AUTHOR’S NOTE
188 Words
AUTHOR’S NOTEAs I have told in this novel when the War with Napoleon Bonaparte became more and more intense as it drew to an end, he considered the English smugglers to be his friends.
He even, at one time, established a special camp for them on the coast at Gravelines.
It was believed that the smugglers also carried War secrets and French spies across the Channel and there is no doubt that given a sufficient amount of money they would take home French prisoners of war who had escaped.
Jack Rattenbury, a notorious West Country smuggler, was caught and found to have agreed to take four French Officers across for one hundred pounds.
The money that Napoleon received for the goods brought back by the smugglers was always in gold and enabled him to buy extra arms from the few countries in Europe who were not yet at war.
When finally Napoleon Bonaparte was banished into exile on St. Helena, some of his admirers approached the famous English smuggler Thomas Johnson and offered him a bribe of forty thousand pounds if he could arrange to rescue the Emperor.
- Writer
