Envisaging Canada as “51st State”: A Preoccupation with Invading and Annexing, an American Tradition North of the 49th Parallel

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
International Relations, Military history, Political geography, Regional History

During the time of European settlement of North America there has been at least three attempts to invade Canada by Americans (or by British settlers in what was to become the United States of America). All three ended ignominiously. The first in 1690, part of the Anglo-French conflict known as King William’s War, was a naval expedition by the Massachusetts Bay Colony led by Sir William Phips with the objective of seizing Québec City, the capital of New France. The English bombardment of Québec was an abject failure and Phips’ expedition was forced to return to Boston in smallpox-infested ships on which hundreds perished on the journey [‘King William’s War 1688-1697’, Colonial Society of Massachusetts,  www.colonialsociety.org]<ᵃ>.

1690 assault on Québec City from Massachusetts Bay colonists

The second invasion attempt was in 1775, during the early days of the American Revolutionary War. The idea to invade came from American army colonel (and later defector to the British side) Benedict Arnold, the rationale being to try to induce French Canadians to join the war for independence against their British rulers. The assault on Québec led by Arnold was easily repulsed by a reinforced British garrison and the American patriots reduced to 100 men were forced to retreat with their tails between their legs back to the American side [‘Battle of Québec: When Benedict Arnold Tried to Invade Canada’, Patrick J. Kiger, History, Upd. 29-Sep-2021, www.history.com].

1775 invasion of Québec, brainchild of Benedict Arnold
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The third occurrence was during the War of 1812, when the Americans invaded Canada, urged on by the “war hawks” in Congress who predicted it would an easy victory (in Thomas Jefferson’s words, “a mere matter of marching”)<ᵇ>.Despite making several invasion attempts, via both Upper and Lower Canada, the Americans again emerged empty-handed from their efforts (due to a combination of factors including inept US military leadership and woeful preparedness, and fierce resistance from the allied forces of British ‘Redcoats’ and First Nation warriors). In early 1813 the  Vermont newspaper Green-Mountain Farmer lamented that the Canadian campaign had produced nothing but “disaster, defeat, disgrace, and ruin and death” [‘How U.S. Forces Failed to Conquer Canada 200 Years Ago’, Jesse Greenspan,  History, Upd. 29-Aug-2018, www.history.com].

Guernsey Is stamp, commemoratingMaj-Gen Brock, War of 1812 (Source: rpsc.org)

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In addition there have been other unsanctioned invasions from the US, such as the Patriot War of 1837-38, a series of disjointed raids from the US borderlands in support of the Canadian rebels (Rebellions of 1837). The Americans who participated, many from the Hunters’ Lodges, were motivated both by antagonisms against what they saw as British tyranny and by a sense of adventurism (Washington under Van Buren maintained a policy of neutrality during this episode to safeguard its trade interests with Britain).

Map source: New York Almanack

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After the American Civil War Irish-American Republicans from the Fenian Brotherhood crossed the border, raiding British military strongholds in both the west and east of Canada as part of a stratagem to force the British into negotiation for Irish independence…the most notable of these engagements was the Battle of Ridgeway (1866) in which the Fenians were victorious over inexperienced Canadian volunteers. For the Fenian militia it was a pyrrhic victory, serving only to a spur for the realisation of Canadian confederation rather than to advance the cause of Irish independence<ᶜ> . [‘An Irishman’s Diary on the Battle of Ridgeway, the Fenian Invasion of Canada in 1866’, Brendan Ô Cathaoir, The Irish Times, 01-Jun-2016, www.irishtimes.com].

And when Americans weren’t engaged in the process of actually invading Canada, they were often scheming and planning to annex their northern neighbour. One of the more bizarre instances of this was “War Plan Red”, this 1930 US plan to invade Canada was, unlike earlier ones, supposedly a scheme to get in first! The US military’s predessors to the Pentagon feared that Britain in the years following WWI might launch an invasion of the US from Canada. Canadians in fact had already preempted the US with the military coming up with its own “Defender Scheme No. 1”, a five-pronged attack plan to invade the US (the idea was that Canada would make the initial (surprise) strike on key American cities and then rely on Britain and it’s other dominions to follow up the invasion).  Fortunately, nothing came of either of these plans and they were quietly shelved by the time North Americans managed to crystallise in their minds who the real enemy was (Nazi Germany) [‘The Time the U.S. Almost Went to War With Canada’, Kevin Lippert, Politico Magazine, 21-Jun-2018, www.politico.com].

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Parliament ablaze in Montreal

Another odd manifestation of the tendency toward annexation came from north of the 49th Parallel in the 1840s. In 1846 Britain repealed the Corn Laws<ᵈ> ending preferential colonial trade which provoked a merchant revolt in Canada. Conservative Anglophone businessmen were fearful that without protection for their produce the Canadian economy might plummet into recession,  some of them rioted, burning down the new parliament building in Montreal. 325 of the Tory businessmen, convinced that republican system of the United States would be more profitable to them, signed a document known as the Montreal Annexation Manifesto (1849), calling for the US to annex Canada. This of course never came to reality but the movement’s primary objective,  reciprocal free trade with the US and access to its market, was ultimately realised with the Elgin-Marcy (Reciprocity) Treaty in 1854…by which Canadian lumber and wheat entered the US duty-free, in exchange the Americans were given fishing rights off Canada’s Atlantic coast.

 

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<ᵃ> an unexpected consequence of Phips’ disastrous Québec adventure was Massachusetts’ introduction of the first government-backed paper currency in the American colonies, necessary to pay the near-mutinous troops, promised a share of the loot from Québec’s capture [Goldberg, Dror. “The Massachusetts Paper Money of 1690.” The Journal of Economic History 69, no. 4 (2009): 1092–1106. http://www.jstororg/stable/25654034.]

<ᵇ> once again the American invaders made the error of thinking they would be received as liberators in Canada

<ᶜ> curiously, in this same year (1866) a bill—designed to appeal to American Fenians—was introduced into the US Congress to formally annex “British North America”, but it never passed the House of Reps

<ᵈ> the ‘corn’ laws in the UK encompassed all cereal grain crops

 

Tsarist Russia in America’s Pacific Backdoor III: Hawai’i

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Regional History

The story of the Russian-American Company’s (RAC) Hawai’ian ‘colony’ reads as a minor footnote in the history of Russian America. In fact, rather than amounting to a colony, the ephemeral Hawai’ian enclave might at best be described as a putative outpost. The first tentative contacts between the Russians of RAC and the Sandwich Islands (Hawai’i) was in 1804 when Russian ships visited two of the islands, O’ahu and Kaua’i❈. RAC funded such circumnavigational expeditions from the early 19th century – one of its commercial aims to locate suppliers for its Russian-American settlements and markets for its manufactured goods (eg, China, Japan)[1].

Hawai’i: Fort Elizabeth
In 1807 RAC vessels began exchanging goods with the Hawaiian chieftains (animal pelts for foodstuffs and supplies). The following year RAC sent Lieutenant Hagemeister to Hawai’i to obtain salt (vital to Alaska for the preservation of both food and furs). Russian trade approaches were soon reciprocated by King Kamehameha I who had unified most of the Hawai’ian Islands under his kingdom[2]. Kamekameha exchanged correspondences with the governor of Russian Alaska at Sitka (New Archangel), Baranov, welcoming an annual trade between the two – hogs, batatas (sweet potato) and salt for otter pelts[3].

The Schaffer Fiasco – the “Hawai’ian Spectacular”
Around late 1814 early 1815 an RAC vessel was shipwrecked on Kaua’i and its company goods were seized by the island’s chieftain Kaumuali’i. Lieutenant Podushkin and George Anton Schäffer (a German surgeon in the Company’s employ) were sent to Kaua’i to recover the goods, but Schäffer, instead of following instructions, allowed himself to be embroiled in Hawai’ian politics and a plot hatched by Chief Kaumuali’i to regain power in the archipelago. Kaumuali’i and Schäffer entered into an alliance (without the approval of RAC!) – the Kaua’i king would provide 500 warriors + Schäffer would provide ships and ammunition for a military assault on King Kamekameha’s stronghold. The injudicious Schäffer embraced the quixotic notion that he was capable of paving the way for the RAC and the Russian navy to colonise Hawai’i[4].

Dr GA Schäffer

What followed was a bizarre 18-month misadventure during which Schäffer built fortifications at Waimea which he named Fort Elizabeth (Rus: Форт Елизаветы) and two smaller, earthworks forts on Kaua’i, made costly purchases of American ships without RAC authority, planted crops and failed to muster any native support for a Russian takeover of the archipelago (except for Kaumuali’i who was playing him for his own advantage) – all the while Shäffer was losing touch with reality and succumbing to delusions of grandeur (eg, naming the region of the island where the fort was, Shäfferthal). Schäffer’s faux colony finally came a cropper when Kamekameha’s influential clique of American traders ejected him from Hawai’i in 1817. Back in Sitka Baranov and RAC disavowed Schäffer’s actions and refused to pay the outstanding bills incurred by the German physician-cum-imperialist adventurer¤.

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Kaua’i

PostScript: Baranov, RAC and Russian designs on Hawai’i
Did Baranov at any stage perhaps want to go further than just establishing bilateral trade with the Hawai’ian chiefs? His written instructions to Lt Podushkin in early 1816 hint at something more imperially expansionist – Podushkin was told to secure King Kaumuali’i’s agreement to conduct trade and the construction of a Russian factory on Kaua’i, or failing that “… the whole island of Kauai should be taken in the name of our Sovereign Emperor of all the Russias and become a part of his possessions”[5]. After the War of 1812 broke out Baranov certainly sensed the chance to get a foothold in the Sandwich Islands and the lucrative sandalwood trade whilst the two combatants (Britain and the US) were likely to be distracted. Schäffer’s forcible removal from Hawai’i did not put an end to his advocacy … he continued to make grander and grander proposals to the Tsar that the islands be taken by force ASAP to safeguard all of Russian American possessions. And the delusional Schäffer was not entirely alone in running this line … after Baranov left Sitka elements of RAC continued to entertain Russia’s “Hawai’ian project” until 1821. The whole disastrous business was finally brought to a conclusion when Alexander I unequivocally expressed his disapproval of Schäffer’s scheme to integrate Hawai’i into the Russian Empire✥ (Alexander was very mindful of the necessity of not antagonising the European powers who used Hawai’i as a free port and regular trading station). Whether Russia and RAC harboured designs on Hawai’i or not, Washington was quick to react to the Russian incursion by establishing a consulate on Hawai’ian territory in 1820 – paving the way for the missionaries[6].

FN: Surprisingly, rather than disappearing without trace as you might imagine, the discredited Doctor Schäffer resurfaced in Brazil in the early 1820s, reinventing himself as an agent for Emperor Dom Pedro I securing large-scale emigration of Germans to newly independent Brazil.

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❈ following upon Captain James Cook’s discovery of the Sandwich Islands in 1778 American and British traders had established close commercial ties with the Hawai’ians
¤ described by RA Pierce as “a fast-working interloper”
✥ this was not the end of Russian involvement with Hawai’i by any measure – a Russian political exile, Nikolai Sudzilovsky, was elected the first Senate president of Hawai’i in 1901 (socialist Sudzilovsky was both opposed to Hawai’i joining the US and hostile to Tsarist Russia)

[1] ‘First Russian circumnavigation – Russian Voyage’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org
[2] E Joesting, Kauai: The Separate Kingdom (1988)
[3] RA Pierce, Russia’s Hawaiian Adventure, 1815-1817, (1965)
[4] H Schwartz, ‘Fort Ross California – A Historical Synopsis’, Fort Ross Conservancy, (IP Unit, Dept of Parks & Rec. California, Feb 1977)
[5] A.A.Baranov to I.A.Pudushkin, Feb. 15, 1816, cited in Pierce, op.cit.
[6] ‘Georg Anton Schäffer’, Wikipedia, http://.wikipedia.n.em.org

Bonaparte in America

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Biographical, Regional History, Social History

The association of America with Napoléon Bonaparte for most people probably revolves round the US government’s bonanza real estate deal with Napoléon in 1803…the US cheaply acquired huge swathes of territory (the Louisiana Purchase) which the French emperor wanted to offload to build up France’s finances for war. Napoléon Bonaparte (Italian: Nabulione Buonaparte) never came to the United States or to anywhere in the New World –- although in the event of his grand scheme to conquer Europe going pear-shaped (as it ultimately and irrevocably did in 1815), his “Plan B” was just that, to make good an escape to the American Republic [1]. However it was Napoléon’s older brother Joseph (born Giuseppe) Bonaparte, formerly installed as king of Spain and the Indies, and before that, king of Naples and Sicily, who did come to the American continent and moreover lived in the US for some 17 or more years after the Emperor’s fall from power.

Sibling & HM King Joseph

Joseph succeeded in his getaway where Napoléon failed, slipping out of French waters and travelling incognito to New York, albeit narrowly avoiding detection by the British. In America Joseph styled himself the Comte de Survilliers … after living in New York and Philadelphia for a period Bonaparte purchased a palatial residence in Bordentown, New Jersey called “Point Breeze” – one of the finest country houses in the Delaware Valley. Joseph was able to afford (and subsequently vastly improve) one of the republic’s grand mansions because he had brought the Spanish Bourbons’ crown jewels with him which he had acquired when abdicating the Spanish throne. With his dubiously acquired riches Bonaparte made other land acquisitions in upstate New York on the Black River (a locale still known as Lake Bonaparte)[2].

‘Point Breeze’, Bordentown, NJ

Joseph AKA the Count of Survilliers largely led a quiet, uneventful and comfortable life in the US, taking no interest in a political role … when Mexican rebels and expat French supporters gave their backing to him to be made emperor of Mexico (1820), he demurred at the offer. In 1832 Bonaparte returned to Europe (although he did return briefly to the US and his much loved mansion ‘Point Breeze’❈ in 1839), living for a while in London and in Italy where he died in 1844. The ineffective, former ‘puppet’ king of Spain was never permitted to return to his native France again because of the French government’s concern that it might provoke a groundswell for a Bonapartist restoration[3].

Joseph was not the only Bonapartist to flee to America following his brother’s downfall in 1815. The return of the Bourbons with the ascension of Louis XVIII prompted a “witch-hunt” of Bonapartists in France. Many followers of Napoléon escaped to America to avoid arrest and recriminations … once there some of Napoléon’s loyal soldiers set up Bonapartist colonies in Alabama (Vine and Olive Colony) and Texas (Champ d’Asile) – which were uniformly unsuccessful and short-lived[4].

Joseph’s (Spanish) Royal Monogram 👑

PostScript: Napoleon’s “life in America”
A) Rescue plans – before exile and on St Helena
In the aftermath of the disaster of Waterloo rumours abounded about various plots and attempts to rescue Napoléon. One plot involved a mega-wealthy French-born banker Stephen (Étienne) Girard living in the US who supposedly hatched an elaborate plan to transport the deposed emperor to Virginia (a claim made in the Baltimore American, 1902). According to some sources Girard also played a role in the Louisiana Purchase machinations[5].

Napoléon’s island prison
By far the most bizarre plot involved a Brit of Irish parentage Tom Johnson, who as well as being a recidivist smuggler had a bit of a reputation as an escape expert. Johnson’s claim was that in 1820 he was offered £40,000 to rescue Napoléon from St Helena, using two primitive types of submarines he had designed as the “getaway” vessels. Johnson’s colourful account reads as highly fanciful and the plot was in any case never implemented … the one plausible element of the story being that Johnson’s underwater crafts (for which designs did exist) were inspired by Robert Fulton’s 1806 submarine -–the American engineer and inventor had earlier worked for both Napoléon and the British government on armed maritime vessel projects (what is less certain is whether Johnson had actually met Fulton as he claimed)[6].

B) Exploring the “What If …” scenario for Napoléon
Devotees of alternative history have speculated lyrically about what might have happened had Napoléon made good his escape to the Americas. One of the early imaginative conjectures (1931) came from British historian HAL Fisher who hypothesised that the exiled emperor might have established a base in New York and then gone on to Spanish America to liberate the masses, before finally drowning at sea whilst attempting to conquer India[7].

Outlawed in Europe after Waterloo, it would have been logical for Napoléon to gravitate towards America … the US had only recently engaged in hostilities with Britain (War of 1812), so the locals would probably have been disposed or at least neutral towards him, he would have been able to live as a free man. The US was a new country born of revolution (and one inspiring a revolution in his native France which promoted his own rise). An American base would position the ambiguous ex-monarch well to marshal his resources and launch an invasion of Central and South America which was ripe for revolution against the Spanish conquerors. One of Napoléon’s aides-de-camp in fact made the suggestion to him that he should make himself “emperor of Mexico”[8] (anticipating what transpired with a later Habsburg royal).

A recent alternative history (Shannon Selin, Napoléon in America) postulates three possible theoretical courses of action for Napoléon – settling on the eastern (Atlantic) seaboard, living peacefully, probably near his favoured brother Joseph (possibly biding his time, building up the necessary support for another go at overthrowing the French Bourbons and reclaim the throne either for himself or for his son); establishing a colony within the US peacefully (in fact Bonapartists later attempted to forge colonies in Alabama and Texas – both then controlled by Spain); and as with Fisher’s supposition, invading Spain’s American colonies and thereby securing a new throne[9].

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❈ as boys Frank and Charles Woolworth (the future retail empire giants) lived close to ‘Joe’ Bonaparte’s abandoned Bordentown mansion, spending lots of their leisure time playing at ‘Point Breeze’

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[1] originally Napoléon and Joseph had laid plans for the two of them to seek refuge together in America in the likelihood of a worst-case scenario. A location in New Jersey was picked out as the optimum place for settling but Napoléon missed a real chance to escape to the US by stealth, having prevaricated too long waiting for anticipated passports which did not come, and then making the fateful decision to give himself up to the British authorities, CE Macartney & G Dorrance, The Bonapartes in America, (1939), www.penelope.uchicago.edu (see also PostScript above)
[2] R Veit, ‘Point Breeze (Bonaparte Estate)’, (2015), www.philadelphiaencyclopedia.org; ‘Joseph Bonaparte at Point Breeze. New Jersey’s Ex-King and the Crown Jewels’, Flatrock, www.flatrock.org.nz
[3] ibid.
[4] ‘Bonapartist Refugees in America, 1815-1850’, www.napolun.com
[5] L Weeks, ‘What if Napoleon Had Come to America’, NPR, 10-Feb-2015, www.npr.org. Girard also underwrote the American war effort in the War of 1812.
[6] M Dash, ‘The Secret Plot to Rescue Napoleon by Submarine’, Smithsonian Magazine, 08-Mar-2013, www.smithsonian.com
[7] H.A.L. Fisher, ‘If Napoleon had Escaped to America’, (Scribner’s Magazine, Jan. 1931), www.unz.org
[8] M Price, ‘How Napoleon Nearly Became a U.S. Citizen’, History News Network, 28-Dec-2014, www.historynewsnetwork.org
[9] Weeks, op.cit.

The Hawkesbury – A Not So Close Encounter with Napoleonic France

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Local history, Military history
Hawkesbury R. at Windsor
Hawkesbury R. at Windsor

Windsor, 63 kilometres north-west of Sydney and nestling on the southern side of the winding Hawkesbury River, is one of the most historic towns of Australia’s European settlement. The first white settlers moved into Windsor in the early 1790’s giving it the name Green Hills, although it wasn’t until Lachlan Macquarie’s governorship (commencing in early 1810) that the town and environs of Green Hills (by now renamed ‘Windsor’) started to get a kick-along, progress-wise.

Plaque honouring site of Macquarie’s Govt House at Windsor

The Riverview Shopping Centre in George Street (Windsor’s high street), constructed in 2006, offers up its own acknowledgement of the suburb’s rich historical story. On the centre’s marble effect floor, positioned at regular points, there is an historical timeline, a series of banner inscriptions which identify certain events or milestones in the history of the Hawkesbury district.

Among the little snippets of local historical interest is a reference to Windsor’s own notorious colonial bushranger, George Armstrong. Armstrong – labelled “the terror of the Windsor district” – briefly threatened the safety and well-being of the township’s citizens in 1837[1] (an interesting side-note to this is that nearby Wilberforce – just across the river – was the birthplace of a far more celebrated Australian bushranger, Fred Ward, better known as Captain Thunderbolt).

However it was another historical headline on the centre floor that caught my eye – the banner read “1814 ~ Report given to Governor Macquarie of planned invasion of the Hawkesbury by Napoleon”. I was not previously aware of any reference to a supposed connection between Napoléon and Sydney’s Windsor district, and found the notion an intriguing one.

Gov. Macquarie in Thompson Square
“http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/image-8.jpg”> Gov. Macquarie in Thompson Square[/captio
At the time the Napoleonic Wars were at their height with Britain and its allies moving towards the ultimate showdown with France at Waterloo in 1815. The official who alerted Macquarie to the French danger was Earl Bathurst, Secretary of War and Colonies (Bathurst to Macquarie: 1813 correspondence). Bathurst’s letter warned of the possibility of French attack on the colony, most likely to originate by sea from Broken Bay, down the Hawkesbury River … the target was thought to be Windsor’s granary (Sydney’s “food bowl”), to cut off its supply to Sydney Town[2]. In response, Macquarie, already preoccupied with the task of making Windsor more secure, stepped up the strengthening of the military garrison and boosted the population of free men (including emancipists) in the district.

British intelligence about a planned invasion of the Sydney colony has its genesis in the period’s French maritime expeditions in the South Pacifc, particularly that of Nicolas Baudin in 1802 and 1803. Baudin’s scientific expedition visited Port Jackson in 1802 and it was the activities (and subsequent written record) of the expedition’s naturalist, François Péron, which provided the blueprint for supposed French intentions in New Holland. Whilst there, Péron, under the guise of his scientific activities, engaged in a “freelance spying” exercise[3], collecting information on the nature and defence capacity of the colony. Péron wrote down his observations in a secret report (entitled Mémoire sur les établissements anglais à la Nouvelle Hollande).

Monsieur Péron

Péron claimed to be a government agent and that the expedition’s real purpose was a political mission. The zoologist-cum-spy recommended that France attack the fledgling British colony in New Holland, speculating that the act would incite an Irish rebellion against the colony’s English overlords and elicit resistance from the indigenous population as well. The military strategy advanced by Péron also called for a takeover of the south of Tasmania. The assault on Sydney via the Hawkesbury was one of three invasion routes proposed by Péron[4].

Although Péron’s viewpoint was widely discredited at the time, his memoir has recently been translated into English (from the original) and new research on the subject at Adelaide University (UOA) has thrown up fresh evidence to support the contention of Péron that Napoléon was seriously considering such an attack. Peron’s report (and the reactions to it) demonstrates that Port Jackson/NSW was perceived as a strategic location by both Britain and its enemies. The related UOA research unearthed further evidence that the British South Pacific outpost held a strategic necessity that went beyond the mere penal colony that was stated to be Sydney’s raison d’être[5].

Isle de France 🇫🇷

The perspective of the Sydney colony proffered by Péron (and Napoléon’s later acknowledgement of his views) underscore the displeasure with which the French viewed Britain’s decision to unilaterally annex this great, southern land without consulting other European powers. The new British colony was also seen as posing a potential threat to France’s Indian Ocean island possessions, especially to the French naval base in the Isle de France (Mauritius and its dependent territories)[6].

The British colonialists in Australia did recognise and respond to the threat from France at some level. Concern over French incursions into Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) was intensified by the contemporary activity of French explorers (separate ‘scientific’ expeditions by d’Entrecasteaux, Baudin and Freycinet in the south) – and prompted His Majesty’s government to occupy the south of Tasmania and plant the “Union Jack” on King Island (in the Bass Strait) in fear of French designs on this part of the continent[7].

Bathurst’s “hush-hush” letter to Macquarie (based on information supplied by agents friendly to Britain) also raised the prospect of a joint naval attack by both France and the United States[8]. The plan was for the combined fleet to assemble at Two Fold Bay (Eden, NSW) and then proceed up the Pacific Coast and launch an attack on Sydney from the north (Hawkesbury River). Napoléon’s disastrous Russian campaign and the reverses suffered by the US early in the War of 1812 meant that the plan was never put into practice[9], but the episode served to underline how strategically important the remote, western Pacific colony was for Britain imperial ambitions.

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[1] ‘The Notorious Bushranger George Armstrong’, Hawkesbury Historical Society, (10-Feb 2016), www.hawkesburyhistoricalsocietyblogspot.com.au
[2] ‘Windsor, New South Wales’, (Wiki), http://en.m.wikipedia.org
[3] described by some as an “amateur espionage project”, N Rothwell, ‘Francois Peron’s French lessons in the colonisation of Australia’, The Australian, 05-Apr 2014
[4] M Connor, ‘The secret plan to invade Sydney’, Quadrant Magazine, 01-Nov 2009, www.quadrant.org.au; ‘Napoleon’s Intention to Capture Thompson Square’, (The Battle for Windsor Bridge – Personal Stories), www.rahs.org.au
[5] R Brice, ‘Sacré bleu! French invasion plan for Sydney’, (ABC News, 11-Dec 2012), www.abc.net.au
[6] ibid.
[7] ‘Battle for Windsor Bridge’, op.cit.
[8] At the time (1813), both France and the US were engaged in (distinct but related) wars with Britain, whose navy was blockading the fleets of both countries. Attacking the important colony of Port Jackson made tactical sense to divert the British fleet away from US and French ports, ibid.
[9] ibid.