"The Secret War against Napoleon: Britain's Assassination" Topic

Plot on the French Emperor

"The role of spying and propaganda in war has received significant attention among academic and popular historians of the twentieth century. Until recently, however, the significance of such "dark business" (the original title of this book in Great Britain) has been overlooked in histories of the first "total" wars during the revolutionary and Napoleonic era. Building on work by Elizabeth Sparrow, Simon Burrows, and Stuart Semmel, among others, this new book by the author of more traditional histories of Trafalgar and Waterloo reconstructs the "secret war" orchestrated by the British government against Napoleon Bonaparte.[1] Developing out of research he conducted for an exhibit on Napoleon and the British at the British Museum in 2015, Tim Clayton asserts that the new kind of "total" warfare practiced by the French necessitated "an unprecedented ruthlessness whose full extent remains relatively unexplored and remarkably little known" (p. 9). In contrast to recent work on Britain in the revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, which details its administrative, financial, and industrial mobilization, this book emphasizes the political intrigue behind the scenes of the British war effort.

Although it traces the pre- and post-history of the British "secret war" against Napoleon, the book focuses on the period between two government-sponsored assassination attempts against him: the machine infernale exploded by Pierre Robinault de Saint-Régent in the rue Saint-Nicaise on Christmas Eve in 1800 and the "Grand Conspiracy" involving French generals Jean-Charles Pichegru and Jean-Victor Moreau as well as numerous royalist and Chouan agents operating around Boulogne to restore the Bourbon monarchy in early 1804. During these three years, in spite of the Peace of Amiens, the British government financed an extensive propaganda campaign against Napoleon, thereby creating the "Black Legend" about him. Fueled by fear of invasion and revolution at home, the ministries of William Pitt and Henry Addington enlisted an army of French and British journalists, publishers, spies, and counterrevolutionaries under the direction of spymaster William Windham to undermine the government of the first consul. Recounting "a very modern story of secret committees, slush funds, assassination and black propaganda" in addition to safe houses and even invisible ink, Clayton asserts that it was British intransigence, not French aggression, that was responsible for the renewal of war after 1803 (p. 14). The British-sponsored virulent press campaign and foiled royalist plot of that year provoked Napoleon to order the assassination of the royal prince Duc d'Enghien as well as the execution of a number of the arrested plotters. This "dark business" also encouraged Napoleon to take the title of emperor, which in turn exacerbated tensions between France and Great Britain—and the rest of Europe. Ultimately, Clayton argues, the British campaign against the French "tyrant" prolonged the wars for another decade, "with the ironic consequence that Britain itself stepped back many, many paces and was a much less liberal and attractive country in 1815 than it had been in 1789" (p. 347)…"
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