Inferno (52 page)

‘You're too kind, dear fellow, but we do not wish to inconvenience. For now we'd be satisfied with our present quarters until you're ready to sail and—'

‘Nonsense! I won't have it – Cecilia might feel need to make use of my copper hip-bath and you could—'

‘Thank you, brother, your kindness is much appreciated. I believe, however, that we must be content with our present situation while you're engaged with your current duties. Please don't concern yourself on our account – the Amalienborg Palace is renowned for its civilities.'

‘But perhaps dinner tonight? At which all shall be revealed, I promise.'

He grinned. ‘Of course, Nicholas, you may count upon it.'

They left and Kydd sat down, bemused and curious by turns as to why his closest friend and his sister should be in the very place in the world he wouldn't wish any to be.

‘Sir?'

He looked up. The duty master's mate had poked his head around the door. ‘I've a kindness to ask of you, sir.'

‘What is it?'

‘Sir, I've a care for my younger brother, who went ashore with the 52nd and … and I'd be beholden to you should you allow me to step ashore and see if he … is in health, as it were.'

‘Mr Maynard, go as of this minute!'

T
he day was grey, in keeping with what was about to take place; the only points of bright colour the ensigns and pennants of the great fleet that Britain had sent to exact its will.

It was so vast that it stretched in an unbroken forest of spars well up the Sound. In the van was the majestic
Prince of Wales
, flagship of Admiral Sir James Gambier, at the head of a concourse of ships-of-the-line such as had not been seen since Trafalgar.

In the centre were even more – eighty ships, the transports for the army divisions that had compelled the Danes to bow to their fate, and the dread weapons they had employed to such effect.

And in the rear,
Superb
and other sail-of-the-line of Commodore Keats, with his three frigates lying off the Trekroner Fortress.

‘Preparative,'
Tyger
's signals midshipman reported importantly, his telescope on the flagship.

The English were about to leave Copenhagen to its inhabitants and sail away for ever.

Standing on the quarterdeck, Renzi murmured to Cecilia, ‘A memory that will never leave us.' She squeezed his arm tightly, gazing back at the stricken city.

‘Execute!' came the next signal.

From the yards of the van and centre, sail appeared and slowly, ponderously, the grand fleet got under way for the open sea.

The rear remained where it was, theirs a solemn duty.

‘Give me that glass, younker,' Kydd rapped, taking the telescope and training it on the shore. He'd spotted unusual movement along the waterfront, like the stealthy advance of an army. He held his breath and stared – was this going to be a last frenzied falling upon the forces that had so grievously hurt their city?

Yet there were no trumpets or drums, wild shouts or gunfire. In an unearthly hush, a ghost-like mass of people flooded forward until the foreshore was black with silent figures, standing, watching. From Swan Mill to far along into the harbour, hundreds, thousands of Danes had come to witness the last act.

The first of the Danish fleet emerged from its refuge.

Christian VII
, flagship, powerful enough on her own to take on any one of the British 74s that waited for her outside. No white ensign was flaunted aloft, for this was not a mano'-war taken in battle.

She was closely followed by
Waldemaar
,
Prindsesse Sophia Friderica
, more. One after another, the proudest vessels of the Royal Danish Navy passed through the harbour entrance by the Citadel seeming, to the still figures along the water-front, almost close enough to touch.

In an endless stream, battleships, frigates, others emerged to join the British fleet. Still more – even the gallant
Nakskov kanonchalup
going now to serve a different master.

And in all the time it took to assemble there was not a murmur from the crowded foreshore.

‘Hands to the braces,' Kydd ordered quietly.

Superb
's signal to get under way soared up.

Tyger
's post was in the rear, the last ship to quit the scene and therefore granted the final view of Copenhagen harbour.

Where a first-rank navy had rested in the bosom of its nation's capital, now there was nothing but bare wharves, deserted storehouses and an expanse of empty harbour. A bleak and unforgettable sight.

As the last ship took up on its northward course,
Tyger
braced about and followed.

Guessing Renzi's thoughts, Kydd went over to him. He gave a twisted smile. ‘Nicholas, m' friend. Do know we've scuppered Boney, that's true enough …'

Without taking his eyes from Copenhagen and its army of silent watchers slipping astern, Renzi whispered, ‘Yes, dear fellow, but how will history judge us?'

J
ohn Lethbridge of Newton Abbot is an almost unknown figure – and a surprising hero. ‘Wrackman', as he was known locally, was a modest wool merchant who in mature years, and with a large family to support, took it upon himself in that inland Devonshire town to think about wreck-diving in a special contrivance of his own devising, after he had spent half an hour in a barrel at the bottom of his pond. At a time when Blackbeard and Teach were ravaging the Spanish Main, he was quietly at work in places like Cape Town and Madeira, where he brought up three tons of silver in his ‘diving engine', retiring years later a wealthy man.

When I came across an item in a local paper, reporting that in the 1840s a full working set of his gear had been found on a Dorset farm, my creative juices began to flow. Readers interested in the device can today view a faithful replica in Cherbourg's Cité de la Mer. Incidentally, the legendary Tobermory Galleon has not yet been found – the latest attempt, by Sir Torquhil Ian Campbell, 13th Duke of Argyll, was begun in 2014.

As for the main thrust of this book, it's astonishing to me that this episode in Napoleonic history is not more widely known. It was undoubtedly of global significance and at a time of the Emperor's highest pinnacle of conquest. Given the odds against her, Britain was arguably at greater peril even than on the eve of Trafalgar. She chose to make a bold and desperate stroke that some have termed a war crime – but it worked, at the cost of abhorrence at home and abroad. There was questionable intelligence, true; there was politicking and ambition; but there is proof that Bonaparte intended to invade Denmark and seize its fleet. This was at a time when he was overheard boasting to Fouché, his chief of secret police, ‘Europe is a rotten whore who I will use as I please with my eight hundred thousand men.'

The Royal Navy's part in this largely army-mounted bombardment was crucial. The Great Belt sailing isolated the island of Sjælland and sealed the fate of the Danes before even a shot was fired. It was a feat of great seamanship and deserving of recognition, the irony being that today, instead of the direct route through the Sound, modern ships of deep draught prefer this passage, tracking the
dybe rende
, as Keats and his squadron did.

The future King Louis XVIII did flee from his Mitau exile, leaving his family, but it was actually a Swedish frigate that ferried him to safety in England. He was a distinct embarrassment to the British government who were anything but grateful to those who brought him. Far from a triumphant landing, he was kept cooped up in his ship for a fortnight off Yarmouth while the cabinet debated what to do with him. Customs and Revenue were given the awkward task of coming up with a stream of pretexts to delay his touching English soil. In the event he was granted residency and
allowances from the Prince Regent. He set up a court in exile at a modest mansion in Buckinghamshire until, after Waterloo, he became the restored Bourbon King of France.

Bernadotte became increasingly disenchanted with his ever-rapacious master and later turned on him, eventually facing and defeating his compatriot marshals Oudinot and Ney in battle. Such was his charm and appeal that he was beseeched to accept the throne of Sweden, and the House of Bernadotte still reigns in Sweden today.

One can only sympathise with the hapless Danes. Struggling to maintain their strict neutrality, trapped between giants locked in mortal combat, they had no chance. It did not help that the Crown Prince abandoned Copenhagen to the plodding Peymann, who took his orders so literally, among other things failing to evacuate the city of civilians when invited to by the British, and playing it out so hopelessly to the bitter end. On his return to the city, after everything was over a furious Crown Prince Frederik put the old soldier on trial for his life but then relented.

At bay in an impossible situation the Danes grimly fought back – one's heart can only wring with pity at the thought of country-folk with pitchforks sent against the future victor of Waterloo or men in tiny gunboats going in against a mighty battle-fleet. Of the previous time of Danes against English, Nelson had declared, ‘The French fought bravely, but they could not have stood for one hour the fight which the Danes had supported for four!'

For the British, while they eventually employed four of the captured fleet, the main objective was achieved – the Danish fleet could not close the Sound, and its warships were denied to Bonaparte either as battleships or as invasion troop transports. Above all, the vital Baltic trade was saved.
Canning and others, however, endured much vilification in Parliament and the press for a barbarous act, and debate about its morality continues to this day.

In Copenhagen there is little left to show of the devastation wreaked over those four days except some atmospheric displays at several fine museums and the sight of an iron ball still embedded in the wall of the Rosenborg barracks on the Nørrevold side. Congreve's rockets are still talked about; they would go on to achieve immortality with their red glare in Baltimore.