The Life of Nelson, Volume 1

On the 6th of June Duckworth arrived at Palermo from the main fleet, with four ships-of-the-line, among them the "Foudroyant," eighty. This ship had been designated originally for Nelson's flag, and he shifted to her from the "Vanguard" on the 8th. Duckworth brought a report that St. Vincent was about to give up the command and go home, on account of ill-health. This at once aroused Nelson's anxiety, for he had long felt that few superiors would have the greatness of mind to trust him as implicitly, and humor him as tenderly, as the great admiral had done. It is not every one that can handle an instrument of such trenchant power, yet delicate temper, as Nelson's sensitive genius. The combination in St. Vincent of perfect professional capacity with masterful strength of character, had made the tactful respect he showed to Nelson's ability peculiarly grateful to the latter; and had won from him a subordination of the will, and an affection, which no subsequent commander-in-chief could elicit. He wrote to him:—

MY DEAR LORD,—We have a report that you are going home. This distresses us most exceedingly, and myself in particular; so much so, that I have serious thoughts of returning, if that event should take place. But for the sake of our Country, do not quit us at this serious moment. I wish not to detract from the merit of whoever may be your successor; but it must take a length of time, which I hope the war will not give, to be in any manner a St. Vincent. We look up to you, as we have always found you, as to our Father, under whose fostering care we have been led to fame.... Give not up a particle of your authority to any one; be again our St. Vincent, and we shall be happy.

Your affectionate NELSON.

This letter did not reach St. Vincent before he carried his purpose into effect; but Nelson never quite forgave the abandonment of the command at such a moment. In after years he spoke bitterly of it, as a thing he himself could not have done; failing, perhaps, to realize the difference in staying power between forty-five and sixty-five.

On the 2d of June, being then seventy miles southwest of Toulon, St. Vincent turned over to Keith the command of the twenty ships-of-the-line then with him, and went to Port Mahon. For the moment he retained in his own hands the charge of the station,—continued Commander-in-chief,—with headquarters at Minorca, and two divisions cruising: one of twenty ships, with Keith, between Toulon and Minorca, and one of sixteen, including three Portuguese, under Nelson in the waters of Sicily. Friction between these two began at once. Lord Keith was an accomplished and gallant officer, methodical, attentive, and correct; but otherwise he rose little above the commonplace, and, while he could not ignore Nelson's great achievements, he does not seem to have had the insight which could appreciate the rare merit underlying them, nor the sympathetic temperament which could allow for his foibles. Nelson, exasperated at the mere fact of the other's succession to the command, speedily conceived for him an antipathy which Keith would have been more than mortal not to return; but it is to the honor of the latter's self-command that, while insisting upon obedience from his brilliant junior, he bore his refractoriness with dignified patience.

After St. Vincent left him, Keith continued to stand to the northward and eastward. On the 5th of June he received certain information that the French fleet, now twenty-two ships-of-the-line, was in Vado Bay. This word he at once sent on to Nelson. Next day his division was so close in with the Riviera, off Antibes, that it was fired upon by the shore batteries; but the wind coming to the eastward, when off Monaco, did not permit it to pass east of Corsica, and, fearing that the French would take that route and fall upon Nelson, Keith detached to him two seventy-fours, which joined him on the 13th of June.

Admiral Lord Keith

At the moment of their arrival Nelson had just quitted Palermo for Naples, taking with him the whole squadron. The King of Naples had formally requested him to afford to the royal cause at the capital the assistance of the fleet, because the successes of the royalists elsewhere in the kingdom rendered imminent an insurrection in the city against the republican party and the French, which held the castles; and such insurrection, unless adequately supported, might either fail or lead to deplorable excesses. Lady Hamilton, whose irregular interference in State concerns receives here singular illustration, strongly urged this measure in a letter, written to the admiral after an interview with the Queen. Nelson consented, took on board seventeen hundred troops, with the Hereditary Prince, who was to represent the King,—the latter not wishing to go,—and was already clear of Palermo Bay when the two ships from Keith appeared. Gathering from their information that the French were bound for Naples or Sicily, in which his own judgment coincided, he returned at once into port, landed the Prince and the troops, and then took the squadron again off Maritimo, where he expected Ball and the two ships off Malta to join him without delay. "The French force being twenty-two sail of the line," he wrote in suppressed reproach to Keith, "four of which are first rates, the force with me being only sixteen of the line, not one of which was of three decks, three being Portuguese, and one of the English being a sixty-four, very short of men, I had no choice left but to return to Palermo."

With this incident of the insufficient reinforcement sent, began the friction with Keith which appears more openly in his correspondence with others. To St. Vincent, still commander-in-chief, he wrote: "I send a copy of my letter to Lord Keith, and I have only stated my regret that his Lordship could not have sent me a force fit to face the enemy: but, as we are, I shall not get out of their way; although, as I am, I cannot think myself justified in exposing the world (I may almost say) to be plundered by these miscreants. I trust your Lordship will not think me wrong in the painful determination I conceived myself forced to make," that is, to go back to Palermo, "for agonized indeed was the mind of your Lordship's faithful and affectionate servant."

Nelson appears to have felt that the return to Palermo, though imperative, in view of the relative forces of himself and the French, would not only postpone and imperil the restoration of the royal family, but would bring discredit upon himself for not seeking and fighting the enemy's fleet. "I shall wait off Maritimo," he wrote Keith, "anxiously expecting such a reinforcement as may enable me to go in search of the enemy's fleet, when not one moment shall be lost in bringing them to battle; for," he continues, with one of those flashes of genius which from time to time, unconsciously to himself, illuminate his writings, "I consider the best defence for his Sicilian Majesty's dominions is to place myself alongside the French." "My situation is a cruel one," he wrote to Hamilton, "and I am sure Lord Keith has lowered me in the eyes of Europe, for they will only know of 18 sail, [Ball having joined], and not of the description of them; it has truly made me ill." But, although not justified in seeking them, he had off Maritimo taken a strategic position which would enable him to intercept their approach to either Naples or Sicily, "and I was firmly resolved," he wrote with another of his clear intuitions, "they should not pass me without a battle, which would so cripple them that they might be unable to proceed on any distant service." "On this you may depend," he had written to Lady Hamilton, on the first cruise off Maritimo, three weeks before, "that if my little squadron obeys my signal, not a ship shall fall into the hands of the enemy; and I will so cut them up, that they will not be fit even for a summer's cruise."

On the 20th of June, off Maritimo, he received a despatch from St. Vincent that a reinforcement of twelve ships-of-the-line from the Channel was then approaching Port Mahon, and that Keith, having returned thither, had left again in search of Bruix, whose whereabouts remained unknown. He was also notified that St. Vincent had resigned all his command, leaving Keith commander-in-chief. Nelson was convinced—"I knew," was his expression—that the French intended going to Naples. He determined now to resume his enterprise against the republicans in the city; a decision which caused him great and unexplained mental conflict. "I am agitated," he wrote Hamilton the same day, in a note headed "Most Secret," "but my resolution is fixed. For Heaven's sake suffer not any one to oppose it. I shall not be gone eight days. No harm can come to Sicily. I send my Lady and you Lord St. Vincent's letter. I am full of grief and anxiety. I must go. It will finish the war. It will give a sprig of laurel to your affectionate friend, Nelson." The cause of this distress can only be surmised, but is probably to be found in the fears of the Queen, and in the differences existing at the time between herself and the King. Possibly, too, Lady Hamilton's sympathy with the Queen, in a present fear for Sicily, may have led her, contrary to the request so lately made for the admiral to go to Naples, to second an entreaty that the island should not now be exposed; and to refuse her may have caused him pain. On the 21st he was at Palermo, and after two hours' consultation with their Majesties and Acton, the Prime Minister, he sailed again, accompanied in the "Foudroyant" on this occasion by Sir William and Lady Hamilton, but not by the Hereditary Prince, nor the Sicilian troops. On the 24th, at 9 P.M., he anchored in the Bay of Naples. Flags of truce were at that moment flying on the castles of Uovo and Nuovo, which were in the hands of the Neapolitan republicans, and upon the frigate "Seahorse," whose commander had been the senior British officer present, before Nelson's own appearance.

On the passage from Palermo, Nelson had received information that the royalists,—with whom were co-operating some detachments of Russians and Turks, as well as the British naval forces, under Captain Foote, of the "Seahorse,"—had concluded an armistice with the French and their Neapolitan allies, who were in possession of the castles. The terms of the armistice, thus rumored, were that the castles, if not relieved within twenty-one days, should then be surrendered; the garrisons to march out with the honors of war, and to be transported to Toulon in vessels to be furnished by the King of Naples. This report was erroneous in important particulars, especially as to the period of twenty-one days. What really had happened was, that a capitulation had been concluded, which provided that the Neapolitan insurgents should evacuate the two castles held by them—Uovo and Nuovo—as soon as the transports were ready to take them to Toulon, but not before. The French, in the castle of St. Elmo, were not included in the arrangement, their only part being that it required the ratification of their commander before becoming operative. This ratification was given, and, when Nelson's squadron came in sight,82 the treaty had received the signature of all the parties interested; the flags of truce indicating a cessation of hostilities until the terms of the capitulation were carried into effect.

Nelson had been given full power by the King of the Two Sicilies to act as his representative. He was also, as commander of the fleet, the representative of the King of Great Britain among the allied forces, which were acting in support of the royalist cause. The double function introduces great confusion into the subsequent transactions, especially as there are on record no formal credentials investing him with the authority he claimed to have from the King of Naples. The omission probably arose from the extreme shortness of his stay in Palermo on the 21st—only two hours and a half elapsing, by the "Foudroyant's" log, between the entering of the ship and her sailing again; a time sufficient for an interview and a clear understanding, but scarcely for drawing up a regular commission. The fact rests upon his own statement, adequately supported, however, by inferences reasonably to be drawn from expressions in letters to him, both from the King and from Acton, the Prime Minister. That his power went so far as to authorize him to remove Cardinal Ruffo, up to that time the King's representative, would alone confirm the assertion of a man habitually truthful. Sir William Hamilton also, writing to Greville, and alluding to his official despatch by the same mail, says, "We had full powers." It may be accepted that Nelson himself was entirely satisfied that he was authorized at the time to act for the King, when emergency required; and it is certain that letters were speedily sent, empowering him to appoint a new government, as well as to arrest Ruffo and to send him to Palermo in a British ship.

Seeing the flags of truce flying, from the two castles and the "Seahorse," and being under the impression that has been stated as to the terms of an armistice, which he called "infamous," Nelson immediately made a signal annulling the truce, "being determined," he wrote to Keith, "never to give my approbation to any terms with Rebels, but that of unconditional submission." As the execution of the capitulation depended upon the embarkation of the garrisons in the transports which were to be provided, Nelson was entirely master of the situation, so far as force went. Next morning, June 25th, he moved his fleet of eighteen sail nearer in, mooring it in a close line of battle before the city, and at the same time sent for twenty-two gun and mortar vessels, then lying at the islands, with which he flanked the ships-of-the-line. In this imposing array, significant at once of inexorable purpose and irresistible power, he sent to Ruffo his "opinion of the infamous terms entered into with the rebels," and also two papers, to be by him forwarded to the insurgents and to the French. From the latter, who had not treated, was required simply an unconditional surrender; but the message to the insurgents, sent, singularly enough, not from the representative of the King of Naples but from the British admiral, ran as follows:—

His Britannic Majesty's Ship Foudroyant, Naples Bay, 25th June, 1799.

Rear Admiral Lord Nelson, K.B., Commander of His Britannic Majesty's Fleet in the Bay of Naples, acquaints the Rebellious Subjects of His Sicilian Majesty in the Castles of Uovo and Nuovo, that he will not permit them to embark or quit those places. They must surrender themselves to His Majesty's royal mercy.

NELSON.

Ruffo refused to send the papers in, and said decisively that, if Nelson saw fit to break the armistice then existing, between the signature of the capitulation and its execution, he would aid neither with men nor guns. Finally, he went on board the "Foudroyant;" but after an animated discussion, which rose nearly to an altercation, neither party yielded his ground. "I used every argument in my power," wrote Nelson, "to convince him that the Treaty and Armistice was at an end by the arrival of the fleet", and this therefore may be taken to summarize his own position. He then gave the Cardinal a written opinion that the treaty was one that "ought not to be carried out without the approbation of His Sicilian Majesty." Neither his powers nor Ruffo's, he argued, extended to granting such a capitulation. Ruffo, indeed, had been expressly forbidden to do so; a fact which rendered the paper void from the first. "Under this opinion," reported Nelson to Keith, "the Rebels came out of the Castles;" "as they ought," he wrote to his friend Davison, "and as I hope all those who are false to their King and Country will, to be hanged, or otherwise disposed of, as their sovereign thought proper." They were then placed in transports, which were anchored under the guns of the fleet; and in the end many of them were put to death.

For his action in this case Nelson has been severely blamed. The point at issue is perfectly simple, however it may be decided. Disregarding subordinate considerations, of which there are many, such as the motives which induced Ruffo and Foote to grant terms, and the question whether they would have been justified, which Nelson denied, in conceding them under any conditions, the matter reduces itself to this: When an agreement has been made, one of the parties to which is acting only as a representative, not as a principal, nor accredited for the specific purpose, has the principal, in person or by proxy, a right to annul the agreement, provided, as in this case, it has not passed into execution, either total or partial? Nelson admitted that the persons of the insurgents would have been entitled to the immunity stipulated, if they had already delivered up the castles. They had not done so; the flags of truce marked only a cessation of hostilities, not the completion of the transaction. By the terms, the evacuation and embarkation were to be simultaneous: "The evacuation shall not take place until the moment of embarkation." The status of the opponents was in no wise altered by a paper which had not begun to receive execution. The one important circumstance which had happened was the arrival of the British squadron, instead of Bruix's fleet which all were expecting. It was perfectly within Nelson's competence to stop the proceedings at the point they had then reached.

[After writing the above, the author, by the courtesy of the Foreign Office, received a copy of Sir William Hamilton's despatch of July 14, 1799, giving his account of the events happening after June 20th, the date when Nelson left Palermo for Naples. In this occurs a statement which would seriously modify, if not altogether destroy, the justification of Nelson's conduct in annulling the capitulation, which rests upon the condition that it had not received any substantial execution. Hamilton says: "When we anchored in this Bay the 24th of June the capitulation of the castles had in some measure taken place.83 Fourteen large Polacks or transport vessels had taken on board out of the castles the most conspicuous and criminal of the Neapolitan Rebels, that had chosen to go to Toulon, the others had already been permitted with their property to return to their own homes in this kingdom, and hostages selected from the first royalist nobility of Naples had been sent into the castle of St. Elmo that commands the city of Naples, and where a French garrison and the flag of the French Republic was to remain until the news of the arrival of the Neapolitan Rebels at Toulon.... There was no time to be lost, for the transport vessels were on the point of sailing for Toulon, when Lord Nelson ordered all the boats of his squadron to be manned and armed, and to bring those vessels, with all the Rebels on board, directly under the sterns of his ships, and there they remain, having taken out and secured on board His Majesty's ships the most guilty chiefs of the rebellion."

Occurring in an official despatch, from a minister of Nelson's sovereign, his own warm personal friend and admirer, closely associated with him throughout the proceedings, and his colleague and adviser in much that was done, the words quoted, if they could stand accepted as an accurate statement of occurrences, would establish that Nelson had secured the persons of men who had surrendered on the faith of a treaty, and had held them, subject to the tender mercies of the King of the Two Sicilies. They were in his power (accepting Hamilton's statement), only because the King's Vicar-General, his representative so far as they knew, had guaranteed their safety if they came out of the castles. The least they were entitled to, in such case, was to be restored to the castles—not yet evacuated—to be placed as they were before surrendering. It is true that, as the terms of the treaty made embarkation and evacuation coincident, and as the latter had certainly not taken place, it may be argued that they had no claim to immunity when they had precipitated their action, and left the castle of their own motion before the formal evacuation and embarkation; but one would prefer not to rest on such a technical plea the justification of a character generally so upright in his public acts as Lord Nelson.

Fortunately for his fame, there is adequate reason to believe—to be assured—that Hamilton's despatch is very inaccurate in details, and specifically in this one, so damaging as it stands. The incident of arming the boats and bringing out the vessels took place, according to the log of the "Foudroyant," not when the fleet moored, on the morning of June 25th, or even shortly afterwards, but on the morning of the 28th; two days after the castles, as shown by the logs of both the "Foudroyant" and "Seahorse," surrendered and were taken possession of. Miss Helen Maria Williams, whose account of the affair was strongly tinged with sympathy for the revolutionists, says: "While the two garrisons, to the number of fifteen hundred, were waiting for the preparing and, provisioning of the vessels which were to convey them to France, Lord Nelson arrived with his whole fleet in the Bay of Naples [June 24-25]. On the evening of the twenty-sixth of June, the patriots evacuated their forts, and embarked on board the transports prepared for their conveyance to France. The next day [June 27], the transports were moored alongside the English fleet, each under the cannon of an English vessel."84 These several witnesses may be confidently accepted, and prove that the embarkation and removal of the garrisons took place after Nelson's declaration to them, dated June 25th, in which he said "he would not permit them to embark or quit those places. They must surrender themselves to His Majesty's Royal mercy." Captain Foote, who had signed the capitulation that Nelson condemned, affords evidence which, though not conclusive, is corroborative of the above. Writing to Nelson at 7 A.M. of the 24th of June, fourteen hours before the fleet anchored, but only eight before he knew of its approach, he says: "the Republicans are about to embark," and again, "when the Capitulation is put into effect;" both which expressions show that up to that moment the agreement had not begun to receive execution. On the 22d of June Ruffo wrote to Foote that there were no vessels in Naples on which to embark the revolutionists, and requested him to furnish them; a request that Foote referred to Count Thurn, the senior Neapolitan naval officer, for compliance. It is therefore antecedently probable that the vessels could not have been collected from other ports, and prepared for an unexpected voyage of at least a week's duration, before Nelson arrived, forty-eight hours later.

Hamilton's despatch contains another mistake, affecting the order of events, so circumstantial that, taken with the one just discussed, it shows his accuracy on such points was more than doubtful. "Admiral Caracciolo," he says, was hanged, "the day after the King's squadron came to Naples;" the fact being that the squadron arrived on the night of June 24-25, and that Caracciolo was executed on the evening of the 29th. This error was not a slip of the pen, for he characterizes the alleged fact as "so speedy an act of justice" as to elicit loud applause from the concourse of spectators surrounding the ship in boats.

Hamilton was not only nearly seventy, but he was worn out in health and constitution. Writing a fortnight after the events, and having passed that time in the turmoil and confusion attending the re-establishment of order in Naples, it is not wonderful that he ran together incidents that happened in rapid succession, and failed to realize the importance which might afterwards attach to the date of their occurrence. "I am so worn out," he tells Greville, "by the long despatch I have been obliged to write to-day to Lord Grenville that I can scarcely hold my pen;" and again, "My head is so confused with long writing on this subject that I must refer you to my letter to Lord Grenville.... You will find me much worn and am little more than skin and bone, as I have very little stomach."

Although they were on board ship together, Nelson cannot have seen Hamilton's despatch, or he must have corrected a misstatement which directly contradicted his own account of June 27 to Lord Keith, as well as that he was sending by the same messenger, in a private letter to Earl Spencer. The latter ran thus: "Your Lordship will observe my Note (No. 1), and opinion to the Cardinal (No. 2). The Rebels came out of the Castles with this knowledge, without any honours, and the principal Rebels were seized and conducted on board the ships of the squadron. The others, embarked in fourteen polacres, were anchored under the care of our ships."