again, (tarrying Cochrane towards his last Mediterranean exploit. It was to eclipse the
Gamo
incident and all the harrying of enemy coasts. More important, it was to convince at least some of the British commanders that such abilities and audacity must be employed at the highest level if the war was to be won.

Cochrane's orders from Lord Collingwood were to assist the Spanish guerrillas in any way which seemed practicable. At the same time, a French column of
6000
men with considerable Italian reinforcements was marching into Catalonia to decide the military issue with the Spaniards once for all. Anything that could be done to divert or impede the advance would be of the utmost value. The next town on the route of the approaching army was Rosas. The northern arm of Rosas Bay was Cape Creux, where the Pyrenees came down in a long grey spur to the Mediterranean.

The
Imperieuse
dropped anchor in the bay on
21
November. Cochrane himself was already in the town, having gone on ahead by gig when the
Imperieuse
was becalmed ten miles short of Rosas Bay. He judged this essential, since the town and citadel were coming under fire from the head of the approaching column. When he arrived, the Spanish commander was already preparing to withdraw in the face of superior numbers. Cochrane begged him to hold on until the arrival of the
Imperieuse
with her crew and her marines. As a token of his faith in this, he announced that he would remain to assist the defenders of Rosas until the frigate arrived.

His plan was, as usual, very simple. The town and its citadel could not hold out indefinitely against the French. Napoleon's gunners had perfected the technique of breaching such defences by firing repeatedly at the same area in the base of a wall, bringing down a section of the structure at the precise moment required, and allowing their infantry to pour through the gap before the defenders had time to shore it up.

But Cochrane, with his long experience of gunnery, had surveyed the cliffs above Rosas and noticed an old and rather dilapidated fortress, Fort Trinidad. It consisted of three towers, rising like three steps because of the sloping ground, the tallest of them no feet high. The only way in which it could be attacked by the French artillery was from still higher ground, but Cochrane guessed that their guns could not be depressed sufficiently to hit anything but the leading tower about
50
feet above its base. The shells would certainly blow a breach in the wall but at such a height it would take scaling ladders for the infantry, in their frontal attack, to reach the opening. To most commanders, Fort Trinidad had one over-riding disadvantage. It backed directly on to the edge of the cliff, making access, supply, and retreat equally hazardous. But to men whose lives were spent climbing masts and rigging, cliffs and ropes presented no problems. An army commander might not like fighting with the sea at his back, but at Cochrane's back there would be the
Imperieuse
with her
18-
pounder guns.