#napoleonic — Public Fediverse posts

British engineers making a pontoon bridge to access Bayonne, France, 1814 AD

https://piefed.social/c/historyart@piefed.social/p/2182640/british-engineers-making-a-pontoon-bridge-to-access-bayonne-france-1814-ad

Napoleonic forces in Russia during the 1812 invasion (Vasili Vasilievich Vereshchagin)

https://piefed.social/c/traditional_ar[email protected]/p/2182631/napoleonic-forces-in-russia-during-the-1812-invasion-vasili-vasilievich-vereshchagin

Napoleonic forces in Russia during the 1812 invasion (Vasili Vasilievich Vereshchagin)

https://piefed.social/c/historyart@piefed.social/p/2182629/napoleonic-forces-in-russia-during-the-1812-invasion-vasili-vasilievich-vereshchagin

Vive la révolution! Vive l'Empereur!

https://piefed.social/c/historymemes/p/2177510/vive-la-revolution-vive-l-empereur

Where does Napoleon keep his armies? Up his sleevies... Pocket General: Waterloo, Brandon Fisichella's rules-agnostic illustrated card system, lets you achieve much the same thing but with pockets. #wargames #pocketGeneral #napoleonic #crowdfundQuest #crowdfunding #kickstarter
https://www.tabletopsentinel.com/news/historical/crowdfund-quest-pocket-general-wargaming-cards?utm_source=mastodon

Master and Commander (Aubrey/Maturin Novels) "British naval officer Jack Aubrey is elated to be given his first appointment as commander" Sale: $15.95 to $2.99 by Patrick O'Brian Rating: 4.5/5 (10251 Reviews) #historical #fiction #literary #seaadventures #napoleonic #wars #books #kindle #booksky

Master and Commander (Aubrey/M...

When you finally reach Moscow

https://piefed.social/c/historymemes/p/2114063/when-you-finally-reach-moscow

Gold Star for Old Boney

https://piefed.social/c/historymemes/p/2101637/gold-star-for-old-boney

"A conqueror, like a cannonball, must go on..."

https://piefed.social/c/historymemes/p/2100662/a-conqueror-like-a-cannonball-must-go-on

All that financial aid you've been giving the Prussians? Down the drain.

https://piefed.social/c/historymemes/p/2086159/all-that-financial-aid-you-ve-been-giving-the-prussians-down-the-drain

"Feudalism is for squares" - Napoleon

https://piefed.social/c/historymemes/p/2081057/feudalism-is-for-squares-napoleon

ANGLOPHOBIA

https://piefed.social/c/noncrediblediplomacy/p/2078575/anglophobia

ANGLOPHOBIA

https://piefed.social/c/historymemes/p/2078574/anglophobia

"It's not like Russia is big or anything like that"

https://piefed.social/c/historymemes/p/2070642/it-s-not-like-russia-is-big-or-anything-like-that

POV: you have the misfortune of being any country near France 1800-1812

https://piefed.social/c/historymemes/p/2041366/pov-you-have-the-misfortune-of-being-any-country-near-france-1800-1812

"Josephine, my darling, I would like to refer to you as 'Tsar Alexander' tonight when we make love."

https://piefed.social/c/historymemes/p/2037552/josephine-my-darling-i-would-like-to-refer-to-you-as-tsar-alexander-tonight-when-we-mak

The Devil and his Protegée or Another Separation in Contemplation (1810) by James Gillray.

Source: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Available to buy as a print.

https://pdimagearchive.org/images/7e51a9cf-6442-41f5-98fd-70a0efa8d3e2

#austria #devil #french #napoleon #napoleonic-wars #pitchforks #beds #sex-manual #art #publicdomain

Sacre bleu, the absolute madman has done it again!

https://piefed.social/c/historymemes/p/2034456/sacre-bleu-the-absolute-madman-has-done-it-again

"You don't understand, this is L'EMPEREUR who HATES KINGS! A true son of the French Revolution!"

https://piefed.social/c/historymemes/p/2025893/you-don-t-understand-this-is-l-empereur-who-hates-kings-a-true-son-of-the-french-revolu

Any day now!

https://piefed.social/c/historymemes/p/2010230/any-day-now

Swiss sapper in service to Napoleonic France

https://piefed.social/c/historyart/p/2000609/swiss-sapper-in-service-to-napoleonic-france

Mounted drummer of Napoleon's Horse Grenadiers

https://piefed.social/c/historyart/p/1998962/mounted-drummer-of-napoleon-s-horse-grenadiers

Drummer (and dog) in Napoleonic France, 1809 AD

https://piefed.social/c/historyart/p/1991907/drummer-and-dog-in-napoleonic-france-1809-ad

Artillery officers of the French Imperial Guard, 1813 AD

https://piefed.social/c/historyart/p/1987926/artillery-officers-of-the-french-imperial-guard-1813-ad

"Let me reorganize a bit"

https://piefed.social/c/historymemes/p/1980578/let-me-reorganize-a-bit

It is becoming clear that the #USA was feinted into a #ceasefire that #Trump took on face value. And #Iran continued the war, lighting #Kuwait and #UAE on fire while #mining the straight of #Hormuz except for their own #tollbooth. And #Hezbollah (fuck them anyway) is proving effective against #Israel. #dronewar

Not learning lessons from the #Ukraine war.

This new #Napoleonic period, the desire for glory and conquest, crashes on pure stupidity.

At least we get the end of the oil era. #greens

Throne of Jade: Book Two of Temeraire "It is good to show respect to old gods, even if they are not yours" Sale: $20 to $1.99 by Naomi Novik Rating: 4.4/5 (4,126 Reviews) #Temeraire #Dragons #Historical #Fantasy #Napoleonic #Books #Mystery #Suspense #BookSky

Throne of Jade: Book Two of Te...

"Looks like a fair fight." - France

https://piefed.social/c/historymemes/p/1928970/looks-like-a-fair-fight-france

The thread about the Calton Hill Naval Telegraph and the Forth coast’s Napoleonic communication system

Edinburgh’s City Art Centre shared this wonderful 1797 painting by George Walker this morning (July 11th 2023), showing the east of the old city as viewed from the vicinity of St. Anthony’s Chapel in Holyrood Park. This was an extremely popular viewpoint for 18th and 19th century artists and there are any numbers of etchings, watercolours and prints of this vista, making it a good record of the changes in the city over this time period.

This image of course poses the question: “what on earth is that enormous mast on the Calton Hill?!“

Well then, what on earth is that enormous mast on the Calton Hill? The answer is that this was a telegraph. No, not an electric or wireless telegraph, but a naval flagstaff for communication with ships in Leith Roads during the period of the French Revolutionary & Napoleonic Wars of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The word telegraph of course long predates more modern uses and literally means “writing from a distance” and that’s exactly what a systems such as this could do; as and when daylight and the ambient visibility allowed, the mast could communicate by coded messages transmitted by hoisting various combinations of flags and marker balls up the staff.

The telegraph pole is clearly marked on John Ainslie’s 1804 map of the City:

And we can also very clearly see it in an advertising print for one of Robert Barker’s panoramas from 1806 that was exhibited in Leicester Square in London. His first panorama of this view, from 1792, does not show the mast in place.

An earlier print – also in the collection of the city – shows a similar scene to that of George Walker’s painting, however as the Bridewell – Robert Adam’s prison on the lower slopes of the Calton Hill – is missing from this scene it suggests that this is prior to 1795 and therefore that the mast pre-dates the installation of the Admiralty’s signal telegraph chain. The mast is absent in a plan of the city by James Watson and Thomas Brown dated 1793, suggesting it was erected between those dates. A chain of very similar telegraphs had been installed around the Channel Islands in 1792.

This Calton Hill signal post was at the western end of a telegraph chain that stretched between Edinburgh and St. Abbs Head, to forewarn of any French incursions into the Firth of Forth (bear in mind that in 1779, a small American squadron under John Paul Jones had tried just that) and allow the reporting of shipping traffic in and out of the Forth back to the Admiralty in Leith (formally the Commander-in-Chief at Leith and on the Coast of Scotland) . Interception and boarding parties could then be sent out to any unexpected or unknown vessels. This signal chain was apparently constructed in 1801, so would have been an addition to the pre-existing Calton Hill flagstaff. It is likely that the mast was first erected for communicating with ships anchored in the Leith Roads out in the Forth, at this time an important forming-up point for naval convoys.

With thanks to Chris Wright for his assistance in finding a copy of the relevant paper, I have plotted the Forth & East Coast flag telegraph chain onto a map (below). The 8 stations spanned 41 miles of coast from St. Abb’s Head in the east to Calton Hill in the west, for the Admiralty HQ in Leith. Messages that would otherwise take the best part of a day to carry could be transmitted (weather dependent) to and from Edinburgh and Leith in a matter of minutes.

Each station was manned by a lieutenant on half pay, a petty officer or midshipman plus as his deputy and two men. All to have been classed as “unfit for sea service”, meaning they were too old, young, or injured. The structures were hastily constructed and temporary, built largely from timber with canvas for roofing and little remains apart from perimeter walls to keep the sheep out or some levelled platforms for the signal staff and support guys. The wooden huts were painted with a mix of tar, ochre and sand. Life must have been dull, cold and uncomfortable.

For communication purposes, each telegraph was provided with 1 x large red signal flag (18 breadths x 7 yards size), 1 x large blue pennant (5 breaths x 50 yards size) and 4 x hollow canvas signalling balls, painted black (43″ diameter). A system of coded signals used combinations of the red flag, blue pennant and a certain number of balls. For instance the blue pennant plus 3 balls = “Enemy landing to the west“. The below diagram for the Port of Leith flag signals in the 1860s, shows how with just 3 flags and 2 balls, it was possible to unambiguously communicate the numbers 10 – 26 (and the halves in-between). Now make those depth numbers signals in a code book, and you’ve got yourself a telegraphic communication system.

Each station was provided with an inventory that included:

• 163 yards of roofing canvas
• A 30 foot flagstaff
• A 50 foot topmast for the staff
• 100 fathoms of 1.5 inch and 77 fathoms of 2.5 inch rope
• officer’s bath stove
• fire grate for the men’s quarters
• 6 chairs, 2 tables

Four chaldrons of coal (about 5.25 m3), £3 of candles and £1 of stationary were allowed per annum. It wasn’t until 1803 that the Admiralty made an allowance for 1 x cot bed (for the officer) and 3 x hammocks (for the men), and only upon written application. I have also inferred that the officer may not have lived permanently on site as he was given a travel allowance. The illustrations below, made by Royal Engineer Captain William Smith, show the telegraph station at Malin Head in Ireland in 1804. The flagstaffs and cabins would have been similar on the East Coast of Scotland.

Exceptions exist however. The stations at St. Abbs, Dowlaw and North Berwick seem to have been more substantially built from the local stone, perhaps due to their isolation or exposure? Good remains of the stone buildings remain on North Berwick Law above the town.

In case there was any doubt it was a military structure, rather than a shepherd’s bothy, one of the stones has been neatly inscribed with the cipher “G. R.”

And a section of flag staff (quite remarkably, if it’s original) remained in situ during the archaeological site survey in 2018!

I can find almost no mentions of the East Coast telegraph being used in the newspapers. The earliest is in the London Oracle on 26th October 1798, which records a scare that French warships were in the Forth when two friendly Russian warships did not give the correct signals and in consequence “the signal post on the Calton Hill was at work most part of the day“. A decade later in 1808 the Caledonian Mercury reported that the St. Abb’s Head station sent a message to Edinburgh that the damaged merchant ship Cygnet had drifted inshore there. An 1802 aquatint shows that the mast was still in place at that time:

Plans of the city include it up to 1809, but construction of the Nelson Monument from 1807 onwards soon made the flagstaff surplus to requirements – however the below illustration below by John Harden clearly shows the Monument in place where the flagstaff once stood but also shows the flagstaff standing to the east of it. This suggests that the staff was moved to an alternative location while the monument was still under construction.

The Monument was designed to effectively be a 160 foot tall flagstaff in its own right, to act as a signal station, with accommodation for the signallers, the officer in the tower itself and four injured seamen pensioners in the building at its base. It was intended that the duties of the occupants would include hoisting news of British naval victories and celebrating past triumphs on their anniversaries. For the latter purposes, flags bearing the names of these events were to have been provided.

The design of the monument by Robert Burn is said to be inspired by Nelson’s folding telescope. You have to admit that it was a big improvement on the obelisk style from an earlier draft by Alexander Nasmyth that had been rejected as too expensive.

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A “saga of procrastination and sharp practice”: the thread about Leith’s Tally Toor

If you were to go down to Leith Docks and venture where security won’t let you go, you would eventually come across a squat, circular and very curious masonry structure. What you have just found is the Tally Toor, the Leith Martello Tower. You would be forgiven for not realising it was there or for never having heard of it. It doesn’t look like much of a tower, but that’s because most of it has been buried within the reclaimed land behind the Easter Breakwater of the Port of Leith. There was a time when this once stood proudly upon the rocks in the Leith Roads.

Martello Towers were a response to the threat of coastal attacks or even invasion during the Napoleonic period of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. They were built throughout the British Isles and out into the Empire, but Leith is one of only three that were constructed in Scotland. The word Martello (or Tally to Leithers) is an Anglicisation of Torra di Mortella – a medieval Genoese round tower in the north of Corsica. This fortification caused the Royal Navy such disproportionate trouble to overcome it during the Siege of Saint Florent in 1794 that it was taken as a model defensive outpost for home use. The thirty-three men at Mortella had resisted bombardment of British warships and had held off the 700 men sent ashore to take it that it inspired a home grown variant as a model defensive outpost.

The basic design of the British tower is rather like a squat lighthouse and they were to be located at advantageous coastal positions. Entrance was via a raised door accessed through a retractable ladder to make capture from the land more difficult. Inside, behind the thick stone walls, were two floors of accommodation and storage for an officer and about twenty-five men. Buried within the foundations would be a well and/or water cistern and perhaps a storeroom. But unlike a lighthouse, instead of a navigation beacon on the top instead there was an open fighting platform fitted with two or three heavy guns that could pivot be trained to attack approaching targets. The height of the tower meant it fired down upon ships, affording a raised and protected position for observation and signalling.

The Tally Toor was not the first Georgian-era fortification to defend Leith. In 1779, Leith and Edinburgh had been threatened by the squadron of the American John Paul Jones during the War of Independence and the city had responded to the threat from the sea by building Leith Fort to guard the harbour entrance. The Fort was never entirely satisfactory and for most of its life was used as an ordnance depot, a drill barracks for artillery volunteers and as accommodation for army administrators. In light of its deficiencies in 1807 the Board of Ordnance proposed a thirty-two foot high Martello tower on the rocks at the mouth of the Port of Leith to improve the defences.

Somewhat unusually, the tower was not to be built by the military but was left to the Corporation of the City of Edinburgh to construct. Work began in 1809 but due to a “saga of procrastination and sharp practice” and it was not finally handed over to the Board until nearly 30 years later in 1838. The below painting by Robert Norie shows the end of the outer breakwater at Leith as it then was, with the tower being accessible across the interidal rocks at low water. The incomplete base storeys are being used as a handy mooring point for fishing boats.

It had cost £17,179 18s 4½d, and it wasn’t even finished! Plus ça change for a construction project by the council in Edinburgh! The final structure was 45 feet high, with 16 feet of foundations built down into the rocks. The base diameter was 80 feet and the gun platform at the top was large enough to accommodate not one but three pivoting cannons. As a result of this, from the top the tower has an elegant cloverleaf (or fidget spinner!) appearance on account of the three overlapping gun positions.

Within the foundations was a single central chamber and there were two staircases within the walls, leading up to the gun platform. Due to the relative peace with other European powers by the time it was completed the tower was not finally made ready to accept its guns until 1853, thirty-five years after it was first planned, prompted by the crisis of the Crimean War.

According to “Martello Towers Worldwide” (where would one be without a copy of that handy?) at that time it was armed with two 32-pdr cannons and was occupied (when required) by a detachment from Leith Fort until 1869 when it was mothballed. The 32-pdr was so-called because it fired a shot weighing thirty-two pounds and was the Royal Navy’s standard heavyweight shipboard weapon. The handy diagram below shows the main parts including the rammer, wad and pricker (no giggling at the back!)

These were the same such guns as were also mounted at Leith Fort itself, as can be seen in a series of earlier photos made there by David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson.

The 1849 Ordnance Survey Town Plan clearly shows the tower and also one presumes the obvious route for the garrison to reach it should they ever need to across the barrier of intertidal rocks known as The Weir” the same route as shown in Norie’s painting.

The rocks on which the Tower was situated, once the Mussell Cape Rocks, became known instead as the Martello Rocks. Further, smaller towers for the Forth were planned at Cramond Island and Inchkeith but were judged not to be a pressing need and so work never started; given how long it took and how much it cost to build the first, that was probably a sensible decision. These would have carried two 24-pdr cannons rather than the three 32-pdrs at Leith. In 1854, the Inspector General of Fortifications prepared a report on the Forth defences in which he stated:

At Leith there are at present twelve heavy guns, mounted for the protection of the harbour and roadstead at Leith Fort and on a tower; it would be, however, very desirable to establish two batteries and a small barrack on the Island of Inch Keith.

Burgoyne’s report

After 1869 the disarmed tower was abandoned, just 15 or so years after it had finally been completed and occupied. Thereafter its main function was an interesting navigation marker for the approaches to Leith.

As war clouds gathered and dispersed again on the horizon, there were occasional plans to re-establish the Tower as a defensive position. It was proposed in the 1880s to mount a 6-inch Rifled Breech Loader (RBL) gun on top, which appears never to have been completed. In 1891 an even bigger 9.2-inch Breech Loader (BL) gun was proposed but by 1894 it was instead suggested to place two 6-inch BL guns on the dock walls. In 1899, approval was given for two 4.7-inch Quick Firing (QF) guns for the Tower but once again these do not ever seem to have been installed. The following year it was back to two 6-inch pieces but again these remained paper plans. All these proposals are detailed in The Fortification of the Firth of Forth 1880-1977 by Gordon J. Barclay and Ron Morris, published by the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland in 2019.

In fact it does not seem that the Tower was ever actually re-armed to defend the Port against intrusion from the sea ever again. The citizens of Leith were however left with a curious object to explore, one which was easily accessible at low tide, and it became a source of fascination for generations of children. The picture below shows the scale of the abandoned fortification. Check out the boy in his swimmers looking over the parapet!

But that was not quite the end of the story for the Tower as a defensive position and it finally went to war in 1939 when it was reconfigured to act as an anti-aircraft gun platform. The insides were modified with hastily-built brick partition walls to reduce the risk of blast damage and on the top were mounted three concrete and cast iron positions for the guns.

After the war the Tower’s splendid isolation out at sea was about to be terminated. From the late 1930s onwards the Leith Docks Commissioners had been building vast new breakwaters around the harbour in an attempt to make it non-tideal and they were slowly edging towards the tower. By 1951 it was still outside the sea wall, but only just.

The sea wall finally enclosed the tower in 1972 and with the land behind being built up by reclamation it appeared to be sinking lower and lower into the ground, when in reality the ground was rising higher and higher around it. The diagram below indicates just how deeply the tower was buried within the new docklands.

The slow march of Leith Docks out towards the Firth of Forth can be visualised in the below animation based on maps. It also shows how useful a defensive position the tower initially was when it was built, any ship wanting to enter the docks had to come around the Eastern and Middle Craigs and the Black Rocks, therefore had to pass close by the Tower’s guns.

We can no longer get anywhere near the Tower thanks to the stringent security at the docks, which has been stepped up significantly in recent years. Forth Ports, the current landowner, used to open it once a year to visitors but it’s been around a decade since anyone was afforded that privilege as far as I know. But we can still see the tower in art, look at enough paintings of Leith Docks and it pops up again and again.

And if you are ever fortunate enough to get the chance to get up close and personal with it, look out for the mason’s marks left behind by the Irish Navvies who were engaged in its construction:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/davydubbit/37503950394/in/album-72157688932723074/

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
Or please do just share this post on social media or amongst friends and like-minded people, sites like this thrive on being shared.

Explore Threadinburgh by map:

These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

NO AI TRAINING: Any use of the contents of this website to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. The author reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.