Countdown to Waterloo - 98 days

In an age before the telegraph, let alone the mobile phone, news took a while to travel. On 11 March, 1815, 'Cobbett's Weekly Register' published a piece celebrating Napoleon's captivity with a hastily added addendum to give notice that he was now once again in France.

Some astute businessmen were quick to capitalise on the news. The 'Examiner' for Sunday 12 March, for example, noted that 'The first notice of this most memorable event was announced by Mr Rosschild, the Exchange Broker, who sold stock to the amount of 600,000l on the receipt of the news by express from France.'

Napoleon's exploits still have an extraordinary hold on our imaginations two hundred years later. On average, there is one book about Napoleon published every day - and the anniversary of Waterloo means we can confidently expect that 2015 will see that average comfortably exceeded.

Everyone interested in the period will have their own favourite books about it. Here are five, a mix of fiction and non-fiction, that I would recommend to anyone wanting to make a start on reading, not about Napoleon directly, but about the Napoleonic Wars.

Sharpe’s Company by Bernard Cornwell. There are an awful lot of Sharpe books and it's difficult to choose between them. This is one of Cornwell’s own favourites and is a fast paced story set around the fall of Badajoz in the Peninsular War. There is a lot of military action, but also plenty of description of the relationships between the various regiments and the life of the men. Cornwell's novels bring the Napoleonic Wars alive. If your school history lessons concentrated (as mine did) on the long list of battles and the makeup of the continually shifting alliances, then these books give a useful reminder that there were real people in those red (or, in Sharpe's case, green) uniforms. Sharpe isn't an especially rounded or credible character, but he's rounded and credible enough. And the details of military life are fascinating.

The Fields of Death by Simon Scarrow. It's easy to sneer at Scarrow's books. They aren't 'proper' novels. The characterisation is thin and the dialogue unconvincing. But Scarrow approaches the Napoleonic Wars from the opposite direction to Cornwall. His main interest is the way that Napoleon and Wellington planned their campaigns at the grand strategic level and how these grand plans worked out in blood and terror on the battlefield. Fields of Death may not be great literature, but by the end of it I understood more about how and why Napoleon was finally defeated than I had ever learned before.

The Recollections of Rifleman Harris by Christopher Hibbert. For a real infantryman's view of the war, you can do no better than read Rifleman Harris's account. Harris told his story in his own words after the war had ended. There is no sense of grand strategy, no neat little parcels of story. Harris advances across Europe and retreats back to the North Sea coast without ever bothering about objectives and political goals. He's more interested in staying alive, bedding the local women and keeping on the right side of his officers. A worm's eye account of Napoleonic warfare and a valuable antidote to modern romanticisation of history.

Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian. British control of the seas was crucial to success in the Napoleonic Wars and any list of books about them has to include at least one set at sea. When I was young, the obvious choice would have been one of C S Forester's Hornblower novels, but nowadays I think Patrick O'Brian is more in fashion. His attention to nautical detail is impressive and in Aubrey and Maturin he has produced two well-rounded characters, whose adventures are easy to get caught up in. As with Sharpe, it's difficult to pick out any individual book in the series. Master and Commander is the first of twenty completed novels (a twenty-first being unfinished at the time of O’Brian’s death).

The Officer’s Prey by Armand Cabasson. UK readers will find an easy diet of Napoleonic War stories featuring British heroes and perfidious Frogs. The Officer’s Prey provides an interesting look at things from the other side. The book is essentially a murder mystery, but it is set against the background of Napoleon’s Russian campaign. Although the story is a detective thriller, there is an enormous amount of military detail. Armand Cabasson is a Napoleonic Wars expert, and it shows. If you are interested in Napoleon's march on Moscow (and the retreat), the interminable descriptions of uniforms and details of the different regiments will be gripping, though for many readers they may become tedious. The descriptions of the horror of war and the scale of the disaster that was the retreat are well handled, though. 

You'll notice that, heroically, I haven't included my own "His Majesty's Confidential Agent" series about the adventures of James Burke, but I know visitors to my blog are people of wisdom and discretion and they'll click the book covers on the right to be taken to the Amazon pages to buy them. And, though it has nothing to do with Napoleon, please don't forget my latest release, Cawnpore, set in India some forty-odd years after Waterloo.

Countdown to Waterloo - 100 days

Historians often refer to Napoleon's Hundred Days, so you may be wondering what exactly was happening two hundred years ago today, with just 100 days to Waterloo.

Napoleon was still on his way north and had just reached Lyons. Here, as so often on his journey, the officials who were ordered to stop him were quick to change sides. The Mayor of Lyons actually issued a proclamation on the tenth, ordering citizens to stay indoors and trust in the law; by the next day he was proclaiming his loyalty to Napoleon. It was another minor triumph, but what was particularly significant about this event, one hundred days from Napoleon's defeat?

The answer is: nothing. The 'Hundred Days' are regarded as starting on Napoleon's return to Paris and ending with the restoration of King Louis on 8 July 1815. Constitutionally, it's important, because it marks the period while France was, yet again, without a king, though if you count it up it adds to 111 days. It doesn't, though, mark the period of Napoleon's ascendancy. The failure of Louis' men to stop Napoleon on his march north marked the end of any real power for the king and Waterloo, though not technically the end of Napoleon's rule, was the end of his control of France.

Let's leave Napoleon moving inexorably toward Paris (but carefully avoiding any areas he thought might still support the monarchy) and have a quick look at what's going on in my writing life. It's been a slightly strange time. I have written two separate series of books: the ones about James Burke, heroic Napoleonic era spy, and the ones about John Williamson, a rather more reflective chap living in the Far East at the high point of Empire. The second John Williamson book, Cawnpore, has just been re-published by Accent. It's a book I particularly like, so I've been spending some time trying to promote it. (If any of you want me to come to your book group or local history society to talk about Cawnpore and the history of the Indian Mutiny, please contact me. I'm happy to write on your blogs too.) At the same time, the third book about James Burke, Burke at Waterloo has just been finished and is with my lovely editor at Accent for her to work through it, after which will come all her requests for changes and re-writing. By then, though, I should have started on the next John Williamson book, which will see him back in England. So my brain is hopelessly split between India in 1857, Belgium in 1815 and London in around 1860. It's not helped by the fact that I am just home from Egypt, which obviously took me back to the world of Burke and the Bedouin and Napoleon's Middle Eastern adventure in 1798.

I hope you can keep track. If you haven't read The White Rajah, you can still take up John Williamson's adventures in Cawnpore, which is a stand-alone novel. It's out on Kindle and available to pre-order in paperback. We're still hoping to have Burke at Waterloo out in time for the anniversary: meanwhile, you can keep up with his earlier adventures in Burke in the Land of Silver and Burke and the Bedouin. Both are ridiculously cheap on Kindle and available in paperback for those who prefer a more traditional read.

Countdown to Waterloo - 105 days

Two hundred years ago today, one of the French king's bodyguards, Col Marie Antoine de Reiset, wrote in his journal:

An astounding piece of news arrived yesterday. We learnt, by Telegraph, that Bonaparte had landed at Cannes, near Frejus.

[The 'telegraph' referred to here was a system of semaphore. A reader has pointed out, entirely correctly, that the electric telegraph was not yet invented.]

By this time, Napoleon was already well on his way north, heading toward Paris, albeit by a circuitous route, designed to avoid areas that he believed were likely to be loyal to the king.

Two hundred years later, and my focus slips briefly away from Waterloo, as today marks the publication on Kindle of the new edition of Cawnpore. (The paperback will be out in a few days.)

Accent are now publishing four of my books, with Burke at Waterloo on the way. Check out the new page header, which celebrates with pictures of all five covers.

There's so much going on, I find it difficult to keep track. I hope you don't. All I'm asking you to do is click HERE and that should take you to Amazon, where you buy the Kindle version of Cawnpore. (Thanks to the magic of technology, this link should work whether you're in the US or UK or, indeed, anywhere else. Let me know if it doesn't.)

Please do give Cawnpore a try. It's not a particularly cheery read (it's almost certain to make you cry), but of all my books, it's the one I'm most proud of.

There'll be more about Napoleon's march on Paris in the next couple of days. Until then, get started on Cawnpore.

The characters of Cawnpore: the Hillersdons

Charles George Hillersdon, who also held the position of Magistrate for the district, was a few years my junior, being in his early thirties. He was slightly above the average in height, but a sedentary life had left him somewhat corpulent and he tended to stoop, making him appear older than his years.

This is John Williamson’s first impression of the Collector – the official appointed by the East India Company’s to run Cawnpore and the area around it. Hillersdon is to be his boss while he works for the Company in Cawnpore.

Charles Hillersdon was a real person. The description of him is based on a drawing that is unreliable for two reasons: he’s just a background figure and many of the drawings made of key incidents at the time were works of imagination by people who may not even have been there. Still, it’s a credible picture and may well be accurate.

Hillersdon’s personality is even more the product of my imagination. He seems to have been an unremarkable man, presumably good at his job or there would have been paperwork defining his deficiencies. In Cawnpore he is the most sympathetic of the Europeans, a bridge between Williamson and the other British staff with whom he has nothing in common. Hillersdon is, if you like, the acceptable face of colonialism: hard-working, sincere, doing his very best for the people who are his responsibility, but ultimately having little understanding of the country where he is living.

His wife, too, was a real person and there are suggestions that she was, indeed, the rather sweet piano playing mother that Williamson describes. Like many English wives in India, she lived an isolated life, surrounded by servants but with no real contact with the Indians. Her home attempted to keep India at bay with the furnishings and taste of the English Home Counties, while she bore children at a rate that reflected the value that Victorians placed on motherhood.

Charles, Lydia and their children all took shelter from the rebels in General Wheeler’s Entrenchment. Lydia was pregnant at the time and she survived to see her child born. None of the Hillersdon family, though, survived the bombardment of the European position. Like so many of the people who died on both sides at Cawnpore, they may well have made political misjudgements and they may have served deeply flawed systems, but they surely cannot have deserved the fate that they met there.

The characters of Cawnpore: Nana Sahib

An updated version of this blog post is now available at http://tomwilliamsauthor.co.uk/nana-sahib-and-the-siege-of-cawnpore.

Please note that thewhiterajah.blogspot.com is an archive of old blogs. For my latest posts please check out http://tomwilliamsauthor.co.uk/blog/

The characters of Cawnpore: John Williamson

My editor has signed off my efforts on Cawnpore and now there is only the proofing of the final copy to go before the new edition is published in a few weeks. One of the joys of electronic publishing is that the months of delay between submitting your manuscript and seeing your book printed can be reduced to weeks. That's a definite plus, as far as I'm concerned.

With the book about to go on sale again, I'd like to the chance to tell everyone about it. It was only the second book I wrote, but it remains the one I'm most proud of. It's not a cheerful read and I'm not surprised that it didn't initially find much of an audience, but I am disappointed. I hope that, with a publisher like Accent behind it, it will gather more readers this time around.

I'm going to blog a little about the main characters, so that you know something about the people that you will meet when you read the book. I'm starting with the narrator, John Williamson. He was the narrator of The White Rajah, making Cawnpore technically a sequel, though it's a self-contained story with John himself the only character carried over from the previous book.

At the start of the story, Williamson leaves Borneo to begin a new life in India. He had arrived in Borneo an illiterate seaman, but with the help of his lover, James Brooke, he had become a successful administrator. Unwilling to return to his old life in Britain, and unhappy to stay in Borneo following the massacres of the natives there, he decides to look for a post in India where his administrative skills will allow him to earn a living. Rather to his surprise, he learns that Brooke’s achievements in Borneo have become well-known to Britain's colonial administrators and he is rapidly pointed to a senior position at Cawnpore.

Most of the characters in Cawnpore are real people, although their personalities have often been invented. Williamson, however, is totally fictional. His name was borrowed from that of James Brooke's real-life interpreter, but everything else about him is pure invention. His importance to the story comes from the fact that he is so completely an outsider to both Indian and British colonial society. He's a homosexual at a time when homosexuality was illegal in England. Buggery was still punishable by hanging. Probably of more concern to the men who ran British India, Williamson has working-class origins. He does not know the right people and he is uneasy in the rigid class society of his time.

Uncomfortable with the British, Williamson finds himself attracted to the court life of the local Indian prince, Nana Sahib. Yet, he is, of course, no more truly at home in the Indian court than he is in the British club. As an outsider, Williamson can see what is going on from both the point of view of the colonisers and of those whose rule the English had displaced.

I like Williamson. He is a fundamentally honest and decent man who is always trying to act for the best in impossible circumstances. Writing as John Williamson (it's a first person novel) came naturally in Cawnpore, perhaps because I spent so long trying to get inside his head while I was writing The White Rajah. He has a back story which was originally the start of The White Rajah, but which was cut out before it reached the final draft. For anyone who's interested, here it is:

 The man I am today is the man that James Brooke made me. 

My family were farm labourers who had never known anywhere but their own small village in Devon. Five generations, I know, had lived and worked on Mr Slattery’s farm, for each generation was recorded in the family Bible that was the only book I ever saw as a child. That book was honoured in our home and kept as a great treasure, though none of those who had scratched their mark in it could read what was written there.

My name was entered in May of 1819. I was the third child my mother bore but the only one to survive infancy and, after me, there were no others. Perhaps it was this that made me a solitary child. I suppose, when I was younger, I must have played with the village children. I have some vague memories of rolling in the mud with the other boys and of our parents scolding us for our dirty clothes. But from my earliest youth, I spent most of my time alone with the animals of the farm, growing up alongside the horses and the poultry and the pigs. As soon as I was old enough, I would make myself useful to my mother, feeding the pigs and collecting the eggs. By the time I was twelve, I was working in the stables. I was good with the horses and Mr Slattery seemed to like me. It seemed I was settled and would be there forever.

Then, in 1831, sickness came to our village. Some said it was a visitation from the Lord but I preferred to believe those who said it was some contagion of the wells. Whatever the cause, all of us on the farm were stricken down and I remember lying in a fever, between life and death.

By the time I recovered, both of my parents were dead. I was not even able to attend their funeral. Mr Slattery organised it and I am sure that he did all that was needful and proper.

I remember that when I was strong enough to leave my bed, I made my way to the churchyard and knelt for some time praying beside my parents’ grave. It was a warm day in early spring, quiet, save for the calling of the birds. I listened for a human voice but I heard none, for everyone was busy in the fields or the housewives about their work in the cottages.

I had no special friends among the boys and no sweetheart among the girls. I would pray together with my neighbours in the church that would now watch over my parents’ bones but I would never find true fellowship there. I saw my life stretching before me and ending where I stood beside this grave.

And so a restlessness seized me and, as I regained my strength, the restlessness grew until, one day in June, I made my farewells to the farm. I left the Bible – mine now, for there was no other family – with Mr Slattery for safekeeping. I packed my few other belongings into a stout canvas bag and set out to see what the world had to offer.

I moved first from village to village, seeking work as a farm-hand or ostler but, though I found employment enough to give me a roof for the night and food in my belly, nowhere I saw on my travels round the county offered me more than the life I was escaping. It seemed that Providence guided my footsteps ever closer to Plymouth and the sea. And then, as if by chance, I took up life as a sailor.

I will say nothing of my first experiences of a shipboard life. I voyaged mainly in coalers, plying the coastal waters on the East coast of England. The work was hard and, as a landlubber from the West Country I found myself alone on vessels crewed mainly by men who had grown up with the water of the North Sea running in their veins. After two years of moving from ship to ship, I was still an outsider and, when I was discharged in London, I had nothing better to do than find some dingy tavern by the Pool and set out to drink my pay away. I was in low spirits and wondering if I might not be wise to make my way back to Devon and reconcile myself to a life on the farm.

It was a quiet evening and the place matched my sombre mood but at about ten, the door opened and a group of young men stood for a moment caught in the tavern light against the darkness of the night outside. It was twenty years ago, yet I still remember that first glimpse I had of James Brooke.

Egypt

Dan Brown once said that he researches his novels after he's written them. Well, it hasn't done his sales any harm, so I thought I'd try the same trick.

Burke and the Bedouin was published last October. I had wanted to visit Egypt while I was writing it, but the political situation there made this impractical. This year, though, our son booked a diving holiday on the Red Sea and suggested that we join him. We took the chance to visit Luxor and, very briefly, Cairo on our way back.

If you're writing about Egypt, you have to have a picture of the Pyramids. It's the law.

The Cairo of 1798 has almost totally vanished under a modern city that we were told now houses 22 million people. That figure seems incredible, but a quick Internet search suggests that it is correct if you include the entire metropolitan area. We visited the pyramids, of course, and I stood there and looked out over the field of Napoleon's famous victory, but all I saw was Cairo's suburbs. The built-up area extends almost to the pyramids and the three famous structures can be a bit of an anti-climax, but the smaller pyramids there that nobody talks about are interesting. And if you enter one of the huge structures and climb down to the burial chamber it is a truly awesome experience – especially now when you can often have a place to yourself. If you do visit, make sure you see the solar boat – an astonishing artefact from the time of the Pharaohs.

The Solar Boat would carry the Pharoah to the afterlife. It was found near the Great Pyramid

The guides we met had surprisingly strong views on Napoleon, either praising him as the man who opened up our modern interest in Ancient Egypt or attacking him as a villain who was responsible the death of many Egyptians and the theft of thousands of pharaonic artefacts. The sight of the base of an obelisk at Luxor crudely hacked off so that the monument could be carried back to Paris (it's in the Place de la Concorde) was quite sobering.

The temple at Luxor. There should be another column on the right of the entrance. Blame Napoleon!

It was interesting to visit, if only very briefly, the site of Burke's adventures and to take a felucca out onto the Nile. Egypt is a fascinating country and even such a short trip was better than nothing. I recommend it. But if you can't go, try to catch a glimpse of its past in Burke and the Bedouin.