The Glorious First of June Read online

  THE

  GLORIOUS

  FIRST OF JUNE

  THE

  GLORIOUS

  FIRST OF JUNE

  Fleet Battle in the Reign of Terror

  Sam Willis

  First published in Great Britain in 2011 by

  Quercus

  55 Baker Street

  7th Floor, South Block

  W1U 8EW

  Copyright © 2011 Sam Willis

  The moral right of Sam Willis to be

  identified as the author of this work has been

  asserted in accordance with the Copyright,

  Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication

  may be reproduced or transmitted in any form

  or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

  including photocopy, recording, or any

  information storage and retrieval system,

  without permission in writing from the publisher.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available

  from the British Library

  ISBN 978 1 84916 038 4

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Text and plates designed and typeset by Helen Ewing

  Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd. St Ives plc

  THE HEARTS OF OAK TRILOGY

  This is the third book of the Hearts of Oak trilogy, which explores three of the most iconic and yet largely unexplored stories of the Great Age of Sail. The Fighting Temeraire, The Admiral Benbow and The Glorious First of June are the biographies of a ship, a man and a battle that will splice together to form a narrative of an era that stretches from the English Civil War of the 1640s to the coming of steam two centuries later. This Great Age of Sail was once written about in heroic terms but many of those legends have since been overlooked. The details of the stories themselves have become confused and the reasons behind the formation of those legends ignored. With more than a century of professional naval history to draw from, together with new access to previously restricted archives, now is the time to look afresh at those stories of heroism from the perspective of the modern historian; now is the time to understand how and why The Fighting Temeraire, The Admiral Benbow and The Glorious First of June became legends.

  Heart of oak are our ships, jolly tars are our men,

  We always are ready; Steady, boys, steady!

  We’ll fight and we’ll conquer again and again.

  D. GARRICK, Heart of Oak (1759)

  Acknowledgements

  Many people have made this book better than it otherwise would have been. Fenton Burgin kindly let me look at a previously unstudied account of the battle; Sim Comfort knows as much about naval swords and badges as anyone alive; Mark Barker’s ability to visualise battle plans is priceless; both Lucy Morris and Gareth Cole gave their time, knowledge and skill; and Christine Reynolds knows her way around Westminster Abbey in both present and past. Mike Duffy, Nicholas Blake and Andrew Bond read all, or part of this book through in draft. It is a better book because of them.

  But in particular I must thank the staff on the Yarty Ward of the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital and the inventors of chemotherapy who made sure that my family is as big as it was when I started writing this book. Our families have also provided unceasing support during these Dark Ages, which has meant that this book was not put aside on a dusty shelf even when my mind was full of anything but naval history. There are, in fact, entire sections of this book that I can’t remember writing. When I eventually came back to the manuscript, it was like reading something new but very obviously mine: a very strange experience. I particularly enjoyed the bit about the Revolutionaries banning kings, queens and jacks in playing cards and their new rule of allowing an ace to beat any other card – the lowest thus rising to the top. They also reinvented time. How mad is that! But what I think is irrelevant of course – what’s your favourite bit? Let me know at www.sam-willis.com or on Twitter @navalhistoryguy. I’ll see you there. Bring your friends.

  Sam

  Heading home to glorious Devon on a train, October 2010

  For Tors

  ‘… totally beyond my powers of description… of magnificence and importance, not of common occurrence, and not often equalled.’*

  Howe’s daring signal floats on high;

  I see through roaring cannon’s smoke –

  Their awful line subdued and broke

  They strike, they sink, they fly.

  Earl of Mulgrave, 1794

  Contents

  List of Illustrations

  Maps

  Prologue: The First Regicide

  Introduction

  1. The First Terror

  2. The First Surrender

  3. The First and Greatest Sea Officer

  4. The First War Artist

  5. The First Convoy

  6. The First Contact

  7. The First Blood

  8. The First of June

  9. The First Reaction: Honour and Glory

  10. The Second Reaction: Acrimony and Disgrace

  11. The Second Terror

  Epilogue

  APPENDIX I: The Chronology

  APPENDIX II: The Fleets

  APPENDIX III: The Pocock Sketches

  APPENDIX IV: The Biographies

  Glossary

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Index

  List of Illustrations

  FRONTISPIECE

  La Montagne by Philip James de Loutherbourg, c.1794. (Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK/The Bridgeman Art Library)

  CHAPTER OPENER DETAIL

  Commemorative gold anchor badge. (Sim Comfort Collection)

  PLATES

  1. Memorial to James Montagu, Westminster Abbey by John Flaxman, 1798. (© Dean and Chapter of Westminster)

  2. Marble Sculpture at the Panthéon in Paris dedicated to the Vengeur by Ernest Dubois, 1908. (Caroline Rose © CMN/Paris)

  3. Execution of Louis XVI, 21st January 1793. (Private Collection/Archives Charmet/The Bridgeman Art Library)

  4. Admiral Earl Howe by John Singleton Copley, 1794. (National Maritime Museum)

  5. Vice Admiral Louis-Thomas-Villaret de Joyeuse. (Malmaison, Châteaux de Malmaison et Bois-Préau/©RMN/Gérard Blot)

  6. Portrait of Maximilien de Robespierre. (Musee de la Ville de Paris/Musee Carnavalet, Paris, France/The Bridgeman Art Library)

  7. Portrait of Jeanbon Saint-André by Jacques Louis David, 1795. (Helen Regenstein Collection, 1973.153/The Art Institute of Chicago)

  8. Danton Led to His Execution by Pierre Alexandre Wille, 1794. (Musee de la Ville de Paris/Musee Carnavalet, Paris, France/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library)

  9. The Battle of Scheveningen, 31 July 1653 by Willem van de Velde, the Elder, 1655. (National Maritime Museum)

  10. View of the Port at Brest by Jean-Francois Hue. (Musee de la Marine, Paris, France/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library)

  11. Queen Charlotte’s Union flag. (National Maritime Museum)

  12. Schematic view of Barker’s Panorama. (The National Archives)

  13. Section of the Rotunda, Leicester Square, in which is exhibited the Panorama by Robert Mitchell, 1801. (Private collection/The Bridgeman Art Library)

  14. Nicholas Pocock’s logbook of the Betsey 1766-7. (National Maritime Museum)

  15. French Boarding flag from L’America. (National Maritime Museum)

  16. The Battle of the First of June, 1794 by Loutherbourg. (National Maritime Museum)

  17. The Brunswick and Vengeur at the Glorious First of June, by Nicholas Pocock. (National Maritime Museum)

  18. Le Vengeur du Peuple sinking at the Battle of Ouessant, 1st June 1794 by Louis Lafitte
. (Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris, France/Giraudon/The Bridgeman Art Library)

  19. Admiral Earl Howe on the deck of the Queen Charlotte during the Glorious First of June by Mather Brown. (National Maritime Museum)

  20. Portsmouth Harbour, Lord Howe’s victory, the French prizes brought into the harbour by Thomas Rowlandson, 1780. (Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK)

  21. Caricature of Admiral Earl Howe, Anonymous. (National Maritime Museum)

  22. Le Juste and L’America both captured and added 1 June 1794 aquatint engraved by J Wells after an original by R Livesay (National Maritime Museum)

  23. French ship Sans Pareil 3rd Rate 80 guns captured at First of June. Watercolour attributed to Dominic Serres, c. 1800. (National Maritime Museum)

  24. The sterns of three French prizes by Loutherbourg, 1794. (British Museum)

  25. Commemorative uniform badge. (National Maritime Museum)

  IN TEXT IMAGES

  i. Breaking the Line by Jamie Whyte

  ii. Battle plan depicting morning of 28 May by Matthew Flinders (National Maritime Museum)

  iii. Battle plan depicting evening of 28 May by Matthew Flinders (National Maritime Museum)

  iv. Battle plan depicting 29 May by Matthew Flinders (National Maritime Museum)

  v. Battle plan depicting 29 May (2) by Matthew Flinders (National Maritime Museum)

  vi. Battle plan depicting evening of 31 May by Matthew Flinders (National Maritime Museum)

  vii. Battle plan depicting morning of 1 June by Matthew Flinders (National Maritime Museum)

  viii. A new method of securing guns to a ship’s side, 1794 (The National Archives)

  APPENDIX III

  All by Nicholas Pocock (National Maritime Museum)

  26. Battle View 1: The Engagement of 28 May.

  27. Battle View 2: The Engagement of 29 May.

  28. Battle View 3: The Battle of 1 June.

  29. Battle View 4: The End of the Battle.

  30. Battle Plan 1 June.

  31. HMS Invincible raking La Juste.

  32. HMS Brunswick and Le Vengeur du Peuple.

  33. Frigate towing HMS Defence.

  34. HMS Queen and HMS Queen Charlotte.

  35. The French Admiral … No.1.

  36. French Ships to Windward … No.2.

  37. Stern views of the captured French ships L’ America and La Juste.

  38. Lord Howe to windward of the French Line on the same tack

  Maps

  Prologue

  The First Regicide

  No quarter! Whenever we can lay our hands on emperors, kings, queens, empresses, let us rid them from the face of the earth. Better to kill the devil than that the devil should kill us. Never will we do as much harm to these monsters as they have done to us, and would do to us, damn it.

  From the radical newspaper Le Père Duchesne.1

  It was a time of mad kings and dead kings. In 1789, the year that a Revolutionary mob stormed the great Bastille prison in Paris, George III of England had to be kept in a straitjacket, occasionally a restraining chair, as he ranted incessantly and often indecently. Three years later Louis XVI of France was put to death on a cold winter’s morning in the centre of Paris.

  How many members of the National Convention, the governing French body, actually voted for the King’s execution is uncertain because each member was allowed to make a speech as he voted and some speeches were highly ambiguous. But all scholars agree that the ballot return was very close. Some claim that a proposal for immediate execution was carried by only one vote. Greater skill and diplomacy could undoubtedly have saved Louis’s life. Even a final vote on a stay of execution was carried by 380 to 310, the decision to execute him swung by barely 10 per cent of the whole assembly. While some sections of the public and the gutter press rejoiced, renaming him ‘Louis the Last’ long before his execution, France was deeply divided over the direction that the Revolution was taking.2

  One hundred horsemen escorted Louis from the oppressive and long-vanished temple fortress in the east of the city where he had been confined with his family and some 1,200 foot soldiers surrounded the coach. The streets were so thickly lined with onlookers that it took the coach two hours to cover the short distance to the scaffold. The King sat with his confessor, an Irish priest named Henry Edgeworth, and together they murmured the penitential psalms and the traditional prayers for the dying. A feeble attempt to rescue the King was savagely cut down. When he arrived at the square, he left the coach with purpose and climbed the stairs to the scaffold with steady legs and a strong back.

  And then it was over, shockingly, deliberately and, disappointingly for some, quickly. The guillotine had been designed to immobilise the head, to severe it far more cleanly and reliably than death by sword (restricted to nobility) or hanging (for everyone else). It had been designed with a revolutionary principle at its heart: this was execution for everyone, with no distinction between rich and poor, enacted anonymously by a machine designed to end life and not to cause pain. The end came so quickly that many believed the victim retained some measure of consciousness as the head fell to the floor. We now know that the catastrophic blood loss would cause unconsciousness in a matter of seconds, if not instantaneously, but the eyes and lips of every severed head twitched and the executioners played to the crowd. On one occasion, the executioner of Charlotte Corday – brazen assassin of the Revolutionary leader Jean Marat – slapped her cheek as he brandished the severed head, and she blushed.

  So it was that, atop the scaffold, Louis, manhandled onto the horizontal plank and his neck secured in the brace, looked into the basket and died. A very young guard, perhaps no more than eighteen years old, held the King’s head aloft for the crowd.

  Louis’s execution was a quite extraordinary event whose impact has to be understood if the complex history which followed, and in which the great naval Battle of the Glorious First of June played its part, is to be put in any kind of perspective.

  Louis died as a citizen of France rather than its monarch: he died as plain old citoyen (citizen) Louis Capet, and not as Louis XVI. Everything about the execution was designed to obliterate the rights and rituals of centuries of French monarchy. The monarchy had been abolished four months earlier and none of his final requests, made in the hope if not the expectation of preferential treatment, were granted. He asked to delay the execution for three days to better prepare himself and to spend more time with his family. This was denied. He asked to keep his hair long for the execution. This, too, was denied and his skull was roughly shaved by the executioner, Charles Sanson. He asked to keep his hands free for the execution. Again, this was denied. He tried to make a brief speech on the scaffold, but it was drowned out as the sixty drums surrounding the scaffold rolled in response to a harsh call from General Santerre. Once severed, the body of the former king, with its head laid between its legs, was taken in a wicker basket to the nearby cemetery of La Madeleine – and not to the ancient burial ground of French monarchy near St Denis – where it was transferred into a plain wooden coffin, covered in two layers of quicklime and then lowered into a communal grave pit.

  To comprehend the full significance of Louis’s death one must see him not just as a king but as a king of France. Unlike many of its north-European counterparts, the French monarchy had been secure for centuries. Elsewhere, spates of regicide had become the defining characteristic of some monarchies, such as medieval Scandinavia, late medieval England and Stuart Scotland. If we consider the case of medieval England, regicide was surprisingly common. Since 1066, of the forty English monarchs who reigned, six were killed by their subjects, and five of those six murders – the exception of course being the execution of Charles I – occurred in the 158 years between 1327 and 1485. For these dynasties a central feature of kingship was that they were so prone to being killed.3 Now consider France. The Capetian monarchy was founded in 987 AD. Between then and 1789 – that is 802 years – thirty French kings reigned but none of them was deposed and on
ly two were murdered. The two who were murdered were killed by lone assassins and they were replaced immediately on the throne by the next male heir. The French monarchy was a shining example of dynastic security, whereas in England, Sweden and Russia, most successions from the eleventh to the early sixteenth centuries violated the rules of succession. 4New dynasties were forced to secure their rocky claim to the throne through murder and even more murder. In England, for example, both Henry VII and Henry VIII had powerful nobles killed to protect the Tudor crown from Yorkist attack, and in Romanoff Russia a crown prince was killed by his father and a Czar by his wife.

  In all of these examples of European regicide, however, the monarch was always replaced. The physical bodies of the monarchs may have been threatened, but at no stage was the divine body of kingship questioned. Monarchs were regarded as central to the prosperity, security and wellbeing of a nation’s body and spirit. The king, after all, was divinely anointed and the murder of a monarch was an act not only against humanity, but also an act against God. Modern scholars believe that the majority of regicides performed their dastardly acts in the full expectation of spending the rest of eternity in hell.

  Tyranny of course was both loathed and feared, but not so much as anarchy, and nothing suggested anarchy more than the execution and non-replacement of a monarch. Even raving-mad monarchs were endured for considerable periods, sometimes for as long as a decade, purely to secure stability. Charles VI of France thought he was made of glass; Henry VI of England spent several years without moving or speaking; Joanna the Mad of Spain believed the corpse of her husband wasn’t actually a corpse; and the ravings of George III of England are infamous. A mad king and a dead king therefore represent the polar opposites of attitudes toward monarchy in the 1790s: George was tolerated even though he was mad while Louis was killed because he was a king.