Odd this day
Ah, the 227th anniversary of the last time Britain was invaded by a hostile foreign power. What’s that? Something about 1066? Ah, yes — same source of invasion (that beastly France place), but different outcome. This was the last time foreign troops landed on British shores — it was a technical invasion, rather than a successful one.
The initial plan had been to land two forces at different places to distract the British from an invasion of Ireland. So, what went wrong? Pretty much everything that could. To begin with, the other two expeditions were abandoned because of bad weather — so quite why this one went ahead is anyone’s guess. Maybe it was a chance for a pop at perfidious Albion, and they simply couldn’t resist.
Anyway, they were, according to some accounts at least, headed for Bristol, planning to burn it to the ground and then march on London, rousing the Lower Orders to revolution on the way. Instead, they were blown off course and landed near Fishguard in Pembrokeshire. Unfortunately for them (and, again, depending on which version of the story you read), they landed a few days or weeks after a smuggling ship had wrecked nearby, and everyone in Fishguard had helped themselves to a barrel of port. The place was awash with booze in a way unseen until Whisky Galore graced bookshelves and screens a century or so later.
Add to this the fact that the 1,400-strong force was made up of only 600 regular soldiers. Napoleon had most of the useful troops of the time, and they were marauding successfully across Europe. This expedition had to make do with the dregs, plus 800 people who’d been dragged out of French prisons — some of whom were prisoners of war, so didn’t have a great deal of incentive to fight for the French.
They did land, though, and went out to look for supplies. According to legend, they stole chickens, geese, and pigs from people’s yards, and ‘acquired’ rather a lot of booze, too. They’d been on ship’s rations for days, with many on prison rations before that. They were hungry. And soon shitfaced into the bargain. These were not circumstances conducive to morale, military discipline, or waiting to see if the meat was cooked. Soon, there were arseholed, unwilling soldiers, staggering across the Welsh countryside, vomiting copiously.
Then, we need to factor in the brilliance of their plan. They were going to rouse the peasantry to revolt? By stealing their food and drink? Quite apart from anything else, if there’s anyone the non-ruling classes of Britain hate more than the ruling classes, it’s the French.
In the invaders’ favour, they outnumbered the local military force 10 to 1. That didn’t matter, though, because the Welsh had Jemima.
This is another bit of legend, but it appears to have been reported in one form or another at the time, so there must be some truth in it. Apparently, Jemima Fawr (or Jemima Nicholas, accounts vary. Obviously.) came across 12 French soldiers, rounded them up single-handed, possibly at the point of a pitchfork, and took them to the fort at Fishguard.
Another legend has it that the French troops gathered on the beach the following day, and would have fought the British if they hadn’t seen a huge force of redcoats massed on the hillside above, waiting to charge on them. The French threw down their weapons and surrendered, not knowing that these figures were in fact local women in Welsh national dress — including tall black hats and red cloaks.
Unfortunately, this legend only really appears at the first centenary of the invasion, and almost certainly nothing close to this happened.
What did (more or less) was that the French commander (William Tate, actually Irish-American) effectively only had 600 troops at his disposal. The rest were either nowhere to be seen, or in plain sight and… indisposed. He could tell the writing was on the wall because his naval captain had fucked sharply off with the ships, and they didn’t have anywhere to retreat to. They had already lost some men to skirmishes with ragged bands of locals, and weren’t to know that when they arrived, the local force was being commanded by the 28-year-old son of a local landowner who had bought his commission and had no experience of combat.
The British did have Lord Cawdor, but his troops took a while to get to Fishguard from Haverfordwest in the south of the county. When he arrived, it could still have gone the French’s way, because he marched his men up a narrow lane towards a spot where an ambush was waiting. In the end, though, Cawdor decided that, because it was dusk, he would wait for morning. Bad light stopped play.
By then, Tate had had more than enough. He tried to negotiate a conditional surrender (which would see him and his force getting back to France), but Cawdor simply bluffed. He claimed to have many hundreds more men than he actually did, and that it was unconditional surrender or a big old scrap. Tate caved. It was 24 February – two days after they’d arrived.
The French troops did, apparently, surrender on the beach, and there were a fair few locals watching, as you can imagine. Presumably, as the story was told and retold over the years, the people of Fishguard on the surrounding hills merged with Jemima, the fearsome Welsh woman who took on the French, and they all grew into an entertaining but sadly inaccurate legend.
Tate and his useless troops finally got home the following year, after spending many more months on prison rations, and presumably getting even more sick of the bloody British than they had been before. The same year, the French tried to invade Ireland again — and to rouse the peasantry to revolt against the British again. And enjoyed roughly the same level of success. Again. There’s an excellent novel about that one, called The Year of the French, by Thomas Flanagan.
