The Unfortunate Colonel Despard - Softcover

Jay, Mike

Softcover

ISBN 10: 055381608X ISBN 13: 9780553816082

Publisher: Bantam Books (Transworld Publishers a division of the Random House Group), 2005

Synopsis

Colonel Edward Marcus Despard was the last person to be sentenced to hanging, drawing and quartering for high treason. At his execution on 21 February 1803, the streets of London were packed with twenty thousand ominously silent onlookers. Few of them believed he was guilty. Despard's execution was the climax of an extraordinary life. He had served as a soldier in Jamaica, and fought in Nicaragua alongside savage Miskito Indians - and a young Horatio Nelson - in one of the most hellish jungle campaigns in the history of warfare. Rewarded with command of the British settlement of Belize, he had married a black woman and staked his reputation on giving the same rights to freed slaves as to white settlers. Summoned back to London to explain himself, and finding his career put on hold, he joined the revolutionary underground. The Unfortunate Colonel Despard moves from high adventure on the Spanish Main to the political tumult of the London underworld in the 1790s, when many believed that, as in America and France, the old elite were on the verge of collapse. Despard's personal drama unfolds against a background of voodoo slave revolts and naval mutinies, the French Revolution and the Irish Rebellion, the democratic ideals of Tom Paine and the ruthless political clampdown of William Pitt's 'Reign of Terror'. Despard's contested fate was the sensational climax to a British revolution that never happened, but it also presaged the birth of modern democracy.

About this title

About the Author

Mike Jay is the author of The Air Loom Gang, Emperors of Dreams- Drugs in the Nineteenth Century, Blue Tide- The Search for Soma and Artificial Paradises- A Drugs Reader, and editor of 1900- A Fin-de-Si cle Reader. u>www.booksattransworld.co.uk

From the Back Cover

Colonel Despard s execution for high treason on 21st February 1803 was witnessed by twenty thousand hushed onlookers. Their silence was ominous, for few believed he was guilty and his death would tear apart a Britain still reeling from the impact of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars.
But who was Edward Marcus Despard? Was he, as his comrade-in-arms on the Spanish Main Lord Nelson believed, an outstanding British army officer of unimpeachable honour, courage and patriotism? Or, as the white slave-owners of the Caribbean claimed, a traitor not only to his nation but to his race, who had married a local woman and championed the rights of freed slaves?
And when Despard returned to London to answer these allegations, did he commit himself to the cause of political reform in Britain s best interests? Or did he join a shadowy international terrorist conspiracy dedicated to the murder of George III and the overthrow of the state? Despard s contested fate marked the sensational climax to a British revolution that never happened, but it also presaged the birth of modern democracy.

A gem of a book was Despard a hero or villain? In answering this question, Jay has also produced a powerful and energetic study of the political complexity of the 1790s Sunday Telegraph

Compelling, absorbing and wide-ranging Jay weaves a complex variety of themes, many with overtly topical resonances, into Despard s journey from hero to traitor Sunday Times

'A riveting account of the life and times of Britain's first terrorist' Independent on Sunday 'Books of the Year'

Beautifully crafted as thrilling as any novel. The Colonel s fast-paced adventures are matched by Jay s equally breathless narrative Good Book Guide

Edition details

• Publisher: Bantam Books (Transworld Publishers a division of the Random House Group)
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 055381608X
• ISBN 13: 9780553816082
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384