The Last Invasion of Britain

Governments who decide to send an invading army into someone else’s country always have a very good reason. Usually, these days, the reason given is that they don’t like the way Johnny Foreigner is behaving: they don’t agree with his religion and they way he treats his citizens is appalling. They have tried reasoning with him but unfortunately he isn’t open to logical discussion and therefore, with regret, they have no alternative but to send in the troops. In due course, of course, everyone will be grateful, especially the ordinary citizens of the country.

In the olden days they didn’t bother dressing it up in all this crap. It was simply look, you’ve got this, we want it, and we’re coming to get it, okay?

So I always find it pleasing when an invading army makes a total cock-up of the whole thing: and thus it was in the Last Invasion of Britain, in February 1797, which is a little-known and strangely cheering story.

In this case the invading army was French: but I’m not jumping on to the anti-French bandwagon – of course it wasn’t the ordinary French people, it was, as usual, the idiots in charge.

The job of invading Britain in 1797 was offered to a young Napoleon Bonaparte, who had the good sense to turn it down. So they ended up with an Irish-American chap called Tate. There were two problems with this choice of leader, neither of them too difficult to spot: 1) he didn’t speak any French and 2) he was over seventy years old.

He gathered together about 1400 troops from prisons and galleys. A crack fighting force they were not, though they could probably have won the Pan-France Drinking and Brawling Contest given half a chance.

So, on 22 February 1797, four French ships were spotted off the coast of Devon. They had a Cunning Plan – they sailed under English colours, in the hope nobody would notice they were French. I expect they sang English sea-shanties loudly, too, while saying things like “I say, Carruthers! Water frightfully choppy, what?” (in English) and “Keep those bloody baguettes out of sight!”(in French)

The next day they reached Fishguard and – in a move clearly intended to be described as “showing their true colours” – changed to French colours. The troops landed and wandered about looking for something to conquer.

Meanwhile, Lord Cawdor (no connection with Macbeth, I promise, he’s just in the story to add confusion) assembled six hundred or so militia, fencibles (volunteers not liable to serve abroad) and yeoman cavalry. The Welsh army’s trump card, in a nice variant of the trick the French had tried to play, was four hundred Welsh women volunteers all wearing red flannel – the French thought they were English soldiers.

One of these women, Jemima Nicholas, was having none of this French-invasion nonsense and arrested twelve French soldiers single-handedly, using just a pitchfork. I expect that when they saw her she reminded them of their scary mothers: “Put those guns down. Now. I said NOW!” (in Welsh).

On 25 February all the French surrendered at Goodwick Sands. Two Welshmen had been killed. Jemima Nicholas was hailed as the Fishguard Heroine and – this pleases me – given an annuity for life (and she lived to be eighty-two).

And that was the last time Britain was ever invaded.

That story’s almost forgotten. We have no memory, as a nation, of being invaded, and hardly even a folk-memory. People in their seventies and eighties remember the fear of being invaded by the Nazis, but nobody – apart from refugees from abroad who live here - remembers the terror of invasion. If we did, our leaders might be a bit more cautious about sending our soldiers into other people’s countries.