The Last Invasion of Britain - Fishguard 1797

Many remember the name of Hastings as the site of the last invasion of mainland Britain by Norman forces in 1066, but many forget the less successful  French attempt at invasion, which took place in Fishguard,West Wales  on this day in 1797 and  was the last time a hostile foreign force landed on British soil, and is therefore often referred to as “the last invasion of Britain”.

Irish revolutionary leader Wolfe Tone had received support from France to help end British rule in Ireland. Part of this plan was to organise French invasions of Britain to divert and weaken the British forces, with the overall aim of sending a much larger force to Ireland to overthrow the British there.

So on February 18th, 1797, a collection of 1400 French mercenaries and bailed convicts, led by an Irish-American named Colonel Tate set sail from Camaret .

Tate’s orders were to raid Bristol. He was ‘to bring as much chaos and confusion to the heart of Britain as was possible; to recommend and facilitate a rising of the British poor against the government; but whenever and wherever possible, to wage war against the castle, not the cottage.’

Once Bristol had been sacked, they were to march on Liverpool and do the same there. The original expectation had been that they would then traverse the country from west to east and link up with the force that was supposed to have taken Newcastle. All the while, it was assumed, their numbers would grow as the rebellious poor flocked to join them.Tate's orders had been to land near Bristol, England's second largest city at the time, and destroy it, then to cross over into Wales and march north into Chester and Liverpool. 

From the outset though things did not go according to plan. Wind conditions made it impossible for the four French warships to land anywhere near Bristol, so Tate decided to set course to here in Cardigan Bay instead, hoping the Welsh would join their revolt against English rule and join their Revolutionary cause.

 The French force was conveyed in four ships: two frigates La Vengeance and La Resistance, a corvette La Constance and a lugger Le Vatour. The commander was Commodore Jean Joseph Castagnier, and his log gives details of the voyage.

 There were several sightings of the fleet as they made their journey. The ships had been seen on their journey off Lundy Island by the master of a sloop, and he reported the sighting to Samuel Hancorne, the collector of the port of Swansea. He duly reported to the Duke of Portland on 22 February that the master of the sloop St Ives had seen the French ships.

On Wednesday February 22nd, the French warships sailed into Fishguard Bay. Upon landing, the French invasion force seem to have run out of enthusiasm,  which could have been a result of having to survive for years on prison rations, and on all accounts were more interested in the rich food and fine wine of the locals, and after a looting spree many were simply too drunk to do anything.Having angered the Welsh locals by seizing their food and wine, they quickly assembled an army of volunteer militia, army reservists, and sailors to fight the invasion, this attempted insurrection. And  after two days  the invasion had collapsed. Tate's forces surrendering to a local militia force led by Lord Cawdor on Febuary 25, 1797, with the French  being disarmed, and being marched of to imprisonment to nearby Haverfordwest .It is said the treaty was signed in the building that is now the Royal Oak pub.

It is interesting to note  that the surrender agreement drawn up by Tate' officers referred to the British coming at them "with troops of the line to the number of several thousand."No such troops were anywhere near Fishguard , at the time, however hundreds of local Welsh women dressed in their traditional scarlet tunics and tall black felts had come too witness  fighting between the French and the local men of the militia, and under the influence of too much wine, these women could easily have been mistaken for British army Redcoats.

One of the women who is said to be the hero of the hour went by the name of "Jemima Fawr" (Jemima the Great) 47 year old Jemima Nicholas,  who was a local cobbler. She single handedly with nothing more than a  pitchfork in hand rounded up twelve Frenchmen, and locked them inside the local St Mary's Church.

 

She would become a Welsh heroine and was awarded a pension of £50 for the rest of her life. After her death a memorial was raised to her, the lady who confronted the French invader armed only with a pitchfork.

 

There is little doubt that French boldness in Wales jolted Whitehall into realising that further attempts to invade Ireland were only a matter of time.

Wolfe Tone eventually got ashore in October 1798, but only after the rebellion had been bloodily crushed, a small French force had been defeated in September at Ballinamuck, and another flotilla had come to grief off Donegal. Tone’s arrival was as a prisoner of the Royal Navy. He was tried, condemned to death, and committed suicide. 

William Tate and several of his officer were eventually imprisoned on the Royal Oak, a prison hulk in Portsmouth harbour.  (They were released in a prisoner exchange in 1797 and returned to France.  The last record of Tate is of his returning to the United States in 1809 – hch)  In the inn of the same name in Fishguard there are several relics of the invasion, including a musket taken from a drunken French soldier, a French officer’s water bottle, and the table – now converted into a settle-type bench – on which the terms of surrender were signed.  There are also several paintings of 1797-style military personnel gathered outside the inn, even though records indicate that Cawdor’s headquarters was a private house at the time.

As the wars against France stretched on, Napoleon himself made his own plans to invade the UK, plans that were only dashed by his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo.

For the bicentenary in 1997, the Fishguard Arts Society made a tapestry on the model of the one in Bayeux. With scintillating detail and remarkable wit, the embroidery – thirty metres long and stitched by more than seventy local women – interweaves the stories told by the locals with those of the invaders.

http://www.fishguardartssociety.org.uk/The%20Last%20Invasion%20Tapestry.html  

Also for the bicentenary in 1997, Fishguard held a full-blown reenactment. Yvonne Fox, a local woman, played the role of heroic Jemima and did so until her death in 2010. Fishguard continues to  commemorate the invasion  to this day

Bibliography:

Phil Carradice, The Last Invasion, Village Publishing 1992

Pamela Horn, History of the French Invasion of Fishguard, 1797, Presell Printers, Fishguard 1980

Commander E H Stuart-Jones, The Last Invasion of Britain, University of Wales Press, Cardiff 1947

David Williams, A History of Modern Wales, John Murray, London 1950