Cochrane (5 page)

He was still in Paris on
10
August when the mob invaded the Tuileries, as the Duke of Brunswick neared Paris, and command of the revolution passed from its intellectual leaders to the butchers who were prepared to do the work at which finer sensibilities shuddered. The Swiss guard was massacred, prisons where enemies of the revolution were held became slaughterhouses, associates of the royal family were lynched. Marie Antoinette's friend, Madame de Lamballe, was torn apart, her "executioners" wearing the most private parts of her anatomy as decorations.

The news reached England on
14
August with reports of
11,000
men and women having been massacred. Charles James Fox and the members of the Whig opposition, who had watched the progress of the revolution with interested benevolence, were dismayed. J. B. Burges wrote from Whitehall to Lord Grenville that the mob had advanced on the British embassy, but the Swiss Guard there had been hidden and so escaped the massacre. Quite apart from horror at the events, the government must decide what to do about the ambassador, Lord Gower. "I tremble for the safety of Lord Gower and family," wrote Burges. So did Pitt, who insisted to the Foreign Secretary that it was "absolutely necessary to lose no time in bringing Lord Gower from Paris".
²²

The withdrawal of the British ambassador was inevitable, Lord Gower arriving back in London on
3
September. It was the first movement of the diplomats' danse macabre, preceding a great war.

A fortnight after Lord Gower's return, the limping figure of the ex-Bishop of Autun was seen again in Kensington Square. At the insistence of Danton, he had become the apologist of the new phase of the revolution, still striving to keep peace with England. He presented a memorandum explaining that the
"down
fall
of the King of France" did not mean that the new republic presented "an insult and a menace to all kings". On the contrary, France professed nothing but "friendship" and "esteem" for England. Yet just as France had not interfered when England beheaded Charles I, but had recognised the new regime, so England must cease to meddle in the affairs of the infant republic.
²³

Such was the philosophy which Talleyrand expounded. It was small wonder that his audience at St James's was a trying encounter. George III, in place of his quirky, exclamatory manner on social occasions, received the envoy with glacial correctness and in almost total silence. Queen Charlotte, like a stately-rigged ship, ostentatiously turned her back on Talleyrand's apologies and refused either to speak to or look at him again.

Citizen Chauvelin was even more detestable. In August it was thought that he had bolted for France and a watch was kept for him at Dover and Margate, the likely ports of embarkation. But it proved that he had only gone down to Brighton for a couple of days. Presumably he had met a messenger from the National Convention, but the news which he had to send to Paris was not encouraging. The August massacres had turned the people of England against France. They felt a natural human interest in
the fate of Louis XVI and Marie
Antoinette. The political injustices of royalist France were eclipsed by a concern for the imprisoned family. The Whigs, who had opposed war on the grounds that it would be waged to interfere in the internal affairs of France, now washed their hands of the revolution. There was no longer an extreme anti-war faction in England which a few months previously had daubed the walls of London with such slogans as, "No war with France or we rebel".

During the autumn of
1792,
the peacemakers like Talleyrand continued their efforts, but they did so without conviction. There was no inescapable reason driving France and England into conflict. Rather, the public mood which had been so strong for peace was drifting into approval of war.

The crisis came on the evening of
23
January
1793.
In St James's and the City, Westminster and Southwark, small groups of men and women gathered to read the bills which had been freshly posted. As the crowds gathered, there was a mood of stupor and then indignation, the news being passed back from one person to another. Two days before, Louis XVI had been taken from captivity and guillotined. The shock was followed by suppressed anger. Every theatre closed and at one in which the performance had already begun, the audience demanded that the curtain should be rung down and the play stopped as a mark of respect. Men went home and reappeared in black coats. The court, parliament, and the great mass of the people went into mourning. By this final act of barbarity, the French republic had put itself beyond the conventions of diplomacy.

The next morning there was a hurried correspondence between the King, Pitt, and Lord Grenville. The royal drawing room to be held that afternoon was postponed and, instead, there was a meeting of the Privy Council at the Queen's House. On the King's insistence, the meeting drew up "the necessary order that Monsieur Chauvelin may instantly leave the kingdom". As for Talleyrand, he had already written to Grenville denouncing the "crime" of his countrymen in executing their King. He was permitted to stay for the time being and eventually made his way to America. It was a wise decision, since he had been secretly denounced to the Convention by Achille Viard on
7
December as a collaborator with emigres.
²⁴

George III left his Privy Council. As he drove through the London streets, he was heartened by the crowds who cheered and roared, "War with France! War with France!" The diplomatic minuet was almost complete. Even as the King greeted his enthusiastic subjects, Lord Grenville was writing to Lord
Auckland, British ambassador at
The Hague, "the next despatch to you, or the next but one, will announce the commencement of hostilities. Probably the French will commence them".
²⁵

As a matter of fact, hostilities had already begun. Captain Robert Barlow was off the north-west coast of France, commanding the Royal Navy brig-sloop
Childers,
a diminutive warship with a single gun-deck and eight small guns on either side. He was standing in towards the entrance of Brest harbour, the mouth of the port being guarded by two artillery forts. There was hardly a breath of wind and the flood tide was carrying the
Childers
towards the harbour entrance. When the ship was less than a mile away there was a white puff of smoke from one of the forts, the hiss of a cannon ball overhead, and then a plume of spray just beyond the brig-sloop. Assuming that there was some error of identification, Barlow ran up his ensign. At this the fort on the other side of the harbour opened fire as well and he found himself caught in a resolute crossfire. His only advantage was that the
Childers
was so small as to be a difficult target at that range. None the less, a
48
-pound shot hit the upper deck, exploding into three fragments and doing superficial damage. The tide was not due to change for some hours and Captain Barlow owed his escape to a light breeze which sprang up and enabled him to carry his ship clear of the port. He returned home with the questionable honour of being the first man to engage the enemy.
²⁶

On
1
February
1793,
the French Convention put hostilities on an official footing by declaring war on England and Holland. The news reached London on
4
February and five days later George III wrote from Windsor to Lord Grenville, describing it as "highly agreeable to me".
²⁷

It was not, perhaps, highly agreeable to the Earl of Dundonald but it certainly opened up opportunities for placing his remaining sons in the army or the navy. Young Lord Cochrane had made a sufficient ass of himself to rule out the army, however much his father might have preferred that to a naval career and his uncle, Alexander Cochrane, had at least entered his name as a midshipman on the books of several small and undistinguished vessels. It was not much, but it was the only expedient at hand. The
9th
Earl had not even the money to buy his son's uniform but the first weeks of war were a time of great patriotic feeling and the nation's leaders were more ready than usual to encourage martial ambition among the young. Lord Hopetoun was approached, and the Earl managed to borrow

£100
from him. Part of this was laid out in the purchase of a gold watch, which Cochrane received with the remains of the money and a dour warning that it was the only inheritance he need expect.

The frigate
Hind, lying
off Sheerness, was the first available ship on whose books the young man's n
ame had been entered. Lord Coch
rane's grandmother happened to be going to London at the time and, since he had yet to prove his capacity for looking after himself, he was entrusted to her care. With the final lecture on the spartan virtues of the "res angusta domi" echoing in his mind, he watched the vistas of Culross, Edinburgh, and Scotland, fade behind him. On
27
June, in charge of an uncle who saw him safely from London to Sheerness, Cochrane and his luggage were ferried out to the frigate, which lay at anchor in the river estuary, the sails reefed on her tall masts.

Even the general air of public indignation against France could not disguise the deep preoccupation with hard cash which dominated naval affairs. It was a fact of war that enemy ships were far more often captured than sunk. In the first year of the new war, for example, the British captured thirty-six French ships of which twenty-seven were incorporated into the Royal Navy. The French took nine British ships in return. Subject to the ruling of the Admiralty prize courts, the value of the ships captured from the enemy was shared, however unequally, between captains, officers, and men, as well as the admiral who happened to hold general command of the area in which the seizure had occurred. Though it was not mentioned in the patriotic ballads, it was a commonplace observation among those who knew naval life at first-hand that British seamen thought of cash rather than glory as they sailed into battle. From long experience, Captain Marryat observed that sailors "always begin to reckon what their share of prize money may be, before a shot is fired". An ordinary seaman, under an enterprising captain, found that his real income was higher than that of many officers on more easy-going ships. As for the commanders, they included such men as Captain Digby, who was to command H.M.S.
Africa
at Trafalgar and who had amassed
£60,000
in prize money before he was thirty years old, which put him well on the way to being a millionaire by modern values.

To most Royal Navy crews there was no incompatibility whatever between glory and cash. Glory was excellent for national morale and personal reputation, but it had proved a notoriously unnegotiable commodity for heroes and their dependents. Once the elation and gratitude of their countrymen began to cool, the heroes of the hour were easily regarded as the "surplus population" of the long years of peace.

To a young man in Cochrane's position, the life of a naval officer was rich in promise. From the day on which he joined H.M.S.
Hind,
there was to be almost continuous war for twenty-two years. Few periods in history could have presented a better opportunity for the acquisition of wealth by conquest. Whatever interludes might occur in the land campaigns, the war at sea was likely to be unremitting.

Such, at least, was the golden prospect offered to hopeful young officers. In more general terms, the nation was possessed by two alternative views of naval life. The first was that of a stout-hearted, £lite fighting service, unrivalled in the world. As the Royal Marine bands piped "Hearts of oak are our ships, jolly tars are our men", they caught this sentiment with trite precision. The second and opposing image was of a navy of surly, press-ganged crews, kept to their duty by homicidal floggings and the fear of being hanged. Starved, diseased, and cowed, these men rose in occasional desperate mutinies, which were put down by brutal repression.

Like all travesties, each of these pictures reflected an element of truth. Though its officers were less wealthy and its social prestige stood below that of the more famous regiments of t
he army, the Royal Navy was an e
lite fighting force. "You can always beat a Frenchman if you fight him long enough," Cornwallis assured Nelson. Such sentiments were arrogant as expressions but accurate as matters of record. It was not superior moral character but more thorough training in the techniques of battle which, for example, enabled many British gun crews to deliver two broadsides against a passing French ship in exchange for the one they received. Moreover, while the French Navy had been allowed to dwindle during the eighteenth century, Britain's maritime interests had dictated the opposite policy. Her most impressive ships had been laid down during that period. The
Victory
was forty years old at Trafalgar, the
Defiance
was forty-one, and the
Britannia
was forty-three, having been launched in
1762.