THE LORD OF CHAOS
The news of Napoleon’s death caused
a boom, and Cochrane immediately disposed of £139,000 worth of govern- ment Omnium shares. The source of the Napoleon rumour, a Prussian called De Berenger, was seen entering Cochrane’s house the day the news broke. Cochrane was tried under his political opponent Lord Ellenborough and found guilty: he was sentenced to 12 months in prison, fi ned £1000, stripped of his knighthood, debarred from the Commons, expelled from the Navy and ordered to stand in the pillory (which was never enacted as the authorities thought it would provoke a riot). Cochrane always claimed to be innocent and that his accusation was politically motivated; future Lord Chancellors agreed that Ellenborough should not have found him guilty on the basis of the evidence presented. But the disgraced Cochrane was not
to be beaten. At the invitation of Bern- ando O’Higgins he took up leadership of the Chilean navy. With only 300 men and two ships he captured seven forts and the Spanish South American fl agship, Esmer- alda. Moving on to Brazil in 1822, he assisted them in their war of independence from Portu- gal, pulling off an audacious stunt when he captured Maranhão by bluffi ng that a vast Brazil- ian fl eet was just over the horizon; a tactic that owed more to Captain Kirk than Lord Nelson. Although his time in Greece was less dramatic, his attacks on the Ottomans led to the interven- tion of the Great Powers, a situation that would reach its climax in the Crimean War. Things were changing in Britain as well. The
Whigs eventually came to power, but even the Tory Foreign Secretary, George Canning, was keen to promote British military might abroad. The Reform Bill was passed, and Cochrane’s knighthood was restored by William IV. Under Victoria, he became a knight of the Order of Bath and ascended through the Admiralty until he became Admiral of the Blue (1851), the White (1853), the Red (1857) and Rear-Admiral of the United Kingdom. Few politicians and
military commanders nowadays could bounce back from such ignominy; and there were, no doubt, some blimpish characters who retained their reservations about Cochrane. During the Crimean, the government considered bring- ing him back into active service, but worried that he would lose the Baltic fl eet in a hazard- ous offensive. An inveterate individualist to the end, even when he became Earl of Dundonald, he refused to sit in the House of Lords. No less a fi gure than Lord Byron, in conver- sation with Thomas Medwin, said:
‘There is
no man I envy so much as Lord Cochrane. His entry into Lima, which I see announced in today’s paper, is one of the great events’. For Byron, the existence of Cochrane was
proof that ‘patriotism and virtue are not quite extinct’. For many of his numerous foes, he was also proof that sheer gall, massive self-belief and low cunning were a surer route to popular adoration than sticking to the rules and not rocking the boat. He was the best kind of hero: one with a strong dash of the rogue.
‘Sentenced to 12 months in prison, he was fi ned £1000, stripped of his knighthood, debarred from the Commons and expelled by the Navy’
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