Cochrane (35 page)

The occupants of the opposite benches rolled and guffawed. Ministeral men they might be, but some of them had no great love for the Wellesleys, certainly not for Wellington himself. The absurdity of Cochrane's comparison appealed greatly to those who had never favoured sending the future Duke to the Peninsula in the first place, and who regarded his treaty with the French at Cintra as hardly short of treason. It was Wellesley-Pole who rose to deal with Cochrane. He made no attempt to deny the payment of a sinecure pension to the family, though he insisted it was paid to the head of the family, to console him for his delicate state of health and the large number of mouths he had to feed. It was not with anger but with studied menace that he delivered his last warning to Cochrane.

Let me advise him that adherence to the pursuits of his profession, of which he is so great an ornament, will tend more to his own honour and to the advantage of his country than a perseverance in the conduct which he has of late adopted, conduct which can only lead him into error, and make him the dupe of those who use the authority of his name to advance their own mischievous purposes.
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Cochrane saw only in this a promise that "if I would quit Sir Francis Burdett, sell my constituents, and come over to the ministerial side, the Government would - despite the affair of Lord Gambier - put me in the way of advancement". That was only half the truth. Such statements and warnings also carried their implication of the chastisement which awaited those who perversely rebelled against established order. Cochrane had shown himself wilful and incorrigible. He was ripe for retribution.
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On
21
February
1814,
some eighteen months after Cochrane's marriage to Kitty Barnes, there occurred one of the most extraordinary incidents in the history of the nineteenth century. By this time, Napoleon's army had fallen back into eastern France. Its strength was depleted but it was not yet routed. Indeed, there were constant rumours of counter-attack and victory by the French against Bliicher and Schwartzenberg. On
14
February, the English newspaper the
Courier
reported that there were rejoicings in Boulogne and Calais for a great French triumph on the battlefields of Champagne. By
17
February there was new
s of a Napoleonic victory at Cha
teau-Thierry, in which the French had taken
6000
prisoners and thirty guns. On
18
February, the
Courier
reported Napoleon's attack at Montmirail. His campaign, though perhaps a desperate last defence had, in the words of
The Times,
"been attended with immediate success".
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Such was the situation on Saturday
19
February, with close fought battles reported from the eastern approaches to Paris and rumours of the Cossacks or the Prussians no more than fifteen or twenty miles from the city itself. But the victory which had eluded Napoleon after Moscow now seemed to be eluding the allies in France.

Early on the morning of Monday
21
February, a group of men in the parlour of the Packet Boat public house at Dover were suddenly aware of loud, insistent knocking at the door of the Ship Inn opposite. The landlord of the Packet Boat went out and found an officer in the red uniform of the general staff and grey coat, and assisted him in rousing the boots of the Ship. He gave his name as Lieutenant-Colonel Du Bourg, aide-de-camp to Lord Cathcart, who was British ambassador to Russia. Du Bourg said only that he had just been landed on the beach by a French ship and that he must have writing materials at once, as well as a horse and rider to carry an urgent message to the port admiral at Deal.

By
1
a.m. he had written his momentous despatch to Admiral Foley.

I have the honour to acquaint you, that the
L'Aigle
from Calais, Pierre Duquin, Master, has this moment landed me near Dover, to proceed to the capital with despatches of the happiest nature. I have pledged my honour that no harm shall come to the crew of the
L'Aigle
,
even with a flag of truce they immediately stood for sea. Should they be taken, I have to entreat you immediately to liberate them; my anxiety will not allow me to say more for your gratification than that the Allies obtained a final victory; that Bonaparte was overtaken by a party of Sacken's Cossacks, who immediately slayed him, and divided his body between them. General Platoff saved Paris from being reduced to ashes; the allied sovereigns are there, and the white cockade is universal; an immediate peace is certain.
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Admiral Foley, roused from his bed to read this despatch, sought some kind of confirmation from the bearer, who could only add that he had been instructed to bring the message from Dover and that Colonel Du Bourg had already left for London in a chaise-and-four, paying his way with gold Napoleons. There was nothing more that the admiral could do until dawn, when it would be possible to telegraph John Wilson Croker at the Admiralty by means of the semaphore system. Foley was not prepared to take the message at face-value, though there was nothing inherently unlikely about it. Napoleon had, as a matter of fact, very nearly been killed on
29
January when the patrol he was with was attacked by a group of Cossacks, one of whom had only been brought down within a yard or so of the Emperor himself. Moreover, it was generally expected that, barring some major reversal of military fortune, there would be an allied victory before long and that Paris would be occupied.

But when dawn came, Dover was shrouded in fog. There was no hope of using semaphore to telegraph to London, news from Calais. Foley sent a messenger after Du Bourg, who was by then approaching the city. The rumours spread along the way. There had been a great battle in which the French were utterly defeated and Napoleon was killed soon afterwards. Du Bourg had been present as Lord Cathcart's aide-de-camp and had been ordered by the Czar himself to bring the news to England.

On the outskirts of London, Colonel Du Bourg paid off the post-chaise and transferred to a hackney carriage, ordering it to drive him to Grosvenor Square. At th
is point,
his work was apparently done.

Presently the news of Napoleon's death and the final allied victory was sweeping through London, and not least through the Stock Exchange. Apart from Bank Stock, East India Stock, and such government securities as
3
per cent Consols and
4
per cent Reduced, there was one dominant commodity on the Exchange, known as Omnium. It was made up of Consols and Reduced, and was well-known for the volatility with which its price might rise or fall. Moreover, it was much used for time bargains, by those who would not actually buy the stock but merely the title on it, hoping to clear a profit before payment was due without having to find the money to buy the stock outright. Buying "on margin" was the term later given to it.

Omnium stood nowhere near
100
per cent of its value on the Exchange. On Saturday
19
February, it had closed at
26
,
opening at
26
on Monday
21
February. Du Bourg had arrived in London at
9
a.m. and the Stock Exchange opened for business an hour later. As the rumours became more detailed, prices of all stock began to climb, none more so than that of Omnium. By noon, it had moved up from
26%
to
30
,
to the manifest delight of those who had bought at
19
only a fortnight earlier. But when it was discovered that not even the Lord Mayor had received confirmation of the rumours from any authority, the price of Omnium faltered.

The doubters were soon laughed to scorn. Over London Bridge, down Lombard Street, along Cheapside, and over Blackfriars Bridge came another post-chaise and four. By a happy chance, it passed right through the heart of the most sensitive and speculative area in the city. More to the point, the horses were decorated with laurels and the three occupants of the chaise were French officers, though now they wore the white cockade of the restored House of Bourbon in their hats. In case there was still any broker who remained unconvinced, the officers tossed papers out of the chaise, inscribed with "Vive le Roi! Vivent
les Bourbons!" Omnium regained its momentum and surged forward to
32.
Those who sold at the end of the morning realised a profit of more than
20
per cent in three hours. Those who had held it for a fortnight found themselves almost
70
per cent better off. As for men who dealt in the shadowy regions of options and time bargains, their profits were potentially enormous.

Even before the end of the day, however, there was little doubt over the "Stock Exchange Hoax", as the fraud was termed. It was soon discovered that Napoleon was still alive and undefeated. Omnium sank rapidly back to
26
,
the despair of all those who had not had the good sense to sell at
32.

While the great financial drama of
21
February was taking place, Cochrane was occupied over very different matters. Since
1812,
England had been involved in war with the United States, brought about by British insistence on applying blockade measures to neutral countries trading with France. The Americans retaliated, and the Perceval government in London seemed inclined to compromise. But the assassination of Perceval and the general dilatoriness of his ministerial colleagues frustrated the decisive action which might have avoided war. At sea, it was discovered that the English frigates were no match for the Americans. This was hardly surprising, since the Americans built their frigates to a different design, more nearly resembling a British
50
-gun ship. When this simple truth was at length appreciated by the Admiralty, there was a rush to reinforce the Royal Navy on the far side of the Atlantic. Cochrane was even offered temporary command of H.M.S.
Tonnant,
then fitting out at Chatham. The commander of the
Tonnant
was, in fact, his uncle, Alexander, who had already sailed on another ship. But Cochrane was to be allowed to take the
Tonnant
across the Atlantic and, with luck, to see active service of some kind after five years of enforced retirement.

At the time of the Stock Exchange fraud, Cochrane had a week's leisure remaining before he was to join the
Tonnant
for her Atlantic voyage. He was much preoccupied with a new type of lamp which he had designed and which was being made for him near Snow Hill. On the morning of
21
February, he left his house in Green Street, off Park Lane, and went to have breakfast with another uncle, Andrew Cochrane-Johnstone, in Cumberland Street. Cochrane-Johnstone was now busily engaged in Stock Exchange speculations and had acquired a partner in the business, Richard Gathorne Butt, a former pay clerk at Portsmouth dockyard. Cochrane himself had invested his prize money in Omnium. He held a nominal
£139,000
valued at
28
per cent and had given instructions to his broker that it was to be sold as soon as the price increased by
1
per cent. His profit would then be about
£2000
on an investment of some
£36,000.

After breakfast on
21
February, he left Cumberland Street with his uncle and Butt, the three of them travelling by coach together. At Snow Hill, Cochrane got out of the coach and went to attend to the business of his new lamp, while the other two drove on to the Stock Exchange. There the first tremors of the sensational rumour brought by Du Bourg were already having their effect.

Cochrane had been at the factory in Cock Lane for about three quarters of an hour when his footman Thomas Dewman arrived from Green Street with an urgent message. The signature was illegible but it had been written by an army officer who had arrived at Green Street soon after Cochrane's departure and insisted on seeing him about a matter of great importance. Cochrane's first thought was that something had happened to his brother William, who was serving with Wellington in Spain. He left Cock Lane and returned to Green Street at once.

The officer who awaited him was not from Spain. His name was Random de Berenger, a soldier of fortune whom he had met at one of his uncle Basil Cochrane's dinner parties in the previous month. He had asked Cochrane to let him join the
Tonnant
in order to command the sharpshooters on board. Cochrane explained that the
Tonnant
was in no state to receive any more officers then but that he might join her later at Portsmouth. Berenger made no secret of his desperate financial plight. He was confined to the King's Bench prison for debt, though allowed out of it so far as the rules permitted.
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