The Life of Nelson, Volume 1

Hamilton's statement remaining uncorrected, and being so circumstantial, though erroneous, has made necessary a fuller discussion of the evidence on this point than otherwise might have been required.

Although, in the author's judgment, Nelson acted within his right in disallowing the capitulation, it is essential to note that a fortnight later, when fully cognizant of all the circumstances, he characterized it in a letter to Lord Spencer as "infamous." "On my fortunate arrival here I found a most infamous treaty entered into with the Rebels, in direct disobedience of His Sicilian Majesty's orders."85 Such an adjective, deliberately applied after the heat of the first moment had passed, is, in its injustice, a clear indication of the frame of mind under the domination of which he was. Captain Foote with his feeble squadron, and the commanders of the undisciplined mob ashore known as the Christian army, expected, as did Nelson himself, the appearance of the French fleet at Naples. In view of that possibility, it was at the least a pardonable error of judgment to concede terms which promised to transfer the castles speedily into their own hands. The most censurable part of the agreement was in the failure to exact the surrender of St. Elmo, which dominates the others. It is to be regretted that Captain Foote, who naturally and bitterly resented the word "infamous," did not, in his "Vindication," confine himself to this military argument, instead of mixing it up with talk about mercy to culprits and Nelson's infatuation for Lady Hamilton.]

On the 27th of June, the day following the surrender of Uovo and Nuovo, Troubridge landed with thirteen hundred men to besiege the French in St. Elmo, an undertaking in which he was joined by five hundred Russians and some royalists. Forty-eight hours later Nelson felt called upon, as representative of the King of the Two Sicilies, to take action more peremptory and extreme than anything he had hitherto done.

On the 29th of June, Commodore Francesco Caracciolo, lately head of the Republican Navy, was brought on board the "Foudroyant," having been captured in the country, in disguise. This man had accompanied the royal family in their flight to Palermo; but after arrival there had obtained leave to return to Naples, in order to avert the confiscation of his property by the Republican government. He subsequently joined the Republicans, or Jacobins, as they were called by Nelson and the Court. His reasons for so doing are immaterial; they were doubtless perfectly sound from the point of view of apparent self-interest; the substantial fact remains that he commanded the insurgent vessels in action with the British and Royal Neapolitan navies, firing impartially upon both. In one of these engagements the Neapolitan frigate "Minerva" was struck several times, losing two men killed and four wounded. Caracciolo, therefore, had fully committed himself to armed insurrection, in company with foreign invaders, against what had hitherto been, and still claimed to be, the lawful government of the country. He had afterwards, as the republican cause declined, taken refuge with the other insurgents in the castles. When he left them is uncertain, but on the 23d of June he is known to have been outside of Naples, and so remained till captured.

It is not easy to understand in what respect his case differed from that of other rebels who surrendered unconditionally, and whom Nelson did not try himself, but simply placed in safe keeping until the King's instructions should be received, except that, as a naval officer, he was liable to trial by court-martial, even though martial law had not been proclaimed. It was to such a tribunal that Nelson decided instantly to bring him. A court-martial of Neapolitan officers was immediately ordered to convene on board the "Foudroyant," the precept for the Court being sent to Count Thurn, captain of the "Minerva," who, because senior officer in the bay, was indicated by custom as the proper president. The charges, as worded by Nelson, were two in number, tersely and clearly stated. "Francisco Caracciolo, a commodore in the service of His Sicilian Majesty, stands accused of rebellion against his lawful sovereign, and for firing at his colours hoisted on board his Frigate, the Minerva." The court assembled at once, sitting from 10 A.M. to noon. The charges being found proved, sentence of death was pronounced; and Caracciolo, who had been brought on board at 9 A.M., was at 5 P.M., by Nelson's orders, hanged at the foreyard-arm of the "Minerva." He was forty-seven years old at the time of his death.

The proceedings of the court-martial were open, but the record, if any was drawn up, has not been preserved. It is impossible, therefore, now to say whether the evidence sustained the charges; but the acts alleged were so simple and so notorious, that there can be little doubt Caracciolo had fairly incurred his fate. Even in our milder age, no officer of an army or navy would expect to escape the like punishment for the same offence; if he did, it would be because mercy prevailed over justice. As regards the technicalities of the procedure, it would seem probable that Nelson's full powers, especially when committed to a military man, included by fair inference, if not expressly, the right of ordering courts-martial; whereas he had not at hand the machinery of judges and civil courts, for proceeding against the civilians who had joined in the insurrection. Despite his fearlessness of responsibility, he was always careful not to overpass the legal limits of his authority, except when able to justify his action by what at least appeared to himself adequate reasons. The Portuguese squadron, for instance, was absolutely under his orders, so far as its movements went; but, when a case of flagrant misconduct occurred, he confined himself to regretting that he had not power to order a court. Anomalous as his position was in the Bay of Naples, before the arrival of the King, and regrettably uncertain as is the commission under which he acted, there is no ground for disputing that he had authority to order a court-martial, and to carry its sentence into execution, nor that Caracciolo came within the jurisdiction of a court-martial properly constituted. Having regard, therefore, to the unsettled conditions of things prevailing, no fatal irregularity can be shown either in the trial or execution of this prisoner.

But, while all this is true, the instinctive aversion with which this act of Nelson's has been regarded generally is well founded. It was not decent, for it was not necessary, that capture should be followed so rapidly by trial, and condemnation by execution. Neither time nor circumstances pressed. The insurrection was over. Except the siege of St. Elmo, hostilities near Naples were at an end. That Caracciolo's judges were naval officers who had recently been in action with him would be, with average military men, rather in the prisoner's favor than otherwise; but it was very far from being in his favor that they were men in whom the angry passions engendered by civil warfare, and licentious spoliation, had not yet had time to cool. Neither the judges nor the revising power allowed themselves space for reflection. Nelson himself failed to sustain the dispassionate and magnanimous attitude that befitted the admiral of a great squadron, so placed as to have the happy chance to moderate the excesses which commonly follow the triumph of parties in intestine strife. But, however he then or afterwards may have justified his course to his own conscience, his great offence was against his own people. To his secondary and factitious position of delegate from the King of Naples, he virtually sacrificed the consideration due to his inalienable character of representative of the King and State of Great Britain. He should have remembered that the act would appear to the world, not as that of the Neapolitan plenipotentiary, but of the British officer, and that his nation, while liable like others to bursts of unreasoning savagery, in its normal moods delights to see justice clothed in orderly forms, unstained by precipitation or suspicion of perversion, advancing to its ends with the majesty of law, without unseemly haste, providing things honest in the sight of all men. That he did not do so, when he could have done so, has been intuitively felt; and to the instinctive resentment thus aroused among his countrymen has been due the facility with which the worst has been too easily believed.

Commander Jeaffreson Miles of the British Navy, writing in 1843, was one of the first, if not the very first, to clear effectually Nelson's reputation from the stigma of treachery, and of submission to unworthy influences, at this time. He has sought also to vindicate his hasty action in Caracciolo's case, by citing the swift execution of two seamen by Lord St. Vincent, at a time when mutiny was threatening. It cannot be denied that, for deterrent effect, punishment at times must be sudden as well as sharp; but the justification in each case rests upon attendant circumstances. In the instances here compared, we have in the one a fleet in which many ships were seething with mutiny, and the preservation of order rested solely upon the firmness of one man,—the commander-in-chief,—and upon the awe inspired by him. In the other, we see rebellion subdued, the chief rebels in confinement, the foreign enemy, except three small isolated garrisons, expelled beyond the borders of the kingdom six weeks before, and a great British fleet in possession of the anchorage. Punishment in such case, however just, is not deterrent, but avenging. True, Nelson was expecting the appearance of Bruix's fleet; but he himself characterized as "infamous" the capitulation granted by Ruffo and Foote, to which they were largely moved by the same expectation, when wielding a much smaller force than he did. The possible approach of the French fleet did not necessitate the hasty execution of a prisoner.

That Nelson yielded his convictions of right and wrong, and consciously abused his power, at the solicitation of Lady Hamilton, as has been so freely alleged, is not probably true,—there is no proof of it; on the contrary, as though to guard against such suspicion, he was careful to see none but his own officers during Caracciolo's confinement. But it is true that he was saturated with the prevalent Court feeling against the insurgents and the French, which found frequent expression in his letters. After living in the Hamiltons' house for four months, during which, to use his own expression, "I have never but three times put my foot to the ground, since December, 1798," in daily close contact with the woman who had won his passionate love, who was the ardent personal friend of the Queen, sharing her antipathies, and expressing her hatred of enemies in terms which showed the coarseness of her fibre,86 Nelson was steeped in the atmosphere of the Court of Naples, and separated from that of the British fleet, none of whose strongest captains were long with him during that period. The attitude more natural to men of his blood is shown in a letter signed by the officers of the "Leviathan," Duckworth's flagship. Coming from Minorca, they were out of touch with Neapolitan fury, and they addressed Lady Hamilton, interceding for a family engaged in the rebellion; a fact which shows the prevailing impression—whether well founded or not—of the influence in her power to exert. "We all feel ourselves deeply impressed with the horrid crime of disaffection to one's lawful sovereign, … but when we consider the frailty of human nature," &c. "Advise those Neapolitans not to be too sanguinary," wrote Keith to Nelson, apparently immediately after receiving the news of Caracciolo's hanging.

The abrupt execution of Caracciolo was an explosion of fierce animosity long cherished, pardonable perhaps in a Neapolitan royalist, but not in a foreign officer only indirectly interested in the issues at stake; and hence it is that the fate of that one sufferer has aroused more attention and more sympathy than that of the numerous other victims, put to death by the King's command after ordinary processes of law. It stands conspicuous as the act of an English officer imbued with the spirit of a Neapolitan Bourbon official. "Could it ever happen," he wrote to Acton, some months after this, "that any English minister wanted to make me an instrument of hurting the feelings of His Sicilian Majesty, I would give up my commission sooner than do it.... I am placed in such a situation—a subject of one King by birth, and, as far as is consistent with my allegiance to that King, a voluntary subject of His Sicilian Majesty—that if any man attempted to separate my two Kings, by all that is sacred, I should consider even putting that man to death as a meritorious act."87 On the other hand, it must be considered that Nelson, though humane, tended even in his calmest moments to severity towards military offenders. Writing with reference to a captain convicted of misbehavior before the enemy, he said, "If a man does not do his utmost in time of action, I think but one punishment ought to be inflicted;" and it may be inferred that he would have approved Byng's execution, where cowardice was not proved, but grave military dereliction was.

On the 10th of July the King of the Two Sicilies arrived from Palermo in the Bay of Naples, and went on board the "Foudroyant," which, for the whole time he remained,—about four weeks,—became practically his seat of government. There the royal standard was hoisted, there the King held his levees, and there business of State was transacted. In and through all moved the figures of Sir William and Lady Hamilton, the latter considering herself, and not without cause, the representative of the Queen. The latter had remained in Palermo, being out of favor with the Neapolitans, and with her husband, who attributed to her precipitancy the disasters of the previous December. The two women corresponded daily; and, if the minister's wife deceived herself as to the amount and importance of what she effected, there is no doubt that she was very busy, that she was commonly believed to exert much influence, and that great admiration for one another was expressed by herself, Hamilton, and Nelson, the "Tria juncta in uno" as the latter was pleased to style them. "I never saw such zeal and activity in any one as in this wonderful man [Nelson]," wrote she to Greville. "My dearest Sir William, thank God! is well, and of the greatest use now to the King." "Emma has been of infinite use in our late very critical business," said Hamilton to the same correspondent. "Ld. Nelson and I cou'd not have done without her. It will be a heart-breaking to the Queen of N. when we go"—back to England, as was then expected. "Sir William and Lady Hamilton are, to my great comfort, with me," wrote Nelson to Spencer; "for without them it would have been impossible I could have rendered half the service to his Majesty which I have now done: their heads and their hearts are equally great and good."

The execution of Caracciolo was shortly followed by another very singular incident, which showed how biassed Nelson had become towards the interests of the Neapolitan Court, and how exclusively he identified them—confused them, would scarcely be too strong a word—with the essential interests of the Allied cause and the duties of the British Navy. On the 13th of July the castle of St. Elmo was surrendered by the French, the whole city of Naples thus returning under the royal authority. On the same day, or the next, Troubridge, with a thousand of the best men that could be sent from the squadron, marched against Capua, accompanied by four thousand troops. A letter had already been received from the Commander-in-chief, Keith, to Nelson, intimating that it might be necessary to draw down his vessels from Naples to the defence of Minorca. "Should such an order come at this moment," wrote Nelson to the First Lord, forecasting his probable disobedience, "it would be a cause for some consideration whether Minorca is to be risked, or the two Kingdoms of Naples and Sicily? I rather think my decision would be to risk the former;" and he started Troubridge off with a detachment that seriously crippled the squadron. Capua is fifteen to twenty miles inland from Naples.

On the 13th—it is to be presumed after closing his letter to Spencer just quoted—an order reached him from Keith, in these words: "Events which have recently occurred render it necessary that as great a force as can be collected should be assembled near the island of Minorca; therefore, if your Lordship has no detachment of the French squadron in the neighbourhood of Sicily, nor information of their having sent any force towards Egypt or Syria, you are hereby required and directed to send such ships as you can possibly spare off the island of Minorca to wait my orders." The wording was so elastic, as regards the numbers to be sent, as to leave much to Nelson's judgment, and he replied guardedly the same day: "As soon as the safety of His Sicilian Majesty's Kingdoms is secured, I shall not lose one moment in making the detachment you are pleased to order. At present, under God's Providence, the safety of His Sicilian Majesty, and his speedy restoration to his kingdom, depends on this fleet, and the confidence inspired even by the appearance of our ships before the city is beyond all belief; and I have no scruple in declaring my opinion that should any event draw us from the kingdom, that if the French remain in any part of it, disturbances will again arise, for all order having been completely overturned, it must take a thorough cleansing, and some little time, to restore tranquillity."

When Keith wrote this first order, June 27, he was at sea somewhere between Minorca and Toulon, trying to find Bruix's fleet, of which he had lost touch three weeks before, at the time he sent to Nelson the two seventy-fours, whose arrival caused the latter's second cruise of Maritimo. He had lost touch through a false step, the discussion of which has no place in a life of Nelson, beyond the remark that it was Keith's own error, not that of Lord St. Vincent, as Nelson afterwards mistakenly alleged; querulously justifying his own disobedience on the ground that Keith, by obeying against his judgment, had lost the French fleet. What is to be specially noted in the order is that Keith gave no account of his reasons, nor of the events which dictated them, nor of his own intended action. No room is afforded by his words for any discretion, except as to the number of ships to be sent by Nelson, and, though the language of the latter was evasive, the failure to move even a single vessel was an act of unjustifiable disobedience. To Keith he wrote privately, and in a conciliatory spirit, but nothing that made his act less flagrant. "To all your wishes, depend on it, I shall pay the very strictest attention."

Conscious of the dangerous step he was taking, Nelson wrote on the same day, by private letter,88 to the First Lord of the Admiralty. "You will easily conceive my feelings," he said, "but my mind, your Lordship will know, was perfectly prepared for this order; and more than ever is my mind made up, that, at this moment, I will not part with a single ship, as I cannot do that without drawing a hundred and twenty men from each ship now at the siege of Capua, where an army is gone this day. I am fully aware of the act I have committed; but, sensible of my loyal intentions, I am prepared for any fate which may await my disobedience. Do not think that my opinion is formed from the arrangements of any one," an expression which shows that he was aware how talk was running. "No; be it good, or be it bad, it is all my own. It is natural I should wish the decision of the Admiralty and my Commander-in-chief as speedily as possible. To obtain the former, I beg your Lordship's interest with the Board. You know me enough, my dear Lord, to be convinced I want no screen to my conduct."

On the 9th of July, Keith wrote again, from Port Mahon, a letter which Nelson received on the 19th. He said that he was satisfied that the enemy's intentions were directed neither against the Two Sicilies, nor to the reinforcement of their army in Egypt; that, on the contrary, there was reason to believe they were bound out of the Straits. "I judge it necessary that all, or the greatest part of the force under your Lordship's orders, should quit the Island of Sicily, and repair to Minorca, for the purpose of protecting that Island during the necessary absence of His Majesty's squadron under my command, or for the purpose of co-operating with me against the combined force of the enemy, wherever it may be necessary." The commander-in-chief, in short, wished to mass his forces, for the necessities of the general campaign, as he considered them. Nelson now flatly refused obedience, on the ground of the local requirements in his part of the field. "Your Lordship, at the time of sending me the order, was not informed of the change of affairs in the Kingdom of Naples, and that all our marines and a body of seamen are landed, in order to drive the French scoundrels out of the Kingdom, which, with God's blessing will very soon be effected, when a part of this squadron shall be immediately sent to Minorca; but unless the French are at least drove from Capua, I think it right not to obey your Lordship's order for sending down any part of the squadron under my orders. I am perfectly aware of the consequences of disobeying the orders of my commander-in-chief." It cannot be said that the offensiveness of the act of disobedience is tempered by any very conciliatory tone in the words used. The reason for disobedience makes matters rather worse. "As I believe the safety of the Kingdom of Naples depends at the present moment on my detaining the squadron, I have no scruple in deciding that it is better to save the Kingdom of Naples and risk Minorca, than to risk the Kingdom of Naples to save Minorca." When he thus wrote, Nelson knew that Bruix had joined the Spanish fleet in Cartagena, making a combined force of forty ships, to which Keith, after stripping Minorca, could oppose thirty-one.

None of Nelson's letters reached Keith until long after he had left the Mediterranean, which probably prevented the matter being brought to a direct issue between the two, such as would have compelled the Admiralty to take some decisive action. On the 10th of July the commander-in-chief sailed from Port Mahon for Cartagena, following on the tracks of the allied fleets, which he pursued into the Atlantic and to Brest, where they succeeded in entering on the 13th of August, just twenty-four hours before the British came up. The narrow margin of this escape inevitably suggests the thought, of how much consequence might have been the co-operation of the dozen ships Nelson could have brought. It is true, certainly, as matters turned out, that even had he obeyed, they could not have accompanied Keith, nor in the event did any harm come to Minorca; but there was no knowledge in Nelson's possession that made an encounter between the two great fleets impossible, nor was it till three days after his former refusal to obey, that he knew certainly that Keith had given up all expectation of a junction with himself. Then, on the 22d of July, he received two letters dated the 14th, and couched in tones so peremptory as to suggest a suspicion that no milder words would enforce obedience—that his Commander-in-chief feared that nothing short of cast-iron orders would drag him away from the Neapolitan Court. "Your Lordship is hereby required and directed to repair to Minorca, with the whole, or the greater part, of the force under your Lordship's command, for the protection of that island, as I shall, in all probability, have left the Mediterranean before your Lordship will receive this. Keith." The second letter of the same date ended with the words: "I therefore trust the defence of Minorca to your Lordship, and repeat my directions that the ships be sent for its protection." On the receipt of these, though Capua had not yet surrendered, Nelson at once sent Duckworth with four ships-of-the-line to Minorca, detaining only their marines for the land operations.

It seems scarcely necessary to say that, while an officer in subordinate command should have the moral courage to transcend or override his orders in particular instances—each of which rests upon its own merits, and not upon any general rule that can be formulated—it would be impossible for military operations to be carried on at all, if the commander-in-chief were liable to be deliberately defied and thwarted in his combinations, as Keith was in this case. It does not appear that Nelson knew the circumstances which Keith was considering; he only knew what the conditions were about Naples, and he thought that the settlement of the kingdom might be prevented by the departure of several of his ships. In this opinion, in the author's judgment, his views were exaggerated, and colored by the absorbing interest he had come to take in the royal family and their fortunes, linked as these were with the affections of a particular woman; but, even granting that his apprehensions were well founded, he was taking upon himself to determine, not merely what was best for the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, but what was best for the whole Mediterranean command. It was not within his province to decide whether Minorca or Naples was the more important. That was the function of the commander-in-chief. Had the latter, while leaving Nelson's force unchanged, directed him to follow a particular line of operations in the district committed to him, it is conceivable that circumstances, unknown to his superior, might have justified him in choosing another; but there was nothing in the conditions that authorized his assumption that he could decide for the whole command. And this is not the less true, because Nelson was in the general a man of far sounder judgment and keener insight than Keith, or because his intuitions in the particular instance were more accurate, as they possibly were. He defended his course on the ground, so frequently and so erroneously taken, that his intentions were right. "I am so confident," he wrote to the Admiralty, "of the uprightness of my intentions for his Majesty's service, and for that of his Sicilian Majesty, which I consider as the same, that, with all respect, I submit myself to the judgment of my superiors." Four years later, in 1803, he used the following singular expressions concerning his conduct at this period: "I paid more attention to another sovereign than my own; therefore the King of Naples' gift of Bronté to me, if it is not now settled to my advantage, and to be permanent, has cost me a fortune, and a great deal of favour which I might have enjoyed, and jealousy which I should have avoided. I repine not on those accounts. I did my duty, to the Sicilifying my own conscience, and I am easy."89 "As I have often before risked my life for the good cause," he told his old friend the Duke of Clarence, "so I with cheerfulness did my commission: for although a military tribunal may think me criminal, the world will approve my conduct." With such convictions, he might, if condemned, as he almost inevitably must have been, have met his fate with the cheerfulness of a clear conscience; but no military tribunal can possibly accept a man's conscience as the test of obedience.