On This Day in 1797 the French Invaded Wales - and the World Should Know What Happened Next

France is loaning the UK the Bayeux Tapestry. Would they appreciate our depiction of the Battle of Fishguard?

It was on this day in 1797 that French troops landed near Fishguard in the last invasion of mainland Britain.

We have our equivalent of the Bayeux tapestry in Fishguard which records the drama in glorious detail.

French President Emmanuel Macron last month set off public relations fireworks with his pledge to loan the Bayeux Tapestry to the UK.

It was a diplomatic masterstroke, allowing the Gallic wunderkind to appear generous and magnanimous without making any rash promises about future Brexit deals. The epic work of embroidery may not arrive in the UK for several years but legions of history lovers will line up to see its depiction of Norman conquerors demolishing Anglo Saxon resistance.

The Welsh Quilt Party proves our textile tradition is stronger than ever The good people of Bayeux may worry that their tourist income may take a hit while the tapestry is in British hands – but perhaps Wales can help out?

A colleague recently joked that we could loan the French one of Fishguard’s great cultural treasures – the Last Invasion Tapestry. Well, why not?

The 30-metre wonder is a wonderful reminder that 1066 was not the last time Britain was invaded. It depicts the February 22, 1797 landing of French forces near Fishguard in what quickly became a spectacular fiasco.

You could probably fit all the French or English historians who regularly think about the Battle of Fishguard in a couple of double decker buses but this incident has never been forgotten in Wales – and it deserves a much wider telling.

It’s not just the fantastic human detail that makes this story resonate over the centuries – although the tale of how cobbler Jemima Nicholas (aka Jemima Fawr) single-handedly rounded up 12 of the invaders would make a brilliant TV drama.

The Battle of Fishguard is an international story about the power of ideas, early globalisation and the complex nature of national identity. If ever there was an event with special relevance in the age of Brexit, this is it.

The invading force was launched under the French Revolutionary government known as the Directory. The plan was to first sack Bristol and then head into Wales – where the locals might prove friendly – while bigger forces landed in Ireland to support a rising by the United Irishmen.

This was a moment when the world was ablaze with incendiary ideas about liberty. France was in the throes of revolution; romantics, idealists and zealots across Ireland dreamed of ousting the British; and the uprising in American colonies had demonstrated that the forces of the Crown could be overthrown.

It was in this febrile atmosphere that the invasion plot was hatched, with the Irish-American Colonel William Tate leading his 1,400 troops from La Legion Noire. These men were not an elite fighting force; they were a ragtag assortment of ex-prisoners and decidedly unimpressive soldiers whom Napoleon had declined to take him on his own adventures.

Everything went to pot. The Irish landings never happened, the wind kept the warships far away from Bristol; a shot of cannon fire was enough to prevent a docking in Fishguard itself so the troops went onshore at Carreg Wastad.

Tales are still told of the drunken looting that followed. The hungry and ill soldiers did not inspire a Welsh uprising and after initial skirmishes and an attempt at negotiation the French realised the game was up and surrendered unconditionally.

So ended the last invasion of mainland Britain. We can be thankful that the events of February 1797 climaxed without mass bloodshed – most of the invading forces were able to return home as part of a prisoner exchange – but the memory of this episode should be kept alive.

Napoleon reportedly exhibited the Bayeux Tapestry in Paris while planning an invasion of Britain The French demonstrated how ideological fervour and a false confidence that a people’s sense of identity could be easily manipulated spurred a government to embark on a disastrous foreign escapade. The Welsh did not embrace the chance to join in a revolt, and Ireland would not achieve independence until the 20th century.

Then as now, governments need people in place who can press the pause button on military strikes that are all too likely to end in ignominy. It would have required guts and clout for someone to have stopped La Legion Noire from setting sail, but there must have been a mid-level bureaucrat who reckoned this plan was too cunning by half.

Historians are still trying to make sense of recent military decisions taken by US and UK governments.

The 2016 Iraq Inquiry gave a withering assessment of the lead-up to the invasion and its aftermath. Costly interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya failed to transform these countries into democratic success stories.

The next time that policy wonks suggest that the labyrinthine politics of a troubled region could be transformed with a quick invasion that is likely to command popular support, military commanders and politicians alike would do well to take a look at Fishguard’s Last Invasion Tapestry; it might encourage a healthy scepticism and humility in the Pentagon and the Ministry of Defence.

If President Macron does not jump at the chance of displaying this Welsh masterwork in Bayeux, he could consider coming to see it for himself and exploring West Wales. Not only would he find a walk on the nation’s coastal path a welcome contrast with the stuffiness of the Élysée Palace, such a visit might spur ideas throughout Wales about how this nation’s relationship with Europe should evolve post-Brexit.

The stories of Wales, Britain, Europe, North America and countries far beyond are utterly intertwined, and so are our futures. Just as ideas about equality caught fire in Paris and Philadelphia and led to the improbable spectacle of an Irish American colonel leading French ex-convicts in an invasion of Wales, people on different continents will continue to meet online and in person and the results will sometimes be fantastic and on other occasions farcical.

Students from all over the globe converge in Welsh universities and fall in and out of love and share ideas, recipes, music and ambitions. We can hope that Wales will be a crossroads nation where people from wildly different backgrounds pool their genius and make medical, technological and cultural breakthroughs.

The Welsh story and the human story, at its best, is about the wonder which emerges when lives are woven together. Our nation and our world, at its most beautiful, is a grand tapestry.

this could never happen in this day and age, these days all they need to do to conquer a nation is to just illegally immigrate and celebrate diversity, done deal

The article omits an essential piece of tradition . . . the national dress of Welsh women basically consists of a red shawl and a tall black chimney hat. From a distance (possibly combined with the effects of looted alcohol) this could be mistaken for the uniform of a British redcoat soldier. Folklore has it that while the local men flustered, their women lined the top of a neraby hill armed with shouldered broomsticks. Thinking this was the Army Militia ready to receive them, rather than face them in battle the invaders surrendered!

“Just as ideas about equality caught fire in Paris and Philadelphia and led to the improbable spectacle of an Irish American colonel leading French ex-convicts in an invasion of Wales, people on different continents will continue to meet online and in person and the results will sometimes be fantastic and on other occasions farcical.”

Seems like 200 years later that noble idea of equality has been perverted into the one that Tocqueville called “depraved”...

“There is a passion for equality that spurs all men to wish to be strong and esteemed. This passion tends to elevate the lesser to the rank of the greater. But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level [Class Warfare], and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom.”

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