The Life of Nelson, Volume 1

After these preliminary compliments, Nelson presents his grievances. He has given the passports of a British admiral to Sicilian vessels bonâ fide employed in carrying grain to the besiegers of the French, and to such only; and he must insist upon those passports being respected, as the vessels bearing them are serving the great common cause. He demands, also, that aid be not given to the common enemy. "I was rejoiced," he writes the Bashaw of Tripoli, "to find that you had renounced the treaty you had so imprudently entered into with some emissaries of General Bonaparte—that man of blood, that despoiler of the weak, that enemy of all true Musselmen; for, like Satan, he only flatters that he may the more easily destroy; and it is true, that since the year 1789, all Frenchmen are exactly of the same disposition." His Highness, however, has relapsed into his former errors. "It is now my duty to speak out, and not to be misunderstood. That Nelson who has hitherto kept your powerful enemies from destroying you, can, and will, let them loose upon you, unless the following terms are, in two hours, complied with.... If these proper terms are not complied with, I can no longer prevent the Portuguese ships from acting with vigour against your Highness. Your Highness will, without difficulty, write me a letter, the substance of which will be dictated by the British consul."

The vehemence with which the French are here denounced, though pitched in a key deemed harmonious to the ears for which it was immediately intended, was entirely consonant to the feelings which had lately taken possession of Nelson. They were the result, probably, in part, of the anxious rancor bred by the uncertainties and worry of the pursuit of Bonaparte; in part, also, of more direct contact than before with the unbridled license which the French Government and its generals, impelled by dire necessity and by an unquestionable lack of principle, had given to the system of making war support war. The feebleness and corruption of the Directory had relaxed the reins of discipline from top to bottom, and a practice which finds its justification only when executed with the strictest method and accountability, had degenerated into little better than disorganized pillage. "'Down, down with the French!' is my constant prayer." "'Down, down with the French!' ought to be placed in the council-room of every country in the world." "To serve my King, and to destroy the French, I consider as the great order of all, from which little ones spring; and if one of these little ones militate against it, I go back to obey the great order and object, to down, down with the damned French villains. Excuse my warmth; but my blood boils at the name of a Frenchman. I hate them all—Royalists and Republicans." Infidels, robbers, and murderers are the characteristic terms. This detestation of the legitimate enemy spread, intensified, to those who supported them in Naples,—the Jacobins, as they were called. "Send me word some proper heads are taken off," he wrote to Troubridge, "this alone will comfort me." "Our friend Troubridge had a present made him the other day, of the head of a Jacobin," he tells St. Vincent, "and makes an apology to me, the weather being very hot, for not sending it here!" Upon the copy of the letter accompanying this ghastly gift to him, Troubridge had written, "A jolly fellow. T. Troubridge." The exasperation to which political animosities had given rise may be gauged by the brutal levity shown in this incident, by men of the masculine and generous characters of Troubridge and Nelson, and should not be forgotten in estimating the actions that in due consequence followed.

The duties as well as the anxieties of his situation bore heavily upon Nelson, and may help to account, in combination with the tide of adverse fortune now running strongly, for the depression that weighed upon him. "My public correspondence, besides the business of sixteen sail-of-the-line, and all our commerce, is with Petersburg, Constantinople, the Consul at Smyrna, Egypt, the Turkish and Russian admirals, Trieste, Vienna, Tuscany, Minorca, Earl St. Vincent, and Lord Spencer. This over, what time can I have for any private correspondence?" Yet, admitting freely that there is a limit beyond which activity may cease to please, what has become of the joyous spirit, which wrote, not four years before: "This I like, active service or none!" Occupying one of the most distinguished posts open to the Navy; practically, and almost formally, independent; at the very head and centre of the greatest interests,—his zeal, while preserving all its intensity, has lost all its buoyancy. "My dear Lord," he tells St. Vincent, alluding at the moment to his stepson Nisbet, "there is no true happiness in this life, and in my present state I could quit it with a smile." "My spirits have received such a shock," he writes some days after, to the wife of his early patron, Sir Peter Parker, "that I think they cannot recover it. You who remember me always laughing and gay, would hardly believe the change; but who can see what I have and be well in health? Kingdoms lost and a royal family in distress." "Believe me," he confides to his intimate friend Davison a month later, "my only wish is to sink with honour into the grave, and when that shall please God, I shall meet death with a smile. Not that I am insensible to the honours and riches my King and Country have heaped upon me, so much more than any officer could deserve; yet I am ready to quit this world of trouble, and envy none but those of the estate six feet by two." "I am at times ill at ease, but it is my duty to submit, and you may be sure I will not quit my post without absolute necessity." "What a state I am in!" he writes of one of those perplexities inevitable to an officer in his position. "If I go, I risk Sicily; as I stay, my heart is breaking." This is not the natural temper of a man to whom difficulties and perplexities had been, and were yet again to be, a trumpet call that stirred to animation, a stimulant that steadied the nerves, and sent the blood coursing with new life through heart and brain. Mingled as these expressions were with despondent broodings over his health, even if the latter were well founded, they are the voice of a mind which has lost the spring of self-content. The sense of duty abides, but dogged, cheerless; respondent rather to the force of habit than to the generous ardor of former days.

For over two months after the flight to Palermo, the condition of affairs for the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was seemingly critical to the verge of desperation; for neither the preparations of the Coalition, nor the hollowness of the French successes, were understood, and news was slow to reach the remote city where the Court now dwelt. The republican movement extended, though superficially, to the toe of Italy, many of the towns in Calabria planting the tree of liberty, and the new flag flying on the islands along the coast. Sicily, though hostile to the French, was discontented with the existing government, and disaffection there was feared. In that, Nelson truly observed, lay the danger. "Respecting an invasion of the French, I have no alarms; if this island is true to itself no harm can happen." Nevertheless, "it is proper to be prepared for defence, and," if Calabria is occupied by the French, "the first object is the preservation of Messina."

For this purpose he ordered the Portuguese squadron there, immediately after he reached Palermo; and, when the outlook grew more threatening, appealed to the Turkish and Russian admirals to send a detachment to the Straits. General Stuart, commanding the troops in Minorca, which had passed into the hands of Great Britain the previous November, was entreated to detail a garrison for the citadel of Messina, as no dependence was placed upon the Neapolitan troops. Stuart complied, and the citadel was occupied by two English regiments about the 10th of March. The danger, however, was considered sufficiently imminent to withdraw to Palermo the transports lying at Syracuse; a step which could not have been necessary had Nelson made Syracuse, as he at first intended, the base of operations for the British fleet, and suggests the idea, which he himself avows, that his own presence with the Court was rather political than military80 in its utility, dependent upon the fears of their own subjects felt by the sovereigns. While these measures were being taken he endeavored, though fruitlessly, to bring matters to a conclusion at Alexandria and Malta, in order to release the ships there employed and fetch them to the coast of Naples. "The moment the Emperor moves," he wrote to St. Vincent, "I shall go with all the ships I can collect into the Bay of Naples, to create a diversion." Nothing certain can be said as yet, "whether all is lost or may yet be saved; that must depend upon the movements of the Emperor." Yet it was the hand of the emperor which he had advised the King of Naples to force, by his ill-timed advance.

Troubridge rejoined the Flag at Palermo on the 17th of March, having turned over the command in the Levant to Sir Sidney Smith, after an ineffectual attempt to destroy the French shipping in Alexandria. By this time matters had begun to mend. Calabria had returned to its loyalty, and the insurrection of the peasantry against the French was general throughout the country, and in the Roman State. The Directory, taking umbrage at the advance of Russian troops to the frontiers of Austria, demanded explanations from the latter, and when these proved unsatisfactory directed its armies to take the offensive. The French advanced into Germany on the first of March, and in Italy towards the end of the month. But the action of the French Government, though audacious and imposing, rested upon no solid foundation of efficiency in the armies, or skill in the plan of campaign. Serious reverses soon followed, and the fatally ex-centric position of the corps in Naples was then immediately apparent.

Before this news could reach Palermo, however, Nelson had sent Troubridge with four ships-of-the-line and some smaller vessels to the Bay of Naples, to blockade it, and to enter into communication, if possible, with the loyalists in the city. As the extreme reluctance of the King and Queen prevented his going in person,—a reason the sufficiency of which it is difficult to admit,—Nelson hoisted his flag on board a transport in the bay, and sent the flagship, in order not to diminish the force detailed for such important duties. Within a week the islands in the immediate neighborhood of Naples—Procida, Ischia, Capri, and the Ponzas—had again hoisted the royal ensign. On the 22d of April the French evacuated the city, with the exception of the Castle of St. Elmo, in which they left a garrison of five hundred men. In Upper Italy their armies were in full retreat, having been forced back from the Adige to the Adda, whence an urgent message was sent to Macdonald, Championnet's successor at Naples, to fall back to the northward and effect a junction with the main body, soon to be sorely pressed by an overwhelming force of the Austro-Russians, at whose head was the famous Suwarrow. On the 29th the Allies entered Milan, and on the 7th of May the northern French, now under the command of Moreau, had retired as far as Alessandria, in Piedmont. On this same day, Macdonald, having thrown garrisons into Capua and Gaeta, evacuated the kingdom of Naples, and hastened northward to join Moreau. With the exception of these fortified posts and the city of Naples, the country was now overrun by the Christian army, the name applied to the numerous but utterly undisciplined bands of rude peasantry, attached to the royal cause, and led by Cardinal Ruffo. The Jacobins in the city still held out, and had in the bay a small naval force under the command of Commodore Caracciolo.

Troubridge's successes continued. A week later Salerno had been taken, and the royal colors were flying at Castellamare, on the opposite side of the Bay from Naples, and distant from it only twelve miles by land. Nelson questioned Troubridge about the return of the King, whose most evident political conviction was that the success of the royal cause was vitally connected with the safety of the royal person. "What are your ideas of the King's going into the Bay of Naples, without foreign troops? If it should cause insurrection [of the royalists] in Naples which did not succeed, would it not be worse? The King, if a rising of loyal people took place, ought to be amongst them; and that he will never consent to." "The King, God bless him! is a philosopher," he had said, repeating an expression of Lady Hamilton's, referring to the disasters which caused the headlong flight from Rome, through Naples, to Palermo; "but the great Queen feels sensibly all that has happened." The Queen also was extremely fearful, and Nelson intimated to St. Vincent that a request would be made for British troops to protect the sovereigns. "Their Majesties are ready to cross the water whenever Naples is entirely cleansed. When that happy event arrives, and not till then, a desire will be expressed for the British troops to be removed from Messina into Naples to guard the persons of their Majesties." That Nelson should have considered it essential to maintain in power, by any means, sovereigns devoted to Great Britain, is perfectly comprehensible. What is difficult to understand is the esteem he continued to profess, for those whose unheroic bearing so belied the words he had written six months before: "His Majesty is determined to conquer or die at the head of his army." Under other conditions and influences, none would have been more forward to express dissatisfaction and contempt.

Withal, despite the favorable outlook of affairs and the most joyous season of the year, his depression of spirits continued. "I am far from well," he writes on the 3d of May, "and the good news of the success of the Austrian arms in Italy does not even cheer me." But in the midst of the full current of success, and of his own gloom, an incident suddenly occurred which threw everything again into confusion and doubt, and roused him for the time from his apathy. On the 12th of May a brig arrived at Palermo, with news that a French fleet of nineteen ships-of-the-line had escaped from Brest, and had been seen less than a fortnight before off Oporto, steering for the Mediterranean.

CHAPTER XIII.

FROM THE INCURSION OF THE FRENCH FLEET UNDER BRUIX TO THE RESTORATION OF THE ROYAL AUTHORITY AT NAPLES.—THE CARACCIOLO EXECUTION.—NELSON'S DISOBEDIENCE TO ADMIRAL LORD KEITH

MAY-JULY, 1799. AGE, 40

The intention of the French to send a fleet into the Mediterranean had transpired some time before, and the motive—to retrieve the destruction of their naval power in that sea by the Battle of the Nile—was so obvious that the attempt was regarded as probable. As far back as the 7th of January, Nelson had written to Commodore Duckworth, commanding the detachment of four ships-of-the-line at Minorca, that he had received notification of the force expected from Brest. If they got into the Mediterranean, he was confident they would go first to Toulon, and he wished to concert beforehand with Duckworth, who was not under his orders, the steps necessary to be taken at once, if the case arose. He did not think, so he wrote to Ball, that they would venture a squadron to Malta or Alexandria, in view of the certain destruction which in the end must befall it, even if successful in reaching the port.

Both remarks show that he did not look for the number of ships that were sent—nineteen, as the first news said, twenty-five, as was actually the case. An emergency so great and so imminent drew out all his latent strength, acute judgment, and promptitude. The brig that brought the news was sent off the same night to Naples, with orders to proceed from there to Minorca and Gibraltar, and to notify Duckworth and St. Vincent what Nelson intended to do. A cutter sailed at the same time for Malta. Troubridge and Ball were both directed to send or bring all their ships-of-the-line, save one each, to Minorca, there to unite with Duckworth. Troubridge's ships were to call off Palermo for further instructions, but not to lose time by coming to anchor there. Expresses were sent to the different ports of Sicily, in case any Russian or Turkish ships had arrived, to put them on their guard, and to request co-operation by joining the force assembling off Minorca, where Nelson reasoned Lord St. Vincent also would repair. To the latter he wrote: "Eight, nine, or ten sail of the line shall, in a few days, be off Mahon, ready to obey your orders (not in the port);" for his intention was that they should remain outside under sail. "You may depend upon my exertion, and I am only sorry that I cannot move81 to your help, but this island appears to hang on my stay. Nothing could console the Queen this night, but my promise not to leave them unless the battle was to be fought off Sardinia."

The next day he wrote again in similar terms, seeking to reconcile his promise to the Queen with his impulses, and, it may be said safely, with his duty. "Should you come upwards without a battle, I hope in that case you will afford me an opportunity of joining you; for my heart would break to be near my commander-in-chief, and not assisting him at such a time. What a state I am in! If I go, I risk, and more than risk, Sicily, and what is now safe on the Continent; for we know, from experience, that more depends on opinion than on acts themselves. As I stay, my heart is breaking; and, to mend the matter, I am seriously unwell."

That evening, the 13th, at nine o'clock, a lieutenant arrived, who had been landed to the westward of Palermo by a sloop-of-war, the "Peterel," she not being able to beat up to the city against the east wind prevailing. From him Nelson learned that the French fleet had passed the Straits, and had been seen off Minorca. The next day, the "Peterel" having come off the port, he went alongside, and sent her on at once to Malta, with orders to Ball to abandon the blockade, bringing with him all his ships, and to proceed off Maritimo, a small island twenty miles west of Sicily, where he now proposed to concentrate his squadron and to go himself. Troubridge, having already orders to come to Palermo, needed no further instructions, except to bring all his ships, instead of leaving one at Naples. Every ship-of-the-line in the squadron, including the Portuguese, was thus summoned to join the Flag, in a position to cover Palermo and the approaches to the eastern Mediterranean. To these necessary dispositions was owing that the senior officer left at Naples was Captain Foote, who afterwards signed the articles of capitulation with the insurgents, which gave such offence to Nelson, and have occasioned much controversy in connection with his subsequent action.

Troubridge, having sailed at once on receipt of his first orders, arrived on the 17th with three British ships and one Portuguese. A heavy gale prevented Nelson getting to sea till the 20th, when he sailed, and was joined the next morning by the fourth ship from Naples. The same day came a Portuguese corvette from Gibraltar and Mahon, with letters from St. Vincent and Duckworth. The former announced that the French had passed the Straits, and that he was about to start in pursuit. Duckworth, who also was asked to join off Maritimo, declined to do so, saying that he must await the commander-in-chief. Nelson had of course immediately communicated to the latter his change of plan. He hoped to collect ten sail-of-the-line, which, "if Duckworth reinforce me, will enable me to look the enemy in the face"—fourteen ships to nineteen; "but should any of the Russians or Turks be off Malta, I hope to get a force of different nations equal to the enemy, when not a moment shall be lost in bringing them to battle."

On the 23d of May he was off Maritimo with seven ships, Ball not having joined yet. His spirits were fast rising, as in thought he drew near the enemy. "Duckworth means to leave me to my fate," he wrote to Lady Hamilton. "Never mind; if I can get eleven sail together, they shall not hurt me." "I am under no apprehension for the safety of his Majesty's squadron," he said in a circular letter to his scattered vessels, designed to heighten their ardor; "on the contrary, from the very high state of discipline of the ships, I am confident, should the enemy force us to battle, that we shall cut a very respectable figure; and if Admiral Duckworth joins, not one moment shall be lost in my attacking the enemy." It must be mentioned that St. Vincent had expressed his opinion that the French were bound for Malta and Alexandria, and Nelson, when he wrote these words, was hourly expecting to see their sails appear on the horizon. He did not know yet, however, that they were twenty-five, instead of nineteen, of the line. To St. Vincent he expressed himself with the sober, dauntless resolution of a consummate warrior, who recognized that opportunities must be seized, and detachments, if need be, sacrificed, for the furtherance of a great common object. "Your Lordship may depend that the squadron under my command shall never fall into the hands of the enemy; and before we are destroyed, I have little doubt but the enemy will have their wings so completely clipped that they may be easily overtaken"—by you. In this temper he waited. It is this clear perception of the utility of his contemplated grapple with superior numbers, and not the headlong valor and instinct for fighting that unquestionably distinguished him, which constitutes the excellence of Nelson's genius. This it was which guided him in the great Trafalgar campaign, and the lack of which betrayed Villeneuve at the same period to his wretched shortcomings. Yet, as has before been remarked, mere insight, however accurate and penetrating, ends only in itself, or at best falls far short of the mark, unless accompanied by Nelson's great power of disregarding contingencies—an inspired blindness, which at the moment of decisive action sees, not the risks, but the one only road to possible victory.

Whilst thus expecting an engagement which, from the disparity of numbers, could be nothing short of desperate, he drew up a codicil to his will, making to Lady Hamilton a bequest, in terms that show how complete were the infatuation and idealization now in possession of his mind: "I give and bequeath to my dear friend, Emma Hamilton, wife of the Right Hon. Sir William Hamilton, a nearly round box set with diamonds, said to have been sent me by the mother of the Grand Signor, which I request she will accept (and never part from) as token of regard and respect for her very eminent virtues (for she, the said Emma Hamilton, possesses them all to such a degree that it would be doing her injustice was any particular one to be mentioned) from her faithful and affectionate friend." During this short cruise he wrote her almost daily, and at some length, in addition to the more official communications addressed to Hamilton. At this same period he was excusing himself to his wife for the shortness and infrequency of his letters: "Pray attribute it to the true cause—viz., that in truth my poor hand cannot execute what my head tells me I ought to do."

On the 28th of May Nelson received letters from St. Vincent, dated the 21st, off Minorca, which put him in possession of the movements of the enemy up to that date. The French fleet, under the command of Admiral Bruix, had appeared on the 4th of the month off Cadiz. It was then blowing a half-gale of wind, and the French admiral did not care, under that condition, to engage the fifteen British ships-of-the-line which were cruising off the harbor, under Lord Keith, who had come out from England the previous autumn to be St. Vincent's second in command. The intended junction with the Spanish squadron in Cadiz being thus thwarted, Bruix passed the Straits on the 5th, and Lord St. Vincent, having recalled Keith, followed on the 12th with sixteen ships. On the 20th he joined Duckworth, and learned that the enemy, when last seen, were heading for Toulon. Keith's removal had uncovered Cadiz, and St. Vincent fully expected that the Spanish fleet would leave there for the Mediterranean, which it did, and on the 20th entered Cartagena, to the number of seventeen of the line, but much crippled from a stormy passage. This Nelson did not yet know, nor that Bruix had reached Toulon on the 14th of May, and sailed again on the 26th for the eastward.

Satisfied that the enemy would not at once come his way, and knowing that a vessel had passed up the Mediterranean from St. Vincent to put Sidney Smith on his guard, Nelson ordered Ball to resume the blockade of Malta with two ships-of-the-line. The rest of his squadron he kept massed, and took to Palermo, where he arrived May 29th. Lookout ships were stationed off the north end of Corsica and west of Sardinia. "My reason for remaining in Sicily," he wrote St. Vincent, "is the covering the blockade of Naples, and the certainty of preserving Sicily in case of an attack, for if we were to withdraw our ships, it would throw such a damp on the people that I am sure there would be no resistance."