Tim Clayton. The Secret War against Napoleon: Britain's Assassination Plot on the French Emperor. New York: Pegasus Books, 2019. Illustrations. 448 pp. $29.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-64313-057-6.
Reviewed by Christine Haynes
"... this new book by the author of more traditional histories of Trafalgar and Waterloo reconstructs the “secret war” orchestrated by the British government against Napoleon Bonaparte. Developing out of research he conducted for an exhibit on Napoleon and the British at the British Museum in 2015, Tim Clayton asserts that the new kind of “total” warfare practiced by the French necessitated “an unprecedented ruthlessness whose full extent remains relatively unexplored and remarkably little known” (p. 9). In contrast to recent work on Britain in the revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, which details its administrative, financial, and industrial mobilization, this book emphasizes the political intrigue behind the scenes of the British war effort....During these three years, in spite of the Peace of Amiens, the British government financed an extensive propaganda campaign against Napoleon, thereby creating the “Black Legend” about him.... the ministries of William Pitt and Henry Addington enlisted an army of French and British journalists, publishers, spies, and counterrevolutionaries under the direction of spymaster William Windham to undermine the government of the first consul....Ultimately, though, this book falls short of its promise to uncover a “secret war” against Napoleon. While the narrative begins strong, it gets bogged down in its reconstruction of the events of 1801-4, especially the political intrigue surrounding the Peace of Amiens and the second plot to land royalist agents near Boulogne. Although it seems to be intended for a popular non-British audience, the book assumes significant knowledge of British political factions and leaders in this period. In general, despite a helpful “Cast of Characters” at the beginning, there are far too many names for the reader to keep track of. More significantly for the overall argument, a lack of evidence in government records forces too much speculation on the part of the author, for instance, about the financing of royalist agents....Nonetheless, Clayton’s work does point to two relatively unexplored avenues of research on the role of Great Britain in the Napoleonic Wars: spying and propaganda."