Napoleon’s Gambit is an historical adventure, which blends facts and fiction.
The facts are:
- Napoleon signed the Treaty of Valençay with King Ferdinand VII of Spain, on December 11th, 1813. Its goal was to restore Ferdinand to the throne that he was forced to abdicate to Napoleon’s brother, Joseph, in 1808.
- The Battle of Vittorio occurred on June 21st, 1813. The French were defeated by , and relinquished Spain.
- Wellington’s Vittorio dispatch describes an item of French property found at the battle, as ‘a single military chest containing one hundred thousand francs in gold coins.’
- Sir Gabriel Hopetown Stoke commanded a division of British troops at the Battle of Vittorio. According to his memoirs, his men found ‘some money tumbrils loaded with chests,’ and looted them.
- French records indicate that the tumbrils contained five million francs worth of gold coins.
- The Battle of Aix Roads took place on the 11th and 12th of April, 1809. To accommodate the story, the battle was moved to June 1813, but the events leading up to the battle and the two days of the mission itself, are accurately depicted.
- Captain Lord Thomas Cochrane was born in 1775 and died in 1860. Some of the words spoken by Thomas, Lord Mulgrave and Admirals Gambier and Harvey, in the events leading up to and during the Battle of Aix Roads, were extracted from Cochrane’s Autobiography of a Seaman.
- Dr. James Guthrie was the surgeon and doctor aboard Captain Lord Cochrane’s ship, Impérieuse, during the battle of Aix Roads. James and Thomas were friends.
- With one obvious exception, the technologies used on Bit-by-Bit exist today, albeit in some cases, in less sophisticated forms.
The rest is fiction. But for a little more details, see below…
