On the night of February 21, 1814, a man wearing a French staff officer's uniform arrived at Dover's Ship Inn. Calling himself Colonel de Bourg, he bore extraordinary news: Napoleon Bonaparte had been killed by Cossacks, and the Allied forces had entered Paris. The news promised an immediate end to the ruinous Napoleonic Wars, sending British government securities soaring on the London Stock Exchange the moment the markets opened.
As rumors spread across London, huge sums of omnium stock were liquidated at inflated prices. However, the victory claims were entirely fabricated. By the afternoon, officials confirmed Bonaparte was alive and well, causing stock values to plunge dramatically.
An investigation traced the sale of over one hundred thousand pounds in government bonds to naval hero Lord Thomas Cochrane, his uncle Andrew Cochrane-Johnstone, and their associates. Cochrane, famous for his daring sea battles, maintained his innocence, claiming he was merely a passive investor advised by others. Nevertheless, he was convicted of conspiracy, stripped of his naval rank, expelled from Parliament, and imprisoned.
Decades later, Cochrane was pardoned and reinstated, but historians remain divided over whether he was the mastermind of the fraud or a convenient scapegoat caught in his uncle's elaborate scheme.