The Life of Nelson, Volume 2

Whatever weight may be attributed to this criticism on Nelson's hastily sketched scheme, there can scarcely be any discord in the note of admiration for the fire that begins to glow, the instant he in thought draws near the enemy. There, assuredly, is no uncertain sound. They must be met as soon as possible; if not strong enough to attack, they must be watched, and company kept, till a favorable opportunity offers. If none occur till they draw near the beach, then, "Whatever plans may be adopted, the moment they touch our coast, be it where it may, they are to be attacked by every man afloat and on shore: this must be perfectly understood. Never fear the event." The resolution shown by such words is not born of carelessness; and the man who approaches his work in their spirit will wring success out of many mistakes of calculation—unless indeed he stumble on an enemy of equal determination. The insistence upon keeping the enemy under observation, "keeping company" with them, however superior in numbers, may also be profitably noted. This inspired his whole purpose, four years later, in the pursuit of the French to the West Indies—if the odds are too great for immediate attack, "We won't part without a battle." It was the failure to hold the same principle of action, applicable to such diverse cases, that ruined Calder in the same campaign.

With the general views that have been outlined, Nelson hastened to his task. His commission for the new service was dated July 24, three weeks after his return from the Baltic. On the 25th he presented the memorandum of operations which has been discussed, on the 26th the Admiralty issued their instructions, and on the 27th he hoisted his flag upon the "Unité" frigate at Sheerness. "I shall go on board this day," he said, "in order to show we must all get to our posts as speedily as possible." His orders, after mentioning the general reason for creating the "Squadron on a Particular Service," as his command was officially styled, designated the limits of his charge, coastwise, as from Orfordness, on the Suffolk shore, round to Beachy Head, on the Channel. On the enemy's side of the water, it extended from end to end of the line of ports from which the especial danger of an invasion by troops might be supposed to issue—from Dieppe to Ostend; but the mouth of the Scheldt was implicitly included.

The district thus assigned to him was taken out of the commands hitherto held by some very reputable admirals, senior to himself, who otherwise retained their previous charges, surrounding and touching his own; while at the Scheldt he trenched closely upon the province of the commander-in-chief in the North Sea. Such circumstances are extremely liable to cause friction and bad blood, and St. Vincent, who with all his despotism was keenly alive to the just susceptibilities of meritorious officers, was very careful to explain to them that he had with the greatest reluctance yielded to the necessity of combining the preparations for defence under a single flag-officer, who should have no other care. The innate tact, courtesy, and thoughtful consideration which distinguished Nelson, when in normal conditions, removed all other misunderstandings. "The delicacy you have always shown to senior officers," wrote St. Vincent to him, "is a sure presage of your avoiding by every means in your power to give umbrage to Admiral Dickson, who seems disposed to judge favourably of the intentions of us all: it is, in truth, the most difficult card we have to play." "Happy should I be," he said at another time, "to place the whole of our offensive and defensive war under your auspices, but you are well aware of the difficulties on that head." From first to last there is no trace of a serious jar, and Nelson's instructions to his subordinates were such as to obviate the probability of any. "I feel myself, my dear Lord," he wrote St. Vincent, relative to a projected undertaking on the Dutch coast, "as anxious to get a medal, or a step in the peerage as if I had never got either. If I succeeded, and burnt the Dutch fleet, probably medals and an earldom. I must have had every desire to try the matter, regardless of the feelings of others; but I should not have been your Nelson, that wants not to take honours or rewards from any man; and if ever I feel great, it is, my dear Lord, in never having, in thought, word, or deed, robbed any man of his fair fame."

He was accompanied from London by a young commander, Edward Parker, who seems first to have become known to him in the Baltic, and who now acted as an additional aide. The latter was filled with the admiration, felt by most of those thrown into contact with Nelson, for the rapidity with which he transacted business, and set all about him in movement. "He is the cleverest and quickest man, and the most zealous in the world. In the short time we were in Sheerness, he regulated and gave orders for thirty of the ships under his command, made every one pleased, filled them with emulation, and set them all on the qui vive." In forty-eight hours he was off again for the Downs, by land, having to make some inquiries on the way as to the organization, and readiness to serve, of the Sea Fencibles, a large body of naval reserves, who were exempt from impressment upon the understanding that they would come forward for coast defence, in case of threatened invasion. Concerning their dispositions he received fairly flattering assurances, which in the event were not realized. If the men were certified that they would not be detained after the danger was over, it was said, they certainly would go on board. "This service, my dear Lord," he wrote to St. Vincent, "above all others, would be terrible for me: to get up and harangue like a recruiting sergeant; but as I am come forth, I feel that I ought to do this disagreeable service as well as any other, if judged necessary."

Three days more, and he was off Boulogne in a frigate with some bomb-vessels. The French admiral, Latouche Tréville, had moored in front of the pier a line of gun-vessels, twenty-four in number, fastened together from end to end. At these, and at the shipping in the small port, some bombs were thrown. Not much injury was done on either side. Prevented by an easterly wind from going on to Flushing, as he had intended, Nelson returned to Margate on the 6th of August, issued a proclamation to the Fencibles, assuring them that the French undoubtedly intended an invasion, that their services were absolutely required at once on board the defence-ships, and that they could rely upon being returned to their homes as soon as the danger was over. Out of twenty-six hundred, only three hundred and eighty-five volunteered to this urgent call. "They are no more willing to give up their occupations than their superiors," wrote Nelson, with characteristically shrewd insight into a frame of mind wholly alien to his own self-sacrificing love of Country and of glory.

Hurrying from station to station, on the shores, and in the channels of the Thames, he was on the 12th of August back at Margate, evidently disappointed in the prospects for coast-defence, and more and more inclining to the deep-sea cruising, and to action on the enemy's coast, recommended by the Admiralty, and consonant to his own temper, always disdainful of mere defensive measures. "Our active force is perfect," he wrote to St. Vincent, "and possesses so much zeal that I only want to catch that Buonaparte on the water." He has satisfied himself that the French preparations were greatly exaggerated; Boulogne in fact could not harbor the needed vessels, unless enlarged, as afterwards by Napoleon. "Where is our invasion to come from? The time is gone." Nevertheless, he favors an attack of some sort, suggests an expedition against Flushing, with five thousand troops, and proposes a consultation. St. Vincent replied that he did not believe in consultations, and had always avoided them. "I disapprove of unnecessary consultations as much as any man," retorted Nelson, "yet being close to the Admiralty, I should not feel myself justified in risking our ships through the channels of Flushing without buoys and pilots, without a consultation with such men as your Lordship, and also I believe you would think an order absolutely necessary." "Lord St. Vincent tells me he hates councils," he writes rather sorely to Addington. "So do I between military men; for if a man consults whether he is to fight, when he has the power in his own hands, it is certain that his opinion is against fighting; but that is not the case at present, and I own I do want good council. Lord St. Vincent is for keeping the enemy closely blockaded; but I see they get alongshore inside their sand banks, and under their guns, which line the coast of France. Lord Hood is for keeping our squadrons of defence stationary on our own shore (except light cutters to give information of every movement of the enemy).... When men of such good sense, such great sea-officers, differ so widely, is it not natural that I should wish the mode of defence to be well arranged by the mature consideration of men of judgment?"

Meanwhile he had again gone off Boulogne, and directed an attack in boats upon the line of vessels moored outside. He took great care in the arrangements for this hazardous expedition, giving personal supervision to all details. "As you may believe, my dear Emma," he wrote to her who had his closest confidence, "my mind feels at what is going forward this night; it is one thing to order and arrange an attack, and another to execute it; but I assure you I have taken much more precaution for others, than if I was to go myself—then my mind would be perfectly at ease." He professed, and probably felt, entire confidence in the result. Fifty-seven boats were detailed for the attack. They were in four divisions, each under a commander; Edward Parker having one. Each division was to advance in two columns, the boats of which were secured one to another by tow-ropes; a precaution invaluable to keep them together, though rendering progress slower. The points in the enemy's line which each division was to make for were clearly specified, and special boats told off and fitted to tow out any vessels that were captured. Simultaneous with this onslaught, a division of howitzer flatboats was to throw shot into the port.

At half-past eleven on the night of August 15th, the boats, which had assembled alongside the flag-frigate "Medusa," shoved off together; but the distance which they had to pull, with the strong, uncertain currents, separated them; and, as so often happens in concerted movements, attacks intended to be simultaneous were made disconnectedly, while the French were fully prepared. The first division of the British arrived at half-past twelve, and after a desperate struggle was beaten off, Commander Parker being mortally wounded. Two other divisions came up later, while the fourth lost its way altogether. The affair was an entire failure, except so far as to show that the enemy would be met on their own shores, rather than on those of Great Britain. The British loss was forty-four killed, and one hundred and twenty-eight wounded.

Nelson returned to the Downs, bitterly grieved, but not greatly discouraged. The mishap, he said, was due to the boats not arriving at the same moment; and that, he knew, was caused by conditions of currents, which would ever prevent the dull flatboats of the enemy moving in a concert that the cutters of ships of war had not attained. "The craft which I have seen," he wrote, "I do not think it possible to row to England; and sail they cannot." As yet, however, he had not visited Flushing, and he felt it necessary to satisfy himself on that point. On the 24th of August, taking some pilots with him, he went across and inspected the ground, where the officer in charge of the British observing squadron was confident something might be effected. Nelson, however, decided otherwise. "I cannot but admire Captain Owen's zeal in his anxious desire to get at the enemy, but I am afraid it has made him overleap sand-banks and tides, and laid him aboard the enemy. I could join most heartily in his desire; but we cannot do impossibilities, and I am as little used to find out the impossibles as most folks; and I think I can discriminate between the impracticable and the fair prospect of success." By the 27th of August he had returned to the Downs, where, with a brief and unimportant intermission, he remained until the cessation of hostilities with France in October.

Satisfied that invasion was, for that year at least, an empty menace, Nelson fell again into the tone of angry and fretful complaint which was so conspicuous in the last weeks of his stay in the Baltic. To borrow the words of a French admirer, "He filled the Admiralty with his caprices and Europe with his fame." Almost from his first contact with this duty, it had been distasteful to him. "There is nothing to be done on the great scale," he said. "I own, my dear Lord," he told St. Vincent, "that this boat warfare is not exactly congenial to my feelings, and I find I get laughed at for my puny mode of attack." As usual, he threw himself with all his might into what he had to do, but the inward friction remained. "Whilst I serve, I will do it actively, and to the very best of my abilities. I have all night had a fever, which is very little abated this morning; my mind carries me beyond my strength, and will do me up; but such is my nature. I require nursing like a child."

That he was far from well is as unquestionable as that his distemper proceeded largely from his mind, if it did not originate there. "Our separation is terrible," he writes to Lady Hamilton; "my heart is ready to flow out of my eyes. I am not unwell, but I am very low. I can only account for it by my absence from all I hold dear in this world." From the first he had told St. Vincent that he could not stay longer than September 14th, that it was beyond his strength to stand the equinoctial weather. The veteran seaman showed towards him the same delicate consideration that he always had, using the flattering urgency which Nelson himself knew so well how to employ, in eliciting the hearty co-operation of others. "The public mind is so much tranquillised by your being at your post, it is extremely desirable that you should continue there: in this opinion all His Majesty's servants, with Sir Thomas Troubridge, agree. Let me entreat your Lordship to persevere in the measures you are so advantageously employed in, and give up, at least for the present, your intention of returning to town, which would have the worst possible effect at this critical juncture. The dispositions you have made, and are making, appear to us all as the most judicious possible." "I hope you will not relinquish your situation at a moment when the services of every man are called for by the circumstances the Country is placed in, so imperiously that, upon reflection, I persuade myself you will think as I, and every friend you have, do on this subject." Nelson admitted, in a calmer moment, that "although my whole soul is devoted to get rid of this command, yet I do not blame the Earl for wishing to keep me here a little longer." "Pray take care of your health," the latter says again, "than which nothing is of so much consequence to the Country at large, more particularly so to your very affectionate St. Vincent." "Your health is so precious at all times, more particularly so at this crisis."

St. Vincent tried in vain to conjure with the once beloved name of Troubridge, whom Nelson used to style the "Nonpareil," whose merits he had been never weary of extolling, and whose cause he had pleaded so vehemently, when the accident of his ship's grounding deprived him of his share in the Battle of the Nile. From the moment that he was chosen by St. Vincent, who called him the ablest adviser and best executive officer in the British Navy, to assist in the administration of the Admiralty, Nelson began to view him jealously. "Our friend Troubridge is to be a Lord of the Admiralty, and I have a sharp eye, and almost think I see it. No, poor fellow, I hope I do him injustice; he cannot surely forget my kindness to him." But when the single eye has become double, suspicion thrives, and when tortured by his desire to return to Lady Hamilton, Nelson saw in every obstacle and every delay the secret hand of Troubridge. "I believe it is all the plan of Troubridge," he wrote in one such instance, "but I have wrote both him and the Earl my mind." To St. Vincent, habit and professional admiration enabled him to submit, if grudgingly, and with constant complaints to his confidante; but Troubridge, though now one of the Board that issued his orders, was his inferior in grade, and he resented the imagined condition of being baffled in his wishes by a junior. The latter, quick-tempered and rough of speech, but true as his sword, to use St. Vincent's simile, must have found himself put to it to uphold the respect due to his present position, without wronging the affection and reverence which he undoubtedly felt for his old comrade, and which in the past he had shown by the moral courage that even ventured to utter a remonstrance, against the infatuation that threatened to stain his professional honor.

Such straining of personal relations constantly accompanies accession to office; many are the friendships, if they can be called such, which cannot endure the experience that official action may not always be controlled by them. If such is to be noted in Nelson, it is because he was no exception to the common rule, and it is sad that a man so great should not in this have been greater than he was. St. Vincent felt it necessary to tell him, with reference to the difficulty of granting some requests for promotion, "Encompassed as I am by applications and presumptuous claims, I have nothing for it but to act upon the defensive, as your Lordship will be compelled to do, whenever you are placed in the situation I at present fill." This Nelson contents himself with quoting; but of Troubridge he says: "Troubridge has so completely prevented my mentioning any body's service, that I am become a cypher, and he has gained a victory over Nelson's spirit. Captain Somerville has been begging me to intercede with the Admiralty again; but I have been so rebuffed, that my spirits are gone, and the great Troubridge has what we call cowed the spirits of Nelson; but I shall never forget it. He told me if I asked anything more that I should get nothing. No wonder I am not well."

The refusal of the Admiralty to give him leave to come to London, though founded on alleged motives of state, he thinks absurd. "They are beasts for their pains," he says; "it was only depriving me of one day's comfort and happiness, for which they have my hearty prayers." His spleen breaks out in oddly comical ways. "I have a letter from Troubridge, recommending me to wear flannel shirts. Does he care for me? No; but never mind." "Troubridge writes me, that as the weather is set in fine again, he hopes I shall get walks on shore. He is, I suppose, laughing at me; but, never mind." Petulant words, such as quoted, and others much more harsh, used to an intimate friend, are of course to be allowed for as indicating mental exasperation and the excitement of baffled longings, rather than expressing permanent feeling; but still they illustrate mental conditions more faithfully than do the guarded utterances of formal correspondence. Friendship rarely regains the ground lost in them. The situation did undoubtedly become exasperating towards the end, for no one pretended that any active service could be expected, or that his function was other than that of a signal displayed, indicating that Great Britain, though negotiating for peace, was yet on her guard. Lying in an open roadstead, with a heavy surf pouring in on the beach many days of the week, a man with one arm and one eye could not easily or safely get back and forth; and, being in a small frigate pitching and tugging at her anchors, he was constantly seasick, so much so "that I cannot hold up my head," afflicted with cold and toothache,—"but none of them cares a d—n for me and my sufferings."

In September the Hamiltons came to Deal, off which the ship was lying, and remained for a fortnight, during which he was happy; but the reaction was all the more severe when they returned to town on the 20th. "I came on board, but no Emma. No, no, my heart will break. I am in silent distraction.... My dearest wife, how can I bear our separation? Good God, what a change! I am so low that I cannot hold up my head." His depression was increased by the condition of Parker, the young commander, who had been wounded off Boulogne, and had since then hovered between life and death. The thigh had been shattered too far up for amputation, and the only faint hope had been that the bones might reunite. The day that the Hamiltons left, the great artery burst, and, after a brief deceitful rally, he died on the 27th of September. Nelson, who was tenderly attached to him, followed him to the grave with emotion so deep as to be noticeable to the bystanders. "Thank God," he wrote that afternoon, "the dreadful scene is past. I scarcely know how I got over it. I could not suffer much more and be alive." "I own," he had written to St. Vincent immediately after the repulse, "I shall never bring myself again to allow any attack to go forward, where I am not personally concerned; my mind suffers much more than if I had a leg shot off in this late business."

The Admiralty refusing any allowances, much of the expense of Parker's illness and of his funeral fell upon Nelson, who assumed all his debts. It was but one instance among many of a liberality in money matters, which kept him constantly embarrassed. To the surgeon who had attended the wounded, and to the captain of the "Medusa," a much richer man than he was, but who had shown him kindness, he gave handsome remembrances of the favors which he was pleased to consider done to himself personally. In a like spirit he wrote some months afterwards, concerning a proposed monument to Captain Ralph Willett Miller, who had fought under his flag. "I much doubt if all the admirals and captains will subscribe to poor dear Miller's monument; but I have told Davison, that whatever is wanted to make up the sum, I shall pay. I thought of Lord St. Vincent and myself paying,£50 each; some other admirals may give something, and I thought about £12 each for the captains who had served with him in the actions off Cape St. Vincent and the Nile. The spirit of liberality seems declining; but when I forget an old and dear friend, may I cease to be your affectionate Nelson and Bronté." Yet at this period he felt it advisable to sell the diamonds from the presents given him by foreign sovereigns. He was during these weeks particularly pressed, because in treaty for a house which he bought at Merton in Surrey, and for which he had difficulty in raising funds. In this his friend Davison helped him by a generous and unlimited offer of a loan. "The Baltic expedition," wrote Nelson in his letter of thanks, "cost me full £2,000. Since I left London it has cost me, for Nelson cannot be like others, near £1,000 in six weeks. If I am continued here, ruin to my finances must be the consequence."

On the 1st of October the Preliminaries of Peace with France were signed, and on the 9th news of their ratification reached Nelson on board his ship. "Thank God! it is peace," he exclaimed. Yet, while delighted beyond measure at the prospect of release from his present duties, and in general for the repose he now expected, he was most impatient at the exuberant demonstrations of the London populace, and of some military and naval men. "Let the rejoicings be proper to our several stations—the manufacturer, because he will have more markets for his goods,—but seamen and soldiers ought to say, 'Well, as it is peace, we lay down our arms; and are ready again to take them up, if the French are insolent.' There is no person in the world rejoices more in the peace than I do, but I would burst sooner than let a d—d Frenchman know it. We have made peace with the French despotism, and we will, I hope, adhere to it whilst the French continue in due bounds; but whenever they overstep that, and usurp a power which would degrade Europe, then I trust we shall join Europe in crushing her ambition; then I would with pleasure go forth and risk my life for to pull down the overgrown detestable power of France." When the mob in London dragged the carriage of the French ambassador, his wrath quite boiled over. "Can you cure madness?" he wrote to his physician; "for I am mad to read that our d—d scoundrels dragged a Frenchman's carriage. I am ashamed for our Country." "I hope never more to be dragged by such a degenerate set of people," he tells Lady Hamilton. "Would our ancestors have done it? So, the villains would have drawn Buonaparte if he had been able to get to London to cut off the King's head, and yet all our Royal Family will employ Frenchmen. Thanks to the navy, they could not." Nelson's soul was disturbed without cause. Under the ephemeral effervescence of a crowd lay a purpose as set as his own, and of which his present emotions were a dim and unconscious prophecy.