Dan Snow's History Hit - The Last Invasion of Britain

Episode Date: February 21, 2022

Popular knowledge may claim Hastings as the site of the last invasion of mainland Britain by Norman forces in 1066. True, this was the last successful invasion however in 1797 there was a much less successful one.In fact, the last time any invaders foot ever stood upon the soil of mainland Britain was February 1797 when 1,400 members of the French Légion Noire landed on just outside Fishguard in Wales. Leading to a brief 2-day Campaign, 22–24 February.We hear the full story of the ill-planned invasion, local resistance and long term legacy from Julie Coggins, chair of the Fishguard Last Invasion Centre Trust.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download the History Hit app please go to the Android or Apple store.

This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone. Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts. Hi everyone, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. There have been many invasions of England and Britain.

By the way, anyone who uses the old line about 1066 being the last invasion of Britain, it's an immediate tell. Don't listen to another word they say. Don't read another word they say. Don't read another sentence they write. England, Britain, have been invaded constantly over the last thousand years since 1066. And apart from anything else, William the Conqueror's kids invaded England. Various members of William the Conqueror's own family, immediate family, invaded England in the years that followed the conquest.

And there'd been many others. I mean, who can forget 1326? 1326, Edward II was on the throne. His kingdom was invaded by his wife. Yep, by his wife, Isabella. That was an absolute peach. Of course, French troops landed. William of Orange invaded in 1688.

The French Prince Louis invaded in May 1216. The Scots were often invading and French troops fought at the Battle of Culloden on the side of Bonnie Prince Charlie in 1746. So there are plenty of invasions. There are plenty of invasions. One of the least impressive, most extraordinary invasions was also the last invasion of Britain. It was a very brief campaign, lasted two or three days in February 1797. It was the last organised landing of a foreign hostile force on British soil. When an Irish-born American, commanding a French force, landed in south-west Wales as part of a bizarre three-pronged attack in which it was believed that landing French troops around the isles would support the uprising of the Society

of United Irishmen, a rebellion that was going on on the island at the time. It was also thought by the French they might be able to take advantage of revolutionary further among the British people. So a small force was landed in Wales with the aim of marching on Bristol. You know what? It didn't go well. I've obviously made it my business to go to Fishguard, where this invasion took place, and have a drink in the pub, where the British organised resistance and where the French eventually surrendered. So it's a subject very close to my heart. I am lucky in this podcast to be talking to Julie Coggins. She's chair of the Fishguard Last Invasion Centre Trust. She's done so much to keep the memory of this campaign alive and provide support for people that go to Fishguard and want to learn more about it,

which I urge you to do. It is a truly remarkable story with, interestingly, national significance, as you'll hear about at the end. If you wish to watch documentaries about Napoleonic Wars, about the French Revolutionary Wars, about military history, about the Navy, about anything really, we've got them on History Hit TV. We've got our own history channel over here at History. We're not messing about. We've got the world's best history channel, in fact. No aliens about, no mysterious conspiracy theories, just proper history. You're going to love it. If you follow the link in the description of this podcast, you will get whisked over there. You can watch it on your smart TV.

You can watch it on your phone, on your computer, on your big wall-mounted thingamabobs. You can watch it on everything. And it costs less than the price of a cappuccino every month. So please go and check it out. Head over and check out History Hit TV. In the meantime, before you do that, please enjoy this podcast with Julie Coggins

about the last invasion of Britain. Julie, thanks very much for coming on the podcast. It's a pleasure, pleasure. Now, do you, like me, get triggered when people say the last invasion of Britain was in 1066? Oh, we get very annoyed because we're very proud of our history here. And I think the more we talk about it, the more people will realise that it was as late as 1797. It's wild, isn't it? It is, absolutely. And why Fishguard? I mean, of all the places to invade mainland Britain, why Fishguard? And I get asked this all the time. Well, I'm going to ask you right now. So tell me what was going on in 1797. What was the context? Right. Britain was at war. Absolutely. So we've been at war for four years. And in 1797, in February, the French force landed in West Wales,

but we weren't the target place. They were heading for Bristol, really. The attacks in Ireland had failed, so they failed to get the poor peasantry support in the French Revolution. But Colonel Tate, William Tate, decided that he would still attack mainland Britain. So he had four ships, and they headed to Bristol. But weather was against them. The storms flew them off course. And the commander of the fleet decided that they would be better in Cardigan Bay because they'd be more sheltered. So that's where they ended up.

Now, Colonel Tate had 1,400 men on board. We should say, by the way, he doesn't sound very French. He is actually Irish born. He's Irish American, but he hated the British. So he really went to France because he supported the cause. And that's why he ended up with the fleet. But he didn't have the best of the force because although he had 1,400 men, only 600 of them were actually trained soldiers. men, only 600 of them were actually trained soldiers. 800 of the men were convicts and they were released out of prison on the understanding that they would fight. So, although he had a large body of men, it wasn't really a very good force to have. Napoleon had the best soldiers in Central Europe, conquering Central Europe. So, he had to make do with the force that he had.

Let's see how it goes. So basically, they arrive in West Wales on the coast of Pembrokeshire, not a million miles away from where Henry Tudor landed and on his way to the Battle of Bosworth. So it's not a bad place to land a force. But how does it go? Well, they decided to come into Carrigwasted point it's an area just a couple of miles north of fishguard and they thought that they could climb the cliffs there to get on land in the hours of darkness so he sent an advanced force up the cliffs to basically see

how the land was and the advanced force got to a farmstead called Trahowell and at Trahowell there was supposed to be a wedding but because these ships had been spotted and the alarms were raised everybody fled so the advance force got to the farm saw all the food there and all the alcohol there and the advance force got very drunk so the the remaining force then followed. So by dawn, 1400 of his men were actually on British soil, but some of them are very drunk already. Right. And that kind of sets the tone, doesn't it? It does. It really does. So Tate knew he had to find transport. He knew he had to find food. He knew he had to find food. He really needed to have a good discipline on his force.

But what he didn't realize was that sending out these unsupervised convicts was a huge mistake because very recently a Portuguese ship had been wrecked offshore and the cargo was wine. So all of the local inhabitants of the peninsula were well stocked with wine. So these soldiers were ransacking buildings and they were just finding wine and food. So most of the force within day one were very, very drunk and very undisciplined. So, you know, Tate didn't really have any discipline over his force and to make matters worse the fleet commander Castagna actually demanded that the ships leave so the ships left to head back to France leaving 1400 men on land with nowhere to go. So it's a disaster of command and control within minutes and hours of the landings.

What about the Brits? What about the Welsh? What do they do about this invasion? Well, the British defence was mainly down to the gentry. The person who spotted the ships flying British flags, who knew they weren't British ships, they were French, had sent messages to the gentry. Now, Lord Milford was primarily responsible for the defence of the county, but he was in Picton Castle. He delegated it to Lord Corder, the most senior of our gentry, the highest social status. And he had the backing of the Yeomanry, the Fishguard Defensibles. He had the Cardigan Militia supporting him, naval forces. So he gathered his troops together and they actually met at what is now known as the Royal Oak and

they planned their tactics. But really the tactics didn't come into a lot of force because Tate was faced with a situation that he had no support from the local peasantry. His ships had gone. He didn't really have any means of travelling north to Liverpool. He had no transport, he had no food. So he had really no other thing to do other than surrender. But he wanted to surrender on conditional terms. He wanted to basically cease fire, have no bloodshed. But he wanted to surrender on conditional terms. He wanted to

basically cease fire, have no bloodshed, and they wanted to leave. But Lord Cawdor demanded an unconditional surrender because he stated that he had a far more superior force so he could fight the French. In reality, you only had 600 men and possibly 100 more volunteers to help. So Tate didn't know that he could outnumber them two to one. You listen to Dan Snow's history, we're talking about the shambolic last invasion of Britain. More coming up.

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And you mentioned an important point there, which is that part of this plan is not quite as bonkers as it sounds. They had believed that Britain was ripe for revolution as France had been, and they would land in the peasantry, and the Welsh would all rise up and support these liberators arriving on their soil. Yeah. Yes, but it was not the case in Wales. He was in a hostile territory. He did not get the support of the poor that he was expecting. He may have got it Bristol.

It could have been a very different story had he landed in Bristol and marched north. He could have easily have had more and more people join him along the way, and they wouldn't have been drunk, which would have helped. Is this where we need to talk about the famous heroine who may or may not have played her part? Tell me about her. That's right. Well, Jemima, Jemima Vaur, Jemima the Great. She is a local hero here. The legend has it that she single-handedly caught 12 French soldiers and marched them off to the church and locked them in. And then they went to prison. Now, Jemima was a very brave, a very strong lady. She was a local cobbler,

and she just had a pitchfork as her weapon. Some legends have it that she went back for more. The documents, we don't find that. We know of the 12. She was rewarded for her bravery. She had a pension and you can see her headstone in the local St. Mary's Church here. And she's also depicted in our most wonderful tapestry that we have here in the town as well.

So the legend of Jemima was a big part of the story. To this day, we always have Jemima present at all of our events. Jemima is synonymous with Vishgard. And I'd quite like to mention another legend because I think the surrender process that happened, Lord Corder did not have the forces that the French thought they had. But we did have women marching along the mountain, which we call the Bigny, with their red shawls and their tall black hats. And I think this also gave the impression that they were more military here than they actually were. So women did take a big part in the last invasion.

They certainly did. So when did they land? They land on the 22nd. Second. They started climbing the cliffs on the 22nd. By the 24th, it was all over. It's a very short invasion. Right.

So how does it end exactly? Once Tate had made his surrender letter, Corder accepted the unconditional surrender eventually. So all of the French force would then march down to Goodick Sands. They disarmed, they were fed some food, and then they had a long, slow walk, Haverford West Jail. And so by the 24th, it was all over.

Is it true they surrender in the pub that I have been to and had a delicious pint of beer in? Well we like to promote the Roelock as the site of surrender. The actual surrender document is lost but we believe that it was actually at Trahowell so Trahowell Farm is where the military leaders set up camp. And we believe that is really the place that the surrender document was signed. But the Royal Oak, well, it wasn't the Royal Oak in those days, it is now, but it did have its part to play because that's where all our military leaders met. And that's where all of their strategies and tactics were discussed. Excellent. And so they all go off to prison. And is that the end of it? What is the legacy of this at last invasion? Yeah, I think one of the aftermaths was very

interesting with the Bank of England. Because news of the French invading didn't just affect West Wales, it frightened the country. And a lot of investors withdrew their coins and their silver, their precious metals from the banks. Now, this concerned William Pitt enormously. So really, the last invasion led to the first of what the Bank of England created, their promissory notes. So we had the first of the £1 and the £2 notes. And a lot of people wanted to take their money out to bury it for safety so these notes well the one pound note was still in force for a couple of hundred years after this it's amazing so it's when it says on the power of notes i've

promised to pay the bearer that's a lie and that lie begins in the aftermath of this it does it absolutely does in fact the people of london seem far more panicked than the people of Pembrokeshire. There was a kind of run on the stock market. It all fell apart. Well, that's right. All of the investors, a lot of the regional banks were hit very hard. But the meetings at the Bank of England with the Prime Minister were serious talks indeed. And as it happened, they didn't run out of money. But there was a great fear that the Bank of England would definitely run out of money. Well, amazing.

Now, tell me about your tapestry, because the invasions of Britain required tapestries to be made. And there's a Bay of Tapestries some people have heard of, but much more important, much more important is your tapestry. Yes, our beautiful tapestry was made for the bicentenary celebrations here in 1997. It took four years to make, 40,000 hours of sewing. The designer was Elizabeth Cramp. She was a local artist, a very well-known artist living here in Fishguard. And she was commissioned to design a tapestry. Now,

she was a painter, a drawer and a painter. She wasn't an embroiderer, but she took several months sketching what would have been the landscape, what would have been the churches, what would have been the roofs, how the ships looked. So she painted these beautiful, what she called cartoons. And these cartoons then were translated into embroidery. She had the help of four expert embroiderers who turned her pictures into drawings that could be translated onto fabric. They managed to get hold of a beautiful linen cotton blend fabric from a Greek market because they only had a limited amount of money and couldn't afford pure linen, but they wanted it to be easy to handle. And then they recruited local people to start sewing.

So 78 local people were involved in making the tapestry. They were organised into small groups, so they had panels to work on their kitchen tables, groups of threes and fours. And it was truly a remarkable community project. It's 100 feet long. It's just over 30 meters long. And it's housed in a purpose-built gallery in Fishguard Library, which is open to the public.

It is beautiful. It's a ward wing. And when people arrive and look at it, they are amazed at what a beautiful piece of embroidery it is. We're very proud of it. It's a wonderful thing. It's a wonderful thing. We should be very proud of that whole bit of history.

It's great. And it's the forgotten invasion of Britain. Yes, yes. So thank you very much indeed for coming on the podcast. And I urge you all to go and look at the Fishguard tapestry. Everyone can go and do that. Please, please. You'd be very welcome.

Let me know when you're coming. Thank you so much for coming on, Julie. That was fantastic. Thank you very much. Thank you. I feel we have the history on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs, this part of the history of our country,

all work on and finish. Thanks, folks. You've reached the end of our country, all of our gods, and finish. Thanks, folks. You've reached the end of another episode. Hope you're still awake. Appreciate your loyalty. Sticking through to the end. If you fancied doing us a favour here at History Hit, I would be incredibly grateful if you would go and wherever you get these pods, give it a rating, five stars or its equivalent. A review would be great. Please head over there and do that. It really does make a huge difference. It's one of the funny things the algorithm loves to take into account. So please head over there and do that. Really, really appreciate it. This is History's Heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone,

Purpose, brave ideas, and the courage to stand alone, including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War. You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, Sonny, you'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman, for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.