In the collections of the British Library is a first edition of, what is for me, one of the most remarkable books ever published: A General History of the Lives and Adventures of the Most Famous Highwaymen, Murderers, Street-Robbers, &c. To Which Is Added, a Genuine Account of the Voyages and Plunders of the Most Notorious Pyrates.

It was written by one Captain Charles Johnson and published in 1734. On the surface, this is a collection of fascinating stories about various bloodthirsty rogues.

But scratch a little deeper, reading carefully its narratives of murder and mayhem, and you’ll discover that this book actually raises questions that go to the very heart of what we know about the past – and the present.

Who was Captain Charles Johnson?

Johnson was a literary phenomenon in the early part of the 18th century. He first roared onto the London publishing scene in 1724, in a cacophony of swearing and violence, with a book recounting the “true” lives of pirates, building on a tradition of criminal biographies that can be traced back to the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. A decade later, he saw the opportunity to bring together the stories of diverse criminals in one book – the literary equivalent of Newgate Prison, each villain occupying his own cell-like chapter.

Charles Johnson’s identity remains a mystery (that name presumably being a pseudonym), but one thing is certain: he was a masterful storyteller and historian. He weaves fact with fiction and glorifies in his own trickery, celebrating his role as a historical fraudster. At the same time, he often tells the truth – or at least the truth as he wishes it to be remembered.

To read his book is not only to be educated and entertained by a rich cast of criminals going back over a number of centuries, but also to be educated and entertained by life in Britain in the mid 1730s, and by the anonymous author’s beliefs and understanding of his world. In particular, it provides fascinating insights into attitudes towards criminals and wider society in the early Georgian era.

Why did he focus on highwaymen?

As Johnson’s book makes abundantly clear, criminals could strike anywhere. But nowhere were people more vulnerable to crime’s depredations than when they were on the move. For centuries before the Industrial Revolution – with its gates, turnpikes and road patrols – roads were a source of intense anxiety, presenting numerous hazards. Settlements were spread out, dislocated from one another. To travel was to become isolated for long periods of time.

The landscape was more awkward than it is today, with thick forests here, unwadeable streams there, and bogs and thickets regularly blocking the way. Watchmen provided a degree of security in some towns and cities, but there was no formal police force until the Metropolitan Police was established in London in 1829. Roads, even on the outskirts of major cities, were dangerous.

Johnson explores danger on the roads in his chapter on a highwayman called Sir Gosselin Denville, who plied his trade not in the author’s own time but back in the 14th century. Among other exploits, this rogue robbed two cardinals sent to England from Rome to negotiate with Edward II. Johnson gleefully describes his predations:

“The continual preys he and his men made on all travellers, put the whole country into a terrible pannic; for there was no such thing as travelling with any safety; and the great number of persons, of whom his gang was composed, plainly shewed, that they defied the laws, and every thing else. What they could not obtain on the highway, they sought for in houses, monasteries, churches, and nunneries, which were rifled without any distinction; and the most valuable and sacred things carried off.”

• Read more | The extraordinary legend of highwayman Dick Turpin

Did he present the criminals in a positive light?

One of the most eye-catching aspects of Johnson’s book is that he reserves some of his most stinging criticism not for highwaymen themselves, but their victims. He is keenly aware of the deficiencies of the criminals we meet in the book, describing one such rogue, Thomas Dun, as a man of “very mean extraction” who “had contracted thieving so much from his childhood, that every thing he touch’d stuck to his fingers like birdlime”.

Yet the victims of criminal acts are, in Johnson’s estimation, often as culpable as those who commit them. Throughout his book we encounter sly lawyers, grasping politicians, crooked tradesmen and quack doctors, each presented as a parasite on society. The author also notes the villainy of those in power, arguing that “A Great Villain may commit more Depredations in a short time, than a hundred little ones can in a long Course of Years,” and claiming that: “It is not unprecedented for a very great knight to be a very great robber.”

Johnson takes great glee in scolding hypocrites. It is telling that he quotes at length a passage in the Bible in an early chapter from the gospel of Luke in which everyday criminals are named:

“Servants when they embezzle the Goods of their Masters: Nay, Apothecaries, and Taylors, when they make unconscionable Bills; Butchers, when they blow their Veil; Millers, for taking double Toll; Shoemakers, for stretching their Leather larger than their Consciences; Surgeons, for prolonging a Cure; Physicians, for taking away the Lives of their Patients; and Lawyers, for taking Bribes on both Sides: I say, that all these are no better than Thieves, and such as they, nor Covetous, nor Drunkards, nor Revilers, nor Extortioners, shall inherit the Kingdom of God.”

In his life of Ned Wicks, a highwayman executed in Warwick in 1713, Johnson reserves particular ire for a miserly landlord who relentlessly demanded rent from a poor widow, driving her to ruin. In Johnson’s account, Wicks comes across the weeping widow, discovers her story and hunts down the landlord on the road, whereupon “he did not only bid him stand and deliver, but presenting him also with a whole volley of first-rate oaths, he so frightened him out of his wits, that he delivered all the money he had lately received, and as much more to it.”

• Read more | Stede Bonnet, Gentleman Pirate: how a mid-life crisis created the ‘worst pirate of all time’

How interested were Georgians in tales of criminals?

Johnson’s book demonstrates that true crime sold well in the 18th century, just as it does today. Many of his subjects were not just criminals plucked from obscurity but well-known personalities – celebrities, even.

In 1724, the year Johnson published his first book – a compendium of the lives of pirates – four criminal biographies were printed about the notorious thief Jack Sheppard. He had been hanged that winter at Tyburn in London; almost immediately, chapbooks, ballads and plays appeared telling his story. Meanwhile, the previous year had seen the publication of biographies of the Scottish outlaw Rob Roy and John Stanley, a murderous early 15th-century knight-errant.

Johnson’s writings give glimpses into the private lives of criminal “celebrities” in a period when the public were quite happy not to draw a line between fame and infamy. The most flamboyant stories were preserved and retold time and again, to the great joy of listeners and readers all over the country. There is perhaps no finer example than that of Claude Du Vall, the very essence of a 17th-century gentleman thief.

When he stopped “a knight and his lady” travelling with £400 in their coach – a fortune at the time – the lady began to play a flageolet, a type of early flute. Inspired, Du Vall whipped out his own flageolet and responded with a tune of his own. “’Sir,’ says he to the knight, ‘your lady plays excellently, and I make no doubt but she dances as well: will you please to step out of the coach, and let me have the honour to dance one courant with her on the heath?’

“’I dare not deny any thing, Sir,’ the knight readily replied, ‘to a gentleman of your quality, and good behaviour…’ It was surprizing to see how gracefully [Du Vall] moved upon the grass; scarce a dancing master in London, but would have been proud to have shewn such agility in a pair of pumps, as Du Vall shewed in a great pair of French riding boots. As soon as the dance was over, he waits on the lady back to the coach, without offering her the least affront; but just as the knight was step ping in, ‘Sir,’ says he, ‘you have forgot to pay the music.’

“His Worship replied, that he never forgot such things; and instantly put his hand under the seat of the coach, and pulled out a hundred pound in a bag, which he delivered to Du Vall, who received it with a very good grace.”

• On the podcast | Dr Rosalind Crone answers all the key questions on the history of British prisons

How did Johnson write about more serious crimes?

Claude Du Vall may have been a rogue, but he was dashing one. That wasn’t the case for all of Johnson’s protagonists. There was a darker side to his General History, most especially when it was recounting acts of shocking violence against women. The most powerful example of this was an episode in the life of Patrick O’Bryan. This criminal, we are told, was born in Galway and served in the army under Charles II. He ran up debts, borrowing “with the common defence of his countrymen, a front that would brazen out anything, and even laugh at the persons whom he had imposed on, to their very faces”.

Johnson’s attitude is a reminder of the power of anti-Irish sentiment in the 18th century. So it comes as no surprise when he accuses his subject of an act that, you sense, Johnson sees as the worst crimes imaginable. Having described how O’Bryan shot and dismembered one of his victims, Johnson then ascribes to him a gang rape and mass murder.

With four accomplices “as bad as himself”, O’Bryan heads to the home of Lancelot Wilmot in Wiltshire, an isolated house known to contain substantial wealth. Having broken in at night, they set to work:

“… they ty’d and gagg’d the three servants, and then proceeded to the old gentleman’s room, where he was in bed with his lady. They served both these in the same manner, and then went in the daughter’s chamber. This young lady they severally forced after one another to their brutal pleasure, and when they had done, most inhumanly stabb’d her, because she endeavoured to get from their arms. They next acted the same tragedy on the father and mother, which they told them, ‘was because they did not breed up their daughter to better manners’.

“Then they rifled the house of every thing valuable which they could find in it, that was fit to be carried off, to the value in all of 2500 [pounds]. After which they set the building on fire, and left it to consume with the unhappy servants that was in it.”

We know that O’Bryan was a historical figure who committed terrible crimes because he hanged for them in 1689. Yet readers have to take some of Johnson’s other accounts with a pinch of salt. He tells us that we can “depend” on the “authenticity” of his tale, but then he peppers it with episodes that are implausible or outright fictional.

For the implausible, look no further than Sawney Bean, whom Johnson introduces thus: “The following account, though as well attested as any historical fact can be… is almost incredible.” The author then urges us to believe the story of a cannibal tribe, a near-50-strong family born of incest, living in a cave on a headland in the Firth of Clyde in the 16th century. This clan survived, he writes, by ambushing people on the road near their cave and then eating them, pickling the leftovers in barrels.

• Read more | Did the Scottish mass-murdering cannibal Sawney Bean actually exist?

Less dramatic, but entirely fictional nonetheless, is Johnson’s chapter on the life of John Falstaff, a character invented by William Shakespeare. We are told that he was born in Bedfordshire, and “flourished in the reigns of Henry IV and V”. Johnson also includes Robin Hood among his cast, recounting splendid stories of the outlaw hoodwinking traveller after traveller in the guise of “a very honest and worthy person”.

There is no doubt that Johnson wrote this book with his tongue firmly in his cheek. In our modern world, beset with fake news, to avoid falling prey to credulity we must all learn the skills of the historian. So it is with Johnson’s magnificent book: a reader must be willing to be entertained, but also be sceptical. The moment you open the cover, you have placed yourself in the open palm of a master manipulator. It’s an uncomfortable experience, but one to savour – because it summons the past as does no other book I have ever read.

Sam Willis is a historian, archaeologist and broadcaster. He wrote the introduction to the recent reissue of Johnson’s General History (British Library Publishing, 2020)

This article was first published in the March 2023 issue of BBC History Magazine

The Indian subcontinent, North America, south-east Asia and continental Europe all saw vicious fighting in the 1750 and 1760s as part of a major conflict now known as the Seven Years’ War. But did it really last for seven years? What role did George Washington play in its outbreak? And can it be described as history’s first truly global conflict? In conversation with Spencer Mizen, Jeremy Black answers listener questions on the Seven Years’ War.

And a lot of people don’t get the context or they try and explain it away. So one of the things that people often say is, ‘Oh, Wellington didn’t believe his men were the scum of the Earth’. No, I’m sorry, he absolutely did. He used the comment on four separate occasions, so he was utterly committed to that belief.

Some people say it was a backhanded compliment. Well, on one of the occasions, yes, it was. So much later, after the Napoleonic Wars, he turns around and says that the army was composed of the scum of the Earth, and it was remarkable what fine fellows the British army was able to make out of them.

Where does ‘scum of the Earth’ come from?

But the original comment actually comes from 1813, and it comes after the battle of Vitoria. About a fortnight after the battle. Wellington gets a lot of complaints from locals, local Spanish individuals.

In fact, the mayor of Vitoria writes to him and says, ‘Look, we’re very grateful that you won the battle of Vitoria and that you’ve liberated the region from French control. But there’s a problem. And that problem is that lots of your soldiers are marauding the countryside, casually holding up people going about their lawful business and robbing them. Could you possibly do something about it? Because it’s not great.’

• Read more | 7 things you (probably) didn’t know about the Napoleonic Wars

Series of rants

Wellington makes a series of rants about this throughout his time commanding forces on active operations, and this is actually instalment number four in a series of letters.

And he writes in a private capacity to a member the British government and says, “It is quite impossible for me or any other man to command the British army under the existing system. We have in the service the scum of the Earth as common soldiers,” which is a really bruising and brutal comment to make.

Now the bottom line is that it’s not true. So we’ve taken that and we’ve kind of created this perception that everybody in the rank and file of the British army was poor – which is often true, you know, these weren’t rich people quite obviously – but on top of that, these were the criminal cases, the underclass beneath the working class. And that’s just not true.

• Read more | From the Napoleonic Wars to Vietnam and Iraq: a history of war trauma

Recruit from prisons

You do have scope, actually, to recruit people from prisons. It was a way to boost recruitment. There are lots of kind of variables within that. One of the things is that part of that system is that you can sentence somebody to serve, in the worst cases. So, if you’re caught having committed theft, for example, one of the sentences that the Old Bailey occasionally hands out is service in the army or the navy, and you quite often get the choice.

But those individuals tend to be drafted straight off to the penal battalions that man the West Indies (the ‘Fever Islands’), and they’re sent there because that’s where most people end up dying if they’re on active service and they’re Western European because of issues with disease.

We’re only just discovering things like the smallpox vaccine during this period, so people haven’t got on top of immunology and so they send these people who are not particularly promising in terms of qualities that you want in a soldier, and they send them that to die basically. And if they survive their service, well, that’s great.

• Read more | What was the battle of Waterloo like for Wellington’s Redcoats?

Spikes in recruitment

But the majority in the army are actually sort of labourers, people who end up on hard times, and you see these spikes in recruitment actually occurring when the labouring classes can’t find work. So they tend to be quite kind of seasonal and when there are depressions or when there are food shortages.

That’s when people really start to look to the army because, in theory, it should give you a daily wage and two meals a day. The reality doesn’t necessarily match that, but that is people’s hope. And so actually the whole “scum of the Earth” thing has become a massive distraction, in terms of how the rank and file were really kind of comprised socially.

Dr Zack White was speaking with David Musgrove on the HistoryExtra podcast, discussing crime and punishment in the Duke of Wellington’s army during the Napoleonic wars. Hear more from this conversation in the full the audio episode, or watch the whole video interview.

• Listen to the audio version of this HistoryExtra podcast

How did the British army keep order among troops and officers during the Napoleonic wars of the early 19th century? And were the rank and file really as rough and ready as you might imagine? Speaking with David Musgrove, Dr Zack White details the most common crimes and punishments in the armies of the Duke of Wellington and his contemporaries, considering whether the effective imposition of discipline helped the British and their allies finally defeat Napoleon on the battlefield of Waterloo.

• Watch the video version of this HistoryExtra podcast

Women blown up like balloons about to burst; leaders carving up the globe like a plum pudding; a drunken, bloated prince sprawled surrounded by unpaid invoices – the art of satirists like James Gillray, Thomas Rowlandson and Isaac Cruikshank gives us an unfiltered look at the preposterous highs and grisly lows of Georgian society. Alice Loxton tells Ellie Cawthorne how these artists pricked the pomposity of politicians, mocked the outlandish fashions of the aristocracy and gave the people of London a good laugh while doing so.

Alice Loxton is the author of Uproar: Satire, Scandal and Printmakers in Georgian London (Icon Books, 2023)

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The popular conception of Rob Roy MacGregor is of a wronged Highlander, a man of principle who triumphed over overwhelming odds to survive the machinations of his enemies, both personal and political. Yet research into his life has revealed a man who became an outlaw after a failed attempt at large-scale fraud, and whose Jacobite posturing went hand-in-hand in betraying that cause to the Government. So what was Rob Roy really like, how did he become perceived as a hero, and why has this admiration survived for so long in defiance of clear evidence to the contrary?

Which clan did Rob Roy belong to?

Robert MacGregor, nicknamed Rob Roy, was the son of a chieftain of the scattered Clan Gregor. The clan had once been a major force in the Highlands, but over the centuries, with the fluctuations of politics and clan warfare, it had lost most of its lands to rivals, and had even been outlawed by the Government.

• On the podcast | Scottish clans: everything you wanted to know

Remnants of the clan had clung on to small pockets of land in remote areas, often reliant on cattle thieving to survive. Rob Roy’s birth in 1671 came in a period of respite, as the outlawry of the clan had been revoked, but as he reached adulthood the world changed.

The Glorious Revolution of 1688–89 drove the senior line of the Stuart dynasty from the throne, and replaced it with William and Mary. Supporters of the dethroned James II, the Jacobites, rose in rebellion in the Highlands in 1689 and Rob Roy fought with them. But the rising failed, and the Government repression that followed included re-imposing the outlawry of the MacGregors. With their name banned, clansmen had to take new ones, and Rob Roy chose that of his mother, Campbell.

Very little is known of Rob Roy’s activities in the 1690s, and it is probable that he, like many of his clansmen, was heavily involved in cattle raiding and extorting protection money from farmers. But after 1700, he emerged as a legitimate cattle trader, paid in advance by Lowland landowners to buy cattle deep in the Highlands and deliver them to Lowland markets. Rob Roy prospered and bought land. He gained respectability and trust as a peaceful businessman. There were suspicions of his politics, as the MacGregors were notorious Jacobites, but it is clear that he was well liked.

This last point is the key to understanding the way in which stories about Rob Roy developed, even in his own lifetime. Most people who met him found him likeable and believable, and he was usually able to turn his natural charisma to his advantage.

The popular fraudster

Rob Roy the respectable businessman, however, was abruptly replaced in 1711–12 by Rob Roy the fraudster. He faced business failure and decided on a high-risk strategy for survival. First, he secretly transferred his lands to the hands of members of his family – a classic con-man’s move designed to protect assets from creditors. Then he continued trading, gathering as much money as he could from customers. But the cattle he was supposed to deliver never appeared. Neither did Rob Roy, who had disappeared deep into the Highlands with well over £1,000.

It was a clear case of deliberate fraud, and his plan was to bargain with his creditors. He was perfectly safe in the Highlands, so if they did not settle for a percentage of what was due to them, they would never see a penny. He boasted that he was so popular that no one would ever betray him. If creditors tried to use the law against him, they would simply waste more money paying lawyers.

• Read more | Hell at Glencoe: what led to the massacre in the Scottish Highlands?

Many of his creditors might have agreed to this, in spite of their outrage. Settling for a percentage rather than nothing was commonplace at the time. But Rob Roy had miscalculated. One creditor, the Duke of Montrose, was implacable. He was only owed a small amount, but he felt his honour was at stake. One of the greatest magnates in Scotland, he had shown the despised MacGregor friendship, and had been betrayed.

Rob Roy became a hunted outlaw. Legal processes to recover debt were put underway, and Montrose’s Chamberlain, Mungo Graham, even put an advert in an Edinburgh newspaper, offering a reward for his capture. Rob Roy wrote a stream of letters protesting innocence and goodwill, starting with one to a Glasgow lawyer James Graham in June 1712, claiming he was chasing two debtors to exact payment, ‘and with God’s assistance I will gett a grip of them for all the highlands has such a kindness for me in generall that they will assist me what ever place I will gett them taken’. This and subsequent letters are eloquent and full of righteous indignation. But his dishonesty is clear, as he tailors his version of events to suit his individual correspondents.

• Read more | Anglo-Scottish border wars: everything you wanted to know

Rob Roy’s assertion that he was safe in the Highlands was true. Montrose’s desire for vengeance was countered by the patronage of the Earl of Breadalbane, who employed the outlaw in his service. Nonetheless, he remained an outlaw, his future uncertain. Perhaps he hoped that on the death of the ageing and childless Queen Anne, who had succeeded William in 1702, the main Stuart line would be restored, and the reputation of the MacGregors as staunch Jacobites would bring him pardon.

Instead, in 1714, the Hanoverian George I ascended the throne. Rebellion brewed once more in the Highlands, and Rob Roy was vociferous in support of the rising. But soon rumours circulated that he was supplying intelligence on Jacobite activities to the Hanoverian Commander- in-Chief in Scotland, the Duke of Argyll. This was true, but surprisingly, it did not entirely discredit him. There were many on both sides in the 1715 rebellion who kept a foot on each side of the fence as insurance against their side’s defeat, so there was a degree of understanding of Rob Roy’s actions. But during the rising there remained suspicion. The Jacobites accepted the services of Rob Roy and his men, but they were not fully trusted.

The failure of the 1715 rising left 49 Scots attainted for high treason, including ‘Robert Campbell alias Macgregour commonly called Rob Roy’; and of course he was still an outlawed bankrupt. The hunt for Rob became intense as the result of political faction fighting. Montrose believed that Rob Roy could supply him with evidence that his rival, Argyll, had had treasonable contacts with the Jacobites. Rob Roy defused the plot with a written declaration, furiously denouncing those who wanted to force him to give false evidence, thanking providence for helping him to ‘escape the barbarity of these monstrous proposals’ and avoid ‘some stinking dungeon, where I must choose either to rot, dye, or be damn’d’. This took the heat off, but the fact that he took part in an abortive Jacobite rising in 1719 meant that he remained, in government eyes, a troublesome outlaw. He also stepped up his feud with Montrose by regularly raiding the Duke’s lands.

Rob Roy’s reputation spread widely. In political terms, he was a man discussed at court by the King himself. In the world of popular journalism and anecdote, Rob Roy’s version of events – that he was a man ruined by oppression by the great and corrupt – was becoming widely accepted. A rather fanciful biography, The Highland Rogue (thought to be by Elias Brockett) was published in London in 1723, which provided the basis of ‘biographies’ until the 20th century. It was the beginning of the Rob Roy legend, and the second edition in 1743 claimed that he had ‘lived in the manner of the ancient Robin Hood of England’.

• Read more | When did the Scots start wearing tartan – and what did it mean?

However, as Rob’s fame as an active outlaw reached its height, an opportunity to end this phase of his career appeared. An offer of pardon for former rebels was announced, and Rob Roy hastened to disarm and submit. His letter of submission addressed to General Wade is a wonderful demonstration of his skill in manipulating facts to his advantage. In it, he boldly announces that he had never wanted to be a rebel. When the 1715 rebellion began he had been keen to join the Hanoverian army, but he couldn’t because he would have been arrested for debt by Montrose. But now at last, if granted a pardon, he would have a chance to serve King George, as he had longed to do all along.

Wade was, predictably, charmed by Rob Roy, even believing the Highlander’s story that whenever he had met lost soldiers in the hills, he had offered them a dram so they could drink a toast to King George together. Rob Roy got his pardon in 1725, and two years later showed that he would indeed serve the king. Jacobite agents from the Continent were known to be operating in the Highlands, trying to gain support for a new rebellion. Rob offered his services to the Government to spy on them – if he was paid. Offer accepted, he infiltrated the plot with such success that he was made trusted messenger, carrying letters between the agents and Highland chiefs. He opened them and sent copies to Wade. Most of the plotting chiefs were let off with a warning, but James Stirling of Keir was arrested, fingered by Rob Roy as one of the chief agents in Scotland of the exiled Stuarts.

From con-man to hero

There is no reason to doubt that Rob Roy would have preferred the Stuart cause to the Hanoverian. In that sense, he was a Jacobite. But political principles were not his priority. He battled for survival for himself and his family. If that necessitated fraud, deceit, double-dealing and betrayal, he was ready to act accordingly. In spite of this he maintained his reputation as a hero. He was talented at spinning his own image, and got Highlanders to see him as a victim who bravely fought against the odds for survival. He created his own myth of triumphantly overcoming oppression.

How did Rob Roy die?

In reality, Rob Roy failed to achieve what he had hoped for. He never got his lands back, and died in 1734 as a poor tenant farmer who was on the brink of eviction. But his deeds had won him immortality, and stories continued to be told and invented about his many exploits.

• Read more | The Highland Clearances: a historian’s guide to a century of eviction

What is the legacy of Rob Roy?

At the end of the century, the romantic vision of old Highland life that was emerging gave the legends a fresh boost. This process culminated in 1818, when Walter Scott’s novel Rob Roy appeared. This was an instant success, and inspired playwrights, poets, composers and artists throughout the western world. Rob Roy the honest man forced into outlawry was reborn, and has thrived ever since. Probably the most powerful influence on his image today is based on the Hollywood film of 1994, with Liam Neeson in the title role.

But why have modern historians not rumbled Rob Roy? The answer is partly that they have ignored him, because he did not play a significant role in Scottish history in his own lifetime, whatever cultural status he achieved. The written accounts of his life have generally been uncritical reworkings of old stories.

In 1982, there was a biography that used historical evidence, but WH Murray’s book has a fatal flaw; the author seemed committed to the belief that Rob Roy was heroic. In this book, the facts are interpreted to portray Rob Roy in a favourable light, and at one point, Murray omits to consider a key piece of evidence. The papers that prove that Rob Roy acted as a Hanoverian spy in 1727 were published (in Historical Records Relating to the Jacobite Period) as long ago as 1895. Murray uses this source in his biography, but he writes nothing about the 1727 papers. As always, Rob Roy has a knack of finding friends who prefer to turn a blind eye to many of his actions.

David Stevenson was formerly Professor of Scottish History at the University of St Andrews, and has written an article on Rob Roy for the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 

This article was first published in the August 2004 edition of BBC History Magazine

Marie Antoinette is a historical figure who has been much mythologised – as callous, superficial, extravagant and out of touch with reality. But if we go back to the original sources and examine her own letters, what kind of woman emerges? Speaking to Ellie Cawthorne, Catriona Seth reveals what the Queen of France’s correspondence can tell us about her life and character – from her early years as a teenaged royal bride, to her eventual downfall in the French Revolution.

Who were the Romantics? And how did they shake up society and culture at the turn of the 19th century? Speaking to Ellie Cawthorne, Daisy Hay answers your top questions on the rebellious literary movement whose members’ lives were as unconventional as their art, touching on the intense but difficult collaboration between Wordsworth and Coleridge, the outrageous reputation of Lord Byron, and the literary significance of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Daisy Hay is the author of Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron and Other Tangled Lives (Bloomsbury, 2011)

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In 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte – emperor of the French for the previous eight years – sent 600,000 of his troops into Russia. Allied with the British and Austrian empires, Russia had increasingly become the focus of Napoleon’s foreign policy following his naval defeat to the British at the battle of Trafalgar in 1805. The same year, victory over combined Austro-Russian forces at the battle of Austerlitz had seen him extending his influence eastwards through the annexing of lands in Prussia.

Before considering what would have happened next had Napoleon’s Russian campaign been successful, it is instructive to first understand his motivation for putting so many of his men on the front line. It would be too easy to assume that Napoleon was simply empire-building and pursuing ambitions of controlling much of mainland Europe. This is not the case, as Michael Broers – professor of western European history at the University of Oxford and author of Napoleon: The Decline and Fall of an Empire, 1811–1821 (Pegasus Books, 2022) – explains.

“Napoleon never intended to conquer Russia. It’s an urban myth. His aim was to find the Russian army – the only one still strong enough to be a threat to him – and thump it. He knew he couldn’t rule Russia. His objective was to make it too weak to fight him, and to force Tsar Alexander I to be his ally. Napoleon had no intention of deposing or replacing him, but he wanted to neutralise the Russians for as long as possible, and leave them too weak to worry him. The invasion was about containment.”

Indeed, why the notion of Napoleon as the power-hungry expansionist out to conquer Russia has prevailed is a curious one. He himself admitted that Russian containment was the invasion’s over-riding objective. “They must be pushed back into their ice,” the French emperor reportedly announced, “so that for the next 25 years, they no longer come to busy themselves with the affairs of civilised Europe.” By reducing Russia’s military potency, Napoleon wouldn’t have to keep looking over his shoulder.

• Read more | Napoleon: a life in 10 objects

Had he been successful in his Russian mission, had he not retreated with just 100,000 survivors of his original 600,000-strong invasion force, what would have been the significance for eastern Europe? “If he had crushed Russia,” says Professor Broers, “it would have meant there would no longer have been a threat to his ally in Poland, the Duchy of Warsaw. Above all, it would have brought Russia back into the Continental Blockade against Britain – and so cut off the supplies that the Royal Navy needed for its ships.”

A British invasion?

The Continental Blockade was Napoleon’s response to Britain’s own blockade of the French coasts, and prohibited the importation of British goods into any countries that were allied to France. A weakened Russia would have been forced to adhere to the doctrine, in the process damaging Britain economically. “The whole aim of the invasion of Russia,” confirms Professor Broers, “was, ultimately, to weaken Britain – and the Royal Navy especially. It would have been his first priority.”

Indeed, had his troops accomplished their mission and emerged more intact than they were in defeat, an invasion of Britain could well have been on the cards. “He never gave up on it. He intended to invade Britain in 1811, but felt Russia had become the bigger threat.” That being said, it is likely that an invasion of Britain would have been a dismal failure – even if Napoleon himself didn’t see that.

There’s also a theory that Britain’s other route around the Blockade, Spain, might well have found themselves subject to an amplification of the Peninsular War (which had begun in 1808), but Professor Broers disagrees. “Napoleon’s army fought on in Spain until the end – until it was driven out. He wanted ‘out’ of Spain for years; he saw it like Vietnam. With Russia back in the Blockade, it would not have mattered so much, as Britain would have been less of a threat.”

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Generally, though, Napoleon was unlikely to have expanded his empire. “He wanted to protect what he had, above all. He would have liked to have regained France’s lost colonies in the Caribbean and, had he managed to get full control of Spain, its colonial empire, but it wasn’t a priority.”

Neutralising the threat

Aside from its emperor not subsequently falling from power, a French defeat of Russia is likely to have brought more peace and stability to Europe. “Had Napoleon beaten the Russians,” concludes Professor Broers, “there wouldn’t have really been much trouble left inside Europe to threaten him. A unified Germany would have been impossible as long as France was strong. Poland would have been united and strong, and never conquered again. And Russia would not have been able to make trouble in the Balkans for a while.”

Had he managed to contain Russia and avoid that humiliating defeat, the course of European affairs would surely have taken a different direction.

Professor Michael Broers teaches at the University of Oxford, and specialises in the Napoleonic period. Nige Tassell is a journalist specialising in history.

This article was first published in the Christmas 2022 issue of BBC History Revealed