STUDIES IN THE NAPOLEONIC WARS 055
The Plan to Cross the Channel
8. Tales of Secret Service (16)
The Plan to Cross the Channel
This may appear a dangerous method for imposing on local police and officials; but that it was not so mad as it looked may be gathered from the record of other impostors of a less political caste, such as Pontis de St-Hélène, who passed himself off as a lieutenant-colonel, and the daring swindler Collot, who went through half a dozen departments as an inspecteur aux revues, turned out the depots of every garrison town, and got free dinners and free quarters from prefects and colonels. Most of all is the hypnotism caused by a fine uniform displayed in the case of General Malet. With self-confidence and a studied air of authority officials of minor rank could nearly always be bluffed into taking a stranger in big epaulettes for what he claimed to be.
Kolli’s plan was to get himself landed by night on the Breton coast, to show himself in official capacity in several towns, and then to travel quite openly to Paris, where he would shed his uniform, only to resume it on the day on which he intended to carry off Ferdinand from Valençay by another piece of bluffing. The preparation of the coup de main both in Paris and round Valençay would have to be carried out in mufti, of an unostentatious sort. But the actual removal of the captive King was to be executed by someone who looked like an important and peremptory officer, whose commands would not be disputed by underlings.
It was necessary to recruit a limited number of devoted adherents of the Bourbons, who would appear as Kolli’s official satellites, and to secure a carefully guarded place of embarkation for the King if he should succeed in escaping. The Baron took with him only one companion, a young émigré, whom he only calls Albert de St-B, who acted as his confidential secretary. But he had a list of approved old Royalists—some in Brittany who had been chouans in the days of the Republic, others in Paris who were already in secret communication with the British Foreign Office. The place on the coast which had been selected as the point of escape was near Sarzeau on the Bay of Morbihan, in sight of which a British vessel, small or great, was always to be hovering, on the watch for a bonfire which would announce the arrival of Ferdinand and his escort. For this signalling an old-established chouan friend had been told off.
There remained the method to be adopted for getting into communication with the captive King, and convincing him that the envoy was a real agent of the British Government. The first half of this task was to be conducted through Ferdinand’s Master of the Horse, Amezaga, who was in touch with some Paris bankers, from whom he had been borrowing money for the King, without the knowledge of the French Government as far as he could ascertain. There was also a château not many miles from Valençay, whose owner was prepared to put up a stranger and a carriage and to ask no questions.
As to credentials for Ferdinand, Lord Wellesley gave Kolli a document impossible to forge, the original letter, with the signature of the late King Carlos III, by which that monarch had announced to George III in 1802 the marriage of Ferdinand himself to his short-lived first wife, Maria Antonia of Naples. This was obviously a thing that could only have come out of the archives of the British Foreign Office. To back it up there were two short letters from George III to Ferdinand—one in Latin, the other in French—countersigned by Lord Wellesley, in which he was told to trust the “vir idoneiis” who was the bearer of the three papers. These were sewn up in the Baron’s underclothing, while his diamonds were packed in a belt worn next his skin.
On February 28, 1810, Kolli and his secretary, Albert de St-B, sailed from Plymouth on a brig which joined the squadron under Sir George Cockburn which was blockading Brest. After a conference with the Admiral and with a Breton Royalist, who came off secretly in a boat, a certain Baron de Ferriet, he and Albert were put on shore in a lonely salt-marsh in the Bay of Morbihan. Both the Admiral and de Ferriet had expressed doubts as to the practicability of the landing, but it came on successfully on the rainy evening of March 9th.
Kolli was dressed in his uniform of a colonel of gendarmerie—his companion was to pass as his clerk and wore mufti. They walked several miles in the dusk, through muddy tracks along the shore, till both were tired out; the rain continued, and a cold wind was sweeping the marshes. At length the young secretary declared that he was on the verge of collapse, sat down in the slime, and refused to move. After giving him in vain a draught from his flask and a series of stinging reproofs, Kolli in a rage thrust some money upon him, and told him that he would probably get arrested as a spy, but that, if he were not, he was to report to a certain address in Paris.
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