What did General Napier mean . . .?

Question

. . . when he said "peccavi", and did he really say it? I am quite familiar with the famous play on words, so please don't spend a lot of time on the first part of the question, except to explain it to others.

Gerald: Thanks, that was the kind of answer I was looking for! All you Others: Still hoping for serious competion.

PS: I always award BA!

Answer 1

Although a good pun, it is almost certainly apocryphal. The historian Wendy Doniger has done a fair amount of research into it and noted that the first reference to Peccavi occurred in a cartoon in "Punch," a humorous magazine. She writes,

"[t]he authors of the Punch item [humorously attributing "peccavi" to Napier] may have been inspired by another apocryphal historical anecdote, which was linked with the peccavi story as early as 1875 and was in circulation for some time before that: it tells us that someone [usually Sir Francis Drake himself] who had witnessed the defeat of the Spanish Armada announced it with one word: "Cantharides," which is the Latin and pharmaceutical name of the aphrodisiac drug known as "the Spanish fly."

Answer 2

Col. Sir Harry Flashman, in "Flashman and the Mountain of Light " says he said it and it would take a braver man than me to argue with the good Colonel or George MacDonald Frasier........................