The dispatch that moved the market

A false dispatch reports Napoleon dead. Prices rise, positions are sold, and the trial assembles a route, disguises, challenged accounts and figures. Establish what the pieces support — and where they stop deciding.

5 synthesis scenes · 10 pieces · 38–54 min (estimate, unmeasured)

Advanced · connect route, preparation and market evidence without erasing contradictions

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A dispatch of final victory

On 21 February 1814 at Dover, a letter signed “R. Du Bourg” described its signer as a lieutenant-colonel and aide-de-camp to Lord Cathcart. It announced extraordinary news: the Allies had supposedly won a final victory, Napoleon had been killed and immediate peace was certain. In London, such an upheaval could raise the prices of government securities traded at the Stock Exchange. The text, later read at the trial, carries the claims of the false dispatch, not a record of established events. The Dover testimony can show only how the bearer presented himself.

my anxiety will not allow me to say more for your gratification, than that the Allies obtained a final victory, that Bonaparte was overtaken by a party of Sachen's Cossacks, who immediately slaid him, and divided his body between them; General Platoff saved Paris from being reduced to ashes, the Allied Sovereigns are there, and the White Cockade is universal, an immediate Peace is certain.

A letter produced at trial falsely reports Napoleon's death, an Allied victory and immediate peace.

William Brodie Gurney, 1814 trial, p. 92, T03; scan-verified English.