STUDIES IN THE NAPOLEONIC WARS 067
Why Waterloo Might Never Have Been Fought
9. Tales of Secret Service (28)
Why Waterloo Might Never Have Been Fought
For the rest, Mortier’s record fits the story exactly. He had British blood, as his name Edward shows; had been educated at the English college at Douai; and had been across the Channel as a young man, “spending my father’s money, I fear”, as he confided to another English prisoner-of-war, Charles Boothby, to whom he had shown extraordinary kindness after the Battle of Talavera. I have found notes of him in the memoirs of other officers, who praise his humanity, his pity for prisoners, and his extraordinary good and fluent English diction. After the Napoleonic Wars were over, he visited Great Britain at least once, and picked up some old relationships. But that Mortier was in Anjou about June 15, 1812, I cannot prove, nor indeed does it seem very likely. On the other hand, it appears almost incredible that Sir James McGrigor can have got out of his brother-in-law Grant a tale about a French marshal which had no foundation whatever.
However this may be, the adventurer was back near the mouth of the Loire before the end of June, searching for a more trustworthy boat-owner, not too close to the place where he had picked up his first unlucky bargain. This time he was more fortunate, and found a very honest old man, who with his son was accustomed to fish off the island where the British cruisers were wont to water. This day, however, there was no sail in sight, and after casting his nets a few times and catching some fish, he was constrained to coast southward and homeward. While passing a shore battery at the mouth of the river a shot was fired across the boat’s bows, and a party of coastguards came out in a launch. The old fisherman placed Grant with his back to the mast, and twisted the sail, which he had let down, twice around him, so that he was invisible. The soldiers explained that the shot had been fired to give warning that there was an English 74 lying out a few miles in the offing, and that fishermen were prohibited from going too far away from the batteries. However, the old man pacified them with a gift of some of his fish, and explained that he was so well acquainted with the coast that there was no danger of his getting into trouble. He lay by, as directed, till dusk, and then raised his sail again, and detecting the British man-of-war by her lights, ran out to sea, put Grant on board, and received his well-merited ten napoleons.
Grant reported himself in London, where his name was well known from Wellington’s dispatches, and got leave from the Transport Office to send a French officer of his own rank to the Exchange Bureau at Morlaix; for he thought that this was due on a scrupulous interpretation of the rights and wrongs of his escape. Visiting the prison camp at Porchester, he was vexed to find the old fisherman who had delivered him, and also his son, as newly arrived prisoners. They had been captured only a few days later, in spite of a “protection” which he had left with them, commending them to the good will of all naval officers. Grant obtained their release, and sent them back to France with a sum of money competent to purchase them a new boat.
It will scarcely be believed that this resourceful man was back in the Peninsula by September and reported himself to Wellington just four months after he had been captured near Sabugal. His chief got him a brevet-colonelcy without delay, and employed him as his head Intelligence officer during the remaining eighteen months of the war.
He was again called out during the Hundred Days from the Military College at Farnham, where he had been given a berth as instructor in 1814, and was put by Wellington in charge of his Intelligence department in Belgium. He always maintained that the surprise of the British and Prussian armies by Napoleon on June 15th would never have taken place but for the stupidity of a cavalry brigadier, who stopped one of his emissaries bearing certain news of the outmarch of the French army. Grant’s messenger was detained by the Hanoverian general Dõrnberg, whose cavalry was watching the frontier about Tournai and Mons. He did not send him on till the fighting had already begun around Charleroi, and Grant could only deliver the message to Wellington a day late, when the Battle of Quatre-Bras had actually begun. The loss of the twenty-four hours was almost irreparable: if Dõrnberg had not stopped the all-important news, Wellington’s whole army would have been concentrated a day earlier than was actually the case, and he would certainly have co-operated with Blücher at Ligny, instead of being forced to hold back Ney at Quatre-Bras with detachments that kept dropping in all through the day.
Grant was put on half-pay, much to his disgust, in 1816, but went out to India in command of the 54th Foot in 1821. There he took part in the Burmese War of 1824, in charge of the brigade which overran the province of Arracan. Unfortunately he contracted a persistent malarial fever in the swamps of that unhealthy region and had to be invalided home. He never recovered his health, and died, aged only forty-nine, at Aix-la-Chapelle on October 20, 1829. His monument is—or was when I was last in the old Imperial city—visible in its Protestant cemetery.
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