STUDIES IN THE NAPOLEONIC WARS 047
Infiltrating Germany by Sea
7. Tales of Secret Service (8)
Infiltrating Germany by Sea
So after an endless march across France, the Rhineland, and Hanover, La Romana’s army had been lodged on the Danish border, at Hamburg and Lübeck, and on Danish soil at Altona and Gliickstadt in Hoistein. Here Canning and Frere and Wellesley believed that they were still lying in June 1808. But as a matter of fact one of Napoleon’s last moves, in preparation for the kidnapping at Bayonne in May, had been to dislocate the little Spanish army in the North, and to spread it piecemeal all over the isles and the peninsula of Denmark. Marshal Bernadotte, commanding the French forces on the Baltic, had placed six Spanish battalions in the royal island of Zeeland, mixed up with Danish troops, four more in Fünen, the central isle of the Danish group, where La Romana himself had been told to take up his headquarters at Nyborg. Another regiment was in Langeland, far out to sea, and most of the cavalry and the rest of the infantry were in the coast-towns of Jutland, mixed up with a Dutch contingent and Danish militia.
This was not known either in London or in Spain. And it was believed at the Foreign Office that La Romana’s troops were still concentrated in Holstein and about Hamburg. The Marquis was known to be a patriotic Spaniard, and no friend to France: wherefore it had occurred to both Wellesley and to Frere, who knew La Romana well, and had often conversed with him on politics at Madrid, that something might be done in the way of offering him help to escape with his army by sea. The same idea had occurred to the deputies from the Asturian insurgents, who had reached London on June 6th, and had just been interviewing Canning.
Accordingly Bartholomew Frere explained to Robertson that, if he would take the risk, he should be landed by smugglers somewhere on the North German coast, should make his way to Hamburg, and there open up the plan to the Marquis. Of course, Frere might have misjudged his man, and a secret agent bringing such proposals might simply be handed over to the French and shot. But Frere was sure that Romana would do nothing of the sort. The messenger could be given no formal credentials, in case he should fall into the hands of the French; but he was told that he should ask the Marquis to remember a certain talk that he had once had with Frere in a certain room at Toledo, sitting in front of a picture of St. Peter and St. John by Rafael Mengs. And he was given a scrap of paper on which was written in Frere’s hand a short Latin tag or proverb, which would recall the conversation.
As to ways and means, Robertson should be accredited to Mr. Mackenzie of the Foreign Office, who from the newly captured isle of Heligoland was directing secret service business which embraced Holland and North Germany, and was the man to whom all secret agents in the North made their reports. Mackenzie would give him some thalers for present needs, and verbal credentials to a banker in Hamburg, who would ask no questions, and was good for any reasonable sum of money. The message to La Romana was to the effect that the British Government was prepared to secure the evasion of his army, and would land him wherever he pleased—in Minorca, or Cadiz, or the Canaries, or even in South America if he preferred that destination. No pledges whatever about his further intentions were asked for.
Robertson memorized all these instructions, and was run across to Heligoland before he was three days older. Then difficulties began: Mr. Mackenzie was helpful, but he found that the smugglers, on whom he had been relying, disliked the idea of carrying a secret agent to Germany. At last a very ruffianly fellow was got to undertake the task for a round sum. The monk’s few hours on the smuggler’s smack were the most unpleasant of his whole journey. When they were well inside the mouth of the Weser, a French revenue cutter came tacking after them. They had the heels of her, and ran at dusk upstream; but as they anchored a boat was seen approaching.
The smuggler then assured his passenger that if this was the French douaniers, bent on a search, he and his crew were not going to be shot for carrying spies. Overboard Brother James should go, before the Frenchmen came on deck. “And I verily believe that the fate of Jonah would have been mine, had the boat been what we feared that it was”, writes the monk. Fortunately the visitors were only local smugglers come to greet a friend, and next day the traveller got safely ashore far up the Weser.
From thence he walked to Bremen, where he had to provide himself with a new identity and some sort of passport. The plan which he had thought out was simple. He had a friend in Scotland named Adam Rohrauer, born in Bremen, who had settled for good in Britain, and whose whole family had left the old Hanseatic city many years ago. His first step was to make a call on the pastor of the parish where Rohrauer had been born, to represent himself as that individual, and to get a birth certificate in his name. With this he went to the municipal offices, and claiming to be a native of Bremen recently returned to his birthplace for a few days, he obtained a permit for Hamburg. This he got endorsed, without much trouble, with the visé of the French Resident. The amount of perjury and forgery involved gave the clerical conscience a twinge, but was condoned after mature consideration, on the ground that the matter could not possibly do any harm to the real Rohrauer in Edinburgh, and that anything was permissible for the good cause and against the French.
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