[image error] On Monday 21 February 1814, Colonel du Bourg, aide-de-camp to Lord Cathcart, arrived at the Ship Inn in Dover and made the announcement that everyone in the country had been hoping to hear. Napoleon, the scourge of Europe, was dead, killed by a detachment of Cossacks, and the triumphant Allied armies were fast approaching Paris.

Pausing only to ask that the message be transmitted as quickly as possible by semaphore to the Admiralty in London, du Bourg then took the coach for London himself, s...