Robert Armstrong is a writer and Director of the Institute for Free Trade.
Among the most well-known facts about the Bayeux Tapestry is that it wasn’t made in Bayeux and that it’s not technically a tapestry. It was an obscure embroidery in Bayeux Cathedral for centuries until Napoleon exhibited it in Paris in 1803 in an attempt to whip up enthusiasm for his invasion of England.
By 1805 Britain had mustered 615,000 men into its standing armies, militias, volunteer corps, coastal fortifications and navy in by far the largest anti-invasion preparations made until the Second World War. For context, 300,000 garrisoned the Great Wall of China at its peak. The country was fully seized of the threat from Napoleon. Contingency plans were laid out in great detail: evacuation plans for George III depending on where the French landed. Orders were established for how and when the stock exchange would close, and how the London arsenal, foundries and stores would have their goods sent to the Midlands through the canals, where they would “use the final mainstays of sovereignty – treasure and arms – to keep up the final struggle”.
