Secret Service Under Pitt

Tandy arrived at Bordeaux on March 14, 1802. Bonaparte's treaty with England was signed on the 27th of the same month. Military honours hailed Tandy. Bordeaux was illuminated, and he was promoted to the rank of a general of division. But in the midst of this jubilee the old rebel read with horror a speech of Pelham's in Parliament stating that 'Tandy owed his life to the useful information and discoveries he had given to the British Government.' He addressed a letter to Pelham, now a peer, branding the statement as mean, audacious, and false. 'This may appear uncouth language to a courtly ear,' he added; 'but it is the voice of truth. I never had any connection or correspondence with your Government, and if I had, they knew my character too well to attempt to tamper with me. Had you contented yourself with saying, "there were particular circumstances in my case," you would have adhered to the truth, for you know the whole, though you have let out only a part!' Tandy thus concluded: 'I am, my Lord, with the same sentiments which I have uniformly cherished and supported, a friend to universal benevolence, and an enemy to those only who raise their fortunes on their country's ruin!'

Pelham probably confounded Napper Tandy with James Tandy, from whom information had been given to his confidant, McNally, and by 'Mac' conveyed to Dublin Castle. Napper told his son all, not thinking it would transpire. His feelings had been roused by the imputation, and in a letter to the 'Argus' he gave them fuller vent. 'Had discoveries been proposed to me, I should have rejected, with scorn and indignation, a baseness which my soul abhorred… I had made up my mind for death in a cause which no mode of execution could stamp disgrace upon. It would have been death in the cause of freedom and of my country – a cause which would have converted the scaffold into an altar, the sufferer into a victim!'

Mr. Elliot, who, I think, afterwards succeeded his brother as Lord St. Germans, echoed in Parliament the taunt cast by Pelham, and spoke of 'Tandy's ignorance and insignificant birth.'226 Tandy, addressing Elliot, said: —

The illiberal attack which you have made upon me in your speech of the 24th of November last, in the British House of Commons, is the cause of my troubling you with this. My 'ignorance and insignificance,' which you have painted in such glowing colours, ought, with a man of sense, to have been my protection; but you have proved yourself as deficient in this, as in point of good manners, which is the true criterion of a gentleman.

You cannot, sir, but know (for you pretend to be a man of information) that I hold a high rank in the army of this great and generous nation, which places me upon a footing with the proudest peer of your island. You know, also, that the honour of a soldier is dearer to him than life; yet, with these facts before you, you have dared to traduce my character, and have attempted to affix a stigma to my name which nothing can now wipe out but the blood of one of us. A French officer must not be insulted with impunity, and you, as well as the country which gave me birth, and that which has adopted me, shall find that I will preserve the honour of my station. I, therefore, demand of you to name some town on the Continent where you will be found, accompanied by your friend and your pistols – giving me sufficient time to leave this, and arrive at the place appointed.

Napper Tandy, General of Division.

Bourdeaux, December 12, 1802.

Eight weeks elapsed. Elliot failed to reply, and Tandy, in accordance with the fashion of the day, proclaimed him 'a calumniator, a liar, and a poltroon!' This fierce climax was preceded by a more temperate tone.

The question in debate [he said, when Elliot assailed him] was for laying a tax on Great Britain, in which I, as a French citizen, could not possibly be implicated, and, therefore, it is evident that I was wantonly dragged in for the sole purpose of calumny and abuse. Such conduct was unmanly, as no brave man would attack a defenceless person, much less an absent one.

Ignorant of the source to which his betrayal was due, it did not occur to Tandy that the speeches of Elliot and others may have aimed at diverting suspicion from their real informant. Tandy, in reply, advanced merely the suspicion that the charge of being an informer was fulminated to excite the jealousy and disgust of his adopted country France, which, unlike America, had opened her arms to afford him protection.227

The wearing worry of Tandy's later life had sapped his strength, and left him sensitively open to hostile shafts, which his conduct provoked. His vanity was commensurate with his patriotism, and in his stoutest day was easily wounded. He gradually sank, and died at Bordeaux in 1803. 'His private character,' writes Barrington, 'furnished no ground to doubt the integrity of his public one.' He died, as he had lived, a staunch Protestant.228

Much has been written of the wonderful escape from Kilmainham Gaol of Corbet, afterwards a general in the French service, and one of the prisoners captured with Tandy at Hamburg, and thence removed to Dublin. Miss Edgeworth was so much struck by this romantic escape, that she made it the leading incident of her best novel. But, considering the subtle international difficulties that had arisen, and with the suggestion of Under-Secretary Marsden before us, it is a question how far Corbet's escape may not have been connived at by Castlereagh.

The sermon which Napoleon preached to the Hamburg deputies on their infringement of the law of nations was in the mouths of his admirers for years after; but it lost in impressiveness by his own violation of the neutral territory of Baden, when, on the night of March 17, 1804, he sent a strong guard to seize and carry off to France the Duc d'Enghien. After a hasty trial by court-martial, and on unproven charges of conspiracy, he was cruelly put to death in the Castle of Vincennes. In the heated discussions to which this outrage gave rise, Buonaparte more than once quoted the case of Tandy, and feebly sought to find in the past conduct of Hamburg a precedent and justification.

Thomas Addis Emmet accused him of coldness and indecision as regards the long threatened invasion of Ireland, because, instead of steering for Erin in 1798, he changed his plan and went to Egypt. The arrest of Tandy in Hamburg rekindled Napoleon's hostile feeling, and shortly after the death of that general he resolved to carry out comprehensively his oft-mooted design.

The 'Correspondence of Napoleon'229 contains a letter to Berthier, dated September 27, 1804. He says that an expedition to Ireland had been decided upon; that 18,000 men for that purpose were ready at Brest; that a simultaneous landing was to be attempted in Kent; while in Ireland the French army would march straight on Dublin. Meanwhile 200,000 men were encamped at Boulogne; but hostile plans collapsed with the smash of the French fleet at Trafalgar. A few weeks later the so-called 'Army of England' traversed the banks of the blue Danube instead of the Thames. General Mack capitulated at Ulm; Francis of Austria fled, and Napoleon's legions entered Vienna.

CHAPTER IX

ARREST OF JÄGERHORN IN LONDON – THE PLOT THICKENS – TURNER SHOT THROUGH THE HEAD

In 1799, Turner's stealthy steps can be traced once more in London. It will be remembered that Lord Edward Fitzgerald had met, by appointment near Whitechapel, M. Jägerhorn, a secret envoy of France, and gave him, in full detail, information regarding every point on which that agent had been charged to inquire. Jägerhorn was 'the estimable Swede' named by Reinhard, the French minister at Hamburg, when writing the intercepted letter. This document, dated July 12, the editor of the 'Castlereagh Papers' assigns to the year 1798;230 but as Lord Edward was dead at that time,231 it must belong to the previous year. Other secret missives were sent to Dublin at the same time by the Home Office, in order to guide the course of the Irish Government. These papers, filling forty pages of the book,232 were the result of a successful stroke of espionage at Hamburg.

M. Jägerhorn is of course the person alluded to by Mr. Froude when describing the nocturnal visit to Lord Downshire. 'He [Lord Edward] had been watched in London, and had been traced to the lodgings of a suspected agent of the French Directory, and among other papers which had been forwarded by spies to the Government, there was one in French containing an allusion to some female friend of Lady Edward, through whom a correspondence was maintained between Ireland and Paris.'

Hamburg was Turner's usual residence, and Jägerhorn had an estate near that place.233

Although the case of M. Jägerhorn is opened in the first volume of the 'Castlereagh Papers,' and misplaced among the incidents of another year, we do not find until far in the second the letters addressed to him in 1797 by General Valence and Lord Edward. In 1799 Jägerhorn had sought to renew his perilous enterprise. The same keen scent which traced Lord Edward, in 1797, to the lodgings of the confidential envoy in London, was once more on his track. Wickham, writing from the Home Office on March 28, 1799, has news for Castlereagh in Dublin: 'I have the satisfaction to inform your lordship that we have secured M. Jägerhorn, who was coming over here on a mission similar to that which he undertook some two years since, when he met Lord Edward Fitzgerald in London.'

A full report is given of Jägerhorn's examination, in which he is asked: 'Were you not charged to deliver to Lord Edward Fitzgerald a letter from somebody?' and he replied, 'Madame Matthiessen.' This was the lady, nearly connected with Lady Edward, and alluded to by Mr. Froude as a name found in secret papers. He is further questioned about Lord Edward, Lady Lucy, General Valence, and a number of other persons whose names had cropped up in the interview between Turner and Downshire; but, though the queries were searching, and Jägerhorn now seemed completely in Pitt's power, nothing material was wrung from him. England and Russia were at this time allied, and Jägerhorn, pretending that he had a pension of 2,000 roubles as a spy of Russia, rather dumb-foundered his examiners, and he at last regained his liberty. All this is to be found, with full details, in the 'Correspondence of Lord Castlereagh.'

The paltry sum which Turner received for his services now comes to be considered. This man, who had every facility of access to Lady Edward's house at Hamburg and its rebel entourage, held the key of a position so incalculably important that he never himself discerned its marketable value. Thousands would doubtless just as readily have been paid to him as 'the cool 500l.' that he modestly asked. 'To get the information had cost him,' he said, 'three times that sum, and to keep up the acquaintances and connections he had at Hamburg he could not live on less.' 'Small profits and quick returns' seems to have been his motto.

'Fresh evidence of the person's power to be useful,' writes Froude, 'made Pitt extremely anxious to secure his permanent help.' The Cornwallis papers record, but without any attempt to identify him, that the pension Samuel Turner received – dating from 1800 – was but 300l. a year. Wellington when Irish Secretary addressed to Portland a letter in which a present payment of 5,000l., and 'not more than 20,000l. within the year,' appears guaranteed to one nameless informer.234

Another case may be cited. A document placed in my hands by Sir W. Cope, Bart., records that his grandfather was told by Under-Secretary Cooke to stop at no sum, not even 100,000l., in urging Reynolds to turn approver. Reynolds, not realising the importance of his evidence, consented to take 5,000l. and 1,000l. a year, with the post of British consul. The tergiversation of Reynolds did not take place until 1798, long after Turner had sold the pass.

The services of 'Downshire's friend' were more timely and, perhaps, more valuable. He told what he knew in 1797: the names he gave of the Executive Committee (p. 7, ante) proved more important than might appear at first sight. Reynolds, it is true, gave the hint that a Committee would be found sitting at Bond's on March 12, 1798, but he does not seem to have disclosed names; his son says that the names were inserted in the warrant purely 'on speculation.'235

As regards the more distinct whisper of Turner, the betrayal of the Belfast Directory, at the very hour that Tone was leaving Brest with a French fleet, proved in itself a paralysing blow, and one worth its weight in gold. But the arm that dealt it struck from behind unseen. However, as most of the information that Downshire's friend gave concerned the Northern organisation, he may, perhaps, be credited with this exploit. The loss of Ulster was the loss of the right arm of the rebellion. Turner made his disclosures on October 8, 1797. Besides the list of the Executive Directory, there can be no doubt that in the information which followed he named, with others, John Hughes of Belfast, the date and place of whose arrest tally with the presumption that to Turner it was due. The 'History of Belfast' records: 'October 20, 1797 – John Hughes, bookseller, having been apprehended in Newry236 on a charge of high treason, was brought in here escorted by a party of light dragoons.'237 Mr. Froude says that 'Downshire's friend' kept him informed of everything.238

How well Turner knew Hughes is proved by the sworn testimony of the latter,239 in which he describes a breakfast in June 1797, with Samuel Turner, Teeling, Macnevin, etc., when the fitness of the country for an immediate rising was debated. Hughes had been a great patriot previously, but now to save himself became a mercenary informer, and even sought to criminate Grattan, who thereupon was dismissed from the Privy Council, though, as Stanhope240 admits, without just cause. There had been no more zealous propagandist of the rebellion than Hughes, and he names a long list of men whom he himself had sworn in on a prayer-book. In 1802 John Hughes retired to the United States and became a slave-owner.

Wickham's letter of June 8, 1798, enumerated, for the information of Lord Castlereagh, a number of men whose arrests in England seem consequent on the information furnished by Downshire's visitor. These names include McGuckin, the attorney, who had been concerned for O'Coigly at Maidstone. The subsequent career of this once determined rebel, but who soon after his arrest in 1798 became a spy for the Crown, enhances the importance of Turner's information at a great crisis. The first recorded payment to McGuckin of secret service money is March 5, 1799.241 His son migrated to France, and was created a baron by Louis Philippe.

The peril of assassination which shadowed every step made by Turner was not adequately weighed by Pitt when estimating the value of his services. The risk he ran was not confined to Ireland. The life of an English spy abroad was deemed equally unsafe, and there is much reason to fear that more than one met with short shrift. Even a successful diplomat, if his subtlety touched French interests, could not regard his life as safe. The disappearance of Benjamin Bathurst, a kinsman of Earl Bathurst, has never been explained. Bathurst was sent on a secret mission to Vienna, at the time that England before opening the Peninsular campaign sought to persuade Austria to declare, by way of a distraction, war against France. Austria soon after crossed the French frontier, and Bathurst received hints of threatened personal doom. Hoping to avoid assassination, he took a northerly route in returning to England, and on reaching Perleberg in Brandenburg, he visited, in his agitation, the commandant of cuirassiers, requesting that sentries might mount guard at the inn where he stopped. These were supplied, and Bathurst spent the day in writing and destroying letters. Shortly before his carriage came to the door in the dark of a November evening, he told some troopers who escorted him that they might withdraw. While all the household was on the alert to see him off, he walked beyond the circle of the lantern glare, and was lost to sight at the heads of the horses. This occurred on November 25, 1809, and Bathurst was never seen or heard of more, notwithstanding that, as we are reminded by Baring Gould, England offered 2,000l. reward, and Prussia 100 Friedrichs d'or, for the discovery even of his remains.

To trace the spy with whom these chapters mainly deal seemed, at the outset, almost as hopeless as to find Bathurst's bones. Of all the Government informers not one has been more ingeniously guarded from discovery. Wellington, with all his astuteness, supposed that the fact of a man's name appearing in the Banishment Act was conclusive evidence against him of having been a rebel,242 and therefore disqualified from claiming any favour from the Crown. But had he known the secret history of Turner's case, it would have opened his eyes. A Fugitive Bill was passed in July 1798, enumerating the rebel leaders who had fled from justice. In this bill we find Samuel Turner named. During the following year Parliament was asked to lend itself to the fraud of branding as a traitor the same Samuel Turner, by passing against him an Act of Attainder. From 1797 he lived abroad, posing as an 'exile of Erin.'243

The sealed chest in Dublin Castle which was opened a few years ago contained the only letter I ever saw signed with Turner's name. It related to his pension, and it was necessary to lay the mask aside for once. We have already seen him styled Furnes, Richardson, and especially 'Lord Downshire's friend.'244 A new name is now adopted to puzzle posterity. He directs that 500l. be lodged to the account of 'J. Destinger,' and this sum he was to draw through a third party. Turner's letter is addressed, not to Dublin Castle, but to Cooke in London, that gentleman having been succeeded, as Under-Secretary for Ireland, by Mr. Marsden.

Rt. Honble Mr. Secretary Cooke. 245 Hamburg: May 18, 1802.

Sir, – In consequence of letters I've had the honour of receiving from Lord Castlereagh and Sir James Craufurd, I take the liberty of intruding relative to a pension of 300l. per annum the Government has thought proper to bestow on me for information on Irish affairs.

His lordship states that you have been so kind as to offer to pay the pension to any person I would name as agent – or in any way I was to propose. At present there is no person in Ireland I'd like to trust, and till some mode is adopted, I should be extremely obliged if you'd take the trouble of lodging in any bank in London the sum of 500l. (British) on account of J. Destinger – the name I shall draw it under – through Sir Geo. Rumbold.246

Now that the war is over, and it is supposed all persons in my line are discharged, I make it a point to spend much more money than heretofore in order to do away any idea of my being employed and income diminished, and it is for that reason I request your attention, and beg the honour of a line through Sir George to say where the draft is to be sent.

Hoping one day or other to merit your good opinion, I remain, most respectfully, &c. &c.

S. Turner.

Turner spent money freely, and often when he could ill afford it. He had a social status to maintain: he was the son of a county magistrate; had distinguished himself in college; belonged to an honourable profession. He was the trustee of marriage settlements. He was 'Lord Downshire's friend!' If he continued to wear his mask well, why might he not aspire to attain, in America at least, the high official rank of his late colleague and fellow-prisoner, Thomas Addis Emmet, whom she at last honoured by a public funeral and a monument raised by national subscription?

The 'Dublin Directory' for 1804 describes Samuel Turner's address as 58 St. Stephen's Green, in that city. The volume must have been compiled during the previous year, and it may be that the Irish Government, in 1808, removed him to Dublin, with the object of picking the brains of those who had been concerned in Emmet's rebellion of that year. Until the very night of its outburst, in July 1808, the existence of a slumbering volcano had not been suspected. After the vain attempts to convict and hang Tandy, Turner had returned to his old quarters.247

The Irish Government were wholly unprepared for Emmet's revolt. No wonder that Wickham, with the experience he had acquired, confessed amazement that the secret should have been kept so well.

The Secretary of State cried out with astonishment to think that such a preparation for revolution could be carried on in the very bosom of the seat of Government, without discovery, for so long a time, when any of the party could have made their fortunes by a disclosure of the plot; and remarked, at the same time, in presence of Mr. Stafford and the two Mr. Parrots, John and William, that it was because they were mostly all mechanics, or working people, that the thing was kept so profound; and said that if the higher orders of society had been connected, they would divulge the plot for the sake of gain.248

Turner was at once set in motion: but how? We find him put into the same gaol with a swarm of State prisoners, many of whom had been active in 1798. All daily met for exercise in the yard of Kilmainham Gaol, and had every opportunity for converse. Here Robert Emmet himself had been confined until the very day of his execution.

The execution was followed by that of several of his confederates. Let us look back. Martial law is proclaimed; a dead calm prevails. Turner is now traced stealthily making his way to the Secretary of State's Office, Dublin Castle. Anxious to avoid committing himself in writing, especially with a true signature, he seeks the safer medium of oral communication. Mr. Marsden cannot be seen; he is engaged just then in conference with the chief law officer of the Crown. Turner scribbles the following and sends it in; no signature is attached, but the paper and enclosure are endorsed, by Marsden, 'Mr. Samuel Turner': —

Understanding the Attorney-General is just with you, I take the liberty of sending in a letter of Mr. Ball, but wish to speak on other matters.

Sergeant Ball's letter is dated

Temple St., October 3, 1803.

I have looked into the Act of Parliament and considered in what manner you should proceed in order to do away the effect of the attainder thereby passed against you. Nothing short of an Act of Parliament, reversing the former as far as it affects you, will be sufficient to enable you to sue for your property in our courts of justice. I think you mentioned that some other plan had been suggested as sufficient. If you will let me know what it is, I will give it the most attentive consideration.

How Marsden and the Attorney-General settled the difficulty, no correspondence exists to show; but the London 'Courier' of December 5, 1803, most lucidly reveals the facts: —

On Friday last, Samuel Turner, Esq., barrister-at-law, was brought to the bar of the Court of King's Bench, in custody of the keeper of Kilmainham Prison, under a charge of attainder, passed in the Irish Parliament, as one concerned in the Rebellion of the year 1798; but having shown that he was no way concerned therein, that he had not been in the country for a year and seven months prior to passing that Act —i. e. for thirteen months prior to the rebellion – and therefore could not be the person alluded to, his Majesty's Attorney-General confessed the same, and Mr. Turner was discharged accordingly.249

The 'Dublin Evening Post' of the day states that Turner's arrest was due simply to his indiscretion in visiting Ireland on business arising from the death of his father.250 But as the 'Post' in 1803 had been subsidised by the Crown, this account was probably meant to mislead. The Castle archives bulge with the brimful letters of its editor, H. B. Code. Turner's committal to Kilmainham was only another act in the great drama, one scene of which Mr. Froude has so powerfully put before us. 'Samuel Turner, Esquire,' of imposing presence and indomitable mien, a veteran in 'the cause,' the man who had challenged the Commander-in-Chief, the envoy to France, the exile of Erin, the friend of Lord Edward and Pamela, the disinherited by his father, the victim of State persecution, now stood before his fellow-prisoners the 'Ecce Homo' of martyrdom, commanding irresistibly their confidence.