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After Waterloo: British Society and the Legacy of the Napoleonic Wars

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

N. Gash
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Extract

For our ancestors the end of the twenty-year conflict with Revolutionary and Napoleonic France came with the signing of what was called the ‘General Peace’ in April 1814. All over the country the occasion was celebrated with thanksgiving services, public feasts, open-air sports, fireworks and processions with tableaux depicting Wellington, Blucher, the Tsar Alexander and the vanquished Bonaparte. At Gainsborough in Lincolnshire the future Chartist Thomas Cooper, then nine years old, and some other boys dressed themselves up in ribbons and hats, labelled with the names of these contemporary military heroes (Cooper was Wellington), and went round the neighbouring squires and farmers soliciting money. They sang some of Bishop Ken's hymns and at theend, in imitation of what they had heard on procession day, shouted ‘Peace and Plenty! God Save the King!’ followed by three cheers, for which one benevolent old squire gave them a whole half-crown.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 28 , December 1978 , pp. 145 - 157
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1978

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References

1 The Life of Thomas Cooper (13th edn., 1879), pp. 23–4.

2 Annual Register 1814, p. 219; Annual Register 1815, Preface, p. vi.

3 de Joinville, Prince, Note sue l'état des forces nauales de France, trans, under the title On the State of the Naval Strength of France in comparison with that of England by Peake, Willliam (London 1844)Google Scholar; LtKennedy, Gen. Shaw, Notes on the Defences of Great Britain and Ireland, (London 1859)Google Scholar.

4 Kilvert's Diary, ed. Plomer, William (1960 edn.), i, pp. 64, 212–13, 326, 381–2Google Scholar.

5 For conditions in the Army, see Fortescue, J. W., A History of the British Army, XI (London, 1923), pp. 31ff., 82ff., XIII (1930), pp. 2ffGoogle Scholar. For the Navy, see Clowes, William Laird, The Royal Navy, VI (1901), ch. xliiiGoogle Scholar. Neither Admiralty nor War Office were oblivious to the problem. Both made attempts to reduce the long list of officers on the active list, the former by offering higher pensions to those who retired, the latter by allowinghalf-pay officers to sell their commissions. But the effect was only marginal.

6 Hibbert, C., The Destruction of Lord Raglan (London 1961), p. 16Google Scholar.

7 The first historian to draw attention to this feature of post–1815 administration was, asfar as I know, ProfessorMcCord, N. in his essay on ‘Some Limitations of the Age of Reform’ in British Government and Administration: studies presented to S. B. Chrimes, ed. Hearder, H. and Loyn, H. R. (Cardiff, 1974), p. 195Google Scholar.

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11 Bamford's Passages in the Life of a Radical and Early Days, ed. Dunckley, Henry (1893), ii, p. 143Google Scholar. At Bamford's trial in 1820 it was said that two of the men who drilled the Middleton contingent before Peterloo were John Whitworth, a former private in the 6th (Warwickshire) Foot and J. Heywood, a former trooper in the 6th (Enniskilling) Dragoons (Ibid., ii, p. 233).

12 Walmsley, R., Peterloo; The Case Reopened (Manchester 1969), pp. 112, 151–2Google Scholar; cf. Read, D., Peterloo (1973), p. 123Google Scholar.

13 Not to be confused with the better-known ‘rising’ in 1817. See Peel, F., Risings of the Luddites (Heckmondwike, 1888), pp. 313–19Google Scholar; Annual Register, LXII (1820–1821), pp. 128, 281, 407, 411Google Scholar.

14 So Peel, but the 29th (Worcestershire) Foot did not fight at Waterloo. Possibly a mistake for the 28th (North Gloucestershire) Foot which did.

15 Williams, D., John Frost: A Study in Chartism (London, 1969), p. 192Google Scholar.

16 60 Geo. III c. I..

17 For example, Lord Durham's speech in the House of Lords, 13 April 1832; or Russell's, letter to Melbourne in 1838, quoted in my Reaction and Reconstruction in English Politics (Oxford, 1965), p. 161Google Scholar.

18 Fraser, D., Urban Politics in Victorian England (Leicester 1976), p. 253Google Scholar.

19 Read, D., ‘Chartism in Manchester’ in Chartist Studies, ed. Briggs, A. (London, 1959), pp. 37–8Google Scholar.

20 Taylor, W. Cooke, Notes of a Tour in the Manufacturing Districts of Lancashire (London, 1842), p. 205Google Scholar.

21 Speech in the House of Lords in the debate on agricultural distress, 26 February 1822. It was subsequently reprinted in pamphlet form (London, 1822).

22 See his letter to Lord Grenville, 23 July 1823, in Yonge, C. D., Life and Administration of Robert Banks, 2nd Earl of Liverpool (London, 1868), iii, pp. 251–3Google Scholar.

23 Ibid., p. 311 (to Canning, 19 Oct. 1824).