The Life of Nelson, Volume 2

The course instinctively advocated by Nelson, transpiring through occasional utterances, was directly contrary to Bonaparte's aims and would have marred his game. "We never wanted ten thousand troops more than at this moment," Nelson wrote shortly after he had reached the station and become acquainted with the state of affairs. "They might save Naples, Sicily, the Morea and Egypt, by assisting and giving confidence to the inhabitants." "It has been my plan to have 10,000 disposable troops in the Mediterranean," he wrote to Acton; and he regretted to the Ministry that they should have withdrawn all the fine army which had regained Egypt in 1801. "The sending them home," he remarked to an occasional correspondent, "was a very inconsiderate measure, to say nothing further of it." His idea was to garrison Gaeta and Naples on the coast of the mainland, and Messina in Sicily; and to throw a force into the mountains of Calabria, which should sustain and give cohesion to the insurrection that he confidently expected would follow. With the British fleet covering the approaches by water, and sustaining and reinforcing garrisons in the ports, there would be imposed upon the enemy, unless he chose to abandon Southern Italy, a scene of operations in a distant, difficult country, with a long and narrow line of communications, flanked throughout by the sea, and particularly by the two fortified harbors which he proposed to occupy. "The peasantry would, I believe, defend their mountains, and at least it would give a check to the movements of the French, and give us time to get a fleet into the Mediterranean." That the attempt would have been ultimately successful, against such power as Napoleon then wielded, cannot be affirmed; but, until put down, it necessarily would have engaged a force very disproportionate to its own numbers, drawing off in great part the army destined against England, as it was diverted two years later by Austria, and giving opportunity for changes in the political conditions, even to the formation of a new Coalition.

Nelson, therefore, was not far from right in reasoning that the Mediterranean should, and therefore would, be the chief scene of operations. In Bonaparte's eyes, to invade Britain was, justly, the greatest of all ends, the compassing of which would cause all the rest to fall. Nelson, weighing the difficulties of that enterprise more accurately than could be done by one unaccustomed to the sea, doubted the reality of the intention, and thought it more consonant to the true policy of France to seize control of the Mediterranean, by a sudden concentration of her fleets, and then to transport her troops by water to the heel of Italy, to the Ionian Islands, to the Morea, to Egypt. So stationed, with fortified stepping-stones rising at short intervals from the deep, future movements of troops and supplies from point to point would be but an affair of coasters, slipping from battery to battery, such as he had experienced to his cost in the Riviera. In this project he thought it likely that France could secure the co-operation of Russia, by allowing the latter her share of the spoils of Turkey, especially in Constantinople. He saw, indeed, that the partition would involve some difficulty between the two partners, and in his correspondence he attributes the Morea and the islands, now to one, now to the other; but the prediction, elicited piece-meal from his letters, received a close fulfilment four years later in the general tenor of the agreements of Tilsit, nor was it less accurate in its dim prophecy of a disagreement.

Such, in broad outline, were the prepossessions and views Nelson took with him from England in 1803, as modified by the information he received upon reaching the station; and such the counter-projects of Bonaparte, to whom belonged, as the privilege of the offensive, the choice of direction for his attack. The essential difference between the two was, that one believed the invasion of England, however difficult, to be possible, and therefore to be the true and first object of his efforts; while the other, without pronouncing that attempt impossible, saw its difficulties so clearly, that he conceived his enemy must be aiming for the Mediterranean from the beginning. It is permissible to remark that Bonaparte, after the failure of the invasion, first busied himself in reducing Austria, Prussia, and Russia, successively, to the state of inaction in which they were in 1803; next came to an understanding with the latter, such as Nelson had foreseen; and then turned to the Mediterranean, where he established his own rule in Naples, in the Ionian Islands, on the eastern shore of the Adriatic, and finally in the Spanish peninsula. Beyond that his advance was stayed by the Sea Power of Great Britain, which at last wrought his ruin. Thus in the event the predictions of the British admiral were postponed, but not falsified.

Nelson's characteristic impatience and energy hurried him on from the moment he took up his command. "I cannot sail before to-morrow," he said repeatedly in Portsmouth, "and that's an age." "If the Devil stands at the door," he tells St. Vincent, "we shall sail to-morrow forenoon." The Admiralty, in its primary anxiety about Brest, imposed upon him a delay under which he chafed angrily. He was directed to meet off that port the squadron of Admiral Cornwallis, in order that, if the latter wanted the "Victory," she might be left there, and an intimation was even given that he was "on no account to pass Admiral Cornwallis, so as to run any chance of his being deprived of the services of the Victory, if he should judge it necessary to detain her." Nelson resented the implication that he was capable of evading an order, like a frigate-captain parting company to better his chance of prize-money. "I beg to assure you that I hold it impossible for any officer, under such orders as their Lordships' to me, to designedly miss Admiral Cornwallis off Brest."

On the 22d of May he was off Ushant, between which and Cornwallis's rendezvous he passed twenty-four hours, fuming and fretting over a delay that was losing him a fresh, fair, northerly wind; the more so, that he was satisfied Cornwallis neither needed nor wanted the ship. "From his conduct,"—not being on his rendezvous,—"I am clear there can be nothing in Brest to demand his attention." On the 23d, however, he could stand it no longer. "What a wind we are losing!" "If the wisdom of my superiors had not prevented me," he growled, "at this moment I should have been off the coast of Portugal. I am aware of the importance of my getting to the Mediterranean, and think I might safely have been allowed to proceed in the Victory." At 6 P.M. of that day, Cornwallis not turning up, he tumbled himself and his suite on board the frigate "Amphion," which was in company, and continued his voyage, going out in all the discomfort of "a convict," to use St. Vincent's expression; "seven or eight sleeping in one cabin," as Nelson himself described it. "It is against my own judgment but in obedience to orders," he told the Earl; while to the Prime Minister, with whom he was in personal correspondence, he lamented the loss, "for I well know the weight of the Victory in the Mediterranean." As he anticipated, Cornwallis did not want the ship, and she joined Nelson two months afterwards off Toulon.

Late in the evening of June 3d, the "Amphion" anchored at Gibraltar, whither she brought the first certain news of the war, though it had been declared nearly three weeks before. The next day was actively employed in giving necessary instructions to the yard officials, and detailing cruisers to guard the entrance to the Straits, and to maintain the communications with the Barbary coast, upon which the Rock depended for supplies of fresh provisions. At 4 P.M. the ship again sailed for Malta, accompanied by the frigate "Maidstone," to which, on the 11th of June, was transferred, for direct passage to Naples by the north of Sicily, the new British minister to the Two Sicilies, Mr. Elliot, who had embarked with Nelson on board the "Victory," and afterwards gone with him to the "Amphion." Throughout the following two years an active correspondence, personal and diplomatic, was maintained with this gentleman, who, like his brother, Lord Minto, placed the utmost dependence upon the political sagacity and tact of the admiral. When the latter, a year later, spoke of leaving the station on account of his health, Elliot wrote to him: "Where such great interests are concerned, I shall not presume to dwell upon my own feelings, although I cannot but recall to your Lordship that I only consented to depart as abruptly as I did from England, to undertake this arduous and ruinous mission, from the expectation that my efforts to direct the councils of this Kingdom would have been seconded by your pre-eminent talents and judgment." After the two frigates parted, the "Amphion" kept on to Malta, where she arrived on the 15th of June.

With the separation of the "Maidstone" Nelson began the extensive diplomatic correspondence, which employed so much of his time during this command, and through which we are made familiar with the workings of his mind on the general political conditions of the Mediterranean. She carried from him letters to the King and Queen of the Sicilies, to their Prime Minister, Acton, and to the British minister to the Court of Sardinia. To these succeeded, upon his arrival in Malta,—as a better point of departure for the farther East, now that the French held the west coast of the Adriatic,—despatches to the British minister to the Porte, to the Grand Vizier and the Capitan Pacha, to the Republic of the Seven Islands, as the group of Corfu and its sisters was now styled, and to the British representative to their government.

All these communications were, of course, tentative, based upon a yet imperfect knowledge of conditions. For the most part they conveyed, besides the notification of his having taken the command, chiefly general assurances of the good-will of the writer's government, and an undefined intimation that all had best be on their guard against French scheming and aggressions. To Naples he spoke more definitely, and indicated at once the considerations that would dictate his course, and, he intimated, should control theirs also. He had been instructed, he said, to consider the welfare of the Two Sicilies as one of the first of British objects, and his Government was convinced of the advantages that would accrue both to Sicily and Naples, if their neutrality could be maintained. They had to do, however, with an enemy that was not only powerful, but wily and unscrupulous; one whose action would be governed wholly by considerations of interest and expediency, not by those of right. Great Britain could not, probably, keep the French out of Naples, but she could out of Sicily, provided, and only provided, Messina was adequately garrisoned and held. If, however, there was any hasty overt action taken, looking to the security of Sicily, it might merely precipitate the seizure of Naples and the entire conquest of the King's continental dominions; or, "ten times more humiliating," leave him "an odious commissary to raise contributions from his unhappy subjects for the French." On the other hand, if, to avert suspicion, there was too much slackness in the measures to guard Sicily, Messina might be suddenly seized, the gates of the island thus thrown open, and, Sicily once lost, "Naples falls of course." "It is a most important point," he wrote to Elliot soon after, "to decide when Sicily ought to be placed in a state of security. For the present, I am content to say that Messina need not be taken possession of; but the strictest watch must be kept by Sir John Acton that we are not lulled into a fatal security, and thus lose both Kingdoms. To save for the moment Naples, we risk the two Kingdoms, and General Acton must join me in this heavy responsibility." "My whole opinion rests in these few words—that we must not risk Sicily too far in trying to save Naples; therefore, General Acton, yourself and myself must keep a good lookout."

This summed up the conditions for Naples during the long two years of watching and waiting, while Bonaparte, concentrating his purposes upon his invasion scheme, was content to leave things quiet in the South. To check, as far as might be, the designs of the French towards Morea or towards Sicily, on either side of the central position they held at the heel of Italy, Nelson employed a proportionately large number of cruisers—five—between Messina and the mouth of the Adriatic; while, to provide for the safety of the royal family, he kept always a ship-of-the-line in the Bay of Naples, the British minister holding orders for her captain to embark them at a moment's notice, and take them to Sicily. "I have kept everything here to save Italy, if in my power," he wrote Elliot two months later, "and you know I was ordered to send a squadron outside the Straits. Fourteen days ago, a French seventy-four got into Cadiz from Santo Domingo, and two French frigates, with some merchant ships. What will they say at home? However, I feel I have done right, and care not." "I must place a squadron between Elba and Genoa," he says again, "to prevent that expedition from moving, and also send some ships to the Straits' mouth, and keep enough to watch the ships in Toulon. These are all important objects, but nothing when compared to the security of the Sicilies."

Nelson's anxiety for Sicily threw him again into contact with an instance of that rigid and blind conformity to orders which always exasperated him. He had brought out directions to the general commanding in Malta, to hold a detachment of two thousand British troops in readiness to go at once to Messina, on the appearance of danger, and to garrison the works there, if he thought they could be spared from the defence of Malta. Nelson told the Prime Minister that discretion, as to such a step, was a responsibility greater than the average officer could bear, and would certainly defeat the object in view; for he would never feel his charge secure enough to permit such a diminution. There was at this time in Malta a body of Neapolitan soldiers, which had been sent there during the peace of Amiens, in accordance with a stipulation of the treaty. The general received an order to send them to Messina. Nelson had pointed out to him that if he did so, in the divided state of feeling in the Neapolitan dominions, and with the general character of Neapolitan officers, for both efficiency and fidelity, the citadel would not be safe from betrayal at their hands. "I have requested him to keep the orders secret, and not to send them; for if they got into Messina, they would certainly not keep the French out one moment, and it would give a good excuse for not asking us to secure Messina." "If General Acton sends for them we must submit; but at present we need not find means of sending them away." The British general, however, sent them over, and then the Neapolitan governor, as Nelson foretold, said it was quite unnecessary for any British to come. "I must apprise you," wrote Nelson to Addington, "that General Villettes, although a most excellent officer, will do nothing but what he receives, 'You are hereby required and directed;' for to obey, is with him the very acme of discipline. With respect to Sicily, I have no doubt but that the French will have it. My former reasons for inducing General Villettes to keep the Neapolitan troops in Malta, was to prevent what has happened; but, in a month after my back was turned, Villettes obeyed his orders, and now the Governor of Messina says, 'We can defend it, and want no assistance.' His whole conduct, I am bold to say, is either that of a traitor or a fool."59

Upon his own subordinates Nelson laid a distinct charge, that he should expect them to use their judgment and act upon it with independence, sure of his generous construction and support of their action. "We must all in our several stations," he tells one of them, "exert ourselves to the utmost, and not be nonsensical in saying, 'I have an order for this, that, and the other,' if the King's service clearly marks what ought to be done. I am well convinced of your zeal." In accordance with this, he was emphatic in his expressions of commendation for action rightly taken; a bare, cold approval was not adequate reward for deeds which he expected to reproduce his own spirit and temper, vivifying the whole of his command, and making his presence virtually co-extensive with its utmost limits. No severer condemnation, perhaps, was ever implied by him, than when he wrote to Sidney Smith, unqualifiedly, "I strictly charge and command you never to give any French ship or man leave to quit Egypt." To deny an officer discretion was as scathing an expression of dissatisfaction as Nelson could utter; and as he sowed, so he reaped, in a devotion and vigor of service few have elicited equally.

In Malta Nelson remained but thirty-six hours. Arriving at 4 P.M. on the evening of June 15th, he sailed again at 4 A.M. of the 17th. He had expected partly to find the fleet there; but by an odd coincidence, on the same day that he hoisted his flag in Portsmouth, it had sailed, although in ignorance of the war, to cruise between Sicily and Naples; whence, on the day he left Gibraltar, the commanding officer, Sir Richard Bickerton, had started for Toulon,—"very judiciously," said Nelson,—the instant he heard of the renewal of hostilities.

The "Amphion" passed through the Straits of Messina, and within sight of Naples, carrying Nelson once more over well-known seas, and in sight of fondly remembered places. "I am looking at dear Naples, if it is what it was," he wrote to Elliot from off Capri. "Close to Capri," he tells Lady Hamilton, "the view of Vesuvius calls so many circumstances to my mind, that it almost overpowers my feelings." "I am using force upon myself to keep away," he had already said to Acton; "for I think it likely, was I to fly to Naples, which I am much inclined to do, that the French might turn it to some plea against those good sovereigns." In his anxiety to join the fleet, and get in touch of the French, the length of the passage, three weeks, caused him great vexation, and deepened his convictions of the uselessness of the island to his squadron off Toulon. "My opinion of Malta, as a naval station for watching the French in Toulon, is well known; and my present experience of what will be a three weeks' passage, most fully confirms me in it. The fleet can never go there, if I can find any other corner to put them in; but having said this, I now declare, that I consider Malta as a most important outwork to India, that it will ever give us great influence in the Levant, and indeed all the southern parts of Italy. In this view, I hope we shall never give it up." "Malta and Toulon are entirely different services. It takes upon an average seven weeks to get an answer to a letter. When I am forced to send a ship there, I never see her under two months."

With Gibraltar, however, Malta gave the British two impregnable and secure bases of operations, within reasonable distance of one another, and each in close proximity to points most essential to control. During Nelson's entire command, the three chief centres of interest and of danger were the Straits of Gibraltar, the heel of Italy, and Toulon. The narrowing of the trade routes near the two former rendered them points of particular exposure for merchant shipping. Around them, therefore, and in dependence upon them, gathered the largest bodies of the cruisers which kept down privateering, and convoyed the merchant ships, whose protection was not the least exacting of the many cares that fell upon Nelson. Upon the Malta division depended also the watch over the mouth of the Adriatic and the Straits of Messina, by which Nelson hoped to prevent the passage of the French, in small bodies, to either Sicily, the Morea, or the Ionian Islands. Malta in truth, even in Nelson's time, was the base for operations only less important than the destruction of the Toulon fleet. The latter he rightly considered his principal mission, success in which would solve most other maritime difficulties. "My first object must ever be to keep the French fleet in check; and, if they put to sea, to have force enough with me to annihilate them. That would keep the Two Sicilies free from any attack from sea."

On the 8th of July the "Amphion" joined the fleet off Toulon. It numbered then nine ships-of-the-line, with three smaller cruisers. "As far as outside show goes," he reported to St. Vincent, "the ships look very well; but they complain of their bottoms, and are very short of men." The fact was, as he afterwards explained, that before the war came they had been expecting every day to go to England, and consequently had been allowed to run down gradually, a result which doubtless had been hastened by St. Vincent's stringent economies. Gibraltar and Malta were both bare, Nelson wrote six months later, and it was not the fault of the naval storekeepers. The ships, everywhere, were "distressed for almost every article. They have entirely eat up their stores, and their real wants not half complied with. I have applications from the different line-of-battle-ships for surveys on most of their sails and running rigging, which cannot be complied with, as there is neither cordage nor sails to replace the unserviceable stores, and, therefore, the evil must be combated in the best manner possible." As the whole Navy had suffered from the same cause, there was no reserve of ships at home to replace those in the Mediterranean, which, besides lacking everything, were between eight and nine hundred men short of their complement, or about one hundred for each ship-of-the-line. "We can send you neither ships nor men," wrote St. Vincent as winter drew on; and even a year later, the administration which followed his found it impossible to replace the "crazy" vessels, of which Nelson said only four were fit for winter cruising. "It is not a storeship a week," he declared, "that would keep them in repair." The trouble was greater because, when leaving Malta, they had anticipated only a cruise of three weeks, which for many of them became two years.

Despite the difficulties, he determined that the fleet as a body should not go into port; nor should the individual ships-of-the-line, except when absolutely necessary, and then to Gibraltar, not Malta. "I have made up my mind never to go into port till after the battle, if they make me wait a year, provided the Admiralty change the ships who cannot keep the sea in winter;" nor did the failure of the Admiralty to meet this proviso alter his resolution. It was the carrying out of this decision, with ships in such condition, in a region where winds and seas were of exceptional violence, and supplies of food and water most difficult to be obtained, because surrounded in all directions by countries either directly hostile, or under the overmastering influence of Bonaparte, that made the exercise of Nelson's command during this period a triumph of naval administration and prevision. It does not necessarily follow that an officer of distinguished ability for handling a force in the face of an enemy, will possess also the faculty which foresees and provides for the many contingencies, upon which depend the constant efficiency and readiness of a great organized body; though both qualities are doubtless essential to constitute a great general officer. For twenty-two months Nelson's fleet never went into a port, other than an open roadstead on a neutral coast, destitute of supplies; at the end of that time, when the need arose to pursue an enemy for four thousand miles, it was found massed, and in all respects perfectly prepared for so distant and sudden a call. To quote his own words, written a year before this summons in reply to an intimation from the Admiralty to be on his guard against Spain, "I have the pleasure to acquaint you that the squadron under my command is all collected, except the Gibraltar,60 complete in their provisions and stores to near five months, and in a perfect state of readiness to act as the exigency of the moment may determine." "With the resources of your mind," wrote St. Vincent, when unable to reinforce him, "you will do very well;" and Nelson, when he put off his harness, might have boasted himself that the prediction was more than fulfilled.

Provisions, water, and supplies of all sorts were brought to the ships on their station, either at sea, or in unfrequented roadsteads within the limits of the cruising ground. "I never could have spared the ships to go to Gibraltar for them," he wrote to St. Vincent, to whom he expressed his satisfaction with the way the plan worked. He soon abandoned, in fact, the method of sending individual ships for water, because of the long absence thus entailed. When water could not be brought in transports, or rather could not easily be transhipped owing to the badness of the season, he thought it better to take the whole fleet to the nearest watering-place than to divide its strength. Fresh provisions, absolutely indispensable to the health of the ships' companies, constituted the greatest of difficulties. Opposition to furnishing them must be expected wherever French influence could be felt. "The great distance from Malta or Gibraltar renders the getting such refreshments from those places, in a regular manner, absolutely impossible;" and from the Spanish ports, Barcelona or Rosas, which were near his cruising ground, they could be had only "clandestinely." Government Bills would not be taken there, nor in Barbary or Sardinia, where bullocks might be got. Hard money must be paid, and about this there was some routine bureau difficulty. "I certainly hate to have anything to do with the management of money," he wrote, "but I submit the propriety of lodging public money on board the fleet, for the purpose of paying for fresh beef and vegetables, provided, but on no account otherwise, that the simple receipt from the captain of the ship may be a sufficient voucher for the disbursement of such money." Absolutely disposed as he was to assume political or military responsibilities, he was not willing, even for the health of the fleet, to incur the risk of pecuniary imputations for himself or his captains.