The Life of Nelson, Volume 1

Admiral, Lord Hood

The feeling between the land and sea services was emphasized in the relations existing between Lord Hood and Colonel Moore, who afterwards, as Sir John Moore, fell gloriously at Corunna. To these two eminent officers fortune denied the occasion to make full proof of their greatness to the world; but they stand in the first rank of those men of promise whose failure has been due, not to their own shortcomings, but to the lack of opportunity. Sir John Moore has been the happier, in that the enterprise with which his name is chiefly connected, and upon which his title to fame securely rests, was completed, and wrought its full results; fortunate, too, in having received the vindication of that great action at the hands of the most eloquent of military historians. His country and his profession may well mourn a career of such fair opening so soon cut short. But daring and original in the highest degree as was the march from Salamanca to Sahagun, it did not exceed, either in originality or in daring, the purposes nourished by Lord Hood, which he had no opportunity so to execute as to attract attention. Condemned to subordinate positions until he had reached the age of seventy, his genius is known to us only by his letters, and by the frustrated plans at St. Kitts in 1782, and at Golfe Jouan in 1794, in the former of which, less fortunate than Moore, he failed to realize his well-grounded hope of reversing, by a single blow, the issues of a campaign.

It is to be regretted that two such men could not understand each other cordially. Hood, we know from his letters, was "of that frame and texture that I cannot be indifferent,"—"full of anxiety, impatience, and apprehension,"—when service seemed to him slothfully done. Moore, we are told by Napier, "maintained the right with vehemence bordering upon fierceness." Had he had the chief command on shore, it is possible that the two, impetuous and self-asserting though they were, might have reached an understanding. But in the most unfortunate disagreement about Bastia,—wherein it is to a naval officer of to-day scarcely possible to do otherwise than blame the sullen lack of enterprise shown by the army,—and afterwards at Calvi, Moore appeared to Hood, and to Nelson also, as the subordinate, the power behind the throne, who was prompting a line of action they both condemned. No position in military life is more provocative of trouble than to feel you are not dealing with the principal, but with an irresponsible inferior; and the situation is worse, because one in which it is almost impossible to come to an issue. Moore's professional talent and force of character naturally made itself felt, even with a man of Stuart's ability. Hood and Nelson recognized this, and they resented, as inspired by a junior, what they might have combated dispassionately, if attributed to the chief. There was friction also between Moore and Elliot, the viceroy of the island. Doubtless, as in all cases where suspicion, not to say jealousy, has been begot, much more and worse was imagined by both parties than actually occurred. The apportionment of blame, or prolonged discussion of the matter, is out of place in a biography of Nelson. To that it is of moment, only because it is proper to state that Nelson, on the spot and in daily contact,—Nelson, upon whose zeal and entire self-devotion at this period no doubt is cast,—agreed in the main with Hood's opinion as to what the latter called the San Fiorenzo leaven, of which Moore was to them the exponent. It is true that Nelson naturally sympathized with his profession and his admiral, whom he heartily admired; but some corrective, at least, to such partiality, was supplied by his soreness about the latter's omission duly to report his services at Bastia, of which he just now became aware. The estrangement between the two commanders-in-chief was doubtless increased by the apparent reluctance, certainly the lack of effort, to see one another frequently.

The principal work, called by Nelson the Mozelle battery, was carried before daylight of July 19, and before dark all the outposts were in the hands of the British. "I could have wished to have had a little part in the storm," wrote Nelson, characteristically covetous of strenuous action, "if it was only to have placed the ladders and pulled away the palisadoes. However, we did the part allotted to us." That day a summons was sent to the garrison, but rejected, and work upon batteries to breach the town walls was then pushed rapidly forward; for it was becoming more and more evident that the siege must be brought to an end, lest the entire force of besiegers should become disabled by sickness. On the 28th the batteries were ready, and General Stuart sent in word that he would not fire upon the hospital positions, where indicated by black flags. The besieged then asked for a truce of twenty-five days, undertaking to lay down their arms, if not by then relieved. The general and admiral refused, but were willing to allow six days. This the garrison in turn rejected; and on the night of the 30th four small vessels succeeded in eluding the blockading frigates and entering supplies, which encouraged the besieged. On the 31st the batteries opened, and after thirty-six hours' heavy cannonade the town held out a flag of truce. An arrangement was made that it should surrender on the 10th of August, if not relieved; the garrison to be transported to France without becoming prisoners of war.

No relief arriving, the place capitulated on the day named. It was high time for the besiegers. "We have upwards of one thousand sick out of two thousand," wrote Nelson, "and the others not much better than so many phantoms. We have lost many men from the season, very few from the enemy." He himself escaped more easily than most. To use his own quaint expression, "All the prevailing disorders have attacked me, but I have not strength enough for them to fasten upon. I am here the reed amongst the oaks: I bow before the storm, while the sturdy oak is laid low." The congenial moral surroundings, in short,—the atmosphere of exertion, of worthy and engrossing occupation,—the consciousness, to him delightful, of distinguished action, of heroic persistence through toil and danger,—prevailed even in his physical frame over discomfort, over the insidious climate, and even over his distressing wound. "This is my ague day," he writes when the batteries opened; "I hope so active a scene will keep off the fit. It has shaken me a good deal; but I have been used to them, and now don't mind them much." "Amongst the wounded, in a slight manner, is myself, my head being a good deal wounded and my right eye cut down; but the surgeons flatter me I shall not entirely lose the sight. It confined me, thank God, only one day, and at a time when nothing particular happened to be doing." "You must not think my hurts confined me," he tells his wife; "no, nothing but the loss of a limb would have kept me from my duty, and I believe my exertions conduced to preserve me in this general mortality." In his cheery letters, now, no trace is perceptible of the fretful, complaining temper, which impaired, though it did not destroy, the self-devotion of his later career. No other mistress at this time contended with honor for the possession of his heart; no other place than the post of duty before Calvi distracted his desires, or appealed to his imagination through his senses. Not even Lord Hood's report of the siege of Bastia, which here came to his knowledge, and by which he thought himself wronged, had bitterness to overcome the joy of action and of self-contentment.

Not many days were required, after the fall of Calvi, to remove the fleet, and the seamen who had been serving on shore, from the pestilential coast. Nelson seems to have been intrusted with the embarkation of the prisoners in the transports which were to take them to Toulon. He told his wife that he had been four months landed, and felt almost qualified to pass his examination as a besieging general, but that he had no desire to go on with campaigning. On the 11th of August, the day after the delivery of the place, he was again on board the "Agamemnon," from whose crew had been drawn the greatest proportion of the seamen for the batteries. One hundred and fifty of them were now in their beds. "My ship's company are all worn out," he wrote, "as is this whole army, except myself; nothing hurts me,—of two thousand men I am the most healthy. Every other officer is scarcely able to crawl." Among the victims of the deadly climate was Lieutenant Moutray, the son of the lady to whom, ten years before, he had been so warmly attracted in the West Indies. Nelson placed a monument to him in the church at San Fiorenzo.

On the 10th of August the "Agamemnon" sailed from Calvi, and after a stop at San Fiorenzo, where Hood then was, reached Leghorn on the 18th. Now that the immediate danger of the siege was over, Nelson admitted to his wife the serious character of the injury he had received. The right eye was nearly deprived of sight,—only so far recovered as to enable him to distinguish light from darkness. For all purposes of use it was gone; but the blemish was not to be perceived, unless attention was drawn to it.

At Leghorn the ship lay for a month,—the first period of repose since she went into commission, a year and a half before. While there, the physician to the fleet came on board and surveyed the crew, finding them in a very weak state, and unfit to serve. This condition of things gave Nelson hopes that, upon the approaching departure of Lord Hood for England, the "Agamemnon" might go with him; for he was loath to separate from an admiral whose high esteem he had won, and upon whom he looked as the first sea-officer of Great Britain. Hood was inclined to take her, and to transfer the ship's company bodily to a seventy-four. This he considered no more than due to Nelson's distinguished merit and services, and he had indeed offered him each ship of that rate whose command fell vacant in the Mediterranean; but the strong sense of attachment to those who had shared his toils and dangers, of reluctance that they should see him willing to leave them, after their hard work together,—that combination of sympathy and tact which made so much of Nelson's success as a leader of men,—continued to prevent his accepting promotion that would sever his ties to them.

The exigencies of the war in the Mediterranean forbade the departure, even of a sixty-four with a disabled crew. A full month later her sick-list was still seventy-seven, out of a total of less than four hundred. "Though certainly unfit for a long cruise," Nelson said, "we are here making a show,"—a military requirement not to be neglected or despised. He accepted the disappointment, as he did all service rubs at this period, with perfect temper and in the best spirit. "We must not repine," he wrote to his wife on the 12th of October, the day after Hood sailed for England. "Lord Hood is very well inclined towards me, but the service must ever supersede all private consideration. I hope you will spend the winter cheerfully. Do not repine at my absence; before spring I hope we shall have peace, when we must look out for some little cottage." She fretted, however, as some women will; and he, to comfort her, wrote more sanguinely about himself than the facts warranted. "Why you should be uneasy about me, so as to make yourself ill, I know not. I feel a confident protection in whatever service I may be employed upon; and as to my health, I don't know that I was ever so truly well. I fancy myself grown quite stout." To his old captain, Locker, he admitted that he could not get the better of the fever.

Corsica being now wholly in the power of its inhabitants, allied with and supported by Great Britain, his attention and interest were engrossed by the French fleet centring upon Toulon, the dominant factor of concern to the British in the Mediterranean, where Vice-Admiral Hotham had succeeded Hood as commander-in-chief. Nelson realizes more and more the mistake that was made, when a fraction of it was allowed to escape battle in the previous June. The various reasons by which he had at first excused the neglect to bring it to action no longer weigh with him. He does not directly blame, but he speaks of the omission as an "opportunity lost,"—a phrase than which there are few more ominous, in characterizing the closely balanced, yet weighty, decisions, upon which the issues of war depend. Nothing, he thinks, can prevent the junction of the two fragments,—then in Golfe Jouan and Toulon,—one of which, with more resolution and promptitude on Hotham's part, might have been struck singly at sea a few months before; and if they join, there must follow a fleet action, between forces too nearly equal to insure to Great Britain the decisive results that were needed. The thought he afterwards expressed, "Numbers only can annihilate," was clearly floating in his brain,—inarticulate, perhaps, as yet, but sure to come to the birth. "If we are not completely victorious,—I mean, able to remain at sea whilst the enemy must retire into port,—if we only make a Lord Howe's victory, take a part, and retire into port, Italy is lost." Criticism clearly is going on in his mind; and not mere criticism, (there is enough and to spare of that in the world, and not least in navies), but criticism judicious, well considered, and above all fruitful. The error of opportunity lost he had seen; the error of a partial victory—"a Lord Howe's victory," another opportunity lost—he intuitively anticipated for the Mediterranean, and was soon to see. He was already prepared to pass an accurate judgment instantly, when he saw it. May we not almost hear, thundering back from the clouds that yet veiled the distant future of the Nile, the words, of which his thought was already pregnant, "You may be assured I will bring the French fleet to action the moment I can lay my hands upon them."

The year closed with the British fleet watching, as best it could, the French ships, which, according to Nelson's expectation, had given the blockaders the slip, and had made their junction at Toulon. There was now no great disparity in the nominal force of the two opponents, the British having fourteen ships-of-the-line, the French fifteen; and it was quite in the enemy's power to fulfil his other prediction, by keeping Hotham in hot water during the winter. In the middle of November the "Agamemnon" had to go to Leghorn for extensive repairs, and remained there, shifting her main and mizzen masts, until the 21st of December. Nelson, who had endured with unyielding cheerfulness the dangers, exposure, and sickliness of Calvi, found himself unable to bear patiently the comfort of quiet nights in a friendly port, while hot work might chance outside. "Lying in port is misery to me. My heart is almost broke to find the Agamemnon lying here, little better than a wreck. I own my sincere wish that the enemy would rest quiet until we are ready for sea, and a gleam of hope sometimes crosses me that they will." "I am uneasy enough for fear they will fight, and Agamemnon not present,—it will almost break my heart; but I hope the best,—that they are only boasting at present, and will be quiet until I am ready." "It is misery," he repeats, "for me to be laid up dismantled."

It was during this period of comparative inactivity in port, followed by monotonous though arduous winter cruising off Toulon, which was broken only by equally dreary stays at San Fiorenzo, that Nelson found time to brood over the neglect of which he thought himself the victim, in the omission of Lord Hood to notice more markedly his services in Corsica. It is usually disagreeable to the uninterested bystander to see an excessive desire for praise, even under the guise of just recognition of work done. Words of complaint, whether heard or read, strike a discord to one who himself at the moment is satisfied with his surroundings. We all have an instinctive shrinking from the tones of a grumbler. Nelson's insistence upon his grievances has no exemption from this common experience; yet it must be remembered that these assertions of the importance of his own services, and dissatisfaction with the terms in which they had been mentioned, occur chiefly, if not solely, in letters to closest relations,—to his wife and uncle,—and that they would never have become known but for the after fame, which has caused all his most private correspondence to have interest and to be brought to light. As a revelation of character they have a legitimate interest, and they reveal, or rather they confirm, what is abundantly revealed throughout his life,—that intense longing for distinction, for admiration justly earned, for conspicuous exaltation above the level of his kind, which existed in him to so great a degree, and which is perhaps the most potent—certainly the most universal—factor in military achievement. They reveal this ambition for honor, or glory, on its weak side; on its stronger side of noble emulation, of self-devotion, of heroic action, his correspondence teems with its evidence in words, as does his life in acts. To quote the words of Lord Radstock, who at this period, and until after the battle of Cape St. Vincent, was serving as one of the junior admirals in the Mediterranean, and retained his friendship through life, "a perpetual thirst of glory was ever raging within him." "He has ever showed himself as great a despiser of riches as he is a lover of glory; and I am fully convinced in my own mind that he would sooner defeat the French fleet than capture fifty galleons."

After all allowance made, however, it cannot be denied that there is in these complaints a tone which one regrets in such a man. The repeated "It was I" jars, by the very sharpness of its contrast, with the more generous expressions that abound in his correspondence. "When I reflect that I was the cause of re-attacking Bastia, after our wise generals gave it over, from not knowing the force, fancying it 2,000 men; that it was I, who, landing, joined the Corsicans, and with only my ship's party of marines, drove the French under the walls of Bastia; that it was I, who, knowing the force in Bastia to be upwards of 4,000 men, as I have now only ventured to tell Lord Hood, landed with only 1,200 men, and kept the secret till within this week past;—what I must have felt during the whole siege may be easily conceived. Yet I am scarcely mentioned. I freely forgive, but cannot forget. This and much more ought to have been mentioned. It is known that, for two months, I blockaded Bastia with a squadron; only fifty sacks of flour got into the town. At San Fiorenzo and Calvi, for two months before, nothing got in, and four French frigates could not get out, and are now ours. Yet my diligence is not mentioned; and others, for keeping succours out of Calvi for a few summer months, are handsomely mentioned. Such things are. I have got upon a subject near my heart, which is full when I think of the treatment I have received.... The taking of Corsica, like the taking of St. Juan's, has cost me money. St. Juan's cost near £500; Corsica has cost me £300, an eye, and a cut across my back; and my money, I find, cannot be repaid me."

As regards the justice of his complaints, it seems to the author impossible to read carefully Hood's two reports, after the fall of Bastia and that of Calvi, and not admit, either that Nelson played a very unimportant part in the general operations connected with the reduction of Corsica, with which he became associated even before it was effectively undertaken, and so remained throughout; or else that no due recognition was accorded to him in the admiral's despatches. Had he not become otherwise celebrated in his after life, he would from these papers be inferred to stand, in achievement, rather below than above the level of the other captains who from time to time were present. That this was unfair seems certain; and notably at Calvi, where, from the distance of the operations from the anchorage, and the strained relations which kept Hood and Stuart apart, he was practically the one naval man upon whose discretion and zeal success depended. It is probable, however, that the failure to do him justice proceeded as much from awkward literary construction, phrases badly turned, as from reluctance to assign due prominence to one subordinate among several others.

How readily, yet how keenly, he derived satisfaction, even from slight tributes of recognition, is shown by the simplicity and pleasure with which he quoted to Mrs. Nelson the following words of Sir Gilbert Elliot, the Viceroy of Corsica, then and always a warm friend and admirer: "I know that you, who have had such an honourable share in this acquisition, will not be indifferent at the prosperity of the Country which you have so much assisted to place under His Majesty's government." "Whether these are words of course and to be forgotten," wrote Nelson, "I know not; they are pleasant, however, for the time." Certainly his demands for praise, if thus measured, were not extreme.

CHAPTER V.

NELSON'S SERVICES WITH THE FLEET IN THE MEDITERRANEAN UNDER ADMIRAL HOTHAM.—PARTIAL FLEET ACTIONS OF MARCH 13 AND 14, AND JULY 13.—NELSON ORDERED TO COMMAND A DETACHED SQUADRON CO-OPERATING WITH THE AUSTRIAN ARMY IN THE RIVIERA OF GENOA

JANUARY-JULY, 1795. AGE, 36

From the naval point of view, as a strategic measure, the acquisition of Corsica by the British was a matter of great importance. It was, however, only one among several factors, which went to make up the general military and political situation in the Mediterranean at the end of the year 1794. Hitherto the exigencies of the well-nigh universal hostilities in which France had been engaged, and the anarchical internal state of that country, had prevented any decisive operations by her on the side of Italy, although she had, since 1792, been formally at war with the Kingdom of Sardinia, of which Piedmont was a province.

At the close of 1794 the conditions were greatly modified. In the north, the combined forces of Great Britain, Austria, and Holland had been driven out of France and Belgium, and the United Provinces were on the point of submission. On the east, the Austrians and Prussians had retreated to the far bank of the Rhine, and Prussia was about to withdraw from the coalition, which, three years before, she had been so eager to form. On the south, even greater success had attended the French armies, which had crossed the Pyrenees into Spain, driving before them the forces of the enemy, who also was soon to ask for peace. It was therefore probable that operations in Italy would assume greatly increased activity, from the number of French soldiers released elsewhere, as well as from the fact that the Austrians themselves, though they continued the war in Germany, had abandoned other portions of the continent which they had hitherto contested.

The political and military conditions in Italy were, briefly, as follows. The region north of the Maritime Alps and in the valley of the Po was, for the most part, in arms against France,—the western province, Piedmont, as part of the Kingdom of Sardinia, whose capital was at Turin, and, to the eastward of it, the duchies of Milan and Mantua, as belonging to Austria. The governments of the numerous small states into which Northern and Central Italy were then divided—Venice, Genoa, Tuscany, the States of the Church, and others—sympathized generally with the opponents of France, but, as far as possible, sought to maintain a formal though difficult neutrality. The position of Genoa was the most embarrassing, because in direct contact with all the principal parties to the war. To the westward, her territory along the Riviera included Vintimiglia, bordering there on the county of Nice, and contained Vado Bay, the best anchorage between Nice and Genoa. To the eastward, it embraced the Gulf of Spezia, continually mentioned by Nelson as Porto Especia.

The occupation of the Riviera was of particular moment to the French, for it offered a road by which to enter Italy,—bad, indeed, but better far than those through the passes of the upper Alps. Skirting the sea, it afforded a double line of communications, by land and by water; for the various detachments of their army, posted along it, could in great degree be supplied by the small coasting-vessels of the Mediterranean. So long, also, as it was in their possession, and they held passes of the Maritime Alps and Apennines, as they did in 1794, there was the possibility of their penetrating through them, to turn the left flank of the Sardinian army in Piedmont, which was, in fact, what Bonaparte accomplished two years later. These inducements had led the French to advance into the county of Nice, then belonging to Sardinia, which in the existing state of war it was perfectly proper for them to do; but, not stopping there, they had pushed on past the Sardinian boundary into the neutral Riviera of Genoa, as far as Vado Bay, which they occupied, and where they still were at the end of 1794.