Sunday Spotlight: The Duel for Europe 1800-1830

‘The Duel for Europe 1800-1830’ is an exhibition created by the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office. Although there is a physical exhibit, which contains artifacts such as an 1811 pistol, made by a leading London gunmaker, and the Treaties of Vienna and Paris, it is also, much to the delight of this history enthusiast who lives in Canada, an online exhibition.

‘The Duel for Europe 1800-1830’ “highlights one of the most important periods in the history of the Foreign Office, when it helped to end the devastation of war and begin one of Europe’s longest periods of peace.” The exhibition, made up of images and explanatory text, begins with the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars that consumed Britain, and the need for a new system to bring peace. Further pages summarize the 1809 duel between the Foreign Secretary, George Canning, and the Secretary for War, Lord Castlereagh, which I have previously discussed on this blog, and their different approaches to foreign policy.

Discussing the idea behind the exhibit, Chief Historian Patrick Salmon explains, “we thought of it as a literal duel, obviously, but also as a metaphorical duel; a duel between Britain and Napoleon for the future of Europe, and a duel between two alternative views of foreign policy”, referring to Canning and Castlereagh. Both men served as Foreign Secretary, but while Castlereagh worked through persuasion in one-on-one meetings and favoured a policy of international agreement, Canning preferred to use public oratory and was viewed as an isolationist.

I was surprised to learn that the Foreign Office regularly employs historians, such as Chief Historian Patrick Salmon. Aside from providing briefing support on historical issues, the historians’ roles include publishing the Official Record of British Foreign Policy since World War II, with an emphasis on documents from the last thirty years that have not yet gone to the National Archives.

‘The Duel for Europe 1800-1830’ is the first exhibition by the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, but Salmon hopes that this will be the beginning of several exhibits. I hope so too.

A dish best served cold

continued from ‘His ears must have been burning…’

Standard dueling procedure was to send a friend with a note asking for satisfaction shortly after an insult occurred. In 1798, Prime Minister William Pitt had accused opposition Member of Parliament George Tierney of harboring a desire to ‘obstruct the defense of the country’ and was challenged the next day, yet Lord Castlereagh waited a full nine days before demanding satisfaction from George Canning.

In those nine days Castlereagh learned nothing new, but his resentment grew after he was shown the months worth of correspondence that took place behind his back. Letters revealed that all of his colleagues had agreed that he should be removed from office as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies and, in a more damaging blow to his pride, that they had thought him incapable but continued to act as though he had their full confidence while making important decisions regarding the war with France. Although Canning was not the only man involved in the deception, and not the most deserving of blame, the Duke of Portland was elderly and had suffered a stroke in August, and Castlereagh’s uncle Lord Camden’s selective retelling of events had made Canning the target of his wounded pride.

As he had guessed back in July, Canning took the blame, which came in the form of an unusually worded challenge. Challenges were usually notes that asked for an explanation of the perceived insult and demanded satisfaction, but Castlereagh’s long note reads more like a compilation of grievances. “You continued to sit in the same cabinet with me,” he writes, “and to leave me, not only in the persuasion that I possessed your Confidence and Support as a Colleague, but… to originate and proceed in the Execution of a new Enterprize [referring to the failed Walcheren Expedition] of the most arduous and important nature with your apparent concurrence and ostensible approbation.”

Although the challenge addressed the dishonourable conduct in detail, what it didn’t do was give Canning a chance to respond to the allegations levelled against him. In fact, fellow Member of Parliament William Wilberforce later called it ‘a cold-blooded measure of deliberate revenge’, although he strongly disapproved of dueling in general. Canning sent his reply to the challenge the next day:

My Lord, The Tone and the Purport of your Lordship’s letter (which I have this moment recieved) of course preclude any other answer, on my part, to the Misapprehensions and misrepresentations with which it abounds, than that I will cheerfully give to your Lordship, the Satisfaction which you desire.

The duel was set for the morning of September 21st, 1809 at Putney Heath.
Although duels were slowly becoming less murderous, there were still fatalities and participants used the night before the duel to put their affairs in order. Canning wrote a letter to his wife Joan that reads as a farewell… and for good reason. Lord Castlereagh was known as a good shot while Canning had never fired a pistol in his life. Reflecting on the events leading up to the challenge, he wrote that,

“The poor old Duke’s procrastination and Lord Camden’s malice or mismanagement have led [to these] circumstances. If anything happens to me, dearest love, be comforted with the assurance that I could not do otherwise than I have done… I hope that I have made you happy; and if I leave you a happy mother and a proud widow, I am content. Adieu, Adieu.”

The next morning Canning and Castlereagh’s seconds, whose job was to ensure fairplay and attempt to defuse the situation, decided on a distance of twelve paces (one of the longer distances between participants) and that both would shoot at the same moment. Both statesmen missed their first shot and Castlereagh’s second Yarmouth commented that it was a pity Canning hadn’t fired into the air because his friend would be unable to demand a second shot honourably under those circumstances. Instead, the seconds agreed that a second shot would be the last regardless of the result. Canning’s second shot also missed, but Castlereagh’s hit his opponent in the thigh. Agreeing that honour had been satisfied, Canning was helped off the field.

Undoubtedly the wound put him out of commission while he recovered, but Canning had been fortunate that the bullet missed all major arteries, only passing through ‘the fleshy part of the thigh’. He wrote a reassuring letter to his aunts later that day:

Pray, young women, had either of you ever a Ball pass through the fleshy part of your thigh? If not you can hardly conceive of how slight a matter it is…if you have a mind to try the experiment, I would recommend Lord Castlereagh as the operator. For here I am just as well as if I had not undergone the operation two hours ago – without pain, without fever, and with only two little holes which I daresay you could see through… upon my word of honour there is not the slightest danger, pain, or inconvenience in my wound.

Although both statesmen had survived the duel, they were now faced with navigating the murky waters of public opinion…

His ears must have been burning…

We’ve all had times when we worry, usually unnecessarily, that someone is talking behind our backs. But one man who should have worried more is Lord Castlereagh.

By 1809, Foreign Secretary George Canning had become disillusioned with the government, writing that “the government as at present constituted, does not appear to me equal to the great task which it has to perform.” Led by the Duke of Portland as Prime Minister and Spencer Perceval as Leader of the House of Commons, the government had already mishandled the ‘Duke and the Darling’ scandal involving Frederick, Duke of York, and his mistress Mary Anne Clarkes’ trafficking of army commissions.

Increasingly frustrated at being part of a government he believed to be ineffective, Canning pressed for reform. In April he threatened to tender his resignation unless changes were made, namely the removal of Lord Castlereagh from his position as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies. Castlereagh had been ill for months and Canning thought that he was mismanaging the War Office, but a change would also benefit the ambitious Canning on a personal level. He suggested that Lord Wellesley, a supporter of his, replace Castlereagh. The Prime Minister was elderly and he had never been a firm man. Unwilling to lose Canning, he agreed to remove Castlereagh from the War Office, as did Castlereagh’s Uncle and fellow statesman Lord Camden.

The Prime Minister, Castlereagh’s Uncle, and fellow minister in the Foreign Office George Canning, had all decided that Castlereagh would be replaced. Unfortunately, no one had bothered to tell him this!

First the Duke of Portland assured Canning that he was asking Castlereagh to accept another office (the Government of India), but he put off telling Spencer Perceval (The Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader in the House of Commons), who explained that no changes could be made to the cabinet because a plan had just been approved that Castlereagh would have to see through.

Meanwhile, Lord Camden had assured everyone that his nephew had agreed to the proposed change, when poor Castlereagh was, in fact, completely unaware. Canning learned of the deception himself in mid-July, wisely guessing that in the end he would be blamed for it.

A few months passed in which nothing was done before Canning attempted to resign. Not only did King George III refuse to accept it, he also forbid the Duke of Portland from saying anything about the planned change of office to Castlereagh. The Duke of Portland was further silenced by a stroke in August.

So the all-important plan that Castlereagh had to see through went ahead. The campaign, an expedition to the Netherlands in hopes of assisting the Austrian Empire against the French, was a disaster. British troops seized a swampy island called Walcheren, but they began to suffer from Malaria. In early September the expedition was called off, but not before 4000 men had died, only 106 of them in combat. The failed campaign cost the government eight million pounds.

With the Prime Minister’s health precarious, the ambitious Canning thought he would be asked to form a government next, but he was passed over for office in favour of Spencer Perceval. This time Canning did resign, remaining Foreign Secretary only until a successor could be appointed, but he didn’t attend a cabinet meeting on September 9th. Noting the absence, Lord Castlereagh asked his Uncle why Canning wasn’t there and Lord Camden finally told him (likely leaving out the whole part where he assured the cabinet that his nephew knew about and approved of the plan), about the maneuvers that had been taking place behind his back for the last five months.

Nine days later Lord Castlereagh challenged George Canning to a duel.

continued in ‘A dish best served cold’

YotH: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2004.

This is my January entry in the 2010 reading challenge Year of the Historical.

On her blog Grammar Tales, the Grammarian has a series of posts titled ‘Great Beginnings’, in which she discusses memorable beginnings of novels. The first page of a novel should be the hook that reels you in, and few do that better than Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. Set in an alternate Regency England, the novel begins as follows:

“Some years ago there was in the city of York a society of magicians. They met upon the third Wednesday of every month and read each other long, dull papers upon the history of English magic.

They were gentlemen-magicians, which is to say that they had never harmed anyone by magic – nor done any one the slightest good. In fact, to own the truth, not one of these magicians had ever cast the smallest spell, nor by magic caused one leaf to tremble upon a tree, made one mote of dust to alter its course or changed a single hair upon any one’s head. But, with this one minor reservation, they enjoyed a reputation as some of the wisest and most magical gentlemen in Yorkshire.”

Although Clarke’s world is populated by gentlemen who study magic, it has seemingly not been practiced for centuries until the reclusive Mr. Norrell reveals that he can perform magic and has been doing so for years. Much to the dismay of Mr. Norrell, he is not the only magician remaining in England. The younger, more charming, Jonathan Strange becomes his pupil and the novel cleverly examines the relationship between these very different men, England’s only practicing magicians, as well as the limitations and consequences of using magic which affect them both.

If I hadn’t already been hooked from the beginning, this ardent admirer of English Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger certainly would have been won over by a scene in which prominent politicians of the day (such as George Canning) suggest that the way to win the war against France is to resurrect the late Mr. Pitt, although they quickly think better of it.

“Then the ministers thought how Mr. Pitt had been dead for almost two years, and that, devoted as they had been to Pitt in his life, they really had very little desire to see him in his present condition.” (p. 125).

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell is an interesting read even for someone with no interest in history, but the rich detail adds to the novel for those who are. Clarke has done her research and includes historical figures of the day, from politicians to the Duke of Wellington and Lord Byron, as minor characters. She also ties in historical events and works from history, suggesting that Lord Byron’s supernaturally-themed poem Manfred was inspired by Jonathan Strange, and mentioning in a footnote the famous duel between Secretary of War Lord Castlereagh and Foreign Secretary George Canning that occurred in 1809. These facts help ground her alternate England in reality.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is not only an intelligent and witty tale of magic, it’s an intelligent and witty historical tale of magic and the setting is a part of the story with dinner parties and mentions of social class and status that are appropriate for the times. Although the presence of magic and fairies could easily make this into a work of pure fantasy, it is grounded by intelligent discussions. For example, when the British government realizes that they have a magician employed in the war against France, there is an argument over how best to put his talents to practical use. Clarke also uses footnotes to create an invented history of English magic that gives her world depth.

At over 1000 pages, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell is a long read and the pace is sometimes slower than it should be, but the novel is well-written with flawed yet intriguing characters, historical depth, and imaginative scenes of magic. It’s also completely and utterly unique, blending elements of many genres and drawing on works from Austen to the modern fantasy of Phillip Pullman and J.R.R. Tolkien. This is one work of historical fiction that I will re-read again and again.