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 COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 
 
VICE-ADMIRAL, LORD NELSON. 
 
 From the portrait in the possession of Sir W, Biddulph Parker, 
 Bart., Blackbrook House, Fareham, Hants. On the back of the 
 pidtire is written, " This head was sketched from the Hero during 
 his short stay at Merton, the beginning of September, 1805, by me, 
 fohn WhicheloP 
 
^. / 
 
 THE 
 
 LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 THE EMBODIMENT 
 
 Sea Power or Great Britain 
 
 CAPTAIN A. T. MAHAN, D.C.L., LL.D. 
 
 Winitta States Wabg 
 
 AUTHOR OF "the INFLUENCE OF SEA POWER tIPON HISTORY, 1660-1783" "THE 
 
 INFLUENCE OF SEA POWER UPON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND 
 
 EMPIRE," AND OF A "LIFE OF ADMIRAL FARRAGUT " 
 
 SStcanb lEtition, lEleijisctJ 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 
 
 1899 
 
'VM^2 
 
 Copyright, 1897, 1899, 
 By Captain A. T. Mahan. 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 SEntbcrsttg JSrcss : 
 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. 
 
 -boUT-^ 
 
PREFACE 
 
 TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 SINCE the first publication of this book, there have 
 appeared two principal criticisms upon the accuracy 
 of its presentation of Nelson. The first, in order of time, 
 revived the often debated question of his action towards 
 the Neapolitan republicans, in 1799, challenging the 
 author's verdict with much parade of evidence. The 
 second disputed the estimate of Nelson's affection for his 
 wife, basing the argument chiefly upon some recently found 
 letters from him to her, the hiding-place of which had 
 escaped even the diligent search of Sir Harris Nicolas. 
 
 Concerning the former of these, the author, after due 
 consideration, has seen no cause to change the opinion 
 first expressed ; but he has recognized a necessity to pro- 
 tect the fair fame of the admiral, as well as to fortify his 
 own position, by recasting and amplifying the discussion 
 of the subject. He has therefore embodied in the text 
 such demonstration of Nelson's integrity as may in the 
 future enable a studious reader to rebut the accusations, 
 if renewed. 
 
 As regards Nelson's affection for his wife, it is enough 
 to say that the author never thought or said that he did 
 not love her tenderly at marriage, and for years after- 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 wards. But there is love and love. What was noted, 
 and emphasized, was the absence of any tendency to 
 idealize her, as he did other women to whom he became 
 attached from time to time, and as lovei"s commonly do. 
 The newly found letters, as far as published, — the author 
 has not been permitted to see the others, — afford no 
 reason to modify this remark, and consequently no change 
 of treatment has been made. These letters contain also 
 some small details which have novelty and interest, con- 
 nected with the separation between Nelson and his wife. 
 These have been incorporated in the text ; but, beyond 
 accentuating slightly his hardness to her in the particular 
 instance, they throw no new light upon his character. 
 
 As far as they go, these new letters confirm the remark 
 made more than once by the author during his first study 
 of the life of Nelson : that more letters might yet be 
 found ; that a trivial detail of fact might here and there 
 receive correction, altering a little the background, or 
 the framing, of the portrait; but that the mass of cor- 
 respondence published by Nicolas was so extensive, so 
 continuous, and addressed to so many different persons, as 
 to make it highly improbable that any further light, not 
 to be found in those volumes, would be shed upon the ad- 
 miral's character. So much being known, biographies of 
 Nelson will contrast one with another, not in point of 
 abundance of material, but, as portraits do, according to 
 the ability of the workman to reproduce, from the original 
 before him, an impression of the man which shall be at 
 once true, full, and living. 
 
 The work of revision has embraced also the correction 
 or amplification of certain minor details, noted by the 
 author himself or by others. Of these, the most impor- 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION 
 
 tant concerns the reason for withholding the medals for 
 Copenhagen. In the author's judgment, his previous pre- 
 sentment of Nelson's character and conduct is not affected 
 in the slightest degree hy these changes. They are part 
 of the frame, not of the pictme. 
 
 A. T. M. 
 
 April, 1899. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 TO THE FIRST EDITION 
 
 THE Life of Nelson has been written so often, that an 
 explanation — almost an apology — seems cine for any 
 renewal of the attempt ; but, not to mention the attractive- 
 ness of the theme in itself, it is essential to the complete- 
 ness and rounding off of the author's discussion of the 
 Influence of Sea Power, that he present a study, from his 
 own point of view, of the one man who in himself summed 
 up and embodied the greatness of the possibilities which 
 Sea Power comprehends, — the man for whom genius and 
 opportunity worked together, to make him the personifica- 
 tion of the Navy of Great Britain, the dominant factor in 
 the periods hitherto treated. In the century and a half 
 embraced in those periods, the tide of influence and of 
 power has swelled higher and higher, floating upward 
 before the eyes of mankind many a distinguished name; 
 but it is not until their close that one arises in whom all 
 the promises of the past find their finished realization, 
 their perfect fulfilment. Thenceforward the name of Nel- 
 son is enrolled among those few presented to us by His- 
 tory, the simple mention of which suggests, not merely a 
 personality or a career, but a great force or a great era 
 concrete in a single man, who is its standard-bearer before 
 the nations. 
 
 Yet, in this process of exaltation, the man himself, even 
 when so very human and so very near our own time as 
 Nelson is, suffers from an association which merges his 
 individuality in the splendor of his surroundings; and it 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 
 
 is perhaps pardonable to hope that the subject is not so 
 far exhausted but that a new worker, gleaning after the 
 reapers, may contribute something further towards disen- 
 gaging the figure of the hero from the glory that cloaks it. 
 The aim of the present writer, while not neglecting other 
 sources of knowledge, has been to make Nelson describe 
 himself, — • tell the story of his own inner life as well as of 
 his external actions. To realize this object, it has not 
 seemed the best way to insert numerous letters, because, 
 in the career of a man of action, each one commonly deals 
 with a variety of subjects, which bear to one another little 
 relation, except that, at the moment of writing, they all 
 formed part of the multifold life the writer was then lead- 
 ing. It is true, life in general is passed in that way ; but 
 it is not by such distraction of interest among minute de- 
 tails that a particular life is best understood. Few let- 
 ters, therefore, have been inserted entire ; and those which 
 have, have been chosen because of their unity of subject, 
 and of their value as characteristic. 
 4 The author's method has been to make a careful study 
 of Nelson's voluminous correspondence, analyzing it, in 
 order to detect the leading features of temperament, traits 
 of thought, and motives of action ; and thence to conceive 
 within himself, by gradual familiarity even more than by 
 formal effort, the character therein revealed. The impres- 
 sion thus produced he has sought to convey to others, 
 partly in the form of ordinary narrative, — daily living 
 with his hero, — and partly by such grouping of incidents 
 and utterances, not always, nor even nearly, simultaneous, 
 as shall serve by their joint evidence to emphasize particu- 
 lar traits, or particular opinions, more forcibly than when 
 such testimonies are scattered far apart ; as they would be, 
 if recounted in a strict order of time. 
 
 A like method of treatment has been pursued in regard 
 to that purely external part of Nelson's career in which 
 are embraced his military actions, as well as his public and 
 
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION 
 
 private life. The same aim is kept in view of showing 
 clearly, not only what he did, but the principles which 
 dominated his military thought, and guided his military 
 actions, throughout his life; or, it may be, such changes 
 as must inevitably occur in the development of a man who 
 truly lives. This cannot be done satisfactorily without 
 concentrating the evidence from time to time; and it is 
 therefore a duty a writer owes to his readers, if they wish 
 such acquaintance with his subject as he thinks he has 
 succeeded in acquiring for himself. 
 
 The author has received individual assistance from sev- 
 eral persons. To a general expression of thanks he wishes 
 to add his special acknowledgments to the present Earl 
 Nelson, through whose aid he has obtained information of 
 interest which otherwise probably would have escaped 
 him; and to Lords Radstock and De Saumarez, both of 
 whom have been good enough to place in his hands letters 
 contemporary with Nelson, and touching incidentally mat- 
 ters that throw light on his career. Material of the same 
 kind has also been furnished him by Professor John Knox 
 Laughton, whose knowledge of Nelson and of the Navy of 
 that period is second to none; it is not the least of the 
 writer's advantages that he has had before him, to check 
 possible errors in either fact or conclusions, the admiralile, 
 though brief. Life of Nelson published by Mr. Laughton 
 two years since. 
 
 Illustrative anecdotes have also been supplied by Ad- 
 miral Sir William R. Mends, G. C. B., who has shown 
 his continued interest in tlie work by the trouble he has 
 taken for it; by Mr. Stuart J. Reid, of Blackwell Cliff, 
 East Grinstead; and by Mr. Edgar Goble, of Fareham, 
 Hants, Mr. B. F. Stevens, of 4 Trafalgar Square, has 
 also kindly exerted himself on several occasions to obtain 
 needed information. To Mrs. F. H. B. Eccles, of Sher- 
 well House, Plymouth, granddaughter of Josiah Nisbet, 
 Nelson's stepson, the author is indebted for reminiscences 
 
PREFACE to THE FIRST EDITION 
 
 of Lady Nelson, and for her portrait here published ; and 
 his thanks are also due to Lieutenant-Colonel "W. Clement 
 D. Esdaile, of Burley ISIanor, Ringwood, Hants, through 
 whom he was brought into communication with ]\Irs. 
 Eccles, and who has in other ways helped him. 
 
 Throughout the writing of the book constant assistance 
 has been received from Mr. Robert B. Marston, to whom 
 cordial acknowledgment is made for the untiring pains 
 taken in prosecuting necessary inquiries, which could not 
 have been done without great delay by one not living in 
 England. Suggestions valuable to the completeness of 
 the work have been given also by INIr. ]\Iarston. 
 
 For the portrait of Mrs. Philip Ward, the "Horatia'' 
 whom Nelson called generally his adopted daughter, but 
 at times spoke of as his daughter simply, and whom, on 
 the last morning of his life, he commended to the care of 
 his Country, the author has to thank Mr. and Mrs. Nelson 
 Ward, of 15 Lancaster Road, Belsize Park, London. Mr. 
 Nelson Ward is her son. 
 
 To the more usual sources of information already in 
 print, it is not necessary to refer in detail ; but it is right 
 to mention especially the collection of Hamilton and Nel- 
 son letters, published by Mr. Alfred Morrison, a copy of 
 Avhich by his polite attention was sent the writer, and upon 
 which must necessarily be based such account of Nelson's 
 relations with Lady Hamilton as, unfortunately, cannot 
 be omitted wholly from a life so profoundly affected by 
 
 them. 
 
 A. T. MAHAN. 
 
 March, 1897. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 1758-1783. 
 
 Page 
 The First Tweutj-Five Years ... 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 1784-1793. Age, 26-34. 
 
 The Cruise of the "Boreas." — Controversy over the Enforcement of 
 the Navigation Act. — Keturn to England. — Retirement until the 
 Outbrealv of the French Revolution. — Appointed to c(jramand the 
 " Agamemnon," 64 38 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Febkdarv-Decembek, 1793. Age, 34. 
 
 Nelson's Departure from England in the "Agamemnon." — Services in 
 the Mediterranean until the Recovery of Toulon by the French. — 
 Lord Hood in Command 82 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 January-December, 1794. Age, 35. 
 
 Reduction of Corsica by the British. — Departure of Lord Hood for 
 
 England. — The " Agamemnon" Refitted at Leghorn 101 
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 
 January-Jult, 1795. Age, 36. 
 
 Nelson's Services with the Fleet in the Mediterranean under Admiral 
 Hotham. — Partial Fleet Actions of March 13 and 14, and July 13. 
 — Nelson ordered to command a Detached Squadron co-operating 
 with the Austrian Army in the Riviera of Genoa 13^ 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 JuLT-DjiCEMBEK, 1795. Age, 37. 
 
 Page 
 Nelson's Coniinaud of a Detached Squadron on the Riviera of Genoa, 
 until the Defeat of the Austriaus at the Battle of Loano. — Sir Joiin 
 Jervis appointed Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean . . . 157 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 January-December, 1796. Age, 38. 
 
 Nelson's Services in the Mediterranean during the Year 1796. — Bona- 
 parte's Italian Campaign. — The Britisii abandon Corsica, and the 
 Fleet leaves the Mediterranean 179 
 
 CHAPTER Ylll. 
 
 December, 1796-JuNE, 1797. Age, 38. 
 
 The Evacuation of Elba. — Niglit Combat with Two Spanish Frigates. 
 
 — Battle of Cape St. Vincent. — Nelson Promoted to Kear-Admiral. 
 
 — Services before Cadiz 221 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 July, 1797-Apkil, 1798. Age, 39. 
 
 The Unsuccessful Attempt against Teneriffe. — Nelson loses his Right 
 Arm. — Return to England. — Rejoins St. Vincent's Fleet, and sent 
 into the Mediterranean to watch the Toulon Armament .... 253 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 May-September, 1798. Age, 39. 
 The Campaign and Battle of the Nile 271 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 September-December, 1798. Age, 40. 
 
 Nelson's Return from Egypt to Naples. — Meeting with Lady Hamilton. 
 — Association with the Court of Naples. — War between Naples 
 and France. — Defeat of the Neapolitans. — Flight of the Court to 
 I'alermo 314 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 January-May, 1799. Age, 40. 
 
 Page 
 Nelson's Career, and General Events in the Mediterranean and Ital}-, 
 from tlie Overthrow of the Royal Government in Naples to the In- 
 cursion of the French Fleet under Admiral Bruix 342 
 
 CHAPTER XHI. 
 
 May-July, 1799. Age, 40. 
 
 From the Incursion of tlie French Fleet under Bruix to the Restoration 
 of the Royal Authority at Naples. — The Caracciolo Execution. — 
 Nelson's Disohedience to Admiral Lord Keith 358 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 August, 1799-June, 1800. Age, 41. 
 
 Nelson temporarily Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean. — Re- 
 lieved by Lord Keith. — Applies to return to England on account 
 of 111 Health 405 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 June, 1800-Januaky, 1801. Age, 42. 
 
 Nelson leaves the Mediterranean. — The Journey Overland through 
 Germany. — Arrival in England. — Separation from Lady Nelson. — 
 Hoists his Flag in the Channel Fleet, under Lord St. Vincent . . . 435 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 February-June, 1801. Age, 42. 
 
 The Expedition to the Baltic and Battle of Copenhagen. — Nelson re- 
 turns to England - 456 
 
 CHAPTER XVIL 
 
 July-October, 1801. Age, 43. 
 
 Nelson commands the " Squadron on a Particular Service," for the 
 Defence of the Coast of England against Invasion. — Signature of 
 Preliminaries of Peace with France 505 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 OcTOBEi!, 1801-May, 1803. Age, 43-44. 
 
 Page 
 Release from Active Service iluriiig the Peace of Amiens. — Home Life 
 
 at jNlerton. — Public Incidents 529 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 May, 1803-Januarv, 1805. Age, 45-46. 
 
 Commander-in-Chief in tlie Mediterranean. — The Long Watch off 
 
 Toulon. — Occupations of a Commander-in-Chief 557 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 January-Adgust, 1805. Age, 46. 
 
 The Escape and Pursuit of the Toulon Fleet. — Nelson's Return to 
 
 England 632 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 August 19-September 15, 1805. Age, 46. 
 Nelson's Last Stay in England . 677 
 
 CHAPTER XXIL 
 
 September 15-October 19, 1805. Age, 47. 
 
 The Antecedents of Trafalgar 691 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 October 19-21, 1805. Age, 47. 
 
 Trafalgar. — The Death of Nelson 713 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Vice-Admiral, Lord Nelson Frontispiece 
 
 From the portrait in the possession of ISir W. Biddulph Parker, 
 Bart, of Blackbrooli House, Fareham, Hants. On the back of the 
 picture is written, " This head was sketched from the Hero during 
 his short stay at Merton, the beginning of September, 1 805, by me, 
 John Whichelo." 
 
 Admiral, Lord Hood 122 
 
 From the painting by L. F. Abbott, in the National Portrait 
 Gallery. 
 Admiral, Sir John Jervis, Earl of St. Vincent . . . 184 
 From an engraving by H. Robinson, after the painting by John 
 Hoppner, in St James's Palace. 
 
 Sir Thomas Troubridge 260 
 
 From the painting by Sir William Beechey. 
 
 Lady Nelson 262 
 
 From a photograpli by Mr. E. Kelly, of Plymouth, of a minia- 
 ture in the possession of Mrs. F. H. B. Eccles, of Sherwell House, 
 Plymouth, a great-granddaughter of Lady Nelson. Believed to 
 have been painted about the time of the Battle of the Nile. 
 
 Rear-Admiral, Sir Horatio Nelson in 1798 272 
 
 From the painting by L. F. Abbott, in the National Portrait 
 Gallery. 
 
 Emma, Lady Hamilton 318 
 
 After a painting by G. Romney. 
 
 Vice-Admiral, Sir Hyde Parker 481 
 
 After the painting by George Romney. 
 H. M. Ships "Agamemnon," "Captain," "Vanguard," 
 
 "Elephant," and "Victory." 558 
 
 From an engraving by J. Fittler, after the painting by N. Pocock. 
 
 Admiral Collingwood 670 
 
 From the painting by Henry Howard, at Greenwich Hospital. 
 
 Captain Thomas Masterman Hardy 736 
 
 From the painting by Robert Evans, at Greenwich Hospital. 
 
 Horatia, at twenty-two years of age 738 
 
 From a miniature by Sir William Charles Ross, in the possession 
 of Mr Nelson Ward. 
 
MAPS AND BATTLE PLANS. 
 
 Page 
 
 Map of Northern Italy, and Corsica 102 
 
 The "Agamemnon" and the " (^a Ira" 140 
 
 Partial Fleet Action, March 14, 1795 143 
 
 Battle of Cape St. Vincent, Figures 1 and 2 . . . . 230 
 
 Battle of Cape St. Vincent, Figure 3 ...... . 233 
 
 Map of the Mediterranean 276 
 
 Map of Coast-line, Alexandria to Rosetta 293 
 
 Map of Aboukir Bay 296 
 
 Battle of the Nile, First Stage 298 
 
 Battle of the Nile, Second Stage 301 
 
 Map of the Baltic and its Approaches 468 
 
 Battle of Copenhagen, Plan Number 1 473 
 
 Battle of Copenhagen, Plan Number 2 476 
 
 Map of the English Channel and North Sea .... 508 
 
 Map of Sardinia 576 
 
 Map of the North Atlantic 675 
 
 Plans of Attack, issued May, 1805, Figures 1, 2, and 3 695 
 
 Plan of Attack for Trafalgar, Figure 1 698 
 
 Plan of Attack for Trafalgar, Figure 2 702 
 
 The Attack at Trafalgar 720 
 
 Track Chart, giving the General Lines of Nelson's 
 Cruisings, from Lieutenant in the Lowestoffe 1777 
 
 TO 1805 742 
 
THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The First Twenty-Five Years. 
 
 1758-1783. 
 
 IT is the appointed lot of some of History's chosen few to 
 come upon the scene at tlie moment when a great tendency 
 is nearing its crisis and culmination. Specially gifted with 
 qualities needed to realize the fulness of its possibilities, they 
 so identify themselves with it by their deeds that they thence- 
 forth personify to the world the movement which brought them 
 forth, and of which their own achievements are at once the 
 climax and the most dazzling illustration. Fewer still, but 
 happiest of all, viewed from the standpoint of fame, are those 
 whose departure is as well timed as their appearance, who do 
 not survive the instant of perfected success, to linger on sub- 
 jected to the searching tests of common life, but pass from our 
 ken in a blaze of glory which thenceforth forever encircles 
 their names. In that evening light break away and vanish the 
 ominous clouds wherewith human frailties or tyrant passions 
 had threatened to darken their renown ; and their sun goes 
 down with a lustre which the lapse of time is powerless to dim. 
 Such was the privilege of the stainless Wolfe ; such, beyond 
 all others, that of Nelson. Earely has a man been more 
 favored in the hour of his appearing ; never one so fortunate 
 in the moment of his death. 
 
 Yet, however accidental, or providential, this rarely allotted 
 portion, this crowning incident of an heroic career, it is after 
 all but an incident. It the man has not contrived; but to it 
 he has contributed much, withou.t which his passing hour would 
 have faded to memory, undistinguished among those of the 
 myriads, great and small, who have died as nobly and are 
 
 1 
 
THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 forever forgotten. A sun has set; but before its setting it has 
 run a course, be it long or short, and has gathered a radiance 
 which iixes upon its parting beams the rapt attention of be- 
 holders. The man's self and the man's works, what he was 
 and what he did, the nature which brought forth such fruits, 
 the thoughts which issued in such acts, hopes, fears, desires, 
 quick intuitions, painful struggles, lofty ambitions, happy- 
 opportunities, have blended to form that luminous whole, 
 known and seen of all, but not to be understood excej)t by a 
 patient effort to resolve the great result into its several rays, 
 to separate the strands whose twisting has made so strong a 
 cord. 
 
 Concerning the man's external acts, it will often happen that 
 their true value and significance can best be learned, not from 
 his own personal recital, but from an analytic study of the 
 deeds themselves. Yet into them, too, often enters, not only 
 the subtile working of their author's natural qualities, but also 
 a certain previous history of well-defined opinions, of settled 
 principles firmly held, of trains of thought and reasoning, of 
 intuitions wrought into rational convictions, all of which betray 
 both temjierament and character. Of these intellectual ante- 
 cedents, the existence and development may be gleaned from 
 his writings, confirming the inference reached somewhat 
 mechanically by the scrutiny of his actions. They play to the 
 latter the part of the soul to the body, and thus contribute to 
 the rather anatomical result of the dissecting process a spiritual 
 element it would otherwise lack. But if this is so even of the 
 outward career, it is far more deeply true of the inner history, 
 of that underlying native character, which masterfully moulds 
 and colors every life, yet evades the last analysis except when 
 the obscure workings of heart and mind have been laid bare 
 by their owner's words, recording the feelings of the fleeting 
 hour with no view to future inspection. In these revelations 
 of self, made Avithout thought of the world outside, is to be 
 found, if anywhere, the clue to that complex and often contra- 
 dictory mingling of qualities which go to form the oneness of 
 the man's personality. This discordance between essential 
 unity and superficial diversities must be harmonized, if a true 
 conception of his being is to be formed. We know the faces 
 of our friends, but we see each as one. The features can, if 
 
THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 
 
 we will, be separately considered, catalogued, and valued ; but 
 who ever thus thinks habitually of one he knows well ? Yet 
 to know well must be the aim of biography, — so to present 
 the traits in their totality, without suppression of any, and in 
 their true relative proportions, as to produce, not the blurred 
 or distorted outlines seen through an imperfect lens, but the 
 vivid apprehension which follows long intimacy with its con- 
 tinual, though unconscious, process of correction. 
 
 For such a treatment of Nelson's character, copious, if im- 
 perfect, material is afforded in his extensive and varied corre- 
 spondence. From it the author aims, first, to draw forth a 
 distinct and living image of the man himself, as sketched there- 
 in at random and loosely by his own hand. It is sought to 
 reach the result by keeping the reader in constant contact, as 
 by daily acquaintance, with a personality of mingled weakness 
 and strength, of grave faults as well as of great virtues, but 
 one whose charm was felt in life by all who knew it. The 
 second object, far less ambitious, is to present a clear narrative 
 of the military career, of the mighty deeds of arms, of this 
 first of British seamen, whoiii the gifts of Nature and the course 
 of History have united to make, in his victories and in their 
 results, the representative figure of the greatest sea-power that 
 the world has known. 
 
 It will not be thought surprising that we have, of the first 
 thirty years of Nelson's life, no such daily informal record as 
 that which illustrates the comparatively brief but teeming 
 period of his active fighting career, from 1793 to 1805, when 
 he at once, with inevitable directness and singular rapidity, 
 rose to prominence, and established intimate relations with 
 numbers of his contemporaries. A few anecdotes, more or less 
 characteristic, have been preserved concerning his boyhood and 
 youth. In his early manhood we have his own account, both 
 explicit and implied in many casual unpremeditated phrases, 
 of the motives which governed his public conduct in an episode 
 occurring when, scarcely yet more than a youth, he commanded 
 a frigate in the West Indies, — the whole singularly confirma- 
 tory, it might better be said prophetic, of the distinguishing 
 qualities afterwards so brilliantly manifested in his maturity. 
 But beyond these, it is only by the closest attention and careful 
 gleaning that can be found, in the defective and discontinuous 
 
THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 collection of letters which remains from his first thirty years, 
 the indisputable tokens, in most important particulars, of the 
 man that was to be. 
 
 The external details of this generally uneventful jieriod can 
 be rapidly summarized. He was born on the 29th of Septem- 
 ber, 1758, the fifth son and sixth child of Edmund Nelson, then 
 rector of the parish of Burnham Thorpe, in Norfolk, a county 
 which lies along the eastern coast of England, bordering the 
 North Sea. His mother, whose name before marriage was 
 Catherine Suckling, was grandniece to Sir Eobert WaljDole, 
 the famous prime minister of Great Britain during twenty years 
 of the reigns of the first two Georges. Sir Robert's second 
 brother was called Horatio ; and it was from the latter, or from 
 his son, that the future hero took his baptismal name, which, 
 in a more common form, was also that of Sir Robert's younger 
 son, the celebrated letter and memoir writer, Horace Walpole. 
 
 Of the eleven children borne by Nelson's mother in her 
 eighteen wedded years, only two lived to grow old. She her- 
 self died at forty-two ; and her brother. Captain Maurice 
 Suckling, of the Royal Navy, was also cut off in the prime of 
 his age. As the earlier Nelsons were unusually long-lived, it 
 seems probable that a certain delicacy of constitution was 
 transmitted through the Sucklings to the generation to which 
 the admiral belonged. He was himself, at various periods 
 through life, a great sufferer, and frequently an invalid ; allu- 
 sions to illness, often of a most prostrating type, and to his 
 susceptibility to the influences of climate or weather, occur 
 repeatedly and at brief intervals throughout his correspond- 
 ence. This is a factor in his career which should not be lost 
 to mind; for on the one hand it explains in part the fretful- 
 ness which at times appears, and on the other brings out with 
 increased force the general kindly sweetness of his temper, 
 which breathed with slight abatement through such depressing 
 conditions. It enhances, too, the strength of purpose that 
 trod bodily weakness under foot, almost unconsciously, at the 
 call of duty or of honor. It is notable, in his letters, that the 
 necessity for exertion, even when involving severe exposure, 
 is apt to be followed, though without apparent recognition of 
 a connection between the two, by the remark that he has not 
 for a long time been so well. He probably experienced, as 
 
THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 
 
 have others, that it is not the greater hardships of the profes- 
 sion, much less the clangers, but its uncertainties and petty 
 vexations, which tell most severely on a high-strung organiza- 
 tion like his own. 
 
 The immediate occasion of his going to sea was as follows. 
 In 1770 the Falkland Islands, a desolate and then unimportant 
 group, lying in the South Atlantic, to the eastward of Pata- 
 gonia, were claimed as a possession by both Spain and Great 
 Britain. The latter had upon them a settlement called Fort 
 Egmont, before which, in the year named, an overwhelming 
 Spanish squadron suddenly appeared, and compelled the 
 British occupants to lower their flag. The insult aroused 
 public indignation in England to the highest pitch ; and, while 
 peremptory demands for reparation were despatched to Spain, 
 a number of ships of war were ordered at once into commis- 
 sion. Among these was the " Eaisonnable," of sixty- four 
 guns, to the command of which was appointed Nelson's uncle. 
 Captain Maurice Suckling. The latter had some time before 
 promised to provide for one of his sister's children, the family 
 being very poor ; and, the custom of the day permitting 
 naval captains, as a kind of patronage, to take into the 
 King's service on board their own ships a certain number of 
 lads, as midshipmen or otherwise, the opportunity of giving a 
 nephew a start in life was now in his hands. The story is 
 that Horatio, though then but twelve years old, realized the 
 burden of pecuniary care that his father was carrying, and 
 himself volunteered the wish that his uncle would take him to 
 sea. However it happened, the suggestion staggered Suckling, 
 who well knew the lad's puny frame and fragile constitution. 
 ''What has poor little Horatio done," cried he, "that he, being 
 so weak, should be sent to rough it at sea ? But let him 
 come, and if a cannon-ball takes off his head, he will at least 
 be provided for." Under such gloomy foreboding began the 
 most dazzling career that the sea, the mother of so many 
 heroes, has ever seen.^ 
 
 1 The precise date of Xelson's entering the Navy, which would be that of his 
 being rated upon the books of the " Raisonnable," is not stated. Accepting 
 the times during which he was borne upon the books of different ships, as 
 given by Sir Harris Nicolas (Letters and Despatches of Lord Nelson, vol. i. 
 p. 4, note), and with them calculating back from October 15, 1773, the day 
 
THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 Spain, after a short hesitation, yielded the British demands, 
 so that war did not come, and the " Eaisonnable," with 
 other ships, was again put out of commission. The incident 
 of the Falkland Islands, however, had served the purpose of 
 introducing Nelson to his profession, for which otherwise the 
 opportunity might not have offered. Being so young when 
 thus embarked, he, in common with many of the most success- 
 ful seamen of that day, got scanty schooling ; nor did he, as 
 some others did, by after application remedy the eccentricities 
 of style, and even of grammar, which are apt to result from 
 such early neglect. His letters, vigorous and direct as they 
 are, present neither the polished diction of Collingwood, nor 
 the usual even correctness of St. Vincent and Saumarez, but 
 are, on the contrary, constantly disfigured by awkward expres- 
 sions and bad English. There was rarely, however, danger of 
 mistaking his meaning, as was sometimes charged against 
 Lord Howe. 
 
 Here, before fairly parting with the humble home life, of 
 which the motherless boy had seen, and was throughout his 
 career to see so little, is a fit place to introduce two anecdotes 
 associated with those early days which his biographers have 
 transmitted to us. We of these critical times have learned to 
 look with incredulity, not always unmixed with derision, upon 
 stories relating to the childhood of distinguished men ; but it 
 can safely be said that the two now to be given are in entire 
 keeping, not merely with particular traits, but with the great 
 ruling tenor of Nelson's whole life. He and his elder brother 
 were going to school one winter day upon their ponies. Find- 
 ing the snow so deep as to delay them seriously, they went 
 back, and the elder reported that they could not get on. The 
 
 mentioned by Nelson himself as that on which he was paid off from the 
 "Carcass" (Nicolas, p. 5), the date of entry upon the books of the 
 " Raisoiinable " would be November 27, 1770; unless, which is unlikely, 
 there were any lost days. The news of the Port Egmont business reached 
 England in October, 1770. Clarke and M'Arthur (Life of Nelson, vol. i. 
 p. 14, note) infer January 1, 1771, for his entry u])on the " Raisonnable's " 
 books ; but this would not allow the times which Nicolas gives with minute 
 exactness. For his actually joining the " Raisonnable " they give, loosely, 
 the spring of 1771, — March or April. This is very possible, as rating back, 
 for the sake of gaining constructive time needed to qualify for promotion, was 
 tolerated by the practice of the day. 
 
THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 
 
 father very judiciously replied: "If that be so, I have of 
 course nothing to say ; but I wish you to try again, and I 
 leave it to your honour not to turn back, unless necessary." 
 On the second attempt, the elder was more than once for 
 returning; but Horatio stuck it out, repeating continually, 
 "Eemember it was left to our honour," and the difficult 
 journey was accomplished. 
 
 The children in this instance seem to have felt that there 
 was danger in going on. The other recorded occurrence shows 
 in the lad that indifference to personal benefit, as distinguished 
 from the sense of conspicuous achievement, which was ever a 
 prominent characteristic of the man. The master of his 
 school had a very fine pear-tree, whose fruit the boys coveted, 
 but upon which none dared hazard an attempt. At last 
 Nelson, who did not share their desires, undertook the risk, 
 climbed the tree by night, and carried off the pears, but 
 refused to eat any of them, — sajang that he had taken them 
 only because the others were afraid. 
 
 Trivial though these incidents may seem, they are so merely 
 because they belong to the day of small things. To those 
 accustomed to watch children, they will not appear unworthy 
 of note. Taken together, they illustrate, as really as do his 
 greatest deeds, the two forms assumed at different times by 
 the one incentive which always most powerfully determined 
 Nelson's action through life, — the motive to which an appeal 
 was never made in vain. No material considerations, neither 
 danger on the one hand, nor gain on the other, ever affected 
 him as did that idealized conception which presented itself, 
 now as duty, now as honor, according as it bore for the mo- 
 ment upon his relations to the state or to his own personality. 
 '' In my mind's eye," said he to his friend Captain Hardy, who 
 afterwards bent over him as his spirit was parting amid the 
 tumult of his last victory, "I ever saw a radiant orb suspended 
 which beckoned me onward to renown." Nelson did not often 
 verge upon the poetical in words, but to the poetry of lofty 
 aspiration his inmost being always answered true. 
 
 To the young naval officer of a century ago, especially if 
 without political or social influence, it was a weighty advan- 
 tage to be attached to some one commanding officer in active 
 employment,, who by favorable opportunity or through pro- 
 
THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 fessional friendships could push the fortunes of those in 
 whom he was interested. Much of the promotion was then 
 in the hands of the admirals on foreign stations ; and this 
 local power to reward distinguished service, though liable to 
 abuse in many ways, conduced greatly to stimulate the zeal 
 and efforts of officers who felt themselves immediately under 
 the eye of one who could make or mar their future. Each 
 naval captain, also, could in his degree affect more or less the 
 prospects of those dependent upon him. Thus Suckling, 
 though not going to sea himself, continued with intelligent 
 solicitude his promised care of the young Nelson. When the 
 " Raisonnable " was paid off, he was transferred to the com- 
 mand of the " Triumph," of seventy-four guns, stationed as 
 guard-ship in the river Med way ; and to her also he took with 
 him his ne^^hew, who was borne upon her books for the two 
 following years, which were, however, far from being a period 
 of inactive harbor life. Having considerable professional 
 interest, he saw to the lad's being kept afloat, and obtained 
 for him from time to time such service as seemed most 
 desirable to his enterjDrising spirit. 
 
 The distinction between the merchant seaman and the man- 
 of-war's man, or even the naval officer, in those days of sail- 
 ing ships and simple weapons was much less sharply marked 
 than it has since become. Skill in seamanship, from the use 
 of the marlinespike and the sail-needle up to the full equipping 
 of a ship and the handling of her under canvas, was in either 
 service the prime essential. In both alike, cannon and small 
 arms were carried ; and the ship's company, in the peaceful 
 trader as well as in the ship of war, expected to repel force 
 with force, when meeting upon equal terms. With a reduced 
 number of naval vessels in commission, and their quarter- 
 decks consequently over-crowded with young officers, a youth 
 was more likely to find on board them a life of untasked idle- 
 ness than a call to professional occupation and improvement. 
 Nelson therefore was sent by his careful guardian to a mer- 
 chant-ship trading to the West Indies, to learn iipon her, as 
 a foremast hand, the elements of his profession, under condi- 
 tions which, from the comparative fewness of the crew and 
 the activity of the life, would tend to develop his powers most 
 rapidly. In this vessel he imbibed, along with nautical knowl- 
 
THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 
 
 edge, the prejudice which has usually existed, more or less, in 
 the merchant marine against the naval service, due probably 
 to the more rigorous exactions and longer terms of enlistment 
 in the latter, although the life in other respects is one of less 
 hardship; but in Nelson's day the feeling had been intensified 
 by the practice of impressment, and by the severe, almost 
 brutal discipline that obtained on board some ships of war, 
 through the arbitrary use of their powers by captains, then 
 insufficiently controlled by law. In this cruise he seems to 
 have spent a little over a year ; a time, however, that was not 
 lost to him for the accomplishment of the period of service 
 technically required to qualify as a lieutenant, his name con- 
 tinuing throughout on the books of the " Triumph," to which 
 he returned in July, 1772. 
 
 Suckling's care next insured for him a continuance of active, 
 semi-detached duty, in the boats of the " Triumph," — an 
 employment very different from, and more responsible than, 
 that in which he had recently been occupied, and particularly 
 calculated to develop in so apt a nature the fearlessness of 
 responsibility, both professional and personal, that was among 
 the most' prominent features of Nelson's character. *' The 
 test of a man's courage is responsibility," said that great 
 admiral and shrewd judge of men, the Earl of St. Vincent, 
 after a long and varied experience of naval officers ; and none 
 ever shone more brightly under this supreme proof than the 
 lad whose career is now opening before us. It may be inter- 
 esting, too, to note that this condition of more or less detached 
 service, so early begun, in which, though not in chief com- 
 mand, he held an authority temporarily independent, and was 
 immediately answerable for all that happened on the spot, 
 was the singular characteristic of most of his brilliant course, 
 during which, until 1803, two years before Trafalgar, he was 
 only for brief periods commander-in-chief, yet almost always 
 acted apart from his superior. Many a man, gallant, fearless, 
 and capable, within signal distance of his admiral, has, when 
 out of sight of the flag, succumbed" with feeble knees to the 
 burden of independent responsible action, though not beyond 
 his professional powers. This strength, like all Nature's best 
 gifts, is inborn ; yet, both for the happy possessor and for the 
 merely average man, it is susceptible of high development 
 
10 THE LIFE OF NELSOX 
 
 only by being early exercised, which was the good fortune 
 of Nelson. 
 
 Of these two years of somewhat irregular service, while 
 nominally attached to the " Triumph," it will be well to give 
 the account in his own words ; for, having been written a full 
 quarter of a century later, they record the deepest and most 
 lasting impressions made upon him during that susceptible 
 period when first becoming familiar Avith the calling he was 
 to adorn : — 
 
 " The business with Spain being accommodated, I was sent in a 
 West India ship belonging to tlie house of Hibbert, Furrier, and 
 Horton, with Mr. John Rathbone, who had formerly been in the 
 Navy, in the Dreadnought with Captain Suckling. From this voyage 
 I returned to the triumph at Chatham in July, 1772 ; and, if I did not 
 improve in my education, I returned a practical Seaman, with a horror 
 of the Royal Xavy, and with a saying, then constant with the Sea- 
 men, ' Afl tlie most honour, forward the Letter inati ! ' It was many 
 weeks before I got the least reconciled to a Mau-of-War, so deep was 
 the prejudice rooted ; and what pains were taken to instil tliis erro- 
 neous principle in a young mind ! However, as my ambition was to 
 be a Seaman, it was always held out as a reward, that if I attended 
 well to my navigation, I should go in the cutter and decked long-boat, 
 which was attached to the Commanding officer's ship at Chatham. 
 Thus by degrees I became a good pilot, for vessels of that description, 
 from Chatham to the Tower of London, down the Swin, and the 
 North Foreland; and confident of myself amongst rocks and sands, 
 which has many times since been of great comfort to me. In this 
 way I was trained, till the expedition towards the North Pole was 
 fitted out; when, although no boys were allowed to go in the Ships, 
 (as of no use,) yet nothing could prevent my using every interest to 
 go with Captain Lutwidge in the Carcass ; and, as I fancied I was to 
 fill a man's place, I begged I might be his cockswain ; which, finding 
 my ardent desire for going with him, Captain Lutwidge complied with, 
 and lias continued the strictest friendship to this moment. Lord 
 Mulgrave, whom I then first knew, maintained his kindest friendship 
 and regard to the last moment of his life. Wlien the boats were fit- 
 ting out to quit the two Ships blocked up in the ice, I exerted myself 
 to have the command of a four-oared cutter raised upon, which was 
 given me, with twelve men; and I prided myself in fancying I could 
 navigate her better than any other boat in the Ship." 
 
 It will be recognized from this brief yet suggestive and 
 characteristic narrative, that, however valuable and even 
 
THE riKST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 11 
 
 indispensable may have been his uncle's assistance in forward- 
 ing his wishes, it was his own ambition and his own impulse 
 that even at this early day gave direction to his course, and 
 obtained opportunities which would scarcely have been offered 
 spontaneously to one of his physical frailty. In this Arctic 
 expedition he underwent the experiences common to all who 
 tempt those icebound seas. During it occurred an incident 
 illustrative of iSTelson's recklessness of personal danger, — a 
 very different thing from official recklessness, which he never 
 showed even in his moments of greatest daring and highest 
 inspiration. The story is so hackneyed by frequent repetition 
 as to make its relation a weariness to the biographer, the 
 more so that the trait of extreme rashness iu youth is one 
 by no means so rare as to be specially significant of Nel- 
 son's character. It will be given in the words of his first 
 biographers : — 
 
 "There is also an anecdote recollected by Admiral Lutwidge, 
 which marked the fiUal attention of his gallant cockswain. Among 
 the gentlemen on the quarter-deck of the Carcass, who were not 
 rated midsldpmen, there was, besides young Nelson, a daring ship- 
 mate of his, to whom he had become attached. One night, during 
 the mid-watch, it was concerted between them that tliey should steal 
 together from the ship and endeavour to obtain a bear's skin. The 
 clearness of the niglits iu those high latitudes rendered the accom- 
 plishment of this object extremely difficult : they, however, seem to 
 have taken advantage of the haze of an approaching fog, and thus to 
 have escaped unnoticed. Nelson in high spirits led the way over the 
 frightful chasms in the ice, armed with a rusty musket. It was not, 
 however, long before the adventurers were missed by those on board ; 
 and, as the fog had come on very thick, the anxiety of Captain Lut- 
 widge and his officers was very great. Between three and four in 
 the morning the mist somewhat dispersed, and the hunters were dis- 
 covered at a considerable distance, attacking a large bear. The 
 signal was instantly made for their return ; but it was in vain that 
 Nelson's companion urged him to obey it. He was at this time 
 divided by a chasm in the ice from his shaggy antagonist, which 
 probably saved his life ; for the musket had flashed in the pan, and 
 their ammunition was expended. ' Never mind,' exclaimed Horatio, 
 ' do but let me get a blow at this devil with the butt-end of my 
 musket, and we shall have him.' His companion, finding that 
 entreaty was in vain, regained the ship. The captain, seeing the 
 young man's danger, ordered a gun to be fired to terrify the enraged 
 
12 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 animal. This had the desired eifect ; but Nelson was obliged to 
 return without his bear, somewhat agitated with the apprehension of 
 the consec^ueuce of this adventure. Captain Lutwidge, though he 
 could not but admire so daring a disposition, reprimanded him 
 rather sternly for such rashness, and for conduct so unworthy of the 
 situation he occupied ; and desired to know what motive he could 
 have for hunting a bear? Being thought by his captain to have 
 acted in a manner unworthy of his situation, made a deep impression 
 on the high-minded cockswain ; who, pouting his lip, as he was wont 
 to do when agitated, replied, ' Sir, I wished to kill the bear, that I 
 might carry its skin to my father.' " 
 
 Upon his return to England from the Arctic Seas, Nelson 
 again by his own choice determined his immediate future. 
 Within a fortnight of leaving the " Carcass," he was, through 
 his uncle's influence, received on board by the captain of the 
 " Seahorse," of twenty guns, one of the ships composing a 
 squadron that was just then fitting out for the East Indies. 
 To quote himself, " Nothing less than such a distant voyage 
 could in the least satisfy my desire of maritime knowledge." 
 During an absence of three years he for much of the time, as 
 formerly in his West India cruise, did the duty of a seaman 
 aloft, from which he was afterwards rated midshipman, and 
 placed, this time finally, upon the quarter-deck as an officer. 
 In the ordinary course of cruising in peace times, he visited 
 every part of the station from Bengal to Bussorah ; but the 
 climate, trying even to vigorous Europeans, proved too much 
 for his frail health. After a couple of years he broke down 
 and was invalided home, reaching England in September, 1776. 
 His escape from death was attributed by himself to the kind 
 care of Captain Pigot of the " Dolphin," in which ship he came 
 back. At this period we are told that, when well, he was of 
 florid countenance, rather stout and athletic ; but, as the result 
 of his illness, he was reduced to a mere skeleton, and for some 
 time entirely lost the use of his limbs, — a distressing symp- 
 tom, that returned iipon him a few years later after his Cen- 
 tral American expedition in 17S0, and confirms the impression 
 of extreme fragility of constitution, which is frequently indi- 
 cated in other ways. 
 
 During this absence in the East Indies Captain Suckling, in 
 April, 1775, had been named Comptroller of the Navy, — a 
 
THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 13 
 
 civil position, but one that carried with it power and conse- 
 quent influence. This probably told for much in obtaining for 
 Nelson, who was but just eighteen, and liad not yet passed the 
 examinations for his first promotion, an acting appointment as 
 lieutenant. With this he joined a small ship-of-the-line, the 
 " Worcester," of sixty-four guns, on board which he remained 
 for six months, engaged in convoy duty between the Channel 
 and Gibraltar, seeing from her decks for the first time the 
 waters of the Mediterranean and its approaches, since then 
 indissolubly associated with his name and his glory. He took 
 with him a letter from his uncle to the captain of his new 
 ship ; but while such introduction, coming from so influential 
 a quarter, doubtless contributed powerfully to clear from his 
 path the obstacles commonly encountered by young men, 'Nel- 
 son had gained for himself a reputation for professional 
 capacity, which, here as throughout his life, quickly won him 
 the full confidence of his superiors. In later years, when his 
 admiral's flag was flying, he recorded, with evident pride in 
 the recollection, that while on board the " Worcester," not- 
 withstanding his youth, his captain used to say, " He felt as 
 easy when I was u.pon deck as any officer of the ship." It is 
 doubtful, indeed, whether Nelson ever possessed in a high 
 degree the delicate knack of handling a ship with the utmost 
 dexterity and precision. He certainly had not the reputation 
 for so doing. Codrington — a thorough Nelsonian, to use his 
 own somewhat factious expression — used to say in later years, 
 " Lord Nelson was no seaman ; even in the earlier stages of 
 the profession his genius had soared higher, and all his ener- 
 gies were turned to becoming a great commander." His 
 apprenticeship, before reaching command, was probably too 
 short ; and, as captain, his generous disposition to trust others 
 to do work for which he knew them fitted, would naturally 
 lead him to throw the manipulation of the vessel upon his 
 subordinates. But although, absorbed by broader and deeper 
 thoughts of the responsibilities and opportunities of a naval 
 commander, to which he was naturally attracted by both his 
 genius and his temperament, he was excelled in technical skill 
 by many who had no touch of his own inspiration, he never- 
 theless possessed a thoroughly competent knowledge of his 
 profession as a simple seaman ; which, joined to his zeal, 
 
14 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 energy, and intelligence, would more than justify the confi- 
 dence expressed by his early commander. Of this knowledge 
 he gave full proof a year later, when, before a board of cap- 
 tains, strangers to him, he successfully passed his examina- 
 tions for a lieutenancy. His uncle Suckling, as Comptroller 
 of the Navy, was indeed on the board ; but he concealed the 
 fact of relationship until the other members had expressed 
 themselves satisfied. 
 
 His examination was held within a week of his leaving the 
 "Worcester," on the 8th of April, 1777; and Suckling once 
 more, but for the last time in his life, was able to exert his 
 influence in behalf of his relative by promptly securing for 
 him, not only his promotion to lieutenant, which many waited 
 for long, but with it his commission, dated April 10, to the 
 " Lowestoffe," a frigate of thirty-two guns. This class of 
 vessel was in the old days considered particularly desirable 
 for young officers, being more active than ships-of-the-line, 
 while at the same time more comfortable, and a better school 
 for the forming of an officer, than were the smaller cruisers ; 
 and his uncle probably felt that JSTelson, whose service hitherto 
 had been mainly upon the latter, needed yet to perfect the 
 habits and methods distinctive of a ship of war, for he now 
 wrote him a letter upon the proprieties of naval conduct, 
 excellently conceived, yet embracing particulars that should 
 scarcely have been necessary to one who had served his time 
 on board well-ordered ships. The appointment to the "Lowe- 
 stoffe " was further fortunate, both for him and for us, as in 
 the commander of the vessel, Captain William Locker, he 
 found, not only an admirable officer and gentleman, but a 
 friend for whom he formed a lasting attachment, ending only 
 with Locker's death in 1800, two years after the Battle of the 
 Nile. To this friendship we owe the fullest record, at his 
 own hands, of his early career ; for Locker kept the numer- 
 ous letters written him by Nelson while still an unknown 
 young man. Of seventy odd which now remain, covering the 
 years from 1777 to 1783, thirty-seven were to this one 
 correspondent. 
 
 In another respect the appointment to the " Lowestoffe " 
 was fortunate for Nelson. The ship was destined to the 
 West Indies — or, to speak more precisely, to Jamaica, 
 
THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 15 
 
 which was a command distinct from that of the eastern 
 Caribbean, or Lesser Antilles, officially styled the Leeward 
 Islands Station. Great Britain was then fully embarked 
 in the war with her ISTorth American colonies, which ended 
 in their independence ; and the course of events was has- 
 tening her to the rupture with France and Spain that fol- 
 lowed within a year. In this protracted contest the chief 
 scene of naval hostilities was to be the West Indies ; but 
 beyond even the casualties of war, the baneful climate of 
 that region insured numerous vacancies by prostration and 
 death, with consequent chances of promotion for those who 
 escaped the fevers, and found favor in the eyes of their 
 commander-in-chief. The brutal levity of the old toast, 
 "A bloody war and a sickly season," nowhere found surer 
 fulfilment than on those pestilence-stricken coasts. Captain 
 Locker's health soon gave way. Arriving at Jamaica on the 
 19th of July, 1777, we find Nelson in the following month 
 writing to him from the ship during an absence produced by 
 a serious illness, from which fatal results were feared. The 
 letter, like all those to Locker, was marked hy that tone of 
 quick, eager sympathy, of genial inclination always to say 
 the kindest thing, that characterized his correspondence, and, 
 generally, his intercourse with others, — traits that through 
 life made him, beyond most men, acceptable and beloved. 
 He was, from first to last, not merely one of those whose 
 services are forced upon others by sheer weight of ability, 
 because indispensable, — though this, too, he was, — but men 
 wanted him because, although at times irritable, especially 
 after the wounds received in later years, he was an easy yoke- 
 fellow, pleasant to deal with, cordial and ready to support 
 those above him, a tolerant and appreciative master to sub- 
 ordinates. It may even be said that, in matters indiffer- 
 ent to him, he too readily reflected the feelings, views, and 
 wishes of those about him ; but when they clashed with 
 his own fixed convictions, he was immovable. As he himself 
 said in such a case, "I feel I am perfectly right, and you 
 know upon those occasions I am not famous for giving up a 
 point." 
 
 Of his connection with the " Lowestoffe " he himself, in 
 the short autobiographical sketch before quoted, mentions 
 
16 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 two circumstances, which, from the very fact of their re- 
 maining so long in his memory, illustrate temperament. 
 " Even a frigate," he says, " was not sufficiently active for my 
 mind, and I got into a schooner, tender to the Lowestoffe. 
 In this vessel I made myself a complete pilot for all the 
 passages through the [Keys] Islands situated on the north 
 side Hispaniola." This kind of service, it will be noted, was 
 in direct sequence, as to training, to his handling of the 
 " Triumph's " long-boat in the lower waters of the Thames, 
 and would naturally contribute to increase that " confidence 
 in himself among rocks and sands," which was afterwards to 
 be so " great a comfort " to him. In his later career he had 
 frequent and pressing need of that particular form of profes- 
 sional judgment and self-reliance for which these early expe- 
 riences stood him in good stead. As he afterwards wrote to 
 the First Lord of the Admiralty, when pleading the cause of 
 a daring and skilful officer who had run his ship ashore : 
 " If I had been censured every time I have run my ship, or 
 fleets under my command, into great danger, I should long 
 ago have been out of the service, and never in the House of 
 Peers." At the critical instants of the Nile and Copenhagen, 
 as well as in the less conspicuous but more prolonged anxieties 
 of the operations off Corsica and along the Riviera of Genoa, 
 this early habit, grafted upon the singularly steady nerve 
 wherewith he was endowed by nature, sustained him at a 
 height of daring and achievement to which very few have 
 been able to rise. 
 
 The other incident recorded by him as happening while on 
 board the " Lowestoffe," he himself cites as illustrative of 
 temperament. " Whilst in this frigate, an event happened 
 which presaged my character ; and, as it conveys no dishonour 
 to the officer alluded to, I shall insert it. Blowing a gale of 
 wind, and a very heavy sea, the frigate captured an American 
 letter-of-marque. The first Lieutenant was ordered to board 
 her, which he did not do, owing to the very heavy sea. On 
 his return, the Captain said, ' Have I no officer in the ship 
 who can board the prize ? ' On which the Master ran to the 
 gangway, to get into the boat : when I stopped him, saying, 
 * It is my turn now ; and if I come back, it is yours.' This 
 little incident," he continues, "has often occurred to my 
 
THE riEST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 17 
 
 mind; and I know it is my disposition, that difficulties and 
 dangers do but increase my desire of attempting them." An 
 action of this sort, in its results unimportant, gives keener 
 satisfaction in the remembrance than do greater deeds, because 
 more purely individual, — entirely one's own. It is upon 
 such as this, rather than upon his victories, that Nelson in 
 his narrative dwells caressingly. His personal daring at St. 
 Vincent, and against the gunboats off Cadiz, ministered more 
 directly to his self-esteem, to that consciousness of high desert 
 which was dear to him, than did the Battle of the Nile, whose 
 honors he, though ungrudgingly, shared with his " band, of 
 brothers." 
 
 When the " Lowestoffe " had been a year upon the station, 
 it became very doubtful whether Locker could continue in 
 her, and finally he did go home ill. It was probably due to 
 this uncertainty that he obtained the transfer of Nelson, in 
 whom he had become most affectionately interested, to the 
 "Bristol," flagship of Sir Peter Parker, the commander-in- 
 chief. Here, under the admiral's own eye, warmly recom- 
 mended by his last captain, and with a singular faculty for 
 enlisting the love and esteem of all with whom he was brouglit 
 into contact, the young officer's prospects were of the fairest; 
 nor did the event belie them. Joining the " Bristol " as her 
 third lieutenant, not earlier than July, 1778, he had by the 
 end of September risen " by succession " — ■ to use his own 
 phrase — to be first; a promotion by seniority whose rapidity 
 attests the' rate at which vacancies occurred. Both Parker 
 and his wife became very fond of him, cared for him in illness, 
 and in later years she wrote to him upon each of the occasions 
 on which he most brilliantly distinguished himself — after 
 St. Vincent, the Nile, and. Copenhagen. "Your mother," said 
 she after the first, " could not have heard of your deeds with 
 more affection ; nor could she be more rejoiced at your per- 
 sonal escape from all the dangers of that glorious day; " and 
 again, after the Nile, " Sir Peter and I have ever regarded 
 you as a son." The letter following the victory at Copen- 
 hagen has not been published ; but Nelson, whose heart was 
 never reluctant to gratitude nor to own obligation, wrote in 
 reply : "Believe me when I say that I am as sensible as ever 
 that I owe my present position in life to your and good Sir 
 
 2 
 
18 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 Peter's partiality for me, and friendly remembrance of Maurice 
 Suckling." 
 
 This last allusion indicates some disinterestedness in Par- 
 ker's patronage, and its vital importance to Nelson at that 
 time. Captain Suckling had died in July, 1778, and with him 
 departed the only powerful support upon which the young 
 lieutenant could then count, apart from his own merits and 
 the friends obtained by them. There was in those days an 
 immense difference in prospects between the nephew of the 
 Comptroller of the Navy and a man unknown at headquar- 
 ters. By what leading principles, if any, Sir Peter Parker was 
 guided in the distribution of his favors, can scarcely now be 
 ascertained ; but that he brought rapidly forward two men of 
 such great yet widely different merit as Nelson and Colling- 
 wood, is a proof that his judgment was sound and the station 
 one where vacancies were frequent. Colliugwood, who was 
 then a lieutenant on board a sloop-of-war, went to the 
 " Lowestott'e" in Nelson's place. When the latter, in Decem- 
 ber, 1778, was made commander into the brig "Badger," the 
 other was transferred to the vacant room in the '' Bristol ; " 
 and when Nelson, on the 11th of June, 1779, became post-captain 
 in the " Hinchinbrook " frigate, Colliugwood again followed 
 him as commander of the " Badger." Finally, when through 
 a death vacancy a better frigate offered for Nelson, Colliug- 
 wood also was posted into the " Hinchinbrook ; " this ship 
 thus having the singular distinction of conferring the highest 
 rank obtainable by selection, and so fixing the final position of 
 the two life-long friends who led the columns at Trafalgar, the 
 crowning achievement of the British Navy as well as of their 
 own illustrious careers. The coincidence at the earlier date 
 may have been partly factitious, due to a fad of the com- 
 mander-in-chief ; but it assiimes a different and very impres- 
 sive aspect viewed in the light of their later close association, 
 especially when it is recalled that Colliugwood also succeeded, 
 upon Nelson's death, to the Mediterranean command, and Avas 
 there worn out, as his predecessor fell, in the discharge of his 
 duty upon that important station, which thus proved fatal to 
 them both. Few historic parallels are so complete. Sir Peter 
 Parker, living until 1811, survived both his illustrious juniors, 
 and at the age of eighty-two followed Nelson's coffin, as chief 
 
THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 19 
 
 mourner at the imposing obsequies, where the nation, from the 
 highest to the lowest, mingled the exultation of triumph with 
 weeping for the loss of its best-beloved. 
 
 Of Nelson's exterior at this time, his early biographers have 
 secured an account which, besides its value as a portrait, pos- 
 sesses the further interest of mentioning explicitly that charm 
 of manner which was one of his best birth-gifts, reflecting, as it 
 did, the generous aud kindly temper of his heart. "■ The personal 
 appearance of Captain Nelson at this period of his life, owing 
 to his delicate health and diminutive figure, was far from ex- 
 pressing the greatness of his intellectual powers. From his 
 earliest years, like Cleomenes, the hero of Sparta, he had been 
 enamoured of glory, and had possessed a greatness of mind. 
 Nelson preserved, also, a similar temperance and simplicity of 
 manners. Nature, as Plutarch adds of the noble Spartan, had 
 given a spur to his mind which rendered him impetuous in the 
 pursuit of whatever he deemed honourable. The demeanour 
 of this extraordinary young man was entirely the demeanour 
 of a British seaman ; when the energies of his mind were not 
 called forth by some object of duty, or professional interest, 
 he seemed to retire within himself, and to care but little for 
 the refined courtesies of polished life." No saving sense of 
 humor seems to have suggested that the profane might here 
 ask, '' Is this the British seaman ? " " In his dress he had all 
 the cleanliness of an Englishman, though his manner of wear- 
 ing it gave him an air of negligence ; and yet his general ad- 
 dress and conversation, when he wished to please, possessed a 
 charm that was irresistible." ^ 
 
 In June, 1779, when posted into the " Hinchinbrook," Nel- 
 son wanted still three months of being twenty-one. By the 
 custom of the British Navy, then and now, promotions from 
 the grade of Captain to that of Admiral are made by seniority 
 only. Once a captain, therefore, a man's future was assured, 
 so far as concerned the possibility of juniors passing over his 
 head, — neither favor nor merit could procure that ; his rank 
 relatively to others was finally fixed. The practical difficulty 
 of getting at a captain of conspicuous ability, to make of him 
 a fiag-officer, was met by one of those clumsy yet adequate 
 expedients by which the practical English mind contrives to 
 1 Clarke aud M'Arthur, vol. i. p. 31. 
 
20 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 reconcile respect for precedent with the demands of emer- 
 gency. There being then no legal limit to the number of 
 admii-als, a promotion was in such case made of all captains 
 down to and including the one wanted ; and Lord St. Vincent, 
 one of the most thorough-going of naval statesmen, is credited 
 with the declara,tion that he would promote a hundred down 
 the list of captains, if necessary, to reach the one .demanded 
 by the needs of the country. Even with this rough-riding 
 over obstacles, — for the other officers promoted, however 
 useful in their former grade, not being wanted as admirals, 
 remained perforce unemployed, — the advantage of reaching 
 post-rank betimes is evident enough ; and to this chiefly Nel- 
 son referred in acknowledging his permanent indebtedness to 
 Sir Peter Parker. With this early start, every artificial im- 
 pediment was cleared from his path ; his extraordinary ability 
 was able to assert itself, and could be given due opportunity, 
 without a too violent straining of service methods. He had, 
 indeed, to wait eighteen years for his flag-rank ; but even so, 
 he obtained it while still in the very prime of his energies, 
 before he was thirty-nine, — a good fortune equalled by none 
 of his most distinguished contemporaries.^ 
 
 A somewhat singular feature of this early promotion of 
 Nelson is that it was accorded without the claim of service in 
 actual battle, — a circumstance that seems yet more remark- 
 able when contrasted with the stormy and incessant warfare of 
 his later career. While he was thus striding ahead, his equals 
 in years, Saumarez and Pellew, were fighting their way up step 
 by step, gaining each as the reward of a distinct meritorious 
 action, only to find themselves outstripped by one who had 
 scarcely seen a gun fired in anger. The result was mainly due 
 to the nature of the station, where sickness made vacancies 
 more rapidly than the deadliest engagement. But while this 
 is true, and must be taken into the account, it was character- 
 istic of Nelson that his value transpired through the simplest 
 intercourse, and amid the commonplace incidents of service. 
 Locker and Parker each in turn felt this. A little later, while 
 he and Collingwood were still unknown captains, the latter, 
 usually measured and formal in his language, wrote to him in 
 
 1 Collingwood was nearly fifty when he got his flag. Howe was forty-five, 
 St. Vincent fifty-three, Saumarez forty-four, JExmonth (Pellew) forty-eight. 
 
THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 21 
 
 these singularly strong words : " My regard for you, my dear 
 Nelson, my respect and veneration for your character, I hope 
 and believe, will never lessen." So, some years afterwards, 
 but before lie became renowned or had wrought his more bril- 
 liant achievements, an envious brother captain said to him, 
 " You did just as you pleased in Lord Hood's time, the same 
 in Admiral Hotham's, and now again with Sir John Jervis ; it 
 makes no difference to you who is Commander-in-chief." This 
 power of winning confidence and inspiring attachment was one 
 of the strongest elements in Nelson's success, alike as a sub- 
 ordinate and when himself in chief command. 
 
 With his mind ever fixed upon glory, or rather upon honor, 
 — the word he himself most often used, and which more accu- 
 rately expresses his desire for fame ; honor, which is to glory 
 what character is to reputation, — the same hard fortune per- 
 sisted in denying to him, during the War of the American 
 Revolution, the opportunities for distinction which he so 
 ardently coveted. In the " Badger " and in the " Hinchiu' 
 brook," during the year 1779, his service was confined to 
 routine cruising about Jamaica and along the Mosquito coast 
 of Central America. A gleam of better things for a moment 
 shone upon him in August of that year, when the French fleet, 
 under Count D'Estaing, appeared in Haiti, numbering twenty- 
 two ships-of-the-line, with transports reported to be carrying 
 twenty thousand troops. All Jamaica was in an uproar of ap- 
 prehension, believing an attack upon the island to be immi- 
 nent ; for its conquest was known to be one of the great objects 
 of the enemy. Nelson was at the time living on shore, the 
 " Hinchinbrook " seemingly ^ not having returned to the port 
 since his appointment to her, and he eagerly accepted the duty 
 of commanding the land batteries. The odds were great, — 
 " You must not be surprised to hear of my learning to speak 
 French," he wrote, laughingly, to Locker in England, — but if 
 so, the greater the honor attendant, whether upon success or 
 defeat. D'Estaing, however, passed on to America to encoun- 
 ter disaster at Savannah, and Nelson's hopes were again 
 disappointed. 
 
 In January, 1780, an opportunity for service offered, which 
 
 1 This appears certain from his letters of July 28 and August 12, which 
 explicitly mention that ship's absence. 
 
22 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 ended in no conspicuous or permanent result, but nevertheless 
 conferred distinction uj)on one who, to use his own expression, 
 was determined to climb to the top of the tree, and to neglect 
 no chance, however slight, that could help him on. War with 
 Spain had then been about seven months declared, and the 
 British governor of Jamaica had sagaciously determined to 
 master Lake Nicaragua, and the course of the river San Juan, 
 its outlet to the Caribbean Sea. The object of the attempt 
 was twofold, both military and commercial. The route was 
 recognized then, as it is now, as one of the most important, if 
 not the most important, of those affording easy transit from 
 the Pacific to the Atlantic by way of the Isthmus. To a 
 nation of the mercantile aptitudes of Great Britain, such a 
 natural highway was necessarily an object of desire. In her 
 hands it would not only draw to itself the wealth, of the sur- 
 rounding regions, but would likewise promote the develop- 
 ment of her trade, both north and south, along the eastern 
 and western coasts of the two Americas. But the pecuniary 
 gain was not all. The military tenure of this short and nar- 
 row strip, supported at either end, upon the Pacific and the 
 Atlantic, by naval detachments, all the more easily to be main- 
 tained there by the use of the belt itself, would effectually sever 
 the northern and southern colonies of Spain, both by actual in- 
 terposition, and by depriving them of one of their most vital 
 lines of intercommunication. To seek control of so valuable 
 and central a link in a great network of maritime interests 
 was as natural and inevitable to Great Britain a century ago, 
 as it now is to try to dominate the Mediterranean and the Suez 
 Canal, which fulfil a like function to her Eastern possessions 
 and Eastern commerce. 
 
 Preoccupied, however, with numerous and more pressing 
 cares in many quarters of the world, and overweighted in a 
 universal struggle with outnumbering foes. Great Britain 
 could spare but scanty forces to her West India Islands, and 
 from them Governor Dalling could muster but five hundred 
 men for his Nicaraguan undertaking. Nelson was directed to 
 convoy these with the " Hinchinbrook " to the mouth of the 
 San Juan del Norte, where was the port now commonly called 
 Greytown, in those days a fine and spacious harbor. There 
 his charge ended ; but his mental constitution never allowed 
 
THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 23 
 
 him to look upon a military task as well done- while anything 
 remained to do. In the spirit of his famous saying, fifteen 
 years later, "Were ten ships out of eleven taken, I would 
 never call it well done if the eleventh escaped, if able to get 
 at her," he determined to go with the troops. With his 
 temperament it was impossible to turn his back upon the 
 little body of soldiers, whose toilsome advance up the tropical 
 stream might be aided and hastened by his ready seamen. 
 
 The first objective of the expedition was Fort San Juan, a 
 powerful work controlling the river of the same name, and 
 thereby the only natural water transit between the sea and 
 Lake Nicaragua. Upon the possession of this, as a position 
 of vantage and a safe depot for supplies aud reinforcements, 
 Calling based his hopes of future advance, both west and 
 south. Nelson took with him forty-seven seamen and ma- 
 rines from his ship's company; the former, aided by some 
 Indians, doing most of the labor of forcing the boats against 
 the current, through shoal and tortuous channels, under his 
 own constant supervision and encouragement. A small out- 
 post that withstood their progress was by him intrepidly 
 stormed, sword in hand, by sudden assault ; and upon reach- 
 ing Fort San Juan he urgently recommended the same sum- 
 mary method to the officer commanding the troops. The 
 latter, however, was not one of the men who recognize the 
 necessity for exceptional action. Eegular approaches, though 
 the slower, were the surer way of reducing a fortified place, 
 and entailed less bloodshed. Professional rule commonly 
 demanded them, and to professional rule he submitted. 
 Nelson argued that through delays, which, however incurred, 
 were now past discussion, the expedition had reached its 
 destination in April, at the end of the healthy, dry season, 
 instead of shortly'' after its beginning, in January. Conse- 
 quently, owing to the fall of the water, much additional 
 trouble had been experienced in the advance, the men were 
 proportionately weakened by toil and exposure, and the wet 
 months, with their dire train of tropical diseases, were at 
 hand. Therefore, though more might fall by the enemy's 
 weapons in a direct attack, the ultimate loss would be less 
 than by the protracted and sickly labors of the spade ; while 
 with San Juan subdued, the force could receive all the care 
 
24 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 possible in such a climate, and under the best conditions await 
 the return of good weather for further progress. 
 
 In military enterprises there will frequently arise the ques- 
 tion, Is time or life in this case of the greater value ? Those 
 regularly ordered and careful procedures which most econo- 
 mize the blood of the soldier may, by their inevitable delays, 
 seriously imperil the objects of the campaign as a whole ; or 
 they may even, while less sanguinary, entail indirectly a 
 greater loss of men than do prompter measures. In such 
 doubtful matters Nelson's judgment was usually sound ; and 
 his instinct, which ever inclined to instant and vigorous 
 action, was commonly by itself alone an accurate guide, in 
 a profession whose prizes are bestowed upon quick resolve 
 more often than upon deliberate consultation. The same in- 
 tuition that in his prime dictated his instant, unhesitating 
 onslaught at the Nile, depriving the French of all opportunity 
 for further preparation, — that caused him in the maturity of 
 his renown, before Copenhagen, to write, " every hour's delay 
 makes the enemy stronger ; we shall never be so good a match 
 for them as at this moment," — that induced him at Trafalgar 
 to modify his deliberately prepared plan in favor of one vastly 
 more hazardous, but which seized and held the otherwise fleet- 
 ing chance, — led him here also at San Juan, unknown, and 
 scarcely more than a boy, to press the policy of immediate 
 attack. 
 
 The decision was not in his hands, and he was overruled ; 
 whereupon, with his usual readiness to do his utmost, he 
 accepted the course he disapproved, and, without nursing a 
 grievance, became at once active in erecting batteries and 
 serving the guns. " When unfortunate contentions," says one 
 dispassionate narrator, '-had slackened the ardour for public 
 service. Captain Nelson did not suffer any narrow spirit to 
 influence his conduct. He did more than his duty : where 
 anything was to be done, he saw no difficulties." Great as 
 his merits were, he was never insensible to them ; and, in the 
 sketch of his career, furnished by him to his chief biographers, 
 he records his exploits with naive self-satisfaction, resembling 
 the sententious tablets of Eastern conquerors : " I boarded, if 
 I may be allowed the expression, an outpost of the enemy, 
 situated on an island in the river; I made batteries, and 
 
THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 25 
 
 afterwards fought them, and was a principal cause of our 
 success." But this simple, almost childlike, delight in his 
 own performances, which continually crops out in his corre- 
 spondence, did not exaggerate their deserts. Major Poison, 
 commanding the land forces, wrote to Governor Dalling : "I 
 want words to express the obligations I owe to Captain 
 Nelson. He was the first on every service, whether by day 
 or night. There was not a gun fired but was pointed by him, 
 or by Captain Despard, Chief Engineer." Calling, after some 
 delay, wrote in the same sense to the Minister of War in Lon- 
 don, warmly recommending Nelson to the notice of the home 
 Government. 
 
 While the siege was in progress, Nelson received word of 
 his appointment to a better ship, the " Janus," of forty-four 
 guns, and it became necessary for him to join her. He left 
 Fort San Juan only the day before it surrendered, and re- 
 turned to Jamaica ; but his health now gave way wholly, and 
 his command of the " Janus," for the most part merely nomi- 
 nal, soon came to an end altogether. Dalling had truly said, 
 *' Captain Nelson's constitution is rather too delicate for ser- 
 vice in this northern ocean." ^ Before starting on ihe expe- 
 dition, he had himself written to his friend Locker : " If my 
 health is not much better than it is at present, I shall cer- 
 tainly come home after this trip, as all the doctors are against 
 my staying so long in this country. You know my old com- 
 plaint in my breast : it is turned out to be the gout got there. 
 I have twice been given over since you left this country with 
 that cursed disorder, the gout." In such weakness he lived 
 and worked through a month of a short campaign, in which, 
 of the " Hinchinbrook's " crew of two hundred, one hundred 
 and forty-five were buried in his time or that of his successor, 
 Collingwood, — a mortality which he justly cites as a further 
 proof of the necessity for expedition in such climates. But, 
 though he survived, he escaped by the skin of his teeth. 
 Worn out by dysentery and fatigue, he was carried ashore in 
 his cot, and soon after taken to Sir Peter Parker's house, 
 where Lady Parker herself nursed him through. Her kind- 
 
 1 Tlie Caiibbean was formerly thus styled in contradistinction to tlie South 
 Sea, the Pacific, which was so called because its first discoverers saw it to the 
 south from the Isthmus, 
 
26 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 ness to him and his own debility are touchingly shown by a 
 note written from the mountains, where he was carried in 
 his convalescence: "Oh, Mr. Ross, what would I give to be 
 at Port Royal! Lady Parker not here, and the servants let- 
 ting me lay as if a log, and take no notice." By September, 
 1780, it was apparent that perfect restoration, without change 
 of climate, was impossible, and in the autumn, having been 
 somewhat over three years on the station, he sailed for home 
 in the " Lion," of sixty-four guns. Captain Cornwallis,^ to 
 whose careful attention, as formerly to that of Captain Pigot, 
 he gratefully attributed his life. The expedition with which 
 he had been associated ended in failure, for although a part 
 of the force pushed on to Lake Nicaragua, sickness compelled 
 the abandonment of the conquests, which were repossessed by 
 the Spaniards. 
 
 Arriving in England, Nelson went to Bath, and there passed 
 through a period of extreme suffering and tedious recovery. 
 " I have been so ill since I have been here," says one of his 
 letters, " that I was obliged to be carried to and from bed, 
 with the most excruciating tortures." Exact dates are want- 
 ing; butjie seems to have been under treatment near three 
 months, when, on the 28th of January, 1781, he wrote to 
 Locker, in his often uncouth style : " Although I have not 
 quite recovered the use of my limbs, yet my inside is a new 
 man ; " and again, three weeks later, " I have now the perfect 
 use of all my limbs, except my left arm, which I can hardly tell 
 what is the matter with it. From the shoulder to my fingers' 
 ends are as if half dead." He remained in Bath until the 
 middle of March, latterly more for the mild climate than be- 
 cause feeling the necessity of prosecuting his cure; yet that 
 his health was far from securely re-established is evident, for 
 a severe relapse followed his return to London. On the 7th 
 of May, 1781, he writes to his brother : " You will say, why 
 does not he come into Norfolk ? I will tell you : I have en- 
 tirely lost the use of my left arm, and very near of my left 
 leg and thigh." In estimating Nelson's heroism, the sickly 
 
 1 Comwallis was an officer of marked gallantry and conduct, who distin- 
 guished himself on several occasions, as captain, during the War of 1778, and 
 as admiral during the wars of the French Revolution. He was brother to 
 Jjord Comwallis, who surrendered at Yorktown, in 1781, 
 
THE FIRST TWENTY-nVE YEARS 27 
 
 fragility of his bodily frame must be kept in memory ; not to 
 excuse shortcomings of nerve or enterprise, for there were 
 none, but to exalt duly the extraordinary mental energy 
 which rather mocked at difficulties than triumphed over them. 
 While yet an invalid he had again applied for employment, 
 and, as the war was still raging, was appointed in August, 
 1781, to the " Albemarle," a small frigate of twenty-eight 
 guns. He was pleased with the ship, the first commissioned 
 l3y himself at home, Avith a long cruise in prospect; and, to- 
 gether with his expressions of content with her, there appears 
 that manifestation of complete satisfaction with his officers 
 and crew, with those surrounding him as subordinates, that 
 so singularly characterized his habit of mind. "I have an 
 exceeding good ship's company. Not a man or officer in 
 her I would wish to change. ... I am perfectly satisfied 
 with both officers and ship's company." Down to the month 
 before Trafalgar, when, to the bidding of the First Lord of 
 the Admiralty to choose his own officers, he replied, "Choose 
 yourself, my lord ; the same spirit actuates the whole pro- 
 fession, you cannot choose wrong," there is rarely, it might 
 almost be said never, anything but praise for those beneath 
 him. With the "Agamemnon," "We are all well; indeed, 
 nobody can be ill with my ship's company, they are so fine a 
 set." At the Nile, "I had the happiness to command a band 
 of brothers ; therefore night was to my advantage. Each 
 knew his duty, and I was sure each would feel for a French 
 ship. My friends readily conceived my plan." His ships in 
 the Mediterranean, in 1803, " are the best commanded and 
 the very best manned " in the navy. So his frequent praise 
 of others in his despatches and letters has none of the formal, 
 perfunctory ring of an official paper ; it springs evidently 
 from the warmest appreciation and admiration, is heartfelt, 
 showing no deceptive exterior, but the true native fibre of 
 the man, full of the charity which is kind and thinketh no 
 evil. It was not always so toward those above him. Under 
 the timid and dilatory action of Hotham and Hyde Parker, 
 under the somewhat commonplace although exact and ener- 
 getic movements of Lord Keith, he was restive^ and freely 
 showed what he felt. On the other hand, around Hood and 
 Jervis, who commanded his professional respect and esteem, 
 
28 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 he quickly threw the same halo of excellence, arising from 
 his tendency to idealize, that colored the medium through 
 which he invariably saw the men whom he himself com- 
 manded. The disposition to invest those near to him with 
 merits, which must in part at least have been imaginary, is 
 a most noteworthy feature of his character, and goes far to 
 explain the attraction he exerted over others, the enthusiasm 
 which ever followed him, the greatness of his success, and 
 also, unhappily, the otherwise almost inexplicable but en- 
 during infatuation which enslaved his later years, and has 
 left the most serious blot upon his memory. 
 
 Though thus pleased with his surroundings, his own health 
 continued indifferent. He excuses himself for delay in corre- 
 spondence, because " so ill as to be scarce kept out of bed." 
 In such a state, and for one whose frame had been racked and 
 weakened by three years spent in the damp heat of the trop- 
 ics, a winter's trip to the Baltic was hardly the best prescrip- 
 tion; but thither the " Albemarle " was sent, — "it would 
 almost be supposed," he wrote, " to try my constitution." He 
 was away on this cruise from October to December, 1781, 
 reaching Yarmouth on the 17th of the latter month, with a 
 large convoy of a hundred and ten sail of merchant-ships, all 
 that then remained of two hundred and sixty that had started 
 from Elsinore on the 8th, " They behaved, as all convoys 
 that ever I saw did, shamefully ill ; parting company every 
 day." After being several days wind-bound in Yarmouth 
 Roads, he arrived in the Downs on the first day of 1782. The 
 bitter cold of the North had pierced him almost as keenly as 
 it did twenty years later in the Copenhagen expedition. "I 
 believe the Doctor has saved my life since I saw you," he 
 wrote to his brother. The ship was then ordered to Ports- 
 mouth to take in eight months' pi-ovisions, — a sure indication 
 that she was intended for a distant voyage. Kelson himself 
 surmised that she would join the squadron of Sir Eichard 
 Bickerton, then fitting out to reinforce the fleet in the East 
 Indies. Had this happened, he would have been on hand to 
 hear much and perchance see something of one of his own 
 professional forerunners, the great French Admiral Suffren, as 
 well as of the latter's doughty antagonist. Sir Edward Hughes ; 
 for Bickerton arrived in time to take part in the last of the 
 
THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 29 
 
 five pitched battles between those two hard fighters. Un- 
 luckily, a severe accident had befallen the "Albemarle," — a 
 large East Indiaman having dragged down upon her during 
 a heavy gale in the Downs. The injuries received by this 
 collision were so extensive that the ship was under repairs 
 at Portsmouth for six weeks, during which time Bickerton 
 sailed. 
 
 While thus detained in one of the principal dockyards and 
 naval stations of the kingdom, another large detachment, be- 
 longing to the Channel fleet, assembled before Nelson's eyes. 
 It comprised twelve sail-of-the-line, under Admiral Barring- 
 ton ; and among these was the " Foudroyaut," the most famous 
 ship of her time, then commanded by Captain John Jervis, 
 with whom, as the Earl of St. Vincent, Nelson was afterwards 
 closely associated ; but the young frigate captain did not now 
 come in contact with his stately superior, who in later years 
 so highly valued and loved him. It was for him still the day 
 of small things. Though thus thrown in the midst of tlie din 
 and bustle of extensive naval preparations, he had not the 
 fortune to be directly connected with them ; and consequently 
 no occasion arose for becoming known to admirals who could 
 recognize his worth, and give him the opportunities without 
 which distinction cannot be achieved. It is, however, a sig- 
 nificant and instructive fact that, while thus persistently dis- 
 sociated from the great operations then in progress, and 
 employed wholly in detached service. Nelson's natural genius 
 for war asserted itself, controlling the direction of his thoughts 
 and interests, and fixing them to that broad field of his profes- 
 sion from which he was as yet debarred. " The height of his 
 ambition," an acquaintance of this period tells us, " was to 
 command a line-of-battle ship ; as for prize money," for which 
 frigates offered the best chances, " it never entered his 
 thoughts." A few months later, while still in the " Albe- 
 marle," it was said of him by Lord Hood, the most original 
 tactician of the day, that he knew as much about naval tactics 
 as any officer in the fleet. When this high encomium was be- 
 stowed, Nelson had barely passed his twenty-fourth birthday. 
 
 Meanwhile the " Albemarle " was again ordered upon con- 
 voy duty, this time to Quebec. This destination also was 
 distasteful on account of the climate. " I want much to get 
 
80 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 off from this d cl voyage," he wrote. " Mr. Adair," an 
 
 eminent London surgeon, who the year before had treated him 
 for the paralysis of his limbs, " has told me that if I was sent 
 to a cold damp climate it would make me worse than ever." 
 He himself had scruples about applying for an exchange, and 
 the efforts of some f rieuds who interfered proved useless. The 
 " Albemarle " started with a convoy of thirty-odd vessels on 
 the 10th of April, 1782 ; and after a short stop at Cork, an- 
 chored at St. John's, Newfoundland, on May 27, whence she 
 reached Quebec July 1. Three days later she again sailed on 
 a cruise that lasted over two months, spent chiefly about 
 Boston Bay and Cape Cod. During this time several enemy's 
 vessels were taken or destroyed ; but, with the bad luck that 
 so often followed Nelson in the matter of prize-money, none 
 of the captures reached port, and the cruise was pecuniarily 
 unprofitable. It afforded him, however, an opportunity for 
 displaying conduct and gaining deserved reputation, which he 
 valued more highly. On the 14th of August the sudden lifting 
 of a fog showed the "Albemarle" within gunshot of a French 
 squadron, of four ships-of-the-line and a frigate, that had just 
 come out of Boston. A close chase followed, lasting nine or 
 ten hours ; but ISTelson threw off the heavy ships by running 
 among the shoals of George's Bank, which he ventured to do, 
 trusting to the cool head and aptitude for pilotage acquired in 
 earlier life. The frigate followed warily, watching for a 
 chance to strike at advantage ; but when the ships-of-the-line 
 had been dropped far enough to be unable to help their con- 
 sort, the British vessel hove-to ^ in defiance, and the enemy 
 fell back upon his supports. 
 
 Shortly after this escape, so many of the ship's company 
 fell ill with scurvy that Nelson decided to go back to Quebec, 
 where he arrived on the 17th of September. " For eight 
 weeks," he wrote, " myself and all the officers lived upon salt 
 beef ; nor had the ship's company had a fresh meal since the 
 7th of April." The fears for his health that he had expressed 
 before sailing from England had happily proved groundless, 
 and a month's stay in port which now followed, at the most 
 delightful and invigorating of the American seasons, wrought 
 wonders for him. His letters to Locker state that the voyage 
 1 That is, stopped. 
 
THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 31 
 
 agreed with liim better than he had expected ; while from the 
 St. Lawrence he wrote to his father, " Health, that greatest of 
 blessings, is what I never truly enjoyed until I saw Fair 
 Canada. The change it has wrought, I am convinced, is truly 
 wonderful." This happy result had been due, in part at 
 least, to surroundings that told favorably upon his sensitive 
 nervous system, and not to the bracing climate alone. He had 
 been actively occupied afloat, and had fallen desperately in love 
 with a fair Canadian, around whom his ardent imagination 
 threw that glamour of exaggerated charm in which he saw all 
 who were dear to him, except his wife. Her he seems from 
 the first to have looked upon with affection indeed, but with- 
 out rapture or illusion. The Canadian affair came near ending 
 in an imprudent offer, from which he was with difficulty de- 
 terred by a cool-headed friend. The story runs that, the ship 
 being ordered to ISTew York and ready for sea, he had bidden 
 her good-bye and gone on board, expecting to sail next day ; 
 but that, unable to bear the approaching separation, he re- 
 turned to the city, and was on his way to the lady's home 
 when his friend met him. 
 
 Tearing himself away from his mistress by a violent effort. 
 Nelson, on the 20th of October, sailed for New York. Arriv- 
 ing on the 13th of November, he found there a large part of 
 the West India fleet, under Lord Hood, who had been second 
 in command to Rodney on the occasion of the latter's cele- 
 brated victory over De Grasse in the previous April. Eodney 
 had since then been recalled to England, while Hood had gone 
 to Boston to look after a division of the beaten French fleet, 
 Avhich was there refitting. He was now on his return to the 
 islands, where the enemy was expected to make a vigorous 
 aggressive campaign the following spring. Extensive prepa- 
 rations were in fact on foot for the reduction of Jamaica, fi-us- 
 trated six months before by De Grasse's mishap. Nelson 
 thus found himself again in tantalizing contact Avith the stir- 
 ring circumstance that preludes hostilities, in which he him- 
 self had little hope to share; for the "Albemarle" belonged 
 to the North American station, where all active naval opera- 
 tions had ceased with the surrender of Cornwallis the year 
 before. He went, therefore, to Hood, and begged to be trans- 
 ferred to his squadron. In vain did Admiral Digby, his own 
 
32 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 comraancler-in-ehief, tell him that he was on a good station for 
 prize-money. " Yes," he replied, " but the West Indies is the 
 station for honour." 
 
 Digby was reluctant to part with a frigate, as all admirals 
 were ; but Hood, either from an intuitive faculty for judging 
 men, or from his conversations with Nelson eliciting the 
 latter's singular knowledge of the higher part of his profes- 
 sion, wished to push an officer of so much promise, and suc- 
 ceeded in obtaining the transfer of the "Albemarle" to his 
 squadron. " I am a candidate with Lord Hood for a line-of- 
 battle ship," wrote Nelson to Locker ; " he has honoured me 
 highly, by a letter, for wishing to go off this station to a 
 station of service, and has promised me his friendship." A 
 few months later he wrote again: "My situation in Lord 
 Hood's fleet must be in the highest degree flattering to any 
 young man. He treats me as if I were his son, and will, I 
 am convinced, give me anything I can ask of him." This 
 was really the beginning, the outstart, of Nelson's great 
 career; for Hood's interest in him, then aroused, and deep- 
 ened by experience to the utmost confidence and appreciation, 
 made itself felt the instant the French Revolutionary War 
 began. Nelson then came at once under his orders, went 
 with him to the Mediterranean, and there speedily made his 
 mark, being transferred from admiral to admiral with ever- 
 growing tokens of reliance. Despite the lapse of time, and 
 the long interval of peace, it is no exaggeration to say that 
 there is a direct connection of cause and effect between his 
 transfer to Hood's fleet, in the harbor of New York, and the 
 battle of Cape St. Vincent, in 1797, when he emerged from 
 merely professional distinction to national renown, standing 
 head and shoulders above all competitors. In the four days 
 that followed his arrival in New York, Nelson took the tide 
 at the flood, and was borne on to fortune. Yet in this, as in 
 many other instant and happy decisions, we may not see the 
 mere casting of a die, the chance result of an irreflective im- 
 pulse. The determination to change into Hood's squadron, 
 with its powerful, far-reaching effect upon his future, was in 
 necessary logical sequence to Nelson's whole habit of thought, 
 and wish, and previous preparation. He was swept into 
 the current that carried him on to fame by the irresistible 
 
THE FIRST TWENTY-FIV^E YEARS 83 
 
 tendency of his own conscious will and cherished purpose. 
 Opportunity flitted by ; he was ready, and grasped it. 
 
 At this turning-point the commendable diligence of his 
 principal biographers has again secured for us a striking de- 
 scription of the young captain's personal appearance, and of 
 the impression produced by his manner upon an interested 
 acquaintance, who afterwards became a warm friend and ad- 
 mirer as well as a frequent correspondent. The narrator — 
 then Prince "William Henr}^, afterwards King William IV. 
 — gave the following account, apparently at some period 
 between 1805, when Nelson -fell, and 1809, when the first 
 edition of Clarke and M'Arthur's Life appeared. "I was 
 then a midshipman on board the Barfleur," Lord Hood's flag- 
 ship, "lying in the Narrows off Staten Island, and had the 
 watch on deck, when Captain Nelson, of the Albemarle, came 
 in his barge alongside, who apjjeared to be the merest boy of 
 a captain I ever beheld ; and his dress was worthy of atten- 
 tion. He had on a full-laced uniform ; his lank unpowdered 
 hair was tied in a stiff Hessian tail, of an extraordinary 
 length; the old-fashioned flaps of his waistcoat added to the 
 general quaintness of his figure, and produced an appearance 
 which particularly attracted my notice ; for I had never seen 
 anything like it before, nor could I imagine who he was, nor 
 what he came about. My doubts were, however, removed 
 when Lord Hood introduced me to him. There was some- 
 thing irresistibly pleasing in his address and conversation; 
 and an enthusiasm, when speaking on professional subjects, 
 that showed he was no common being." The Countess of 
 Minto, in her Life of Lord Minto, speaks of Nelson's "shock 
 head " at the time (1794) when he was a frequent visitor at 
 the house of Minto, then Sir Gilbert Elliott, and Viceroy of 
 Corsica; a trivial detail, but confirmatory, so far, of the 
 picture drawn by the prince. The latter continued : " Nelson, 
 after this, went with us to the AVest Indies, and served under 
 Lord Hood's flag during his indefatigable cruise off Cape 
 Francois. ... I found him warmly attached to my father 
 [King George III.], and singularly humane. He had the 
 honour of the King's service and the independence of the 
 British navy particularly at heart; and his mind glowed with 
 this idea as much when he was simply captain of the Albe- 
 
 3 
 
34 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 mavle, and had obtained none of the honours of his Country, 
 as when he was afterwards decorated with so much well- 
 earned distinction." 
 
 The war of 1778 was now fast drawing to its close; the 
 preliminaries of peace being signed in January, 1783, though 
 not ratified till the following September. Hood cruised oft' 
 Cap FrauQois, a naval station of the French at the west end 
 of Haiti, to intercept the fleet from Boston, which was under- 
 stood to be on its way to the Caribbean; but the enemy, 
 learning his whereabouts, went through the Mona Passage, 
 east of the island, thus avoiding a meeting, and was next 
 heard of by the British as being off Cura9ao, far to the south- 
 ward. Nelson, therefore, had no opportunity to show his 
 prowess in battle ; and as only three letters remain covering 
 this uneventful period, little is known of his movements, 
 except that he made an abortive attempt to recapture Turk's 
 Island from the French with a small force of ships he was 
 able to gather at short notice. An interesting indication of 
 the spirit which animated him transpires in the first of the 
 three letters mentioned. He had received unexpected orders 
 to wait in New York after Hood's leaving. " I was to have 
 sailed with the fleet this day, but for some private reasons, 
 when my ship was under sail from New York to join Lord 
 Hood, at Sandy Hook, I was sent for on shore, and told I was 
 to be kept forty-eight hours after the sailing of the fleet. It 
 is much to my private advantage," allowing more latitude for 
 picking up prizes, without having to share with the other 
 ships, "but I had much rather have sailed with the fleet." 
 "Money," he continues, "is the great object here," on the 
 North American Station, "nothing else is attended to," — a 
 motive of action which he always rejected with disdain, 
 although by no means insensible to the value of money, nor 
 ever thoroughly at his ease in the matter of income, owing 
 largely to the lavish liberality with which he responded to 
 the calls upon his generosity or benevolence. A year later 
 he wrote in the same strain : " I have closed the war without 
 a fortune ; but I trust, and, from the attention that has been 
 paid to me, believe, that there is not a speck in my character. 
 True honour, I hope, predominates in my mind far above 
 riches." 
 
THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS So 
 
 Wht'u news of the peace reached the West Indies, Hood 
 was ordered to return with his fleet to England. Nelson 
 went home at the same time, being directed tirst to accom- 
 pany Prince William Henry iii a visit to Havana, The 
 "Albemarle" reached Spithead on the 25th of June, 1783, 
 and was paid otf a week later, her captain going on half-pay 
 until the following April. The cruise of nearly two years' 
 duration closed with this characteristic comment: "Not au 
 officer has been changed, except the second lieutenant, since 
 the Albemarle was commissioned ; therefore, it is needless 
 to say, I am happy in my ship's company." And again he 
 writes: "My ship was paid off last week, and in such a 
 manner that must flatter any officer, in particular in these 
 turbulent times. Tlie whole ship's com])any offered, if I 
 could get a ship, to enter for her immediately." Nelson was 
 keenly alive to the impolicy and injury to the service in- 
 volved in the frequent changes of officers and men from ship 
 to ship. " The disgust of the seamen to the Navy," he wrote 
 immediately after leaving the " Albemarle," " is all owing to 
 the infernal plan of turning them over from ship to ship, so 
 that men cannot be attached to their officers, or the officers 
 care twopence about them." This element of personal attach- 
 ment is never left out of calculation safely. 
 
 Nelson was now nearly twenty-five. In direct achievement 
 he had accomplished little, and to most he was unknown ; but 
 he did not deceive himself in believing that his reputation 
 was established, and his promise, as a capable man of action, 
 understood by those who knew him, and especially by the 
 brilliant admiral under whom he had last served. Within a 
 Aveek of his release from the ship Hood carried him to Court, 
 and presented him to the King, — an evident proof of his 
 approbation ; and Nelson notes that the sovereign was exceed- 
 ingly attentive. The next few months were spent in Lon- 
 don, or at his old home in Norfolk, to which and to his 
 family he Avas always fondly attached. Toward the end of 
 October he obtained a leave of absence, in order to visit 
 France and acquire the French language. His impressions of 
 that country, as far as he Avent, — from Calais to St. Omer, 
 — are given in lively enough style in a feAv letters ; but they 
 differ little from Avhat might be expected from any very 
 
36 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 young man deeply tinged with insular prejudice. "I hate 
 their country and their manners," he wrote, soon after his 
 return ; and his biographers were quite right in saying that 
 he had been brought up in the old anti-Gallican school, with 
 prejudices not to be eradicated by a flying visit. He duly 
 records his disgust with two British naval captains, one of 
 whom was afterwards among his most valued and valuable 
 friends, for wearing epaulettes, at that time confined to the 
 French service. ''I hold them a little clieap,^' he said, "for 
 putting on any part of a Frenchman's uniform." 
 
 It is more interesting to notice that his impressionable 
 fancy was again taken by an attractive young Englishwoman, 
 the daughter of a clergyman named Andrews, living at St. 
 Omer. "Two very beautiful young ladies," he Avrites to 
 Locker and to his brother; "I must take care of my heart, I 
 assure you." " My heart is quite secured against the French 
 beauties; I almost wish I could saj'' as much for an English 
 young lady, the daughter of a clergyman, with whom I am 
 just going to dine, and spend the day. She has such accom- 
 plishments that, had I a million of money, I am sure I should 
 at this moment make her an offer of them." "The most 
 accomplished woman my eyes ever beheld," he repeats, a 
 month later. The sentimental raptures of a .young man about 
 a handsome girl have in themselves too much of the common- 
 place to justify mention. What is remarkable, and suggests 
 an explanation of the deplorable vagary of his later years, is 
 that his attachment to his wife, even in the days of court- 
 ship, elicited no such extravagance of admiration as that into 
 which he freely lapses in his earlier fancies, and yet more in 
 his last absorbing passion. Eespect and tenderness for her 
 he certainly felt and expressed; but there is no indication 
 that she ever enkindled his ardent imagination, or filled for 
 him the place of an ideal, which his mental constitution 
 imperatively demanded as an object of worship. The present 
 attachment went so far with him that he wrote to his uncle 
 William Suckling, asking for an allowance to enable him to 
 marry. " If nothing can be done for me," said he, gloomily, 
 "I know what I have to trust to. Life is not worth preserv- 
 ing without happiness; and I care not where I may linger 
 out a miseral)le existence. I am prepared to hear your refusal, 
 
THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 37 
 
 and have fixed my resolution if tliat should happen. ... I 
 pray you may never know the pangs which at this instant 
 tear my heart." If, as is said by the gentleman into whose 
 hands this letter passed, Suckling consented to help him, as 
 he certainly did at the time of his actual marriage, it seems 
 probable that the lady refused him. 
 
CPIAPTER II. 
 
 The Cruise of the "Boreas." — Controversy over the Enforce- 
 ment OF THE Navigation Act. — Return to liNOLAND. — IIetiki;- 
 
 MENT until the OUTBREAK OF THE FkENCH REVOLUTION. — Al'- 
 POINTED TO COMMAND THE "AgAMEMNON," 6i. 
 
 1784-1793. Age, 26-34. 
 
 WHATEVER the cause, Nelson's visit to France ended 
 prematurely and abruptly. Early in Januaiy, 1784, 
 after an absence of two mouths, he went back to England, 
 announcing to his friends that his coming was only tem- 
 porary, partly on business, partly for ti-eatment; for his 
 delicate health again occasioned him anxiety. " The frost, 
 thank God, is broke," he wrote ; " cold weather is death to 
 me." But even while speaking confidently of his speedy 
 return to the Continent, he dropped a hint that he was dis- 
 posed to resume the active pursuit of his profession, although 
 on leaving the " Albemarle," six months before, he had said 
 that lie could not afford to live afloat, in peace times, in the 
 style then prevalent. " My stay in England will be but very 
 short, without the First Lord in the Admiralty thinks proper 
 to employ me. I shall offer my services." He did see Lord 
 Howe, at that time First Lord, asking him for a ship; and 
 he renewed his cordial relations with Hood, then living in 
 London. On the 18th of March Howe appointed him to the 
 command of the frigate " Boreas." Occupation in peace, 
 with a reduced establishment, was not easy to get, and his 
 brother, an inveterate wirepuller, must needs know to whose 
 favor Nelson owed it. ''You ask," replied the hero, "by 
 what interest did I get a ship ? I answer, having served 
 with credit was my recommendation to Lord Howe. Any- 
 thing in reason that I can ask, I am sure of obtaining from 
 his justice." The statement was no more than fair to Howe ; 
 but in his knowledge of the merits of Nelson, whose claim 
 
THE CRUISE OF THE "BOREAS" 39 
 
 lay rather iu evident promise than in conspicuous perform- 
 ance, we can probably trace the friendly intervention of Lord 
 Hood. 
 
 Nelson's wish was that the " Boreas " should go to the East 
 Indies. To this he inclined, apparently, because the station 
 was to be under the command of Commodore Cornwallis, in 
 whose ship he had returned from Jamaica as an invalid in 
 1780, and to whom on that occasion he was indebted for the 
 most friendly care. He was not long allowed to indulge this 
 hope, for five days after receiving his appointment he wrote 
 that the ship was bound to the Leeward Islands, and that he 
 had been asked to take as passengers the wife and familj'' of 
 the commander-in-chief. Sir Richard Hughes, who had already 
 gone out. In a small vessel, for such the "Boreas" was, the 
 request, which he could not well refuse, gave Nelson cause of 
 reasonable discontent, entailing crowding and a large outlay 
 of money. "I shall be pretty well filled with lumher," he 
 wrote ; and later, on the voyage out, " I shall not be sorry to 
 part with them, although they are very pleasant, good people; 
 but they are an incredible expense." The incident, annoying 
 though it was, was not without compensations. After arriving 
 on the station, he soon became involved in a serious difference 
 with Sir Richard Hughes ; and the latter, though a weak man 
 and in the Avrong, might have acted more peremptorily, had 
 he not laid himself under such obligations. On the other hand, 
 Lady Hughes, many years later, shortly after Nelson's death, 
 committed to writing some recollections of his personal traits 
 and actions daring the passage, so characteristic, even though 
 trivial, that we could ill have spared them. 
 
 " I was too much affected when we met at Bath," wrote she 
 to Mr. Matcham, Nelson's brother-in-law, " to say every par- 
 ticular in which was always displayed the infinite cleverness 
 and goodness of heart of our dearly beloved Hero. As a 
 woman, I can only be a judge of those things that I could 
 comprehend — such as his attention to the young gentlemen 
 who had the happiness of being on his quarter-deck. It may 
 reasonably be supposed that among the number of thirty, there 
 must be timid as well as bold; the timid he never rebuked, 
 but always wished to show them he desired nothing of them 
 that he would not instantly do himself : and I have known him 
 
40 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 say, ' Well, Sir, I am going a race to the masthead, and beg I 
 may meet you there.' No denial could be given to such a wish, 
 and the poor fellow instantly began his march. His Lordship 
 never took the least notice with what alacrity it was done, but 
 when he met in the top, instantly began speaking in the most 
 cheerful manner, and saying how much a person was to be 
 pitied that could fancy there was any danger, or even anything 
 disagreeable, in the attempt. After this excellent example, I 
 have seen the timid youth lead another, and rehearse his cap- 
 tain's words. In like manner, he every day went into the 
 school-room, and saw them do their nautical business, and at 
 twelve o'clock he was the first upon deck with his quadrant. 
 No one there could be behindhand in their business when their 
 captain set them so good an example. One other circumstance 
 I must mention which will close the subject, which was the 
 day we landed at Barbadoes. We were to dine at the Gover- 
 nor's. Our dear captain said, ' You must permit me. Lady 
 Hughes, to carry one of my aid-de-camps with me ; ' and when 
 he presented him to the Governor, he said, ' Your Excellency 
 must excuse me for bringing one of my midshipmen, as I make 
 it a rule to introduce them to all the good company I can, as 
 they have few to look up to besides myself during the time 
 they are at sea.' This kindness and attention made the young 
 people adore him ; and even his wishes, could they have been 
 known, would have been instantly complied with." 
 
 The charm and wisdom of such a bearing is patent ; but it 
 was the natural character of the man that thus shone out, and 
 no mere result of conscientious care. To the last, through all 
 his ill-health, anxiety, and sufferings, the same genial sweet- 
 ness of manner, the outcome of an unaffected, cordial good-will 
 to all, was shown to those who came in contact with him. 
 Captain Duff, who met him for the first time three weeks before 
 Trafalgar, and who fell in the battle, wrote to his wife in almost 
 the same words as Lady Hughes : " You ask me about Lord 
 Nelson, and how I like him. I have already answered that 
 question as every person must do that ever served under him. 
 He is so good and pleasant a man, that we all wish to do what 
 he likes, without any kind of orders. I have been myself very 
 lucky with most of my admirals, but I really think the present 
 the pleasantest I have met with." There do, it is true, occur 
 
THE CBUISE OF THE "BOREAS" 41 
 
 in Nelson's letters occasional, though very rare, expressions of 
 that passing annoyance with individuals which is inseparable 
 from the close and long-continued contact of ship life. Thus, 
 shortly before leaving the '' Boreas," he writes : " I begin to be 
 very strict in my Ship. Whenever I may set off in another, 
 I shall be indifferent whether I ever speak to an Officer in her, 
 but upon duty." One wonders what passing and soon forgotten 
 breeze was responsible for this most un-Nelson-like outburst. 
 But to the end it remained true that between the officers and 
 crews under Nelson's command and their chief, there was 
 always that cordial regard which can only spring from the 
 hearty sympathy of the commander with those beneath him. 
 
 While thoughtful and considerate, even to gentleness, for 
 the weak and dependent, the singular energy that quickened 
 Nelson's frail and puny frame showed itself on occasion in 
 instant resentment of any official slight to himself or his ship, 
 or injury to the interests of the country. During the " Bo- 
 reas's " stay at Madeira, the British Consul neglected to return 
 his visit, on the plea that the Government allowed him no boat. 
 Nelson declined any further intercourse with him. While 
 lying in the Downs, he learns that sixteen British seamen are 
 detained by force on board a Dutch Indiaman. He requires 
 their delivery to him ; and when their effects were withheld, 
 on the alleged ground of their being in debt to the ship, he 
 stops all intercourse between it and the shore, sending an armed 
 cutter to enforce his order. " The Admiralty," he wrote, 
 "have fortunately approved my conduct in the business/' and 
 added grimly, " a thing they are not very guilty of where there 
 is a likelihood of a scrape." When entering the harbor of Fort 
 Royal, Martinique, the principal French island in the Lesser 
 Antilles, the officer at the citadel neglected to hoist the colors, 
 a ceremonial observance customary when a ship of war ap- 
 proached. Nelson at once demanded an explanation and 
 received ample amends ; the offending party being placed under 
 arrest. To the governor of some of the British West India 
 islands, he wrote making suggestions for the better discharge 
 of certain duties, in which both of them were interested. He 
 received, it is said, a testy message that " old generals were 
 not in the habit of taking advice from j^oung gentlemen." "I 
 have the honour, Sir," replied Nelson, " of being as old as the 
 
42 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 prime nnnister of England, and think myself as capable of 
 commanding one of his majesty's ships as that minister is of 
 governing the state ; " and throughout he held to the stand he 
 had taken. 
 
 The most remarkable instance, however, of this promptness 
 to assert the dignity and rights of his official position, allow- 
 ing no man to despise his youth, occurred very soon after his 
 arrival upon the station, and brought him to a direct issue with 
 his commander-in-chief, — if not, indeed, with an authoritative 
 precedent set by so great a man as Lord Eodney. Young 
 though he still was in years, — only twenty-six, — Nelson was 
 by date of commission the senior captain in the small squadron, 
 of some half-dozen vessels, to which the economies of the ad- 
 ministration had reduced the Leeward Islands station. Being 
 thus next in rank to the admiral, the latter, who made his 
 headquarters at Barbadoes in the southern part of the station, 
 sent him to the northern division, centring about the island of 
 Antigua. Having remained in harbor, as was usual, during the 
 hurricane months, Nelson cruised during the winter and until 
 February, 1785, when some damage received compelled the 
 "Boreas " to put into Antigua for repairs. Here he found a 
 vessel of the squadron, whose own captain was of course junior 
 to him, flying a Commodore's broad pendant, which asserted 
 the official presence of a captain siqoerior to himself in rank 
 and command, and. duly qualified to give him orders. He at 
 once asked the meaning of this from the ship's proper com- 
 mander, and was informed by him that Captain Moutray, an 
 old officer, twenty years his senior on the post list, and then 
 acting as Commissioner of the Navy, a civil office connected 
 with the dockyard at Antigua, had directed it to be hoisted, 
 and claimed to exercise control over all men-of-war in the 
 harbor, during the admiral's absence. 
 
 Nelson was not ^vholly unprepared for this, for Hughes had 
 notified him and the other captains that Moutray was author- 
 ized by himself to take this step. Being then away from the 
 island, he had replied guardedly that if Commissioner Moutray 
 ivas put into commission, he would have great pleasure in 
 serving under him, — thus reserving his decision to the 
 moment for action. He now took the ground that an officer 
 not commissioned afloat, but holding only a civil appointment, 
 
THE CRUISE OF THE "BOREAS" 43 
 
 could not exercise naval command, — that an order authorizing 
 him to do so was invalid, — that to entitle him to such com- 
 mand he must be put into military commission by being 
 attached to a ship in commission. He therefore flatly declined 
 to obey Moutray's orders, refusing to admit his claim to be 
 considered a commodore, or entitled to military obedience, 
 unless he produced a commission. This he held to when 
 Moutray gave him a written order to put himself under his 
 command. 
 
 On technical points of this kind Nelson was a clear and 
 accurate thinker, and in the admiral he had to do with a 
 muddle-headed, irresolute superior. Hughes had already been 
 badly worried and prodded, on matters concerning his own 
 neglected duties, by his unquiet young subordinate, who was 
 never satisfied to leave bad enough alone, but kept raising 
 knotty points to harass an easy-going old gentleman, who 
 wanted only to be allowed to shut his eyes to what went ou 
 under his nose. He was now exasperated by Nelson's con- 
 tumacy, but he was also a little afraid of him, and supported 
 his own order by no more decisive action than laying the case 
 before the Admiralty, who informed Nelson that he should 
 have referred his doubts to the admiral, instead of deciding 
 for himself in a matter that concerned "the exercise of the 
 functions of his [the admiral's] appointment." This was 
 rather begging the question,' for Nelson expressed no doubts, 
 either to Hughes or in his explanatory letter to the Admiralty. 
 The latter in turn shirked thus the decision of the question, — 
 for, if Nelson was right, Hughes's order was illegal and not 
 entitled to obedience ; if he was wrong, he had been guilty of 
 flagrant insubordination, and should have been sharply dealt 
 with. The Government probably thought that the admiral 
 had blundered in undertaking to give military authority to a 
 civil official, — a step so generally disastrous in experience 
 that it is now explicitly forbidden by the regulations of most 
 navies. It is worthy of note that twenty years later, when 
 commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean, Nelson directed the 
 captains of ships cruising in the Straits of Gibraltar to consult 
 on all occasions with the Commissioner of the Navy resident 
 in Gibraltar, as well as to receive his advice, if proffered, — 
 adding that the commissioner's opinion of their conduct would 
 
44 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 have great weight with himself ; but he did not put them 
 under his orders.^ 
 
 Reasoning from Nelson's position, as the pendant was flying 
 without proper authority on board a ship under his immediate 
 command, he should, as senior captain afloat, have gone 
 further and hauled it down. Of his authority to do so he 
 felt no doubt, as is evident from his letter to the Admiralty ; 
 but his motive for refraining was characteristic. He was 
 unwilling to wound Moutray; just as, before Trafalgar, in 
 direct disregard of the Admiralty's orders, he allowed an 
 admiral going home under charges to take with him his flag- 
 ship, a vessel of the first force and likely to be sorely needed 
 in the approaching battle, because he was reluctant to add to 
 the distress the officer was undergoing already. ''I did not 
 choose to order the Commissioner's pendant to be struck, as 
 Mr. Moutray is an old officer of high military character ; and 
 it might hurt his feelings to be supposed wrong by so young 
 an officer." The question solved itself shortly by the Com- 
 missioner's returning to England ; but the controversy seems 
 to have made no change in the friendly and even affectionate 
 relations existing between him and his wife and Nelson. For 
 Mrs. Moutray the latter had formed one of those strong ideal- 
 izing attachments which sprang up from time to time along 
 his path. "You may be'certain," he writes to his brother at 
 the very period the discussion was pending, " I never passed 
 English Harbour without a call, but alas ! I am not to have 
 much comfort. My dear, sweet friend is going home. I am 
 really an April day ; happy on her account, but truly grieved 
 were I only to consider myself. Her equal I never saw in any 
 country or in any situation. If my dear Kate [his sister] goes 
 to Bath next winter she will be known to her, for my dear 
 friend promised to make herself known. What an acquisition 
 to any female to be acquainted with, what an example to take 
 pattern from." " My sweet, amiable friend sails the 20th for 
 England. I took my leave of her three days ago with a heavy 
 heart. What a treasure of a woman." Eeturning to Antigua 
 a few weeks later, he writes again in a sentimental vein very 
 rare in him : " This country appears now intolerable, my dear 
 friend being absent. It is barren indeed. English Harbour I 
 1 Nicolas, vol. v. p. 356. 
 
THE CRUISE OF THE "BOREAS" 45 
 
 hate the sight of, and Windsor I detest. I went once up the 
 hill to look at the spot where I spent more happy days than 
 in any one spot in the world. E'en the trees drooped their 
 heads, and the tamarind tree died : — all Avas melancholy : the 
 road is covered with thistles ; let them grow. I shall never 
 pull one of them up." His regard for this attractive woman 
 seems to have lasted through his life ; for she survived him, 
 and to her Collingwood addressed a letter after Trafalgar, 
 giving some particulars of Nelson's death. Her only son also 
 died under the latter's immediate command, ten years later, 
 when serving in Corsica. 
 
 The chief interest of the dispute over Moutray's position 
 lies not in the somewhat obscure point involved, but in the 
 illustration it affords of Nelson's singular independence and 
 tenacity in a matter of principle. Under a conviction of right 
 he throughout life feared no responsibility and shrank from 
 no consequences. It is difficult for the non-military mind to 
 realize how great is the moral effort of disobeying a superior, 
 whose order on the one hand covers all responsibility, and on 
 the other entails the most serious personal and professional 
 injury, if violated without due cause ; the burden of proving 
 which rests upon the junior. For the latter it is, justly and 
 necessarily, not enough that his own intentions or convictions 
 were honest : he has to show, not that he meant to do right, 
 but that he actually did right, in disobeying in the particular 
 instance. Under no less rigorous exactions can due military 
 subordination be maintained. The whole bent of advantage 
 and lifelong training, therefore, draws in one direction, and is 
 withstood by nothing, unless either strong personal character 
 supplies a motive, or established. professional standing permits 
 a man to presume upon it, and to exercise a certain right to 
 independence of action. At this time Nelson was practically 
 unknown, and in refusing compliance with an order he took a 
 risk that no other captain on the station would have assumed, 
 as was shown by their failure a few months later to support 
 their convictions in an analogous controversy, upon which 
 Nelson had entered even before the Moutray business. In 
 both cases he staked all upon legal points, considered by him 
 vital to the welfare of the navy and the country. The spirit 
 was identically the same that led him to swing his ship out of 
 
46 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 the line at Cape St. Vincent without waiting for signals. 
 After that day and the Nile he could afford to take liberties, 
 and sometimes took them with less justification than in his 
 early career. 
 
 When the Moutray question arose, Nelson was already 
 engaged in a more far-reaching dispute, not only with his 
 commander-in-chief, but with the colonial authorities and 
 the popular sentiment of the West India Islands. Like 
 most men, great and small, he shared the prepossessions of 
 his day and generation; differing, however, from others, 
 in that he held his opinions as principles, from asserting 
 which he was not to be deterred by the ill-will or dislike 
 of those immediately about him. Upon arriving in the 
 West Indies he found flourishing a system of trade ex- 
 tremely beneficial to the islands, but which his education 
 condemned as hurtful to Great Britain, as it certainly was 
 contrary to then existing laws that had for a century pre- 
 vious regulated the commerce of the kingdom. In 1784, 
 a year only had elapsed since tlie United States had been 
 formally recognized as independent, thereby becoming, in 
 British estimation as well as in their own, a nation foreign 
 to the British flag. By the Navigation Laws, first estab- 
 lished by Cromwell, but continued under the restored mon- 
 archy without serious modification until 1794, trade with the 
 Colonies was reserved to vessels built in Great Britain or her 
 dependencies, and manned in three-fourths part by British 
 subjects. The chief object and advantage of the law were 
 conceived to be, not merely a monopoly of the trade, — con- 
 cerning the economical wisdom of which serious doubts began 
 to be felt, — but the fostering of the British merchant service 
 as a nursery of seamen, upon whom, in time of war, the navy 
 could draw. The military strength of the Empire was thought 
 to be involved in the enforcement of the Navigation Act.^ 
 
 Before the United States declared their independence, the}^ 
 as British colonies, enjoyed the privilege of trading with their 
 
 ^ Thus Colliiigwood, rarely other than sober ami restrained in his language, 
 wrote to Hughes : " It is from the idea that the greatness and superiority 
 of the British navy very much depends upon preserving inviolate the Act of 
 Navigation, excluding foreigners from access to the colonies, that I am in- 
 duced to make this representation to you." Nicolas, vol. i. p. 172. 
 
THE CRUISE OF THE "BOREAS" 47 
 
 fellow-colouists under what was then the common flag; and 
 the nearness of the two regions contributed to the advantage 
 of both in this traffic, in which tlie continental communities 
 were the chief suppliers of many articles essential to the 
 islands, notably provisions and lumber. This mutual inter- 
 course and dependence promoted a sympathy which was 
 scarcely disguised in the West Indies during the War of 
 Independence ; indeed, Nelson wrote that many of the in- 
 habitants were as arrant rebels as those who had renounced 
 their allegiance. Under these conditions, when peace was 
 restored, the old relations were readily resumed ; and as there 
 had really been considerable inconvenience and loss to the 
 islanders from the deprivation of American products, the 
 renewal was eagerly promoted by popular sentiment. The 
 local authorities, as usual and natural, yielded to the pressure 
 around them, and in entire disregard of the known policy of 
 the home government permitted American vessels to trade 
 openly under their own colors. In Jamaica the governor 
 had even gone so far as to authorize formally a free trade, 
 during pleasure, with the United States, contrary to the 
 explicit orders of his superiors in Great Britain. Where 
 scruples were felt or hesitation was shown, advantage was 
 taken of the exceptions of the law, which allowed vessels in 
 distress to sell so much of their cargoes as Avould pay for 
 necessary repairs. With the tendency of commerce to evade 
 restrictions by liberal sti-etching of the conscience, the mer- 
 chant-captain and the colonial officer found little difficulty in 
 arranging that the damage should be great enough to cover 
 the sale of the whole lading. 
 
 After laying up in Antigua during the hurricane season of 
 1784, Nelson was summoned to Barbadoes in November, with 
 the other captains, to receive orders for the winter's cruising. 
 These, when issued, were found to direct only the examina- 
 tion of anchorages, and the gathering of information about 
 supplies of wood and water. Nelson's attention had been 
 drawn already to the American traffic ; and he, with his friend 
 Collingwood, who was again on the station, went to the 
 admiral, and urged that it was the duty of ships of war to 
 enforce the Navigation Laws. The admiral professed igno- 
 rance of these; and Nelson himself remarks that British 
 
48 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 vessels up to that time had been so much cheaper built than 
 others, that they had, without artificial protection, naturally 
 absorbed their own colonial trade, — the question, therefore, 
 had dropped out of sight till it was revived by American 
 competition. A copy of the Act being then produced, Hughes 
 gave an order requiring his vessels to enforce it ; making 
 special mention of the changed relations of the United States 
 to Great Britain, whereby they were "to be considered as 
 foreigners, and excluded from all commerce with the islands 
 in these seas." 
 
 With these instructions Nelson sailed again for the north, 
 where the Virgin Islands, with those of Montserrat, Nevis, and 
 St. Christopher, were put under his especial charge, — the 
 sloop " Eattler," Captain Wilfred Collingwood, a brother of 
 the well-known admiral, being associated with the "Boreas." 
 At first the two officers confined their action to waniing off 
 American vessels, and at times forcing them to leave ports 
 where they had anchored ; but they found that either the 
 vessels returned during the absence of the ships of war, or 
 that permissions to land, upon what they thought trivial 
 grounds, were given by the Customs' officials, in virtue of the 
 exceptions to the law above mentioned. 
 
 There matters stood until the 11th of January, 1785, Nelson 
 acting by the authority of the commander-in-chief, but exer- 
 cising his own discretion, and with forbearance, in carrying 
 out his instructions. On the day named he received another 
 order from the admiral, modifying the first upon the grounds 
 of a more mature consideration, and of "the opinion of the 
 King's Attorney-General " in the islands. Nelson was now 
 directed, in case of a foreign merchant-ship coming within the 
 limits of his station, to cause her to anchor near his own 
 vessel and to report her arrival, and situation in all respects, 
 to the governor of the colony where he then was ; " and if, 
 after such report shall have been made and received, the gov- 
 ernor or his representative shall think proper to admit the 
 said foreigner into the port or harbour of the island where 
 you may be, yoti are on no account to hinder or prevent such 
 foreign vessel from going 171 accordingly, or to interfere any 
 further in her subsequent proceedings." 
 
 Here the admiral not only raised, but also decided, the 
 
THE CRUISE OF THE "BOREAS" 49 
 
 point as to whether the enforcement of the ISTavigatiou Act 
 rested with naval officers, or was vested only in the civil 
 authorities of the islands. Nelson was convinced that an 
 essential part of the duty of ships of war, and especially wlien 
 peace took from them so much of their military function, was 
 to afford to the commerce of the nation proper protection, of 
 which a necessary feature, according to the ideas of the age, 
 was the interdiction of foreign traders. A seaman, he plau- 
 sibly argued, could decide better than an unprofessional man 
 the questions of injuries and distress upon which the un- 
 lawful traffic largely hinged. "In judging of their distress, 
 no person can know better than the sea officers," he wrote to 
 Hughes. " The governors may be imposed upon by false 
 declarations ; we, who are on the spot, cannot." He was 
 aware, also, that a petition for relaxing the Act in favor of 
 the American trade with the West Indies had been referred 
 to the home government, by which it had been explicitly 
 rejected. Strengthened by this knowledge, but actuated, after 
 all, chiefly by his invariable resoluteness to assume responsi- 
 bility where he felt he was right, he replied to the admiral's 
 letter with a clear statement of the facts, concluding with the 
 words : " Whilst I have the honour to command an English 
 man-of-war, I never shall allow myself to be subservient to 
 tlie Avill of any Governor, nor co-operate with him in doing 
 illegal acts. ... If I rightly understand your order of the 
 29th of December, it is founded upon an Opinion of the King's 
 Attorney-General, viz. : ' That it is legal for Governors or 
 their representatives to admit foreigners into the ports of 
 their government, if they think fit.' How the King's 
 Attorney-General conceives he has a right to give an illegal 
 opinion, which I assert the above is, he must answer for. I 
 know the ISTavigatiou Laws." As he summed up the matter in 
 a letter to his friend Locker: "Sir Eichard Hughes was a 
 delicate business. I must either disobey my orders, or dis- 
 obey Acts of Parliament, which the admiral was disobeying. 
 I determined upon the former, trusting to the uprightness of 
 my intention. In short, I wrote the Admiral that I should 
 decline obeying his orders, till I had an opportunity of seeing 
 and talking to him, at the same time making him an apology." 
 Hughes's first impulse was to supersede his recalcitrant 
 
 4 
 
50 THE LIFE OE jS'ELSON 
 
 subordinate, and bring Lim to trial. He learned, however, 
 that many of the other captains, of wliom the court must be 
 formed, shared his junior's views, although they shrank, with 
 the submissiveness of military men, from the decisive act of 
 disobedience. The result of a trial must therefore be doubt- 
 ful. He was, moreover, a fiddler, as Nelson continually 
 styled him, shifting back and forth, from opinion to opinion, 
 and to be relied upon for only one thing, — to dodge respon- 
 sibility, if possible. Consequently, no official action was 
 taken ; the commander-in-chief contented himself with wash- 
 ing his hands of all accountability. He had given orders 
 which would clear himself, in case Kelson's conduct was 
 censured in England. If, on the contrary, it was approved, 
 it would redound to the credit of the station. 
 
 The matter was soon brought to a test. The governors and 
 all the officials, particularly of the Custom House, resented 
 the action of the naval officers ; but the vigilauce of the latter 
 so seriously interrupted the forbidden traffic under American 
 colors, that recourse was had to giving British r'egisters to 
 the vessels concerned, allowing them to trade under British 
 flags. This, however, was equally contrary to the ISTavigation 
 Act, which forbade British registry to foreign-built ships, 
 except when prizes taken in war ; and the disguise was too 
 thin to baffle men like Collingwood and Nelson. The latter 
 reported the practice to the home Government, in order that 
 any measures deemed necessary might be taken. Meanwhile 
 he patiently persisted in turning away all vessels, not British 
 built, which he encountered, confining himself for the time to 
 this merely passive prevention ; but finding at last that this 
 was not a sufficient deterrent, he gave notice that after the 
 1st of IVIay, 1785, he would seize all American vessels trading 
 to the islands, "let them be registered by whom they might." 
 Accordingly, on the 2d of May he arrested an American- 
 built schooner, owned in Philadelphia and manned entirely 
 by Americans, biit having a British register issued at the 
 island of St. Christopher. 
 
 The Crown lawyer was now called upon to prosecute the 
 suit. He expressed grave doubts as to a naval captain's 
 power to act by virtue simply of his commission, the sole 
 authority alleged by the captor ; and, although he proceeded 
 
THE CRUISE OF THE "BOREAS" 51 
 
 with the case, his manner so betrayed his uncertainty that 
 Nelson felt it necessary to plead for himself. To the con- 
 fusion of all opponents the judge decided in his favor, sayino- 
 lie had an undoubted right to seize vessels transgressino' the 
 Navigation Laws. The principle thus established, Nelson on 
 the 23d of the same month, at the island of Nevis, upon the 
 same grounds, seized four vessels, — one of which had been 
 registered at Dominica by Governor Orde, a naval captain 
 senior in rank to himself, and with whom he came into 
 unpleasant contact upon several occasions in his later life. 
 
 There was no serious question as to the condemnation of 
 the four last seizures, the facts being clear and the principle 
 settled;^ but the rage of the inhabitants of Nevis led them 
 to seek revenge upon Nelson for the injury they could no 
 longer prevent. He had summoned the masters of the ships 
 on board the " Boreas," and, after satisfying himself that the 
 vessels were not entitled to British registers, had sent marines 
 to hold them, and to prevent essential witnesses from leaving 
 them, until the cases were tried. Upon these circumstances 
 was based an accusation of assault and imprisonment, the 
 masters swearing that they had made their statements under 
 bodily fear. Writs were issued against Nelson, damages 
 being laid at four thousand pounds, a sura which to him meant 
 ruin. Although he asserted that there was absolutely no truth 
 in the charges, which are certainly in entire contradiction 
 to the general, if not invariable, tenor of liis life and conduct, 
 he was advised by the Crown lawyers not to subject himself to 
 trial, as in the state of public feeling he could not expect a 
 fair verdict. To avoid arrest, he was forced to confine him- 
 self to the ship for seven weeks, during which the marshal 
 made several attempts to serve the writ, but without success. 
 On the day that the case of the seized ships came up, he was 
 able to be present in court only by the safe conduct of the judge. 
 
 1 Nelson's letters are contradictory on this point. In a letter to Locker of 
 March 3, 1786, lie says, "Before the first vessel was trii;d I liael seized four 
 others ; " whereas in the formal and detailed narrative drawn nj) — without 
 date, but later than the letter to Locker — he says the first vessel was tried 
 and condemned May 17, the other four seized May 23. (Nicolas, vol. i. pp. 
 177, 178.) The author has followed the latter, because from the particularity 
 of dates it seems to have been compiled from memoranda, that of Locker 
 written from memory, — both nearly a year after the events. 
 
52 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 Two days after the seizure of the four vessels, Sir Kiehard 
 Hughes, who was making a tour of the station under his 
 command, arrived at Nevis ; but he had no support to give 
 his zealous lieutenant. " He did not appear to be pleased 
 with my conduct," wrote Nelson to Locker. " At least he 
 did not approve it, but told me I shovxld get into a scrape. 
 Seven weeks I was kept a close prisoner to my ship ; nor did 
 I ever learn that the admiral took any steps for my release. 
 He did not even acquaint the Admiralty Board how cruelly 
 I had been treated ; nor of the attempts which had been made 
 to take me out of ray ship by force, and that indignity offered 
 under the fly of his flag." " I had the governor, the Customs, 
 all the planters upon me ; subscriptions were soon tilled to 
 prosecute ; and my admiral stood neuter, although his flag 
 was then in the roads." To this lack of countenance on the 
 part of his superior, and direct persecution by those injuri- 
 ously affected by his action, there was added a general social 
 ostracism, to which he frequently alludes, and which was 
 particularly emphasized by its contrast with the habits of 
 hospitality prevalent among the small and wealthy planter 
 community. One friend, however, stood by him, and offered 
 to become his bail in the sum of ten thousand pounds, — Mr. 
 Herbert, the President of Nevis, and one of the wealthiest 
 men in the island. He had, Nelson said, suffered more than 
 any one else from the interruption of the trade, but he con- 
 sidered that the young captain had done only his duty. 
 Possibly there may have been a warmer feeling underlying 
 this esteem, for he was the uncle of the lady whom Nelson 
 afterwards married, and to whom he seems to have been pay- 
 ing attention already. 
 
 Despite his indomitable pluck and resolve, the confinement, 
 uncertainty, and contention told heavily on Nelson's health 
 and spirits. His temper was too kindly and social not to feel 
 the general alienation. It could not affect his purpose; but 
 the sense of right-doing, which sustained him in that, did not 
 make his road otherwise easier. It is, indeed, especially to 
 be noticed that there was not in him that hard, unyielding 
 fibre, upon which care, or neglect, or anxiety makes little 
 impression. He was, on the contrary, extremely sympathetic, 
 even emotional ; and although insensible to bodily fear, he 
 
THE CRUISE OF THE "BOREAS" 53 
 
 was by no means so to censure, or to risk of other misfortune. 
 To this susceptibility to worry, strong witness is borne by an 
 expression of his, used at the veiy time of which we are now 
 writing. One of his friends — Captain Pole of the Kavy — 
 had detained and sent in a neutral vessel for breach of bel- 
 ligerent rights. After long legal j^roceediugs, extending over 
 five years, she was condemned, and proved to be a very valu- 
 able prize to the captors. " Our friend Charles Pole," he 
 writes, " has been fortunate in his trial ; but the lottery is so 
 very much against an officer, that never will I knowingly 
 involve myself in a doubtful cause. Prize-money is doubtless 
 very acceptable ; but my mind would have suffered so much, 
 that no pecuniary compensation, at so late a period, would 
 have made me amends." Contrasting this utterance with the 
 resolution shown by him at this time, in fighting what he 
 considered the cause of his country in the West Indies, it can 
 be seen how much stronger with him was the influence of 
 duty than that exercised by any considerations of merely 
 material advantage. In the one he could find support; in 
 the other not. But in neither case was he insensible to care, 
 nor could he escape the physical consequences of anxiety 
 upon a delicate frame and nervous organization. Of this, his 
 harassment in the pursuit of the French fleet in 1798, during 
 Bonaparte's Egyptian expedition, gave a very conspicuous 
 illustration. 
 
 With such a temperament, being now very much in the 
 position of an individual fighting a corporation, he appealed 
 to the home Government; addressing, on the 29th of June, 
 1785, a memorial to the King, setting forth the facts of the 
 case, as already given, adding that his health was much 
 impaired, and asking for assistance. He received a reply to 
 this in the following September, informing him that the King 
 had directed that he should be defended by the Crown law- 
 yers. This implied approval of his course was s\icceeded, in 
 November, by a letter from the Secretary of the Treasury, 
 through the usual official channels of the Admiralty, acquaint- 
 ing him that the Government was " of opinion that the 
 commander-in-chief of the Leeward Islands, and officers under 
 him, have shown a very commendable zeal, in endeavouring 
 to put a stop to the very illicit practices which were carrying 
 
54 Till-: LIL-'E OF KELSON 
 
 on ill the islands, in open violation of the law, and to the 
 great detriment of tlie navigation and trade of his Majesty's 
 dominions." Verily, Hughes had his reward. Here he was 
 commended in express terms for doing that which he had 
 been too prndent to do, for zeal which he had never shown, 
 for maintaining a law which he had given orders not to main- 
 tain. "I own I was surprised,'' wrote Nelson, "that the 
 commander-in-chief should be thanked for an act which he 
 did not order, but which, if I understand the meaning of 
 words, by his order of the 29th December, 1784, he ordered not 
 to be." " To the end of the station,^ his order of the 29th of 
 December was never repealed, so that I always acted with a rod 
 over me." How heavily the responsibility he assumed was felt 
 b}'' others, is clearly shown in another statement made by him. 
 *' The Captains Collingwood were the only officers, with myself, 
 who ever attempted to hinder the illicit trade with America ; 
 and I stood' si nglij with respect to seizing, for the other officers 
 were fearful of being brought into scrapes." 
 
 Backed by the royal approval, and with his legal expenses 
 guaranteed. Nelson's course was now smooth. He continued 
 in all parts of the station to suppress the contraband trade, 
 and his unpopularity, of course, also continued ; but excite- 
 ment necessarily subsided as it became clear that submission 
 was unavoidable, and as men adapted themselves to the new 
 conditions. The whole procedure now looks somewhat bar- 
 barous and blundering, but in no essential principle differs 
 from the methods of protection to which the world at present 
 seems again tending. It is not for us to throw stones at it. 
 The results, then, were completely successful, judged by the 
 standards of the time. "At this moment," wrote Nelson 
 some few months later, " there are nearly fifty sail employed 
 in the trade between the Islands of St. Kitts, Nevis, and 
 America, which are truly British built, owned, and navigated. 
 Had I been an idle spectator, my firm belief is that not a 
 single vessel would have belonged to those islands in the 
 foreign trade." His own action was further endorsed by the 
 ministry, which now gave captains of ships-of-war much more 
 
 1 This word is used by Nelson, apparently, as equivalent to "season," — 
 the cruising period in the "West Indies. " The admiral wishes to remain an- 
 Other statjpw," he writes elsewhere. 
 
THE cruisp: of the "boreas" 
 
 extensive powers, thereby justifying his contention that it 
 was within their office to enforce the Navigation Act. Xor 
 was this increjised activity of the executive branch of the 
 government the only result of Xelson's persistence. His 
 sagacious study of the whole question, under the local con- 
 ditions of the West Indies, led to his making several sug- 
 gestions for more surely carrying out the spirit of the Law; 
 and these were embodied the next year in a formal Act of the 
 Legislature. 
 
 With so vivid a career as tliat of Nelson ahead, the delay 
 imposed by this wrangling episode is somewhat dreary ; but 
 it undeniably shows his characteristics in the strongest light. 
 Duty, not ease; honor, not gain; the ideal, not the material, 
 
 — such, not indeed without frailty and blemish, were ever 
 his motives. And, while he craved his reward in the ap- 
 proval and recognition of those around and above him, he 
 could find consolation for the lack of them in his own sense 
 of right-doing. " That thing called Honour," he writes to a 
 friend soon after the " r>oreas " cruise, "is now, alas! thought 
 of no more. My integrity cannot be mended, I hope ; but 
 my fortune, God knows, has grown worse for the service ; so 
 much for serving my country. But I have invariably laid 
 down, and followed close, a jjlan of what ought to be upper- 
 most in the breast of an officer : that it is much better to 
 serve an ungrateful Country than to give up his own fame. 
 Posterity will do him justice; a uniform conduct of honour 
 and integrity seldom fails of bringing a man to the goal of 
 fame at last." 
 
 This struggle with Sir Ricliard Hughes, in wliich Nelson 
 took the undesiraljle, and to a naval officer invidious, step of 
 disobeying orders, showed clearly, not only the loftiness of 
 his motives, but the distinguishing features which constituted 
 the strength of his character, both personal and military. 
 There was an acute perception of the right thing to do, an 
 entire readiness to assume all the responsibility of doing it, 
 and above all an accurate judgment of the best way to do it, 
 
 — to act with impunity to himself and with most chances of 
 success to his cause. Its analogy to a military situation is 
 striking. There was a wrong condition of things to be 
 righted — a victory to be won. To achieve this a great risk 
 
56 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 must be taken, and he was willing to take it ; but in so doing 
 he made such choice of his ground as to be practically unas- 
 sailable — to attain his end without lasting harm to himself. 
 That Nelson would have managed better had he been ten 
 years older is very probable. Likely enough he betrayed 
 some of the carelessness of sensibilities which the inexperi- 
 ence of youth is too apt to show towards age ; but, upon a 
 careful review of the whole, it appears to the writer that his 
 general course of action was distinctly right, judged by the 
 standards of the time and the well-settled principles of 
 military obedience, and that he pursued an extremely diffi- 
 cult line of conduct with singular resolution, with sound 
 judgment, and, in the main, with an unusual amount of tact, 
 without which he could scarcely have failed, however well 
 purposing, to lay himself open to serious consequences. Cer- 
 tainly he achieved success. 
 
 It was in the midst of this legal warfare, and of the pre- 
 occupations arising from it, that JSTelson first met the lady 
 who became his wife. She was by birth a Miss Frances 
 Woolward, her mother being a sister of the Mr. Herbert 
 already mentioned as President of the Council in Nevis. She 
 was born in the first half of 1758,^ and was therefore a few 
 months older than Nelson. In 1779 she had married Dr. 
 Josiah Msbet, of Nevis, and the next year was left a widow 
 with one son, who bore his father's full name. After her 
 husband's death, being apparently portionless, she came to 
 live with Herbert, who looked upon and treated her as his 
 own child, although he also had an only daughter. When 
 Nelson first arrived at Nevis, in January, 1785,^ she was 
 absent, visiting friends in a neighboring island, so that they 
 did not then meet, — a circumstance somewhat fortunate for 
 us, because it led to a description of him being sent to her in 
 a letter from a lady of Herbert's family, not improbably her 
 
 ^ Lady Nelson's tombstone in Littleham Chiirclij'ard, Exmouth, reads that 
 she died Maj' 6, 1831, "aged 73." She would then have been born before 
 May 6, 1758. The Annual Register for 1831 gives May 4, as tlie date of her 
 death, and her age 68. 
 
 2 Prior to May, 1785, the only stops of the "Boreas" at Nevis were Jan- 
 nary 6-8, February 1-4, and March 11-15. (Boreas's Log in Nicolas's 
 Letters and Despatches of Lord Nelson, vol. vii. Addenda, pp. viii, ix.) 
 
COURTSHIP 57 
 
 cousin, Miss Herbert. Nelson had then become a somewhat 
 conspicuous factor in the contracted interests of the island 
 society, owing to the stand he had already publicly assumed 
 Avith reference to the contraband trade. People were talking 
 about him, although he had not as yet enforced the extreme 
 measures which made him so unpopular. " We have at last," 
 so ran the letter, " seen the little captain of the Boreas of 
 whom so much has been said. He came up just before din- 
 ner, much heated, and was very silent; but seemed, according 
 to the old adage, to think the more. He declined drinking 
 any wine ; but after dinner, when the president, as usual, 
 gave the three following toasts, 'the King,' 'the Queen and 
 Royal Family,' and 'Lord Hood,' this strange man regularly 
 filled his glass, and observed that those were always bumper 
 toasts with him ; which, having drank, he uniformly passed 
 the bottle, and relapsed into his former taciturnity. It was 
 impossible, during this visit, for any of us to make out his 
 real character ; there was such a reserve and sternness in his 
 behaviour, with occasional sallies, though very transient, of 
 a superior mind. Being placed by him, I endeavoured to 
 rouse his attention by showing him all the civilities in my 
 power; but I drew out little more than 'Yes,' and 'No.' If 
 you, Fanny, had been there, we think you would have made 
 something of him, for you have been in the habit of attending 
 to these odd sort of people." 
 
 Mrs. Nisbet very quickly made something of him. Little 
 direct description has been transmitted to us concerning the 
 looks or characteristics of the woman who now, at the time 
 when marriage was possible to him, had the misfortune to 
 appear in the line of succession of Nelson's early fancies, and 
 to attract the too easily aroused admiration and affection of a 
 man whose attachment she had not the inborn power to bind. 
 That Nelson was naturally inconstant, beyond the volatility 
 inherent in youth, is sufficiently disproved by the strength and 
 endurance of his devotion to the one woman, in whom he either 
 found or imagined the qualities that appealed to the heroic 
 side of his character. How completely she mastered all the 
 approaches to his heart, and retained her supremacy, once 
 established, to the end, is evidenced by the whole tenor of his 
 correspondence with her, by his mention of her in letters to 
 
58 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 others, by the recorded expressions he used in speaking to or 
 about her. Despite all that he certainly knew of her, and 
 much more that it is uu reasonable to doubt he must have 
 known of her history, there is no mistaking the profound 
 emotions she stirred in his spirit, which show themselves con- 
 tinually in spontaneous outbreaks of passionate fondness and 
 extravagant admiration, whose ring is too true and strong for 
 doubt concerning their reality to find a place. 
 
 Many men are swayed by strong and wayward impulses; 
 but to most the fetters imposed by social conventions, by in- 
 herited or implanted standards of seemliness and decorum, 
 suffice to steady them in the path of outward propriety. Of 
 how great and absorbing a passion Lord Nelson was capable 
 is sliown by the immensity of the sacrifice that he made to it. 
 Principle apart, — and principle wholly failed him, — all else 
 that most appeals to man's self-respect and regard for the 
 esteem of others was powerless to exert control. Loyalty to 
 friendship, the sanctity which man is naturally fain to see in 
 the woman he loves, and, in Nelson's own case, a peculiar re- 
 luctance to wound another, — all these were trampled under 
 foot, and ruthlessly piled on the holocaust which he offered to 
 her whom he worshipped. He could fling to the winds, as 
 others cannot, considerations of interest or expediency, as he 
 flung them over and over in his professional career. My 
 motto, he said once and again, is " All or nothing." The same 
 disregard of consequences that hazarded all for all, in battle 
 or for duty, broke through the barriers within which prudence, 
 reputation, decency, or even weakness and cowardice, confine 
 the actions of lesser men. And it must be remembered that 
 the admitted great stain upon Nelson's fame, Avhicli it would 
 be wicked to deny, lies not in a general looseness of life, but 
 in the notoriety of one relation, — a notoriety due chiefly to 
 the reckless singleness of heart which was not ashamed to 
 own its love, but rather gloried in the public exhibition of a 
 faith in the worthiness of its object, and a constancy, which 
 never wavered to the hour of his death. ^ The pitifulness of 
 
 1 The author is satisfied, from casual expressions in Nelson's letters to 
 Lady Hamilton, that his famous two years' confinement to the ship, 1803- 
 1805, and, to a less extent, the similar seclusion practised in the Baltic and 
 the Downs, proceeded, in large part at least, from a romantic and chivalrous 
 
COURTSHIP 59 
 
 it is to see the incongruity between such faith, such devotion, 
 and the distasteful inadequacy of their object. 
 
 To answer the demands of a nature capable of such energetic 
 manifestation — to fulfil the imagination of one who could so 
 cast himself at the feet of an ideal — was beyond the gentle, 
 well-ordered, and somewhat prosaic charms with which alone 
 Mrs. Nisbet was invested by Nelson, even when most loverlike 
 in tone. ''My greatest wish," he writes in the first of his 
 letters to her that has been preserved, " is to be united to you ; 
 and the foundation of all conjugal happiness, real love and 
 esteem, is, I trust, what you believe I possess' in the strongest 
 degree toward you." Fifteen months later, and but a short 
 time before their wedding, he says again : " His Eoyal High- 
 ness often tells me, he believes I am married ; for he never 
 saw a lover so easy, or say so little of the object he has a regard 
 for. When I tell him I certainly am not, he says, ' Then he 
 is sure I must have a great esteem for you, and that it is not 
 what is (vulgarly), I do not much like the use of that word, 
 called love.' He is right : my love is founded on esteem, the 
 only foundation that can make the passion last." But general 
 maxims, even when less disputable than this, do not admit of 
 luiiversal application ; and if an affection was to hold its own 
 in a nature enthusiastic and imaginative as that of Nelson, it 
 had need to strike root deeper than that surface soil indicated 
 by mere esteem, at least when the latter rests simply upon an 
 assemblage of upright and amiable qualities, and not upon that 
 force of character which compels dependence as well as appre- 
 ciation. At their last parting he solemnly avowed that his 
 esteem was not lessened; while he was destined also to afford 
 a conspicuous illustration of how enduring a passion may 
 flourish where no just title to esteem exists. 
 
 The progress of his wooing was rapid enough. On the 12th 
 of May he first mentions their meeting ; on the 28th of June 
 he writes to his brother : '•'■ Entrenoxis. — Do not be surprised 
 to hear I am a Benedict, for if at all, it will be before a month. 
 Do not tell." On the lltli of September is dated his first 
 letter to her, already quoted, in which he addresses her as 
 " My dear Fanny," and alludes to the understanding existing 
 
 resolve to leave no room for donbt, in the mind of Lady Hamilton or of the 
 world, that he was entire!}' faithful to her. 
 
60 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 between tliem. At the expiration of six months he wrote, for- 
 mally announcing his engagement, to Mr. William Suckling, 
 his mother's brother. He anticipates the latter's doubts as to 
 the permanence of this fancy: "This Horatio, you will say, is 
 for ever in love ; " but he considers that six months without 
 change settles that question. " My present attachment is of 
 pretty long standing ; but I was determined to be fixed before 
 I broke this matter to any person." He then explains the sit- 
 uation,— that the lady herself has little or nothing; that Mr. 
 Herbert, though rich, is not likely to help the young couple 
 much, and he asks his uncle's assistance. This Suckling con- 
 sented to give, and for several years continued liberally to 
 extend. But still, impatient though Nelson always was to 
 complete whatever he had on hand, various causes delayed the 
 wedding for another year. Even with Suckling's help the 
 question of means was pressing; and while, with pardonable 
 self -justification, he gloried to his betrothed that "the world 
 is convinced that I am superior to pecuniary considerations in 
 my public and private life, as in both instances I might have 
 been rich," he nevertheless owned to regretting that he " had 
 not given greater attention to making money." Besides, as 
 he wrote to his brother, " What should I do carrying a wife 
 in a ship, and when I marry I do not mean to part with my 
 wife." The cruising duty of the " Boreas " took her from 
 port to port of the limited area embraced in the Leeward 
 Islands Station, and Nevis was among the least important of 
 the points demanding his attention. He was, therefore, fre- 
 quently away from his betrothed during this period, and 
 absence rather fanned than cooled the impetuous ardor which 
 he carried into all his undertakings. Whether it were the 
 pursuit of a love affair, or the chase of an enemy's fleet, de- 
 lays served only to increase the vehemence with which Nelson 
 chafed against difficulties. " Duty," he tells Mrs. Nisbet, " is 
 the great business of a sea officer, — all private considerations 
 must give way to it, however painful it is ; " but he owns he 
 wishes " the American vessels at the Devil, and the whole 
 continent of America to boot," because they detain him from 
 her side. 
 
 There is no singularity in the experience that obstacles tend 
 rather to inflame than to check a lover's eagerness. What is 
 
COURTSHIP 61 
 
 noteworthy in Nelson's letters at this time is the utter absence 
 of any illusions, of any tendency to exaggerate and glorify the 
 qualities of the woman who for the nonce possessed his heart. 
 There is not a sign of the perturbation of feeling, of the stir- 
 ring of the soul, that was afterwards so painfully elicited 
 by another influence. " The dear object," he writes to his 
 brother, "you must like. Her sense, polite manners, and, to 
 you I may say, beauty, you will much admire. She possesses 
 sense far superior to half the people of our acquaintance, and 
 her manners are Mrs. Moutray's." The same calm, measured 
 tone pervades all his mention of her to others. His letters to 
 herself, on the other hand, are often pleasing in the quiet, 
 simple, and generally unaffected tenderness which inspires 
 them. In a more ordinary man, destined to more common- 
 place fortunes, they might well be regarded as promising that 
 enduring wedded love which strikes root downward and bears 
 fruit upward, steadily growing in depth and devotion as the 
 years roll by. But Nelson was not an ordinary man, and 
 from that more humble happiness a childless marriage further 
 debarred him. He could rise far higher, and, alas! descend 
 far lower as he followed the radiant vision, — the image of his 
 own mind rather than an external reality, — the ideal, which, 
 whether in fame or in love, beckoned him onward. The calm, 
 even, and wholly matter-of-fact appreciation of his wife's esti- 
 mable traits can now be seen in the light of his after career, 
 and its doubtful augury descried ; for to idealize was an es- 
 sential attribute of his temperament. Her failure, even in the 
 heyday of courtship, to arouse in him any extravagance of 
 emotion, any illusive exaltation of her merits, left vacant that 
 throne in his mind which could be permanently occupied only 
 by a highly wrought excellence, — even though that were the 
 purely subjective creation of his own enthusiasm. This hold 
 Lady Nelson never gained ; and the long absence from 1793 
 to 1797, during the opening period of the war of the French 
 Revolution, probably did to death an affection which owed 
 what languid life it retained cliiefly to propinquity and cus- 
 tom. Both Saumarez and Codrington, who served under him, 
 speak passingly of the lightness with which his family ties 
 sat upon Nelson in the years following his short stay at home 
 in 1797. The house was empty, swept, and garnished, when 
 
62 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 the simple-minded, if lion-hearted, seaman came under the 
 spell of one whose fascinations had overpowered the resistance 
 of a cool-headed man of the world, leading him in his old age, 
 with open eyes, to do what every prepossession and every 
 reasonable conviction of his life condemned as folly. 
 
 In the summer of 1786 Sir Richard Hughes was recalled to 
 England. During the later part of his association with 
 Nelson, the strain which had characterized their earlier rela- 
 tions had not only disappeared, but had been succeeded by 
 feelings approaching cordiality. The Government's approval 
 of his subordinate's action, and of himself as credited with 
 supporting it, had removed that element of apprehension 
 which in timid men induces irritation ; and Hughes, who, 
 though irresolute, was naturally kindly, had been still farther 
 placated by the prize-money falling to him from the vessels 
 condemned through the zeal of" Nelson. The latter, who never 
 harbored malice, easily forgave the past, and responded to this 
 change of tone. " I have been upon the best terms with the 
 Admiral," he wrote from Barbadoes to his intended wife in 
 April, 1786, "and I declare I think I could ever remain so. 
 He is always remarkably kind and civil to every one ; " and 
 again, a few days earlier, " The admiral is highly pleased with 
 my conduct here, as you will believe, by sending me such fine 
 lines with a white hat. I well know I am not of abilities to 
 deserve what he has said of me : but I take ib as they are 
 meant, to show his regard for me ; and his politeness and 
 attention to me are great : nor shall I forget it. I like the 
 man, although not all his acts." He then directs that the 
 lines shall not be shown to any one, " as the compliment is 
 paid to me at the expense of the officers of the squadron," an 
 injunction thoroughly characteristic of the man's kindly con- 
 sideration for others. It was creditable to Hughes that, after 
 being so braved, and his instructions set at naught by his 
 junior, he had candor enough to see and acknowledge his 
 merit ; but the fact still remained that in the hour of trial he 
 had failed Nelson, nor did the latter, though he forgave, for- 
 get it. As he wrote to Locker in September, 1786, after the 
 admiral's departure, " Instead of being supported by my 
 admiral, I was obliged to keep him up, for he was frightened 
 at this business ; " of which business he truly said, emphasiz- 
 
LEFT SENIOR OFFICER IN THE WEST INDIES G?j 
 
 ing, but not at all exaggerating, the gravity of the responsi- 
 bility he had taken in defiance of his superior : " After loss of 
 health and risk of fortune, another is thanked for what I did 
 against his orders. Either I deserved to he sent out of the 
 service,'^ or at least to have had some little notice taken of 
 me." 
 
 Nelson indeed, in the West Indies, as an unknown captain, 
 had done that which as a junior admiral he did later at Copen- 
 hagen, at a moment far more critical to Great Britain. By 
 his own unusual powers of impulse and resolve he had en- 
 forced, as far as was possible against the passive, inert lethargy 
 — not to say timidity — of his superior, the course of action 
 which at the moment was essential to the interests of his 
 country. Truly great in his strength to endure, he knew not 
 the perturbations nor the vacillations that fret the temper, 
 and cripple the action, of smaller men ; and, however harassed 
 and distressed externally, the calmness of a clear insight and 
 an unshaken purpose guided his footsteps, unwavering, in the 
 path of duty, through all opposition, to the goal of success. 
 It is reported that an officer of the " Boreas," speaking to him 
 of the vexations and odium he had undergone, used the word 
 " pity." Nelson's reply showed the profound confidence which 
 throughout had animated him, keenly as he had undoubtedly 
 felt the temporary anxieties. "Pity, did you say? I shall 
 live. Sir, to be envied ; and to that point I shall always direct 
 my course." 
 
 By the departure of Sir Eichard Hughes Nelson was left 
 senior officer upon the station until his own return home, a 
 twelvemonth later. In November he renewed his acquaint- 
 ance with Prince William Henry, whom he had known as a 
 midshipman in 1782, and who now came to the Leeward 
 Islands a post-captain, in command of the frigate " Pegasus." 
 The two young men Avere not far apart in age, and an 
 intimacy between them soon arose, which ended only with the 
 death of Nelson. The latter had a profound reverence for 
 royalty, both as an institution and as represented in its raem- 
 
 1 The author has italicized these words because they accurately express the 
 just peualty that military law would have required of Nelson, had he not 
 shown adequate grounds for his disobedience. They measure, tlierefore, the 
 responsibility he shouldered, and the reward he deserved. 
 
64 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 bers; and to this, in the present case, was added a strong 
 personal esteem, based upon the zeal and efficiency in the dis- 
 charge of official duties, which he recognized in one whose 
 rank would assure him impunity for any mere indifference. 
 The prince, on the other hand, quickly yielded to the charm 
 of Nelson's intercourse, so vividly felt by most who knew 
 him, and to the contagious enthusiasm which animated his 
 conversation when talking of his profession. This, also, his 
 ardent imagination endowed with possibilities and aspirations, 
 not greater, indeed, than its deserts, but which only the intui- 
 tions of a genius like his could realize and vivify, imparting 
 to slower temperaments something of his own fire. To this 
 association the prince afterwards attributed the awakening of 
 that strong interest in maritime affairs which he retained to 
 the day of his death. The two friends dined alternately one 
 with the other, and, in their association of some six months at 
 this time, they together fought over all the naval battles that 
 during the recent war had illustrated the waters through 
 which they were then cruising. 
 
 The incessant energy displayed by Nelson, and the agitations 
 through which he passed during the three years of this stay 
 upon the West Indian station, again produced distressing symp- 
 toms in his general health. To use his own words, the activity 
 of the mind was " too much for my puny constitution." '' I am 
 worn to a skeleton," he writes to Mr. Suckling in July, 1786 ; 
 and three months later to Locker, " I have been since June so 
 very ill that I have only a faint recollection of anything which 
 I did. My complaint was in my breast, such a one as I had 
 going out to Jamaica [in 1777]. The Doctor thought I was 
 in a consumption, and quite gave me up." This fear, how- 
 ever, proved unfounded ; nor does there appear at any time to 
 have been any serious trouble with his lungs. 
 
 On the 11th ^ of March, 1787, the marriage of Captain 
 Nelson to Mrs. Nisbet took place at Nevis. Prince William 
 Henry, whose rule it was never to visit in any private house, 
 made an exception on this occasion, having exacted from 
 
 1 Sir Harris Nicolas (Nelson's Despatches and Letters, vol. 1. p. 217) gives 
 March 12 as the daj' of the wedding, upon the ground of a letter of Lady- 
 Nelson's. Her mention of the date is, however, rather casual ; and March 11 
 is given in the parish register of the church in Nevis. 
 
THREATENING ASPECT OF AFFAIRS IN HOLLAND 60 
 
 Nelson a promise that the wedding should wait until he 
 could be present ; and he gave away the bride. Three 
 months later, on the 7th of June, the " Boreas " sailed for 
 England, and on the 4th of July anchored at Spithead. 
 Whether Mrs. Nelson accompanied him in the ship does not 
 appear certainly ; but from several expressions in his letters 
 it seems most probable that she did. Five days after his ar- 
 rival he sent a message from her to Locker, in terms which 
 indicate that she was with him. 
 
 A newly married man, who had just concluded a full cruise 
 of such arduous and unremitting exertions, might reasonably 
 have wished and expected a period of relaxation ; but the 
 return of the " Boreas " coincided with a very disturbed state 
 of European politics. In the neighboring republic of Holland 
 two parties were striving for the mastery ; one of which was 
 closely attached to France, the other, that of the Stadtholder, 
 to Great Britain. In 1785 the former had gained the upper 
 hand ; and, by a treaty signed on Christmas Day of that year, 
 a decided preponderance in the councils of the United Prov- 
 inces had been given to France. The enfeebled condition of 
 the latter country, however, had allowed little prospect of 
 permanence to this arrangement ; and in the summer of 1787, 
 an insult offered by the French party to the wife of the Stadt- 
 holder led to a forcible intervention by the King of Prussia, 
 whose sister she was. Louis XVI. prepared to support his 
 partisans, and notified his purpose to Great Britain ; where- 
 upon the latter, whose traditional policy for over a century 
 had been to resist the progress of French influence in the Low 
 Countries, replied that she could not remain a quiet spectator, 
 and at once began to arm. " The Dutch business," wrote 
 Nelson, " is becoming every day more serious ; and I hardly 
 think we can keep from a war, without giving forever the 
 weight of the Dutch to the French, and allowing the Stadt- 
 holdership to be abolished, — things which I should suppose 
 hardly possible." Already his eager spirit was panting for 
 the fray. " If we are to have a bustle, I do not want to come 
 on shore ; I begin to think I am fonder of the sea than ever." 
 Only five months married ! 
 
 The threatening aspect of affairs necessitated the " Boreas " 
 being kept in commission, — the more so because the economies 
 
 5 
 
THE LIFE OP NELSON 
 
 introduced by Mr. Pitt into the administration of the two 
 military services had reduced the available naval force below 
 that which France could at once send out. " The Boreas is 
 kept in readiness to go to sea with the squadron at Spithead," 
 wrote Nelson ; " but in my poor opinion we shall go no further 
 at present. The French have eight sail in Brest water ready 
 for sea: therefore I think we shall not court the French out 
 of port," — a singular illustration of the unreadiness of Great 
 Britain in the years immediately preceding the French Revolu- 
 tion. He looks for war, however, the following summer. As 
 not only ships, but men also, were urgently needed, the impress 
 service was hastily organized. His friend Locker was sum- 
 moned from his long retirement to superintend that work in 
 Exeter, and the " Boreas " was ordered to the Thames on the 
 same business, arriving on the 20th of August at the Nore. 
 There her duty was to board passing vessels, and take from 
 them as many of their crew as were above the number barely 
 necessary for the safety of the ship. She herself, besides act- 
 ing as receiving ship for the men thus pressed, was to be kept 
 in readiness to sail at a moment's warning. Mrs. Nelson had 
 therefore to leave her and go to London. " Here we are," 
 wrote Nelson on the 23d of September, " laying seven miles 
 from the land on the Impress service, and I am as much sep- 
 arated from my wife as if I were in the East Indies ; " and he 
 closes the letter with the words, " I am this moment getting 
 under sail after some ships." 
 
 His early biographers say that Nelson keenly felt and re- 
 sented the kind of service in which he was then engaged ; so 
 much so that, moved also by other causes of irritation, he 
 decided at one time to quit the Navy. No indication of such 
 feeling, however, appears in his letters. On the contrary, one 
 of the surest signs with him of pleasurable, or at least of in- 
 terested, excitement was now manifested in his improving 
 health. As he himself said, many years later, " To say the 
 truth, when I am actively employed I am not so bad." ^ A 
 month after reaching England, though then midsummer, he 
 
 1 The same symptom will be noted in the anxious pursuit of Villcneuve to 
 the West Indies in 1805, where he grew better, although for some months he 
 liad had in his hands the Admiralty's permission to return home on account of 
 his health. 
 
 
LACK OF APPRECIATION 6*7 
 
 Avrote : " It is not kind in one's native air to treat a poor 
 wanderer as it has me since my arrival. The rain and cold, 
 at first gave me a sore throat and its accompaniments; the 
 hot weather has given me a slow fever, not absolutely bad 
 enough to keep my bed, yet enough to hinder me from doing 
 anything;" and again, "I have scarcely been able to hold, up 
 my head." In blustering October, on the other hand, while 
 in the midst of the detested Impress work, he says : " My 
 health, thank God, was never better, and I am fit for any 
 quarter of the globe ; " although " it rains hard, and we have 
 had very bad weather of late." Whatever momentary vexa- 
 tion he may have vented in a hasty expression, it was entirely 
 inconsistent with his general tone to take amiss an employ- 
 ment whose vital importance he would have been the first to 
 admit. Lack of zeal, or haggling about the duty assigned him, 
 was entirely foreign to his character ; that the country needed 
 the men who were to be pressed was reason sufficient for one 
 of his temper. If, indeed, there had been an apparent inten- 
 tion to keep him in such inglorious occupation, and out of 
 the expected war, he might have chafed ; but his orders to 
 be constantly ready indicated the intention to send him at 
 once to the front, if hostilities began. Doubtless he was dis- 
 appointed that the application he made for a ship-of-the-line 
 was not granted ; but he knew that, being still a very young 
 captain, what he asked was a favor and its refusal not a griev- 
 ance, nor does he seem to have looked upon it otherwise. 
 
 There were, however, some annoyances, which, joined to 
 tlie lack of appreciation for his eminent services to the inter- 
 ests of the nation in tlie West Indies, must have keenly stung 
 him. Without the slightest necessity, except that laid upon 
 him by his own public spirit, he had fought and struggled, 
 and endured three years of hot water to serve the Government. 
 He might have gone easy, as did the admiral and the other 
 captains ; but instead of so doing he had destroyed the con- 
 traband trade, and re-established the working of laws upon 
 which the prosperity and security of the kingdom were 
 thought to depend. For this he had received a perfunctory, 
 formal acknowledgment, though none apparently from the 
 Admiralty, the head of his own service. But he soon found 
 that, if slow to thank, they were prompt to blame, and that 
 
68 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 Avith no light hand nor disposition to make allowances. He 
 had run his head against various regulations of the bureau- 
 cracy ; and this let him know, Avith all the amenities of offi- 
 cial censure, that if they could not recognize what he had 
 done well, they were perfectly clear-sighted as to where he 
 had gone wrong. 
 
 So far from appreciation, there seems even to have been a 
 prejudice against Nelson in high quarters, due not only to the 
 discomposure felt by the routine official, at the rude irregulari- 
 ties of the man who is more concerned to do his work than 
 nice about the formalities surrounding it, but also to misrep- 
 resentation by the powerful interests he had offended through 
 his independent course in the West Indies. After Hughes 
 had gone home, Nelson, as senior officer on the station, began 
 to examine the modes of conducting government business, and 
 especially of making purchases. Conceiving that there were 
 serious irregularities in these, he suggested to the Civil De- 
 partment of the Navy, under whose cognizance the transac- 
 tions fell, some alterations in the procedure, by which the 
 senior naval officer would have more control over the pur- 
 chases than simply to certify that so much money was wanted. 
 The Comptroller of the Navy replied that the old forms were 
 sufficient, — "a, circumstance which hurt me," wrote Nelson ; 
 while all the civil functionaries resented his interference with 
 their methods, and seem to have received the tacit support, if 
 not the direct sympathy, of the Navy Board, as the Civil De- 
 partment was then called. His disposition to look into matters, 
 however, had become known, and the long struggle over the 
 contraband trade had given him in the islands a reputation 
 for tenacity and success. It was probably in dependence upon 
 these that two merchants came to him, two months before he 
 left the station, and told him of the existence of very exten- 
 sive frauds, dating back several years, in which were impli- 
 cated both civil officials of the Navy and private parties on 
 shore. It is possible that the informants themselves had 
 shared in some of these transactions, and they certainly de- 
 manded in payment a part of the sums recovered ; but, as 
 Nelson truly said, the question was not as to their character, 
 but how to stop the continuance of embezzlements which had 
 then amounted to over two millions sterling. 
 
DISCONTENT WITH SERVICE, 1787 69 
 
 The reports made by him upon this subject reached London 
 about a month before the return of the " Boreas ; " but the war 
 scare, and the urgent call upon all departments of the Navy to 
 mobilize the available force, prevented any immediate steps 
 being taken. His letters were acknowledged, and the inten- 
 tion expressed to investigate the matter, but nothing more was 
 then done. In October, however, the Prussian troops occupied 
 Amsterdam, reinstating the Stadtholder in all his privileges, 
 and restoring to power the partisans of Great Britain ; while 
 France remained passive, her power for external action para- 
 lyzed by the dying convulsions of the monarchy. The curtain 
 had just risen upon the opening scene in the great drama of 
 the Eevolution, — the first Assembly of Notables. Warlike 
 preparations consequently ceased, and on the 30th of Novem- 
 ber, 1787, the cruise of the " Boreas " came to an end. 
 
 It was during this last month of servitude, and immediately 
 before quitting the ship, that Nelson is said to have used the 
 vehement expressions of discontent with " an ungrateful ser- 
 vice," recorded by his biographers, concluding with his resolve 
 to go at once to London and resign his commission. In the 
 absence of the faintest trace, in his letters, of dissatisfaction 
 with the duty to which the ship was assigned, it is rea- 
 sonable to attribute this exasperation to his soreness under 
 the numerous reprimands he had received, — a feeling which 
 plainly transpires in some of his replies, despite the forms of 
 official respect that he scrupulously observed. Even in much 
 later days, when his distinguished reputation might have 
 enabled him to sustain with indifference this supercilious 
 rudeness, he winced under it with over-sensitiveness. "Do 
 not, my dear lord," he wrote to Earl Spencer a year after the 
 battle of the Nile, "let the Admiralty write harshly to me 
 
 — my generous soul cannot bear it, being conscious it is 
 entirely unmerited." This freedom of censure, often felt by 
 him to be undeserved, or at least excessive, and its sharp 
 contrast with the scanty recognition of his unwearied efforts, 
 
 — of whose value he himself was by no means forgetful, 
 
 — though not unusual in the experience of officers, are quite 
 sufficient to account for the sense of neglect and unjust treat- 
 ment by which he was then outraged. This feeling was prob- 
 ably accentuated, also, by a renewal of the legal persecution 
 
70 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 which had been begun in the West Indies; for towards the 
 end of the year he received formal notice of suits being insti- 
 tuted ao-ainst him for the seizure of the American vessels, and 
 it is likely enough that some intimation of what was coming 
 reached him before leaving the "Boreas." Scanty thanks, 
 liberal blame, and the prospect of an expensive lawsuit based 
 upon his ofl&cial action, constituted, for a poor man lately 
 married, causes of disturbance which might well have upset 
 his equanimity. 
 
 Lord Howe, who was then at the head of the Admiralt}', 
 though formal and unbending in outward bearing, was a just 
 and kind man, and one fully appreciative of professional 
 worth. A mutual friend acquainted him with Nelson's irri- 
 tation, and Howe wrote a private letter asking that he would 
 call upon him as soon as he came to town. Though quick to 
 resent, Nelson was easily soothed by attention and pleased by 
 compliment, even when it rose to flattery, — which Howe's 
 was not likely to do. A short interview gave the First Lord 
 a clearer idea than he before had of the extent, value, and 
 wholly voluntary character of the services rendered by the 
 young captain in the West Indies; and he indicated the com- 
 pleteness of his satisfaction by offering to present him to the 
 King, which was accordingly done at the next levee. George 
 III. received him graciously; and the resentment of Nelson, 
 whose loyalty was of the most extreme type, melted away in 
 the sunshine of royal favor. 
 
 Thus reconciled to the service, and convinced, as in his less 
 morbid moods he often said, that gratitude and honor, though 
 long deferred, were sure to follow upon steadfast performance 
 of duty, he speedily renewed his efforts to bring to light the 
 fraiids practised in the colonies. His letters on the subject to 
 Mr. Pitt, the Prime Minister, had been turned over to the 
 Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. George Eose, and upon the 
 latter Nelson now called. Eose received him at first with 
 that courteous nonchalance which is the defensive armor of 
 the beset official, — the name of his visitor, and the business 
 with which it was connected, had for the moment slipped his 
 mind. Nelson's mastery of his subject, however, and his 
 warmth in it, soon roused the attention of his hearer, who, 
 being then pressed for time, asked to see him again the next 
 
MENTAL CHARACTERISTICS 71 
 
 day, stipulating only that the interview should be early, 
 before office hours. "It cannot be too early for me," re- 
 plied Nelson, whose habit, in Ids career as admiral, was to 
 get through his correspondence before eight o'clock, — "six 
 o'clock, if you please." 
 
 The arrangement was so made, and the consequent meeting 
 lasted from six to nine the next morning. Of its general 
 nature and results we have an authentic outline, given in 
 later years to Nelson's biographers by Rose, who became, and 
 to the last remained, his warm personal friend. The conver- 
 sation ranged, apparently, over all the chief occurrences in 
 the West Indies during the cruise of the "Boreas," including 
 both the naval frauds and the contraband trade. The breadth 
 and acuteness of Nelson's intellect have been too- much over- 
 looked, in the admiration excited by his unusually grand 
 moral endowments of resolution, dash, and fearlessness of 
 responsibility. Though scarcely what could be called an 
 educated man, he was one of close and constant observation, 
 thereby gaining a great deal of information ; and to the use 
 of this he brought a practical sagacity, which coped with the 
 civil or political questions placed before it, for action^ much 
 as it did with military questions — for, after all, good gen- 
 eralship, on its intellectual side, is simply the application, to 
 the solution of a military problem, of a mind naturally gifted 
 therefor, and stored with experience, either personal or of 
 others. As a strategist and tactician. Nelson made full proof 
 of high native endowments, of wisdom garnered through 
 fruitful study and meditation, and of clear insight into the 
 determining conditions of the various military situations with 
 which he had to deal. To Mr. Rose, the young captain of 
 barely thirty years displayed a precise knowledge of several 
 political subjects, connected with the commerce of the coun- 
 try, that would not naturally come under his notice as an 
 officer, and which therefore the mere seaman would probably 
 not have imbibed. Not only so, but his suggestions for deal- 
 ing practically with the interests at stake were so judicious, 
 that Rose, a valued associate of Pitt and intimately ac- 
 quainted with the financial measures of that brilliant admin- 
 istrator, complimented him warmly upon the justice and 
 correctness of his views, the result, as they were, of reflection 
 
72 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 based upon a mastery of the data involved. With Nelson's 
 consent, he undertook to lay them before the prime minister, 
 as the direct testimony of a singularly competent first-hand 
 observer. 
 
 It is to be noted, however, of Nelson, that this accuracy 
 of mental perception, this power of penetrating to the root 
 of a matter, disregarding unessential details and fastening 
 solely on decisive features, was largely dependent upon the 
 necessity laid upon him for action; which is j^robably equiva- 
 lent to saying that it was usually elicited by a sobering 
 sense of responsibility. In his letters and despatches may 
 be found many Avild guesses, inconsistent from week to week, 
 colored by changing moods and humors, — the mere passing 
 comments of a mind off guard, — the records of evanescent 
 impressions as numerous, fickle, and unfounded as tliose of 
 the most ordinary mortal. It is when urgency presses and 
 danger threatens, when the need for action comes, that his 
 mental energies are aroused, and he begins to speak, as it 
 were, ex cathedra. Then the unsubstantial haze rolls away, 
 and the solid features of the scene one by one appear, until, 
 amid all the unavoidable uncertainties of imperfect infor- 
 mation, it becomes plain that the man has a firm grasp upon 
 the great landmarks by which he must guide his course. 
 Like the blind, who at first saw men as trees walking, and 
 then saw everything clearly, so Eis mental illumination gradu- 
 ally reduces confusion to order, and from perplexity evolves 
 correct decision. But what shall be said of those flashes of 
 insight, as at Cape St. Vincent, elicited in a moment, as by 
 the stroke of iron on rock, where all the previous processes 
 of ordered thought and labored reasoning are condensed into 
 one vivid inspiration, and transmuted without a pause into 
 instant heroic action ? Is that we call " genius " purely a 
 mystery, of which our only account is to give it a name ? Or 
 is it true, as Napoleon said, that '' on the field of battle the 
 happiest inspiration is often but a recollection" ? 
 
 From Eose Nelson went to the Comptroller of the Navy, 
 Sir Charles Middleton, who afterwards, as Lord Barbara, sent 
 him forth to Trafalgar. Middleton had replied promptly to 
 the first report of the fraudulent transactions, giving as- 
 surance of his readiness to act, and urging that all the 
 
CONTEST WITH FRAUDS 73 
 
 iiiformatiou possible should be secured, as lie feared that the 
 allegations, were substantially true. He now showed the 
 instructions of the Navy Board, under which its colonial 
 employees acted, to Nelson, who said that, if honestly fol- 
 lowed, they must prevent the unlawful practices ; but that 
 he believed they were habitually violated, and that he him- 
 self, though senior officer on the station, had never before 
 seen the instructions. This failure to intrust supervision to 
 the one person upon whom all responsibility should ulti- 
 mately have rested, practically neutralized the otherwise 
 laudable methods prescribed by the Board. It was simply 
 another instance of the jealousy between the civil and mili- 
 tary branches of the naval organization, which, as is well 
 known, resulted in constant strained relations between the 
 Admiralty and the Naval Commissioners, until the latter 
 Board was at last abolished. 
 
 It is, fortunately, unnecessary to follow farther this dreary 
 record of old-time dishonesty. Nelson continued to interest 
 himself stremiously in the matter for two years after his 
 return to England, both by letter and interview with persons 
 in authority. His own position and influence were too in- 
 significant to effect anything, except by moving the home 
 officials, whose administration was compromised and embar- 
 rassed by the malpractices of their representatives. Though 
 up-hill work, it was far from fruitless. "His representa- 
 tions," said Mr. Rose, in a memorandum furnished to his 
 biographers, "were all attended to, and every step which he 
 recommended was adopted. He thus put the investigation 
 into a proper course ; which ended in the detection and pun- 
 ishment of some of the parties whose conduct was complained 
 of." The broad result appears to have been that the guilty 
 for the most part escaped punishment, unless, indeed, some 
 of them lost their positions, of which no certain information 
 exists ; but the corrupt combination was broken up, and 
 measures were adopted to prevent the recurrence of the same 
 iniquities. Upon Nelson himself the effect was twofold. 
 His energy and intelligence could not fail to impress the 
 powerful men with whom he was in this way brought into 
 contact. The affair increased his reputation, and made him 
 more widely known than as a simple captain in the Navy he 
 
74 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 would otherwise have been. As the various public Boards 
 whose money had been stolen realized the amovuit of the 
 thefts, and the extent of the conspiracy to rob the Govern- 
 ment, they felt their obligations to him, and expressed them 
 in formal, but warm, letters of thanks. On tlie other hand, 
 the principal culprits had command of both money and in- 
 fluence; and by means of these, as so often happens, they 
 not only impeded inquiry, but, according to Southey, who 
 wrote not very long after the events, " succeeded in raising 
 prejudices against ISTelson at the Board of Admiralty which 
 it was many years before he could subdue." Clarke and 
 M'Arthur make the same assertion. 
 
 That these prejudices did at one time exist is beyond 
 doubt, and that they should have been fostered by this 
 means is perfectly in keeping with common experience. 
 Such intrigues, liowever, work in the dark and by in- 
 direction ; it is not often easy to trace their course. The 
 independence and single-mindedness with which Nelson fol- 
 lowed his convictions, and the outspoken frankness with 
 which he expressed his views and feelings, not improbably 
 gave a handle to malicious misrepresentation. His known 
 intimacy with Prince William Henry, upon whose favor he 
 to some extent relied, was also more likely to do him harm 
 than good ; and he entertained for the royal captain pre- 
 possessions not far removed from partisanship, at a time 
 when the prince avowed himself not a friend to the present 
 minister. " Amidst that variety of business Avhich demanded 
 his attention on his return to England," say his biographers, 
 "he failed not, by every means in his power, to fulfil the 
 promise which he had made to his Royal Highness Prince 
 William of counteracting whatever had been opposed to the 
 merited reputation of his illustrious pupil, and to the friend- 
 ship they had invariably preserved for each other." It was 
 a clifficult task. Opinionated and headstrong as the King, 
 his father, the young man was an uneasy subordinate to the 
 Admiralty, and made those above him realize that he was 
 full as conscious of his personal rank as of his official posi- 
 tion as a captain in the Navy. It was, indeed, this self- 
 assertive temperament that afterwards frustrated liis natural 
 ambition to be the active head of the service. Having such 
 
OUT OF FAVOR AT ADMIRALTY 75 
 
 an ally, there is something ominous for Nelson's own pros- 
 pects to tind him writing in evident sympathy: "The great 
 folks above now see he will not be a cypher, therefore many 
 of the rising people must submit to act subordinate to him, 
 which is not so palatable; and I think a Lord of the Ad- 
 miralty is hurt to see him so able, after what he has said 
 about him. He has certainly not taken a leaf out of his 
 book, for he is steady in his command and not violent." 
 Upon this follows, " He has wrote Lord Hood what I cannot 
 but approve," — a sentence unquestionably vague, but which 
 sounds combative. Nelson had already felt it necessary to 
 caution the prince to be careful in the choice of those to 
 whom he told his mind. 
 
 In fact, at the time when the letter just quoted was Avritten, 
 the conduct of the prince had been such as necessarily, and 
 not wholly unjustly, to prejudice an officer who displayed 
 marked partisanship for him, such as certainly was indicated 
 by Nelson's expressions. He had brought his ship from New- 
 foundland to Ireland in flat disobedience of orders, issued by 
 the commander of the station, to go to Quebec. When this 
 action became known to the Admiralty by his arrival at Cork, 
 in December, 1787, it was at once reported to the King, who 
 himself directed that the prince should proceed to Plymouth 
 with his ship, should remain within the limits of the port for 
 as many months as he had been absent from his station, and 
 should then be sent back to Halifax. The Prince of Wales, 
 afterwards George IV., who was already at variance with the 
 King, took advantage of this flagrant breach of discipline to 
 flaunt his opposition before the world. In company with his 
 second brother, the Duke of York, he went down to Plymouth, 
 and paid a ceremonious visit to Prince William on board his 
 ship. The round of festivities necessitated by their presence 
 emphasized the disagreement between the sovereign and the 
 heir to the throne, and drew to it public attention. Immedi- 
 ately after this, in January, 1788, Nelson also visited the 
 prince, having been summoned by him from London. He 
 could, indeed, scarcely decline, nor was he at all the man to 
 turn his back on a friend in difficulty, but, in his fight against 
 corruption, the matter could scarcely fail to be represented by 
 his opponents under the worst light to the King, to whom 
 
70 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 corruption was less odious than insubordination. If, in con- 
 versation, Nelson uttered such expressions as he wrote to his 
 friend Locker, he had only himself to blame for the disfavor 
 which followed ; for, to a naval officer, the prince's conduct 
 should have appeared absolutely indefensible. In the course 
 of the same year the King became insane, and the famous 
 struggle about the Kegency took place. The prince had mean- 
 time returned to America, in accordance with his orders, and 
 by the time he again reached England the King had recovered. 
 He could, therefore, have refrained from any indication of his 
 own sympathies ; but instead of this he openly associated 
 himself with the party of the Prince of Wales, whose course 
 throughout, when it became known to his father, had bitterly 
 displeased the latter, and accentuated the breach between them. 
 At a banquet given by the Spanish ambassador in celebration 
 of the King's recovery, the three princes sat at a table separate 
 from the rest of the royal family. A formal reconciliation 
 took place in September, 1789; but the Duke of Clarence, as 
 he had then become, continued attached to the Prince of 
 Wales's clique. Those who know how party considerations 
 influenced naval appointments at that time, wall in these facts 
 find at least a partial explanation of the cloud which then 
 hung over Nelson. 
 
 Lord Chatham, brother of the minister to whom Prince 
 William was not a friend, became head of the Admiralty in 
 July, 1788, and so remained until after the war with France 
 began in 1793. With him was associated Lord Hood, between 
 whom and Nelson there arose Avhat the latter called "a dif- 
 ference of opinion," which led to a cessation of "familiar 
 correspondence. " The exact date at which this occurred does 
 not appear, but it was probably before May, 1790 ; for Hood 
 refused to use his influence to get Nelson a ship, in the arma- 
 ment which was then ordered on account of a difficulty with 
 Spain, whereas eighteen months before he had assured him 
 that in case of hostilities he need not fear not having a good 
 ship. This refusal was the more marked, because ''almost 
 the whole service was then called out." On the same occasion, 
 Nelson wrote, " he made a speech never to be effaced from my 
 memory, viz. : that the King was impressed with an unfavour- 
 able opinion of me." Knowing Nelson's value as an officer as 
 
UNPLEASANT CIRCUMSTANCES 77 
 
 well as Hood did, there can scarcely remain a doubt that some 
 serious indiscretion, real or imagined, must have caused this 
 alienation ; but of what it was there is no trace, unless in his 
 evident siding with the prince, who was then out of favor with 
 both the King and the administration. 
 
 The five years — from 1788 to 1792 inclusive — intervening 
 between the cruise of the "Boreas " and the outbreak of war 
 with the French Republic, were thus marked by a variety of 
 unpleasant circumstances, of which the most disagreeable, to 
 a man of Nelson's active temperament, was the apparently 
 fixed resolve of the authorities to deny him employment. He 
 was harassed, indeed, by the recurring threats of prosecution 
 for the West India seizures ; but both the Admiralty and the 
 Treasury agreed that he should be defended at the expense of 
 the Crown, — a fact which tends to show that his subsequent 
 disfavor arose from some other cause than disapproval of his 
 official action, however some incidents may have been misrep- 
 resented. On its private side, his life during this period seems 
 to have been happy, though uneventful ; but in the failure of 
 children he was deprived, both then and afterwards, of that 
 sweetest of interests, continuous yet ever new in its gradual 
 unfolding, which brings to the most monotonous existence its 
 daily tribute of novelty and incident. The fond, almost rap- 
 turous, expressions with which he greeted the daughter after- 
 wards born to him out of wedlock, show the blank in his home, 
 — none the less real because not consciously realized. 
 
 The lack of stimulus to his mind from his surroundings at 
 this time is also manifested by the fewness of his letters. But 
 thirty remain to show his occupation during the five years, and 
 seventeen of these are purely official in character. From the 
 year 1791 no record survives. His wife being with him, one 
 line of correspondence was thereby closed ; but even to his 
 brother, and to his friend Locker, he finds nothing to write. 
 For the ordinary country amusements and pursuits of the 
 English gentry he had scant liking ; and, barring the occasional 
 worry over his neglect by the Admiralty, there was little else 
 to engage his attention. The first few months after his release 
 from the "Boreas" were spentin the West of England, chiefly 
 at Bath, for the recovery of Mrs. iSTelson's health as well as 
 his own ; but toward the latter part of 1788 the young couple 
 
78 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 went to live with his father at the parsonage of Burnham 
 Thorpe, and there made their home until he was again called 
 into active service. "It is extremely interesting," say his 
 biographers, " to contemplate this great man, when thus re- 
 moved from the busy scenes in which he had borne so distin- 
 guished a part to the remote village of Burnham Thorpe;" 
 but the interest seems by their account to be limited to the 
 energy with which he dug in the garden, or, frdm sheer want 
 of something to do, reverted to the bird-nesting of his boyhood. 
 His favorite amusement, we are told, was coursing, and he once 
 shot a partridge ; but his habit of carrying his gun at full cock, 
 and firing as soon as a bird rose, without bringing the piece to 
 his shoulder, made him a dangerous companion in a shooting- 
 party. His own account is somewhat different : " Shoot I 
 cannot, therefore I have not taken out a license ; but notwith- 
 standing the neglect I have met with I am happy ;"and again, 
 to his brother, he says: "It was not my intention to have gone 
 to the coursing meeting, for, to say the truth, I have rarely 
 escaped a wet jacket and a violent cold; besides, to me, even 
 the ride to the Smee is longer than any pleasure I find in the 
 sport will compensate for." The fact is that Nelson cared for 
 none of these things, and the only deduction of real interest 
 from his letters at this time is the absolute failure of his home 
 life and affections to content his aspirations, — the emj^tiness 
 both of mind and heart, which caused his passionate eagerness 
 for external employment to fill the void. Earnestness appears 
 only when he is brooding over the slight with which he was 
 treated, and the resultant thwarting of his career. For both 
 mind and heart the future held in store for him the most en- 
 grossing emotions, but it did not therefore bring him happiness. 
 Of his frames of mind during tliis period of neglect and 
 disfavor, his biographers give a very strongly colored picture, 
 for which, it is to be presumed, they drew upon contemporary 
 witnesses that were to them still accessible. " With a morti- 
 fied and dejected spirit, he looked forward to a continuance 
 of inactivity and neglect. . . . During this interval of dis- 
 appointment and mortification, his latent ambition would at 
 times burst forth, and despise all restraint. At others, a 
 sudden melancholy seemed to overshadow his noble faculties, 
 and to affect his temper ; at those moments the remonstrances 
 
A STORMY AND ANXIOUS PERIOD 79 
 
 of his wife and venerable father alone could calm the tempest 
 of his passions." That Nelson keenly felt the cold indiffer- 
 ence he now underwent, is thoroughly in keeping with the 
 sensitiveness to censure, expressed or implied, which his cor- 
 respondence frequently betrays, while his frail organization 
 and uncertain health would naturally entail periods oP depres- 
 sion or nervous exasperation ; but the general tenor of his 
 letters, few as they at this time were, shows rather dignified 
 acceptance of a treatment he had not merited, and a steady 
 resolve not to waver in his readiness to serve his country, nor 
 to cease asking an opportunity to do so. Many years later, at 
 a time of still more sickening suspense, he wrote: ''I am in 
 truth half dead, but what man can do shall be done, — I am 
 not made to despair ; " and now, according to a not improbable 
 story, he closed an application for employment with the 
 words, " If your Lordships should be pleased to appoint me 
 to a cockle boat, I shall feel grateful." Hood, whose pupil he 
 in a sense was, and who shared his genius, said of himself, 
 when under a condition of enforced inactivity : " This proves 
 very strongly the different frames of men's minds ; some are 
 full of anxiety, impatience, and apprehension, while others, 
 under similar circumstances, are perfectly cool, tranquil, and 
 indifferent." 
 
 The latter half of the year 1792 was marked by the rapid 
 progress in France of the political distemper, which was so 
 soon to cuhuinate in the worst excesses of the Revolution. 
 The quick succession of symptoms, each more alarming than 
 the other, — the suspension of the royal power at the tumult- 
 uous bidding of a mob, the September massacres, the abolition 
 of royalty, the aggressive character of the National Convention 
 shown by the decrees of November 19 and December 15, — 
 roused the apprehensions of most thoughtful men throughout 
 Europe ; and their concern was increased by the growing 
 popular effervescence in other countries than France. The 
 British cabinet, as was natural, shifted more slowly than did 
 the irresponsible members of the community ; nor could Pitt 
 lightly surrender his strong instinctive prepossessions in 
 favor of peace, with the continuance of which was identified 
 the exercise of his own best powers. 
 
 During this stormy and anxious period, Nelson shared the 
 
80 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 feelings of his day and class. It is noteworthy, however, that, 
 in regarding the perils of the time, he was no mere panic- 
 monger, but showed the same discriminating carefulness of 
 observation that had distinguished him as captain of the 
 "Boreas," and had elicited the admiration of Mr. Eose. 
 Strenuous and even bigoted royalist as he always was, sat- 
 isfied of the excellence of the British Constitution, and con- 
 demning utterly the proceedings of the more or less seditious 
 societies then forming throughout the kingdom, he yet rec- 
 ognized the substantial grievances of the working-men, as 
 evident in the district immediately under his eye. The sym- 
 pathetic qualities wliich made him, fortune's own favorite in 
 his profession, keenly alive to the hardships, neglect, and 
 injustice undergone by the common seaman, now engaged 
 him to set forth the sad lot of the ill-paid rural peasantry. 
 In his letters to the Duke of Clarence, he on the one hand 
 strongly blames the weakness and timidity of the justices and 
 country gentlemen, in their attitude towards the abettors of 
 lawlessness^ but, on the other, he dwells upon the sufferings 
 of the poor, prepares a careful statement of their earnings and 
 unavoidable expenses, and insists upon the necessity of the 
 living wage. The field laborers, he said, " do not want 
 loyalty, many of their superiors, in many instances, might 
 have imitated their conduct to advantage ; but hunger is a 
 sharp thorn, and they are not only in want of food sufficient, 
 but of clothes and firing." 
 
 Under the threatening outlook, he considers that every 
 individual will soon " be called forth to show himself ; " and 
 for his own part, he writes on the 3d of November, he sees no 
 way so proper as asking for a ship. But, even at that late 
 moment, neither Pitt nor his associates had abandoned the 
 hope of peace, and this, as well as other applications of I>I"el- 
 son's, received only a formal acknowledgment without encour- 
 agement. Eoused, however, by the Convention's decree of 
 November 19, which extended the succor of France to all 
 people who should wish to recover their liberty, and charged 
 the generals of the republic to make good the offer with the 
 forces under their command, the ministry decided to abandon 
 their guarded attitude ; and their new resolution was con- 
 firmed by the reception, on the 28th of November, of deputa- 
 
APPOINTED TO THE "AGAMEMNON" 81 
 
 tions from British revolutionary societies at the bar of the 
 Convention, on which occasion the president of the latter 
 affected to draw a dividing line between the British govern- 
 ment and the British nation. On the 1st of December the 
 militia was called out by proclamation, and Parliament sum- 
 moned to meet on the 15th of the month. On the latter day 
 the Convention put forth another decree, announcing in the 
 most explicit terms its purpose to overthrow all existing gov- 
 ernments in countries where the Republican armies could 
 penetrate. Pitt now changed his front with an instantaneous- 
 ness and absoluteness which gave the highest proof of his 
 capacity as a leader of men. It was not so much that Avar 
 was then determined, as that the purpose was formed, once 
 for all, to accept the challenge contained in the French decree, 
 unless France would discontinue her avowed course of aggres- 
 sion. Orders were immediately given to increase largely the 
 number of ships of war in commission. 
 
 When danger looms close at hand, the best men, if known, 
 are not left in the cold shade of official disfavor. " Post 
 nubila Phoebus," was the expression of Nelson, astonished for 
 a rarity into Latin by the suddenness with which the sun now 
 burst uj)on him through the clouds. '* The Admiralty so 
 smile upon me, that really I am as much surprised as when 
 they frowned." On the 6th of January, 1793, the First Lord, 
 with many apologies for previous neglect, promised to give 
 him a seventy-four-gun ship as soon as it was in his power to 
 do so, and that meanwhile, if he chose to take a sixty-four, he 
 could have one as soon as she was ready. On the 30th he was 
 appointed to the "Agamemnon,'' of the latter rate. Within 
 the preceding fortnight Louis XVI. had been beheaded, and 
 the French ambassador ordered to leave England. On Feb- 
 ruary 1, 1793, two days after Nelson's orders were issued, the 
 Republic declared war against Great Britain and Holland. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 Kelson's Departure from England in the "Agamemnon." — Ser- 
 vices IN THE Mediterranean until the Recovery of Toulon by 
 THE French. — Lord Hood in Command. 
 
 Eebruaey-Decembek, 1793. Age, 34. 
 
 "VTELSON'S j)age in history covers a little more than 
 AAI twelve years, from February, 1793, to October, 1805. 
 Its opening coincides with the moment when the wild passions 
 of the French Revolution, still at fiercest heat, and which had 
 hitherto raged like flame uncontrolled, operative only for 
 destruction, were being rapidly mastered, guided, and regu- 
 lated for efficient work, by the terrors of the Revolutionary 
 Tribunal and the Committee of Public Safety. In the object 
 to which these tremendous forces were now about to be 
 applied lay the threat to the peace of Europe, which aroused 
 Great Britain to action, and sent into the field her yet un- 
 known champion from the Korfolk parsonage. The represen- 
 tatives of the French jjeople had imparted to the original 
 movement of their nation, — which aimed only at internal 
 reforms, however radical, — a new direction, of avowed pur- 
 poseful aggression upon all political institutions exterior to, 
 and differing from, their own. This became the one charac- 
 teristic common to the successive forms of government, which 
 culminated in the pure military despotism of Napoleon. 
 
 To beat back that spirit of aggression was the mission of 
 Nelson. Therein is found the true significance of his career, 
 which mounts higher and higher in strenuous effort and 
 gigantic achievement, as the blast of the Revolution swells 
 fiercer and stronger under the mighty impulse of the great 
 Corsican. At each of the momentous crises, so far removed 
 in time and place, — at the Nile, at Copenhagen,- at Trafalgar, 
 — as the unfolding drama of the age reveals to the onlooker 
 the schemes of the arch-planner about to touch success, ove^^ 
 
SIGNIFICANCE OF NELSON'S CAREEK 83 
 
 against Napoleon rises ever Kelson ; and as the latter in the 
 hour of victory drops upon the stage where he has played so 
 chief a part, his task is seen to be accomplished, his triumph 
 secured. In the very act of dying he has dealt the foe a blow 
 from which recovery is impossible. Moscow and Waterloo 
 are the inevitable consequences of Trafalgar ; as the glories of 
 that day were but the lit and assured ending of the illus- 
 trious course which was begun upon the quarter-deck of the 
 "•■ Agamemnon." 
 
 With the exception of the " Victory," under whose flag he 
 fell after two years of arduous, heartbreaking uncertainties, 
 no ship has such intimate association with the career and 
 name of Nelson as has the "Agamemnon." And this is but 
 natural, for to her he was the captain, solely, simply, and 
 entirely; identified with her alone, glorying in her excellences 
 and in her achievements, one in purpose and in spirit with 
 her ofiicers and seamen ; sharing their hopes, their dangers, 
 and their triumphs ; quickening them with his own ardor, 
 moulding them into his own image, until vessel and crew, as 
 one living organism, reflected in act the heroic and unyielding 
 energy that inspired his feeble frame. Although, for a brief 
 and teeming period, he while in command of her controlled 
 also a number of smaller vessels on detached service, it was 
 not until after he had removed to another ship that he became 
 the squadron-commander, whose relations to the vessel on 
 which he himself dwelt were no longer immediate, nor 
 differed, save in his bodily presence, from those he bore to 
 others of the same division. A personality such as Nelson's 
 makes itself indeed felt throughout its entire sphere of action, 
 be that large or small ; but, withal, diffusion contends in vain 
 with the inevitable law that forever couples it with slackening 
 power, nor was it possible even for him to lavish on the 
 various units of a fleet, and on the diverse conflicting claims 
 of a great theatre of war, the same degree of interest and 
 influence that he concentrated upon the "Agamemnon," and 
 upon the brilliant though contracted services through which 
 he carried her. Bonds such as these are not lightly broken, 
 and to the " Agamemnon " Nelson clave for three long years 
 and more, persistently refusing larger ships, until the ex- 
 hausted hulk could no longer respond to the demands of her 
 
84 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 masters, and separation became inevitable. When he quitted 
 her, at the moment of her departure for England, it was simply 
 a question whether he would abandon the Mediterranean, and 
 the prospect of a great future there opening before him, or 
 sever a few weeks earlier a companionship which must in any 
 event end upon her arrival home. 
 
 There is yet another point of view from which his command 
 of the " Agamemnon " is seen to hold a peculiar relation to 
 Nelson's story. This was the period in which expectation 
 passed into fulfilment, when development, long arrested by 
 unpropitious circumstances, resumed its outward progress 
 under the benign influence of a favoring environment, and the 
 bud, whose rare promise had long been noted by a few dis- 
 cerning eyes, unfolded into the brilliant flower, destined in the 
 magnificence of its maturity to draw the attention of a world. 
 To the fulness of his glorious course these three years were 
 what the days of early manhood are to ripened age ; and they 
 are marked by the same elasticity, hopefulness, and sanguine 
 looking to the future that characterize youth, before illusions 
 vanish and even success is found to disappoint. Happiness 
 was his then, as at no other time before or after ; for the sur- 
 rounding conditions of enterprise, of difiiculties to be over- 
 come, and dangers to be met, were in complete correspondence 
 with those native powers that had so long struggled painfully 
 for room to exert themselves. His health revived, and his 
 very being seemed to expand in this congenial atmosphere, 
 which to him was as life from the dead. As with untiring 
 steps he sped onward and upward, — counting naught done 
 while aught remained to do, forgetting what was behind as he 
 pressed on to what was before, — the ardor of pursuit, the 
 delight of achievement, the joy of the giant running his course, 
 sustained in him that glow of animation, that gladness in the 
 mere fact of existence, physical or moral, in which, if any- 
 where, this earth's content is found. Lack of recognition, 
 even, wrung from him only the undaunted words : " Never 
 mind ! some day I will have a gazette of my own." Not till 
 his dreams were realized, till aspiration had issued in the 
 completest and most brilliant triumph ever wrought upon the 
 seas, and he had for his gazette the loud homage of every 
 mouth in Europe, — not till six months after the battle of the 
 
COMMAND OF THE "AGAMEMNON" 85 
 
 Nile, — did Nelson write : " There is no true happiness in this 
 life, and in my present state I could quit it with a smile. My 
 only wish is to sink with honour into the grave." 
 
 The preparation of the Mediterranean fleet, to which the 
 "Agamemnon" was assigned, was singularly protracted, and 
 in the face of a well-ordered enemy the delay must have led 
 to disastrous results. Nelson himself joined his ship at 
 Chatham on the 7th of February, a week after his orders were 
 issued ; but not until the 16th of March did she leave the 
 dockyard, and then only for Sheerness, where she remained 
 four weeks longer. By that time it seems probable, from 
 remarks in his letters, that the material equipment of the 
 vessel was complete ; but until the 14th of April she remained 
 over a hundred men short of her complement. " Yet, I think," 
 wrote Nelson, " that we shall be far from ill-manned, even 
 if the rest be not so good as they ought to be." Mobilization 
 in those days had not been perfected into a science, even in 
 theory, and the difficulty of raising crews on the outbreak of 
 war was experienced by all nations, but by none more than by 
 Great Britain. Her wants were greatest, and for supply de- 
 pended upon a merchant service scattered in all quarters of 
 the globe. " Men are very hard to be got," Nelson said to his 
 brother, " and without a press I have no idea that our fleet 
 can be manned." It does not appear that this crude and 
 violent, yet unavoidable, method was employed for the " Aga- 
 memnon," except so far as her crew was completed from the 
 guard-ship. Dependence was placed upon the ordinary wiles 
 of the recruiting-sergeant, and upon Nelson's own popularity 
 in the adjacent counties of Suffolk and Norfolk, from which 
 the bulk of his ship's company was actually drawn. " I have 
 sent out a lieutenant and four midshipmen," he writes to 
 Locker, "to get men at every seaport in Norfolk, and to 
 forward them to Lynn and Yarmouth ; my friends in York- 
 shire and the North tell me they will send what men they can 
 lay hands on ; " but at the saine time he hopes that Locker, 
 then Commander-in-chief at the Nore, will not turn away any 
 who from other districts may present themselves for the 
 "Agamemnon." Coming mainly from the same neighborhood 
 gave to the crew a certain homogeneousness of character, 
 affording ground for appeal to local pride, a most powerful 
 
THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 incentive in moments of difficulty and emulation; and this 
 feeling was enhanced by the thought that their captain too 
 was a Norfolk man. To one possessing the sympathetic 
 qualities of Nelson, who so readily shared the emotions and 
 gained the affections of his associates, it was easy to bind into 
 a living whole the units animated by this common sentiment. 
 
 His step-son, Josiah Nisbet, at this time about thirteen 
 years old, now entered the service as a midshipman, and 
 accompanied him on board the "Agamemnon." The oncoming 
 of a great war naturally roused to a yet higher pitch the im- 
 pulse towards the sea, which in all generations has stirred the 
 blood of English boys. Of these, Nelson, using his captain's 
 privilege, received a number as midshipmen upon his quarter- 
 deck, among them several from the sons of neighbors and 
 friends, and therefore, like the crew, Norfolk lads. It is told 
 that to one, whose father he knew to be a strong Whig, of the 
 party which in the past few years had sympathized with the 
 general current of the French Revolution, he gave the fol- 
 lowing pithy counsels for his guidance in professional life : 
 "First, you must always implicitly obey orders, without 
 attempting to form any opinion of your own respecting their 
 propriety; secondly, you must consider every man as your 
 enemy who speaks ill of your king ; and thirdly, you must hate 
 a Frenchman as you do the devil." On the last two items 
 Nelson's practice was in full accord with his precept ; but to 
 the first, his statement of which, sound enough in the general, 
 is open to criticism as being too absolute, he was certainly not 
 obedient. Not to form an opinion is pushing the principle of 
 subordination to an indefensible extreme, even for a junior 
 officer, though the caution not to express it is wise, as well as 
 becoming to the modesty of youth. Lord Howe's advice to 
 Codrington, to watch carefully all that passed and to form his 
 own conclusions, but to keep them to himself, was in every 
 respect more reasonable and profitable. But in fact this dictum 
 of Nelson's was simply another instance of hating the French 
 as he did the devil. The French were pushing independence 
 and private judgment to one extreme, and he instinctively 
 adopted the other. 
 
 It was not till near the end of April that the " Agamem- 
 non " finally left the Thames, anchoring at Spithead on the 
 
COMMAND OF THE "AGAMEMNON" 87 
 
 28th of that month. Still the fleet which Lord Hood was to 
 command was not ready. While awaiting her consorts, the 
 ship made a short cruise in the Channel, and a few days later 
 sailed as one of a division of five ships-of-the-line under 
 Admiral Hothani, to occupy a station fifty to a hundred 
 miles west of the Channel Islands. Nelson's disposition not 
 to form any opinion of his own respecting the propriety of 
 orders was thus evidenced : " What we have been sent out 
 for is best known to the great folks in London : to us, it 
 appears, only to hum the nation and make tools of us, for 
 where we have been stationed no enemy was likely to be met 
 with, or where we could protect our own trade." There can 
 be no doubt that not only was the practical management of 
 the Navy at this time exceedingly bad, but that no sound 
 ideas even prevailed upon the subject. Hotham's squadron 
 gained from neutral vessels two important pieces of informa- 
 tion, — that Nantes, Bordeaux, and L'Orient were filled with 
 English vessels, prizes to French cruisers ; and that the 
 enemy kept eight sail-of-the-line, Avith frigates in proportion, 
 constantly moving in detachments about the Bay of Biscay. 
 Under the dispositions adopted by the British Admiralty, 
 these hostile divisions gave, to the commerce destroying of 
 the smaller depredators, a support that sufficiently accounts 
 for the notorious sufferings of British trade during the open- 
 ing years of the war. Nelson had no mastery of the termi- 
 nology of warfare, — he never talked about strategy and little 
 about tactics, — but, though without those valuable aids to 
 precision of thought, he had pondered, studied, and reasoned, 
 and he had, besides, what is given to few, — real genius 
 and insight. Accordingly he at once pierced to the root of 
 the trouble, — the enemy's squadrons, rather than the petty 
 cruisers dependent upon them, to which the damage was com- 
 monly attributed. " They are always at sea, and England 
 not willing to send a squadron to interrupt them." But, 
 while instancing this intuitive perception of a man gifted 
 with rare penetration, it is necessary to guard against rash 
 conclusions that might be drawn from it, and to remark that 
 it by no means follows that education is unnecessary to the 
 common run of men, because a genius is in advance of his 
 times. It is well also to note that even in him this flash of 
 
88 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 insight, though unerring in its indications, lacked the defi- 
 niteness of conviction which results from ordered thought. 
 However accurate, it is but a glimmer, — not yet a fixed 
 light. 
 
 Hotham's division joined the main body under Lord Hood, 
 off the Scilly Islands, on the 23d of May, the total force then 
 consisting of eleven sail-of-the-line, with the usual smaller 
 vessels. It remained cruising in that neighborhood until the 
 6th of June, keeping the approaches of the Channel open for 
 a homeward-bound convoy of merchantmen, which passed on 
 that day. The fleet then bore up for the Straits, and on the 
 14th six ships, the " Agamemnon " among them, parted com- 
 pany for. Cadiz, there to till up with water, in order to avoid 
 the delays which would arise if the scanty resources of Gib- 
 raltar had to supply all the vessels. On the 23d this division 
 left Cadiz, reaching Gibraltar the same evening ; and on the 
 27th Hood, having now with him fifteen of the line, sailed 
 for Toulon. 
 
 Nelson's mind was already busy with the prospects of the 
 campaign, and the various naval factors that went to make 
 up the military situation. " Time must discover what we are 
 going after," he writes to his brother; while to Locker he 
 propounds the problem which always has perplexed the 
 British mind, and still does, — how to make the French 
 fight, if they are unwilling. So long as that question re- 
 mains unsolved, the British government has to bear the 
 uncertainties, exposure, and expense of a difiicult and pro- 
 tracted defensive. "We have done nothing," he says, "and 
 the same prospect appears before us : the French cannot 
 come out, and we have no means of getting at them in Tou- 
 lon." In "cannot come out," he alludes to the presence of 
 a Spanish fleet of twenty-four ships-of-the-line. This, in 
 conjunction with Hood's force, would far exceed the French 
 in Toulon, which the highest estimate then placed at 
 twenty-one of the line. He had, however, already measured 
 the capabilities of the Spanish Navy. They have very fine 
 ships, he admits, but they are shockingly manned, — so much 
 so that if only the barges' crews of the six British vessels 
 that entered Cadiz, numbering at the most seventy-five to a 
 hundred men, but all picked, could have got on board one of 
 
COMMAND OF THE "AGAMEMNON" 89 
 
 their first-rates, he was certain they could have captured her, 
 although her ship's company numbered nearly a thousand. 
 " If those we are to meet in the Mediterranean are no better 
 manned," he continues, " much service cannot be expected of 
 them." The prediction proved true, for no sooner did Hood 
 find the Spanish admiral than the latter informed him he 
 must go to Cartagena, having nineteen hundred sick in his 
 fleet. The officer who brought this message said it was no 
 wonder they were sickly, for they had been sixty days at sea. 
 This excited Nelson's derision — not unjustly. "From the 
 circumstance of having been longer than that time at sea, do 
 we attribute our getting healthy. It has stamped with me 
 the extent of their nautical abilities : long may they remain 
 in their present state." The last sentence reveals his intui- 
 tive appreciation of the fact that the Spain of that day could 
 in no true sense be the ally of Great Britain ; for, at the 
 moment he penned the wish, the impotence or defection of 
 their allies would leave the British fleet actually inferior to 
 the enemy in those waters. He never forgot these impres- 
 sions, nor the bungling efforts of the Spaniards to form a 
 line of battle. Up to the end of his life the prospect of a 
 Spanish war involved no military anxieties, but only the 
 prospect of more prize money. 
 
 Among the various rumors of that troubled time, there 
 came one that the French were fitting their ships with forges 
 to bring their shot to a red heat, and so set fire to the 
 enemy's vessel in which they might lodge. Nelson was 
 promptly ready with a counter and quite adequate tactical 
 move. " This, if true," he wrote, " I humbly conceive would 
 have been as well kept secret ; but as it is known, we must 
 take care to get so close that their red shots may go through 
 both sides, when it will not matter whether they are hot or 
 cold." This sentence is among the most characteristic oc- 
 curring at this period in Nelson's correspondence ; indicative 
 of the continuous mental activity which, throughout his 
 career, sought to anticipate difficulties, and to devise means 
 of meeting them. 
 
 On the 14th of July Nelson notes that the fleet had re- 
 ceived orders to consider Marseilles and Toulon as invested, 
 and to take all vessels of whatever nation bound into those 
 
90 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 ports. He at once recognized the importance of this step, 
 and the accurate judgment that dictated it. The British could 
 not, as he said, get at the enemy in his fortified harbor; but 
 they might by this means exercise the pressure that would 
 force him to come out. Undoubtedly, whether on a large or 
 on a small scale, whether it concern the whole plan of a war 
 or of a campaign, or merely the question of a single military 
 position, the best way to compel an unwilling foe to action, 
 and to spoil his waiting game which is so onerous to the 
 would-be assailant, is to attack him elsewhere, to cut short his 
 resources, and make his position untenable by exhaustion. 
 " This has pleased us," Nelson wrote ; " if we make these red- 
 hot gentlemen hungry, they may be induced to come out." 
 
 The investment by sea of these two harbors, but especially 
 of Toulon, as being an im^^ortant dockyard, was accordingly 
 the opening move made by the British admiral. On the 16th 
 of July he approached the 'latter port, and from that time 
 until August 25 a close blockade was maintained, with the 
 exception of a very few days, during which Hood took the 
 fleet off Nice, and thence to Genoa, to remonstrate with that 
 republic upon its supplying the south of France with grain, 
 and bringing back French property under neutral papers. 
 " Our being here is a farce if this trade is allowed," said 
 Nelson, and rightly ; for so far as appearances then went, the 
 only influence the British squadrons could exert was by cur- 
 tailing the supplies of southern France. That district raised 
 only grain enough for three months' consumption ; for the 
 remainder of the year's food it depended almost wholly upon 
 Sicily and Barbary, its communications with the interior being 
 so bad that the more abundant fields of distant French prov- 
 inces could not send their surplus. 
 
 In the chaotic state in which France was then plunged, the 
 utmost uncertainty prevailed as to the course events might 
 take, and rumors of all descriptions were current, the wildest 
 scarcely exceeding in improbability the fantastic horrors that 
 actually prevailed throughout the land during these opening 
 days of the Reign of Terror. The expectation that found 
 most favor in the fleet was that Provence would separate 
 from the rest of France, and proclaim itself an independent 
 republic under the protection of Great Britain ; but few looked 
 
 I 
 
COMMAND OF THE "AGAMEMNON" 91 
 
 for the amazing result which shortly followed, in the delivery 
 of Toulon by its citizens into the hands of Lord Hood. This 
 Nelson attributed purely to the suffering caused by the strict- 
 ness of the blockade. "At Marseilles and Toulon," wrote he 
 on the 20th of August, " they are almost starving, yet noth- 
 ing brings them to their senses. Although the Convention 
 has denounced them as traitors, yet even these people will 
 not declare for anything but Liberty and Equality." Three 
 days later. Commissioners from both cities went on board 
 Hood's flagship to treat for peace, upon the basis of re-estab- 
 lishing the monarchy, and recognizing as king the son of Louis 
 XVI. The admiral accepted the proposal, on condition that 
 the port and arsenal of Toulon should be delivered to him for 
 safe keeping, until the restoration of the young prince was 
 effected. On the 27th of August the city ran up the white 
 flag of the Bourbons, and the British fleet, together with the 
 Spanish, which at this moment arrived on the scene, anchored 
 in the outer port. The allied troops took possession of the 
 forts commanding the harbor, while the dockyards and thirty 
 ships-of-the-line were delivered to the navies. 
 
 "The perseverance of our fleet has been great," wrote 
 Nelson, " and to that only can be attributed our unexampled 
 success. Not even a boat could get into Marseilles or Toulon, 
 or on the coast, with provisions ; and the old saying, ' that 
 hunger will tame a lion,' was never more strongly exem- 
 plified." In this he deceived himself, however natural the 
 illusion. The opposition of Toulon to the Paris Government 
 was part of a general movement of revolt, which spread 
 throughout the provinces in May and June, 1793, upon the 
 violent overthrow of the Girondists in the National Conven- 
 tion. The latter then proclaimed several cities outlawed, 
 Toulon among them ; and the bloody severities it exercised 
 were the chief determining cause of the sudden treason, the 
 offspring of fear more than of hunger, — though the latter 
 doubtless contributed, — which precipitated the great southern 
 arsenal into the arms of the Republic's most dangerous foe. 
 Marseilles fell before the Conventional troops, and the result- 
 ant panic in the sister city occasioned the hasty step, which 
 in less troubled moments would have been regarded with just 
 horror. But in truth Nelson, despite his acute military per- 
 
92 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 ceptions, bad not vet developed that keen political sagacity, 
 the fruit of riper judgment grounded on wider information, 
 which he afterwards showed. His ambition was yet limited 
 to the sphere of the " Agamemnon," his horizon bounded by 
 the petty round of the day's events. He rose, as yet, to no 
 apprehension of the mighty crisis hanging over Europe, to no 
 appreciation of the profound meanings of the opening strife. 
 " I hardly think the War can last," he writes to his wife, "for 
 what are we at war about ?" and again, " I think we shall be 
 in England in the winter or spring." Even some months 
 later, in December, before Toulon had reverted to the French, 
 he is completely blind to the importance of the Mediterranean 
 in the great struggle, and expresses a wish to exchange to the 
 AYest Indies, " for I think our Sea War is over in these seas." 
 It is probable, indeed, that in his zeal, thoroughness, and 
 fidelity to the least of the duties then falling to him, is to be 
 seen a surer indication of his great future than in any wider 
 speculations about matters as yet too high for his position. 
 The recent coolness between him and Lord Hood had been 
 rapidly disappearing under the admiral's reviving apprecia- 
 tion and his own aptitude to conciliation. " Lord Hood is 
 very civil," he writes on more than one occasion, "I think we 
 may be good friends again ; " and the offer of a seventy-four- 
 gun ship in place of his smaller vessel was further proof of 
 his superior's confidence. ISTelson refused the proposal. ''I 
 cannot give up my ofiicers," he said, in the spirit that so en- 
 deared him to his followers ; but the compliment was felt, 
 and was enhanced by the admiral's approval of his motives. 
 The prospective occupation of Toulon gave occasion for a yet 
 more flattering evidence of the esteem in which he was held. 
 As soon as the agreement with the city was completed, but 
 the day before taking possession. Hood despatched him in 
 haste to Oneglia, a small port on the Riviera of Genoa, and 
 thence to JNaples, to seek from the latter court and that of 
 Turin ^ a reinforcement of ten thousand troops to hold the 
 new acquisition. The " Agamemnon " being a fast sailer 
 undoubtedly contributed much to this selection ; but the char- 
 acter of the commanding ofiicer could not but be considered on 
 
 1 Turin was capital of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which embraced the island 
 of that name and the Province of Piedmont, 
 
 I 
 
COMMAND OF THE "AGAMEMNON" 93 
 
 SO important, and in some ways delicate, a mission. " I should 
 have liked to have stayed one day longer with the fleet, when 
 they entered the harbour," he wrote to Mrs. Nelson, "but 
 service could not be neglected for any private gratification," 
 — a sentiment she had to hear pretty often, as betrothed and 
 as wife, but which was no platitude on the lips of one who 
 gave it constant demonstration in his acts. " Duty is the 
 great business of a sea officer," he told his intended bride in 
 early manhood, to comfort her and himself under a prolonged 
 separation. " Thank God ! I have done my duty," was the 
 spoken thought that most solaced his death hour, as his heart 
 yearned towards those at home whom he should see no more. 
 
 About this time he must have felt some touch of sympathy 
 for the effeminate Spaniards, who were made ill by a sixty 
 days' cruise. "All we get here," he writes, "is honour and 
 salt beef. My poor fellows have not had a morsel of fresh 
 meat or vegetables for near nineteen weeks ; and in that time 
 I have only had my foot twice on shore at Cadiz. We are 
 absolutely getting sick from fatigue." "I am here [Naples] 
 with news of our most glorious and great success, but, alas! 
 the fatigue of getting it has been so great that the fleet gen- 
 erally, and I am sorry to say, my ship most so, are knocked 
 up. Day after day, week after week, month after month, we 
 have not been two gun shots from Toulon." The evident 
 looseness of this statement, for the ship had only been a little 
 over a month off Toulon, shows the impression the service 
 had made upon his mind, for he was not prone to such 
 exaggerations. "It is hardly possible," he says again, "to 
 conceive the state of my ship ; I have little less than one 
 hundred sick." This condition of things is an eloquent testi- 
 mony to the hardships endured ; for Nelson was singularly 
 successfiil, both before and after these days, in maintaining 
 the health of a ship's company. His biographers say that 
 during the term of three years that he commanded the 
 " Boreas " in the West Indies, not a single officer or man 
 died out of her whole complement, — an achievement almost 
 incredible in that sickly climate ; ^ and he himself records 
 
 1 This statement, which apparently depends upon a memoir supplied many 
 years later by the first lieutenant of the "Boreas," is not strictly accurate, for 
 Nelson himself, i)i a letter written shortly after her arrival in the "West Indies, 
 
94 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 tliat in his two naonths' chase of Villeneuve, in 1805, no death 
 from sickness occurred among the seven or eight thousand 
 persons in the fleet. He attributed these remarkable results 
 to his attention, not merely to the physical surroundings of 
 the crews, but also to the constant mental stimulus and 
 interest, which he aroused bj^ providing the seamen with oc- 
 cupation, frequent amusements, and change of scene, thus 
 keeping the various faculties in continual play, and avoiding 
 the monotony which most saps health, through its deadening 
 influence on the mind and spirits. 
 
 The "Agamemnon" reached Naples on the 12th of Septem- 
 ber, and remained there four days. Nelson pressed the mat- 
 ter of reinforcements with such diligence, and was so heartily 
 sustained by the British minister, Sir William Hamilton, that 
 he obtained the promise of six thousand troops to sail at once 
 under the convoy of the "Agamemnon." "I have acted for 
 Lord Hood," he wrote, "with a zeal which no one could 
 exceed;" and a few weeks later he says: "The Lord is very 
 much pleased with my conduct about the troops at Naples, 
 which I undertook without any authority whatever from him ; 
 and they arrived at Toulon before his requisition reached 
 Naples." It appears, therefore, that his orders were rather 
 those of a despatch-bearer than of a negotiator; but that he, 
 with the quick initiative he always displayed, took upon him- 
 self diplomatic action, to further the known wishes of his 
 superior and the common cause of England and Naples. It 
 was upon this occasion that Nelson first met Lady Hamilton, 
 who exercised so marked an influence over his later life ; but, 
 though she was still in the prime of her singular loveliness, 
 being yet under thirty, not a ripple stirred the surface of his 
 soul, afterward so powerfully perturbed by this fascinating 
 woman. "Lady Hamilton," he writes to his wife, "has been 
 wonderfully kind and good to Josiah [his step-son]. She is a 
 young woman of amiable manners, and who does honour to 
 the station to which she is raised." His mind was then too 
 full of what was to be done ; not as after the Nile, when, un- 
 strung by reaction from the exhausting emotions of the past 
 
 mentions that sevei-al of her sliip's coni]iany had been caiTied off by fever 
 (Nicolas, voh i. p. Ill); but it can doubtless be accepted as evidence of an 
 unusually healthy condition. 
 
MISSION TO NAPLES, 1193 95 
 
 months, it was for the moment empty of aspiration and cloyed 
 with flattery only. 
 
 The prospect of sailing with the convoy of troops, as Avell 
 as of a few days' repose for the wearied ship's company, was 
 cut short by the news that a French ship of war, with some 
 merchant vessels in convoy, had anchored on the Sardinian 
 coast. Although there were at Naples several Neapolitan 
 naval vess'els, and one Spaniard, none of them moved ; and as 
 the Prime Minister sent the information to Nelson, he felt 
 bound to go, though but four days in port. "Unfit as my 
 ship was, 1 had nothing left for the honour of our country but 
 to sail, which I did in two hours afterwards. It was necessary 
 to show them what an English man-of-war would do." The 
 expected enemy was not found, and, after stretching along the 
 coast in a vain search, the "Agamemnon" put into Leghorn 
 on the 25th of September, nine days after leaving Naples, — 
 " absolutely to save my poor fellows," wrote her captain to 
 his brother. But even so, he purposed staying at his new 
 anchorage but three days, " for I cannot bear the thought of 
 being absent from the scene of action " at Toulon. In the 
 same, letter he mentions that since the 23d of April — five 
 months — the ship had been at anchor only twenty days. 
 
 The unwavering resolution and prompt decision of his char- 
 acter thus crop out at every step. In Leghorn he found a 
 large French frigate, which had been on the point of sailing 
 when his ship came in sight. " I am obliged to keep close 
 watch to take care he does not give me the slip, which he is 
 inclined to do. I shall pursue him, and leave the two Courts 
 [Great Britain and Tuscany] to settle the propriety of the 
 measure, which I think will not be strictly regular. Have 
 been up all night watching him — ready to cut the moment 
 he did." The enemy, however, made no movement, and 
 Nelson was not prepared to violate flagrantly the neutrality 
 of the port. On the 30th of September he sailed, and on the 
 5th of October rejoined Lord Hood off Toulon, where four 
 thousand of the Neapolitan troops, for which he had nego- 
 tiated, had already arrived. 
 
 The high favor in which the admiral had held him ten 
 years before in the West Indies, though slightly overcast by 
 the coolness which arose during the intervening peace, had 
 
96 THE LIFE OF NELSOIif 
 
 been rapidly regained in the course of the present campaign ; 
 and the customary report of his proceedings during the six 
 weeks' absence could not but confirm Hood in the assurance 
 that he had now to deal with a very exceptional character, 
 especially fitted for separate and responsible service. Ac- 
 cordingly, from this time forward, such is the distinguishing 
 feature of Nelson's career as a subordinate. He _is selected 
 from among many competitors, frequently his seniors, for the 
 performance of duty outside the reach of the commander-in- 
 chief, but requiring the attention of one upon whose activity, 
 intelligence, and readiness, the fullest dependence could be 
 Xjlaced. Up -to the battle of the Nile, — in which, it must 
 always be remembered, he commanded a squadron detached 
 from the main fleet, and was assigned to it in deliberate pref- 
 erence to two older flag-officers, — Nelson's life presents a 
 series of detached commands, independent as regarded the 
 local scene of operations, and his method of attaining the 
 prescribed end with the force allotted to him, but dependent, 
 technically, upon the distant commanders-in-chief, each of 
 whom in succession, with one accord, recognized his singular 
 fltness. The pithy but characteristic expression said to have 
 been used by Earl St. Vincent, when asked for instructions 
 about the Copenhagen expedition, — " D — n it, Nelson, send 
 them to the devil your own way," — sums up accurately 
 enough the confldence shown him by his superiors. He could 
 not indeed lift them all to the height of his own conceptions, 
 fearlessness, and enterprise ; but when they had made up their 
 minds to any particular course, they were, each and all, per- 
 fectly willing to intrust the execution to him. Even at Co- 
 penhagen he was but second in command, though conspicuously 
 first in achievement. It was not till the opening of the 
 second war of the French Revolution, in May, 1803, that he 
 himself had supreme charge of a station, — his old familiar 
 Mediterranean. 
 
 Being held in such esteem, it was but a short time before 
 Nelson was again sent off from Toulon, to which he did not 
 return during the British occupation. He was now ordered to 
 report to Commodore Linzee, then lying with a detachment of 
 three ships-of-the-line in the harbor of Cagliari, at the south 
 end of Sardinia. On her passage the " Agamemnon " met and 
 
MISSION TO TUNIS, 1793 97 
 
 engaged a French squadron, of four large frigates and a brig. 
 Though without decisive results, Nelson was satisfied with 
 his own conduct in this affair, as was also Lord Hood when it 
 came to his knowledge ; for, one of the frigates being badly 
 crippled, the whole force, which was on its way to Nice, was 
 compelled to take refuge in Corsica, where it was far from 
 secure. Two days later, on the 24th of October, Cagliari was 
 reached, and the "Agamemnon" accompanied the division to 
 Tunis, arriving there on the 1st of November. 
 
 Linzee's mission was to try and detach the Bey from the 
 French interest, and it was hoped he could be induced to 
 allow the seizure of a number of French vessels which had 
 entered the port, under the convoy of a ship-of-the-line and 
 four frigates. When the British entered, the frigates had 
 disappeared, being in fact the same that Nelson had fought 
 ten days before. In accordance with his instructions, Linzee 
 strove to persuade the Bey that the Eepublican government, 
 because of its revolutionary and bloodthirsty character, should 
 receive no recognition or support from more regular states, 
 not even the protection usually extended by a neutral port, 
 and that in consequence he should be permitted to seize for 
 Great Britain the vessels in Tunis. The Turk may possibly 
 have overlooked the fallacy in this argument, which assumed 
 that the protection extended by neutral governments was 
 rather for the benefit of the belligerent than for the quiet 
 and safety of its own waters ; but he was perfectly clear-sighted 
 as to his personal advantage in the situation, for the French 
 owners, in despair of getting to France, Avere selling their 
 cargoes to him at one third their value. To the argument that 
 the French had beheaded their king, he drily replied that the 
 English had once done the same; and he decisively refused to 
 allow the ships to be molested. Nelson was disgusted that 
 his consent should have been awaited. '' The English seldom 
 get much by negotiation except the being laughed at, which 
 we have been ; and I don't like it. Had we taken, which in 
 my opinion we ought to have done, the men-of-war and con- 
 voy, worth at least £300,000, how much better we could have 
 negotiated : — given the Bey £50,000, he would have been 
 glad to have put up with the insult offered to his dignity ; " 
 and he jjlainly intimates his dissatisfaction with Linzee. This 
 
 7 
 
THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 irresponsible and irreflective outburst was, liowever, only an 
 instance of the impatience liis enterprising, energetic spirit 
 always felt when debarred from prompt action, whether by 
 good or bad reasons ; for almost on the same day he expresses 
 the sounder judgment : ''' Had we latterly attempted to take 
 them I am sure the Bey would have declared against us, and 
 done our trade some damage." No advantage could have 
 accrued from the seizure of the French vessels, at all pro- 
 portioned to the inconvenience of having the hostility of Tunis, 
 flanking as it did the trade routes to the Levant. The British 
 had then quite enough on their hands, without detaching an 
 additional force from the north coast of the Mediterranean, to 
 support a gratuitous quarrel on the south. As a matter of 
 mere policy it would have been ill-judged. 
 
 Nelson, however, did not as yet at all realize the wideness 
 of the impending struggle, for it was in these very letters that 
 he expressed a wish to exchange to the West Indies. " You 
 know," he writes to his old friend Locker, " that Pole is gone 
 to the West Indies. I have not seen him since his order, but 
 I know it was a thing he dreaded. Had I been at Toulon I 
 should have been a candidate for that service, for I think our 
 sea war is over in these seas." Perhaps his intrinsic merit 
 would have retrieved even such a mistake as we can now see 
 this would have been, and he would there have come sooner 
 into contact with Sir John Jervis — to whom, if to any one, 
 the name of patron to Nelson may be applied — for Jervis then 
 had the W^est India command ; but it is difficult to imagine 
 Nelson's career apart from the incidents of his Mediterranean 
 service. The Mediterranean seems inseparable from his name, 
 and he in the end felt himself identified with it beyond all 
 other waters. 
 
 His longing for action, wdiich prompted the desire for the 
 West Indies, was quickly gratified, for orders were received 
 from Hood, by Linzee, to detach him from the latter's com- 
 mand. The admiral sent him a very handsome letter upon 
 his single-handed combat with the French frigates, and directed 
 him to go to the north end of Corsica, to take charge of a 
 division of vessels he would there find cruising, and to search 
 for his late enemies along that coast and through the neighbor- 
 ing waters, between the island and the shores of Italy. He 
 
COMMAND OFF CORSICA 99 
 
 was also to warn off neutral vessels bound to Genoa, that port 
 being declared blockaded, and to seize them if they persisted 
 in their voyage thither. " I consider this command as a very 
 high compliment," wrote iSTelsou to his uncle Suckling, "there 
 being five older captains in the fleet." This it certainly was, 
 — a compliment and a prophecy as well. 
 
 In pursuance of these orders Nelson left Tunis on the 30th 
 of November, and on the 8th of December discovered the 
 French squadron, protected by shore batteries, in San Fiorenzo 
 Bay, in Corsica. This island, which during the middle ages, 
 and until some twenty years before the beginning of the 
 French Eevolution, was a dependency of Genoa, had then by 
 the latter been ceded to France, against the express wishes of 
 the inhabitants, whose resistance was crushed only after a 
 prolonged struggle. Although it was now in open revolt 
 against the Revolutionary government, the troops of the latter 
 still held three or four of the principal seaports, among them the 
 nortliern one in which the frigates then lay, as well as Bastia 
 upon the east coast of the island, and Calvi on the west. His 
 force being insufficient to engage the works of any of these 
 places, there was nothing for Nelson to do but to blockade 
 them, in hopes of exhausting their resources and at least pre- 
 venting the escape of the ships of war. In this he was 
 successful, for the latter either were destroyed or fell into tlie 
 hands of Great Britain, when the ports were reduced. 
 
 Meanwhile affairs at Toulon were approaching the crisis 
 which ended its tenure by the British and their allies. The 
 garrison had never been sufficient to man properly the very 
 extensive lines, which the peculiar configuration of the sur- 
 rounding country made it necessary to occupy for the security 
 of the town ; and the troops themselves were not only of 
 different nations, but of very varying degrees of efficiency. 
 Under these conditions the key of the position, accurately in- 
 dicated by Napoleon Bonaparte, then a major and in command 
 of the artillery, was held in insufficient force, and was success- 
 fully stormed on the night of December 16, 1793. It was 
 immediately recognized that the ships could no longer remain 
 in the harbor, and that with them the land forces also must 
 depart. After two days of hurried preparations, and an 
 attempt, only partially successful, to destroy the dockyard and 
 
100 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 French ships of war, the fleets sailed out on the 19th of 
 December, carrying with them, besides the soldiery, as many 
 as possible of the wretched citizens, who were forced to fly in 
 confusion and misery from their homes, in order to escape the 
 sure and fearful vengeance of the Republican government. 
 The " Agamemnon " was in Leghorn, getting provisions, when 
 the fugitives arrived there, and Nelson speaks in vivid terms 
 of the impression made upon him by the tales he heard and 
 the sights he saw. "Fathers are here without families, and 
 families without fathers, the pictures of horror and despair." 
 " In short, all is horror. I cannot write all : my mind is deeply 
 impressed with grief. Each teller makes the scene more 
 horrible." He expressed the opinion that the evacuation was 
 a benefit to England, and it unquestionably was. He had not 
 always thought so ; but it must be allowed that the hopes and 
 exultation with which he greeted the acquisition of the place 
 had sufficient foundation, in the reported attitude of the people 
 of Southern France, to justify the first opinion as well as the 
 last. The attempt was worth making, though it proved unsuc- 
 cessful. As it was, the occupation had resulted in a degree of 
 destruction to the French ships and arsenal in Toulon, which, 
 though then over-estimated, was a real gain to the allies. 
 
 1 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Reduction of Corsica by the British. ^Departure of Lord Hood 
 FOR England. — The "Agamemnon" Refitted at Leghorn. 
 
 jA:sruARY-DECEMBER, 1794. Age, 35. 
 
 BY the loss of Toulon the British fleet in the Mediterranean 
 was left adrift, without any secure harbor to serve as a 
 depot for supplies and a base for extended operations. Hood 
 took his ships to Hyeres Bay, a few miles east of Toulon, a 
 spot where they could lie safely at anchor, but which was un- 
 suitable for a permanent establishment, — the shores not being 
 tenable against French attack. He now turned his eyes upon 
 Corsica, whence the celebrated native chieftain, Paoli, who had 
 led the natives in their former struggle against France, had 
 made overtures to him, looking to the union of the island to 
 the British crown. Nelson in person, or, during his brief 
 absence in Leghorn, his division, had so closely invested the 
 shores, that neither troops nor supplies of any kind had been 
 able to enter since the early part of December, nor had the 
 blockaded vessels been able to get out. The thoroughness 
 with which this work was done brought him, on the 6th of 
 January, 1794, yet further compliments from Hood, who 
 wrote him that '"'he looked upon these frigates as certain, 
 trusting to my zeal and activity, and knows, if it is in the 
 power of man to have them, I will secure them." At the same 
 time he was instructed to enter into communication with Paoli, 
 and settle plans for the landing of the troops. In attending 
 to this commission his intermediary was Lieutenant George 
 Andrews, brother to the lady to whom he had become attached 
 at St. Omer, and who had afterwards been a midshipman with 
 him on board the "Boreas." ''This business going through 
 my hands," he wrote with just pride, "is a proof of Lord 
 Hood's confidence in me, and that I shall pledge myself for 
 nothing but what will be acceptable to him." It was indeed 
 
102 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 evident that Hood Avas more aud more reposing in him a 
 peculiar trust, a feeling which beyond most others tends to 
 increase by its own action. Kelson repaid him with the most 
 unbounded admiration. " The Lord is very good friends with 
 me," he writes ; " he is certainly the best officer I ever saw. 
 Everything from him is so clear it is impossible to misunder- 
 stand him." "His zeal, his activity for the honour and benefit 
 of his country," he says at another time, "are not abated. 
 Upwards of seventy, he possesses the mind of forty years of 
 age. He has not a thought separated from honour and glory." 
 The flattering proofs of his superior's esteem, and the demand 
 made upon his natural powers to exert themselves freely, had 
 a very beneficial effect upon his health and spirits. It was 
 not effort, however protracted and severe, but the denial of 
 opportunity to act, whether by being left unemployed or 
 through want of information, that wore Kelson down. " I 
 have not been one hour at anchor for pleasure in eight months ; 
 but I can assure you I never was better in health." 
 
 Meanwhile a commission from the fleet arrived in Corsica. 
 Sir Gilbert Elliot, the representative of the British govern- 
 ment in the island, was at its head, and with him were associ- 
 ated two army officers, one of whom afterwards became widely 
 celebrated as Sir John Moore. A satisfactory agreement 
 being concluded. Hood sailed from Hyeres Bay with the ships 
 and troops, and operations began against San Fiorenzo, termi- 
 nating in the evacuation of the place by the French, who upon 
 the 19th of February retreated by land to Bastia. Kelson was 
 not immediately connected with this undertaking; but he had 
 the satisfaction of knowing that two of the four frigates, of 
 whose detention in the island he was the immediate cause, 
 were here lost to the enemy. He was during these weeks ac- 
 tively employed harrying the coast — destroying depots of 
 stores on shore, and small vessels laden with supplies. These 
 services were mainly, though not entirely, rendered in the 
 neighborhood of Bastia, a strongly fortified town, which was 
 to become the next object of the British efforts, and the scene 
 of his own exertions. There, also, though on a comparatively 
 small scale, he was to give striking evidence of the character- 
 istics which led him on, step by step, to his great renown. 
 
 When Hood himself took command at San Fiorenzo, he 
 

SIEGE OF BASTIA 103 
 
 relieved Nelson from that part of his charge, and sent him on 
 the 7th of February to blockade Bastia, — a strictly detached 
 service, and one of the utmost importance, as upon the inter- 
 cepting of supplies the issue of the siege largely turned. 
 Three weeks later, on the 1st of March, Xelson wrote : " We 
 are still in the busy scene of war, a situation in which I own I 
 feel pleasure, more especially as my actions have given great 
 satisfaction to my commander-in-chief. The blocking up of 
 Corsica he left to me : it has been accomplished in the most 
 complete manner, not a boat got in, nor a soldier landed, 
 although eight thousand men were embarked at Nice ;" and, 
 he might have added, although a vessel was said to sail from 
 Nice every thirty-six hours. Nor was his activity confined to 
 blockading. He continually reconnoitered the town and the 
 works, in doing which on the 23d of February he engaged the 
 batteries at short range, with the "Agamemnon" and two 
 frigates, — the action lasting for nearly two hours. While it 
 was at its height, the heads of the British columns, coming 
 from San Fiorenzo, only twelve miles distant by land, were 
 seen upon the heights overlooking Bastia from the rear. 
 " What a noble sight it must have been " to them ! wrote 
 Nelson enthusiastically, in the ardor of his now opening 
 career, — for it must be remembered that this hero of a hun- 
 dred tights was even then but beginning to taste that rapture 
 of the strife, in which he always breathed most freely, as 
 though in his native element. 
 
 Bastia, as he saw it and reported to Lord Hood, was a 
 walled town with central citadel, of some ten thousand inhabi- 
 tants, on the east coast of Corsica, and twenty miles south of 
 Cape Corso, the northern extremity of the island. The main 
 fortifications were along the sea-front ; but there was, besides, 
 a series of detached works on either flank and to the rear. 
 The latter not only guarded the approaches from the interior, 
 but also, being situated on the hills, much above the town, 
 were capable of commanding it, in case of an enemy gaining 
 possession. Nelson, while modestly disclaiming any pre- 
 sumptuous dependence upon his own judgment, expressed a 
 decided opinion, based upon the engagement of the 23d, that 
 the " Agamemnon " and the frigates could silence the fire of the 
 sea-front, batter down the walls, and that then five hundred 
 
104 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 troops could carry the place by assault. " That the works on 
 the hills would aunoy the town afterwards is certain, but the 
 enemy being cut off from all supplies — the provisions in the 
 town being of course in our possession — would think of 
 nothing but making the best terms they could for themselves." 
 To his dismay, however, and to the extreme annoyance of the 
 admiral, General Dundas, commanding the army, refused to 
 move against Bastia, condemning the attempt as visionary 
 and rash. Meantime the French, unmolested except by the 
 desultory efforts of the insurgent Corsicans, were each, day 
 strengthening their works, and converting the possibilities 
 Nelson saw into the impossibilities of the cautious general. 
 
 Hood on the 25tli of February came round from San 
 Fiorenzo to Bastia; but he purposely brought with him no 
 captain senior to Nelson, in order that the latter might remain 
 in charge of the operations he had begun so well. When 
 Dundas retreated again to San Fiorenzo, Hood on the 3d of 
 March followed him there with the flagship, to urge his co- 
 operation ; leaving Nelson with six frigates to conduct the 
 blockade and take such other steps as the opportunities might 
 justify. By the middle of March, nearly three months having 
 elapsed since her last hasty visit to Leghorn, the "Agamem- 
 non " was wholly destitute of supplies. " We are really," wrote 
 Nelson to Hood, " without firing, wine, beef, pork, flour, and 
 almost without water : not a rope, canvas, twine, or nail in the 
 ship. The ship is so light she cannot hold her side to the 
 wind. . . . We are certainly in a bad plight at present, not a 
 man has slept dry for many months. Yet," he continues, with 
 that indomitable energy which made light of mere difficulties 
 of material, and conveys so impressive a lesson to our modern 
 days, when slight physical defects appear insurmountable, 
 and ships not wholly up to date are counted obsolete, — ''yet, 
 if your Lordship wishes me to remain off Bastia, I can, by 
 going to Porto Ferrajo, get water and stores, and twenty-four 
 hours in Leghorn will give us provisions ; and our refitting, 
 which will take some time, can be put off a little. My wish is 
 to be present at the attack of Bastia." 
 
 On the 18th of March Hood summoned him to San Fiorenzo. 
 The difference between him and Dundas had become a quarrel, 
 and the latter had quitted his command. Hood wished to 
 
SIEGE OF BASTIA 105 
 
 strengthen the argument with his successor, by a report of the 
 observations made by Nelson ; but the latter records that, 
 after expressing his opinion that eight hundred troops with 
 four hundred seamen could reduce the place, it was found that 
 all the army was united against an attack, declaring the im- 
 possibility of taking Bastia, even if all the force were united, 
 — and this, notwithstanding that an engineer and an artillery 
 officer had visited the scene, and agreed with Xelson that there 
 was a probability of success. On the north side both they and 
 he considered the place weak, and at the same time found the 
 ground favorable for establishing the siege guns. Moreover, 
 even during the winter gales, he had succeeded in so closing 
 the sea approaches, while the revolted Corsicans intercepted 
 those by land, that a pound of coarse bread was selling for 
 three francs. The spring equinox was now near at hand, and 
 with better weather the blockade would be yet more efficient. 
 Between actual attack and famine, he argued, the place must 
 fall. "ISTot attacking it I could not but consider as a national 
 disgrace. If the Army will not take it, we must, by some way 
 or other." 
 
 If every particular operation of war is to be considered by 
 itself alone, and as a purely professional question, to be deter- 
 mined by striking a balance between the arguments pro and 
 con, it is probable that the army officers were right in their 
 present contention. In nothing military was scientific accu- 
 racy of prediction so possible as in forecasting the result and 
 duration of a regular siege, where the force brought to bear on 
 either side could be approximately known. But, even in this 
 most methodical and least inspired of processes, the elements 
 of chance, of the unforeseen, or even the improbable, will 
 enter, disturbing the most careful calculations. For this 
 reason, no case must be decided purely on its individual 
 merits, without taking into account the other conditions of the 
 campaign at large. For good and sufficient reasons, the 
 British had undertaken, not to conquer a hostile island, but to 
 effect the deliverance of a people who were already in arms, 
 and had themselves redeemed their country with the exception 
 of two or three fortified seaports, for the reduction of which 
 they possessed neither the materials nor the technical skill. 
 To pause in the movement of advance was, with a half- 
 
106 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 civilized race of unstable temperament, to risk everything. 
 But besides, for the mere purpose of the blockade, it was im- 
 perative to force the enemy as far as possible to contract his 
 lines. Speaking of a new work thrown up north of the town, 
 Nelson said with accurate judgment: "It must be destroyed, 
 or the Corsicans will be obliged to give up a post which the 
 enemy would immediately possess ; and of course throw us on 
 that side at a greater distance from Eastia." The result would 
 be, not merely so much more time and labor to be expended, 
 nor yet only the moral effect on either party, but also the un- 
 covering of a greater length of seaboard, by which supplies 
 might be run into the town. 
 
 The strength of the place, in which, when it fell, were found 
 " seventy-seven pieces of ordnance, with an incredible amount 
 of stores," was far superior to that estimated by the eye of 
 Nelson, untrained as an engineer. Not only so, but the force 
 within the walls was very much larger than he thought, when 
 he spoke with such confidence. " I never yet told Lord Hood," 
 he wrote nearly a year later, "that after everything was fixed 
 for the attack of Bastia, I had information given me of the 
 enormous number of troops we had to oppose us ; but my own 
 honour. Lord Hood's honour, and the honour of our Country 
 must have all been sacrificed, had I mentioned what I knew ; 
 therefore you will believe what must have been my feelings 
 during the whole siege, when I had often proposals made to 
 me by men, now rewarded, to write to Lord Hood to raise the 
 siege." " Had this been an English town," he said immediately 
 after the surrender, " I am sure it would not have been taken 
 by them. The more we see of this place, the more we are 
 astonished at their giving it up, but the truth is, the different 
 parties were afraid to trust each other." The last assertion, 
 if correct, conveys just one of those incidents which so fre- 
 quently concur to insure the success of a step rightly taken, 
 as that of Nelson and Hood in this instance certainly was. 
 "Forty-five hundred men," he continues, "have laid down 
 their arms to under twelve hundred troops and seamen. If 
 proofs were wanting to show that perseverance, unanimity, 
 and gallantry, can accomplish almost incredible things, we are 
 an additional instance." 
 
 " I always was of opinion," he wrote in the exultation of 
 
SIEGE OF BASTIA 107 
 
 reaction from the weight of responsibility he had assumed by 
 his secrecy, — "I always was of opinion, have ever acted up 
 to it, and never have had any reason to repent it, that one 
 Englishman was equal to three Frenchmen." This curious 
 bit of the gasconade into which Nelson from time to time 
 lapsed, can scarcely be accepted as a sound working theory, 
 or as of itself justifying the risk taken; and yet it undoubt- 
 edly, under a grossly distorted form, portrays the tempera- 
 ment Avhich enabled him to capture Bastia, and which made 
 him what he was, — a man strong enough to take great 
 chances for adequate ends. " All naval operations under- 
 taken since I have been at the head of the government," said 
 Napoleon, " have always failed, because the admirals see 
 double, and have learned — where I do not know — that war 
 can be made without running risks." It is not material cer- 
 tainty of success, the iijnis fatuus which is the great snare of 
 the mere engineer, or of the merely accomplished soldier, that 
 points the way to heroic achievements. It is the vivid in- 
 spiration that enables its happy possessor, at critical moments, 
 to see and follow the bright clear line, which, like a ray of 
 light at midnight, shining among manifold doubtful indica- 
 tions, guides his steps. Whether it leads him to success or 
 to failure, he may not know ; but that it is the path of wis- 
 dom, of duty, and of honor, he knows full well by the per- 
 suasion within, — by conviction, the fortifier of the reason, 
 though not by sight, the assurance of demonstration. Only 
 a man capable of incurring a disaster like that at Teneriffe 
 could rise to the level of daring, which, through hidden perils, 
 sought and wrought the superb triumph of Aboukir Bay. Such 
 is genius, that rare but hazardous gift, which separates a man 
 from his fellows by a chasm not to be bridged by human will. 
 Thus endowed, Nelson before the walls of Bastia showed, 
 though in a smaller sphere, and therefore with a lighter hazard, 
 the same keen perception, the same instant decision, the same 
 unfaltering resolve, the same tenacity of purpose, that, far 
 over and beyond the glamour of mere success, have rendered 
 eternally illustrious the days of St. Vincent, of the Nile, and 
 of Copenhagen. 
 
 Of the spirit which really actuated him, in his unwavering 
 support of Lord Hood's inclination to try the doubtful issue, 
 
108 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 many interesting instances are afforded by his correspondence. 
 " I feel for the honour of my Country, and had rather be beat 
 than not make the attack. If we do not try we can never be 
 successful. I own I have no fears for the final issue : it will 
 be conquest, certain we will deserve it. My reputation de- 
 pends on the opinion I have given ; but I feel an honest con- 
 sciousness that I have done right. We must, we will have it, 
 or some of our heads will be laid low. I glory in the attempt." 
 " What would the immortal Wolfe have done ? " he says 
 again, refresliing his own constancy in the recollection of an 
 equal heroism, crowned with success against even greater 
 odds. " As he did, beat the enemy, if he perished in the at- 
 tempt." Again, a fortnight later : " W'e are in high health 
 and spirits besieging Bastia; the final event, I feel assured, 
 will be conquest." W^hen the siege had already endured for 
 a month, and with such slight actual progress as to compel 
 him to admit to Hood that the town battery had been " put in 
 such a state, that firing away many shot at it is almost useless 
 till we have a force sufficient to get nearer," his confidence 
 remains unabated. "I have no fears about the final issue," 
 he writes to his wife ; " it will be victory, Bastia will be ours ; 
 and if so, it must prove an event to which the history of Eng- 
 land can hardly boast an equal." Further on in the same letter 
 he makes a prediction, so singularly accurate as to excite curi- 
 osity about its source: " I will tell you as a secret, Bastia will 
 be ours between the 20th and 24th of this month " — three 
 weeks after the date of writing — "if succours do not get in." 
 It surrendered actually on the 22d. One is tempted to specu- 
 late if there had been any such understanding with the garrison 
 as was afterwards reached with Calvi ; but there is no other 
 token of such an arrangement. It is instructive also to com- 
 pare this high-strung steadfastness of 2)urpose to dare every 
 risk, if success perchance might be won thereby, with his 
 comment upon his own impulses at a somewhat later date. 
 "My disposition cannot bear tame and slow measures. Sure 
 I am, had I commanded our fleet on the 14th, that either the 
 whole French fleet would have graced my triumph, or I should 
 have been in a confounded scrape." Surely the secret of great 
 successes is in these words. 
 
 The siege of Bastia was not in its course productive of 
 
 I 
 
BASTIA TAKEN 109 
 
 striking events. Having reasoned in vain with the two suc- 
 cessive generals, Hood demanded that there should be sent 
 back to him a contingent of troops, which had originally been 
 detailed to serve as marines in the fleet, but which he had 
 loaned to the army for the operations against San Fiorenzo. 
 Having received these, he returned to Bastia, and on the 4th 
 of April, 1794, the besieging force, twelve hundred troops and 
 two hundred and fifty seamen, landed to the northward of the 
 town. They at once began to throw up batteries, while the 
 Corsicans harassed the landward approaches to the place. 
 Nelson being with the troops, the " Agamemnon " with some 
 frigates was anchored north of the city, Hood with his ships 
 south of it. During the nights, boats from the fleet rowed 
 guard near to the sea-front, with such diligence that few of 
 the craft that attempted to run in or out succeeded in so 
 doing. When darkness covered the waters, British gunboats 
 crept close to the walls, and by an intermitting but frequent 
 fire added much to the distress of the enemy. On the 11th 
 of April the garrison was formally summoned, and, the ex- 
 pected refusal having been received, the British batteries 
 opened. There was not force enough, however, to bring the 
 place to terms as a consequence of direct attack, and after 
 three weeks Nelson, while betraying no apprehension of fail- 
 ure, practically admitted the fact. " Although I have no 
 doubt but even remaining in our present situation, and by 
 strict guard rowing close to the town, and the Corsicans har- 
 assing them on the hills, and the gunboats by night, but that 
 the enemy must surrender before any great length of time, 
 yet, if force can be spared, a successful attack on the heights 
 must much facilitate a speedy capture. I own it will give me 
 the highest pleasure to assist in the attack." 
 
 It was by such an attack, or rather by the fear of it, coming 
 upon the long and exhausting endurance of cannonade and 
 hunger, that Bastia finally fell. "We shall in time accom- 
 plish the taking of Bastia," wrote Nelson on the 3d of May. 
 " I have no doubt in the way we proposed to attempt it, by 
 bombardment and cannonading, joined to a close blockade of 
 the harbour." " If not," he adds, " our Country will, I be- 
 lieve, sooner forgive an officer for attacking his enemy than 
 for letting it alone." On the 12th a large boat was captured 
 
]10 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 coming out from the port; and on her were found letters from 
 the governor, Gentili, confessing the annoyance caused by the 
 British fire, and saying that if relief did not arrive by the 
 29th, the place must be looked upon as lost. Three nights 
 later another boat was caught attempting to enter. On board 
 her was a brother of the Mayor of Bastia. This man, while 
 talking with Hood's secretary, expressed his fears for the 
 result to his relatives, if the town were carried by assault. 
 The secretary replied that Hood could not prevent those evils, 
 if the garrison awaited the attack, and gave the Cqrsican to 
 understand that it was imminent, troops being expected from 
 San Fiorenzo. At the urgent request of the prisoner, one of 
 the seamen taken with him was permitted to land with a letter, 
 stating the impending danger. By a singular concidence, or 
 by skilful contrivance, the San Fiorenzo troops appeared on 
 the heights upon the evening. May 19, following this conver- 
 sation. Flags of truce had already been hoisted, negotiations 
 were opened, and on the 22d the French colors were struck 
 and the British took possession. " When I reflect what we 
 have achieved," confessed the hitherto outwardly unmoved 
 Nelson, " I am all astonishment. The most glorious sight 
 that an Englishman can experience, and which, I believe, 
 none but an Englishman could bring about, was exhibited, — 
 4,500 men laying down their arms to less than 1,000 British 
 soldiers, who were serving as marines.'' As towards the 
 French this account is perhaps somewhat less than fair ; but 
 it does no more than justice to the admirable firmness and 
 enterprise shown by Hood and Nelson. As a question of 
 Bastia only, their attempt might be charged with rashness; 
 but having regard to the political and military conditions, to 
 the instability of the Corsican character, and to the value of 
 the island as a naval station, it was amply justified, for the 
 risks run were out of all proportion less than the advantage 
 to be gained. 
 
 Thus the siege of Bastia ended in triumph, despite the 
 prior pronouncement of the general commanding the troops, 
 that the attempt was "most visionary and rash." These 
 epithets, being used to Hood after his own expressions in 
 favor of the undertaking, had not unnaturally provoked from 
 him a resentful retort ; and, as men are rarely conciliated by 
 
BASTIA TAKEN m 
 
 the success of measures which they have ridiculed, there arose 
 a degree of strained relations between army and navy, that 
 continued even after the arrival of a new commander of the 
 land forces, and indeed throughout Hood's association with 
 the operations in Corsica. 
 
 During this busy and laborious period, despite his burden 
 of secret anxiety, Nelson's naturally delicate health showed 
 the favorable reaction, which, as has before been noted, was 
 with him the usual result of the call to exertion. His letters 
 steadily reflect, and occasionally mention, the glow of exulta- 
 tion produced by constant action of a worthy and. congenial 
 nature. " We are in high health and spirits besieging Bastia," 
 he writes to his wife soon after landing ; and shortly before 
 the fall of the place he says again : " As to my health, it was 
 never better, seldom so well." Yet, although from beginning 
 to end the essential stay of the enterprise, the animating soul, 
 without whose positive convictions and ardent support Lord 
 Hood could scarcely have dared so great a hazard, he was 
 throughout the siege left, apparently purposely, in an anoma- 
 lous position, and was at the end granted a recognition which, 
 though probably not grudging, was certainly scanty. No 
 definition of his duties was ever given by the commander-in- 
 chief. He appears as it were the latter's unacknowledged 
 representative ashore, a plenipotentiary without credentials. 
 " What my situation is," he writes to a relative, " is not to be 
 described. I am everything, yet nothing ostensible ; enjoying 
 the confidence of Lord Hood and Colonel Villettes, and the 
 captains landed with the seamen obeying my orders." A fort- 
 night later he writes to Hood : " Your Lordship knows exactly 
 the situation I am in here. With Colonel Villettes I liave no 
 reason but to suppose I am respected in the highest degree ; 
 nor have I occasion to complain of want of attention to my 
 wishes from any parties ; but yet I am considered as not com- 
 manding the seamen landed. My wishes may be, and are, 
 complied with ; my orders would possibly be disregarded. 
 Therefore, if we move from hence, I would wish your Lord- 
 ship to settle that point. Your Lordship will not, I trust, 
 take this request amiss : I have been struggling with it since 
 the first day I landed." 
 
 Hood apparently gave him full satisfaction as regards .his 
 
112 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 own view of the situation. " I am happy," Nelson wrote, when 
 acknowledging his reply, " that my ideas of the situation I am 
 in here so perfectly agree with your Lordship's ; " but he did 
 not settle the matter by a decisive order. His object, as he 
 seems to have explained, was to bestow a certain amount of 
 prominence upon a young captain, Hunt, who had recently 
 lost his ship, and who, Hood thought, would be sooner pro- 
 vided with another, if he appeared as in command at the guns. 
 Nelson acceded to this arrangement with his usual generosity. 
 " Your kind intention to Captain Hunt," he wrote, " I had the 
 honour of telling your Lordship, should be furthered by every 
 means in my power; and my regard for him, I assure you, is 
 undiminished. He is a most exceeding good young man, nor 
 is any one more zealous for the service. I don't complain of 
 any one, but an idea has entered into the heads of some under 
 him, that his command was absolutely distinct from me ; and 
 that I had no authority over him, except as a request." Un- 
 fortunately, Hood, in his desire to serve Hunt, not only unduly 
 but absurdly minimized Nelson's relations to the whole affair. 
 His despatch ran: "Captain Nelson, of his Majesty's ship 
 Agamemnon, who had the command and directions of the sea- 
 men in landing the guns, mortars and stores,^ and Captain 
 Hunt who commanded at the batteries,^ . . . have an equal 
 claim to my gratitude." To limit Nelson's share in the 
 capture of Bastia to the purely subsidiary though important 
 function of landing the guns, was as unjust as it was unneces- 
 sary to the interests of Hunt. The latter, being second in 
 command ashore, and afterwards sent home with the de- 
 spatches, was sure to receive the reward customarily bestowed 
 upon such services. 
 
 The incident singularly and aptly illustrates the difference, 
 which in a military service cannot be too carefully kept in 
 mind, between individual expressions of opinion, which may be 
 biassed, and professional reputation, which, like public senti- 
 ment, usually settles at last not far from the truth. Despite 
 this curious inversion of the facts by Lord Hood, there prob- 
 ably was no one among the naval forces, nor among the 
 soldiery, who did not thoroughly, if perchance somewhat 
 vaguely, appreciate that Nelson was the moving spirit of the 
 1 The italics are the autiior's. 
 
SERVICES BEFORE BASTIA 113 
 
 whole operation, even beyond Hood himself. As the Greek 
 commanders after Salamis were said to have voted the award 
 of merit each to himself first, but all to Themistocles second, 
 so at Bastia, whatever value individuals might place on their 
 own services, all probably would have agreed that Nelson 
 came next. 
 
 The latter meantime was happily unconscious of the wrong 
 done him, so that nothing marred the pleasure with which he 
 congratulated the commander-in-chief, and received the latter's 
 brief but hearty general order of thanks, wherein Kelson's 
 own name stood foremost, as was due both to his seniority 
 and to his exertions. When the despatch reached him, he 
 freely expressed his discontent in letters to friends ; but being, 
 at the time of its reception, actively engaged in the siege of 
 Calvi, the exhilaration of that congenial employment for the 
 moment took the edge off the keenness of his resentment. 
 " Lord Hood and myself were never better friends — nor, 
 although /lis Letter does,^ did he wish to put me where I never 
 Avas — in the rear. Captain Hunt, who lost his ship, he 
 Avanted to push forward for another, — a young man who never 
 was on a battery, or ever rendered any service during the 
 siege ; if any person ever says he did, then I submit to the 
 character of a story-teller. Poor Serocold, Avho fell here,^ 
 was determined to publish an advertisement, as he commanded 
 a battery under my orders. The whole operations of the siege 
 were carried on through Lord Hood's letters to me. I was the 
 mover of it — I was the cause of its success. Sir Gilbert 
 Elliot will be my evidence, if any is required. I am not a 
 little vexed, bat shall not quarrel." "I am well aware," he 
 had written to Mrs. Kelson a few days before, " my poor ser- 
 vices will not be noticed : I have no interest ; but, however 
 services may be received, it is not right in an officer to slacken 
 his zeal for his Country." 
 
 These noble words only voiced a feeling which in Kelson's 
 heart had all the strength of a principle ; and this light of the 
 single eye stood him in good stead in the moments of bitterness 
 which followed a few months later, when a lull in the storm 
 of fighting gave the sense of neglect a chance to rankle. 
 
 1 The italics are Nelson's. 
 
 2 Written at the siege of Calvi. 
 
114 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 "My heart is full," he writes then to his uncle Suckling, 
 speaking not only of Bastia, but of the entire course of opera- 
 tions in Corsica, " when I think of the treatment I have re- 
 ceived : every man who had any considerable share in the 
 reduction has got some place or other — I, only I, am without 
 reward. . . . Nothing but my anxious endeavour to serve my 
 Country makes me bear up against it ; but I sometimes am 
 ready to give all up." " Forgive this letter," he adds towards 
 the end : " I have said a great deal too much of myself ; but 
 indeed it is all too true." In similar strain he expressed him- 
 self to his wife : " It is very true that I have ever served faith- 
 fully, and ever has it been my fate to be neglected ; but that shall 
 not make me inattentive to my duty. I have pride in doing 
 my duty well, and a self-approbation, which if it is not so 
 lucrative, yet perhaps affords more pleasing sensations." Thus 
 the consciousness of duty done in the past, and the clear 
 recognition of what duty still demanded in the present and 
 future, stood him in full stead, when he failed to receive at 
 the hands of others the honor he felt to be his due, and which, 
 he never wearied in proclaiming, was in his eyes priceless, 
 above all other reward. " Corsica, in respect of prizes," he 
 wrote to Mrs. Nelson, " produces nothing but honour, far 
 above the consideration of wealth : not that I despise riches, 
 quite the contrary, yet I would not sacrifice a good name to 
 obtain them. Had I attended less than I have done to the 
 service of my Country, I might have made some money too : 
 however, I trust my name will stand on record when the 
 money-makers will be forgot," — a hope to be abundantly 
 fulfilled. 
 
 At the moment Bastia fell there arrived from England a 
 new commander-in-chief for the land forces, General Stuart, 
 an officer of distinguished ability and enterprise. Cheered by 
 the hope of cordial co-operation. Hood and Nelson resumed 
 without delay their enthusiastic efforts. "Within a week, on 
 the 30th of May, the latter wrote that the " Agamemnon" was 
 taking on board ammunition for the siege of Calvi, the last 
 remaining of the hostile strongholds. In the midst of the 
 preparations, at eleven p. m. of June 6, word was received 
 that nine French ships-of-the-line had come out of Toulon, and 
 were believed to be bound for Calvi, with reinforcements for 
 
HIS MILITARY PRINCIPLES 115 
 
 the garrison. At seven the next morning the squadron was 
 under way ; the " Agamemnon," which had two hundred tons 
 of ordnance stores to unload, sailing only half an hour after her 
 less encumbered consorts, whom she soon overtook. 
 
 Hood shaped his course for Calvi, being constrained thereto, 
 not only by the rumor of the enemy's destination, but also by 
 the military necessity of effecting a junction with the rest of 
 his fleet. Admiral Hotham, who commanded the British 
 division of seven ships in front of Toulon, instead of waiting 
 to verify the report brought to him of the enemy's force, — 
 which was actually the same, numerically, as his own, — bore 
 up hastily for Calvi, intending, so wrote Nelson at the time, 
 to fight them there, rather than that they should throw in 
 succors. "Whatever their numbers, thus to surrender touch of 
 them at the beginning was an evident mistake, for which, as 
 for most mistakes, a penalty had in the end to be paid; and 
 in fact, if the relief of Calvi was the object of the sortie, the 
 place to fight was evidently as far from there as possible. 
 Off Toulon, even had Hotham been beaten, his opponents 
 would have been too roughly handled to carry out their mis- 
 sion. As it was, this precipitate retirement lost the British 
 an opportunity for a combat that might have placed their 
 control of the sea be3^ond peradventure ; and a few months 
 later, Nelson, who at first had viewed Hotham's action with 
 the generous sympathy and confident pride which always 
 characterized his attitude towards his brother officers, showed 
 how clearly he was reading in the book of experience the 
 lessons that should afterwards stand himself in good stead. 
 "When 'Victory' is gone," he wrote, "we shall be thirteen 
 sail of the line [to the French fifteen], when the enemy will 
 keep our new Commanding Officer [Hotham] in hot water, 
 who missed, unfortunately, the opportunity of fighting them, 
 last June." Ten years later, in his celebrated chase of Ville- 
 neuve's fleet, he said to his captains : " If we meet the enemy 
 we shall find them not less than eighteen, I rather think 
 twenty, sail of the line, and therefore do not be surprised if I 
 should not fall on them immediately [he had but eleven] — ive 
 wonH part ^ without a battle ; " and he expressed with the 
 utmost decision his clear appreciation that even a lost battle, if 
 
 1 Author's italics. 
 
116 THE LIFE UF NELSON 
 
 delivered at the right point oi* at the right moment, would 
 frustrate the ulterior objects of the enemy, by crippling the 
 force upon which they depended. As will be seen in the 
 sequel, Hotham, throughout his brief command as Hood's 
 successor, suffered the consequences of permitting so impor- 
 tant a fraction of the enemy's fleet to escape his grasp, when 
 it was in his power to close with it. 
 
 The British divisions met off the threatened port two days 
 after leaving Bastia, and two hours later a lookout frigate 
 brought word that the French fleet had been seen by her the 
 evening before, to the northward and westward, some forty 
 miles off its own coast. Hood at once made sail in pursuit, 
 and in the afternoon of the 10th of June caught sight of the 
 enemy, but so close in with the shore that they succeeded in 
 towing their ships under the protection of the batteries in 
 Golfe Jouan, where, for lack of wind, he was unable to follow 
 them for some days, during Avliich they had time to strengthen 
 their position beyond his powers of offence. Hotham's error 
 was irreparable. The " Agamemnon " was then sent back to 
 Bastia, to resume the work of transportation, which Nelson 
 pushed with the untiring energy that characterized all his 
 movements. Arriving on the 12th, fifteen hundred troops 
 were embarked by eight the next morning, and at four in the 
 afternoon he sailed, having with him two smaller ships of w^ar 
 and twenty-two transports. On the 15th he anchored at San 
 Fiorenzo. 
 
 Here he met General Stuart. The latter was anxious to 
 proceed at once with the siege of Calvi, but asked Nelson 
 whether he thought it proper to take the shipping to that 
 exposed position ; alluding to the French fleet that had left 
 Toulon, and which Hood was then seeking. Nelson's reply 
 is interesting, as reflecting the judgment of a warrior at once 
 prudent and enterprising, concerning the influence of a hostile 
 " fleet in being " upon a contemplated detached operation. 
 " I certainly thought it right," he said, " placing the firmest 
 reliance that we should be perfectly safe under Lord Hood's 
 protection, who would take care that the French fleet at Gour- 
 jean ^ should not molest us." To Hood he wrote a week later : 
 "I believed ourselves safe under your Lordship's wing." At 
 1 Golfe Jouan ; on the coast of France between Toulon and Nice. 
 
OPEEATIONS AGAINST CALVI 117 
 
 tliis moment he thought the French to be nine sail-of-the-line 
 to the, British thirteen, — no contemptible inferior force. Yet 
 that he recognized the possible danger from such a detach- 
 ment is also clear ; for, writing two days earlier, under the 
 same belief as to the enemy's strength, and speaking of the 
 expected approach of an important convoy, he says : " I hope 
 they will not venture up till Lord Hood can get off Toulon, 
 or wherever the French fleet are got to." When a particular 
 opinion has received the extreme expression now given to that 
 concerning the '^ fleet in being," and apparently has under- 
 gone equally extreme misconception, it is instructive to recur 
 to the actual effect of such a force, upon the practice of a man 
 with whom moral effect was never in excess of the facts of 
 the case, whose imagination produced to him no paralyzing 
 picture of remote contingencies. Is it probable that, with the 
 great issues of 1690 at stake. Nelson, had he been in Tour- 
 ville's place, would have deemed the crossing of the Channel 
 by French troops impossible, because of Torrington's '' fleet iu 
 being " ? 
 
 Sailing again on June 16, the expedition arrived next day 
 off Calvi. Although it was now summer, the difliculties of 
 the new undertaking were, from the maritime point of view, 
 very great. The town of Calvi, which was walled and had a 
 citadel, lies upon a promontory on the west side of an open gulf 
 of the same name, a semicircular recess, three miles wide by 
 two deep, on the northwest coast of Corsica. The western 
 point of its shore line is Cape Eevellata ; the eastern. Point 
 Espano. The port being fortified and garrisoned, it was not 
 practicable to take the shipping inside, nor to establish on the 
 inner beach a safe base for disembarking. The " Agamemnon " 
 therefore anchored outside, nearly two miles south of Cape 
 Eevellata, and a mile from shore, in the excessive depth of 
 fifty-three fathoms ; the transports coming-to off the cape, but 
 farther to seaward. The water being so deep, and the bottom 
 rocky, the position was perilous for sailing-ships, for the pre- 
 vailing summer wind blows directly on the shore, which is 
 steep-to and affords no shelter. Abreast the " Agamemnon " 
 was a small inlet, Porto Agro, about three miles from Calvi by 
 difficult approaches. Here Nelson landed on the 18th with 
 General Stuart; and, after reconnoitring both the beach and the 
 
118 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 town, the two officers decided that, though a very bad landing, 
 it was the best available. On the 19th, at 7 a. m., the troops 
 disembarked. That afternoon Nelson himself went ashore to 
 stay, taking with him two hundred and fifty seamen. The next 
 day it came on to blow so hard that most of the ships put to 
 sea, and no intercourse was had from the land with those 
 which remained. The "Agamemnon " did not return till the 
 24th. Lord Hood was by this time in San Fiorenzo Bay, having 
 abandoned the hope of attacking the French fleet in Golfe 
 Jouan. On the 27th he arrived off Calvi, and thenceforth Nelson 
 was in daily communication with him till the place fell. 
 
 As the army in moderate, though not wholly adequate, force 
 conducted the siege of Calvi, under a general officer of vigor- 
 ous character, the part taken by Nelson and his seamen, 
 though extremely important, and indeed essential to the ulti- 
 mate success, was necessarily subordinate. It is well to notice 
 that his journal, and correspondence with Lord Hood, clearly 
 recognize this, his true relation to the siege of Calvi ; for it 
 makes it probable that, in attributing to himself a much more 
 important part at Bastia, and in saying that Hood's report 
 had put him unfairly in the background, he was not exag- 
 gerating his actual though ill-defined position there. That 
 Nelson loved to dwell in thought upon his own achievements, 
 that distinction in the eyes of his fellows was dear to him, 
 that he craved recognition, and was at times perhaps too in- 
 sistent in requiring it, is true enough ; but there is no indi- 
 cation that he ever coveted the laurels of others, or materially 
 misconceived his own share in particular events. Glory, sweet 
 as it was to him, lost its value, if unaccompanied by the con- 
 sciousness of desert which stamps it as honor. It is, there- 
 fore, not so much for personal achievement as for revelation 
 of character that this siege has interest in his life. 
 
 Besides the defences of the town proper, Calvi was pro- 
 tected by a series of outworks extending across the neck of 
 land upon which it lay. Of these the outermost was on the 
 left, looking from the place. It flanked the approaches to 
 the others, and commanded the communications with the 
 interior. It was, by Nelson's estimate, about twenty-two 
 hundred yards from the town, and had first to be reduced. By 
 the 3d of July tliirteen long guns, besides a number of mortars 
 
SIEGE OF CALVI 119 
 
 and howitzers, had been dragged from the beach to the spot 
 by the seamen, who also assisted in placing them in position, 
 and for the most part worked them in battle, an artillerist 
 from the army pointing. Nelson, with Captain Hallowell, 
 already an officer of mark and afterwards one of distinction, 
 took alternate day's duty at the batteries, a third captain, 
 Serocold, having fallen early in the siege. Fearing news 
 might reach his wife that a naval captain had. been killed, 
 without the name being mentioned, he wrote to her of this sad 
 event, adding expressively : " I am very busy, yet own I am 
 in all my glory ; except with you, I would not be anywhere 
 but where I am, for the world." On July 7th the first out- 
 work fell. The attack upon the others was then steadily and 
 systematically prosecuted, until on the 19th all had been 
 captured, and the besiegers stood face to face with the town 
 walls. 
 
 During this time Nelson, as always, was continually at the 
 front and among the most exposed. Out of six guns in the 
 battery which he calls " ours," five were disabled in six da,js. 
 On the 12th at daylight, a heavy fire opened from the town, 
 which, he says, " seldom missed our battery ; " and at seven 
 o'clock a shot, which on the ricochet cleared his head by a 
 hair's breadth, drove sand into his face and right eye with 
 such violence as to incapacitate him. He spoke lightly and 
 cheerfully of the incident to Lord Hood, " I got a little hurt 
 this morning : not much, as you may judge by my writing," 
 and remained absent from duty only the regular twenty-four 
 hours ; but, after some fluctuations of hope, the sight of the 
 eye was permanently lost to him. Of General Stuart's con- 
 duct in the operations he frequently speaks with cordial 
 admiration, "He is not sparing of himself on any occasion, 
 he every night sleeps with us in the advanced battery. If I 
 may be allowed to judge, he is an extraordinary good judge of 
 ground. No officer ever deserved success more." At the same 
 time he expresses dissatisfaction with some of the subordinate 
 army officers, to whose inefficiency he attributes the necessity 
 for undue personal exertion on the general's part : " The 
 General is not well. He fatigues himself too much, but I 
 can't help seeing he is obliged to do it. He has not a 
 person to forward his views, — the engineer sick, the artillery 
 
120 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 captain not fit for active service ; therefore every minute thing 
 must be done by himself, or it is not done at all." 
 
 The Avork was tedious and exhausting, and the malaria of 
 the hot Corsican summer told heavily on men's health and 
 patience. The supply of ammunition, and of material of war 
 generally, for the army seems to have been inadequate ; and 
 heavy demands were made upon the fleet, not only for guns, 
 which could be returned, but for powder and shot, the ex- 
 penditure of which might prove embarrassing before they could 
 be renewed. The troops also were not numerous enough, 
 under the climatic conditions, to do all their own duty. In 
 such circumstances, when two parties are working together to 
 the same end, but under no common control, each is prone to 
 think the other behindhand i:i his work and exacting in his 
 demands. "Why don't Lord Hood land 500 men to work ? " 
 said Colonel Moore, the general's right-hand man. " Our 
 soldiers are tired." Nelson, on the other hand, thought that 
 Moore wanted over-much battering done to the breach of a 
 work, before he led the stormers to it ; and Hood, who was 
 receiving frequent reports of the preparations of the French 
 fleet in Toulon, was impatient to have the siege pushed, and 
 thovight the army dilatory. "The rapidity with which the 
 French are getting on at Toulon," he wrote confidentially to 
 Nelson, " makes it indispensably necessary for me to put the 
 whole of the fleet under my command in the best possible 
 state for service ; and I must soon apply to the general for 
 those parts of the regiments now on shore, ordered by his 
 Majesty to serve in lieu of marines, to be held in readiness to 
 embark at the shortest notice. I shall delay this application 
 as long as possible." 
 
 Nelson, being a seaman, sympathized of course with his 
 own service, and with Hood, for whom he had most cordial 
 admiration, both personal and professional. But at the same 
 time he was on the spot, a constant eye-witness to the difficul- 
 ties of the siege, a clear-headed observer, with sound military 
 instincts, and fair-minded when facts were before him. The 
 army, he wrote to Hood, is harassed to death, and he notices 
 that it suffers from sickness far more than do the seamen. 
 He repeats the request for more seamen, and, although he 
 seems to doubt the reasonableness of the demand, evidently 
 
FRICTION BETWEEN ARMY AND NAVY 121 
 
 thinks that they should be furnished, if possible. Hood 
 accordingly sent an additional detachment of three hundred, 
 raising the number on shore to the five hundred suggested by 
 Moore. " I had much rather," he wrote, " that a hundred sea- 
 men should be landed unnecessarily, than that one should be 
 kept back that was judged necessary." On the other hand, 
 when the general, after a work bearing on the bay had been 
 destroyed, suggests that the navy might help, by laying the 
 ships against the walls, Nelson takes " the liberty of observ- 
 ing that the business of laying wood before walls was much 
 altered of late," and adds the common-sense remark, that " the 
 quantity of powder and shot which would be fired away on 
 such an attack could be much better directed from a, battery 
 on shore." This conversation took place immediately after 
 all the outworks had been reduced. It was conducted " with 
 the greatest politeness," he writes, and " the General thanked 
 me for my assistance, but it was necessary to come to the 
 point whether the siege should be persevered in or given up. 
 If the former, he must be supplied with the means, which 
 were more troops, more seamen to work, and more ammuni- 
 tion." Nelson replied that, if the requisite means could not 
 be had on the spot, they could at least hold on where they 
 were till supplied from elsewhere. 
 
 It will be noticed that Nelson was practically the inter- 
 mediary between the two commanders-in-chief. In fact, there 
 appears to have been between them some constraint, and he 
 was at times asked to transmit a message which he thought 
 had better go direct. In this particularly delicate situation, 
 one cannot but be impressed with the tact he for the most 
 part shows, the diplomatic ability, which was freely attributed 
 to him by his superiors in later and more influential commands. 
 This was greatly helped by his cordial good-will towards 
 others, combined with disinterested zeal for the duty before 
 him; the whole illumined by unusual sagacity and good sense. 
 He sees both sides, and conveys his suggestions to either with 
 a self-restraint and deference which avert resentment ; and he 
 preserves both his calmness and candor, although he notices 
 in the camp some jealousy of his confidential communication 
 with his immediate superior, the admiral. _ Though never 
 backward to demand what he thought the rights of himself or 
 
122 THE LITE OF NELSON 
 
 i 
 
 his associates, Nelson was always naturally disposed to recon- 
 cile differences, to minimize causes of trouble, and this native 
 temperament had not yet undergone the warping which fol- 
 lowed his later wounds — especially that on the head received 
 at the Nile — and the mental conflict into which he was 
 plunged by his unhappy passion for Lady Hamilton. At this 
 time, in the flush of earlier enthusiasm, delighting as few men 
 do in the joy of battle, he strove to promote harmony, to 
 smooth over difficulties by every exertion possible, either by 
 doing whatever was asked of him, or by judicious representa- 
 tions to others. Thus, when Hood, impatient at the disturb- 
 ing news from Toulon, wishes to hasten the conclusion by 
 summo.ning the garrison, in the hope that it may yield at 
 once, the general objected, apparently on the ground that the 
 statement of their own advantages, upon which such a sum- 
 mons might be based, would be prejudicial, if, as was most 
 probable, the demand was rejected. Whatever his reason. 
 Nelson, though indirectly, intimates to Hood that in this 
 matter he himself agrees, upon the whole, with the general, 
 and Hood yields the point, — the more so that he learns from 
 Nelson that the outposts are to be stormed the next night ; 
 and sorely was the captain, in his judicious efforts thus to 
 keep the peace, tried by the postponement of the promised 
 assault for twenty-four hours. " Such th Ings are,^' he wrote 
 to Hood, using a favorite expression. " I hope to God the 
 general, who seems a good officer and an amiable man, is not 
 led away ; but Colonel Moore is his great friend." 
 
 The feeling between the land and sea services was empha- 
 sized in the relations existing between Lord Hood and Colonel 
 Moore, who afterwards, as Sir John Moore, fell gloriously at 
 Corunna. To these two eminent officers fortune denied the 
 occasion to make full proof of their greatness to the world ; 
 but they stand in the first rank of those men of promise 
 whose failure has been due, not to their own shortcomings, 
 but to the lack of opportunity. Sir John Moore has been the 
 happier, in that the enterprise with which his name is chiefly 
 connected, and upon which his title to fame securely rests, 
 was completed, and wrought its full results ; fortunate, too, in 
 having received the vindication of that great action at the 
 hands of the most eloquent of military historians. His coun- 
 
ADMIRAL, LORD HOOD. 
 From the painting by L. F. Abbott, in the National Portrait Gallery. 
 

 
 
 ^^^Hr. ^»m^.. 
 
 -■■ :■■ 1 
 
HOOD AND MOORE 123 
 
 try and his profession may well mourn a career of such, fair 
 opening so soon cut short. But daring and original in the 
 highest degree as was the march from Salamanca to Sahagun, 
 it did not exceed, either in originality or in daring, the pur- 
 poses nourished by Lord Hood, which he had no opportunity 
 so to execute as to attract attention. Condemned to subordi- 
 nate positions until he had reached the age of seventy, his 
 genius is known to us only by his letters, and by the frustrated 
 plans at St. Kitts in 1782, and at Golfe Jouau in 1794, in the 
 former of which, less fortunate than Moore, he failed to 
 realize his well-grounded hope of reversing, by a single blow, 
 the issues of a campaign. 
 
 It is to be regretted that two such men could not under- 
 stand each other cordially. Hood, we know from his letters, 
 was " of that frame and texture that I cannot be indifferent," 
 — "full of anxiety, impatience, and apprehension," — when 
 service seemed to him slothfully done. Moore, we are told 
 by Napier, " maintained the right with vehemence bordering 
 upon fierceness." Had he had the chief command on shore, 
 it is possible that the two, impetuous and self-asserting though 
 they were, might have reached an understanding. But in the 
 most unfortunate disagreement about Bastia, — wherein it is 
 to a naval officer of to-day scarcely possible to do otherwise 
 than blame the sullen lack of enterprise shown by the army, — 
 and afterwards at Calvi, Moore appeared to Hood, and to 
 Nelson also, as the subordinate, the power behind the throne, 
 who was prompting a line of action they both condemned. 
 No position in military life is more provocative of trouble 
 than to feel you are not dealing with the principal, but with 
 an irresponsible inferior ; and the situation is worse, because 
 one in which it is almost impossible to come to an issue. 
 Moore's professional talent and force of character naturally 
 made itself felt, even with a man of Stuart's ability. Hood 
 and Nelson recognized this, and they resented, as inspired by 
 a junior, what they might have combated dispassionately, if 
 attributed to the chief. There was friction also between 
 Moore and Elliot, the viceroy of the island. Doubtless, as in 
 all cases where suspicion, not to say jealousy, has been begot, 
 much more and worse was imagined by both parties than 
 actually occurred. The apportionment of blame, or prolonged 
 
124 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 discussion of the matter, is out of place in a biography of 
 Nelson. To that it is of moment, only because it is proper to 
 state that Nelson, on the spot and in daily contact, — Nelson, 
 upon whose zeal and entire self-devotion at this period no 
 doubt is cast, — agreed in the main with Hood's opinion as to 
 what the latter called the San Fiorenzo leaven, of which Moore 
 was to them the exponent. It is true that Nelson naturally 
 sympathized with his profession and his admiral, whom he 
 heartily admired ; but some corrective, at least, to such par- 
 tiality, was supplied by his soreness about the latter's omission 
 duly to report his services at Bastia, of which he just now 
 became aware. The estrangement between the two com- 
 manders-in-chief was doubtless increased by the apparent 
 reluctance, certainly the lack of effort, to see one another 
 frequently. 
 
 The principal work, called by Nelson the Mozelle battery, 
 was carried before daylight of July 19, and before dark all the 
 outposts were in the hands of the British. "I could have 
 wished to have had a little part in the storm," wrote Nelson, 
 characteristically covetous of strenuous action, " if it was only 
 to have placed the ladders and pulled away the palisadoes. 
 However, we did the part allotted to us." That day a sum- 
 mons was sent to the garrison, but rejected, and work upon 
 batteries to breach the town.walls was then pushed rapidly 
 forward ; for it was becoming more and more evident that the 
 siege must be brought to an end, lest the entire force of 
 besiegers should become disabled by sickness. On the 28th 
 the batteries were ready, and General Stuart sent in word 
 that he would not fire upon the hospital positions, where indi 
 cated by black flags. The besieged then asked for a truce of 
 twenty-five days, undertaking to lay down their arms, if not 
 by then relieved. The general and admiral refused, but were 
 willing to allow six days. This the garrison in turn rejected ; 
 and on the night of the 30th four small vessels succeeded in 
 eluding the blockading frigates and entering supplies, which 
 encouraged the besieged. On the 31st the batteries opened, 
 and after thirty-six hours' heavy cannonade the town held out 
 a flag of truce. An arrangement was made that it should sur- 
 render on the 10th of August, if not relieved ; the garrison to 
 be transported to France without becoming prisoners of war. 
 
CALVI CAPITULATES 125 
 
 No relief arriving, the place capitulated on the day named. 
 It was high time for the besiegers. "We have upwards of 
 one thousand sick out of two thousand," wrote Nelson, " and 
 tlie others not much better than so many phantoms. We have 
 lost many men from the season, very few from the enemy." 
 He himself escaped more easily than most. To use his own 
 quaint expression, " All the prevailing disorders have attacked 
 me, but I have not strength enough for them to fasten upon. 
 I am here the reed amongst the oaks : I bow before the storm, 
 while the sturdy oak is laid low." The congenial moral sur- 
 roundings, in short, — the atmosphere of exertion, of worthy 
 and engrossing occupation, — the consciousness, to him de- 
 lightful, of distinguished action, of heroic persistence through 
 toil and danger, — prevailed even in his physical frame over 
 discomfort, over the insidious climate, and even over his dis- 
 tressing wound. " This is my ague day," he writes when the 
 batteries opened; "I hope so active a scene will keep off the 
 fit. It has shaken me a good deal ; but I have been used to 
 them, and now don't mind them much." " Amongst the 
 wounded, in a slight manner, is myself, my head being a 
 good deal wounded and my right eye cut down ; but the 
 surgeons flatter me I shall not entirely lose the sight. It con- 
 fined me, thank God, only one day, and at a time when nothing 
 particular happened to be doing." " You must not think my 
 hurts confined me," he tells his wife ; " no, nothing but the 
 loss of a limb would have kept me from my duty, and I believe 
 my exertions conduced to preserve me in this general mor- 
 tality." In his cheery letters, now, no trace is perceptible of 
 the fretful, complaining temper, which impaired, though it 
 did not destroy, the self-devotion of his later career. No 
 other mistress at this time contended with honor for the pos- 
 session of his heart; no other place than the post of duty 
 before Calvi distracted his desires, or appealed to his imagina- 
 tion through his senses. Not even Lord Hood's report of the 
 siege of Bastia, which here came to, his knowledge, and by 
 which he thought himself wronged, had bitterness to over- 
 come the joy of action and of self-contentment. 
 
 Not many days were required, after the fall of Calvi, to 
 remove the fleet, and the seamen who had been serving on 
 shore, from the pestilential coast. Nelson seems to have been 
 
126 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 intrusted, with the embarkation of the prisoners in the trans- 
 ports which were to take them to Toulon. He told his wife 
 that he had been four months landed, and felt almost qualified 
 to pass his examination as a besieging general, but that he 
 had no desire to go on with campaigning. On the 11th of 
 August, the day after the delivery of the place, he was again 
 on board the " Agamemnon," from whose crew had been drawn 
 the greatest proportion of the seamen for the batteries. One 
 hundred and fifty of them were now in their beds. "My 
 ship's company are all worn out," he wrote, " as is this whole 
 army, except myself; nothing hurts me, — of two thousand 
 men I am the most healthy. Every other officer is scarcely 
 able to crawl." Among the victims of the deadly climate was 
 Lieutenant Moutray, the son of the lady to w^hom, ten years 
 before, he had been so warmly attracted in the West Indies. 
 Nelson placed a monument to him in the church at San 
 Fiorenzo. 
 
 On the 15th of August the "Agamemnon" sailed from 
 Calvi, and after a stop at San Fiorenzo, where Hood then was, 
 reached Leghorn on the 18th, Now that the immediate 
 danger of the siege was over. Kelson admitted to his wife the 
 serious character of the injury he had received. The right 
 eye was nearly deprived of sight, — only so far recovered as 
 to enable him to distinguish light from darkness. For all 
 purposes of use it was gone ; but the blemish was not to be 
 perceived, unless attention was drawn to it. 
 
 At Leghorn the ship lay for a month, — the first period of 
 repose since she went into commission, a year and a half 
 before. While there, the physician to the fleet came on board 
 and surveyed the crew, finding them in a very weak state, and 
 unfit to serve. This condition of things gave Nelson hopes 
 that, upon the approaching departure of Lord Hood for Eng- 
 land, the " Agamemnon " might go with him ; for he was loath 
 to separate from an admiral whose high esteem he liad won, 
 and upon whom he looked as the first sea-officer of Great 
 Britain. Hood was inclined to take her, and to transfer the 
 ship's company bodily to a seventy-four. This he considered 
 no more than due to Nelson's distinguished merit and services, 
 and he had indeed offered him each ship of that rate whose 
 command fell vacant in the Mediterranean; but the strong 
 
REFITTING AT LEGHORN 127 
 
 sense of attachment to those Avho had shared his toils and 
 dangers, of reluctance that they should see him willing to 
 leave them, after their hard work together, — that combination 
 of sympathy and tact which made so much of Xelson's success 
 as a leader of men, — continu.ed to prevent his accepting pro- 
 motion that would sever his ties to them. 
 
 The exigencies of the war in the Mediterranean forbade the 
 departure, even of a sixty-four with a disabled crew. A full 
 month later her sick-list was still seventy-seven, out of a total 
 of less than four hundred. "Though certainly unfit for a 
 long cruise," Nelson said, "we are here making a show," — a 
 military requirement not to be neglected or despised. He 
 accepted the disappointment, as he did all service rubs at this 
 period, with perfect temper and in the best spirit. " We must 
 not repine," he wrote to his wife on the 12th of October, the 
 day after Hood sailed for England. "Lord Hood is very well 
 inclined towards me, but the service must ever supersede all 
 private consideration, I hope you will spend the winter cheer- 
 fully. Do not repine at my absence; before spring I hope we 
 shall have peace, when we must look out for some little 
 cottage." She fretted, however, as some women will; and he, 
 to comfort her, wrote more sanguinely about himself than the 
 facts warranted. " Why you should be uneasy about me, so 
 as to make yourself ill, I know not. I feel a confident protec- 
 tion in whatever service I may be employed upon; and as to 
 my health, I don't know that I was ever so truly well. I 
 fancy myself grown quite stout." To his old captain. Locker, 
 he admitted that he could not get the better of the fever. 
 
 Corsica being now wholly in the power of its inhabitants, 
 allied with and supported by Great Britain, his attention and 
 interest were engrossed by the French fleet centring upon 
 Toulon, the dominant factor of concern to the British in the 
 Mediterranean, where Vice-Admiral Hotham had succeeded 
 Hood as commander-in-chief. Nelson realizes more and more 
 the mistake that was made, when a fraction of it was allowed 
 to escape battle in the previous June. The various reasons 
 by which he had at first excused the neglect to bring it to 
 action no longer weigh with him. He does not directly blame, 
 but he speaks of the omission as an " opportunity lost," — a 
 phrase than which there are few more ominous, iu char- 
 
128 THE LIFE OF NELSOX 
 
 acterizing the closely balanced, yet weighty, decisions upon 
 which the issues of war depend. Nothing, he thinks, can 
 prevent the junction of the two fragments, — then in Golfe 
 Jouan and Toulon, — one of which, with more resolution and 
 promptitude on Hotham's part, might have been struck singly 
 at sea a few months before ; and if they join, there must fol- 
 low a fleet action, between forces too nearly equal to insure to 
 Great Britain the decisive results that were needed. The 
 thought he afterwards expressed, "Numbers only can an- 
 nihilate," was clearly floating in his brain, — inarticulate, 
 perhaps, as j'et, but sure to come to the birth. "If we are 
 not completely victorious, — I mean, able to remain at sea 
 whilst the enemy must retire into port, — if we only make a 
 Lord Howe's victory, take a part, and retire into port, Italy 
 is lost." Criticism clearly is going on in his mind ; and not 
 mere criticism (there is enough and to spare of that in the 
 world, and not least in navies), but criticism judicious, well 
 considered, and above all fruitful. The error of opportunity 
 lost he had seen; the error of a partial victory — "a Lord 
 Howe's victory," another opportunity lost — he intuitively 
 anticipated for the Mediterranean, and was soon to see. He 
 was already prepared to pass an accurate judgment instantl}', 
 when he saw it. May we not almost hear, thundering back 
 from the clouds that yet veiled the distant future of the Nile, 
 the words, of which his thought was already pregnant, " You 
 may be assured I will bring the French fleet to action the 
 moment I can lay my hands upon them." 
 
 The year closed with the British fleet watching, as best it 
 could, the French ships, which, according to Nelson's expecta- 
 tion, had given the blockaders the slip, and had made their 
 junction at Toulon. There was now no great disparity in the 
 nominal force of the two opponents, the British having four- 
 teen ships-of-the-line, the French fifteen ; and it was quite in 
 the enemy's power to fulfil his other prediction, by keeping 
 Hotham in hot water during the winter. In the middle of 
 November the " Agamemnon " had to go to Leghorn for ex- 
 tensive repairs, and remained there, shifting her main and 
 mizzen masts, until the 21st of December. Nelson, who had 
 endured with unyielding cheerfulness the dangers, exposure, 
 and sickliness of Calvi, found himself unable to bear patiently 
 
HIS MILITARY OPINIONS 129 
 
 the comfort of quiet nights in a friendly port, while hot work 
 might chance outside. " Lying in port is misery to me. My 
 heart is almost broke to find the Agamemnon lying here, little 
 better than a wreck. I own my sincere wish that the enemy 
 Avould rest -quiet until we are ready for sea, and a gleam of 
 hope sometimes crosses me that they will." " I am uneasy 
 enough for fear they will fight, and Agamemnon not present, 
 — it will almost break my heart ; but I hope the best, — that 
 they are only boasting at present, and will be quiet until I am 
 ready." "It is misery," he repeats, "for me to be laid up 
 dismantled." 
 
 It was during this period of comparative inactivity in port, 
 followed by monotonous though arduous winter cruising of£ 
 Toulon, which was broken only by equally dreary stays at 
 San Fiorenzo, that Iselsoa found time to brood over the 
 neglect of which he thought himself the victim, in the omis- 
 sion of Lord Hood to notice more markedly his services in 
 Corsica. It is usually disagreeable to the uninterested by- 
 stander to see an excessive desire for praise, even under the 
 guise of just recognition of work done. Words of complaint, 
 whether heard or read, strike a discord to one who himself at 
 the moment is satisfied with his surroundings. We all have 
 an instinctive shrinking from the tones of a grumbler. Nel- 
 son's insistence upon his grievances has no exemption from 
 this common experience ; yet it must be remembered that 
 these assertions of the importance of his own services, and 
 dissatisfaction with the terms in which they had been men- 
 tioned, occur chiefly, if not solely, in letters to closest rela- 
 tions, — to his wife and uncle, — and that they would never 
 have become known but for the after fame, which has caused 
 all his most private correspondence to have interest and to be 
 brought to light. As a revelation of character they have a^ 
 legitimate interest, and they reveal, or rather they confirm, 
 what is abundantly revealed throughout his life, — that in- 
 tense longing for distinction, for admiration justly earned, for 
 conspicuous exaltation above the level of his kind, which ex- 
 isted in him to so great a degree, and which is perhaps the 
 most potent — certainly the most universal — factor in mili- 
 tary achievement. They reveal this ambition for honor, or 
 glory, on its weak side ; on its stronger side of noble emula- 
 
 9 
 
130 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 tion, of self-devotion, of heroic action, his correspondence 
 teems with its evidence in words, as does his life in acts. To 
 quote the words of Lord Kad stock, who at this period, and 
 until after the battle of Cape St. Vincent, was serving as one 
 of the junior admirals in the Mediterranean, and retained his 
 friendship through life, " a perpetual thirst of glory was ever 
 raging within him." " He has ever showed himself as great 
 a despiser of riches as he is a lover of glory ; and I am fully 
 convinced in my own mind that he would sooner defeat the 
 French fleet than capture fifty galleons." 
 
 After all allowance made, however, it cannot be denied that 
 there is in these complaints a tone which one regrets in such 
 a man. The repeated "It was I " jars, by the very sharpness 
 of its contrast, with the more generous expressions that 
 abound in his correspondence. " When I reflect that I was 
 the cause of re-attacking Bastia, after our wise generals gave 
 it over, from not knowing the force, fancying it 2,000 men ; 
 that it was I, who landing, joined the Corsicans, and with only 
 my ship's party of marines, drove the French under the walls 
 of Bastia ; that it was I, who, knowing the force in Bastia to 
 be upwards of 4,000 men, as I have now only ventured to tell 
 Lord Hood, lauded with only 1,200 men, and kept the secret 
 till within this week past ; — what I must have felt during 
 the whole siege may be easily conceived. Yet I am scarcely 
 mentioned. I freely forgive, but cannot forget. This and 
 much more ought to have been mentioned. It is known that, 
 for two months, I blockaded Bastia with a squadron ; only 
 fifty sacks of flour got into the town. At San Fiorenzo and 
 Calvi, for two months before, nothing got in, and four French 
 frigates could not get out, and are now ours. Yet my dili- 
 gence is not mentioned ; and others, for keeping succours out 
 of Calvi for a few summer months, are handsomely mentioned. 
 JSicch things are. I have got upon a subject near my heart, 
 which is full when I think of the treatment I have received. 
 . . , The taking of Corsica, like the taking of St. Juan's, has 
 cost me money. St. Juan's cost near £500 ; Corsica has cost 
 me £300, an eye, and a cut across my back ; and my money, 
 I find, cannot be repaid me." 
 
 As regards the justice of his complaints, it seems to the 
 author impossible to read carefully Hood's two reports, after 
 
 I 
 
HIS LOVE OF DISTINCTION 131 
 
 the fall of Bastia and that of Calvi, and not admit, either that 
 Nelson played a very unimportant part in the general opera- 
 tions connected with the reduction of Corsica, with which 
 he became associated even before it was effectively under- 
 taken, and so remained throughout ; or else that no due 
 recognition was accorded to him in the admiral's despatches. 
 Had he not become otherwise celebrated in his after life, he 
 would from these papers be inferred to stand, in achievement, 
 rather below than above the level of the other captains who 
 from time to time were present. That this was unfair seems 
 certain ; and notably at Calvi, where, from the distance of the 
 operations from the anchorage, and the strained relations 
 which kept Hood and Stuart apart, he was practically the 
 one naval man upon whose discretion and zeal success de- 
 pended. It is probable, however, that tlie failure to do him 
 justice proceeded as much from awkward literary construc- 
 tion, phrases badly turned, as from reluctance to assign due 
 prominence to one subordinate among several others. 
 
 How readily, yet how keenly, he derived satisfaction, even 
 from slight tributes of recognition, is shown by the simplicity 
 and pleasure with which he quoted to Mrs. Nelson the follow- 
 ing words of Sir Gilbert Elliot, the Viceroy of Corsica, then 
 and always a warm friend and admirer : " I know that you, 
 who have had such an honourable share in this acquisition, 
 will not be indifferent at the prosperity of the Country which, 
 you have so much assisted to place under His Majesty's gov- 
 ernment." " Whether these are words of course and to be 
 forgotten," Avrote Nelson, " I know not ; they are pleasant, 
 however, for the time." Certainly his demands for praise, if 
 thus measured, were not extreme. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 Nelson's Services with the Fleet in the Mediterranean under 
 Admiral Hotham. — Partial Fleet Actions of March 13 and 14, 
 AND July 13. — Nelson ordered to command a Detached Squad- 
 ron co-operating with the Austrian Army in the Eiviera of 
 Genoa. 
 
 January-July, 1795. Age, 36. 
 
 FROM the naval point of view, as a strategic measure, the 
 acquisition of Corsica by the British was a matter of 
 great importance. It was, however, only one among several 
 factors, which went to make up the general military and po- 
 litical situation in the Mediterranean at the end of the year 
 1794. Hitherto the exigencies of the well-nigh universal 
 hostilities in which Erance had been engaged, and the anarch- 
 ical internal state of that country, had prevented any decisive 
 operations by her on the side of Italy, although she had, since 
 1792, been formally at war with the Kingdom of Sardinia, of 
 which Piedmont was a province. 
 
 At the close of 1794 the conditions were greatly modified. 
 In the north, the combined forces of Great Britain, Austria, 
 and Holland had been driven out of France and Belgium, and 
 the United Provinces were on the point of submission. On 
 the east, the Austrians and Prussians had retreated to the 
 far bank of the Rhine, and Prussia was about to withdraw 
 from the coalition, which, three years before, she had been 
 so eager to form. On the south, even greater success had 
 attended the French armies, which had crossed the Pyrenees 
 into Spain, driving before them the forces of the enemy, who 
 also was soon to ask for peace. It was therefore probable 
 that operations in Italy would assume greatly increased 
 activity, from the number of French soldiers released else- 
 where, as well as from the fact that the Austrians themselves, 
 though they continued the war in Germany, had abandoned 
 
MILITARY CONDITIONS IN MEDITERRANEAN 133 
 
 other portions of the continent which they had hitherto 
 contested. 
 
 The political and military conditions in Italy were, briefly, 
 as follows. The region north of the Maritime Alps and in 
 the valley of the Po was, for the most part, in arms against 
 France, — the western province. Piedmont, as part of the 
 Kingdom of Sardinia, whose capital was at Turin, and, to 
 the eastward of it, the duchies of Milan and Mantua, as be- 
 longing to Austria. The governments of the numerous small 
 states into which Northern and Central Italy were then 
 divided — Venice, Genoa, Tuscan}', the States of the Church, 
 and others — sympathized generally with the opponents of 
 France, but, as far as possible, sought to maintain a formal 
 though difficult neutralit}^. The position of Genoa was the 
 most embarrassing, because in direct contact with all the 
 principal parties to the war. To the westward, her territory 
 along the Piviera included Vintimiglia, bordering there on 
 the county of Nice, and contained Vado Bay, the best anchor- 
 age between Nice and Genoa. To the eastward, it embraced 
 the Gulf of Spezia, continually mentioned by Nelson as Porto 
 Especia. 
 
 The occupation of the Piviera was of particular moment to 
 the French, for it offered a road by which to enter Italy, — 
 bad, indeed, but better far than those through the passes of 
 the upper Alps. Skirting the sea, it afforded a double line 
 of communications, by land and by water ; for the various 
 detachments of their arm}-, posted along it, could in great 
 degree be supplied by the small coasting-vessels of the Medi- 
 terranean. So long, also, as it was in their possession, and 
 they held passes of the Maritime Alps and Apennines, as they 
 did in 1794, there was the possibility of their penetrating 
 through them, to turn the left flank of the Sardinian army in 
 Piedmont, which was, in fact, what Bonaparte accomplished ' 
 two years later. These inducements had led the French to 
 advance into the county of Nice, then belonging to Sardinia, 
 which in the existing state of war it was perfectly proper for 
 them to do ; but, not stopping there, they had pushed on past 
 the Sardinian boundary into the neutral Riviera of Genoa, as 
 far as Vado Bay, which they occupied, and where they still 
 were at the end of 1794. 
 
134 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 Genoa submitted under protest to this breach of her neu- 
 trality, as she did botli before^ and after to similar insults 
 from parties to the Avar. She derived some pecuniary benefit 
 from the condition of affairs, — her ports, as well as those of 
 Tuscany, immediately to the southward, becoming depots of a 
 trade in grain, which supplied both the French army and the 
 southern provinces of France. These food stuffs, absolutely 
 essential to the French, were drawn chiefly from Sicily and 
 the Barbary States, and could not be freely taken into French 
 ports by the larger class of sea-going vessels, in face of the 
 British fleet. They were, therefore, commonly transshipped 
 in Leghorn or Genoa, and carried on by coasters. As so much 
 Genoese seacoast was occupied by French divisions, it was 
 practically impossible for British cruisers to distinguish 
 between vessels carrying corn for the inhabitants and those 
 laden for the armies, and entirely impossible to know that 
 what was intended for one object would not be diverted to 
 another. If, too, a vessel's papers showed her to be destined 
 for Vintimiglia, near the extreme of the Genoese line, there 
 could be no certainty that, having got so far, she might not 
 quietly slip by into a French port, either Nice or beyond. The 
 tenure of the neutral Eiviera of Genoa by the French army 
 was a threat to the allies of Great Britain in Piedmont and 
 Lombardy, as well as to the quasi-neutrals in Genoa, Tuscany, 
 Venice, and the Papal States. Its further advance or suc- 
 cesses would imperil the latter, and seriously alTect the 
 attitude of Naples, hostile to the Republic, bat weak, timid, 
 and unstable of purpose. On the other hand, the retention of 
 its position, and much more any further advance, depended 
 upon continuing to receive supplies by way of the sea. To 
 do so by the shore route alone was not possible. Southern 
 France itself depended upon the sea for grain, and could send 
 nothing, even if the then miserable Corniche road could have 
 sufficed, as the sole line of communications for forty thousand 
 troops. 
 
 Thus the transfer of Corsica to Great Britain had a very 
 important bearing upon the military and political conditions. 
 At the moment when Italy was about to become the scene of 
 
 ^ In the j'ear 1793 the French frigate " Modeste " had been forcibly taken 
 from the harbor of Genoa by an English squadron. 
 
 * 
 
STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE OF CORSICA 135 
 
 operations which might, and in the event actually did, exercise 
 a decisive influence upon the course of the general war, the 
 British position was solidified by the acquisition of a naval 
 base, unassailable while the sea remained in their control and 
 the Corsicans attached to their cause, and centrally situated 
 with reference to the probable scenes of hostilities, as well as 
 to the points of political interest, on the mainland of Italy. 
 The fleet resting upon it, no longer dependent upon the reluc- 
 tant hospitality of Genoese or Tuscan ports, or upon the far 
 distant Kingdom of Naples, was secure to keep in its station, 
 whence it menaced the entire seaboard trade of France and 
 the Riviera, as well as the tenure of the French army in the 
 latter, and exerted a strong influence upon the attitude of both 
 Genoa and Tuscany, who yielded only too easily to the nearest 
 or most urgent pressure. The fleet to which Nelson belonged 
 had spent the greater part of the year 1794 in securing for 
 itself, as a base of operations, this position, by far the most 
 suitable among those that could be considered at all. It 
 remained now to utilize the advantage obtained, to make the 
 situation of the French army in Italy untenable, by establish- 
 ing an indisputable control of the sea. To this the holding of 
 Corsica also contributed, indirectly ; for the loss of the island 
 forced the French fleet to go to sea, in order, if possible, to 
 expedite its re-conquest. In all the operations resulting from 
 these various motives, Nelson bore a part as conspicuous and 
 characteristic as he had done in the reduction of Corsica. 
 Almost always on detached service, in positions approaching 
 independent command, he was continually adding to his 
 reputation, and, what was far more important, maturing the 
 professional character, the seeds of which had been so bounti- 
 fully bestowed upon him by nature. His reputation, won 
 hard and step by step, obtained for him opportunity ; but it 
 was to character, ripened by experience and reflection, that he 
 owed his transcendent successes. 
 
 The scheme for the government of the island as a British 
 dependency, stated broadly, was that it should be administered 
 by the Corsicans themselves, under a viceroy appointed by the 
 British crown. Its military security was provided for by the 
 control of the sea, and by British soldiers holding the fortified 
 ports, — a duty for which the Corsicans themselves had not 
 
13G THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 then the necessary training. Nelson, who did not yet feel 
 the impossibility of sustaining a successful over-sea invasion, 
 when control of the sea was not had, was anxious about the 
 expected attempts of the French against the island, and urged 
 the viceroy, by private letter, to see that Ajaccio, which he 
 regarded as the point most favoi*able to a descent, was gar- 
 risoned sufficiently to keep the gates shut for a few days. 
 This caution did not then proceed from a distrust of the 
 Corsicans' fidelity, without which neither France nor England 
 could hold the island, as was shown by the quickness of its 
 transfer two years later, when the inhabitants again revolted 
 to France. " With this defence," he wrote, " I am confident 
 Ajaccio, and I believe I may say the island of Corsica, would 
 be perfectly safe until our fleet could get to the enemy, when 
 I have no doubt the event would be what every Briton might 
 expect." 
 
 The repairs of the " Agamemnon " were completed before 
 Nelson's anxious apprehensions of a battle taking place in his 
 absence could be fulfilled. On the 21st of December, 1794, he 
 sailed from Leghorn with the fleet, in company with which 
 he remained from that time until the following July, when 
 he was sent to the Riviera of Genoa on special detached ser- 
 vice. He thus shared the severe cruising of that winter, as 
 well as the abortive actions of the spring and early summer, 
 where the admiral again contrived to lose opportunities of 
 settling the sea campaign, and with it, not improbably, that 
 of the land also. There were plain indications in the port of 
 Toulon that a maritime enterprise of some importance was in 
 contemplation. In the outer road lay fifteen sail-of-the-line, 
 the British having then fourteen; but more significant of the 
 enemy's purpose was the presence at Marseilles of Mty large 
 transports, said to be ready. " I have no doubt," wrote Nel- 
 son, "but Porto Especia is their object." This was a mistake, 
 interesting as indicating the slight weight that Nelson at that 
 time attributed to the deterrent effect of the British fleet " in 
 being " upon such an enterprise, involving an open-sea passage 
 of over a hundred miles, though he neither expressed nor 
 entertained any uncertainty as to the result of a meeting, if 
 the enemy were encountered. The French Government, not 
 yet appreciating the inefficiency to which its navy had been 
 
MISTAKEN CONJECTURES 137 
 
 reduced by many concurrent circumstances, was ready to dis- 
 pute the control of the Mediterranean, and it contemplated, 
 among other things, a demonstration at Leghorn, similar to 
 that successfully practised at Naples in 1792, which might 
 compel the Court of Tuscany to renounce the formally hostile 
 attitude it had assumed at the bidding of Great Britain ; but 
 it does not appear that there was any serious purpose of 
 exposing a large detachment, in the attempt to hold upon the 
 Continent a position, such as Spezia, with which secure com- 
 municatiou by land could not be had. 
 
 Though none too careful to proportion its projects to the 
 force at its disposal, the Directory sufficiently understood that 
 a detachment at Spezia could not be self-dependent, nor could, 
 with any certainty, combine its operations with those of the 
 army in the Eiviera; and also that, to be properly supported 
 at all, there must be reasonably secure and unbroken com- 
 munication, either by land or water, neither of which was 
 possible until the British fleet was neutralized. The same 
 consideration dictated to it the necessity of a naval victory, 
 before sending out the expedition, of whose assembling the 
 British were now hearing, and which was actually intended 
 for Corsica ; although it was known that in the island there 
 had already begun the revulsion against the British rule, 
 which culminated in open revolt the following year. Owing 
 to tlie dearth of seamen, the crews of the French ships were 
 largely composed of soldiers, and it was thought that, after 
 beating the enemy, four or five thousand of these might be at 
 once thrown on shore at Ajaccio, and that afterwards the main 
 body could be sent across in safety. First of all, however, 
 control of the sea must be established by a battle, more or 
 less decisive. 
 
 On the 24th of February, 1795, the British fleet arrived at 
 Leghorn, after a very severe cruise of over a fortnight. On 
 the 2d of March Nelson mentioned, in a letter to his wife, that 
 the French were said then to have a hundred and twenty-four 
 transports full of troops, from which he naturally argued that 
 they must mean to attempt something. On the evening of the 
 8th, an express from Genoa brought Hotham word that they 
 were actually at sea, fifteen ships-of-the-line, with half a 
 dozen or more smaller vessels. He sailed in pursuit early 
 
138 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 the next morning, having with him thirteen ^ British ships-of- 
 the-line. and one Neapolitan seventy-four. Of the former, 
 four were three-decked ships, carrying ninety-eight to one 
 hundred guns, a class of vessel of which the French had but 
 one, the " Sans Culottes," of one hundred and twenty, which, 
 under the more dignified name of " L'Orient," afterwards met 
 so tragic a fate at the Battle of the Nile ; but they had, in 
 compensation, three powerful ships of eighty guns, much 
 superior to the British seventy-fours. As, however, only 
 partial engagements followed, the aggregate of force on either 
 side is a matter of comparatively little importance in a Life 
 of Nelson. 
 
 Standing to the northward and westward, with a fresh 
 easterly wind, the British fleet through its lookouts discov- 
 ered the enemy on the evening of the day of sailing, and by 
 the same means kept touch with them throughout the 10th 
 and 11th ; but the bafltling airs, frequent in the Mediterranean, 
 prevented the main body seeing them until the morning of 
 the 12th. At daylight, then, they were visible from the 
 "Agamemnon," in company with which were five British 
 ships and the Neapolitan; the remainder of the fleet being so 
 far to the eastward that their hulls were just rising out of the 
 water. The British lying nearly becalmed, the French, Avho 
 were to windward, bore down to within three miles ; but 
 although, in Nelson's judgment, they had a fair opportunity 
 to separate the advanced British shij^s, with which he was, 
 from the main body, they failed to improve it. Nothing 
 happened that day, and, a fresh breeze from the west spring- 
 ing up at dusk, both fleets stood to the southAvard with it, the 
 French being to windward. That night one of the latter, a 
 seventy-four, having lost a topmast, Avas permitted to return 
 to port. 
 
 The next morning the wind Avas still southwest and squally. 
 Hotham at daylight ordered a general chase, Avhich alloAved 
 each ship a certain freedom of movement in endeavoring to 
 close Avith the French. The " Agamemnon " had been Avell to 
 the westward, from the start; and being a very handy, quick- 
 working ship, as Avell as, originally at least, more than com- 
 
 1 The " Berwick," seventy-four, had been left in San Fiorenzo for repairs. 
 Putting to sea at this time, she fell in with the French fleet, and was taken. 
 
 
ACTION OF MARCH 13, 1795 139 
 
 monly fast, was early in the day in a position where she had 
 a fair chance for reaching the enemy. A favorable oppor- 
 tunity soon occurred, one of those which so often show that, 
 if a man only puts himself in tlie way of good luck, good luck 
 is apt to offer. At 8 a. m. the eighty-gun ship '' Ca Ira," third 
 from the rear in the French order, ran on board the vessel 
 next ahead of her, and by the collision lost her fore and main 
 topmasts. These falling overboard on the lee side — in this 
 case the port ^ — not only deprived her of by far the greater 
 part of her motive power, but acted as a drag on her progress, 
 besides for the time preventing the working of the guns on 
 that side. The " Ca Ira " dropped astern of her fleet. Al- 
 though this eighty-gun ship was much bigger than his own, 
 — "absolutely large enough to take Agamemnon in her hold," 
 Nelson said, — the latter saw his chance, and instantly seized 
 it with the promptitude characteristic of all his actions. The 
 " Agamemnon," if she was not already on the port tack, oppo- 
 site to that on which the fleets had been during the night, 
 must have gone about at this time, and probably for this 
 reason. She was able thus to fetch into the wake of the 
 crippled vessel, which a frigate had already gallantly at- 
 tacked, taking advantage of the uselessness of the French- 
 man's lee batteries, encumbered with the wreckage of the 
 masts. 
 
 At 10 A.M., the " Ca Ira" and the ''Agamemnon" having 
 passed on opposite tacks, the latter again went about and 
 stood in pursuit under all sail, rapidly nearing the enemy, 
 who at this time was taken in tow by a frigate. But although 
 in this position the French ship could not train her broadside 
 guns upon her smaller opponent, she could still work freely 
 the half-dozen stern guns, and did so with much effect. " So 
 true did she fire," noted Nelson, " that not a shot missed some 
 part of the ship, and latterly the masts were struck every 
 shot, which obliged me to open our fire a few minutes sooner 
 than I intended, for it was my intention to have touched his 
 stern before a shot was fired." At quarter before eleven, the 
 " Agamemnon " was within a hundred yards of the " Ca Ira's " 
 stern, and this distance she was able to keep until 1 p. m. 
 
 1 The port side, or, as it was called in Nelson's day, the larboard side, is the 
 left, looking from the stern to the how of a ship. 
 
i40 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 Here, by the use of the helm and of the sails, the ship alter- 
 nately turned her starboard side to the enemy to fire her bat- 
 teries, and again resumed her course, to regain the distance 
 necessarily lost at each deviation. This raking fire not only 
 killed and wounded many of the " ^a Ira's " crew, and injured 
 the hull, but, what was tactically of yet greater importance, 
 preventing the replacing of the lost spars. Thus was entailed 
 upon the French that night a crippled ship, which they could 
 not in honor abandon, nor yet could save without fighting for 
 her, — a tactical dilemma which was the direct cause of the 
 next day's battle. 
 
 Brief and cursory as is the notice of this action of the 
 "Agamemnon" in Hotham's despatches, he mentions no other 
 ship-of-the-line as engaged at this time, and states that she 
 and the frigate were so far detached from the fleet, that they 
 were finally obliged to retire on account of other enemy's 
 vessels approaching. Nelson's journal says that two French 
 ships, one of one hundred and twenty guns and a seventy-four, 
 were at gun-shot distance on the bow of the ^' Ca Ira " when 
 he began to attack her. These, with several others of their 
 fleet, went about some time before one, at which hour the 
 frigate, towing the disabled ship, tacked herself, and also got 
 the latter around. The "Agamemnon" standing on, she and 
 the " (^Si Ira " now crossed within half pistol-range ; but, the 
 French guns being too much elevated, the shot passed over 
 their antagonist, who lost in this day's work only seven men 
 wounded. Nelson then again tacked to follow, but by this 
 time the French admiral had apparently decided that his 
 crippled vessel must be rescued, and his fleet no longer defied 
 by a foe so inferior in strength. Several of the enemy were 
 approaching, when Hothara made a signal of recall, which 
 Nelson on this occasion at least had no hesitation in obeying, 
 and promptly. There was no pursuit, the hostile commander- 
 in-chief being apparently satisfied to save the " Ca Ira " for 
 the moment, without bringing on a general engagement. 
 
 In this affair, what is mainly to be noted in Nelson is not 
 the personal courage, nor yet even the professional daring, or 
 the skill which justified the daring. It may be conceded that 
 all these were displayed in a high degree, but they can 
 scarcely be claimed to have exceeded that shown by other 
 
\ Wind 
 
 <3 F' 
 
 c' ^ c^ C c 
 
 ^A 
 
 Agamemnon b\ Qa Ira 
 
 March /J, /795. 
 
 B' 
 
 A — Agojtieinnon 
 
 C - (^a I rev 
 
 F — French, Ships of Line 
 
 B — Nearest Britishv do- 
 
i 
 
ACTION OF MARCH 13, 1795 141 
 
 officers, not a few, when equally tried. What is rather strik- 
 ing, account for it how we will, is that Nelson, here as always, 
 was on hand when opportunity offered ; that after three days 
 of chase he, and he only, was so far to the front as to be able to 
 snatch the fleeting moment. " On looking round," he says at 
 ten o'clock, when about to begin the action, " I saw no ship- 
 of-the-line within several miles to support me ; the Captain 
 was the nearest on our lee-quarter." With the looseness and 
 lack of particularity which characterize most logs and 
 despatches remaining from those days, and make the compre- 
 hension of naval engagements, other than the greatest, a 
 matter of painful and uncertain inference, it is impossible 
 accurately to realize the entire situation ; but it seems difficult 
 to imagine that among all the other thirteen captains, " where 
 emulation was common to all and zeal for his Majesty's ser- 
 vice the general description of the fleet," to use Hotham's 
 words, none could have been on the spot to support so prom- 
 ising an attempt, had there been "common" that sort of 
 emulation w^hich takes a man ever to the front, not merely in 
 battle but at all times, — the spirit that will not and cannot 
 rest while anything remains to be done, ever pressing onward 
 to the mark. To this unquestionably must be added the 
 rapid comprehension of a situation, and the exceeding promp- 
 titude with which Nelson seized his opportunity, as well as 
 the tenacious intrepidity Avith which he held to his position 
 of advantage, despite the imminent threat to his safety from 
 the uninjured and gigantic " Sans Culottes," barely out of 
 gunshot to windward. It is right also to note the accessi- 
 bility to advice, a feature of his genial and kindly tempera- 
 ment, to which he admitted much of the success was due. 
 The trait is not rare in mankind in general, but it is excep- 
 tional in men of a character so self-reliant and decided as 
 Nelson. " If the conduct of the Agamemnon on the 13th," 
 he generously wrote, " was by any means the cause of our 
 success on the 14th, Lieutenant Andrews has a principal 
 share in the merit, for a more proper opinion was never given 
 by an officer than the one he gave me on the loth, in a situa- 
 tion of great difficulty." 
 
 The same hot spirit, the same unwearying energy, made 
 itself still more manifest the next day, when were to be 
 
142 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 garnered the results of his own partial, yet, in its degree, 
 decisive action of the 13th. " Sure I am," said he afterwards, 
 ''had I commanded our fleet on the 14th, that either the 
 whole French fleet would have graced ray triumph, or I should 
 have been in a confounded scrape." A confounded scrape he 
 would have been in on the 13th, and on other days also, great 
 and small, had there been a different issue to the risks he 
 dared, and rightly dared, to take. Of what man eminent in 
 war, indeed, is not the like- true? It is the price of fame, 
 which he who dare not pay must forfeit ; and not fame only, 
 but repute. 
 
 During the following night the "Sans Culottes" quitted 
 the Prencli fleet. The wind continued southerly, both fleets 
 standing to the westward, the crippled '' (^a Ira " being taken 
 in tow by the " Censeur," of seventy-four guns. At daylight 
 of March 14, being about twenty miles southwest from Genoa, 
 these two were found to be much astern and to leeward of 
 their main body, — that is, northeast from it. The British lay 
 in the same direction, and were estimated by Nelson to be 
 three and a half miles from the disabled ship and her consort, 
 five miles from the rest of the French. At 5.30 a. m. a smart 
 breeze sprang up from the northwest, which took the British 
 aback, but enabled them afterwards to head for the two sepa- 
 rated French ships. Apparently, from Nelson's log, this 
 wind did not reach the main body of the enemy, a circumstance 
 not uncommon in the Mediterranean. Two British seventy- 
 fours, the " Captain " and the " Bedford," in obedience to 
 signals, stood down to attack the "Censeur" and the "Ca 
 Ira ; " and, having in this to undergo for twenty minutes a fire 
 to which they could not repl}'^, were then and afterwards 
 pretty roughly handled. They were eventually left behind, 
 crippled, as their own fleet advanced. The rest of the British 
 were meantime forming in line and moving down to sustain 
 them. The French main body, keej^ing the southerly wind, 
 wore in succession to support their separated ships, and 
 headed to pass between them and their enemies. The latter, 
 having formed, stood also towards these two, which now lay 
 between the contestants as the prize to the victor. 
 
 Apparently, in these manoeuvres, the leading British ships 
 ran again into the belt of southerly wind, — which the French 
 
I 
 
PARTIAL FLEET ACTION, MARCH 14, 1795 143 
 
 kept throughout, — while part of the centre and rear were left 
 becalmed, aud had little or no share in the cannonade that 
 followed. Under these conditions the resolution of the 
 French admiral seems to have faltered, for instead of passing 
 to leeward — north — of the enemy's line, which was quite in 
 his power, aud so covering his endangered ships, he allowed 
 the latter to be cut off, thus insuring their surrender. His 
 fleet kept to windward of the British, passing fairly near the 
 two leading ships, the " Illustrious " and the " Courageux," 
 who thus underwent a " concentration by defiling," that took 
 the main and mizzen masts out of both, besides killing and 
 wounding many of their people. The '•' Princess Royal " and 
 "Agamemnon," which came next, could only engage at long 
 range. "The enemy's fleet kept the southerly wind," wrote 
 Nelson in his journal, " which enabled them to keep their 
 distance, which was very great. At 8 A. m. they began to 
 pass our line to windward, and the Ca Ira and Le Censeur 
 were on our lee side ; therefore the Illustrious, Courageux, 
 Princess Tioyal, and Agamemnon were obliged to fight on 
 both sides of the ship." At five minutes past ten A. m. both 
 the French vessels struck, the "^a Ira" having lost her three 
 masts, and the " Censeur " her mainmast. It was past one 
 p. M. when firing wholly ceased ; and the enemy then crowded 
 all possible sail to the westward, the British fleet lying with 
 their heads to the southeast. 
 
 "When the British line was forming, between seven and 
 eight in the morning, Nelson was directed by Vice-Admiral 
 Goodall, the second in command, to take his station astern of 
 his flagship, the "Princess Eoyal," of ninety guns. Immedi- 
 ately behind the "Agamemnon " came the " Britannia," carry- 
 ing Hotham's flag. This position, and the lightness of the 
 wind, serve to explain how Nelson came to take the step he 
 mentions in several letters ; going on board the "Britannia," 
 after the two French vessels struck, and urging the comman- 
 der-in-chief to leave the prizes in charge of the British frigates 
 and crippled ships-of-the-line, and vigorously to pursue the 
 French, who having lost four ships out of their fleet, by 
 casualty or capture, were now reduced to eleven sail. " I 
 went on board Admiral Hotham as soon as our firing grew 
 slack in the van, and the Ca Ira and the Censeur had struck, 
 
144 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 to propose to him leaving our two crippled ships, the two 
 prizes, and four frigates, to themselves, and to pursue the 
 enemy ; but he, much cooler than myself, said, ' We must be 
 contented, we have done very well.' Now, had we taken ten 
 sail, and had allowed the eleventh to escape, when it had been 
 possible to have got at her, I could never have called it well 
 done. Goodall backed me ; I got him to write to the admiral, 
 but it would not do : we should have had such a day as I be- 
 lieve the annals of England never produced." 
 
 Nelson here evidently assumes that it was possible to have 
 got at the French fleet. After a man's reputation has been 
 established, there is always the danger of giving undue weight 
 to his ojjinions, expressed at an earlier time, somewhat 
 casually, and not under the sobering sense of responsibility. 
 Hotham may have questioned the possibility of getting at the 
 French effectively, having regard to the fickle lightness of 
 the wind then prevalent, and to the fact that, besides the two 
 ships partially dismasted and for the moment useless, two 
 others, the " Captain " and the " Bedford," had suffered 
 severely in sails and rigging. He would also doubtless con- 
 sider that the three-decked shij)S, of which he had four, were 
 notoriously bad sailers, and sure to drop behind if the chase 
 lasted long, leaving to eight ships, including the "Neapoli- 
 tan," the burden of arresting the enemy, who had shown very 
 fair offensive powers in the morning. Nelson was not blind 
 to these facts, and not infrequently alludes to them. *' Had 
 we only a breeze, I have no doubt we should have given a 
 destructive blow to the enemy's fleet." '' Sure I am, that 
 had the breeze continued, so as to have allowed us to close 
 with the enemy, we should have destroyed their whole fleet." 
 Whether these remarks apply to the heat of the engagement, 
 or to the proposed chase, which Hotham declined to permit, 
 is not perfectly clear ; but inasmuch as the second part of 
 the action of the 14th consisted, actually, in the French filing 
 by the " Courageux " and the *' Illustrious," upon whom their 
 fire was thus concentrated, while the rest of the British were 
 becalmed out of gunshot, it is very possible he was thinking 
 of that incident only, which doubtless would have taken a 
 very different turn had the main body been able to come 
 down. His wish to pursue is unquestionable, both from his 
 
MILITAEY OPINIONS 145 
 
 assertion and from the whole character of his career hefore 
 and after ; and a casual remark, written ten days after the 
 affair, shows his opinion confirmed by time. " Had our good 
 admiral followed the blow, we should probably have done 
 more, but the risk was thought too great." 
 
 The question attracts attention, both impersonally, as of 
 military interest, and also as bearing upon Nelson's correct- 
 ness of judgment, and professional characteristics, at this 
 time. As regards the amouut of wind, it is sufficient to say 
 that the French fleet, having borne away to the westward in 
 the afternoon, was next day out of sight.^ Most of the 
 British might equally have been out of sight from the posi- 
 tion in which they remained. As for the risk — of course 
 there was risk ; but the whole idea of a general chase rests 
 upon the fact that, for one reason or another, the extreme 
 speed of the ships in each fleet will vary, and that it is 
 always probable that the fastest of the pursuers can overtake 
 the slowest of the pursued. The resulting combats compel 
 the latter either to abandon his ships, or to incur a general 
 action, which, from the fact of his flight, it is evident he has 
 reason to avoid. In this case many of the retreating French 
 were crippled, — some went off towed by frigates, and some 
 without bowsprits. Unquestionably, the pursuers who thus 
 engage may be overpowered before those following them 
 come up; but the balance of chances is generally in their 
 favor, and in the particular instance would have been mark- 
 edly so, as was shown by the results of the two days' fighting, 
 which had proved the superior quality of the British ships' 
 companies. 
 
 The fact is, neither Hotham nor his opponent, Martin, was 
 willing to hazard a decisive naval action, but wished merely 
 to obtain a temporary advantage, — the moment's safety, no 
 risks. " I have good reason," wrote Hotharn in his despatch, 
 " to hope, from the enemy's steering to the westward after 
 having passed oiir fleet, that whatever might have been their 
 design, their intentions are for the jpresent frustrated^ It is 
 scarcely necessary to say that a man who looks no further 
 ahead than this, who fails to realize that the destruction of 
 the enemy's fleet is the one condition of permanent safety to 
 
 1 Nelson to the Puke of Clarence, March 15, 1795. (Nicolas.) 
 10 
 
14G THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 his cause, will not rise to the conception presented to him on 
 his quarter-deck by Nelson. The latter, whether by the sheer 
 intuition of genius, which is most probable, or by the result 
 of well-ordered reasoning, which is less likely, realized fully 
 that to destroy the French fleet was the one thing for which 
 the British fleet was there, and the one thing by doing which 
 it could decisively affect the war. As he wrote four years 
 later to St. Vincent, " Not one moment shall be lost in bring- 
 ing the enemy to battle ; for I consider the best defence for 
 his Sicilian Majesty's dominions is to place myself alongside 
 the French." 
 
 Yet Nelson was far from unconscious of the difficulties of 
 Hotham's position, or from failing duly to allow for them. 
 "Admiral Hotham has had much to contend Avith, a fleet half- 
 manned, and in every respect inferior to the enemy; Italy 
 calling him to her defence, our newly acquired kingdom ^ 
 calling might and main, our reinforcements and convoy hourly 
 expected ; and all to be done without a force by any means 
 adequate to it." Add to this the protection of British trade, 
 of whose needs Nelson was always duly sensible. Yet, as 
 one scans this list of troubles, Avith the query how to meet 
 them running in his mind, it is scarcely possible not to see 
 that each and every difficulty would have been solved by a 
 crushing pursuit of the beaten French, preventing their again 
 taking the sea. The British admiral had in his control no 
 means to force them out of port. Therefore, when out, he 
 should by no means have allowed them to get back. It is 
 only just to Hotham, who had been a capable as well as 
 gallant captain, to say that he had objected to take the chief 
 command, on account of his health. 
 
 Nelson was delighted with his own share in these affairs, 
 and with the praise he received from others for his conduct, 
 — especially that on the 13th. He was satisfied, and justly, 
 that his sustained and daring grapple with the " Ca Ira," in 
 the teeth of her fleet, had been the effective cause of the next 
 day's action and consequent success. It was so, in truth, 
 and it presented an epitome of what the 14th and 15th ought 
 to have witnessed, — a persistent clinging to the crippled 
 ships, in order to force their consorts again into b^^ttle. 
 
 ^ Corsica. 
 
DOMESTIC AFFECTIONS 147 
 
 " You will participate," he wrote to his uncle, " in the pleas- 
 ure I must have felt in being the great cause of our success. 
 Could I have been supported, I would have had Ca Ira on the 
 13th." Elliot, the Viceroy of Corsica, wrote to him : " I 
 certainly consider the business of the 13th of March as a 
 very capital feature in the late successful contest with the 
 French fleet ; and the part which the Agamemnon had in it 
 must be felt by every one to be one of the circumstances that 
 gave lustre to this event, and rendered it not only useful, but 
 peculiarly honourable to the British arms." " So far," added 
 Nelson, in quoting this to his wife, " all hands agree in giving 
 me the praises which cannot but be comfortable to me to the 
 last moment of my life." He adds then a reflection, evincing 
 that he was assimilating some of the philosophy of life as 
 well as of fighting. " The time of my being left out here by 
 Lord Hood," which he had so much regretted, "I may call 
 well spent ; had I been absent, how mortified should I now 
 be. What has happened may never happen to any one again, 
 that only one ship-of-the-line out of fourteen should get into 
 action with the French fleet for so long a time as two hours 
 and a half, and with such a ship as the Ca Ira." It may be 
 of interest to mention that the French fleet, upon this occa- 
 sion, was largely composed of the vessels which three years 
 later were destroyed by him at the Battle of the Nile. 
 
 In all his interests, ambitions, and gratification with success 
 and praise, he at this period writes fully and intimately to his 
 wife, between whom and himself there evidently still existed, 
 after these two years of absence, a tender and affectionate con- 
 fidence. " It is with an inexpressible pleasure I have received 
 your letters, with our father's. I rejoice that my conduct 
 gives you pleasure, and I trust I shall never do anything 
 which will bring a blush on your face. Eest assured you are 
 never absent from my thoughts." When looking forward to 
 the action of March 14, he tells her : " Whatever may be my 
 fate, I have no doubt in my own mind but that my condvict will 
 be such as will not bring a blush on the face of my friends ; the 
 lives of all are in the hands of Him who knows best whether 
 to preserve mine or not ; to His will do I resign myself. My 
 character and good name are in my own keeping. Life with 
 disgrace is dreadful. A glorious death is to be envied : " and 
 
148 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 he signs himself with unwonted tenderness, " Ever your most 
 faithful and affectionate husband." Save of the solemn hours 
 before Trafalgar, when another image occupied his thoughts, 
 this is the only personal record we have of the feelings with 
 which this man, dauntless above his fellows, went into battle. 
 He refrains thoughtfully from any mention of his health that 
 may cause her anxiety, which she had shown herself over 
 weak and worrying to bear; but he speaks freely of all that 
 passes, confiding that with her he need have no reserves, even 
 in a natural self-praise. "This I can say, that all I have 
 obtained I owe to myself, and to no one else, and to you I may 
 add, that my character stands high with almost all Europe. 
 Even the Austrians knew my name perfectly." While silent 
 on the subject of illness, he admits now that his eye had 
 grown worse, and was in almost total darkness, besides being 
 very painful at times ; " but never mind," he adds cheeringly, 
 "I can see very well with the other." 
 
 It is instructive to note, in view of some modern debated 
 questions, that, despite the recent success, Nelson was by no 
 means sure that the British fleet could defend Corsica. " I 
 am not even now certain Corsica is safe," he wrote on the 2oth 
 of March, "if they undertake the expedition with proper 
 spirit." The threat, never absent while the French fleet re- 
 mained, was emphasized by the arrival of six ships-of-the-line 
 from Brest, which reached Toulon on the 4th of April, 
 materially altering the complexion of affairs in the Mediterra- 
 nean, and furnishing an instructive instance of the probable 
 punishment for opportunity imperfectly utilized, as on the 
 14th of March. Great discontent was felt at the apparent 
 failure of the Admiralty to provide against this chance. 
 " Hotham is very much displeased with them," wrote Nelson, 
 " and certainly with reason ; " and doubtless it is satisfactory 
 to believe, rightly or wrongly, that our disadvantages are due 
 to the neglect of others, and not to our own shortcomings. 
 
 Although the nominal force of the French was thus raised 
 to twenty of the line, the want of seamen, and the absence of 
 discipline, prevented their seizing the opportunity offered by 
 the temporary inferiority of the British, reduced to thirteen 
 besides two Neapolitans, in whose efficiency, whether justly or 
 not, Nelson placed little confidence. At this critical moment, 
 
HIS OPINION OF LORD HOOD 149 
 
 with a large British military convoy expected, and the fleet, 
 to use his impatient expression, " skulking in port," a Jacobin 
 outbreak occurred in Toulon, and the seamen assumed the 
 opera-houffe role of going ashore to assist in deliberations 
 upon the measures necessary to save the country. Before 
 they were again ready to go to sea, the convoy had arrived. 
 On the 7th of June, however, the French again sailed from 
 Toulon, seventeen ships-of-the-line ; and the following day 
 Nelson, writing to his brother, thus gave vent to the bitterness 
 of his feelings : " We have been cruising off Minorca for a 
 long month, every moment in expectation of reinforcements 
 from England. Great good fortune has hitherto saved us, 
 what none in this fleet could have expected for so long a time. 
 Near two months we have been skulking from them. Had 
 they not got so much cut up on the 14th of March, Corsica, 
 Eome, and Naples would, at this moment, have been in their 
 possession, and may yet, if these people [the Admiralty] do 
 not make haste to help us. I am out of spirits, although 
 never better in health." 
 
 His depression was due less to the inadequacy of the British 
 fleet than to the dismissal of Lord Hood from the command, 
 news of which was at this time received. When about to sail 
 from England, to resume his duty as commander-in-chief, he 
 got into a controversy with the Government about the force 
 necessary in the Mediterranean, and, giving oflieuce by the 
 sharpness of his language, was ordered to haul down his flag. 
 He never again went to sea. Nelson deplored his loss in 
 terms unusually vivacious : " Oh, miserable Board of Admi- 
 ralty ! They have forced the first oflicer in our service away 
 from his command." In more temperate but well-weighed 
 words, he said : " This fleet must regret the loss of Lord 
 Hood, the best officer, take him altogether, that England has 
 to boast of. Lord Howe is certainly a great officer in the 
 management of a fleet, but that is all. Lord Hood is equally 
 great in all situations which an admiral can be placed in." In 
 the judgment of the present writer, this estimate of Hood is 
 as accurate as it is moderate in expression. It was nothing 
 less than providential for the French that he was not in com- 
 mand on the 14th of March, or in the yet more trivial and 
 discreditable affair of July 13th, when, to use again Nelson's 
 
150 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 words, "To say how much we wanted Lord Hood at that 
 time, is to say, will you have all the French fleet or no 
 action ? " 
 
 On the 14th of June the expected reinforcement from Eng- 
 land, nine ships-of-the-line, joined the fleet ofE Minorca; and a 
 few days later a large convoy also arrived, with which the 
 whole body of ships of war put into San Fiorenzo Bay on the 
 29th. This concluded for Nelson a period of three months, 
 counting from the action of March 14th, of pretty monotonous 
 cruising Avith the fleet, the last in which he was to take part 
 until his admiral's flag was hoisted, two years later. Though 
 unmarked by any event of importance, the time was passed 
 not unprofitably to himself, for his correspondence bears marks 
 of fruitful reflection, not merely upon the evident inadequacy 
 of his commander-in-chief to the position he unwillingly occu- 
 pied, but upon the character of the operations and the line of 
 conduct that ought to be followed. If he does criticise the 
 former's want of head for enterprise, he formulates for him- 
 self a general principle which showed its vital influence in his 
 future career. ** After all my complaints, I have no doubt 
 but, if we can get close to the enemy, we shall defeat any plan 
 of theirs ; hut we ought to have our ideas beyond mere defensive 
 rneasurefi.'' 
 
 Among other matters for reflection, he had at this time a 
 curious cause of anxiety, lest he should be promoted to flag 
 rank, or rather that, being promoted, he should be obliged to 
 return to England at once, as there would be too many 
 admirals in the Mediterranean to permit his retention. A 
 rumor was current, which proved to be correct, that there 
 would be a large promotion on the 1st of June, the first anni- 
 versary of the victory celebrated by that name. Being then 
 forty-six on the list of captains. Nelson feared that it might 
 include him ; in which case, if not permitted to hoist his flag 
 where he was, not only would he lose his ardently desired 
 opportunities for distinction, — "not an hour this war will I, 
 if possible, be out of active service," — but he would be put 
 to much inconvenience and loss. " If they give me my flag, I 
 shall be half ruined: unless I am immediately employed- in 
 this country, I should, by the time I landed in England, be a 
 loser, several hundred pounds out of pocket." To be taken 
 
 41 
 
APPOINTED COLONEL OF MARINES 151 
 
 " from actual service would distress me much, more especially 
 as I almost believe these people will be mad euougli to come 
 out." He escaped this disappointment, however, for the pro- 
 motion left him still on the post-captains' list, seven from its 
 head; but lie received, what was both complimentary and 
 profitable, the honorary rank of Colonel of Marines, — a sine- 
 cure appointment, of which there were then four, given to 
 post-captains of distinguished services, and vacated by them 
 upon promotion. These are now discontinued, and replaced, as 
 a matter of emolument, by Good Service Pensions. Nelson 
 heard later that this reward had been conferred upon him, not 
 merely as a favor, but with a full recognition of all his claims 
 to it. "The Marines have been given to me in the hand- 
 somest manner. The answer given to many was, the King 
 knew no officer who had served so much for them as myself." 
 
 These promotions came timely to insure for him an em- 
 ployment particularly suited to his active temperament and 
 fearlessness of responsibility, but which, though the fittest 
 man for it, he might, with less seniority, not have received 
 from Hotham, despite the well-known confidence in him 
 shown by Hood. Since the spring opened, the Austrians and 
 their allies, the Sardinians, had been waiting, ostensibly at 
 least, for assistance from the Navy, to begin a forward move- 
 ment, the first object of which Avas the possession of Vado 
 Bay as a safe anchorage for the fleet. Until the arrival of 
 Man and the convoy, Hotham had not felt strong enough to 
 spare the required force ; but now, after the ships had filled 
 their wants from the transports, he, on the 4th of July, de- 
 tached Nelson, with the " Agamemnon " and six smaller 
 vessels, to co-operate with the Austrian commander-in-chief. 
 The latter had begun his movement on the 13th of June, 
 passing through Genoese territor}^ despite the remonstrances 
 of the Republic, whose neutrality could claim but slight re- 
 gard from one belligerent, when she had already permitted 
 the occupation of so much of her shore line by the other. 
 The Ei-encli had fallen back, Avhen attacked, abandoning Vado 
 Bay to the enemy, whose headquarters were established at 
 that point. 
 
 Nelson, having sailed with four of his squadron, fell in Avith 
 the French fleet of seventeen of the line, off the Riviera, on 
 
152 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 the 6tli of July. He liad, of course, to retreat, which he did 
 upon San Fiorenzo, to join the body of the fleet. On the 
 morning of the 7th the " Agamemnon " and her followers, 
 with the French in close pursuit, were sighted from the an- 
 chorage, much to the surprise of the admiral, who knew the 
 enemy had come out, but, upon the information of the Aus- 
 trian general, believed them returned to Toulon. Why he 
 had not more accurate news from lookout frigates is not clear; 
 but, as jSTelson said, he took things easy, and he had persuaded 
 himself that they had left harbor only to exercise their men. 
 As it was, the "Agamemnon" was hard pressed, but escaped, 
 chiefly through the enemy's lack of seamanship. The fleet, 
 when she arrived, was in the midst of refitting and watering, 
 but succeeded in getting to sea the following morning in search 
 of the enemy, who meantime had disappeared. 
 
 Precise information of the French whereabouts could not be 
 obtained until the evening of the 12th, when two of the Brit- 
 ish lookout ships reported that they had been seen a few hours 
 before to the southwest, south of the Hyeres Islands. The 
 fleet made sail in that direction. During the night a heavy 
 gale came on from west-northwest, out of the Gulf of Lyons, 
 which split the main-topsails of several British ships. At 
 daybreak the enemy were discovered in the southeast, standing 
 north to close the land. After some elaborate manoeuvring — 
 to reach one of those formal orders, often most useful, but 
 which the irregular Mediterranean winds are prone to dis- 
 arrange as soon as completed — the admiral at 8 a. m. signalled 
 a general chase. The British being to windward, and the 
 breeze fresh, the half-dozen leading ships had at noon closed 
 the enemy's rear within three-quarters of a mile ; but, from 
 their relative positions, as then steering, the guns of neither 
 could be used effectively. At this time a shift of wind to 
 north headed off both fleets, which put their bows to the 
 eastward, throwing the British advanced vessels, to use 
 Nelson's expression, into line abreast, and bringing to bear 
 the broadsides of the ships, of both fleets, that were within 
 range. The action then began, the British fire being directed 
 mainly upon the French rear ship, the " Alcide," which sur- 
 rendered at about 2 p. m., and soon afterwards blew up. The 
 wind had meanwhile changed again to the eastward, giving 
 
PARTIAL FLEET ACTION, JULY 13, 1795 153 
 
 the weather-gage to the French, most of whom were consider- 
 ably nearer the shore than their opponents, and better sailers. 
 
 Up to this time Nelson, who in the forenoon had thought 
 there was every prospect of taking every ship in the French 
 fleet, still felt almost certain that- six would be secured ; but, 
 to use his own words, it was now "impossible to close." lu 
 the space between the ships engaged, and to leeward, the 
 light air seems to have been killed by the cannonading; 
 whereas the French, who were now to windward, still re- 
 ceived enough to draw slowly away. Hothara, being in one 
 of the very worst sailers in the fleet, if not in the Navy, had 
 fallen eight miles astern, and not seeing clearly how things 
 were going, made at this time a signal of recall, which was 
 certainly premature. It seems a not improper comment that, 
 in light and baffling weather, such as that of the Mediter- 
 ranean, the commander-in-chief should have been in a fast 
 and handy ship, able at the least to keep him within eyeshot 
 of the decisive scene. Remaining in the "Britannia" may 
 have been due to the natural unwillingness of an invalid to 
 quit his well-ordered surroundings, by which even St. Vincent 
 was led to take a first-rate ship away with himself at a criti- 
 cal moment; but, if so, it only emphasizes the absolute 
 necessity of physical vigor to a commander-in-chief. 
 
 Nelson had again managed to keep the "Agamemnon" well 
 to the front, for the other ships that succeeded in getting 
 into action were almost wholly from among those Avhich had 
 recently arrived from England with Rear-Admiral Man. 
 These, being fresh from home, should naturally outsail a ship 
 now two and a half years in commission, and which, not long 
 after, had to be wrapped with hawsers to hold her together. 
 In his comments on the action he says comparatively little of 
 the signal of recall, which, though ill-timed, he does not seem 
 to have thought affected the result materially ; but he was 
 utterly dissatisfied with the previous management of the 
 business, and into the causes of this dissatisfaction it is de- 
 sirable to look, as bearing at once upon his natural military 
 characteristics, and the development they received from time 
 and thought. "The scrambling distant fire was a farce," he 
 wrote ; " but if one fell by such a fire, what might not have 
 been expected had our whole fleet engaged? Improperly 
 
154 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 as the part of the fleet which fired got into action, we took 
 one ship ; but the subject is unpleasant, and I shall have done 
 with it." The criticism, though far from explicit, evidently 
 bears upon the manner in which the fleet was handled, from 
 the moment the enem}'- was sighted until the firing began. 
 During the latter, Man was the senior officer on the spot, and 
 Nelson does not blame him ; on the contrary, punning on the 
 name, says, "He is a good man in every sense of the word." 
 
 The precise working of his thought can only be inferred. 
 " The whole fleet " failed to get into action. Why ? Because 
 the signal for a general chase was delayed from 4 to 8 a. m., 
 pending certain drill-ground manoeuvres, upon whose results, 
 however well intended, no dependence could be placed in 
 Mediterranean weather. During these four hours the wind 
 was fresh, — the heel of a short summer's gale, invaluable to 
 both sides, — and the enemy were using it to close the shore, 
 where wind, the sole dependence for motive power, baffles 
 most. Had the fastest British ships, under a competent flag- 
 officer, utilized that time and that wind, there was, to put the 
 case most mildly, the chance that they could repeat, upon the 
 French rear, the same part the " Agamemnon " alone had 
 played with the " ^a Ira," — and such a chance, were it no 
 more, should not have been dawdled with. "Missed the 
 opportunity," — the fatal words, "it might have been." Is 
 it far-fetched to bee in his reflections upon "this miserable 
 action," as it is styled independently by James and himself, 
 the forecast of the opening sentence of his celebrated order 
 before Trafalgar ? — " Thinking it almost impossible to bring 
 a fleet of forty sail-of-the-line ^ into a line of battle in vari- 
 able winds, thick weather, and other circumstances which 
 must occur, without such a loss of time that the opjportuuity 
 would probably he lost of bringing the enemy to battle in such a 
 manner as to make the business decisive, I have therefore made 
 up my mind — " Or, again, as he saw Man dragged off — with 
 too little remonstrance, it may be — by a superior, who could 
 by no means see what was the state of the action, is there not 
 traceable a source of the feeling, partly inborn, partly 
 reasoned, that found expression in the generous and yet most 
 wise words of the same immortal order? — "The second in 
 ^ There were twenty-three present on July 13, 1795. 
 
HIS IMILITARY OPINIONS 155 
 
 command will [in fact command his line and]/ after my in- 
 tentions are made known to him, have the entire direction of 
 his line to make the attack upon the enemy, and to follow up 
 the blow until they are captured or destroyed." Whether 
 such words be regarded as the labored result of observation 
 and reflection, or whether as the flashes of intuition, with 
 which genius penetrates at once to the root of a matter, with- 
 out the antecedent processes to which lesser minds are sub- 
 jected, — in either case they are instructive when linked with 
 the events of his career here under discussion, as corrobo- 
 rative indications of natural temperament and insight, which 
 banish altogether the thought of mere fortuitous valor as the 
 one explanation of Nelson's successes. 
 
 With this unsatisfactory affair, Nelson's direct connection 
 with the main body of the fleet came to an end for the re- 
 mainder of Hotham's command. It is scarcely necessary to 
 add that the prime object of the British fleet at all times, and 
 not least in the Mediterranean in 1795, — the control of the 
 sea, — continued as doubtful as it had been at the beginning 
 of the year. The dead weight of the admiral's having upon 
 his mind the Toulon fleet, undiminished in force despite two 
 occasions for decisive action, was to be clearly seen in the 
 ensuing operations. On this, also, Nelson did much thinking, 
 as passing events threw light upon the consequences of miss- 
 ing opportunities. "The British fleet," he wrote, five years 
 later, and no man better knew the facts, " could have prevented 
 the invasion of Italy ; and, if our friend Hotham had kept his 
 fleet on that coast, I assert, and you will agree with me, no 
 army from France could have been furnished with stores or 
 provisions ; even men could not have marched." But how 
 keep the fleet on the Italian coast, while the French fleet in 
 full vigor remained in Toulon ? What a curb it was appeared 
 again in the next campaign, and even more clearly, because 
 the British were then commanded by Sir John Jervis, a man 
 not to be checked by ordinary obstacles. From the decks of 
 his flagship Nelson, in the following April, watched a convoy 
 passing close in shore. " To get at them was impossible be- 
 
 1 The words in brackets were ei'ased in the rough draft, but are here in- 
 serted, because they emphasize the underlying thought, that the second was 
 to have real command, not wait nor look for signals, nor yet fear them. 
 
156 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 fore they anchored under such batteries as would have crippled 
 our fleet ; and, had such an event happened, in the present state 
 of the enemijs fleet, Tuscany, Naples, Rome, Sicily, &c., would 
 have fallen as fast as their ships could have sailed along the 
 coast. Our fleet is the only saviour at present for those 
 countries.'' 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Nelson's Command of a Detached Squadron on the Eiviera of 
 Genoa, until the Defeat of the Austrians at the Battle of 
 LoANo. — Sir John Jervis appointed Commander-in-Chief in the 
 Mediterranean. 
 
 July-December, 1795. Age, 37. 
 
 AFTER the action of July 13, Nelson was again clespatcliecl 
 upon his mission to co-operate with the Austrians on 
 the Riviera. His orders, dated July 15, were to confer first 
 with the British minister at Genoa, and thence to proceed 
 with his squadron to the Austrian headquarters at Vado Bay. 
 The seniority he had now attained made his selection for this 
 detached and responsible service less evidently flattering than 
 Hood's preferment of him to such positions when he Avas 
 junior in rank ; but the duty had the distinction of being not 
 only arduous from the purely naval standpoint, but delicate 
 in the diplomatic management and tact required. Although 
 Great Britain at that period was rarely slack in resorting to 
 strong and arbitrary measures in dealing with neutrals, when 
 her interests seemed to demand it, she was always exceedingly 
 desirous to avoid causes of needless offence. The exigencies 
 of Southern France, and of both the opposing armies in 
 the Riviera, had created a busy neutral trade, occupied in 
 supplying all parties to the war, as well as the inhabitants of 
 Genoese towns then in military occupation by the French. 
 Although the latter and the Austrians had both openly disre- 
 garded the neutrality of Genoa, it was the policy of Great 
 Britain now to manifest respect for it as far as possible, and 
 at the same time not to raise causes of diplomatic contention . 
 over the neutral trade, although this was well known to be 
 supporting the enemy's army. 
 
 When Nelson left the fleet, he had, besides his special 
 orders for his own mission, a circular letter from the admiral 
 
158 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 to all vessels under his command, framed upon instructions 
 received from England a month before, directing special care 
 "not to give any just cause of offence to the foreign powers in 
 amity with his Majesty, and whenever any ships or vessels 
 belonging to the subjects of those powers shall be detained, or 
 brought by you into port, you are to transmit to the Secretary 
 of the Admiralty a complete specification of their cargoes, and 
 not to institute any legal process against such ships or vessels 
 until their lordships' -further pleasure shall be known." 
 
 To the naval ofiicers on the spot this order was calculated 
 to increase vastly the perplexities, which necessarily arose 
 from the occupation of the Genoese coast by French troops. 
 But, besides questions of trade, the weaker States, Genoa and 
 Tuscany, — the latter of which had recently made peace with 
 France, — were driven to manifold shifts and compromises, in 
 order to maintain in their ports such semblance of impartial 
 neutrality as would save them from reprisals by either party. 
 These measures, while insuring to some extent the end in 
 view, gave rise also to a good deal of friction and recrimination 
 between the neutral and the belligerents. The vessels of the 
 latter were admitted, under certain limitations as to number, into 
 the neutral port, where they lay nearly side by side, jealously 
 watching each other, and taking note of every swerving, real 
 or presumed, from an exact and even balance. Each sailed 
 from the neutral port to carry on war, but it is obvious that 
 the shelter of such a port was far more useful to the belligerent 
 who did not control the water, who moved upon it only by 
 evasion and stealth, and who was therefore tempted, in order 
 to improve such advantages, to stretch to the verge of abuse 
 the privileges permitted to him by the neutral. " The Genoese 
 allow the French," wrote Nelson, *• to have some small vessels 
 in the port of Genoa, that I have seen towed out of the port, 
 and board vessels coming in, and afterwards return into the 
 mole ; the conduct of the English is very different." He else- 
 where allows, however, that, " in the opinion of the Genoese, 
 my squadron is constantly offending ; so that it almost appeai-s 
 a trial between us, who shall first be tired, they of complain- 
 ing, or me of answering them." 
 
 After the first successes of the Austrians and Sardinians, in 
 the previous June, the French commander-in-chief, Kellerman, 
 
OPERATIONS ON THE RIVIERA, 1795 159 
 
 feeling his inferiority to be such as compelled him to a de- 
 fensive attitude, had carefully selected the most advanced line 
 that he thought could be held. His right rested upon the sea, 
 near the village of Borghetto, some fifty or sixty miles east of 
 Nice, extending thence to and across the mountains, to Ormea. 
 The Austrian front was parallel, in a general sense, to that of 
 the enemy, and a couple of leagues to the eastward ; thus 
 securing for the British Vado Bay, considered the best anchor- 
 age between Genoa and Nice. In rear of Vado, to the east- 
 Avard, and on the coast road, lay the fortress of Savona, 
 esteemed by Bonaparte of the first importance to an army 
 operating in the Biviera and dependent upon the control of 
 the road. The town was occupied by the Austrians, but they 
 were excluded from the citadel by Genoese troops, — a con- 
 dition of weakness in case of sudden retreat. It ought, said 
 Bonaparte, to be the object of all the enemy's efforts. In 
 these positions, both armies depended for supplies partly upon 
 the sea, partly upon the land road along the Kiviera. Across 
 the mountains, in Piedmont, lay the Sardinian forces, extend- 
 ing perpendicularly to the main front of the French operations, 
 and, so far as position went, threatening their communications 
 by the narrow land road. The character of the ground inter- 
 vening between the French and Austrians rendered an attack 
 upon either line, once fairly established, very difficult ; and it 
 was doubtless a fault in the Austrian commander, De Vins, 
 while superior in force, to allow the enemy to strengthen him- 
 self in a position which at the first had its weak points ; the 
 more so as the plainly approaching peace between Spain and 
 France foretold that the Army of Italy would soon be rein- 
 forced. Having, however, made this jnistake, the Austrian 
 settled himself in his works, shrugged the responsibility off 
 his own shoulders, and awaited that either the Sardinians by 
 land, or the British by sea, should, by choking the communi- 
 cations of the French, compel them to abandon their lines. 
 
 Such was the situation when Nelson, on the 21st of July, 
 had his first interview with De Vins ; on the 22d peace be- 
 tween Spain and France was formally concluded. Within 
 a month, Bonaparte, who then occupied a prominent position 
 in Paris, as military adviser to the Government, was writing : 
 " Peace with Spain makes offensive war in Piedmont certain j 
 
160 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 my plan is being discussed ; Vado will soon be taken ; " and a 
 few days later, on the 25tli of August, " Troops from Spain 
 are marching to Italy." It was incumbent upon the French 
 to repossess Vado, for, by affording safe anchorage to small 
 hostile cruisers, it effectually stopped the trade with Genoa. 
 De Vins had there equipped several privateers, under the 
 Austrian flag. Of it Bonaparte said : " By intercepting the 
 coasters from Italy, it has svispended our commerce, stopped 
 the arrival of provisions, and obliged us to supply Toulon 
 from the interior of the Eepublic. It is recognized that our 
 commerce and subsistence require that communication wdth 
 Genoa be promptly opened." Having in view Bonaparte's 
 remarkable campaign of the following year, and the fact that 
 Vado was now held in force by the Austrians, the importance 
 of British co-operation by the fleet, at this critical moment, 
 becomes strikingly apparent. The future thus throws back a 
 ray of illuminating significance upon the otherwise paltry and 
 obscure campaign of 1795, dragging out into broad daylight 
 the full meaning of lost opportunities in the early year, and 
 of Nelson's strenuous efforts in his detached command. 
 
 Immediately upon his arrival in Genoa, on July 17, the 
 effect of the neutral trade, if unchecked, upon the operations 
 of both armies, was brought before him by the British min- 
 ister. Unless the supplies thus received by the French could 
 be stopped, the Austrian general would not only be unable to 
 advance, but feared he could not hold his present position. 
 If, on the other hand, the forage and grain thus brought to 
 them could be intercepted, they would be forced to retreat, 
 and there were hopes that the Austrians might reach Nice 
 before winter, thus covering the excellent and advanced 
 harbor of Villef ranche as an anchorage for their British allies. 
 Nelson readily understood the situation, and admitted the 
 necessity of the service demanded of his squadron, which was 
 simply a blow at the enemy's communications ; but he j)ointed 
 out to the minister that the circular instructions, before 
 quoted, tied his hands. Not only would the ordinary diffi- 
 culties of proving the ownership and destination of a cargo 
 give rise to the usual vexatious disputes, and irritate neutrals, 
 contrary to the spirit of the order ; but there was a particular 
 complication in this instance, arising from the occupation of 
 
OPERATIONS ON TPIE RIVIERA, 1795 161 
 
 Genoese towns by French troops, and from the close proximity 
 of the neutral and hostile seaboards. These embarrassments 
 might be met, were it permissible to sell the cargoes, and hold 
 the money value, subject to the decision of an admiralty court 
 upon the propriety of the seizure ; but this the circular 
 explicitly forbade, until the case was referred to England. 
 If the decision there was adverse to the captors, the other 
 party would look to the responsible naval officer for pecuniary 
 redress, and as, during the delay, the cargo would be spoiled, 
 costs could come only out of the captor's pocket. Nelson's 
 exiDeriences in the West Indies, ten years before, naturally 
 made him cautious about further legal annoyances. 
 
 All this he stated with his usual lucidity ; but the ease was 
 one in which his course could have been safely predicted by a 
 person familiar with his character. The need for the pro- 
 posed action was evident. "The Avhole of the necessity of 
 stopping all the vessels is comprised in a very few words : 
 that, if we will not stop supplies of corn, etc., going to France, 
 the armies will return from whence they came, and the failure 
 of this campaign, from which so much is expected, will be 
 laid to our want of energy; for the only use of the naval 
 co-operation is the keeping out a supply of provisions." He 
 therefore, after a night's reflection, told the minister that if 
 he would tell him, officially, that it Avas for the benefit of his 
 Majesty's service that he should stop all trade between the 
 neutral towns and France, and places occupied by the armies 
 of France, he would give the proper directions for that pur- 
 pose. It would have been possible for him, though with some 
 delay, to refer the matter to Hotham, but he knew the latter's 
 temperament, and distrusted it. "Our admiral has no politi- 
 cal courage whatever," he wrote to Collingwood, "and is 
 alarmed at the mention of any strong measure ; but, in other 
 respects, he is as good a man as can possibly be." With a 
 superior so little decided, it was better, by his own independ- 
 ent initiative, to create a situation, which the former would 
 be as backward to reverse as he would have been to change 
 the previous and wholly different state of things. Like the 
 American frontiersman, whose motto was, " Be sure you 're 
 right, then go ahead," Nelson, when convinced, knew no hesi- 
 tations; but further, he unquestionably derived keen enjoy- 
 
 II 
 
162 THE LIFE OE NELSON 
 
 ment from the sense that the thing done involved risk to 
 himself, appealed to and brought into play his physical or 
 moral courage, in the conscious exercise of which he delighted. 
 '' I am acting, not only without the orders of my commander- 
 in-chief, but in some measure contrary to them. However, I 
 have not only the support of his Majesty's ministers, both at 
 Turin and Genoa, but a consciousness that I am doing what is 
 right and proper for the service of our King and Country. 
 Political courage in an officer abroad is as highly necessary as 
 military courage." "The orders I have given are strong, and 
 I know not how my admiral will approve of them, for they 
 are, in a great measure, contrary to those he gave me ; but the 
 service requires strong and vigorous measures to bring the 
 war to a conclusion." 
 
 The case bore some resemblance to that in which he had 
 disobeyed Hughes in the West Indies ; but the disregard of 
 the superior's orders on the earlier occasion was more direct, 
 and the necessity for it less urgent. In both he disobeyed 
 first, and referred afterwards, and in both his action was 
 practically sustained ; for, whatever the technical fault, the 
 course taken was the one demanded by the needs of the situa- 
 tion. It is possible to recognize the sound policy, the moral 
 courage, and the correctness of such a step in the particular 
 instance, without at all sanctioning the idea that an officer 
 may be justified in violating orders, because he thinks it right. 
 The justification rests not upon what he thinks, but upon the 
 attendant circumstances which prove that he is right ; and, if 
 he is mistaken, if the conditions have not warranted the in- 
 fraction of the fundamental principle of military efficiency, — 
 obedience, — he must take the full consequences of his error, 
 however honest he may have been. Nor can the justification 
 of disobedience fairly rest upon any happy consequences that 
 follow upon it, though it is a commonplace to say that the 
 result is very apt to determine the question of reward or 
 blame. There is a certain confusion of thought prevalent on 
 this matter, most holding the rule of obedience too absolutely, 
 others tending to the disorganizing view that the integrity of 
 the intention is sufficient; the practical result, and for the 
 average man the better result, being to shun the grave 
 responsibility of departing from the letter of the order. 
 
OPERATIONS ON THE RIVIERA, 1795 163 
 
 But all this only shows more clearly the great professional 
 conrage and professional sagacity of Nelson, that he so often 
 assumed such a responsibility, and so generally — with, per- 
 haps, but a single exception — was demonstrably correct in 
 his action. 
 
 Hotham in this case very heartily approved what had been 
 done, and issued, to the fleet in general, orders similar to those 
 given by Nelson; but he did not like the difficulties that sur- 
 rounded the question of co-operation, and left the conduct of 
 affairs on the spot wholly to his eager and enterprising sub- 
 ordinate. The latter directed the seizure of all vessels laden 
 with corn for France or the French armies, an order that was 
 construed to apply to the Genoese towns occupied by them. 
 The cargoes appear to have been sold and the money held. 
 The cruisers in his command were stationed along the Riviera, 
 east and west of Genoa itself. Those to the eastward, in the 
 neighborhood of Spezia, where no French were, gave great 
 offence to the Government of the Republic, which claimed 
 that their chief city was blockaded ; but Nelson refused to 
 remove them. They are not blockading Genoa, he said, but 
 simply occupying the station best suited to intercept a contra- 
 band trade. The various British vessels displayed the full 
 activity that might have been expected from the character of 
 their leader, and the pressure was speedily felt by the enemy, 
 and by the neutrals whose lucrative trade was summarily in- 
 terrupted. The traffic in vessels of any considerable size, sea- 
 going vessels, soon ceased, and Nelson entertained at first 
 great hopes of decisive results from the course adopted by 
 him. "We have much power here at present to do great 
 things, if we know how to apply it," he wrote, after being 
 ten days on the ground ; and at the end of a month, " The 
 strong orders which I judged it proper to give on my first 
 arrival, have had an extraordinary good effect; the French 
 army is now supplied with almost daily bread from Marseilles ; 
 not a single boat has passed with corn." The enemy them- 
 selves admitted the stringency of their situation. But Nelson 
 had yet to learn how ingenuity and enterprise could find a 
 way of eluding his care. The coasting-trade soon began to 
 take on a large development. The Spaniards, now at peace 
 with France, supplied Marseilles, and from both that port and 
 
1G4 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 Genoa grain was carried by small boats, that could be moved 
 by oar as well as sail, could hug closely the rocky shore, and 
 run readily under the batteries with which the French had 
 covered the small bays of the western Riviera, whither the 
 cruisers could not follow. The operations of the latter, de- 
 pendent only upon their canvas, could not always be extended 
 to within easy gunshot of the beach, along which the blockade- 
 runners kept, usually under cover of night. 
 
 Hence, although seriously inconvenienced, the French did 
 not find their position untenable. There were two ways by 
 which the pressure might be increased. A flotilla of small 
 vessels, similar to the coasters themselves, but armed and 
 heavily manned, might keep close in with the points which 
 the latter had to round, and prevent their passage ; but the 
 British had no such vessels at their disposal, and, even if 
 they had, the operations would be exposed to danger from the 
 weather upon a hostile, iron-bound coast, whose shelter was 
 forbidden them by the enemy's guns. The Neapolitans had 
 such a flotilla, and it seems probable that its co-operation was 
 asked, for Nelson speaks of it as a desirable aid on the 23d of 
 August ; but it did not actually join him until the 15th of 
 September, w^hen the season for its acting was almost past. 
 "Had I the flotilla," wrote he, "nothing should be on this 
 coast. A few weeks more and they will not stay a night at 
 sea to save an empire." Prior to its arrival the British at- 
 tempted to harass the traffic with their ships' boats, but these 
 were undecked, and of limited capacity compared to those 
 against which they were to act. They were occasionally suc- 
 cessful, but the results were too uncertain and hazardous to 
 warrant perseverance, although Bonaparte had to admit that 
 " The audacity of the English boats and the indolence of the 
 Genoese, who allow their own vessels to be taken in their own 
 roads, make it necessary to erect a battery for hot shot at a 
 proper point, which you will exact shall be done by the gov- 
 ernor of San Remo." 
 
 Nelson's active mind, clinging with its usual accurate in- 
 sight to the decisive factor in the situation, now fixed upon 
 the idea of seizing a suitable point upon the Riviera to the 
 westward of the French, upon their line of communication 
 with Nice. A body of troops there, strong enough to hold 
 
OPERATIONS ON THE RIVIERA, 1795 1G5 
 
 the position, would stop tlie passage of supplies by land, and, 
 if they controlled an anchorage, a condition indispensable to 
 their support, — and to their retreat, if necessary to retire, — 
 the small vessels based upon that could better interrupt the 
 coasting business. In pursuance of this plan, he in the first 
 week of September made a cruise with the " Agamemnon " as 
 far to the westward as Nice, reconnoitring carefully all re- 
 cesses of the shore line that seemed available for the purpose. 
 Upon his return, he wrote to De Vins what he had done, and 
 described San Eemo as the only available spot. He mentioned 
 its disadvantages as well as its advantages, but undertook 
 positively to land there five thousand men with field-guns, 
 and provisions for a few days, to maintain their supplies by 
 sea, and to cover their embarkation in case retreat became 
 imperative. In short, he guaranteed to land such a force 
 safely, and to be responsible for its communications; for both 
 which he practically pledged his professional reputation. He 
 added, what was indisputable, that the French army must 
 abandon its present lines for want of supplies, if San Remo 
 were held for some time. 
 
 De Vins replied on the 14th of September, expressing his 
 interest in the matter thus broached to him, but carefully 
 evading the issue. He addressed his remarks to the com- 
 parative merits of Vado and San Remo as anchorages, upon 
 which Nelson had touched barely, and only incidentally, for 
 the gist of his proposal was simply to intercept the enemy's 
 communications ; if this were feasible, all other considerations 
 were subsidiary and matters of detail. San Remo was' ad- 
 mitted to be the poorer anchorage, unfit for the fleet, but open 
 to small vessels, which could carry the supplies to the Aus- 
 trian detachment, and stop those of the enemy. The move 
 proposed was intended to effect by sea, substantially, the ob- 
 ject which De Vins himself had told Nelson, three wrecks 
 before, that he was trying to secure through the co-operation 
 of the Sardinian land forces. " He has been long expecting," 
 wrote Nelson on the 13th of August, "an attack by General 
 Colli with the Piedmontese, near Ormea, directly back from 
 Vintimiglia. This is the great point to be carried, as the 
 Piedmontese army would then get Vintimiglia, and , . . prob- 
 ably, unless the enemy are very active, their retreat to Nice 
 
166 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 will be cut off. De Vins says he has flattered and abused the 
 Piedmontese and Keapolitans, but nothing will induce them 
 to act." Colli was a good soldier, but his relations with the 
 Austrian were very strained, and coalitions rarely act cor- 
 dially. This plan, however, becoming known to the French, 
 was commended by Bonaparte as well conceived. " We have 
 examined attentively the project attributed to the enemy 
 in the enclosed note. We have found it conformable to his 
 real interests, and to the present distribution of his troops. 
 The heights of Briga are in truth the key to the Department 
 of the Maritime Alps, since from there the high-road may be 
 intercepted and we be obliged to evacuate Tende. We charge 
 you to pay serious attention to this matter." ^ Disappointed 
 in Sardinian support, Nelson and De Vins had then discussed 
 a plan, of which the former's present proposal was the ver}'- 
 clear and practical outcome. Some risk must be run, he said ; 
 but De Vins, when it came to the point, saw the dangers too 
 plainly. He did not distinctly refuse, but talked only, and 
 instead of San Remo proposed to land west of Nice, between 
 it and the Var. Nothing, however, was done, or even at- 
 tempted, and Hotham refused co-operation. 
 
 Having regard to the decisive effect exercised upon any 
 strategic position, or movement, by a valid threat against the 
 communications, — considering, for example, the vital influ- 
 ence which the French occupation of Genoa in 1800 had upon 
 the campaign which terminated at Marengo, — it is impossible 
 to speak otherwise than with respect of this proposal of 
 Nelson's. Nevertheless, serious reflection can scarcely fail 
 to affirm that it was not really practicable. There is an 
 immeasurable difference between the holding of a strongly 
 fortified city with an army corps, and the mere seizure of a 
 comparatively open position by a detachment, which, if it 
 means to remain, must have time to fortify itself, in order to 
 withstand the overwhelming numbers that the enemy must at 
 once throw upon it. The time element, too, is of the utmost 
 importance. It is one thing to grasp a strong position with a 
 few men, expecting to hold it for some hours, to delay an 
 advance or a retreat until other forces can come into play, 
 
 1 Correspondance de Napoleon, August 30, 1795. The letter was from 
 Bonaparte's hand, though signed by the Committee of Public Safety. 
 
OPERATIONS ON THE RRaERA, 1795 167 
 
 and quite another to attempt to remain permanently and un- 
 supported in such a situation. In the case before us, De Vins 
 would have landed five thousand men in a comparatively ex- 
 posed position; for, although the town of San Eemo was in 
 possession of the French, who might be driven out for the 
 moment, the only strong point, the citadel, was occupied — as 
 in the case of Savona, to the eastward of the Austrians — by 
 the Genoese, Avho would doubtless have refused admission. 
 Before his main body would still lie the works which the 
 French had been diligently strengthening for more than two 
 months, and which, with his whole force in hand, he did not 
 care to assail. The enemy, knowing him thus weakened, 
 could well afford to spare a number greatly superior to the 
 detachment he had adventured, certain that, while they were 
 dislodging it, he could make no serious impression upon their 
 lines. As for retreat and embarkation under cover of the guns 
 of a squadron, when pressed by an enemy, the operation is 
 too critical to be hazarded for less than the greatest ends, and 
 with at least a fair possibility of success for the undertaking 
 whose failure Avould entail it. 
 
 Nelson's confidence in himself and in his profession, and 
 his accurate instinct that war cannot be made without running 
 risks, combined with his lack of experience in the difiiculties 
 of land operations to mislead his judgment in the particular 
 instance. In a converse sense, there may be applied to him 
 the remark of the French naval critic, that Napoleon lacked 
 ''le sentiment exact des difficultes de la marine." It was not 
 only to British seamen, and to the assured control of the sea, 
 that Nelson thought such an attempt offered reasonable 
 prospect of success. He feared a like thing might be effected 
 by the French, — by evasion. " If the enemy's squadron 
 comes on this coast, and lands from three to four thousand 
 men between Genoa and Savona, I am confident that either 
 the whole Austrian array will be defeated, or must inevitably 
 retreat into Piedmont, and abandon their artillery and stores." 
 These words, the substance of which he frequently repeats, 
 though written immediately before the disastrous Battle of 
 Loano, do not apply to the purpose entertained by the French 
 on that occasion, of endeavoring, by a small detachment at 
 Voltri, to check the Austrian retreat till their pursuers came 
 
168 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 up. He is contemplating a much more considerable and sus- 
 tained effort, strategic in character, and identical in aim with 
 his own proposal to De Vins about San Remo. It is clear that 
 Nelson, in his day, did not attach absolute deterrent effect to 
 a fleet in being, even to such an one as the British then had 
 in the Mediterranean. Important a factor as it was, it might 
 conceivably be disregarded, by a leader who recognized that 
 the end in view justified the risk. 
 
 There was yet another motive actuating Nelson in his 
 present proposals. Justly impatient of the delays and color- 
 less policy of both De Vins and the British leaders, he fore- 
 saw that the latter would be made to take the blame, if the 
 camj)aign i:)roved abortive or disastrous. The Austrians had 
 at least something to show. They had advanced, and they 
 had seized Vado Bay, cutting off the intercourse between 
 Genoa and France, which Bonaparte deemed so important, 
 and at the same time securing an anchorage for the fleet. 
 The latter had done nothing, although its co-operation had 
 been promised ; except Nelson's little squadron, in which was 
 but one small ship-of-the-line out of the twenty-three under 
 Hotham's command, it had not been seen.^ Nelson was de- 
 termined, as far as in him lay, to remove all grounds for 
 reproach. He urged the admiral to send him more ships, and 
 abounded in willingness towards De Vins. For the latter he 
 had at first felt the esteem and confidence which he almost 
 invariably showed, even to the point of weakness, towards 
 those associated with him ; but he now became distrustful, 
 and devoted himself to stopping every loophole of excuse 
 which might afterwards be converted into reproaches to the 
 navy. 
 
 The cause for the inadequacy of the force left under his 
 command, of which he often complains, is not apparent. The 
 question was put direct to the admiral whether he would 
 co-operate with the fleet in the proposed descent of the 
 Austrians. He said that he could not, owing to the nature 
 of his instructions -from home; but that he would answer for 
 
 1 The fleet passed once, August 14, in sight of Vado Bay. Nelson went on 
 board, and tried to induce Hotham to go in and meet De Vins. He refused, 
 saying he must go to Leghorn, but would return, and water the fleet in Vado; 
 but he never came. 
 
 
OPEKATIONS ON THE RIVIERA, 1795 169 
 
 it that the French navy should not interfere. Six weeks later 
 the question was repeated ; but the admiral replied that, after 
 a consultation with the flag-officers under his command, he 
 refused co-operation in what he considered a wild scheme. In 
 this opinion he was probably right, though Nelson possibly 
 was reminded of Dundas's objections to besieging Bastia. 
 Nelson then went in person to Leghorn, and saw Hotham. 
 He asked to be given two seventy-fours and the transports, to 
 make the attempt himself. Hotham again refused a single 
 ship ; but not only so, reduced Nelson's squadron, and ordered 
 him, in addition to liis present duties, to reconnoitre Toulon 
 continually, "whilst he," said Nelson, scornfully, "lies quiet 
 in Leghorn Roads." It would almost seem as if the admiral 
 thought tliat the time had come for a little judicious snubbing, 
 and repression of ardor in the uncomfortable subordinate, 
 whose restless energy conflicted so much, with his repose of 
 mind. The fleet spent its time chiefly in San "Fiorenzo Bay or 
 in Leghorn, making occasional cruises off Toulon to observe 
 the French navy in that port. The latter was undoubtedly 
 its principal care ; but, being distinctly inferior to the British, 
 it is impossible to say why Nelson should not have been rein- 
 forced. If it was due to the wish to continue so largely 
 superior in numbers, it certainly illustrates with singular 
 appositeness the deterrent effect of an inferior " fleet in 
 being," and that that effect lies ' less in the nature of things 
 than in the character of the officer upon whom it is produced. 
 Moreover, the employment of adequate force upon the Riviera, in 
 active aggressive work under Nelson during the summer, when 
 it was practicable to do so, would have compelled the French 
 fleet to come out and fight, or the French army to fall back. 
 
 On the 1st of November Hotham struck his flag in Genoa, 
 and departed, bequeathing to his successors a military estate 
 encumbered by the old mortgage of the French fleet, still in 
 being, which he might have cleared off, and by a new one in 
 the numerous and powerful batteries of the Riviera, built and 
 controlled by troops whose presence to erect them might have 
 been prevented by a timely action on his part. The harm, being 
 done, was thenceforth irreparable. As time passed, the situa- 
 tion became more and more favorable to the French. The 
 reinforcements from Spain arrived, and gunboats and flatboats, 
 
170 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 fitted out at Toulon, began to come upon the scene. Their 
 appearance revived in Nelson the apprehension, so consonant 
 to his military ideas at this time, of an attempt upon the coast 
 road in rear of the Austrians. He even feared for Genoa itself, 
 and for the "Agamemnon," while she lay there, as the result 
 of such a dash. The recurrence of this jDrepossession is illus- 
 trative of his view of possibilities. The true and primary 
 object of the French was to consolidate their communications; 
 nor, with Bonaparte in the influential position he then occu- 
 pied, was any such ex-centric movement likely. For useful 
 purposes, Genoa was already at his disposal ; the French sub- 
 sistence department was, by his plans, to collect there rations 
 of corn for sixty thousand men for three months, preparatory 
 to an advance. For the same object the coasting activity 
 redoubled along the Eiviera, from Toulon to the French front. 
 By ISTovember 1st a hundred sail — transports and small ships 
 of war — had assembled fifteen miles behind Borghetto, in 
 Alassio Bay, whither Nelson had chased them. Depots and 
 supplies were collecting there for the prospective movement. 
 Nelson offered to enter the bay with three ships-of-the-line, speci- 
 fied by name, and to destroy them ; but this ■was declined by 
 Sir Hyde Parker, who had temporarily succeeded Hotham in 
 command, and who at a later day, in the Baltic, w^as to check 
 some of Nelson's finest inspirations. "I pretend not to say," 
 wrote the latter, a month afterwards, when the Austrians had 
 been driven from their lines, " that the Austrians would not 
 have been beat had not the gunboats harassed them, for, on 
 my conscience, I believe they w^ould ; but I believe the French 
 would not have attacked had we destroyed all the vessels of - ■ 
 war, transports, etc." As to the practicability of destroying 11 
 them, Nelson's judgment can safely be accepted, subject only 
 to the chances which are inseparable from war. 
 
 So far from reinforcing the squadron on the Riviera, Sir 
 Hyde Parker first reduced it, and then took away the frigates 
 at this critical moment, when the indications of the French 
 moving were becoming apparent in an increase of boldness. 
 Their gunboats, no longer confining themselves to the convoy 
 of coasters, crept forward at times to molest the Austrians, 
 where they rested on the sea. Nelson had no similar force to 
 oppose to them, except the Neapolitans, whom he ordered to 
 
OPERATIONS ON THE RIVIERA, 1795 171 
 
 act, but with what result is not clear. At the same time the 
 l^'rench partisans in Genoa became very threatening. On the 
 10th of November a party of three hundred, drawn from 
 the ships in the port, landed at Voltri, about nine miles from 
 Genoa, seized a magazine of corn, and an Austrian commissary 
 with £10,000 in his charge. The place was quickly retaken, 
 but the effrontery of the attempt from a neutral port showed 
 the insecurity of the conditions. At the same time a rumor 
 spread that a force of between one and two thousand men, 
 partly carried from Genoa in the French ships of war then 
 lying there, partly stealing along shore in coasters from 
 Borghetto, was to seize a post near Voltri, and hold it. Nelson 
 was informed that men were absolutely being recruited on the 
 Exchange of Genoa for this expedition. When the attack 
 at Voltri was made, the " Agamemnon " was lying in Vado 
 Bay. Leaving a frigate there, Nelson started immediately for 
 Genoa, in order, by the presence of a superior naval force and 
 the fear of retaliation, both to compel the Republic to have its 
 neutrality observed, and to check similar undertakings in the 
 future. The "Agamemnon" was laid across the harbor's 
 mouth, and no French vessel was allowed to sail. Urgent 
 representations were made to Nelson by the Austrian minister 
 and commander-in-chief, that if, the ship were withdrawn, the 
 consequences to the army would be most serious. Contrary, 
 therefore, to his personal inclinations, which were always to 
 be at the front, he remained, although the demonstrations of 
 the gunboats continued, and it was evident that they would at 
 least annoy the Austrian flank in case of an assault. The 
 latter evil, however, was much less disquieting than a descent 
 on the army's line of retreat, at the same moment that it was 
 assailed in front in force ; and it was evident that the Austrian 
 general was feeling an uneasiness, the full extent of which he 
 did not betray. De Vins had by this timQ quitted his com- 
 mand, ill, and had been succeeded by General Wallis. 
 
 In this condition of affairs, a general attack upon the 
 Austrian positions was made by the French on the morning 
 of November 21. As had been feared, the gunboats took 
 part, in the absence of any British ships, — the frigate having 
 been removed. Nelson asserts, without his knowledge ; but 
 the matter was of very secondary importance, for the weight 
 
172 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 of the enemy's attack fell upon the positions in the mountains, 
 the centre and right, which were routed and driven back. 
 Swinging round to their own right, towards the sea, the vic- 
 torious French pushed after the disordered enemy, seeking to 
 intercept their retreat by the coast. Had there then been 
 established, in a well-chosen point of that narrow road, a 
 resolute body of men, even though small, they might well 
 have delayed the fliers until the main body of the pursuers 
 came up ; but the presence of the " Agamemnon " controlled 
 the departure of the intended expedition from Genoa, upon 
 which alone, as an organized effort, the projected obstruction 
 depended. Thus she was the efficient cause, as Nelson 
 claimed, that many thousands of Austrian s escaped capture. 
 As it was, they lost in this affair, known as the Battle of 
 Loano, seven thousand men, killed, wounded, or prisoners. 
 The entire Riviera was abandoned, and they retreated across 
 the Apennines into Piedmont. 
 
 When things go wrong, there is always a disposition on the 
 part of each one concerned to shift the blame. The Austrians 
 had complained before the action, and still more afterwards, 
 of the failure of the fleet to aid them. Nelson thought their 
 complaint well founded. " They say, and true, they were 
 brought on the coast at the express desire of the English, to 
 co-operate with the fleet, which fleet nor admiral they never 
 saw." On his own part he said : " Our admirals will have, I 
 believe, much to answer for in not giving me that force which 
 I so repeatedly called for, and for at last leaving me with 
 Agamemnon alone. Admiral Hotham kept my squadron too 
 small for its duty ; and the moment Sir Hyde took the com- 
 mand of the fleet he reduced it to nothing, — only one frigate 
 and a brig ; whereas I demanded two seventy- four-gun ships and 
 eight or ten frigates and sloops to insure safety to the army." 
 
 It is unnecessary to inquire into the motives of the two 
 admirals for the distribution of their force. Unquestionably, 
 the flrst thing for them to do was to destroy or neutralize the 
 French fleet ; and next to destro}^, or at least impede, the 
 communications of the French army. That it was possible to 
 do this almost wholly may be rested upon the authority of 
 Nelson, whose matured opinion, given five years later, has 
 already been quoted. Two opportunities to cripple the Toulon 
 
OPERATIONS ON THE KIVIERA, 1705 173 
 
 fleet were lost ; but even so, after the junction of Man, in 
 June, the superiority over it was so great that much might 
 have been spared to the Riviera squadron. The coast was 
 not at this time so extensively fortified that coasting could 
 not, in Nelson's active hands, have been made a very insuffi- 
 cient means of supply. As an illustration of the operations 
 then possible, on the 26th of August, six weeks after the 
 naval battle of July 13, the "Agamemnon," with her little 
 squadron, anchored in the Bay of Alassio, three cables' length 
 from the fort in the centre of the town, and with her boats 
 took possession of all the French vessels in the harbor. Two 
 months later, so much had the place been strengthened, he 
 could not vouch for success with less than three ships-of-the- 
 line; but had the pressure been consistently applied during 
 those months, the French position would long before have 
 become untenable. That a shore line, by great and systematic 
 effort, could be rendered secure throughout for coasters, was 
 proved by Napoleon's measures to cover the concentration of 
 the Boulogne flotilla in 1803-5 ; but such conditions did not 
 obtain between Nice and Vado in 1795. 
 
 Despite the abortive and ignominious ending to the cam- 
 paign. Nelson's own reputation issued from it not only un- 
 scathed, but heightened ; and this is saying much, for, 
 although due public recognition of his services had scarcely 
 been extended, — except in conferring the Marines upon him, 
 — he had already, before its beginning, made upon all who 
 were brought into contact with him that impression of un- 
 usual efficiency, zeal, and sound judgment, to which subse- 
 quent employment and opjjortunity apply a sure and searching 
 test. As he entered upon his detached duties, the Viceroy of 
 Corsica, who had necessarily seen and known much of his past 
 conduct, wrote to him thus : " Give me leave, my dear Sir, to 
 congratulate you on the Agamemnon's supporting iiniformly, 
 on all occasions, the same reputation which has always dis- 
 tinguished that ship since I have been in the Mediterranean. 
 It gives me great pleasure also to see you employed in your 
 present important service, which requires zeal, activity, and 
 a spirit of accommodation and co-operation, qualities which 
 will not be wanting in the Commodore of your squadron. I 
 consider the business you are about, I mean the expulsion of 
 
174 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 the enemy from the Genoese and Piediuontese territories, as 
 the most important feature in the southern campaign," These 
 anticipations of worthy service and exceptional merit were 
 confirmed, after all the misfortunes and disappointments of 
 the campaign, by the singularly comi^etent judgment of the 
 new commander-in-chief, Sir John Jervis. The latter at his 
 first interview with Nelson, nearly two months after his 
 arrival on the station, so that time enough had elapsed to 
 mature his opinion, asked him to remain under his command, 
 as a junior admiral, when he received his promotion. Having 
 regard to Jervis's own high endowments, it was not then in 
 the power of the British Navy to pay an ofiicer of Nelson's 
 rank a higher compliment. 
 
 During these months of service upon the Eiviera, there 
 occurred an incident, which, from the reflection made upon 
 Nelson's integrity, drew from him a letter, struck off at such 
 white heat, and so trans j)arently characteristic of his tempera- 
 ment, aspirations, and habit of thought, as to merit quotation. 
 A report had been spread that the commanders of the British 
 ships of war connived at the entry of supply- vessels into the 
 ports held by the French, and a statement to that effect was 
 forwarded to the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. The 
 latter sent the paper, for investigation, to the Minister to 
 Genoa, who mentioned its tenor to Nelson. The latter, justly 
 stigmatizing the conduct imputed to him and his officers as 
 '' scandalous and infamous," requested a copy of the accusa- 
 tion, in order that' by his refutation he might convince the 
 King, that he was " an officer who had ever pursued the road 
 of honour, very different from that to wealth." Having re- 
 ceived the copy, he wrote to the Secretary as follows : — 
 
 Agamemnon, Genoa Road, 23d November, 1795. 
 
 My Lord, — Having received, from Mr. Drake, a copy of yom* 
 Lordship's letter to him of October, enclosing a paper highly reflect- 
 ing on the honour of myself and other of His Majesty's Officers era- 
 ployed on this Coast under my Orders, it well becomes me, as far 
 as in my power lies, to wipe away this ignominious stain on our 
 characters. I do, therefore, in behalf of myself, and much injm'ed 
 Brethren, demand, that the person, whoever he may be, that wrote, 
 or gave that j^aper to your Lordship, do fully, and expressly bring 
 home his charge; which, as he states tlaat this agreement is made by 
 
OPERATIONS ON THE RIVIERA, 1795 175 
 
 numbers of people on both sides, there can be no difficulty in doing. 
 We dare him, my Lord, to the proof. If he cannot, I do most 
 humbly implore, that His Majesty will be most graciously pleased to 
 direct his Attorney-General to prosecute this infamous libeller in His 
 Courts of Law ; and I likewise feel, that, without impropriety, I may 
 on behalf of my brother Officers, demand the support of His Majesty's 
 Ministers : for as, if true, no punishment can be too great for the 
 traitors; so, if false, none can be too heavy for the villain, who has 
 dared to allow his pen to write such a paper. Perhaps I ought to 
 stop my letter here ; but I feel too much to rest easy for a moment, 
 when the honour of the Navy, and oar Country, is struck at through 
 us ; for if nine [ten] Captains, whom chance has thrown together, can 
 instantly join in such a traitorous measm'e, it is fair to conclude we 
 are all bad. 
 
 As this traitorous agreement could not be carried on but by concert 
 of all the Captains, if they were on the Stations allotted them, and as 
 they could only be drawn from those Stations by orders from me, I 
 do most fully acquit all my brother Captains from such a combina- 
 tion, and have to request, that I may be considered as the only re. 
 sponsible person for what is done under my command, if I approve 
 of the conduct of those under my orders, which in this most public 
 manner I beg leave to do: for Officers more alert, and more anxious 
 for the good, and honour, of their King and Country, can scarcely 
 ever fall to the lot of any Commanding Officer : their Names I place 
 at the bottom of this letter. 
 
 For myself, from my earliest youth I have been in the Naval 
 Service ; and in two Wars, have been in more than one hundred and 
 forty Skirmishes and Battles, at Sea and on shore ; have lost an eye, 
 and otherwise blood, in fighting the Enemies of my King and Coun- 
 try; and, God knows, instead of riches, my little fortune has been 
 diminished in the Service : but I shall not trouble your Lordship 
 further at present, than just to say — that at the close of this Cam- 
 paign, where I have had the pleasure to receive the approbation of 
 the Generals of the Allied Powers ; of his Excellency Mr. Drake, who 
 has always been on the spot ; of Mr. Trevor, who has been at a dis- 
 tance ; when I expected and hoped, from the representation of His 
 Majesty's Ministers, that His INIajesty would have most graciously 
 condescended to have favourably noticed my earnest desire to serve 
 Him, and when, instead of all my fancied approbation, to receive an 
 accusation of a most traitorous nature — it has almost been too much 
 for me to bear. Conscious innocence, I hope, will support me. 
 I have the honour to be. 
 My Lord, 
 Your Lordship's most obedient, humble servant, 
 
 Horatio Nplson- 
 
176 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 Except this vexatious but passing cloud, his service upon 
 the Eiviera, despite the procrastinations and final failure of 
 his associates in the campaign, was pleasant both personally 
 and officially. He earned the warm esteem of all with whom 
 he acted, notably the British ministers at Turin and Genoa; 
 and though necessarily in constant collision with the Genoese 
 authorities upon international questions, lie upheld the inter- 
 ests and policy of his own government, without entailing 
 upon it serious cause of future reclamations and disputes. i 
 Hotham's very indifference and lethargy, while crippling his 
 enterprise, increased his independence. " I cannot get Hotham 
 on the coast," he said, " for he hates this co-operation ; " but 
 he owns to the fear that the admiral, if he came, might over- 
 rule his projects. The necessity for exertion delighted him. 
 " My command here is so far pleasant," he wrote to his friend 
 Collingwood, "as it relieves me from the inactivity of our 
 fleet, which is great indeed, as you will soon see." "At 
 present," be tells his wife, "I do not write less than from 
 ten to twenty letters every day; which, with the Austrian 
 general, and aide-de-camps, and my own little squadron, fully 
 employ my time: this I like; active service or none." As 
 usual, when given room for the exercise of his powers, he 
 was, for him, well. He had a severe attack of illness very 
 soon after assuming the duty — "a complaint in the breast " 
 — the precursor perhaps of the similar trouble from which he 
 suffered so much in later years ; but it wore off after an acute 
 attack of a fortnight, and he wrote later that, except being at 
 home, he knew no country so pleasant to serve in, nor where 
 his health was so good. This well-grounded preference for 
 
 1 A year later, when all his transactions with Genoa as an independent re- 
 public were concluded, Nelson received from the British Minister of Foreign 
 Affairs, through the Admiralty, the following strong and comprehensive 
 endorsement of his political conduct: — 
 
 "I esteem it an act of justice due to that officer, to inform your lordships 
 that His Majesty has been graciously pleased entirely to approve of the con- 
 duct of Commodore Nelson in all his transactions with the Republic of Genoa. 
 I have the honour to be, &c., &c. Grenville." 
 
 The First Lord of the Admiralty about the same time expressed "the great 
 satisfaction derived here from the very spirited, and at the same time dignified 
 and temperate manner, in which your conduct has been marked both at Leg- 
 horn and Genoa." 
 
OPERATIONS ON THE EIVIERA, 1795 177 
 
 the Mediterranean, as best suited to his naturally frail con- 
 stitution, remained with him to the end. 
 
 Besides his official correspondence, he wrote freely and 
 fully to those at liome, unburdening to them the thoughts, 
 cares, and disappointments of his career, as well as the com- 
 mendations he received, so dear to himself as well as to them. 
 Mrs. Nelson and his father lived together, and to her most 
 of his home letters were addressed. " I have been very neg- 
 ligent," he admits to hei-, •' in writing to my father, but I 
 rest assured he knows I would have done it long ago, had 
 you not been under the same roof. . . . Pray draw on me," 
 he continues, " for £200, my father and myself can settle our 
 accounts when we meet ; at present, I believe I am the richer 
 man, therefore I desire you will give my dear father that 
 money." One wonders whether, in the slightly peremptory 
 tone of the last sentence, is to be seen a trace of the feeling 
 she is said, by one biographer, to have shown, that he was too 
 liberal to his relatives ; an indication of that lack of sym- 
 pathy, which, manifested towards other traits of his, no less 
 marked than openhandedness, struck a jarring note within 
 him, and possibly paved the way to an indiiference which 
 ended so unfortunately for both. An absent husband, how- 
 ever, very possibly failed to realize what his extreme gener- 
 osity might mean, to one who had to meet household expenses 
 with narrow means. 
 
 The political surmises with which his correspondence at 
 this period abounds were often crude, though not infrequently 
 also characterized by the native sagacity of his intellect, 
 as yet undisciplined, and to some extent deficient in data 
 for accurate forecasts. The erroneous military conception 
 which colored much of his thought, the propositions for 
 ex-centric movements in an enemy's rear, by bodies com- 
 paratively small, out of supporting distance from the rest of 
 the army, and resting upon no impregnable base, contributed 
 greatly to the faulty anticipations entertained and expressed 
 by him from time to time. When applied to operations 
 directed by the consummate and highly trained genius of 
 Bonaparte, speculations so swayed naturally flew wide of the 
 mark. His sanguine disposition to think the best of all 
 persons and all things — except Frenchmen — made him also 
 
 12 
 
178 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 a ready prey to the flattering rumors of which war is ever 
 fertile. These immaturities will be found to disappear, as 
 his sphere widens and his responsibilities increase. 
 
 After the close of the campaign, Nelson made a short 
 cruise from Genoa to the westward, seeing the French on 
 November 29 in full possession of Vado Bay. He then went 
 to Leghorn, where he arrived on the 6th of December and 
 remained till the middle of January, repairing, to make the 
 "Agamemnon" ''as tit for sea as a rotten ship can be." The 
 longing for rest and for home, after nearly three years' ab- 
 sence, was again strong upon liim in this moment of relaxa- 
 tion. " I fear our new admiral is willing to keep me with 
 him," he wrote to his brother. " He has wrote me, I am 
 sorry to say, a most flattering letter, and I hear I am to be 
 offered St. George or Zealous [much larger ships], but, in my 
 present mind, I shall take neither. My wish is to see Eng- 
 land once more, and I want a few weeks' rest." But here 
 again, having regard to that fame which was to him most 
 dear, he was mistaken, as he now owned he had been in the 
 wish, a year before, to accorapau}'- Lord Hood on his return. 
 In Sir John Jervis he was to meet, not only one of the most 
 accomplished and resolute officers of the British ISTavy, closely 
 akin to himself in enterprise and fearlessness, though without 
 his exceptional genius, but also a man capable of appreciating 
 perfectly the extraordinary powers of his subordinate, and of 
 disregarding every obstacle and all clamor, in the determina- 
 tion to utilize his qualities to the full, for the good of the 
 nation. 
 
 II 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Nelson's Sekvices in the Mediteruanean duuing the Year 1796.— 
 Bunaparte's Italian Campaign. — The British abandon Corsica, 
 AND THE Fleet leaves the Mediterranean. 
 
 January-Deckmbek, 1796. Age, 38. 
 
 WHILE the " Agamemnon " was refitting in Leghorn, the 
 sensitive mind of her captain, no longer preoccupied 
 with the cares of campaigning and negotiations, dwelt with 
 restless anxiety upon the refiections to which the British 
 Navy was liable, for its alleged failure to support the Aus- 
 trians throughout the operations, and especially at the critical 
 moment of the Battle of Loano, when the left flank of their 
 army was harassed with impunity by the French gunboats. 
 Nelson felt rightly that, with the British superiority at sea, 
 this should have been impossible ; and he feared that his own 
 name might be unpleasantly involved, from the fact that the 
 ''Agamemnon" had remained throughout at Genoa, instead 
 of being where the fighting was. He was by nature, and at 
 all times, over-forward to self-vindication, — an infirmity 
 springing from the innate nobility of his temperament, which 
 was impatient of the faintest suspicion of backwardness or 
 negligence, and at the same time resolved that for any short- 
 coming or blunder, occurring by his order or sanction, no other 
 than himself should bear blame, directly or indirectly. 
 
 After the first unsuccessful pursuit of Bonaparte's expe- 
 dition to Egypt, in 1798, in the keenness of his emotions over 
 a failure that might by some be charged to a precipitate error 
 of judgment, he drew up for Lotd St. Vincent a clear and able 
 statement of all the reasons which had determined his action, 
 arraigning himself, as it were, at the bar of his Lordship's 
 opinion and that of the nation, and assuming entire responsi- 
 bility for the apparent mistake, while at the same time 
 justifying the step by a review of the various considerations 
 
180 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 which at the time had occasioned it. His judicious frieud 
 and subordinate, Captain Ball, whom he consulted, strongly 
 advised him not to send the paper, ''I was particularly 
 struck," he wrote, " with the clear and accurate style, as well 
 as with the candour of the statement in your letter, but I 
 should recommend a friend never to begin a defence of his 
 conduct before he is accused of error." Nevertheless, in Feb- 
 ruary, 1805, when he once more went to Alexandria in search 
 of Villeneuve, this time really misled by the elaborate mys- 
 tifications of Napoleon, he again brought himself before the 
 Admiralty. *' I am entirely responsible to my King and 
 Country for the whole of my conduct. ... I have consulted 
 no man, therefore the whole blame of ignorance in forming 
 my judgment must rest with me. I would allow no man to 
 take from me an atom of my glory, had I fallen in with the 
 French fleet, nor do I desire any man to partake any of the 
 responsibility — all is mine, right or wrong." 
 
 In 1795, being a much younger man, of less experience of 
 the world, and with a reputation, already brilliant indeed, but 
 still awaiting the stamp of solidity which the lapse of time 
 alone can give. Nelson felt strongly, and not improperly, that 
 it was necessary to be vigilant against any possible imputa- 
 tions upon his action. This was the more true, because blame 
 certainly did attach to the service of which he was the repre- 
 sentative on the spot, and the course he had been obliged to 
 follow kept him to the rear instead of at the front. There 
 would have been no greater personal danger to a man on 
 board the " Agamemnon " in one place than in the other ; but 
 current rumor, seeking a victim, does not pause to analyze 
 conditions. Not only, therefore, did he draw up for Sir John 
 Jervis a succinct synopsis of occurrences subsequent to his 
 taking command of the operations along the Eiviera, in which 
 he combined a justification of his own conduct with the gen- 
 eral information necessary for a new commander-in-chief, but 
 to all his principal correspondents he carefully imparted the 
 facts necessary to clear him from blame, and to show just 
 what the Navy had effected, and where it had fallen short 
 through inadequate force. 
 
 To the British minister to Genoa, who was constantly at the 
 Austrian headquarters, be wrote with clear emphasis, as to 
 
DEFENCE OF HIS OWN CONDUCT 181 
 
 one cognizant of all the truth, and so a witness most important 
 to himself. Having first asked certain certificates, essential 
 to be presented in the Admiralty Courts when Genoese prizes 
 came to be adjudicated, he continued characteristically : " The 
 next request much more concerns my honour, than the other 
 does my interest — it is to prove to the world, to my own 
 admiral, or to whoever may have a right to ask the question, 
 why I remained at Genoa. I have therefore to desire that you 
 will have the goodness to express, in writing, what you told 
 me, that the Imperial minister and yourself were assured, if I 
 left the port of Genoa unguarded, not only the Imperial troops 
 at St. Pierre d' Arena and Voltri would be lost, but that the 
 French plan for taking post between Voltri and Savona would 
 certainly succeed ; and also, that if the Austrians should be 
 worsted in the advanced posts, the retreat by the Bocchetta 
 would be cut off: to which you added, that if this happened, 
 the loss of the Army would be laid to my leaving Genoa, and 
 recommended me most strongly not to think of it. I am 
 anxious, as you will believe, to have proofs in my possession, 
 that I employed to the last the Agamemnon as was judged 
 most beneficial to the common cause." 
 
 A week later he wrote again, having heard that the Austrian 
 commander-in-chief, General Wallis, had declared that the 
 defeat was due to the failure of the British to co-operate. 
 Nelson thought that they had a strong hold on Wallis, and he 
 therefore enclosed a letter to him, which he asked might be 
 forwarded by the minister. The experience and training of 
 the latter, however, here interposed to prevent his sensitive 
 uneasiness leading to a false step, and one that might involve 
 him farther than he foresaw. While bearing the clearest and 
 strongest witness to the facts which Nelson had asked him to 
 establish, he hinted to him, tactfully and with deference, that 
 it was scarcely becoming a public servant to justify his con- 
 duct to a foreign official, he being accountable only to his own 
 government. Nelson accepted the suggestion, and in so doing 
 characterized aptly enough the temperament which then and 
 at other times carried him farther than discretion warranted. 
 "My feelings ever alive, perhaps, to too nice a sense of 
 honour, are a little cooled." 
 
 Along with this care for the stainless record of the past, 
 
182 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 there went on in liis mind a continiial reasoning upon the 
 probable course of the next j'ear's operations. In his fore- 
 casts it is singuh^r to notice how, starting froia the accurate 
 prenuse that it is necessary for the French to get into the 
 phains of Italy, — " the gold mine," — he is continually misled 
 by his old prepossession in favor of landing in rear of the 
 enemy a body of troops, supported neither bj^ sure communi- 
 cation Avith their niaiu army, nor by a position in itself of 
 great strength. The mistake, if mistake it was, illustrates 
 aptly the errors into which a man of great genius for war, of 
 quick insight, such as ISTelson indisputably had, can fall, from 
 want of antecedent study, of familiarity Avith those leading 
 principles, deduced from the experience of the past, which are 
 perhaps even more serviceable in warning against error than 
 in prompting to right. Everything assures him that the 
 French will carry some twenty thousand men to Italy by sea. 
 " If they mean to carry on the war, they must penetrate into 
 Italy. I am convinced in my own mind, that I know their 
 very landing-place." Tliis, it appears afterwards, he believed 
 would be between Spezia and Leghorn, in the districts of Massa 
 and Carrara, whence also they would doubtless turn upon 
 Leghorn, though neiitral, as a valuable and fortified seaport. 
 "The prevention," he continues, "requires great foresight; 
 for, if once landed, our fleet is of no use." 
 
 The importance of Vado Bay, so discreditably lost the year 
 before, strikes him from this point of view, as it did also 
 Bonaparte from his more closely coherent plan of operations. 
 Nelson reasoned that, if Vado were possessed by the allies, the 
 French, in their attempt to reach the Tuscan coast, would be 
 compelled to put to sea, where they would be exposed to the 
 British fleet, while such an anchorage would enable the latter, 
 when necessary, to keep the coast close aboard, or would pro- 
 vide a refuge to a small squadron, if threatened by the sudden 
 appearance of a superior force. Bonaparte thought Vado 
 important, because, on the one hand, essential to uninter- 
 rupted coasting-trade with Genoa, and on the other as advanc- 
 ing his water line of communications — that by land being 
 impassable for heavy articles, such as siege-guns and carriages 
 — to Savona, from wdiich point the mountains could be crossed 
 at their lowest elevation, and by their most practicable passes. 
 
riRST MEETING WITH JERVIS 183 
 
 ISTelsou's analysis of the conditions, in other respects than 
 the one mentioned, was not nn worthy of his great natural 
 aptitudes. There are three things to be guarded against, he 
 says. One is that pet scheme of his imagination, the trans- 
 port of a corps by sea to Tuscany ; the other two are an inva- 
 sion of Piedmont, and the entrance into Italy by the pass of 
 the Bocchetta, behind Genoa. " If three are to be attended 
 to, depend upon it one will fall, and the Emperor, very pos- 
 sibly, may be more attentive to the Milanese than to Pied- 
 mont." Upon this divergence of interests in a coalition 
 Bonaparte also explicitly counted ; and his plan, in its first 
 inception, as laid before the Directory in the summer of 1795, 
 looked primarily to the subjugation of Piedmont, by separat- 
 ing it from the support of the Austrian Army. The bearing 
 of Vado Bay upon this project is not definitely recognized by 
 Nelson. He sees in the possession of it only the frustration 
 of both the enemy's supposed alternatives, — invasion of Italy 
 by the Bocchetta, and of Tuscany by sea. 
 
 With these views Nelson arrived, at San Fiorenzo, on the 
 19th of January, and had his first interview with Jervis. His 
 reception by the latter, whom he never before had met, was 
 not only cordial but flattering. He was at once offered the 
 choice of two larger ships, which were declined, " but with 
 that respect and sense of obligation on my part which such 
 handsome conduct demanded of me." The admiral then asked 
 him if he would have any objection to remain on the station, 
 when promoted, as he soon must be. Nelson's longing to go 
 home had worn off with his disgust, occasioned by the im- 
 potent conclusions of last year's work. Then he was experi- 
 encing the feeling voiced b}^ the great Frenchman, Suffren, 
 some dozen years before : " It was clear that, though we had 
 the means to impose the law, all would be lost. I heartily 
 pray you may permit me to leave. War alone can make bear- 
 able the weariness of certain things." Now his keen enjoy- 
 ment of active service revived as the hour of opening hostilities 
 drew near. With these dispositions, the graciousness of his re- 
 ception easily turned the scale, and before long he was not only 
 willing to remain, but fearful lest he should be disappointed, 
 despite the application for his retention which the admiral 
 hastened to make. 
 
184 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 " The credit I derive from all these compliments," he wrote 
 to his wife, " must be satisfactory to you ; and, should I 
 remain until peace, Avhich cannot be very long, you will, I 
 sincerely hope, make your mind easy." But more grateful 
 than open flattery, to one so interested in, and proud of, his 
 military activities, was the respect paid by Jervis to his 
 views and suggestions relative to the approaching operations. 
 " He was so well satisfied with my opinion of what is likely 
 to happen, and the means of prevention to be taken, that he 
 had no reserve with me respecting his information and ideas 
 of what is likely to be done ; " or, as he wrote a month later, 
 " he seems at present to consider me more as an associate than 
 a subordinate officer ; for I am acting without any orders. 
 This may have its difficulties at a future day ; but I make 
 none, knowing the uprightness of my intentions. 'You must 
 have a larger ship,' continued the admiral, 'for we cannot 
 spare you, either as captain or admiral.' " Such were the 
 opening relations between these two distinguished officers, 
 who were in the future to exert great influence upon each 
 other's career. 
 
 It is far from improbable that the ready coincidence of 
 Jervis's views with those of Nelson, as to future possibilities, 
 arose, partly indeed from professional bias and prepossession 
 as to the potency of navies, but still more from the false 
 reports, of which Bonaparte was an apt promoter, and which 
 a commission of the allies in Genoa greedily swallowed and 
 transmitted. The deterrent effect of their own fleet, " in 
 being," seems not to have prevented either of them from 
 believing that the attempt upon Tuscany by sea was seriously 
 intended. True, Nelson does at times speak of the French as 
 being so unreasonable that one may expect anything from 
 them ; but this scheme, which probably had not even a paper 
 existence in Prance, Avas accepted by him as imminent, because 
 he thought it suitable. As he cogently remarked to Beaulieu, 
 it is likely that your enemy will not do the thing which you 
 wish him to do ; and conversely, in this case, what to him 
 appeared most threatening to his own cause was just what he 
 expected to occur. Jervis, sharing his views, and already 
 knowing his man, despatched him again to the Gulf of Genoa, 
 within forty-eight hours of his arrival in San Fiorenzo, some- 
 
ADMIRAL, SIR JOHN JERVIS, EARL OF 
 ST. VINCENT. 
 
 Frojn an engraving by H. Robinson, after the painting by John 
 Hoppner, in St. James's Palace. 
 
ON THE RIVIERA, 1796 185 
 
 what to the disgust of the other captains, weary of being ever 
 under the eye of an observant aud exacting admiral. " You 
 did as you pleased in Lord Hood's time," said one grumbler, 
 "the same in Admiral Hotham's, and now again with Sir 
 John Jervis; it makes no difference to you who is commander- 
 in-chief." The tone of these words, which in the reading are 
 almost flattering, is evident from iSTelson's comment : " I re- 
 turned a pretty strong answer to this speech." 
 
 The object of his present mission was to ascertain what prep- 
 arations for the expected descent were being made along the 
 Eiviera, and to frustrate them as far as lay in the power of 
 his squadron. He soon reported to Jervis that there was as 
 yet no collection of vessels between Nice and Genoa. He 
 then went on to reconnoitre Toulon, where he saw thirteen 
 sail-of-the-line and five frigates lying in the outer roads, ready 
 for sea, while five more of the line he learned were fitting at 
 the arsenal. During the six days he remained off the port he 
 noted that continual progress was being made in the enemy's 
 preparations. At the end of this time, on the 23d of Feb- 
 uruary, 1796, the admiral joined with the fleet, and the same 
 afternoon the " Agamemnon " again parted company for 
 Genoa, where she anchored on the 2d of March. 
 
 The bustle on board the French ships confirmed Nelson's 
 belief in the descent upon Tuscany ; and it is interesting here 
 to quote his words upon the possibilities of the operation, re- 
 garded from the naval point of view by one of the ablest of 
 sea-generals. His opinion throws light upon the vexed ques- 
 tion of the chances for and against Napoleon's projected 
 invasion of England in 1805, — so far, that is, as the purely 
 naval part of the latter project is concerned. He imagines as 
 perfectly feasible ("I firmly believe," are his words) a com- 
 bination at Toulon, of the fleet already there with divisions 
 arriving from Cadiz and Brest, giving a total much superior 
 to that actually with Jervis. This anticipates Napoleon's 
 projected concentration under Villeneuve in the Channel. 
 Nelson then continues : " One week's very superior fleet will 
 effect a landing between Port Especia and Leghorn, I mean on 
 that coast of Italy. . . . We may fight their fleet, but unless 
 we can destroy them [i. e. the transports], their transports 
 will push on and effect their landing. What will the French 
 
186 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 care for the loss of a few men-of-war ? It is nothing if they 
 can get into Italy." " Make us masters of the channel for 
 three days, and we are masters of the world/' wrote Napoleon 
 to his admirals, with preparations far more complete than 
 those Nelson was considering in 1796, and the distance across 
 the Channel is less than from Vado to Spezia.^ 
 
 With these convictions, Nelson immediately began to urge 
 the necessity of again occupying Vado upon the Austrian com- 
 mander-in-chief, through the medium of the British ministers 
 to Genoa and Turin, with whom he was in frequent corre- 
 spondence. If this were not done, he assured them, the 
 enemy's fleet could with ease convoy a body of troops in 
 transports to Italy, which they could not do with their present 
 force unless they held Vado. It was also the only means, he 
 added, by which the French could be prevented from receiv- 
 ing plenty of provisions from Genoa. " Unless the Austrians 
 get possession of a point of land, we cannot stop the coasting- 
 trade." The latter argument, at any rate, was incontestable ; 
 and it was also true that only by an advance to Vado could 
 communication between the army and the British fleet be re- 
 stored and maintained. Beaulieu, who had lately acquired a 
 high reputation on the battle-fields of Belgium, had now suc- 
 ceeded De Vins in the command. He was averse to opening 
 the campaign by an advance to the sea, a feeling shared by 
 the Austrians generally. He wished rather to await the 
 enemy in the plains of Lombardy, and to follow up by a decisive 
 blow the victory which he confidently expected there. It was 
 in this connection that Nelson warned him, that he must not 
 reckon upon the French following the line of action which he 
 himself would prefer. 
 
 The time for hostilities had now arrived ; from February to 
 August being the period that Bonaparte, who knew the wars 
 
 1 This indicates no opinion as to the fortune of the military operations in 
 England, a landing once effected. It has, however, seemed to the author 
 singular that men fail to consider that Napoleon would not have hesitated to 
 abandon an army in England, as he did in Egj'pt and in Russia. A few 
 hours' fog or calm, and a quick-pulling boat, would have landed himself again 
 in France ; while the loss of 150,000 men, if it came to that, would have 
 been cheaply bought with the damage such an organized force could have done 
 London and the dock yards, not to speak of the moral effect. 
 
ON THE RIVIERA, 1796 187 
 
 of Italy historically, considered the most proper for operations 
 in the held, because the least sickly. But for the backward- 
 ness of the spring, — for snow that year lay upon the moun- 
 tains late into March, — the campaign doubtless would have 
 been begun before. At the same time came fresh reports, 
 probably set afloat by the French, of large reinforcements of 
 seamen for the fleet and transports, in Toulon and Marseilles ; 
 and Nelson furthermore received precise information that the 
 enemy's movement would be in three columns, — one upon 
 Ceva, which was Bonaparte's original scheme, one by the 
 Bocchetta, and the third either to march through Genoese 
 territory to Spezia, or to be carried thither by sea. Nelson 
 felt no doubt that the last was the real plan, aiming at the 
 occupation of Leghorn and entrance into the plains of Italy. 
 The others he considered to be feints. There will in this 
 opinion be recognized the persistency of his old ideas. In 
 fact, he a month later revived his proposal of the previous 
 year, to occupy San Remo, — this time with British troops. 
 
 The urgency of the British, aided, perhaps, by the reports 
 of the French designs, prevailed at last upon Beaulieu to ad- 
 vance as requested ; nor can it be denied that the taking of 
 Vado was in itself a most proper and desirable accessory ob- 
 ject of the campaign. Unfortunately, the Austrian general, 
 as is well known, fastening his eyes too exclusively upon the 
 ulterior object of his movement, neglected to provide for the 
 immediate close combination and mutual support of the organ- 
 ized forces, — his own and the Piedmontese, — upon which 
 final success would turn. Manoeuvring chiefly by his own 
 left, towards the Riviera, and drawing in that direction the 
 efforts of the centre and right, he weakened the allied line at 
 the point where the Austrian right touched the Sardinian left. 
 Through this thin curtain Bonaparte broke, dividing the one 
 from the other, and, after a series of combats which extended 
 over several days, rendering final that division, both political 
 and military, for the remainder of the war. 
 
 To one who has accustomed himself to see in Nelson the 
 exponent of the chief obstacle Napoleon had to meet, — who 
 has recognized in the Nile, in Copenhagen, and in Trafalgar, the 
 most significant and characteristic incident attending the fail- 
 ure of each of three great and widely separated schemes, — 
 
188 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 there is something impressive in noting the fact, generally 
 disregarded, that Nelson was also present and assisting at 
 the very opening scene of the famous campaign in Italy. This 
 was not, certainly, the beginning of Napoleon's career any 
 more than it was of Nelson's, who at the same moment hoisted 
 for the first time his broad pendant as commodore ; but it was 
 now that, upon the horizon of the future, toward which the 
 world was fast turning, began to shoot upward the rays of 
 the great captain's coming glory, and the sky to redden with 
 the glare from the watchfires of the unseen armies which, at 
 his command, were to revolutionize the face of Europe, caus- 
 ing old things to pass away, never to be restored. 
 
 The Austrians had asked for a clear assurance that their 
 movement to the seashore should receive the support of the 
 fleet, whether on the Riviera or at Spezia; Nelson having laid 
 stress upon the possession of the latter, as a precaution against 
 the invasion of Tuscany. These engagements he readily made. 
 He would support any movement, and provide for the safety 
 of any convoys by water. He told the aid-de-camp whom 
 Beaulieu sent to him that, whenever the general came down 
 to the sea-coast, he would be sure to find the ships; and to 
 the question whether his squadron would not be risked there- 
 by, he replied that it would be risked at all times to assist 
 their allies, and, if lost, the admiral would find another. ''If 
 I find the French convoy in any place where there is a proba- 
 bility of attacking them," he wrote about this time, "you 
 may depend they shall either be taken or destroyed at the 
 risk of my squadron, . . . which is built to be risked on 
 proper occasions." Here was indeed a spirit from which 
 much might be expected. The fleet, doubtless, must be hus- 
 banded in coastwise work so long as the French fleet remained, 
 the legacy of past errors, — this Nelson clearly maintained; 
 but such vessels as it could spare for co-operation were not to 
 be deterred from doing their work by fear of harm befalling 
 them. Warned by the recriminations of the last campaign, 
 he had minutes taken of his interview with the Austrian 
 officer, of the questions he himself put, as well as of the un- 
 dertakings to which he pledged himself; and these he caused 
 to be witnessed by the British consul at Genoa, who was 
 present. 
 
ON THE RIVIERA, 1796 189 
 
 On the 8th of April the "Agamemnou," having shortly 
 before left the fleet in San Fioreuzo Bay, anchored at Genoa ; 
 and the following morning the port saluted the broad pendant 
 of the new commodore. The next day, April 10, Beaulieu 
 attacked the French at Voltri. The " Agamemnon," with 
 another sixty-four-gun ship, the " Diadem," and two frigates, 
 sailed in the evening, and stood along the shore, by precon- 
 certed arrangement, to cover the advance and harass the 
 enemy. At 11 p. m. the ships anchored abreast the positions 
 of the Austrian s, whose lights were visible from their decks 
 — the sails hanging in the clewlines, ready for instant move- 
 ment. They again got under way the following day, and con- 
 tinued to the westward, seeing the French troops in retreat 
 upon Savona. The attack. Nelson said, anticipated the hour 
 fixed for it, which was daylight ; so that, although the ships 
 had again started at 4 a. m. of the 11th, and reached betimes 
 a point from which they commanded every foot of the road, 
 the enemy had already passed. " Yesterday afternoon I re- 
 ceived, at five o'clock, a note from the Baron de Malcamp [an 
 aid-de-camp], to tell me that the general had resolved to at- 
 tack the French at daylight this morning, and on the right of 
 Voltri. Yet by the Austrians getting too forward in the 
 afternoon, a slight action took place ; and, in the night, the 
 French retreated. They were aware of their perilous situa- 
 tion, and passed our ships in the night. Had the Austrians 
 kept back, very few of the French could have escaped." 
 Whether this opinion was wholly accurate may be doubted ; 
 certain it is, however, that the corps which then passed rein- 
 forced betimes the positions in the mountains, Avhich stead- 
 fastly, yet barely, checked the Austrian attack there the 
 following day. Beaulieu wrote that the well-timed co-opera- 
 tion of the squadron had saved a number of fine troops, which 
 must have been lost in the attack. This was so far satis- 
 factory ; but the economizing of one's own force was not in 
 Nelson's eyes any consolation for the escape of the enemy, 
 whose number he estimated at four thousand. '•! beg you 
 will endeavour to impress on those about the general," he 
 wrote to the British minister, " the necessity of punctuality 
 in a joint operation, for its success to be complete." 
 
 There was, however, to be no more co-operation that year 
 
190 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 on the Kiviera. For a few days Nelson remained in snspense, 
 hoping for good news, and still very far from imagining the 
 hail-storm of ruinous blows which a master hand, as j'^et 
 unrecognized, was even then dealing to the allied cause. On 
 the 15th only he heard from Beaulieu, through the minister, 
 that the Austrians had been repulsed at Montenotte ; and on 
 the 16th he wrote to Collingwood that this reverse had been 
 inflicted by the aid of those who slipped by his ships. On the 
 18th news had reached him of the affairs at Millesimo and 
 Dego, as well as of further disasters ; for on that day he wrote 
 to the Duke of Clarence that the Austrians had taken posi- 
 tion between jSTovi and Alessandria., with headquarters at 
 Acqui. Their loss he gave as ten thousand. "Had the 
 general's concerted time and plan been attended to," he re- 
 peats, " I again assert, none of the enemy could have escaped 
 on the night of the 10th. By what has followed, the disasters 
 commenced from the retreat of those troops." 
 
 There now remained, not the stirring employment of accom- 
 panying and supporting a victorious advance, but only the 
 subordinate, though most essential, duty of ilnpeding the com- 
 munications of the enemy, upon which to a great extent must 
 depend the issues on unseen and distant fields of war. To 
 this Kelson's attention had already been turned, as one of the 
 most important functions intrusted to him, even were the allies 
 successful, and its difficulties had been impressed upon him by 
 the experience of the previous year. But since then the con- 
 ditions had become far more onerous. The defeat of the 
 Austrians not only left Vado Bay definitively in the power of 
 the French, but enabled the latter to push their control up to 
 the very walls of Genoa, where they shortly established a 
 battery and depot on the shore, at St. Pierre d'Arena, within 
 three hundred yards of the mole. Thus the whole western 
 Riviera, from the French border, was in possession of the 
 enemy, who had also throughout the previous year so mul- 
 tiplied and strengthened the local defences, that, to use 
 Nelson's own words, " they have batteries from one end of 
 the coast to the other, within shot of each other." Such were 
 the means, also, by which Napoleon, the true originator 
 of this scheme for securing these communications, insured 
 the concentration of the flotilla at Boulogne, eight or ten 
 
 I 
 
ON THE RIVIP:RA, ITOG 191 
 
 years later, without serious molestation from the British 
 Kavy. 
 
 It may not unnaturally cause some surprise that, with the 
 urgent need jSTelson had felt the year before for small armed 
 vessels, to control the coastwise movements of the enemy, 
 upon which so much then depended, no serious effort had been 
 made to attach a flotilla of that kind to the fleet. The reply, 
 however, to this very obvious criticism is, that the British 
 could not supply the crews for them without crippling the 
 etticiency of the cruising fleet; and it was justly felt then, as 
 it was some years later at the time of the Boulogne flotilla, 
 that the prime duty of Great Britain was to secure the sea 
 against the heavy fleets of the enemy. If, indeed, the Italian 
 States, whose immediate interests were at stake, had supplied 
 seamen, as they might have done, these could quickly have 
 been formed to the comparatively easy standard of discipline 
 and training needed for such guerilla warfare, and, supported 
 by the cruising fleet, might have rendered invaluable service, 
 so long as the system of coast defence was defective. How 
 far the rulers of those States, trained heretofore to the narrow- 
 est considerations of personal policy, could have been induced 
 to extend this assistance, is doubtful. They did nothing, or 
 little. 
 
 Nelson measured the odds against him accurately, and saw 
 that the situation was well-nigh hopeless. Nevertheless, there 
 was a chance that by vigorous and sustained action the enemy 
 might be not only impeded, but intimidated. He sought 
 earnestly to obtain the co-operation of the Sardinians and 
 Neapolitans in maiming a flotilla, with which to grapple the 
 convoys as they passed in shore. By this means, and the 
 close securing of the coast by the vessels of his squadron, 
 something might be effected. He contemplated also using the 
 crews of the British vessels themselves in gunboats and light- 
 armed feluccas ; but he said frankly that, important as was 
 the duty of intercepting communications, the efficiency of 
 the fleet was more important still, and that to divert their 
 crews overmuch to such objects would hazard the vessels 
 themselves, and neutralize their proper work. The resort, 
 therefore, could only be occasional. The general political com- 
 plexion of affairs in the Mediterranean depended greatly upon 
 
102 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 the presence aud readiness of the British fleet, and its efficiency 
 therefore could not be risked, to any serious extent, except 
 for the object of destroying the enemy's naval forces, to which 
 it was then the counterpoise. 
 
 Acting, however, on his determination to co-operate effec- 
 tively, at whatever risk to his own squadron, — to the detach- 
 ment, that is, which the commander-in-chief thought could 
 safely be spared from his main force for the secondary object, 
 — Nelson applied all his intelligeiice and all his resolution to 
 the task before him. In words of admirable force and clear- 
 ness, he manifests that exclusiveness of purpose, which 
 Napoleon justly characterized as the secret of great operations 
 and of great successes. '' I have not a thought," he writes to 
 the minister at Genoa, "on any subject separated from the 
 immediate object of my command, nor a wish to be employed 
 on any other service. So far the allies," he continues, with 
 no unbecoming self-assertion, " are fortunate, if I may bo 
 allowed the expression, in having an officer of this character." 
 He felt til is singleness of mind, which is so rare a gift, to be 
 the more important, from his very consciousness that the diffi- 
 culty of his task approached the border of impossibility. " I 
 cannot command winds and weather. A sea-officer cannot, like 
 a land-officer, form plans ; his object is to embrace the happy 
 moment which now and then offers, ■ — it may be this day, 
 not for a month, and perhaps never." Nothing can be more 
 suggestive of his greatest characteristics than this remark, 
 which is perhaps less applicable to naval officers to-day than 
 it was then. In it we may fairly see one of those clearly held 
 principles which serve a man so well in moments of doubt and 
 perplexity. At the Nile and at Trafalgar, and scarcely less at 
 St. Vincent and Copenhagen, the seizure of opportunity, the 
 unfaltering resolve " to embrace the happy moment," is per- 
 haps even more notable and decisive than the sagacity which so 
 accurately chose the proper method of action. 
 
 Nelson's deeds did not belie his words. Immediately after 
 definite news of Beaulieu's retreat to the Po was received. Sir 
 John Jervis appeared off Genoa with the fleet. The " Aga- 
 memnon " joined him, and remained in company until the 23d 
 of April, when by Nelson's request she sailed on a cruise to 
 the westward. From that time until the 4th of June she was 
 
ON THE RIVIERA, 1796 193 
 
 actively employed between Mce aud Genoa, engaging the 
 batteries, and from time to time cutting out vessels from the 
 anchorages. His attempts were more or less successful ; on 
 one occasion he captured a considerable portion of the French 
 siege-train going forward for the siege of Mantua ; but upon 
 the whole the futility of the attempt became apparent. 
 •''Although I will do my utmost, I do not believe it is in my 
 power to prevent troops or stores from passing along shore. 
 Heavy swells, light breezes, and the near approach to the 
 shore which these vessels go are our obstacles. . . . You may 
 perceive I am distressed. Do' you really think we are of any 
 use here ? If not, we may serve our country much more by 
 being in other places. The Levant and coast of Spain call 
 aloud for ships, and they are, I fancy, employed to no purpose 
 here." The position was almost hopelessly complicated by 
 the Genoese coasters, which plied their trade close to the 
 beach, between the mother city and the little towns occupied 
 by the French, and which Nelson felt unable to touch. 
 "There are no vessels of any consequence in any bay from 
 Monaco to Vado," he wrote to Jervis ; " but not less than a 
 hundred Genoese are ever}'- day passing, which may or may not 
 have stores for the French." " The French have no occasion 
 to send provisions from France. The coasts are covered with 
 Genoese vessels with corn, wine, hay, &c., for places on the 
 coast ; and they know I have no power to stop the trade with 
 the towns. I saw this day not less than forty-five Genoese 
 vessels, all laden, passing along the coast. What can I do ? " 
 Although not dehnitely so stated, it is shown, by an allu- 
 sion, that Nelson at this time entertained, among other ideas, 
 the project of keeping afloat in transports a body of three 
 thousand troops, which should hover upon the coast, and by 
 frequent descents impose a constant insecurity upon the long 
 line of communications from Nice to Genoa. The same plan 
 was advocated by him against the Spanish peninsula in later 
 years. ^ Of this conception it may be said that it is sound in 
 principle, but in practice depends largely upon the distance 
 from the centre of the enemy's power at which its execution 
 is attempted. Upon the Spanish coast, in 1808, in the hands 
 of Lord Cochrane, it was undoubtedly a most effective second- 
 
 1 Naval Chronicle, vol. xxi. p. 60. 
 13 
 
194 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 ary operation ; but when that distinguished officer proposed 
 to apply a like method, even though on a much greater scale, 
 to the western coast of France, against the high-road south of 
 Bordeaux, it can scarcely be doubted that he would have met 
 a severe disappointment, such as attended similar actions 
 upon the Channel in the Seven Years' War. On the liiviera, in 
 1795, this means might have been decisive; in 1796, in the 
 face of Bonaparte's fortified coast, it could scarcely have been 
 more than an annoyance. At all events, the advocacy of it 
 testifies to the acuteness and energy with which Nelson threw 
 himself into the operations espe'ciaJly intrusted to him. 
 
 His letters during this period reflect the varying phases 
 of hope and of discouragement; but, upon the whole, the 
 latter prevails. There is no longer the feeling of neglect by 
 his superior, of opportunity slipping away through the inade- 
 quate force which timid counsels and apathetic indolence al- 
 lowed him. He sees that the chance which was permitted to 
 pass unimproved has now gone forever. " As the French can- 
 not want supplies to be brought into the Gulf of Genoa, for 
 their grand army," he writes to the admiral, " I am still of 
 opinion that if our frigates are wanted for other services, they 
 may very well be spared from the Gulf." And again, " As 
 the service for which my distinguishing pendant was intended 
 to be useful, is nearly if not quite at an end, I assure you I 
 shall have no regret in striking it." Sir John Jervis, he 
 asserts with pride, has cruised with the fleet in the Gulf of 
 Genoa, close to shore, " where I will venture to say no fleet 
 ever cruised before — no officer can be more zealous or able to 
 render any service in our profession to England ; " yet from 
 the decks of the flagship he and Nelson had helplessly watched 
 a convoy passing close in shore, and directly to windward, but 
 wholly out of reach of their powers of offence. At times, in- 
 deed, somewhat can be accomplished. For several days the 
 " Agamemnon " " has kept close to shore, and harassed the 
 enemy's troops very much. Field pieces are drawn out on 
 our standing in shore. You must defend me if any Genoese 
 towns are knocked down by firing at enemy's batteries. I 
 will not fire first." Six weeks later he writes again : " Our 
 conduct has so completely alarmed the French that all their 
 coasting trade is at an end ; even the corvette, gunboats, &c., 
 
LEAVES THE "AGAMEMNON" 195 
 
 which were moored under the fortress of Vado, have not 
 thought themselves in security, but are all gone into Savona 
 Mole, and unbent their sails." 
 
 This movement, however, which he notes under the date of 
 June 23, proceeded probably less from fear than from the 
 growing indiiference of the French concerning their communi- 
 cations by water, now that their occupation of the line of the 
 Adige Eiver had solidified their control over the ample re- 
 sources of Piedmont and Lombardy. At the very hour when 
 Nelson was thus writing, he learned also the critical condition 
 of Leghorn through the approach of a French division, the 
 mere sending of which showed Bonaparte's sense of his 
 present security of tenure. 
 
 jSTelson had severed by this time his long and affectionate 
 connection with the battered "Agamemnon." On the 4th of 
 June the old ship anchored at San Fiorenzo, having a few 
 days before, with the assistance of the squadron, cut out from 
 under the French batteries the vessels carrying Bonaparte's 
 siege-train, as well as the gunboats which convo3'^ed them. 
 There was then in the bay the •' Egmont," seventy-four, whose 
 commander had expressed to the admiral his wish to return to 
 England. Jervis, therefore, had ordered Nelson to the spot, 
 to make the exchange, and the latter thought the matter 
 settled ; but to his surprise he found the captain did not wish 
 to leave the station unless the ship went also. This did away 
 with the vacancy he looked to fill ; and, as the " Agamemnon," 
 from her condition, must be the first of the fleet to go home, 
 it seemed for the moment likely that he would have to go in 
 her with a convoy then expected in the bay. "■ I remained in 
 a state of uncertainty for a week," he wrote to his wife ; 
 "and had the corn ships, which were momentarily expected 
 from Naples, arrived, I should have sailed for England." 
 The dilemma caused him great anxiety ; for the longing for 
 home, which he had felt in the early part of the winter, had 
 given way entirely before the pride and confidence he felt in 
 the new admiral, and the keen delight in active service he 
 was now enjoying. " I feel full of gratitude for your good 
 wishes towards me," he wrote to Jervis in the first moment of 
 disappointment, " and highly flattered by your desire to have 
 me continue to serve under your command, which I own would 
 
19(5 THE LIFE OF KELSON 
 
 afford me infinite satisfaction." The following day he is still 
 more restless. "I am not less anxious than yesterday for 
 having slept since my last letter. Indeed, Sir, I cannot bear 
 the thoughts of leaving your command." He then proposed 
 several ways out of the difficulty, which reduced themselves, 
 in short, to a readiness to hoist his pendant in anything, if 
 only he could remain. 
 
 No violent solution was needed, as several applicants came 
 forward when Nelson's wish Avas known. On the 11th of 
 June, 1796, he shifted his broad pendant to the " Cajjtain," 
 of seventy-four guns, taking with him most of his officers. 
 Soon afterwards the "Agamemnon " sailed for England. Up 
 to the last day of his stay on board, Nelson, although a com- 
 modore, was also her captain ; it was not until two months 
 after joining his new ship that another captain was appointed 
 to her, leaving to himself the duties of commodore only. In 
 later years the " Agamemnon " more than once bore a share in 
 his career. She was present at Copenhagen and at Trafalgar, 
 being in this final scene under the command of an officer who 
 had served in her as his first lieutenant, and was afterwards 
 his flag-captain at the Nile. In 1809 she was totally lost in 
 the river La Plata, having run aground, and then settled on 
 one of her anchors, which, upon the sudden shoaling of the 
 water, had been let go to bring her up.^ It is said that there 
 were then on board several seamen who had been with her 
 during Nelson's command. 
 
 On the 13th of June the "Captain" sailed from San 
 Fiorenzo Bay, and on the 17th joined the fleet off Cape Sicie, 
 near Toulon, where Jervis, six weeks before, had established 
 the first of those continuous close blockades which afterwards, 
 off Brest, became associated with his name, and proved so 
 potent a factor in the embarrassments that drove Napoleon to 
 his ruin. There were then twelve British ships off the port, 
 while inside the enemy had eleven ready for sea, and four or 
 five more fitting. The following day Nelson again left the 
 fleet, and on the 21st of June arrived at Genoa, where very 
 serious news was to be received. 
 
 The triumphant and hitherto unchecked advance of Bona- 
 
 1 An account of tliis disaster, said to he tliat of an eye-witness, is to be 
 found in Colburn's United Service Journal, 1846, part i. 
 
IMPORTANCE OF LEGHORN 197 
 
 parte had greatly encouraged the French party in Corsica, 
 which had been increased by a number of malcontents, dis- 
 satisfied with their foreign rulers. Owing to the disturbed 
 condition of the interior, the British troops had been drawn 
 down to the seacoast. Bonaparte, from the beginning of his 
 successes, had kept in view the deliverance of his native 
 island, which he expected to effect by the exertions of her 
 own people, stimulated and supported by the arrival upon the 
 spot of Corsican officers and soldiers from the French armies. 
 These refugees, proceeding in parties of from ten to twenty 
 each, in small boats, movable by sail or oars, and under cover 
 of night, could seldom be stopped, or even detected, by the 
 British cruisers, while making the short trip, of little more 
 than a hundred miles, from Genoa, Nice, and Leghorn. The 
 latter port, from its nearness, was particularly favorable to 
 these enterprises ; but, although neutral, and freely permit- 
 ting the ingress and egress of vessels belonging to both 
 belligerents, its facilities for supporting a Corsican uprising 
 Avere not so great as they would be if the place were held for 
 the French. For this reason, partl}^, Bonaparte had decided 
 to seize it ; and he was still more moved to do so by the fact that 
 it was a centre of British trade, that it contributed much to 
 the supply and repair of the British fleet, and that the pres- 
 ence of vessels from the latter enabled an eye to be kept upon 
 the movements of the Corsicans, and measures to be taken for 
 impeding them. 
 
 " The enemy possessing themselves of Leghorn," Nelson had 
 written in the middle of March, when expecting them to do 
 so by a coastwise expedition, "cuts off all our supplies, such 
 as fresh meat, fuel, and various other most essential neces- 
 saries ; and, of course, our fleet cannot always [in that case] be 
 looked for on the northern coast of Italy." Bonaparte had not, 
 indeed, at that time, contemplated any such ex-centric move- 
 ment, which, as things then were, would have risked so large 
 a part of his army out of his own control and his own support ; 
 but in the middle of June, having driven the Austrians for the 
 moment into the Tyrol, consolidated his position upon the 
 Adige, established the siege of Mantua, and enforced order 
 and submission throughout the fertile valley of the Po, 
 which lay in rear of his array and amply supplied it with the 
 
398 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 necessaries of subsistence, he felt not only able to spare the 
 force required, but that for the security of the right flank and 
 rear of his army it had become essential to do so. The Papacy 
 and Naples, although they had contributed little to the active 
 campaigning of the allies, were still nominally at war Avith 
 France, and might possibly display more energy now that opera- 
 tions were approaching their own frontiers. Should the British 
 take possession of Leghorn with a body of troops, — their own 
 or Neapolitan, — the port would remain a constant menace to the 
 operations and communications of the French, and especially 
 at the critical moments when the Austrians advanced to the 
 relief of Mantua, as they must be expected to do, and actually 
 did on four several occasions during the succeeding six months. 
 Bonaparte, as he was ever wont, diligently improved the 
 opportunity permitted to him by the need of the Austrians to 
 reorganize and reinforce Beaulieu's beaten army before again 
 taking the field. Threatened, as often again in later years, 
 by enemies in divergent directions, he with the utmost promp- 
 titude and by the most summary measures struck down the 
 foe on one side, before the other could stir. Occupying 
 Verona in the first days of June, he immediately afterwards 
 detached to the southward a corps under Augereau to enter 
 the Papal States ; and at the same time another small division, 
 commanded by General Vaubois, started from the upper valley 
 of the Po, ostensibly destined to proceed against Eome by 
 passing through Tuscany. The effect of Augereau's move- 
 ment, which was closely followed by the commander-in-chief 
 in person, was to bring both Naples and the Pope speedily to 
 terms. An armistice was signed by the former on the 5th, 
 and by the latter on the 24th of June. Vaubois, on the other 
 hand, after passing the Arno below Florence, instead of con- 
 tinuing on to Siena, as the Grand Duke had been assured that 
 he would, turned sharp to the westward, and on the 28th of 
 June entered Leghorn, Avhich was thenceforth held by the 
 French, Thus within a brief month were the British deprived 
 of two allies, lethargic, it is true, in actual performance, but 
 possessed of a degree of potential strength that could not but 
 enter largely into Bonaparte's anxieties ; while at the same 
 time they lost the use of a seaport that had heretofore been 
 considered essential to their support. 
 
THE FRENCH OCCUPY LEGHORN 199 
 
 Rumors of Vaubois' movement reached Nelson in Genoa at 
 noon of June 23, but somewhat vaguely. " Eeports are all we 
 have here," he wrote to Jervis the same clay, " nothing official 
 from the armies ; " but he thought the situation critical, and 
 started without delay for Leghorn. Arriving there on the 
 morning of June 27, after a passage rendered tedious by light 
 airs and calms, he found the British merchant vessels that 
 had been in the harbor, to the number of nearly forty sail, 
 already under way, laden with British merchants and their 
 property, and standing out under convoy of several ships of 
 war ; while in pursuit of them — a singular indication of the 
 neutrality possible to small States like Tuscany and Genoa at 
 that time — were a dozen French privateers, which had been 
 lying beside them within the mole. One or two of the depart- 
 ing vessels were thus taken. 
 
 The first impression upon Nelson's mind was that the occu- 
 pation of Leghorn was only the prelude to an invasion of 
 Corsica in force. " I have no doubt," he wrote to the Viceroy, 
 " but the destination of the French army was Corsica, and it 
 is natural to suppose their fleet was to amuse ours whilst they 
 cross from Leghorn." Thus reasoning, he announced his 
 purpose of rejoining the admiral as soon as possible, so as not 
 to lose his share in the expected battle. " My heart would 
 break," he says to Jervis, " to be absent at such a glorious 
 time; " but it is difficult to understand why he imagined that 
 the French would transfer their army into the destitution of 
 the Corsican mountains from the fertile plains of Lombardy, 
 abandoning the latter to their enemy, and exchanging their 
 assured communications with France for the uncertainties and 
 irregularities of a water transit over seas commanded by the 
 British fleet. The tenure of the island, as he well knew, 
 depended upon the willing support of the Corsicans them- 
 selves ; in the equal balance of the existing war, neither 
 belligerent could maintain its control against the opposition 
 of the natives. 
 
 This anticipation, in its disregard of the perfectly obvious 
 conditions, was scarcely worthy of Nelson's real native 
 sagacity, and shows clearly how much a man, even of genius, 
 is hampered in the conclusions of actual life by the lack of 
 that systematic ordering and training of the ideas which it is 
 
200 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 the part of education to supply. Genius is one thing, the 
 acquirements of an accomplished — instructed — officer are 
 another, yet there is between the two nothing incompatible, 
 rather the reverse; and when to the former, which nature 
 alone can give, — and to Nelson did give, — is added the con- 
 scious recognition of principles, the practised habit of view- 
 ing, under their clear light, all the circumstances of a situation, 
 assigning to each its due weight and relative importance, then, 
 and then only, is the highest plane of military greatness 
 attained. Whether in natural insight Xelson fell short of 
 Napoleon's measure need not here be considered ; that he was 
 at this time far inferior, in the powers of a trained intellect, 
 to his younger competitor in the race for fame, is manifest by 
 the readiness with which he accepted such widely ex-centric 
 conjectures as that of an attempt by sea upon Leghorn at the 
 opening of the campaign, and now upon Corsica by a great 
 part, if not the whole, of the army of Italy. 
 
 '' On the side of the French," says Jomini, speaking of 
 Bonaparte at this very period, " was to be seen a young 
 warrior, trained in the best schools, endowed with an ardent 
 imagination, brought up upon the examples of antiquity, 
 greedy of glory and of power, knowing thoroughly the Apen- 
 nines, in which he had distinguished himself in 1794, and 
 already measuring with a practised eye the distances he must 
 overpass before becoming master of Italy. To these advan- 
 tages for a war of invasion, Bonaparte united an inborn 
 genius, and clearly established principles, the fruits of an 
 enlightened theory." 
 
 Jomini doubtless may be considered somewhat too absolute 
 and pedantic in his insistence upon definite formulation of 
 principles ; but in these words is nevertheless to be recognized 
 the fundamental difference between these two great warriors, 
 a difference by which the seaman was heavily handicapped in 
 the opening of his career. As time passed on, responsibilitj", 
 the best of educators, took under her firm and steady guid- 
 ance the training of his yet undeveloped genius, gleams of 
 which from time to time, but fitfully and erratically, illumine 
 his earlier correspondence. The material was there from the 
 first, but inchoate, ill-ordered, confused, and therefore not 
 readily available to correct passing impressions, wild rumors, 
 
COMMERCIAL BLOCIv^iDE OF LEGHORN 201 
 
 01- even to prevent the radically false conceptions of an 
 enemy's possible movements, such as we have had before us. 
 Bonaparte, furthermore, whose career began amid the troubled 
 scenes of a revolution which had shattered all the fetters of 
 established custom, — so strong in England to impede a man's 
 natural progress, — had enjoyed already for some time the 
 singular advantage of being military adviser to the Directory, 
 a duty Avhich compelled him to take a broad view of all cur- 
 rent conditions, to consider them in their mutual relations, 
 and not narrowly to look to one sphere of operations, without 
 due reference to its effects upon others. 
 
 As to the invasion of Corsica after the manner he had 
 imagined, Xelson was soon undeceived. Bonaparte himself, 
 after a hurried visit to Leghorn, again departed to press the 
 siege of Mantua, having assured himself that for a measurable 
 time he had nothing to apprehend from movements on his 
 flank and rear. Orders were received from Jervis on the 
 2d of July to institute a commercial blockade of Leghorn, 
 permitting no vessels to enter or depart. The conduct of this 
 business, as well as the protection of British trade in that 
 district, and the support of the Viceroy in securing Corsica 
 against the attempts of French partisans, were especially 
 intrusted to Xelson, whose movements during the following 
 months, until the first of October, were consequently confined 
 to the waters between Corsica and Tuscany, while the Riviera 
 west of Genoa saw him no more. Leghorn became the chief 
 centre of his activities. These redoubled with the demands 
 made upon him ; his energy rose equal to every call. A few 
 weeks before, he had made a conditional application to the 
 admiral, though with evident reluctance, for a short leave of 
 absence on account of his health. '• I don't much like what I 
 have written," he confessed at the end of his difiident request, 
 and some days later he again alludes to the subject. " My 
 complaint is as if a girth was buckled taut over my breast, 
 and my endeavours, in the night, is to get it loose. To say the 
 truth, when I am actively emplo3'ed, I am not so bad. If the 
 Service will admit of it, perhaps I shall at a future day take 
 your leave." The service now scarcely admitted it, and the 
 active duty apparently restored his health ; at all events we 
 now hear no more of it. Everything yielded to the require- 
 
202 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 ments of the war. " The Captain has wants, but I intend she 
 shall last till the autumn : for I know, when once we begin, 
 our wants are innumerable." 
 
 In his still limited sphere, and on all matters directly con- 
 nected with it and his professional duties, his judgment was 
 sound and acute, as his activity, energy, and zeal were un- 
 tiring. The menace to Corsica from the fall of Leghorn was 
 accurately weighed and considered. Midway between the 
 two lay the since famous island of Elba, a dependence of 
 Tuscany, so small as to be held readily by a few good troops, 
 and having a port large enough, in JSTelson's judgment, to 
 harbor the British fleet with a little management. " The way 
 to Corsica," he wrote to the viceroy, "if our fleet is at hand, 
 is through Elba ; for if they once set foot on that island, it is 
 not all our fleet can stop their passage to Corsica." The Vice- 
 roy took upon himself to direct that the island be occupied by 
 the British. Nelson coraj)lied without waiting for Jervis's 
 orders, and on the 10th of July a detachment of troops, con- 
 voyed by his squadron, were landed in the island, and took 
 charge, without serious opposition, of the town of Porto 
 Ferrajo and the works for the defence of tJie harbor. The 
 measure was justified upon the ground that the seizure of 
 Leghorn by the French showed that Tuscany was unable to 
 assure Elba against a similar step, prejudicial to the British 
 tenure in Corsica. The administration remained in the hands 
 of the Tuscan officials, the British occupation being purely 
 military, and confined to the places necessary for that purpose. 
 The blockade of Leghorn was enforced with the utmost 
 rigor and great effectiveness. For a long time no vessels 
 were allowed to go either out or in. Afterwards the rule was 
 gradually relaxed, so far as to permit neutrals to leave the 
 port in ballast; but none entered. The trade of the place 
 was destroyed. Nelson hoped, and for a time expected, that 
 the populace, accustomed to a thriving commerce, and draw- 
 ing their livelihood from its employments, would rise against 
 the feeble garrison, whose presence entailed upon them such 
 calamities ; but herein, of course, he underestimated the coer- 
 cive power of a few resolute men, organized for mutual sup- 
 port, over a mob of individuals, incapable of combined action 
 and each uncertain of the constancy of his fellows. 
 
PLANS AN ASSAULT ON LEGHORN 203 
 
 The Austrian preparations in the Tyrol gradually matured 
 as the month of July wore on. Towards its end Marshal 
 Wurmser, the successor of Beaulieu, advanced for the relief 
 of Mantua and the discomfiture of Bonaparte, whose numbers 
 were much inferior to his opponents. The projected move- 
 ment was of course known to the British, and its first results 
 in raising the siege of Mantua, and throwing reinforcements 
 into the place, gave them great hopes. Amid the conflicting 
 rumors of the succeeding days, the wonderful skill and success 
 of Bonaparte, who overthrew in detail forces greatly superior 
 in the aggregate to his own, escaped notice for the time ; the 
 superficial incidents of his abandoning his previous positions 
 alone received attention, and nothing less than his retreat in 
 confusion was confidently expected. Nelson, justly estimat- 
 ing the importance of Leghorn, and over-sanguine of the 
 support he might hope from the inhabitants, projected a sud- 
 den assault upon the town, by troops to be drawn from the 
 garrisons in Corsica, supported by seamen of the squadron. 
 Speaking of the steady intercourse between that island and 
 the mainland by way of Leghorn, he says : "The only way is 
 to cut at the root, for whilst Leghorn is open, this communi- 
 cation must constantly be going on. This moment brings to 
 my eyes a body of about 200 men, with the Corsican flag 
 carrying before them ; they are partly from Nice, and joined 
 by Genoese, &c., on the road. The time approaches," he 
 rightly forecasts, " when we shall either have to fight them 
 in Corsica or Leghorn." The imminence of the danger was 
 evident. " Our affairs in Corsica are gloomy," he had already 
 written to the Duke of Clarence. " There is a very strong 
 republican party in that island, and they are well supported 
 from France; the first favourable moment, they will certainly 
 act against us." 
 
 The details of the intended assault upon Leghorn do not 
 appear, and it is probable that they never passed beyond the 
 stage of discussion to that of acceptance, although he alludes 
 to the plans as "laid." Clear-sighted for the key of a situ- 
 ation, and ardent to strike "at the root," as five years later 
 in the Baltic he was eager to cut away the Eussian root of 
 the Armed Neutrality, instead of hewing off the Danish 
 branch. Nelson urged the speedy adoption of the measure, 
 
204 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 and pressed his own fitness to harmonize the land and sea 
 forces under one command, in virtue of his rank as Colonel 
 of Marines. " Leghorn is in such a state," he writes to Elliot 
 on the 5th of August, •' that a respectable force landed, Avould, 
 I have every reason to suppose, insure the inunediate posses- 
 sion of the town. Not less than a thousand troops should be 
 sent, to which I will add every soldier in my squadron, and 
 a party of seamen to make a show. In every way, pray con- 
 sider this as private, and excuse my opinions. I well know 
 the difficulty of getting a proper person to command this 
 party. Firmness, and that the people of Leghorn should 
 know the person commanding, will most assuredly have a 
 great effect. A cordial co-operation with me (for vanity 
 apart, no one is so much feared or respected in Leghorn as 
 myself) is absolutely necessary. I am going further : we 
 know the jealousy of the army against the navy, but I am by 
 the King's commission a Colonel in the army from June 1st, 
 1795." After discussing this difficult question of professional 
 susceptibilities, he concludes : " You will consider, Sir, all 
 these points, and form a much better judgment than I can, 
 only give me credit that the nearest wish of my heart is to 
 serve my King and my Country, at every personal risk and 
 consideration. It has ever pleased God to prosper all my 
 undertakings, and I feel confident of His blessing on this 
 occasion. I ever consider my motto, Fides et Opera.'' ^ 
 
 Having, with true strategic insight, chosen the place where 
 the blow ought to be struck for the preservation of Corsica, 
 he pressed, with characteristic fervor, the necessit}'- of taking 
 risks. He discusses details indeed ; he proposes no mere ad- 
 venture, real as was his personal enjoyment of danger and 
 action. What man can do, shall be done ; but being done, 
 still " something must be left to chance. Our only considera- 
 tion, is the honour and benefit to our Country worth the risk ? 
 If it is (and I think so), in God's name let us get to work, 
 and hope for His blessing on our endeavours to liberate a 
 people who have been our sincere friends." Hearing at the 
 same time that an army officer of general rank will have the 
 command instead of himself, he adds : " Pray assure him 
 
 ^ This motto was subsequently adopted by Nelson, when arms were as- 
 signed to him as a Knight of the Bath, in May, 1797. 
 
HIS AMBITION AND SELF-EELIANCE 205 
 
 there is nothing I feel greater pleasure in than hearing he is 
 to command. Assure him of my most sincere wishes for his 
 speedy success, and that he shall have every support and 
 assistance from me." Truly, in generosity as in ardor, 
 Nelson was, to use the fine old phrase, " all for the service." 
 
 The project upon Leghorn had the approval of the Viceroy 
 and of Jervis ; but the latter, while expressing perfect reli- 
 ance upon '' the promptitude of Commodore Nelson," was 
 clear that the attempt must depend upon the continued ad- 
 vance of the Austrians. This was also Nelson's own view. 
 " All will be well, I am satisfied, provided Wurmser is vic- 
 torious ; upon this ground only have I adopted the measure." 
 This qualification redeems the plan from the reproach of 
 rashness, which otherwise might have been applied to the 
 somewhat desperate undertaking of carrying a fortified town 
 by such a feat of hardihood. It loses thus the color of reck- 
 lessness, and falls into place as one part of a great common 
 action, to harass the retreat of a beaten enemy, and to insure 
 the security of one's own positions. 
 
 On the 15th of August, when the above words were written, 
 Nelson was still ignorant of the Austrian defeats at Lonato 
 and Castiglione, nearly two weeks before, and of their sub- 
 sequent retreat to the Tyrol. A rumor of the reverse had 
 reached him through Florence, but he gave it little attention, 
 as the French in Leghorn were not claiming a victory. On 
 the 19th he knew it definitely, and had to abandon the ex- 
 pectation, confided to his brother, that the next letter seen 
 from him would be in the " Public Gazette." " An exjjedi- 
 tion is thought of, and of course I shall be there, for most of 
 these services fall to my lot." " One day or other," he had 
 written to his wife, apparently with this very enterprise in 
 mind, "I will have a long Gazette to myself; I feel that such 
 an opportunity will be given me. I cannot," he continued 
 with prophetic self-reliance, " if I am in the field of glory, bo 
 kept out of sight." 
 
 During the remainder of the month he continued to be 
 amused with those unfounded reports of victories, which are 
 among the invariable concomitants of all wars, and which his 
 sanguine temperament and peculiar readiness to trust others 
 made him especially ready to accept. He was not wholly 
 
206 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 unaware of this tendency in himself^ though he continued to 
 repeat with apparent belief reports of the most startling and 
 erroneous character, and never seems to have appreciated, up 
 to the time of his leaving the Mediterranean, the astonishing 
 quickness and sagacity with which Bonaparte frustrated the 
 overwhelming combinations against him. " We Ijear what we 
 wish," he says on one occasion. '' The Toulon information 
 is, as I always thought it, pleasant to know but never to be 
 depended upon; all is guess. I have long had reason to 
 suspect great part is fabricated in Genoa ; " but he was con- 
 tinually deceived by it. 
 
 Throughout the discomfitures of the Austrians on shore, the 
 purely naval part of the Avar continued to be successfully 
 maintained. Jervis, with unrelaxing grip, kept his position 
 before Toulon, effectually checking every attempt of the 
 French fleet to escape unobserved into the open, while Nelson 
 shut up Leghorn so rigorously that the enemy lost even the 
 partial advantage, as a port of supply, Avhich they had before 
 drawn from its neutrality. But, during this pregnant sum- 
 mer, grave causes for anxiety were rolling up in the western 
 basin of the Mediterranean. The attitude of Spain had long 
 been doubtful, so much so that before Sir John Jervis left 
 England, in the previous autumn, the ministry had deliberated 
 upon the contingency of her declaring Avar, and a conditional 
 decision had been reached to evacuate Corsica, if that event 
 occurred. During the spring of 1796 reports of coming 
 hostilities Avere current in the fleet. Nelson's first opinion 
 was that, if they ensued, there Avas no object in remaining in 
 the Mediterranean, except to preserve Corsica from the 
 French. This, he thought, Avas not a sufficient motive, nor 
 had the conduct of the natives entitled them to protection. 
 With all the powers making peace with France, he hoped 
 Great Britain Avould leave the Mediterranean. This, how- 
 ever, was but a passing expression of discouragement, Avhence 
 he soon rallied, and, with a spirit Avorthy of his race, Avhich 
 Avas soon to face all Europe undismayed, his courage mounted 
 continually as the storm drew nearer. 
 
 The summer of 1796 was in truth the period of transition, 
 when the victories of Bonaparte, by bringing near a cessation 
 of warfare upon the land, Avere sweeping from the scene the 
 
I 
 
 OPINION OF QUITTING MEDITERRANEAN 207 
 
 accessories that confused the view of the future, removing 
 conditions and details which perplexed men's attention, and 
 bringing into clear relief the one field upon which the contest 
 was finally to be fought out, and the one foe, the British sea- 
 power, upon whose strength and constancy would hinge the 
 issues of the struggle. The British Nav}^, in the slight 
 parson of its indomitable champion, was gradually rising to 
 the appreciation of its own might, and gathering together its 
 energies to endure single-handed the gigantic strife, with a 
 spirit unequalled in its past history, glorious as that had often 
 been. From 1796 began the rapid ascent to that short noon- 
 tide of unparalleled brilliancy, in which Nelson's fame out- 
 shone all others, and which may be said to have begun with 
 the Spanish declaration of war, succeeded though that was by 
 the retreat in apparent discomfiture from the Mediterranean, 
 now at hand. 
 
 The approach of this extraordinary outburst of maritime 
 vigor is aptly foretokened in the complete change, gradual 
 yet rapid, that passed over Nelson's opinions, from the time 
 when rumors of a Spanish war first assumed probability, uj) 
 to the moment when the fact became tangible by the appear- 
 ance of the Spanish fleet in the waters of Corsica. Ac- 
 centuated thus in a man of singular perceptions and heroic 
 instincts, it further affords an interesting illustration of the 
 manner in which a combative race — for Nelson was through 
 and through a child of his people — however at first averse 
 to war, from motives of well-understood interest, gradually 
 warms to the idea, and finally grows even to welcome the 
 fierce joy which Avarriors feel, as the clash of arms draws 
 near. '' If all the states of Italy make peace," he writes on 
 the 20tli of May, "we have nothing to look to but Corsica; 
 which, in the present state of the inhabitants, is not, in my 
 opinion, an object to keep us in the Mediterranean : we shall, 
 I hope, quit it, and employ our fleet more to our advantage." 
 " Eeports here," on the 20th of June, " are full of a Spanisli 
 war. If that should be the case, we shall probably draw 
 towards Gibraltar and receive large reinforcements." 
 
 On the 15th of August, however, he writes to Jervis, be- 
 traying the incipient revulsion, as yet not realized, against 
 abandoning the Mediterranean, which was already affecting 
 
208 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 the current of his thoughts. " I hope we shall have settled 
 Leghorn before the Dons, if they intend it, arrive. I have 
 still my doubts as to a Spanish war ; and if there should be 
 one, with your management I have no fears. Should the 
 Dons come, I shall then hope I may be spared,^ in my own 
 person, to help to make you at least a Viscount." A few 
 days later, having meantime heard of Wurmser's disasters at 
 Castiglione : " Austria, I suppose, must make peace, and we 
 sliall, as usual, be left to fight it out : however, at the worst, 
 we only give up Corsica, an acquisition which I believe we 
 cannot keep, and our fleet will draw down the Mediterra- 
 nean ; " but at the same time, August 19, he writes to the 
 Duke of Clarence with glowing hopes and rising pride: "I 
 hope Government will not be alarmed for our safety — I mean 
 more than is proper. Under such a commander-in-chief as 
 Sir John Jervis nobody has any fears. We are now twenty- 
 two sail of the line; the combined fleet will not be above 
 thirty-five sail of the line. I will venture my life Sir John 
 Jervis defeats them. This country is the most favourable 
 possible for skill with an inferior fleet ; for the winds are so 
 variable, that some one time in twenty-four hours you must 
 be able to attack a part of a large fleet, and the other will be 
 becalmed, or have a contrary wind." That the Duke trembled 
 and demurred to such odds is not wonderful ; but the words 
 have singular interest, both as showing the clear tactical ap- 
 prehensions that held sway in Nelson's mind, and still more, 
 at the moment then present, as marking unmistakably his 
 gradual conversion to the policy of remaining in the 
 Mediterranean, and pursuing the most vigorous aggressive 
 measures. 
 
 A fortnight after this letter was written, Genoa, under 
 pressure from Bonaparte, closed her ports against British 
 ships, interdicting even the embarkation of a drove of cattle, 
 already purchased, and ready for shipment to the fleet off 
 Toulon. Nelson immediately went there to make inquiries, 
 and induce a revocation of the orders. While the "Captain" 
 lay at anchor in the roads, three of the crew deserted, and 
 when her boats were sent to search for them they were fired 
 
 1 That is, apparently, from detached service, and ordered to the main 
 fleet. 
 
HIS CONFIDENCE IN THE FLEET 209 
 
 upon by a French battery, established near the town. Nelson, 
 in retaliation, seized a French supply ship from under the 
 guns of the battery, whereupon the Genoese forts opened 
 against the " Captain," which had meantime got under way 
 and was lying-to off the city. Nelson did not return the fire 
 of the latter, which was kept up for two hours, but threw 
 three shot into the French battery, " to mark," as he said, the 
 power of the English to bombard the town, and their human- 
 ity in not destroying the houses and innocent Genoese in- 
 habitants. In the communications which followed under a 
 flag of truce. Nelson was informed, verbally, that all the ports 
 of the Republic were closed against Great Britain. This 
 stand, and the firing on the ship, being considered acts of 
 hostility, the little island of Capraia, between Corsica and 
 Genoa, and belonging to the latter, was seized by Nelson, act- 
 ing under the counsel of the Viceroy of Corsica. This was 
 done both as a retaliatory measure, and to put a stop to the 
 use which French privateers and parties of Corsicans had 
 hitherto made of it, under cover of Genoese neutrality. 
 
 As Jervis was already under apprehension of an outbreak 
 of scurvy in the fleet, consequent upon the faikire of supplies 
 of live cattle following the French occupation of Leghorn, the 
 closure of the Genoese ports was a severe blow. It was, how- 
 ever, but one among several incidents, occurring nearly simul- 
 taneously, which increased his embarrassments, and indicated 
 the close approach of the long-muttering storm. To use his 
 own words, '' The lowering aspect of Spain, with the advanced 
 state of the equipment of the French fleet in Toulon," impelled 
 him to concentrate his force. Rear-Admiral Man, who had 
 been blockading Cadiz since his detachment there by Hotham, 
 in October, 1795, was ordered up to the main fleet. Swayed 
 by fears very unlike to Nelson's proud confidence in his 
 admiral and his service, he acted with such precipitation as 
 to leave Gibraltar without filling with provisions, and arrived 
 so destitute that Jervis had to send him back at once, with 
 orders to replenish with stores and then to rejoin without 
 delay. Under the influence of the panic which prevailed at 
 Gibraltar, Man had also sent such advices to the coast of 
 Portugal as caused the commander-in-chief to fear that ex- 
 pected supplies might be arrested. " Oh, our convoy ! " cried 
 
 14 
 
210 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 Nelson ; '^ Admiral Man, how could you quit Gibraltar ? " Yet, 
 as he wrote to Jervis, he had expected some such step, from 
 what he had already seen '' under his hand to you." 
 
 Thus, for the time at least, there were lost to the British 
 seven of the ships-of-the-line upon which Nelson had reckoned 
 in his letter to the Duke of Clarence. It was possibly on this 
 account that Jervis Avrote him to shift his commodore's pen- 
 dant to a frigate, and send the " Captain " to the fleet. Nelson 
 obeyed, of course, and at once ; but taking advantage of the 
 fact that no captain had yet joined his ship, he thought it 
 " advisable to go in her myself." In this he doubtless was 
 influenced chiefly by his unwillingness to miss a battle, 
 especially against such great numerical odds. " I take for 
 granted," he admitted to the Viceroy, " that the admiral will 
 send me back in a cutter, but I shall give him a good ordered 
 seventy-four, and take my chance of helping to thrash Don 
 Langara, than which few things, I assure you, would give me 
 more real pleasure." The particular emergency seems, how- 
 ever, soon to have passed ; for after two days with the fleet he 
 returned off Leghorn in the " Captain," somewhat comforted as 
 to the apprehensions of the British Cabinet. " Whatever fears 
 we may have for Corsica, it is certain Government at home 
 have none, by taking so very respectable a part of your force 
 away." A regiment had been transferred to Gibraltar with 
 Man's squadron, when the latter returned there. 
 
 These rising hopes and stirring expectations of brilliant 
 service were speedily dashed. On the 2oth of September 
 Jervis received orders from the Admiralty to abandon Corsica, 
 to retreat from the Mediterranean, and to proceed with the 
 fleet to England. In pursuance of these instructions Nelson 
 was directed to superintend the evacuation of Bastia, the 
 " most secret " letter to that effect reaching him at that port 
 on the 29th of September, — his birthday. The purpose of 
 the ministry filled him with shame and indignation. Con- 
 fronted abruptly with the course which four months before 
 had seemed to him natural and proper, the shock brought out 
 the fulness of the change through which he had passed mean- 
 time. He has no illusions about Corsica. The inhabitants 
 had disappointed all the expectations of the British, — " At 
 a peace I should rejoice at having given up the island." 
 
 -i 
 
CHANGES OF OPINION 211 
 
 But the days passing over his head had brought wider and 
 niaturer views of the general policy of Great Britain, as well 
 as increasing faith in the powers of the fleet, vigorously used 
 in aggressive warfare. " Whilst we can keep the combined 
 fleet in the Mediterranean [by our own presence], so much the 
 more advantageous to us ; and the moment we retire, the 
 whole of Italy is given to the French. If the Dons detach 
 their fleet out of the Mediterranean, we can do the same — 
 however, that is distant. Be the successes of the Austrians 
 on the other hand what they may, their whole supply of stores 
 and provisions comes from Trieste, across the Adriatic to the 
 Po, and when this is cut off [as by our uncovering the sea it 
 must be], they must retire." Above all he grieves for Naples. 
 If a weak and vacillating ally, there Avas no doubt her heart 
 was with them. " I feel more than all for Naples. The King 
 of Naples is a greater sacrifice than Corsica. If he has been 
 induced to keep off the peace, and perhaps engaged in the war 
 again by the expectation of the continuance of the fleet in the 
 Mediterranean, hard indeed is his fate; his kingdom must 
 inevitably be ruined." In the impression now made upon 
 him, may perhaps be seen one cause of Nelson's somewhat 
 extravagant affection in after days for the royal family of 
 Naples, independent of any influence exerted upon him by 
 Lady Hamilton. 
 
 With these broad views of the general strategic situation, 
 which are unquestionably far in advance of the comparatively 
 narrow and vague conceptions of a year, or even six months 
 before, and doubtless indicate the results of independent com- 
 mand and responsibility, acting upon powers of a high order, 
 he at the same time shows his keen appreciation of the value 
 of the organized force, whose movements, properly handled, 
 should dominate the other conditions. "When Man arrives, 
 who is ordered to come up, we shall be twenty-two sail of such 
 ships as England hardly ever produced, and commanded by an 
 admiral who will not fail to look the enemy in the face, be 
 their force what it may : I suppose it will not be more than 
 thirty -four of the line. There is not a seaman in the fleet who 
 does not feel confident of success." " The fleets of England," 
 he says again, "are equal to meet the world in arms; and of 
 all fleets I ever saw, I never beheld one in point of officers and 
 
212 THE LITE OF NELSON 
 
 men equal to Sir John Jervis's, Avho is a commander-in-chief 
 able to lead them to glory." 
 
 Reasoning so clearly and accurately upon the importance to 
 Great Britain's interests and honor, at that time, of maintain- 
 ing her position in the Mediterranean, and upon the power of 
 her fleet in battle, it is not strange that iSTelson, writing in 
 intimate confidence to his wife, summed up in bitter words his 
 feelings upon the occasion ; unconscious, apparently, of the 
 great change they indicated, not merely in his opinions, but in 
 his power of grasping, in well-ordered and rational sequence, 
 the great outlines of the conditions amid which he, as an 
 officer, was acting. " We are all preparing to leave the Medi- 
 terranean, a measure which I cannot approve. They at home 
 do not know what this fleet is capable of performing ; any- 
 thing, and everything. Much as I shall rejoice to see Eng- 
 land, I lament our present orders in sackcloth and ashes, so 
 dishonourable to the dignity of England." To the British 
 minister at Naples his words were even stronger: "Till this 
 time it has been usual for the allies of England to fall from 
 her, but till now she never was known to desert her friends 
 whilst she had the power of supporting them. I yet hope the 
 Cabinet may, on more information, change their opinion ; 
 it is not all we gain elsewhere which can compensate for our 
 loss of honour. The whole face of affairs is totally diiferent 
 to what it was when the Cabinet formed their opinion." 
 
 Nevertheless, although Nelson's perceptions and reasoning 
 were accurate as far as they went, they erred in leaving out 
 of the calculation a most important consideration, — the main- 
 tenance of the communications with England, which had 
 assumed vital importance since the general defection of the 
 Italian States, caused by Bonaparte's successes and his im- 
 j)erious demands. It would be more true to say that he 
 underestimated this factor than that he overlooked it ; for he 
 had himself observed, six weeks earlier, when the approach of 
 a Spanish war first became certain: "I really think they 
 would do us more damage by getting off Cape Einisterre ;^ it 
 is there I fear them," and the reason for that fear is shown 
 
 1 Ou the northwest coast of Spain, at the entrance of the Bay of Biscay, 
 and therefore right in the track of vessels from the Channel to the Straits of 
 Gibraltar. 
 
MILITARY OPINIONS 213 
 
 by his reproach against Man, already quoted, for his neglect 
 of the convoy. The position of the Spanish Navy in its 
 home ports was in fact intermediate — interior — as regarded 
 the British fleet and the source of its most essential supplies. 
 So long as its future direction remained uncertain, it lay upon 
 the flank of the principal British line of communications. 
 Nelson did not use, perhaps did not know, the now familiar 
 terms of the military art; and, with all his insight and com- 
 prehensive sagacity, he suffered from the want of proper tools 
 with which to transmute his acute intuitions into precise 
 thought, as well as of clearly enunciated principles, which 
 serve to guide a man's conclusions, and would assuredly have 
 qualified his in the present instance. Upon the supposition 
 that the Spanish Navy, practically in its entirety, entered 
 the Mediterranean and appeared off Corsica, — as it did, — 
 Nelson's reasoning was correct, and his chagrin at a retreat 
 justified ; hut, as he himself had wisely remarked to Beaulieu, 
 it is not safe to count upon your enemy pursuing the course 
 you wish. Had the Spanish Government chosen the other 
 alternative open to it, and struck at the communications, such 
 a blow, or even such a threat, must have compelled the with- 
 drawal of the fleet, unless some other base of supplies could 
 be found. The straitness of the situation is shown by the fact 
 that Jervis, after he had held on to the last moment in San 
 Fiorenzo Bay, sailed for Gibraltar with such scanty provisions 
 that the crews' daily rations were reduced to one-third the 
 ordinary amount ; in fact, as early as the first of October 
 they had been cut down to two-thirds. Whether, therefore, 
 the Government was right in ordering the withdrawal, or 
 Nelson in his condemnation of it, may be left to the decision 
 of those fortunate persons who can be cock-sure of the true 
 solution of other people's perplexities. 
 
 In evacuating the Mediterranean, Jervis determined, upon 
 his own responsibility, to retain Elba, if the troops, which 
 were not under his command, would remain there. This was 
 accordingly done ; a strong garrison, adequately provisioned, 
 thus keeping for Great Britain a foothold within the sea, at a 
 time when she had lost Minorca and did not yet possess 
 Malta. Nelson hoped that this step would encourage the Two 
 Sicilies to stand firm against the French ; but, however valu- 
 
 h 
 
214 THE LIFP: OF NELSON 
 
 able Elba would be to the fleet as a base, if lield until its 
 return, it was useless to protect Naples in the absence of the 
 fleet, and upon the news of the latter's proposed retirement 
 that Kingdom at once made peace. 
 
 After the receipt of his orders for the evacuation of Bastia, 
 and pending tlie assembling of the transports, Nelson was 
 despatched by the admiral to Genoa, to present reclamations 
 for injuries alleged to have been done to Groat Britain, and to 
 propose terms of accommodation. The little llepublic, how- 
 ever, under the coercive influence of Bonaparte's continued 
 success, was no longer in doubt as to the side Avhich policy- 
 dictated her to take, between the two belligerents who vexed 
 her borders. During this visit of Nelson's, on the 9th of 
 October, she signed a treaty with France, stipulating, besides 
 the closure of the ports against Great Britain, the payment of 
 a sum of money, and free passage to troops and suj^plies for 
 the army of Italy. Thus was Genoa converted formally, as 
 she for some time had been actually, into a French base of 
 operations. Returning from this fruitless mission. Nelson 
 rejoined the commander-in-chief on the 13th of October, at 
 San Fiorenzo, and the same afternoon left again for Bastia, 
 where he arrived the following day. 
 
 During the fortnight intervening since he left the place, the 
 fact that the Spanish fleet was on its way to Corsica had be- 
 come known, and the French partisans in the island were pro- 
 portionately active. It was impossible for the British to go 
 into the interior ; their friends, if not in a minority, were 
 effectually awed by the preponderance of their enemies, on 
 land and sea. Nelson, wishing to cross overland to San 
 Fiorenzo to visit Jervis, was assured he could not do so with 
 safety. In Bastia itself the municipality had wrested the 
 authority from the Viceroy, and consigned the administration 
 to a Committee of Thirty. The ships of war and transports 
 being blown to sea, the inhabitants became still more aggres- 
 sive ; for, foreseeing the return of the French, they were 
 naturally eager to propitiate their future masters by a display 
 of zeal. British property was sequestered, and shipping not 
 permitted to leave the mole. 
 
 Nelson was persuaded that only the arrival of the ships 
 accompanying him saved the place. Except a guard at the 
 
ORDERED TO EVACUATE BASTIA 215 
 
 Viceroy's house, the British troops had been withdrawn to the 
 citadeh Even there, at the gates of the citadel, and within 
 it, Corsican guards were present in numbers equal to the 
 British, while the posts in the towns were all held by them. 
 Arriving at early dawn of the 14th, ISTelson at once visited the 
 general and the Viceroy. The former saw no hope, under the 
 conditions, of saving either stores, cannon, or provisions. 
 "The Army," said Nelson in a private letter to Jervis, with 
 something of the prejudiced chaff of a seaman of that day, 
 " is, as usual, well dressed and powdered. I hope the general 
 will join me cordially, but, as you well know, great exertions 
 belong exclusively to the ISTavy.'*' After the evacuation, how- 
 ever, he admitted handsomely that it was impossible to "do 
 justice to the good dispositions of the general." 
 
 Between the heads of the two services such arrangements 
 were perfected as enabled almost everything in the way of 
 British property — public and private — to be brought away. 
 By midday the ships, of which three were of the line, were 
 anchored close to the mole-head, abreast the town, and the 
 municipality was notified that any opposition to the removal 
 of the vessels and stores would be followed by instant bom- 
 bardment. Everything yielded to the threat, made by a man 
 whose determined character left no doubt that it would be 
 carried into execution. "Nothing shall be left undone that 
 ought to be done," he wrote to Jervis, "even should it be 
 necessary to knock down Bastia." From time to time inter- 
 ference was attempted, but the demand for immediate desist- 
 ence, made, watch in hand, by the naval officer on the spot, 
 enforced submission. " The firm tone held by Commodore 
 Nelson," wrote Jervis to the Admiralty, " soon reduced these 
 gentlemen to order, and quiet submission to the embarkation." 
 Owing to the anarchy prevailing, the Viceroy was persuaded 
 to go on board before nightfall, he being too valuable as a 
 hostage to be exposed to possible kidnappers. 
 
 On the 18th of October a large number of armed French 
 landed at Cape Corso, and approached the town. On the 19th 
 they sent to the municipality a demand that the British should 
 not be permitted to embark. Under these circumstances even 
 Nelson felt that nothing more could be saved. The work of 
 removal was continued actively until sunset, by which time 
 
216 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 two hundred thousand pounds worth of cannon, stores, and 
 provisions had beeu taken on board. At midnight the troops 
 evacuated the citadel, and marched to the north end of the 
 town, where they embarked — twenty-four hours ahead of the 
 time upon which Nelson had reckoned four days before. It 
 was then blowing a strong gale of wind. Last of all, about 
 six o'clock on the morning of the 20th, Nelson and the general 
 entered a barge, every other man being by that time afloat, 
 and were pulled off to the ships, taking with them two field- 
 guns, until then kept ashore to repel a possible attack at the 
 last moment. The French, who " were in one end of Bastia 
 before we quitted the other," had occupied the citadel since 
 one in the morning, and the Spanish fleet, of over twenty sail- 
 of-the-line, which had already arrived, was even then off Cape 
 Corso, about sixty miles distant ; but the little British squad- 
 ron, sailing promptly with a fair wind, in a few hours reached 
 Elba, where every vessel was safely at anchor before night. 
 On the 24th Nelson joined the commander-in-chief in Martello 
 Bay, the outer anchorage of San Fiorenzo. Everything was 
 then afloat, and ready for a start as soon as the transports, 
 still at Elba, should arrive. The evacuation of Corsica was 
 complete, though the ships remained another week in its 
 waters. 
 
 The Spanish fleet continued cruising to the northward of 
 the island, and was every day sighted by the British lookout 
 frigates. Jervis held grimly on, expecting the appearance of 
 the seven ships of Admiral Man, who had been ordered to re- 
 join him. That officer, however, acting on his own responsi- 
 bility, weakly buttressed by the opinion of a council of his 
 captains, had returned to England contrary to his instructions. 
 The commander-in-chief, ignorant of this step, was left in the 
 sorely perplexing situation of having his fleet divided into 
 two parts, each distinctl}^ inferior to the Spanish force alone, 
 of twenty-six ships, not to speak of the French in Toulon. 
 Under the conditions, the only thing that could be done was 
 to await his subordinate, in the appointed spot, until the last 
 moment. By the 2d of November further delay had become 
 impossible, from the approaching failure of provisions. On 
 that day, therefore, the fleet weighed, and after a tedious 
 passage anchored on the first of December at Gibraltar. 
 
INCREASING REPUTATION 217 
 
 There Nelson remained until tlie 10th of the month, when 
 he temporarily quitted the "Captain," hoisted his broad pen- 
 dant on board the frigate " Minerve," and, taking with him 
 one frigate besides, returned into the Mediterranean upon a 
 detached mission of importance. 
 
 Nelson's last services in Corsica were associated with the 
 momentary general collapse of the British operations and in- 
 fluence in the Mediterranean ; and his final duty, by a curious 
 coincidence, was to abandon the position which he more than 
 any other man had been instrumental in securing. Yet, amid 
 these discouraging circumstances, his renown had been steadily 
 growing throughout the year 1796, Avhich may justly be looked 
 upon as closing the first stage in the history of British Sea 
 Power during the wars of the French Revolution, and as 
 clearing the way for his own great career, which in the re- 
 possession of the Mediterranean reached its highest plane, 
 and there continued in unabated glory till the hour of his 
 death. It was not merely the exceptional brilliancy of his 
 deeds at Cape St. Vincent, now soon to follow, great and dis- 
 tinguished as those were, which designated him to men in 
 power as beyond dispute the coming chief of the British 
 Navy; it was the long antecedent period of unswerving con- 
 tinuance in strenuous action, allowing no flagging of earnest- 
 ness for a moment to appear, no chance for service, however 
 small or distant, to pass unimproved. It was the same unre- 
 mitting pressing forward, which had brought him so vividly 
 to the front in the abortive fleet actions of the previous year, 
 — ■ an impulse born, partly, of native eagerness for fame, partly 
 of zeal for the interests of his country and his profession. 
 " Mine is all honour ; so much for the Navy ! " as he wrote, 
 somewhat incoherently^, to his brother, alluding to a disap- 
 pointment about prize money. 
 
 Nelson himself had an abundant, but not an exaggerated, 
 consciousness of this increase of reputation ; and he knew, 
 too, that he was but reaping as he had diligently sowed. '^ If 
 credit and honour in the service are desirable," he tells his 
 brother, '' I have my full share. I have never lost an oppor- 
 tunity of distinguishing myself, not only as a gallant man, 
 but as having a head ; for, of the numerous plans I have laid, 
 not one has failed." "You will be informed from my late 
 
218 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 letters," lie writes to his wife, " that Sir John Jervis has such 
 an opinion of my conduct, that he is using every influence, 
 both public and private, with Lord Spencer, for my continu- 
 ance on tliis station ; and I am certain you must feel the 
 superior pleasure of knowing, that my integrity and plainness 
 of conduct are the cause of my being kept from you, to the 
 I'eceiving me as a person whom no commander-in-chief would 
 wish to keep under his flag. Sir John was a perfect stranger 
 to me, therefore I feel the more flattered ; and when I reflect 
 that I have had the unbounded confidence of three command- 
 ers-in-chief, I cannot but feel a conscious pride, and that I 
 possess abilities." "If my character is known," he writes to 
 the Genoese Government, which knew it well, " it will be 
 credited that this blockade [of Leghorn] will be attended to 
 Avith a degree of rigour unexampled in the present war," " It 
 has pleased God this war," he tells the Duke of Clarence, 
 "not only to give me frequent opportunities of shoAving my- 
 self an ofiicer worthy of trust, but also to prosper all my un- 
 dertakings in the highest degree. I have had the extreme 
 good fortune, not only to be noticed in my immediate line of 
 duty, but also to obtain the repeated approbation of His 
 Majesty's Ministers at Turin, Genoa, and Naples, as well as 
 of the Viceroy of Corsica, for my conduct in the various 
 opinions I have been called upon to give ; and my judgment 
 being formed from common sense, I have never yet been 
 mistaken." 
 
 Already at times his consciousness of distinction among 
 men betrays something of that childlike, delighted vanity, 
 half unwitting, Avhieh was afterward forced into exuberant 
 growth and distasteful prominence, by the tawdry flatteries of 
 Lady Hamilton and the Court of Naples. Now, expressed to 
 one who had a right to all his confidence and to share all his 
 honors, it challenges rather the sympathy than the criticism 
 of the reader. '' I will relate another anecdote, all vanity to 
 myself, but you will partake of it : A person sent me a letter^ 
 and directed as follows, ' Horatio Nelson, Genoa.' On being 
 asked how he could direct in such a manner, his answer, in a 
 large party, was, ' Sir, there is but one Horatio Nelson in the 
 world.' I am known throughout Italy," he continues ; " not a 
 Kingdom, or State, where my name Avill be forgotten. This 
 
INCREASING REPUTATION 219 
 
 is my Gazette. Probably my services may be forgotten by 
 the great, by the time I get home; but my miud will not for- 
 get, nor cease to feel, a degree of consolation and of applause 
 superior to undeserved rewards. Wherever there is anything 
 to be done, there Providence is sure to direct my steps. Credit 
 must be given me in spite of envy. Had all my actions been 
 gazetted, not one fortnight would have passed during the 
 whole war without a letter from me. Even the French re- 
 spect me." After the conclusion of the campaign, when on 
 the way to Gibraltar, he tells her again : '* Do not flatter your- 
 self that I shall be rewarded ; I expect nothing, and therefore 
 shall not be disappointed: the pleasure of my own mind will 
 be my reward. I am more interested, and feel a greater satis- 
 faction, in obtaining yours and my father's applause than that 
 of all the world besides." The wholesome balance between 
 self-respect and a laudable desire for the esteem of men was 
 plainly unimpaired. 
 
 Though devoid of conspicuous events, the year 1796, from 
 the opening of the campaign, early in April, up to the evacua- 
 tion of the Mediterranean, had been to Nelson one of constant 
 and engrossing occupation. There is therefore little mention 
 by him of his private affairs and feelings. In the home corre- 
 spondence there is no diminution in the calm tenderness of 
 affection always shown by him towards his wife and father, 
 who continued to liv^e together ; rather, perhaps, the expres- 
 sions to Mrs. Nelson are more demonstrative than before, pos- 
 sibly because letters were less frequent. But there is nothing 
 thrilling in the " assurance of my unabated and steady affec- 
 tion, which, if possible, is increasing by that propriety of 
 conduct which you pursue.'' He is clearly satisfied to remain 
 away ; the path of honor has no rival in his heart ; there is no 
 suggestion of an inward struggle between two masters, no 
 feeling of aloneness, no petulant discontent with uneasy sur- 
 roundings, or longing for the presence of an absent mistress. 
 The quiet English home, the " little but neat cottage," attracts, 
 indeed, with its sense of repose, — "I shall not be very sorry 
 to see England again. I am grown old and battered to pieces, 
 and require some repairs " — but the magnet fails to deflect 
 the needle ; not even a perceptible vibration of the will is 
 produced. 
 
220 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 Yet, while thus engrossed in the war, eager for personal 
 distinction and for the military honor of his country, he appar- 
 ently sees in it little object beyond a mere struggle for superi- 
 ority, and has no conception of the broader and deeper issues 
 at stake, the recognition of which intensified and sustained 
 the resolution of the peace-loving minister, who then directed 
 the policy of Great Britain. Of this he himself gives the proof 
 in a curious anecdote. An Algerine official visiting the " Cap- 
 tain " ofE Leghorn, Nelson asked him why the Dey would not 
 make peace with the Genoese and Neapolitans, for they would 
 pay well for immunity, as the Americans at that period always 
 did. His answer was : " If we make peace with every one, 
 what is the Dey to do with his ships ? " " What a reason for 
 carrying on a naval war ! " said Nelson, when writing the story 
 to Jervis ; " but has our minister a better one for the present ? " 
 Jervis, a traditional Whig, and opposed in Parliament to the 
 war, probably sympathized with this view, and in any case the 
 incident shows the close confidence existing between the two 
 officers ; but it also indicates how narrowly Nelson's genius 
 and unquestionable acuteness of intellect confined themselves, 
 at that time, to the sphere in which he was visibly acting. In 
 this he presents a marked contrast to Bonaparte, whose rest- 
 less intelligence and impetuous imagination reached out in 
 many directions, and surveyed from a lofty height the bearing 
 of all things, far and near, upon the destinies of France. 
 
I 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The Evacuation of Elba. — Night Combat with Two Spanish Frig- 
 ates. — Battle of Cape St. Vincent. — Nelson Promoted to 
 Kear- Admiral. — Services before Cadiz. 
 
 December, 1796-June, 1797. Age, 38. 
 
 ''T'TTHElSr we quitted Toulon," wrote Nelson to his old 
 VV captain, Locker, while on the passage to Gibraltar, 
 " I remember we endeavoured to reconcile ourselves to 
 Corsica ; now we are content with Elba — such things are." 
 Even this small foothold was next to be resigned. Upon 
 reaching Gibraltar, Jervis received orders from the Admiralty 
 to evacuate the island. 
 
 This was the duty upon which Nelson was so soon de- 
 spatched again to the Mediterranean. Though "most im- 
 portant,'' wrote he to his wife, " it is not a fighting mission, 
 therefore be not uneasy." The assurance was doubtless 
 honestly given, but scarcely to be implicitly accepted in view 
 of his past career. Leaving the admiral on the evening of 
 December 14, with the frigates "Blanche" and "Minerve," 
 his commodore's pendant lying in the latter, the two vessels, 
 about 11 p. M. of the 19th, encountered two Spanish frigates 
 close to Cartagena. The enemies pairing off, a double action 
 ensued, which, in the case of the " Minerve," ended in the 
 surrender of her opponent, " La Sabina," at half-past one in 
 the morning. Throwing a prize-crew on board, the British 
 ship took her late antagonist in tow and stood away to the 
 southeast. At half-past three another Spanish frigate came 
 up, and, in order to meet this fresh enemy on fairly equal 
 terms, the " Minerve " had to drop her prize. The second fight 
 began at 4.30, and lasted half an hour, when the Spaniard 
 hauled off. With daylight appeared also two hostile ships- 
 of-the-line, which had been chasing towards the sound of the 
 guns. These had already been seen by the " Blanche," which 
 
222 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 was by them prevented from taking possession of her antago- 
 nist, after the latter struck. The pursuit lasted through the 
 day, the " Minerve " being hard pressed in consequence of 
 the injuries received by all her masts during the engagement ; 
 but both British frigates succeeded in shaking off their pur- 
 suers. " La Sabina " was recaptured ; she had already lost 
 one mast, and the remaining two were seen to go over the side 
 as she was bringing-to, when the enemy overtook her. It is 
 interesting to note that her captain, Don Jacobo Stuart, was 
 descended from the British royal house of Stuart. He, with 
 many of his crew, had been transferred to the " Minerve," and 
 remained prisoners. 
 
 Kelson reached Porto Ferrajo a week later, on the 26th of 
 December. ''On my arrival here," wrote he to his brother, 
 " it was a ball night, and being attended by the captains, I 
 was received in due form by the General, and one particular 
 tune was played : ^ the second was ' Eule Britannia.' From 
 Italy I am loaded with compliments." Having regard to com- 
 parative strength, the action was in all respects most creditable, 
 but it received additional lustre from being fought close to the 
 enemy's coast, and in full view of a force so superior as that 
 from which escape had been handsomely made, under condi- 
 tions requiring both steadiness and skill. Though on a small 
 scale, no such fair stand-up fight had been won in the Medi- 
 terranean during the war, and the resultant exultation was 
 heightened by its contrast with the general depression then 
 weighing upon the British cause. Especially keen and warmly 
 expressed was the satisfaction of the veteran commander-in- 
 chief at Lisbon, who first learned the success of his valued 
 subordinate through Spanish sources. " I cannot express to 
 you, and Captain Cockburn, the feelings I underwent on the 
 receipt of the enclosed bulletin, the truth of which I cannot 
 doubt, as far as relates to your glorious achievement in the 
 capture of the Sabina, and dignified retreat from tlie line-of- 
 battle ship, which deprived you of your well-earned trophy ; 
 your laurels were not then within their grasp, and can never 
 fade." 
 
 General De Burgh, who commanded the troops in Elba, had 
 
 ^ It is evident that this must have involved a compliment personal to 
 Nelson. 
 
 4 
 
MISSION TO EVACUATE ELBA 223 
 
 received no instructions to quit the island, and felt uncertain 
 about his course, in view of the navy's approaching departure. 
 Nelson's orders were perfectly clear, but applied only to the 
 naval establishment. He recognized the general's difficulty, 
 though he seems to have thought that, under all the circum- 
 stances, he might very well have acted upon his own expressed 
 opinion, that " the signing of a Neapolitan peace with France 
 ought to be our signal for departure." "The army," wrote 
 Nelson to the First Lord of the Admiralty, " are not so often 
 called upon to exercise their judgment in political measures 
 as we are ; therefore the general feels a certain diffidence." 
 He told De Burgh that, the King of Naples having made 
 peace, Jervis considered his business with the courts of Italy 
 as terminated; that the Admiralty's orders were to concen- 
 trate the effort of the fleet upon preventing the allied fleets 
 from quitting the Mediterranean, and upon the defence of 
 Portugal, invaluable to the British as a base of naval opera- 
 tions. For these reasons, even if he had to leave the land 
 forces in Elba, he should have no hesitation in following his 
 instructions, which were to withdraw all naval belongings. 
 " I have sent to collect my squadron, and as soon as they 
 arrive, I shall offer myself for embarking the troops, stores, 
 &c. ; and should you decline quitting this post, I shall pro- 
 ceed down the Mediterranean with such ships of war as are 
 not absolutely wanted for keeping open the communication of 
 Elba with the Continent." 
 
 The necessary preparations went on apace. Vessels were 
 sent out to summon the scattered cruisers to the port. A 
 frigate was despatched to Naples to bring back Sir Gilbert 
 Elliot, the late Viceroy of Corsica, who, since the abandon- 
 ment of the latter island, had been on a diplomatic visit to 
 Rome and Naples. It is to this incident that we owe the 
 fullest account transmitted of the Battle of Cape St. Vincent ; 
 the narrator, Colonel Drinkwater, being then a member of the 
 Viceroy's suite, and attending him upon his return with Nel- 
 son's squadron. The Spanish prisoners were sent to Cartagena 
 in a cartel. Nelson restoring to the captain of the " Sabina " 
 the sword which he had surrendered. "I felt this consonant 
 to the dignity of my Country, and I always act as I feel right, 
 without regard to custom." By the 16th of January all the 
 
224 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 naval establishment Avas embarked, ready for departure, 
 though some of the ships of war had not yet returned, nor had 
 the Viceroy arrived. The delay allowed the " Minerve " to 
 be completely refitted, two of her masts and most of her rig- 
 ging having to be renewed. 
 
 When Elliot came, it was decided in a consultation between 
 him, Nelson, and De Burgh, that the troops should remain. 
 The transports had been completely victualled, and so pre- 
 pared that every soldier could be embarked in three days. 
 With them Avere left two frigates and a few smaller ships of 
 war. On the 29th of January, Nelson sailed with the rest 
 of his force and the convoy, divided into three sections, which 
 proceeded for the Straits by different routes, to diminish the 
 chances of total loss by capture. Nelson himself, with another 
 frigate, the " Romulus," in company, intended to make a 
 round of the enemy's ports, in order to bring the admiral the 
 latest information of the number of ships in each, and their 
 state of preparation. " I hope to arrive safe in Lisbon v/ith 
 my charge," he wrote to his wife on the eve of sailing, " but 
 in war much is left to Providence : however, as I have hitherto 
 been most successful, confidence tells me I shall not fail : and 
 as notliing will be left undone by me, should I not always 
 succeed, my mind will not suffer ; nor will the world, I trust, 
 be willing to attach blame, where my heart tells me none 
 would be due." The habit of taking risks had wrought its 
 beneficial influence upon mind and temper, when he thus 
 calmly and simply reasoned from the experience of the past to 
 the prospective fortnight, to be passed in sight of a hostile 
 coast, and in waters where he could meet no. friendly sail. " It 
 has ever pleased Almighty God to give his blessing to my en- 
 deavours," was his New Year greeting to his father at this time. 
 
 During this month in Elba a slight political reference shows 
 how his views and purpose were changing with the rapidly 
 shifting political scene. In this hour of deepening adversity 
 he no longer looks for peace, nor seeks the reason for the 
 current war, which a few months before he had failed to find. 
 " As to peace, I do not expect it ; Lord Malmesbury will come 
 back as he went. But the people of England will, I trust, be 
 more vigorous for the prosecution of the war, which can alone 
 insure an honourable peace." 
 
NAVAL EVACUATION OF ELBA ^25 
 
 The " Minerve " and the "■ Eomulus " looked first into the 
 old British anchorage in San Fiorenzo Bay, which was found 
 deserted. Standing thence to Toulon, tliey remained forty- 
 eight hours off that port, in which were to be seen no ships iu 
 condition for sailing. From there they passed off Barcelona, 
 showing French colors, but without succeeding in drawing out 
 any vessel there lying. The wind not being fair for Minorca, 
 where Nelson had purposed to reconnoitre Port Mahon, tho 
 frigates next went to Cartagena, and ascertained that the great 
 Spanish fleet was certainly not there. As Toulon also had 
 been found empty, it seemed clear that it had gone to the 
 westward, the more so as the most probable information indi- 
 cated that the naval enterprises of the French and their allies 
 at that time were to be outside of the Mediterranean. Nelson 
 therefore pushed ahead, and on the 9fch of February the 
 "■ Minerve " and " Eomulus " anchored in Gibraltar. All three 
 divisions from Elba passed the Straits within the same forty- 
 eight hours. 
 
 The Spanish grand fleet had been seen from the Eock, four 
 days before, standing to the westward into the Atlantic. Two 
 ships-of-the-liue and a frigate had been detached from it, with 
 supplies for the Spanish lines before Gibraltar, and had 
 anchored at the head of the bay, where they still were when 
 Nelson arrived. On board them had also been sent the two 
 British lieutenants and the seamen, who became prisoners 
 when the "Sabina" was recaptured. Their exchange was 
 effected, for which alone Nelson was willing to wait. The 
 fact that the Spanish fleet had gone towards Jervis's rendez- 
 vous, and the continuance of easterly winds, which would 
 tend to drive them still farther in the same direction, gave 
 him uneasy premonitions of that coming battle which it would 
 " break his heart " to miss. It was, besides, part of his in- 
 grained military philosophy, never absent from his careful 
 mind, that a fair wind may fall or shift. "The object of a 
 sea-officer is to embrace the happy moment which now and 
 then offers, — it may be to-day, it may be never." Eegretting 
 at this moment the loss even of a tide, entailed by the engage- 
 ments of the Viceroy, whom he had to carry to Jervis, and 
 therefore could not leave, he wrote, " I fear a ivesterly wind." 
 The Providence in which he so often expresses his reliance, 
 
 15 
 
226 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 now as on many other occasions, did not forsake the favored 
 son, who never by sluggishness or presumption lost his oppor- 
 tunities. The wind held fair until the 13th of February, when 
 Nelson rejoined the commander-in-chief. That night it shifted 
 to the westward, and the following day was fought the Battle 
 of Cape St. Vincent. 
 
 Taken in its entirety, the episode of this nearly forgotten 
 mission to Elba is singularly characteristic, not only of Xel- 
 son's own qualities, but also of those concurrences which, 
 whatever the origin attributed to them by this or that person, 
 impress upon a man's career the stamp of '^ fortunate." An 
 errand purely of evasion, not in itself of prime importance, 
 but for an object essentially secondary, it results in a night 
 combat of unusual brilliancy, which would probably not have 
 been fought at all could the British have seen the overwhelm- 
 ing force ready to descend upon conqueror and conquered 
 alike. With every spar wounded, and a hostile fleet in sight, 
 the "Minerve" nevertheless makes good her retreat. Soli- 
 tary, in an enemy's sea, she roams it with premeditated 
 deliberateness, escaping molestation, and, except in the first 
 instance, even detection. She carries the fortunes of a Caesar 
 yet unknown, who is ready to stake them at any moment for 
 adequate cause; but everything works together, not merely 
 for his preservation, but to bring him up just in time for the 
 exceptional action, which showed there was more to him than 
 even his untiring energy and fearlessness had so far demon- 
 strated. As when, in later years, burning anxiety pressed 
 him to hasten after Villeneuve, yet failed so to discompose 
 him as to cause the neglect of any preparation essential to 
 due provision for the abandoned Mediterranean ; so now, with 
 every power at highest tension to rejoin the admiral, eager 
 not to waste a moment, he mars his diligence by no precipi- 
 tancy, he grudges no hour necessary to the rounded com- 
 pletion of the present task, — to see, and know, and do, all 
 that can be seen and done. He might almost have used 
 again, literally, the expression before quoted : " I have not 
 a thought on any subject separated from the immediate object 
 of my command." 
 
 Leaving the '•' Romulus " in Gibraltar, the " Minerve " sailed 
 again on the 11th. The Spanish ships-of-the-line followed 
 
NARROW ESCAPE FROM CAPTURE 227 
 
 her at once. The east wind blows in wild and irregular puffs 
 upon the anchorages immediately under the lofty Rock, where 
 the frigate lay. Parther up, where the Spaniards were, it 
 crosses the low neck joining the peninsula to the mainland, 
 and is there more equable and more constant. The " Minerve " 
 was consequently at a disadvantage until she got fairly from 
 under its lee, and the chase through the Straits became close 
 enough to draw the idlers of the town and garrison in crowds 
 to the hillsides. It soon became evident that the leading 
 ship-of-the-line was gaining upon the frigate, and the latter 
 cleared for action. Nelson had but a poor opinion of the 
 Spanish navy of his day, and doubtless chose, before surren- 
 dering, to take his chance of one of those risks which in war 
 often give strange results. He said to Drinkwater that he 
 thought an engagement probable, but added, " Before the Dons 
 get hold of that bit of bunting I will have a struggle with them, 
 and sooner than give up the frigate, I '11 run her ashore." 
 
 About this time the officers' dinner was announced. Drink- 
 water went below, and was just congratulating Lieutenant 
 Hardy, Avho had been captured in the " Sabina," upon his ex- 
 change, when the cry '* Man overboard ! " was heard. The party 
 dispersed hurriedly, in sympathy with the impulse which in- 
 variably causes a rush under such circumstances ; and Drink- 
 water, running to the stern windows, saw a boat already 
 lowering with Hardy in it, to recover the man, who, however, 
 could not be found. The boat therefore, making signal to that 
 effect, soon turned to pull to the shij). The situation was ex- 
 tremely embarrassing, not to say critical ; on the one hand, 
 the natural reluctance to abandon any one or anything to tlie 
 enemy, on the other, the imminent risk of sacrificing the ship 
 and all concerned by any delay, — for the leading Spaniard, by 
 himself far superior in force, was nearly within gunshot. 
 Temperament and habit decide, in questions where reason has 
 little time and less certainty upon Avhich to act; by nature and 
 experience Nelson Avas inclined to take risks. It was evident 
 the boat could not overtake the frigate unless the latter's way 
 was lessened, and each moment that passed made this step 
 more perilous, as the pursuer was already overhauling the 
 " Minerve." " By God, I '11 not lose Hardy ! " he exclaimed : 
 "back the mizzeu-topsail." The ship's speed being thus 
 
228 THE LIFE OP NELSON 
 
 checked, the boat came alongside, and the party scrambled oa 
 board. Singularly enough, the enemy, disconcerted by Nelson's 
 action, stopped also, to allow his consort to come up, — a 
 measure wholly inexcusable, and only to be accounted for by 
 that singular moral effect produced in many men by a sudden 
 and unexpected occurrence. The daring deed had therefore 
 the happiest results of a stratagem, and the frigate was 
 troubled no further. 
 
 Steering that night to the southward, to throw off her pur- 
 suers, the " Minerve " found herself unexpectedly in the midst 
 of a fleet, which, from the signals made, was evidently not 
 that of Jervis, and therefore must be hostile. The hazy 
 atmosphere veiled the British frigate from close observation, 
 and, by conforming her movements to those of the strangers, 
 she escaped suspicion. Nelson was uncertain whether it was 
 the Spanish grand fleet, or, possibly, a detached body proceed- 
 ing to the West Indies. He had heard a rumor of such an 
 expedition, and the impression was probably confirmed by 
 these ships being met when steering southerly from the 
 Straits ; Cadiz, the known destination of the grand fleet, being 
 north. As the British commercial interests in the Caribbean 
 were of the first importance, and would be much endangered, 
 he told Drinkwater, who lay awake in his cot, that, if he be- 
 came convinced the ships in sight were bound there, he should 
 give up the attempt to join the commander-in-chief, and should 
 start at once for the Islands, to forewarn them of the approach- 
 ing danger. The colonel was naturally startled at the prospect 
 of an involuntary trip across the Atlantic, and represented 
 the equally urgent necessity — as he thought — of Jervis and 
 the British Cabinet getting the information, which Elliot was 
 bringing, of the views and intentions of the Italian govern- 
 ments. This Nelson admitted, but replied that he thought the 
 other consideration greater, and that — the condition arising 
 — he must do as he had said. The incident illustrates the 
 activity of his mind, in comprehending instantly the singular 
 opportunity thrust unexpectedly upon him, as well as the 
 readiness to accept responsibility and to follow his own judg- 
 ment, which he showed on so many other occasions, both before 
 and after this. 
 
 Later in the night the hostile ships went about, evidencing 
 
BATTLE OF CAPE ST. VINCENT 229 
 
 thereby a desire to keep to windward, wliich pointed much 
 more toward Cadiz than to any western destination. The 
 " Minerve " imitated them, but altered her course so as to 
 edge away gradually from her dangerous neighbors. Nelson, 
 some time after, again entered the cabin, and told Drink- 
 water and Elliot, the latter having also waked, that he had 
 got clear of the enemy, but that at daylight the course 
 would be altered so as to sight them once more, if tliey were 
 really going west. Should it prove to be so, they must make 
 up their minds to visit the West Indies. Nothing, however, 
 being seen during the 12th, the commodore, satisfied at last 
 that he had been in the midst of the grand fleet, hastened on, 
 and towards noon of tlie 13th joined the admiral. Before do- 
 ing so, some of the Spaniards were again sighted. They had 
 been seen also by the regular British lookouts, one at least of 
 which had kept touch with them through the preceding days 
 of hazy weather. Nelson, after an interview with Jervis, 
 went on board the " Captain," where his broad pendant was 
 again hoisted at 6 p. m. 
 
 At daybreak, the position of the two fleets was twenty-five 
 miles west of Cape St. Vincent, a headland on the Portuguese 
 coast, a hundred and fifty miles northwest of Cadiz. During 
 the night the wind had shifted from the eastward to west by 
 south, and, being now fair, the Spaniards were running for 
 their port, heading about east-southeast; but they were in 
 disorder, and were divided into two principal fragments, of 
 which the headmost, and therefore leewardmost, numbered six 
 ships. It was separated from the other division of twenty-one 
 by a sj)ace of six or eight miles. In the whole force, of 
 twenty-seven ships, there were seven of three decks, the least 
 of which carried one hundred and twelve guns ; the remainder 
 were principally seventy-fours, there being, however, one of 
 eighty-four guns. Jervis's fleet consisted of fifteen ships-of- 
 the-line, — two of one hundred guns, four of ninety-eight or 
 ninety, eight seventy-fours, and one sixty-four. From the 
 intelligence received the previous day of the enemy's proxim- 
 ity, the admiral kept the command throughout the night in 
 two columns, in close order, a formation suited by its com- 
 pactness to a hazy night, and at the same time manageable in 
 case of encountering an enemy suddenly. The course was 
 
230 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 south by west, almost perpendicular to that of the Spaniards. 
 The two fleets were thus running, one from the westward, and 
 the other from the northward, to a common crossing.^ 
 
 At daylight the enemy's fleet was partly visible to the 
 leading ships of the British columns. As the morning ad- 
 vanced, and the situation developed, it was seen that the 
 Spanish line was long and straggling, and the gap began to 
 show. As the British were heading directly towards it, 
 Jervis ordered a half-dozen of his ships, which were all still 
 under moderate canvas, to press on and interpose between 
 the enemy's divisions. An hour or so later he made the 
 signal to form the single column, which was the usual fight- 
 ing order of those days. The fleet being already properly 
 disposed for manoeuvres, this change of order was effected, 
 to use his own words, "with the utmost celerity." ]!felson's 
 ship was thirteenth in the new order, therefore nearly the 
 last. Next after him came the sixty-four, the " Diadem," 
 while Collingwood, in the " Excellent," brought up the rear. 
 Immediately ahead of Nelson was the "Barfleur," carrying 
 the flag of one of the junior admirals, to whom naturally fell 
 the command in that part of the line. 
 
 Three of the larger Spanish body succeeded in crossing 
 ahead of the British column and joining the lee group, thus 
 raised to nine ships. No others were able to effect this, the 
 headmost British ships anticipating them in the gap. Jer- 
 vis's plan was to pass between their two divisions with his 
 one column, protracting this separation, then to go about in 
 succession and attack the eighteen to windward, because their 
 comrades to leeward could not help them in any short time. 
 This was done. The lee ships did attempt to join those to 
 windward by breaking through the British order, but were 
 so roughly handled that they gave it np and continued to 
 the south-southwest, hoping to gain a better opportunity. 
 The weather ships, on the other hand, finding they could not 
 pass, steered to the northward, — nearly parallel, but oppo- 
 site, to the course which both the British and their own lee 
 group were then following. 
 
 A heavy cannonade now ensued, each British ship engag- 
 ing as its batteries came to bear, through the advance of the 
 1 See Plate, Figure 1. 
 
BATTLE OF CAPE 5T VINCENT 
 
 FEBRUARY 14,1797. 
 
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BATTLE OF CAPE ST. VINCENT 231 
 
 column to tlie south-southwest. After an hour of this, the 
 admiral made the signal to tack in succession. This was 
 instantly obeyed by the leader, the " Culloden," which was 
 expecting it, and each following ship tacked also as it reached 
 tlie same point. But as the Spaniards were continually re- 
 ceding from this point, which the British rear was approach- 
 ing, it was evident that in time the latter would leave 
 uncovered the grouud that had so far separated the two 
 hostile divisions. This the Spanish admiral expected to be 
 his opportunity ; it proved to be Nelson's. 
 
 At 1 p. M.,^ by Nelson's journal, the "Captain," standing 
 south by west, had come abreast the rearmost of the eigh- 
 teen weather ships, having passed the others. He then 
 noticed that the leaders of that body were bearing up be- 
 fore the wind, to the eastward, to cross behind the British 
 column. If this were carried out unmolested, they could 
 join the lee ships, which heretofore had been separated from 
 them by the centre and rear of the British line, and at this 
 moment were not very far distant, being still engaged with 
 the British centre; or else, so Nelson thought, they might 
 fly before the wind, making ineffective all that had been 
 done so far. "To prevent either of their schemes from tak- 
 ing effect, I ordered the ship to be wore, and passing between 
 the Diadem and Excellent, at a quarter past one o'clock, was 
 engaged with the headmost, and of course leewardmost of 
 the Spanish division. The ships which I know were, the 
 Santissima Trinidad, 126 ; San Josef, 112 ; ^ Salvador del 
 Mundo, 112 ; "- San Nicolas, 80 ; ^ another first-rate, and 
 seventy-four, names not known. I was immediatel}'^ joined 
 and most nobly supported by the Culloden, Captain Trou- 
 bridge. The Spanish fleet,^ from not wishing (I suppose) to 
 have a decisive battle, hauled to the wind [again] on the 
 larboard tack, which brought the ships afore-mentioned to 
 be the leewardmost and sternmost ships in their fleet." 
 
 By this spontaneous and sudden act, for which he had no 
 authority, by signal or otherwise, except his own judgment 
 and quick perceptions, Nelson entirely defeated the Spanish 
 movement. Devoting his own ship to a most unequal con- 
 
 1 See Plate, Figure 2. 2 Captured. 
 
 3 That is, the weather division, — the eighteen ships. 
 
232 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 test, he gained time for the approaching British van to come 
 up, and carry on the work they had already begun when first 
 passing these ships — before the moment of tacking. The 
 British column being then in a V shape, — part on one tack, 
 part on the other, the point of the V being that of tacking, — : 
 he hastened across, by a short cut, from the rear of one arm 
 of the V to a position on the other side, toward which the 
 van was advancing, but which it, being more distant, could 
 not reach as soon as he, and therefore not to as good effect. 
 To quote Jervis's words concerning this incident, ''Commo- 
 dore Nelson, who was in the rear on the starboard tack, took 
 the lead on the larboard, and contributed very much to the 
 fortune of the day." On the intellectual side, the side of 
 skill, this is what he did ; on the side of valor, it is to be 
 said that he did it for the moment single-handed. The " Cul- 
 loden," the actual leader, came up shortly, followed afterwards 
 by the " Blenheim ; " and the " Excellent " was ordered by 
 Jervis to imitate Nelson's movement, and strengthen the 
 operation which he had initiated. It was the concentration 
 of these ships at the point which Nelson seized, and for a 
 moment held alone, that decided the day ; and it was there 
 that the fruits of victory were chiefly reaped. 
 
 It must not be understood, of course, that all the honors 
 of the day are to be claimed for Nelson, even conjointly with 
 those present with him at the crucial moment. Much was 
 done, both before and after, which contributed materially to 
 the aggregate results, some of which were missed by the 
 very reluctance of men of solid military qualities to desist 
 from seeking enemies still valid, in order to enjoy what 
 Nelson called the " parade of taking possession of beaten 
 enemies." It seems probable that more Spanish ships might 
 have been secured, had it not been for the eagerness of 
 some British vessels to push on to new combats. But, 
 while fully allowing the merits of many others, from the 
 commander-in-chief down, it is true of St. Vincent, as of most 
 battles, that there was a particular moment on which success 
 or failure hinged, and that upon the action then taken de- 
 pended the chief outcome, — a decisive moment, in short. 
 That moment was when the enemy attempted, with good 
 prospect, to effect the junction which Nelson foiled. As 
 
BATTLE OF CAPE STVINCENT 
 
 Fig. 3 
 
 Affhe fime when Ne/son tvas faking possession 
 of ihe San Nicolas and San Josef. ^ 
 
 ^ Brifisi) S/j/ps 0^ 
 
 O Spanish Ships W A 
 
 Q ^ 
 
 
 
 
 c' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 s 
 
 
 
 
 C/ 
 
 -'' 
 
 \ 
 
 WIND 
 
 ^ 
 
 /O 0c 
 
 
 
 yy>>>}?> , •> 
 
 / 
 
 / 
 
 \0 
 
 
 z/' 
 
 / 
 
 
 
 N, 
 
 
 / 
 
 / ^ 
 
 
 
 '\£ 
 
 ,' 
 
 
 
 
 
 LETTERS 
 
 
 
 
 
 (^' Nelsons ship, the Captain. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 B ■ Blenheim 
 
 
 
 
 X'Culloden 
 
 
 
 5: 
 Z Q: 
 
 E - Excellenl andherlrack, 
 
 0' Orion (doHedlinej. 
 
 P- Prince George 
 
 
 ,' 
 
 
 'V - Lively (frigate), on board 
 
 
 >' 
 
 
 \ which, Elliot dcDrinkwater. 
 
 
 / 
 
 
 (j - San Josef 
 
 \% 
 
 
 ,' 
 
 
 \ S - San Nicolas 
 
 
 
 
 1 T- Santisima Trinidad 
 
 \ 
 
 / 
 
 
 to 
 
 L- Lee Division dnd if strack 
 I passing British rear, clese 
 1 onthewind.forejoinWedtherDiv 
 \W' Weather Division 
 
^ 
 
 BATTLE OF CAPE ST. VINCENT 233 
 
 Collingwood afterwards summed up the matter : " The high- 
 est rewards are due to you and Culloden ; you formed the 
 phiu of attack, — we were only accessories to the Dous' ruin ; 
 for had they got on the other tack, they would have been 
 sooner joined, and the business would have been less 
 complete." 
 
 AVhen Collingwood came up with the " Excellent," the 
 " Captain " was practically disabled for further movement, 
 had lost heavily in men, and was without immediate support. 
 The " Culloden " had dropped astern, crippled, as had two of 
 the Spanish vessels ; the " Blenheim," after passing the " Cul- 
 loden " and the " Captain," between them and the enemy, had 
 drawn ahead. The " Excellent," steering between the two 
 Spanish ships that had fallen behind, fired into both of them, 
 and Nelson thought both then struck ; but Collingwood did 
 not stop to secure them. " Captain Collingwood," says Nel- 
 son in his account, " disdaining the parade of taking posses- 
 sion of beaten enemies, most gallantly pushed up, with every 
 sail set, to save his old friend and messmate, who was to 
 appearance in a critical state. The Excellent ranged up 
 within ten feet of the San Nicolas, giving a most tremendous 
 fire. The San Nicolas luffing up, the San Josef fell on board 
 her, and the Excellent passing on for the Santissima Trinidad, 
 the Captain resumed ^ her situation abreast of them, and close 
 alongside. At this time the Captain having lost her foretop- 
 mast, not a sail, shroud,^ or rope left, her wheel shot away, 
 and incapable of further service in the line, or in chase, I 
 directed Captain Miller to put the helm a-starboard, and call- 
 ing for the boarders, ordered them to board." ^ 
 
 The " Captain " fetched alongside of the " San Nicolas," her 
 bow touching the lee (starboard) quarter of the Spanish ves- 
 sel, her spritsail yard hooking in the other's mizzen shrouds. 
 Commander Berry, a very young man, who had lately been 
 first lieutenant of the "Captain," leaped actively into the 
 mizzen chains, the first on board the enemy ; he was quickly 
 supported by others, who passed over by the spritsail yard. 
 The captain of the ship was in the act of following, at the 
 
 1 That is, was left in. 
 
 2 Shrouds are large lopes which support the masts. 
 
 3 See Plate, Figure 3. 
 
234 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 head of lais men, when Nelson stopped liim. "No, Miller," 
 he said, " / must have that honour ; " and he directed him to 
 remain. One of the soldiers of the Sixty-ninth Regiment, who 
 were serving on board as marines, broke open the upper 
 quarter-gallery window of the "San Nicolas," and through 
 this Nelson entered, with a crowd of followers, to find himself 
 in the cabin of the enemy's ship. The doors being fastened, 
 they were held there a few moments, while Spanish officers 
 from the quarter-deck discharged their pistols at them ; but 
 the doors were soon broken down, and the party, after firing a 
 volley, sallied on the spar deck, which the enemy yielded to 
 them, — a Spanish commodore falling by the wheel as he 
 retreated. Berry had by this time reached the poop, where 
 he hauled down the colors, while Nelson passed to the forward 
 part of the ship, meeting on his way several Spanish ofiicers, 
 who, being by this time in the hands of British seamen, gave 
 up to him tbeir swords. The Spanish guns on the lower 
 decks still continued firing for some moments, apparently at 
 the " Prince George," which had passed to leeward of the 
 " Captain," and now kept her batteries playing upon the hull 
 of the " San Nicolas " forward of the part where the " Cap- 
 tain" touched her. 
 
 At this moment a small-arm fire was opened from the stern 
 galleries of the " San Josef " upon the British party in the 
 " San Nicolas." Nelson caused the soldiers to reply to it, 
 and ordered reinforcements sent to him from the " Captain." 
 Parties were stationed at the hatchways of the " San Nicolas " 
 to control the enemy and keep them below decks, and then the 
 boarders charged again for the Spanish three-decker. Nelson 
 was helped by Berry into her main chains ; but he had got no 
 farther before a Spanish officer put his head over the rail and 
 said they surrendered. " From this most welcome informa- 
 tion," continues Nelson, in his narrative, "it was not long 
 before I was on the quarter-deck, when the Spanish captain, 
 with a bow, presented me his sword, and said the admiral was 
 dying of his wounds below. I asked him, on his honour, if 
 the ship were surrendered ? he declared she was ; on which I 
 gave him my hand, and desired him to call to his officers and 
 ship's company, and tell them of it — which he did ; and on 
 the quarter-deck of a Spanish First-rate, extravagant as the 
 
BATTLE OF CAPE ST. VINCENT 235 
 
 story may seem, did I receive the swords of vanquished Span- 
 iards ; which, as I received, 1 gave to William Fearney, one of 
 my bargemen, who put them with the greatest sangfroid under 
 his arm. I was surrounded by Captain Berry, Lieutenant 
 Pierson, 69tli Regiment, John Sykes, John Thomson, Francis 
 Cook, all old Agameninons, and several other brave men, sea- 
 men and soldiers : thus fell these ships." The firing from the 
 lower deck of the " San Nicolas " was by this time stopped, 
 and the " Prince George " was hailed that both the enemy's 
 vessels were in possession of the British. The " Victory," 
 Jervis's flagship, passed a few moments later and cheered, as 
 did every ship in the fleet. 
 
 The dramatic and picturesque surroundings which colored 
 the seizure of these two Spanish ships have doubtless given 
 an exaggerated idea of the danger and difficulty attending 
 the exploit. The impression made upon a sympathetic and 
 enthusiastic eye-witness. Sir Gilbert Elliot, who saw the 
 affair from the decks of the frigate " Lively," has been trans- 
 mitted to posterity with little diminution. " Xothing in the 
 world was ever more noble than the transaction of the Captain 
 from beginning to end, and the glorious group of your ship 
 and her two prizes, fast in your gripe, was never surpassed, 
 and I dare say never will." Yet it may better be looked upon 
 as another of those " fortunate " occurrences which attend — 
 and in Nelson's career repeatedly attended — the happy meet- 
 ing of opportunity and readiness. Doubtless they were beaten 
 ships, but other beaten ships have escaped in general actions 
 — did at St. Vincent. ''I pretend not to say," wrote iSTelson 
 a week later, " that these ships might not have fell, had I not 
 boarded them ; but truly it was far from impossible but they 
 might have forged into the Spanish fleet as the other two 
 ships did." He was there, he could do nothing else, he saw 
 with his rapid glance that he might do this, and he did it. 
 And, after all, it was a big thing, — this boarding a first-rate 
 ship over the decks of another hostile ship, not inaptly char- 
 acterized in the fleet as " Nelson's patent bridge." We must 
 mark, too, or we shall miss significant indications of character, 
 that the same qualities which led him to the quarter-deck of 
 the " San Josef " had led him but an hour before from the 
 rear of the fleet to the van to save the fight, — the same 
 
236 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 quickness to see opportunity, the same promptness to seize it, 
 the same audacity to control it. The brilliant crowning of 
 the day may be but an ornament, but it sits well and fitly 
 upon the knightly deed that rolled back the tide of battle in 
 the hour of need. 
 
 Those Spanish ships of the weather division which were 
 first encountered by Nelson, after he wore out of the line, bore 
 the brunt of tlie fighting. As the whole division continued to 
 stand on close to the wind, these ships, becoming crippled, 
 dropped astern of their consorts, and so first received the 
 broadsides of the British van as that arrived. Being also the 
 leaders in the movement frustrated by Nelson, they became 
 the most leewardly ; and, as the British van on coming up 
 passed to leeward, this contributed further to concentrate fire 
 upon the sa.me vessels. Among them was the " Santisima 
 Trinidad," of four decks and one hundred and thirty guns, 
 then the largest ship of war in tlie world. When Collingwood 
 passed ahead of Nelson, he engaged her, but not as near as he 
 wished, and could have done, had not the '' Excellent's " 
 rigging been so cut as to prevent her hauling close to the 
 wind. She was also brought to action by Sir James Saumarez, 
 in the " Orion," and towards the close of her contest with the 
 latter ship showed a British Union Jack, — -a token of sub- 
 mission possibly unauthorized, as it was almost immediately 
 hauled in again. Besides those boarded by Nelson, two other 
 enemy's ships had already struck. 
 
 It was now after four o'clock, and the other Spanish divi- 
 sion, of eight ships, was heading for the scene and near at 
 hand. Although effectually blocked in their first attempt to 
 pierce the British line, these had not received such injury as 
 to detract seriously from their efficiency. Continuing to stand 
 south-southwest, after the British began tacking, they at last 
 gained ground sufficiently to come up to windward, the side 
 on which their other division Avas. In view of the now in- 
 evitable junction of a great number of comparatively fresh 
 ships, and of the casualties in his own vessels, Jervis decided 
 to discontinue the action. He ordered his fleet to form on the 
 starboard tack, covering the four prizes and the "Captain;" 
 and with this done the firing soon ceased. The Spanish divi- 
 sions united, and carried off their other disabled ships. 
 
BATTLE OF CAPE ST. VINCENT 237 
 
 jSTelsou's account of the proceedings of the " Captain " ou 
 the 14tli of February, having been published not long after- 
 wards, apparently by his authority, was challenged as in- 
 correct by Vice-Admiral William Parker, commanding the van, 
 whose flag was on board the third British ship, the " Prince 
 George.'" Parker claimed that the latter, with the "Blen- 
 heim " and " Orion," had been much closer to the " Captain " 
 and "Culloden" than was implied in Nelson's narrative by 
 the words, "For near an hour, I believe, (but do not pretend 
 to be correct as to time,) did the Culloden and Captain sup- 
 port this apparently, but not really, unequal contest ; when 
 the Blenheim, passing between us and the enemy, gave us a 
 respite." Parker labored under the misfortune of a singularly 
 involved and obscure style, while in two separate papers he 
 contradicted himself more than once on points of detail ; but 
 the tone of his letter to Nelson was temperate and dignified, 
 and he asserted that, "so different to your statement, very 
 soon after you commenced your fire, you had four ships press- 
 ing on [Culloden, Blenheim, Prince George, and Orion], 
 almost on board of each other, close in your rear; but" — and 
 the admission following must be noted as well as the charge 
 — " the ships thus pressing upon each other, and the ttvo latter 
 not far enough ahead to fire with projoer effect^ besides having 
 none of the enemy's ships left in the rear for our succeeding 
 ships, at forty-three ^ minutes past one I made the signal to 
 fill and stand on." Parker had also stated, in his log of the 
 action, that the brunt fell upon the " Captain," the " Cul- 
 loden," and the "Blenheim," but more particularly the two 
 former, "from their being more in the van." 
 
 It appears to the writer pi-obable that Nelson overestimated 
 the period that he and Troubridge remained unsupported ; 
 time would seem long to the bi'avest man, when opposed to 
 such heavy odds. Parker seems to have reckoned it to be 
 about fifteen minutes, and he admits that it was impossible 
 for him to open fire with proper effect for some time, although 
 close on the heels of the "Captain" and the "Culloden," be- 
 cause he could not get abreast of the enemy. All the ships — 
 
 1 The italics are the author's. 
 
 2 In his letter to Nelson this is thirteen, but evidentlj' a slip. His log of 
 the action says forty-three. 
 
238 THE LITE OF NELSON 
 
 Spanish and British — were moving ahead, probably at not 
 very different rates of speed. The " Prince George " certainly 
 became in the end actively and closely engaged, much of the 
 time with the " San Josef," a ship of force superior to her 
 own. 
 
 Nelson's account is a simple, if somewhat exultant, nar- 
 rative of the facts as they passed under his observation ; and, 
 except in the statement to which Parker objected, they do not 
 even inferentially carry an imputation upon any one else. 
 There was a reflection, though scarcely intended, upon the 
 van ships, which should have been, and Parker says were, 
 close behind the *' Culloden ; " but the attack was upon the 
 extreme rear of the enemy, and Nelson probably forgot that 
 readers might not understand, as he did, that the ships behind 
 him must need some time to get up, and that his own posi- 
 tion, abreast the enemy's rear, was in itself an obstacle to 
 their reaching a place whence their batteries could bear, with 
 the limited train of broadside guns in those days. 
 
 Another and interesting illustration of the injustice a man 
 may thus unintentionally do, through inadvertence, is afforded 
 by Nelson's accounts of St. Vincent. There were two drawn 
 up on board the '* Captain," — one by himself in his own 
 hand; the second simply signed by him, Miller, and Berry. 
 It is quite evident that the latter is based upon the former, 
 much of the phraseology being identical ; but the whole is 
 toned down in many points. The instance of unintentional 
 injustice is this. In his autograph account. Nelson, thinking 
 only of himself,^ speaks of his going with the boarders, and 
 makes no mention of the captain of the ship, Miller, whose 
 proper business it would be rather than his. In the revision. 
 Miller would naturally feel that his failure to board should 
 be accounted for, and it contains accordingly the statement, 
 " Captain Miller was in the very act of going also, but I 
 directed him to remain." Berry's hand also appears; for 
 whereas Nelson's own account of boarding the " San Josef " 
 simply says, " I got into her main-chains," the published 
 
 1 Botli papers are headed : " A few remarks relative to m}'self in the Cap- 
 tain," etc. It is nnfortunate that Nicolas, in giving these two papers, puts 
 first the one which, from internal indications, is (in the author's judgment) 
 the later in date. 
 
CONTROVERSY WITH ADMIRAL PARKER 239 
 
 copy reads, " Captain Berry assisting me into the main- 
 chains." 
 
 So too with reference to Parker's controversy. In the first 
 draft there occurs the unqualified statement: "For an hour 
 the Culloden and Captain supported this apparently unequal 
 contest." The revision reads : " For near an hour, I believe, 
 {Jmt do not pretend to be correct as to time,y did Culloden and 
 Captain," etc. Parker quotes from the revision, which was 
 therefore the one published, but does not quote the words 
 italicized. Probably, if the " Blenheim " and the " St. 
 George " had had a hand in this revision, there would have 
 been more modification ; but Nelson did not realize where he 
 was hurting them, any more than he did in Miller's case. 
 
 The love of glory, the ardent desire for honorable dis- 
 tinction by honorable deeds, is among the most potent and 
 elevating of military motives, which in no breast has burned 
 with a purer flame than in that of jSTelson ; but it is better 
 that officers leave the public telling of their own exploits to 
 others, and it is evident that [Nelson, when taken to task, 
 realized uncomfortably that he had not exercised diie thought- 
 fulness. Parker refrained from addressing him till he had 
 received the printed account. This was not till July, and his 
 remonstrance reached Xelson shortly after the loss of his arm 
 at Teneriffe, when on his way home for what proved to be a 
 tedious and painful recovery. He was then suffering, not 
 only from pain and weakness, but also from discouragement 
 about his professional future, which he thought threatened by 
 disability, and for these conditions allowance must be made ; 
 but for all this his reply did not compare favorably with 
 Parker's letter, which had been explicit in its complaint as 
 well as moderate in expression. He wrote curtly : " I must 
 acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 25th of July ; 
 and, after declaring that I know nothing of the Prince George 
 till she was hailed from the forecastle of the San Nicolas,^ it 
 is impossible I can enter into the subject of your letter." 
 
 This course was the more ungenerous, because no explana- 
 tion, or even admission of involuntary wrong done, could have 
 detracted in the least from the abounding credit due and ac- 
 
 1 Author's italics. 
 
 2 Hailed to stop fii'iug, because the " San Nicolas" had surrendered. 
 
240 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 corded to Nelson for his conduct at St. Vincent, which indeed 
 did not depend upon the length of time he remained unsup- 
 ported, but upon the rapidity and fearlessness with which he 
 had acted aright at a very critical juncture. This had been 
 done so openly, under the eyes of all men, that it could by no 
 means be hid. Collingwood had borne witness to it, in words 
 which have- been quoted. Drinkwater and Elliot had watched 
 the whole from the deck of their frigate. The latter had 
 written to him : "To have had any share in yesterday's glory 
 is honour enough for one man's life, but to have been fore- 
 most on such a day could fall to your share alone." The 
 commander-in-chief had come out to greet him upon the 
 quarter-deck of the flagship, — a compliment naval ofiicers 
 can appreciate, — had there embraced him, saying he could 
 not sufficiently thank him, and " used every kind expression 
 which could not fail to make me happy." Jervis had also 
 insisted upon his keeping the sword of the Spanish rear- 
 admiral who fell on board the "San Josef." 
 
 Before dropping this subject, which has the unpleasantness 
 that attends all contentions between individuals about their 
 personal deserts, it is right to say that Nelson had held from 
 the first that Collingwood, Troubridge, and himself were 
 the only ones "who made great exertions on that glorious 
 day : the others did their duty, and some not exactly to my 
 satisfaction." " Sir John Jervis," he continued, " is not 
 quite contented, but says nothing publicly." He then quotes 
 an anecdote which, if he had it from Jervis, confirms his own 
 opinion about the support given. "Calder [the Chief of 
 Staff] said, ' Sir, the Captain and Culloden are separated from 
 the fleet, and unsupported : shall we recall them ? ' 'I will 
 not have them recalled. I put my faith in those ships : it is a 
 disgrace that they are not supported and [are] separated.' " 
 
 In his public letter Jervis refrained alike from praise and 
 from blame. He mentions but one name, that of Calder, as 
 bearer of despatches, and only incidentally says that he has 
 been useful to him at all times. In a private letter to the 
 First Lord he was more explicit, yet scarcely adequately so. 
 Whatever momentary expression of impatience escaped him, 
 when anxious about the "Culloden" and "Captain," he knew 
 that his own flagship could not get to them in time for effi- 
 
AN INTERESTING ANECDOTE 241 
 
 cient support, and he gives as the reason for reticence in his 
 public letter that all had behaved well, and that he was " con- 
 fident that had those who were least in action been in the 
 situation of the fortunate few, their conduct would not have 
 been less meritorious." He then mentions by name Trou- 
 bridge, — who led the fleet, — Nelson, and Collingwood, and 
 five ships (without the names of the captains, " Blenheim," 
 " Prince George," " Orion," " Irresistible," and " Colossus," 
 which "gallantly supported" Troubridge, though just where 
 or when is not specified. " The ships' returns of killed and 
 wounded," he says explicitly, "although not always the 
 criterion of their being more or less in action, is, in this in- 
 stance, correctly so." This would include the "Blenheim," 
 whose casualties were in excess of any except the " Captain," 
 and Parker's ship, the " Prince George," which lost not many 
 less than Collingwood. The " Captain's " loss in killed, 
 twenty-four, was double that of any other ship, and in killed 
 and wounded nearly one-third that of the whole fleet. 
 
 An interesting anecdote of Jervis shows the importance 
 conceded by him to Nelson's action. It rests on good author- 
 ity, and is eminently characteristic of one who valued beyond 
 most traits in an officer the power to assume responsibility. 
 " The test of a man's courage," he used to say, " is responsi- 
 bility." In the evening, while talking over the events of the 
 day, Calder spoke of Nelson's wearing out of the line as an 
 unauthorized departure from the method of attack prescribed 
 by the admiral. " It certainly was so," replied Jervis, " and 
 if ever you commit such a breach of your orders, I will for- 
 give you also." Success covers many faults, yet it is difficult, 
 to believe that had Nelson been overwhelmed, the soundness, 
 of his judgment and his resolution would not equally have 
 had the applause of a man, who had just fought twenty-seven 
 ships with fifteen, because "a victory was essential to Eng- 
 land at that moment." The justification of departure from 
 orders lies not in success, but in the conditions of the case ; 
 and Jervis was not one to overlook these, nor hereafter to 
 forget that only one man in his fleet had both seen the thing 
 to do and dared the responsibility of doing it. 
 
 A victory so signal entailed, as a matter of course, a number 
 of those rewards and titles with which Great Britain judiciously 
 
 16 
 
242 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 fostered the spirit of emulation in her Navy. These were to 
 a considerable extent aifairs of routine and precedent, and Nel- 
 son, knowing that junior flag-officers had on several previous 
 occasions been made baronets, wished to avoid this hereditary 
 dignity because inconsistent with his uieans. His love of 
 distinction also prompted him to desire one of those Orders 
 which carry with them the outward token of merit. Meeting 
 Drinkwater the day after the battle, he expressed his reluc- 
 tance to the baronetage, and upon the other's asking him 
 whether he would prefer to be a Knight of the Bath, he re- 
 plied, "Yes ; if my services have been of any value, let them 
 be noticed in a Avay that the public may know them." To 
 Elliot, who was about to return at once to England, he wrote, 
 asking him to make known his wishes to the Admiralty. "If 
 you can be instrumental in keeping back what I expect will 
 happen, it will be an additional obligation. I conceive to 
 take hereditary honours without a fortune to support the 
 dignity, is to lower that honour it would be my pride to sup- 
 port in proper splendour. There are other honours which die 
 with the possessor, and I should be proud to accept, if my 
 efforts are thought worthy of the favour of my King." 
 
 Elliot started for England a fcAv days afterwards, and 
 reached London at a time when the whole country was ring- 
 ing with the news of the victory. Arriving at such a propi- 
 tious moment, there could have been for Nelson no better 
 advocate than this man, placed high in political councils, and 
 having to give to the Ministry a long account of his career in 
 the Mediterranean, throughout the whole of which the two 
 had been in intimate contact and constant correspondence. 
 Himself an eye-witness, and filled with enthusiasm for Nelson's 
 latest exploit, Elliot knew better than any one that it was no 
 sporadic outburst, but only a signal manifestation of the 
 intuitive sagacity, the flashing promptness, and the sustained 
 energy, whose steady fires he had known to burn, without 
 slackening of force or change of motive, through two years of 
 close personal association in public action to a common end. 
 The government thus learned more of him than can easily 
 transpire under ordinary service conditions, or be shown even 
 by an incident like that at St. Vincent ; and Elliot's admira- 
 tion, free from all bias of professional partiality or profes- 
 
 i 
 
MADE A KNIGHT OF THE BATH 243 
 
 sional jealousy, doubtless was more useful to Nelson than 
 any narrative of his own could have been. Even the royal 
 favor was conciliated, despite the obstinate temper which 
 jdelded prejudices with difficulty. "I must rejoice," wrote 
 Nelson to the Duke of Clarence, who had mentioned to him 
 the King's approval, "in having gained the good opinion of 
 my Sovereign, which I once was given to understand I had no 
 likelihood of enjoying." ^ It was to the honor of the monarch 
 that he was thus as pliant to admit merit in an officer as yet 
 only rising to distinction, as he was firm at a later day to 
 stamp with the marks of his displeasure the flagrant moral 
 aberration of the then world-renowned admiral. 
 
 The coveted Knighthood of the Bath was accorded on the 
 17th of March, " in order," wrote the First Lord, " to mark 
 the Royal approbation of your successful and gallant exer- 
 tions on several occasions during the course of the present 
 war in the Mediterranean, and moi;e particularly of your very 
 distinguished conduct in the glorious and brilliant victory 
 obtained over the fleet of Spain by His Majesty's fleet, on the 
 14th of February last." Nelson's delight was great and char- 
 acteristic. Material rewards were not in his eyes the most 
 real or the richest. " Chains and Medals," he wrote to his 
 brother, "are what no fortune or connexion in England can 
 obtain ; and I shall feel prouder of those than all the titles in 
 the King's power to bestow." To his wife he said : " Though 
 we can afford no more than a cottage — yet, with a contented 
 mind, my chains, medals, and ribbons are all sufficient." To 
 receive honor was second to no possession, except that of 
 knowing he had deserved it. 
 
 On the evening of the Battle of St. Vincent, soon after the 
 firing ceased. Nelson shifted his commodore's pendant to the 
 " Irresistible," of seventy-four guns, the " Captain " being 
 unmanageable from the damage done to her spars and rigging. 
 Her hull also had been so battered, that he wrote a few days 
 later she would never be able to receive him again, which 
 proved to be true ; for although, after she had been patched 
 up, he returned to her temporarily, a newly fitted ship, the 
 "Theseus," seventy-four, was assigned to his flag, as soon as 
 a reinforcement arrived from England. 
 1 See ante, page 89. 
 
244 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 After a vain effort to reach the Tagus against contrary- 
 winds, with disabled ships, Jervis decided to take his fleet 
 into Lagos Bay, an open roadstead on the southern coast of 
 Portugal, and there to refit sufficiently to make the passage 
 to Lisbon. While lying at Lagos Nelson became a Rear- 
 Admiral of the Blue, by a flag-promotion dated on the 20th 
 of February, although his flag was not hoisted until the first 
 of April, when the official notification of his advancement was 
 received by him. He was then thirty -eight and a half years 
 of age. In this rank he remained until after the Battle of the 
 Nile was fought, but it mattered comparatively little where 
 he stood on the list of flag-officers, while Jervis commanded ; 
 that he was an admiral at all made it possible to commit to 
 him undertakings for which he was pre-eminently qualified, 
 but which could scarcely have been intrusted to a simple 
 captain by any stretching of service methods, always — and 
 not improperly — conservative. 
 
 On the 23d of February the fleet sailed again, and on the 
 28th anchored in the Tagus. The same day Nelson wrote to 
 his wife that he was to go to sea on the 2d of March, with 
 three ships-of-the-line, to look out for the Viceroy of Mexico, 
 who was reported to be on his way to Cadiz, also with three 
 ships-of-the-line, laden with treasure. " Two are first-rates," 
 said he, "■ but the larger the ships the better the mark, and 
 who will not fight for dollars?" Foul winds prevented his 
 getting away until the 5th. From that date until the 12th of 
 April he remained cruising between Cape St. Vincent and the 
 coast of Africa, covering the approaches to Cadiz; frigates 
 and smaller vessels being spread out to the westward, to gain 
 timely notice of the approach of the specie ships, upon whose 
 safe arrival Spain depended both for her commercial affairs 
 and her naval preparations. 
 
 But while thus actively employed, and not insensible to the 
 charm of dollars, the immediate business on board was not in 
 itself so engrossing, nor to him so attractive, as to obtain that 
 exclusiveness of attention which he prided himself upon giving 
 to matters more military in character, and more critical in 
 importance. "The Spaniards threaten us they will come out, 
 and take their revenge," he writes to an occasional corre- 
 spondent. " The sooner the better ; but I will not believe it 
 
ANXIETY ABOUT THE ELBA GARRISON 245 
 
 till I see it ; and if they do, what will the mines of Mexico 
 and Peru signify, compared with the honour I doubt not we 
 shall gain by fighting an angry Don ? They will have thirty 
 sail of the line, Ave twenty or twenty-two ; but fear we shall 
 have a peace before they are ready to come out. AVhat 
 a sad thing that will be ! " His mind reverts to the troops 
 in Elba, which had been left in a most exposed position, and 
 were now about to Avithdraw under the protection of some 
 frigates, passing through a thousand miles of hostile sea open 
 to the line-of-battle ships at Toulon. He is more concerned 
 about them than about his possible prize-money in the rich 
 ships from Vera Cruz and Havana, whose danger from his own 
 squadron was agitating all Spain. " Respecting myself," he 
 writes to Jervis, "I wish to stay at sea, and I beg, if line-of- 
 battle ships are left out,^ either on this side the Gut, or to the 
 eastward of Gibraltar, that I may be the man. This brings 
 forward a subject which I own is uppermost in my mind, — 
 that of the safety of our troops, should they embark from Elba. 
 The French have a number of ships at Toulon. They may 
 get two, three, or four ready, Avith a number of frigates, and 
 make a push for our convoy. I am ready, you know, to go 
 eastAvard to cover them, eA^en to Porto Ferrajo, or off Toulon, 
 or INIinorca, as you may judge proper." 
 
 This exposed detachment continued to occupy his thoughts. 
 A month later, on the 11th of April, he again writes : " I own, 
 Sir, my feelings are alive for the safety of our army from 
 Elba. If the French get out tAvo sail of the line, Avhich I am 
 confident they rnay do, our troops are lost, and what a triumph 
 that Avould be to them ! I knoAv you have many difficulties to 
 contend with, but I am anxious that nothing should miscarry 
 under your orders. If you think a detachment can be spared, 
 I am ready to go and do my best for their protection." In 
 both letters he apologizes for this freedom of urgency with 
 his superior : " I have said much, but you have spoiled me by 
 allowing me to speak and Avrite freely. I trust you will not 
 imagine that my taking the great liberty of thus mentioning 
 my thoughts, arises from any other motive than affection 
 tOAvards you." 
 
 Jervis had already joined him on the 1st of April, before 
 1 That is, at sea, the main fleet being still in the Tagus. 
 
246 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 the second letter was written. His hesitation about sending 
 the detachment suggested by Nelson had arisen, not from 
 doubt as to the danger of the troops, but from the imminent 
 expectation of the Spanish fleet coming out. The British 
 force was already too inferior, numericall}'-, to risk any dimi- 
 nution, in view of such a contingency. Confronted with 
 divergent objects, Jervis would not be drawn into the snare 
 of dividing his force ; but after reconnoitring the port, he 
 was satisfied that the Spaniards could not sail before Nelson 
 had time to fulfil the proposed mission, and on the 12th of 
 April he gave him the necessary orders. The latter trans- 
 ferred his own squadron to the command of Sir James 
 Saumarez, and started at once. He had now returned to 
 the " Captain," which had doubtless come down with Jervis. 
 " She is little better than a wreck," he wrote to a friend ; 
 but the cripples had to be kept to the front, pending the 
 arrival of fresh ships. Besides her, he had the " Colossus," 
 seventy -four, and "Leander," fifty, with a suitable number 
 of smaller cruisers. Passing within gunshot of Port Mahon 
 in Minorca, he heard from several passing vessels that a 
 French squadron of four ships-of-the-line was at sea, as he 
 had anticipated ; and these, he afterwards learned, were seen 
 off Minorca only twenty-two hours before he passed. Fortu- 
 nately a fresh northwest gale had carried them to the south- 
 ward, and on the 21st of April, sixty miles west of Corsica, 
 he joined the convoy, which carried over three thousand 
 soldiers. He reached Gibraltar with it in safety in the early 
 days of May, without adventures of any kind. ''I observed a 
 man-of-war brig evidently looking at us ; but my charge was 
 too important to separate one ship in chase of her, especially 
 as three frigates had parted company ; for until this garrison 
 is safe down, I do not think our business is well finished." 
 Its arrival completed the evacuation of the Mediterranean. 
 
 At Gibraltar several days were spent, evidently crowded 
 with administrative details concerning the coming and going of 
 convoys, for there is here an almost total cessation of Nelson's 
 usually copious letter-writing. An interesting and instructive 
 incident is, however, made known to us by one of the three 
 letters dated during these ten days. The Consul of the 
 United States of America had to apply to him for the pro- 
 
CLOSE BLOCKADE OF CADIZ 247 
 
 tectioii of twelve American merchant ships, then at Malaga, 
 against the probable depredations of French privateers lying 
 in that port, which, under the edicts of the government of the 
 French Republic, with whom the United States was at peace, 
 were expected to overhaul and capture them when they sailed. 
 Nelson at once complied, ordering a British frigate to go to 
 Malaga and escort the vessels to the Barbary coast, and even 
 out of the Straits, if necessary. In doing this, he wrote cour- 
 teously to the Consul: "I am sure of fultilling the wishes of 
 my Sovereign, and I hope of strengthening the harmony which 
 at present so happily subsists between the two nations." 
 
 On the 24th of May Nelson rejoined the admiral off Cadiz, 
 and on the 27th shifted his own flag into the '' Theseus." The 
 day before he left the fleet, April 11th, Jervis had decided to 
 institute a strict commercial blockade of Cadiz, with the object 
 of distressing Spanish trade, preventing the entrance of sup- 
 plies, upon which depended the operations of Spain against 
 Portugal, as well as her naval preparations, and so forcing the 
 Spanish fleet out to fight, in order to rid itself of such embar- 
 rassment. Nelson, as commander of the inshore squadron, 
 had then issued the necessary notices to neutrals in the port, 
 and to this charge he now returned. Under Jervis's intelli- 
 gent partiality, he, the junior flag-officer, was thus intrusted 
 with a command, which in the conduct of details, great and 
 small, and in emergencies, was practically independent. Jervis, 
 knowing his man, was content to have it so, reserving of course 
 to himself the decision of the broad outlines of military exer- 
 tion. The inshore squadron was gradually increased till it 
 numbered ten sail-of-the-line. The boats of the fleet, which 
 had been rowing guard off the harbor's mouth under the 
 general supervision of the two senior flag-officers, were 
 ordered, shortly after Nelson's arrival, to report to him ; 
 and upon him, indeed, devolved pretty nearly all the active 
 enterprises of the fleet. It was his practice to visit the line 
 of boats every night in his barge, to see by personal inspec- 
 tion of these outposts that his instructions were fully observed. 
 "Our inferiority," he wrote about this time, "is greater than 
 before. I am barely out of shot of a Spanish rear-admiral. The 
 Dons hope for peace, but must soon fight us, if the war goes on." 
 
 Another motive, perhaps even more imperative than the 
 
248 THE LIFE OF NELSOK 
 
 wish to force the Dons out, now compelled. Jervis to seek by 
 all means to increase the activity of his fleet, and to intrust 
 the management of such activities to his most zealous and 
 capable subordinate. These were the mouths of the great 
 mutinies of the British iSTavy, in which the seamen of the 
 Channel fleet, and of the North Sea fleet, at the Nore, had 
 taken the ships out of the hands of their officers. The details 
 of Jervis's management, which was distinguished as much by 
 keen judgment and foresight as by iron-handed severity, that 
 knew neither fear nor ruth when it struck, belong to his 
 biography, not to Nelson's ; but it is necessary to note the 
 attitude of the latter, a man more sympathetic, and in common 
 life gentler, than his stern superior. Always solicitous for 
 everything that increased the well-being and happiness of his 
 crew, — as indeed was eminently the case with Jervis also, — 
 he did not withhold his candid sympathy from the grievances 
 alleged by the Channel fleet; grievances which, when temper- 
 ately presented to the authorities, had been ignored, " I a,m 
 entirely with the seamen in their first complaint. We are a 
 neglected set, and, when peace comes, are shamefully treated ; 
 but for the Nore scoundrels," passing on to those who had 
 rebelled after substantial redress had been given, and had 
 made unreasonable demands when the nation was in deadly 
 peril, " I should be happy to command a ship against them." 
 Jervis's measures received full support from him, clear-headed 
 as ever to see the essentials of a situation. The senior vice- 
 admiral, for instance, went so far as to criticise the com- 
 mander-in-chief for hanging a convicted mutineer on Sunday. 
 " Had it been Christmas Day instead of Sunday," wrote Nel- 
 son, " I would have executed them. We know not what 
 might have been hatched by a Sunday's grog : now your dis- 
 cipline is safe." His glorious reputation and his known 
 kindly character, supported by that of his captain, made 
 mutiny impossible under his flag. It had not been up a 
 month on board the " Theseus," which was lately from the 
 Channel and infected with the prevalent insubordination, 
 when a paper was dropped on the quarter-deck, expressing 
 the devotion of the ship's company to their commander, and 
 pledging that the name of the " Theseus " should yet be as 
 renowned as that of the "Captain." 
 
CLOSE BLOCKADE OF CADIZ 249 
 
 The stringent blockade, and the fears for the specie ships, 
 weighed heavily on the Spaniards, who were not as a nation 
 hearty in support of a war into which they had been coerced 
 by France. Their authorities were petitioned to compel the 
 fleet to go out. Whatever the event, the British would at 
 least have to retire for repairs ; while if the Lima and Havana 
 ships — to look for which the Cadiz people every morning 
 flocked to the walls, fearing they might be already in the 
 enemy's hands — should be captured, the merchants of Spain 
 would be ruined. Better lose ten ships-of-the-line, if need be, 
 than this convoy. AVith rumors of this sort daily reaching 
 him. Nelson's faculties were in a constant state of pleasing 
 tension. He was in his very element of joyous excitement 
 and expectation. ''We are in the advance day and night, 
 prepared for battle ; bulkheads down, ready to weigh, cut, or 
 slip,^ as the occasion may require. I have given out a line of 
 battle — myself to lead ; and you may rest assured that I will 
 make a vigorous attack upon them, the moment their noses 
 are outside the Diamond. Pray do not send me another 
 ship," he implores ; " if you send any more, they may believe 
 we are prepared, and know of their intention." " If they 
 come out," he writes later to a naval friend, when he had 
 ten sail under him, " there will be no fighting beyond my 
 squadron." 
 
 To increase yet further the pressure upon the Spanish fleet 
 to come out, a bombardment was planned against the town 
 and the shipping, the superintendence of which also was 
 intrusted to the commander of the inshore squadron. Only 
 one bomb-vessel was provided, so that very extensive results 
 could scarcely have been anticipated, but Nelson saw, with 
 evident glee, that the enemy's gunboats had taken advanced 
 positions, and intended to have a hand in the night's work. 
 " So much the better," wrote he to Jervis ; " I wish to make it 
 a warm night in Cadiz. If they venture from their walls, I 
 shall give Johnny "^ his full scope for fighting. It will serve 
 to talk of better than mischief." " It is good," he writes to 
 another, " at these times to keep the devil out of their heads. 
 
 1 Cut, or let go, the cables, — leaving the anchor in haste, instead of rais- 
 ing it from the bottom. 
 ^ The British seamen". 
 
250 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 I had rather see fifty shot by the enemy, than one hanged 
 by us." 
 
 The bombardment, which was continued upon two succes- 
 sive nights, did little direct harm ; but it led to a sharp hand- 
 to-hand contest between the British and Spanish boats, in 
 which Nelson personally bore a part, and upon which he 
 seems afterwards to have dwelt with even greater pride and 
 self-satisfaction than upon the magnificent victories with 
 which his name is associated. "It was during this period that 
 perhaps my personal courage was more conspicuous than at 
 any other part of my life." On the first night the Spaniards 
 sent out a great number of mortar gunboats and armed 
 launches. Upon these he directed a vigorous attack to be 
 made, which resulted in their being driven back under the 
 walls of Cadiz ; the Bi-itish, who pursued them, capturing two 
 boats and a launch. In the affray, he says, "I was boarded in 
 my barge with its common crew of ten men, coxswain. Captain 
 Freemantle, and myself, by the commander of the gunboats ; 
 the Spanish barge rowed twenty-six oars, besides officers, — 
 thirty men in the whole. This was a service hand-to-hand 
 with swords, in which my coxswain, John Sykes, now no 
 more, twice saved my life. Eighteen of the Spaniards being 
 killed and several wounded, we succeeded in taking their 
 commander." In his report he complimented this Spanish 
 officer, Don Miguel Tyrason, upon his gallantry. Near a hun- 
 dred Spaniards were made prisoners in this sharp skirmish. 
 
 Not even the insult of bombardment was sufficient to attain 
 the designed end of forcing the enemy's fleet out to fight. 
 The Spaniards confined themselves" to a passive defence by 
 their shore batteries, which proved indeed sufficient to pro- 
 tect the town and shipping, for on the second night they got 
 the range of the bomb-vessel so accurately that the British 
 were forced to withdraw her; but this did not relieve the 
 vital pressure of the blockade, which could only be removed 
 by the mobile naval force coming out and fighting. So far 
 from doing this, the Spanish ships of war shifted their berth 
 inside to get out of the range of bombs. Nelson cast longing 
 eyes upon the smaller vessels which lay near the harbor's 
 mouth, forming a barricade against boat attack, and threaten- 
 ing the offensive measures to which they rarely resorted. 
 
HEALTH AND SPIRITS 251 
 
 "At present the brigs lie too close to each other to hope for 
 a dash at them, but soon I expect to find one off her guard, 
 and then — " For the rest, his sanguine resolve to persist in 
 annoyance until it becomes unbearable, and insures the de- 
 sired object, finds vent in the words : " if Mazaredo will not 
 come out, down comes Cadiz ; and not only Cadiz, but their 
 fleet." 
 
 This close succession of varied and exciting active service, 
 unbroken between the day of his leaving Lisbon, March 5th, 
 and the date of the last bombardment, July 5th, had its 
 usual effect npon his spirits. His correspondence is all 
 animation, full of vitality and energy, betraying throughout 
 the happiness of an existence absorbed in congenial work, at 
 peace with itself, conscious of power adequate to the highest 
 demands upon it, and rejoicing in the strong admiration and 
 confidence felt and expressed towards him on all sides, espe- 
 cially by those whose esteem he most valued. He complains 
 of his health, indeed, from time to time ; he cannot last an- 
 other winter ; he is suffering for the want of a few months' 
 rest, which he must ask for in the coming October, and trusts 
 that, " after four years and nine months' service, without one 
 moment's repose for body or mind, credit will be given me " 
 that I do not sham." 
 
 Bodily suffering was his constant attendant, to which he 
 always remained subject, but at this time it was powerless to 
 depress the moral energies which, under less stimulating 
 conditions, at times lost something of their elastic force. 
 They never, indeed, failed to rise equal to imminent emer- 
 gency, however obscured in hours of gloom, or perplexity, 
 or mental conflict ; but now, supported by the concurrence 
 of every favoring influence, they carried him along in the 
 full flow of prosperity and exhilaration. Thanking Earl 
 Spencer, the First Lord of the Admiralty, for a compli- 
 mentary letter, he says : " The unbounded praises Sir John 
 Jervis has ever heaped, and continues to heap on me, are a 
 noble reward for any services which an officer under his 
 command could perform. Nor is your Lordship less profuse 
 in them." To his wife he writes: "I assure you I never 
 was better, and rich in the praises of every man, from the 
 highest to the lowest in the fleet." " The imperious call of 
 
252 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 liououi' to serve my country, is the ouly thing that keeps me 
 a moment from you, and a hope, that by staying a little longer, 
 it may enable you to enjoy those little luxuries which you so 
 highly merit.'^ '' My late affair here ^ will not, I believe, lower 
 me in the opinion of the world. I have had flattery enough to 
 make me vain, and success enough to make me confident." 
 
 XoTE. Tu Naval Biography and History, distinguished ships have 
 a personality only less vivid than that of the men who fought them. 
 The fate of the " Captain," Nelson's flagship at St. Vincent, can 
 therefore scarcely fail to interest readers. The author is indebted to 
 Lieutenant Henry Chamberlain, R. N., for calling his attention to the 
 following paragraph in the Naval Chronicle, for 1813, vol. sxix. 
 p. 245: — 
 
 " On the night of Friday, March 22d, the Captain, of 74 guns 
 (Lord Nelson's ship when lie took the San Josef), which had recently 
 been converted into a hulk at Plymouth, took fire, and was totally 
 destroyed. The San Josef, which lay alongside, was with difficulty 
 preserved." 
 
 1 The night conflict with the Spanish launches. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The Unsuccessful Attempt against Teneriffe. — Nelson loses his 
 Eight Arm. — Eeturn to England — Rejoins St. Vincent's Fleet, 
 and sent into the mediterranean to watch the toulon 
 Armament. 
 
 July, 1797-April, 1798. Age, 39. 
 
 TOO much success is not wholly desirable ; an occasional 
 beating is good for men — and nations. When Nelson 
 wrote the words with which the preceding chapter ends, he 
 was on the eve of a sharp reverse, met in attempting an 
 enterprise that had occupied his thoughts for more than three 
 months. While cruising for the Viceroy of Mexico, before 
 Jervis left Lisbon with the fleet, he had considered the pos- 
 sibility of the enemy's treasure-ships, warned of their danger, 
 taking refuge in the Canary Islands, which belong to Spain. 
 Meditating upon the contingency, he had formed a project of 
 seizing them there, and probably had already suggested the 
 matter to Jervis, taking advantage of the freedom permitted 
 him by the latter in advancing opinions. However that be, 
 immediately before he started to meet the Elba convoy, the 
 commander-in-chief asked for his plan, which he submitted 
 in writing, after talking it over with Troubridge, his intimate 
 friend, upon whose judgment Jervis also greatly relied. Re- 
 garded as a purely naval expedition, Nelson pointed out that 
 it was subject to great uncertainties, because, the land being 
 very high, the wind could not be depended on. It might 
 blow in from the sea, but if so it would be by daylight, which 
 would deprive the attack of the benefits of a surprise ; while 
 at night the land wind was too fitful and unreliable to assure 
 the ships reaching their anchorage before the enemy could 
 discover them, and have time for adequate preparation against 
 assault. 
 
 For these reasons, certainty of success would depend upon 
 co-operation by the army, and for that Nelson suggested that 
 
254 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 the Elba troops, over three thousand strong, already in trans- 
 ports and on their way, would provide a force at once available 
 and sufficient. Save a naval dash by Blake, more than a 
 century before, Teneriffe had never been seriously attacked. 
 Probably, therefore, the heights commanding the town of 
 Santa Cruz had not been fortified, and could be easily seized 
 by the detachment designated ; besides which, the water supply 
 was exposed to interruption by an outside enemy. If only 
 General De Burgh could be persuaded, Nelson was sure of 
 success, and offered himself to command the naval contingent. 
 Failing the consent of De Burgh, whom he and Jervis both 
 thought deficient in moral courage to undertake responsibility, 
 could not the admiral get assistance from O'Hara, the governor 
 of Gibraltar, who would have at his disposal one thousand to 
 fifteen hundred men ? More would be better, but still with 
 that number success would be probable. " Soldiers," regretted 
 Nelson characteristically, " have not the same boldness in un- 
 dertaking a political measure that we have ; we look to the 
 benefit of our Country and risk our own fame [not life merely] 
 every day to serve her : a soldier obeys his orders and no 
 more." But he thought O'Hara an exception, and then — 
 could not the substantial advantages move him ? The public 
 treasure of Spain that might be seized would be six or seven 
 millions sterling. Think what that sum would be, " thrown 
 into circulation in England! " Avhere specie payments had just 
 been suspended. It was nearly a year's value of the subsidies 
 which Great Britain was lavishing on the general war. 
 Whatever the merits of Nelson's judgment upon the soldiers 
 of his day, this avowal of readiness, for the nation's sake, to 
 risk fame — reputation — which was in his eyes the dearest 
 of possessions, should not be overlooked. It was the best he 
 had to give ; to hazard life was but a vulgar thing compared to 
 it. His career, both before and after, fully bore out the boast. 
 While on the return with the Elba troops, in a despatch 
 sent ahead of the convoy, he jogs Jervis's memory about 
 O'Hara, having doubtless ascertained that De Burgh, as they 
 expected, would not deviate from his orders to proceed to 
 Lisbon. " I hope you will press General O'Hara about 
 Teneriffe. What a strike it would be!" In a copy of this 
 letter forwarded to the Admiralty, presumably by Jervis for 
 
THE TENERIFFE EXPEDITION 
 
 255 
 
 its general information, these words were omitted. Possibly 
 he had already sonnded O'Hara, and found him unwilling, for 
 he was not optimistic ; possibly Jervis himself thought that the 
 fitting conditions had not yet obtained, and did not care to let 
 the idea get abroad before the hour for execution arrived. For 
 the time, the commander-in-chief preferred to keep his fleet 
 concentrated before Cadiz, and to try to worry the enemy out 
 to battle ; for which object, indisputably the most advan- 
 tageous to be pursued, he 'also naturally wished to xise his 
 
 ^lif»%^ 
 
 SKETCH OF SANTA CRUZ AND SUKKOUNDINGS. 
 
 (From Nelson's Journal.) 
 
 most active and efficient subordinate. Both blockade and 
 bombardment having failed to provoke the enemy to action, 
 and intelligence having been received that a treasure-ship 
 from Manila had put into Teneriffe, it was decided in July to 
 make the attempt, which had only been postponed — never 
 abandoned. In words written by Nelson on the 18th of June, 
 the conditions determining Jervis's course are clearly indicated. 
 " I wish these fellows would come out, and then, with the good 
 ships we have left [after a general engagement], we might 
 be a little at liberty to make dashes. I hope your design 
 about Teneriffe will not get wind, by making inquiries at the 
 present moment. Whenever I see it," he added character- 
 istically, " ten hours shall decide its fate." Although unable 
 to obtain the troops upon which he considered certaint}'- to 
 depend, he felt little fear for the result. Two hundred 
 additional marines must be given, and certain specified artillery 
 
256 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 and ammunition in excess of what he had. With these, " I 
 have no doubt of doing the job as it ought to be, the moment 
 the ships come in sight." " Under General Troubridge ashore, 
 and myself afloat, I am confident of success." 
 
 On the 14th of July he received his orders, which were to 
 seize Santa Cruz, the chief town, and hold the island to ran- 
 som, unless all public treasure were surrendered to his 
 squadron, in which case the contribution on the inhabitants 
 should not be levied. " God bless and prosper you," wrote 
 Jervis, who, although he considered the enterprise promising, 
 was less sanguine than his junior. " I am sure you will 
 deserve success. To mortals is not given the power of com- 
 manding it." On the 15th Nelson sailed, having under his 
 command three seventy-fours, a fifty-gun ship, three frigates, 
 and a cutter. Towards sundown of the 20th the Peak of 
 Teneriffe was sighted, distant fifty or sixty miles. The follow- 
 ing morning the landing-party, a thousand strong, under the 
 command of Captain Troubridge, was transferred to the 
 frigates. The intention was to keep the line-of-battle-ships 
 out of sight, while the frigates, whose apparent force would 
 carry no impression of menace, approached near enough to 
 make a dash during the night. It was hoped that thus the 
 assault might be so far a surprise as to enable the British to 
 storm from the rear a fort on the heights, to the northeast 
 of the town, and commanding it. Santa Cruz was then to be 
 summoned. In the meantime the ships-of-the-line would be 
 coming in from the sea, and upon arrival would support the 
 shore movement by bringing their broadsides to bear upon the 
 walls. 
 
 By midnight the frigates were within three miles of the 
 landing-place ; but there strong wind and contrary current 
 delayed them, and before they could get within a mile the day 
 dawned. Thus discovered, the hope of surprise was lost. At 
 6 A.M., when the squadron approached, Troubridge went 
 on board the " Theseus " and told Nelson that he thought, 
 if the heights over the fort, in its rear, could be seized, 
 he could yet compel it to surrender. The landing-party 
 was therefore put on shore at nine, but could not dispossess 
 the enemy, who had recognized the importance of the position 
 indicated by Troubridge, and had occupied it in force. The 
 
THE TENERIFFE EXPEDITION 257 
 
 ships-of-the-line endeavored to get within range of the fort, 
 to batter it, but could not come nearer than three miles. They 
 were unable even to reach anchoring-ground, and, as it was 
 blowing very fresh, they struck their topgallantmasts and. 
 stood off and on. At night Troubridge re-embarked his men 
 on board the frigates, which had remained where they were. 
 The following morning, July 23d, Nelson abandoned the 
 attempt upon the fort, recalling the frigates ; and, as the wind 
 did not yet serve to approach the shore, he continued under 
 sail during that day and the next. The members of the landing- 
 party rejoined their proper ships. 
 
 Troubridge's failure to act at once upon his own judgment, 
 and seize the heights above the fort, instead of waiting until 
 he could communicate with the admiral, whereby were lo?t 
 more than three invaluable hours, excites surprise, in view of 
 the extremely high value set upon him as an officer by St. 
 Vincent and Nelson ; and is the more singular because the 
 latter, in certain " Eecommendations," dated July 17, had in- 
 dicated the heights, as well as the fort, among the objects to 
 be secured. It is, of course, possible that these Eecommen- 
 dations were not given out ; but even so, the formal orders 
 issued gave ample discretion. This hesitation was wholly 
 contrary to Nelson's own readiness to assume responsibility, 
 and probably accounts for his subsequent remark, in a private 
 letter, that had he himself been present this first attempt 
 would not have failed. Occurring in an officer of Troubridge's 
 high standing, and contrasted with Nelson's action at St. 
 Vincent, as well as on many other occasions, the incident 
 serves to bring out forcibly the characteristic eminence of the 
 latter, — the distinction between a really great captain and 
 the best type of a simply accomplished and gallant officer. It 
 may safely be said that had Nelson been in the frigates that 
 morning, and thought as Troubridge thought, he would either 
 have had the heights without waiting for orders, or, to use his 
 own words on a former occasion, would have " been in a con- 
 founded scrape." 
 
 His first x)lan having miscarried, Nelson was nevertheless 
 unwilling to forsake the enterprise wholly, without attempting 
 a direct assault upon the town itself. Meantime the enemy 
 was not idle, but employed the delay caused by the wind to 
 
 17 
 
258 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 collect a greater force, and to develop further the preparations 
 to repel attack. At half -past five in the evening of July 24 
 the squadron reached an anchorage two or three miles north 
 of Santa Cruz, and all boats were ordered prepared for a night 
 expedition. Captain Fremantle, of the frigate '^ Seahorse," 
 had with him his wife, whom he had lately married ; and with 
 them Nelson, who intended to lead the attack in person, 
 supped that evening. He was conscious of the imminent 
 danger to which he was about to expose himself and his fol- 
 lowers ; it is indeed scarcely possible that he could, in under- 
 taking the adventure, have expected to succeed, except thi-ough 
 some happy accident skilfully improved, — the deserved good 
 fortune which had so often attended him. It was not so much 
 the hope of victory that moved him, as the feeling that to re- 
 treat baffled, without a further effort, would be worse than 
 defeat. This in fact was the reason which he afterwards gave. 
 " Although I felt the second attack a forlorn hope, yet the 
 honour of our Country called for the attack, and that I should 
 command it. I never expected to return." " Your partiality 
 will give me credit," he wrote to Jervis, "that all has hitherto 
 been done which was possible, but without effect : this night 
 I, humble as I am, command the whole, destined to land under 
 the batteries of the town, and to-morrow my head will prob- 
 ably be crowned with either laurel or cypress. I liave only to 
 recommend Josiah iSTisbet [his stepson] to you and my Coun- 
 try." He urged ISTisbet not to go in the boats, on the ground 
 that his mother should not run the risk of losing both hus- 
 band and son in one night, and that in the absence of Captain 
 Miller, who was going in charge of a division of men, Nisbet's 
 duties with the ship demanded his remaining. Nisbet steadily 
 refused, and his presence was the immediate means of saving 
 the admiral's life. 
 
 At eleven p. m. the boats shoved off, carrying a thousand 
 men. The orders were for all to land at the mole, the inten- 
 tion being to storm it, and the batteries covering it, in a body, 
 and to fight their way, thus massed, to the great square, which 
 was designated as the place for rallying. A considerable sea 
 was running and the night dark, so that the Spaniards did not 
 discover the assailants till they were within half gunshot. 
 The bells of the place then began to ring, and a heavy fire 
 
THE ASSAULT AT SANTA CRUZ 259 
 
 opened, amid which the British pushed vigorously forward. 
 Mau}^, however, missed the mole. Nelson's own boat reached 
 it with four or five besides, and the parties from these suc- 
 ceeded in carrying the mole itself, advancing to its head and 
 spiking the guns ; but there they were met with such a sus- 
 tained fire of musketry and grape from the citadel and the 
 neighboring houses, that they could get no farther. Many 
 were killed and wounded, and the rest after a struggle had 
 to retreat. 
 
 Troubridge, with a number of others who missed the mole, 
 landed amid a heavy surf, which stove the boats on a rocky 
 beach and tumbled the men into the water, whereby most of 
 the ammunition was spoiled. In the midst of the turmoil 
 the cutter " Fox " was struck by a shot under water, and went 
 down, taking with her her commander and ninety-seven men. 
 Although the scaling-ladders had all been lost in the "general 
 upset, those who here got on shore succeeded in climbing over 
 the walls, and forced their way to the place of rendezvous in 
 the great square. There Troubridge, having assembled be- 
 tween three and four hundred men, held his ground, awaiting 
 Xelson and the party that might have entered by way of the 
 mole. 
 
 It was in vain. Nelson had been struck by a grapeshot in 
 the right elbow, as, with sword drawn, he was stepping from 
 the boat to the landing. Bleeding profusely and faint, but 
 clinging with his left hand to the sword, which had belonged 
 to his uncle Maurice Suckling, he fell back into the arms of 
 Josiah Nisbet, who managed with considerable presence of 
 mind to bind up the shattered limb and stop the flowing of the 
 blood. A few men being got together, the boat pushed off to 
 take the admiral back to the ship. At this moment occurred 
 the sinking of the " Fox ; " upon which much delay ensued, 
 because Nelson refused to abandon the men struggling in the 
 water, and insisted upon looking personally to their being 
 saved. At last the " Seahorse " was reached ; but here again 
 he would not go on board, saying that he would not have 
 Mrs. Fremantle alarmed by seeing him in such a condition 
 and without any news of her husband, who had accompanied 
 the landing. When he got to the " Theseus," he declined 
 assistance to climb to the deck. " At two in the morning," 
 
260 THE LIFE OF ]?fELSON 
 
 wrote Hoste, one of her midshipmen, who had been with him 
 continuously since the " Agamemnon " left England, " Admiral 
 Nelson returned on board, being dreadfully wounded in the 
 right arm. I leave you to judge of my situation, when I be- 
 held our boat approach with him, who I may say has been a 
 second father to me, his right arm dangling by his side, while 
 with the other he helped himself to jump up the ship's side, 
 and with a spirit that astonished every one, told the surgeon 
 to get his instruments ready, for he knew he must lose his 
 arm, and that the sooner it was off the better." 
 
 At daylight Troubridge, who had collected some ammunition 
 from Spanish prisoners, started from the square to try what 
 could be done without ladders against the citadel; but, find- 
 ing every approach blocked by overwhelming force, he had to 
 retreat. Having neither powder nor provisions, and no boats 
 with which to return to the ship, he sent a flag of truce to the 
 governor to say that he was prepared to burn the place down 
 with means at his disposal, but, being most reluctant to do so, 
 was willing to treat, upon condition of the whole party being 
 permitted to return to the ships, free and with their arms. 
 One scarcely knows which most to admire, Troubridge's cool 
 audacity in making such a demand, or the chivalrous readi- 
 ness with which these honorable terms were at once granted 
 to a man whose gallant bearing compelled the esteem of his 
 enemies. Don Juan Gutierrez had repulsed the various at- 
 tempts with such steadiness and watchfulness, had managed 
 his business so well, that he could afford to be liberal. He 
 agreed that Troubridge's men should withdraw, carrying off 
 with them all British equipments, even to such boats as had 
 been taken by the Spaniards, but could still swim. On the 
 other hand, it was stipulated that no further attempt upon 
 the town should be made by ISTelson's squadron. Prisoners on 
 both sides were to be given up. This arrangement having 
 been concluded, the governor directed that the British wounded 
 should be at once received into the hospitals, while the rest of 
 the party, with their colors flying, marched to the mole, and 
 there embarked. 
 
 Troubridge dwelt with evident pride upon his part in this 
 night's work, — a pride that was shared then by his superiors, 
 and will be justified in the eyes of military men now. " The 
 
SIR THOMAS TROUBRIDGE. 
 
 From the Fainting by Sir William Beechey. 
 
THE ASSAULT AT SANTA CRUZ. 261 
 
 Spanish officers assure me they expected us, and were per- 
 fectly prepared with all the batteries, and the number of men 
 I have before mentioned [8,000], under arms : with the great 
 disadvantage of a rocky coast, high surf, and in the face of 
 forty pieces of cannon, though we were not successful, will 
 show what an Englishman is equal to." His conduct affords 
 for all time an example of superb courage in the face of ex- 
 traordinary and unexpected difficulty and danger, and especially 
 of single-minded energy in carrying through one's own share 
 of an enterprise, without misplaced concern about conse- 
 quences, or worry as to whether the other parties were pros- 
 pering or not. Had Nelson reached the square he would have 
 found Troubridge there, and that was the one thing about which 
 the latter needed to care. Nelson's own words recur to mind: 
 " I have not a tliought on any subject separated from the im- 
 mediate object of my command," — a maxim eminently suited 
 to the field and to the subordinate, though not necessarily so 
 to the council chamber or to the general officer. Troubridge 
 that night proved himself invaluable as a subordinate, though 
 the conduct of the previous attempt seems to show a lack of 
 that capacity to seize a favorable moment, although in the 
 presence of a superior, of which Nelson himself had given so 
 brilliant an example at Cape St. Vincent. 
 
 The squadron remained off Teneriffe for three days after 
 the assault, intercourse with the shore for the purpose of 
 obtaining fresh provisions being permitted by the governor, 
 between whom and the admiral were exchanged complimentary 
 letters and presents of courtesy. On the 27th Nelson sailed 
 for Cadiz, and on the ICth of August rejoined the commander- 
 in-chief, now become Earl St. Vincent. The latter received 
 him with generous sympathy and appreciation, which leave 
 little doubt as to what his verdict would have been, had the 
 gallant initiative taken by his junior at St. Vincent ended in 
 disaster, instead of in brilliant success. Nelson's letters, sent 
 ahead of the squadron by a frigate, had shown the despondency 
 produced by suffering and failure, which had reversed so 
 sharply the good fortune upon which he had begun to pride 
 himself. <' I am become a burthen to my friends and useless 
 to my Country. When I leave your command, I become dead 
 to the world; I go hence and am no more seen." ''Mortals 
 
262 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 cannot command success," replied St. Vincent. " You and your 
 companions have certainly deserved it, by the greatest degree 
 of heroism and perseverance that ever was exhibited." ISTelson 
 had asked for his stepson's promotion, implying that he him- 
 self would not hereafter be in a position of influence to lielp 
 the boy — for he was little more. " He is under obligations to 
 me, but he repaid me by bringing me from the mole of Santa 
 Cruz." '•' He saved my life," he said more than once after- 
 wards. St. Vincent immediately made him a commander into 
 the vacancy caused by the death of Captain Bowen, who had 
 fallen in the assault. " Pretty quick promotion," wrote his 
 messmate Hoste, who probably knew, from close association, 
 that Nisbet had not the promising qualities with which he 
 was then credited by his stepfather, from whom in later years 
 he became wholly estranged. 
 
 On the 20th Nelson received formal leave to return to Eng- 
 land in the " Seahorse," and on the 3d of September his flag 
 was hauled down at Spithead. On the way home he suffered 
 niucli. After amputation the ligature had been awkwardly 
 applied to the humeral artery. As he would not allow the 
 surgeon to examine the stuuip during the passage, this was 
 not then discovered, but the intense spasms of pain kept him 
 irritable and depressed. It is likely, too, that his discour- 
 agement was increased by brooding over the failure of his 
 enterprise ; believing, as he did, that had he been with the 
 landing-party, the first attempt would have succeeded. He 
 could scarcely fail now to see that, although it was strictly 
 in accordance with service methods for the senior to remain 
 with the ships, the decisive point in the plan, as first formed, 
 was the seizure of the heights, and that there, consequently, 
 was the true place for the one in chief command. Any captain, 
 Troubridge especially, could have placed the ships as well as 
 Nelson. It is self-accusation, and not fault-finding merely, 
 that breathes in the words : " Had I been with the first party, 
 I have reason to believe complete success would have crowned 
 our efforts. My i^ide suffered.''^ 
 
 Whatever his mental distress, however, he always, from the 
 time of receiving the wound, wi'ote to his wife with careful 
 cheerfulness. " As to my health, it never was better ; and 
 now I hope soon to return to you ; and my Country, I trust, 
 
LADY NELSON. 
 
 From a photograph by Mr. E. Kelly, of Plymouth, of a minia- 
 ture in the possession of Mrs. F. H. B. Eccles, of Shenvell House, 
 Plymouth, a great-granddaughter of Lady N'elson. Believed to 
 have been painted about the time of the Battle of the Nile. 
 
SICK LEAVE IN ENGLAND 2G3 
 
 will not allow me any longer to linger in want of that pecu- 
 niary assistance which I have been fighting the whole war to 
 preserve to her. But I shall not be surprised to be neglected 
 and forgot, as probably I shall no longer be considered as 
 useful. However, I shall feel rich if I continue to enjoy 
 your affection. I am fortunate in having a good surgeon on 
 board ; in short, I am much more recovered than I could have 
 expected. I beg neither you or my father will think much 
 of this mishap : my mind has long been made up to such an 
 event." 
 
 Immediately after quitting the " Seahorse " he joined his 
 wife and father at Bath. For a time the wound seemed to 
 be progressing favorably, but the imlucky complication of the 
 ligature threw him back. "jNIuch pain and some fever," he 
 wrote to a friend soon after his arrival ; and Avliile he kept up 
 fairly before his wife, who spoke of his spirits as very good, 
 he confessed to St. Vincent, on the 18th of September, that he 
 was then not the least better than when he left the fleet. " I 
 have suffered great misery." This letter was dated in London, 
 whither he had gone a few days before to be invested with 
 the Order of the Bath, which was formally done by George 
 III. in person on the 27th of September. He was graciously 
 received by the King, who conversed with him after the 
 ceremony, and by his manner throughout made a lasting im- 
 pression upon the mind of Nelson, whose loyalty was intense. 
 The Order of the Bath remained the most highly prized among 
 his many decorations. At the same time was awarded him a 
 pension of £1,000 a year. 
 
 He remained in London till near Christmas. Sir Gilbert 
 Elliot, the late Viceroy of Corsica, who about this time became 
 Lord Minto, saw him not long after his arrival there, as did 
 also Colonel Drinkwater. Elliot found him looking better and 
 fresher than he ever remembered him, although the continued 
 pain prevented sleep, except by use of opium. He was already 
 impatient to go to sea again, and chafed under the delay of 
 healing, concerning the duration of which the surgeons could 
 give him no assurance. The ligature must be left to slough 
 away, for it was two inches up the wound, and if, in attempt- 
 ing to cut it, the artery should be cut, another amputation 
 would be necessary higher up, which would not be easy, for 
 
2G4 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 the stump was already very short. There was consequently 
 nothing for it but endurance. To his suffering at this time 
 an accomplished surgeon, who sailed with him shortly before 
 Trafalgar, attributed a neuralgic predisposition under which 
 he then labored, and which produced serious effects upon his 
 general health. 
 
 A singular exhibition of his characteristic animation and 
 temperament was elicited by Drinkwater's visit. The colonel 
 saw him shortly before the naval battle of Caraperdown, 
 fought on the 11th of October. " One of the first questions 
 which Nelson put to me was whether I had been at the Admi- 
 ralty. I told him there was a rumou.r that the British fleet 
 had been seen engaged with that of Holland. He started 
 Tip in his peculiar energetic manner, notwithstanding Lady 
 Nelson's attempts to quiet him, and stretching out his un- 
 wounded arm, — 'Drinkwater,' said he, 'I would give this 
 other arm to be with Duncan ^ at this moment ; ' so unconquer- 
 able was the spirit of the man, and so intense his eagerness to 
 give every instant of his life to the service." 
 
 Until the 4th of December his agony continued. On that 
 day the ligature came away, giving instant and entire relief. 
 In a letter to a friend, apologizing for delay in replying, he 
 said: "Truly, till last Monday, I have suffered so much, I 
 hope for your forgiveness. I am now perfectly recovered, 
 and on the eve of being employed." On Friday, the 8th, he 
 wrote to Captain Berr}^, who had led the boarders to the " San 
 Nicolas " at Cape St. Vincent, and was designated to command 
 the ship in which the admiral's flag should next be hoisted, 
 saying that he was well ; and the same day, with that pro- 
 found recognition of a personal Providence which was with 
 him as instinctive as his courage, he sent to a London clergy- 
 man the following request: "An oflicer desires to return 
 thanks to Almighty God for his perfect recovery from a severe 
 wound, and also for the many mercies bestowed upon him. 
 (For next Sunday.)" 
 
 As the close attention of the skilled surgeons in whose 
 hands he had been was now no longer needed, he returned to 
 Bath to await the time when his flagship should be completely 
 
 1 The British admiral in comniaiul of the fleet which fought at Camper- 
 down . 
 
DEPAKTURE FOE MEDITERRANEAN, 1798 265 
 
 equipped. St. Vincent ]iad asked that tlie " Foudroyant," of 
 eighty guns, should be prepared for him ; but, after his sudden 
 recovery, as she was not yet ready, there was substituted for 
 her the "Vanguard," seventy-four, which was commissioned 
 by Berry at Chatham on the 19th of December. In March 
 she had reached Portsmouth, and Nelson then went up to 
 London, where he attended a levee on the 14th of the month 
 and took leave of the King, On the 29th his flag was hoisted, 
 and on the 10th of April, after a week's detention at St. 
 Helen's by head winds, he sailed for Lisbon. There he re- 
 mained for four days, and on the 30th of the month, off Cadiz, 
 rejoined St. Vincent, by whom he was received Avith open 
 arms. The veteran seaman, stern and resolved as was his 
 bearing in the face of danger, was unhopeful about the results 
 of the war, which from the first he had not favored, and for 
 whose ending he was eager. Now, at sixty-four, his health 
 was failing, and the difficulties and dangers of the British 
 cause in the Mediterranean weighed upon him, with a discour- 
 agement very alien from the sanguine joy with which his 
 ardent junior looked forward to coming battles. His request 
 to be relieved from command, on the score of ill-health, 
 was already on file at the Admiralty. " I do assure your 
 Lordship," he wrote to Earl Spencer, "that the arrival of 
 Admiral Nelson has given me new life; you could not 
 have gratified me more than in sending him ; his presence in 
 the Mediterranean is so very essential, that I mean to put 
 the "Orion" and "Alexander " under his command, with the 
 addition of three or four frigates, and send him away, to en- 
 deavour to ascertain the real object of the preparations mak- 
 ing by the French." These preparations for a maritime 
 expedition were being made at Toulon and the neighboring 
 ports, on a scale which justly aroused the anxiety of the 
 British Cabinet, as no certain information about their object 
 had been obtained. 
 
 Nelson's departure from England on this occasion closes 
 the first of the two periods into which his career naturally 
 divides. From his youth until now, wherever situated, the 
 development has been consecutive and homogeneous, external 
 influences and internal characteristics have worked harmoni- 
 ously together, nature and ambition have responded gladly to 
 
266 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 opportunit}', and the course upon which they have combiued 
 to urge him has conformed to his inherited and acquired 
 standards of right and wrong. Doubt, uncertainty, inward 
 friction, double motives, have been unknown to him ; he has 
 moved freely in accordance with the laws of his being, and, 
 despite the anxieties of his profession and the frailty of his 
 health, there is no mistaking the tone of happiness and con- 
 tentment which sounds without a jarring note throughout his 
 correspondence. A change Avas now at hand. As the sails of 
 the "Vanguard" dip below the horizon of England, a brief 
 interlude begins, and when the curtain rises again, the scene 
 is shifted, — surroundings have changed. We see again the 
 same man, but standing at the opening of a new career, whose 
 greatness exceeds by far even the high anticipations that had 
 been formed for him. Before leaving England he is a man of 
 distinction only ; prominent, possibly, among the many distin- 
 guished men of his ov/n profession, but the steady upward 
 course has as yet been gradual, the shining of the light, if it 
 has latterly shot forth flashes suggestive of hidden fires, is still 
 characterized by sustained growth in intensity rather than by 
 rapid increase. No present sign so far foretells the sudden 
 ascent to fame, the burst of meridian splendor with which the 
 sun of his renown was soon to rise upon men's eyes, and in 
 which it ran its course to the cloudless finish of his day. 
 
 Not that there is in that course — in its achievements — 
 any disproportion with the previous promise. The magni- 
 tude of the development we are about to witness is due, not to 
 a change in him, but to the increased greatness of the oppor- 
 tunities. A man of like record in the past, but less gifted, 
 might, it is true, have failed to fill the new sphere which the 
 future was to present. Nelson proved fully equal to it, be- 
 cause he possessed genius for war, intellectual faculties, 
 which, though not unsuspected, had not hitherto been allowed 
 scope for their full exercise. Before him was now about to 
 open a field of possibilities hitherto unexampled in naval war- 
 fare; and for the appreciation of them was needed just those 
 perceptions, intuitive in origin, yet resting firmly on well- 
 ordered rational processes, which, on the intellectual side, 
 distinguished him above all other British seamen. He had 
 already, in casual comment upon the military conditions sur- 
 
HIS MILITARY GENIUS 267 
 
 rounding the former Mediterranean campaigns, given indica- 
 tions of these perceptions, which it has been the aim of 
 previous chapters to elicit from his correspondence, and to 
 marshal in such order as may illustrate his mental character- 
 istics. But, for success in war, the indispensable complement 
 of intellectual grasp and insight is a moral power, which 
 enables a man to trust the inner light, — to have faith, — a 
 power which dominates hesitation, and sustains action, in the 
 most tremendous emergencies, and which, from the formidable 
 character of the difficulties it is called to confront, is in no men 
 so conspicuously prominent as in those who are entitled to 
 rank among great captains. The two elements — mental and 
 moral power — are often found separately, rarely in due combi- 
 nation. In Nelson chey met, and their coincidence with the 
 exceptional opportunities afforded him constituted his good 
 fortune and his greatness. 
 
 The intellectual endowment of genius was Nelson's from 
 the first ; but from the circumstances of his life it was denied 
 the privilege of early manifestation, such as was permitted to 
 Napoleon. It is," consequently, not so much this as the con- 
 stant exhibition of moral power, force of character, which 
 gives continuity to his professional career, and brings the 
 successive stages of his advance, in achievement and reputa- 
 tion, from first to last, into the close relation of steady devel- 
 opment, subject to no variation save that of healthy and 
 vigorous growth, till he stood unique — above all competition. 
 This it was — not, doubtless, to the exclusion of tliat reputa- 
 tion for having a head, upon which he justly prided himself 
 — which had already fixed the eyes of his superiors upon him 
 as the one officer, not yet indeed fully tested, most likely to 
 cope with the difficulties of any emergency. In the display 
 of this, in its many self-revelations, — in concentration of pur- 
 pose, untiring energy, fearlessness of responsibility, judgment 
 sound and instant, boundless audacity, promptness, intrepidity, 
 and endurance beyond all proof, — the restricted field of Coi-- 
 sica and the Eiviera, the subordinate position at Cape St. 
 Vincent, the failure of Teneriffe, had in their measure been as 
 fruitful as the Nile was soon to be, and fell naught behind the 
 bloody harvests of Copenhagen and Trafalgar. Men have 
 been disposed, therefore, to reckon this moral energy — call it 
 
268 THE LITE OF NELSON 
 
 courage, dash, resolution, what you will — as Kelson's one 
 and only great quality. It was the greatest, as it is in all 
 successful men of action ; but to ignore that this mighty 
 motive force was guided by singularly clear and accurate per- 
 ceptions, upon which also it consciously rested with a firmness 
 of faith that constituted much of its power, is to rob him of a 
 great part of his due renown. 
 
 But it was not only in the greatness of the opportunities 
 offered to Nelson that external conditions now changed. The 
 glory of the hero brought a temptation which wrecked the 
 happiness of the man. The loss of serenity, the dark evidences 
 of inward conflict, of yielding against conviction, of conse- 
 quent dissatisfaction with self and gradual deterioration, make 
 between his past and future a break as clear, and far sharper 
 than, the startling increase of radiancy that attends the Battle 
 of the Nile, and thenceforth shines with undiminished inten- 
 sity to the end. The lustre of his well-deserved and world- 
 wide renown, the consistency and ever-rising merit of his 
 professional conduct, contrast painfully with the shadows of 
 reprobation, the swerving, and the declension, whicli begin to 
 attend a life heretofore conformed, in the general, to healthy 
 normal standards of right and wrong, but now allowed to 
 violate, not merely ideal Christian rectitude, but the simple, 
 natural dictates of upright dealing between man and man. 
 It had been the proud boast of early years : " There is no 
 action in my whole life but what is honourable." The attain- 
 ment of glory exceeding even his own great aspirations 
 coincides with dereliction from the plain rules of honor 
 between friends, and with public humiliation to his wife, 
 which he allowed himself to inflict, notwithstanding that he 
 admitted her claims to his deferential consideration to be un- 
 broken. In this contrast, of the exaltation of the hero and 
 the patriot with the degradation of the man, lie the tragedy 
 and the misery of Nelson's story. And this, too, was incurred 
 on behalf of a woman whose reputation and conduct were 
 such that no shred of dignity could attach to an infatuation 
 as doting as it was blamable. The pitiful inadequacy of the 
 temptation to the ruin it caused invests with a kind of prophecy 
 the words he had written to his betrothed in the heyday of 
 courtship : "■ These I trust will ever be my sentiments ; if 
 
MORAL DETEEIORATION 269 
 
 they are not, I do verily believe it will be my folly that 
 occasions it." 
 
 The inward struggle, though severe, was short and decisive. 
 Once determined on his course, he choked down scruples and 
 hesitations, and cast them from him with the same single- 
 minded resolution that distinguished his public acts. "Fixed 
 as fate," were the remorseless words with which he charac- 
 terized his firm purpose to trample conscience under foot, and 
 to reject his wife in favor of his mistress. But although 
 ease may be obtained by silencing self-reproach, safety 
 scarcely can. One cannot get the salt out of his life, and not 
 be the worse for it. Much that made Nelson so lovable re- 
 mained to the end ; but into his heart, as betrayed by his 
 correspondence, and into his life, from the occasional glimpses 
 afforded by letters or journals of associates, there thenceforth 
 entered much that is unlovely, and which to no appreciable 
 extent was seen before. The simple bonhomie, the absence of 
 conventional reticence, the superficial lack of polish, noted by 
 his early biographers, and which he had had no opportunity 
 to acquire, the childlike vanity that transpires so innocently 
 in his confidential home letters, and was only the weak side of 
 his noble longing for heroic action, degenerated rapidly into 
 loss of dignity of life, into an unseemly susceptibility to ex- 
 travagant adulation, as he succumbed to surroundings, the 
 corruptness of which none at first realized more clearly, and 
 where one woman was the sole detaining fascination. And 
 withal, as the poison worked, discontent with self bred dis- 
 content with others, and with his own conditions. Petulance 
 and querulousness too often supplanted the mental elasticity, 
 which had counted for naught the roughnesses on the road to 
 fame. The mind not worthily occupied, and therefore ill at 
 ease, became embittered, prone to censure and to resent, sus- 
 picious at times and harsh in judgment, gradually tending 
 towards alienation, not from his wife only, but from his best 
 and earliest friends. 
 
 During the short stay of seven months in England, which 
 ended with the sailing of the " Vanguard," the record of his 
 correspondence is necessarily very imperfect, both from the 
 loss of his arm, and from the fact of his being with his family. 
 Such indications as there are point to unbroken relations of 
 
270 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 tenderness with his wife. "I found my domestic happiness 
 perfect," he wrote to Lord St. Vincent, shortly after his 
 arrival home ; and some months later, in a letter from Bath to 
 
 a friend, he says jestingly : " Tell that I possess his 
 
 place in Mr. Palmer's box ; but he did not tell me all its 
 charms, that generally some of the handsomest ladies in Bath 
 are partakers in the box, and was I a bachelor I would not 
 answer for being tempted ; but as I am possessed of every- 
 thing which is valuable in a wife, I have no occasion to think 
 beyond a pretty face." Lady Nelson attended personally to 
 the dressing of his arm ; she accompanied him in his journeys 
 between Bath and London, and they separated only when he 
 left town to hoist his flag at Portsmouth. The letters of Lady 
 Saumarez, the wife of one of his brother captains then serv- 
 ing with Lord St. Vincent, mention frequent meetings with 
 the two together in the streets of Bath ; and upon the 1st of 
 May, the day before leaving the fleet olf Cadiz for the Medi- 
 terranean, on the expedition which was to result in the Nile, 
 and all the consequences so fatal to the happiness of both, he 
 concludes his letter, " with every kind wish that a fond heart 
 can frame, believe me, as ever, your most affectionate 
 husband." 
 
 On the 2d of May the " Vanguard " quitted the fleet for 
 Gibraltar, where she arrived on the 4th. On the 7th Nelson 
 issued orders to Sir James Saumarez, commanding the " Orion," 
 and to Captain Alexander Ball, commanding the " Alexander," 
 both seventy-fours, to place themselves under his command ; 
 and the following day the " Vanguard " sailed, in company 
 with these ships and five smaller vessels, to begin the memo- 
 rable campaign, of Avhich the Battle of the Nile was the most 
 conspicuous incident. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 The Campaign and Battle of the Nile. 
 May-September, 1798. Age, 39. 
 
 BETWEEN the time that Nelson was wounded at TenerifEe, 
 July 24, 1797, and his return to active service in April, 
 1798, important and ominous changes had been occurring in 
 the political conditions of Europe. These must be taken 
 briefly into account, because the greatness of the issues thence 
 arising, as understood by tlie British Government, measures 
 the importance in its eyes of the enterprise which it was about 
 to intrust, by deliberate selection, to one of the youngest flag- 
 officers upon the list. The fact of the choice shows the esti- 
 mation to which Nelson had already attained in the eyes of 
 the Admiralty. 
 
 In July, 1797, Great Britain alone was at war with France, 
 and so continued for over a year longer. Portugal, though 
 nominally an all}'-, contributed to the common cause nothing 
 but the use of the Tagus by the British Navy. Austria, it is 
 true, had not yet finally made peace with France, but prelim- 
 inaries had been signed in April, and the definitive treaty of 
 Campo Formio was concluded in October. By it Belgium 
 became incorporated in the territory of France, to which was 
 conceded also the frontier of the Rhine. The base of her 
 power was thus advanced to the river, over which the posses- 
 sion of the fortified city of Mayence gave her an easy passage, 
 constituting a permanent threat of invasion to Gei-many. 
 Venice, as a separate power, disappeared. Part of her former 
 domains upon the mainland, with the city itself, went to 
 Austria, but part was taken to constitute the Cisalpine 
 Republic, — a new state in Northern Italy, nominally inde- 
 pendent, but really under the control of France, to whom it 
 owed its existence. Corfu, and the neighboring islands at the 
 
272 THE LIFE OF KELSON 
 
 mouth of the Adriatic, till then belonging to Venice, were 
 transferred to France. The choice of these distant and 
 isolated maritime positions, coupled with the retention of a 
 large army in the valley of the Po, showed, if any evidence 
 were needed, a determination to assure control over the Italian 
 peninsula and the Mediterranean Sea. 
 
 The formal acquisitions by treaty, even, did not measure the 
 full menace of the conditions. The Revolutionary ferment, 
 which had partially subsided, received fresh impetus from the 
 victories of Bonaparte and the cessation of Continental war ; 
 and the diplomacy of France continued as active and as 
 aggressive as the movement of her armies had previously 
 been. By constant interference, overt and secret, not always 
 stopping short of violence, French influence and French ideas 
 were propagated among the weaker adjoining states. Holland, 
 Switzerland, and the Italian Republics became outposts of 
 France, occupied by French troops, and upon them were 
 forced governments conformed to the existing French pattern. 
 In short, the aggrandizement of France, not merely in moral 
 inflnence but in physical control, was being pushed forward as 
 decisively in peace as in war. and by means which threatened 
 the political equilibrium of Europe. But, while all states 
 were threatened, Great Britain remained the one chief enemy 
 against which ultimately the efforts of France must be, and 
 were, concentrated. " Either our government must destroy 
 the English monarchy," wrote Bonaparte at this time, "or 
 must expect itself to be destroyed by the corruption and 
 intrigue of those active islanders." The British ministry on 
 its part also realized that the sea-power of their country was 
 the one force from which, because so manifold in its activities, 
 and so readily exerted in many quarters by virtue of its 
 mobility, France had most reason to fear the arrest of its 
 revolutionary advance and the renewal of the Continental war. 
 It was, therefore, the one opponent against which the efforts 
 of the French must necessarily be directed. For the same 
 reason it was the one centre around whose action, wisely 
 guided, the elements of discontent, already stirring, might 
 gather, upon the occurrence of a favorable moment, and con- 
 stitute a body of resistance capable of stopping aggressions 
 which threatened the general well-being. 
 
REAR ADMIRAL, SIR HORATIO NELSON 
 
 IN 1798. 
 
 From the fainting by L. F. Abbott in the National Portrait Gallery. 
 
POLITICAL STATE OF EUROPE 273 
 
 When the British Government found that the overtures for 
 peace which it had made in the summer of 1797 could have no 
 result, except on terms too humiliating to be considered, it at 
 once turned its attention to the question of waging a distinct- 
 ively offensive war, for effect in which co-operation was needed. 
 The North of Europe was hopeless. Prussia persisted in the 
 policy of isolation, adopted in 1795 by herself and a number 
 of the northern German states. Kussia was quietly hostile to 
 France, but the interference contemplated by the Empress 
 Catherine had been averted by her death in 1796, and her 
 successor, Paul, had shown no intention of undertaking it. 
 There remained, therefore, the Mediterranean. In Italy, 
 France stood face to face with Austria and Naples, and both 
 these were dissatisfied with the action taken by her in the 
 Peninsula itself and in Switzerland, besides sharing the appre- 
 hension of most other governments from the disquiet attend- 
 ing her political course. An advance into the Mediterranean 
 was therefore resolved by the British Cabinet. 
 
 This purpose disconcerted St. Vincent, who, besides his 
 aversion from the war in general, was distinguished rather 
 by tenacity and resolution in meeting difficulties and dangers, 
 when forced upon him, than by the sanguine and enterprising 
 initiative in offensive measures which characterized Nelson. 
 Writing to the latter on the 8th of January, 1798, he says : 
 "I am much at a loss to reconcile the plans in contemplation 
 to augment this fleet and extend its operations, with the peace 
 which Portugal seems determined to make with France, upon 
 any terms the latter may please to impose ; because Gibraltar 
 is an unsafe depot for either stores or provisions, which the 
 Spaniards have always in their power to destroy, and the 
 French keep such an army in Italy, that Tuscany and Naples; 
 would fall a sacrifice to any the smallest assistance rendered 
 to our fleet." In other words, the old question of supplies; 
 still dominated the situation, in the apprehension of this; 
 experienced officer. Yet, in view of the serious condition of 
 things, and the probable defection of Portugal under the 
 threats of France and Spain, to which he alludes, it seems, 
 probable that the ministry were better advised, in their deter- 
 mination to abandon a passive defence against an enemy 
 unrelentingly bent upon their destruction. As Nelson said 
 
 18 
 
274 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 of a contingency not more serious : '' Desperate affairs require 
 desperate remedies." 
 
 However determined the British Government might be to 
 act in the Mediterranean, some temporary perplexity must at 
 first have been felt as to where to strike, until a movement of 
 the enemy solved the doubt. In the early months of 1798 the 
 Directory decided upon the Egyptian expedition under General 
 Bonaparte, and, although its destination was guarded with 
 admirable secrecy until long after the armament sailed, the 
 fact necessarily transpired that preparations were being made 
 on a most extensive scale for a maritime enterprise. The 
 news soon reached England, as it did also Jervis at his station 
 off Cadiz. Troops and transports were assembling in large 
 numbers at the southern ports of France, in Genoa, Civita 
 Vecchia, and Corsica, while a fleet of at least a dozen ships-of- 
 the-liue was fitting out at Toulon. Various surmises were 
 afloat as to the object, but all at this time were wide of the 
 mark. 
 
 On the 29th of April, less than three weeks after !N"elson 
 left England, but before he joined the fleet, the Cabinet issued 
 orders to St. Vincent to take such measures as he deemed 
 necessary to thwart the projects of the Toulon squadron. It 
 was left to his judgment whether to go in person with his 
 whole fleet, or to send a detachment of not less than nine or 
 ten ships-of-the-line under a competent flag-officer. If i)os- 
 sible, the government wished him to maintain the blockade 
 of Cadiz as it had been established since the Battle of St. 
 Vincent ; but everything was to yield to the necessity of 
 checking the sailing of the Toulon expedition, or of defeating 
 it, if it had already started. A speedy reinforcement was 
 promised, to supply the places of the ships that might be 
 detached. 
 
 Accompanying the public letter was a private one from the 
 First Lord of the Admiralty, reflecting the views and anxieties 
 of the Government. " The circumstances in which we now 
 find ourselves oblige us to take a measure of a more decided 
 and hazardous comjDlexion than we should otherwise have 
 thought ourselves justified in taking; but when you are 
 apprized that the appearance of a British squadron in the 
 Mediterranean is a condition on which the fate of Europe 
 
BONAPARTE'S EGYPTIAN EXPEDITION 275 
 
 may at this moment be stated to depend, you will not be sur- 
 prised that we are disposed to strain every nerve, and incur 
 considerable hazard in effecting it," This impressive, almost 
 solemn, statement of the weighty and anxious character of 
 the intended step, emphasizes the significance of the choice, 
 which the First Lord indicates as that of the Government, of 
 the officer upon whom such a charge is to devolve. " If you 
 determine to send a detachment into the Mediterranean [in- 
 stead of going in person with the fleet], I think it almost 
 unnecessary to suggest to you the propriety of putting it 
 under the command of Sir H. Kelson, whose acquaintance 
 with that part of the world, as well as his activity and dis- 
 position, seem to qualify him in a peculiar manner for that 
 service." 
 
 In concluding his letter, Earl Spencer summed up the 
 reasons of the Government, and his own sense of the great 
 risk attending the undertaking, for the conduct of which he 
 designated Nelson. "I am as strongly impressed, as I have 
 no doubt your Lordship will be, with the hazardous nature of 
 the measure which we now have in contemplation ; but I 
 cannot at the same time help feeling how much depends upon 
 its success, and how absolutely necessary it is at this time to 
 run some risk, in order, if possible, to bring about a new 
 system of affairs in EurojDe, which shall save us all from 
 being overrun by the exorbitant power of France. In this 
 view of the subject, it is impossible not to perceive how much 
 depends on the exertions of the great Continental powers; 
 and, without entering further into what relates more par- 
 ticularly to them, I can venture to assure you that no good 
 will be obtained from them if some such measure as that 
 now in contemplation is not immediately adopted. On the 
 other hand, if, by our appearance in the Mediterranean, we 
 can encourage Austria to come forward again, it is in the 
 highest degree probable that the other powers will seize the 
 ojiportunity of acting at the same time, and such a general 
 concert be established as shall soon bring this great contest 
 to a termination, on grounds less unfavorable by many 
 degrees to the parties concerned than appeared likely a short 
 time since." It may be added here, by way of comment, that 
 the ups and downs of Xelson's pursuit, the brilliant victory 
 
276 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 at the Nile, and the important consequences flowing from it, 
 not only fully justified this forecast, but illustrated aptly 
 that in war, when a line of action has been rightly chosen, 
 the following it up despite great risks, and with resolute 
 perseverance through many disappointments, will more often 
 than not give great success, — a result which may probably 
 be attributed to the moral force which necessarily underlies 
 determined daring and sustained energy. 
 
 As has appeared, the Government's recommendation had 
 been ratified beforehand by St. Vincent, in sending Nelson 
 with three ships to watch Toulon. Upon receiving the 
 despatches, on the 10th of May, the admiral's first step was 
 to order Nelson to return at once to the fleet, to take charge 
 of the detachment from the beginning. " You, and you only, 
 can command the important service in contemplation ; there- 
 fore, make the best of your way down to me." More urgent 
 letters arriving from England, with news that a heavy rein- 
 forcement had left there, he, on the 19th, hurried off a brig, 
 "La Mutine," commanded by Hardy, Nelson's former lieu- 
 tenant, to notify the rear-admiral that a squadron of ten ships 
 would be sent to him shortly from before Cadiz ; and on the 
 21st this detachment sailed, under the command of Captain 
 Troubridge. 
 
 The " Mutine " joined Nelson on the 5th of June. His 
 little division had so far had more bad fortune than good. 
 Leaving Gibraltar on the 8th of May, late in the evening, 
 so that the easterly course taken should not be visible to 
 either friend or enemy, he had gone to the Gulf of Lyons. 
 There a small French corvette, just out of Toulon, was 
 captured on the 17th, but, except in unimportant details, 
 yielded no information additional to that already possessed. 
 On the 19th Bonaparte sailed with all the vessels gathered 
 in Toulon, directing his course to the eastward, to pass near 
 Genoa, and afterwards between Corsica and the mainland 
 of Italy. On the night of the 20th, in a violent gale of wind, 
 the *' Vanguard " rolled overboard her main and mizzen top- 
 masts, and later on the foremast went, close to the deck. 
 The succession of these mishaps points rather to spars badly 
 secured and cared for than to unavoidable accident. Fortu- 
 nately, the " Orion " and " Alexander " escaped injury, and 
 
HIS FLAGSHIP DISMASTED 277 
 
 the latter, on the following morning, took the "VangUcard" 
 in tow, to go to Oristaii Bay, in Sardinia. The situation 
 became extremely dangerous on the evening of the 22d, for, 
 the wind falling light, the sail-power of the " Alexander'" was 
 scarcely sufficient to drag both ships against a heavy westerly 
 swell which was setting them bodily upon the Sardinian 
 coast, then not far distant. Thinking the case hopeless, 
 Nelson ordered the " Alexander " to let go the hawser; but 
 Captain Ball begged permission to hold on, and finally suc- 
 ceeded in saving the flagship, which, on the 23d, anchored 
 with her consorts under the Islands of San Pietro, at the 
 sputhern extremity of Sardinia. The governor of the place 
 sent word that they must not remain, Sardinia being allied to 
 France, but added that, as he had no power to force them out, 
 they would doubtless do as they pleased ; and he supplied 
 them with fresh provisions, — a line of conduct which illus- 
 trates at once the restrictions imposed upon British operations 
 in the Mediterranean by French insistence, and at the same 
 time the readiness of the weaker states to connive at the 
 evasion of them, other instances of which occurred during 
 this period. By the united efforts of the division, four days 
 sufficed to refit the "Vanguard" with jury-masts, and the 
 three ships again sailed, on the 27th, for an appointed 
 rendezvous, to seek the frigates, which had separated during 
 and after the gale. 
 
 This severe check, occurring at so critical a moment, — 
 more critical even than Nelson knew, for he remained igno- 
 rant of the French sailing for some days longer, — was in 
 itself disheartening, and fell upon one whose native eagerness 
 chafed painfully against enforced inaction and delay. His 
 manner of bearing it illustrated both the religious character- 
 istics, which the experience of grave emergencies tends to 
 develop and strengthen in men of action, and the firmness of 
 a really great man, never more signally displayed than under 
 the pressure of calamity and suspense, such as he continually 
 had to undergo. The exceptional brilliancy and decisiveness 
 of his greater battles — the Nile, Copenhagen, and Trafalgar 
 — obscure the fact that each of them was preceded by a weary 
 period of strenuous uphill work, a steady hewing of his way 
 through a tanglewood of obstacles, a patient endurance of dis- 
 
278 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 appointments, a display of sustained, undaunted resolution 
 under discouragements, nobler far than even the moments of 
 triumphant action, into which at last he joyfully emerges and 
 freely exerts his extraordinary powers. " I trust," he wrote 
 to St. Vincent, " my friends will tliink I bore my chastisement 
 like a man. I hope it has made me a better officer, as I 
 believe it has made me a better man. On the Sunday evening 
 I thought myself in every respect one of the most fortunate 
 men, to command such a squadron in such a place, and n\j 
 pride was too great for man." To his wife he wrote in the 
 same strain : "I ought not to call what has happened to the 
 Vanguard by the cold name of accident ; I believe firmly that 
 it was the Almighty's goodness, to check my consummaffe 
 vanity." 
 
 Vanity was rather a hard name to call the natural elation of 
 a young admiral, intrusted with an unusually important ser- 
 vice, and proud of his command ; but the providential inter- 
 position worked directly to his advantage. The delays caused 
 by the repairs to the " Vanguard," and by the subsequent 
 necessity of seeking the separated frigates at the rendezvous 
 appointed for such a case, made possible the junction of Trou- 
 bridge, of whose approach Nelson was totally ignorant. On 
 the 2d of June Sir James Saumarez mentions speaking a ship, 
 which a few days before had seen eleven sail-of-the-line, sup- 
 posed to be English. "We are at a loss what conjectures to 
 put on this intelligence." Five days before this, May 28, a 
 vessel out of Marseilles had informed them of Bonaparte's 
 sailing with all his transports. Nelson would doubtless have 
 pursued them at once, in conformity witli his instructions to 
 ascertain the enemy's objects ; but for such operations, essen- 
 tially those of a scouting expedition, the frigates were too 
 necessary to be left behind. On the 4th of June he reached 
 the rendezvous, and, not finding the frigates, waited. The 
 next morning, by the arrival of the "Mvitine," he learned that 
 he was to expect the reinforcement, which converted his 
 division into a fleet, and enlarged his mission from one of 
 mere reconnoissance to the duty of overtaking and destroying 
 a great maritime expedition. 
 
 Besides this good news, the " Mutine " brought word of 
 another misfortune, more irretrievable than the loss of spars. 
 
JOINED BY TEOUBRIDGE 279 
 
 She had fallen in with the frigates three days before, and the 
 senior captain had told Hardy that he was going with them to 
 Gibraltar, persuaded that the condition of the flagship, which 
 he had seen, would necessitate her return to an arsenal for 
 repairs. " I thought Hope would have known me better," 
 commented Nelson, when he became aware of a step which 
 materially affected, in fact probably entirely changed, the 
 course of events, and most seriously embarrassed all his sub- 
 sequent movements. This untimely and precipitate action, 
 and his remark, illustrate conspicuously the differences be- 
 tween men, and exemplify the peculiar energy and unrelax- 
 ing forward impulse which eminently fitted Nelson for his 
 present high charge. 
 
 The inconvenience and danger arising from the frigates' 
 departure was instantly felt. "Nothing," wrote Saumarez, 
 "can equal our anxiety to fall in with the reinforcement. 
 Our squadron has been, these two days, detached in all direc- 
 tions, without falling in with them ; and there is strong 
 reason to fear they think us returned to Gibraltar" — from 
 Hope's reports. Such were the risks springing from mis- 
 placed caution, more ruinous than the most daring venture, 
 and which from beginning to end well-nigh wrecked the 
 great attempt upon which the Admiralty, St. Vincent, and 
 Nelson had staked so much. In further consequence, the 
 line-of-battle ships became separated by stretching too far 
 apart in their anxious care to find Troubridge, and when he 
 joined the "Vanguard," on the 7th, the "Orion " and "Alex- 
 ander " were not in sight. The French having so long a 
 start, and there being now with him eleven seventy-fours. 
 Nelson with characteristic promptness would not delay an 
 instant. The fifty-gun ship " Leander," which had come with 
 Troubridge, was directed to wait forty-eight hours for the two 
 absentees, with a memorandum of the course about to be fol- 
 lowed. Confident that single ships would be able to over- 
 take a squadron whose route they knew, the admiral at once 
 pushed on for Cape Corso, the north point of Corsica, intend- 
 ing to pass between the island and Italy, seeking information 
 as he went. The "Mutine" was all he had to replace the 
 missing frigates. 
 
 June 7th thus marks the beginning of a chase, which 
 
280 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 ended only upon the 1st of August in the Battle of the Nile. 
 During this miserable period of suspense and embarrassment, 
 occasioned and prolonged beyond all reason or necessity by 
 the want of lookout ships, the connecting and illuminating 
 thread is the purpose of Nelson, at once clear and firm, to 
 find the French fleet and to fight it the instant found. No 
 other consideration draws his mind aside, except so far as it 
 may facilitate the attainment and fulfilment of this one ob- 
 ject. In this one light he sees all things. At the start he 
 writes to St. Vincent : " You may be assured I will fight 
 them the moment I can reach, be they at anchor or under 
 sail." Three days later, he tells Sir William Hamilton : 
 '' If their fleet is not moored in as strong a port as Toulon, 
 nothing shall hinder me from attacking them." " Be they 
 bound to the Antipodes," he says to Earl Spencer, "your 
 Lordship may rely that I will not lose a moment in bringing 
 them to action, and endeavour to destroy their transports." 
 Such expressions are repeated with a frequency which proves 
 the absolute hold the resolution had upon his mind. When 
 obstacles occur to him, or are mentioned, they do not make 
 room for the thought of not fighting to be entertained ; only 
 Toulon suggests the idea of impossibility. He raises diffi- 
 culties diligently enough, but it is only that they may be 
 the better overcome, not that they may deter. All possible 
 conditions are considered and discussed, but simply in order 
 that the best fighting solution may be reached. The constant 
 mental attitude is such that the man is unprepared to recede 
 before any opposition ; he fortifies his mind beforehand with 
 the best means of meeting and vanquishing it, but the at- 
 tempt at least shall be made. " Thank God," he wrote at this 
 moment, "I do not feel difficulties;" yet the avowal itself 
 accompanies so plain a statement of his embarrassments as to 
 show that his meaning is that they do not discourage. This 
 characteristic appeared most strongly at Copenhagen, partly 
 because the difficulties there were greatest, partly from the 
 close contrast with a man of very different temper. 
 
 Being entirely without intelligence as to the real object of 
 the French, there was nothing to do but to follow upon their 
 track, with eyes open for indications. They were known to 
 have gone southerly, towards Naples and Sicily ; and these 
 
THE PURSUIT OF BONAPARTE 281 
 
 two points, parts of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, had 
 been mentioned by Jervis as probable destinations. The 
 "Orion" and "Alexander" rejoined in two or three days, 
 and on the 14th of June information, second-hand but prob- 
 able, was obtained that on the 4th the French armament had 
 been seen off the west end of Sicily, steering to the eastward. 
 '•' If they pass Sicily," said Nelson in his letter to Spencer 
 written the next day, " I shall believe they are going on their 
 scheme of possessing Alexandria, and getting troops to India 
 — a plan concerted with Tippoo Saib, by no means so diffi- 
 cult as might at first view be imagined." Troubridge was 
 now sent ahead in the " Mutine " to communicate with Sir 
 William Hamilton, the British minister at Naples, and with 
 Acton, the prime minister of that Kingdom. He took with 
 him letters from the admiral, who wished to know what co- 
 operation he might hope from the Court of Naples, in the 
 matters of supplies, of frigates to act as lookouts, and of 
 pilots for Sicilian waters. 
 
 On the 17th the squadron hove-to ten miles off Naples, and 
 Troubridge rejoined. The Neapolitan Government sent assur- 
 ances of good wishes, and of hatred to the French ; supplies 
 would be given under the rose, and Acton sent a written 
 order to that effect, addressed to the governors of ports in the 
 name of the King. Naples being at peace with France, assist- 
 ance with ships could not be given, nor, to use the words of 
 Nelson, "the smallest information of what was, or was likely 
 to be, the future destination of the French armament. With 
 this comfortable account I pushed for the Faro of Messina." 
 Troubridge brought word, however, that the French fleet was 
 off Malta, about to attack it, which served to give direction 
 for the squadron's next move. 
 
 After leaving Naples Nelson wrote strong and clear letters 
 to Sir William Hamilton upon the existing conditions. Why 
 should Naples stand in shivering hesitation about taking a de- 
 cided step in support of Great Britain ? She had looked and 
 prayed for the arrival of the fleet, as the one force competent 
 to check the designs of the French. Sicily could be approached 
 only by water, and the distance of Naples from Northern Italy 
 rendered the control of the sea most advantageous, if not ab- 
 solutely essential, to a French army attempting to hold the 
 
282 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 boot of the peninsula, Now the British fleet had come, in 
 force adequate to neutralize the French Navy, and, in Nelson's 
 belief, to defeat and destroy it, if properly supported. Did 
 Naples expect to escape by a timid adherence to half measures, 
 when by her notorious preference for the British she had al- 
 ready gained the ill-will of the French ? *' The French know 
 as well as you and I do, that their Sicilian Majesties called 
 for our help to save them — even this is crime enough with 
 the French." Safety — true safety — could be had only by 
 strenuous and decisive action in support of Nelson's squadron. 
 Did not the attack on Malta indicate a design upon Sicily ? 
 "Were I commanding a fleet attending an army which is to 
 invade Sicily, I should say to the general, ' If you can take 
 Malta, it secures the safety of your fleet, transports, stores, 
 &c., and insures your safe retreat [from Sicily] should that 
 be necessary ; for if even a superior fleet of the enemy should 
 arrive, before one week passes, they will be blown to leeward 
 and you may pass with safety.' This would be my opinion. . . . 
 I repeat it, Malta is the direct road to Sicily. '^ If the French 
 are overtaken, he continues, and found in some anchorage, it 
 can scarcely be so strong but that I can get at them, but there 
 will be needed things which I have not, fire-ships, bomb- 
 vessels, and gunboats, when one hour would either destroy or 
 drive them out. Without such aid, the British- may be 
 crippled in their attempt, and forced to leave the Mediter- 
 ranean. In case of blockade — or necessity to remain for any 
 reason — the fleet must have supplies, which only Naples can 
 furnish. Failing these it must retire, and then Sicily and 
 Naples are lost. Since, then, so much assistance must be 
 given in time, why postpone now, when one strong blow 
 would give instant safety ? Why should not his own motto, 
 " I will not lose a moment in attacking them," apply as well 
 to the policy of an endangered kingdom as of a British 
 admiral ? 
 
 If this reasoning and advice took more account of the exi- 
 gencies of the British arms than of the difficulties of a weak 
 state of the second order, dependent for action upon the sup- 
 port of other nations, they were at least perfectly consonant 
 to the principles and practice of the writer, wherever he him- 
 self had to act. But Nelson could not expect his own spirit 
 
 I 
 
THE PURSUIT OF BONAPARTE 283 
 
 ill tlie King of tlie Two Sicilies. Even if the course suggested 
 were the best for Naples under the conditions, it is the prop- 
 erty of ordinary men, in times of danger, to see difficulties 
 more clearly than advantages, and to shrink from steps which 
 involve risk, however promising of success. The Neapolitan 
 Government, though cheered by the appearance of the British 
 fleet, had to consider danger also on the land side, where it 
 relied upon the protection of Austria, instead of trusting man- 
 fully to its own arms and the advantages of its position, re- 
 mote from the centre of French power. Austria had pledged 
 herself to support Naples, if invaded without just cause ; but 
 it was not certain that she would interfere if the cause of at- 
 tack was the premature admission of British ships into the 
 ports of the kingdom, beyond the number specified in the still 
 recent treaties with France. The Emperor was meditating 
 Avar, in which he expected to assist Naples and to be assisted 
 by her ; but he did not choose to be hurried, and might refuse 
 aid if an outbreak were precipitated. 
 
 Actually, what Naples did mattered little. Under some 
 contingencies, such as Nelson was contemplating when he 
 wrote his letter, it might have mattered much whether he re- 
 ceived the abundant support of small armed vessels which he 
 indicated ; but in the end supplies only were required, and 
 those he had orders from Jervis to exact at the mouth of his 
 cannon from all powers, — friends or neutrals, — Sardinia 
 only excepted. The fleet passed the Straits of Messina on 
 the 20th of June, and continued south, keeping close to the 
 Sicilian shore in hope of information, until the 22d, when 
 it was off Cape Passaro, the southeastern extremity of the 
 island. There a Genoese brig was spoken, which had left 
 Malta the previous day. From her Nelson learned that Malta 
 had surrendered to the French on the 15th, a week before, 
 which was correct ; but the information further stated, that, 
 after landing a garrison, the expedition had sailed again on 
 the 16th — it was thought for Sicily. This last news was un- 
 true, whether by intention or not, for Bonaparte remained in 
 Malta till the 19th ; but upon it Nelson had to act. Had he 
 seen the captain of the stranger himself, he might have found 
 out more, for he was a shrewd questioner, and his intellect 
 was sharpened by anxiety, and by constant dwelling upon the 
 
284 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 elements of the intricate problem before liim ; but the vessel 
 had been boarded by the " Mutine," three hours before, and 
 was now beyond recall. 
 
 At this season the winds in the Mediterranean prevail from 
 the westward; therefore, with the six days' start the enemy 
 was believed now to have, no time could be lost. Six days 
 sufficed to carry the British squadron from its present position 
 to Alexandria, which Nelson was already inclined to think the 
 destination of the French. Yet, being dependent upon a wind 
 then practically constant in direction, it would not do to yield 
 a mile of ground, except upon a mature, if rapid, deliberation. 
 Nelson's own mind was, by constant preoccupation, familiar 
 beforehand with the bearings of the different conditions of 
 any situation likely to occur, and with the probable inferences 
 to be drawn ; his opinions Avere, so to say, in a constant state 
 of formation and development, ready for instantaneous appli- 
 cation to any emergency as it arose. But he had, besides, ex- 
 ercised the same habit in the captains of the ships, by the 
 practice of summoning them on board the flagship, singly or 
 in groups ; !he slow movement of sailing vessels, particularly 
 in the light summer weather of the Mediterranean, permitting 
 such intercourse without materially affecting the progress of 
 the fleet. Invitations or commands so to visit the flagship 
 were common. " I have passed the day on board the Van- 
 guard,"' notes Saumarez on one occasion, " having breakfasted 
 and stayed to dinner with the admiral." " It was his practice 
 during tlie whole of his cruise," Avrote Berry, the flag-captain, 
 ''whenever the weather and circumstances would permit, to 
 have his captains on board the Vanguard, where he would 
 fully develop to them his own ideas of the different and best 
 modes of attack, in all possible positions." That such con- 
 versations were not confined to tactical questions, but extended 
 to what would now be called the strategy of the situation, is 
 evident from allusions by Saumarez to the various surmises 
 concerning the probable movements of the enemy. Nelson 
 never yielded a particle of his responsibility, nor of his credit, 
 but it is clear that such discussion would not only broaden his 
 own outlook, but prepare his subordinates to give readier and 
 sounder views upon any new conjuncture that might arise. 
 
 He now summoned on board four captains " in whom I place 
 
THE PURSUIT OE BONAPARTE 285 
 
 great coDfidence," Saumarez, Troubridge, — the two seniors, — 
 Ball and Darby, stated the case, and received their opinions. 
 These seem to have been given in writing,^ and from his letter 
 to St. Vincent the results of the conference, as shown by his de- 
 cision, may be summarized as follows. With the existing winds, 
 it would be impossible for such a fleet as the enemy's to get to 
 the westward. Had they aimed at Sicily, an object concern- 
 ing which explicit disclaimers had been given by the French 
 to the ISTeapolitan Government, some indication of their 
 approach must have been known at Syracuse, the day before, 
 when the British were off tliat city. Consequently, the expe- 
 dition must have gone to the eastward. The size and nature 
 of the armament must also be considered, — forty thousand 
 troops, a dozen ships-of-the-line, besides a staff of scientific 
 men, — all pointed to a great, distant, and permanent occupa- 
 tion. The object might be Corfu, or to overthrow the exist- 
 ing government of Turkey, or to settle a colony in Egypt. 
 As between these, all equally possible, the last was the most 
 direct and greatest menace to present British interests, and 
 should determine his course. "If they have concerted a plan 
 with Tippoo Saib, to have vessels at Suez, three weeks, at this 
 season, is a common passage to the Malabar coast, where our 
 India possessions would be in great danger." 
 
 Such was the conclusion — how momentous at the moment 
 can only be realized by those who will be at the pains to con- 
 sider a man still young, with reputation brilliant indeed, but 
 not established; intrusted with a great chance, it is true, but 
 also with a great responsibility, upon which rested all his 
 future. On slight, though decisive, preponderance of evi- 
 dence, he was about to risk throwing away an advantage a 
 
 1 The author is indebted to the present Lord De Saumarez for a copy of the 
 opinion of Sir James Saumarez, written on board the "Vanguard" at this 
 meeting: — • 
 
 "The French fleet having left Malta six days ago, had their destination 
 been the Island of Sicily there is reason to presume we should have obtained 
 information of it yesterday off Syracuse, or the day before in coming through 
 the Pharo of Messina — under all circumstances I think it most conducive to 
 the good of His Majesty's service to make the best of our way for Alexandria, 
 as the only means of saving our possessions in India, should the French arma- 
 ment be destined for that counti-y. 
 
 "Vanguard, at sea, 22d June 1798. James Saumarez." 
 
286 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 seaman must appreciate, that of being to windward of his 
 enemy, — able to get at him, — the strategist's position of 
 command. The tongues of envy and censure might well be 
 — we now know that they were — busy in inquiring why so 
 young an admiral had so high charge, and in sneering at his 
 failure to find the enemy. " Knowing my attachment to you," 
 wrote his old friend. Admiral Goodall, alongside whom he 
 had fought under Hotham, " how often have I been ques- 
 tioned : ' What is your favourite hero about ? The French 
 fleet has passed under his nose,' &c., &c." Kelson was saved 
 from fatal hesitation, primarily, by his singleness of purpose, 
 which looked first to his country's service, to the thorough 
 doing of the work given him to do, and only afterwards to the 
 consequences of failure to his own fame and fortunes. At 
 that moment the choice before him was either to follow out an 
 indication, slight, but as far as it went clear, w^hich, though 
 confessedly precarious, promised to lead to a great and decisive 
 result, such as he had lately urged upon the King of Naples ; 
 or to remain where he was, in an inglorious security, perfectly 
 content, to use words of his own, that '' each day passed with- 
 out loss to our side." To the latter conclusion might very 
 well have contributed the knowledge, that the interests which 
 the Cabinet thought threatened were certainly for the present 
 safe. Broadly as his instructions were drawn, no word of 
 Egypt or the East was specifically in them. Naples, Sicil}'', 
 Portugal, or Ireland, such were the dangers intimated by 
 Spencer and St. Vincent in their letters, and he was distinctly 
 cautioned against letting the enemy get to the westward of 
 him. He might have consoled himself for indecisive action, 
 which procrastinated disaster and covered failure with the 
 veil of nullity, as did a former commander of his in a gazetted 
 letter, by the reflection that, so far as the anticipations of the 
 ministry went, the designs of the enemy were for the time 
 frustrated, by the presence of his squadron between them and 
 the points indicated to him. 
 
 But the single eye of jirinciple gained keener insight in 
 this case by the practised habit of reflection, which came pre- 
 pared, to the full extent of an acute intellect, to detect every 
 glimmer of light, and to follow them to the point where they 
 converged upon the true solution ; and both principle and 
 
THE PURSUIT OF BONAPARTE 281 
 
 reflection were powerfully supported iu their final action by 
 a native temperament, impatient of hesitations, of half meas- 
 ures, certain that the annihilation of the French fleet, and 
 nothing short of its annihilation, fulfilled that security of his 
 country's interests in which consisted the spirit of his instruc- 
 tions. His own words in self-defence, when for a moment it 
 seemed as if, after all, he had blundered in the great risk he 
 took, though rough in form, rise to the eloquence that speaks 
 out of the abundance of the heart. "The only objection I 
 can fancy to be started is, 'you should not have gone such 
 a long voyage without more certain information of the 
 enemy's destination:' my answer is ready — who was I to 
 get it from? The governments of Naples and Sicily either 
 knew not, or chose to keep me in ignorance. AVas I to 
 wait patiently till I heard certain accounts ? If Egypt was 
 their object, before I could hear of them they would have 
 been in India. To do nothing, I felt, was disgraceful ; there- 
 fore I made use of my understanding, and by it I ought to 
 stand or fall." 
 
 The destination of the enemy had been rightly divined, 
 following out a course of reasoning outlined by Nelson a week 
 before in his letter to Spencer ; but successful pursuit was 
 bafiled for the moment by the wiliness of Bonaparte, who 
 directed his vast armament to be steered for the south shore 
 of Candia, instead of straight for Alexandria. Even this 
 would scarcely have saved him, had Nelson's frigates been 
 with the fleet. Immediately after the council, the admiral 
 with his customary promptitude kept away for Egypt under 
 all sail. ''I am just returned from on board the Admiral," 
 Avrites Saumarez, ''and we are crowding sail for Alexandria; 
 but the contrast to what we experienced yesterday is great 
 indeed, having made sure of attacking them this morning. 
 At present it is very doubtful whether we shall fall in Avith 
 them at all, as we are proceeding upon the merest conjecture 
 only, and not on any positive information. Some days must 
 now elapse before we can be relieved from our cruel suspense ; 
 and if, at the end of our journej^, we find we are upon a wrong 
 scent, our embarrassment will be great indeed. Fortunately, I 
 only act here en second ; but did the chief responsibility rest 
 with me, I fear it would be more than my too irritable nerves 
 
288 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 would bear." Such was the contemporary estimate of an eye- 
 witness, an officer of tried and singular gallantry and ability, 
 who shared the admiral's perplexities and ambitions, though 
 not his responsibility. His words portray justly the immen- 
 sity of the burden Nelson bore. That, indeed, is the inevi- 
 table penalty of command ; but it must be conceded that, when 
 adequately borne, it should convey also an equal measure of 
 renown. 
 
 In the morning, before the consultation with the captains, 
 three French frigates had been seen ; but Nelson, warned by 
 the parting of the ''Orion" and "Alexander" a fortnight 
 before, would not run the risk of scattering the squadron by 
 chasing them. No time could now be lost, waiting for a 
 separated ship to catch up. The circumstance of the fleet 
 being seen by these frigates was quoted in a letter from Louis 
 Bonaparte, who was with the expedition, to his brother 
 Joseph, and was made the ground for comment upon the 
 stupidity of the British admiral, who with this opportunity 
 failed to find the armament. The criticism is unjust ; had 
 the frigates taken to flight, as of course they would, the 
 British fleet, if not divided, would certainly not be led towards 
 the main body of the enemy. Concentration of purpose, sin- 
 gleness of aim, was more than ever necessary, now that time 
 pressed and a decision had been reached ; but the sneer of the 
 French officer reproduces the idle chatter of the day in London 
 streets and drawing-rooms. These, in turn, but echoed and 
 swelled the murmurs of insubordination and envy in the navy 
 itself, at the departure from the routine methods of officialism, 
 by passing over the claims of undistinguished seniors, in favor 
 of one who as yet had nothing but brilliant achievement, and 
 yet more brilliant promise, to justify committing to him the 
 most momentous charge that in this war had devolved on a 
 British admiral. A letter from^one of the puisne lords of the 
 Admiralty was read publicly on board the " Prince George," 
 flagship of Sir William Parkei*, — the same who had the con- 
 troversy with Nelson about the Battle of St. Vincent, — 
 denouncing Lord St. Vincent in no very gentle terms for 
 having sent so young a flag-officer.^ " Sir William Parker 
 and Sir John Orde have written strong remonstrances against 
 1 Clarke and M 'Arthur's Life of Nelson, vol. ii. p. 100. 
 
 I 
 
THE PURSUIT OF BONAPARTE 289 
 
 your coinmanding the detached squadron instead of them," 
 wrote St. Vincent to Nelson. " I did all I could to prevent it, 
 consistently with my situation, but there is a faction, fraught 
 with all manner of ill-will to you, that, unfortunately for the 
 two Baronets, domined over any argument or influence I could 
 tise : they will both be ordered home the moment their letters 
 arrive." It will be seen how much was at stake for Nelson 
 personally in the issue of these weeks. Happy the man who, 
 like him, has in such a case the clear light of duty to keep his 
 steps from wavering! 
 
 The night after Nelson made sail for Alexandria the two 
 hostile bodies crossed the same tract of sea, on divergent 
 courses ; but a haze covered the face of the deep, and hid them 
 from each other. When the day dawned, they were no longer 
 within range of sight; but had the horizon of the British fleet 
 been enlarged by flanking frigates, chasing on either side, the 
 immunity of the French from detection could scarcely have 
 continued. For some days not a hundred miles intervened 
 between these two foes, proceeding for the same port. On the 
 26th, being two hundred and fifty miles from Alexandria, 
 Nelson sent the " Mutine " ahead to communicate with the 
 place and get information ; a single vessel being able to out- 
 strip the progress of a body of ships, which is bound to the 
 speed of its slowest member. On the 28th the squadron itself 
 was off the town, when the admiral to his dismay found that 
 not only the French had not appeared, but that no certain 
 news of their destination was to be had. 
 
 Preoccupied as his mind had been with the fear that the 
 enemy had so far the start that their army would be out of 
 the transports before he overtook them, the idea that he 
 might outstrip them does not seem to have entered his head. 
 Only three vessels had been spoken since Sicily was left 
 behind, — two from Alexandria and one from the Archipel- 
 ago ; but these knew nothing of the French, being doubtless, 
 when met, ahead of the latter's advance. That Nelson again 
 consulted with his captains seems probable — indeed almost 
 certain, from casual mention ; but if so, their opinion as to the 
 future course does not appear. The unremitting eagerness of 
 his temperament, the singleness of his purpose, which saw the 
 whole situation concentrated in the French fleet, had worked 
 
 19 
 
290 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 together up to the present to bring him to the true strategic 
 point just ahead of time ; although, bj no fault of his own, he 
 had started near three weeks late.^ These two high qualities 
 now conspired to mislead him by their own excess. '"'His 
 active and anxious mind," wrote Captain Berry, " would not 
 permit him to rest a moment in the same place ; he therefore 
 shaped his course to the northward, for the coast of Cara- 
 mania [in Asia Minor], to reach as quickly as possible some 
 quarter where information could probably be obtained." 
 
 To say that this was a mistake is j^erhaps to be wise only 
 after the event. Had Nelson known that the French, when 
 leaving Malta, had but three days' start of him, instead of six, 
 as the Genoese had reported, he might have suspected the 
 truth ; it is not wonderful that he failed to believe that he 
 could have gained six days. The actual gain was but three ; 
 for, departing practically at the same time from points 
 equidistant from Alexandria, Bonaparte's armament appeared 
 before that place on the third day after Nelson arrived. The 
 troops were landed immediately, and the transports entered 
 the port, thus making secure their escape from the British 
 pursuit. The ships of war remained outside. 
 
 Meanwhile Nelson, " distressed for the Kingdom of the 
 Two Sicilies," was beating back to the westward against the 
 wind which had carried him rapidly to the coast of Egypt. 
 Rightly or wrongly, he had not chosen to wait at the point 
 which mature reflection had indicated to him as tlie enemy's 
 goal, and the best course that now occurred to him was to do 
 with his fleet the exploring duty that frigates should have 
 done. " No frigates,''^ he wrote to Sir William Hamilton ; 
 " to which has been, and may again be, attributed the loss of 
 the French fleet." On his return he kept along the northern 
 shore of the Mediterranean, passing near Candia ; but, though 
 several vessels were spoken, he only gathered from them that 
 the French were not west of Sicily, nor at Corfu. On the 
 19th of July, he anchored the fleet at Syracuse, having, to 
 use his own words, "gone a round of six hundred leagues with 
 an expedition incredible," and yet " as ignorant of the situa- 
 tion of the enemy as I was twenty-seven days ago." 
 
 1 That is, counting from May 19, when Bonaparte left Toulon, to June 7, 
 when Troubridge's squadron joined, and pursuit began. 
 
 I 
 
THE PURSUIT OF BONAPARTE 291 
 
 At Syracuse fresh disappointments awaited him, which only 
 the indomitable single-mindedness and perseverance of the 
 man prevented from becoming discouragements. The minister 
 at Naples had sent despatches to await him at Cape Passaro ; 
 when he sent for these, thirsty for news about the French, 
 they had been returned to Naples. The governor of the port, 
 despite Acton's assurances to Troubridge, made difficulties 
 about the admission of so many ships, and about supplying 
 water, which they absolutely required. This Nelson resented, 
 with angry contempt for the halting policy of the weak king- 
 dom. "I have had so much said about the King of Naples' 
 orders only to admit three or four of the ships of our fleet into 
 his ports, that T am astonished. I understood that private 
 orders, at least, would have been given for our free admission. 
 If we are to be refused supplies, pray send me by many ves- 
 sels an account, that I may in good time take the King's fleet 
 to Gibraltar. Our treatment is scandalous for a great nation 
 to put up with, and the King's flag is insulted at every friendly 
 port we look at." " I wish to know your and Sir William's 
 plans for going down the Mediterranean," he wrote to Lady 
 Hamilton, " for, if we are to be kicked in every port of the 
 Sicilian dominions, the sooner we are gone the better. Good 
 God ! how sensibly I feel our treatment. I have only to pray 
 I may find the French and throw all my vengeance on them." 
 
 These words show the nervous exasperation superinduced 
 by the tremendous strain of official anxiety and mortified 
 ambition ; for the governor's objections were purely formal 
 and perfunctory, as was the Court's submission to the French. 
 " Our present wants," he admitted at the same writing, " have 
 been most amply supplied, and every attention has been paid 
 us." Years afterwards Nelson spoke feelingly of the bitter 
 mental anguish of that protracted and oft-thwarted pursuit. 
 "Do not fret at anything," he told his friend Troubridge; 
 '•' I wish I never had, but my return to Syracuse in 1798, 
 broke my heart, which on any extraordinary anxiety now 
 shows itself, be that feeling pain or pleasure." " On the 18th 
 I had near died, with the swelling of some of the vessels of 
 the heart. More people, perhaps, die of broken hearts than 
 we are aware of." But the firmness of his purpose, the clear- 
 ness of his convictions, remained unslackened and unclouded. 
 
292 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 " What a situation am I placed in ! " he writes, when he finds 
 Hamilton's despatches returned. *' As yet I can learn nothing 
 of the enemy. You Avill, I am sure, and so will our country, 
 easily conceive what has passed in my anxious mind ; but I 
 have this comfort, that I have no fault to accuse myself of. 
 This bears me up, and this only." " Every moment I have to 
 regret the frigates having left me," he tells St. Vincent. 
 ''Your lordship deprived yourself of frigates to make mine 
 certainly the first squadron in the world, and I feel that I 
 have zeal and activity to do credit to your appointment, and 
 yet to be unsuccessful hurts me most sensibly. But if they 
 are above water, I will find them out, and if possible bring 
 them to battle. You have done your part in giving me so fine 
 a fleet, and I hope to do mine in making use of them." 
 
 In five days the squadron had filled with water and again 
 sailed. Satisfied that the enemy were somewhere in the 
 Levant, Nelson now intended a deliberate search for them — 
 or rather for their fleet, the destruction of which was the 
 crucial object of all his movements. "It has been said," he 
 wrote to Hamilton, "that to leeward of the two frigates I saw 
 off Cape Passaro was a line-of-battle ship, with the riches of 
 Malta on board, but it was the destruction of the enemy, not 
 riches for myself, that I was seeking. These w^ould have 
 fallen to me if I had had frigates, but except the ship-of-the- 
 line, I regard not all the riches in this world." A plaintive 
 remonstrance against his second departure was penned by the 
 Keapolitan prime minister, which depicts so plainly the com- 
 monplace view of a military situation, — the apprehensions 
 of one to whom immediate security is the great object in war, 
 — that it justifies quotation, and comparison Avith the clear 
 intuitions, and firmly grasped principle, Avhich placed Nelson 
 always, in desire, alongside the enemy's fleet, and twice 
 carried him, at every risk, to the end of the Mediterranean to 
 seek it. " We are now in danger of a war, directly on Admiral 
 Nelson's account ; you see fairly our position ; will Admiral 
 Nelson run to the Levant again vithout knnwinr/ for ceHnin 
 the position of the French, and leave the Two Sicilies exposed 
 in these moments ? Buonaparte has absconded himself, but 
 in any port he has taken securitys not to be forced. God 
 knows where he is, and whether we shall not see him asjain in 
 
THE PURSUIT OF BONAPARTE 293 
 
 a few days, if we do uot hear of what a course he has taken. 
 I present all this to your consideration." To this letter, 
 which oddly enough was written on the very day the Battle 
 of the Nile was fought, Nelson might well have replied then, 
 as he did in terms a year afterwards, •' The best defence for 
 His Sicilian Majesty's dominions is to place myself alongside 
 the French fleet." 
 
 The fleet left Syracuse on the 25th of July, just one week 
 before the discovery of the enemy in Aboukir Bay put an 
 end to Nelson's long suspense. The course was first shaped 
 for the southern capes of the Morea, and on the 28th Trou- 
 bridge was sent into the Gulf of Korou for information. He 
 returned within three hours, with the news that the French 
 had been seen four weeks before from the coast of Candia, 
 and were then steering southeast. This intelligence was 
 corroborated by a vessel spoken the same day. Southeast, 
 being nearly dead before the prevailing wind, was an almost 
 certain clue to the destination of an unwieldy body which 
 could never regain ground lost to leeward ; so, although Nelson 
 now learned that some of his missing frigates had also been 
 seen recently off Candia, he would waste no time looking for 
 them. It may be mentioned that these frigates had appeared 
 off the anchorage of the French fleet, and had been recognized 
 by it as enemies ; but, so far from taking warning from the 
 incident, the French admiral was only confirmed by it in a 
 blind belief that the British feared to attack. Immediately 
 after Troubridge's return, the fleet bore np under all sail, and 
 at 2.45 in the afternoon of the 1st of August, 1798, the mast- 
 head lookout of the " Zealous" discovered the long-sought-for 
 enemy, lying in Aboukir Bay, on the coast of Egypt, fifteen 
 miles east of Alexandria. 
 
 Suspense was ended, but Nelson's weightiest responsibility 
 had yet to be met. The enemy was still so far distant that he 
 coidd not be reached till near nightfall, and it was possible that 
 not only would the battle be fought in the dark, but that some 
 at least of the ships would not have daylight to take their 
 positions. The consequent difficulty and risk was in any 
 event great; but in this case the more so, because the ground 
 was unknown to every officer in the fleet. The only chart of it 
 in possession of the British was a rude sketch lately taken 
 
294 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 out of a prize. There was no time now for calling captains 
 together, nor for forming plans of action. Then appeared 
 conspicuousl}' the value of that preparedness of mind, as well 
 as of purpose, Avhich at bottom was the greatest of Nelson's 
 claims to credit. Much had been received by him from 
 Nature, — gifts which, if she bestows them not, man strug- 
 gles in vain to acquire by his own efforts ; but the care which 
 he took in fitting himself to use those gifts to their utmost 
 capacity is his own glory. The author of the first full narra- 
 tive of these eventful weeks. Captain Berry, than whom no 
 man had larger occasion to observe Nelson's moods, used his 
 capitals well when he wrote, " The admiral viewed the 
 obstacles with the eye of a seaman determined ox i^TTACK." 
 It was not for him, face to face with opportunity, to hesitate 
 and debate whether he would be justified in using it at once. 
 But this preparation of purpose might have led only to a 
 great disaster, had it not received guidance from a richly 
 stored intellect, which had pondered probable conditions so 
 exhaustively that proper direction could be at once imparted 
 and at once understood. The French admiral, indeed, by his 
 mistaken dispositions had delivered himself into the hands of 
 his enemy ; but that might not have availed had that enemy 
 hesitated and given time, or had he not instantly compre- 
 hended the possibilities of the situation with a trained glance 
 which had contemplated them long before. "By attacking 
 the enemy's van and centre, the wind blowing directly along 
 their line, I was enabled to throw what force I pleased on a 
 few ships. This plan my friends readily conceived by the 
 signals." ^ 
 
 It was, therefore, no fortuitous coincidence that the battle 
 was fought on a plan preconcerted in general outline, though 
 necessarily subject to particular variations in detail. Not 
 only had many situations been discussed, as Berry tells us, 
 butnew signals had been inserted in the signal-book to enable 
 the admiral's intentions to be quickly understood. To pro- 
 vide for the case of the enemy being met at sea, the force had 
 been organized into three squadrons, — a subdivision of com- 
 mand which, while surrendering nothing of the admiral's in- 
 itiative, much facilitated the application of his plans, by 
 1 Nelson to Lord Howe. 
 
DISPOSITIONS FOR BATTLE 295 
 
 committing the execution of major details to the two senior 
 captains, Saumarez and Troubridge, each wielding a group of 
 four ships. Among the provisions for specific contingencies 
 was one that evidently sprang from the report that the 
 enemy's fleet numbered sixteen or seventeen of the line, — 
 an impression which arose from there being in, it four Vene- 
 tian ships so rated, which were not, however, fit for a place in 
 the line. In that case Nelson proposed to attack, ship for 
 shii), the rear thirteen of the enemy. That he preferred, 
 when possible, to throw two ships on one is evident enough — 
 the approaching battle proves it ; but when confronted with a 
 force stronger, numerically, than his own, and under way, he 
 provides what was certainly the better alternative. He en- 
 gages at once the attention of as many ships as possible, con- 
 fident that he brings against each a force superior to it, owing 
 to the general greater efficiency of British ships over French 
 of that date, and especially of those in his own squadron, 
 called by St. Vincent the elite of the Navy. 
 
 The position of the French fleet, and the arrangements 
 made by its commander, Admiral Brueys, must now be given, 
 for they constitute the particular situation against which 
 Nelson's general plan of attack was to be directed. Consider- 
 ing it impracticable for the ships-of-the-line to enter the port 
 of Alexandria, Bruej^s had taken the fleet on the 8th of July 
 to their present anchorage. Aboukir Bay begins at a promon- 
 tory of the same name, and, after curving boldly south, 
 extends eastward eighteen miles, terminating at the Rosetta 
 mouth of the Nile. From the shore the depth increases very 
 gradually, so that water enough for ships-of-the-line was not 
 found till three miles from the coast. Two miles northeast of 
 the promontory of Aboukir is Aboukir Island, since called 
 Nelson's, linked with the point by a chain of rocks. Outside 
 the island, similar rocks, with shoals, prolong this foul ground 
 under water to seaward, constituting a reef dangerous to a 
 stranger approaching the bay. This barrier, however, broke 
 the waves from the northwest, and so made the western part 
 of the bay a fairly convenient summer roadstead. The French 
 fleet was anchored there, under the shelter of the island and 
 rocks, in an order such that "the wind blew nearly along 
 the line." Its situation offered no local protection against 
 
296 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 an enemy's approach, except that due to ignorance of the 
 ground. 
 
 It was therefore Brueys's business to meet this defect of 
 protection by adequate dispositions ; and this he failed to do. 
 Numerically his force was the same as Nelson's ; but, while 
 the latter had only seventy-fours, there were in the French 
 fleet one ship of one hundred and twenty guns, and three 
 eighties. In a military sense, every line divides naturally 
 into three parts, — the centre, and the two ends, or flanks ; 
 and it is essential that these should so far support one another 
 that an enemy cannot attack any two in superior force, while 
 the third is unable to assist. Shallow water, such as was 
 found in Aboukir Bay, if properly utilized, will prevent a 
 flank being turned, so that an enemy can get on both sides of 
 the ships there, or otherwise concentrate upon them, as by 
 enfilading ; and if, in addition, the ships are anchored close to 
 each other, it becomes impossible for two of the attacking 
 force to direct their fire upon one of the defence, without 
 being exposed to reprisals from those next astern and ahead. 
 These evident precautions received no illustration in the ar- 
 rangements of Admiral Brueys. The general direction of his 
 line was that of the wind, from northwest to southeast, with a 
 very slight bend, as shown in the diagram. The leading — 
 northwestern — ship was brought close to the shoal in thirty 
 feet of water, but not so close as to prevent the British pass- 
 ing round her, turning that flank ; and there were between 
 the successive ships intervals of five hundred feet, through 
 auy one of which an enemy could readily pass. Brueys had 
 very properly accumulated his most powerful vessels at the 
 centre. The flagship "Orient," of one hundred and twenty 
 guns, was seventh in the order; next ahead and astern of her 
 were, respectively, the ''Franklin" aud the "Tonnant," each 
 of eighty. By a singular misconception, however, he had 
 thought that any attack would fall upon the rear — the lee 
 flank ; and to this utter misapi3rehension of the exposed points 
 it Avas owing that he there placed his next heaviest ships. 
 Nelson's fore-determined onslaught upon the van accordingly 
 fell on the weakest of the French vessels. 
 
 Such was the French order of battle. The proceedings of 
 the British fleet, under its leader, show an instructive combi- 
 

 
 
 
 
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BATTLE OF THE NILE 297 
 
 nation of rapidity and caution, of quick comprehension of the 
 situation, with an absence of all precipitation ; no haste in- 
 compatible with perfect carefulness, no time lost, either by 
 hesitation or by preparations postponed. When the enemy 
 were first discovered, two ships, the " Alexander " and 
 "Swiftsure," were a dozen miles to leeward, having been 
 sent ahead on frigates' duty to reconnoitre Alexandria. This 
 circumstance prevented their joining till after the battle 
 began and night had fallen. At the same moment the 
 "Cnlloden" was seven miles to windward. She was sig- 
 nalled to drop the prize she was towing, and to join the fleet. 
 To this separation was due that she went aground. The 
 remaining ten ships, which had been steering about -east, 
 hauled sharp on the wind to enable them to weather with 
 ample allowance the shoal off Aboukir Island. It was blowing 
 a whole-sail breeze, too fresh for the lighter canvas; the 
 royals were furled as soon as close-hauled. As the French 
 situation and dispositions developed to the view, signals were 
 made to prepare for battle, to get ready to anchor by the stern, 
 and that it was the admiral's intention to attack the van and 
 centre of the enemy. The captains had long been forewarned 
 of each of these possibilities, and nothing more was needed to 
 convey to them his general plan, which was intrusted to them 
 individually to carry out as they successively came into action. 
 At about half-past five signal was given to form line of 
 battle. This, for the ships of the day, was a single column, 
 in which they were ranged ahead and astern of each other, 
 leaving the broadside clear. As they came abreast the shoal, 
 Nelson hailed Captain Hood, of the " Zealous," and asked if 
 he thought they were yet far enough to the eastward to clear 
 it, if they then headed for the enemy. Hood replied that he 
 did not know the ground, but was in eleven fathoms, and 
 would, if the admiral allowed, bear up and sound with the 
 lead, and would not bring the fleet into danger. This was 
 done. Hood leading all the fleet except the " Goliath," Captain 
 Foley, which kept ahead, on the lee bow of the "Zealous." 
 No close shaving was done, however, at this critical turn ; 
 and it is that steady deliberation, combined with such parsi- 
 mony of time in other moments, which is most impressive in 
 Nelson. So few realize that five minutes are at once the most 
 
298 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 important and the least important of considerations. Thus 
 the British passed so much beyond the island and the shoal, 
 before keeping away, that, as the long column swept round to 
 head for the French van, the ships turned their port broad- 
 sides to the enemy, and were steering southwesterly when 
 they finally ran down. "The English admiral," wrote the 
 French second in command, "without doubt had experienced 
 pilots on board ; he hauled well round all dangers." 
 
 The "Goliath" still leading the fleet, followed closely by 
 the " Zealous," the flagship Avas dropped to sixth in the order, 
 — Nelson thus placing himself so that he could see what the 
 first five ships accomplished, while retaining in his own hands 
 the power to impart a new direction to the remaining five of 
 those then with him, should he think it necessaiy. Captain 
 Foley had formed the idea that the French would be less 
 ready to fight on the inshore side, and had expressed his in- 
 tention to get inside them, if practicable. Sounding as he 
 went, he passed round the bows of the leading vessel, the 
 " Guerrier," on the inner bow of which he intended to place 
 himself ; but the anchor hung, and the " Goliath " brought up 
 on the inner quarter of the " Conquerant," the second ship. 
 The " Zealous," following, anchored where Foley had pur- 
 posed, on the bow of the " Guerrier ; " and the next three 
 ships, the " Orion," " Theseus," and " Audacious," also placed 
 themselves on the inner side of the French line. 
 
 The two leading French vessels were at once crushed. All 
 the masts of the " Guerrier," although no sail was on them, 
 went overboard within ten minutes after she was first attacked, 
 while the " Conquerant " was receiving the united broadsides 
 of the "Goliath" and the "Audacious," — the latter raking. 
 Nelson therefore placed the " Vanguard " on the outer side, 
 and within pistol-shot, of the third French ship, the "Spartiate," 
 which was already engaged on the other side by the " Theseus," 
 but at much longer range. His example was of course followed 
 by those succeeding him — the seventh and eighth of the 
 British engaging the fourth and fifth of the French, which were 
 already receiving part of the fire of the " Orion " and " Theseus " 
 on the inner side — the latter having ceased to play upon the 
 "Spartiate" for fear of hitting the "Vanguard." Thus five 
 French ships were within half an hour in desperate conflict 
 
 i 
 
Wind 
 N.N.W. 
 
 B»^2 
 
 FrRST STAOE 
 
 of the 
 
 BATTLE OF THE NILE 
 
 / Cuerrier 
 
 2. Conguerdnt 
 
 3. Spdiiiate 
 
 4. AquJion 
 
 5. Peuple Souverdin 
 
 6. Frdnhlin 
 
 7. Orient 
 
 8. Tonnant 
 
 9. Heureux 
 
 10. Mercwe 
 
 11. Cuillaume Tell 
 
 12. Ce'ne'reux 
 
 13. Timole'on 
 
 A. Zealous 
 6. Audacious 
 
 C. Coliatf} 
 
 D. T/ieseus 
 £. l/anguari] 
 F Minotaur 
 6. Defence 
 H. Orion 
 
 I. Bellerophon 
 J. Mdjestic 
 
BATTLE OF THE NILE 299 
 
 with eight British, while their consorts to leeward looked 
 helplessly on. 
 
 The ninth and tenth of Nelson's fleet were less fortunate, 
 owing to the envelope of smoke and the growing darkness, 
 which now obscvired the scene. The " Bellerophon," missing 
 the sixth French vessel, the " Franklin," brought up abreast 
 the " Orient," whose force was double her own, and which had 
 no other antagonist. The " Majestic," groping her way, ran 
 into the ninth French, the '' Heureux," where for some 
 moments she hung in a position of disadvantage and had her 
 captain killed. Then swinging clear, she anchored on the bow 
 of the next astern, the " Mercure," and there continued a 
 deadly and solitary action. Owing to the circumstances men- 
 tioned, the loss of each of these ships was greater, by fifty 
 per cent, than that of any other of the British fleet. The 
 movements so far described, and the resultant fighting, may 
 be styled the first stage of the battle. Concerning it may be 
 remarked the unswerving steadiness, rapidity, and yet sound 
 judgment, with which all the movements were executed; and 
 further, that not only was the first direction of the attack 
 that prescribed by Nelson's signal, but that the second, 
 initiated by his own ship, was also imparted by him. The 
 incident of passing round the " Guerrier," and inside of the 
 line, is a detail only, although one which cannot be too highly 
 praised. " The van ship of the enemy being in five fathom," 
 wrote Captain Hood, "I expected the Goliath and Zealous to 
 stick fast on the shoal every moment, and did not imagine we 
 should attempt to pass Avithin her." It is difficult to exagger- 
 ate the coolness, intrepidity, and seamanlike care of Captain 
 Foley, to whom is to be attributed, perhaps, the whole con- 
 ception, and certainly the entire merit of the execution ; but 
 they no more detract from Nelson's honors than does the 
 distinguished conduct of the other captains. 
 
 The battle had begun a little after half-past six, the 
 " Guerrier's " masts falling at sundown, which was quarter 
 before seven. It continued under the conditions already given 
 until past eight o'clock — none of the ships engaged shifting 
 her position for some time after that hour. It was, appar- 
 ently, just before the second act of the drama opened with the 
 arrival of the remaining ships — the ''Alexander," "Swift- 
 
300 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 sure," and " Leander " — that Nelson was severely wounded ; 
 but the precise moment has not been recorded. He was struck 
 upon the upper part of the forehead by a flying piece of iron, 
 the skin, which was cut at right angles, hanging down over 
 his face, covering the one good eye, and, with the profuse flow 
 of blood, blinding him completely. He exclaimed, "I am 
 killed ! Kemeraber me to my wife ! " and was falling, but 
 Captain Berry, who stood • near, caught him in his arms. 
 When carried below to the cockpit, the surgeon went immedi- 
 ately to him, but he refused to be attended before his turn 
 arrived, in due succession to the injured lying around him. 
 
 The pain was intense, and Nelson felt convinced that his 
 hurt was mortal ; nor could he for some time accept the sur- 
 geon's assurances to the contrary. Thus looking for his end, 
 he renewed his farewell messages to Lady Nelson, and 
 directed also that Captain Louis of the '' Minotaur," which lay 
 immediately ahead of the "Vanguard," should be hailed to 
 come on board, that before dying he might express to him his 
 sense of the admirable support given by her to the flagship. 
 "Your support," said he, "has prevented me from being 
 obliged to haul out of the line." ^ From the remark it may 
 be inferred that the French " Aquilon," their fourth ship, 
 which became the " Minotaur's " antagonist, had for a measur- 
 able time been able to combine her batteries with those of the 
 " Spartiate " upon the " Vanguard," and to this was probably 
 due that the loss of the latter was next in severity to that of 
 the "Majestic" and of the " Bellerophon." The inference is 
 further supported by the fact that the worst slaughter in the 
 "Vanguard" was at the forward guns, those nearest the 
 " Aquilon." 
 
 After his wound was bound up, Nelson was requested by 
 the surgeon to lie quiet ; but his preoccupation with the events 
 of the evening was too great, and his responsibility too im- 
 mediate, to find relief in inactivity, — the physician's panacea. 
 He remained below for a while, probably too much jarred for 
 physical exertion ; but his restlessness sought vent by begin- 
 ning a despatch to the Admiralty. The secretary being too 
 agitated to write. Nelson tried to do so himself, and it was 
 characteristic that the few lines he was then able to trace, 
 1 G. Lathom Browne's Life of Nelson, p. 198. 
 
Second Stage of the Battle of the Nile. 
 Concentration op British Reserve on the French Centre. 
 
BATTLE OF THE NILE 301 
 
 blinded, suffering, and confused, expressed that dependence 
 upon the Almighty, habitual with him, which illustrated a 
 temperament of so much native energy and self-reliance, and 
 is more common, probably, among great warriors than in any 
 other class of men of action. This first outburst of emotion, 
 excited in him by the tremendous event wrought by his 
 hands, was identical in spirit, and not improbably was clothed 
 in the same words, as those with which began the despatch 
 actually sent : " Almighty God has blessed His Majesty's 
 arms." 
 
 While Nelson lay thus momentarily disabled, important 
 events were transpiring, over which, however, he could have 
 exerted no control. It has been mentioned that the " Culloden " 
 was seven miles to the northward and westward of the fleet, 
 when the French were first discovered. Doing her best, it 
 was impossible to reach the main body before it stood down 
 into action, and the day had closed when the ship neared the 
 shoal. Keeping the lead going, and proceeding with caution, 
 though not with the extreme care which led Hood and Nelson 
 to make so wide a sweep, Troubridge had the mishap to strike 
 on the tail of the shoal, and there the ship stuck fast, pound- 
 ing heavily until the next morning. The fifty-gun ship 
 " Leander " went to her assistance, as did the brig " Mutine," 
 but all efforts to float her proved vain. Meanwhile the 
 "Alexander" and "Swiftsure" were coming up from the 
 southwest, the wind being so scant that they could barely pass 
 to windward of the reef, along whose northwestern edge they 
 were standing. The " Alexander," in fact, was warned by the 
 lead that she was running into danger, and had to tack. As 
 they approached, Troubridge, by lantern and signal, warned 
 them off the spot of his disaster, thus contributing to save 
 these ships, and, by removing doubt, accelerating their entrance 
 into action. As they rounded the stranded " Culloden," the 
 " Leander " was also dismissed from a hopeless task, and 
 followed them to the scene of battle. 
 
 The delay of the two seventy-fours, though purely fortui- 
 tous, worked in furtherance of Nelson's plan, and resulted, 
 practically, in constituting them a reserve, which was brought 
 into play at a most auspicious moment. The " Bellerophon," 
 crushed by the preponderating weight of the "Orient's" 
 
302 THE LITE OF NELSON 
 
 battery, had just cut her cable and worn out of action, with 
 the loss of forty-nine killed and one hundred and forty-eight 
 wounded, out of a total of five hundred and ninety men. Her 
 foremast alone was then standing, and it fell immediately 
 after. The firing, which had been animated from the French 
 left ^towards the centre, now slackened around the latter, at 
 the point where the " Orient " and her next ahead, the 
 " Franklin," were lying. For this spot, therefore, the cap- 
 tains of the two fresh British ships steered. The '' Swiftsure," 
 Captain Hallowell, anchored outside the enemy's line, abreast 
 the interval separating the "Orient" and the "Franklin," 
 between which he divided his fire. The "Alexander," Cap- 
 tain Ball, passed through the line, astern of the " Orient," 
 and anchored close on her inner quarter. Just at this time 
 a shot cut the cable of the " Peuple Souverain," next ahead 
 of the " Franklin," and she drifted out of her place to abreast 
 the latter ship, ahead of which a wide gap of a thousand feet 
 was thus left. Into this the " Leander " glided, fixing herself 
 with great skill to rake at once the "Franklin" and the 
 " Orient." 
 
 These two French ships had already been much battered, 
 and the " Franklin " was still receiving part of the fire of the 
 " Orion," Sir James Saumarez, on her inner bow, as well as 
 that of the "Defence," hitherto engaged by the "Peuple 
 Souverain." This accumulation upon them of three fresh 
 ships would doubtless have proved irresistible, even if a yet 
 more dire calamity had not supervened. The new-comers 
 took their positions soon after eight, and a little before nine 
 a fire was observed on the poop of the " Orient." The Brit- 
 ish captains, seeing the flames fighting on their behalf, re- 
 doubled their efforts, directing their aim especially \ipon the 
 scene of the conflagration, and thereby thwarting all attempt 
 to extinguish it. The blaze spread rapidly, upward through 
 the tarred rigging and the masts, downward to the lower 
 decks, where her heroic crew, still ignorant of the apj)roach- 
 ing doom, labored incessantly at their guns. As the sublime 
 sight forced itself upon the eyes of all about, friends and 
 enemies alike busied themselves with precautions for their 
 own safety in the coming catastrophe. The ships to wind- 
 ward held on ; those to leeward for the most part veered or 
 
BATTLE OF THE NILE 303 
 
 slipped their cables, the " Alexander " fiercely refusing to do 
 so till assured that the "Orient's" destruction was inevi- 
 table. Captain Berry went below to report to the admiral 
 this appalling climax to the night's work, and to his own 
 long-sustained efforts iu chase and battle, Nelson demanded 
 to be led on deck, where he gave orders that the only boat 
 still in condition for use should be sent with the " Van- 
 guard's " first lieutenant, to help save the unhappy crew. 
 He then remained watching the progress of the fire. At 
 quarter before ten the " Orient " blew up. At this time the 
 moon rose, and from her tranquil path looked down, through 
 the clear Egyptian air, upon the scene of devastation. 
 
 Nelson was now persuaded to go to bed, but he neither got 
 nor sought repose of mind. Throughout the night, and in 
 the early morning, messages went from him to various ships 
 to take this or that step, to garner in the fruits of the victory 
 yet unculled. The fleet responded somewhat spasmodically, 
 if not inadequately, to these calls. Men in truth were worn 
 out with labor and excitement. "My people were so ex- 
 tremely jaded," wrote Captain Miller of the "Tlieseus," who 
 obeyed a summons to move, "that as soon as they had hove 
 our sheet anchor up they dropped under the capstan bars, 
 and were asleep in a moment in every sort of posture, having 
 been then working at their fullest exertion, or fighting, for 
 near twelve hours." Nelson, in common with other great 
 leaders, could nut be satisfied with any but the utmost results. 
 To quote again his words of years gone by: "Had ten ships 
 been taken and the eleventh escaped, we being able to get at 
 her, I should never consider it well done." His idea. Captain 
 Berry tells us, was first to secure the victory, and then to 
 make the most of it, as circumstances might permit. The 
 expression is so luminous that it can scarcely be doubted that 
 the words are substantially those of the admiral himself.^ 
 
 1 An interesting example of the illuminating eflect of a sound maxim upon 
 different phases of a man's life and actions, and one illustrative of the many- 
 sidedness of this motto of Nelson's, occurs later in his career, and not long 
 before his death. When the frigates " Phcebe" and " Amazon" were ordered 
 to cruise before Toulon in October, 1804, " Lord Nelson gave Captains Capel 
 and Parker several injunctions, in case they should get an opportunity of 
 attacking two of the French frigates, which now got under way more fre- 
 f^uently. The principal one was, that they should not each single out and 
 
304 
 
 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 First, the great combination, which necessarily for the mo- 
 ment neglects a part of the enemy in order to disconcert and 
 overwhelm the rest ; afterwards, the unremitting pursuit, 
 Avhich completes the triumph. 
 
 It was therefore perfectly characteristic of Nelson's habit 
 of thought, and not merely an egotistic expression of baseless 
 discontent with others, that he avowed his dissatisfaction 
 with the results of the night's Avork, stupendous and wholly 
 unparalleled as they were. But his own condition, pros- 
 trated and with disabled head, was doubly typical of the state 
 of his fleet after the " Orient " blew up. Not only were men 
 overcome with fatigue, — from weariness as great men have 
 been aroused by the inspiring call of a trusted chief, — but 
 the guiding head of the body was dazed and incapacitated ; 
 that was gone which alone could sustain energy and give 
 unity to movement. Although Nelson indulged in no meta- 
 phorical allusions, he had this figure of the head clearly 
 enough in his mind, when he wrote four weeks later to Lord 
 Minto : " I regret that one escaped, and I think, if it had 
 pleased God that I had not been wounded, not a boat would 
 have escaped to have told the tale ; but do not believe that 
 any individual in the fleet is to blame. In my conscience, 
 I believe greater exertions could not have been, and I only 
 mean to say, that if my experience could in person have 
 directed ^ those exertions of individuals, there Avas every 
 appearance that Almiglity God would have continued to bless 
 my endeavours." This opinion he reiterated to Lord Howe, 
 even more positively, after four months' longer reflection, in 
 a letter dated January 8, 1799; and, whether the result 
 would or would not have equalled his belief, the traces are 
 clear that what was wanted, during the remainder of that 
 eventful night, was just that concord of action which the 
 head imparts to the members. Messages went from ship to 
 ship, captains consulted together and proposed to move to- 
 
 attack an opponent, but ' that both should endeavour together to take one 
 frigate ; if successful, chase the other ; but if you do not take the second, 
 still you have won a victory, and your country will gain a frigate.' " (Philli- 
 more's Last of Nelson's Captains, p. 122.) When summarized, this again 
 is — Victory first ; afterwards the results, as circumstances may permit. 
 ^ Author's italics. 
 
BATTLE OF THE NILE 305 
 
 gether, and did move separately ; there was no lack of good- 
 will, nor, as Nelson says, of exertion ; but men were not 
 quite snve of what the other man would do, and felt no 
 authority to command him ; and there was hesitation over 
 risks, and cautious delays about soundings and shaky spars, 
 which, the author is persuaded, would not have deterred 
 Nelson in such conditions, where victory was decisive, though 
 not yet complete. Illustrations would perhaps be invidious, 
 as seeming to imply a blame upon individuals which Nelson 
 expressly disavowed ; blame that officers of exceptional pro- 
 fessional capacity, concerning whom the measured profes- 
 sional opinion of Lord Howe affirmed that the Battle of the 
 Nile ''was unparalleled in this respect, that every cajjtain 
 distinguished himself," fell short of the peculiar excellence 
 attained by Nelson only among the men of his day. More- 
 over, this work does not aim at a discussion of battles, except 
 so far as they touch Nelson personally. It may, however, be 
 permissible to remark, that the incident here under discus- 
 sion suggests a doubt about the opinion, too easily current, 
 that an admiral's powers of control cease when the battle 
 joins. Under the circumstances, it is probable that Nelson, 
 being so far incapacitated as he thought himself, should have 
 transferred the direction of affairs, formally, to the next 
 senior officer, with general orders to secure the best results 
 attainable. 
 
 The following morning it was found that the leading six 
 ships of the French had already struck their colors. The 
 " Orient " having blown up, there were six survivors. Of 
 these, one, the " Tonnant," next astern of the " Orient,'" 
 though dismasted, was still afloat, a mile behind her former 
 position, having dropped there to avoid the explosion. The 
 " Heureux " and " Mercure," which had slipped their cables 
 for the same reason, were ashore and helpless. The spars of 
 the three rear ships, the " Guillaume Tell," " Genereux," and 
 " Timoleon," were still standing, and they had received little 
 injury. At about noon, these vessels, commanded by Eear 
 Admiral Villeneuve, got under way to go to sea ; but the 
 " Timoleon " cast with her head inshore, and, after an ineffect- 
 ual attempt to wear, ran aground, bows on, her foremast 
 going over the side as she struck. The crew escaped to the 
 
306 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 beach, and she was then set on fire by her captain, her colors 
 flying as she burned. The two other ships escaped, with two 
 frigates which accompanied them. Only one British ship, the 
 " Zealous," was in condition to follow, and she did so ; but 
 Nelson, seeing that she could not be supported, recalled her 
 from the unequal contest. 
 
 It is upon the chance that these sole survivors of the great 
 catastrophe might have been secured, by action during the 
 night, that the validity of Nelson's regrets turns. Concerning 
 this, it is impossible to affirm positively one way or the other; 
 therefore his regrets were well grounded. It is not certainties, 
 but chances, that determine the propriety of military action. 
 Had Villeneuve, conscious that he had done nothing as yet, 
 and not fully aware how the fight had gone, hesitated about 
 running away, and had several British ships dropped to lee- 
 ward together, which was all they had to do, and what the 
 dismasted French had done, it was quite within the bound of 
 possibilities that the "Genereux" and the " Guillaume Tell" 
 would have been crippled at their anchors. " If " and " but," 
 it may be objected. Quite so ; it is on if and but, not on yea 
 and nay, that military criticism justly dwells. A flash of 
 lightning and a crash of thunder may be seen and heard ; it 
 is the still small voice that leads the hero to success. As 
 regards Villeneuve, indecision was his distinguishing trait ; 
 and Bonaparte wrote that if any error could be imputed to 
 him, it was that he had not got under way as soon as the 
 '' Orient " blew up, for by that time the battle was lost beyond 
 redemption. 
 
 The extent of the victory was decided by tliis retreat, and 
 Nelson, before devoting himself to the new duties entailed by 
 his successes, paused an instant that he might first acknowl- 
 edge his debt of gratitude to God and man. A memorandum 
 was issued at once to the captains of the Squadron : — 
 
 Vanguard off the mouth of the Nile, 2d August, 1798. 
 
 Almighty God having blessed His INIajesty's arms with victory, the 
 Admiral intends returning Public Thanksgiving for the same at two 
 o'clock this day ; and he recommends every ship doing the same as 
 soou as convenient. 
 
 Horatio Nelson. 
 
BATTLE OF THE NILE 307 
 
 To those under his command he at the same time issued a 
 general order, congratulating, by explicit mention of each 
 class, the captains, officers, seamen, and marines, upon the 
 event of the conflict. "The Admiral desires they will accept 
 his most sincere and cordial thanks for their very gallant 
 behaviour in this glorious battle." It was this habit of associ- 
 ating to himself, in full recognition and grateful remembrance, 
 those who followed and fought with him, that enthroned 
 Nelson in the affections of his men ; nor will it escape obser- 
 vation that the warmth, though so genuine, breathes through 
 Avords whose quietness might be thought studied, were they 
 not so transparently spontaneous. There is in them no appeal 
 to egotism, to the gratified passion for glory, although to that 
 he was far from insensible ; it is the simple speech of man to 
 man, between those who have stood by one another in the 
 hour of danger, and done their duty — the acknowledgment 
 after the event, which is the complement of the famous signal 
 before Trafalgar. 
 
 The order closed with further words of commendation, 
 which will not have the immortal response of the human 
 heart to the other phrases ; but which, uttered at such a 
 moment, conveyed a salutary warning, justified as much by 
 recent unhappy events in the British navy, as by the well- 
 known disorganization and anarchy that had disgraced that of 
 France. " It must strike forcibly every British seaman, how 
 superior their conduct is, ivhen in discipline and good order, 
 to the riotous behaviour of lawless Frenchmen." ^ Captain 
 Berry states that the assembling of the "Vanguard's" ship's 
 company for the thanksgiving service strongly impressed the 
 prisoners on board, — not from the religious point of view, 
 which was alien from the then prevalent French temper, — 
 but as evidence of an order and discipline which could render 
 such a proceeding acceptable, after a victory so great, and at a 
 moment of such seeming confusion, No small amount of 
 self-possession, indeed, was needed thus to direct the attention 
 of six hundred men, in the confined space of a ship, whose 
 shattered sides and blood-stained decks bore witness to the 
 hundred dead and wounded snatched from their number 
 within the few hours before ; yet, on the other hand, nothing 
 
 1 Author's italics. 
 
308 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 could have been better calculated to compose the thoughts, or 
 to facilitate the transition from the excitement of battle to 
 the resumption of daily life. 
 
 If, by the escape of two ships-of-the-line, the British triumph 
 lacked something in technical completeness, the disaster to the 
 French was no less absolute. Victory, said Nelson truly, is 
 not the name for such a scene as I have witnessed. There 
 remained now to gather up the spoils of the field, and to 
 realize the consequences of the battle, great and small, near 
 and remote. The first was speedily done ; battered as they 
 were, " only two masts standing out of nine sail-of-the-line," 
 within a fortnight six of the nine prizes were ready to start 
 for Gibraltar. Little by little, yet with the rapidity of his 
 now highly trained intuitions, Nelson saw the greatness of 
 what lie had effected, and with his full native energy struggled 
 on, amid mental confusion and bodily suffering, and in the 
 heat of an Egyptian August, to secure all the fruits of success. 
 With splitting head and constantly sick, a significant indica- 
 tion of the rattling shock his brain had received, he was 
 wonderfully helped, so far as tlie direction of his efforts was 
 concerned, by the previous familiarity of his mind with the 
 various elements of the problem. First of all, the home gov- 
 ernment must be informed of an event that would so pro- 
 foundly affect the future. Berry's orders, as bearer of de- 
 spatches to St. Vincent off Cadiz, were issued on the 2d of 
 August ; but there were no frigates, and the " Leander," 
 appointed to carry him, could not sail till the 6th. For the 
 same reason it was not until the 14th that the " Mutine " 
 could be sent off with duplicates, to go direct to the Admi- 
 ralty by way of Naples, — a wise precaution in all events, but 
 doubly justified in this case ; for the brig reached port, 
 whereas the fifty-gun ship was captured by the " Genereux." 
 The " Mutine's " account, though hastened forward without 
 delay, reached London only on the 2d of October, two months 
 after the action. 
 
 The news was received at the first with an applause and a 
 popular commotion commensurate to its greatness, and prom- 
 ised for the moment to overflow even the barriers of routine in 
 one of the most conservative of nations. " Mr. Pitt told me the 
 day after Captain Capel arrived," wrote his old admiral, Hood, 
 
HONORS GIVEN FOR THE NILE 309 
 
 to Nelson, "that you would certainly be a Viscount, which 
 I made known to Lady Nelson. But it was objected to in a 
 certain quarter, because your Lordship was not a commander- 
 in-chief. In my humble opinion a more flimsy reason never 
 was giyen." Official circles regained, or rather perhaps again 
 lost, their senses, and the victory, unquestionably the most 
 nearly complete and the most decisive ever gained by a 
 British fleet, was rewarded, in the person of the commanding 
 officer, with honors less than those bestowed for St. Vincent 
 and Camperdown. Nelson was advanced to the lowest rank 
 of the peerage, as Baron Nelson of the Nile. "In con- 
 gratulating your Lordship on tliis high distinction," wrote the 
 First Lord, " I have particular pleasure in remarking, that it 
 is the highest honour that has ever been conferred on an 
 officer of your standing,^ in the Service, and who was not a 
 commander-in-chief ; and the addition [of the Nile] to the 
 Title is meant more especially to mark the occasion on which 
 it was granted, which, however, without any such precaution, 
 is certainly of a nature never to be forgotten." His Lordship's 
 sense of humor must a little have failed him, when he penned 
 the platitude of the last few words. 
 
 To the sharp criticism passed in the House of Commons on 
 the smallness of the recognition, the Prime Minister replied 
 that Nelson's glory did not depend upon the rank to which he 
 might be raised in the peerage ; a truism too palpable and in- 
 applicable for serious utterance, the question before the House 
 being, not the measure of Nelson's glory, but that of the 
 national acknowledgment. As Hood justly said, " All remun- 
 erations should be proportionate to the service done to the 
 public ; " and if that cannot always be attained absolutely, 
 without exhausting the powers of the State,^ there should at 
 least be some proportion between the rewards themselves, 
 extended to individuals, and the particular services. But even 
 were the defence of the Ministers technically perfect, it would 
 have been pleasanter to see them a little blinded by such an 
 achievement. Once in a way, under some provocations, it is 
 refreshing to see men able even to make fools of themselves. 
 
 1 " Eank " doubtless is meant by this singularly ill-chosen word. 
 
 2 As General Sherman justly asked, " What reward adequate to the service, 
 could the United States have given Grant for the Vicksburg campaign ? " 
 
310 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 Nelson made to the First Lord's letter a reply that was 
 dignified and yet measured, to a degree unusual to him, con- 
 trasting singularly with his vehement reclamations for others 
 after Copenhagen. Without semblance of complaint, he 
 allowed plainly to appear between the lines his own sense that 
 the reward was not proportionate to the service done. ''I 
 have received your Lordship's letter communicating to me the 
 Title his Majesty has been graciously pleased to confer upon 
 me — an Honour, your Lordship is pleased to say, the highest 
 that has ever been conferred on an ofl&cer of my standing who 
 was not a Commander-in-Chief. I receive as I ought what the 
 goodness of our Sovereign, and not my deserts, is j)leased to 
 bestow ; but great and unexampled as this honour may be to 
 one of my standing, yet I own I feel a higher one in the un- 
 bounded confidence of the King, your Lordship, and the whole 
 World, in my exertions. Even at the bitter moment of my 
 return to Syracuse, your Lordship is not insensible of the 
 great difficulties I had to encounter in not being a Commander- 
 in-Chief. The only happy moment I felt was in the view of 
 the French ; then I knew that all my sufferings Avould soon be 
 at an end." To Berry he wrote : " As to both our Honours, it 
 is a proof how mnch a battle fought near England is prized to 
 one fought at a great distance." 
 
 Whatever was defective in the formal recognition of his 
 own government was abundantly supplied by the tributes 
 which flowed from other quarters, so various, that his own 
 phrase, "the whole world," is scarcely an exaggeration to 
 apply to them. The Czar, the Sultan, the Kings of Sardinia 
 and of the Two Sicilies, sent messages of congratulation and 
 rich presents ; the Czar accompanying his Avith an autograph 
 letter. The Houses of Parliament voted their thanks and a 
 pension of £2,000 a year. The East India Company acknowl- 
 edged the security gained for their Lidian possessions by a gift 
 of £10,000, £2,000 of which he, with his wonted generosity, 
 divided at once among his father and family, most of whom 
 were not in prosperous circumstances. Other corporations 
 took appropriate notice of the great event ; instances so far 
 apart as the cities of London and Palermo, and the Island of 
 Zante, showing how wide-spread was the sense of relief. Not 
 least gratifying to him, with his sensitive appreciation of 
 
HONORS GIVEN FOR THE NH.E 311 
 
 friendship and susceptibility to flattery, must have been the 
 numerous letters of congratulation he received from friends in 
 and out of the service. The three great admirals, — Lords 
 Howe, Hood, and St. Vincent, — the leaders of the Navy in 
 rank and distinguished service, wrote to him in the strongest 
 terms of admiration. The two last styled the battle the 
 greatest achievement that History could produce ; while 
 Howe's language, if more measured, was so only because, like 
 himself, it was more precise in characterizing the special 
 merits of the action, and was therefore acknowledged by 
 Nelson with particular expressions of pleasure. 
 
 Besides the honors bestowed upon the commander of the 
 squadron, and the comprehensive vote of thanks usual on such 
 occasions, a gold medal commemorative of the battle was given 
 to the admiral and to each of the captains present. The First 
 Lord also wrote that the first-lieutenants of the ships engaged 
 would be promoted at once. The word " engaged " caught Nel- 
 son's attention, as apparently intended to exclude the lieutenant 
 of the " Culloden," Troubridge's unlucky ship. '' For Heaven's 
 sake, for my sake," he wrote to St. Vincent, '' if this is so, get 
 it altered. Our dear friend Troubridge has suffered enough. 
 His sufferings were in every respect more than any of us. 
 He deserv^es every reward which a grateful Country can 
 bestow on the most meritorious sea-officer of his standing in 
 the service. I have felt his worth every hour of my com- 
 mand." " I well know, he is my superior," he said on another 
 occasion ; " and I so often want his advice and assistance. I 
 have experienced the ability and activity of his mind and 
 body : it was Troubridge that equipped the squadron so soon 
 at Syracuse — it was he that exerted himself for me after the 
 action — it was Troubridge who saved the Culloden, when 
 none that I know in the service would have attempted it — it 
 was Troiibridge whom I left as myself at Naples to watch 
 movements — he is, as a friend and an officer, a noniKireil ! " 
 His entreaties prevailed so far that the officer in question 
 received his promotion, not with the others, but immediately 
 after them ; a distinction which Troubridge bewailed bitterly, 
 as a reflection upon himself and his ship. 
 
 On the 9th of August Nelson sent a lieutenant to Alexan- 
 dretta, on the northern coast of Syria, to make his way overland, 
 
312 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 by way of Aleppo, to India, with despatches to the Governor 
 of Bombay. Resuming briefly the events of the past months, 
 and the numbers and character of the French army in Egypt, 
 he expresses the hope that special care will be exercised 
 against the departure of ships from India, to convey this 
 huge force thither by the Red Sea. On the side of the 
 Mediterranean, their fate is settled by the recent victory. 
 They can receive nothing from France ; they cannot advance 
 freely into Syria, as water transport is essential for much of 
 their equipment ; even in Egypt itself they are hampered by 
 the difficulties of communication — on land by the guerilla 
 hostility of the natives, and now on the water through his own 
 presence and control. The Nile, through its Rosetta mouth, 
 had been heretofore the easiest communication between Cairo 
 and Alexandria. The garrison of the latter depended largely 
 for daily bread upon this route, now closed by the fleet in 
 Aboukir Bay. By land, nothing short of a regiment could 
 pass over ground where, even before the battle, the French 
 watering-parties from the ships had to be protected by heavy 
 armed bodies. He intended, therefore, to remain where he 
 was as long as possible. " If my letter is not so correct as 
 might be expected," he concludes, "I trust for your excuse, 
 when I tell you that my brain is so shook with the wounds in 
 my head, that I am sensible I am not always so clear as could 
 be wished ; but whilst a ray of reason remains, my heart and 
 my head shall ever be exerted for the benefit of our King and 
 Country." 
 
 It may be added here, that the scar left by this wound 
 seems to have been the cause of Nelson's hair being trained 
 down upon his forehead, during the later years of his life. 
 Prior to that it was brushed well off and up, as may be seen 
 in the portrait by Abbott, painted during his stay in England, 
 while recovering from the loss of his arm. After his death, a 
 young officer of the '' Victory," who had cut off some locks for 
 those who wished such a remembrance of their friend, speaks 
 of " the hair that used to hang over his forehead, near the 
 wound that he received at the Battle of the Nile." 
 
 The perception of his control over the communications from 
 Rosetta to Alexandria dawned rather late upon Nelson, for on 
 the 5th of August he had announced his purpose of starting 
 
SAILS FOR NAPLES 313 
 
 down the Mediterranean on the 19th. This he postponed 
 afterwards to the first part of September, and again for as 
 long as possible. While in this intention, most secret and 
 urgent orders came on the loth from St. Vincent, to return to 
 the westward with his command, and to co-operate with an 
 expedition planned against Minorca. Six prizes, with seven 
 of the British ships-of-the-line, had started on the 14th for 
 Gibraltar, under the command of Sir James Saumarez. The 
 three remaining prizes were burned, and hasty temporary 
 repairs, adequate only for a summer voyage, were put upon 
 the " Vanguard," " Culloden," and " Alexander," the three 
 most defective ships of his fleet. On the 19th he sailed with 
 these three for Naples, which he had from the first intended 
 to visit, in order to give them the complete overhauling they 
 imperatively needed. On and after the 13th of August sev- 
 eral frigates had joined him. Three of these, witli three 
 ships-of-the-line, were left with Captain Hood, to conduct the 
 blockade of Alexandria, and to suppress the enemy's com- 
 munications by water along the coasts of Egypt and Syria. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Nelson's Eeturn from Egypt to Naples. — Meeting with Lady 
 Hamilton. — Association with the Court of Naples. — War be- 
 tween Naples and France. — Defeat of the Neapolitans. — 
 Flight of the Court to Palermo. 
 
 September-December, 1798. Age, 40. 
 
 THE voyage of Nelson's small division from Aboukir Bay 
 to Naples occupied between four and five weeks, owing 
 partly to light and contrary winds, and partly to the dull sail- 
 ing of the " Culloden," which had a sail secured under her 
 bottom to lessen the dangerous leak caused by her grounding 
 on the night of the battle. This otherwise unwelcome delay 
 procured for Nelson a period of salutary, though enforced, 
 repose, which the nature of his injuries made especially 
 desirable. His mind, indeed, did not cease to work, but it 
 was free from harassment ; and the obvious impossibility of 
 doing anything, save accept the present easy-going situation, 
 contributed strongly to the quietness upon which restoration 
 depended. Nor were there wanting matters of daily interest 
 to prevent an excess of monotony. Now that frigates were 
 no longer so vitally necessary, they and other light cruisers 
 turned up with amusing frequency, bringing information, and 
 being again despatched hither and yonder with letters from 
 the admiral, which reflected instinctively his personal moods, 
 and his active concern in the future military operations. 
 
 The distress from his head continued for some time with 
 little abatement, and naturally much affected his tone of mind. 
 At the first he spoke of his speedy return to England as 
 inevitable, nor did the prospect occasion the discourage mejnt 
 which he had experienced after the loss of his arm ; a symp- 
 tom which had shown the moral effect of failure upon a sen- 
 sitive and ambitious temperament. "My head is ready to 
 split," he had written to St. Vincent before starting, "and I 
 
INSISTS ON ACTIVE OPERATIONS 315 
 
 am always so sick ; in short, if there be no fracture, my head 
 is severely shaken." A fortnight after leaving the bay, he 
 writes him again : " I know I ought to give up for a little 
 while ; my head is splitting at this moment ; " and Nicolas 
 remarks that the letter bears evident marks of suffering, three 
 attempts being made to spell the word "splitting." Yet by 
 this time the pain had become at least intermittent, for Sau- 
 marez, whose squadron fell in with the admiral's division 
 several times, notes that on the 26th of August he spent half 
 an hour on board the fiagshij), and found him in perfect health ; 
 and on the 7th of September Nelson himself writes to the 
 British minister at Florence that he felt so much recovered, 
 it was probable he would not go home for the present. A 
 few days later he wrote to Hood, off Alexandria, that he 
 relied upon the thoroughness of the blockade to complete the 
 destruction of the French army. " I shall not go home," he 
 added, " until this is effected, and the islands of Malta, Corfu, 
 &c., retaken." 
 
 It is to the furtherance of these objects, all closely allied, 
 and in his apprehension mutually dependent, that his occa- 
 sional letters are directed. His sphere of operations he plainly 
 conceives to be from Malta, eastward, to Syria inclusive. " I 
 detest this voyage to Naples," he wrote to St. Vincent, two 
 days before reaching the port. " Nothing but absolute neces- 
 sity could force me to the measure. Syracuse in future, whilst 
 my operations lie on the eastern side of Sicily, is my port, 
 where every refreshment may be had for a fleet." The pres- 
 ent necessity was that of refit and repair, to which Syracuse 
 was inadequate. " For myself," he sent word to Sir William 
 Hamilton, " I hope not to be more than four or live days at 
 Naples, for these times are not for idleness." He is urgent 
 that Naples should now actively support the operations against 
 Malta, and shell the transports in Alexandria. " Naples has 
 evidently broken her treaty with France, and yet is afraid to 
 assist in finishing the vast armament of the French. Four 
 hours with bomb-vessels would set all in a blaze, and we know 
 what an army is without stores." To the British minister in 
 Turkey he is siniilarly insistent. If the Sultan will but send 
 a few ships-of-the-line, and some bombs, he can destroy all 
 the transports in Alexandria ; and an army of ten thousand 
 
316 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 meu may retake the place immediately, for the French have 
 ill it only four thousand. The need to do this is urgent, 
 for, by the information of French prisoners, Bonaparte only 
 wanted '' communication opened by sea to march into Syria, 
 that the transports," — which Nelson proposes to burn, — 
 " with stores for the army, may go alongshore with him.'' 
 
 The same tendency was shown upon the appearance of a 
 Portuguese squadron of four ships-of-the-line, which entered 
 the Mediterranean in July with orders to place themselves 
 under his command. He first learned the fact upon this pas- 
 sage, and at once sent a frigate to Alexandria to beg the Portu- 
 guese admiral, the Marquis de Niza, to assume the blockade, 
 as the most important service to be rendered the common 
 cause. When the frigate reached its destination, ISTiza had 
 come and gone, and Nelson then headed him off at the Strait 
 of Messina, on his way to Naples, and sent him to blockade 
 Malta. It may be added that this squadron remained under 
 his command until December, 1799, and was of substantial 
 utility in the various operations. Nelson professed no great 
 confidence in its efficiency, which was not subjected to the 
 severest tests ; but he made a handsome acknowledgment to 
 its commander when it was recalled to Lisbon. 
 
 Three weeks after reaching Naples his decision as to the 
 direction of his personal oversight underwent a change, due 
 to a series of events for the initiation of which, by plung- 
 ing Naples prematurely into war with France, he was himself 
 largely responsible. From the time that ill-considered move- 
 ment began, under the combined impetus of the Queen and of 
 Lady Hamilton, for both whom he expressed at this time un- 
 bounded chivalrous devotion, Nelson felt tied, not merely to 
 the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, but to the personal protec- 
 tion of its Sovereigns as well. It is true, certainly, that 
 orders from the Admiralty, dated October 3d, immediately 
 after receiving news of the Battle of the Nile, named first 
 among his duties "the protection of the coasts of Sicily, 
 Naples, and the Adriatic, and, in the event of the war being 
 renewed in Italy, an active co-operation with the Austrian 
 and Neapolitan armies ; " but long before receiving these, 
 acknowledged by him on the 18th of November, he had in- 
 duced the hesitating King to precipitate war by advancing 
 
ARRIVAL AT NAPLES, 1798. 817 
 
 against the French army in the Roman States, and had aban- 
 doned his purpose of going to Egypt. On October 22d he 
 wrote St. Vincent, "The King having desired my return to 
 Naples in the first week in November, I shall, after having 
 arranged the blockade of Malta, return to Naples, and en- 
 deavour to be useful in the movements of their army. In 
 thus acquiescing in the desire of the King of Naples, I give 
 up ray plan, which was to have gone to Egypt and attended 
 to the destruction of the French shipping in that quarter." 
 "I do not like going back from the Eastward," he writes 
 two days later, " but I give up ray own opinion for this time, 
 as it is impossible to foresee how this new war may turn out." 
 These expressions, repeated to others, show the anxiety of 
 his mind acting against his judgment. " I feel my duty at 
 present is in the East," he tells Lady Hamilton herself ; but 
 devotion to the Court gains upon him until, from the expres- 
 sion " who could resist such a Queen ? " written in Naples in 
 November, he in February, at Palermo, commits himself un- 
 reservedly to personal attention to the safety of the sover- 
 eigns. "I have promised niy flag shall not go out of the mole 
 at Palermo without the approbation of the Court, and that I 
 never expect to get." 
 
 On the 22d of September the flagship anchored at Naples. 
 On the 15th her foremast had been carried away in a squall, 
 and the " poor wretched Vanguard," as Nelson called her, 
 having to be towed by a frigate, her two crippled consorts 
 preceded her arrival by six days. The news of the victory 
 had been brought three weeks before by the " Mutine," on 
 the 1st of September. The Court party had gone wild with 
 joy, in which the populace, naturally hostile to the French, 
 had joined with southern vivacity of expression. Captain 
 Capel, who commanded the brig, with Lieutenant Hoste, who 
 was to succeed him when he departed with the despatches for 
 England, had been at once taken to Court and presented. 
 When they left the palace they were met by Lady Hamilton, 
 who made them get into her carriage, and with characteris- 
 tic bad taste and love of notoriety paraded them until dark 
 through the streets of this neutral capital, she wearing a 
 bandeau round her forehead with the words, " Nelson and 
 Victory." " The populace saw and understood what it meant," 
 
318 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 wrote Hoste, '^aud 'Viva Nelson!' resounded through, the 
 streets. You can have no idea of the rejoicings that were 
 made throughout Naples. Bonfires and illuminations all over 
 the town ; indeed, it would require an abler pen than I am 
 master of to give you any account but what will fall infinitely 
 short of what was the case." 
 
 By Nelson's orders the " Mutine " sailed in a few days to 
 meet him with despatches, and on the 14th of September 
 joined the division off Stroniboli. With more important in- 
 formation, and letters from persons of greater consequence, 
 she had brought also one from Lady Hamilton, giving a vivid 
 picture of the general joy, and in particular an account of the 
 Queen's state of mind, so highly colored that Nelson hoped he 
 might not witness a renewal of it. When the "Vanguard" 
 approached the town, crowds of boats went out to meet her. 
 The King himself came on board when she was still a league 
 from the anchorage. He had been preceded by Sir William 
 and Lady Hamilton, The latter, greatly overcome, dropped 
 her lovely face and by no means slender figure into the arms 
 of the admiral, who, on his part, could scarcely fail to be 
 struck with the pose of one whose attitudes compelled the 
 admiration of the most exacting critics. The emotion stirred 
 by the warmth of his welcomes, on this and the following 
 days, showed itself in phrases of unusual tenderness to his 
 wife. " If so affecting to those who were only united to me 
 by bonds of friendship, what must it be to my dearest wife, 
 my friend, my everything which is most dear to me in this 
 world ? " " The scene in the boat was terribly affecting. Up 
 flew her ladyship, and exclaiming, '0 God, is it possible?' 
 she fell into my arm more dead than alive. Tears, however, 
 soon set matters to rights." 
 
 This was the beginning of an intimacy destined, in the end, 
 to affect profoundly and unhappily the future of Nelson. 
 Although Sir William Hamilton, in his own congratulatory 
 letter by the "Mutine," called him "our bosom friend," they 
 do not seem to have met since the summer of 1793, when the 
 young captain carried Hood's despatches from Toulon to 
 Naples ; and Nelson, while acknowledging on the present 
 occasion the kindness of an invitation to take up his quarters 
 at the embassy, had expressed a preference for rooms at a 
 
EMMA, LADY HAMILTON. 
 
 After a^aintiug by G. Komney. 
 

r*$ 
 
 Mr^^ 
 
4 
 
LADY HAMILTON 319 
 
 hotel, on account of the business to be transacted. This re- 
 luctance, howerer, was easily and properly overruled, and 
 immediately after anchoring he went to live at the ambas- 
 sador's house, which, under the management of the celebrated 
 woman who presided there, became the social centre of the 
 welcomes lavished not only upon himself, but upon all the 
 officers of the ships. 
 
 Emma, Lady Hamilton, the second wife of Sir William, was 
 at this time thirty -three years old, her husband being sixty- 
 eight. Her name, when first entering the world, was Amy 
 Lyon. Born in Cheshire of extremely poor parents, in the 
 humblest walk of life, she had found her way up to London, 
 while yet little more than a child, and there, having a beau- 
 tiful face, much natural charm of manner and disposition, 
 utterly inexperienced, and with scarcely any moral standards, 
 — of which her life throughout shows but little trace, — she 
 was speedily ruined, fell so far, in fact, that even with all her 
 attractions it seemed doubtful whether any man would own 
 himself responsible for her condition, or befriend her. In 
 these circumstances, when not yet seventeen, she was taken 
 up by a nephew of Sir William Hamilton, Mr. Charles Gre- 
 ville, who recognized not merely her superficial loveliness, but 
 something of the mental and moral traits underlying it, which 
 promised a capacity for development into an interesting and 
 affectionate household companion. Upon her promises of 
 amendment, in the matter of future relations with men, and 
 of submission to his guidance and wishes in the general con- 
 duct of her life, he took her in charge, and the two lived 
 together for nearly four years. 
 
 Greville bestowed a good deal of pains upon her training, 
 and was rewarded, not only by gratitude and careful compli- 
 ance with his directions, but by her sincere and devoted affec- 
 tion. The girl became heartily and fondly in love with him, 
 finding both contentment and happiness in the simply ordered 
 home provided for her. Her education, which hitherto was of 
 the smallest, received attention, — her letters showing a very 
 great improvement both in spelling and mode of expression by 
 the end of their association. On the moral side, of course, 
 there was not much development to be expected from one 
 whose standards, with less excuse, were in no way better than 
 
320 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 her own. On this side Greville's teaching was purely utili- 
 tarian. Her position was considered as a calling, — success in 
 which demanded certain proprieties and accomplishments, 
 only to be attained by the practice of habitual self-control, 
 alike in doing and in not doing. 
 
 The future Lady Hamilton was affectionate and impulsive, 
 good-humored, with generous instincts and a quick temper ; 
 but she was also ambitious and exceptionally clever. She 
 loved Greville warmly ; but she took to heart the hard truths 
 of his teachings, and they sank deep in a congenial soil. 
 Under the influence of the two motives, she applied herself to 
 gain, and did gain, a certain degree of external niceness and 
 self-control. Her affection for Greville made her willing, for 
 his sake, because he was not rich, to live quietly, to accept 
 modest surroundings, and to discard whatever was coarse in 
 associates, or unbecoming in her own person or conduct. He, 
 while relaxing none of his requirements, repaid her with 
 courtesy and increasing admiration, than which nothing was 
 dearer to her ; for, if not appreciative of the satisfaction of 
 self-respect, she was keenly alive to the delights of homage 
 from others, though extorted by purely adventitious qualities. 
 Glory was to her more than honor. This love of admiration, 
 fostered, yet pruned, by Greville's shrewd precepts, was her 
 dominant trait. To its gratification her singular personal 
 advantages contributed, and they were powerfully supported 
 by an unusual faculty for assuming a part, for entering into 
 a character and representing its external traits. Thus gifted 
 by nature, and swayed by vanity, her development was for the 
 time regulated and chastened by the disinterestedness of her 
 passion for her lover. Her worst qualities were momentarily 
 kept in abeyance. Naturally lovable, not only in exterior but 
 in temperament, she became more and more attractive. 
 "Consider," wrote Greville, referring to her surroundings 
 before she passed into his hands, " what a charming creature 
 she would have been, if she had been blessed with the advan- 
 tages of an early education, and had not been spoilt by the 
 indulgence of every caprice," 
 
 Unfortunately the restraining influence, probably ephemeral 
 in any event, was about to be rudely removed, permitting to 
 flourish in unrestrained vigor the natural tendency to compel 
 
LADY HAMILTON 321 
 
 admiration and secure advantage by the spell of physical 
 beauty, and by the exertion of natural aptitudes for pleasing 
 in the only path to success open to her. In 1782 Hamilton's 
 first wife died, and in 17<S4 he came to England ou leave. 
 There he met Amy Lyon, now known as Emma Hart, in the 
 house provided for her by Greville. His admiration of her 
 Avas extreme, and its tendency was not misunderstood by her. 
 He returned to his post at Kaples at the end of the year. In 
 the course of 1785 Greville, who was now in his thirty-sixth 
 year, decided that the condition of his fortune made it impera- 
 tive for him to marry, and that as a first step thereto he must 
 break with Emma Hart. Hamilton's inclination for her pro- 
 vided a ready means for so doing, so far as the two men were 
 concerned ; but her concurrence was not sure. After some 
 correspondence, it was arranged that she should go to Naples 
 in the spring of 178G, to live there under Hamilton's care, 
 with the expectation on her part that Greville would join her 
 a few months later. Placed as she then would be, it was 
 probable that she would eventually accept the offers made 
 her ; though it would be less than just to either Greville or 
 Hamilton, to allow the impression that they did not intend to 
 provide sufficiently for her needs, whatever her decision. 
 
 In this way she left England in the spring of 1786, reach- 
 ing ISTaples on the 26th of April. When the poor girl, after 
 many of her letters to her lover remained unanswered, fully 
 realized that the separation was final, her grief was extreme, 
 and found utterance in words of tenderness and desolation, 
 which, however undisciplined in expression, are marked by 
 genuine pathos. Bub anger struggled with sorrow for the 
 mastery in her soul. She was too keen-witted not to have had 
 an inkling of the possible outcome of her departure from 
 England, and of the doubtful position she was occupying at 
 Naples ; but her wishes had made her willingly deaf to any 
 false ring in the assurances given her by Greville, and she 
 resented not only the abandonment, but the deceit which she, 
 justly or unjustly, conceived to have been practised, while her 
 womanliness revolted from the cold-blooded advice given by 
 him to accept the situation. The conflict was so sharp that 
 for a time both he and Hamilton expected she would return to 
 England ; but Greville had not labored in vain at what he was 
 
 21 
 
322 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 pleased to consider her education. By the end of the year she 
 was addressing Hamilton in words of A'ery fairly assumed 
 affection, but not until she had written to Greville, with a cer- 
 tain haughty desperation, <' If you affront me, I will make 
 him marry me." The threat was two-edged, for Hamilton 
 intended Greville to be his heir ; but the latter probably gave 
 little heed to a contingency he must have thought very 
 unlikely for a man of fifty-six, who had passed his life in the 
 world, and held Hamilton's public position. 
 
 To effect this, however, Emma Hart now bent her personal 
 charms, strong purpose, and the worldly wisdom Avith Avhich 
 Greville had taught her to assure her hold upon a man. 
 Love, in its unselfishness, passed out of her life with Greville. 
 Other men might find her pliant, pleasing, seductive ; he alone 
 knew her as disinterested. She followed out her design with 
 a patience, astuteness, and consistency which attest the 
 strength of her resolution, and her acute intellectual percep- 
 tion of the advantages at her disposal. Ambition, a natural 
 trait with her, had been trained to self-control, in order to 
 compass a lowly, colorless success. Unlooked-for opportunity 
 now held before her eyes, distant and difficult of attainment, 
 but not impossible, a position of assured safety, luxury, and 
 prominence, which appealed powerfully to the love of pleas- 
 ure, still dormant, and to the love of conspicuousness, which 
 became the two most noticeable features of her character. 
 
 With all her natural advantages, however, the way was hard 
 and long. She had to become indispensable to Hamilton, and 
 at the same time, and by the same methods, an object the 
 more desirable to him because of her evident attractiveness 
 to others. Above all, she had to contend with her own tem- 
 per, naturally lively and prone to bursts of anger, which the 
 prolonged suspense of the struggle, acting upon a woman's 
 nerves, tended peculiarly to exasperate. Hamilton Avas of 
 an age when he might be enslaved by fondness, but not con- 
 strained by strength of passion to endure indefinitely house- 
 hold tempests, much less to perpetuate them upon himself 
 by lasting bonds. In all this Emma Hart showed herself 
 fully equal to the task. Tenderly affectionate to him, except 
 when carried away by the fits of irritability which both he 
 and Greville had occasion to observe, she complied readily 
 
LADY HAMILTON 323 
 
 with all Ins wishes, and followed out with extraordinary as- 
 siduity his plans for her improvement in education and in 
 accomplishments. The society which gathered round them 
 was, of course, almost wholly of men, who one and all pros- 
 trated themselves before her beauty and cleverness, with the 
 same unanimity of submission as did the officers of Nelson's 
 division after the Battle of the Nile. But, while giving free 
 rein to coquetry, and revelling in admiration, she afforded no 
 ground for scandal to the world, or dissatisfaction to Hamil- 
 ton. In the attitude of outsiders towards her, he had reason 
 to see only the general testimony to her charms and to his 
 own good fortune. At the end of 1787 he wrote to Greville : 
 '" I can assure you her behaviour is such as has acquired her 
 many sensible admirers, and we have a good man society, and 
 all the female nobility, with the queen at their head, show her 
 every distant civility." 
 
 Thus she persisted, keeping her beauty, and growing in 
 mental acquirements and accomplishments, but making little 
 apparent headway towards the great object of her ambition. 
 " I fear," wrote Hamilton towards the middle of 1789, when 
 she had been three years with him, -'her views are beyond 
 what I can bring myself to execute ; and that when her hopes 
 on that point are over, she will make herself and me unhappy. 
 Hitherto her behaviour is irreproachable, but her temper, as 
 you must know, unequal." He underrated her perseverance, 
 and exaggerated his own strength of reluctance, innate and 
 acquired. Impossible as it would seem, with his antecedents 
 and with hers, his friends and acquaintances became alarmed 
 for the result, and not without cause. " Her influence over 
 him exceeds all belief," Avrote a mutual friend to Greville in 
 March, 1791. "His attachment exceeds admiration, it is 
 perfect dotage." Shortly after this letter was written the 
 two went to England, and there they were married on the 
 6th of September, 1791. By the end of the year they were 
 back in Naples, and did not again leave Italy up to the time 
 of Nelson's arrival in 1798. 
 
 Lady Hamilton did not abuse the security of the place she 
 had won with so much pains, nor on the other hand did her 
 ambition and love of prominence permit her to settle down 
 to inert enjoyment of it. The careful self-restraint with 
 
824 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 which she had observed the proprieties of her former false 
 position facilitated the disappearance of prejudices naturally 
 arising from it. Many English ladies of rank, passing through 
 Naples, visited her, and those who refused to ignore the past 
 of the woman, in the position of the British minister's wife, 
 were by some sharply criticised. "She has had a difficult 
 part to act," wrote Hamilton, six months after their return, 
 " and has succeeded wonderfully, having gained, by having 
 no pretensions, tlie thorough approbation of all the English 
 ladies. The Queen of Naples was very kind to her on our 
 return, and treats her like any other travelling lady of dis- 
 tinction ; in short, we are very comfortably situated here." 
 " We dined yesterday with Sir AVilliam and Lady Hamilton," 
 wrote Lady Malmesbary, whose husband was among the most 
 distinguished diplomatists of the day. " She really behaves 
 as well as possible, and quite wonderfully, considering her 
 origin and education." 
 
 This last phrase, used at the culmination of Lady Hamil- 
 ton's good fortune and personal advance, was wholly good- 
 natured ; but it sums up the best of the not very good that 
 can be said of her during tlie height of her prosperity, and 
 in later j^ears. Although, as has been remarked, she did not 
 at this time abuse the security which as a wife she had at- 
 tained, — for policy too clearly dictated the continuance of 
 her previous circumspection, — the necessity for strenuous 
 watchfulness, exertion, and self-restraint, in order to reach 
 a distant goal, no longer existed ; and, although a woman of 
 many amiable and generous impulses, she had not a shred of 
 principle to take the place of the motive of self-interest, whicli 
 hitherto had been so peremptory in its exactions. What she 
 was in delicacy in 1791, that she remained in 1796. — five 
 years after the disappearance of her social disabilities ; a 
 pretty fair proof that what she possessed of it was but skin- 
 deep, the result of a diligent observance of Greville's pro- 
 prieties, for her personal advantage, not the token of a noble 
 inner spirit struggling from excusable defilement to the light. 
 " She does the honours of the house with great attention and 
 desire to please," wrote Greville's correspondent of 1791, be- 
 fore quoted, '' but wants a little refinement of manners, in 
 which, in the course of six years, I wonder she has not made 
 
LADY HAMILTON 325 
 
 greater jjrogress.'' '' She is all Nature and. yet all Art," said 
 Sir Gilbert Elliot, in 1796; "that is to say, her manners are 
 perfectly unpolished, of course very easy, though not with 
 the ease of good breeding, bnt of a barmaid ; excessively good 
 humoured, and wishing to please and be admired by all ages 
 and sorts of persons that come in her way ; but besides con- 
 siderable natural understanding, she has acquired, since her 
 marriage, some knowledge of history and of the arts, and one 
 Avonders at the application and pains she has taken to make 
 herself what she is. With men her language and conversa- 
 tion are exaggerations of anything I ever heard anywhere ; 
 and I Avas wonderfully struck Avith these inveterate remains 
 of her origin, though the impression Avas very much weakened 
 by seeing the other ladies of Naples.'' '' I thought her a very 
 handsome, vulgar woman," curtly commented the lieutenant 
 of a frigate Avhich visited Naples in the summer of 1798, 
 Avhile hunting for Nelson in the game of cross-purposes that 
 preceded the Nile.^ Allowing for difference of observers, it 
 is plain that the Lady Hamilton Avhom Nelson now met, had 
 not improved in essentials over the Emma Hart of a half- 
 dozen years before. 
 
 Tavo years afterwards, the A^erdict of these men was con- 
 firmed by Mrs. St. George,- a lady in London society, Avho 
 viewed her possibly with something of the repugnant preju- 
 dice of a refined and cultivated Avomau, yet evidently measured 
 her Avords calmly, even in her priA^ate journal. '^ I think her 
 bold, daring, vain even to folly, and stamped with the man- 
 ners of her first situation mucli more strongly than one would 
 suppose, after having represented Majesty, and lived in good 
 company fifteen years. Her dress is frightful. Her Avaist is 
 absolutely between her shoulders." Nelson measured her by 
 a different standard. " In cA'ery point of view," he tells her- 
 self, "from Ambassatrice to the duties of domestic life, I 
 never saAv your equal. That elegance of manners, accomplish- 
 ments, and, above all, your goodness of heart, is unparalleled." 
 The same lady describes her personal appearance, at the time 
 Avhen his devotion had reached the height from which it never 
 declined. " Her figure is colossal, but, excepting her feet, 
 
 1 Colbum's United Service Magazine, 1847, part ii. p. 52. 
 
 2 Afterwards Mrs, Trench, the rnotl^er of Archbishop Trench. 
 
326 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 which are hideous, well shaped. Her bones are large, and 
 she is exceedingly embonpoint. The shape of all her features 
 is fine, as is the form of her head, and particularly her ears ; 
 her teeth are a little irregular, but tolerably white ; her eyes 
 light blue, with a brown spot in one, which, though a defect, 
 takes nothing away from her beauty or expression. Her eye- 
 brows and hair (which, by the bye, is never clean) are dark, 
 and her complexion coarse. Her expression is strongly 
 marked, variable, and interesting ; her movements in com- 
 mon life ungraceful; her voice loud, yet not disagreeable." 
 Elliot's briefer mention of her appearance is at once confirm- 
 atory and complementary of that of Mrs. St. George : " Her 
 person is nothing short of monstrous for its enormity, and is 
 growing every day. Her face is beautiful." 
 
 To these opinions it may be not uninteresting to add the 
 critical estimate of AYilliam Beckford, uttered many years 
 later. Beckford was not an admirable character, far from it; 
 but he had known good society, and he had cultivated tastes. 
 Nelson accepted his hospitality, and, with the Hamiltons, 
 spent several days under his roof, about Christmas time, 1800. 
 In reply to the question, " Was the second Lady Hamilton a 
 fascinating woman ? " he said, '•' I never thought her so. She 
 was somewhat masculine, but symmetrical in figure, so that 
 Sir William called her his Grecian. She was full in person, 
 not fat, but embonjjoint. Her carriage often majestic, rather 
 than feminine. Not at all delicate, ill-bred, often very 
 affected, a devil in temper when set on edge. She had beau- 
 tiful hair and displayed it. Her countenance was agreeable, 
 — fine, hardly beautiful, but the outline excellent. She 
 affected sensibility, but felt none — was artful ; and no 
 wonder, she had been trained in the Court of Naples — a fine 
 school for an English Avoman of any stamp. Nelson wa^ 
 infatuated, She could make him believe anything, that the 
 profligate queen was a Madonna. He was her dupe. She 
 never had a child ii; her life." ■ As to this last assertion, 
 Beckford was not in a position to have personal knowledge. 
 
 But along with this native coarseness, which, if not ineradi- 
 cable, was never eradicated, she possessed an intuitive and 
 perfect sense, amounting to genius, for what propriety and 
 1 Beckfovd's Memoirs, London, 1859, vol. ii. p. 326. 
 
LADY HAMILTON 32t 
 
 good taste demanded in the presentation of an ideal part, — 
 the gift of the born actress. Of her powers in this way the 
 celebrated " Attitudes " were the chief example, and there is 
 no disagreement among the witnesses, either as to their charm 
 or as to the entire disappearance of the every-day woman in 
 the assumed character. " We had the attitudes a night or two 
 ago by candle light," wrote Sir Gilbert Elliot in 1796. '' They 
 come up to my expectations fully, which is saying evei-ything. 
 They set Lady Hamilton in a very different light from any I 
 had seen her in before ; nothing about her, neither her conver- 
 sation, her manners, nor figure, announce the very refined taste 
 which she discovers in this performance, besides the extraordi- 
 nary talent which is needed for the execution." " You never 
 saw anything so charming as Lady Hamilton's attitudes," 
 Avrote Lady Malmesbury in 1791. "The most graceful 
 statues or pictures do not give you an idea of them." '' It is 
 a beautiful performance," wrote Mrs. St. George, who saw her 
 in 1800, when the Hamiltons and Nelson were travelling on 
 the Continent, " amusing to the most ignorant, and highly 
 interesting to the lovers of art. It is remarkable that 
 although coarse and ungraceful in common life, she becomes 
 highly graceful, and even beautiful, during this performance. 
 It is also singular that, in spite of the accuracy of her imita- 
 tion of the finest ancient draperies, her usual dress is taste- 
 less, vulgar, loaded and unbecoming." 
 
 The stormy period of the French Revolution, which was 
 about to burst into universal war at the time she was married, 
 gave Lady Hamilton another opportunity to come yet more 
 conspicuously before men's eyes than she had hitherto done. 
 It is not easy to say what degree of influence she really 
 attained, or what particular results she may have effected ; 
 but she certainly managed to give herself so much the air of a 
 person of importance, in the political intrigues of the day in 
 Naples, as at the least to impose successfully upon a great 
 many, and to be accepted very much at her own valuation. 
 The French ambassador, writing to Bonaparte in 1798, says : 
 " If the preponderance which the French Republic ought to 
 take here, removed hence Acton and the wife of Hamilton, 
 this country, Avithout other changes, would be extremely use- 
 ful for the execution of all your projects in the Mediterra- 
 
328 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 nean ; " and Sir William himself, who should have known, 
 speaks of her activity and utility, — " for several years the 
 real and only confidential friend of the Queen of Naples." 
 Nelson, writing to the Queen of Naples in 1804, after Hamil- 
 ton's death, said : '' Your Majesty well knows that it was her 
 capacity and conduct which sustained his diplomatic character 
 during the last years in which he was at Naples.'" ^ Certainly, 
 Nelson believed, with all the blindness of love, whatever his 
 mistress chose to tell him, but he was not without close per- 
 sonal knowledge of the inside history of at least two of those 
 last years ; for, in 1801, addressing Mr. Addington, then 
 Prime Minister, he used these words : " Having for a length 
 of time seen the correspondence both public and private, from 
 all the Neapolitan ministers to their Government and to the 
 Queen of Naples, I am perfectly acquainted with the views of 
 the several Powers." For her success Lady Hamilton was 
 indebted, partly to her personal advantages, and partly to her 
 position as wife of the British minister and chosen friend to 
 the Queen. Great Britain played a leading part everywhere 
 in the gigantic struggle throughout the Continent, but to a 
 remote peninsular kingdom like Naples, protected by its dis- 
 tance from the centres of strife, yet not wholly inaccessible by 
 land, the chief maritime state was the one and only sufficient 
 ally. A rude reminder of his exposure to naval attack had 
 been given to the King of the Two Sicilies, in 1792, by the 
 appearance of a French fleet, which extorted satisfaction for 
 an alleged insult, by threatening instant bombardment of his 
 capital. 
 
 Sir William Hamilton, who had been minister since 1765, 
 thus found himself suddenly converted from a dilettante and 
 sportsman, lounging through life, into a busy diplomat, at the 
 centre of affairs of critical moment. At sixty-two the change 
 could scarcely have been welcome to him, but to his beautiful 
 and ambitious wife the access of importance was sweet, for it 
 led to a close friendship with the Queen, already disposed to 
 affect her, even in the notorious position she had held before 
 her marriage; and the Queen, a daughter of Maria Theresa 
 and sister to Marie Antoinette, was much more of a man than 
 
 1 Compare au equally strong assertion, Nicolas's Despatches, vol. vi. 
 
LADY HAMILTON 329 
 
 the King. The intimacy became the talk of JSTapleSj and the 
 report spread, easily believed, because in the nature of things 
 very likely, that the personal relations between the two 
 women cloaked a great deal of underhand work, such as often 
 accompanies diplomatic difficulties. Nor did Lady Hamilton 
 lack natural qualifications for the position into which she 
 undoubtedly Avished to thrust herself. She was a brave, 
 capable, full-blooded, efficient woman, not to be daunted by 
 fears or scruples ; a woman who, if only nerve and intelli- 
 gence Avere required, and if distinction for herself Avas at 
 stake, could be fairly depended upon. There was in her 
 make-up a good deal of pagan virtue. She could appreciate 
 and admire heroism, and, under the stimulus of excitement, of 
 self-conscious magnanimity, for the glitter of effective per- 
 formance and the applause of onlookers, she was quite capable 
 of heroic action. It was this daring spirit, coarsely akin to 
 much that was best in himself, and of Avhich she made proof 
 under his own eyes, that Nelson recognized ; and this, in 
 the thought of the writer, was the body of truth, from which 
 his enthusiasm, enkindled by lier charms and by her tender- 
 ness towards himself, projected such a singular phantasm of 
 romantic perfections. 
 
 Such was the woman, and such the position in the public 
 eye that she had gained for herself, Avhen to Naples, first 
 in the European continent, came the ncAvs which made Nel- 
 son for the moment the most conspicuous man of the day. 
 He had achieved a triumph the most startlingly dazzling that 
 had yet been gained, and over one who up to that time had 
 excelled all other Avarriors in the brilliancy and extent of his 
 victories. Bonaparte Avas not yet the Napoleon Avhom history 
 knoAvs, but thus far he had been the most distinguished child 
 of the Revolution. That Lady Hamilton then and there 
 formed the purpose of attaching Nelson to her, by the bonds 
 Avhich have sullied his memory, is most improbable ; but it is 
 in entire keeping Avith the career and the self-revelations of 
 the Avoman that she should, instinctively, if not with delibera- 
 tion, have resolA^ed to parade herself in the glare of his re- 
 noAvn, and appear in the foreground upon the stage of his 
 triumph, the chief dispenser of his praises, the patroness and 
 proprietor of the hero. The great occasion should shed a 
 
330 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 glamour round her, together with him. " Emma's passiou is 
 admiration," Greville liad written soon after they parted, 
 "and it is capable of aspiring to any line which would 
 be celebrated, and it would be indifferent, when on that 
 key, whether she was Lucretia or Sappho, or Scsevola or Reg- 
 ulus ; anything grand, mascnline or feminine, she could 
 take up." 
 
 Unhappily, Nelson was not able to stand the heady dose of 
 flattery administered by a woman of such conspicuous beauty 
 and consummate art ; nor was his taste discriminating enough 
 to experience any wholesome revolt against the rankness of 
 the draught she offered him. The quick appreciation of the 
 born actress, which enabled her when on the stage to clothe 
 herself with a grace and refinement that droj^ped away when 
 she left it, conspired with his simplicity of confidence in 
 others, and his strong tendency to idealize, to invest her with 
 a character very different from the true. Not that the Lady 
 Hamilton of reality was utterly different from the Lady Ham- 
 ilton of his imagination. That she ever loved him is doubtful ; 
 but there were in her spirit impulses capable of sympathetic re- 
 sponse to his own in his bravest acts, though not in his noblest 
 motives. It is inconceivable that duty ever appealed to her 
 as it did to him, nor could a woman of innate nobility of 
 character have dragged a man of Nelson's masculine renown 
 about England and the Continent, till he was the mock of all 
 beholders ; but on the other hand it never could have occurred 
 to the energetic, courageous, brilliant Lady Hamilton, after 
 the loft}^ deeds and stirring dramatic scenes of St. Vincent, 
 to beg him, as Lady Nelson did, '' to leave boarding to cap- 
 tains." Sympathy, not good taste, would have withheld her. 
 In Lady Nelson's letters there is evidence enough of a some- 
 what colorless womanly affection, but not a thrill of response 
 to tiie greatness of her husband's daring, even when sur- 
 rounded herself by the acclamations it called forth. 
 
 What Nelson had never yet found in woman Lady Ham- 
 ilton gave him, — admiration and appreciation, undisguised 
 and unmeasured, yet bestowed by one who had the power, by 
 the admission of even unfriendly critics, of giving a reality 
 and grace to the part she was performing. He was soon at 
 her feet. The playful gallantry with which Ball, Elliot, and 
 
EELATIONS WITH LADY HAMILTON 331 
 
 eveu old St. Vincent ^ himself, paid court to a handsome 
 woman, greedy of homage, became in Nelson a serious mat- 
 ter. Komantic in temperament, he was all day in flattering 
 contact with her. Worn out and ill from that '' fever of 
 anxiety," to use his own words, which he had endured since 
 the middle of June, she attended and nursed him. '' Lady 
 Hamilton," he exclaimed to Lady Nelson, with enthusiasm 
 undiscriminating in more ways than one, '' is one of the very 
 best women in this world; she is an honour to her sex." A 
 week later he tells her, with an odd collocation of persons : 
 " My pride is being your husband, the son of my dear father, 
 and in having Sir William and Lady Hamilton for my friends. 
 While these approve my conduct, I shall not feel or regard 
 the envy of thousands." The matter was passing rapidly 
 into the platonic stage, in which Sir William was also ere- 
 long assigned an appropriate, if not wholly flattering, posi- 
 tion. " What can I say of hers and Sir William's attention 
 to me ? They are in fact, with the exception of you and my 
 good father, the dearest friends I have in this world. I live 
 as Sir William's son in the house, and my glory is as dear to 
 them as their own; in short, I am under such obligations as I 
 can never repay but with my eternal gratitude." " Naples is 
 a dangerous place," he sagely tells Lord St. Vincent, " and we 
 must keep clear of it. I am writing opposite Lady Hamilton, 
 therefore 3'ou will not be surprised at the glorious jumble of 
 this letter. Were your Lordship in my place, I much doubt 
 if you could write so well ; our hearts and our hands must be 
 all in a flutter." Matters progressed ; within ten days the 
 veteran seaman learned, among other concerns of more or less 
 official importance, that " Lady Hamilton is an Angel. She 
 has honoured me by being my ambassadress to the queen : 
 therefore she has my implicit confidence and is worthy 
 of it." 
 
 That such intimacy and such relations resulted in no in- 
 fluence upon the admiral's public action is not to be believed. 
 That he consciously perverted his views is improbable, but that 
 he saw duty under other than normal lights is not only prob- 
 able, but evident. His whole emotional nature was stirred 
 
 1 St. Vincent at this time had not met her, at least as Lady Hamilton, but 
 they exchanged occasional letters. 
 
332 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 as it never had been. Incipient love and universal admiration 
 had created in him a tone of mind, and brought to birth feel- 
 ings, which he had, seemingly, scarcely known. "I cannot 
 write a stiff formal public letter," he tells St. Vincent effu- 
 sively. '^ You must make one or both so. I feel you are my 
 friend, and my heart yearns to you.*' Such extravagance of 
 expression and relaxation of official tone has no pertinent 
 cause, and is at least note^vorth3^ The Court, or rather the 
 Queen through Lady Hamilton, took possession of him. He 
 became immediately one of the little coterie centring round 
 Her Majest}^, and he reflected its tone and partisanship, which, 
 fostered probably in the intimate conversations of the two 
 Avomen, Avere readily transmitted to the minister by the wife 
 whom he adored. The Queen, impetuous, enterprising, and 
 headstrong, like her mother and sister, moved more by fem- 
 inine feelings of hatred and revenge against the French than 
 by well-balanced considerations of polic}', not onl}^ favored war, 
 but wished to precijDitate the action of the Emperor by im- 
 mediately attacking the French in the Roman territory. The 
 decision and daring of such a course was so consonant to Nel- 
 son's own temperament that he readily S3'mpathized ; but it is 
 impossible to admit its wisdom, from either a political or mili- 
 tary standpoint. It was an excessivel}'' bad combination, sub- 
 stituting isolated attacks for co-operation, and risking results 
 upon the chance of prompt support, by a state which would 
 be offended and embarrassed by the step taken. 
 
 Under ordinary conditions Nelson might have seen this, but 
 he was well handled. "Within three days he had been per- 
 suaded that upon his personal presence depended the salva- 
 tion of Italy. "My head is quite healed, and, if it were 
 necessary, I could not at present leave Italy, who looks up 
 to me as, under God, its Protector." He continually, by de- 
 vout recollection of his indebtedness to God, seeks to keep 
 himself in hand. "I am placed by Providence in that situ- 
 ation, that all my caution will be necessary to prevent vanity 
 from showing itself superior to my gratitude and thankful- 
 ness," — but tlie current was too strong for him. and was 
 swollen to a torrent by the streams of adulation, which from 
 all quarters flowed in upon a temperament only too disposed 
 to accept them. '• Could I, my dearest Fanny," he writes to 
 
HONORS PAID AT NAPLES 333 
 
 Lady Nelson, "tell you half the honours which are shown me 
 here, not a ream of paper would hold it." A grand ball was 
 given on his birthda}^, September 29 ; and a rostral column 
 was "erected under a magnificent canopy, never. Lady Ham- 
 ilton says, to come down while they remain at Naples." 
 AVithin a week the conviction of his own importance led 
 him to write to Lady Hamilton, evidently for transmission 
 to the Queen, an opinion, or rather an urgent expression of 
 advice, that Naples should at once begin war. It is only 
 conjectural to say that this opinion, which rested on no 
 adequate knowledge of the strength of the Neapolitan King- 
 dom, was elicited by tlie Queen through Lady Hamilton ; but 
 the inference derives support from the words, " I have read 
 with admiration the queen's dignified and incomparable letter 
 of September, 1796," — two years before. That his views 
 were not the simple outcome of his own unbiassed study of 
 the situation is evident enough. "• This country, by its sys- 
 tem of procrastination, will ruin itself," he writes to St. 
 Vincent, the very day after drawing up the letter in question ; 
 "the queen sees it and thinks " — not as I do, but — " as ive 
 do." That Lady Hamilton was one of the " we " is plain, for 
 in the postscript to the letter he says : " Your Ladyship will, 
 I beg, receive this letter as a preparative for Sir William 
 Hamilton, to whom I am writing, with all respect, the firm 
 and unalterable opinion of a British admiral," etc. Certainly 
 these words — taken with those alread}^ quoted, and written 
 just a week afterwards, " Lady Hamilton has been my am- 
 bassadress to the queen " — indicate that she was the inter- 
 mediary between Nelson and the Court, as well as between 
 him and her husband. 
 
 There is no record of any official request for this unofficial 
 and irregular communication of the opinion of a British ad- 
 miral ; and, of course, when a man has allowed himself, un- 
 asked, though not unprompted, to press such a line of action, 
 he has bound himself personally, and embarrassed himself 
 officially, in case it turns out badly. Nelson very soon, 
 within a fortnight, had to realize this, in the urgent entreat- 
 ies of the Court not to forsake them ; and to see reason for 
 tliinking " that a strong wish for our squadron's being on the 
 Coast of Naples is, that in case of any mishap, that their 
 
334 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 Majesties think their persons much safer under the protection 
 of the British flag than under any other ; " that is — than 
 under their own. They could not trust their own people ; 
 they could not, as the event proved, trust their army in the 
 field ; and the veteran Neapolitan naval officer, Caracciolo, 
 whether he deserved confidence or not, was stung to the quick 
 when, in the event, they sought refuge with a foreign admiral 
 instead of with himself. That Nelson should not have known 
 all this, ten days after reaching Naples, was pardonable enough, 
 and, if formally asked for advice without such facts being 
 placed before him, he could not be responsible for an error 
 thus arising ; but the case is very different when advice is 
 volunteered. He is more peremptory than the minister him- 
 self. '^ You will not believe I have said or done anything, 
 without the approbation of Sir William Hamilton. His 
 Excellency is too good to them, and the strong language of 
 an English Admiral telling them plain truths of their miser- 
 able system may do good." 
 
 The particular position of Naples relatively to France was 
 this. French troops had for a year past occupied the Roman 
 Republic, which had been established by them upon the over- 
 throw of the Papal Government. Their presence there was 
 regarded by Nelson as a constant threat to the Two Sicilies, 
 and this to an extent was true ; but rather because of the 
 contagion of revolutionar}'' ideas than from the military point 
 of view. From the latter, it should have been obvious to a 
 man like Nelson that the French must be, deterred, under ex- 
 isting conditions, from entering Naples unprovoked ; because 
 the farther they advanced the more exposed was their army, 
 in case war, Avhich Avas darkly threatening, should be renewed 
 in Upper Italy. They dared not, unless by folly, or because 
 first attacked, prolong their already too extended ex-centric 
 movement into Lower Italy. This was true, taking account 
 of Austria only ; but now that the British fleet Avas released 
 by the entire destruction of the French at the Nile, and could 
 operate anywhere on the coast, it would be doubly imprudent; 
 and when the news that it had been done reached Egypt, 
 Bonaparte, who had himself felt the weight of Naples as a 
 possible enemy, remote and feeble as she was, exclaimed, 
 " Italy is lost ! " That Naples should co-operate in the 
 
ADVISES NAPLES TO DECLARE WAR 335 
 
 general movement against France was right, although, as 
 Nelson well kne^y, she had never dared do so under much 
 more favorable conditions, — a fact which by itself should 
 have suggested to him caution ; but that she should act alone, 
 with the idea of precipitating war, refusing to await the mo- 
 ment fixed by the principal states, was folly. This, however, 
 was the course determined, under the combined impulse of 
 the Queen, Lady Hamilton, and Nelson ; and it was arranged 
 that, after visiting the blockade off Malta, he should return 
 to Naples to co-operate in the intended movement. 
 
 On the 15th of October Nelson sailed from Naples for 
 Malta in the •' Vanguard," with three ships-of-the-line which 
 had lately joined him. He still felt, with accurate instinct, 
 that Egypt and the Ionian Islands, with Malta, constituted 
 the more purely maritime interests, in dealing with which the 
 fleet would most further the general cause, and he alludes 
 frequently to his wish to attend to them ; but he promised 
 the King that he would be back in Naples in the first week 
 of November, to support the projected movement against the 
 French. He remained off Malta, therefore, only one week, 
 during which adequate arrangements Avere made for the block- 
 ade of the island, which had been formally proclaimed on the 
 12th of October, and was conducted for most of the follow- 
 ing year by the Portuguese squadron ; the senior British offi- 
 cer. Captain Ball, acting ashore with the insurgent Maltese. 
 These had risen against the French during the summer, and 
 now held them shut up in La Valetta. The adjacent island 
 of Gozo surrendered to the British on the 28th. Hood con- 
 tinued in charge off Alexandria with three ships-of-the-line; 
 while the Ionian Islands were left to themselves, until a com- 
 bined Russian and Turkish squadron entered the Mediter- 
 ranean a few Aveeks later. 
 
 On the 5th of November Nelson returned to Naples. "I 
 am, I feai', drawn into a promise that Naples Bay shall never 
 be left without an English man-of-war. I never intended 
 leaving the coast of Naples without one ; but if I had, who 
 could resist tlie request of such a queen ? " He could ground 
 much upon the Admiralty's orders, given when he was first 
 sent into the Mediterranean, to protect the Kingdom of the 
 Two Sicilies, and he had understood that the Emperor also 
 
336 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 would give his aid, if Naples attacked. This impression re- 
 ceived strength from an Austrian general, Mack, — then of 
 high reputation, but afterwards better known by his sur- 
 render to Napoleon at Ulm, in 1805, — being sent to command 
 the Neapolitan army. Sir William Hamilton, however, writ- 
 ing on the 26th of October, was more accurate in saying that 
 the Emperor only advised the King " to act openly against 
 the French at Malta, as he would certainly support him;" 
 for, Naples having a feudal claim upon the island, action there 
 could be represented as merely resistance to aggression. In 
 consequence of this misunderstanding, great confusion ensued 
 in the royal councils when a courier from Vienna brought 
 word, on the 13th of November, that that Court wished it left 
 to the French to begin hostilities ; otherwise, it would give no 
 assurance of help. Nelson was now formally one of the 
 Council which deliberated upon military operations. In virtue 
 of this position he spoke out, roughly enough. " I ventured 
 to tell their Majesties that one of the following things must 
 happen to the King, and he had his choice, — ' Either to ad- 
 vance, trusting to God for his blessing on a just cause, to die 
 with Vepee a la main, or remain quiet and be kicked out of 
 your Kingdoms.' " Thus rudely adjured, the King decided to 
 be a hero after the pattern of Nelson. 
 
 On the 22d of November a summons was sent to the French 
 to evacuate the Papal States and Malta, and a Neapolitan 
 army marched upon Rome, commanded by Mack in person. 
 At the same time Nelson took on board his squadron a corps 
 of five thousand, to seize Leghorn, the possession of which, 
 with control of the sea, was not unjustly considered threaten- 
 ing to the communications between the centre of French 
 power, in Northern Italy, and the exposed corps at the foot 
 of the peninsula. After landing this body, Nelson again went 
 to Naples, leaving Troubridge in charge at Leghorn, with 
 several ships ; directing him also to keep vessels cruising along 
 the Riviera, and before Genoa, to break up the coastwise traffic, 
 which had resumed great proportions since the absence of the 
 British from the Mediterranean, and upon which the French 
 army in Piedmont and Lombardy now greatly depended. 
 
 On the 5th of December the " Vanguard " once more 
 anchored at Naples. Nelson's estimate of affairs as he now 
 
I 
 
 DEFEAT OF THE NEAPOLITANS 337 
 
 foimd them, is best told in his own words. " The state of 
 this Country is briefly this : The army is at Rome, Civita 
 Vecchia taken, but in the Castle of St. Angelo are live hundred 
 French troops. The French have thirteen thousand troops at 
 a strong post in the Eoman State, called Castellana. General 
 Mack is gone against them with twenty thousand : the event 
 in my opinion is doubtful, and on it hangs the immediate fate 
 of iS'aples. If ]\Iack is defeated, this country, in fourteen 
 days, is lost ; for the Emperor has not yet moved his army, 
 and if the Emperor will not march, this country has not the 
 power of resisting the French. But it was not a case of 
 choice, but necessity, which forced the King of Naples to 
 march out of his country, and not to wait till the French had 
 collected a force sufficient to drive him, in a week, out of his 
 kingdom." It is by no means so sure that no other course of 
 action had been open, though Nelson naturally clung to his 
 first opinion. By advancing, the King gave the French occa- 
 sion, if they were seeking one ; and the Neapolitan army, 
 which might well have deterred them, as it had embarrassed 
 even Bonaparte in his time, had its rottenness revealed as 
 only trial can reveal. When reviewed, it had appeared to 
 Mack and Nelson a well-equipped force of thirty thousand 
 of the ''finest troops in Europe." Brought face to face with 
 fifteen thousand French, in a month it ceased to exist. 
 
 Upon Mack's advance, tlie French general Championnet 
 had evacuated Rome, into which the King made a vainglori- 
 ous triumphal entry. The French retired to Castellana, fol- 
 lowed by the Neapolitans ; but in the campaign that ensued 
 the latter behaved with disgraceful cowardice. Flying in 
 every direction, with scarcely any loss in killed, and preceded 
 in their flight by tlie King, the whole force retreated in con- 
 fusion upon the capital. There revolutionary ideas had 
 spread widely among the upper classes ; and, although the 
 populace both in city and country remained fanatically loyal, 
 and hostile to the Frencli, the King and Queen feared to trust 
 their persons to the issue of events. Powerless through sus- 
 picions of those around them, apparently well founded, and 
 through lack of any instrument with Avliich to act, now that 
 their army was destroyed, their one wish was to escape to 
 Palermo. 
 
338 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 To do this involved some difficulty, as the mob, like that of 
 Paris, Avas bitterly opposed to their sovereign leaving the 
 capital ; but by the management and determination of Nelson, 
 who was greatly helped by the courage and presence of mind 
 of Lady Hamilton, the rojal famil^^ was embarked on board 
 the "Vanguard" on the evening of December 21st. During 
 several previous days treasure to the amount of two and a 
 half millions sterling was being conveyed secretly to the 
 ship. '' The whole correspondence relative to this important 
 business," wrote Nelson to St. Vincent, '^ was carried on with the 
 greatest address by Lady Hamilton and the Queen, who being 
 constantly in the habits of correspondence, no one could sus- 
 pect." On the evening of the 23d the " Vanguard " sailed, 
 and after a most tempestuous passage reached Palermo on the 
 26th. The youngest of the princes, six j-ears old, taken sud- 
 denly with convulsions, died on the way in the arms of Lady 
 Hamilton, whose womanly helpfulness, as well as her courage, 
 came out strongly in this trying time. Nelson wrote to St. 
 Vincent: " It is my duty to tell your Lordship the obligations 
 which the whole royal family as well as myself are under on 
 this trying occasion to her Ladyship." These scenes inevi- 
 tably deepened the impression she had already made upon 
 him, which was not to be lessened by her lapse into feminine 
 weakness when the strain was over. To use her own words, , 
 in a letter to her old lover, Greville, "■ ]\[y dear, adorable 
 queen and I weep together, and now that is our onely com- 
 fort." "Our dear Lady Hamilton," Nelson wrote again a 
 few days later, " whom to see is to admire, but, to know, are 
 to be added honour and respect ; her head and heart surpass 
 her beauty, which cannot be equalled by anything I have 
 seen." LTpon himself the brief emergency and its sharp call 
 to action had had the usual reviving effect. " Thank God," 
 he wrote to Spencer, " my health is better, my mind never 
 firmer, and my heart in the right trim to comfort, relieve, and 
 protect those who it is my duty to afford assistance to." 
 
 In Palermo Nelson again lived in the minister's house, 
 bearing a large, if not a disproportionate, share of the 
 expenses. When they returned to England in 1800, Hamil- 
 ton was £2,000 in his debt. The intimacy and the manner 
 of life, in the midst of the Neapolitan court, whose corrupt- 
 
LIFE AT PALERMO 339 
 
 ness of manners both Nelson and Troubridge openly con- 
 demned, was already causing scandal, rumors of which were 
 not long in reaching home. " I am quite concerned," wrote 
 Captain Ball to Saumarez, when Nelson was about to quit the 
 station, " at the many severe paragraphs which have been put 
 in the newspapers respecting him and Lady Hamilton. I am 
 convinced that there has not been anything improper between 
 them — his Lordship could not fail being delighted with her 
 accomplishments and manners, which are very fascinating." 
 Lady Nelson, uneasy as a wife could not fail to be at reports 
 affecting her husband's honor, and threatening her own happi- 
 ness, quickly formed, and for a time entertained, the thought 
 of joining him on the station ; ^ but, if she broached the idea 
 to Nelson, he certainly discouraged it. Writing to her on the 
 10th of April, 1799, he said: "You would by February have 
 seen how unpleasant it would have been had you followed an}/ 
 advice, which carried 3'ou from England to a wandering sailor. 
 I could, if you had come, oidi/ have struck my flag, and carried 
 you back again, for it would have been impossible to have set 
 up an establishment at either Naples or Palermo." ^ 
 
 The scandal increased apace after his headquarters were 
 fixed at Palermo. Lady Minto, writing from Vienna to her 
 sister, in July, 1800, says : '' Mr. Eushout and Colonel Rooke,^ 
 whom I knew in Italy, are here. Mr. Rushout is at last going 
 home. He escaped from Naples at the same time as the 
 King did in Nelson's ship, and remained six months at 
 Palermo ; so I had a great deal of intelligence concerning the 
 Hero and his Lady. . . . Nelson and the Hamiltons all lived 
 together in a house of which he bore the expense, which was 
 enormous, and every sort of gaming Avent on half the night. 
 Nelson used to sit with large parcels of gold before him, and 
 generally go to sleep. Lady Hamilton taking from the heap 
 without counting, and playing with his money to the amount 
 of £500 a night. Her rage is play, and Sir William says 
 when he is dead she will be a beggar. However, she has 
 
 1 Nicolas, vol. iii. p. 138, note. " Pettigrew, vol. i. p. 220. 
 
 3 Lord Minto was at this time ambassador to Vienna. Eushout and Pooke 
 were men well known on the Continent. ]>oth are mentioned with some 
 particularity in the Memoirs of Pryse Lockhart Gordon, another continental 
 rambler. 
 
340 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 about £30,000 worth of diamonds from the royal family in 
 presents. She sits at the Councils, and rules everything and 
 everybody." Some of these statements are probably beyond 
 the personal knowledge of the narrator, and can only be 
 accepted as current talk ; but others are within the obser- 
 vation of an eye-witness, evidently thought credible by Lady 
 Minto, who was a friend to Nelson. Mr. Paget, who succeeded 
 Hamilton as British minister, mentions the same reports, in 
 his private letter to Lord Grenville, the Secretary of State for 
 Foreign Affairs. Hamilton had asked to see his instructions. 
 " I decided at once not to do so, for he would certainly have 
 been obliged to show them to Lady Hamilton, who would 
 have conveyed them next moment to the queen. . . . Lord 
 Nelson's health is, I fear, sadl}^ impaired, and I am assured 
 that his fortune is fallen into the same state, in consequence 
 of great losses which both his Lordship and Lady Hamilton 
 have sustained at Faro and other games of hazard." ^ 
 
 The impressions made upon Lord Elgin, who touched at 
 Palermo on his way to the embassy at Constantinople, are 
 worth quoting ; for there has been much assertion and denial 
 as to what did go on in that out-of-the-way corner of the 
 world, Lady Hamilton ascribing the falsehoods, as she claimed 
 they were, to the Jacobinical tendencies of those who spread 
 them. "During a week's stay at Palermo, on my passage 
 here," wrote Elgin, " the necessity of a change in our repre- 
 sentative, and in our conduct there, appeared to me most 
 urgent. You may perhaps know from Lord Grenville how 
 strong my impression on that subject Avas." ^ Troubridge, a 
 pattern of that most faithful friendship which dares to risk 
 alienation, if it may but save, wrote urgently to his chief : 
 " Pardon me, my Lord, it is my sincere esteem for you that 
 makes me mention it. I know you can have no pleasure sit- 
 ting up all night at cards ; why, then, sacrifice your health, 
 comfort, purse, ease, everything, to the customs of a country, 
 where your stay cannot be long ? . . . Your Lordship is 
 a stranger to half that happens, or the talk it occasions ; if 
 you knew what your friends feel for you, I am sure you would 
 cut all the nocturnal parties. The gambling of the people at 
 Palermo is publicly talked of everywhere. I beseech your 
 1 The Paget Tapers, London, 1896, p. 185. 2 i\)[± p. 219. 
 
LIFE AT PALEliMO 341 
 
 Lordship leave off. I wish my pen could tell you my feel- 
 ings, I am sure you would oblige me. Lady H 's char- 
 acter will suffer, nothing can prevent people from talking. A 
 gambling woman, in the eye of an Englishman, is lost. . . , 
 You will be surprised when I tell you I hear in all companies 
 the sums won and lost on a card in Sir William's house. It 
 furnishes matter for a letter constantly, both to Minorca, 
 Naples, Messina, etc., etc., and finally in England. I trust 
 your Lordship Avill pardon me ; it is the sincere esteem I 
 have for you that makes me risk your displeasure.'' To this 
 manly appeal Nelson seems to have made no reply ; none at 
 least is quoted. In the same letter Troubridge tells him 
 plainly that great discontent had arisen from " the known 
 interference of Lady Hamilton," some months before, in the 
 case of a marine condemned to death for mutiny. •"' These 
 things get home, and are talked of in a different manner to 
 what your Lordship can have any idea of."^ 
 
 1 Troubridge to Nelson, Dec. 15 and 28, 1799. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Nelson's Caket.r, and General Events in the Meuiteuranean and 
 Italy, from the Overthrow of the Koyal Government in 
 Naples to the Incursion of jhe French Fleet under Admiral 
 Bruix. 
 
 January-JNIay, 1799. Agk, 40. 
 
 THE four and a half months of unbroken residence in 
 Palermo, which followed the flight of the Court from 
 Naples, were full of anno3-ance and distress to Nelson, inde- 
 pendent of, and additional to, the disquieting struggle between 
 his passion and his conscience, which had not yet been si- 
 lenced. The disasters in Naples continued. The Neapolitan 
 Navy had been left in charge of one of the Portuguese officers, 
 who soon found himself compelled to burn the ships-of-the- 
 line, to prevent their falling into the hands of the revolution- 
 ists, — a step for which he was severely, but apparently 
 unjustly, censured by Nelson. The peasantry and the lower 
 orders of the city took up arms, under the guidance of their 
 priests, and for some time sought, with rude but undisciplined 
 fury, to oppose the advance of the enem}^ ; but such untrained 
 resistance was futile before the veterans of France, and on the 
 23d of January, 1799, Championnet's troops entered the city. 
 This was followed by the establishment of the Parthenopeian 
 Republic, a name which reflected the prevailing Prench affec- 
 tation of antiquity. For all this Nelson blamed the Emperor, 
 and formed gloomy forebodings. '' Had the war commenced 
 in September or October," he had written amid the December 
 disasters, " all Italy would at this moment have been liberated. 
 Six months hence, Avhen the Neapolitan Republic will be or- 
 ganized, armed, and with its numerous resources called forth, 
 I will suffer to have my head cut off, if the Emperor is not 
 only defeated in Italy, but that he totters on his throne in 
 Vienna." To this text he stuck. Three months later, when 
 the preparations of Austria and Russia were complete, he 
 
ANNOYANCE ABOUT SIDNEY SMITH ^ 343 
 
 wrote : " The French have made war upon the Emperor, and 
 have surprised some of his troops. Serve him right ! why did 
 he not go to war before ? " But the rapid, continuous, and 
 overwhelming successes of the Coalition, between April and 
 August, showed how untimely had been the step he had urged 
 upon the King of the Sicilies, disregardful of the needed 
 preparations and of the most favorable season — February to 
 August — for operations in Italy. Naples never recovered 
 svich political equilibrium as she had possessed before that 
 ill-advised advance. In Nelson's career it, and its reverses, 
 were to the Battle of the Nile what Teneriffe was to St. Vin- 
 cent ; and it illustrates the inadequacy to success of merely 
 "going ahead,'' unless both time and method are dictated 
 by that martial intelligence which Nelson so abundantly 
 possessed, but in this case failed to use. 
 
 Not in Naples only did fortune now administer to him 
 rebuffs, which seemed singularly to rebuke the change of 
 direction and of base which he had been persuaded to give 
 to his personal efforts. Immediately upon his arrival in 
 Palermo, he heard from St. Vincent that a comparatively 
 junior captain, Sir Sidney Smith, had been sent out by the 
 Cabinet, bearing, besides his naval commission from the 
 Admiralt}^, one from the Foreign Office as envoy to Turkey, 
 conjointly with his brother, Spencer Smith. This unusual 
 and somewhat cumbrous arrangement was adopted with the 
 design that Smith should be senior naval officer in the Levant, 
 where it was thought his hands would be strengthened by the 
 diplomatic functions ; but the Government's explanation of its 
 intentions was so obscure, that St. Vincent understood the 
 new-comer was to be independent of both himself and Nelson. 
 This impression was confirmed by a letter from Smith to 
 Hamilton, in which occurred the words, '•' Hood naturally falls 
 under my orders when we meet, as being my junior," while 
 the general tone was that of one who had a right, b}'- virtue 
 of his commission alone, to take charge of such vessels, and 
 to direct such operations, as he found in the Levant. This 
 impression was fairly deducible from a letter of the Secretary 
 of State for Foreign Affairs, that Smith forwarded to Nelson ; 
 after which, without seeking an interview, he at once went 
 on for Constantinople. 
 
344 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 Nelson immediately asked to be relieved. ^' I do feel, for 
 I am a vian" lie wrote to St. Vincent, "that it is impossible 
 for me to serve in these seas, with the squadron under a 
 junior officer. Never, never was I so astonished." With 
 this private letter he sent an official application for leave. 
 '' The great anxiety I have undergone during the whole time 
 I have been honoured with this important command, has 
 much impaired a weak constitution. And now, finding -that 
 much abler officers are arrived within the district which I 
 had thought under my command, . . . and, I flatter myself, 
 having made the British nation and our gracious Sovereign 
 more beloved and respected than heretofore ; under these cir- 
 cumstances I entreat, tliat if my health and uneasiness of 
 mind should not be mended, that I may have your Lordship's 
 permission to leave this command to my gallant and most 
 excellent second in command, Captain Troubridge."' In simi- 
 lar terms, though more guarded, he wrote to Earl Spencer. 
 At the same time he took proper steps to prevent the official 
 impropriety, not to say rudeness, Avhich Smith Avas about to 
 commit by taking from Hood his charge, without either the 
 latter or Nelson receiving personal instructions to surrender 
 it. He sent Troubridge hastily to Alexandria to take com- 
 mand there, with orders that, upon Smith's arrival, he should 
 deliver up the blockade to him, and return to the westvvai'd. 
 " I should hope," he wrote to Spencer, "that Sir Sidney Smith 
 will not take any ship from under my command, without my 
 orders ; " but he evidently expected that he would, and was 
 determined to forestall the possibility of sucli an affront. 
 
 Nelson's services had been so eminent, and were at this 
 time so indispensable, and his exceptions to the manner in 
 which Smith had been intruded into his command were so 
 well founded, that the matter was rectified as rapidly as the 
 slow round of communications in that day would permit. The 
 Admiralty disclaimed any intention of circumscribing his con- 
 trol in the Mediterranean, and Smith received peremptory 
 orders from St. Vincent to report himself to Nelson by letter 
 for orders. The latter of course carried out the Admiralty's 
 wishes, by intrusting to Smith the immediate direction of 
 operations in the Levant, while retaining in his own hands 
 the general outlines of naval policy. He kept a very tight 
 
HIS DIPLOMATIC ABILITY 345 
 
 rein on Smith, however, and introduced into the situation 
 some dry humor, unusual with him. The two brothers, 
 envoys, he addressed jointly, in his official letters, by the 
 collective term "Your Excellency.'' "I beg of your Excel- 
 lency," he says in such a letter, "to forward my letter to 
 Sir Sidney Smith, Captain of the Tigre. I have this day re- 
 ceived letters from Sir Sidney Smith, in his IVIinisterial 
 capacity, I believe. I wish that all Ministerial letters should 
 be written in your joint names ; for it may be difficult for 
 me to distinguish the Captain of the man-of-war from the 
 Joint Minister, and the propriety of language in one might 
 be very proper to what it is in the other." To the naval cap- 
 tain he writes : " I must direct you, whenever you have Minis- 
 terial affairs to communicate, that it is done jointly with 
 your respectable brother, and not mix naval business with 
 the other. I have sent you my orders, which your abilities as 
 a sea-officer will lead you to punctually execute." 
 
 Kelson resented to the end this giving to a junior naval 
 officer, by a side-Avind, an authoritative position in diplomatic 
 affairs, which, on the naval side, properly belonged to him. 
 " Sir Sidney should recollect," he told Earl Spencer, meaning 
 doubtless that the latter also should recollect, "how I must 
 feel in seeing him placed in the situation which I thought 
 naturally would fall to me." It was a singular step on the 
 part of the Government, justified neither by general practice, 
 nor by particular ability on the part of the person chosen ; 
 and all Nelson's care and decision were insufficient to prevent 
 the consequent evil, although he was perfectly clear in his 
 intimation to " Your Excellency," the joint ministers, that 
 they should, " upbn all occasions, arrange plans of operations 
 with me," and not with Captain Sir Sidney Smith. Smith 
 was active and fought well ; but, as far as he dared, he did as 
 he pleased in virtue of his diplomatic commission, looked 
 only to the interests of his own small part of the field, and, as 
 will appear later, flatly disobeyed both the spirit and the 
 letter of Nelson's orders, as well as the Government's pur- 
 pose, concerning the French army in Egypt. The general 
 sound judgment and diplomatic ability of Nelson, who was 
 thus superseded, had on the other hand been fully recognized 
 ■ — formally by the Government, explicitly bv St. Vincent aiid 
 
346 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 Minto, both of whom had personal experience of his conduct 
 in snch matters. "What relates to co-operation with the 
 armies of the allied powers cannot be in better hands than 
 yours," wrote the former, "■■ You are as great iu the cabinet 
 as on the ocean, and your whole conduct fills me with admira- 
 tion and confidence." "There is one other point of excel- 
 lence," said Minto in the House of Peers, " to which I must 
 say a single word, becanse I am, perhaps, the man iu the 
 world who has had the best opportunity of being acquainted 
 with it. The world knows that Lord Nelson can fight the 
 battles of his country : but a constant and confidential corre- 
 spondence with this great man, for a considerable portion of 
 time, has taught me, that he is not less capable of providing 
 for its political interests and honour, on occasions of great 
 delicacy and embarrassment. In that new capacity I have 
 witnessed a degree of abilit}^ judgment, tempei", and concilia- 
 tion, not always allied to the sort of spirit which without an 
 instant's hesitation can attack the whole Spanish line with 
 his single ship." Of Nelson's superior fitness in this respect, 
 the unfortunate choice of Sidney Smith for his anomalous 
 position was to furnish the Government an additional proof. 
 
 It was not in this matter only that maritime affairs in the 
 East took a turn contrary to Nelson's wishes. The Admi- 
 ralty's orders to him had prescribed — next after the protec- 
 tion of Naples and Sicily — the blockades of Egypt and 
 Malta, and co-operation with the Russian and Turkish fleets, 
 which were to enter the Mediterranean from the Black Sea. 
 Nelson, although never slow to express want of confidence in 
 foreign navies, wished their efforts to be directed against the 
 French army in Egypt, a factor in the general situation most 
 decisive by its numbers, by its efficiency, and by the genius of 
 its leader. lie was urgent, both with the joint ministers and 
 with the representatives of Kussia and Turkey, that the fleets 
 of these two powers should relieve Hood off Alexandria, in 
 order to strengthen his own hands on the coast of Italy and 
 oft" Malta. Neither Russia nor Turkey was easily to be con- 
 vinced. Egypt was no affair of the former's, except as it con- 
 cerned the general cause ; and from that point of view it was 
 as much the business of Great Britain, already on the spot, as 
 it was hers. With twenty thousand troops about to enter 
 
SUSPICIONS OF RUSSIA 347 
 
 into a campaign in Northern Italy, as allies of Austria, Russia 
 had undeniable interests there, as well as in the Ionian 
 Islands, which commanded the entrance to the Adriatic, a sea 
 important to communications between Austria and Lombardy. 
 The islands also were, in the hands of France, a threat to the 
 Turkish mainland. It was against these, therefore, that the 
 Russo-Turkish forces directed their efforts, greatly to Nelson's 
 disgust, and there they remained, chained by the obstinate 
 resistance of Corfu, until the 1st of March, 1799, when it sur- 
 rendered. The fifty -gun ship " Leander," which had been 
 taken by the French seventy-four " Genereux," when carrying 
 Nelson's despatches after the Nile, was here recaptured and 
 restored to Great Britain. 
 
 Nelson viewed the progress and policy of Rnssia Avith a 
 mind fully imbued with the distrust, which, for the last 
 quarter of a century, had been supplanting gradually the 
 previous friendly feeling of Great Britain toward that country. 
 As soon as he heard of the intention to attack the islands, 
 in November, 1798, he hurried off Troubridge to anticipate a 
 seizure which he expected to be more easy than it proved. 
 " You will proceed to sea without a moment's loss of time," 
 his instructions ran, " and make the best of your way to the 
 Island of Zante ; and if the Russians have not taken posses- 
 sion of that island and Cephalonia, you will send on shore by 
 the Priest I shall desire to accompany you, ray Declaration. 
 If you can get possession of the islands before named, you 
 will send my Declaration into the Island of Corfu, and use 
 your utmost endeavours to get possession of it. . . . Should 
 the Russians have taken possession of these Islands and be 
 cruizing near with the Turkish fleet, you will pay a visit to 
 the Turkish admiral, and by saluting him (if he consents to 
 return gun for gun) and every other mark of respect and 
 attention, gain his confidence. You will judge whether he 
 is of a sufficient rank to hold a confidential conversation 
 with." It is evident that Nelson's action was precipitated 
 by the news of the Russian movement, and its tenor dictated 
 by a wish to sow distrust between Turkey and Russia. The 
 omission of any mention of a Russian admiral is most sig- 
 nificant. "• Captain Troubridge was absolutely under sail," 
 he wrote to Spencer Smith, "^ when I heard with sorrow that 
 
348 THE LIFE OF XELSON 
 
 the Russians were there." His eagerness in the matter is the 
 more evident, in that he thus detached Troubridge at the 
 moment when he was about to start for Leghorn, where his 
 trusted subordinate and his ship would be greatly needed. 
 
 "I was in hopes that a part of the united Turkish and 
 Russian squadron would have gone to Egypt — the first ob- 
 ject of the Ottoman arms," he tells the Turkish admiral. 
 " Corfu is a secondary consideration." To Spencer Smith he 
 writes : " I have had a long and friendly conference with 
 Kelim Effendi on the conduct likely to be pursued by the 
 Russian Court towards the unsuspicious (I fear) and upright 
 Turk. The Porte ought to be aware of the very great danger 
 at a future day of allowing the Russians to get footing at 
 Corfu, and I hope they will keep them in the East. Our 
 ideas have exactly been the same about Russia. . . . Surely 
 I had a right to expect that the united fleets would have 
 taken care of the things east of Candia. I never Avished to 
 have them west of it." ^' The Russians seem to me to be more 
 intent on taking ports in the Mediterranean than destroying 
 Bonaparte in Egypt." 
 
 It was well known at this time that the Czar Avas looking 
 towards Malta and the restoration of the Order of the Knights, 
 of which he had been elected Grand Master the previous 
 October, immediately after Bonaparte's seizure of the island 
 became known. Nelson held that the King of Naples was 
 the legitimate sovereign, and he directed Captain Ball, his 
 own representative there, to have all the Maltese posts and 
 forces fly the Neapolitan flag ; but he, with Hamilton, got a 
 note from the King, promising that Malta should never be 
 transferred to any other Power without the consent of Eng- 
 land. " Should any Russian sliips, or admiral, arrive oft' 
 Malta," he instructed Ball, '^ yon Avill convince him of the 
 very unhandsome manner of treating the legitimate sovereign 
 of Malta., by wishing to see the Russian flag fly in Malta, and 
 also of me, Avho command the forces of a Power in such close 
 alliance with the Russian Emperor, which have been blockad- 
 ing and attacking Malta for near six months. The Russians 
 shall never take the lead." 
 
 Three AA^eeks later he authorized Ball, Avith the consent of 
 the King, to preside oyer the meetings of the IMaltese chiefs, 
 
JEALOUSY OF RUSSIA 349 
 
 and, by the desire of Lis Sicilian Majesty, the British flag 
 was to be hoisted alongside the Sicilian in every place where 
 the latter was flown, "side by side, that of England being on 
 the right hand," to show that the island was under the special 
 protection of Great Britain during the war. On the 23d of 
 March he cordially congratulates the Eussian admiral upon 
 the fall of Corfu, news of which he has just received, and he 
 mentions, meaningl}^, '^The flag of his Sicilian Majesty, with 
 that of Great Britain, is flying on all parts of Malta, except 
 the town of Valetta, the inhabitants of which have, with his 
 Sicilian Majesty's consent, put themselves under the protec- 
 tion of Great Britain," " I attach no value to it for us," he 
 said explicitly to the P^irst Lord, meaning, no doubt, for the 
 purposes of the existing war. This opinion was perfectly 
 consonant to the secondary importance he had latterly at- 
 tributed to the presence of the British in the Levant, as com- 
 pared to their duties towards Naples, but though he reiterated 
 it in the later war, it was with the express qualification that, 
 for the security of communication with India, not then in 
 question, the value of the island was indisputable. 
 
 But if, positively, Malta was of little use to England, — 
 "a useless and enormous expense," to use his own words, — 
 yet, negatively, the consequences of its passing into the hands 
 of a powerful rival were too serious to be permitted. " Any 
 expense should be incurred rather than let it remain in the 
 hands of the French." The same distrust of the Russians 
 was suggested by his keen political insight. " You will ob- 
 serve what is said in the despatches of the Consul at Corfu," 
 he writes to St. Vincent, '• respecting the Russians being or- 
 dered to Malta. I know this is a favourite object of the 
 Emperor's, and is a prelude to a future war with the good 
 Turk, when Constantinople will change masters. This is so 
 clear, that a man must be blind not to see it." "I have just 
 received the Emperor of Russia's picture in a box magnifi- 
 cently set with diamonds ; it has done him honour and me a 
 pleasure to have my conduct approved ; " " but," he tells 
 Ball, significantly, "this shall not prevent my keeping a 
 sharp look-out on his movements against the good Turk." 
 
 As regards Paul I., ferocious and half crazy as he was, this 
 imputation of merely interested foresight scarcely did justice 
 
350 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 to the quixotic passions which often impelled hiiu to the most 
 unselfish acts, but the general tendency Avas undeniable ; and 
 Nelson's watchful attitude exemplifies the numerous diplo- 
 matic, as well as military, responsibilities that weighed upon 
 him. He was, practically, commander-in-chief in the Medi- 
 terranean, even if Government refused to recognize the fact 
 by reward, or by proper staff appointments ; for St. Vincent, 
 autocratic as he was towards others, could roll off upon Nelson 
 all his responsibilities there, — " the uncontrolled direction 
 of the naval part," were his own words, — and sleep quietly. 
 Despite his objections to the island itself, and his enthusiastic 
 fidelity to the Neapolitan royal house. Nelson had evidently 
 the presentiment that Malta must come to Great Britain, a 
 solution which Ball and the IMaltese themselves were urging 
 upon him. "A Neapolitan garrison would betray it to the 
 first man who would bribe him,-' he wrote ; which, if true, 
 left to Great Britain no other alternative than to take it her- 
 self. Neither he, Troubridge, nor the sovereigns, had confi- 
 dence in the fidelity of Neapolitan officers. 
 
 The blockade of Malta was maintained with great tenacity, 
 and, coupled with the maritime prostration of France in the 
 Mediterranean, resulted in a complete isolation of the French 
 garrison in La Valetta by sea, the Maltese people hemming it 
 in by land. By the 1st of May Ball had erected a batter}^ at 
 the head of the harbor, sweeping it to the entrance, so that 
 the French ships, one of which was the *' Guillaume Tell," 
 eighty, that had escaped from Aboukir, had to be kept in the 
 coves. These affairs of Malta brought Nelson into difficult 
 diplomatic relations with the Barbary States, Tunis and 
 Tripoli. The island not affording sufficient food, strenuous 
 efforts had to be made by him and Ball to get grain- from 
 Sicily and elsewhere, a matter very difficult of accomplish- 
 ment even were the transit unmolested ; but these petty 
 Mussulman states, for the purposes of piracy, kept themselves 
 in formal war with Naples and Portugal, and frequently 
 captured vessels under the Sicilian flag carrying corn to 
 Malta. The British had too much on hand now to spare 
 readily the force necessary to put down these depredators, at 
 whose misdeeds they had winked in quieter days ; and it 
 required all Nelson's tact, combining threats with compli- 
 
TROUBLE AVITH BARBARY STATES. 351 
 
 ments, and with appeals to the prejudices of believers in God 
 against those wlio denied Him, to keep the marauding within 
 bounds. The irrepressible activity of Bonaparte's emissaries 
 also stirred the Beys up to measures friendly to France. 
 ''The infamous conduct of the French during the whole war, 
 has at last called down the vengeance of all true Mussulraen," 
 he writes to the Bey of Tunis; "and your Highness, I am 
 sure, will agree with me that Divine Providence will never 
 permit these infidels to God to go unpunished. The conduct 
 of 3^our Highness reflects upon you the very highest honour. 
 Although I have a squadron of Portuguese ships under my 
 orders, I have prevented their cruizing against the vessels of 
 war of 5'our Highness. For at this moment all wars should 
 cease, and all the world should join in endeavouring to extir- 
 pate from off the face of the earth this race of murderers, 
 oppressors, and unbelievers." 
 
 After these preliminary compliments, Nelson presents his 
 grievances. He has given the passports of a British admiral 
 to Sicilian vessels bond fide employed in carrying grain to the 
 besiegers of the French, and to such onl}'^ ; and he must insist 
 upon those passports being respected, as the vessels bearing 
 them are serving the great common cause. He demands, also, 
 that aid be not given to the common enemy. " I was rejoiced," 
 he writes the Bashaw of Tripoli, "to find that you had re- 
 nounced the treaty you had so imprudently entered into with 
 some emissaries of General Bonaparte — that man of blood, 
 that despoiler of the weak, that enemy of all true Musselmen ; 
 for, like Satan, he only flatters that he may the more easily 
 destroy ; and it is true, that since the year 1789, all French- 
 men are exactly of the same disposition." His Highness, 
 however, has relapsed into his former errors. " It is now my 
 duty to speak out, and not to be misunderstood. That Nelson 
 who has hitherto kept your powerful enemies from destroy- 
 ing you, can, and will, let them loose upon you, unless the 
 following terms are, in two hours, complied with. ... If 
 these proper terms are not complied with, I can no longer 
 prevent the Portuguese ships from acting with vigour against 
 your Highness. Your Highness will, without difficulty, write 
 me a letter, the substance of which will be dictated by the 
 British consul." 
 
352 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 The vehemence with which the French are here denounced, 
 thoixgh pitched in a key deemed harmonious to the ears for 
 which it was immediately intended, was entirely consonant to 
 the feelings which had lately taken possession of Nelson, 
 They were the result, probahl}^, in part, of the anxious rancor 
 bred by the uncertainties and worry of the pursuit of Bona- 
 parte ; in part, also, of more direct contact than before with 
 the unbridled license which the French Government and its 
 generals, impelled by dire necessity and by an unquestionable 
 lack of principle, had given to the system of making Avar sup- 
 port war. The feebleness and corruption of the Directory had 
 relaxed the reins of discipline from top to bottom, and a 
 practice which finds its justification only when executed with 
 the strictest method and accountability, had degenerated into 
 little better than disorganized pillage. "'Down, down with 
 the French ! ' is my constant prayer."' " ' Dowii, down with 
 the French ! ' ought to be placed in the council-room of every 
 country in the world." '/' To serve my King, and to destroy 
 the French, I consider as the great order of all, from which 
 little ones spring ; and if one of these little ones militate 
 against it. I go back to obey the great order and object, to 
 doivn, down with the damned French villains. Excuse my 
 warmth ; but my blood boils at the name of a Frenchman. 
 I hate them all — Royalists and Republicans." Infidels, rob- 
 bers, and murderers are the characteristic terms. This detes- 
 tation of the legitimate enemy spread, intensified, to those 
 who supported them in Naples, — the Jacobins, as they were 
 called. '' Send me word some proper heads are taken off," he 
 wrote to Troubridge, " this alone Avill comfort me." " Our 
 friend Troubridge had a present made him the other day, of 
 the head of a Jacobin," he tells St. Vincent, '"and makes an 
 apology to me, the weather being very hot, for not sending it 
 here ! " Upon the copy of the letter accompanying this 
 ghastly gift to him, Troubridge had written, ''A jolly fellow. 
 T. Troubridge." The exasperation to which political animos- 
 ities had given rise may be gauged by the brutal levity shown 
 in this incident, by men of the masculine and generous 
 characters of Troubridge and Nelson, and should not be 
 forgotten in estimating the actions that in due consequence 
 followed. 
 
 I 
 
MENTAL DEPRESSION. 353 
 
 The duties as well as the anxieties of his situation bore 
 heavily upon Nelson, and may help to account, in combination 
 with the tide of adverse fortune now running strongly, for 
 the depression that weighed upon him. "My public corre- 
 spondence, besides the business of sixteen sail-of-the-line, and 
 all our commerce, is with Petersburg, Constantinople, the 
 Consul at Smyrna, Egypt, the Turkish and Eussian admirals, 
 Trieste, Vienna, Tuscany, Minorca, Earl St. Vincent, and Lord 
 Spencer. This over, what time can I have for any private 
 correspondence ? " Yet, admitting freely that there is a limit 
 beyond which activity may cease to please, what has become 
 of the joyous spirit, which wrote, not four years before : " This 
 I like, active service or none ! " Occupying one of the most 
 distinguished posts open to the Navy ; practically, and almost 
 formally, independent ; at the very head and centre of the 
 greatest interests, — his zeal, while preserving all its inten- 
 sity, has lost all its buoyancy. "My dear Lord," he tells 
 St. Vincent, alluding at the moment to his stepson Nisbet, 
 "there is no true happiness in this life, and in my present 
 state I could quit it with a smile." " My spirits have received 
 such a shock," he writes some days after, to the wife of his 
 early patron. Sir Peter Parker, "' that I think they cannot 
 recover it. You who remember me always laughing and ga.y, 
 would hardly believe the change ; but who can see what I 
 have and be well in health? Kingdoms lost and a royal 
 family in distress." "Believe me," he confides to his inti- 
 mate friend Davison a month later, " my only wish is to sink 
 with honour into the grave, and when that shall please God, 
 I shall meet death with a smile. Not that I am insensible to 
 the honours and riches my King and Country have heaped 
 upon me, so much more than any officer could deserve ; yet I 
 am ready to quit this world of trouble, and envy none but 
 those of the estate six feet by two. " " I am at times ill 
 at ease, but it is my duty to submit, and you may be sure I 
 will not quit my post without absolute necessity." " What a 
 state I am in ! " he writes of one of those perplexities inevi- 
 table to an officer in his position. " If I go, I risk Sicily ; as 
 I stay, my heart is breaking." This is not the natural temper 
 of a man to whom difiiculties and perplexities had been, and 
 were yet again to be, a trumpet call that stirred to animation, 
 
 23 
 
854 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 a stimulant that steadied the nerves, and sent the blood 
 coursing with new life through heart and brain. Mingled 
 as these expressions were with despondent broodings over 
 his health, even if the latter were well founded, they are 
 the voice of a mind which has lost the spring of self-content. 
 The sense of duty abides, but dogged, cheerless ; respondent 
 rather to the force of habit than to the generous ardor of 
 former days. 
 
 For over two months after the flight to Palermo, the condi- 
 tion of affairs for the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was seem- 
 ingly critical to the verge of desperation ; for neither the 
 preparations of the Coalition, nor the hollowness of the 
 French successes, were understood, and news was slow to 
 reach the remote city where the Court now dwelt. The 
 republican movement extended, though superficially, to the 
 toe of Italy, many of the towns in Calabria planting the tree 
 of liberty, and the new flag flying on the islands along the 
 coast. Sicily, though hostile to the French, was discontented 
 with the existing government, and disaffection there was 
 feared. In that. Nelson truly observed, lay the danger. 
 "Respecting an invasion of the French, I have no alarms ; if 
 this island is true to itself no harm can happen." Neverthe- 
 less, " it is proper to be prepared for defence, and," if 
 Calabria is occupied by the French, " the first object is the 
 preservation of Messina." 
 
 For this purpose he ordered the Portuguese squadron there, 
 immediately after he reached Palermo ; and, when the outlook 
 grew more threatening, appealed to the Tui-kish and Russian 
 admirals to send a detachment to the Straits. General Stuart, 
 commanding the troops in Minorca, which had passed into the 
 hands of Great Britain the previous November, was entreated 
 to detail a garrison for the citadel of Messina, as no depend- 
 ence was placed upon the Neapolitan troops. Stuart com- 
 plied, and the citadel was occupied by two English regiments 
 about the 10th of March. The danger, however, was consid- 
 ered sufficiently imminent to withdraw to Palermo the trans- 
 ports lying at Syracuse; a step which could not have been 
 necessary had Nelson made Syracuse, as he at first intended, 
 the base of operations for the British fleet, and suggests the 
 idea, which he himself avows, that his own presence with the 
 
THE FEENCH INVADE ITALY 355 
 
 Court was rather political than military ^ in its utility, 
 dependent upon the fears of their own subjects felt by the 
 sovereigns. While these measvires were being taken he 
 endeavoured, though fruitlessly, to bring matters to a conclu- 
 sion at Alexandria and Malta, in order to release the ships 
 there employed and fetch them to the coast of Naples. 
 " The moment the Emperor moves," he wrote to St. Vincent, 
 *' I shall go with all the ships I can collect into the Bay of 
 Naples, to create a diversion." Nothing certain can be said as 
 yet, " whether all is lost or may yet be saved ; that must 
 depend upon the movements of the Emperor." Yet it was the 
 hand of the emperor which he had advised the King of Naples 
 to force, by his ill-timed advance. 
 
 Troubridge rejoined the Elag at Palermo on the 17th of 
 March, having turned over the command in the Levant to Sir 
 Sidney Smith, after an ineffectual attempt to destroy the 
 French shipping in Alexandria. By this time matters had 
 begun to mend. Calabria had returned to its loyalty, and the 
 insurrection of the peasantry against the French was general 
 throughout the country, and in the Roman State. The 
 Directory, taking umbrage at the advance of Russian troops 
 to the frontiers of Austria, demanded explanations from the 
 latter, and when these proved unsatisfactory directed its 
 armies to take the offensive. The French advanced into 
 Germany on the first of March, and in Italy towards the end 
 of the month. But the action of the French Government, 
 though audacious and imposing, rested upon no solid founda- 
 tion of efficiency in the armies, or skill in the plan of cam- 
 paign. Serious reverses soon followed, and the fatally ex- 
 centric position of the corps in Naples was then immediately 
 apparent. 
 
 Before this news could reach Palermo, however, Nelson had 
 
 ^ Palermo possessed a strategic advantage over Syracuse, in that, with 
 westerljr M'inds, it was to windward, esjiecially as regards Naples ; and it was 
 also nearer the narrowest part of the passage between Sicily and Africa, the 
 highway to the Levant and Egypt. With easterly winds, the enemy of 
 course could not proceed thither ; and at this time there was no enemy's force 
 in the Mediterranean, so that westward movements had not to be appre- 
 hended. All dangers must come from the westward. These considerations 
 were doubtless present to Nelson; but the author has not found any mention 
 of them by him at this period. 
 
356 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 sent Troubridge with four sliips-of-the-liue and some smaller 
 vessels to the Bay of Naples, to blockade it, and to enter into 
 communication, if possible, with the loyalists in the city. As 
 the extreme reluctance of the King and Queen prevented his 
 going in person, — a reason the sufficiency of which it is difficult 
 to admit, — Nelson hoisted his flag on board a transport in 
 the bay, and sent the flagship, in order not to diminish the 
 force detailed for such important duties. Within a week the 
 islands in the immediate neighborhood of Naples — Procida, 
 Ischia, Capri, and the Ponzas — had again hoisted the royal 
 ensign. On the 22d of April the French evacuated the city, 
 with the exception of the Castle of St. Elmo, in which they 
 left a garrison of five hiuidred men. In Upper Italy their 
 armies were in full retreat, having been forced back from the 
 Adige to the Adda, whence an urgent message was sent to 
 Macdonald, Championnet's successor at Naples, to fall back 
 to the northward and effect a junction with the main body, 
 soon to be sorely pressed by an overwhelming force of the 
 Austro-Eussians, at whose head was the famous Suwarrow. 
 On the 29th the Allies entered Milan, and on the 7th of May 
 the Northern French, now under the command of Moreau, had 
 retired as far as Alessandria, in Piedmont. On this same day, 
 Macdonald, having thrown garrisons into Capua and Gaeta, 
 evacuated the kingdom of Naples, and hastened northward to 
 join Moreau. With the exception of these fortified posts and 
 the city of Naples, the country was now overrun by the 
 Christian army, the name applied to the numerous but utterly 
 undisciplined bands of rude peasantry, attached to the royal 
 cause, and led by Cardinal Ruffo. The Jacobins in the city 
 still held out, and had in the bay a small naval force under 
 the command of Commodore Caracciolo. 
 
 Troubridge's successes continued. A week later Salerno 
 had been taken, and the royal colors were flying at Castella- 
 mare, on the opposite side of the Bay from Naples, and dis- 
 tant from it only twelve miles by land. Nelson questioned 
 Troubridge about the return of the King, whose most evident 
 political conviction was that the success of the royal cause 
 was vitally connected with the safety of the royal person. 
 " What are your ideas of the King's going into the Bay of 
 Naples, without foreign troops ? If it should cause insurrec- 
 
INCURSION OF THE BREST FLEET 357 
 
 tion [of the royalists] in Naples which did not succeed, would 
 it not be worse ? The King, if a rising of loyal people took 
 place, ought to be amongst them ; and that he will never con- 
 sent to." " The King, God bless him ! is a philosopher," he 
 had said, repeating an expression of Lady Hamilton's, refer- 
 ring to the disasters which caused the headlong flight from 
 Eome, through Naples, to Palermo ; " but the great Queen 
 feels sensibly all that has happened," The Queen also was 
 extremely fearful, and Nelson intimated to St. Vincent that 
 a request would be made for British troops to protect the 
 sovereigns. " Their Majesties are ready to cross th6 water 
 whenever Naples is entirely cleansed. When that happy 
 event arrives, and not till then, a desire will be expressed 
 for the British troops to be removed from Messina into Naples 
 to guard the persons of their Majesties." That Nelson should 
 have considered it essential to maintain in power, by any 
 means, sovereigns devoted to Great Britain, is perfectly com- 
 prehensible. "What is difficult to understand is the esteem he 
 continued to profess for those whose unheroic bearing so be- 
 lied the words he had written six months before : " His Maj- 
 esty is determined to conquer or die at the head of his army." 
 Under other conditions and influences, none would have been 
 more forward to express dissatisfaction and contempt. 
 
 Withal, despite the favorable outlook of affairs and the 
 most joyous season of the year, his depression of spirits con- 
 tinued. '' I am far from well," he writes on the 3d of May, " and 
 the good news of the success of the Austrian arms in Italy does 
 not even cheer me." But in the midst of the full current of 
 success, and of his own gloom, an incident suddenly occurred 
 which threw everything again into confusion and doubt, and 
 roused him for the time from his apathy. On the 12th of 
 May a brig arrived at Palermo, with news that a French fleet 
 of nineteen ships-of-the-line had escaped from Brest, and had 
 been seen less than a fortnight before off Oporto, steering for 
 the Mediterranean. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 From the Incursion of the French Fleet under Bruix to the Res- 
 toration OF THE Royal Authority at Naples. — The Caracciolo 
 Execution. — Nelson's Disoreuience to Admiral Lord Keith. 
 
 May-July, 1799. Age 40. 
 
 THE intention of the French to send a fleet into the Medi- 
 terranean had transpired some time before, and the 
 motive — to retrieve the destrnction of their naval power in 
 that sea by the Battle of the Nile — was so obvious that the 
 attempt was regarded as probable. As far back as the 7th 
 of January, Nelson had written to Commodore Duckworth, 
 commanding the detachment of four ships-of-the-line at Mi- 
 norca, that he had received notification of the force expected 
 from Brest. If they got into the Mediterranean, he was con- 
 fident they would go first to Toulon, and he wished to con- 
 cert beforehand with Duckworth, who was not under his 
 orders, the steps necessary to be taken at once, if the case 
 arose. He did not think, so he wrote to Ball, that they 
 would venture a squadron to Malta or Alexandria, in view 
 of the certain destruction wliich in the end must befall it, 
 even if successful in reaching tlie jjort. 
 
 Both remarks show that he did not look for the number 
 of ships that were sent — nineteen, as the first news said, 
 twenty-five, as was actually the case. An emergency so great 
 and so imminent drew out all his latent strength, acute judg- 
 ment, and promptitude. The brig that brought the news was 
 sent off the same night to Naples, with orders to proceed from 
 there to Minorca and Gibraltar, and to notify Duckworth and 
 St. Vincent what Nelson intended to do. A cutter sailed at 
 the same time for Malta. Troubridge and Ball were both 
 directed to send or bring all their ships-of-the-line, save one 
 each, to Minorca, there to unite with Duckworth. Trou- 
 bridge's ships were to call off Palermo for further instruc- 
 
PREPARATIONS TO MEET BRUIX 359 
 
 tions, but not to lose time by coming to anchor there. Ex- 
 presses were sent to the different ports of Sicily,, in case any 
 Russian or Turkish ships had arrived, to put them on their 
 guard, and to request co-operation by joining the force assem- 
 bling off Minorca, where Nelson reasoned Lord St. Vincent 
 also would repair. To the latter he wrote: "Eight, nine, or 
 ten sail of the line shall, in a few days, be off Mahon, ready 
 to obey your orders (not in the port) ; " for his intention was 
 that they should remain outside under sail. "You may de- 
 pend upon my exertion, and I am only sorry tliat I cannot 
 move ^ to your help, but this island appears to hang on my 
 stay. Nothing could console the Queen this night, but my 
 promise not to leave them unless the battle was to be fought 
 off Sardinia." 
 
 The next day he wrote again in similar terms, seeking to 
 reconcile his promise to the Queen with his impulses, and, it 
 may be said safely, with his duty. " Should yon come up- 
 wards without a battle, I hope in that case you will afford me 
 an opportunity of joining you ; for my heart would break to 
 be near my commander-in-chief, and not assisting him at such 
 a time. What a state I am in ! If I go, I risk, and more 
 than risk, Sicily, and what is now safe on the Continent ; for 
 we know, from experience, that more depends on opinion than 
 on acts themselves. As I stay, my heart is breaking ; and, 
 to mend the matter, I am seriously unwell." 
 
 That evening, the 13th, at nine o'clock, a lieutenant arrived, 
 who had been landed to the westward of Palermo by a sloop- 
 of-war, the " Peterel," she not being able to beat up to the 
 city against the east wind prevailing. From him Nelson 
 learned that the French fleet had passed the Straits, and had 
 been seen off Minorca. The next day, the "Peterel" having 
 come off the port, he went alongside, and sent her on at once 
 to Malta, with orders to Ball to abandon the blockade, bring- 
 ing with him all his ships, and to proceed off Maritimo, a 
 small island twenty miles west of Sicily, where he now pro- 
 posed to concentrate his squadron and to go himself. Trou- 
 bridge, having already orders to come to Palermo, needed no 
 further instructions, except to bring all his ships, instead of 
 leaving one at Naples. Every ship-of-the-line in the squadron, 
 1 That is, in person. 
 
360 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 including the Portuguese, was thus summoned to join the 
 Plag, in a position to cover Palermo and the approaches to 
 the eastern Mediterranean. To these necessary dispositions 
 was owing that the senior officer left at Naples was Captain 
 Foote, who afterwards signed the articles of capitulation with 
 the insurgents, which gave such offence to Kelson, and have 
 occasioned much controversy in connection with his subse- 
 quent action. 
 
 Troubridge, having sailed at once on receipt of his first 
 orders, arrived on the 17th with three British ships and one 
 Portuguese. A heavy gale prevented Nelson getting to sea 
 till the 20th, when he sailed, and was joined the next morning 
 by the fourth ship from Naples. The same day came a Portu- 
 guese corvette from Gibraltar and Mahon, with letters from 
 St. Vincent and Duckworth. The former announced that 
 the French had passed the Straits, and tliat he was about to 
 start in pursuit. Duckworth, who also was asked to join off 
 Maritime, declined to do so, saying that he must await the 
 commander-in-chief. Nelson had of course immediately com- 
 municated to the latter his change of plan. He hoped to 
 collect ten sail-of-the-line, wliich, "if Duckworth reinforce me, 
 will enable me to look the enemy in the face" — fourteen 
 ships to nineteen ; " but should any of the Russians or Turks 
 be off Malta, I hope to get a force of different nations equal 
 to the enemy, when not a moment shall be lost in bringing 
 them to battle." 
 
 On the 23d of May he was off Maritime with seven ships, 
 Bill not having joined yet. His spirits were fast rising, as in 
 : ought he drew near the enemy. " Duckworth means to leave 
 1 ■ to my fate," he wrote to Lady Hamilton. ''Never mind; 
 ii I can get eleven sail together, they shall not hurt me." 
 " I am under no apprehension for the safety of his Majesty's 
 squadron," he said in a circular letter to his scattered vessels, 
 designed to heighten their ardor ; ''on the contrary, from the 
 very high state of discipline of the ships, I am confident, 
 should the enemy force \is to battle, that we shall cut a very 
 respectable figure ; and if Admiral Duckworth joins, not one 
 moment shall be lost in my attacking the enemy." It must 
 be mentioned that St. Vincent had expressed his opinion that 
 the French were bound for Malta and Alexandria, and Nelson, 
 
PREPARATIONS TO MEET BRUIX SGI 
 
 when he wrote these words, was hourly expecting to see their 
 sails appear on the horizon. He did not know yet, however, 
 that they were twenty-five, instead of nineteen, of the line. 
 To St. Vincent he expressed himself with the sober, dauntless 
 resolution of a consummate warrior, who recognized that op- 
 portunities must be seized, and detachments, if need be, sacri- 
 ficed, for the furtherance of a great common object. " Your 
 , Lordship may depend that the squadron under my command 
 shall never fall into the hands of the enemy ; and before we 
 are destroyed, I have little doubt but the enemy will have 
 their wings so completely clipped that they may be easily over- 
 taken" — by you. In this temper he waited. It is this clear 
 perception of the utility of his contemplated grapple with 
 superior numbers, and not the headlong valor and instinct for 
 fighting that unquestionably distinguished him, Avhich consti- 
 tutes the excellence of Nelson's genius. This it was which 
 guided him in the great Trafalgar campaign, and the lack of 
 which betrayed Villeneuve at the same period to his wretched 
 shortcomings. Yet, as has before been remarked, mere in- 
 sight, however accurate and penetrating, ends only in itself, 
 or at best falls far short of the mark, unless accompanied by 
 Nelson's great power of disregarding contingencies — an in- 
 spired blindness, which at the moment of decisive action sees, 
 not the risks, but the one only road to possible victory. 
 
 Whilst thus expecting an engagement which, from the dis- 
 parity of numbers, could be nothing short of desperate, he 
 dreAv up a codicil to his will, making to Lady Hamilton a 
 bequest, in terms that show how complete were the infatua- 
 tion and idealization now in possession of his mind : " I give 
 and bequeath to my dear friend, Emma Hamilton, wife of the 
 Eight Hon. Sir William Hamilton, a nearly round box set 
 with diamonds, said to have been sent me by the mother of 
 the Grand Signor, which I request she will accept (and never 
 part from) as token of regard and respect for her very emi- 
 nent virtues (for she, the said Emma Hamilton, possesses 
 them all to such a degree that it would be doing her injustice 
 was any particular one to be mentioned) from her faithful 
 and affectionate friend." During this short cruise he wrote 
 her almost daily, and at some length, in addition to the more 
 official communications addressed to Hamilton. At this same 
 
362 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 period he was excusing himself to his wife for the shortness 
 and infrequency of his letters : " Pray attribute it to the true 
 cause — viz., that iu truth my poor hand cannot execute what 
 my head tells me I ought to do." 
 
 On the 28th of May Nelson received letters from St. Vin- 
 cent, dated the 21st, off Minorca, which put him in possession 
 of the movements of the enemy up to that date. The French 
 fleet, under the command of Admiral Bruix, had appeared on 
 the 4th of the month off Cadiz. It was then blowing a half-r 
 gale of wind, and the French admiral did not care, under that 
 condition, to engage the fifteen British sliips-of-the-line which 
 were cruising off the harbor, under Lord Keith, who had come 
 out from England the previous autumn to be St. Vincent's 
 second in command. The intended junction with the Spanish 
 squadron in Cadiz being thus thwarted, Bruix passed the 
 Straits on the 5th, and Lord St. Vincent, having recalled 
 Keith, followed on the 12th with sixteen ships. On the 20tli 
 he joined Duckworth, and learned that the enemy, when last 
 seen, were heading for Toulon. Keith's removal had uncov- 
 ered Cadiz, and St. Vincent fully expected that the Spanish 
 fleet would leave there for the Mediterranean, which it did, 
 and on the 20th entered Cartagena, to the number of seven- 
 teen of the line, but much crippled from a stormy passage. 
 This Nelson did not yet know, nor that Bruix had reached 
 Toulon on the 14th of IMay, and sailed again on the 26th for 
 the eastward. 
 
 Satisfied that the enemy would not at once come his way, 
 and knowing that a vessel had passed up the Mediterranean 
 from St. Vincent to put Sidney Smith on liis guard. Nelson 
 ordered Ball to resume the blockade of Malta with two ships- 
 of-the-line. The rest of his squadron he kept massed, and took 
 to Palermo, where he arrived May 29th. Lookout ships were 
 stationed off the north end of Corsica and west of Sardinia. 
 "My reason for remaining in Sicily," he wrote St. Vincent, 
 '•is the covering the blockade of Naples, and the certainty of 
 preserving Sicily in case of an attack, for if we were to with- 
 draw our ships, it would throw such a damp on the people 
 that I am sure there would be no resistance." 
 
 On the 6th of June Duckworth arrived at Palermo from the 
 main fleet, with four ships-of-the-line, among them the " Fou- 
 
PREPARATIONS TO MEET BRUIX 363 
 
 droyant," 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 dkar 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 lengtli of time, 
 which 1 hope the war will not give, to be in any manner a St. Vin- 
 cent. We look up to you, as we have always found you, as to oiir 
 Father, under whose fostering care we have been led to fame. . . . 
 Give not nji a particle of your authority to any one ; be again our 
 St. Vincent, and we shall be happy. 
 
 Your affectionate Xelsox. 
 
 This letter did not reach St. Vincent before he carried his 
 purpose into effect ; but Nelson never quite forgave the aban- 
 donment 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 
 
SU THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 headquarters at Minorca, and two divisions cruising : one of 
 twenty ships, with Keith, between Toulon and Minorca, and 
 one of sixteen, inchiding 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 Nel- 
 son's great achievements, he does not seem to have had the 
 insight which could appreciate the rare merit underlying 
 them, nor the sj'mpathetic 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 bat- 
 teries ; 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 
 IStli of June. 
 
 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, be- 
 cause 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 con- 
 
PREPAEATIONS TO MEET BRUIX 365 
 
 sented, took on board seventeen hundred troops, with the 
 Hereditary Prince, who was to represent the King, — tlie 
 latter not Avishing 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 
 Avhich 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 com- 
 mander-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 determina- 
 tion I conceived myself forced to make," that is, to go back to 
 Palermo, "for agonized indeed was the mind of your Lord- 
 ship'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 expect- 
 ing such a reinforcement as may enable me to go in search of 
 the enemy's fleet, when not one moment shall be lost in bring- 
 ing 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 along- 
 
366 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 side the rrench." "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 hav- 
 ing joined], and not of the description of them ; it has truly 
 made me ill." But, although not justified in seeking them, 
 he had off Maritinio 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 de- 
 pend," 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. Kelson 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 unusual mental conflict. " I am agitated," he wrote Ham- 
 ilton 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 affection- 
 ate friend. Nelson." The military dilemma of divergeut in- 
 terests confronting him is plain enough, being the same that 
 had " agonized " his mind in abandoning the first expedition 
 to Naples on the 14th. Off Maritimo, with winds prevailing 
 from the westward, he covered both Naples and Sicily, and 
 could hurry to either at a moment's notice. By going to Naples 
 he surrendered this advantage as regarded Sicily and the 
 
TRANSACTIONS AT NAPLES, JUNE, 1799 367 
 
 Court, ill order to undertake a strictly offensive movement; 
 and to this lie dreaded opposition, which would be the more 
 painful, because the fears that prompted it would rest on 
 arguments, the strength of which he could not but admit. 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., the 
 flagship anchored in the Bay of Naples, the rest of the squad- 
 ron remaining outside for the night. Flags of truce Avere 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, Captain E. J. Foote, 
 had been the senior British officer present, before Nelson's own 
 appearance. The following morning the '^ Foudroyant" shifted 
 farther in, near the mole, the remainder of the ships taking 
 position from her, in close line of battle, about noon. 
 
 The occurrences at Naples during the remaining days of 
 June, 1799, have been the occasion of the most serious impu- 
 tations ever made against Nelson's character. These imputa- 
 tions are not limited to a breach of faith in disallowing a 
 capitulation, asserted by accusers to have been irrevocably 
 completed by authorities of final action. Nelson openly dis- 
 allowed and suspended the capitulation on the ground that it 
 had not been executed, and that it was also an improper trans- 
 action, entered into contrary to the orders given by the King 
 to Cardinal Buffo, his representative. Nelson claimed that he 
 had powers direct from the King, to overrule Buffo; in virtue 
 of which he did openly overrule him in this particular instance, 
 because, although the treaty had been signed, it had advanced 
 no further. " Never executed, and therefore no capitulation," 
 was his own expression. In this he may have done wrong. 
 The present writer does not think so ; but the question is one 
 of military public law, as it stood at that date. Whatever the 
 merit of the action otherwise, it Avas open, positive, above- 
 board, and Buffo was requested to convey the knowledge of it 
 to the enemy. This he refused at first to do. Subsequently, 
 he did communicate to them the substance of Nelson's opin- 
 ion. The latter asserted that the final surrender was com- 
 
368 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 pleted under full knowledge of the attitude assumed by 
 him. 
 
 The serious charges made are : first, that Nelson was not 
 invested with legal authority to override lluffo; second, and 
 chiefly, that not only did he break a treaty, and, as is claimed, 
 deprive the enemy of rights acquired by lawful compact, but 
 that he permitted, if he did not induce, them to leave their 
 fortifications, and to place themselves in his power, under the 
 supposition that he acquiesced in a treaty of capitulation. 
 This view was summarized by Captain Foote, writing in 
 1807: "I believe it is but too true that the garrisons of Uovo 
 and Nuovo were taken out of these castles under the pretence 
 of putting the capitulation I had signed into execution." ^ 
 This charge having very recently been repeated, the author 
 has recast his treatment of the subject from that pursued in 
 the first editions. This paragraph, and the one preceding it, 
 convey in brief outline the two contentions to be tested, — that 
 of Nelson, and that of his accusers. 
 
 It is, first, necessary to tell the transactions about Naples 
 up to the date of Nelson's arrival, on the evening of June 24. 
 The French having evacuated the kingdom, leaving garrisons 
 only in Capua, in Gaeta, and in Fort St. Elmo, overlooking 
 Naples, the Neapolitan" republicans were left to their own 
 defence. Against them were advaiicing the so-called Christian 
 Army, composed chiefly of Calabrian peasants and brigands, 
 under the command of Cardinal Euffo, the King's Vicar- 
 General, and a body of some five hundred Eussians and Turks 
 from the Adriatic. The assistance of the latter had been ob- 
 tained by the Chevalier Micheroux, sent to Corfu for that 
 purpose by the King. His style and title was, " Minister 
 plenipotentiary of the King of the Two Sicilies near the 
 Eusso-Ottoman Fleet." Micheroux played a considerable part 
 in the subsequent treaty, but both Foote and Nelson declined 
 to recognize any authority save in Euffo. 
 
 On June 13 the British squadron began to co-operate 
 with Euffo and his allies, who then reached the Bay ; and on 
 the 16th Foote reported to Nelson that the city was in Euffo's 
 power, except Fort St. Elmo, held by the French, and the two 
 
 1 Captain Foote's Vindication, London, 1810, p. 39. The italics are 
 Foote's. 
 
I 
 
 TKANSACTIONS AT NAPLES, JUNE, 1799 369 
 
 lower castles, Uovo and Nuovo, iuto which the Neapolitan 
 insurgents had retired. On the 17th Ruffo notified Foote that 
 Nuovo was admitted to an armistice, from which Uovo stood 
 aloof ; but that night a sortie was made by some of the French 
 and republicans, who spiked the guns of a battery and killed a 
 number of the besiegers. Eu&'o then resumed operations, 
 informing Foote that negotiations were useless, but on the 
 morning of the 19th, he sent word that an armistice had been 
 again granted, and negotiations begun with good promise of 
 success ; he therefore requested Foote to desist from all hos- 
 tilities. The latter acceded, though unwillingly ; saying that 
 so prolonged a cessation of arms was injurious to the common 
 cause. Not hearing anything by the evening of the 20th, he 
 again wrote urgently to the same effect ; but about midnight 
 there was brought to him the first draft of a capitulation, 
 which he signed. This then went back to the shore, was put 
 into final shape, and so approved by the French commandant 
 of St. Elmo, as the terms required. It then received the 
 signatures of Ruffo, of Micheroux, of the Russian and Turkish 
 commanders, and finally of Foote himself; the latter being 
 given on the early morning of June 23. 
 
 The document may be considered then to have been for- 
 mally eomplete ; the only question being whether it was sus- 
 ceptible of ratification or disallowance by superior authority. 
 Ruffo, Foote, and the others held that it was not. Nelson 
 maintained that it was, provided it had not received execu- 
 tion. This it had not, for the second article provided that the 
 garrisons should keep possession of the forts until the vessels 
 that were to take them to Toulon were ready to sail, which 
 was not the case when Nelson arrived. The latter also said 
 that the treaty was "infamous." The term was too strong. 
 The treaty, in the author's judgment, was weak and culpable, — 
 weak, because, as Fort St. Elmo dominated the lower castles, 
 terms so very favorable should not have been granted unless St. 
 Elmo was included in the surrender; ^ and culpable, because 
 Ruffo's orders were disobeyed in granting such liberal terms to 
 
 1 For Foote's opinion of the terms, see Vindication, pp. 154, 155, 190, 191 ; 
 and of the commanding position of St. Ehiio, pp. 137, 141. The unfavorable 
 opinion of Count Thurn, the senior Neapolitan naval officer present, is given 
 by Maresca (Archivio Storico per le Proviucie Napoletane, vol. xix. p. 508). 
 
 24 
 
370 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 men of tlie political and military antecedents of many of those 
 shut up in the castles.^ These considerations do not, however, 
 affect the character of Nelson's act in nullifying the treaty. 
 That depends upon the questions, whether Euffo's act was 
 from the first absolutely final, and, if it were not, whether the 
 method of revoking it were fair and honorable. 
 
 Before proceeding to the consideration of these questions, 
 it is necessary to draw attention to the fact that there were 
 before Nelson two principal conditions, which have been con- 
 founded one with another. There was an Armistice, which 
 had lasted since the morning of the 19th ; and there was the 
 Treaty of Capitulation, signed on the morning of the 23d. 
 The Armistice began for the purpose of negotiation, and con- 
 tinued after the signature, awaiting the execution of the terms, 
 which was to take place when the vessels were ready to em- 
 bark the garrisons. This seems so clear as to be unnecessary 
 to mention, had it not been affirmed in a serious historical 
 magazine that Nelson persisted in styling the Treaty an 
 Armistice ; "^ upon which an elaborate argument is founded. 
 Nelson's own words are, " I used every argument in my power 
 to convince the Cardinal that the Treaty and Armistice was at 
 an end by the coming of the fleet." ^ If it be thought that the 
 singular verb " was " shows confusion in Nelson's mind, the 
 reply is, not only was his grammar notoriously careless,* but 
 that a treaty and an armistice are very different things. 
 Thus Foote, Nelson's chief English accuser, says, " A treaty 
 may be infamous ; an armistice, or cessation from hostilities, 
 cannot deserve this term. It is only a step towards an accom- 
 modation." Without accepting Foote's dictum as to the 
 infamy of either, the distinction is obvious, and the undeniable 
 truth is that there was an armistice and there was a treaty. 
 
 The confusion, introduced and asserted by others, but which 
 did not exist in Nelson's mind, is due probably to the fact that 
 
 1 See the King's letter of May 1, to Ruffo (Dumas, 1 Boiboiii di Napoli, 
 vol. V. p. 240); and of June 17 (p. 253). 
 
 2 English Historical Review, April, 1898, p. 273, and p. 275, note 1. 
 s Nicolas, vol. iii. p. 393. (Author's italics.) 
 
 4 Thus, in the same letter. Nelson writes: "Under this opinion the 
 Rebels came out of the Castles, which was instantly occupied by the Marines 
 of the squadron." (Ibid.) 
 
DISALLOWS CAPITULATION 371 
 
 before he saw Foote he had received word — erroneous — that 
 an Armistice had been granted, by the terms of which there 
 was to be no fighting for twenty-one days ; ^ at tlie end of 
 which, if not relieved, the garrisons were to march out with 
 the honors of war. Such an Armistice — by no means unpre- 
 cedented ^ — though so called, is more than an armistice, for 
 it agrees to more than a stoppage of hostilities. To it Nelson 
 applied the term " infamous." After seeing Foote, aud learn- 
 ing the actual state of affairs, he speaks (in the same letter) 
 of the infamous " terms " entered into with the Eebels. These 
 terms were much the same, though not exactly, as in the sup- 
 posed Armistice, but they were embodied in a Capitulation, in 
 which no mention of an armistice occurs from first to last. 
 Hamilton, writing for iSTelson to Kuffo of the same, calls 
 it the *' capitulation," ^ not the armistice ; and that the 
 distinction was understood both by Hamilton and by Kelson is 
 clear from the fact that the latter formally disapproved and 
 prevented the capitulation, sending Kuffo the information, 
 together with papers to the same effect to be sent in to the 
 enemy. This was positive action, taken independent of Euffo, 
 and so finished ; after which — not before — the question was 
 put to Euffo, " If Lord Nelson breaks the Armistice, will your 
 Eminence assist him ? " The manner and the order in which 
 the events are told by Nelson, and his own course described, in 
 his letter of June 27 to Keith, ^ show that he disapproved and 
 suspended the Capitulation, by his own powers, without consult- 
 ing Euffo ; but that concerning the Armistice, though he held 
 it to be at an end by the mere arrival of the fleet, he would not 
 take the step of actively breaking it — though he at first fully 
 intended to do so — without previous consultation. This 
 separation in treatment of the two things shows conclusively 
 the distinction between them in his own mind.^ 
 
 1 Nicolas, vol. iii. p. 384. 
 
 2 As at Calvi, in 1794. See ante, p. 124. 
 ^ George Rose's Diaries, vol. i. p. 236. 
 
 * Nicolas, vol. iii. p. 392. 
 
 ^ That the Treaty and the Armistice had separate and independent exist- 
 ences, is an historical fact, beyond doubt. That Nelson so understood them 
 re(|uires to be deduced ; that is, to those who doubt his clear-headedness or his 
 honesty. Like men generally, when things are clear in their own minds, he 
 
372 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 The treaty, as finally signed, — and afterwards suspended 
 by him, — read as follows : — 
 
 LIBERTY. EQUALITY. 
 
 NEAPOLITAN REPUBLIC. 
 
 Castel Nuovo, 2d Messidor,^ Year 7 of Liberty. 
 
 Citizen Massa, General of Artillery, and Commandant of Castel 
 Nuovo, the surrender of Castel Uovo having been demanded by 
 Commandant Foote of the English Navy ; and afterwards that of 
 Castel Nuovo by Cardinal Ruffo, Vicar General of the Kingdom of 
 Naples, by Chevalier Micheroux, Minister Plenipotentiary of H. M. 
 the King of the Two Sicilies near the Russo-Ottoman fleet, and by 
 the commandant in chief of the Ottoman troops ; the Council of "War 
 of Castel Nuovo assembled, and having deliberated upon the said 
 samnions, resolved that the two forts shall be delivered to the 
 commanders of the troops of the above named by means of an honor- 
 able capitulation, and after having communicated to the commandant 
 of Fort St. Ehno the motives for the said surrender, in consequence 
 the said Council has drawn up the articles of the following capitu- 
 lation without the acceptance of which the surrender of the forts 
 cannot take place. 
 
 Article 1. The Forts Nuovo and Uovo shall be delivered to the 
 Commanders of the Troops of H. M. tlie King of the Two Sicilies, 
 and of those of his Allies, the King of England, the Emperor of all 
 the Russias, and tlie Ottoman Porte, with all warlike stores, pro- 
 visions, artillery, and effects of every kind now in the magazines, of 
 which an inventory shall be made by Commissaries on both sides, 
 after the present capitulation is signed. 
 
 Article 2. The Troops composing the Garrisons shall keep pos- 
 session of their Forts, until the Vessels which shall be spoken of 
 hereafter, destined to convey such as are desirous of going to Toulon, 
 are ready to sail.^ 
 
 did not suspect misunderstanding in others ; consequently, intent only on 
 the business before him, he did not i)rovide for posterity a categorical declara- 
 tion that he was conscious of a very obvious difference. 
 
 1 June 20. 
 
 - The first draft here contained these additional woi-ds : "The evacuation 
 shall not take place until the moment of embarcation " (Vindication, p. 195). 
 These do not appear in the final terms. This might have been important, 
 because Article 2 fixes the time when, by evacuation, the treaty should re- 
 ceive actual execution, as distinguished from completeness of form. As it 
 was, Nelson arrived before the transports were ready, and consequently found 
 
TERMS OF CAPITULATION 373 
 
 Article 3. The Garrisons shall march out with the honors of war, 
 with arms, and baggage, drums beating, colors flying, matches lighted, 
 and each with two pieces of artillery ; they shall lay down their arms 
 on the beach. 
 
 Article 4. Persons and Property, both movable and immovable, 
 of every individual of the two Garrisons, shall be respected and 
 guaranteed. 
 
 Article 5. All the said individuals shall have their choice of em- 
 barking on board the cartels, which shall be furnished' to carry them 
 to Toulon, or of remaining at Naples without being molested, either 
 in their persons or families. 
 
 Article 6. The conditions contained in the present Capitulation 
 are common to every person of both sexes now in the Forts. 
 
 Article 7. The same conditions shall hold with respect to all the 
 prisoners which the Troops of His IMajesty the King of the Two Sici- 
 lies, and those of his Allies, may have made from the Republican 
 troops, in the different engagements which have taken place before 
 the blockade of the Forts. 
 
 Article 8. Messieurs, the Archbishop of Salerno, Micheroux, 
 Dillon, and the Bishop of Avellino, detained in the Forts, shall be 
 delivered to the Commandant of Fort St. Elmo, where they shall 
 remain as hostages, until the arrival of the individuals, sent to 
 Toulon, shall be ascertained. 
 
 Article 9. All the other hostages and State prisoners, confined in 
 the two Forts, shall be set at liberty, immediately after the present 
 Capitulation is signed. 
 
 Article 10. None of the Articles of the said Capitulation can be 
 put into execution until after they shall have been fully approved by 
 the Commandant of Fort St. Elmo. 
 
 Thirty-six hours after Foote signed, Nelson arrived, and as 
 soon as he saw the flag of truce flying from the forts and from 
 the " Seahorse," he made a signal annulling the truce. -^ This 
 was before he saw Foote, ^ who, by the log of the " Seahorse," 
 came on board outside of the harbor at 4 p. m., having got the 
 ship under way to meet the admiral.^ Shortly after his inter- 
 view with Foote, who brought with him a copy of the capitula- 
 tion, Nelson sent ahead of the flagship, in a pulling boat, 
 
 the Piepublicans still in possession of the forts. He therefore claimed, and 
 undoubtedly believed, that the treaty could rightfully be suspended, because 
 not executed. 
 
 1 Nicolas, vol. iii. p. 392. 2 Vindication, p. 71. 
 
 3 Nicolas, vol. iii. p. 494. 
 
374 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 Troubridge and Ball — two of his most trusted captains — 
 to visit Euffo. These officers carried with them a letter to 
 the Cardinal/ written in the name of Nelson by Sir William 
 Hamilton, who seems throughout to have accepted a minis- 
 terial position between Nelson, as his principal, and the other 
 parties to these transactions. In this letter it was stated 
 that Nelson, having seen the treaty, entirely disapproved of 
 it; that he Would not remain neuter with the fleet; and that 
 the two captains were fully informed of his sentiments and 
 would explain them to his Eminence. He added that he 
 hoped the Cardinal would agree with him, and that to-morrow 
 (the 2oth), at break of day, they would be able to act in con- 
 cert. Besides the letter the captains carried with them two 
 papers. 2 Of these, one, addressed to the French in St. Elmo, 
 demanded their surrender within two hours. ^ The other, to 
 the Kepublicans in Uovo and Nuovo, informed them that they 
 would not be permitted " to embark or to quit those places. 
 They must surrender themselves to His Majesty's Royal 
 mercy." ^ 
 
 Together with the letter and the papers already mentioned, 
 the captains probably took with them anotlier paper,^ in which 
 Nelson, taking for his text the supposed armistice for twenty- 
 one days, reported to him before his arrival, had developed 
 his argument to prove that such a compact, which was of the 
 nature of a treaty rather than of an armistice, could be an- 
 nulled by a superior power appearing on the scene. This paper 
 Ruffo had, either from the captains, or from Nelson himself 
 the next day ; for on it is noted, in Nelson's hand, " Bead 
 and explained, and rejected by the Cardinal." ° 
 
 Buffo absolutely refused to send into the castles the papers 
 brought by the captains, and upon Troubridge asking him 
 whether he would co-operate with Nelson, if the latter broke 
 the armistice, he said he would not. After much communica- 
 tion, he decided to see Nelson personally, and went on board 
 
 1 Rose's Diaries, etc. vol. i. p. 236. In a facsimile given by Sacchinelli 
 the hour of writing appears to have been 5 P. M. 
 
 2 Nicolas, vol. iii. p. 392. ^ Ibid. p. 386. 
 * Ibid. 5 Ibid. p. 384. 
 6 Ibid. p. 386. 
 
NELSON AND RUFFO 375 
 
 the flagship^ the afternoon of the 25th. ^ A long and stormy 
 interview followed, in which neither party yielded his ground, 
 and which ended in Nelson defining his status in the follow- 
 ing written opinion, given to the Cardinal : — 
 
 FouDKOYANT, 26tli3 June, 1799. 
 
 Rear Admiral Lord Nelson arrived with the British fleet the 2Jrth 
 June in the Bay of Naples, and found a treaty entered into with the 
 Rebels, which, in his opinion, cannot be carried into execution, with- 
 out the approbation of his Sicilian Majesty.* 
 
 Ruffo then went on shore, and that evening, the 25th, he 
 sent into Castel Nuovo a letter addressed to the commandant, 
 Massa, as follows : 
 
 " Although he liiniself and the rejireseutatives of the allies held as 
 sacred and inviolable the treaty of capitulation of the castles, never- 
 theless the rear-admiral of the English squadi'ou was not wiUing to 
 recognize it, and therefore the garrisons were at liberty to avail them- 
 selves of the 5th article of the capitulation, as the patriots of St. 
 Martin's Hill liad done, who liad all departed by land; so he made to 
 them this communication, in order that, considering that tlie English 
 commanded the sea, the garrisons might take the resolution which 
 best pleased them." ^ 
 
 At the same time he had proclamation made throughout the 
 city, and notices posted, announcing the surrender of the 
 castles, and forbidding any molestation of the members of 
 the garrison, in goods or person, under penalty of death. "^ 
 
 As the garrisons had not yet embarked, although many of 
 their number had been stealing away, even before the j^^'^j'-i 
 of capitulation was framed,'' and throughout the succeeding 
 
 1 Nelson to Keith, Nicola.s, vol. iii. p. 392. 
 
 2 The time of the interview is fi.xed by the following entry in the log of the 
 flagship, regard being had to the sea-day, which began twelve lionrs before the 
 civil day : " Wednesday, 26th, Sainted a Cardinal who came on board with 
 13 guns. A.M. Employed occasionally." (Nicolas, vol. iii. p. 508.) 
 
 ^ Sea-time. 
 
 * From Nelson's Order Book, Nicolas, vol. iii. p. 388. 
 
 5 Maresca, Arch. Stor. Prov. Nap., vol. xix. p. 521. 
 
 6 Ibid. ; fpioted from the Diario Napol., of June 25, 1799. 
 
 ■^ " Ever since this morning (June 19), from the moment they began to 
 treat about a capitulation, a great many began to desert from the two castles," 
 etc, Ruifo to Foote, Vindication, p. 185. (Author's italics.) 
 
376 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 days, it cannot be said, in view of the above, that they had no 
 warning of Nelson's attitude. Doubtless, in saying thus much, 
 and yet omitting — if he adhered to his first refusal — to send 
 in the papers bearing Nelson's own words, Euffo did not deal 
 candidly with them; so much so, indeed, that it is fairly open 
 to belief that he may similarly have equivocated to the 
 admiral, who stated positively, and immediately after the 
 transactions,^ that the rebels came out of the castles "under 
 this opinion " ^ and " with this knowledge," ^ both which were 
 passed to Ruffo to be communicated, and could by him have 
 been transmitted, if he chose. 
 Massa replied for the garrison : 
 
 " We have given to your letter the interpretation which it deserved. 
 Firm, however, in our duties, we shall religiously observe the articles 
 of the treaty, convinced that an equal obligation should be main- 
 tained by all the contracting parties who have therein solemnly taken 
 part. For the rest we cannot be either surprised or intimidated, and 
 we shall resume a hostile attitude whenever it may happen that you 
 constrain us thereto." * 
 
 He then requested an escort for a messenger to communi- 
 cate with St. Elmo on the matter. 
 
 " From these two letters," remarks Maresca,^ ** it appears 
 that we must deduce, even admitting that Nelson did not 
 directly send in his Declaration, that the patriots of the 
 castles were made acquainted with his intentions by means of 
 Euffo's letter." 
 
 The author has had the good fortune to find evidence, hith- 
 erto unquoted, strongly corroborative of this deduction. The 
 same evening, June 25, Kuffo wrote to Nelson also, informing 
 him that " the letter " had then gone forward to the castles, 
 that it was to be hoped they would surrender at discretion, 
 but, as they might decide to attack, he wished a reinforcement 
 
 1 To Keith, on June 27 (Nicolas, vol. iii. p. 393 ; and to Earl Spencer, on 
 July 13 (Ibid., p. 406). 
 
 2 Nelson's Opinion (Ibid., pp. 388, 393). 
 
 ^ Of Nelson's Opinion, and of his Declaration to the Eebels, Ibid., pp. 
 386, 388. 
 
 * Sacchinelli, Memorie suUa Vita del Cavdinale Ruffo, Rome, 1895, pp. 
 233, 234 (Maresca, 522). 
 
 ^ Archivio Storico per le Prov. Nap., vol. xix. p. 522. 
 
NELSON AND RUFFO 377 
 
 of 1,200 men might be lauded.^ The contents of " the letter " 
 are not specified, which indicates that Nelson knew them, while 
 the results expected tell us what its nature was, and that, in the 
 matter of the Treaty, Euffo, as Acton afterwards wrote,^ had 
 yielded to Nelson so far as to send the latter's Declaration to 
 the garrisons, in substance, if not in its exact words. This 
 step towards a compromise, by which the two chiefs might act 
 in accord, was met by a corresponding concession, concerning 
 the Armistice, on the part of Nelson. He apparently did not 
 receive RufEo's letter of the evening of the 25th until the 26th 
 was well advanced, — "1 am just honoured with 3'our Excel- 
 lency's letter," — but at an earlier hour Hamilton had written 
 in his name to the Cardinal, as follows : — 
 
 " Lord Nelson begs me to assure your Eminence that he is resolved 
 to do nothing which can break the armistice which your Eminence 
 has accorded to the castles of Naples. "^ 
 
 This promise referred explicitly to the Armistice, and 
 gave no assurances concerning his future action upon the 
 Capitulation. This, Nelson had said in writing, "cannot be 
 carried into effect without the approval of the King ; " and 
 that opinion had not been recalled — could not be recalled, 
 effectively, except by a written paper, the existence of which 
 has never been even suggested. The Treaty, so far as Nelson 
 was concerned, remained suspended, but the Armistice was to 
 continue. 
 
 The wording of this letter not only expresses the decisive 
 conclusion reached by Nelson after a night's reflection, but 
 appears also to confirm an arrangement already conditionally 
 reached. In short, as Hamilton wrote to Acton, " If one can- 
 not do exactly as one wishes, one must do the best one can, 
 and that is what Lord Nelson has done."^ It was inexpe- 
 dient, having in view Ruffo's attitude, to proceed to hostilities, 
 as at first intended. If the Cardinal would acquiesce in the 
 annulling of the treaty, in submission to the Admiral's powers, 
 
 1 British Museum, Nelson MSS., ^||A. 
 
 2 Nicolas, vol. vii. p. clxxxvi. 
 
 3 Sacchinelli, p. 236. 
 
 * Dumas, I Borboni di Napoli, vol. iv. p. 89. 
 
378 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 and would send in the latter 's declaration to that effect, — 
 though refusing to join in it, — Nelson would continue the 
 armistice. This concession met Ruffo's leading idea, which 
 was to save the city from further injury, not only by stop- 
 ping fighting, but also by releasing the regular troops avail- 
 able, to suppress the outrages increasingly committed by 
 Ruffo's undisciplined forces, by the lazzaroni, and by the 
 Turkish auxiliaries. Such seem to be conclusions fairly 
 deducible from Ruffo's letter of the 25th, and from the 
 following reply by Nelson on the 26th. The latter is 
 undated, but the date is fixed by the reference to that 
 written by Hamilton. 
 
 " I am just honoured with Your Emiuency's letter ; aud as His 
 Excellency Sir William llaiiiiltoii has v/rote you this morning, that 
 1 will not on any consideration break tlie Armistice entered into by 
 you, I hope Your Eniinency will be satisfied that I am supporting 
 your ideas. 1 send once more Caj)tains Troubridge aud Ball, to 
 arrange witli your Eminency everything relative to an attack on St. 
 Elmo ; whenever your army aud cannon are ready to proceed against 
 it, I will land 1200 men to go with them, under the present Armis- 
 tice. I have only to rejoice that His Britannic Majesty's fleet is 
 here, to secure tlie city of Naples from all attacks by sea, — I 
 am, &c. NELSo^^"^ 
 
 It will be noticed that the purpose of the present mission 
 of Troubridge and Ball is strictly defined, and, because defined, 
 limited. They were to make arrangements for an attack upon 
 St. Elmo. During the interview Ruffo, according to Sacchi- 
 nelli, was by them assured that Nelson " does not oppose the 
 execution of the Capitulation." Sacchinelli states further that 
 Troubridge drew up the following paper, based on this alleged 
 assurance : — 
 
 " Captains Troubridge and Ball have authority, on the part of 
 Lord Nelson, to declare to his Eminence that his Lordship will not 
 oppose the embarkation of the Rebels and of the people who compose 
 the garrison of the castles Uovo and Nuovo." 
 
 It is to be remarked that the one statement, "does not op- 
 pose the execution of the Capitulation," is not identical with 
 
 1 From Nelson's Letter Book, Nicolas, vol. ill. p. 394. 
 
NELSON AND IIUFFO 379 
 
 that of the alleged consequent paper, " will not oppose the 
 embarkation." This effort to confuse two distinct things re- 
 sembles closely the attempt to confound Avniistice and Capitu- 
 lation. Further, Sacchinelli does not give at all Nelson's own 
 letter, last quoted, but attributes the captains' visit to bearing 
 Hamilton's preceding letter of the same day. "This declara- 
 tion," he states, "Troubridge wrote with his oivii hand, hnt was 
 not willing to sign it, saying that they had been charged and ac- 
 credited with the letter of June 24 to confer verbally concern- 
 ing military operations, and not at all, in writing, concerning 
 affairs belonging to diplomacy." ^ It is clear from this that 
 Sacchinelli, though Kuffo's secretary, was imperfectly informed 
 as to the details of what happened. Not only is he ignorant 
 of Nelson's letter, which certainly was brought by the captains, 
 but he attributes to Hamilton's of June 24th a scope which 
 pertains only to Nelson's of the 2Gth. Both these were cer- 
 tainly carried by the captains, while it is not certain that they 
 took Hamilton's of the 26th. In the letter of the 24th, the 
 mission of the captains was clearly diplomatic. They were to 
 convey to the Cardinal Nelson's disapproval of the Capitula- 
 tion, and his intention not to remain neuter. This agrees with 
 Nelson's statement in his letter of the 27th to Keith, " I sent 
 Captains Troubridge and Ball instantly to the Cardinal Vicar- 
 General, to represent my opinion of the infamous terms en- 
 tered into with the Kebels, and also two papers which I 
 enclose." These papers were the Summons to the French and 
 the Declaration to the Rebels ; both part of the diplomacy of 
 war. By this letter of the 24th they were accredited as " fully 
 informed of Lord Nelson's sentiments and will have the honour 
 to explain them " — verbally, of course — " to your Eminence." 
 These functions are all diplomatic — negotiatory — in charac- 
 ter, and that letter goes no further than to hope for agreement 
 with the Cardinal, so that military operations may proceed. 
 There is in it no mention of military arrangements as part of 
 the captains' then mission, although there is in that of the 
 26th ; and at the very least it is clear that their function on 
 the 24th was not limited, as Sacchinelli states that they said, 
 to military operations. Finally, the declaration which it is 
 
 1 Sacchinelli, p. 236, and Appendix, Facsinule c. (Author's italics. ) 
 
380 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 said the captains refiised to sign is not in Troubridge's hand, 
 as alleged. The author has a letter of Troubridge's, written 
 in January, 1799, which differs distinctly from the facsimile 
 of the declaration given by Sacchinelli. 
 
 The attempt to implicate Nelson as partner in a disreputable 
 trick, upon evidence as faulty as this, is mere futile prevarica- 
 tion. It may be tliat the captains were asked to sign such a 
 paper ; although Sacchinelli, by stating that Troubridg© wrote 
 it, invalidates his own testimony, — showing that he is willing 
 to make a statement of infamous import, when he was not 
 eye-witness, nor had adequate proof. The captains, however, 
 had neither authority nor power, direct hor indirect, so to 
 pledge Nelson, by word or script, as Avas perfectly known to 
 Kuffo ; for he had in his hands the letter they brought him 
 from Nelson, defining their present mission, viz, to arrange 
 for the attack on St. Elmo. To say, as some have, that, be- 
 cause accredited, two days before, "as fully informed of Lord 
 Nelson's sentiments," upon one subject, of a specific character, 
 they were equally accredited with knowledge of his views, and 
 with authority to express them, on another subject, when sent 
 upon a second mission, having no relation to the former, but 
 clearly defined and limited, would be to introduce anarchy into 
 negotiation. The verbal assurance of an envoy, sent as Trou- 
 bridge and Ball then were, is of no weight against two written 
 declarations of their principal, close at hand, viz. : that the 
 capitulation could not be carried into effect without the King's 
 approval, and that they were sent to arrange for an attack 
 on St. Elmo. Both these E-uffo had in his hands; and only 
 a written revocation of the former could justify him in assum- 
 ing it to be withdrawn. There is not the slightest proof, nor 
 even indication, that Nelson by letter or by word receded from 
 his attitude towards the Capitulation. He regarded it as be- 
 yond his powers. An armistice — a cessation of hostilities — 
 was within his powers ; and this he undertook to observe. 
 
 After stating that the captains refused to sign, Sacchinelli 
 continues: ''The Cardinal, although he suspected that there 
 might here be bad faith, not wishing to dispute with those two 
 captains, concerned himself no farther than to charge Minister 
 Micheroux to accompany them to the castles, to concert with 
 the republican commanders the execution of the stipulated 
 
NELSON AND RUFFO 381 
 
 articles." The insinuation of the last few words, that the 
 execution of the treaty, which Nelson had unwaveringly 
 refused, was now arranged by his representatives with the 
 other party, becomes an explicit affirmation, a few lines on. 
 " At the end of some hours Micheroux reported to the Cardi- 
 nal that, thanks to God, all had been arranged by common 
 accord." These words end a paragraph, and may be assumed 
 therefore to be all that Micheroux reported. Common accord 
 is stated, but what was arranged is left to inference. What 
 follows is Sacchinelli's inference, which, in view of the loose- 
 ness of his other statements, must go for what it is worth. 
 " The English themselves executed that treaty, which at first 
 they were unwilling to recognize. They disembarked some 
 hundreds of marines, and, the republicans having embarked, 
 took possession of CaStel Nuovo," etc. It is clear in this last 
 quotation that Sacchinelli assumes, in face of the Cardinal's 
 distrust, that the embarkation of the republicans and the tak- 
 ing possession of the castles prove Nelson's acceptance of the 
 Treaty. It is equally clear to a careful reader that the infer- 
 ence is far from inevitable, and that the two acts may equally 
 indicate the submission of the rebels to Nelson's terms. This 
 Nelson explicitly affirmed to be the case in two letters written 
 within three weeks of the transaction to the men to whom he 
 was cliieiiy responsible — his Commander-in-Chief and the 
 First Lord. "The Rebels came out of the Castles under tliis 
 opinion," ^ " with this knowledge." ^ 
 
 High as Nelson's own reputation is, it is nevertheless for- 
 tunate that the stigma of Sacchinelli is rebutted not by that 
 alone, nor yet by Sacchinelli's own carelessness of statement, 
 but by the share borne in these transactions by Ball and 
 Troubridge. Of the latter especially, who, as the senior of 
 the two, stood for their joint action, St. Vincent said, "his 
 honour and his courage are as bright as his sword." Is it to 
 be believed that such a man gave assurances to which he 
 refused to sign his name, and deceived even rebels — much 
 as he hated them — when they were trusting to his honor, 
 with their lives on the stake ? Further, Clarke, the biographer 
 of Nelson, writing to Captain Foote, Nelson's bitterest English 
 assailant, quotes two other captains of the fleet as cognizant 
 
 1 To Keith, Nicolas, vol. iii. p. 393. " To Spencer, Ibid. p. 406. 
 
382 THE LIFE OF KELSON 
 
 of Nelson's action. ''From the conversation I had with 
 Admiral Foley and with Hardy, and from seeing the King of 
 Sicily's private letter in his own hand to Ruffo, I was inclined 
 to think more favourably of Lord Nelson's conduct." ^ This 
 conversation was after Nelson's death, and, though somewhat 
 vague in allusion, it is clear that the opinion of these two 
 honorable men, present throughout, could not have been that 
 the garrisons on surrendering were deceived by Nelson or his 
 representatives. Such also is the deliberate judgment of the 
 Italian Maresca, writing in these present days (1894), when 
 passionate prepossession has given place to historical research 
 and deliberate judgment, and who has devoted especial atten- 
 tion to tliese transactions. He is far from approving the sub- 
 sequent treatment of the prisoners, but concerning these facts he 
 says : " It is allowable to believe that Micheroux with the two 
 Englishmen arranged with the commandants of the forts that 
 the capitulation should be executed upon lines subordinated 
 to Nelson's declarations. That it should receive unconditional 
 effect after the declarations of the admiral, and after the en- 
 forced adhesion of Ruffo, '•^ was no longer to be thought of. 
 Only an unconditional surrender could at that moment be 
 entertained; and, if conditions were offered, they could only 
 have been briefly these : that the patriots should give up the 
 castles, purely and simply, that those who had declared their 
 wish to go to Toulon should embark and remain in the roads, 
 that the others should stay in the forts, until the determina- 
 tion of the King, in the case of each, should be known." ^ 
 
 That afternoon the garrisons quitted Uovo and Nuovo, 
 those who so elected embarking in the vessels which were 
 now ready ; and in them they remained undisturbed, at the 
 mole, during the 27th. The surrendered castles Avere occu- 
 pied on the evening of the 26th by British marines. On tiie 
 27th Nelson requested of Euffo that these should be relieved 
 by two or three hundred Neapolitan soldiers, in order that the 
 
 ^ Vindication, p. 56. 
 
 2 Maresca agrees with the German Hliffer in thinking, contrary to Sacchi- 
 nelli, that Ruffo ended by .submitting to Nelson's decision. He thus accepts 
 Acton's words in his letter of August 1, 1799, to Nelson: "The Cardinal 
 3'ielded to your wise and steady declaration." (Nicolas, vol vii. p. clxxxvi.) 
 
 3 Archivio Storico, 1894, pp. 523-526. 
 
NELSON'S POWERS AT NAPLES 383 
 
 British and Russian troops might proceed with the attack on 
 St. Elmo.^ On the 28th, early, a despatch, dated the 25th, ^ 
 was received from Palermo, from the contents of which Nelson 
 inferred, correctly, that the terms of the Capitulation could 
 not be approved by the King. He then wrote to the Cardinal, 
 announcing the fact, and that he was about to seize and make 
 sure of those who had embarked.^ Before noon of the same 
 day,^ the vessels were brought out from the mole and anchored 
 under the guns of the fleet ; some of the ringleaders being 
 transferred to British ships for safer keeping. The transac- 
 tion, as far as Nelson was concerned in it, was completed 
 by holding them until the King's arrival, on the 10th of 
 July. 
 
 So far the author's effort has been confined to stating clearly 
 and fully just what Nelson did, in order to demonstrate that 
 his conduct throughout was open and consistent. This it 
 was, whatever judgment may be passed upon the correctness 
 of the opinion which he avowed, and upon which he acted, 
 viz. that he not only had a right to suspend the Capitulation, 
 because, though signed, it had not been executed, but that it 
 was his bounden duty so to do ; having both legal power and 
 adequate force to prevent its execution. 
 
 It remains to consider what was the obligation under which 
 he conceived himself to lie, and what was the authority in law 
 by which he assumed to act. The reply, which it is purposed 
 to substantiate, is that he regarded himself as, and for the time 
 being actually was, the representative of the King of the Two 
 Sicilies, as well as the admiral of the British fleet. As repre- 
 sentative, he was charged with the interests and honor of the 
 Sovereign and had authority over all Neapolitan officials ; as 
 admiral, he wielded power to enforce obedience, if refused. 
 
 1 Diaries, etc. of Geo. Rose, vol. i. p. 2-37. 
 
 2 On June 25 Acton wrote to Hiimilton three letters (Egerton MSS. Br. 
 Museum 2640 ; Nos. 267, 269, 271). The first of these, sent by a Neapolitan 
 felucca "with the utmost speed," was in reply to Hamilton's of the 23d, 
 which had transmitted the erroneous intelligence of a twenty-one days' armis- 
 tice, after which the republicans were to march out, if not before relieved. 
 From the tenor of all these, it was clear that the terms, wheii known, would 
 not be approved. 
 
 2 Diaries, etc. of Geo. Rose, vol. i. p. 238. 
 * Foudroyant's Log, Nicolas, vol. iii. p. 508. 
 
384 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 Considering the terms of the Capitulation to be contrary to 
 the interests and the honor of the Kingdom, he was under 
 an obligation to prevent their going into etfect, until the 
 King's decision, becoming known, should supersede his own 
 discretion. 
 
 The proof of Nelson's commission to act for the King goes 
 back of June 21, the day of his second departure from Palermo. 
 It is admitted that no written instructions have been found 
 bearing that date, or specifically issued for that occasion. It 
 must be remembered that the mission which he then under- 
 took, and carried through to the results which we have been 
 considering, was only the resumption of a similar task, begun 
 upon the 13th of June. Though then interrupted, the trans- 
 action was in effect continuous ; postponed, not abandoned. 
 The only modification introduced on the second occasion was 
 in the nature of verbal instructions, consequent upon later 
 intelligence, which in no wise affected his powers ; for these 
 had been amply defined on the first occasion, and were indeed 
 so extensive as scarcely to admit of enlargement. 
 
 Looking to Xelson's arranged departure on the first occa- 
 sion, the King had on the 10th of June addressed him a letter, 
 in which, after defining the causes which then made it expedi- 
 ent that the fleet should go to Naples, taking with it Neapoli- 
 tan troops (as before mentioned),^ he proceeds thus: "This 
 measure, without your valuable assistance and direction, can- 
 not produce the necessary result. I have recourse, therefore, 
 to you, my Lord, to obtain both the one and the other, so that, 
 this Kingdom being speedily delivered from the scourge which 
 it has experienced, I may henceforwai'd be in a condition to 
 perform the engagements contracted, which duty and reason 
 prescribe. I send, therefore, a copy of the instructions I give 
 to the superior generals, and ivliich I forward to those on the 
 Continent,''^ i. e. to Ruffo in principal, as Vicar-General, and 
 to others ; among whom doubtless Micheroux. " At the head 
 of these [generals] I have placed my son, whom I trust to 
 your friendly assistance, so that his first steps in the present 
 critical career which he will have to run, may be guided by 
 your wise advice, requesting you not only to help him with 
 your powerful aid, hut that you ivill always act p>rincipally, 
 
 1 Ante, p. 364. 
 
 I 
 
NELSON'S POWERS AT NAPLES 385 
 
 as your forces are the true means and support on which I rest 
 my future hopes, as they have hitherto been my safety." ^ 
 
 The Instructions to the generals, only alluded to here, are 
 clearly for Nelson's informafcion, as to his own authority, 
 in them set forth, and for his guidance in his relations 
 with the Neapolitan officers. They indicate their duties to- 
 wards himself, towards the Prince, and towards Euffo, whose 
 position Avould be radically affected by the arrival of the new- 
 comers and by the instructions they carried. The articles of 
 the Instructions which are decisive as to Nelson's powers will 
 alone be quoted ; but readers who wish to scrutinize closely 
 the regularity of his procedure, as distinguished from the 
 rightfulness of his action, can study the entire document.^ 
 
 " Article 4. All the miUlary and political operations shall be agreed 
 upon by the Prince Eoyal and Admiral Lord Nelson. The opinion 
 of this latter always to have a preponderance, on account of the re- 
 spect due to his experience, as well as to the forces under his com- 
 mand, which will determine the operations ; and also because we are 
 so deeply indebted to him for the zeal and attachment of which he 
 has given so many proofs. Therefore, should the attack take place, 
 the employment of tlie royal [Neapolitan] forces, and all other means 
 tending to obtain the surrender of Naples, shall be thus decided. 
 
 " 7. When Naples shall be entirely surrendered and subdued, the 
 Vicar-General [Ruifo] shall at once take possession of the entire gov- 
 ernment of the Kingdom; and to this intent will receive from the 
 Prince Royal the King's new ratification of this his commission and 
 charge, witli all the particular determination that the circumstance 
 requires, and any rules that the importance of the time and special 
 considerations indispensably demand. 
 
 " 10. The acts of clemency concerning the noted offenders, and the 
 pardoning of the same, are reserved for the King, excepting tliose stip- 
 ulated in the articles of Capitulation." 
 
 It will be observed that these Instructions concerning Ca- 
 pitulation are for the Crown Prince and Nelson ; not for Euffo, 
 
 1 Nicolas, vol. iii. p. 492. The author quotes from the translation. The 
 original is also given, p. 522. There is more that pi'ecedes, and also follow- 
 ing ; but nothing which in the author's judgment impairs — but rather 
 confirms — the force of the words quoted. 
 
 2 George Rose's Diaries, etc., vol. i. pp. 231-236. Both the Italian origi- 
 nal and the translation are there given. The italics are the author's. 
 
 25 
 
386 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 whose orders at that time were not to approach Naples until 
 the squadron appeared, and who had special directions, less 
 discretional than those in these Instructions, as to terms to be 
 offered to prisoners. 
 
 The extent of the powers intrusted to Nelson — who him- 
 self received a copy of this paper for his information — are 
 clear from the 4th Article. All military operations, and all 
 political, were to be agreed upon by him and the Prince ; but 
 in case of a difference arising, it was known to the generals, 
 and to Nelson, and to Euffo (who also had, or was to have, 
 his copy) — known to each and to all — that the opinion 
 of Nelson was to preponderate — overweigh the others. As 
 this was to be in political as well as in military matters, it is 
 difficult to see what more is wanted to constitute the full 
 powers which Nelson claimed to possess. 
 
 Further, it has been questioned whether he held jiower to 
 supersede Ruffo ; but from Article 7 it is clear that Euffo was 
 already superseded as Vicar-General, «}«o facto, by the mere 
 coming of the Crown Prince and Nelson. Eor, after a certain 
 further time should have elapsed, — ''when Naples shall be 
 entirely subdued," — " the Vicar-General shall take posses- 
 sion of the entire government of the kingdom, and to this 
 intent will receive from the Prince Eoyal the King's neio 
 ratification," etc. The ample vice-regal powers conferred 
 upon the Cardinal by the King's instructions to him of 
 January 25th were superseded by those to the Crown Prince 
 and Nelson, of whose coming and its object, it is stated in 
 Article 2, advices were despatched to him ; for his commission 
 was to be ratified anew when the object of Nelson's coming 
 Avas accomplished by the subjugation of the city or kingdom 
 — to whichever of these the name Naples is meant to apply. 
 This view of the matter is confirmed by the King's subsequent 
 full approval of Nelson's action. Sacchinelli states that Euffo 
 received at Avellino, by June 10,^ an autograph letter from the 
 King, notifying him of the intended expedition, and forbidding 
 
 1 Either this date is a mistake, or the King wrote to Euffo some days he- 
 fore the instructions to the Crown Prince were issued, which is possible. 
 Nelson, on the evening of June 6, wrote to St. Vincent, " It is not yet decided, 
 but it is probable that in forty-eight hours we may sail for the Bay of Naples, 
 in order to replace His Sicilian Majesty on his throne." (Nicolas, vii. clxxxiv.) 
 
NELSON'S POWERS AT NAPLES 387 
 
 him to advance on Naples before the arrival of the fleets 
 This order Ruffo disobeyed ; he claimed, necessarily. 
 
 When Nelson came to Palermo on June 21st, and remained 
 two or tliree hours, it was not needful to invest him with new 
 or ampler powers. The absence of any new credentials at 
 that time is more than overborne by the absence of any revo- 
 cation of the former instrument. The preponderance he had 
 over all others, even to the Crown Prince, was not lessened by 
 the absence of the latter, to whatever due. But, though 
 nothing formal and written is on record, Ave have, concerning 
 his powers over Ruffo, incidental confirmation of a kind usu- 
 ally accepted as authoritative. Sir William Hamilton, in an 
 official despatch of July 14 to the British Secretary for Foreign 
 Affairs, says: ''Their Sicilian Majesties having received 
 alarming accounts from Naples, that the Calabrese Army upon 
 their entry into Naples was plundering the houses of that 
 city, and setting them on fire under the pretence of their 
 belonging to Jacobins, and that Cardinal Ruffo, elated with 
 his unexpected successes, was taking upon himself a power far 
 beyond the positive instructions of his Sovereign, and actually 
 treating with His Sicilian Majesty's subjects in arms, and in 
 open rebellion against him, earnestly entreated Lord Nelson 
 that he would go immediately with his Majesty's whole 
 squadron to Naples, and jy)' event if possible the Cardinal from 
 taking any steps, or coming to any terms ivith the Rebels, that 
 might be dishonourable to their Sicilian Majesties, and hurtful 
 to tbeir future government," etc. As towards Ruffo, such were 
 clearly full powers ; and although Hamilton's despatch cer- 
 tainly contains errors of fact, in important details, a general 
 statement such as the above is entitled to credence, unless his 
 general credibility is successfully impeached. The probability 
 of the statement being substantially correct is increased by the 
 fact that, in writing privately to his nephew, Charles Greville, 
 the same day (July 14), he summarizes the conditions by 
 saying shortly, " We had full powers." ^ These four words 
 have been called an inaccurate summary ; but are they so, of 
 the words above italicized ? 
 
 Hamilton's words are here offered simply as corroborative — 
 if no greater weight of proof be assigned to them — that the 
 
 ^ The Nelson-Hamilton Letters, Alfred Morrison Collection, No. 405. 
 
388 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 force of the Instructions given to the Neapolitan generals, and 
 communicated to Ruffo and Nelson, was not diminished, but 
 rather confirmed, in the interview of the 21st. Although 
 formal record of the latter has not been preserved, its char- 
 acter may be inferred from letters of the King and Queen to 
 Ruffo in the same week. The Queen, writing on the 21st 
 itself, says : " I realise how much all the horrors, which Your 
 Eminence mentions at large in your letter of the 17th to the 
 King, must afflict you. It seems to me that we have done all 
 we can in the matter of clemency to such rebels, and that to 
 treat with them further would be useless, and would lower us. 
 Negotiations might be had with St. Elmo, which is in the 
 hands of the French; but the other two, if they do not sur- 
 render immediately and without conditions, to the summons 
 of Admiral Nelson " (whose coming she had already men- 
 tioned), "are to be taken by main force and treated as they 
 deserve." ^ The King, writing on the 17th, tells the Cardinal 
 he is sure it is needless to repeat what has already been said 
 with reference to the treatment of the Jacobin rebels, espe- 
 cially the chiefs. "Nevertheless, I recommend you strongly 
 to do nothing unbecoming to that dignity, which it is so 
 necessary to sustain, or to your, and my, honor and reputation. 
 As a Christian, I forgive all ; but in the station in which God 
 has placed me, I must be the rigorous avenger of offences done 
 to Him, and of the injury occasioned to the state and to so 
 many poor unfortunates." ^ The views of the Government as 
 to the course which Nelson was expected and requested to 
 pursue are clear from these extracts and references, though 
 his powers were not thereby created. This cumulative evi- 
 dence is very strong ; to the present writer it is demonstra- 
 
 1 Arcli. Stor. per le Prov. Nap., 1880, p. 576. Dumas, I Boiboni di 
 Napoli, vol. iv. p. 77. 
 
 '-' Dumas, I Borboni di Napoli, vol. v. p. 253. The King, on May 1, 1799 
 (Dumas, vol. v. p. 239), had written Euffo a letter, classifying the Rebels who 
 were excepted from a policy of amnesty, then decided. Nelson (Nicolas, vol. 
 iii. p. 341) alludes to this, as published. Ruffo, in his dispute with Nelson, on 
 board the " Foudroyaut," alleged in defence of the Capitulation an order from 
 the King, to do the best he could for his Majesty's service. To this Acton 
 replied that such a verbal order, if given, was countermanded by the special 
 written orders, above mentioned (Egerton MSS. Br. Mus. ^^f§ ). There were 
 very many of the excepted in the Castles. 
 
NELSON'S POWERS AT NAPLES 389 
 
 tive. To its positive weight, also, is opposed only the negative 
 argument that nothing more precise — more like a formal 
 commission — has been preserved. 
 
 To these various written evidences, which remain on record, 
 by persons entirely foreign to Nelson's particular interest in 
 the transactions — which have been so colored as to touch his 
 reputation and his integrity — is to be added his own state- 
 ment, written less than a year later to his friend Davison, for 
 the purpose of being shown to members of the British Govern- 
 ment, or even to be published in the papers, if advisable : ^ 
 "As the whole affairs of the Kingdom of Naples were at the 
 time alluded to absolutely placed in my hands, it is / who am 
 called upon to explain my conduct, and therefore send you my 
 observations on the infamous Armistice entered into by the 
 Cardinal," etc. Concerning the substantial exactness of this 
 statement, opinion will be formed upon the corroborative evi- 
 dence before adduced, and upon Nelson's own claim to be 
 believed, as affected by his record for truthfulness, by his age 
 and intelligence, and generally by his competency to remem- 
 ber and to report correctly a transaction then less than a year 
 old. 
 
 It was in virtue of the same unlimited powers as represent- 
 ative of the King, that Nelson, three days after the surrender 
 of the castles, proceeded to take peremptory action in the case 
 of Caracciolo. In the mean time, in pursuance of the agree- 
 ments with Ruffe, additional marines were landed from the 
 fleet under the command of Troubridge, to besiege St. Elmo, 
 an undertaking in which the five hundred Russians and some 
 royalists also took part. 
 
 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 sub- 
 sequently joined the Republicans, or Jacobins, as they were 
 
 1 (P. S.) " Show these papers to Mr. Rose, or some other, and, if thought 
 right, you will put them in the papers." Nelson to Davison, May, 1800. 
 Nicolas, vol. iv. p. 232. 
 
390 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 called by Kelson and the Court. His reasons for so doing 
 are immaterial ; tliey 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 Eoyal Neapolitan navies, firing 
 impartially upon both. In one of these engagements the Nea- 
 politan frigate " Minerva " was struck several times, losing 
 two men killed and four wounded. Caracciolo, therefore, 
 had fully committed himself to armed insurrection, in com- 
 pany with foreign invaders, against what had hitherto been, 
 and still claimed to be, the lawful government of the country. 
 He had afterwards, as the Kepublican 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 dif- 
 fered from that of other rebels who surrendered uncondi- 
 tionally, and whom Nelson did not tiy himself, but simply 
 ^placed in safe keeping until the King's insti'uctions 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 " Fou- 
 droyant," 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 commo- 
 dore 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 pro- 
 nounced ; and Caracciolo, who had been brought on board at 
 9 A. M., Avas at 5 p. m., by Nelson's orders, hanged at the fore- 
 yard-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, jf any was drawn up, has not been preserved. It is 
 
F 
 
 THE EXECUTION OF CARACCIOLO 391 
 
 impossible, therefore, now to say whether the evidence sus- 
 tained 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 punish- 
 ment 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 re- 
 gretting 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 doubting 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. Hav- 
 ing 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 con- 
 demnation 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 
 
392 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 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 reflec- 
 tion. 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 plenipoten- 
 tiary, 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, advanc- 
 ing 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, wheu he could have done so, has been intui- 
 tively 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 Avith 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 
 
THE EXECUTION OF CARACCIOLO 393 
 
 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. Punish- 
 ment in sxich case, however just, is not deterrent, but aveng- 
 ing. True, Nelson was expecting the appearance of Bruix's 
 fleet ; but he himself characterized as " infamous " the capit- 
 ulation 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 ISTelson 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 ofiicers during Caracciolo's confinement. But it is true 
 that he was saturated Avith the prevalent Court feeling against 
 the insurgents and the French, which found frequent expres- 
 sion 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,^ Nelson was steeped in the atmosphere of the 
 
 ^ Mr. Prj'se Lockliart Gordon, who was in Palermo in January, 1799, tells 
 the following anecdote of Lady Hamilton. He had been dining at the ambas- 
 sador's, and after dinner a Turkish officer was introduced. In the course of 
 the evening he boasted that he had put to death with his own sword a number 
 of French prisoners. " ' Look, there is their blood remaining on it ! ' The 
 speech being translated, her Ladyship's eye beamed with delight, and she 
 said, ' Oh, let me see the sword that did the glorious deed ! ' It was pre- 
 sented to her ; she took it into her fair hands, covered with rings, and, look- 
 ing at the encrusted Jacobin blood, kissed it, and handed it to the hero of 
 the Nile. Had I not been an eye-witness to this disgraceful act, I would not 
 have ventured to relate it." (Gordon's Memoirs, vol. i. p. 210. ) The author, 
 also, would not have ventured to adduce it, witliout first satisfying himself, 
 by impiry, as to the probable credibility of Mr. Gordon, and. likewise testing 
 his narrative. It bears marks of the inaccuracy in details to which memory 
 is subject, but the indications of general correctness are satisfactory. 
 
394 THE LIFE OE NELSON 
 
 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 ou^ 
 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 Caracci- 
 olo's hanging. 
 
 The abrupt execution of Caracciolo was an explosion of 
 fierce animosity long cherished, pardonable perhaps in a Nea- 
 politan 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 roused more attention and more sym- 
 pathy 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. . . .1 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." ^ On the other hand, it must be considered that Nelson, 
 though humane, tended even in his calmest moments to se- 
 verity 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 
 1 Nelson to Acton, November IS, 1799. (Nicolas.) 
 
ACTIVITY OF LADY HAMILTON 395 
 
 may be inferred that he would have approved Byng's exe- 
 cution, 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 govern- 
 ment. 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 re- 
 mained 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 corre- 
 sponded 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 Nel- 
 son, the " Tria juneta 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]," Avrote 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 an- 
 other very singular incident, which showed how biassed Nel- 
 son had become towards the interests of the Neapolitan Court, 
 and how exclusively he identified them — confused them, 
 would scarcely be too strong a Avord — with the essential 
 interests of the Allied cause and the duties of the British 
 
396 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 Navy, On the 13th of July the castle of St. Elmo was sur- 
 rendered by the French, the whole city of Naples thus re- 
 turning under the royal authorit^^ 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, accom- 
 panied by four thousand troops. A letter had already been 
 received from the commander-in-chief, Keith, to Nelson, inti- 
 mating 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 de- 
 •cision would be to risk the former; " and he started Troubridge 
 ofE 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 Avhich 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 Lord- 
 ship has no detachment of the French squadron in the neigh- 
 bourhood of Sicily, nor information of their having sent anj'- 
 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 de- 
 tachment 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 con- 
 fidence inspired even by the appearance of our ships before 
 the city is beyond all belief; and I have no scruple in declar- 
 ing my opinion that should any event draw us from the king- 
 dom, that if the French remain in any part of it, disturbances 
 will again arise, for all order having been completely over- 
 turned, it must take a thorough cleansing, and some little 
 time, to restore tranquillity." 
 
REFUSES TO OBEY KEITH'S ORDER 397 
 
 When Keith wrote this first order, June 27, he was at sea 
 somewhere between IMinorca 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 rooni 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 unjusti- 
 fiable 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,^ to the First Lord of the 
 Admiralty. " You will easily conceive my feelings," he said, 
 " but my mind, your Lordship will know, was perfectly pre- 
 pared for this order ; and more than ever is my mind made 
 
 1 Much confusion has been introduced into the times, M'hen Keith's several 
 orders were received b}' Nelson, by the fact that the original of this private 
 letter to Earl Spencer is dated the 19th (Nicolas, vol. vii. p. clxxxv) ; while 
 the secretary, copying it into the letter-book, wrote July 13th. (Nicolas, vol. 
 iii. p. 408.) Nicolas considered the former correct, probably because it came 
 last into his hands. The author considers the 13th correct, because the 
 official letter to Keith bears that date, and reads, " I have to acknowledge the 
 receipt of your Lordshij/s letter of June '27." (Nicolas, vol. iii. p. 408.) 
 
 The date of Troubridge's marching against Capua is similarly brought into 
 doubt by these letters. The author believes it to have been July 13 or 14, 
 from another official letter to Keith of the 13th. (Nicolas, vol. iii. p. 404.) 
 " Captains Troubridge and Hallowell . . . march against Capua to-morrow 
 morning." The odd Sea-Time of that day, by which July 13 began at noon, 
 July 12, of Civil Time, also causes confusion ; writers using them indiscrinii- 
 natingly. The capitulation of St. Elmo was certainly signed on July 12. 
 (Clarke and M 'Arthur, vol. ii. p. 294.) 
 
398 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 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 com- 
 mitted ; 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. "iVo; 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 INIahon, 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 tlie 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 neces- 
 sary." The commander-in-chief, in short, wished to mass his 
 forces, for the necessities of the general campaign, as he con- 
 sidered 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 
 
KEFUSES TO OBEY KEITH'S ORDER 399 
 
 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 deci- 
 sive action. Oil 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 sug- 
 gest a suspicion that no milder words would enforce obedi- 
 ence — 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 Mediter- 
 
400 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 ranean before your Lordship will receive this, Keith." The 
 second letter of the same date ended witli 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 surren- 
 dered, 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 tran- 
 scend 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 mili- 
 tary 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 kneiv the circumstances which Keith was con- 
 sidering ; he only kneiv 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 him- 
 self 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 instaiice were more accurate, 
 as they possibly were. He defended his course on the ground, 
 
REFUSES TO OBEY KEITH'S ORDER 401 
 
 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 fol- 
 lowing 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 Bronte 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 Sicilify- 
 ing my own conscience, and I am easy." ^ " 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 com- 
 mission : 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. 
 
 The Admiralty, who had sent Keith out knowing that St. 
 Vincent, after three arduous years, meant soon to retire, could 
 not of course acquiesce in Nelson's thus overriding the man 
 they had chosen to be his commander-in-chief. " Their Lord- 
 ships do not, from any information now before them, see suffi- 
 cient reason to justify your having disobeyed the orders you 
 had received from your Commanding Officer, or having left 
 Minorca exposed to the risk of being attacked, without having 
 any naval force to protect it." To this measured rebuke was 
 added some common-sense counsel upon the pernicious practice 
 of jeopardizing the 2^&>'sonnel of a fleet, the peculiar trained 
 force so vitally necessary, and so hard to replace, in petty 
 operations on shore. "Although in operations on the sea- 
 -coast, it may frequently be highly expedient to land a part of 
 the seamen of the squadron, to co-operate with and to assist 
 the army, when the situation will admit of their being imme- 
 diately re-embarked, if the squadron should be called away to 
 
 1 Nicolas, vol. V. p. 160. 
 26 
 
402 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 act elsewhere [as Keith had called it], or if information of 
 the approach of an enemy's fleet should be received, — yet 
 their Lordships by no means approve of the seamen being 
 landed to form a part of an army to be employed in operations 
 at a distance from the coast, where, if they should have the 
 misfortune to be defeated, they might be prevented from 
 returning to the ships, and the squadron be thereby rendered 
 so defective, as to be no longer capable of performing the 
 services required of it; and I have their Lordships' commands 
 to signify their directions to your Lordship not to employ the 
 seamen in like manner in future." 
 
 It was evident that the Admiralty did not fully share Nel- 
 son's attachment to the royal house of Naples, nor consider 
 the service of the King of the Two Sicilies the same as 
 that of the King of Great Britain. Earl Spencer's private 
 letter, while careful of Nelson's feelings, left no room to 
 doubt that he was entirely at one with his colleagues in their 
 oflB-cial opinion. Nelson Avinced and chafed under the double 
 rebuke, but he was not in a condition to see clearly any 
 beams in his own eye. " I observe with great pain that their 
 Lordships see no cause which could justify my disobeying 
 the orders of my commanding officer, Lord Keith ; " but the 
 motives he again alleges are but the repetition of those 
 already quoted. He fails wholly to realize that convictions 
 which would justify a man in going to a martyr's fate may be 
 wholly inadequate to sap the fundamental military obligation 
 of obedience. "My conduct is measured by the Admiralty, 
 by the narrow rule of law, when I think it should have been 
 done by that of common sense. I restored a faithful ally by 
 breach of orders ; Lord Keith lost a fleet by obedience against 
 his own sense. Yet as one is censured the other must be 
 approved. Such things are." As a matter of fact, as before 
 said, it was by departing from St. Vincent's orders that Keith 
 lost the French fleet. Nor did Nelson's mind work clearly on 
 the subject. Thwarted and fretted as he continually was by 
 the too common, almost universal, weakness, which deters men 
 from a bold initiative, from assuming responsibility, from era- 
 bracing opportunity, he could not draw the line between that 
 and an independence of action which would convert unity of 
 command into anarchy. ''Much as I approve of strict obedi- 
 
DEPRESSION OF SPIRITS 403 
 
 eiice to orders, yet to say that an officer is never, for any 
 object, to alter his orders, is what I cannot comprehend." 
 But what rational man ever said such a thing? ''I find few 
 think as I do, — but to obey orders is all perfection ! What 
 would my superiors direct, did they know what is passing 
 under my nose ? To serve my King and to destroy the French I 
 consider as the great order of all, from which little ones spring, 
 and if one of these little ones militate against it, I go back 
 to obey the great order." There is so much that is sound in 
 these words, and yet so much confusion might arise in apply- 
 ing them, that scarcely any stronger evidence could be given 
 that each case must rest on its own merits; and that no gen- 
 eral rule can supplant the one general principle of obedience, 
 by which alone unity and concentration of effort, the great 
 goal of all military movement, can be obtained. 
 
 During this period of agitation and excitement, Nelson's 
 health did not show the favorable symptoms that usually 
 attended a call to exertion. Much may be attributed to a 
 Mediterranean summer, especially after the many seasons he 
 had passed in that sea ; but it can readily be believed that 
 such exceptional responsibilities as he had just assumed could 
 not but tell, even upon his resolute and fearless temper. "I 
 am really sorry," wrote Troubridge to him, from the siege 
 of St. Elmo, " to see your Lordship so low-spirited, all will 
 go well ; " and a few days later, " Your Lordship must en- 
 deavour to fret as little as possible — we shall succeed. His 
 Majesty's arrival will relieve your Lordship ; and if he 
 punishes the guilty, the people will be happy." The day 
 after he had refused to obey Keith's order, he wrote to him, 
 "I am truly so very unwell that I have not the power of 
 writing so much as I could wish; " and the next day, to the 
 Admiralty, he makes the same excuse, adding, "I am writing 
 in a fever, and barely possible to keep out of bed." " My 
 dear friend," he tells Locker, " I am so ill that I can scarcely 
 sit up; yet I will not let the courier go off without assur- 
 ing you that all your kindnesses to me are fresh in my 
 memory. . . . May God Almighty grant you, my revered 
 friend, that health and happiness which has never yet been 
 attained by your affectionate, grateful friend, Nelson." It 
 cannot but be surmised that he did not feel that profound 
 
404 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 conviction of right, which had sustained him on previous 
 occasions. The disquiet indicated resembles rather that 
 attending the uncertainties of the Nile campaign. As Colonel 
 Stewart noticed, two years later, " With him mind and health 
 invariably S3^mpathized." 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Nelson temporarily Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean. — 
 Relieved by Lord Keith. — Applies to return to England on 
 Account of III Health. 
 
 August, 1799-June, 1800. Age, 41. 
 
 UPOIST Keith's departure, the command iu the Mediter- 
 ranean devolved upon Nelson, who for some time re- 
 mained in doubt of the fact, but with his usual promptitude 
 acted as if all depended upon himself . " I am venturing 
 certainly out of my line of duty, but as the commander-in- 
 chief may not even be on the station, I must do the best 
 which my judgment points out during his temporary ab- 
 sence." Six sail-of-the-line, under Admiral Duckworth, were 
 sufficient for service at Gibraltar and Cadiz, if the latter port 
 was deserted. Four of the line were about Minorca, con- 
 stantly, though inefficiently, threatened from the adjacent 
 coasts of Spain. Three were blockading Malta, conjointly 
 with the Portuguese vessels. Sidney Smith with his division 
 remained in the Levant. Troubridge was operating with 
 a few ships on the coast of Italy, against Civita Vecchia, 
 still in the hands of the French. A small squadron was 
 maintained on the Riviera of Genoa, disturbing the com- 
 munications of the French, and keeping touch with the 
 advance of the Austro-Russians ; but it was expected that 
 the Russian fleet, as was natural and proper, would soon 
 assume the duty of co-operating with their general, Suwarrow. 
 The smaller British cruisers were distributed among these 
 various duties. The flagship " Foudroyant " was at Palermo, 
 whither the King returned from Kaples on the 8th of August, 
 and there the headquarters of the squadron remained during 
 Nelson's command. Soon after this arrival in Palermo the 
 King conferred upon him the title of Duke of Bronte, with 
 an estate of the same name in Sicily, valued at £3,000 per 
 
406 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 annum. After this the admiral for a time signed his papers 
 as Bronte Nelson/ changed subsequently to Broute Nelson 
 of the Nile, and finally settled down to Nelson and Bronte, 
 which was his form of signature for the last four years of 
 his life. He placed upon his new estate an annual charge of 
 £500 in favor of his father for the term of the latter's life. 
 "Receive this small tribute, my honoured father," he wrote, 
 "as a mark of gratitude to the best of parents from his most 
 dutiful son." 
 
 On the 20th of September he received letters from the 
 Admiralty, investing him with the chief command, " till the 
 return of Lord Keith or some other your superior officer." 
 He was not, however, allowed the appointments of a com- 
 mander-in-chief, and often complained of the inadequacy 
 of his stafE to the extent of his duties. Nelson naturally 
 hoped that his long and eminent services in that particular 
 field, and the conspicuous ability he had shown on so many 
 occasions, would lead to the station remaining permanently 
 in his hands, and that Lord Keith, who was now in England, 
 would succeed in due course to the Channel Fleet, whose 
 commander, Lord Bridport, soon after retired. The Mediter- 
 ranean was naturally attributed to a vice-admiral, and one of 
 some seniority ; but Nelson was now a rear-admiral of the 
 Red, the highest color, not far, therefore, from promotion, 
 and it would not be an unreasonable conclusion that the same 
 ministry which had been fortunate enough to choose him for 
 the campaign of the Nile, might now prefer to entrust to 
 such able and enterprising hands the great interests of the 
 Mediterranean at large. 
 
 It was not, however, to be so. Whether moved only by 
 routine considerations of rank, as afterwards at Copenhagen, 
 or whether his relations with the Sicilian Court, his conduct 
 of affairs at Naples, and his collisions with Keith, had excited 
 doubt of the normal balance of his mind, the Admiralty de- 
 cided to send Keith back, and Nelson, greatly to his mortifica- 
 tion, was kept in charge only till the end of the year. As St. 
 Vincent had always left him practically independent, he had 
 known no superior since he entered the Straits, except during 
 
 1 The title of Bronte was assumed in Sicily only, until he received the 
 consent of George IIL to accept it. 
 
TEMPORARILY COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF 407 
 
 Keith's brief period of succession, wlieu leagues of sheltering 
 distance left him free, as has been seen, to defy orders when 
 not in accordance with his views ; and he found it impossible 
 now to bow his will to the second place on the very field of 
 his glory. To this feeling, natural in any man, and doubly so 
 to one of Nelson's quick susceptibilities, at once stimulated 
 and soothed by the lavish adulation of the past year, was 
 added personal dislike to his new superior, aggravated, if not 
 originated, by the clash of judgment over the relative impor- 
 tance of Naples and Minorca. " I have serious thoughts of 
 giving up active service," he wrote to Minto ; "Greenwich 
 Hospital seems a fit reti'eat for me after being evidently 
 thought unfit to command in the Mediterranean." Complaints 
 of Keith's lack of consideration then abound, nor does he 
 seem to be conscious that there was anything in his mode of 
 life, in current rumor, or in his past relations with his new 
 commander-in-chief, which might make the latter unwilling to 
 give him the loose rein St. Vincent had done. 
 
 From the time that Keith left the Mediterranean in July, 
 1799, to Nelson's own departure a year later, there was little 
 to be done in the naval way except to maintain and press 
 existing advantages, and wait until the fruit was ready to 
 drop. The absolute supremacy of the British squadrons, 
 challenged for a moment by the incursion of Admiral Bruix, 
 had reverted, in even greater degree than before, by the 
 absence of the Spanish ships which had accompanied him to 
 Brest. Impeded by their own numbers, and paralyzed by the 
 insufficiency of the resources of the port, they remained there 
 a huge, inert mass, whose impotence was only partially under- 
 stood by the British ; a fact which conduced to prolong 
 Keith's presence in the Channel. The year under considera- 
 tion was therefore devoid of stirring events at sea. 
 
 In the Mediterranean, it is true. Nelson's unwearying men- 
 tal energy, and keen sense of the necessity of seizing oppor- 
 tunity, did not allow things to lapse into indolence. Whether 
 or not he was well advised to settle himself at Palermo, aware 
 as he nuist have been of the actual temptation, and of the 
 serious injury that scandal was doing to his reputation, both 
 professional and personal, may admit of doubt. With numer- 
 ous detached and minor services carrying on at the same 
 
408 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 moment, there was much to be said for the commauder-in- 
 chief remaining in a fixed position, near the centre of affairs ; 
 and in his apprehension everything then revolved about the 
 Kingdom of Naples. There can be no question, however, 
 that all his faculties were constantly on the alert; and that 
 his administration of the station until Keith's return was 
 characterized by the same zeal, sagacity, and politic tact that 
 he had shown in earlier days. It is admirable to note the 
 patience, courtesy, and adroit compliment, he brings into 
 play, to kindle, in those over whom he has no direct control, 
 the ardor for the general good, and the fearlessness of respon- 
 sibility, which actuate himself; and at the same time to 
 observe how severe the strain was upon his nervous and irri- 
 table temper, as betrayed in comments upon these very persons, 
 made in private letters which he never expected would see the 
 light. 
 
 The points of principal importance were the consolidation 
 of the royal power in the continental territory of the Two 
 Sicilies, the reduction of Malta, and the retention of the 
 French army in Egypt in entire isolation from France. For 
 the first, Nelson entirely failed in his efforts to induce the 
 King to trust himself again in Naples, as the Hamiltons and 
 he had expected, when they came back to Palermo. " My 
 situation here is indeed an uncomfortable one," he said to 
 Earl Spencer ; " for plain common sense points out that the 
 King should return to Naples, but nothing can move him." 
 "Our joint exertions have been used to get the King to go to 
 Naples," he wrote to Troubridge, "but of no avail; the Aus- 
 trians will be there before him." Although the French had 
 been expelled from all the Neapolitan dominions, the presence 
 of fifteen hundred in Eome and Civita Vecchia served then as 
 an excuse. Nelson implored the commander of the British 
 troops at Minorca to spare twelve hundred of his men, to aid 
 Troubridge on the Eoman coast. "Sir Charles Stuart," he 
 tells him flatteringly, " by his timely exertion saved this 
 Kingdom [Sicily] from anarchy and confusion, and perhaps 
 from rebellion. So it is now, my dear Sir, I trust, in your 
 power (and I have assured the good King and Queen of your 
 readiness to serve them and the good cause as much as Sir 
 Charles) to send for the taking possession of Civita Vecchia 
 
AFFAIRS OF NAPLES 409 
 
 and Eome ; this done, and with my life, I will answer for the 
 success of the expedition. All would be quiet and ha^jpy ; and 
 their Sicilian Majesties might return to their throne without 
 any alarm from mobs. ... I am sure I need not venture to 
 say more on the subject. Your Excellency's judgment and 
 heart will point out the necessity of the measure if it can bo 
 accomplished." " Our King would be much gratified that 
 Britain not Austria should reinstate the Pope." 
 
 Sir James Erskine, thus importuned, did not see his way to 
 sending the troops. Naturally, as a soldier, he did not rely 
 as much upon the navy preventing a landing in his island, as 
 upon his own powers of resistance after it was effected, and 
 was therefore unwilling to spare from the latter. The point 
 of view of a seaman was, and is, different. He complained, 
 too, that Duckworth had taken a great many ships to Gibral- 
 tar. I^elson admits the mistake, and expresses his regret, but 
 no word of dissatisfaction with Erskine transpires through his 
 evident disappointment. He only says, " Pardon what I am 
 going to repeat, that either in Malta or on the Continent, a 
 field of glory is open." " Minorca," he wrote to Spencer, " I 
 have never yet considered in the smallest danger, but it has 
 been a misfortune that others have thought differently from 
 me on that point." Towards the end of September, Trou- 
 bridge, without the aid of British troops, but supported by 
 the arrival of a division sent by Suwarrow, reported the 
 evacuation of Rome and Civita Vecchia. ''How happy you 
 have made us!" wrote Nelson to him. ''My pen will not 
 say what 1 feel." The King, however, Avould not return to 
 Naples, now that this obstacle was withdrawn. " The Queen 
 has a noble, generous disposition," said Nelson two months 
 later. "Unfortunately the King and her Majesty do not at 
 this moment draw exactly the same wa}' ; therefore, his 
 Majesty will not go at this moment to Naples, where his 
 presence is much wanted." "We do but waste our breath," 
 he avowed afterwards. 
 
 In the beginning of October, a visit which he had intended 
 making to Minorca was hastened by a report that thirteen 
 hostile ships-of-the-line had been seen off Cape Einisterre, and 
 it was thought they might be destined for the Mediterranean. 
 Nelson hoped to assemble ten to meet them ; but the news 
 
410 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 proved to be false. He left Palermo for this trip on the 5th 
 of October, and returned again on the 22d, having remained 
 five days in Port Mahon. The arrangements for the naval 
 force, depending entirely upon himself, were soon settled ; 
 but he Avas disappointed in obtaining, as he had hoped to do 
 from a personal interviev/ with Erskine, a detachment of two 
 thousand troops for Malta. About that island he was, to use 
 his own words, almost in despair. For over a year La Valetta 
 had been blockaded by land and sea. For the latter he could 
 with difficulty find ships; for the former he could obtain no 
 men to aid the islanders, who, half starving, dependent for 
 food chiefly upon Sicily, were sustained in their resistance 
 mainly by hatred of the invaders, and by the tactful appeals 
 and encouragement of Captain Ball, who lived ashore among 
 them. The Barbary pirates, by virtue of their war with 
 Naples, captured many of the vessels laden with supplies, 
 despite Nelson's passports; while the Sicilian Court, though 
 well disposed, lacked the energy and the propelling force 
 necessary to compel the collection and despatch of the needed 
 grain. On one occasion Troubridge or Ball, desperate at the 
 sight of the famine around them, sent a ship of war into 
 Girgenti, a Sicilian port, seized, and brought away two corn- 
 laden vessels. "The measure was strong," said Nelson, but 
 he refrained from censuring; and, while apologizing to tlie 
 Government, added he hoped it '' would not again force officers 
 to so unpleasant an alternative." He feared that in their 
 misery the Maltese would abandon the struggle, particularly 
 if they got wind of the purpose of Great Britain to restore 
 the hated Order of Knights, in deference to the wishes of the 
 Czar. ''The moment the French flag is struck," he had been 
 obliged to write to Ball, " the colours of the Order must be 
 hoisted and no other; when it was settled otherwise, the 
 orders from England were not so strong." 
 
 About this time came information that several ships were 
 fitting out at Toulon, with supplies for the besieged. This 
 increased Nelson's anxieties, and at the same time emphasized 
 the necessity which he had always urged of using speedier 
 and surer means to reduce the place, while the undisputed 
 mastery of the sea gave the opportunity. " What might not 
 Briiix have done, had he done his duty?" was his own cora- 
 
 
AFFAIRS OF MALTA 411 
 
 ment upon that recent incursion ; and who could tell how 
 soon as great a force might appear again under an abler man ? 
 He turned in every direction, and was instant in his appeals 
 for aid. He wrote to Acton that he had positive information 
 that seven ships were loaded in Toulon. " I therefore beg 
 leave to propose to your Excellency, whether under our pres- 
 ent circumstances, it would not be riglit for his Sicilian Maj- 
 esty to desire that the English garrison at Messina should 
 instantly go to Malta, for I am clear, that if Malta is relieved, 
 that our forces got together could not take it, and the com- 
 mencement of a new blockade would be useless. All the 
 Barbary cruisers would there have their rendezvous, and not 
 a vessel of his Sicilian Majesty's could put to sea." He ex- 
 horts the minister also to apply to the Russians for immediate 
 help at Malta. 
 
 At the same time, to augment his embarrassments, orders 
 came from Lisbon recalling the Portuguese squadron, which 
 formed the larger part of the sea blockade. Nelson forgot 
 how often he had abused them as useless, and grappled with 
 that part of the difficulty with characteristic boldness. He 
 peremptorily forbade the admiral to obey his orders. " As 
 the reduction of the Island of Malta is of the greatest con- 
 sequence to the interests of the allied Powers at war with 
 Prance, and the withdrawing of the squadron under your 
 command, at this time, from the blockade of that island, will 
 be of the most ruinous consequences to their interests . . . 
 you are hereby required and directed, in consideration of the 
 above circumstances, and notwithstanding the orders you may 
 have received from your Court to return to Lisbon, not on 
 any consideration whatsoever to withdraw one man from that 
 island, which may have been landed from the squadron under 
 your Excellency's command, or detach one ship down the 
 Mediterranean, until further orders from me for that pur- 
 pose." Your orders, he tells JSTiza in a private letter, were 
 founded upon the belief that your presence was no longer 
 necessary ; " but the contrary is the fact — for your services 
 were never more wanted than at this moment, when every 
 exertion is wanting to get more troops of English and Russians 
 to Malta." He is evidently thinking of his difference with 
 Keith ; but now he is within the limits of his commission as 
 
412 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 Commander-in-chief. Doubting, however, whether his official 
 authority will prevail with Niza to disobey his recall, he plies 
 him skilfully with appeals to those sentiments of honor which 
 had received such illustration in his own noble career. *'If 
 you quit your most important station till I can get " reliefs 
 for you, " depend upon it, your illustrious Prince will dis- 
 approve of (in this instance) your punctilious execution of 
 orders." " We shall soon get more troops from Messina and 
 Minorca ; and I am not a little anxious for the honour of 
 Portugal and your Excellency, that you should be present at 
 the surrender, I hold myself responsible." " You was the 
 first at the blockade. Your Excellency's conduct has gained 
 you the love and esteem of Governor Ball, all the British 
 officers and men, and the whole Maltese people ; and give me 
 leave to add the name of Nelson, as one of your warmest 
 admirers, as an officer and a friend." 
 
 As he dealt with the Portuguese admiral, so, in due meas- 
 ure, he conducted his intercourse with all others who came 
 within the scope of his widely ranging activities. Already 
 more Neapolitan than the King, to the Russian he became as 
 a Russian, to the Turk as a Turk, all things to all men, if he 
 could by any means promote the interest of the Allied cause 
 and save Malta. Amid the diverse and conflicting motives 
 of a coalition, Nelson played a steady hand, his attention uni- 
 fied, and his sight cleared, by an unwavering regard to the 
 single object which he compressed into the words, "Down, 
 down, with the French ! " In that sense, he asserts truthfully 
 enough to each and all of his correspondents that the ad- 
 vantage of their country and their monarch is as dear to him 
 as that of Great Britain. He touches with artful skill upon 
 the evident interests of each nation, appeals to the officer's 
 sense of the cherished desires of his sovereign, and, while 
 frankly setting forth the truths necessary to be spoken, as to 
 the comparative claims upon himself of the various portions 
 of the field, he insinuates, rather than suggests, Avhat the 
 person immediately addressed ought to be doing in further- 
 ance of the one great aim. Withal, despite the uneasiness 
 to which he is constantly a prey on account of the failures of 
 others, no lack of confidence in the one to whom he is writing 
 is suffered to appear. Each is not only exhorted and cheered, 
 
DIPLOMATIC MANAGEMENT 413 
 
 but patted on the back with an implied approbation, which 
 iu his own service constituted much of his well-deserved in- 
 fiuence. He is as hearty and generous in his praises to Sir 
 Sidney Smith, whom he never fully trusted, for his services 
 at Acre, as he is to the valued friend, and pattern of all naval 
 efficiency, Troubridge. To the Emperor of Russia he paid 
 the politic attention of sending a detailed report of all that 
 had been done about Malta, made to him as Grand Master of 
 the Order, — a delicate and adroit flattery at the moment, for 
 the Czar then valued himself more as the restorer of an an- 
 cient order of chivalry than as the inheritor of a great Sov- 
 ereignty ; and his position was further recognized by asking 
 of him the insignia of the Order for Captain Ball and Lady 
 Hamilton, 
 
 This immense load of correspondence and anxiety was ad- 
 ditional to the numerous unrecorded cares and interviews, 
 relating to the routine work and maintenance of a great squad- 
 ron, often left bare of resources from home, and to the sup- 
 port of the destitute population of Malta, — sixty thousand 
 souls ; and all was carried on amid the constant going and 
 coming of the ambassador's house, kept open to naval officers 
 and others. This public sort of life and excitement involved 
 considerable expense, and was little to the taste of either 
 Nelson or Hamilton, the latter of whom was now approaching 
 his seventieth year ; but in it Lady Hamilton was in all her 
 glory, overwhelmed with compliments, the victor of the Nile 
 at her feet, and '^ making a great figure in our political line," 
 to use her husband's words. " Except to the Court," wrote 
 Nelson, replying to a censure from the Admiralty for failing 
 to send a letter by a certain channel, when he had sent dupli- 
 cates by two other conveyances, — " except to the Court, till 
 after eight o'clock at night I never relax from business. I 
 have had hitherto, the Board knows, no one emolument — no 
 one advantage of a Commander-in-chief." It was in reference 
 to this captious rebuff, received when immersed in cares, that 
 he wrote to Spencer : " Do not, my dear Lord, let the Ad- 
 miralty write harshly to me — my generous soul cannot bear 
 it, being conscious it is entirely unmerited." 
 
 While he was striving to gain assistance for the Maltese, 
 he does not forget to sustain them with hopes, not always too 
 
414 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 well founded. He tells Ball he trusts the Messina troops will 
 soou be with him. '' You may depend, in October, I will get 
 2,000 men on shore at Malta. Niza is ordered to Lisbon, but 
 I have directed his stay off Malta." He appeals personally to 
 the British commander at Messina, and- to the E-ussian minis- 
 ter at Palermo, reminding the latter how dear Malta and its 
 Order were to his sovereign. '' Malta, my dear Sir, is in my 
 thoughts sleeping or waking." The Portuguese, he tells him, 
 are ordered home ; but, wishing Russian assistance, he does 
 not say that he has stopped them, — as to which, indeed, he 
 could not feel sure. 
 
 The same object pressed upon him while in Port Mahon, 
 and he succeeded, by his personal enthusiasm, in arousing 
 Erskine's interest in the matter ; but the latter was loaded to 
 the muzzle with objections. "Sir James," said Nelson to 
 Troubridge, with the amusing professional prejudice they 
 both entertained, " enters upon the difficulty of the undertak- 
 ing in a true soldier way." " I am just come from Sir James," 
 he wrote to Hamilton on the 13th of October. ''He sees all 
 the difficulty of taking Malta in the clearest point of views, 
 and therefore it became an arduous task to make him think 
 that with God's blessing the thing was possible." He has, 
 however, consented to prepare fifteen hundred men with stores 
 and equipments, but only on condition that the Russians will 
 also give a thousand, — a further draft on Nelson's dij^lomacy, 
 — and a thousand be landed from the squadron, etc. Besides, 
 there is the further difficulty that a superior officer is expected 
 from England, and what will he say ? And will Erskine be 
 justified in sending men before his entirely uncertain arrival ? 
 It may be imagined what such proceedings were to Nelson's 
 nervous, ardent, unhesitating temperament, and they elicited 
 the characteristic comment, " This has been my first confer- 
 ence. It has cost me four hours hard labour, and may be up- 
 set by a fool." " My heart is, I assure yon, almost broke with 
 this and other things," he wrote to Spencer. "If the enemy 
 gets supplies in, we may bid adieu to Malta. This would 
 complete my misery ; for I am afraid I take all services too 
 much to heart. The accomplishing of them is my study, 
 night and day." 
 
 " My dear Sir James," he Avrites to Erskine after returning 
 
DIPLOMATIC MANAGEMENT 415 
 
 to Palermo, "I am in desperation about Malta — we shall lose 
 it, I am afraid, past redemption. I send you copies of Niza's 
 and Ball's letters, also General Acton's, so you will see I have 
 not been idle." As it is, Ball can hardly keep the inhabitants 
 in hope of relief ; what then will it be if the Portuguese with- 
 draw ? "If the islanders are forced again to join the French, 
 we may not find even landing a very easy task, much less to 
 get again our present advantageous position. I therefore en- 
 treat for the honour of our King, that whether General Fox is 
 arrived or not, at least the garrison of Messina maybe ordered 
 to hold post in Malta until a sufficient force can be collected 
 to attack it. ... I know well enough of what officers in your 
 situation can do ; the delicacy of your feelings on the near 
 approach of General Fox I can readily conceive ; but the time 
 you know nothing about; this is a great and important mo- 
 ment, and the only thing to be considered, is his 3Iajestij's 
 service to stand still for an instant? . . . Was the call for 
 these troops known at home, would they not order them to 
 proceed when the service near at hand loudly calls for them ? 
 tills is the only thing in my opinion for consideration. If we 
 lose this opportunity it will be impossible to recall it." From 
 this desperate appeal he turns to Ball, with words of encour- 
 agement for his islanders. ** We shall soon hear to a cer- 
 tainty of at least 5,000 Russian troops for the service of Malta. 
 Within a month I hope to see 10,000 men in arms against La 
 Valetta. I have sent for Troubridge and Martin, that I may 
 get a force to relieve Niza. I trust he will not go till I can 
 get not only a proper force to relieve his ships, but those of 
 his people who are on shore." "The great order of all," he 
 writes Erskine three weeks later, "is to destroy the power of 
 the French. Two regiments for two months would probably, 
 with the assistance of the Russians, give us Malta, liberate us 
 from an enemy close to our doors, gratify the Emperor of 
 Russia, protect our Levant trade, relieve a large squadron of 
 ships from this service, and enable me the better to afford 
 naval protection to the island of Minorca, and assist our allies 
 on tlie northern coast of Italy, and to annoy the enemy on the 
 coast of France." 
 
 Nelson's entreaties and efforts met with success, sufficient at 
 least to stay the ebbing tide. General Fox arrived in Minorca, 
 
416 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 gave permission for the garrison of Messina to go to Malta, 
 and on tlie 25th of November Troubridge, bringing this news, 
 arrived off Palermo. Nelson's haste did not permit the 
 " Cnlloden " to anchor. Shifting his flag to a transport, he 
 sent ont the " Foudroyant " to meet her, with orders for both 
 to go to Messina, embark the garrison, and get off Malta as 
 soon as possible. The " Northumberland," seventy-four, was 
 also to join off Malta, forming a division to replace the Portu- 
 guese squadron. The latter quitted the blockade in December, 
 Nelson notifying Niza on the 18th of the month that he no 
 longer considered him under his command. The Messina 
 troops landed at Malta on the 10th. The British then had 
 fifteen hundred men on tlie island, supported by two thousand 
 Maltese, well disciplined and armed, besides a number of 
 native irregulars upon whom only partial dependence could 
 be placed. The Russians never came to take part. They got 
 as far as Messina, but there received orders to go to Corfu, 
 both ships and men. This was in pursuance of a change of 
 policy in the Czar, who, being enraged at the conduct of his 
 allies, particularly of the Austrians, in the late campaign, 
 intended withdrawing from the Coalition, and was concen- 
 trating troops at Corfu. This revived Nelson's fears for 
 Malta. " I trust Graham will not think of giving the island 
 to the French by withdrawing, till he receives orders from 
 General Fox." The troops remained, but in numbers too 
 small to admit active operations. The result was left perforce 
 to the slow pressure of blockade ; and final success, insured 
 mainly by Nelson's untiring efforts, was not attained until 
 after he had left the Mediterranean. 
 
 The six months of his independent command, though un- 
 marked by striking incidents at sea, were crowded with events, 
 important in themselves, but far more important as pregnant 
 of great and portentous changes in the political and military 
 conditions of Europe. When Keith passed the Straits in pur- 
 suit of the Franco-Spanish fleet, on the 30th of July, the 
 forces of the Coalition in Upper Italy were in the full tide of 
 repeated victories and unchecked success. On that same day 
 the fortress of Mantua, the siege of which in 1796 had stayed 
 for nine months the triumphal progress of Bonaparte, was 
 surrendered by the French, whose armies in the field, driven 
 
MILITARY EVENTS ON THE CONTINENT 417 
 
 far to the westward, were maintaining a difficult position on 
 the crests of the Apennines. Seeking to descend from there 
 into the fields of Piedmont, they were met by Suwarrow, and 
 on the 15th of August, at Novi, received once more a ruinous 
 defeat, in which their commander-in-chief was slain. 
 
 At this moment of success, instead of pressing onward to 
 d rive the enemy out of Italy, and possibly to pursue him into 
 France, it was decided that the Russians should be sent 
 across the Alps into Switzerland, to take the place of a 
 number of Austrians. The latter, in turn, were to move 
 farther north, on the lower Rhine, to favor by a diversion 
 an intended invasion of Holland by a combined force of 
 Russians and British. This gigantic flank movement and 
 change of plan resulted most disastrously. In the midst of 
 it the French general Massena, commanding in Switzerland, 
 the centre of the great hostile front which extended from 
 the Mediterranean to the North Sea, made a vehement and 
 sustained attack upon the Austro-Russians at Zurich, on the 
 2oth of September. Gaining a complete victory, he drove 
 the enemy back beyond the point where Suwarrow expected 
 to make his junction. The veteran marshal, who had left 
 Italy on the 11th of September, arrived two days after the 
 Battle of Zurich was fought. Isolated in insufficient numbers 
 from the friends he expected to meet, it was only after severe 
 hardships and superhuman efforts, extending over ten days, 
 that he at length, on the 9th of October, reached a place of 
 safety at Ilanz. Declining further co-operation with the 
 Austrians, and alleging the need of rest for his troops after 
 their frightful exposure in the mountains, he withdrew into 
 winter quarters in Bavaria at the end of the month. Thus 
 Switzerland remained in possession of the French, inactivity 
 continued in Italy, and the Czar, furious at the turn events 
 had taken, was rapidly passing into hatred of both Austria 
 and Great Britain. 
 
 On the 9th of October, also, Bonaparte landed in France, 
 after a six weeks' voyage from Alexandria. The immense 
 consequences involved in this single event could not then 
 be foreseen ; but it none the less caused mortification and 
 regret to Nelson. It was a cardinal principle with him, 
 vehemently and frequently uttered, that not a single French- 
 
 27 
 
418 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 man should be allowed to return from Egypt ; and here their 
 commander-in-chief had passed successfully from end to end 
 of the station, unseen by any British cruiser. He did not, 
 however, consider himself at fault, and his judgment may be 
 allowed, although in his own ease. " If I could have had any 
 cruisers, as was my plan, off Cape Bon, in Africa, and between 
 Corsica and Toulon, Mr. Buonaparte could not probably have 
 got to France." This he said to Earl Spencer. Elsewhere 
 he wrote : " I have regretted sincerely the escape of Buona- 
 parte; but those ships which were destined by me for the 
 two places where he would cex'tainly have been intercepted, 
 were, from the Admiralty thinking, doubtless, that the 
 Russians woiild do something at sea, obliged to be at Malta, 
 and other services which I thought the Russian Admiral 
 would have assisted me in — therefore, no blame lies at my 
 door." He took some comfort in contrasting the stealthy 
 return of the French general, with the great armada that 
 accompanied his departure. "Ko Crusader ever returned 
 with more humility — contrast his going in L'Orient, &c. &c." 
 A report that Bonaparte had passed Corsica reached Nelson 
 on October 24th. The same day came despatches from Sir 
 Sidney Smith, narrating a disastrous defeat sustained by the 
 Turks on the shores of Aboukir Bay. Smith's period of com- 
 mand in the Levant had been chiefly, and brilliantly, distin- 
 guished by the successful defence of Acre against Bonaparte. 
 The latter, threatened b}^ simultaneous attacks by the Turks 
 from Syria and from the sea, had determined to anticipate 
 such a combination by going him^self against the enemy on 
 the land side, before the weather conditions made it possible 
 to disembark any formidable body of men on the shores of 
 Egypt. Starting with this purpose in February, he had pro- 
 ceeded with slight resistance until the 18th of March, when 
 his army appeared before Acre. Smith was then lying in 
 the roads with two ships-of-the-line. The siege which ensued 
 lasted for sixty -two days, so great was Bonaparte's per- 
 tinacity, and anxiety to possess the place ; and in its course 
 Smith displayed, not only courage and activity, which had 
 never been doubted, but a degree of conduct and sound judg- 
 ment that few expected of him. His division was fortunate 
 enough to capture the French siege train, which had to be 
 
AFFAIRS OF EGYPT 419 
 
 sent by water, and he very much disturbed the enemy's coast- 
 wise communications, besides contributing materially to the 
 direction of the defence, to which the Turks, though brave 
 enough, were not adequate. After several desperate assai;lts 
 the siege was raised on the 20th of May, and Bonaparte 
 retreated to Egypt, regaining Cairo on the 14th of June. 
 
 Following up the success at Acre, a Turkish fleet of thirteen 
 ships-of-the-line anchored in Aboukir Bay on the 11th of July, 
 attended by a body of transports carrying troops, variously 
 estimated at from ten to thirty thousand. Smith with his 
 ships accompanied the expedition. The Turks landed, and 
 stormed the castle of Aboukir; but on the 25th Bonaparte, 
 having concentrated his forces rapidly, fell upon them and 
 totally defeated them. All who had landed were either 
 killed, driven into the sea and drowned, or taken prisoners ; 
 the commander-in-chief being among the latter. Four weeks 
 later, as is already known, Bonaparte embarked for France. 
 
 It was thus conclusively demonstrated that for the present 
 at least, and until the French numbers were further diminished 
 by the inevitable losses of disease and battle, the Turks could 
 not regain control of Egypt. On the other hand, it was 
 equally evident, and was admitted by both Bonaparte and 
 his able successor, Kleber, that without reinforcements, which 
 could not be sent while the British controlled the sea, the 
 end of the French occupation was only a question of time. 
 After Bonaparte's departure, Kleber wrote home strongly to 
 this effect. His letters, being addressed to the Government, 
 fell upon arrival into Bonaparte's hands ; but, with these 
 convictions, he was ready to enter into an arrangement for 
 the evacuation of the country, upon condition of being allowed 
 to return freely to Europe. 
 
 Such also appears to have been the disposition of the 
 British representatives in the East. Immediately after tak- 
 ing over the command in the Levant from Troubridge, Smith 
 gave him, among other papers, a form of passport which he 
 intended to use, permitting individual Frenchmen to go to 
 Europe by sea. This Troubridge handed to Nelson, telling 
 him also that it was Smith's intention to send word into 
 Alexandria, that all French ships might pass to France. 
 This passport, adopted after Smith had been to Constant!- 
 
420 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 iiople, had doubtless the sanction of the joint minister, his 
 brother, and was signed by himself both as plenipotentiary 
 and naval officer. Nelson had by this time been instructed 
 that Smith was under his command, and he at once sent him 
 an order, couched in the most explicit, positive, and peremp- 
 tory terms, Avhich merit especial attention because Smith dis- 
 obeyed them. " An this is in direct opposition to 7ny opinion, 
 which is, never to svjfer any one individual Frenchman to quit 
 Egypt — I must therefore strictly el uirge and command you^ 
 never to give any French ship or man leave to quit Egj-pt. 
 And I must also desire that you u-ill opposchy every means in 
 your p>oioer, any permission which may be attem2)ted to be given 
 by cmy foreigner, Admiral, General, or other person; and you 
 will acquaint those persons, that I shall not pay the smallest 
 attention to any such passport after your notification ; and 
 you are to jnct my orders in force, not on any piretence to permit 
 a single Frenchman to leave Egypt.^' It seems clear from 
 these expressions that Nelson had gathered, thi-ough Trou- 
 bridge, that it was the policy of the Sultan and of the British 
 representatives to get the French out of Egypt at any cost, — 
 to look, in short, to local interests rather than to the general 
 policy of the Allies. This he was determined to prevent by 
 instructions so comprehensive, yet so precise, as to leave no 
 loophole for evasion. 
 
 Here matters seem to have rested for a time. Smith 
 could scarcely dare to disregard such orders at once, and 
 Bonaparte was not yet disposed openly to confess failure by 
 seeking terms. In the autumn of 1799, however, the Earl of 
 Elgin went to Constantinople as ambassador, Spencer Smith 
 dropping to secretary of embassy, and his brother remaining 
 on the Egyptian coast. Elgin was far from being in accord 
 with Smith's general line of conduct, which was marked with 
 presumption and self-sufficiency, and in the end he greatly 
 deplored the terms " granted to the French, so far beyond our 
 expectation ; " but he shared the belief that to rid Egypt of 
 the French was an end for which considerable sacrifices should 
 be made, and his correspondence with Smith expressed this 
 conviction. When prepossessions such as this exist among a 
 number of men associated with one another, they are apt, as 
 
 ^ The italics to this point are Nelson's ; afterwards the author's. 
 

 CONVENTION OF EL ARISH 421 
 
 iu the case of Admiral Man consulting with his captains, to 
 result iu some ill-advised step, bearing commonly the stamp 
 of concern for local interests, and forgetfulness of general 
 considerations. The upshot in this particular instance was 
 the conclusion of a Convention, known as that of El Arish, 
 between the Turks and the French, signed on board Smith's 
 ship on the 24th of January, ISUO, by which this army of vet- 
 erans was to be permitted to return to France unmolested, and 
 free at once to take the field against the allies of Turkey and 
 Great Britain, at the moment when Bonaparte's unrivalled 
 powers of administration were straining every nerve, to restore 
 the French forces from the disorganization into which they 
 had fallen, and to prepare foi- the spring campaign. 
 
 Smith, though present, did not sign this precious paper, 
 which, in a letter to Hamilton, he called "the gratifjdng ter- 
 mination of his labours ; " but he had in his hand the orders 
 of his immediate superior, and temporary commander-in- 
 chief, to notify any "foreigner, general, or admiral," that 
 the execution of such an agreement would not be permitted 
 by the British Navy, and it would have been his own duty to 
 stop any ships attempting to carry it out, until other orders 
 were received. His powers as joint plenipotentiary having 
 ceased, he was now simply the naval officer. As it happened, 
 Keith, who by this time had relieved Nelson, brought out 
 from England clear directions from tlie Government not to 
 allow any transaction of this kind ; and although he person- 
 ally favored the policy of evacuation, feeling perhaps the 
 inconvenience of detaching ships so far from his centre of 
 operations, he was not a man to trifle with orders. Rumors 
 of what was going on had evidently reached him, for on the 
 8th of January, a fortnight before the convention was signed, 
 he wrote to Kleber a letter, which he directed Smith to de- 
 liver, thus placing it out of the power of that very independent 
 officer to leave any mistake as to actual conditions iu the mind 
 of the French general. To the latter he said : " I have posi- 
 tive orders not to consent to any capitulation with the French 
 troops, at least unless they lay down their arms, surrender 
 themselves prisoners of war, and deliver up all the ships and 
 stores of the port of Alexandria to the Allied Powers." Even 
 in such case they would not be allowed to leave Egypt until 
 
422 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 exchanged. Any persons that attempted to return, pursuant 
 to an arrangement with one of the Allies, exclusive of the 
 others, as the El-Arish Convention was, would be made 
 prisoners of war. 
 
 Nelson's opinions in this matter had never wavered. As 
 rumors of what was brewing got about, he wrote to the Earl 
 of Elgin, on the 21st of December, 1800 : " I own my hope yet 
 is, that the Sublime Porte will never permit a single french- 
 man to quit Egypt; and I own myself wicked enough to wish 
 them all to die in that country they chose to invade. We 
 have scoundrels of Erench enough in Europe without them." 
 " I never would consent to one of them returning to the Con- 
 tinent of Europe during the war," he tells Spencer Smith. 
 " I wish them to perish in Egypt, and give a great lesson to 
 the world of the justice of the Almighty." When Elgin, think- 
 ing him still commander-in-chief, sent him the Convention, he 
 replied formally : " I shall forward the papers to Lord Keith, 
 who Avill answer your Excellency. But I cannot help most 
 sincerely regretting that ever any countenance was given to 
 the Turks to enter into such a treaty Avith the Erench ; for I 
 ever held it to be impossible to permit that army to return to 
 Europe, but as prisoners of war, and in that case, not to 
 France. And was I commander-in-chief, even when the thing 
 was done, I should have refused to ratify any consent or 
 approbation of Sir Sidney Smith, and have wrote to both the 
 Grand Vizir and the French General, the impossibility of per- 
 mitting a vanquished army to be placed by one Ally in a posi- 
 tion to attack another Ally." The last phrase put the facts 
 in a nut-shell, and illustrates Avell Nelson's power of going 
 straight to the root of a matter, disregai'dful of confusing side- 
 issues, of policy or timidity. To Hamilton he wrote passion- 
 ately concerning the manifold difficulties caused to all, except 
 the Turks and the Smiths. ''If all the wise heads had left 
 them to God Almighty, after the bridge was broke, all would 
 have ended well. For I differ entirely with my commander-in- 
 chief, in wishing they were permitted to return to France ; 
 and, likewise, with Lord Elgin on the great importance of 
 removing them from Egypt." 
 
 "I have wrote to Lord Keith, and home," said Nelson to 
 Sir Sidney Smith on the 15tli of January, "that I did not 
 
HIS RELATIONS WITH KEITH 423 
 
 give credit that it was possible for you to give any passport 
 foi" a single Freuchiuau, much less the Army, after uiy posi- 
 tive order of March 18th, 171)9." The words show what reports 
 had already got about of the general trend of policy, on the 
 part of the Porte and the British representatives ; but the 
 irony of the matter as regards Nelson is, that Smith disobeyed 
 his orders, as he himself, six months before, had disobeyed 
 Keith's ; and for the same reason, tliat he on the spot was a 
 better judge of local conditions and recent developments than 
 one at a distance. To one, Naples was more important than 
 Minorca, more important than a half-dozen ships in a possible 
 fleet action ; to the other, Egypt was more important than the 
 presence of sixteen thousand veterans, more or less, on a 
 European battle-field. It is impossible and bootless, to weigh 
 the comparative degree of culpability involved in breaches of 
 orders which cannot be justified. 
 
 On the IGtli of January, 1800, Nelson, who some days before 
 had been notified by Keith of his approach, and directed to 
 place himself under his command, left Palermo for Leghorn, 
 arriving on the 20th. The commander-in-chief was already 
 there in the " Queen Charlotte." On the 2oth they sailed to- 
 gether for Palermo, and after nine days' stay in that port went 
 on again for Malta, which they reached on the 15th of February. 
 No incident of particular interest occurred during these three 
 weeks, but Nelson's letters to the Hamiltons show that he was 
 chafing under any act in his superior which could be construed 
 into a slight. "I feel all, and notwithstanding my desire to 
 be as humble as the lowest midshipman, perhaps, I cannot 
 submit to be much lower, I am used to have attention paid me 
 from his superiors." " To say how I miss your house and 
 company would be saying little ; but in truth you and Sir 
 William have so spoiled me, that I am not happy anywhere 
 else but with you, nor have I an idea that I ever can be." 
 Keith's comment — the other point of view — is worth quoting. 
 " Anything absurd coming from the quarter you mention does 
 not surprise me," he wrote to Paget, who succeeded Hamilton 
 as minister. " The whole was a scene of fulsome vanity and 
 absurdity all the lour/ eight days I was at Palermo." ^ 
 
 When Keith returned, the capture of Malta, and of the two 
 1 The Paget Papers, London, 1896, vol. i. p. 200, 
 
424 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 ships-of-the-line wliicli had escaped from the Battle of the 
 Nile, were, by common consent, all that remained to do, in 
 order to round off and bring to a triumphant conclusion Nelson's 
 Mediterranean career. Fortune strove hard against his own 
 weakness to add all these jewels to his crown, but she strove 
 in vain. " We may truly call him a heaven-hovn Admiral, 
 upon whom fortune smiles wherever he goes." So wrote Ball 
 to Lady Hamilton, alluding to the first of the favors flung at 
 his head. " We have been carrying on the blockade of Malta 
 sixteen months, during which time the enemy never attempted 
 to throw in great succours. His Lordship arrived off here 
 the day they were within a few leagues of the island, captured 
 the principal ships, and dispersed the rest, so that not one has 
 reached the port." It was indeed a marvellous piece of what 
 men call luck. Nelson had never gone near Malta since 
 October, 1798, till Keith took him there on the 15th of Febru- 
 ary, 1800. The division had no sooner arrived at the island, 
 tlian a frigate brought word of a French squadron having been 
 seen off the west end of Sicily. It Avas then blowing strong 
 from southeast, and raining. Keith took his own station off 
 the mouth of the harbor, placed other ships where he thought 
 best, and signalled Nelson to chase to windward with three 
 ships-of-the-line, which were afterwards joined by a fourth, 
 then cruising on the southeast of the island. The next day 
 the wind shifted to northwest, but it was not until the morn- 
 ing of the 18th that the enemy were discovered. Guns were 
 then heard to the northward, by those on board the " Fou- 
 droyant," which made all sail in pursuit, and soon sighted the 
 "Alexander" chasing four French sail. ''Pray God we may 
 get alongside of them," wrote Nelson in his journal ; "the 
 event I leave to Providence. I think if I can take one 74 by 
 myself, I would retire, and give the staff to more able hands." 
 " I feel anxious to get up with these ships," he wrote to Lady 
 Hamilton, "and shall be unhappy not to take 'them myself, 
 for first ray greatest happiness is to serve my gracious King 
 and Country, and I am envious only of glory; for if it be a 
 sin to covet glory, I am tlie most offending soul alive. But 
 here lam in a heavy sea and thick fog — Oh, God! the wind 
 subsided — but I trust to Providence I shall have them. ISth 
 in the evening, I have got her — Le Genereux — thank God! 
 
b 
 
 CAPTURE OF "LE GENEREUX" 425 
 
 12 out of 13, onely the Guillaurae Telle remaining ; I am after 
 the others." The enemy's division had consisted of this 
 seventy-foui-, a large transport, also captured, and three cor- 
 vettes which escaped. 
 
 An account of Nelson on the quarter-deck on this occasion 
 has been transmitted by an eye-witness, whose recollections, 
 committed to paper nearly forty years later, are in many points 
 evidently faulty, but in the present instance reflect a frame of 
 mind in the great admiral in perfect keeping with the words 
 last quoted from his own letter. The writer was then a mid- 
 shipman of the " Foudroyant ; " and the scene as described 
 opens with a hail from a lieutenant at the masthead, with his 
 telescope on the chase. 
 
 '"Deck there! the stranger is evidently a man of war — 
 she is a line-of-battle-ship, my lord, and going large on the 
 starboard tack.' 
 
 '"Ah! an enemy, Mr. Stains. I pray God it maybe Le 
 Genereux. The signal for a general chase, Sir Ed'ard, (the 
 Nelsonian pronunciation of Edward,) make the Foudroyant 
 fly!' 
 
 " Thus spoke the heroic Nelson ; and every exertion that 
 emulation could inspire was used to crowd the squadron with 
 canvas, the Northumberland taking the lead, with the flag- 
 ship close on her quarter. 
 
 '' 'This will not do, Sir Ed'ard ; it is certainly Le Genereux, 
 and to my flag-ship she can alone surrender. Sir Ed'ard, we 
 must and shall beat the Northumberland.' 
 
 "'I Avill do the utmost, my lord; get the engine to work on 
 the sails — hang butts of water to the stays — pipe the ham- 
 mocks down, and each man place shot in them — slack the stays, 
 knock up the wedges, and give the masts play — start off the 
 water, Mr. James, and pump the ship.' The Foudroyant is 
 drawing a-head, and at last takes the lead in the chase. ' The 
 admiral is working his fin, (the stump of his right arm,) do 
 not cross his hawse, I advise you.' 
 
 " The advice was good, for at that moment Nelson opened 
 furiously on the quarter-master at the conn. * I '11 knock 
 you off your perch, you rascal, if you are so inattentive. 
 — Sir Ed'ard, send your best quarter-master to the weather- 
 wheel.' 
 
426 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 "' A strange sail a-head of the chase! ' called the look-out 
 man. 
 
 " ' Youngster, to the mast-head. What ! going without 
 
 your glass, and be d d to you ? Let me know what she 
 
 is immediately.' 
 
 " ' A sloop of war, or frigate, my lord,' shouted the young 
 signal-midshipman. 
 
 "'Demand her number.' 
 
 '' ' The Success, my lord.' 
 
 " ' Captain Peard ; signal to cut off the flying enemy — 
 great odds, though — thirty-two small guns to eighty large 
 ones.' 
 
 " 'The Success has hove-to athwart-hawse of the Genereux, 
 and is firing her larboard broadside. The Frenchman has 
 hoisted his tri-colour, with a rear-admiral's flag.' 
 
 " ' Bravo — Success, at her again ! ' 
 
 " ' She has wore round, my lord, and firing her starboard 
 broadside. It has winged her, my lord — her fl^'ing kites are 
 flying away all together.' The enemy is close on the Success, 
 who must receive her tremendous broadside. The Genereux 
 opens her fire on her little enemy, and every person stands 
 aghast, afraid of the consequences. The smoke clears away, 
 and there is the Success, crippled, it is true, but, bull-dog like, 
 bearing up after the enemy. 
 
 " ' The signal for the Success to discontinue the action, and 
 come under my stern,' said Lord Nelson : ' she has done well, 
 for her size. Try a shot from the lower-deck at her, Sir 
 Ed'ard.' 
 
 " ' It goes over her.' 
 
 "'Beat to quarters, and fire coolly and deliberately at her 
 masts and yards.' 
 
 " Le Genereux at this moment opened her fire on us ; and, as 
 a shot passed through the mizen stay-sail, Lord Nelson, pat- 
 ting one of the youngsters on the head, asked him jocularly how 
 he relished the music ; and observing something like alarm 
 depicted on his countenance, consoled him with the informa- 
 tion, that Charles XII. ran away from the first shot he heard, 
 though afterwards he was called ' The Great,' and deservedly, 
 from his bravery. *I, therefore,' said Lord Nelson, 'hope 
 much from you in future.' 
 
CAPTURE OF "LE GfiNEREUX " 427 
 
 ''Here the Northumberland opened her fire, and down 
 came the tri-eolored ensign, amidst the thunder of our united 
 cannon." ^ 
 
 According to Keith, Nelson "on this occasion, as on all 
 others, conducted himself with skill, and great address, in 
 comprehending my signals, wliich the state of the weather led 
 me greatly to suspect." Nelson's account to Hamilton was, 
 "By leaving my admiral without signal, for which I may he 
 broke, I took these French villains." "I have wrote to Loi'd 
 Spencer," he tells his eldest brother, "and have sent him my 
 journal, to show that the Genereux was taken b}^ me, and my 
 plan — that my quitting Lord Keith was at my own risk, and 
 for which, if I had not succeeded, I might have been broke. 
 The way he went, the Genereux never could have been 
 taken." In a letter to Lord Minto he attributed his success 
 to his knowledge of all the local conditions, acquired by seven 
 3'ears' experience. In his anxiety to make this instance prove 
 his case, in the previous disobedience to Keith, for which the 
 Admiralty had censured him. Nelson overreached himself and 
 certainly fell into an ungenerous action. His vaunt of suc- 
 cess by the road of disobedience rested only on the fact that he 
 had failed to see Keith's signal. This the latter did not know, 
 and evidently considered he had complied with its spirit. 
 The signal to chase to windward was not strained to disobedi- 
 ence in being construed to search a fairly wide area for the 
 enemy, keeping the rendezvous, which was also the enemy's 
 destination, to leeward, so as to be readily regained. The 
 "Queen Charlotte," Keith's flagship, covered the inner line, 
 and, being a first-rate, was competent to handle any force 
 that could come out of Toulon. There is a good deal of 
 human nature in this captious unofficial attack on a supe- 
 rior, whose chief fault, as towards himself, was that he had 
 been the victim of disobedience ; but it is not pleasant to see 
 in a man so truly great. 
 
 The "Genereux" carried the flag of a rear-admiral, who was 
 
 1 Nelsonian Reminiscences, by liieiitenant G. S. Parsons. The author has 
 been able to test Parsons' stories sufficiently to assure himself that they can- 
 not be quoted to establish historical fact ; but such scenes as here given, or 
 how many glasses of wine Nelson drank at dinner, or that the writer himself 
 was out of clean shirts, when asked to dine at the admiral's table, are trivi- 
 alities which memory retains. 
 
428 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 killed in the action. Nelson seized the opportunity of further 
 conciliating the Czar, by sending the sword of this officer to 
 hiui, as Grand Master of the Order of Malta. Upon rejoining 
 Keith, he reported in person, as custom demands. '' Lord 
 Keith received my account and myself like a philosopher (but 
 very unlike you)," he wrote to Hamilton; '*it did not, that I 
 could perceive, cause a pleasing muscle in his face." " Had 
 you seen the Peer receive me," he wrote to Lady Hamilton 
 the same day, "I know not what you would have done; but I 
 can guess. But never mind. I told him that I had made a 
 vow, if I took the Genereux by myself, it was my intention to 
 strike my flag. To which he made no answer." What could 
 he very well say, if a man chose to throw away his chances, 
 especially when that man was a subordinate who a short time 
 before had flatly refused to obey his orders. Soreness and 
 testiness had full swing in Nelson at this time; at some fan- 
 cied neglect, lie wrote Troubridge a letter which reduced that 
 gallant officer to tears. 
 
 Between Palermo and Malta Keith had received letters 
 from General Melas, commanding the Austrian army in 
 Piedmont, giving the plan of the approaching campaign, in 
 which, as the Austrians were to besiege Genoa, and advance 
 to the Riviera, much depended upon naval co-operation. 
 Rightly judging that to be the quarter calling for the naval 
 commander-in-chief, he was anxious to get away. On the 24th 
 of February he ordered Nelson to take charge of the block- 
 ade, and "to adopt and prosecute the necessar)- measures for 
 contributing to the complete reduction of Malta." Short of 
 the chief command, which he coveted and grudged, Nelson 
 himself could not have contrived a position better fitted to 
 crown his work in the Mediterranean. AVithin the harbor of 
 La Valetta, concentrating there the two objects yet to be at- 
 tained, — Valetta itself being one, — was the " Guillaume 
 Tell," the thirteenth ship, which alone was lacking now to 
 complete the tale of the trophies of the Nile. Yet the fair 
 prospect of success, inevitable since the capture of the '' Gene- 
 reux" had destroyed the French hopes of relief, brought to 
 Nelson nothing biit dismay. "My Lord," he replied the same 
 day, "my state of health is such, that it is impossible I can 
 much lon<?er remain here. Without some rest. I am gone. I 
 
 
HIS RELATIONS WITH KEITH 429 
 
 must therefore, whenever I find the service will admit of it, 
 request your permission to go to my friends, at Palermo, for a 
 few weeks, and leave the command here to Commodore 
 Troubridge. Nothing but absolute necessity obliges me to 
 write this letter." " I could no more stay fourteen days 
 longer here, than fourteen years," he said in a private let- 
 ter to Keith of the same date. 
 
 By the next day he had recognized that even he could not 
 leave at once the task appointed him, without discredit. 
 " My situation," he then wrote to Hamilton, " is to me very 
 irksome, but how at this moment to get rid of it is a great 
 difficulty. The French ships here [" Guillaurae Tell " and 
 others] are preparing for sea ; the Brest fleet, Lord Keith 
 says, may be daily expected, and with all this I, am very 
 unwell. . . . The first moment which offers with credit to 
 myself I shall assuredly give you my company. . . . Lord 
 Keith is commander-in-chief, and I have not been kindly 
 treated." His tried friends, Troubridge and Ball, realized 
 the false step he was about to take, but they could not change 
 his purpose. " Remember, my Lord," wrote the former, "the 
 prospects are rather good at present of reducing this place, 
 and that William Tell, Diane, ^ and Justice,^ are the only three 
 ships left from the Nile fleet. I beseech you hear the en- 
 treaties of a sincere friend, and do not go to Sicily for the 
 present. Cruizing may be unpleasant. Leave the Foudroy- 
 ant outside, and hoist your flag in the CuUoden, to carry on 
 operations with the General. Everything shall be done to 
 make it comfortable and pleasing to you : a month Avill do 
 all. If you comply with my request, I shall be happy, as I 
 shall then be convinced I have not forfeited your friendship." 
 Ten days later, March 5th, he Avrote again : '' One part of 
 your Lordship's letter distresses me much, your determina- 
 tion to quit us, and of course the service, for I can draw no 
 line between the one and the other. There is nothing I would 
 not do to prevent it. ... I beseech your Lordship hear the 
 entreaties of a sincere friend, and stay until the fall of this 
 place." " I dined with his Lordship yesterday, who is appar- 
 ently in good health," wrote Ball to Lady Hamilton, "but he 
 complains of indisposition and the necessity of repose. I do 
 
 1 Frigates. 
 
430 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 not think a short stay here will hurt his health, particularly 
 as his ship is at anchor, and his mind not harassed. Trou- 
 bridge and I are extremely anxious that the French ships, 
 and the French garrison of La Valetta, shall surrender to him. 
 I would not urge it if I were not convinced that it will ulti- 
 mately add both to his honour and happiness." 
 
 The fear of his friends that he would lose honor, by not 
 resisting inclination, is evident — undisguised; but they could 
 not prevail. On the 4th of March he wrote to Lady Hamil- 
 ton : " My health is in such a state, and to say the truth, an 
 uneasy mind at being taught my lesson like a school boy, 
 that my determination is made to leave Malta on the 15th 
 morning of this month, on the first moment after the wind 
 comes favourable ; unless I am sure that I shall get hold of 
 the French ships." Keith's directions had been full and ex- 
 plicit on details, and this Nelson seems to have resented. 
 Among the particular orders was one that Palermo, being so 
 distant from Malta, should be discontinued as the rendezvous, 
 and Syracuse substituted for it ; Nelson was, however, at 
 liberty to use Messina or Augusta, both also on the east coast 
 of Sicily, if he preferred. It will be remembered that Nelson 
 himself, before he fell under the influence of Naples, had ex- 
 pressed his intention to make Syracuse the base of his opera- 
 tions. Coming as this change did, as one of the first acts of 
 a new commander-in-chief, coinciding with his own former 
 judgment, it readily took the color of an implied censure upon 
 his prolonged stay at Palermo — an echo of the increasing 
 scandal that attended it. 
 
 On the 10th of March he left Malta for Palermo in the 
 " Foudroyant," sending the ship back, however, to take her 
 place in the blockade, and hoisting his own flag on board a 
 transport. His mind was now rapidly turning towards a final 
 retirement from the station, a decision accelerated by the cap- 
 ture of the " Guillaume Tell." This eighty-gun ship started 
 on the night of JNFarch 29th to run out from La Valetta, to 
 relieve the famished garrison from feeding the twelve hundred 
 men she carried. It Avas a singular illustration of the good 
 fortune of the "heaven-born" admiral, to repeat Ball's expres- 
 sion, that the "Foudroyant" arrived barely in time, only a 
 few hours before the event, her absence from which might 
 
CAPTURE OF THE "GUILLAUME TELL" 431 
 
 have resulted in the escape of the enemy, and a just censure 
 upon Nelson. "If the Foudroyant had not arrived," wrote 
 Troubridge to him, "nothing we have could have looked at 
 her." The French ship was sighted first by a frigate, the 
 " Penelope," Captain Blackwood, which hung gallantly upon 
 her quarters, as Nelson in former days had dogged the " Ca 
 Ira" with the "Agamemnon," until the heavier ships could 
 gather round the quarry. The " Guillaume Tell," necessarily 
 intent only on escape from overpowering numbers, could not 
 turn aside to crush the small antagonist, which one of her 
 broadsides might have swept out of existence; yet even so, 
 the frigate decided the issue, for she shot away the main 
 and mizzen topmasts of the French vessel, permitting the 
 remainder of the British to come up. No ship was ever more 
 gallantly fought than the " Guillaume Tell ; " the scene would 
 have been well worthy even of Nelson's presence. More 
 could not be said, but Nelson was not there. She had shaken 
 off the "Penelope" and the "Lion," sixty-four, when the 
 "Foudroyant" drew up at six in the morning. "At half-past 
 six," says the latter's log, ''shot away the [French] main 
 and mizen-masts : saw a man nail the French ensign to the 
 stump of the mizen-mast. Five minutes past eight, shot away 
 the enemy's foremast. Ten minutes past eight, all lier masts 
 being gone by the board, the enemy struck his colours, and 
 ceased firing." The last of the fleet in Aboukir Bay had 
 surrendered to Nelson's ship, but not to Nelson's flag. 
 
 Troubridge took this occasion again to entreat his presence 
 at Malta. " I would have given one thousand guineas your 
 health had permitted your being in the Foudroyant ; " and 
 on the same day, April 1st, in a letter marked "private," he 
 repeats, "Will your Lordship come and hoist your flag in the 
 Culloden ? Kely on everything I can do to make it pleas- 
 ant." On the 13th he is yet more pressing: "Your friends 
 absolutely, as far as they dare, insist on your staying to sign 
 the capitulation. Be on your guard, I see a change in language 
 since Lord Keith was here." Himself suffering from frequent 
 severe illness, and harassed by officers of his own grade dis- 
 regarding his orders, Troubridge still stuck to Malta, and he 
 clearly believed Nelson could do the same under the conditions 
 suggested. If so, the efficiency of the service, as well as his 
 
432 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 own reputation, demanded of the admiral to be there instead 
 of at Palermo. 
 
 "I am sensible/' wrote Kelson to Sir Edward Berry, the 
 captain of the " Foudroyant," " of your kindness in wishing 
 my presence at the finish of the Egyptian fleet, but I have 
 no cause for sorrow. The thing could not be better done, 
 and I would not for all the world rob you of one particle of 
 your well-earned laurels." In the matter of glory Nelson 
 might well yield much to another, nor miss what he gave ; but 
 there is a fitness in things, and it was not fitting that the com- 
 mander of the division should have been absent when such 
 an event was likely to happen. " My task is done, my health 
 is lost, and the orders of the great Earl St. Vincent are com- 
 pletely fidfilled." ''I have wrote to Lord Keith," he tells 
 Spencer, " for permission to return to England, when you 
 will see a broken-hearted man. My spirit cannot submit pa- 
 tiently." But by this time, if the First Lord's forbearance 
 was not exhausted, his patience very nearly was, and already 
 a letter had been sent, which, while couched in terms of 
 delicate consideration, nevertheless betrayed the deep dis- 
 appointment that had succeeded to admiration for services 
 so eminent, and for a spirit once so indomitable : " To your 
 letter of the 20th of March, all I shall say is, to express my 
 extreme regret that your health should be such as to oblige 
 you to quit your station off Malta, at a time when I should 
 suppose there must be the finest prospect of its reduction. I 
 should be very sorry that j'ou did not accomplish that business 
 in person, as the Guillaume Tell is your due, and that ship 
 ought not to strike to any other. If the enemy should come 
 into the jNlediterranean, and whenever they do, it will be sud- 
 denl}^, I sliould be much concerned to hear that you learnt of 
 their arrival in that sea, either on shore or in a transport at 
 ]*alermo." 
 
 A nearer approach to censure soon followed. On the 9th 
 of May, orders were sent to Keith, that if Nelson's health 
 rendered him unfit for duty, he was to be permitted to return 
 home by sea when opportunity offered, or by land if he pre- 
 ferred. Earl Spencer wrote him at the same time a private 
 letter, in which disapprobation was too thinly masked by care- 
 fully chosen words to escape attention: "It is by no means 
 
DISAPPROBATION OP THE ADMIRALTY. 433 
 
 my wish, or intention to call you away from service, but having 
 observed that you have been under the necessity of quitting 
 your station off Malta, on account of your health, which I 
 am persuaded you could not have thought of doing without 
 such necessity, it appeared to me much more advisable for 
 you to come home at once, than to be obliged to remain in- 
 active at Palermo, while active service was going on in other 
 parts of the station. I should still much prefer your remain- 
 ing to complete the reduction of Malta, which I flatter myself 
 cannot be very far distant, and I still look with anxious ex- 
 pectation to the Guillaume Tell striking to your flag. But 
 if, unfortunately, these agreeable events are to be prevented, 
 by your having too much exhausted yourself in the service to 
 be equal to follow them up, I am quite clear, and I believe 
 I am joined in opinion by all your friends here, that you will 
 be more likely to recover your health and strength in Eng- 
 land than in an inactive situation at a Foreign Court, how- 
 ever pleasing the respect and gratitude shown to you for your 
 services may be, and no testimonies of respect and gratitude 
 from that Court to you can be, I am convinced, too great for 
 the very essential services you have rendered it. I trust that 
 you will take in good part what I have taken the liberty to 
 write to you as a friend." 
 
 Both these letters reached Nelson in June, at Leghorn, on 
 his way home. The underlying censure did not escape him, — 
 "your two letters gave me much pain," he replied, — but he 
 showed no traces of self-condemnation, or of regret for the 
 past. Lord Minto, who was now ambassador at Vienna, wrote 
 thence in March of this year, before the question of going 
 home was decided : " I have letters from Nelson and Lady 
 Hamilton. It does not seem clear whether he will go home. 
 I hope he will not for his own sake, and he will at least, I 
 hope, take Malta first. He does not seem at all conscious of 
 the sort of discredit he has fallen into, or the cause of it, for 
 he still writes, not wisely, about Lady H. and all that. But 
 it is hard to condemn and use ill a hero, as he is in his own 
 element, for being foolish about a woman who has art enough 
 to make fools of many wiser than an admiral." Many years 
 later, immediately after the parting which he did not then 
 know was the last, Minto said of him, "He is in many points 
 
 28 
 
434 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 a really great man, in others a baby." Nelson himself, con- 
 scious of the diligence which he had used in the administra- 
 tion of his wide command and its varied interests, put out of 
 court all other considerations of propriety. '' I trust you and 
 all my friends will believe," he told Spencer, " that mine 
 cannot be an inactive life, although it may not carry all the 
 outward parade of much ado ahuut nothing.'" 
 
 Had the Hamiltons remained in Palermo, Nelson would 
 have been forced to a choice between leaving her and the 
 Mediterranean, or yielding a submission to orders which to 
 the last he never gave, when fairly out of signal distance. 
 But the Foreign Office had decided that Sir William should 
 not return after the leave for which he had applied ; and in 
 the beginning of March it Avas known at Palermo that his 
 successor had been appointed. This Nelson also learned, at 
 the latest, when he came back there on the 16th. To one 
 correspondent he wrote, on the 28th, " Most probably my 
 health Avill force me to retire in April, for I am worn out with 
 fatigue of body and mind," and his application was sent in on 
 the 6th of the latter month, after news of the " Guillaume 
 Tell's " capture. On the 22d Hamilton presented his letters 
 of recall, and on the 24th he and Lady Hamilton, with a party, 
 embarked with Nelson on board the "Foudroyant" for a trip 
 to Syracuse and Malta, from which they all returned to 
 Palermo on the first of June. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 Nelson leaves the Mediterranean. — The Journey Overland 
 THROUGH Germany. — Arrival in England. — Separation from 
 Lady Nelson. — Hoists his Flag in the Channel Fleet, under 
 Lord St. Vincent. 
 
 June, 1800-January, ISOl. Age, 42. 
 
 AT the time JSTelson and the Hamiltons returned to 
 Palermo, the Queen of Kaples was wishing, for politi- 
 cal reasons, to visit Vienna. To meet this wish Nelson took 
 the " Foudroyant " and "Alexander " off the blockade of 
 ]\Ialta, that they might carry herself and suite to Leghorn, 
 together with the Hamiltons. He clung also to the hope that 
 Keith would give him his powerful flagship to return to Eng- 
 land, in which case the Hamiltons would go with him. '•' I 
 go with our dear friends Sir William and Lady Hamilton," 
 he wrote to Lord IMinto ; " but wliether by water or land 
 depends on the Avill of Lord Keith. IMay all orders be as 
 punctually obeyed," alluding to the completion of the destruc- 
 tion of the Nile fleet by the capture of the •' Guillaume Tell," 
 " but never again an oflicer at the close of what I must, with- 
 out being thought vain (for such I am represented by enemies), 
 call a glorious career, be so treated ! " 
 
 Keith's opinion of Nelson's obedience was probably some- 
 what different. The latter had written him on the 12th of 
 May, that, being under an old promise to carry the Queen to 
 the Continent, he proposed to take the two ships-of-the-line 
 for that purpose, and Keith sent him a letter forbidding him 
 to do so, and directing them to be sent back at once to Malta. 
 Nelson, it is true, did not receive this ; but it is impossible 
 to reconcile Avith attention to orders the diversion of two 
 ships of their force from the singularly important station 
 appointed them by the commander-in-chief, without reference 
 to him, and using them to carry about foreign sovereigns. 
 On arriving in Leghorn, on the 14th of June, Nelson an- 
 
436 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 uounced the fact to Keith, with apparent perfect uncon- 
 sciousness that the latter coukl be other than charmed. '•' I 
 was obliged to bring the Alexander, or the party never could 
 have been accommodated : I therefore trust you will ap- 
 prove of it." ''I was so displeased by the withdrawing of the 
 ships from before Malta," wrote Keith to Paget, "and with 
 other proceedings, that her Majesty did not take any notice 
 of me latterly." It would seem also that some harm had 
 come of it. "What a clamour, too, letting in the ships to 
 Malta will occasion. I assure you nothing has given me 
 more real concern, it was so near exhausted." ''Had not 
 Nelson quitted the blockade," he wrote a Aveek later, "and 
 taken the ships off the station, it might have fallen about 
 this time." ^ 
 
 Lord Keith had been engaged for six weeks past in the 
 famous blockade and siege of Genoa, the garrison of which, 
 spent with famine and disease, marched out on the 5th of 
 June, 1800. On the 14th — the day Nelson reached Leghorn 
 — was fought the Battle of Marengo, in which the Austrians 
 were totally defeated, the French army under Bonaparte re- 
 maining victorious across their line of retreat to Mantua. 
 The next day Melas signed a convention, abandoning Northern 
 Italy, as far as the Mincio, to the French, to whom were 
 given up all the fortified places, Genoa included. At mid- 
 night of June 18, Nelson received an order from Keith to 
 take all the ships at Leghorn to Spezia, for certain minor 
 military purposes. Nelson sent the "Alexander" and a 
 frigate, but remained himself in Leghorn with the "Fou- 
 droyant," ready, he wrote the admiral, "to receive the queen 
 and royal family, should such an event be necessary." Keith 
 rejoined Avith a peremptory order that no ships-of-the-line 
 should be used for such purpose ; the Queen, he said, had 
 better get to Vienna as fast as she could, and not think of 
 going back to Palermo. "If the French fleet gets the start 
 of ours a day, Sicily cannot hold out even that one day." 
 "Lord Keith," commented Nelson, "believes reports of the 
 Brest fleet, which I give not the smallest credit to." "I 
 own I do not believe the Brest fleet will return to sea," he 
 told Keith ; " and if they do the Lord have mercy on tliem, 
 1 The Paget Papers, vol. i. pp. 253, 257. 
 
RETURN TO ENGLAND, 1800 437 
 
 for our fleet will not, I am sure." It was not the least of his 
 conspicuous merits that he was blind to imaginative or ex- 
 aggerated alarms. Keith saw too vividly all that might 
 happen in consequence of recent reverses — much more than 
 could happen. 
 
 On the 24th of June the latter reached Leghorn in person. 
 "I must go to Leghorn," he complained, "tQ land the fugi- 
 tives, and to be bored by Lord Nelson for permission to take 
 the Queen to Palermo, and princes and princesses to all parts 
 of the globe." The Queen was in a panic, and besought him 
 with tears to give her the " Foudroyant," but Keith was 
 obdurate. " Mr. Wyndham ^ arrived here yesterday from 
 Florence," wrote Lady Minto on the 6th of July to her sister. 
 "He left the Queen of Xaples, Sir William and Lady Hamil- 
 ton, and Nelson, at Leghorn. The Queen has given up all 
 thoughts of coming here. She asked Lord Keith in her own 
 proper person for the Foudroyant to take her back. He 
 refused positively giving her such a ship. The Queen wept, 
 concluding that royal tears were irresistible ; but he remained 
 unmoved, and would grant nothing but a frigate to convoy 
 her own frigates ^ to Trieste. He told her Lady Hamilton 
 had had command of the fleet long enough. The Queen is 
 very ill with a sort of convulsive fit, and Nelson is staying 
 there to nurse her ; he does not intend going home till he 
 has escorted her back to Palermo. His zeal for the public 
 service seems entirely lost in his love and vanity, and they 
 all sit and flatter each other all day long." It is only fair to 
 say that there are indications, in the correspondence, of bad 
 terms between the Hamiltons and Wyndham, who, therefore, 
 was probably not a sympathetic observer. He had also before 
 this written unpleasantly to Nelson, insinuating, apparently, 
 a lack of attention to duty ; for the latter in a letter to Trou- 
 bridge says, " I send you an extract of Mr. Wyndham's 
 unhandsome mode of expressing himself towards me." 
 Towards Keith her Majesty manifested her displeasure 
 by omitting him in the public leave she took of all the 
 officials. 
 
 1 British minister to Tuscany. 
 
 2 There were some Neapolitan frigates in Leghorn, but the royal family 
 were never willing to trust them. 
 
438 TIIK LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 The Queen finally resolved to continue her journey, but the 
 victories of the French introduced into the political future 
 an element of uncertainty, which caused her to delay a month 
 in Leghorn, undecided whether to go by sea or land ; and 
 Nelson had vowed not to forsake her. Keith, after some days, 
 relented so far as to authorize the '' Alexander " taking the 
 royal family to Trieste, but many of the party were averse 
 to the sea voyage. There had been for some time living with 
 the Harailtons a Miss Knight, an English lady already in 
 middle life, whose journal gives the chief particulars that 
 have been preserved of this period. " The Queen," she wrote, 
 " wishes, if possible, to prosecute her journey. Lady Hamil- 
 ton cannot bear the thought of going by sea; and therefore 
 nothing but impracticability Avill prevent our going to 
 Vienna." When it Avas at last fixed, after many vacilla- 
 tions, that they should go to Ancona, and there take small 
 Austrian vessels for Trieste, she exclaims, " to avoid the 
 danger of being on board an English, man-of-war, where 
 everything is commodious, and equally well arranged for 
 defence and comfort! But the die is cast, and go we must." 
 She mentions that Lord Nelson was well, and kept up his 
 spirits amazingly, but Sir William appeared broken, dis- 
 tressed, and harassed. 
 
 On the 11th the travellers started for Florence, passing 
 within two miles of the French advanced posts. At Ancona 
 they embarked on board some Russian frigates, and in them 
 reached Trieste safely on the 2d of August. Nelson was 
 received with acclamations in all the towns of the Pope's 
 states. A party in which were not only the queen of a reign- 
 ing sovereign, but an English minister and his wife, was sure 
 of receiving attention wherever it passed or stopped ; but in 
 the present case it was the naval officer who carried off the 
 lion's share of homage, so widely had his fame spread 
 throughout the Continent. At Trieste, says Miss Knight, 
 " he is followed by thousands when he goes out, and for the 
 illumination which is to take place this evening, there are 
 many Viva jS^e/son^s prepared." 
 
 The same enthusiasm was shown at Vienna, where they 
 arrived on the 21st or 22d of August. " You can have no 
 notion of the anxiety and curiosity to see him," wrote Lady 
 
JOURNEY THROUGH GERMANY 439 
 
 Minto.^ "The door of liis house is always crowded with 
 people, and even the street when his carriage is at the door ; 
 and when lie went to the play he was applauded, a thing 
 which rarely happens here." " Whenever he appeared in 
 public," records Miss Knight, "a crowd was collected, and 
 his portrait was hung up as a sign over many shops — even 
 the milliners giving his name to particular dresses, but it did 
 not appear to me that the English nation was at all popular." 
 At a dinner at Prince Esterhazy's, where he spent some days, 
 his health was drunk Avith a flourish of trumpets and firing 
 of cannon. "I don't think him altered in the least," con- 
 tinued Lady JNIinto, who remembered him from the old days 
 in Corsica. " He has the same shock head and the same 
 honest simple manners ; but he is devoted to Emma, he thinks 
 her quite an angel, and talks of her as such to her face and 
 behind her back, and she leads him about like a keeper with 
 a bear. She must sit by him at dinner to cut his meat, and 
 he carries her pocket-handkerchief. He is a gig from ribands, 
 orders and stars, but he is just the same with us as ever he 
 was ; " and she mentions his outspoken gratitude to Minto 
 for the substantial service he had done him, and the guidance 
 he had imparted to his political thought, — an acknowledg- 
 ment he frequently renewed up to the last days of his 
 life. 
 
 Lady Minto's nephew, Lord Fitzharris, the son of the 
 Earl of Malmesbury, was then in Vienna, apparently as an 
 attache. He speaks in the same way of Nelson himself, but 
 with less forbearance for Lady Hamilton; and he confirms 
 the impression that Nelson at this time had lost interest in 
 the service. Writing to his father, he says: "Nelson per- 
 sonally is not changed ; open and honest, not the least vanity 
 about him. He looks very well, but seems to be in no hurry 
 to sail again. He told me he had no thoughts of serving 
 again." " Lord Nelson and the Hamiltons dined here the 
 other day ; it is really disgusting to see her with him." A 
 few days later there was a ball at Prince Esterhazy's, where 
 Fitzharris Avas present. " Lady Hamilton is without excep- 
 tion the most coarse, ill-mannered, disagreeable Avoman I ever 
 met Avith. The Princess had with great kindness got a number 
 1 Life of Lord Minto, vol. iii. pp. ] 47-150. 
 
440 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 of musicians, and the famous Ha^^dn, who is in their service, 
 to play, knowing Lady Hamilton was fond of music. Instead 
 of attending to them she sat down to the Faro table, played 
 Nelson's cards for him, and won between £300 and £400. 
 In short, I could not disguise my feeling, and joined in the 
 general abuse of her." ^ The impression that Nelson would 
 decline further service had been conveyed to other friends. 
 Troubridge, who had meanwhile returned to England, wrote 
 two months later to a young lieutenant who wished to get on 
 board the admiral's next ship: "Lord Nelson is not yet 
 arrived in England, and between ourselves I do not think he 
 will serve again." 
 
 Both Lady Minto and Fitzharris have recorded an account 
 given them by Nelson, of his motives for action at the Battle 
 of the Nile. " He speaks in the highest terms of all the 
 captains he had with him off the coast of Egypt," writes the 
 former, "adding that without knowing the men he had to trust 
 to, he would not have hazarded the attack, that there was 
 little room, but he was sure each would find a hole to creep 
 in at." In place of this summary, her nephew gives words 
 evidently quite fresh from the speaker's lips. " He says, 
 'When I saw them, I could not help popping my head every 
 
 now and then out of the Avindow, (although I had a d d 
 
 toothache), and once as I was observing their position I 
 heard two seamen quartered at a gun near me, talking, and 
 
 one said to the other, ' D n them, look at them, there they 
 
 are, Jack, if we don't beat them, they will beat us.' He says, 
 'I knew what stuff I had under me, so I went into the attack 
 with only a few ships, j)erfectly sure the others would follow 
 me, although it was nearly dark and they might have had 
 every excuse for not doing it, yet they all in the course of 
 two hours found a hole to poke in at. If,' he added, ' I had 
 taken a fleet of the same force from Spithead, I would sooner 
 have thought of flying than attacking the French in their 
 position, but I knew my captains, nor could I say which dis- 
 tinguished himself most.' " Yet to Lady Minto he revealed 
 the spirit he was of. " I told him I wished he had the com- 
 mand of the Emperor's army. He said, •' I '11 tell you what. 
 
 1 Malmesbury's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 24. 
 
JOURNF.Y THROUGH GERMANY 441 
 
 If I had, I would only use one word — advance, and never say 
 retreat! " 
 
 After a month's stop at Vienna, during which Sir William 
 Hamilton's health continued to cause anxiety, the party started 
 north for Prague, Dresden, and Hamburg, following the course 
 of the Elbe, On the 28th of September, Prague was reached, 
 and there Kelson was met by arrangement by the Archduke 
 Charles, the first in ability of the Austrian generals. The 
 next day, September 29th, was Kelson's birthday, and the 
 Archduke gave a grand entertainment in his honor. Continu- 
 ing thence, the travellers on October 2d reached Dresden, to 
 which Court the British minister was Hugh Elliot, the brother 
 of Lord Minto. Here they came under the eye of Mrs. St. 
 George, a young Irish widow, who by a second marriage became 
 Mrs. Trench, and the mother of the late Archbishop of Dublin. 
 Her description and comments have been considered severe, 
 and even prejudiced; but they do not differ essentially from 
 those of the Mintos and Fitzharris, except in saying that on 
 one occasion, after dinner, Kelson took too much champagne, 
 and showed the effects. However much to be deplored, such 
 an occurrence is not so impossible as to invalidate the testimony 
 of an eye-witness, even in a man of Kelson's well-established 
 habitual abstemiousness, which indeed his health necessitated. 
 That the relater's impression, if unfavorable in some respects, 
 did not prejudice her in important matters, is shown by her 
 comment upon the admiral's letters to Lady Hamilton, when 
 published in 1814. " Though disgraceful to his principles of 
 morality on one subject, they do not appear to me, as they do 
 to most others, degrading to his understanding. They are 
 pretty much what every man, deeply entangled, will express, 
 when he supposes but one pair of fine eyes will read his letters ; 
 and his sentiments on subjects unconnected with his fatal 
 attachment are elevated — -looking to his hearth and his home 
 for future happiness ; liberal, charitable, candid, affectionate, 
 indifferent to the common objects of pursuit, and clear-sighted 
 in his general view of politics and life." ^ 
 
 Mrs. St. George's journal was not written for publication, 
 and did not see the light till thirty-odd years after her death. 
 " October 3d. Dined at Mr. Elliot's with only the Kelson 
 1 Remains of Mis. Trench, p. 293. 
 
442 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 party. It is plain that Lord Nelson thinks of nothing but 
 Lady Hamilton/ who is totally occupied by tlie same object. 
 Lord Nelson is a little man, without any dignity ; who, I 
 suppose, must resemble what Suwarrow was in his youth, as 
 he is like all the pictures I have seen of that General. Lady 
 Hamilton takes possession of him, and he is a willing captive, 
 the most submissive and devoted I have ever seen. Sir 
 William is old, infirm, all admiration of his wife, and never 
 spoke to-day but to applaud her. Miss Cornelia Knight seems 
 the decided flatterer of the two, and never opens her mouth 
 but to show forth their praise ; and Mrs. Cadogan, Lady 
 Hamilton's mother, is — what one might expect. After dinner 
 we had several songs in honour of Lord Nelson, written by 
 Miss. Knight, and sung by Lady Hamilton.'^ She puffs the 
 incense full in his face; but he receives it with pleasure, and 
 snuffs it up very cordially." Lord Minto, whose friendship 
 for Nelson was of proof, wrote eighteen months after this to 
 his wife : " She goes on crainming Nelson with trowelfuls of 
 flattery, which he goes on taking as quietly as a child does 
 pap." ^ 
 
 "Lady Hamilton," wrote Mrs. St. George on succeeding 
 days, "paid me those kinds of compliments which prove she 
 thinks mere exterior alone of any consequence. . . . She loads 
 me with all marks of friendship at first sight, which I always 
 think more extraordinary than love of the same kind, pays me 
 many compliments both when I am absent and present, and 
 said many fine things about my accompanying her at sight. 
 Still she does not gain upon me. . . . Mv. Elliot says, ' She 
 will captivate the Prince of Wales, whose mind is as vulgar as 
 her own, and play a great part in England,' " — a remark which 
 showed shrewd judgment of character, as Nelson afterwards 
 found to his intense disturbance. At Vienna the whole party 
 had been presented at Court, but at Dresden the Electress 
 refused to receive Lady Hamilton, on account of her former 
 dissolute life. " She wished to go to Court," says Mrs. 
 St. George, " on Avhich a pretext was made to avoid receiving 
 
 1 Mrs. St. Gi'orge's description of Lady Hamilton lias already lieen given, 
 ante, p. 325. 
 
 2 Miss Knight mentions the same ceremony occuriing in Vienna. 
 
 3 Lite of Lord Minto, vol. iii. pp. 242-243. 
 
ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND 443 
 
 company last Sunday, and I understand there will be no Court 
 while she stays." Nelson felt resentment at this exclusion, 
 though powerless, of course, to express it ; but he declined an 
 invitation to a private house which had not been extended to 
 her. This incident naturally raised the question, what pros- 
 pect there was of the lady being accepted at the Court of her 
 own sovereign. " She talked to me a great deal of her doubts 
 whether the Queen would receive her, adding, ' I care little 
 about it. I had much rather she would settle half Sir 
 William's pension on me,' " — -a remark which sliowed more 
 philosophy than self-esteem. 
 
 A week's visit in Dresden ended by the party taking boats 
 for Hamburg, which they reached on the 21st of October, the 
 journey being prolonged by stopping every night. They there 
 remained ten days, of which no very noteworthy incidents 
 have been recorded, although the general interest of all classes 
 of people in the renowned warrior, of whom they had heard 
 so much, continued to be manifested, sometimes in quaint and 
 touching expression. On the 31st of October they embarked 
 on board the mail-packet for England, and after a stormy 
 passage landed at Yarmouth on the 6th of November, 1800. 
 Two years and eight months had passed since Nelson sailed 
 from Spithead, on a cruise destined to have so marked an 
 influence on his professional reputation and private happiness. 
 He was received on his landing with every evidence of popular 
 enthusiasm, and of official respect from all authorities, civil 
 and military. With the unvarying devout spirit which char- 
 acterized him in all the greater events of his life, he asked 
 that public service might be held, to enable him to give thanks 
 in church for his safe return to his native country, and for the 
 many blessings which he had experienced. 
 
 Until quite recently the fact of Lady Nelson not being at 
 Yarmouth to meet her husband has been thought to indicate 
 coldness, if not displeasure, on her part. When the first 
 edition of this book was published, the present writer certainly 
 shared that impression, Avhich, whatever its origin, had a 
 certain plausibility from tlie feelings of uneasiness in her, 
 mentioned to Nelson by Davison,^ writing in December, 1798. 
 Although his language was veiled, the implication even then 
 ^ Nicolas, vol. iii, p. 138 (note). 
 
444 THE LIFE OF ISTELSON 
 
 was evident, and the scandalous reports afterwards current in 
 England, concerning the life at Palermo, scarcely tended to 
 soothe her anxieties. Nevertheless, however affected by the 
 rumors that reached her ears, Lady Nelson remained mistress 
 of herself and of her words, until the seeing of her eyes be- 
 came more than she could bear. In 1898 were published for 
 the first time some long-missing letters of Nelson to her ; parts 
 of a correspondence for which the indefatigable Sir Harris 
 Nicolas made " numerous inquiries without success." ^ From 
 these it appears that he had written her he would go at once 
 to London, when released from quarantine at Portsmouth, 
 where he then expected to arrive ; " therefore I would not 
 have you come to Portsmouth on my account." As the same 
 reasons applied to any seaport, Lady Nelson observed her 
 husband's wishes by awaiting him in London. Not only so, 
 however, she carried complaisance so far as to ask Sir William 
 and Lady Hamilton to Nelson's country home, Round Wood, 
 near Ipswich. The letter conveying this invitation was among 
 those awaiting him at Yarmouth, and in his reply of Novem- 
 ber 6th he accepts in their name.^ Meantime, however. Lady 
 Nelson and his father had gone to Loudon, so that their first 
 meeting, after the famous Nile campaign, was there, at Nerot's 
 Hotel, on Saturday, November 8, 1800. 
 
 Thus, Lady Nelson's course, at the beginning of that brief 
 and critical period which ended in their permanent separation, 
 was, in forbearance and self-control, perfectly consistent with 
 the tone of her letters to him during his stay at the Neapolitan 
 Court. In these, the conditions at Palermo are ignored, and 
 the correspondence is confined to the talk of the day, mingled 
 with homely family news and simple unaffected expressions of 
 affection to himself. " I was so glad to see any one who could 
 give me such late accounts of my dear husband and my son, 
 that it had such an effect on me that I could not hear or see 
 and was obliged to call in our good father." One of her 
 latest extant letters to him, prior to his arrival in England, 
 dated March 29th, 1800, shows the same deference to his 
 wishes, the "same affection, while withal quietly protesting her 
 
 1 Nicolas, vol. i. preface, pp. xix, xx. 
 
 2 The letters of Nelson here alluded to were published in "Literature," 
 February- April, 1898. 
 
LETTER OF LADY NELSON 445 
 
 own faithful striving to keep unimpaired the tie that united 
 them. 
 
 " I have this instant received a note from Admiral Young, 
 who tells me if I can send him a letter for you in an hour, 
 he will send it, therefore, I have only time to say I have at 
 last had the pleasure of receiving two letters from you, dated 
 January 20th and 25th. I rejoice exceedingly I did not 
 follow the advice of the physician and our good father to 
 change the climate, and I hope my health will be established 
 by hot sea-bathing and the warmth of the summer. 
 
 " I can with safety put ray hand on my heart and say it has 
 been my study to please and make you happy, and I still 
 flatter myself we shall meet before very long. I feel most 
 sensibly all your kindnesses to my dear son, and I hope he will 
 add much to our comfort. Our good father has been in good 
 spirits ever since we heard from you ; indeed, my spirits were 
 quite worn out, the time had been so long. I thank God for 
 the preservation of my dear husband, and your recent success 
 off Malta. The taking of the Genereux seems to give great 
 spirits to all. God bless you, my dear husband, and grant us 
 a happy meeting, and believe me," etc.^ 
 
 The newly found letters prove that the length of time pass- 
 ing without news was not due to his failure to write. So far 
 as published, however, they are wanting in the traces of 
 tenderness which marked their former relations, as noted in 
 previous passages of this work. " My dearest Fanny " has 
 become " my dear Fanny ; " "your most affectionate husband," 
 "your affectionate." That such conjugal commonplaces as 
 the earlier phrases no longer slip from his pen bears evidence, 
 in the writer's opinion, to the stubborn integrity of the man 
 scorning to deceive even himself by ordinary subterfuges. 
 
 It is possible that, like many men, though it would not be in 
 the least characteristic of himself, Nelson, during his journey 
 home, simply put aside all consideration of the evil day when 
 the two women would be in the same city, and trusted to the 
 chapter of accidents to settle the terms on which they might 
 live ; but he seems to have entertained an idea that he could 
 maintain in London, with the acquiescence of his wife, the 
 public relations towards Lady Hamilton tolerated by Neapoli- 
 
 ^ Alfred Morrison Collection of Autograph Letters (No. 473). 
 
446 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 tan society. Miss Knight relates that, while at Leghorn, he 
 said he hoped Lady Nelson and himself would be much with 
 the Hamiltons, that they all would dine together very often, 
 and that when the latter went to their musical parties, he and 
 Lady Nelson would go to bed. In accordance with this pro- 
 gramme, he took his two friends to dine with his wife and 
 father, immediately upon his arrival in town. Miss Knight 
 went to another hotel with Lady Hamilton's mother, and was 
 that evening visited by Troubridge. He advised her to go 
 and stop with a friend; and, although no reason is given, it 
 is probable that he, who knew as much as any one of the past, 
 saw that the position of residence with the Hamiltons would 
 be socially untenable for a woman. Miss Knight accordingly 
 went to live with Mrs. Nepean, the wife of the Secretary to 
 the Admiralty. 
 
 A few days later there was again a dinner at the house 
 taken by the Hamiltons in Grosvenor Square. The Nelsons 
 were there, as was Miss Knight. The next day several of 
 the party attended the theatre, and Lady Nelson, it is said, 
 fainted in the box, overcome by feeling, many thought, at 
 her husband's marked attentions to Lady Hamilton. The 
 latter being in her way a character as well known as Nelson 
 himself, the affair became more than usually a matter of 
 comment, especially as the scene now provided for London 
 gossipers was a re-presentation of that so long enacted at 
 Palermo, and notorious throughout Europe; but it received 
 little toleration. "Most of my friends," wrote Miss Knight, 
 '^ were urgent with me to drop the acquaintance, but, circum- 
 stanced as I had been, I feared the charge of ingratitude, 
 though greatly embarrassed as to what to do, for things became 
 very unpleasant." Had it been a new development, it would 
 have presented little difficulty; but having quietly lived many 
 months in the minister's house under the same conditions, 
 only in the more congenial atmosphere of Palermo, it was not 
 easy now to join in the disapproval shown by much of London 
 society. 
 
 Lady Hamilton, of course, could not have any social accept- 
 ance, but even towards Nelson himself, in all his glory, a 
 marked coldness was shown in significant quarters. "The 
 Lady of the Admiralty," wrote he to his friend Davison, 
 
ILL RECEIVED AT COURT 447 
 
 " never had any just cause for being cool to me ; " an allusion 
 probably to Lady Spencer, the wife of the First Lord. Cold- 
 ness from her must have been the more marked, for after the 
 Nile she had written him a wildly enthusiastic letter, recog- 
 nizing with gratitude the distinction conferred npon her hus- 
 band's administration by the lustre of that battle. " Either 
 as a public or private man," he continued, "I wish nothing 
 undone which I have done," — a remark entirely ambiguous 
 and misleading as regards his actual relations to Lady Hamil- 
 ton. He told Collingwood, at this same time, that he had not 
 been well received by the King. " He gave me an account of 
 his reception at Court," his old comrade writes, ''which was 
 not very flattering, after having been the adoration of that of 
 Naples. His Majesty merely asked him if he had recovered 
 his health ; and then, without waiting for an answer, turned 
 
 to General , and talked to him near half an hour in great 
 
 good humour. It could not be' about his successes." This 
 sliglit was not a revival of the old prejudice entertained by 
 the King before the war, which had been wholly removed by 
 the distinguished services Nelson had rendered afterwards. 
 Eighteen months before this Davison had written to him : " I 
 waited upon the King early last Sunday morning, and was 
 alone with him a full hour, when much of the conversation 
 was about you. It is impossible to express how warmly he 
 spoke of you, and asked me a thousand questions about you. 
 ... I have been again at the Queen's house, and have given 
 the King a copy of your last letter to me, giving an account 
 of your health, which he read twice over, with great attention, 
 and with apparent emotion of concern. His Majesty speaks 
 of you with the tenderness of a father." Samuel Rogers has 
 an incidental mention of the effect produced upon Nelson by 
 the treatment now experienced. "I heard him once during 
 dinner utter many bitter complaints (which Lady Hamilton 
 vainly attempted to check) of the way he had been treated at 
 Court that forenoon : the Queen had not condescended to take 
 the slightest notice of him. In truth, Nelson was hated at 
 Court; they were jealous of his fame." ^ People, however, 
 are rarely jealous of those who are not rivals. 
 
 The position which Nelson had proposed to himself to es- 
 1 Table-Talk of Samuel Rogers. 
 
448 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 tablish was of course impossible. The world was no more 
 disposed to worry about any private immoralities of his than 
 it did about those of other men, but it was not prepared to 
 have them brandished in its face, and it would have none 
 of Lady Hamilton, — nor would Lady Nelson. The general 
 public opinion at the time receives, probably, accurate expres- 
 sion from Sir William Hotham, a man then in London society. 
 "His vanity, excusable as such a foible is in such a man, led 
 him to unpardonable excesses, and blinded him to the advan- 
 tages of being respected in society. . . . His conduct to Lady 
 Nelson was the very extreme of unjustifiable weakness, for he 
 should at least have attempted to conceal his infirmities, with- 
 out publicly wounding the feelings of a woman 'whose own 
 conduct he well knew was irreproachable." ^ On the other 
 hand. Nelson could not forget the kindnesses he had accepted 
 from Lady Hamilton, nor w'as he either able or willing to les- 
 sen an intimacy which, unless diminished, left the scandal 
 unabated. He was not able, for a man of his temperament 
 could not recede before opposition, or slight a woman now 
 compromised by his name ; and he was not willing, for he was 
 madly in love. Being daily with her for seven months after 
 leaving Palermo, there occurs a break in their correspondence ; 
 but when it was resumed in the latter part of January, 1801, 
 every particle of the reticence which a possible struggle with 
 conscience had imposed disappears. He has accepted the new 
 situation, cast aside all restraints, and his language at times 
 falls little short of frenzy, while belying the respect for her 
 which lie asserts continually and aggressively, as though against 
 his convictions. 
 
 The breach with Lady Nelson had in this short time become 
 final. We have not the means — happily — to trace through 
 its successive stages a rapid process of estrangement, of 
 which Nelson said a few months afterwards : " Sooner than 
 live the unhappy life I did when last I came to England, I 
 would stay abroad forever." A highly colored account is 
 given in Harrison's Life of Nelson, emanating apparently 
 from Lady Hamilton, of the wretchedness the hero experi- 
 enced from the temper of his wife ; while in the " Memoirs 
 
 1 The author is iiiilebted to Prof. J. Knox Laugh ton for some extracts from 
 Hotham's diary. 
 
THE BREACH WITH LADY NELSON 449 
 
 of Lady Hamilton," published shortly after her death, another 
 side of the case is brought forward, and Lady Nelson appears 
 as rebutting with quiet dignity the reproaches of her husband 
 for heartlessness, displayed in her unsympathetic attitude 
 towards her rival, when suffering from indisposition. Into 
 these recriminations it is needless to enter; those who wish 
 can read for themselves in the works mentioned. A marked 
 symptom of growing alienation was afforded by his leaving 
 her on the 19th of December, in company with the Hamiltons, 
 to spend the Christmas holidays at Fonthill, the seat of 
 William Beckford. 
 
 Daring this visit occurred a curious incident, which shows 
 that the exultation unqiiestionably felt by Nelson in battle did 
 not indicate insensibility to danger, or to its customary effects 
 upon men, but resulted from the pleasurable predominance of 
 other emotions, which accepted danger and the startling tokens 
 of its presence as accompaniments, that only enhanced the 
 majesty of the part he had to play, Beckford tells the story 
 as follows: " I offered to show him what had been done by 
 planting in the course of years. Nelson mounted by my side 
 in a phaeton, drawn by four well-trained horses, which I 
 drove. There was not the least danger, the horses being per- 
 fectly under my command, long driven by myself. Singular 
 to say, we had not gone far before I observed a peculiar 
 anxiety in his countenance, and presently he said : ' This is 
 too much for me, you must set me down.' I assured him 
 that the horses were continually driven by me, and that they 
 were perfectly under command. All would not do. He 
 would descend, and I walked the vehicle back again." ^ Nel- 
 son, of course, never claimed for himself the blind ignorance 
 of fear which has been asserted of him ; on the contrary, 
 the son of his old friend Locker tells us, " The bravest man 
 (so we have heard Lord Nelson himself declare) feels an 
 anxiety ' circa ijvcecordia ' as he enters the battle ; but he 
 dreads disgrace yet more." ^ In battle, like a great actor in a 
 great drama, he knew himself tlie master of an invisible con- 
 course, whose homage he commanded, whose plaudits he 
 craved, and whom, by the sight of deeds raised above the 
 
 1 Beckford's Memoirs, London, 1859, vol. ii. p. 127. 
 
 2 Locker's Greenwich Gallery, article " Torrington." 
 
 29 
 
450 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 common ground of earth, lie drew to sympathy with heroism 
 and self-devotion. There, too, he rejoiced in the noblest 
 exercise of power, in the sensation of energies and faculties 
 roused to full exertion, contending with mighty obstacles, 
 and acting amid surroundings worthy of their grandeur ; 
 like Massena, of whom it was said that he found his greatest 
 self only when the balls flew thick about him, and things 
 began to look their worst. 
 
 After his return from Fonthill Lady Nelson and himself 
 lived together again for a time in their London lodgings, 
 in Arlington Street, and there, according to the story told 
 forty-five years afterwards by Mr. William Haslewood, Nel- 
 son's solicitor, the crisis of their troubles was reached. " In 
 the winter of 1800, 1801, I was breakfasting with Lord and 
 Lady Nelson, at their lodgings in Arlington Street, and a 
 cheerful conversation was passing on indifferent subjects, 
 when Lord Nelson spoke of something which had been done 
 or said by ' dear Lady Hamilton ; ' upon which Lady Nel- 
 son rose from her chair, and exclaimed, with much vehe- 
 mence, 'I am sick of hearing of dear Lady Hamilton, and 
 am resolved that you shall give up either her or me.' Lord 
 Nelson, Avith perfect calmness, said : ' Take care, Fanny, 
 what you say. I love jon sincerely ; but I cannot forget 
 my obligations to Lady Hamilton, or speak of her other- 
 wise than with affection and admiration.' Without one 
 soothing word or gesture, but muttering something about 
 her mind being made up, Lady Nelson left the room, and 
 shortly after drove from the house. They never lived to- 
 gether afterwards." Though committed to paper so many 
 years later, the incident is just one of those that sticks to 
 the memory, and probably occurred substantially as told. 
 Lady Nelson's outbreak will probably be differently regarded 
 by different persons ; it shows at least that she was living 
 human flesh and blood. In later life, we are told by Hotham, 
 who was in the habit of frequently seeing her, up to her 
 death, in 1831, " she continually talked of him, and always 
 attempted to palliate his conduct towards her, was warm and 
 enthusiastic in her praises of his public achievements, and 
 bowed down with dignified submission to the errors of his 
 domestic life." 
 
THE BREACH WITH LADY NELSON 451 
 
 The same testimony is borne by a lady, of whom Isicolas 
 speaks as " the personal and intimate friend both of Lord 
 and Lady Nelson, and the widow of one of his most distin- 
 guished followers," but whose name he does not give.^ "I 
 am aware of your intention not to touch upon this delicate 
 subject : I only allude to it in order to assure you, from my 
 personal knowledge, in a long and intimate acquaintance, that 
 Lady Nelson's conduct was not only affectionate, wise, and 
 prudent, but admirable, throughout her married life, and that 
 she had not a single reproach to make herself. I say not this 
 to cast unnecessary blame upon one whose memory I delight 
 to honour, but only in justice to that truly good and amiable 
 woman. ... If mildness, forbearance, and indulgence to the 
 weaknesses of human nature could have availed, her fate 
 would have been very different. No reproach ever passed her 
 lips ; and when she parted from her Lord, on his hoisting 
 his flag again, it was without the most distant suspicion 
 that he meant it to be final, and that in this life they were 
 never to meet again. I am desirous that you should know 
 the worth of her who has so often been misrepresented, from 
 the wish of many to cast the blame anywhere, but on him 
 who was so deservedly dear to the Nation." 
 
 After their separation Lady Nelson wrote to her husband 
 on three different occasions ; the first, January 14, 1801, to 
 thank him for the " generosity and tenderness " shown in the 
 handsome allowance made to her ; the second, in the following 
 summer, to express her " thankfulness and happiness " that 
 his life had been spared afc Copenhagen ; the third, Decem- 
 ber 18, 1801, begging, but in terms of dignified simplicity and 
 affection, that the past might be forgotten and they live to- 
 gether again. The last was returned to her unread. The 
 latter years of her life were passed partly in Paris, where she 
 lived with her son and his family. Her eldest grandchild, 
 a girl, was eight or ten years old at the time of her death. 
 She remembers the great sweetness of her grandmother's 
 temper, and tells that she often saw her take from a casket a 
 miniature of Nelson, look at it affectionately, kiss it, and then 
 replace it gently ; after which she would turn to her and say, 
 " When you are older, little Fan, you too may know what it is 
 1 Nicolas, vol. ii. p. 353. 
 
452 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 to have a broken heart." This trifling incident, transpiring 
 as it now does for the first time, after nearly seventy years, 
 from the intimate privacies of family life, bears its own 
 mute evidence that Lady Nelson neither reproached her 
 husband, nor was towards him unforgiving,^ Nelson's early 
 friend, the Duke of Clarence, who had given her away at 
 the wedding, maintained his kindly relations Avith her to 
 the end, and continued his interest to her descendants after 
 his accession to the tlirone. 
 
 Thus abruptly and sadly ended an attachment which, if 
 never ardent, had for many years run undisturbed its ten- 
 der course, and apparently had satisfied Nelson's heart, until 
 the wave of a great passion swept him off his feet. "I re- 
 member," writes ]\[iss Knight, " that, shortly after the Battle 
 of the Nile, when my mother said to him that no doubt he 
 considered the day of that victory as the happiest in his life, 
 he answered, ' No ; the happiest was that on which I married 
 Lady Nelson.' " On the 13th of January, 1801, Nelson took 
 formal and final leave of her before hoisting his flag at Torbay. 
 "I call God to witness," he then said, "there is nothing in 
 you, or your conduct, that I wish otherwise." His alienation 
 from her was soon shared by most of his family, except his 
 father, who said to him frankh", tliat gratitude required he 
 should spend part of his time with Lady Nelson. Two years 
 before, he had written of her : " During the whole war [since 
 1793] I have been with Lady Nelson, a good woman, and at- 
 tentive? to an infirm old man," and they had continued to live 
 together. The old man persuaded himself that there was 
 nothing criminal in relations, the result of which, as regarded 
 his son and daughter-in-law, he could. not but deplore ; but his 
 letters to Lady Hamilton go little beyond the civility that was 
 necessary to avoid giving offence to Nelson. Nelson's two 
 married sisters, IMrs. Bolton and jNIrs. INIatcham, evidently 
 shared their father's belief. They and their children main- 
 tained with Lady Hamilton a friendly and even affectionate 
 correspondence, long after Trafalgar, and until the death of 
 the parties put an end to it. 
 
 Immediately upon landing at Yarmouth, Nelson had written 
 
 ^ Tlic author is indebted for this anecdote to Mrs. F. H. B. Eceles, of 
 Sherwell House, Plymouth, the daughter of the "little Fan" who told it. 
 
THE BIRTH OF HORATIA 453 
 
 to the Admiralty that his health was perfectly restored, and 
 that he wished to resume service immediately. He was soon 
 designated to a command in the Channel fleet, under Earl St. 
 Vincent, who had been commander-in-chief since the spring 
 of 1800. The " San Josef," the three-decker boarded by him 
 at Cape St. Vincent, was named to receive his flag, and on the 
 17th of January it was hoisted on board her, at Plymouth, — 
 blue at the fore, he having been promoted Vice-Ad miral of the 
 l)lue on New Year's Day. An arrangement, however, had 
 already been made, that, if the impending difficulties with 
 Denmark threatened hostilities, he should accompany the fleet 
 sent to the Baltic, as second to Sir Hyde Parker, selected for 
 the chief command. While he was reporting to St. Vincent, 
 on the 16th, at Torbay, preparatory to hoisting his flag, a let- 
 ter from Parker informed him that the armament was decided 
 upon. This he showed at once to St. Vincent, who acquiesced 
 of course in the disappointment, but expressed a hope that he 
 would soon rejoin him. 
 
 By the first of February the " San Josef " had gone round 
 to Torbay, the rendezvous of the Channel fleet under St. Vin- 
 cent's command, and there it was that Xelson received the 
 news of the birth, on the 29th or oOth of January, of the child 
 Horatia, whose parentage for a long time gave rise to much 
 discussion, and is even yet considered by some a matter of 
 doubt. Fortunately, that question requires no investigation 
 here; as regards the Life of Nelson, and his character as 
 involved in this matter, the fact is beyond dispute that he 
 believed himself the father, and Lady Hamilton the mother, 
 of the girl, whose origin he sought to conceal by an elaborate 
 though clumsy system of mystification. This might possibly 
 have left the subject covered with clouds, though not greatly 
 in doubt, had not Lady Hamilton, after wildly mmecessary 
 lying on her own part, recklessly preserved her holdings of 
 a correspondence which Nelson scrupulously destroyed, and 
 enjoined her to destroy. 
 
 The sedulous care on his side to conceal the nature of their 
 relations, and the reckless disregard of his wishes shown by 
 her, is singularly illustrated by the method he took to bring 
 the child into her charge, from that of the nurse to whom it 
 had been intrusted. When it was somewhat over three years 
 
454 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 old, oil the 13tli of August, 1804, he wrote Lady Hamilton a 
 letter, evidently to be used, where necessary, to account for 
 its presence under his roof. " I am now going to state a thing 
 to you and to request your kind assistance, which, from my 
 dear Emma's goodness of heart, I am sure of her acquiescence 
 in. Before we left Italy I told you of the extraordinary cir- 
 cumstance of a child being left to my care and protection. 
 On your first coming to England I presented you the child, 
 dear Horatia. You became, to my comfort, attached to 
 it, so did Sir William, thinking her the finest child he had 
 ever seen. She is become of tliat age when it is necessary to 
 remove her from a mere nurse and to think of educating her. 
 ... I sliall tell you, my dear Emma, more of this matter 
 when I come to England, but I am now anxious for the child's 
 being placed under your protecting wing." With this letter 
 (or, possibly, with another written the same day) was found 
 an enclosure, undated and unsigned, but in Nelson's hand- 
 writing. "My beloved, how I feel for your situation and that 
 of our dear Horatia, our dear child . . ." ^ 
 
 The indifference to incidental consequences which was 
 shown by Nelson, when once he had decided upon a course 
 of action, was part of his natural, as well as of his more dis- 
 tinctively military character ; but in this connection with 
 Lady Hamilton he must have felt intuitively that not only 
 her reputation was involved, but his own also. The hospital- 
 ity, the attention, the friendship, extended to him at Naples 
 and Palermo, were not from Lady Hamilton only but from her 
 husband also, in whose house he lived, and who to the end, so 
 far as the records show, professed for him unbounded esteem 
 and confidence. This confidence had been betrayed, and the 
 strongest line of argument formerly advanced, by those who 
 disputed Lady Hamilton's being the mother of the child, has 
 become now Nelson's severest condemnation. 
 
 "However great was Nelson's infatuation," says Sir Har- 
 ris Nicolas, " his nice sense of honour, his feelings of pro- 
 priety, and his love of truth, were unquestionable. Hence, 
 though during a long separation from his wife on the public 
 service in the Mediterranean, he so far yielded to temptation 
 as to become the father of a child, it is nevertheless difficult to 
 1 Morrison, The Hamilton and Nelson Papers, Nos. 777, 778, 779. 
 
HIS RELATIONS WITH LADY HAMILTON 455 
 
 believe that be sbould for years bave had a criminal inter- 
 course with the wife of a man of bis own rank, whom be 
 considered as his dearest friend, who placed the greatest 
 confidence in his honour and virtue, and in whose house he 
 was living. Still more difficult is it to believe, even if this 
 bad been the case, that he should not only bave permitted 
 every one of his relations, male and female, — his wife, his 
 father, bis brothers, his brothers-in-law, his two sisters, and 
 all their daughters, — to visit and correspond with her, but 
 even bave allowed three of his nieces to live for a consider- 
 able time with her; have ostentatiously and frequently writ- 
 ten and spoken of her ' virtuous and religious ' character, — 
 holding her up as an example to his family ; bave appointed 
 her the sole guardian of bis child ; have avowedly intended to 
 make her bis wife ; have acted upon every occasion as if the 
 purity 'of their intimacy was altogether free from suspicion; 
 and in the last written act of his life have solemnly called 
 upon his country to reward and support her. An honourable 
 and conscientious man rarely acts thus towards his mistress. 
 . . . Moreover, Nelson's most intimate friends, including the 
 Earl of St. Vincent, who called them ' a pair of sentimental 
 fools,' Dr. Scott, his Chaplain, and Mr. Haslewood, were of 
 the same opinion; and Soutbey says, 'there is no reason to 
 believe that this most unfortunate attachment was criminal.' " 
 This complicated and difficult path of deception had to be 
 trod, because the offence was not one of common error, readily 
 pardoned if discovered, but because the man betrayed, what- 
 ever his faults otherwise, had shown both the culprits un- 
 bounded confidence and kindness, and upon the woman, at 
 least, bad been led by bis love to confer a benefit which 
 neither sbould have forgotten. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 The Expedition to the Baltic and Battle of Copenhagen. — -Nelson 
 iiETURNS TO England. 
 
 Eebkuaky-June, 1801. Age, 42. 
 
 THE trouble between Great Britain and Denmark, which 
 now called Nelson again to the front, leading to the most 
 difficult of his undertakings, and, consequently, to the most 
 distinguished of his achievements, arose about the maritime 
 rights of neutrals and belligerents. The contention was not 
 new. In 1780 the Baltic States, Bussia, Sweden, and Den- 
 mark, being neutrals in the war then raging, had combined to 
 assert, by arms, if necessary, certain claims advanced by them 
 to immunity from practices which international law had 
 hitherto sanctioned, or concerning which it had spoken am- 
 biguously. These claims Great Britain had rejected, as con- 
 trary to her rights and interests ; but, being then greatly 
 outnumbered, she temporized until the end of the war, which 
 left her in possession of the principles at stake, although she 
 had forborne to enforce them offensively. The coalition of the 
 Baltic States, at that time, received the name of the Armed 
 Neutrality. 
 
 Erom 1793 to 1800 Sweden and Denmark had again suc- 
 ceeded in maintaining their neutrality, and, as most other 
 maritime states were at war, their freedom of navigation had 
 thrown into their hands a large carrying trade. But, while 
 their profit was thus great, it would be much greater, if their 
 ships could be saved the interruptions to their voyages arising 
 from the right of belligerents to stop, to search, and, if neces- 
 sary, to send into port, a vessel on board which were found 
 enemy's goods, or articles considered "contraband of war." 
 The uncertainty hanging round the definitions of the latter 
 phrase greatly increased the annoyance to neutrals; and seri- 
 
TROUBLES WITH DENMARK 457 
 
 ous disputes existed on certain points, as, for example, whether 
 materials for ship-building, going to an enemy's port, were 
 liable to capture. Great Britain maintained that they were, 
 the neutrals that they were not ; and, as the Baltic was one of 
 the chief regions from which such supplies came, a principal 
 line of trade for the Northern States was much curtailed. 
 
 Sweden and Denmark were too weak to support their con- 
 tention against the sea-power of Great Britain. Where there 
 is lack of force, there will always be found the tendency to 
 resort to evasion to accomplish an end ; and Denmark, in 
 1799, endeavored to secure for her merchant ships immunity 
 from search by belligerent cruisers — which International Law 
 has always conceded, and still concedes, to be within the 
 rights of a belligerent — by sending them on their voyages in 
 large convoys, protected by ships of war. It was claimed that 
 the statement of the senior naval officer, that there were not 
 in the convoy any articles subject to capture, was sufficient; 
 and that the belligerent would in that case have no right to 
 search. Great Britain replied that the right of search rested 
 upon long-standing common consent, and precedent, and that 
 it could not be taken from her against her will by any process 
 instituted by another state. The Danish ships of war being 
 instructed to use force against search, two hostile collisions 
 followed, in one of which several men were killed and wounded, 
 and the Danish frigate was taken into a British port — though 
 afterwards released. 
 
 The latter of these conflicts occurred in July, 1800. Great 
 Britain then sent an ambassador to Denmark, backing him 
 with a fleet of nine ships of-the-line, with bomb-vessels ; and 
 at the end of August a convention was signed, by which the 
 general subject was referred to future discussion, but Denmark 
 agreed for the time to discontinue her convoys. The impor- 
 tance of the subject to Great Britain was twofold. First, by 
 having the right to seize enemy's property in neutral ships, 
 she suppressed a great part of the commerce which France 
 could carry on, thus crippling her financially ; and, second, by 
 capturing articles of ship-building as contraband of war, she 
 kept from the French materials essential to the maintenance 
 of their navy, which their own country did not produce. 
 British statesmen of all parties maintained that in these 
 
458 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 contentions there was at stake, not an empty and offensive 
 privilege, but a right vital to self-defence, to the effective 
 maintenance of which the power to search Avas fundamentally 
 necessary. 
 
 In 1800 the Czar Paul I. had become bitterly hostile to 
 Austria and Great Britain. This feeling had its origin in the 
 disasters of the campaign of 1799, and was brought to a climax 
 by the refusal of Great Britain to yield Malta to him, as Grand 
 Master of the Order, after its capture from the French in Sep- 
 tember, 1800. It had been the full purpose of the British 
 ministry to surrender it, and Nelson, much to his distaste, had 
 received specific orders to that effect ; but, besides the fact that 
 the Russians had contributed nothing directly to the reduction 
 of the island, the attitude of the Czar had become so doubtful, 
 that common prudence forbade putting into the hands of a 
 yjrobable future enemy the prize so hardly won from a present 
 foe. Paul had already announced his intention of reviving the 
 Armed Neutrality of 1780 ; and Avhen, in Kovember, he learned 
 the fall of Malta, he seized three hundred British vessels lying 
 in Russian ports, marched their crews into the interior, and at 
 the same time placed seals on all British warehoused prop- 
 erty, — a measure intended to support his demand for the 
 restitution of the island to him. 
 
 On the 16th of December a treaty was signed at St. Peters- 
 burg by Russia and Sweden, to which Denmark and Prussia 
 promptly adhered, renewing the Armed Neutrality, for the 
 support of their various claims. The consenting states bound 
 themselves to maintain their demands by force, if necessary ; 
 but no declaration of war was issued. Great Britain, in ac- 
 cepting the challenge, equally abstained from acts which 
 would constitute a state of war ; biit she armed at once to 
 shatter the coalition, before it attained coherence in aught 
 but words. From first to last, until the Armed Neutrality 
 again dissolved, though there Avas hard fighting, there was not 
 formal war. 
 
 The relation of these occurrences to the life of Nelson will 
 not be fully understood, unless the general state of Europe 
 be recalled, and the master hand of Bonaparte be recognized, 
 underlying and controlling previous changes and present con- 
 ditions. After the Battle of the Nile, and up to a year before 
 
THE ARMED NEUTRALITY OF 1800 459 
 
 this, Austria, Russia, and Great Britain liad been united in 
 arms against France ; and, in addition to the undisputed con- 
 trol of the sea by the British Kavy, they were pressing in 
 overpowering numbers upon her eastern frontiers, from the 
 North Sea to the jNFediterranean. Blunders of their own had 
 arrested the full tide of success, and the return of Bonaparte 
 from Egypt reversed the current. Russia withdrew in anger, 
 and Austria, beaten upon field after field, in Italy and Ger- 
 many, by Bonaparte and Moreau, had finally consented to 
 peace after the disastrous defeat of Hohenlinden, on the 3d 
 of December, 1800. Great Britain was left without an ally ; 
 and Russia was added to the list of her active enemies by 
 the skilful political manipulation of Bonaparte, who played 
 upon the impulses and weaknesses of the half-mad Czai*, 
 releasing with distinguished marks of respect all Russian 
 prisoners, and offering the vain gift of Malta, the French 
 garrison of which was even then clutched by the throat in 
 the iron grip of the British sea-power. 
 
 The renewal of the Armed Neutrality was thus, primarily, 
 the work of Bonaparte. He alone had the keenness to see 
 all the possibilities in favor of France that were to be found 
 in the immense combination, and he alone possessed the skill 
 and the power to touch the various chords, whose concert 
 was necessary to its harmonious action. Although it was 
 true, as Nelson said, that Paul was the trunk of the many- 
 limbed tree, it was yet more true that Bonaparte's deft cajol- 
 ing of the Czar, and the inducements astutely suggested by 
 him to Prussia, were the vitalizing forces which animated 
 the two principal parties in the coalition, in whose wake the 
 weaker states were dragged. Through the former he hoped 
 to effect a combination of the Baltic navies against the 
 British ; through the latter he looked to exclude Great 
 Britain from her important commerce with the Continent, 
 which was carried on mainly by the ports of Prussia, or by 
 those of North Germany, which she could control. Thus, 
 by the concerted and simultaneous action of direct weight of 
 arms on the one hand, and of commercial embarrassment on 
 the other, Bonaparte hoped to overbear the power of his 
 chief enemy ; and here, as on other occasions, both before 
 and after, Nelson was at once the quickening spirit of the 
 
460 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 enterprise, and the direct agent of the blow, which brought 
 down his plans, in ruins, about his ears. 
 
 Relaxing none of her efforts in other quarters of the world, 
 Great Britain drew together, to confront the new danger, 
 everything in the home waters that could float, till she had 
 gathered a fleet of twenty sail-of-the-line, with smaller cruisers 
 in due proportion. '' Under the present impending storm 
 from the north of Europe," wrote St. Vincent, from his perch 
 above the waters of Torbay, "to enable us to meet such a 
 host of foes, no ship under my command must hav^e anything 
 done to her at Plymouth or Portsmouth that can be done at 
 this anchorage." "We are now arrived at that period," wrote 
 Nelson, " what we have often heard of, but must now execute 
 — that of fighting for our dear Country; and I trust that, al- 
 •^ though we may not be able to subdue our host of enemies, yet 
 we may make them ashamed of themselves, and prove that they 
 cannot injure us." "I have only to say," he wrote to Earl 
 Spencer, who must have rejoiced to see the old spirit flaming 
 again in undiminished vigor, " what you, my dear Lord, are 
 fully satisfied of, that the service of my King and Country 
 is the object nearest my heart; and that a first-rate, or sloop 
 of war, is a matter of perfect indifference to your most faith- 
 ful and obliged Nelson." 
 
 The " San Josef " being considered too heavy a ship for 
 the Baltic service. Nelson's flag was shifted on the 12th of 
 February to the " St. George," a three-decker of lighter draft. 
 Hardy accompanied him as captain, and on the 17th Nelson 
 received orders to place himself under the command of Sir 
 Hyde Parker. A few days afterwards, the " St. George " 
 went to Spithead, where she received on board six hundred 
 troops, under the command of Colonel William Stewart, to 
 whom we owe the fullest and most interesting account of the 
 expedition in general, and of the Battle of Copenhagen in 
 particular, that has been transmitted by an eye-witness. The 
 ship sailed again on the 2d of March for Yarmouth, where 
 she arrived on the 6th. The next day Nelson went to call 
 on the commander-in-chief, who was living on shore, his flag 
 flying on board a vessel in the roads. " I remember," says 
 Colonel Stewart, "that Lord Nelson regretted Sir Hyde being 
 on shore. We breakfasted that morning as usual, soon after 
 
THE BALTIC EXPEDITION 461 
 
 six o'clock, for we were always up before daylight. "We went 
 on shore, so as to be at Sir H3'de's door at eight o'clock, Lord 
 Nelson choosing to be amusingly exact to that hour, Avhich he 
 considered as a very late one for business." 
 
 At this, his first official visit, the commander-in-chief, it 
 is said, scarcely noticed him, and Nelson, as will be seen, 
 complained freely of the treatment he at the beginning 
 received. Parker was now verging on old age, but he had 
 recently married a young wife, who was in Yarmouth with 
 him, and the two had arranged to give a great ball on the 
 13th of March ; altogether a bad combination for a military 
 undertaking. Nelson, who was in haste to get away, — chiefly 
 because of his sound martial instinct that this was peculiarly 
 a case for celerity, but partly, also, because of anxiety to get 
 the thing over and done, and to return to his home comforts, 
 — appears to have represented matters unofficially to the 
 Admiralty, a step for which his personal intimacy with St. 
 Vincent and Troubridge afforded easy opportunity ; and an 
 express quickly arrived, ordering the fleet to sea at once.^ 
 " The signal is made to prepare to unmoor at twelve o'clock," 
 wrote Nelson to Troubridge on the 11th. "Now we can have 
 no desire for staying, for her ladyship is gone, and the Ball 
 for Friday knocked up by yours and the Earl's unpoliteness, 
 to send gentlemen to sea instead of dancing with white gloves, 
 I will only say," he continues, " as yet I know not that we 
 are even going to the Baltic, except from the newspapers, 
 and at sea I cannot go out of my ship but with serious incon- 
 venience," — owing to the loss of his arm. What was not 
 told him before starting, therefore, could not be told by mouth 
 till after arrival. 
 
 It will be remembered that Sir Hyde Parker had succeeded 
 Hotham in the chief command of the Mediterranean, for a 
 brief but critical month in 1795,^ and that Nelson had then 
 complained of his action as regards the general conduct of 
 the campaign, and specifically for having reduced to the point 
 of inefficiency the small squadron under Nelson's own direc- 
 tion, upon Avhlch the most important issues hinged. Possibly 
 Parker had heard this, possibly the notorious disregard of 
 
 1 Naval Chronicle, vol. xxxvii. p. 445. 
 
 2 AiUe, pp. 170-172. 
 
462 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 Keith's orders a few months before influenced him to keep his 
 renowned, but independent, subordinate at a distance in ofli- 
 cial matters. It was not well advised ; though probably the 
 great blunderers were- the Admiralty, in sending as second 
 a man who had shown himself so exceptionally and uniquely 
 capable of supreme command, and so apt to make trouble for 
 mediocre superiors. If Lord St. Vincent's surmise was cor- 
 rect, Parker, who was a very respectable of&cer, had been 
 chosen for his present place because in possession of all the 
 information acquired during the last preparation for a Russian 
 war; while Kelson fancied that St. Vincent himself, as com- 
 mander of the Channel fleet, had recommended him, in order 
 to get rid of a second in command who did not carry out satis- 
 factorily the methods of his superior. If that were so, the 
 mistake recoiled upon his own head ; for, while the appoint- 
 ment was made by Earl Spencer, St. Vincent succeeded him as 
 First Lord before the expedition sailed, and the old seaman 
 would much have preferred to see Nelson at the helm. He 
 was quite sure of the latter, he said, and should have been in 
 no apprehension if he had been of rank to take the chief com- 
 mand ; but he could not feel so sure about Sir Hyde, as he had 
 never been tried. Whatever the truth, Lady Malmesbury's 
 comment after the event Avas indisputable : " I feel very sorry 
 for Sir Hyde; but no wise man would ever have gone with 
 Kelson, or over him, as he was sure to be in the background 
 in every case." 
 
 " I declare solemnly," wrote Nelson to Davison four days 
 after reporting, " that I do not know " — officially, of course — 
 " that I am going to the Baltic, and much worse than that I 
 could tell you. Sir Hyde is on board sulk^^ Stewart tells 
 me, his treatment of me is now noticed. Dickson came on 
 board to-day to say all were scandalized at his gross neglect. 
 Burn this letter ; then it can never appear, and you can speak 
 as if your knowledge came from another quarter." That day 
 the orders came from the Admiralty to go to sea ; and the 
 next, March 12, the ships then present sailed, — fifteen ships- 
 of-the-line and two fifties, besides frigates, sloops of war, 
 brigs, cutters, fire-ships, and seven bomb- vessels, — for, if the 
 Danes Avere obstinate, Copenhagen was to be bombarded. On 
 the 16th of March Kelson wrote both to Davison and Ladj 
 
THE BALTIC EXPEDITION 463 
 
 Hamilton that he as yet knew nothing, except by common 
 report. '•' Sir Hyde has not told me officially a thing. I am 
 sorry enough to be sent on such an expedition, but nothing 
 can, I trust, degrade, do what they will.^' His mind was in a 
 condition to see the worst motives in what befell him. " I 
 know, I see, that I am not to be supported in the way I ought, 
 but the St. George is beginning to prepare this day for battle, 
 and she shall be true to herself. . . . Captain Murray sees, as 
 do every one, what is meant to disgrace me, but that is impos- 
 sible. Even the Captain of the Fleet [Parker's Chief of Staff] 
 sent me word that it was not his doing, for that Sir Hyde 
 Parker had run his pen through all that could do me credit, 
 or give me support ; but never mind, Nelson will be first if he 
 lives, and you shall partake of all his glory. So it shall be 
 my study to distinguish myself, that your lieart shall leap for 
 joy when my name is mentioned." ^ 
 
 Enough reached his ears to draw forth unqualified expres- 
 sions of dissent from the plans proposed, and equally clear 
 statements as to what should be done, — all stamped unmis- 
 takably with the " Nelson touch," to use an apt phrase of his 
 own. "Reports say," he tells Lady Hamilton, "we are to 
 anchor before we get to Cronenburg Castle, that our minister 
 at Copenhagen may negotiate. What nonsense ! How much 
 better could we negotiate was our fleet off Copenhagen, and the 
 Danish minister would seriously reflect how he brought the 
 fire of England on his Master's fleet and capital ; but to keep 
 us out of sight is to seduce Denmark into a war. . . . H they 
 are the plans of IMinisters, they are weak in the extreme, and 
 very different to what I understood from Mr. Pitt.^ If they 
 originate with Sir Hyde, it makes him, in my mind, as — but 
 never mind, your Nelson's plans are bold and decisive — all 
 on the great scale. I hate your pen and ink men ; a fleet of 
 British ships of war are the best negotiators in Europe." 
 While the greatness and decision of his character remain un- 
 impaired, perhaps even heightened, it will be noticed that 
 self-reliance, never in any man more justified, has tended to 
 degenerate into boastfulness, and restlessness under displeas- 
 ing orders to become suspicion of the motives prompting them. 
 
 1 Nelson to Lady Hamilton. Pettigrew, vol. 1. pp. 442-444. 
 
 2 Pitt had resigned from office since then. 
 
4G4 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 " They all hate me and treat me ill," he saj^s, speaking of 
 Spencer's and St. Vincent's administrations. " I cannot, 
 my dear friend, recall to mind any one real act of kindness, 
 but all of unkindness." It must, of course, be remembered 
 that, while such expressions portray faithfully the working of 
 the inner spirit, and serve, by contrast, to measure the Nelson 
 of 1801 against the Nelson of 1796, they were addressed to 
 the most intimate of friends, and do not necessarily imply a 
 corresponding bearing before the eyes of the world. 
 
 An amusing story is told of a shrewd stratagem resorted to 
 by Nelson, on the passage to the Baltic, to thaw the barrier of 
 frigidity in his superior, which not only was unpleasant to him 
 personally, as well as injurious to the interests of the state, 
 but threatened also to prevent his due share in the planning 
 and execution of the enterprise in hand, thus diminishing the 
 glory he ever coveted. The narrator, Lieutenant Layman, was 
 serving on board the '' St. George," and happened to mention, 
 in Nelson's presence, that some years before he had seen 
 caught a very fine turbot on the Dogger Bank, over which the 
 fleet must pass on its way. 
 
 " This being a mere casual remark, nothing more would have 
 been thought of it, had not Nelson, after showing great anxiety 
 in his inquiries when they should be on the Dogger Bank, sig- 
 nificantly said to Mr. Layman, ' Do you think we could catch 
 a turbot ? ' After a try or two, a small turbot was caught. 
 Lord Nelson appeared delighted, and called out, ' Send it to 
 Sir Hyde.' Something being said about the risk of sending a 
 boat, from the great sea, lowering weather, and its being dark, 
 his Lordship said with much meaning, ' I know the Chief is 
 fond of good living, and he shall have the turbot.' That his 
 Lordship was right appeared by the result, as the boat re- 
 turned with a note of compliment and thanks from Parker. 
 The turbot having opened a communication, the effect was 
 Avonderful. At Merton Mr. Layman told Lord Nelson that a 
 man eminent in the naval profession had said to him, ' Do tell 
 me how Parker came to take the laurel from his own brow, and 
 place it on Nelson's ? ' ' What did you say ? ' asked Nelson. 
 ' That it was not a gift,' replied Layman, ' as your Lordship 
 had gained the victory by a turbot.' ' A turbot ! ' ' Yes, my 
 lord, I well recollect your great desire to catch a turbot, and 
 
THE BALTIC EXPEDITION 405 
 
 your astonishing many, by insisting upon its being immediately 
 sent to Sir Hyde, who condescended to return a civil note ; i 
 withou-t which opening your Lordship would not have been ; 
 consulted in the Cattegat, and without such intercourse your 
 Lordship would not have got the detached squadron ; without 
 which there would not have been any engagement, and conse- 
 quently no victory.' Lord Nelson smilingly said, <You are 
 right.' " 1 
 
 On the 19th of March the fleet was collected off the northern 
 point of Denmark, known as the Skaw. Prom there the broad 
 channel, called the Kattegat, extends southward, between 
 Sweden and the northern part of the Danish peninsula, until 
 it reaches the large Island of Zealand, upon the eastern shore 
 of which Copenhagen lies. The two principal entrances into 
 the Baltic are on either side of Zealand. The eastern one, 
 separating it from Sweden, is called the Sound, that to the 
 west is known as the Great Belt; each, from the military 
 point of view, possessed its particular advantages and par- 
 ticular drawbacks. " We are slow in our motions as ever," 
 wrote Nelson, whose impatient and decided character would 
 have used the fair wind that was blowing to enter the 
 Kattegat, and to proceed at once to Copenhagen, "but I 
 hope all for the best. I have not yet seen Sir Hyde, but I 
 purpose going this morning ; for no attention shall be want- 
 ing on my part." The next day he reports the result of the 
 interview to his friend Davison : " I staid an hour, and 
 ground out something, but there was not that degree of /> 
 openness which I should have shown to my second in com- v 
 mand." The fleet advanced deliberately, a frigate being 
 sent ahead to land the British envoy, Mr. Vansittart, whose 
 instructions were that only forty -eight hours were to be al- 
 lowed the Danes to accept the demands of Great Britain, 
 and to withdraw from the coalition. The slowness here, 
 like every other delay, chafed Nelson, whose wish from the 
 beginning was to proceed at the utmost speed, not merely 
 from the Skaw, but from England, with whatever ships could 
 be collected ; for he reasoned perfectly accurately upon the 
 safe general principle that delay favors the defence more 
 than the offence. " I only now long to be gone," he wrote 
 
 1 Naval Chronicle, vol. xxxvii. p. 446. 
 30 
 
466 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 before leaving Yarmouth: '' time is precious, aud every hour 
 makes more resistance; strike quick, and home." It was 
 particularly true in this case, for Denmark, long used to 
 peace, had not thought war possible, and every day was 
 precious to her in restoring and increasing the neglected pro- 
 tection of Copenhagen. 
 
 On the evening of March 20 the fleet anchored in the 
 Kattegat, eighteen miles from Cronenburg Castle and the 
 town of Elsinore, at which the Sound narrows to three 
 miles. Both shores being hostile, Parker would not attempt 
 to force the passage until he learned the result of the British 
 mission to Copenhagen ; meanwhile the Danes were working 
 busily at the blockships and batteries of the city. On the 
 23d Mr. Vansittart returned with the terms rejected ; and he 
 bi-ought, also, alarming reports of the state of the batteries 
 at Elsinore and Copenhagen, which were much stronger than 
 the previous information of the British Cabinet had shown, 
 proving, as Nelson urged, that each day's delay increased the 
 enemy's relative power. Sir Hyde called a council. "Now 
 we are sure of fighting," wrote Nelson to Lady Hamilton. 
 " I am sent for. When it was a joke I was kept in the back- 
 ground ; to-morrow will I hope be a proud day for England 
 — to have it so, no exertion shall be wanting from your 
 most attached and affectionate friend," 
 
 He was accompanied to Parker's flagship by Lieutenant 
 Layman, who went in the boat to steer for him. " On board 
 the London," according to Layman, " the heads appeared very 
 gloomy. Mr. Vansittart, who arrived at the same moment 
 Nelson did, said that if the fleet proceeded to attack, it 
 would be beaten, and the attempt was in danger of being 
 relinquished. The Captain of the Fleet said to Layman that 
 the Danes \yfire too strong to attack, and a torpor verging to 
 despondency prevailed in the councils. While others were 
 ' dismayed, however, Lord Nelson questioned those just arrived 
 from Copenhagen not only as to the force, but as to the posi- 
 tion of the enemy. Such interrogatories he called 'bringing 
 people to the post.' Having learned that the great strength 
 of the enemy was at the head of the line, supported by the 
 . Crown Battery, his Lordship emphatically observed that to 
 begin the attack there would be like taking a bull by the 
 
THE BALTIC EXPEDITION 467 
 
 horns, and he therefore suggested the attempt by the tail." ^ 
 In order to avoid the formidable works at Cronenburg, and 
 yet come up in rear of Copenhagen, according to this proposi- 
 tion of Kelson's, it was proposed in the council to go by the 
 Great Belt. That passage is more intricate, and therefore, 
 from the pilot's point of view, more hazardous than the 
 Sound. Nelson was not much deterred by the alarming re- 
 ports. " Go by the Sound, or by the Belt, or anyhow," he 
 said, " only lose not an hour." 
 
 The minutes of the council have not been transmitted, but 
 it is evident from Nelson's own letter of the following day, 
 soon to be quoted in full, and also from one written to him 
 by Mr. Vansittart, after the latter reached London, that he 
 urged upon Parker, and prevailed with him, to throw aside 
 the instructions of the Government, under the changed condi- 
 tions, and to adopt boldly the plan which, according to his 
 present knowledge, should seem most certain to crush Den- 
 mark at once. After that, he would shatter the coalition by 
 immediate steps against Russia. Only such a bold spirit, 
 with the prestige of a Nelson, can dominate a council of war, 
 or extort decisive action from a commander-in-chief who calls 
 one. " The difficulty," wrote Nelson some time afterwards, 
 *' was to get our commander-in-chief to either go past Cronen- 
 burg or through the Belt [that is, by any passage], because, 
 what Sir Hyde thought best, and what I believe was settled 
 before I came on board the London, was to stay in the 
 Cattegat, and there wait the time when the whole naval 
 force of the Baltic might choose to come out and fight — a 
 measure, in my opinion, disgraceful to our Country. I wanted 
 to get at an enemy as soon as possible to strike a home stx-oke, 
 and Paul was the enemy most vulnerable, and of the greatest 
 consequence for us to humble." So pressing, daring, and out- 
 spoken were his counsels, so freely did he now, as at former 
 times, advocate setting aside the orders of distant superiors, 
 that he thought advisable to ask Vansittart, who was to sail 
 immediately for England, to explain to the Admiralty all the 
 conditions and reasons, which Vansittart did. St. Vincent, as 
 Pirst Lord, gave unhesitating approval to what his former 
 lieutenant had advised. 
 
 1 Naval Chronicle, vol. xxxvii., art. " Layman." 
 
468 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 Nelsou's uuderstauding of the situation was, iu truth, acute, 
 profound, and decisive. In the northern combination against 
 Great Britain, Paul was the trunk, Denmark and Sweden 
 the branches. Could he get at the trunk and liew it down, 
 the branches fell with it ; but should time and strength first 
 be spent lopping off the branches, the trunk would remain, 
 and "my power must be weaker when its greatest strength 
 is required." As things then were, the Russian Navy was 
 divided, part being in Cronstadt, and a large fraction, twelve 
 ships-of-the-line, in Revel, an advanced and exposed port, 
 where it was detained fettered by the winter's ice. Get at 
 that and smite it, and the Russian Navy is disabled ; all falls 
 together. This would be his own course, if independent. As 
 Parker, however, was obstinately resolved not to leave Denmark 
 hostile in his rear. Nelson had to bend to the will of his 
 superior. He did so, without forsaking his own purpose. 
 As in the diverse objects of his care in the Mediterranean, 
 where he could not compel, he sought diligently to compass 
 his object, by persuasion, by clear and full explanation of his 
 lofty views, by stirring appeals to duty and opportunity, 
 striving to impart to another his own insight, and to arouse 
 in him his own single-minded and dauntless activity. Con- 
 ceding, perforce, that Denmark was not to be left hostile in 
 the rear, • — although he indicates that this object might be at- 
 tained by masking her power with a detachment, while the 
 main effort was immediately directed against Revel, — his 
 suggestions to Parker for reducing Denmark speedily are 
 dominated by the same conception. Strategic and tactical 
 considerations unite to dictate, that the fleet, whether it go 
 by the Sound or the Belt, must quickly reach and hold a 
 position beyond — and therefore in the rear of — Copenhagen. 
 There it interposed between Denmark and Russia; from 
 there it approached Copenhagen where its defences were 
 weakest. This comprehensive exposition went, with Nelson's 
 customary directness, straight to the root of the matter. 
 
 Next day, after returning to his own shijD, Nelson drew up 
 the following paper, which is at once so characteristic of his 
 temperament and genius, and so lucid and masterly a review 
 of the political and military conditions, that, contrary to the 
 author's usual practice, it is given entire. Being devoted to 
 

 Nautical Mile» 
 
 ifm l,t^ uri'eUon.) 
 
LETTER TO SIR HYDE PARKER 469 
 
 a single subject, and inspired by the spirit of tlie writer when 
 in a state of more than usual exaltation, it possesses a unity 
 of purpose and demonstration, necessarily absent from most 
 of his letters, in which many and diverse matters have to be 
 treated. 
 
 24tli March, 1801, 
 My dear Sir Hyde, — The conversation we had yesterday has 
 naturally, from its importance, been the subject of my thoughts ; and 
 the more I have reflected, the more I am confirmed in opinion, that 
 not a moment should be lost in attacking the enemy : they will every 
 day and hour be stronger ; we never shall be so good a match for 
 them as at this moment. The only consideration iu my mind is, 
 how to get at them with the least risk to our ships. By Mr. Yansit- 
 tart's account, the Danes have taken every means in their power to 
 prevent our getting to attack CoiDenhagen by the passage of the 
 Sound. Cronenburg has been strengthened, the Crown Islands for- 
 tified, on the outermost of which are twenty guns, pointing mostly 
 downwards, and only eight hundred yards from very formidable 
 batteries placed under the Citadel, supported by five Sail of the Line, 
 seven Floating batteries of fifty guns each, besides Small-craft, Gun- 
 boats, &c. &c. ; and that the Revel Squadron of twelve or fourteen ' 
 Sail of the Line are soon expected, as also five Sail of Swedes. It 
 would appear by what you have told me of your instructions, that 
 Government took for granted you would find no difficulty in getting 
 off Copenhagen, and in the event of a failure of negotiation, you 
 , might instantly attack; and that there woiild be scarcely a doubt but 
 " the Danish Fleet would be destroyed, and the Capital made so hot 
 that Denmark woidd listen to reason and its true interest. By ]\Ir. 
 Vansittart's account, their state of preparation exceeds what he con- 
 ceives our Government thought possible, and that the Danish Govern- 
 jment is hostile to us in the greatest possible degree. Therefore here 
 / you are, with almost the safety, certainly with the honour of England 
 I more intrusted to you, than ever yet fell to the lot of any British 
 Officer. On your decision depends, whether our Country shall be 
 degraded in the eyes of Europe, or whether she shall rear her head 
 higher than ever; again do I repeat, never did our Country depend 
 so much on the success of any Fleet as on this. How best to honour 
 our Country and abate the pride of her Enemies, by defeating their 
 schemes, must be the subject of your deepest consideration as Com- 
 mander-in-Chief; and if what I have to offer can be the least useful 
 in forming yoiTr decision, yon are most heartily welcome. 
 
 I shall begin with supposing you are determined to enter by the 
 Passage of the Sound, as there are those who think, if you leave that 
 passage open, that the Danish Fleet may sail from Copenhagen, and 
 
470 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 join the Dutch or French. I own I haA^e no fears on that subject; 
 for it is not likely that whilst their Capital is menaced with an attack, 
 9,000 of her best men should be sent out of the Kingdom. I suppose 
 that some damage may arise amongst our masts and yards ; yet per- 
 haps thei'e will not be one of them but could be made serviceable 
 again. You are now about Cronenburg : if the wind be fair, and 
 you determine to attack the Ships and Crown Islands, j'ou must ex- 
 pect the natural issue of such a battle — Ships crippled, and perhaps 
 one or two lost; for the wind which carries you in, will most prolia- 
 bly not bring out a crippled Ship. This mode I call taking the bull 
 by the horns. It, however, will not prevent the Revel Ships, or 
 Swedes, from joining the Danes ; and to prevent this from taking 
 effect, is, in my humble opinion, a measure absolutely necessary — 
 and still to attack Copenhagen. Two modes are in my view; one 
 to pass Cronenburg, taking the risk of damage, and to pass up^ the 
 deejiest and straightest Channel above the Middle Grounds ; and 
 coming down the Garbar or King's Channel, to attack their Floating 
 batteries, &c. &c., as we find it convenient. It must have the effect 
 of preventing a junction between the Russians, Swedes, and Danes, 
 and may give us an opportunity of bomliarding Copenhagen. I am 
 also pretty certain that a passage could be found to the northward 
 of Southolm for all our Ships ; perhaps it might be necessary to warp 
 a short distance in the very nai-row part. Should this mode of attack 
 be ineligible, the passage of the Belt, I have no doubt, would be ac- 
 complished in four or five days, and then the attack by Draco could 
 be carried into effect, and the junction of the Russians prevented, 
 with every probability of success against the Danish Floating bat- 
 teries. What effect a bombardment might have, I am not called upon 
 to give an oi")inion ; but think the w^ay would be cleared for the trial. 
 Supposing us through the Belt with the wind first westerly, would 
 it not be possible to either go with the Fleet, or detach ten Ships of 
 three and two decks, with one > Bomb and two Fireships, to Revel, to 
 destroy the Russian Squadron at that place ? I do not see the great 
 risk of such a detachment, and with the remainder to attempt the 
 business at Copenhagen. The measure may be thought bold, but I 
 am of opinion the boldest measures are the safest ; and our Country 
 /^ demands a most vigorous exertion of her force, directed with judg- 
 ment. In supporting you, my dear Sir Hyde, through the arduous 
 and important task you have undertaken, no exertion of head 
 or heart shall be wanting from your most obedient and faithful 
 servant, 
 
 Nelsox axd Bronte. 
 
 1 That is, from noiih to south. It may be well to notice that to go from 
 the Kattegat to the Baltic is vp, although from north to south. 
 
THE BALTIC EXPEDITION 471 
 
 On the 25th. the wind was too strong to allow the ships 
 to lift their anchors. On the 26th the fleet weighed, and pro- 
 ceeded for a few hours in the direction of the Great Belt, 
 which Parker had decided to follow. Captain Otway of the 
 " London," Sir Hyde's flagship, chanced to have local knowl- 
 edge of that passage, which had not come before the council, 
 because he was not a member. When he ascertained the in- 
 tention, he explained the difficulties and risks to the adn;iral, 
 upon which the latter concluded that the batteries of Crouen- 
 burg and Elsinore presented fewer dangers. He accordingly 
 directed the fleet to return toward the Sound, and sent Otway 
 to tell Nelson he should take that route. " I don't care a 
 d — n by which passage we go," replied the latter, " so that we 
 fight them." " Sir Hyde Parker," he wrote the same day to 
 Lady Hamilton, "has by this time found out the worth of 
 your Nelson, and that he is a useful sort of man on a pinch ; 
 therefore, if he ever has thought unkindly of me, I freely for- 
 give him. Nelson must stand among the first, or he must 
 fall." Side by side with such expressions of dauntless resolve 
 and unfailing self-confidence stand words of deepest tender- 
 ness, their union under one cover typifying aptly the twin 
 emotions of heroic aspiration and passionate devotion, which 
 at this time held within him alternate, j^et not conflicting, 
 sway. In the same letter he tells her fondly, " You know I 
 am more bigoted to your picture — the faithful representation 
 of you I have with me — than ever a Neapolitan was to St. 
 Januarius, and look upon you as my guardian angel, and God, 
 I trust, will make you so to me. Plis will be done." From 
 the time of leaving he wrote to her practically every day. 
 " Mr. S. is quite right," he says to her on one occasion, "that 
 through the medium of your influence is the surest way to 
 get my interest. It is true, and it will ever be, whilst you 
 hold your present conduct, for you never ask anything that 
 does not do honour to your feelings, as the best won;ian, as 
 far as my knowledge goes, that ever lived, and it must do me 
 honour the complying with them." 
 
 The fleet anchored again on the evening of the 26th of 
 March, six miles from Cronenburg, and was there detained 
 three days by head winds and calms. In this interval, Nel- | 
 son's general plan of operations having been adopted, he 
 
472 THE LIFE OF NELSOK 
 
 shifted his flag to a lighter ship, the "Elephant," seventy- 
 four, commanded by Captain Foley, the same who had led 
 ^f^UiA'''^' the fleet inside the French line in Aboukir Bay. On the 30th, 
 "^P^-^ the wind coming fair from northAvest, the ships weighed and 
 passed Cronenburg Castle. It had been expected that the 
 Swedish batteries would open upon them, but, finding they 
 remained silent, the column inclined to that side, thus going 
 clear of the Danish guns. " More powder and shot, I believe, 
 never were thrown away," wrote Nelson, " for not one shot 
 striick a single ship of the British fleet. Some of our ships 
 fired ; but the Elephant did not return a single shot. I hope 
 to reserve them for a better occasion." 
 y: That afternoon they anchored again, about five miles below 
 Copenhagen. Parker and Nelson, accompanied by several 
 senior officers, went at once in a schooner to view the defences 
 of the town. " We soon perceived," wrote Stewart, " that our 
 delay had been of important advantage to the enemy, who had 
 lined the northern edge of the shoals near the Crown batteries, 
 and the front of the harbour and arsenal, with a formidable 
 flotilla. The Trekroner (Three Crowns) Battery" — a strong 
 work established on piles, whose position will be given — 
 "appeared, in particular, to have been strengthened, and all 
 the buoys of the Northern, and of the King's Channels had 
 been removed." Nelson, however, was, or feigned to be, less 
 impressed. " I have just been reconnoitring the Danish line 
 of defence," he wrote to Lady Hamilton. "It looks for- 
 midable to those who are children at war, but to my judgment, 
 with ten sail-of-the-line I think I can annihilate them ; at 
 all events, I hope to be allowed to try." This is again the 
 same spirit of the seaman " determined to attack " at Aboukir ; 
 the same resolution as before Bastia, where he kept shut in 
 his own breast the knowledge of the odds, feeling that to do 
 nothing was as bad as failure — and worse. A like eagerness 
 ' does not seem to have prevailed on board the flagship. 
 Parker had allowed himself to be stiffened to the fighting-point 
 by the junior he had before disregarded, but that he looked to 
 the issue with more than doubt may be inferred from the 
 words of his private secretary, the Eev. Mr. Scott, who after- 
 wards held the same relation to Nelson. " I fear," he wrote 
 on the day of the council, " there is a great deal of Quixotism 
 
BATTLE OF COPENHAGEN 
 
 APRIL 2.1801. 
 
 References: 
 
 A' Agamemnon, af Anchor 
 BB-Brih'sh Line of Baffle. 
 C.C" British 5 flips Aground, 
 ii" British Frigates. 
 
 D.D- Danish Line of Hulks. 
 
 N- Anchorage of Nelson's Division, 
 
 April 1-2. 
 P~Anchorage of British Main Fleet 
 
 under Sir H. ParKer. 
 
PLAN OF ATTACK 47:: 
 
 in this business ; there is no getting any positive information 
 of their strength." 
 
 Nelson's general plan of attack is set forth in main outlines 
 in the letter already given, but it is desirable to.give a some- 
 what more detailed description. It will be seen, by the an- 
 nexed chart, that there are before Copenhagen two channels 
 by which the city can be passed. Between the two lies a shoal, 
 called the Middle Ground. The inner, known as the King's 
 Channel, lay under the guns of the defences which had been 
 hurriedly improvised for the present emergency. These con- 
 sisted of a line of hulks, mostly mastless, ranged along the 
 inner side of the King's Channel, close to the flats which bor- 
 dered it, flanked at the northern end by the permanent work, 
 called the Trekroner ^ Battery. Westward of the latter lay, 
 across the mouth of the harbor proper, two more hulks, and 
 a small squadron consisting of two ships-of-the-line and a 
 frigate, masted, and in commission. This division was not 
 seriously engaged, and, as a factor in the battle, may be 
 disregarded. 
 
 The northern part of this defence was decisively the stronger. 
 To attack there, Kelson called '• taking the bull by the horns." 
 The southern wing was much more exposed. Nor was this 
 all. An advance from the north must be made with a north- 
 erly wind. If unsuccessful, or even, in case of success, if 
 ships were badly crippled, they could not return to the north, 
 where the fleet Avas. On the other hand, attack from the 
 south presupposed a southerly wind, with which, after an ac- 
 tion, the engaged ships could rejoin the fleet, if they threaded 
 safely the difficult navigation. In any event there was risk, 
 but none knew better than Nelson that without risks war is 
 not made. To the considerations above given he added that, 
 when south of the city, the British would be interj^osed be- 
 tween the other Baltic navies and Denmark. The latter, in 
 that case, could not receive reinforcements, unless the English 
 squadron were first defeated. He therefore proposed that ten 
 ships-of-the-line, of the lighter draughts, which he offered him- 
 self to lead, should pass through the outer, or northern channel, 
 gain the southern flank of the defence, and thence make the prin- 
 
 1 Trekroner, wlneli was then a favorite military name in Denmark, refers to 
 the three Crowns of Demnark, Norway, and Sweden, once united. 
 
THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 cipal attack, while tlie rest of the fleet supported them by a 
 demonstration against the northern end. The sagacity of this 
 scheme is best attested from the enemy himself. " We have 
 been deceived in the plan of attack," wrote the historian 
 JSTiebuhr, then residing in the city ; " and," now that the right 
 wing of the defence is destroyed, " all is at stake." The 
 nights of the 30th and 31st were employed in surveying the 
 waters, laying down buoys to replace those removed by the 
 Danes, and in further reconnoissance of the enemy's position. 
 The artillery officers who were to supervise the bombardment 
 satisfied themselves that, if the floating defences south of the 
 Trekroner were destroyed, the bomb-vessels could be placed 
 in such a position as to shell the city, without being them- 
 selves exposed to undue peril. 
 
 Parker gave JSTelson twelve ships-of-the-line, two more than 
 he had asked; a judicious addition, for the main part of the 
 fighting was to fall to him, and the difficulties of pilotage 
 might, and actually did, deprive him of several ships. More- 
 over, while it was proposed that the vessels remaining with 
 Parker should approach and engage the northern defences, yet 
 the time of attack depended upon a fair wind for JSTelson ; and 
 as that would necessarily be foul for the other body, the 
 diversion made by it might be, and proved to be, ineffective. 
 Sound judgment dictated giving Nelson all that could be 
 spared. 
 
 On the afternoon of the 31st another council was held, in 
 which Nelson's plan was finally ratified ; he again volunteered 
 his services, which were accepted and his force detailed. As 
 usual, the council was prolific in suggestions of danger. 
 Stewart, who seems to have been present, writes: "During 
 this Council of War, the energy of Lord Nelson's character 
 was remarked: certain difficulties had been started by some 
 of the members, relative to each of the three Powers we should 
 either have to engage, in succession or united, in those seas. 
 The number of the Russians was, in particular, represented as 
 formidable. Lord Nelson kept pacing the cabin, mortified at 
 everything that savoured either of alarm or irresolution. 
 AVhen the above remark was applied to the Swedes, he sharply 
 observed, ' The more numerous the better ; ' and when to the 
 Russians, he repeatedly said, 'So much the better, I wish they 
 
PLAN OF ATTACK 475 
 
 were twice as many, the easier the victory, depend on it.' He 
 alhuled, as he afterwards explained in private, to the total 
 want of tactique among the Korthern fleets; and to his inten- 
 tion, whenever he should bring either the Swedes or Russians 
 to action, of attacking the head of their line, and confusing 
 their movements as much as possible. He used to say, ' Close 
 with a Frenchman, but out-mauoeuvre a Russian.' " 
 
 Nelson gave personal supervision to the general work of 
 buoying the Northern Channel. On the morning of April 1st 
 he made a final examination of the ground in the frigate 
 " Amazon," commanded by Captain Riou, who fell in the next 
 day's battle. Returning at about one in the afternoon, he 
 signalled his division to weigh, and, the wind favoring, the 
 whole passed without accident, the "Amazon" leading. By 
 nightfall they were again anchored, south of the Middle 
 Ground, not over two miles from that end of the Danish line. 
 As the anchor dropped, Nelson called out emphatically, "I 
 will fight them the moment I have a fair wind." As there 
 were in all thirty-three ships of war, they were crowded to- 
 gether, and, being Avithiu shelling distance of the mortars on 
 Amag Island, might have received much harm ; but the Danes 
 were too preoccupied with their yet incomplete defences to 
 note that the few shells thrown dropped among their enemies. 
 
 "On board the Elephant," writes Stewart, who with his 
 soldiers had followed Nelson from the " St. George," " the 
 night of the 1st of April was an important one. As soon as 
 the fleet was at anchor, the gallant Nelson sat down to table 
 with a large party of his comrades in arms. He was in the 
 highest spirits, and drank to a leading wind and to the success 
 of the ensuing day. Captains Foley, Hardy, Fremantle, Riou, 
 Inman, Admiral Graves, his Lordship's second in command, 
 and a few others to whom he was particularly attached, were 
 of this interesting party ; from which every man separated 
 with feelings of admiration for their great leader, and with 
 anxious impatience to follow him to the approaching battle. 
 The signal to prepare for action had been made early in the 
 evening. All the captains retired to their respective ships, 
 Riou excepted, who with Lord Nelson and Foley arranged the 
 Order of Battle, and those instructions that were to be issued 
 to each^ ship on the succeeding day. These three officers re- 
 
476 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 tired between nine and ten to the after-cabin, and drew up 
 those Orders that have been generally published, and which 
 ought to be referred to as the best proof of the arduous nature 
 of the enterprise in which the fleet was about to be engaged. 
 
 " From the previous fatigue of this day, and of the two pre- 
 ceding, Lord Nelson was so much exhausted while dictating 
 his instructions, that it was recommended to him by us all, 
 t-/. and, indeed, insisted upon by his old servant, ^llen, who 
 assumed much command on these occasions, that he should go 
 to his cot. It was placed on the floor, but from it he still 
 continued to dictate. Captain Hardy returned about eleven. 
 He had rowed as far as the leading ship of the enemy ; sound- 
 ing round her, and using a pole when he was apprehensive of 
 being heard. He reported the practicability of the Channel, 
 and the depth of water up to the ships of the enemy's line. 
 Had we abided by this report, in lieu of confiding in our 
 Masters and Pilots, we should have acted better. The Orders 
 were completed about one o'clock, when half a dozen clerks in 
 the foremost cabin proceeded to transcribe them. Lord Nel- 
 son's impatience again showed itself; for instead of sleeping 
 undisturbedly, as he might have done, he was every half hour 
 calling from his cot to these clerks to hasten their work, for 
 that the wind was becoming fair : he was constantly receiving 
 a report of this during the night." It was characteristic of 
 the fortune of the "heaven-born" admiral, that the wind 
 which had been fair the day before to take him south, changed 
 by the hour of battle to fair to take him north; but it is only 
 just to notice also that he himself never trifled with a fair 
 wind, nor with time. 
 
 The Orders for Battle, the process of framing which Stewart 
 narrates, have been preserved in full ; ■*■ but they require a 
 little study and analysis to detect Nelson's thought, and their 
 tactical merit, which in matters of detail is unique among his 
 works. At the Nile and Trafalgar he contented himself with 
 general plans, to meet cases which he could only foresee in 
 broad outlines ; the method of application he reserved to the 
 moment of battle, when again he signified the general direction 
 of the attack, and left the details to his subordinates. Here 
 
 1 They are to be found iu Nicolas's "Despatclies and Letters of Lord 
 Nelson," vol. iv. p. 304. 
 
11, U-. 
 
 o o. . 
 
 CD O 
 O 
 
 >2 
 
 .1 
 
 S '^ -s -§ ;^ ^ 
 ^ -s ^ ^ >S ^ 
 
 , ?5 1 .^ ^ S 
 
 Alio 
 
 •^ 
 
 si 
 
 
 «0 >) fNi 
 
 5^ Cto 
 
 
 
 
PLAN OF ATTACK 477 
 
 at Copenhagen He had been able to study the hostile disposi- 
 tions. Consequently, although he could not mark with preci- 
 sion the situations of the smaller floating batteries, those of 
 the principal blockships were known, and upon that knowledge 
 he based very particular instructions for the position each 
 ship-of-the-line was to occupy. The smaller British vessels 
 also had specific orders. 
 
 Taking the Trekroner as a point of reference for the Danish 
 order, there were north of it, on the Danish left flank, two 
 blockships. South of it were seven blockships, with a number 
 of miscellaneous floating batteries, which raised that wing of 
 the defence to eighteen — the grand total being therefore 
 twenty. This was also N'elson's count, except that he put one 
 small vessel on the north wing, reducing the southern to seven- 
 teen — an immaterial difference. South of the Trekroner, 
 the Danes had disposed their seven blockships — which were 
 mastless ships-of-the-line — as follows. Two were on the 
 right flank, supporting each other, two on the left, the three 
 others spaced between these extremes ; the distance from the 
 Trekroner to the southernmost ship being about a mile and a 
 half. The intervals were filled with the floating batteries. It 
 will be recognized that the Danes treated this southern wiug 
 as an entity by itself, of which they strengthened the flanks, 
 relying for the protection of the centre upon the nearness to 
 shoal water, which would prevent the line being pierced. 
 
 As thus described, the southern wing covered the front of 
 the city against bombardment. The two northern blockships 
 and the Trekroner did not conduce materially to that ; they 
 protected chiefly the entrance of the harbor. It was therefore 
 only necessary to reduce the southern wing ; but Nelson pre- 
 ferred to engage at once the whole line of vessels and the 
 Trekroner. It is difficult entirely to approve this refusal to 
 concentrate upon a part of the enemy's order, — an advantage 
 to which Nelson was fully alive, — but it was probably due to 
 underestimating the value of the Danish gunnery, knowing as 
 he did how long they had been at peace. He may, also, have 
 hoped something from Parker's division. Be this as it may, 
 he spread his ships-of-the-line, in the arrangement he pre- 
 scribed, from one end to the other of the enemy's order. 
 
 Having done this, however, he adopted measures well cal- 
 
418 THE LIFE OF NELSOJ? 
 
 culated to cvush the southern flank speedil}-, and then to 
 accumulate superior numbers on the northern. The British 
 were arranged in a column of attack, and the directions were 
 that the three leading ships should pass along the hostile line, 
 engaging as they went, until the headmost reached the fifth 
 Dane, a blockship inferior to itself, abreast which it was to 
 anchor by the stern, as all the British ships were to do. Num- 
 bers two and three were then to pass number one, and anchor 
 successively ahead of her, supporting her there against the 
 other enemy's batteries, while four and five were to anchor 
 astern of her, engaging the two flank blockships, which would 
 have received already the full broadsides of the three leading 
 vessels. Nelson hoped that the two southern Danes, by this 
 concentration of fire upon them, would be speedily silenced ; 
 and their immediate antagonists had orders, when that was 
 done, to cut their cables and go north, to reinforce the fight in 
 that quarter. The sooner to attain this end, a frigate and 
 some smaller vessels were told off to take position across 
 the bows of the two blockships', and to keep a raking fire upon 
 them. 
 
 The dispositions for the other British vessels were more 
 simple. They were to follow along the outer side of their 
 own engaged ships, each one anchoring as it cleared the head- 
 most ship* already in action, — number six ahead of number 
 five, number seven of number six, — so that the twelfth would 
 be abreast the twentieth Dane. One ship-of-the-line was of 
 course thought equivalent to two or three floating batteries, if 
 opposed to them in an interval. By this arrangement, each of 
 the British was covered in its advance, until it reached its pre- 
 scribed antagonist as nearly fresh as possible, and the order of 
 the British column was reversed from end to end.-"- A division 
 of frigates and fireships, under Captain Riou, was held ready for 
 any special service. The bomb-vessels were to anchor in the 
 King's Channel, but well outside the line of battle, from which 
 position they threw some bombs. Alongside each ship-of-the- 
 line was towed a flat-boat, intended to carry soldiers in an 
 attempt to storm the Trekroner, if circumstances favored; and 
 other boats were sent for that purpose from Parker's division. 
 
 ^ Except numbers 4 and 5, whose stations, as has been said, were abreast 
 the two southernmost Danes. 
 
PLAN 01* ATTACK 479 
 
 These orders were copied, and ready for distribution, by 
 six in the morning. Kelson, who was already up and had 
 breakfasted, signalled at seven for all captains, and by eight 
 these had their instructions. The Avind had become so fair 
 that ships anchoring by the stern would lie perfectly well 
 for using their broadsides at once. At this instant indecision 
 appeared among the pilots, who were mostly men of only 
 a little local experience, and that gained in vessels much 
 smaller than those they were now to conduct, l^elson, re- 
 verting afterwards to these moments, said: "I experienced in 
 the Sound the misery of having the honour of our Country _ 
 intrusted to pilots, who have no other thought than to keep 
 the ship clear of danger, and their own silly heads clear of 
 shot. At eight in the morning of the 2d of April, not one ' 
 pilot would take charge of a ship." There is in these words 
 scarcely fair allowance for the men's ignorance. At length 
 one of the Masters of the fleet, a Mr. Brierley, undertook to 
 lead the column, and the signal to weigh in succession was 
 made. The leading ship got off handsomely, but difficulties 
 soon arose. Nelson's old " Agamemnon " was so anchored 
 that she could not Aveather the Middle Ground; she conse- 
 quently did not get into action at all. Two other ships, the 
 "Bellona" and *' Russell," seventy-fours, grounded on the 
 west side of the Middle Ground, where they remained fast. 
 Although they could use their guns, and did use them against 
 those southern ships which Nelson particularly wanted crushed, 
 the disadvantages of distance, of position, and of general help- 
 lessness, detracted exceedingly from their usefulness. The 
 valid British force was thus reduced by one-fourth, — to nine 
 vessels. 
 
 Nelson's ship, the "Elephant," was following the "Bel- 
 lona" and "Russell," and he saw them ground. " His agita- 
 tion during these moments was extreme," says an eye-witness. 
 "I shall never forget the impression it made on me. It was 
 not, however, the agitation of indecision, but of ardent, 
 animated patriotism panting for glory, which had appeared 
 within his reach, and was vanishing from his grasp." He 
 doubtless well knew the thinly veiled reproaches of rashness, 
 cast by timid counsels upon the daring, which even under 
 these disadvantages was to cover with confusion their 
 
480 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 prophecies of disaster ; but, as on many another day, and in 
 that more famous incident, a few hours hater, in this same 
 battle, his tenacious purpose harbored no side-thought of 
 retreat. " Before you receive this," he had written to Lady 
 Hamilton, ''all will be over with Denmark, — either your 
 Nelson will be safe, and Sir Hyde Parker a victor, or he, 
 your own Nelson, will be laid low." The signal to advance 
 was kept flying, but new dispositions had to be made to meet 
 the new and adverse conditions.^ The remaining ships were 
 made to close to the rear, as they anchored. The " Elephant" 
 had been originally assigned as antagonist to the biggest 
 Danish ship, the "Sjaelland," seventy -f our ; but, the " Bel- 
 lona " having grounded, she now dropped into the latter's 
 berth immediately ahead of the "Glatton ; " and Nelson hailed 
 the "Ganges," as she was passing, to place herself as close 
 as possible ahead of the "Elephant." This movement v/as 
 imitated by the •'Monarch," which thus got the "Elephant's " 
 position abreast the " Sjaelland." Here, according to Danish 
 accounts, the contest stood for some time, until the "Defi- 
 ance," Graves's flagship, arriving, anchored ahead of the 
 "Monarch," completing the line of nine British ships. Cap- 
 tain Eiou with his light division engaged the Trekroner, and 
 the Danish blockship next south of it, which was by him 
 terribly battered. Erom this moment, and for some time, to 
 use subsequent words of Nelson, " Here was no manoeuvring : 
 it was downright fighting." 
 
 Meanwhile Parker's division, which had weighed as agreed, 
 was some four miles off, beating up against Nelson's fair 
 wind. It had not yet come into action, and the anxious chief, 
 ever doubtful of the result of a step into which he had been 
 persuaded, contrary, not, perhaps, to his will, but certainly 
 to his bent, watched the indecisive progress of the strife 
 with a mind unoccupied by any fighting of his own. Two 
 
 1 The following is the order of the ships in the column of attack, as 
 originally prescribed : — 
 
 1. Edgar, 74. 7. Elephant, 74. 
 
 2. Ardent, 64. 8. Ganges, 74. 
 ?.. Giatton, 54. 9. Monarch, 74. 
 
 4. Isis, 50. 10. Defiance, 74. 
 
 5. Agamemnon, 64. 11. Russell, 74. 
 
 6. Bellona, 74. 12. Polyphemus, 64. 
 
VICE-ADMIRAL, SIR HYDE PARKER. 
 
 After the painting by G. Romney. 
 
BATTLE OF COPENHAGEN 481 
 
 things were evident: that Nelson had met with some mis- 
 haps, and that the Danish resistance was more prolonged 
 and sturdier than he had argued in the Council that it would 
 be. Parker began to talk about making the signal to leave 
 off action, and the matter was discussed between himself, 
 his fleet-captain, and Otway, the captain of the ship. The 
 latter opposed the idea strongly, and at last, as a stay, ob- 
 tained the admiral's authority to go on board the "Elephant" 
 and learn how things were. He shoved off accordingly, but 
 before he reached Nelson the signal was made. 
 
 Nelson at the moment was walking the (^uarter-deck of the 
 "Elephant," which was anchored on the bow of the Danish 
 flagship " Dannebroge," engaging her and some floating bat- 
 teries ahead of her. At this time, Stewart says, " Few, if 
 any, of the enemy's heavy ships and praams had ceased to 
 fire ; " and, after mentioning various disappointments that 
 had befallen the smaller British vessels, besides the failure 
 of three heavy ships to reach their stations, he continues : 
 " The contest, in general, although from the relaxed state of 
 the enemy's fire, it might not have given much room for 
 apprehension as to the result, had certainly not declared 
 itself in favour of either side. Nelson was sometimes much 
 animated, and at others heroically fine in his observations. 
 A shot through the mainmast knocked a few splinters about 
 us. He observed to me, with a smile, 'It is warm work, and 
 this day may be the last to any of us at a moment; ' and 
 then, stopping short at the gangway, he used an expression 
 never to be erased from my memory, and said with emotion, 
 'but mark you, I would not be elsewhere for thousands.' 
 
 "When the s igna l. No. 39, was made, the Signal Lieu- 
 tenant reported it to him. He continued his walk, and did not 
 appear to take notice of it. The lieutenant meeting his Lord- 
 ship at the next turn asked, 'whether he should repeat it?' 
 Lord Nelson answered, ' No, acknowledge it.' ^ On the officer 
 returning to the poop, his Lordship called after him, ' Is No. 
 16 [For Close Action] still hoisted ? ' The lieutenant an- 
 swering in the affirmative. Lord Nelson said, ' Mind you keep 
 
 ^ To acknowledge a signal is siinply to hoist a flag, showing that it has 
 been seen and understood. To repeat is to hoist the signal yourself, thus 
 transmitting it as an order to those concerned. 
 
 31 
 
482 THE LIFE OF KELSON 
 
 it so.' He now walked the deck considerably agitated, which 
 was always known by his moving the stump of his right arm. 
 After a turn or two, he said to me, in a quick manner, ' Do 
 you know what 's shown on board the Commander-in-Chief, 
 JSTo. 39 ? ' On asking him what that meant, he answered, 
 ' Why, to leave off action.' 'Leave off action ! ' he repeated, 
 and then added, with a shrug, 'Now damn me if I do.' He 
 also observed, I believe, to Captain Foley, * You know, Foley, 
 I have only one eye — I have a right to be blind sometimes ; ' 
 and then with an archness peculiar to his character, putting 
 the glass to his blind e3^e, he exclaimed, ' I really do not see 
 the signal.' This remarkable signal was, therefore, only ac- 
 knowledged on board the Elephant, not repeated. Admiral 
 Graves did the latter, not being able to distinguisli the Ele- 
 phant's conduct : either by a fortunate accident, or intention- 
 ally, No. 16 was not displaced. 
 
 y^ " The squadron of frigates obeyed the signal, and hauled 
 
 -^off. That brave officer. Captain Eiou, was killed by a raking 
 shot, when the Amazon showed her stern to the Trekroner. 
 He was sitting on a gun, was encouraging his men, and had 
 been wounded in the head by a splinter. He had expressed 
 himself grieved at being thus obliged to retreat, and nobly 
 observed, ' What will Nelson think of us ? ' His clerk was 
 killed by his side ; and by another shot, several of the marines, 
 while hauling on the mainbrace, shared the same fate. E,iou 
 then exclaimed, ' Come then, my boys, let us all die together ! ' 
 The words were scarcely uttered, when the fatal shot severed 
 him in two. Thus, and in an instant, was the British service 
 deprived of one of its greatest ornaments, and society of a 
 character of singular worth, resembling the heroes of ro- 
 
 - mance." Fortunately for the British, not a ship-of-the-line 
 T budged. Graves had indeed transmitted the order by repeat- 
 ing it, but as he kept that for close action also flying, and 
 did not move himself, the line remained entire throughout 
 
 . a period when the departure of a single ship would have 
 ruined all, and probably caused its own destruction. 
 
 This incident of refusing to see the signal has become as 
 hackneyed as a popular ballad, and in its superficial aspect, 
 showing Nelson as the mere fighting man, who, like a plucky 
 dog, could not be dragged off his antagonist, might well now 
 
BATTLE OF COPENHAGEN 483 
 
 have been dismissed with the shortest and most summary 
 mention. Of Late years doubt has been cast over tlie reality 
 of Nelso-n's disobedience, for the reason that Otway, whose 
 mission has already been noted, carried a verbal message that 
 the order was to be understood as permissive, leaving Nelson 
 the liberty to obey or not. From Otway 's biography, however, 
 it appears tliat the signal was hoisted before he reached the 
 "Elephant." Parker's Secretary, Mr. Scott, has also stated 
 distinctly, tliat "it was arranged between the admirals, that, 
 should it appear the ships which were engaged were suffering 
 too severely, the signal for retreat would be made, to give 
 Lord Nelson the opUon of retiring, if he thought fit." ^ 
 
 On the other hand, without affirming positively, it should 
 be said that Nelson's own impressions do not seem to have 
 agreed with Scott's. Not only did he say, some hours after "> (5>i(^ 
 the fight, " Well, I haye_iought contrary to orders, and I ( ^ 
 shall perhaps be hanged ; never mind, let them," — which 
 might pass as a continuation of the quarter-deck drama, if 
 such it was, — but his account of the matter to Lord Minto- 
 is not consistent with any clear understanding, on his part, 
 that he had such liberty of action. Nearly a year later, in 
 March, 1802, Minto writes : " Lord Nelson explained to me 
 a little, on Saturday last, the sort of blame which had been 
 imputed to Sir Hyde Parker for Copenhagen ; in the first 
 place, for not commanding the attack in person, and in the 
 next place for making signals to recall the fleet during the 
 action ; and everything would have been lost if these signals 
 had been obeyed." If Nelson understood that the signal was 
 to be construed as permissive only, it was extremely ungener- 
 ous, and most unlike Nelson, to have withheld an explanation 
 which extenuated, if it did not excuse, one of the most dan- 
 gerous and ill-judged orders that ever Avas conveyed by flags; 
 nor is it probable that Parker, if the understanding had been 
 explicit, would not have insisted with the Admiralty upon 
 the fact, when he was smarting under the general censure, 
 which had led to talk of an inquiry. It seems, also, unlikely 
 that Nelson, having such a contingency in view, would have 
 failed to give explicit instructions that his ships should not 
 
 1 Life of Rev. Dr. A. J. Scott, p. 70. 
 
484 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 withdraw (as Kiou's frigates did) unless he repeated; nor is 
 it easy to reconcile the agitation noted by Stewart with a 
 previous arrangement of the kind asserted. 
 
 What Parker said was, probably, simply one of those by- 
 remarks, with which an apprehensive man consoles himself 
 that he reserves a chance to change his mind. Such pro- 
 vision rarel}^ entered Nelson's head when embarking upon an 
 enterprise in whicli " do or die " was the only order for suc- 
 cess. The man who went into the Copenhagen fight with an 
 eye upon withdrawing from action would have been beaten 
 before he began. It is upon the clear perception of this truth, 
 and his tenacious grip of it, that the vast merit of Nelson in 
 this incident depends, and not upon the disobedience ; though 
 never was disobedience more justified, more imperative, more 
 glorious. To retire, with crippled ships and mangled crews, 
 through difficult channels, under the guns of the half-beaten 
 foe, who would renew his strength when he saw the move- 
 ment, would be to court destruction, — to convert probable 
 victory into certain, and perhaps overwhelming, disaster. It 
 was not, however, only in superiority of judgment or of fight- 
 ing quality that Nelson in this one act towered like a giant 
 above his superior ; it was in that supreme moral character- 
 istic which enabled him to shut his eyes to the perils and 
 doubts surrounding the only path by wliich he could achieve 
 success, and save his command from a defeat verging on an- 
 nihilation. The pantomime of putting the glass to his blind 
 eye was, however unintentionally, a profound allegory. There 
 is a time to be blind as well as a time to see. And if in it 
 there was a little bit of conscious drama, it was one of those 
 touches that not only provoke the plaudits of the spectators, 
 but stir and raise their hearts, giving them both an example 
 of heroic steadfastness, and also the assurance that there is 
 one standing by upon whom their confidence can repose to 
 the bitter end, — no small thing in the hour of hard and 
 doubtful battle. It had its counterpart in the rebuke ad- 
 dressed by him on this very occasion to a lieutenant, who 
 uttered some desponding words on the same quarter-deck : 
 "At such a moment, the delivery of a desponding opinion, 
 unasked, was highly reprehensible, and deserved much more 
 censure than Captain Foley gave you." 
 
BATTLE OF COPENHAGEN 483 
 
 At two o'clock, an hour after the signal was made, the 
 resistance of the Danes had perceptibly slackened; the 
 greater part of their line, Stewart says, had ceased to reply. 
 The flagship " Dannebroge " had been on fire as early as half- 
 past eleven, and the coniniander-in-chief. Commodore Fischer, 
 had felt necessary to shift his broad pendant to the "Hol- 
 stein," the second ship from the north flank. The '< Danne- 
 broge" continued to fight bravely, losing two hundred and 
 seventy killed and wounded out of a total of three hundred 
 and thirty-six, but at length she was driven out of the line 
 in flames, and grounded near the Trekroner, where she blew 
 up after the action. The " Sjaelland," seventy-four, next 
 north of her, was likewise carried out of the line by her cables 
 being cut; while the "Holstein," and the northernmost ship 
 of all, the '' Indfodsretten," were so shattered, the latter 
 mainly by Kiou's frigates, that Fischer again shifted his flag, 
 this time to the Trekroner. The two southern flank ships, 
 upon whom the most concentrated attack was made, had also 
 met with tremendous losses. Their flags were shot away 
 many times, till at the last, by a Danish account, no one had 
 time to raise them again, whence the impression arose amongst 
 the British that these vessels, as well as some others, fought 
 after having surrendered. 
 
 This incident, occurring in several cases, was the imme- 
 diate cause of Nelson's taking a step which both then and 
 since has been blamed as an unjustifiable stratagem. So 
 much of the Danish fire south of the Trekroner had ceased, 
 that that wing could be looked upon as subdued; some vessels 
 were helpless, some had their flags down. Between himself 
 and the Trekroner, Nelson alleged, there was a group of four 
 Danes, unresisting and unmanageable, across and through which 
 the battery was firing, and the British replying. Ships which 
 had struck repelled boats sent to board them, and the batteries 
 on A mag Island also fired upon those boats, and over the 
 surrendered Danes. That there was some ground for the 
 complaints made by him appears from the Danish admission 
 just quoted, as well as from several British statements ; Stew- 
 art's being explicit. Kelson accordingly sent a message 
 ashore, under a flag of truce, to the Crown Prince, who was 
 in general command, saying that if he were not allowed to 
 
486 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 take possession of his prizes, he wouhl have to burn them. 
 The message ran : — 
 
 TO THE BROTHERS OF ENGLISHMEN, THE DANES. 
 
 Lord Nelson has directions to spare Denmai'k, when no longer 
 resisting ; but if the firing is continued on the part of Denmark, Lord 
 Nelson will be obliged to set on fire all the floating batteries he has 
 taken, without having the power of saving the brave Danes who have 
 defended them. 
 
 Nelson and Bronte. 
 
 It was in the preparation and despatch of this note that 
 Nelson gave another illustration, often quoted, of his cool 
 consideration of all the circumstances surrounding him, and 
 of the politic regard to effect which he ever observed in his 
 official intercourse with naen. It was written by his own hand, 
 a secretary copying as he wrote. When finished, the original 
 was put into an envelope, which the secretary was about to 
 seal with a wafer ; but this Nelson would not permit, directing 
 that taper and wax should be brought. The man sent was 
 killed before he could return. AVhen this was reported to the 
 admiral, his only reply was, " Send another messenger ; " and 
 he waited ufttil the wax came, and then saw that particular 
 care was exercised to make a full and perfect imj^ression of 
 the seal, which bore his own arms. Stewart said to him, 
 "May I take the liberty of asking why, under so. hot a fire, 
 and after so lamentable an accident, you have attached so 
 much importance to a circumstance apparently so trifling ? " 
 Nelson replied, " Had I made use of the wafer, it would still 
 have been wet when presented to the Crown Prince ; he would 
 have inferred that the letter was sent off in a hurry, and that 
 we had some very x^i'essing reasons for being in a hurry. The 
 wax told no tales." 
 
 A flag of truce in a boat asks no cessation of hostilities, 
 except so far as the boat itself is concerned. As for the mes- 
 sage sent, it simply insisted that the Danes should cease fir- 
 ing; failing which, Nelson would resort to the perfectly 
 regular, warlike measure of burning their ships. As the 
 ships were beaten, this might not be humane ; but between it 
 and leaving them under the guns of both parties, the question 
 
THE FLAG OF TRUCE 487 
 
 of humanity was only one of degree. If Nelson could extort 
 from the Danes a cessation of hostilities by such a threat, he 
 had a perfect right to do it, and his claim that what he de- 
 manded was required by humanity, is at least colorable. It 
 must be observed, however, that he makes no suggestion of 
 truce or armistice, — he demands that firing shall be discon- 
 tinued, or he will resort to certain steps. 
 
 The Crown Prince at once sent back his principal aid-de- 
 camp, with a verbal message, which the latter reduced to 
 writing, as follows : — 
 
 " His Eoyal Highness, the Prince Royal of Denmark, has sent me, 
 General Adjutant Lindholm, on board to his Britannic Majesty's 
 Vice- Admiral, the Right Honourable Lord Nelson, to ask the particu- 
 lar object of sending the flag of truce."' 
 
 To this Nelson replied in writing : — 
 
 "Lord Nelson's object in sending on shore a flag of truce is 
 humanity ; he, therefore, consents that hostilities shall cease till Lord 
 Nelson can take his prisoners out of the prizes, and he consents to 
 land all the wounded Danes, and to burn or remove his prizes." 
 
 This message concluded with a complimentary expression 
 of hope that good relations would be restored between the 
 two nations, whom Nelson always carefully spoke of as natu- 
 ral friends. It will be observed that he again alludes only to 
 the flag of truce sent by the boat, and, as at first he demanded, 
 so now he consents to a cessation of hostilities, until he can 
 secure his prisoners and remove his prizes. If he could 
 rightly remove his prizes, which he avowed as part of his 
 demand, then still more he could his own ships. This part of 
 the negotiation he took upon himself to settle ; for discussion 
 of any further matters he referred Lindholm to Sir Hyde 
 Parker, and the Danish officer started for the '' London" at 
 the same time that the English officer pushed off to carry 
 Nelson's second message to the Crown Prince. The latter 
 had already sent orders to the batteries to cease firing. The 
 battle then ended, and both sides hoisted flags of truce. 
 
 Nelson at once began to remove his ships, which had suf- 
 fered more than in any other battle he had ever fought. 
 That he was fully aware of the imminent necessity for some 
 of them to withdraw, and of the advantage the Danes had 
 
488 THE LITE OE NELSON 
 
 yielded him by accepting his terms, is indisputable, and his 
 own. opinion was confirmed by that of two of his leading 
 captains, whom he consulted. This he never denied ; but he 
 did deny that he had used a ruse de guerre^ or taken unfair 
 advantage of a truce. On the score of humanity he had con- 
 sented to a cessation of hostilities, conditional upon his free- 
 dom to take out of the surrendered ships the unwounded 
 prisoners, and to remove the prizes. If the bargain was more 
 to his advantage than to that of the Danes — wliich is a matter 
 of opinion — it was none the less a bargain, of which he had 
 full right to reap the benefit. The Danes did not then charge 
 him with taking an unfair advantage. On the contrary, Lind- 
 holin, who was closely cognizant of all that passed in relation 
 to these negotiations, wrote to him : " Your Lordship's motives 
 for sending a flag of truce to our Government can never be 
 misconstrued, and your subsequent conduct has sufficiently 
 shown that humanity is always the companion of true valour." 
 The truce that then began was prolonged from day to day till 
 April 9th. During it both parties went on with their prepa- 
 rations for war. "These few days," wrote Niebuhr, on the 
 6th, "have certainly been employed in repairing the evil [of 
 faulty preparation] as far as possible." It is clear that the 
 Danes understood, what Nelson's message specified, a cessa- 
 tion of direct hostilities, not of other movements. The British 
 during the same days were putting bomb-vessels in place, a 
 perfectly overt act. 
 
 Nelson's success at Copenhagen was secured by address, as 
 it had been won by force. But it had been thoroughly won. 
 "We cannot deny it," wrote Niebuhr, "we are quite beaten. 
 Our line of defence is destroyed. We cannot do much injury 
 to the enemy, as long as he contents himself with bombarding 
 the city, docks, and fleet. The worst is the Crown Batteries 
 can be held no longer." Two or three days later he says 
 again: "The truce has been prolonged. The remaining half 
 of our defences are useless, now that the right wing is 
 broken, — a defect over which I have meditated uselessly 
 many a time since last summer." The result was due to Nel- 
 son's sagacious and emphatic advice as to the direction and 
 manner of the attack, by which the strong points of the Danish 
 positions were completely and unexpectedly turned. This 
 
NELSON'S METIIT AT COPENHAGEN 489 
 
 plan, it is credibly stated, he had formed before leaving 
 England, although he was not formally consulted by Parker 
 until the 23d of March. 
 
 Having regard to the general political conditions, and 
 especially to the great combination of the North at this time 
 directed against Great Britain, the victory of Copenhagen was 
 second in importance to none that Nelson ever gained ; while 
 in the severity of the resistance, and in the attendant difficul- 
 ties to be overcome, the battle itself was the most critical of 
 all in which he was engaged. So conspicuous were the energy 
 and sagacity shown by him, that most seamen will agree in 
 the opinion of Jurien de la Graviere : " They will always be 
 in the eyes of seamen his fairest title to glory. He alone was 
 capable of displaying such boldness and perseverance ; he 
 alone could confront the immense difficulties of that enterprise 
 and overcome them." Notwithstanding this and notwithstand- 
 ing that the valor of the squadron, as manifested in its losses, 
 was never excelled, medals were not issued for the battle, nor 
 were any individual rewards bestowed, except upon Nelson 
 himself, who was advanced in the peerage to be a Viscount, 
 and upon his immediate second, Kear-Admiral Graves, who 
 was made a Knight of the Bath. The reasons for this action 
 are shown by the following extract from the diary of Mr. 
 George Rose : " Wednesday, April 22d. Breakfasted with 
 Lord St. Vincent by appointment. . . . His Lordship entered 
 on the late glorious victory at Copenhagen, and told me the 
 merit of the attack rested solely with Lord Nelson, as Sir 
 Hyde Parker had been decidedly adverse to the attempt being 
 made, and was overruled only by the perseverance and firm- 
 ness of the former; and that in the middle of the action Sir 
 Hyde had made the signal (No. 39) for discontinuing the 
 engagement, which Lord Nelson said to the officer who 
 communicated it to him, he was sure proceeded from some 
 mistake. When it was mentioned to Admiral Graves, he 
 asked if it was repeated by Lord Nelson ; and on being 
 answered in the negative, he said, ' Then we have nothing to 
 do with it.' Lord St. Vincent then added, ' For these and 
 other causes,' probably alluding to the armistice, ' we have 
 recalled Sir Hyde, and Lord Nelson is to remain with the 
 command.' His Lordship proceeded to say that this measure 
 
490 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 of necessity put the Administration under some difficulty as to 
 rewards of honour to the officers who had distinguished them- 
 selves ; and that he had thought it advisable to delay any dis- 
 tribution of medals or to recommend any stage in the peerage 
 to Lord Nelson, conceiving that the whole might be done on 
 the termination of the service with propriety, and without 
 embarrassment respecting Sir Hyde Parker. . . . After I had 
 left his Lordship, it occurred to me that as no measures can 
 be kept with Sir Hyde Parker, it might be desirable to confer 
 the intended step in the peerage on Lord Nelson now, and the 
 medals on the other officers ; in which opinion Mr. Pitt con- 
 curring, I wrote to suggest that to his Lordship," ^ 
 
 " First secure the victory, then make the most of it," 
 had been avowedly Nelson's motto before the Nile. In the 
 Battle of Copenhagen he had followed much the same rule. 
 After beating the force immediately opposed to him, he 
 obtained the safe removal of his detachment from its critical 
 position, by the shrewd use made of the advantage then in his 
 hands. This achieved, and his ships having rejoined the 
 main body, after various mishaps from grounding, under the 
 enemy's guns, which emphasized over and over the adroit 
 presence of mind he had displayed, it next fell to him to 
 make the most of what the British had so far gained; having 
 regard not merely to Denmark and Copenhagen, but to the 
 whole question of British interests involved in the Coalition of 
 the Baltic States. Parker intrusted to him the direct man- 
 agement of the negotiations, just as he had given him the 
 immediate command of the fighting. 
 
 A circumstance, which completely changed the political 
 complexion of affairs, was as yet unknown to him. On the 
 night of March 24th the Czar Paul had been murdered, and 
 with him fell the main motive force and support of the Armed 
 Neutrality. Ignorant of this fact, Nelson's one object, the 
 most to be made of the victory, was to get at the detachment 
 of the Russian fleet — twelve ships — lying in the harbor of 
 Bevel, before the breaking up of the ice allowed it to join the 
 main body at Cronstadt. The difficulty in the way lay not in 
 his hesitation to act instantly, nor in the power of the British 
 fleet to do so ; it lay in the conflicting views of other persons, 
 
 ^ Diaries, etc., of Rt. Hon. George Eose, vol. i. p. 347. 
 
NEGOTIATIONS AT COPENHAGEN 491 
 
 of the Crown Prince and of Parker, the representatives of 
 Denmark and of Great Britain. Parker was resolved, so 
 Nelson has told us, not to leave Denmark hostile in his rear, 
 flanking his line of communications if he proceeded up the 
 Baltic ; and Nelson admits, although with his sagacious dar- 
 ing he would have disregarded, that the batteries commanding 
 the shoal ground above Copenhagen might have seriously 
 interrupted the passage. He was ready to run risks 
 again for the very adequate object mentioned. On the other 
 hand the Crown Prince, while recognizing the exposure of 
 Copenhagen, feared to yield even to the menace of bombard- 
 ment, lest he should incur the vengeance of the Czar. It was 
 to find a middle term between these opposing motives that 
 Nelson's diplomacy was exerted. 
 
 On the 3d of April he went ashore to visit the Crown Prince, 
 by whom he was received with all possible attention. " The 
 populace," says Stewart, " showed a mixture of admiration, 
 curiosity, and displeasure. A strong guard secured his safety, 
 and appeared necessary to keep off the mob, whose rage, 
 although mixed with admiration at his thus trusting himself 
 amongst them, was naturally to be expected. It perhaps 
 savored of rashness in him thus early to risk himself among 
 them ; but with him his Country's cause was paramount to all 
 personal considerations." Nelson himself did not note these 
 threatening indications. Fond of observation, with vanity 
 easily touched, and indifferent to danger, he heard only homage 
 in the murmurs about him. "The people received me as they 
 always have done ; and even the stairs of the palace were 
 crowded, huzzaing, and saying, 'God bless Lord Nelson.'" 
 
 His interview with the Grown Prince was private, only 
 Lindholm being present. It ranged, according to his private 
 letter to Addington, over the whole subject of tlie existing 
 differences with Great Britain, and the respective interests 
 of the two states. The most important points to be noticed 
 in this personal discussion, which was preliminary to the 
 actual negotiation, are, first, Nelson's statement of the cause 
 for the presence of the British fleet, and, second, the basis of 
 agreement he proposed. As regards the former, to a question 
 of the Prince he replied categorically: The fleet is here "to 
 crush a most formidable and unprovoked Coalition against 
 
492 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 Great Britain." For the second, he said that the only founda- 
 tion, upon which Sir Hyde Parker coukl rest his justification 
 for not proceeding to bombardment, wouhl be the total sus- 
 pension of the treaties with Russia for a fixed time, and the 
 free use of Danish ports and supplies by the Uritish fleet. 
 These two concessions, it will be observed, by neutralizing 
 Denmark, would remove the threat to British communications, 
 and convert Denmark into an advanced base of operations for 
 the fleet. Nelson did not have great hope of success in ne- 
 gotiating, for he observed that fear of Russia, not desire for 
 war, was controlling the Prince. Therefore, had he been 
 commander-in-chief, he would at all risks have pushed on to 
 Revel, and struck the coalition to the heart there. " I make 
 no scruple," he wrote to St. Vincent after he had procured 
 the armistice, ''in saying that I would have been at Revel 
 fourteen days ago. No man but those on the spot can tell 
 what I have gone through, and do suffer. I wanted Sir Hyde 
 to let me at least go and cruise off Carlscrona, [where the 
 Swedish fleet was,] to prevent the Revel ships getting in. 
 Think of me, my dear Lord, and if I have deserved well, 
 let me retire ; if ill, for heaven's sake supersede me, for I 
 cannot exist in this state." Pegasus was indeed shackled. 
 
 The truce was continued from day to day, both sides pre- 
 paring to renew hostilities, while the negotiators sat. Dis- 
 cussing thus, sword in hand. Nelson frankly told the other 
 side that he wanted an armistice for sixteen weeks, to give 
 him time to act against the Russian fleet, and then to return 
 to Denmark. On the likely supposition that the latter would 
 not greatly grieve over a Russian disaster, this openness was 
 probably discreet. In the wrangling that preceded consent, 
 one of the Danes hinted, in Prench, at a renewal of hostilities. 
 " Renew hostilities ! " said Nelson, who understood the lan- 
 guage, but could not speak it, "tell him that we are ready at 
 this moment ; ready to bombard this very night." But, while 
 he thus could use on occasion the haughty language of one 
 at whose back stood a victorious fleet of twenty ships-of-the- 
 line, "the best negotiators in Europe," to repeat his own 
 words, his general bearing was eminently conciliatory, as 
 became one who really longed for peace in the particular in- 
 stance, and was alive to the mingled horror and inutility of 
 
NEGOTIATIONS AT COPENHAGEN 493 
 
 the next move open to Great Britain, under Parker's policy, 
 — the bombardment of Copenhagen. " Whoever may be the 
 respective Ministers v/ho shall sign the peace," wrote to him 
 Count Waltersdorff, who with Lindholm conducted the Danish 
 case and signed the armistice, " I shall always consider your 
 lordship as the Pacificator of the Korth, and I am sure that 
 your heart will be as much flattered by that title, as by any 
 other which your grateful Country has bestowed upon you." 
 
 Had Paul lived, the issue might have been doubtful, and in 
 that case England might well have rued the choice of a 
 commander-in-chief whose chief function was to hamstring 
 her greatest seaman ; but the Danes received word of the 
 murder, and on the 9th of April an agreement was reached. 
 There was to be a cessation of hostilities for fourteen weeks, 
 during which Denmark suspended her part in the Armed 
 Neutrality, and would leave her ships of war in the same state 
 of unpreparedness as they then were. The British fleet was 
 at liberty to get supplies in all Danish ports. In return, it 
 was merely stipulated that no attacks should be made on any 
 part of the coast of Denmark proper. Norway ^ and the 
 Danish colonies were not included, nor was Holstein. In a 
 letter to Addington, Nelson pointed out that as a military 
 measure, which it was, the result was that the hands of Den- 
 mark were tied, those of the fleet loosed, its communications 
 secured, its base of supplies advanced, and last, but far from 
 least, the timid counsels of its commander-in-chief discon- 
 certed ; no excuse for not advancing being left. Besides, as 
 he said, to extort these concessions he had nothing in his 
 hand but the threat of bombardment, which done, ''we had 
 done our worst, and not much nearer being friends." Sir 
 Hyde would not have advanced. 
 
 As a military negotiation it is difficult to conceive one more 
 adroitly managed, more perfectly conducive to the ends in 
 view, or, it may be added, more clearly explained. The 
 Government, with extraordinary dulness, replied in that 
 patronizing oflicial tone of superior wisdom, which is prob- 
 ably one of the most exasperating things that can be encoun- 
 tered by a man of such insight and action as Nelson had 
 
 1 Norway was then attached to the Danish Crown, as now to that of 
 Sweden. 
 
494 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 displayed. " Upon a consideration of all the circumstances, 
 His Majesty lias thought fit to approve." *'I am sorry," 
 replied Nelson, "that the Armistice is only approved under 
 all considerations. Now T own myself of opinion that every 
 part of the all was to the advantage of oiir King and Coun- 
 try." As First Lord of the Admiralty, old St. Vincent had 
 to transmit this qualified approval ; but he wrote afterwards 
 to Nelson : '' Your Lordship's whole conduct, from your first 
 appointment to this hour, is the subject of our constant ad- 
 miration. It does not become me to make comparisons : all 
 agree there is but one Nelson." 
 
 The armistice being signed and ratified, the fleet on the 
 12th of April entered the Baltic ; the heavy ships having to 
 remove their guns, in order to cross the " Grounds," between 
 the islands of Amager and Saltholni. Nelson was left behind 
 in the " St. George," which, for some reason, was not ready. 
 "My commander-in-chief has left me," he wrote to Lady 
 Hamilton, ••' but if there is any work to do, I dare say they 
 will wait for me. Nelson ivill he first. Who can stop him? " 
 "We have reports," he says again, "that the Swedish fleet 
 is above the Shallows, distant five or six leagues. All our 
 fellows are longing to be at them, and so do I, as great a boy 
 as any of them, for I consider this as being at school, and 
 going to England as going home for the holidays, therefore I 
 really long to finish my task." His confidence in himself 
 and in his fortune was growing apace at this time, as was 
 both natural and justifiable. " This day, twenty-two years," 
 he writes soon after, on the 11th of June, " I was made a 
 Post-Captain by Sir Peter Parker. If yt)u meet him again, 
 say that I shall drink his health in a bumper, for I do not 
 forget that I owe my present exalted rank to his partiality, 
 although I feel, if I had even been in an humbler sphere, that 
 Nelson would have been Nelson still." Although always rev- 
 erently thankful to the Almighty for a favorable issue to 
 events, there does not seem to have been in him any keen 
 consciousness of personal dependence, such as led Moltke to 
 mark the text, " My strength is made perfect in weakness." 
 
 While thus lying, about twenty- four miles from the main 
 body, a report came that the Swedish squadron had put to 
 sea. Alarmed lest a battle might take place in his absence, 
 
PARKER'S NEGLIGENCES 495 
 
 Nelson jumped into a boat alougside, and started for a six 
 hours' pull against wind and current to join the jEleet, in haste 
 so great that he refused even to wait for a boat cloak. " His 
 anxiety lest the fleet should have sailed before he got on 
 board one of them," tells the officer who was with him " is 
 beyond all conception. I will quote some expressions in his 
 own words. It was extremely cold, and I Avished him to 
 put on a great coat of mine which was in the boat: ' No, I am 
 not cold; my anxiety for my Country will keep me warm. 
 Do you not think the fleet has sailed?' 'I should suppose 
 not, my Lord.' 'If they are, we shall follow them to 
 Carlscrona in the boat, by G-d ! ' — I merely state this to show 
 how his thoughts must have been employed. The idea of 
 going in a small boat, rowing six oars, without a single morsel 
 of anything to eat or drink, the distance of about fifty leagues, 
 must convince the world that every other earthly consideration 
 than that of serving his Country, was totally banished from 
 his thoughts." Such preoccupation with one idea, and that 
 idea so fine, brings back to us the old Nelson, who has found 
 himself again amid the storm and stress of danger and of action, 
 for which he was created. 
 
 About midnight he reached the "Elephant," Avhere his flag 
 was again hoisted ; but he did not escape unharmed from the 
 exposure he had too carelessly undergone. " Since April 15," 
 he wrote several weeks afterwards to Lady Hamilton, " I have 
 been rapidly in a decline, but am now, thank God, I firmly 
 believe, past all danger. At that time I rowed five hours in a 
 bitter cold night. A cold struck me to the heart. On the 27th 
 I had one of my terrible spasms of heart-stroke, which had 
 near carried me off, and the severe disappointment of being 
 kept in a situation where there can be nothing to do before 
 August, almost killed me. From that time to the end of May 
 I brought up what every one thought was my lungs, and I was 
 emaciated more than you can conceive." 
 
 The fleet proceeded in a leisurely manner toward Carlscrona, 
 Nelson chafing and fretting, none the less for his illness, under 
 the indecision and dilatoriness that continued to characterize 
 Parker's movements. "My dear friend," he had written to 
 Lady Hamilton, "we are very lazy. We Mediterranean 
 people are not used to it." " Lord St. Vincent," he tells his 
 
496 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 brother, " will either take this late business up with a very 
 high hand, or he will depress it ; but how they will manage 
 about Sir H3^de I cannot guess. I am afraid much will be 
 said about him in the public papers ; but not a word shall be 
 drawn from me, for God knows they may make him Lord Copen- 
 hagen if they please, it will not offend me." But now that 
 Denmark has been quieted, he cannot understand nor tolerate 
 the delay in going to Eevel, where the appearance of the fleet 
 wovild checkmate, not only Russia, but all the allied squadrons ; 
 for it would occupy an interior and commanding position 
 between the detachments at Eevel, Cronstadt, and Carlscrona, 
 in force superior to any one of them. " On the 19th of April," 
 he afterwards wrote bitterly to St. Vincent, " we had eighteen 
 ships of the line and a fair W' ind. Count Pahlen [the Russian 
 Cabinet Minister] came and resided at Revel, evidently to 
 endeavour to prevent any hostilities against the Russian fleet 
 there, which was, I decidedly say, at our mercy. Nothing, if 
 it had been right to make the attack, could have saved one ship 
 of them in two hours after our entering the bay ; and to prevent 
 their destruction. Sir Hyde Parker had a great latitude for 
 asking for various things for the suspension of his orders. " 
 That is, Parker having the fleet at his mercy could have 
 exacted terms, just as Nelson himself had exacted them from 
 Denmark when Copenhagen was laid open ; the advantage, 
 indeed, was far greater, as the destruction of an organized 
 force is a greater military evil than that of an unarmed town. 
 This letter was written after Nelson had been to Revel, and 
 seen the conditions on which he based his opinion. 
 
 So far from taking this course, — which it may be said 
 would have conformed to instructions from his Government 
 then on their way, and issued after knowing Paul's death, — 
 Parker appeared off Carlscrona on April 20th. Two days 
 afterwards he received a letter from the Russian minister at 
 Copenhagen, saying that the Emperor had ordered his fleet to 
 abstain from all hostilities. Parker apparently forgot that he 
 was first a naval officer, and only incidentally a diplomatist; 
 for, instead of exacting guarantees which would have insured 
 the military situation remaining unchanged until definite 
 agreements had been reached, he returned to Kioge Bay, near 
 Copenhagen, but within the Shallows, leaving the Revel 
 
THE FISCHER LETTER 497 
 
 squadron untrammelled, either by force or pledge, free to go 
 out when the ice allowed, and to join either the Swedes or its 
 own main body. Accordingly, it did. come out a fortnight 
 later, went to Cronstadt, and so escaped the British fleet. 
 
 While on this cruise towards Carlscrona, Nelson became in- 
 volved in a pen-and-ink controversy about Commodore Fischer, 
 who had commanded the Danish line at the Battle of Copen- 
 hagen, — one of two or three rare occasions which illustrate 
 the vehemence and insolence that could be aroused in him 
 when his vanity was touched, or when he conceived, his repu- 
 tation to be assailed. Fischer, in his official report of the 
 action, had comforted himself and his nation, as most beaten 
 men do, by dwelling upon — and unquestionably exaggerating 
 — the significance of certain incidents, eitlier actual, or 
 imagined by the Danes ; for instance, that towards the end of 
 the battle. Nelson's own ship had fired only single guns, and 
 that two British ships had struck, — the latter being an error, 
 and the former readily accounted for by the fact that the 
 " Elephant" then had no enemy within easy range. What 
 particularly stung Nelson, however, seems to have been the 
 assertion that the British force was superior, and that his 
 sending a flag of truce indicated the injary done his squadron. 
 Some of his friends had thought, erroneously in the opinion 
 of the author, that the flag was an unjustifiable ruse de guerre, 
 which made him specially sensitive on this point. 
 
 His retort, addressed to his Danish friend, Lindholm, was 
 written and sent in such heat that it is somewhat incoherent 
 in form, and more full of abuse than of argument, besides in- 
 volving him in contradictions. That the British squadron was 
 numerically superior in guns seems certain; it would have been 
 even culpable, having ships enough, not to have employed them 
 in any case, and especially when the attacking force had to come 
 into action amid dangerous shoals, and against vessels already 
 carefully placed and moored. In his official report he had 
 stated that the " Bellona " and " Eussell " had grounded ; 
 " but although not in the situation assigned them, yet so 
 placed as to be of great service." In the present dispute he 
 claimed that they should be left out of the reckoning, and he 
 was at variance with the Danish accounts as to the effect of 
 Riou's frigates. But such errors, he afterwards admitted to 
 
 32 
 
498 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 Lindholin, may creep into any official report, and to measure 
 credit merely by counting guns is wholly illusory ; for, as he 
 confessed, with exaggerated humility, some months later, " if 
 any merit attaches itself to me, it was in combating the dangers 
 of the shallows in defiance of the pilots." 
 
 He chose, however, to consider that Fischer's letter had 
 thrown ridicule upon his character, and he resented it in 
 terms as violent as he afterwards used of the French admiral, 
 Latouche Treville, who asserted that he had retired before a 
 superior force ; as though Nelson, by any flight of imagina- 
 tion, could have been suspected of over-caution. Fischer 
 had twice shifted his broad pendant — that is, his own posi- 
 tion — in the battle; therefore he was a coward. "In his 
 letter he states that, after he quitted the Dannebrog, she long 
 contested the battle. If so, more shame for him to quit so 
 many brave fellows. Here was no manoeuvring : it was down- 
 right fighting, and it was his duty to have shown an example 
 of firmness becoming the high trust reposed in him." This 
 was probably a just comment, but not a fair implication of 
 cowardice. " He went in such a hurry, if he went before she 
 struck, which but for his own declaration I can hardly be- 
 lieve, that he forgot to take his broad pendant Avith him." 
 This Liudholm showed was a mistake. "He seems to exult 
 that I sent on shore a flag of truce. Men of his description, 
 if they ever are victorious, know not the feeling of humanity. 
 . . . 'Mv. Fischer's carcase was safe, and he regarded not the 
 sacred call of humanity." This letter was sent to Lindholm, 
 to be communicated to the Crown Prince ; for, had not 
 Fischer addressed the latter as an eye-witness, Nelson " would 
 have treated his official letter wdth the contempt it deserved." 
 Lindholm kept it from Fischer, made a temj^erate reply de- 
 fending the latter, and the subject there dropped. 
 
 On the 25th of April the fleet was at anchor in Kioge Bay, 
 and there remained until the 5th of May, when orders arrived 
 relieving Parker, and placing Nelson in chief command. 
 The latter was utterly dismayed. Side by side with the un- 
 quenchable zeal for glory and for his Country's service had 
 been running the equally unquenchable passion for Lady 
 Hamilton ; and, with the noble impulses that bore him up 
 in battle, sickness, and exposure, had mingled soft dreams of 
 
PARKER RELIEVED BY NELSON 499 
 
 flight from the world, of days spent upon the sunny slopes 
 of Sicily, on his estate of Bronte, amid scenes closely resem- 
 bling those associated with his past delights, and with the 
 life of the woman whom he loved." To this he several times 
 alludes in the almost daily letters which he wrote her. But, 
 whether to be realized there or in England, he panted for the 
 charms of home which he had never known. '■' I am fixed," 
 he tells her, " to live a country life, and to have many (I 
 hope) years of comfort, which God knows, I never yet had 
 — only moments of happiness," — a pathetic admission of the 
 price he had paid for the glory which could not satisfy him, yet 
 which, by the law of his being, he could not cease to crave. " I 
 wish for happiness to be my reward, and not titles or money ; " 
 and happiness means being with her whom he repeatedly calls 
 Santa Emma, and his "guardian angel," — a fond imagining, 
 the sincerity of which checks the ready smile, but elicits no 
 tenderness for a delusion too gross for sympathy. 
 
 Whatever sacrifices he might be ready to make for his 
 country's service, he was not willing to give up all he held 
 dear when the real occasion for his exceptional powers had 
 passed away ; and the assurances that the service absolutely 
 required his presence in the Baltic made no impression upon 
 him. He knew better. " Had the command been given me 
 in February," he said, "many lives would have been saved, 
 and we should have been in a very different situation ; but 
 the wiseheads at home know everything." Now it means 
 expense and suffering, and nothing to do beyond the powers 
 of an average ofiicer. "Any other man can as well look about 
 him as Nelson." " Sir Thomas Troubridge," he complains, 
 after enumerating his grievances, " had the nonsense to say, 
 now I was a Commander-in-Chief I must be pleased. Does he 
 take me for a greater fool than I am ? " It was indeed shav- 
 ing pretty close to insult to send out a man like Nelson as 
 second, when great work was in hand, and then, after he had 
 done all his superior had permitted, and there was nothing 
 left to do, to tell him that he was indispensable ; but to be con- 
 gratulated upon the fact by a Lord of the Admiralty, which 
 Troubridge then was, was rather too much. He could not refuse 
 to accept the command, but he demanded his relief in terms 
 which could not be disregarded. His health, he said, made him 
 
500 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 unequal to the service. For three weeks he could not leave his 
 cabin. " The keen air of the North kills me." " I did not 
 come to the Baltic with the design of dying a natural death." 
 
 Parker had no sooner departed than iSTelsou made the signal 
 for the fleet to weigh, and started at once for Kevel. He did 
 not know whether or not the Russian ships were still there, 
 and he felt that the change of sovereigns probably implied a 
 radical change of policy ; but he understood, also, that the 
 part of a commander-in-chief was to see that the military situ- 
 ation was maintained, from day to day, as favorable as possible 
 to his own country. He anticipated, therefore, by his per- 
 sonal judgment, the instructions of the Cabinet, not to enter 
 upon hostilities if certain conditions could be obtained, but to 
 exact of the Russian Government, pending its decision, that the 
 Revel ships should remain where they were. " My object," he 
 said, writing the same day he took command, " ^oas to get at 
 Revel before the frost broke up at Cronstadt, that the twelve 
 sail of the line might be destroyed. I shall noio go there as a 
 friend, hut the two fleets shall not form a junction, if not already 
 accomplished, unless my orders permit it." For the same reason, 
 he wrote to the Swedish admiral that he had no orders to abstain 
 from hostilities if he met his fleet at sea. He hoped, therefore, 
 that he would see the wisdom of remaining in port. 
 
 His visit to Revel, consequently, was to wear the external 
 appearance of a compliment to a sovereign whose friendly in- 
 tentions were assumed. To give it that color, he took with 
 him only twelve ships-of-the-line, leaving the others, with the 
 small vessels of distinctly hostile character, bombs, fireships, 
 etc., anchored off Bornholm Island, a Danish possession. The 
 resolution to prevent a junction was contingent and concealed. 
 On the 12th the squadron arrived in the outer bay of Revel, 
 and a complimentary letter, announcing the purpose of his 
 coming, was sent to St. Petersburg. Tiie next day he paid an 
 official visit to the authorities, when his vanity and love of 
 attention received fresh gratification. '' Except to you, my own 
 friend, I should not mention it, 'tis so much like vanity ; but 
 hundreds come to look at Nelson, ' tit at is him, that is him,' in 
 short 'tis the same as in Italy and Germany, and I now feel 
 that a good name is better than riches, not amongst our great 
 folks in England: but it has its fine feelings to an honest 
 
VISITS REVEL WITH THE FLEET 501 
 
 heart. All the Russians have taken it into their heads that I 
 am like Suivaroff, Le jeune Suwarojf; " thus confirming the 
 impression made upon Mrs. St. George at Dresden. 
 
 On the 16th of May a letter arrived from Count Pahlen, the 
 Russian minister. The Czar declined to see a compliment in 
 the appearance in Russian waters of so formidable a force, 
 commanded by a seaman whose name stood foremost, not 
 merely for professional ability, but for sudden, resolute, and 
 aggressive action. " Nelson's presence," Niebuhr had written, 
 "leads us to tliink, judging of him by his past conduct, that 
 a furious attack will be made upon our harbor ; " and he him- 
 self had recorded with complacency that a Danish officer, visit- 
 ing the " London," upon learning that he was with the fleet in the 
 Kattegat, had said, " Is he here ? Then I suppose it is no joke, 
 if he is come." " The Baltic folks will never fight me, if it is 
 to be avoided." " The Emperor, my Master," wrote Pahlen, 
 " does not consider this step compatible with the lively desire 
 manifested by His Britannic Majesty, to reestablish the good 
 intelligence so long existing between the two Monarchies. The 
 only guarantee of the loyalty of your intentions that His Maj- 
 esty can accept, is the prompt withdrawal of the fleet under 
 your command, and no negotiation with your Court can take 
 place, so long as a naval force is in sight of his ports." 
 
 Nelson had of course recognized that the game was lost, 
 as soon as he saw that the Russian fleet was gone. The con- 
 ditions which had, mainly prompted his visit were changed, 
 and the Russian Government was in a position to take a high 
 tone, without fear of consequences. " After such an answer," 
 he wrote indignantly to St. Vincent, <' I had no business here. 
 Time will show ; but I do not believe he would have written 
 such a letter, if the Russian fleet had been in Revel." "Lord 
 Nelson received the letter a few minutes before dinner-time," 
 wrote Stewart. " He appeared to be a good deal agitated by it, 
 but said little, and did not return an immediate reply. During 
 dinner, however, he left the table, and in less than a quarter of 
 an hour sent for his secretary to peruse a letter which, in that 
 short absence, he had composed. The signal for preparing to 
 weigh was immediately made ; the answer above-mentioned 
 was sent on shore; and his Lordship caused the fleet to weigh, 
 and to stand as far to sea as was safe for that evening." 
 
502 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 Nelson took hold of Pahlen's expression, that he had come 
 "with his whole fleet" to ReveL Confining himself to that, 
 he pointed out the mistake the minister had made, for he had 
 brought "not one-seventh of his fleet in point of luimbers.-' 
 He mentioned also the deference that he had paid to the Revel 
 authorities. "My conduct, I feel, is so entirely different to 
 what your Excellency has expressed in your letter, that I have 
 only to regret, that my desire to pay a marked attention to 
 His Imperial Majesty has been so entirely misunderstood. 
 That being the case, 1 shall sail immediately into the Baltic." 
 Retiring thus in good order, if defeated, he had the satisfac- 
 tion of knowing that it was not his own blunder, bat the 
 wretched dilatoriness of his predecessor, that had made the 
 Czar, instead of the British admiral, master of the situation. 
 
 Stopping for twenty-four hours at Bornholm on the way 
 down, ISTeJson on the 24th anchored in Rostock Bay, on the 
 German coast of the Baltic, and there awaited the relief i 
 he confidently expected. He liad scarcely arrived when a 
 second letter from Pahlen overtook him. The minister ex- 
 pressed his regret for any misunderstanding that had arisen 
 as to the purpose of his first visit, and continued, " I cannot 
 give your excellency a more striking proof of the confidence 
 which the Emperor my Master reposes in you, than by an- 
 nouncing the effect produced by your letter of the IGth of 
 this month. His Imperial Majesty has ordered the imme- 
 diate raising of the embargo placed upon the English mer- 
 chant ships." Nelson plumed himself greatly upon this result 
 of his diplomacy. " Our diplomatic men are so slow. Lord 
 St. Helens told me that he hoped in a month he should be 
 able to tell me something decisive. Now, what can take two 
 hours I cannot even guess, but Ministers must do something 
 for their diamond boxes. I gained the unconditional release 
 of our ships, which neither Ministers nor Sir Hyde Parker 
 could accomplish, by showing my fleet. Then they became 
 alarmed, begged I would go away, or it would be considered as 
 warlike. On my complying, it pleased the Emperor and his 
 ministers so much, that the whole of the British shipping were 
 given up." There is nothing like the point of view ; but it must 
 be admitted that Nelson extricated himself from an unpleasant 
 position with great good temper and sound judgment. 
 
DAILY LIFE IN THE BALTIC 503 
 
 He remained in his flagship between Eostock and Kioge 
 Bay, until relieved by Vice-Admiral Pole on the 19th of 
 June. Nothing of oificial importance occurred during these 
 three weeks ; for the naval part of the Baltic entanglement 
 was ended, as he had foreseen, A pleasant picture of his daily 
 life on board the '' St. George" at this time has been preserved 
 for us by Colonel Stewart : " His hour of rising Avas four or 
 five o'clock, and of going to rest about ten; breakfast was 
 never later than six, and generally nearer to five o'clock. A 
 midshipman or two were always of the party ; and I have 
 known him send daring the middle watch ^ to invite the little 
 fellows to breakfast with him, when relieved. At table with 
 them, he would enter into their boyish jokes, and be the most 
 youthful of the party. At dinner he invariably had every 
 officer of the ship in their turn, and was both a polite and 
 hospitable host. The whole ordinary business of the fleet was 
 invariably despatched, as it had been by Earl St. Vincent, 
 before eight o'clock. The great command of time which Lord 
 Nelson thus gave himself, and the alertness which this example 
 imparted throughout the fleet, can only be understood by those 
 who witnessed it, or Avho know the value of early hours. . . . 
 He did not again land wdiilst in the Baltic ; his health was 
 not good, and his mind was not at ease ; with him, mind and 
 health invariably sympathized." 
 
 While thus generally pleasant on board ship, he resolutely 
 refused intercourse with the outside world when not compelled 
 by duty. In this there appears to have been something self- 
 imposed, in deference to Lady Hamilton. There are indica- 
 tions that she felt, or feigned, some jealousy of his relations 
 with others, especially with women, corresponding to the 
 frenzied agitation he manifested at the association of her name 
 with that of any other man, and especially with that of the 
 then Prince of Wales. Whatever her real depth of attachment 
 to him, her best hope for the future was in his constancy, and 
 that he would eventually marry her ; for Sir William's death 
 could not be far distant, and matters might otherwise favor 
 the hope that both he and she cherished. Her approaching 
 widowhood would in fact leave her, unless her husband's will 
 was exceptionally generous, in a condition as precarious, her 
 1 Miduiglit to four A. M. 
 
504 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 acquired tastes considered, as that from which her marriage 
 had rescued her ; and her uneasiness would naturally arouse 
 an uncertain and exacting temper as, in the old days at Naples, 
 when Hamilton could not make up his mind. The condition 
 of jM"elson's health furnished him au excuse for declining all 
 civilities or calls, even from a reigning prince, on the ground 
 that he was not well enough to go ashore and return them. 
 Soon after this, however, lie was able to write Lady Hamilton 
 that he was perfectly recovered. " As far as relates to health, 
 I don't think I ever was stronger or in better health. It is 
 odd, but after severe illness I feel much better." Thus he 
 was, when definitely informed that his relief was on the way, 
 " To find a proper successor," said Lord St. Vincent, when 
 announcing the fact to him, " your lordship knows is no easy 
 task; fori never saw the man in our profession, excepting 
 yourself and Troubridge, who possessed the magic art of in- 
 fusing the same spirit into others, which inspired their own 
 actions ; exclusive of other talents and habits of business, not 
 common to naval characters." " I was so overcome yesterday," 
 wrote Nelson to Lady Hamilton, " with the good and happy 
 news that came about my going home, that I believe I was in 
 truth scarcely myself. The thoughts of going do me good, 
 yet all night I was so restless that I could not sleep. It is 
 nearly calm, therefore Admiral Pole cannot get on. If he was 
 not to come, I believe it would kill me. I am ready to start 
 the moment I have talked with him one hour." 
 
 On tlie 19th of June Nelson left the Baltic in the brig "Kite," 
 and on the 1st of July landed at Yarmouth. 
 
 Note. — Since this work was first published, the author has learned 
 that in the year 1847 her present Majesty authorized the grant of a 
 naval medal to the survivors of naval engagements that had taken 
 place between the years 1703 and 1840. Under this ordering, medals 
 were issued for the Battle of Copenhagen. Although a gracious act 
 in the government of the day, such a tardy recognition, when the 
 most conspicuous actors were dead, scarcely invalidates, in the au- 
 thor's opinion, the statement on page 489 that medals were not issued. 
 This note is added, however, as necessary to a complete account of 
 the matter. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 Nelson commands the " Squadron on a PARxicaLAR Service," for 
 THE Defence of the Coast of England against Invasion. — 
 Signature of Preliminaries of Peace with France. 
 
 July-October, 1801. Age, 43. 
 
 BEFORE sailing for the Baltic, and tlirougliout his service 
 in that sea, the longing for repose and for a lover's 
 paradise had disputed with the love of glory for the empire 
 in Nelson's heart, and signs were not wanting that the latter 
 Avas making a doubtful, if not a losing, fight. Shortly before 
 his departure for the North, he wrote to St. Vincent, "Al- 
 though, I own, I have met with much more honours and 
 rewards than ever my most sanguine ideas led me to expect, 
 yet I am so circumstanced that probably this Expedition will 
 be the last service ever performed by your obliged and 
 affectionate friend." His old commander was naturally per- 
 turbed at the thought that the illustrious career, which he 
 had done so much to foster, was to have the ignoble termina- 
 tion to be inferred from these words and the notorious facts. 
 " Be assured, ray dear Lord," he replied, " that every iiuhlic ^ 
 act of your life has been the subject of my admiration, which 
 I should have sooner declared, but that I was appalled by 
 the last sentence of your letter : for God's sake, do not suffer 
 yourself to be carried away by any sudden impulse." 
 
 During his absence, the uncertain deferment of his 
 desires had worked together with the perverse indolence 
 of Sir Hyde Parker, the fretting sight of opportunities wasted, 
 the constant chafing against the curb, to keep both body and 
 mind in perpetual unrest, to which the severe climate con- 
 tributed by undermining his health. This unceasing discom- 
 fort had given enhanced charm to his caressing dreams of 
 
 1 These suggestive italics are in the letter as printed by Clark and 
 M* Arthur, aud reproduced by Nicolas, 
 
606 
 
 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 reposeful happiness, soothed and stimulated by the com- 
 panionship which he so far had found to fulfil all his power 
 of admiration, and all his demands for sympathy. Eeleased 
 at last, he landed in England confidently expecting to realize 
 his hopes, only to find that they must again be postponed. 
 Eeputation such as his bears its own penalty. There Avas 
 no other man in whose name England could find the calm 
 certainty of safety, which popular apprehension demanded 
 in the new emergency, that had arisen while he was uphold- 
 ing her cause in the northern seas. Nelson repined, but he 
 submitted. Within four weeks his flag was flying again, and 
 himself immersed in professional anxieties. 
 
 War on the continent of Europe had ceased definitively with 
 the treaty of Luneville, between France and Austria, signed 
 February 9, 1801. Over four years were to elapse before it 
 should recommence. But, as Great Britain Avas to be the 
 first to take up arms again to resist the encroachments of 
 Bonaparte, so now she was the last to consent to peace, eager 
 as her people were to have it, Malta had fallen, the Armed 
 Neutrality of the North had dissolved, the French occupation 
 of Egypt was at its last gasp. Foiled in these three directions 
 by the sea-power of Great Britain, unable, with all his manip- 
 ulation of the prostrate continent, to inflict a deadly wound, 
 Bonaparte now resorted to the threat of invasion, well aware 
 that, under existing conditions, it could be but a threat, yet 
 hoping that its influence upon a people accustomed to sleep 
 securely might further his designs. But, though the en- 
 chanter wove his spells to rouse the demon of fear, their one 
 effect was to bring up once more, over against him, tlie 
 defiant form of his arch-subverter. Both the Prime Minister, 
 Addington, and the First Lord of the Admiralty assured 
 Nelson that his presence in chai'ge of the dispositions for 
 defence, and that only, could quiet the public mind. "I have 
 seen Lord St. Vincent," he Avrote the former, "and submit to 
 your and his partiality. Whilst my health Avill allow, I can 
 only say, that every exertion of mine shall be used to merit 
 the continuance of your esteem." St. Vincent, Avriting to him 
 a fortnight later, avowed frankly the Aveight attachec^ to his 
 very name by both friend and foe. " Our negotiation is 
 drawing near its close, and must terminate one way or 
 
THREATENED INVASION OF ENGLAND 507 
 
 another in a few clays, and, I need not add, how very impor- 
 tant it is that the enemy should know that yoii are constantly 
 opposed to him." 
 
 The purpose of Bonaparte in 1801 is not to be gauged by 
 the same measure as that of 1803-1805. In 1798 he had told 
 the then government of France that to make a descent upon 
 England, without beiug master of the sea, would be the boldest 
 and most difficult operation ever attempted. Conditions had 
 not changed since then, nor had he now the time or the money 
 to embark in the extensive preparations, which afterwards 
 gave assurance that he was in earnest in his threats. An 
 adept in making false demonstrations, perfectly appreciative 
 of the power of a great name, he counted upon his own 
 renown, and his amazing achievement of the apparently 
 impossible in the past, to overawe the imagination of a nation, 
 whose will, rather than whose strength, he hoped to subdue. 
 Boulogne and the small neighboring ports, whose nearness 
 clearly indicated them as the only suitable base from which 
 an invasion could start, were in that year in no state to receive 
 the boats necessary to carry an army. This the British 
 could see with their own eyes ; but who could be sure that the 
 paper flotilla at Boulogne, like the paper Army of Reserve at 
 Dijon a year before, had not elsewhere a substantial counter- 
 part, whose sudden appearance might yet work a catastrophe 
 as unexpected and total as that of Marengo ? And who more 
 apt than Bonaparte to spread the impression that some such 
 surprise was brewing ? "I can venture to assure you that no 
 embarkation of troops can take place at Boulogne," wrote 
 Nelson, immediately after his first reconnoissance ; but he says 
 at the same time, " I have now more than ever reason to believe 
 that the ports of Flushing and Flanders are much more likely 
 places to embark men from, than Calais, Boulogne, or Dieppe ; 
 for in Flanders we cannot tell by our eyes what means they 
 have collected for carrying an army." " Great preparations 
 at Ostend," he notes a week later; ''Augereau commands that 
 part of the Army. I hope to let him feel the bottom of 
 the Goodwin Sand." It was just this sort of apprehension, 
 specific in direction, yet vague and elusive in details, that 
 Bonaparte was skilled in disseminating. 
 
 St. Vincent, and the Government generally, agreed with 
 
508 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 Nelson's opinion. ** We are to look to Flanders for the great 
 effort," wrote the Earl to him. Neither of them had, nor was 
 it possible for clear-headed naval officers to have, any sub- 
 stantial, rational, fear of a descent in force ; yet the vague 
 possibility did, for the moment, impress even them, and the 
 liability of the populace, and of the commercial interests, to 
 panic, was a consideration not to be overlooked. Besides, in 
 a certain Avay, there was no adequate preparation for resist- 
 ance. The British Navy, indeed, was an overwhelming force 
 as compared to the French ; but its hands were fully occupied, 
 and the fleet Nelson had just left in the Baltic could not yet 
 be recalled. It was, however, in purely defensive measures, iu 
 the possession of a force similar to that by which the proposed 
 attack was to be made, and iu dispositions analogous to 
 coast defences, that the means were singularly defective, 
 both in material and men. "Everything, my dear Lord," 
 wrote Nelson, the day after he hoisted his flag at Sheerness, 
 " must have a beginning, and we are literally at the founda- 
 tion of our fabric of defence ; " but, he continues, reverting to 
 his own and St. Vincent's clear and accurate military intui- 
 tions, " I agree perfectly with you, that we must keep the 
 enemy as far from our own coasts as possible, and be able to 
 attack them the moment they come out of their ports." 
 
 " Our first defence," he writes a fortnight later, showing the 
 gradual maturing of the views whicli he, in common with St. 
 Vincent, held with such illustrious firmness iu the succeeding 
 years, " is close to the enemy's ports. When that is broke, 
 others will come forth on our own coasts." It was in the 
 latter that the unexpected anxieties of 1801 found the Gov- 
 ernmeut deficient, and these it was to be Nelson's first care to 
 organize and dispose. By the time his duties Avere completed, 
 and the problems connected with them had been two months 
 under his consideration, he had reached the conclusion which 
 Napoleon also held, and upon Avhich he acted. " This boat 
 business may be a part of a great plan of Invasion, but can 
 never be the only one." From the first he had contemplated 
 the possibility of the French fleets in Brest and elsewhere 
 attempting diversions, such as Napoleon planned in support 
 of his later great projects. "Although I feel confident that 
 the fleets of the enemy will meet the same fate which has 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
PLANS FOR DEFENDING LONDON 509 
 
 always attended them, yet their sailing will facilitate the 
 coming over of their flotilla, as they will naturally suppose our 
 attention will be called only to the fleets/' 
 
 What was feared in 1801 was not a grand military opera- 
 tion, in the nature of an attempt at conquest, or, at the least, 
 at injury so serious as to be disabling, but rather something 
 in the nature of a great raid, of which the most probable 
 object was the city of London, the chief commercial centre. 
 It was upon this supposition that the instructions of the 
 Admiralty to Nelson were framed, and upon this also the 
 memorandum as to methods, submitted by him to it, on 
 the 25th of July, 1801, " It is certainly proper to believe the 
 French are coming to attack London." "I will suppose that 
 40,000 men are destined for this attack, or rather surprise." 
 His plan is given first in his own words, as due to a matter 
 of so much importance ; and to them the writer appends a 
 summary of the principal features, as understood by him. 
 These are not always easily to be seen on the face of the 
 paper, owing to the small time for its preparation, and the 
 consequent haste — off-hand almost — with whicli it was 
 drawn up, as is further indicated from the copy in the Admi- 
 ralty being in his own writing. 
 
 MEMORANDA BY LORD NELSON", ON THE DEFENCE OF THE 
 THAMES, ETC. 
 
 25th July, 1801. 
 Besides the stationed Ships at the different jDosts between the 
 North Foreland and Orfordness, as many Gun-vessels as can be 
 spared from the very necessary protection of the Coast of Sussex and 
 of Kent to the westward of Dover, should be collected, for this part 
 of the Coast must be seriously attended to ; for supposing London 
 the object of surprise, I am of opinion that the Enemy's object ought 
 to be the getting on shore as speedily as possible, for the dangers of a 
 navigation of forty-eight hours, appear to me to be an insurmountable 
 objection to the rowing from Boulogne to the Coast of Essex. It is 
 therefore inost probable (for it is certainly proper to believe the 
 French are coming to attack London, and therefore to be prepared) 
 that from Boulogne, Calais, and even Havre, that the enemy will try 
 and land in Sussex, or the lower part of Kent, and from Dunkirk, 
 Ostend, and the other Ports of Flanders, to land on the Coast of Essex 
 
510 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 or Suffolk; for I own myself of opinion that, the object being to get 
 on shore somewhere within 100 miles of London, as speedily as pos- 
 sible, that tlie Flats in the month of the Thames will not be the onl}' 
 place necessary to attend to ; added to this, the Enemy will create a 
 powerful diversion by the sailing of the Combined Fleet, and the 
 either sailing, or creating such an appearance of sailing, of the Dutch 
 Fleet, as will prevent Admiral Dickson from sending anything from 
 off the great Dutch Ports, whilst the smaller Ports will s-pew forth its 
 Flotilla, — viz., Flushing, &c. &c. It must be pretty well ascertained 
 what number of small Vessels are in each Port. 
 
 I will suppose that 40,000 men are destined for this attack, or 
 rather surprise, of London; 20,000 will land on the west side of 
 Dover, sixty or seventy miles from London, and the same number on 
 the east side : they are too knowing to let us have but one X'oint of 
 alarm for London. Supposing 200 craft, or 250, collected at Boulogne 
 &c., they are supposed equal to carry 20,000 men. Tn very calm 
 weather, they might row over, supposing no impediment, in twelve 
 hours ; at the same instant, by telegraph, the same number of troops 
 would be rowed out of Dunkirk, Ostend, Sec. &c. These are the two 
 great objects to attend to from Dover and the Downs, aiid perhaps 
 one of the small Ports to the westward. Boulogne (which I call the 
 central point of the Western attack) must be attended to. If it is 
 calm when the Enemy row out, all our Vessels and Boats appointed 
 to watch them, must get into the Channel, and meet them as soon as 
 possible : if not strong enough for the attack, they must watch, and 
 keep them company till a favourable opportunity offers. If a breeze 
 springs up, our Ships are to deal destruction; no delicacy can be 
 observed on this great occasion. But should it remain calm, and our 
 Flotilla not fancy itself strong enough to attack the Enemy on their 
 passage, the moment that they begin to touch our shore, strong or 
 weak, our Flotilla of Boats must attack as much of the Enemy's 
 Flotilla as they are able — say only one-half or two-thirds; it will 
 create a most powerful diversion, for the bows of our Flotilla will be 
 opposed to their unarmed sterns, and the courage of Britons will 
 never, I believe, allow one Frenchman to leave the beach. A great 
 number of Deal and Dover Boats to be on board our vessels off the 
 Port of Boidogne, to give notice of the direction taken by the Enemj\ 
 If it is calm, Vessels in the Channel can make signals of intelligence 
 to our shores, from the North Foreland to Orfordness, and even as 
 far as Solebay, not an improbable place, about seventy or eighty 
 miles from London. 
 
 A Flotilla to be kept near IMargate and Ramsgate, to consist of 
 Gun-boats and Flat-boats; another Squadron to be stationed near the 
 centre, between Orfordness and !N"ortli Foreland, and the third in 
 
PLANS FOR DEFENDING LONDON 511 
 
 Hoseley Bay.i The Floating Batteiies are stationed in all proper 
 positions for defending the different Channels, and the smaller Ves- 
 sels will always have a resort in the support of the stationed ships. 
 The moment of the Enemy's movement from Boulogne, is to be con- 
 sidered as the movement of the Enemy from Dunkirk. Supposing it 
 calm, the Flotillas are to be rowed, and the heavy ones towed, (except 
 the stationed Ships) , those near Mai'gate, three or four leagiies to the 
 north of the North Foreland ; those from Hoseley Bay, a little 
 approaching the Centre Division, but always keeping an eye towards 
 Solebay ; the Centre Division to advance half-way between the two. 
 The more fast Rowing boats, called Thames Galleys, which can be 
 procured the better, to carry orders, information, &c. &c. 
 
 Whenever the Enemy's Flotilla can be seen, our Divisions are 
 to unite, but not intermix, and to be ready to execute such orders as 
 may be deemed necessary, or as the indispensable circumstances may 
 require. For this purpose, men of such confidence in each other 
 should be looked for, that (as far as human foresight can go,) no 
 little jealousy may creep into any man's mind, but to be all animated 
 with the same desire of preventing the descent of the Enemy on our 
 Coasts. Stationary Floating Batteries are not, from any apparent 
 advantage, to be moved, for the tide may prevent their resuming the 
 very important stations assigned them ; they are on no account to be 
 supposed neglected, even should the Enemy surround them, for they 
 may rely on support, and reflect that perhaps their gallant conduct 
 may prevent the mischievous designs of the Enemy. Whatever 
 plans maj'- be adopted, the moment the Enemy touch our Coast, be it 
 where it may, they are to be attacked by every man afloat and on 
 shore: this must be pei-fectly understood. Never fear the event. The 
 Flat Boats can probably be manned (partly, at least,) with the Sea 
 Fencibles, (the numbers or fixed places of whom I am entirely igno- 
 rant of,) but the Flat Boats they may man to be in grand and sub- 
 divisions, commanded by their own Captains and Lieutenants, as far 
 as is possible. The number of Flat Boats is unknown to me, as also 
 the other means of defence in Small Craft ; but I am clearly of opinion 
 that a proportion of the small force should be kept to watch the Fiat- 
 Boats from Boulogne, and the others in the way I 'have presumed to 
 suggest. These are offered as merely the rude ideas of the moment, 
 and are only meant as a Sea plan of defence for the City of London ; but 
 I believe other parts may likewise be menaced, if the Brest fleet, and 
 those from Rochfort and Holland jiut to sea ; although I feel confi- 
 dent that the Fleets of tlie Enemy will meet the same fate which has 
 always attended them, yet their sailing will facilitate the coming over 
 of their Flotilla, as they will naturally suppose our attention will be 
 called only to the Fleets. 
 
 1 HoUesley Bay. 
 
512 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 Coming by water, the expectation seems to have been that 
 the enemy might proceed up the river, or to a landing on 
 some of the flats at the mouth of the Thames. Nelson says 
 expressly that he does not think those alone are the points to 
 be guarded ; but he characterizes his paper as being " only 
 meant as a sea plan of defence for the city of London," and 
 the suggestion already noticed, that the enemy's fleet will 
 support the attack by diversions, is merely mentioned casu- 
 ally. London being the supposed object, and the Thames the 
 highway, the purely defensive force is to be concentrated 
 there ; the Channel coasts, though not excluded, are secondary. 
 '•As many gun-vessels as can be spared from the very necessary 
 protection of the coast of Sussex, and of Kent to the westward 
 of Dover, should be collected between the North Foreland 
 and Orfordness, for this part of the coast must be seriously 
 attended to." 
 
 The attack is expected in this quarter, because from Elanders 
 and Flushing it is the most accessible. The object, Nelson 
 thinks, will be to get on shore as speedily as possible, and 
 therefore somewhere within one hundred miles of London. 
 Anywhere from the westward of Dover round to Solebay — 
 "not an improbable place " — must be looked upon as a pos- 
 sible landing. If there are forty thousand men coming, he 
 regards it as certain that they will come in two principal 
 bodies, of twenty thousand each — " they are too knowing to 
 let us have but one point of alarm for London." " From Bou- 
 logne, Calais, and even Havre, the eiiemy will try and land in 
 Sussex, or the lower part of Kent; and from Dunkirk, Ostend, 
 and the other ports of Flanders, to land on the coast of Essex 
 or Suffolk." "In very calm weather, they might row over 
 [from Boulogne], supposing no impediment, in twelve hours; 
 at the same instant, by telegraph, the same number of troops 
 would be rowed out of Dunkirk, Osteud, &g. &c." " Added to 
 this, the enemy will create a powerful diversion by the sailing 
 of the combined fleet, and the either sailing, or creating siich 
 an appearance of sailing, of the Dutch fleet, as will prevent 
 Admiral Dickson [commander-in-chief in the North Sea] from 
 sending anything from off the great Dutch ports, whilst 
 the smaller ports will spew forth its flotilla — viz, Flushing 
 &c. &c." 
 
PLANS FOR DEFENDING LONDON 513 
 
 To frustrate that part of this combined effort which is sup- 
 posed to be directed against the Channel coast, Nelson pro- 
 poses that, " if it is calm when the enemy row out, all our 
 vessels and boats appointed to watch them, must get into the 
 Channel, and meet them as soon as possible ; if not strong 
 enough for the attack, they must watch, and keep them com- 
 pany till a favourable opportunity offers. . . . Should it re- 
 main calm," so tliat the cruising ships cannot assist, " the mo- 
 ment that they begin to touch our shore, strong or weak, our 
 flotilla of boats must attack as much of the enemy's flotilla as 
 they are able — say only one-half or two-thirds — it will create 
 a most powerful diversion, for the bows of our flotilla will be 
 opposed to their unarmed sterns." 
 
 The dispositions to defend the entrance of the Thames, 
 being considered the more important, are the more minute. 
 Blockships are stationed in the principal channels, as floating 
 fortifications, commanding absolutely the water around them, 
 and forming strong points of support for the flotilla. It is 
 sagaciously ordered that these " are not, from any apparent 
 advantage, to be moved, for the tide may prevent their re- 
 suming the very important stations assigned them." Nelson 
 was evidently alive to that advantage in permanent works, 
 which puts it out of the power of panic to stampede them ; 
 tide is not the only factor that prevents retrieving a false step. 
 The eastern flotilla is organized into three bodies, the right 
 wing being near Margate, the left in Hollesley Bay near Har- 
 wich, the centre, vaguely, between Orfordness and the North 
 Foreland. When the alarm is given, they are to draw together 
 towards the centre, but not to emphasize their movement suffi- 
 ciently to uncover either flank, until the enemy's flotilla can 
 be seen ; then they are '' to unite, but not intermix." 
 
 To both divisions — that in the Channel and that on the 
 East Coast — the commander-in-chief, in concluding, renews 
 his charge, with one of those " Nelson touches " which elec- 
 trified his followers : " Whatever plans may be adopted, the 
 moment the enemy 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. ^^ 
 
 This plan for the defence of London against an attack by 
 surprise, drawn up by Nelson on the spur of the moment, was 
 
 33 
 
514 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 based simply upon his general ideas, and without specific 
 information yet as to either the character or extent of the 
 enemy's preparations, or of the means of resistance available 
 on his own side. It has, therefore, something of an abstract 
 character, embodying broad views unmodified by special cir- 
 cumstances, and possessing, consequently, a somewhat peculiar 
 value in indicating the tendency of iSTelson's military concep- 
 tions. He assumes, implicitly, a certain freedom of move- 
 ment on the part of the two opponents, unrestricted by the 
 friction and uncertainty which in practice fetter action; and 
 the use which, under these conditions, he imagines either will 
 make of his powers, may not unfairly be assumed to show 
 what he thought the correct course in such a general case. 
 
 Prominent among his ideas, and continuous in all his specu- 
 lations as to the movements of an enemy, from 1795 onward, 
 is the certainty that, for the sake of diversion, Bonaparte will 
 divide his force into two great equal fragments, which may 
 land at points so far apart, and separated by such serious 
 obstacles, as were Solebay and Dover. Those who will be at 
 the trouble to recall his guesses as to the future movements 
 of the French in the Riviera, Piedmont, and Tuscany, in 1795 
 .and 1796, as well as his own propositions to the Austrians at 
 the same period, will recognize here the recurrence, unchas- 
 tened by experience or thought, of a theory of warfare it is 
 almost impossible to approve. That Bonaparte, — supposed 
 to be master of his first movements, — if he meant to land in 
 person at Dover, would put half his army ashore at Solebay, 
 is as incredible as that he would have landed one half at 
 Leghorn, meaning to act with the other from the Eiviera. If 
 this criticism be sound, it would show that Kelson, genius as 
 he was, suffered from the lack of that study which reinforces 
 its own conclusions by the experience of others; and that his 
 experience, resting upon service in a navy so superior in 
 quality to its enemies, that great inferiority in nu.mber or 
 position could be accepted, had not supplied the necessary 
 corrective to an ill-conceived readiness to sub-divide. 
 
 The resultant error is clearly traceable, in the author's 
 opinion, in his dispositions at Copenhagen, and in a general 
 tendency to allow himself too narrow a margin, based upon an 
 under-valuation of the enemy not far removed from contempt. 
 
PLANS FOR COAST DEFENCE 515 
 
 It was most fortunate for him, in the Baltic, that Parker in- 
 creased to twelve the detachment he himself had fixed at ten. 
 The last utterances of his life, however, show a distinct ad- 
 vance and ripening of the judgment, without the slightest 
 decrease of the heroic resolution that so characterized him. 
 " I have twenty-three sail with me," he wrote a fortnight 
 before Trafalgar, " and should they come out I will imme- 
 diately bring them to battle ; . . . but I am very, very, very 
 anxious for the arrival of the force which is intended. It is, 
 as Mr. Pitt knows, annihilation that the country wants, and 
 not merely a splendid victory of twenty-three to thirty-six. 
 Numbers only can annihilate." 
 
 The assumption that Bonaparte's plan would be such as he 
 mentioned, naturally controlled Nelson in the dispositions he 
 sketched for the local defence of the shore lines. The inva- 
 sion being in two bodies, the defence was to be in two bodies 
 also; nor is there any suggestion of a possibility that these 
 two might be united against one of the enemy's. The whole 
 scheme is dual ; yet, although the chance of either division 
 of the British being largely inferior to the enemy opposed to 
 it is recognized, the adoption of a central position, or concentra- 
 tion upon either of the enemy's flotillas, apparently is not 
 contemplated. Such uncertainty of touch, Avhen not corrected 
 by training, is the natural characteristic of a defence essen- 
 tially passive; that is, of a defence which proposes to await 
 the approach of the enemy to its own frontier, be that land 
 or water. Yet it scarcely could have failed soon to occur to 
 men of Nelson's and St. Vincent's martial capacities, that a 
 different disposition, which would clearly enable them to 
 unite and intercept either one of the enemy's divisions, must 
 wreck the entire project ; for the other twenty thousand men 
 alone could not do serious or lasting injury. The mere tak- 
 ing a position favorable to such concentration would be an 
 adequate check. The trouble for them undoubtedly was that 
 which overloads, and so nullifies, all schemes for coast defence 
 resting upon popular outcry, which demands outward and 
 visible protection for every point, and assurance that people 
 at war shall be guarded, not only against broken bones, but 
 against even scratches of the skin. 
 
 This uneducated and weak idea, that protection is only 
 
516 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 adequate when co-extensive with the frontier line threatened, 
 finds its natural outcome in a system of defence by very small 
 vessels, in great numbers, capable of minute subdivision and 
 wide dispersal, to which an equal tonnage locked up in larger 
 ships cannot be subjected. Although St. Vincent was at the 
 head of the Admiralty which in 1801 ordered that Nelson 
 should first organize such a flotilla, and only after that pro- 
 ceed to offensive measures, the results of his experience now 
 were to form — or at the least to confirm in him — the con- 
 clusion which he enunciated, and to which he persistently 
 held, during the later truly formidable preparations of Na- 
 poleon. " Our great reliance is on the vigilance and activity 
 of our cruisers at sea, any reduction in the number of which, 
 by applying them to guard our ports, inlets, and beaches, 
 would in my judgment tend to our destruction." Very 
 strangely, so far as the author's opinion goes. Nelson after- 
 wards expressed an apparently contrary view, and sustained 
 Mr. Pitt in his attack upon St. Vincent's administration on 
 this very point ; an attack, in its tendency and in the moment 
 chosen, among the most dangerous to his country ever at- 
 tempted by a great and sagacious statesman. Nelson, how- 
 ever, writing in May, 1804, says : " I had wrote a memoir, 
 many months ago, upon the propriety of a flotilla. I had that 
 command at the end of the last war, and I know the necessity 
 of it, even had you, and which you ought to have, thirty or 
 forty sail of the line in the Downs and North Sea, besides 
 frigates &c. ; but having failed so entirely in submitting my 
 mind upon three points I was disheartened." This Memoir 
 has not been preserved, but it will be noticed that, in express- 
 ing his difference from St. Vincent in the words quoted, he 
 assumes, what did not at any time exist, thirty or forty sail- 
 of-the-line for the North Sea and the Downs. St. Vincent's 
 stand Avas taken on the position that the flotilla could not be 
 manned without diminishing the cruisers in commission, which 
 were far short of the ideal number named by Nelson. It may 
 be believed, or at least hoped, that if forced to choose between 
 the two, as St. Vincent was, his choice would have been that 
 of the great Earl. It seems clear, however, that in 1804 he 
 believed it possible that the Army of Invasion miffht get as 
 far as the shores of England — a question which has been 
 
HIS MILITARY CONCEPTIONS 517 
 
 much argued. " I am very uneasy," he then wrote to Lady 
 Hamilton, " at your and Horatia being on the coast : for you 
 cannot move, if the French make the attempt." 
 
 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 oifers. 
 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 cal- 
 culation — 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, iSTelson 
 hastened to his task. His commission for the new service 
 was dated Jul}'' 24, three weeks after his return from the 
 Baltic. On the 25th he presented the memorandum of oper- 
 ations which has been discussed, on the 26th the Admiralty 
 issued their instructions, and on the 2Tth he hoisted his flag 
 upon the *' Unite" frigate at Sheerness. "1 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 men- 
 tioning 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 Orford- 
 ness, on the Suffolk shore, round to Beachy Head, on the 
 Channel. On the enemy's side of the water, it extended from 
 
518 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 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 im- 
 plicitly 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 com- 
 mander-in-chief in the North Sea. Such circumstances are 
 extremely liable to cause friction and bad blood, and St. Vin- 
 cent, 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, re- 
 moved 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 dis- 
 posed 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, 
 
 I 
 
HIS TACT AND ACTIVITY 519 
 
 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 move- 
 ment. " He is the cleverest and quickest man, and the most 
 zealous in the world. In the short time we were in Sheer- 
 ness, he regulated and gave orders for thirty of the ships 
 under liis 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 Feucibles, 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 disagree- 
 able 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 Treville, 
 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. Pre- 
 vented 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 charac- 
 
520 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 teristically 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 Ad- 
 miralty, 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." Never- 
 theless, he favors an attack of some sort, suggests an expedi- 
 tion 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 ojnnion is against fighting j but that is not 
 the case at j^resent, 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 move- 
 ment 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 
 
BOAT ATTACK OFF BOULOGNE 521 
 
 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 for- 
 ward 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 render- 
 ing 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 flat-boats 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 Avay alto- 
 gether. 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, bat 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 pre- 
 vent the dull flat-boats of the enemy moving in a concert that 
 the cutters of ships of war had not attained. " The craft 
 
522 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 which I have seen," he wrote, " I do not think it possible to 
 roiv 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 
 
JEALOUSY OF TROUBRIBGE 523 
 
 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 em- 
 ployed in, and give up, at least for the present, your inten- 
 tion 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 "Non- 
 pareil," 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 adminis- 
 tration 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 
 
524 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 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 re- 
 sented 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 rever- 
 ence which he undoubtedly felt for his old comrade, and 
 which iu 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 com- 
 mon 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, when- 
 ever 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 mention- 
 ing 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 Nel- 
 son ; but I shall never forget it. He told me if I asked any- 
 
RENEWED DEPRESSION OF MIND 525 
 
 thing 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 ? iVo; 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 dis- 
 traction. . . . 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 condi- 
 tion of Parker, the young commander, who had been wounded 
 
526 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 off Boulogne, and had since then hovered between life and 
 death. The thigh had been shattered too far up for amputa- 
 tion, 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. ISTelson, who was tenderly attached to him, fol- 
 lowed 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 m3^self again to allow any attack to go for- 
 ward, 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 Nel- 
 son, who assumed all his debts. It was but one instance 
 among many of a liberality in mone}" matters, which kept him 
 constantly embarrassed. To the surgeon who had attended 
 the w^ounded, 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, Avho had fought 
 under his flag. " I much doubt if all the admirals and cap- 
 tains 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 Bronte." 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 un- 
 
PEACE WITH FRANCE, 1801 527 
 
 limited offer of a loan. " The Baltic expedition," wrote Nel- 
 son 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 ambassa- 
 dor, 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 Koyal 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. 
 
528 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 On the 15th of October he received official notification for 
 the cessation of hostilities with the French Republic, the pre- 
 cise date at which they were to be considered formally at an 
 end having been fixed at the 22d of the month. The Admi- 
 ralty declined to allow him to leave his station until that day 
 arrived. Then he had their permission to take leave of 
 absence, but not to haul down his flag. " I heartily hope a 
 little rest will soon set you up," wrote St. Vincent, " but until 
 the definitive treaty is signed, your Lordship must continue in 
 pay, although we may not have occasion to require your per- 
 sonal services at the head of the squadron under your orders." 
 In accordance with this decision, Nelson's flag continued to 
 fly as Commander-in-Chief of a Squadron of ships '* on a par- 
 ticular service," throughout the anxious period of doubt and 
 suspicion which preceded the signing of the treaty of Amiens, 
 on the 25th of March, 1802. It was not till the 10th of the 
 following April that he received the formal orders, to strike 
 his flag and come on shore. 
 
 On the 22d of October, 1801, he left the flagship and set off 
 for his new home in Surrey. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Release from Active Service during the Peace of Amiens. — 
 Home Life at Merton. — Public Incidents. 
 
 October, 1801-May, . 1803. Age, 43-44. 
 
 DURING the brief interval between his return from the 
 Baltic, July 1, 1801, and his taking command of the 
 Squadron on a Particular Service, on the 27th of the same 
 month, Nelson had made his home in England with the Ham- 
 iltons, to whose house in Piccadilly he went immediately upon 
 his arrival in London. Whatever doubt may have remained 
 in his wife's mind, as to the finality of their parting in the 
 previous January, or whatever trace of hesitation may then 
 have existed in his own, had been definitively removed by 
 letters during his absence. To her he wrote on the 4th of 
 March, immediately before the expedition sailed from Yar- 
 mouth : " Josiah ^ is to have another ship and to go abroad, if 
 the Thalia cannot soon be got ready. I have done all for him, 
 and he may again, as he has often done before, wish me to 
 break my neck, and be abetted in it by his friends, who are 
 likewise my enemies ; but I have done my duty as an honest, 
 generous man, and I neither want or wish for anybody to care 
 what becomes of me, whether I return, or am left in the Baltic. 
 Living, I have done all in my power for you, and if dead, you 
 will find I have done the same ; therefore my only wish is, to 
 be left to myself : and wishing you every happiness, believe 
 that I am, your affectionate Nelson and Bronte." Upon this 
 letter Lady Nelson endorsed : " This is My Lord Nelson's 
 Letter of dismissal, which so astonished me that I imme- 
 diately sent it to Mr. Maurice Nelson,^ who was sincerely 
 
 ^ Josiah Nisbet, her son. 
 
 2 Nelson's eldest brother. There appear to have been two copies of this 
 letter in Nelson's hand. One, of which the latter half only remains, is in the 
 British Museum. It bears the endorsement of Lady Nelson, as given. The 
 other copy, entire, is in the Alfred Morrison collection — Number 536. Nel- 
 son probably sent a copy to Lady Hamilton to satisfy her exigencies that the 
 
 34 
 
530 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 attached to me, for his advice. He desired me not to take the 
 least notice of it, as his brother seemed to have forgot himself." 
 A separation preceded and caused by such circumstances as 
 this was, could not fail to be attended with bitterness on both 
 sides; yet one could have wished to see in a letter which is 
 believed, and probably was intended, to be the last ever ad- 
 dressed by him to her, some recollection, not only of what he 
 himself had done for his step-son, but that once, to use his own 
 expression, " the boy " had " saved his life ; " and that, after 
 all, if he was under obligations to Nelson, he would have been 
 more than youth, had no intemperance of expression mingled 
 with the resentment he felt for the slights offered his mother 
 in the face of the world. With Nelson's natural temperament 
 and previous habits of thought, however, it was imperative, 
 for his peace of mind, to justify his course of action to him- 
 self; and this he could do only by dwelling upon the wrong 
 done him by those who, in the eyes of men generally, seemed, 
 and must still seem, the wronged. Of what passed between 
 himself and Lady Nelson, we know too little to apportion the 
 blame of a transaction in which she appears chiefly as the suf- 
 ferer. Nisbet, except in the gallantry and coolness shown by 
 him at Teneriffe, has not the same claim to consideration, and 
 his career had undoubtedly occasioned great and legitimate 
 anxiety to Nelson, whose urgency with St. Vincent was 
 primarily the cause of a premature promotion, which spoiled 
 the future of an officer, otherwise fairly promising.^ If the 
 
 breach was final. The two correspond, word for word, — as far, that is, as 
 the former remains. Maurice Nelson died in April, 1801. 
 
 1 Nelson several times sjioke of Nisbet's early promise. The author is 
 indebted to Mrs. F. H. B. Ecclcs, Nisbet's granddaughter, for a copy of the 
 following letter from St. Vincent to his sister Mrs. Ricketts: — 
 
 London, January 22, 1807. 
 My dear Sister, — Upon rede.xion it appears best to send you tbe only 
 letters I can find relative to Captain Nisbet, and to authorize you to assert in 
 my name that Lord Nelson assured me that he owed his life to the resolution 
 and admirable conduct of his stepson, when wounded at Teneriffe, and that 
 he had witnessed many instances of his courage and enterprise. 
 
 Yours most affectionately, 
 
 St. Vincent. 
 
 This letter explains how St. Vincent, feeling the value of Nelson's life to 
 the country, granted, in the still warm memories of Teneriffe, a promotion 
 which must have been sorely against his judgment. 
 
FINAL BREACH WITH HIS WIFE 531 
 
 relations between the two had not been so soon strained by 
 Nelson's attentions to Lady Hamilton, things might have 
 turned out better, through the influence of one who rarely 
 failed to make the most of those under his command. 
 
 The annual allowance made to Lady Nelson by her husband, 
 after their separation, was £1,800; which, by a statement he 
 gave to the Prime Minister, two years later, \yhen asking an 
 increase of pension, appears to have been about half of his 
 total income. On the 23d of April, 1801, when daily expecting 
 to leave the Baltic for England, he sent her a message through 
 their mutual friend Davison : " You will, at a proper time, and 
 before my arrival in England, signify to Lady N. that I expect, 
 and for which I have made such a very liberal allowance to 
 her, to be left to myself, and without any inquiries from her ; 
 for sooner than live the unhappy life I did when last I came 
 to England, I would stay abroad for ever. My mind is fixed 
 as fate : therefore you will send my determination in any way 
 you may judge proper." ^ To Lady Hamilton he wrote about 
 the same time, assuring her, nnder the assumption of mystery 
 with which he sought to guard their relations against discovery 
 through the postal uncertainties of the day, that he had no 
 communication with his Avife : " Thomson ^ desires me to say 
 he has never wrote his aunt" since he sailed, and all the 
 parade about a house is nonsense. He has wrote to his father, 
 but not a word or message to her. He does not, nor cannot, 
 care about her ; he believes she has a most unfeeling heart." * 
 
 His stay with the Hamiltons in Piccadilly, though broken 
 by several trips to the country, convinced Nelson that if they 
 were to live together, as he wished to do, it must be, for his 
 own satisfaction, in a house belonging to him. It is clear 
 that the matter was talked over between Lady Hamilton and 
 himself; for, immediately upon joining his command in the 
 Downs, he began Avriting about the search for a house, as a 
 matter already decided, in which she was to act for him. 
 
 1 Nicolas, vol. vii. Addenda, p. ccix. In a letter to Lady Hamilton of 
 the same date, Nelson says: " Read the enclosed, and send it if you approve. 
 Who should I consult but my friends ? " (Morrison, vol. ii. p. 142. ) Whether 
 the enclosed was this letter to Davison cannot be said; but it is likely. 
 Compare foot-note, page 529. 
 
 2 Nelson. 3 Lady Nelson, 
 
 * Morrison, voL ii. p. 137. 
 
532 THE LIEE OF NELSON 
 
 " Have you heard of any house ? I am very anxious to have 
 a home where my friends might be made welcome." As usual, 
 in undertakings of every kind, he chafed under delays, and he 
 was ready to take the first that seemed suitable. " I really 
 wish you would buy the house at Turnham Green," he writes 
 her within a week. The raising of the money, it is true, pre- 
 sents some diflficulty, for he has in hand but £3,000. " It is, my 
 dear friend," he moralizes, " extraordinary, but true, that the 
 man who is pushed forward to defend his country, has not 
 from that country a place to lay his head in; but never mind, 
 happy, truly happy, in the estimation of such friends as you, 
 I care for nothing." 
 
 Lady Hamilton, however, was a better business-man than 
 himself, and went about his purchase with the deliberation of 
 a woman shopping. At the end of three weeks he was still 
 regretting that he could not " find a house and a little piece of 
 ground, for if 1 go on much longer with my present command, 
 I must be ruined. I think your perseverance and manage- 
 ment will at last get me a home." By the 20th of August 
 she was suited, for on that date he writes to her, "I 
 approve of the house at Merton;" and, as the Admiralty 
 would not consent to his leaving his station even for a few 
 days, all the details of the bargain were left in her hands. " I 
 entreat, my good friend, manage the affair of the house for 
 me." He stipulates only that everything in it shall be his, 
 " to a book or a cook," or even " to a pair of sheets, towels, 
 &c." " I entreat I may never hear about the expenses again. 
 If you live in Piccadilly or Merton it makes no difference, and 
 if I was to live at Merton I must keep a table, and nothing 
 can cost me one-sixth part which it does at present." "You 
 are to be, recollect, Lady Paramount of all the territories and 
 waters of Merton, and we are all to be your guests, and to 
 obey all lawful commands." 
 
 In this way were conducted the purchase and preparation of 
 the only home of his own on English ground that Nelson ever 
 possessed, where he passed his happiest hours, and from which 
 he set out to fight his last battle. The negotiation was con- 
 cluded three days before the rumors of the peace got abroad, 
 therefore about the 27th of September, 1801 ; and in conse- 
 quence, so Sir William Hamilton thought, the property was 
 
 1 
 
PURCHASE OF MERTON 533 
 
 acquired a thousand pouuds cheaper than it otherwise might 
 have been — a piece of financial good luck rare in Nelson's 
 experience. " We have now inliabited your Lordship's prem- 
 ises some days," continued the old knight, " and I can now 
 speak with some certainty. I have lived with our dear Knima 
 several years. I know her merit, have a great opinion of the 
 head and heart that God Almighty has been pleased to give 
 her ; but a seaman alone could have given a fine woman full 
 power to chuse and fit up a residence for him without seeing 
 it himself. You are in luck, for in my conscience I verily 
 believe that a place so suitable to your views could not have 
 been found, and at so cheap a rate. The proximity to the 
 capital," — Nelson found it an hour's drive from Hyde Park 
 — " and the perfect retirement of this place, are, for your 
 Lordship, two points beyond estimation ; but the house is 
 so comfortable, the furniture clean and good, and I never 
 saw so many conveniences united in so small a compass. You 
 have nothing but to come and enjoy immediately ; you have a 
 good mile of pleasant dry walk around your own farm. It 
 would make you laugh to see Emma and her mother fitting up 
 pig-sties and hen-coops, and already the Canal is enlivened 
 with ducks, and the cock is strutting with his hens about the 
 walks." 
 
 As time passed. Sir William did not realize the comfort he 
 had anticipated from surroundings so pleasant as those he 
 described. He was troubled in money matters, fearing lest 
 he might be distressed to meet the current expenses of the 
 house. " If we had given up the house in Piccadilly," he 
 lamented to Greville, "the living here Avould indeed be a 
 great saving ; but, as it is, we spend neither more nor less 
 than we did." Why he did not give it up does not appear. 
 As Lady Paramount over the owner of the place, Lady Hamil- 
 ton insisted upon entertaining to a degree consonant to the 
 taste neither of Lord Nelson, who was only too pleased to 
 humor her whims, nor of her husband, who had an old man's 
 longing for quiet, and, besides, was not pleased to find him- 
 self relegated to a place in her consideration quite secondary 
 to that of his host. '* It is but reasonable," he wrote to 
 Greville, in January, 1802, " after having fagged all my life, 
 that my last days should pass off comfortably and quietly. 
 
534 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 Nothing at present disturbs me but my debt, and the nonsense 
 I am obliged to submit to here to avoid coming to an explo- 
 sion, which would be attended with many disagreeable effects, 
 and would totally destroy the comfort of the best man and 
 the best friend I have in the world. However, I am deter- 
 mined that my quiet shall not be disturbed, let the nonsensi- 
 cal world go on as it will." 
 
 Neither the phlegm on which he prided himself, nor his 
 resolutions, were sufficient, however, to keep the peace, or to 
 avoid undignified contentions with his wife. Some months 
 later he addressed her a letter, which, although bearing no 
 date, was evidently written after a prolonged experience of 
 the conditions entailed upon himself by this odd partnership; 
 for partnership it was, in form at least, the living expenses 
 being divided between the two.^ In their quiet reasonable- 
 ness, his words are not without a certain dignified pathos, 
 and they have the additional interest of proving, as far as 
 words can prove, that, battered man of the world though he 
 was, he had no suspicion, within a year of his death, that the 
 relations between his host and his wife were guilty towards 
 himself. 
 
 " I have passed the last 40 years of my life in the hurry & bustle 
 that must necessarily be attendant on a publick character. I am 
 arrived at the age when some repose is really necessary, & I promised 
 myself a quiet home, & altlio' I was sensible, & said so when I mar- 
 ried, that I shou'd be superannuated when my wife wou'd be in her 
 full beauty and vigour of youth. Tliat time is arrived, and we must 
 make the best of it for the comfort of both parties. Unfortunately 
 our tastes as to the manner of living are very different. I by no 
 means wish to live in solitary retreat, but to have seldom less than 
 12 or 14 at table, and those varying continually, is coming back to 
 what was become so irksome to me in Italy during the latter years 
 of my residence in that country. 1 hav^ no connections out of my 
 own family. 1 have no complaint to make, but I feel that the whole 
 attention of my wife is given to Ld. N. and his interest at Merton. 
 I well know the purity of Ld. N.'s friendship for Emma and me, 
 and I know how very uncomfortable it wou'd make his Lp, our best 
 friend, if a separation shou'd take place, & am therefore determined 
 to do all iu my power to prevent such an extremity, which wou'd be 
 
 * On the 21st of September, 1802, six months before Hamilton's death, he 
 was still £1,200 in Nelson's debt. (Morrison, vol. ii. p. 404.) 
 
HOME LIFE AT MERTON 535 
 
 essentially detrimental to all parties, but wou'd be more sensibly felt 
 by our dear friend than by us. Provided that our expences in house- 
 keejjing do not encrease beyond measure (of which I must own I see 
 some danger), I am willing to go on upon our present footing; but 
 as I cannot expect to live many years, every moment to me is pre- 
 cious, & I hope I may be allow'd sometimes to be my own master, 
 & pass my time according to my own inclination, either by going my 
 fishing parties on the Thames or by going to London to attend the 
 Museum, R. Society, the Tuesday Club, & Auctions of pictures. I 
 mean to have a light chariot or post chaise by the month, that I may 
 make use of it in London and run backwards and forwards to Merton 
 or to Shepperton, &c. This is my plan, and we miglit go on very 
 well, but I am fully determined not to have more of the very silly 
 altercations that happen but too often between us and embitter the 
 present moments exceedingly. If realy one cannot live comfortably 
 together, a ivise and well concerted separation is preferable; but I 
 think, considering the probability of my not troubling any party long 
 in this world, the best for us all wou'd be to bear those ills we have 
 rather than flie to those we know not of. I have fairly stated what 
 I have on my mind. There is no time for nonsense or trifling. I 
 know and admire your talents & many excellent qualities, biit I am 
 not blind to your defects, and confess having many myself ; therefore 
 let us bear and forbear for God's sake." ^ 
 
 There are other accounts by eye-witnesses of the home 
 life at Merton, in which participated, from time to time, not 
 only the many outside guests, of whose burden Hamilton 
 complained, but also most of the members of the Nelson 
 family. Lord Minto, who had returned to England from 
 Vienna, and whose personal friendship to Nelson never slack- 
 ened, wrote to his wife, in March, 1802: "I went to Lord 
 Nelson's on Saturday to dinner, and returned to-day in the 
 forenoon. The whole establishment and way of life are such 
 as to make me angry, as well as melancholy; but I cannot 
 alter it, and I do not think myself obliged, or at liberty, to 
 quarrel with him for his weakness, though nothing shall ever 
 induce me to give the smallest countenance to Lady Hamilton. 
 She looks ultimately to the chance of marriage, as Sir William 
 will not be long in her way, and she probably indulges a hope 
 that she may survive Lady Nelson; in the meanwhile she 
 and Sir William, and the whole set of them, are living with 
 1 Morrison, No. 684. 
 
ft36 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 him at his expense. She is in high looks, but more immense 
 than ever. The love^ she makes to Nelson is not only ridicu- 
 lous, but disgusting : not only the rooms, but the whole house, 
 staircase and all, are covered with nothing but pictures of 
 her and him, of all sizes and sorts, and representations of his 
 naval actions, coats-of-arms, pieces of plate in his honour, the 
 flag-staff of L'Orient, »S:c. — an excess of vanity which coun- 
 teracts its own purpose. If it was Lady Hamilton's house 
 there might be a pretence for it; to make his own house a 
 mere looking-glass to view himself all day is bad taste. 
 Braham, the celebrated Jew singer, performed with Lady 
 Hamilton. She is horrid, but he entertained me in spite of 
 her." Of this same period, but a year later, at the time of 
 Hamilton's death, Minto wrote : " Lady Hamilton talked very 
 freely [to me] of her situation with Nelson, and the construc- 
 tion the world may have put upon it, but protested that their 
 attachment had been perfectly pure, which I declare I can 
 believe, though I am sure it is of no consequence whether it 
 be so or not. The shocking injury done to Lady Nelson is 
 not made less or greater, by anything that may or may not 
 have occurred between him and Lady Hamilton." 
 
 On the 6th of November, 1861, Mr. Matcham, a nephew of 
 Lord Nelson, wrote for the " Times " some reminiscences of 
 the great admiral, as he had known him in private life, both 
 at this period, and three years later, just before Trafalgar. 
 His letter was elicited by the publication of the " Remains of 
 Mrs. Trench." In this had appeared extracts from her jour- 
 nal, when Mrs. St. George, containing statements derogatory 
 to Nelson's conduct in Dresden, when on the journey from 
 Trieste to Hamburg in the year 1800; some of which have 
 been quoted already in this work.^ Mr. Matcham's words, so 
 far as they relate to Nelson himself, are here given in full: "^ 
 
 I too Sir, as well as " the Lady," had some knowledge of that per- 
 son, so much honoured and so much maligned; and although I do 
 not defend his one great error (though in that, with some palliation, 
 there were united elements of a generous and noble nature), I venture 
 to say that whoever forms a notion of his manners and deportment 
 
 1 A^ite, p. 441. 
 
 ■^ From Mr. G. Lathom Browne's " Nelson : His Public and Private Life," 
 London, 1891, p. 412. 
 
HOME LIFE AT MERTON 537 
 
 in private life from this account of him, will labour under a very great 
 delusion. 
 
 I visited my uncle twice during the short periods in which he was 
 on shore — once in 1802, during his journey to Wales, when he was 
 received at Oxford and other places ; and the second time at his house 
 at Merton, in 1805, for three weeks preceding the 15th of September, 
 when he left to embark at Portsmouth to return no more ; and I can 
 assert with truth that a more complete contrast between this lady's 
 portrait and my thorough recollection of him could not be forced on 
 my mind. Lord Nelson in private life was remarkable for a de- 
 meanour quiet, sedate, and unobtrusive, anxious to give pleasure to 
 evei'y one about him, distinguishing each in turn by some act of 
 kindness, and chiefly those who seemed to require it most. 
 
 During his few intervals of leisure, in a little knot of relations and 
 friends, he delighted in quiet conversation, through which occasionally 
 ran an undercurrent of pleasantry, not unmixed with caustic wit. 
 At his table he was the least heard among the company, and so far 
 from being the hero of his own tale, I never heard him voluntarily 
 refer to any of the great actions of his life. 
 
 I have known him lauded by the great and wise; but he seemed to 
 me to waive the homage with as little attention as was consistent 
 with civility. Nevertheless, a mind like his was necessarily won by 
 attention from those who could best estimate his value. 
 
 On his return from his last interview with Mr. Pitt, being asked 
 in what manner he had been received, he replied that he had reason 
 to be gratified with his reception, and concluded with animation, 
 " Mr. Pitt, when I rose to go, left the room with me, and attended 
 me to the carriage " — a spontaneous mark of respect and admira- 
 tion from the great statesman, of which, indeed, he might well be 
 proud. 
 
 It would have formed an amusement to the cii'cle at Merton, if 
 intemperance were set down to the master of the house, who always 
 so prematurely cut short the sederunt of the gentlemen after dinner. 
 
 A man of more temperate habits could not, I am persuaded, have 
 been found. It appears that the person of Lord Nelson (although he 
 was not as described, a little man, but of the middle height and of 
 a frame adapted to activity and exertion) did not find favour with the 
 lady ; and I presume not to dispute her taste, but in his plain suit of 
 black, in which he alone recurs to my memory, he always looked what 
 he was — a gentleman. Whatever expletives of an objectionable 
 kind may be ascribed to him, I feel persuaded that such rarely en- 
 tered into his conversation. He was, it is true, a sailor, and one of 
 a warm and generous disposition ; yet I can safely affirm that I never 
 heard a coarse expression issue from his lips, nor do I recollect one 
 word or action of his to which even a disciple of Chesterfield could 
 
538 
 
 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 reasonably object. If such did arise, it would be drawn forth when 
 a friend was attacked, or even an enemy unjustly accused ; for bis 
 disposition was so truly noble, that it revolted against all wrong and 
 oppression. His heart, indeed, was as tender as it was courageous. 
 Nor do I think, Sir, that it is a necessary concession to truth that 
 you or others should lower your conception of this popular personage, 
 on account of the exaggerated colours in which he is here drawn. 
 Those who best knew the man the most estimated his value, and 
 many who like myself could not appreciate his professional superior- 
 ity, would yet bear witness to his gentleness, kindness, good-breeding, 
 and courtesy. 
 
 He was not " a rude and boisterous captain of the sea." From his 
 early years, by the introduction of his uncle, the Comptroller of the 
 Navy, he was associated with the elite of his own profession ; and the 
 influences of his own paternal home, and his acquaintance with 
 the first families of his native county, to many of whom he was re- 
 lated, would not allow a man of his intelligence and proper pride to 
 foster coarseness beyond the habits of his age. 
 
 It appears to me that, however flattering or consolatory the recital 
 of the follies or foibles of great men may be to that mediocrity which 
 forms the mass of mankind, the person who undertakes to cater for 
 mere amusement withdraws something from the common stock of 
 his country. The glory of Great Britain depends as much on the 
 heroes she has produced, as on her wealth, her influence, and her 
 possessions ; and the true patriot and honourable man, if he can- 
 not add to their lustre, will at least refrain from any premeditated 
 act which may dim their fame, and diminish that high estimation of 
 them which expedience, nationality, and gratitude should alike con- 
 tribute to sustain. 
 
 A Nephew of Admiral Lord Nelson. 
 
 A glimpse of the family life at Merton, and of the society 
 which gathered there, has been casually preserved for us. 
 It presents not only an interesting group of the admiral's as- 
 sociates, but also the record of a conversation concerning him, 
 under his own roof, transmitted by one of the parties to it; 
 particularly instructive, because showing the contradictory 
 traits which illustrated his character, and the impression 
 made by him upon his contemporaries and intimates, — men 
 who had seen him upon all kinds of occasions, both great and 
 small. It corroborates, too, the report of these superficial 
 inconsistencies made by the Duke of Wellington on a later 
 occasion. The narrator. Lieutenant Layman, was the same 
 
HOME LIFE AT MERTON 539 
 
 who had recently been with Nelson in the Baltic, and who 
 has before been quoted in connection with that expedition. 
 Sir Alexander Ball will be remembered as one of his chief 
 supports during the long chase that preceded the Battle of 
 the Nile, as well as in the action, and afterwards during the 
 protracted operations around Malta. Hood was also a Nile 
 captain. 
 
 "During the temporary peace, Mr. Layman spent some 
 days at Merton, with Sir Alexander Ball and Sir Samuel 
 Hood. One day, after tea in the drawing-room, Lord Nelson 
 was earnestly engaged in conversation with Sir Samuel. Mr. 
 Layman observed to Sir Alexander, that Lord Nelson was at 
 work by his countenance and mouth, that he was a most ex- 
 traordinary man, possessing opposite points of character 5 
 little in little things, but by far the greatest man in great 
 things he ever saw : that he had seen him petulant in trifles, 
 and as cool and collected as a philosopher when surrounded 
 by dangers, in which men of common minds, with clouded 
 countenance, would say, 'Ah! what is to be done?' It was 
 a treat to see his animated and collected countenance in the 
 heat of action. Sir Alexander remarked this seeming incon- 
 sistency, and mentioned that, after the Battle of the Nile, 
 the captains of the squadron were desirous to have a good 
 likeness of their heroic chief taken, and for that purpose 
 employed one of the most eminent painters in Italy. The 
 plan was to ask the painter to breakfast, and get him to be- 
 gin immediately after. Breakfast being over, and no prepara- 
 tion being made by the painter, Sir Alexander was selected 
 by the other captains to ask him when he intended to begin ; 
 to which the answer was, 'Never.' Sir Alexander said, he 
 stared, and they all stared, but the artist continued : ' There 
 is such a mixture of humility with ambition in Lord Nelson's 
 countenance, that I dare not risk the attempt.' " ^ 
 
 Tliere is yet another casual mention of the Merton home life, 
 illustrative of more than one feature of Nelson's native char- 
 acter. Many years later the daughter of the Vicar of the 
 parish, when transmitting a letter to Sir Harris Nicolas, added : 
 " In revered affection for the memory of that dear man, I cannot 
 refrain from informing you of his unlimited charity and good- 
 ^ Naval Chronicle, vol. xxxvii. p. 445. 
 
540 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 ness during his residence at Merton. His frequently expressed 
 desire was, that none in that place should want or suffer afflic- 
 tion that he could alleviate ; and this I know he did with a 
 most liberal hand, always desiring that it should not be known 
 from whence it came. His residence at Merton was a continued 
 course of charity and goodness, setting such an example of 
 propriety and regularity that there are few who would not be 
 benefited by following it." His thoughtfulness and generosity 
 to those about him was equally shown in his charges to his 
 agents at Bronte, for the welfare of the Sicilian peasantry 
 upon his estate. In the regularity and propriety of observ- 
 ance which impressed the clergyman's daughter, he carried 
 out the ideal he had proposed to Lady Hamilton. " Have we 
 a nice church at Merton ? We will set an examj)le of good, 
 ness to the under parishioners." 
 
 Whatever of censure or of allowance may be pronounced upon 
 the life he was living, there was in the intention just quoted 
 no effort to conciliate the opinion of society, which he was 
 resolute in braving; nor was it inconsistent with the general 
 tenor of his thoughts. In the sense of profound recognition 
 of the dependence of events upon God, and of the obligation 
 to manifest gratitude in outward act, Nelson was from first to 
 last a strongly religious man. To his sin he had contrived to 
 reconcile his conscience by fallacies, analogies to which will 
 be supplied by the inward experience of many, if they will be 
 honest with themselves. The outcome upon character of such 
 dealings with one's self is, in the individual case, a matter to 
 whicli man's judgment is not competent. During the last two 
 years and a half of Nelson's life, the chaplain of the " Victory " 
 was associated with him in close intimacy as confidential sec- 
 retary, with whom he talked freely on many matters. " He 
 was," said this gentleman, "a thorough clergyman's son — I 
 should think he never went to bed or got up without kneeling 
 down to say his prayers." He often expressed his attachment 
 to the church in which he had been brought up, and showed 
 the sincerity of his words by the regularity and respect with 
 which he always had divine service performed on board the 
 "Victory," whenever the weather permitted. After the ser- 
 vice he had generally a few words with the chaplain on the 
 subject of the sermon, either thanking him for its being a good 
 
THE COPENHAGEN CONTROVERSY 541 
 
 one, or remarking that it was not so well adapted as usual to 
 the crew. More than once, on such occasions, he took down a 
 volume of sermons in his own cabin, with the page already 
 marked at some discourse which he thought well suited to 
 such a congregation, and requested Dr. Scott to preach it on 
 the following Sunday.^ 
 
 On the 29th of October, 1801, just one week after he left the 
 Downs, Nelson took his seat in the House of Lords as a Vis- 
 count, his former commander-in-chief, Hood, who was of the 
 same rank in the peerage, being one of those to present him. 
 While in England he spoke from time to time on professional 
 subjects, or those connected with the external policy of the 
 country, on which he held clear and decided opinions, based, 
 naturally, upon naval exigencies. His first speech was a 
 warm and generous eulogy of Sir James Saumarez, once second 
 to himself at the Battle of the Nile, an officer with whom it is 
 not too much to say he was not in close personal sympathy, as 
 he had been with Troubridge, but who had just fought two 
 desperate squadron actions under conditions of singular diffi- 
 culty, out of which he had wrenched a success that was both 
 signal and, in the then state of the war and negotiations, most 
 opportune. " Sir James Saumarez's action," said Lord St. 
 Vincent, "has put us upon velvet." 
 
 Nelson's own thirst for glory made him keenly appreciative 
 of the necessity to be just and liberal, in distributing to those 
 who had achieved great deeds the outward tokens of distin- 
 guished service, which often are the sole recompense for dan- 
 gers run and hardships borne. Scarcely had he retired from 
 his active command in the Channel when he felt impelled to 
 enter upon a painful and humiliating controversy, on behalf 
 of those who had shared with him all the perils of the des- 
 perate Battle of Copenhagen ; for which, unlike himself, they 
 had received no reward, but from whom he refused to be 
 dissociated in the national esteem and gratitude. 
 
 On the 19th of November, 1801, the City of London voted 
 its thanks to the divisions of the Army and the Navy, whose 
 joint operations during the previous summer had brought to 
 an end the French occupation of Egypt, begun by Bonaparte 
 in 1798. Nelson had for some time been uneasy that no such 
 1 Life of Eev. A. J. Scott, D.D., p. 191. 
 
542 THE LIFE OP NELSON 
 
 notice had been taken of the Battle of Copenhagen, for the 
 custom of the Corporation of the chief city of the Empire, thus 
 to honor the great achievements of their armed forces, was, 
 he asserted, invariable in his experience ; consequently, the 
 omission in the case of Copenhagen was a deliberate slight, 
 the implication of which, he thought, could not be disre- 
 garded. Delay, up to the time then present, might be attrib- 
 uted to other causes, not necessarily offensive, although, from 
 a letter to his friend Davison, he seems to have feared neglect ; 
 but the vote of thanks to the two Services for their successes 
 in Egypt left no room to doubt, that the failure to take similar 
 action in the case of Copenhagen was intentional. 
 
 This Nelson regarded, and justly, as an imputation upon the 
 transactions there. Where a practice is invariable, omission 
 is as significant as commission can be. Either the victory was 
 doubtful, or of small consequence, or, for some other reason, 
 not creditable to the victors. He wrote at once to the Lord 
 Mayor. After recalling the facts, he said : " If I were only 
 personally concerned, I should bear the stigma, now first 
 attempted to be placed upon my brow, with humility. But, 
 my Lord, I am the natural guardian of the characters of the 
 Officers of the Navy, Army, and Marines, who fought, and so 
 profusely bled, under my command on that day. . . . When I 
 am called upon to speak of the merits of the Captains of his 
 Majesty's ships, and of the officers and men, whether seamen, 
 marines, or soldiers, I that day had the happiness to command, 
 I say, that never was the glory of this country upheld with 
 more determined bravery than upon that occasion, and more 
 important service was never rendered to our King and Coun- 
 try. It is my duty to prove to the brave fellows, my compan- 
 ions in dangers, that / have not failed, at every proper place, to 
 represent, as well as I am able, their bravery and meritorious 
 services." 
 
 This matter was the occasion of bringing him into collision 
 with the Admiralty and the Government on the same subject. 
 Although his private representations, soon after his return to 
 England, had obtained from Lord St. Vincent,, as he thought, 
 a promise that medals should be issued for the battle, no 
 steps thereto had been taken. He now enclosed to the Prime 
 Minister and to the First Lord a copy of his letter to the 
 
MISUNDERSTANDING WITH ST. VINCENT 543 
 
 Lord Mayor; and to both he alluded to the assurance he be- 
 lieved had been made him, "I have," he said, "been expect- 
 ing the medals daily since the King's return from Weymouth." 
 St. Vincent's reply was prompt as himself. With reference 
 to the former matter, he confined himself to drily thanking 
 Nelson, without comment, " for communicating the letter you 
 have judged fit to write to the Lord Mayor;" but as to the 
 medals, he wrote a separate note, telling him that he had 
 " given no encouragement, but on the contrary had explained 
 to your Lordship, and to Mr. Addington, the impropriety of 
 such a measure being recommended to the King." 
 
 Nelson, to use his own word, was "thunder-struck" by this 
 statement. " I own," he said, " I considered the words your 
 Lordship used as conveying an assurance. It was an apology 
 for their not being given before, which, I understood you, they 
 would have been, but for the difficulty of fixing who was to 
 have them. ... I have never failed assuring the Captains, 
 that I have seen and communicated with, that they might 
 depend on receiving them. ... I could not, my dear Lord, 
 have had any interest in misunderstanding you, and represent- 
 ing that as an intended Honour from the King which you 
 considered as so improper to be recommended to the King: 
 therefore I must beg that your Lordship will reconsider our 
 conversation — to me of the very highest concern, and think 
 that I could not but believe that we would have medals. I 
 am truly made ill by your letter." St. Vincent replied briefly, 
 " That you have perfectly mistaken all that passed between us 
 in the conversation you allude to, is most certain. At the 
 same time I am extremely concerned that it should have had 
 so material an effect upon your health," etc, "Either Lord ' 
 St. Vincent or myself are liars," wrote Nelson to Davison. 
 The conclusion is not inevitable to those who have had ex- 
 perience of human misunderstandings ; but, recalling Mr. 
 Eose's interview with St. Vincent in April, ^ it seems likely 
 that in July the mind of the latter was still undecided, and 
 that consequently Nelson's recollection of what he then said 
 was correct. 
 
 The Prime Minister took a week to reply. When he did, 
 he deprecated the sending of any letter to the Mayor, for 
 1 Ante, p. 489. 
 
544 THE LIFE OF NELSOK 
 
 reasons, he said, " not merely of a public nature, but connected 
 with the interest I shall ever take in your well-earned fame." 
 These reasons, he added, he would be ready to give him in a 
 private interview. Nelson had asked his opinion upon the 
 terms of the letter ; but, impatient after waiting three days, 
 had already sent it in when this answer came. Probably, with 
 his usual promptness, he called at once ; for on the same day, 
 November 28, that he received Addington's letter he withdrew 
 that to the Mayor.^ " By the advice of a friend, I have now 
 to request that your Lordship will consider my letter as with- 
 drawn, as the discussion of the question viay bring forward 
 characters tvhich had better rest quiet." ^ In short, honors, 
 due to those who fought, were withheld out of consideration 
 to those who had not fought. Nelson himself recognized the 
 difficulty. " They are not Sir Hyde Parker's real friends who 
 wish for an inquiry," he had written to Davison before leav- 
 ing the Baltic. " His friends in the fleet wish everything of 
 this fleet to be forgot, for we all respect and love Sir Hyde ; 
 but the dearer his friends, the more uneasy they have been 
 at his idleness, for that is the truth — no criminality." But, 
 as he characteristically said of another matter occurring about 
 this time, "I was told the difficulties were insurmountable. 
 My answer was, 'As the thing is necessary to be done, the 
 more difficulties, the more necessary to try to remove them.'" 
 As regards the soundness of Nelson's grounds, and the pro- 
 priety of his action in this matter, it must, first, be kept in 
 mind, that, before the City voted its thanks to the Navy 
 engaged in Egypt, he had spoken in the House of Lords in 
 favor of the thanks of the Government to the same force, 
 although, as a whole, it had there played a subordinate part ; 
 and also, that, although deprived of the medal which he hoped 
 to get in common with others, he had himself been rewarded 
 for Copenhagen by promotion in the peerage.^ This separa- 
 tion between himself and the mass of those who fought under 
 him, necessarily intensified the feeling of one always profusely 
 generous, in praise as in money ; but his point otherwise was 
 well taken. The task was ungracious and unpleasant, it 
 may almost be called dirty work to have thus to solicit 
 
 ^ Nicolas, vol. iv. ji. 533. 
 
 - Ibid., vol. vii. p. ccx. (Author's italics.) ^ Ibid., vol. v. ji. CO. 
 
HIS DEVOTION TO HIS FOLLOWERS 545 
 
 honors and distinction for deeds in which one has borne the 
 principal part ; but dirty work must at times be done, with 
 hands or words, and the humiliation then rests, not with him 
 who does it, but with them wlio make it necessary. Had the 
 victors at Copenhagen fought a desperate fight, and Avere they 
 neglected? If so, and the outside world looked indifferently 
 on, who from among them should first come forth to defend 
 their glory fronr implication of some undefined stain, if not 
 their Commander-in-Chief, one whose great renown could well 
 spare the additional ray of lustre which he demanded for 
 them. Whether underneath lay some spot of self-seeking, of 
 the secondary motive from which so few of us are free, mat- 
 ters little or nothing. The thing was right to be done, and he 
 did it. If the Government and the City of London, by calcu- 
 lated omission, proclaimed, as they did, that these men had 
 not deserved Avell of their country, it became him to say, as 
 he did, openly to the City, subordinately to his superiors, that 
 they had done men's work and deserved men's reward. 
 
 "If Lord Nelson could forget the services of those who 
 have fought under his command, he would ill deserve to be so 
 supported as he always has been." Thus he closed his last 
 letter to the Lord Mayor on this subject, a year after the corre- 
 spondence began. It was such noble sympathy with all beneath 
 him, the lack of which has been charged against the great 
 Commander of the British Army of this period, that Avon for 
 Nelson the enthusiastic affection Avhich, in all parts of his 
 command, however remote from his own eyes, aroused the 
 ardent desire to please him. No good service done him es- 
 caped his hearty acknowledgment, and he Avas unwearied in 
 upholding the just claims of others to consideration. In the 
 matter of Copenhagen, up to the time he left the country, 
 eighteen months later, he refused any compromise. He 
 recognized, of course, that he was poAverless in the face of St. 
 Vincent's opposition ; but, he wrote to one of the captains 
 engaged, '^ I am fixed never to abandon the fair fame of my 
 companions in dangers. I have had a meeting Avith Mr. 
 Addington on the subject; I don't expect Ave shall get much 
 by it, except having had a full opportunity of speaking my 
 mind." The Premier's arguments had been to him wholly 
 inconclusive. Oddly enough, as things were, the Sultan sent 
 
 35 
 
546 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 him a decoration for Copenhagen. Coming from a foreign 
 sovereign, there was, in accepting it, no inconsistency with his 
 general attitnde ; but in referring the question to the Govern- 
 ment, as was necessai-y, he told the Prime Minister, " If I can 
 judge the feelings of others by myself, there can be no honours 
 bestowed upon me by foreigners that do not reflect ten times 
 on our Sovereign and Country." '• 
 
 In conformity with this general stand, when it was proposed 
 in June, 1802, to give him the thanks of the City, for taking 
 command of the force destined to defend it against invasion, 
 he wrote to request that the motion might be withdrawn, on 
 the express ground that no thanks had been given those 
 engaged at Copenhagen. "1 should feel much mortified, 
 wlien I reflected on the noble support I that day received, at 
 any honour which could separate me from them." He alleged 
 the same reason, in the following September, for refusing to 
 dine with the Corporation. ''Never, till the City of London 
 think justly of the merits of my brave companions of the 2d 
 of April, can I, their commander, receive any attention from 
 the City of London." A like refusal was sent to his invitation 
 for Lord Mayor's day. 
 
 After the interview with Mr. Addington, the question of 
 medals was dropped. He had explained his position fully, 
 and felt that it was hopeless to attempt more, so long as 
 the Admiralty was against him ; but when the Adminis- 
 tration changed, in May, 1804, he wrote to Lord Melville, 
 the new First Lord, enclosing a statement of facts, includ- 
 ing his correspondence with St. Vincent, and requesting a 
 reconsideration of the matter. "The medal," he said, is 
 Avithheld, "for what reason Lord St. Vincent best knows. 
 I hope," he concluded, "for your recommendation to his 
 Majesty, that he may be pleased to bestow that mark of 
 honour on the battle of Copenhagen, which his goodness has 
 
 ' It is possible that Nelson liere used the word " reflect " in the primary 
 sense of reflecting honor ; but in the secondary sense of being a reflection 
 upon those who had denied a just claim, the phrase, ambiguous as it stands, 
 represented accurately his feelings. "I own, my dear Sir,'' he said again 
 to the Premier, with reference to this decoration, " great as this honour will 
 be, it will have its alio}', if I cannot at the same time wear the medal for the 
 Battle of Copenhagen, the greatest and most honourable reward in the power 
 of our Sovereign to bestow, as it marks my personal services." 
 
THE COPENHAGEN CONTROVERSY 547 
 
 given to the Battle of St. Vincent, the First of June, of 
 Camperdown, and the Nile." Melville, in a very sympathetic 
 and courteous letter, declined, for a reasoti whose weight 
 must be admitted: "When badges of triumph are bestowed in 
 the heat and conflict of war, they do not rankle in the minds 
 even of the enemy, at whose expense they are bestowed ; but 
 the feeling, I suspect, would be very different in Denmark, if 
 the present moment was to be chosen for opening afresh 
 wounds which are, I trust, now healed, or in the daily prog- 
 ress of being so." So it resulted that no inark of public 
 recognition was conferred, during Nelson's life, upon the 
 most difficult, the most hazardous, and, at the moment, per- 
 haps the most critically important of his victories, which he 
 himself considered the greatest of his achievements. 
 
 This unfortunate and embittering controversy was the 
 most marked and characteristic incident of his residence at 
 Merton, between October, 1801, when he first went there, and 
 May, 1803, when he departed for the Mediterranean, upon the 
 renewal of war with France. Living always with the Hamil- 
 tons, the most copious stream of priv^ate correspondence was 
 cut off ; and being unemployed after April, 1802, his official 
 letters are confined to subjects connected rather with the past 
 than with the then present time. Upon general naval ques- 
 tions he had, however, something to say. A trip to Wales 
 suggests a memorandum to the Prime Minister concerning 
 the cultivation and preservation of oak timber in the Forest 
 of Dean. He submits to him also his views as to the disposi- 
 tion of Malta, in case the provision of the Treaty of Amiens, 
 which re-established there the Order of the Knights under 
 the guarantee of the six great Powers, should fail, owing to the 
 refusal of Eussia to join in the proposed guarantee. At the 
 time he wrote, — December, 1802, — the question was become 
 burning, threatening the rupture of the existing peace between 
 France and Great Britain ; a result which, in fact, soon 
 followed, and turned mainly upon this point. The essential 
 aim in the provision, he observed, was that neither of the two 
 countries should have the island. If the Order could not be 
 restored, then it ought to go to Naples, again under the 
 guarantee of the Powers. It was useless to England, for 
 operations against France ; and in the hands of the latter 
 
548 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 was a direct menace to Sicily. This arrangement would accord 
 with the spirit of the treaty ; but if it also was impracticable, 
 Great Britain had no choice but to keep Malta herself. It 
 would cost £300,000 annually, but anything was better than 
 to chance its falling again into the hands of France. 
 
 In like manner he submitted to the Admiralty plans for the 
 more certain manning of the Navy, and for the prevention of 
 desertion. The material conditions of seamen while in the 
 service, the pay and provisions, were, he consideretl, all that 
 could be desired ; but still there was great indisposition to 
 enlist, and the desertions in the last war, 1793-1801, rose to 
 the enormous figure of forty-two thousand. The remedy he 
 outlined was a Registration of seamen, and of certificates to 
 be given them, bearing a personal description by which they 
 could be identified, and on which their character and services 
 would appear. For lack of such papers, seamen b}' hundreds 
 were in London in distress, although large amounts of money 
 were due them at prize agencies, where the agent feared to 
 pay for want of identification. A certificate showing five 
 years' faithful service should entitle the holder to an annual 
 bounty of two guineas, to be increased by further periods. 
 Such provisions were well calculated to appeal to men accus- 
 tomed to entertain prudential considerations, and to create 
 gradually a class with whom they would weigh, and who would 
 by them be retained in permanent employment. In meeting 
 the case of desertions, caused by the heedlessness and weak- 
 ness of seamen, Nelson became more vague. The nature of the 
 trouble he recognized clearly enough, but there is a lack of 
 definiteness in the remedy he proposed to meet an evil which 
 still exists. ''The mainspring of all my plan is, that of 
 Certificates fully descriptive of the persons ; the very greatest 
 good must result from it. Something should be attempted at 
 these times to make our seamen, at the din of war, fly to 
 our Navy, instead of flying from it." His plan is substan- 
 tially that now adopted. 
 
 Closely connected with the discontent of seamen was the 
 subject of prize-money, in the receipt and distribution of 
 which great irregularities and abuses existed among the 
 agents, to remove which also he made particular and detailed 
 suggestions ; and he strongly supported, though with dis- 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
INTEREST IN PUBLIC AFFAIRS 549 
 
 criminating criticism, the Bill for an Inquiry into Naval 
 Abuses, which embodied the most prominent of St. Vincent's 
 administrative measures while at the head of the Admiralty. 
 But, though thus supporting the Earl in his policy of investi- 
 gation, and retaining his respect for him as a sea-officer, he 
 was utterly dissatisfied with the general conduct of the Ad- 
 miralty and with its attitude towards himself in particular. 
 '•' I attribute none of the tyrannical conduct of the late Board 
 to Lord St. Vincent," he Avrote two years later. "For the 
 Earl I have a sincere regard, but he was dreadfully ill-advised, 
 and I fear the Service has suffered much from their conduct." 
 It would seem as if he did not, after the first moments of 
 annoyance, forget the irritation he felt against Troubridge at 
 being retained in the Downs against his will, and, as he 
 thought, without necessity. " I thank you," he wrote to 
 Captain Murray, "for taking the trouble of driving seven 
 miles to make me a visit; for, could you believe it, there are 
 those who I thought were my firm friends, some of near 
 thirty years' standing — who have never taken that trouble ! " 
 This may not refer to Troubridge, but the description an- 
 swers to him, and it appears that in the Nelson-Hamilton 
 circle his name now stood as a type of ingratitude.^ 
 
 Writing to Davison in September, 1802, after a trip of six 
 weeks made to Wales, in company with the Hamiltons, he 
 says: "Our tour has been very tine and interesting, and 
 the way in which I have been everywhere received most 
 flattering to my feelings ; and although some of the higher 
 powers may wish to keep me down, yet the reward of the 
 general approbation and gratitude for my services is an ample 
 reward for all I have done ; but it makes a comparison fly up to 
 my mind, not much to the credit of some in the higher Offices 
 of the State." He seems to have felt that neither in his 
 influence with the Admiralty, nor in reference to his opinions 
 on foreign topics, did he receive the recognition that his dis- 
 tinguished services, abilities, and experience claimed. " Hav- 
 ing failed entirely in submitting my thoughts on three points " 
 — those just cited, manning, desertion, and prize-money — 
 " I was disheartened ; " and to this he attributes his not sendr 
 
 1 See Pettigrew, vol. ii. p. 225 ; Morrison, vol. ii. p. 176. 
 
550 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 ing in a memoir which he had prepared upon the subject of 
 the Flotilla for Coast Defence. 
 
 But, while he resented this neglect, it did not greatly in- 
 terfere with his happiness, which was at this time wellnigh 
 complete. He complains of ill health, it is true, from time 
 to time, and his means were insufficient duly to keep up the 
 two establishments — Lady Kelson's and Merton — for which 
 he was pecuniarily responsible. Under this embarrassment 
 he chafed, and with a sense of injustice which was not un- 
 founded ; for, if reward be proportioned to merit and to the 
 importance of services rendered. Nelson had been most in- 
 adequately repaid. For the single victories of St. Vincent 
 and Camperdown, each commander-in-chief had received a 
 pension of £3,000. The Nile and Copenhagen together had 
 brought him no more than £2,000 ; indeed, as he had already 
 been granted £1,000 a year for St. Vincent, another thousand 
 may be said to have been all he got for two of the greatest 
 victories of the war. In submitting a request for an increase, 
 he asked pertinently, " Was it, or not, the intention of his 
 Majesty's Government to place my rewards for services 
 lower than Lord St. Vincent or Lord Duncan ? " There was, 
 of course, the damaging circumstance that the conditions 
 under which he chose to live made him poorer than he 
 needed to be ; but with this the Government had no concern. 
 Its only care should have been that its recompense was com- 
 mensurate with his deserts, and it is revolting to see a man 
 like Nelson, naturally high-toned and always liberal, forced 
 to the undignified position of urging — and in vain — for the 
 equal remuneration that should have been granted sponta- 
 neously long before. 
 
 In his criticisms of the Admiralty's general course, it does 
 not appear whether Nelson, who was hereafter to be the 
 greatest sufferer from St.Vincent's excessive economies, realized 
 as yet the particular injury being done by them to the material 
 of the Navy. In his passion for reform, the veteran seaman 
 obstinately shut his eyes to the threatening condition of the 
 political atmosphere, and refused to recognize the imminent 
 danger of a renewal of the war, because it necessarily Avould 
 jiustpone his projected innovations. Assuming the con- 
 tinuance of peace with all the violence of a prejudice, he 
 
INSTABILITY OF EXISTING CONDITIONS 551 
 
 permitted the strength and resources of the Navy to de- 
 teriorate rapidly, both by direct action and by omission to act. 
 "Lord St. Vincent," wrote Minto in November, 1802, '4s 
 more violent than anybody against the war, and has declared 
 that he will resign if ministers dare go to war. His principal 
 reason is, I believe, that the ships are so much out of repair 
 as to be unfit for service." '' Lord Nelson," he says at the 
 same period, "has been with me a long time to-day. He 
 seems much of my mind on material points, but especially on 
 the necessity of being better prepared than we now are." The 
 admiral's own letters at this time make little allusion to 
 the measures, or the neglects, which were rapidly undermining 
 the efficiency of the fleet ; but a year after leaving England 
 he wrote, "With all my personal regard for Lord St. Vincent, 
 I am sorry to see that he has been led astray by the opinion of 
 ignorant people. There is scarcely a thing he has done since 
 he has been at the Admiralty that I have not heard him. 
 reprobate before he came to the Board." 
 
 Much as he enjoyed his home and desired peace, Nelson 
 had never felt assured of its continuance. Like Great Britain 
 herself during this repose, he rested with his arms at his side, 
 ready for a call. The Prime Minister, Addington, has trans- 
 mitted a curious story of the manner in which he exemplified 
 his ideas of the proper mode of negotiating with Bonaparte. 
 "It matters not at all," he said, taking up a poker, "in what 
 way I lay this poker on the floor. But if Bonaparte should 
 say it must be placed in this direction," suiting the action to 
 the word, "we must instantly insist upon its being laid in 
 some other one." At the same time Bonaparte, across the 
 Channel, was illustrating in almost identical phrase the in- 
 domitable energy that was common to these two men, the 
 exponents of the two opposing and irreconcilable tendencies 
 of their age. " If the British ministry should intimate that 
 there was anything the First Consul had not done, because 
 he was prevented from doing it, that instant he Avould do it." 
 "You have proved yourself too true a prophet," wrote an oc- 
 casional correspondent to Nelson, "for you have said ever 
 since the peace that it could not be of long duration." Jar 
 after jar, as Bonaparte drove his triumphal chariot over the 
 prostrate continent, announced the instability of existing 
 
552 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 conditions ; and the speech from the throne on the 16fch of 
 ISTovember, 1802, was distinctly ominous, if vague. Nelson 
 then seconded the address in the House of Peers, in words 
 so characteristic of his own temper, and of that then prevail- 
 ing in the nation, that they serve to explain the strong ac- 
 cord between him and it, and to show why he was so readily 
 and affectionately distinguished as its representative hero. 
 They are thus reported : — 
 
 " I, ray Lords, have in different countries, seen much of the miser- 
 ies of war. I am, therefore, in my inmost soul, a man of peace. Yet 
 I would not, for the sake of any peace, however fortunate, consent to 
 sacrifice one jot of England's honour. Our honour is inseparably 
 combined with our genuine interest. Hitherto there has been nothing 
 gi'eater known on the Continent than the faith, the untainted honour, 
 the generous public sympathies, the high diplomatic influence, the 
 commerce, the grandeur, the resistless power, the unconquerable 
 valour of the British nation. Wherever I have served in foreign 
 countries, 1 have witnessed these to be sentiments with which Britons 
 were regarded. The advantages of such a reputation are not to be 
 lightly brought into hazard. I, for one, rejoice that his Majesty has 
 signified his intention to pay due regard to the connection between 
 the interests of this country and the preservation of the liberties of 
 Europe. It is satisfactoiy to know, that the preparations to main- 
 tain our dignity in peace, ai-e not to be neglected. Those supplies 
 which his Majesty shall for such purposes demand, his people will 
 most earnestly grant. The nation is satisfied that the Government 
 seeks in laeace or war no interest separate from that of the people at 
 lai-ge ; and as the nation was pleased with that sincere spirit of peace 
 with which the late treaty was negotiated, so, now that a restless and 
 unjust ambition in those with whom we desired sincere amity has 
 given a new alarm, the country will rather prompt the Government 
 to assert its honour, than need to be I'oused to such measures of vig- 
 orous defence as the exigency of the times may require." 
 
 During the winter, Bonaparte, resentful of Great Britain's 
 claim to a voice in the politics of the Continent, became more 
 and more distinctly menacing in deed and word. On the 20th 
 of February, 1803, in a message to the legislature, he made 
 the imprudent, because useless, vaunt, '' This government 
 says with just pride, England, alone, cannot to-day contend 
 against France." Two days later Minto, who was in opposi- 
 tion^ Avas told by Nelson, " in strict coniidence," that fop some 
 
DESIRES CONTINUANCE OF PEACE 553 
 
 time back there had been great doubts between peace and 
 war in the ministry. "One measure in contemplation has 
 been to send him to the Mediterranean, by way of watching 
 the armament and being ready if wanted. He says that he 
 is thought the fitter for that delicate service, as on the one 
 hand he wishes the continuance of peace, and therefore is not 
 likely to precipitate matters, and on the other hand Bonaparte 
 knows that if he hoists his flag it will not be in joke." It 
 had for some time been arranged that, if war came, he was 
 to have the Mediterranean command. 
 
 On the 8th of March, 1803, the King sent a message to 
 Parliament, that, in consequence of military preparations 
 going on in the ports of France and Holland, he judged ex- 
 pedient to adopt additional measures of precaution for the 
 security of his dominions. While this was under discussion 
 in the Upper House, Nelson, impressed with the idea that 
 war must come, left his seat, and wrote to the Prime Minister 
 the following line : " Whenever it is necessar}^, I am your 
 Admiral." Yet he felt the tug at his heart-strings as he never 
 had before. ''War or Peace ?" he writes to his old flag-cap- 
 tain, Berry. " Every person has a different opinion. I fear 
 perhaps the former, as I hope so much the latter." Only with 
 large reservations would he now have repeated the rule Cod- 
 rington tells us he inculcated, — "that every man became a 
 bachelor after passing the Rock of Gibraltar, and he was not 
 very tardy in showing that he practised Avhat he preached. 
 Honour, glory and distinction were the whole object of his 
 life, and that dear domestic happiness never abstracted his 
 attention." He did, indeed, rail at marriage ^ during his last 
 cruise, now fast approaching ; but his passionate devotion to 
 Lady Hamilton, and his yearning for home, knew- no abate- 
 ment. Yet, through all and over all, the love of glory and 
 the sense of honor continued to the last to reign suj)reme. 
 " Government cannot be more anxious for my departure," he 
 tells St. Vincent, " than I am, if a war, to go." 
 
 Meantime the necessary preparations were quietly progress- 
 ing, while the diplomatic discussions with France became 
 more and more bitter and hopeless, turning mainly on the 
 
 1 This habit is mentioned by Captain James Hillyar, for extracts from 
 whose journals the author is indebted to Admiral Sir W. R. Mends, G. C. B. 
 
554 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 question of Malta, though the root of the trouble lay far 
 deeper. The " Victory," of a hundred guns, was named for 
 Nelson's flag, her officers appointed, and the ship commis- 
 sioned. On the 6th of May he received orders to prepare for 
 departure. On the 12th the British ambassador left Paris, 
 having handed in the Government's ultimatum and demanded 
 his passports. On the 16th Great Britain declared war against 
 France, and the same day Nelson at the Admiralty received 
 his commission as commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean. 
 Within forty-eight hours he joined the " Victory " at Ports- 
 mouth, and on the 20th sailed for his station. 
 
 Thus ended the longest period of retirement enjoyed by 
 Nelson, from the opening of the war with France, in 1793, 
 until his death in 1805. During it, besides the separation 
 from Lady Nelson, two great breaks occurred in his personal 
 ties and surroundings. One was the death of his father, on 
 the 26th of April, 1802, at the age of seventy-nine. There 
 had been no breach in the love between the two, but it seems 
 to the author impossible to overlook, in the guarded letters of 
 the old man to his famous son, a tinge of regret and disapproval 
 for the singular circumstances under which he saw fit to live. 
 That he gladly accepted the opinion professed by many friends, 
 naval and others, and carefully fostered by the admiral, that 
 his relations with Lady Hamilton were perfectly innocent, 
 is wholly probable ; but, despite the usual silence concerning 
 his own views, observed by himself and Nelson, two clues to 
 his thought and action appear in his letters. One is the re- 
 mark, already quoted, that gratitude required him to spend 
 some of his time with Lady Nelson. The other, singular and 
 suggestive, is the casual "mention to Nelson, on October 8, 
 1801, that he had received an anonymous letter, containing 
 " severe reproaches for my conduct to you, which is such, it 
 seems, as will totally separate us." ^ In whose interest would 
 snch a letter most likely be penned ? On the 17th of October 
 he wrote Lady Nelson that he ought to be able to stay with 
 her without offending his children ; but she, with great mag- 
 nanimity, for his countenance meant much to her, advised a 
 separation, because the deprivation of seeing his own family 
 was cruel. In the event, he visited Merton in November, and 
 1 Morrison Collection, No. 632, October 8, 1801. 
 
DEATH or HAMILTON 555 
 
 it has been said, upon the authority of Lady Hamilton, that 
 he intended to make it his home ; but going to Bath for the 
 winter, he there died. Nelson mourned him sincerely, but 
 was prevented by illness from being present at the funeral. 
 He is a man known to us only by his letters, which are marked 
 by none of the originality that distinguishes the professional 
 utterances of the admiral, and cannot be said to rise much 
 above the commonplace ; but they show a strong and un- 
 affected piety, and a cheerful, resolute acceptance of the infirm- 
 ities of protracted old age, which possess charm and inspire 
 respect. There is also a clear indication of the firmness that 
 characterized Nelson himself, in the determination, amid all 
 the feebleness of age, and notwithstanding his pride and love 
 for his famous son, upon whom, too, he was partially depend- 
 ent, that he would not abandon the wife, to whom he con- 
 tinued to write. His attitude in this regard, as far as can be 
 inferred from his letters, commands sympathy and admiration. 
 A year later, on the 6th of April, 1803, Sir AVilliam Hamil- 
 ton also died, "in Lady Hamilton's and my arms," wrote 
 Nelson, " without a sigh or a struggle. The world never lost 
 a more upright and accomplished gentleman." Lady Hamil- 
 ton, with ready tears, recorded : " Unhappy day for the forlorn 
 Emma. Ten minutes past ten dear blessed Sir William 
 left me." The grouping of figures and emotions at that death- 
 bed was odd almost beyond comprehension ; one of the most 
 singular studies which human nature has presented to itself 
 of its powers of self-cajolement. A man systematically de- 
 ceived, yet apparently sincerely regarded, and affectionately 
 tended to the last by his betrayers, one of whom at least 
 prided himself, and for the most part not unjustly, upon his 
 fidelity to his friends. Hamilton, alone among the three, 
 seems to have been single-minded — to have viewed their 
 mutual relations to the end, not with cynical indifference, but 
 with a simplicity of confidence hard to be understood in a man 
 of his antecedents. It may have been, however, that he 
 recognized the inevitable in the disparity of years and in his 
 Avife's early training, and that he chose to cover her failings 
 with a self-abnegation which was not Avithout nobility. Upon 
 such a tacit affirmation he set a final seal in a codicil to his 
 will, well calculated to silence those who saw scandal in the 
 
656 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 association between his wife and his friend. "The copy of 
 Madam Le Brunn's picture of Emma, in enamel, by Bone, I 
 give to my dearest friend Lord Nelson, Duke of Bronte, a very 
 small token of the great regard I liave for his Lordship, the 
 most virtuous, loyal, and truly brave character I ever met 
 with. God bless him, and shame fall on those who do not say 
 amen." 
 
 Sir William's death, by withdrawing the husband's coun- 
 tenance to Nelson's remaining nnder the same roof, might 
 have complicated matters for the two lovers, but the outbreak 
 of war necessitated the admiral's departure a month later. 
 When he returned to England for the last time, in August, 
 1805, he was, deservedly, the object of such wide-spread 
 popular devotion, and his stay was so short, that the voice of 
 censure was hushed amid the general murmur of affectionate 
 admiration. The noble qualities of the man, the exalted spirit 
 of self-sacrifice and heroic aspiration that breathed in his 
 utterances, and was embodied, not only in his brilliant deeds, 
 but in the obscure, patient endurance of the last two years, 
 evoked a sentiment which spread over him and her a haze of 
 tender sympathy that still survives. In the glory of Trafalgar, 
 in his last touching commendation of her and his child to the 
 British Government, in the general grief of the nation, there 
 was justly no room to remember their fault; both acquaintance 
 and strangers saAV in her only the woman whom he loved to 
 the end. The sisters of Nelson, women of mature years and 
 irreproachable character, maintained a correspondence with 
 Lady Hamilton during their lives ; long after his death, and 
 the departure of his influence, removed any interested motive 
 for courting her friendship. Between them and Lady Nelson, 
 on the other hand, the breach was final. Their occasional 
 mention of her is unfriendly, and upon the whole contemptu- 
 ous ; while she, as far as can be judged from their letters, 
 returned to them an equal measure of disdain. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean. — The Long Watch 
 OFF Toulon. — Occupations of a Commander-in-Chief. 
 
 May, 1803- January, 1805. Age, 45-46. 
 
 WHEN Nelson, after a three years' absence, returned to 
 the Mediterranean in 1803, he found the conditions, 
 upon which the military balance of power there depended, 
 greatly altered from those he had known during the period of 
 his previous service. He had been present, indeed, almost 
 an eye-witness, at the tremendous reverse associated with the 
 name of Marengo, for that battle, it will be remembered, was 
 fought while he was at Leghorn on his return to England ; 
 but Marengo, and the conventions following it, were at the 
 moment only the beginning of an end which then could not 
 be foreseen. 
 
 The most significant token of the entire change of condi- 
 tions — of the predominant, far-reaching, and firmly fastened 
 grip of Erance on the land — was the presence of an army 
 corps of fifteen thousand men in the extreme southeast of 
 Italy, occupying the Kingdom of Naples from the river 
 Ofanto, on the Adriatic coast, round to the Bradano on the 
 Gulf of Taranto, and including the useful ports of Brindisi 
 and Taranto. This distant and ex-ceutric extension of the 
 arms of the Republic bespoke Bonaparte's confidence in tlie 
 solidity of his situation in the South of Europe; for under 
 previous circumstances, even after his victorious campaign of 
 1796, he had always deprecated an occupation of Naples, and 
 relied upon threats and a display of force to insure the quies- 
 cence of that state. That one of his first steps, upon the 
 renewal of war with Great Britain, should have been to place 
 a large body of troops in a position he once considered so ex- 
 posed, shows the fulness of his conviction that upon the Con- 
 tinent he had, for the moment, nothing to fear from the other 
 
558 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 Great Powers. Strongly stirred as they had been by his high- 
 handed aggressions, none as yet ventured to call him directly 
 to account. Great Britain, the least immediately affected, had 
 stepped into the lists, and demanded not only that aggression 
 should cease, but that the state of the Continent should be 
 restored as it existed when she signed the treaty of Amiens. 
 With this requirement she maintained the war, single-handed, 
 from May, 1803, to the autumn of 1805. 
 
 It was not without reason that Bonaparte reckoned upon 
 the inaction of the Continent. Austria, although profoundly 
 discontented by much he had done since the peace of Lune- 
 ville, in 1801, was too thoroughly disheartened and exhausted 
 by the unsuccessful and protracted struggle which preceded 
 it, to be ready to renew the strife. Limited as she now was, 
 by the treaty, to the eastern bank of the Adige, there was in 
 Northern Italy no force to threaten the French communica- 
 tions, between their divisions in the valley of the Po and the 
 one at the heel of the peninsula. Prussia, playing a double 
 part for years back, seeking from day to day the favor of the 
 most powerful, was wholly committed for the time to the 
 First Consul ; while Russia, although her youthful sovereign 
 had abandoned the anti-British policy of his predecessor, re- 
 mained undecided as to the general course she should pursue 
 amid the ever-shifting perplexities of the day. Less fantastic 
 in imagination than his insane father, Alexander I. inherited 
 a visionary tendency, which hindered practical action, and 
 showed itself in plans too vast and complicated for realiza- 
 tion, even when two rulers of the overwhelming power of 
 himself and Napoleon, at "a later date, set their hands to the 
 task. Swayed, alternately, by sympathy with the ancient 
 order of things, which Great Britain for the moment repre- 
 sented, and by prospects of Russian aggrandizement, which 
 Bonaparte dangled before his eyes, the Czar halted between 
 two opinions, pleasing himself, meanwhile, in weaving, with 
 associates of his own age, schemes for a general reorganization 
 of Europe. In these the interests of Russia naturally, and 
 quite properly, had a leading part, and not least in those seas 
 and regions that fell within the limits of Nelson's command. 
 
 The power of the great states which lay to the northward 
 and eastward of him being thus neutralized, Bonaparte found 
 
 1 
 
H. M. Ships " Agamemnon," " Captain," " Vanguard," 
 " Elephant," and " Victory." 
 
 From an engraving by Fittler, after the painting by N'- Pocock. 
 
I 
 
rOLITICAL CONDITIONS, 1803 559 
 
 upon the land nothing to oppose his will, or to contest his 
 influence, in the smaller and weaker nations to the southward 
 and westward, close to his own doors, but isolated from the 
 rest of Europe, except by sea — a weighty exception. Spain, 
 reduced to virtual vassalage in the previous war, no longer 
 even pretended to dispute his orders. She was not engaged 
 in the present hostilities, simply because it suited him better 
 to take a money tribute from her, and to enjoy for French 
 ships the benevolent neutrality of Spanish ports, more neces- 
 sary to them than to the British. Moreover, if Spain joined 
 in the war, Minorca, restored to her at the peace, would be at 
 the mercy of Great Britain, and Port INIahon, the fine haven 
 of that island, was always a menace to Toulon. The harbors 
 of remote Portugal, where Lisbon formerly had given power- 
 ful support to the British fleet, were now closed to it for 
 offensive operations ; and Nelson, within w^hose command its 
 seaboard lay, was strictly enjoined to refrain from any such 
 use of them, even from sending in prizes, except under stress 
 of weather. In Italy, Piedmont had been incorporated with 
 B'rauce, while the Italian and Ligurian (Genoa) Republics in 
 the North were so identified with her in action, and so sub- 
 missive to her, that the capture of the latter's ships was at 
 once ordered by Nelson ; and he recommended to his Govern- 
 ment that a formal blockade should be proclaimed of her 
 ports, as well as of. Leghorn, where the French flag was flown 
 on the same staff as the Tuscan. The States of the Pope, in- 
 termediate between these tributaries of Bonaparte in the 
 North and his garrisoned province in Naples, enjoyed only 
 such precarious independence as he from day to day allowed. 
 But, mighty as was the growth of French ascendency, as 
 shown by these changes, the very advantages accruing to 
 France from her advanced maritime positions laid her further 
 open to the Sea Power of Great Britain. The neutrality of 
 Genoa and Tuscany could no longer embarrass the British 
 admiral, as it had Nelson in 1795 and 1796. Offensive opera- 
 tions against them were now merely a question of adequate 
 force, and the South of France depended greatly upon free 
 access to their ports. Taking Piedmont from the King of 
 Sardinia, too, relieved any scruples the British might have 
 concerning their use of the island of Sardinia injuring a 
 
560 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 friendly monarch, a consideration which kept them away 
 from Sicily. 
 
 Nelson, instructed by the experience and observation of the 
 recent past, and by a certain prescient sagacity which was at 
 once native and cultivated in him, recognized that the Medi- 
 terranean, with its immense indented coast line, its positions 
 of critical importance, — such as the Straits of Gibraltar and 
 the Bosphorus, Egypt and Malta, — and its comparatively 
 short water distances, was the field of operations to which the 
 maritime ambitions of Bonaparte, debarred a wider flight by 
 the sea-power of Great Britain, must inevitably incline. To 
 this contributed also its remoteness from England, as well as 
 its nearness to France and to the ports subject to her influence 
 in Italy and Spain ; while the traditional ambitions of French 
 rulers, for three centuries back, had aspired to control in the 
 Levant, and had regarded Turkey for that reason as a natural 
 ally. It was, therefore, not merely as magnifying his own 
 office, nor yet as the outcome of natural bias, resulting fi*om 
 long service in its waters, that Nelson saw in the Mediter- 
 ranean the region at once for defence and offence against 
 Bonaparte ; where he might be most fatally checked, and 
 where also he might be induced most surely to steps exhaus- 
 tive to his strength. This conviction was, indeed, rather an 
 instance of accurate intuition than of formulated reasoning. 
 Clear, ample, and repeated, as are his demonstrations of the 
 importance of the various positions at stake, and of the meas- 
 ures necessary to be taken, they rather apply to the necessities 
 of the moment than indicate a wide scheme of policy, which 
 should divert the energies of the enemy to the South of 
 Europe, and so provide the best of defences against his pro- 
 jected invasion of England. Yet even of such broader view 
 tokens are not wanting. " To say the truth," he writes to 
 the Queen of Naples, " I do not believe we had in the last 
 war, and, according to all appearance, Ave shall not have in 
 the present one either, plans of a sufficiently grand scale to 
 force France to keep within her proper limits. Small meas- 
 ures produce only small results. The intelligent mind of your 
 Majesty will readily comprehend the great things which might 
 be effected in the Mediterranean. On this side Buonaparte is 
 the most vulnerable. It is from here that it would be the 
 
 II 
 
MILITARY CONDITIONS, 1803 561 
 
 most easy to mortify his pride, and so far humble him, as to 
 make him accept reasonable conditions of peace." 
 
 It caniiot be claimed, however, that there entered into Nel- 
 son's thoughts, for Italy, any such diversion as that by which 
 the Spanish Peninsular War some years later drained the life 
 blood of France. The time, indeed, was not yet ripe, nor 
 would the scene have been in any v/ay as favorable to Great 
 Britain ; and, moreover, so far from being ready to threaten, 
 her energies were effectually constrained to her own defence, 
 by the superior audacity and direct threats of Bonaparte. 
 Even the limited suggestions for the employment of troops 
 in the Mediterranean, made by Nelson from time to time, 
 failed to receive attention, and he himself was left to struggle 
 on as best he might, with inadequate means and upon a bare 
 defensive, even in naval matters. Great Britain, in short, 
 had stripped herself, incautiously, so bare, and was so alarmed 
 by the French demonstrations of invasion, that she for the 
 moment could think only of the safety of her territory and of 
 her home waters, and her offensive operations were confined 
 to the sea. 
 
 Bonaparte understood as fully as Nelson the importance of 
 the Mediterranean to him. His mind Avas set upon the exten- 
 sion of France's dominion therein, — in its islands, upon its 
 northern and southern shores, and in the East ; nor was he 
 troubled with scruples as to the means by which that object 
 might be attained. During the short peace of Amiens, Lord 
 Keitli had felt it necessary to take precautions against the re- 
 occupation of Corfu by the French troops ; and again at a 
 later date had stationed a ship for the same purpose at the 
 Madalena Islands, belonging to Sardinia, which Nelson after- 
 Avards made a rendezvous for his fleet. Algiers, too, had at- 
 tracted the First Consul's attention. " Algiers will be French 
 in one year after a peace," wrote Nelson in August, 1804. 
 " You see it, and a man may run and read ; that is the plan 
 of Buonaparte." " The Ministers of the Dey must know, that 
 an armament at Toulon, and a large army, after the peace 
 with Great Britain, was intended to land and plunder Algiers, 
 which they doubtless would have effected, had not a British 
 fleet been placed in Oristan Bay [Sardinia] to watch their mo- 
 tions." These and similar reasons had led the British Gov- 
 
 36 
 
562 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 eminent to maintain the Mediterranean Squadron nearly upon 
 a war footing during the peace. But, if Bonaparte's purpose 
 was fixed to control the Mediterranean some day, it now was 
 set also upon the invasion of England; and although he 
 looked and plotted in many directions, taking long views, and 
 neglecting no opportunity to secure advanced footholds for 
 future uses, he had not yet reached the stage in his develop- 
 ment when he would divide his energies between two gigantic 
 undertakings. One at a time, and with an accumulation of 
 force abundantly adequate to the end in view, was his policy 
 all the days of Nelson. The Mediterranean with its varied 
 interests was to him at this time one of several means, by 
 which he hoped to distract British counsels and to dissever 
 British strength ; but it was no part of his design to provoke 
 Great Britain to measures which would convert her alarm for 
 the Mediterranean peninsulas into open war with them, or in 
 them, compelling France either to recede from thence, or to 
 divert thither a force that might weaken his main effort. His 
 aim was to keep anxiety keenly alive, and to cut short the 
 resources of his enemy, by diplomatic pressure upon neutral 
 states, up to the last extreme that could be borne without war 
 against them being declared, as the lesser evil ; and the nearer 
 he could approach this delicate boundary line, Avithout cross- 
 ing it, the greater his success. " I do not chink a Spanish 
 war [that is, a declaration by Spain] so near," wrote Nelson 
 in November, 1803. " We are more likely to go to war Avith 
 Spain for her complaisance to the French ; but the French can 
 gain nothing, but be great losers, by forcing Spain to go to 
 war with us; therefore, I never expect that the Spaniards 
 will begin, unless Buonaparte is absolutely mad, as many say 
 he is. I never can believe that he or his counsellors are such 
 fools as to force Spain to begin." 
 
 The course instinctively advocated by Nelson, transpiring 
 through occasional utterances, was directly contrary to Bona- 
 parte's aims and Avould have marred his game. " We never 
 wanted ten thousand troops more than at this moment," Nel- 
 son Avrote shortly after he had reached the station and become 
 acquainted Avith the state of affairs. "They might save 
 Naples, Sicily, the INlorea and Egypt, by assisting and giving 
 confidence to the inhabitants." "It has been my plan to 
 
NELSON'S MILITARY VIEWS, 1803 563 
 
 have 10,000 disposable troops in the Mediterranean," he wrote 
 to Acton ; and he regretted to the Ministry that they shoukl 
 have withdrawn all the fine army which had regained Egypt 
 in 1801. " The sending them home," he remarked to an oc- 
 casional 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 tlie 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, uiitil put down, it neces- 
 sarily 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 Avould, 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 diffi- 
 culties 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 con- 
 centration 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 
 
564 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 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 Q'ur- 
 key, especially in Constantinople. He saw, indeed, that the 
 , partition would involve some difficulty between the two part- 
 ners, 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 Avas 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 begin- 
 ning. It is permissible to remark that Bonaparte, after the 
 failure of the invasion, first busied himself in reducing Aus- 
 tria, 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 
 
PASSAGE TO MEDITERRANEAN, 1803 565 
 
 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 " A^ictory," 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 re- 
 sented 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, how- 
 ever, 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 get- 
 ting 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 compan}'-, 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 jSTelson 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 Avant 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 
 
566 THE LITE OF NELSON 
 
 the war, tlioiigh it had been dechxred nearly three weeks be- 
 fore. The next day was actively employed in giving neces- 
 sary 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 Eock 
 depended for supplies of fresh provisions. At 4 p. m. the 
 ship again sailed for Malta, accompanied by the frigate 
 '' ]\[aidstone," 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 em- 
 barked with jSTelson on board the "Victory,'' and afterwards 
 gone with him to the '• Amphion." Throughout the following 
 two years an active correspondence, personal and diplomatic, 
 Avas 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 con- 
 cerned, 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 expec- 
 tation 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 loth 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 
 ]\Ialta, — as a better j^oint 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. 
 
VIEWS CONCERNING NAPLES 567 
 
 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, Avith 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 ade- 
 quately garrisoned and held. If, however, there was any 
 hasty overt action taken, looking to the security of Sicily, it 
 might merely precipitate the seizui'c 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 vSicily, Messina might be 
 suddenly seized, the gates of the island thus thrown open, 
 and, Sicily once lost, '' JS^aples foils ofcovrse." "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 tee must not risk Sicily too far 
 ill trying to save Naples ; therefore, General Acton, yourself 
 and myself must keep a good loolcoutJ' 
 
568 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 This summed up the conditions for Naples during the long 
 two years of watching and waiting, while Bonaparte, concen- 
 trating 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 wi'ote 
 Elliot two months later, " and you know I was ordered to send 
 a squadron outside the Straits. Fourteen days ago, a French 
 sevent^^-four got into Cadiz from Santo Domingo, and two 
 French frigates, with some merchant ships. AYhat 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 imjDortant 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 direc- 
 tions to the general commanding in Malta, to hold a detach- 
 ment of two thousand British troojDS 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 de- 
 fence of Malta. Nelson told the Prime Minister that discre- 
 tion, 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 stip- 
 ulation 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 
 
ANXIETY ABOUT SICILY 569 
 
 dominions, and with the general character of Neapolitan 
 officers, for both efficiency and fidelity, the citadel Avould 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 qertainly not keep the French 
 out one moment, and it would give a good excuse for not ask- 
 ing us to secure INIessina." -'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 fore- 
 told, 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 Vil- 
 lettes 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." ^ 
 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 repro- 
 duce 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 
 
 1 This sentence refers to the governor ; not to Villettes^ as the construc- 
 tion ini''lit indicate. 
 
570 
 
 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 give any French ship or man leave to quit Egypt." To deny 
 an officer discretion was as scathing an expression of dissatis- 
 faction 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 Eichard Bickerton, had started for Toulon, — " very judi- 
 ciously/' said Nelson, — the instant he heard of the renewal 
 of hostilities. 
 
 The " Amphiou " 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 oft" Toulon. '' My opinion of Malta, as a naval 
 station for watching the French in Toulon, is well known; and 
 my present experience of what Avill 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 out- 
 work 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." " IMalta 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 sliip there, I never see her under two months," 
 
MALTA AN IMPORTANT BASE 571 
 
 With Gibraltar, however, Malta gave the British two 
 impregnable and secure bases of operations, within reason- 
 able distance of one another, and each in close proximity to 
 points most essential to control. During Nelson's entire com- 
 mand, 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 pro- 
 tection 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 destruc- 
 tion of the Toulon fleet. The latter he rightly .considered his 
 principal mission, success in which would solve most other 
 maritime difficulties. " My lirst object must ever be to keep 
 the French fleet in check ; and, if they put to sea, to have 
 force enough with me to annUiilate 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 conseqiiently 
 had been allowed to run down gradually, a result which 
 doubtless had been hastened by St. Vincent's stringent econo- 
 mies. 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 
 Avants 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 
 
572 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 is neither cordage nor sails to replace the unserviceable stores, 
 and, therefore, the evil must be combated in the best manner 
 possible." As the Avhole 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 comple- 
 ment, 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 be- 
 cause, 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 ]\Ialta. " 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 Avater most difficult to be obtained, because sur- 
 rounded 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 
 Avhich 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 road- 
 stead 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 per- 
 
THE QUESTION OF SUPPLIES 573 
 
 fectly 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,^ 
 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 ex- 
 pected 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, abso- 
 lutely impossible ; " and from the Spanish ports, Barcelona or 
 Eosas, 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 vege- 
 tables, provided, but on no account otherwise, that the simple 
 1 Unfit for sea, and kept at Naples for political reasons. 
 
574 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 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 responsi- 
 bilities, he was not willing, even for the health of the fleet, to 
 incur the risk of pecuniary imputations for himself or his 
 captains. 
 
 Great dexterity of management was required to obtain these 
 supplies, without drawing, upon those who gave them, such 
 tokens of displeasure from Bonaparte as might result in their 
 discontinuance. Towards Spain, although he felt for her per- 
 plexities, Nelson took a firm tone. She was nominally neutral, 
 and enjoyed privileges as such ; he insisted therefore that she 
 should deal equal measure to both belligerents. " I am ready 
 to make large allowances for the miserable situation Spain has 
 placed herself in ; but there is a certain line beyond which I 
 cannot submit to be treated with disrespect." That line of 
 forbearance was dictated, of course, less by indulgence towards 
 Spain than by the necessities of Great Britain, which Nelson, 
 however indignant, was too good a diplomatist to drop out of 
 sight ; but he kept up a pressure which secured very substan- 
 tial assistance, though grudgingly given. " Refreshments we 
 have a right to as long as we remain at peace, and if this goes 
 on " — the refusal, that is, to allow provisions to be bought in 
 quantities — "you may acquaint them that I will anchor in 
 Rosas with the squadron, and receive our daily supplies, which 
 will offend the French much more than our staying at sea," 
 
 Towards Naples, as secretly friendly to Great Britain, he 
 Avas of course far more tender ; and, while he rejected no sug- 
 gestion without consideration, he regarded the distance as too 
 great to render such a means of subsistence certain. The 
 numerous privateers that haunted every port would intercept 
 the transports and render convoys necessary ; it was not worth 
 while, for so small an advantage, to involve Naples, in its 
 already critical state, in a dispute with France. An occasional 
 purchase, however, seems to have been made there ; and even 
 France herself was at times brought to contribute, indirectly, 
 to the support of the squadron which was watching one of her 
 principal ports. "Latterly our cattle and onions have been 
 procured from France," wrote Nelson ; " but from the apparent 
 incivilities of the Spaniards, I suppose we are on the eve of 
 
IMPORTANCE OF SARDINIA 575 
 
 being shut out." To escape the notice of the French agents, it 
 was obviously desirable to distribute as widely as possible the 
 sources of supply, so as not to concentrate observation upon 
 any one, or upon the general fact. 
 
 It Avas, however, upon Sardinia that Nelson in the end 
 chiefly depended. The importance of this island, both in fact 
 and in his estimation, was so great, that it may be said to 
 have constituted the chief object of his thought and anxiety, 
 after his own squadron and the French, which also he at times 
 prophetically spoke of as his own. '' I do not mean to use the 
 shells you have sent me at sea," he writes to General Villettes, 
 " for that I hope to consider burning our own ships ; but in 
 case they run ashore, then a few put into their sides will do 
 their business." In addition to its extremely favorable cen- 
 tral position, Sardinia, as compared to Sicily, did not entail 
 the perplexity that its use by the British might cause a 
 friendly sovereign the loss of his continental dominions. 
 Those of the King of Sardinia had passed already nearly, if 
 not wholly, out of his hands. The island itself was so wild, 
 poor, and neglected, that, even if seized by the enemy, the 
 King would lose little. The net revenue derived from it was 
 only £5,000. 
 
 During the previous war Nelson's attention had not been called 
 much to Sardinia. Up to the withdrawal from the Mediterra- 
 nean in 1796, Corsica had been a sufficient, and more suitable, 
 base for the operations of the fleet, which until then had been 
 upon the Riviera and the northern coast of Italy. When he 
 returned in 1798, even after the Battle of the Nile and the 
 disasters of the French in 1799, the unsettled condition of 
 Naples, the blockade of Malta, and the affairs of Egypt, had 
 combined to keep him in the South ; while the tenure of the 
 allies in Northern Italy, up to the Battle of Marengo, was 
 apparently so secure as to require no great support from the 
 fleet. Irrespective of any personal influences that may have 
 swayed him, Sicily was better suited then to be the centre 
 from Avhich to superintend the varied duties of his wide 
 command. 
 
 When he returned in 1803, the old prepossessions naturally 
 remained. In a survey of the political conditions written for 
 the Prime Minister when on the passage to Toulon, much is 
 
576 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 said of Malta, Sicily, ami Naples, but Sardinia is dismissed 
 with a passing hope that the French would not seize it. After 
 joining the fleet off Toulon, however, he had to realize that, 
 if it was to remain at sea, as he purposed and effected, and yet 
 be kept fully provisioned and watered, it must at times make 
 an anchorage, which should be so far convenient as to keep it, 
 practically, as much on its station as when under way. In 
 this dilemma his attention was called to the Madalena Islands, 
 a group off the northeast end of Sardinia, where wood and 
 water could be obtained. Between them and the main island 
 there was a good harbor, having the decisive advantage of 
 two entrances, by one or other of which it could be left in 
 winds from any quarter. A survey had been made a year 
 before, during the peace, by a Captain Ryves, now command- 
 ing a ship in the fleet. As winter approached, Nelson decided 
 to examine the spot himself, which he did in the last days of 
 October, taking advantage of a moonlight week when the 
 enemy would be less likely to leave port. He found it admi- 
 rably adapted for his purposes, and that fresh provisions, 
 though not of the best quality, could be had. " It is certainly 
 one of the best anchorages I have met with for a fleet," he 
 wrote, " but I suppose the French will take it now we have 
 used it." This they did not attempt, and the British fleet 
 continued to resort to it from time to time, obtaining water 
 and bullocks. 
 
 Such a roadstead as an occasional rendezvous, where trans- 
 ports could discharge their stores to the vessels, and ships be 
 refitted and supplied, would make the fleet as secure of hold- 
 ing its position as were the cruisers that depended upon Malta 
 and Gibraltar. Its being two hundred miles from Toulon was 
 not a serious drawback, for it was no part of Nelson's plan to 
 keep the fleet close to Toulon. When he took command, he 
 found it so stationed, but he soon removed to a position thirty 
 to forty miles west of the harbor's mouth, which seems to 
 have been his general summer rendezvous. " Lord Nelson," 
 wrote a young officer of the fleet,^ ''pursues a very different 
 plan from Sir Bichard Bickerton. The latter kept close to 
 the harbour, but Lord Nelson is scarce ever in sight of the 
 land, and there is but one frigate inshore." " I chose this 
 
 1 The Honourable Mr. Waldegrave, afterwards Admiral Lord Radstock. 
 
OF ^" 8^ Madalenaias. 
 
 Asinara Id 
 
 Ids. SanPetro 
 
 -,C- Monte Santo 
 
 Statute Miles 
 
 Nautical Miles 
 
 (For life of ^e /son ) 
 
IMPORTANCE OF SARDINIA 577 
 
 position," Nelson said, " to answer two important purposes : 
 one to prevent the junction of a Spanish fleet from the west- 
 ward; and the other, to be to windward, so as to enable me, if 
 the northerly gale came on to the N. N. W., to take shelter in 
 a few hours under the Hieres Islands, or if N. IST. E., under 
 Cape San Sebastian." " It is not my intention to close-watch 
 Toulon, even with frigates," he wrote, and his dispositions 
 were taken rather with a view to encourage the enemy to 
 come out ; although, of course, he took every precaution that 
 they should not get far without being observed, and assured 
 himself by frequent reconnoitring that they had not left port. 
 ''My system is the very contrary of blockading," he told 
 Admiral Pole. "Every opportunity has been offered the 
 enemy to put to sea," he says again, "for it is there we hope 
 to realize the hopes and expectations of our Country." There 
 was also the obvious advantage that, if habitually out of sight, 
 the enemy could not know his movements, nor profit by his 
 occasional absences in any direction. 
 
 From Madalena he extended his observations over the 
 whole island of Sardinia, upon the holding of which he 
 thenceforth laid the greatest stress, and entertained most 
 anxious fears lest the French should snatch it out of his 
 hands. "If we could possess Sardinia, we should want 
 neither Malta nor any other. It is the most important island, 
 as a naval and military station, in the Mediterranean. It 
 possesses at the northern end the finest harbour in the world 
 [Madalena]. It is twenty-four hours' sail from Toulon ; it 
 covers Italy ; it is a position that the wind which carries the 
 French to the westward is fair for you to follow. In passing 
 to the southward they go close to you. In short, it covers 
 Egypt, Italy, and Turkey." He was anxious that the British 
 Government should buy it. " If we, from delicacy, or com- 
 miseration of the unfortunate king of Sardinia, do not get 
 possession of that island, the French will. If I lose Sardinia, 
 I lose the French fleet." 
 
 His apprehensions were not verified ; as also they were 
 
 not during his command, either in the Morea, in Naples, or 
 
 in Sicily. Napoleon took no active steps against Sardinia, 
 
 although the proceedings there did not escape the sharp eyes 
 
 of the French agents, but elicited from them vivacious remon- 
 
 37 
 
678 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 strances. ''The government of the Republic," wrote one, 
 *' has a right to complain of this excessive complaisance. To 
 give regular support to a squadron blockading a port, to re- 
 victual it, in one word, periodically, is to tread under foot the 
 neutrality which is professed. I shall notify my government 
 of a fact which demands all its attention, and in which it is 
 painful to me to see a cause of misunderstanding between 
 France and his Sardinian Majesty." It is singularly confirm- 
 atory of the reality of Bonaparte's intention to attempt the 
 invasion of England, that he confined his efforts in the South 
 — in the Mediterranean — to feints and demonstrations. 
 What he did there looked to the future, not to the present ; 
 although, doubtless, he stood always so ready that no oppor- 
 tunity offering advantage would have passed neglected. The 
 active mind of Nelson, condemned to the uncertainties of the 
 defensive and to military idleness, however it may have been 
 burdened with administrative routine and official correspond- 
 ence, found ample time to speculate on the designs of Bona- 
 parte, and the latter took care that he should have matter 
 enough to occupy him — and if possible mislead him — in 
 rumor and in movements. " At Marseilles they are fatting, 
 as reports say, eighty or ninety gunboats, and intend sending 
 them, by the canal of Languedoc to Bordeaux ; but I am sure 
 this is not true. TJiey are to go alongshore to the Heel of 
 Italy, and to embark and protect their army either to Sicily 
 or the IVforea, or to both ; and the Navy of Europe can hardly 
 prevent these alongshore voyages." In this will be noticed 
 the recurrence of ideas familiar to him in the Riviera eight 
 years before; the expectation of ex-centric operations into 
 which Bonaparte was rarely betrayed. 
 
 Frequent stories also reach him of projects to invade and 
 seize Sardinia. Vessels are fitting for that purpose, now at 
 Marseilles, now at Villefranche ; now the expedition is to 
 come from Corsica only. " A light linen jacket, trowsers, red 
 cap, and a pair of shoes, is the whole expense of Government ; 
 the plunder of the Sardinian Anglo-Sardes is held out as the 
 reward." To prevent it he seeks the authority of his Govern- 
 ment and of the King of Sardinia to garrison Madalena. The 
 straits of Bonifacio are but ten miles wide ; it is impossible 
 therefore for a cruiser to prevent boats passing. If the at- 
 
MANAGEMENT OF THE FLEET 579 
 
 tempt is made, no scruples about the iieutralit}'' of Sardinia 
 shall tie his hands. " I have directed the frigates to piirsue 
 them, even should they chase into Sardinia, and to take or 
 destroy them, and also the Corsican troops ; for if I wait till 
 the island is taken I should feel deserving of reprobation. Of 
 course, they will say we have broken the neutrality, if we 
 attack them in the ports of Sardinia before their conquest, 
 and if we do not I shall be laughed at for a fool. Prevention 
 is better than cureJ' With his usual long-headed circum- 
 spection, however, even when most bent on an extreme step, 
 he warns the Prime Minister, to whom he is writing, to men- 
 tion his purpose to the Russian ambassador — that the latter 
 may understand the apparent breach of neutrality ; for Russia 
 has constituted herself a champion of the Sardinian monarch. 
 " I mention my intention that idle reports may not be at- 
 tended to." 
 
 As the winter of 1803-4 approached, and it became evident 
 that Spain was to persevere in her neutrality. Nelson removed 
 his fleet to a rendezvous about thirty miles south of Cape San 
 Sebastian, on the Spanish coast — the Number 97 continually 
 mentioned in his official letters to captains. There the high- 
 lands of Spain afford some shelter from the furious northerly 
 gales, which, sweeping over France from the Atlantic, are 
 compressed as in a funnel between the Pyrenees and the Alps, 
 to fall with redoubled violence on the Gulf of Lyons. Only 
 the utmost care and the most skilful seamanship could pre- 
 serve the rickety ships, upon whose efficiency so much de- 
 pended, and which, if damaged, there was none to replace. 
 I "bear up for every gale," wrote Nelson. "I must not in 
 our present state quarrel with the northwesters — with crazy 
 masts and no port or spars near us." Even in September, he 
 writes, there are " three days' gale of severe blowing weather 
 out of the seven, which frequently comes on suddenly, and 
 thereby exposes the topmasts, topsail yards and sails, to 
 great hazard, under every care and attention ; and there are 
 no topmasts or topsail yards in store, either at Gibraltar or 
 Malta." "The French fleet keep us waiting; and such a 
 place as all the Gulf of Lyons, for gales of wind from the 
 N. W. to N. E., I never saw ; but by always going away large, 
 we generally lose much of their force and the heavy sea. 
 
580 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 By the great care and attention of every captain, we have 
 suffered much less than coukl liave been expected. I do not 
 believe Lord St. Vincent would have kept the sea with such 
 ships. However, with nursing our ships, we have roughed 
 it out better than could have been expected. We either run 
 to the southward, or furl all the sails and make the ships as 
 easy as possible." Under such circumstances, it was no small 
 nor unworthy boast he made near the close of the cruise, when 
 the first ineffectual attempt of the French to leave Toulon 
 ended, in numerous accidents. " These gentlemen are not 
 accustomed to a Gulf of Lyons gale, which we have buffeted 
 for twenty-one months, and not carried away a spar." Nelson 
 himself, though reckless to desperation when an adequate 
 object was at stake, in the moments of repose husbanded his 
 means, and looked to the efficiency of his instruments, with 
 the diligence of a miser. With his own hand he noted the 
 weather indications, including the barometer, at least three 
 times every twenty-four hours, and occasionally even more 
 often. 
 
 A rendezvous, however advantageous, was not permitted by 
 Nelson to become a permanent station, or a long-continued 
 resting-place for the fleet. In the inevitable monotony of a 
 watch protracted so far beyond his original expectations, his 
 sleepless solicitude for the health and contentment of the 
 ships' companies warned him that lack of mental interest 
 saps the spirit, and wears away the strength, beyond the 
 power of mere bodily comfort to prevent. On Number 97 
 was kept always a ship — frigate or smaller cruiser — with 
 word where the admiral was to be found at any time; and 
 thither resorted the vessels returning from their missions to 
 all parts of the station, or coming ou^t from England. " Re- 
 join me at Number 97," their instructions ran, " where you 
 will find me, or orders for your further proceedings." Other 
 rendezvous there were, of course, each with its own number, 
 and with a cruiser if at sea ; but in the anchorages occasion- 
 ally resorted to, as Madalena, or the Gulf of Palmas in the 
 south of Sardinia, communications were left on shore. With 
 the threads thus reaching from these centres to the different 
 parts of his command. Nelson's habit was to keep his fleet in 
 motion from jjoint to point, in the stretch of sea bounded on 
 
SANITARY PRF.CAUTIONS 581 
 
 the one side by the coast of Spain, as far south as. the Balear- 
 ics, and on the east by tlie islands of Sardinia and Corsica. 
 Through this hunting-ground, from end to end of which he 
 roamed in unceasing restlessness, like a lion roaring for his 
 prey, the Toulon fleet must pass, wherever bound, and by the 
 judicious distribution of the cruisers — all too few — allowed 
 him by St. Vincent's economies, he hoped to get timely and 
 sufficient information of its leaving port. 
 
 " The great thing in all military service is health," he wrote 
 to his old friend. Dr. Moseley, who had been with him in the 
 far-back Central American expedition in 1780 ; " and you will 
 agree with me, that it is easier for an officer to keep men 
 healthy, than for a physician to cure them. Situated as this 
 fleet has been, without a friendly port, where we could get all 
 the things so necessary for us, yet I have, by changing the 
 cruizing ground, not allowed the sameness of prospect to sati- 
 ate the mind — sometimes by looking at Toulon, Ville Tranche, 
 Barcelona, and Eosas ; then running around Minorca, Majorca, 
 Sardinia and Corsica ; and two or three times anchoring for a 
 few days, and sending a ship to the last place for ojiions, 
 which I find the best thing that can be given to seamen ; 
 having always good mutton for the sick, cattle wheil we can 
 get them, and plenty of fresh water. In the winter it is the 
 best plan to give half the allowance of grog, instead of -all 
 Avine. These things are for the commander-in-chief to look 
 to ; but shut very nearly out from Spain, and only getting 
 refreshments by stealth from other places, my command has 
 been an arduous one." "Our men's minds," he added, *'are 
 always kept up with the daily hopes of meeting the enemy." 
 An order indicating one of the squadron movements, of which 
 he here speaks, may be worth quoting. " Whereas it is my 
 intention," he writes at ISTumber 97 to the captain there sta- 
 tioned, " to proceed with the squadron, the first westerly wind, 
 off Toulon, for the purpose of reconnoitring the enemy at that 
 port, and from thence pass through Rendezvous No. 102, to 
 secure any information the ships there may have obtained of 
 them, you are hereby required and directed to keep on your 
 station and inform any of his Majesty's ships arriving on said 
 rendezvous," etc. 
 
 The health of the crews, thus carefully watched, remained 
 
582 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 excellent tliroughout, and is mentioned by him continually 
 with evident pride as well as satisfaction. Occasional slight 
 outbursts of scurvy are noted, despite his eiforts for fresh 
 food, and he mentions hectic complaints — "of the few men 
 we have lost, nine in ten are dead of consumption" — but 
 upon the whole, the general condition is unparalleled in his 
 experience. "We are healthy beyond example, and in great 
 good humour with ourselves," he writes in October, 1803, 
 " and so sharp-set, that I would not be a French Admiral in 
 the way of any of our ships for something." It would be 
 tedious to quote the numerous assertions to the same effect 
 scattered up and down his correspondence at this time ; but 
 in December, 1804, when near the end of this long period of 
 suspense, and after eighteen months at sea, he writes to the 
 Admiralty : " The Fleet is in perfect good health and good 
 humour, iinequalled by anything which has ever come within 
 my knowledge, and equal to the most active service which the 
 times may call for." Dr. Gillespie, who joined the "Victory " 
 as physician to the fleet in January, 1805, wrote immediately 
 afterwards that out of her eight hundred and forty men, but 
 one was confined to his bed by sickness, and that the other 
 ships, though upwards of twenty months off Toulon, were in 
 a like condition of health. 
 
 The same could not then, nor for long before, be said of 
 Nelson himself. The first flush of excitement in leaving Eng- 
 land and taking command, the expectation and change of scene 
 in going out, affected him favorably. "As to my health," 
 he says, immediately after joining the fleet, " thank God, I 
 have not had a finger ache since I left England ; " but this, 
 unfortunately, did not endure. It was his first experience of 
 the weightier anxieties of a commander-in-chief ; for when he 
 had succeeded to that position, temporarily, in the Mediter- 
 ranean and the Baltic, he had found either a squadron in good 
 running order, or at the least no serious hitch about necessary 
 maintenance. Now all this was diffierent. The difficulties 
 about supplies and the condition of his ships have been men- 
 tioned, as have also his fears for Naples, Sicily, and the Morea, 
 — all of which, in his belief, might possibly be conquered, 
 even without the interposition of the Toulon fleet. The latter, 
 however, kept him most uneasy ; for he could get no certain 
 
HIS ILL HEALTH • 583 
 
 knowledge as to its destination, or the probable time of its mov- 
 ing; and the wide field for injury open to it, if his vigilance 
 were eluded, kept his eager, unquiet mind continually on the 
 strain of speculation and anticipation. " I hope they will come 
 out and let us settle the matter. You know I hate being kept 
 in suspense." The nervous excitability — irritability — that 
 often overlay the usually cordial kindliness and gracious bear- 
 ing of the man, was an easy prey to such harassment. It 
 breaks out at times in his letters, but was only occasionally 
 visible to those around him. By the first of December he 
 already foresees that he cannot last long. " Next Christmas, 
 please God, I shall be at Merton ; for, by that time, with all 
 the anxiety attendant on such a command as this, I shall be 
 done up. The mind and body both wear out." 
 
 As autumn drew towards winter, the bitter cold went 
 through his feeble frame, and in the wild weather he was 
 '' always tossed about, and always sea-sick." " We have had 
 a most terrible winter," he writes, even before the Kew Year. 
 '• It has almost knocked me np. I have been very ill, and am 
 now far from recovered ; but I hope to hold out till the battle 
 is over, when I must recruit." " My heart, my Lord, is warm," 
 he tells Lord Hobart, the Secretary of State for War, " my 
 head is firm, but my body is unequal to my wishes. I am 
 visibly shook ; but as long as I can hold out, I shall never 
 abandon my truly honourable post." He feared also blind- 
 ness. " My eyesight fails me most dreadfully," he writes to 
 his old friend Davison. " I firmly believe that, in a very few 
 years, I shall be stone-blind. It is this only, of all my mala- 
 dies, that makes me unhappy ; but God's will be done." The 
 first winter was unusually severe, and during it was added, to 
 his official cares and personal suffering, an extreme anxiety 
 about Lady Hamilton, for he was expecting the birth of a 
 second child in January. This child, a girl, lived b-ut a short 
 time ; he never saw her. The effect of these various causes 
 upon his health was so great, that the physicians, as early as 
 January, 1804, were advising his return. " The medical gen- 
 tlemen are wanting to survey me, and to send me to Bristol 
 for the re-establishmenb of my health," he tells Miuto ; but 
 he adds, "do not mention it (it is my concern) I beg of you." 
 Reports were then unusually persistent that the enemy was 
 
584 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 about to put to sea. " / must not be sick until after the 
 French fleet is taken." 
 
 To the last moment the destination of the French and the 
 purposes of Bonaparte remained unknown to him, a fruitful 
 source of guessing and worry. *' It is at best but a guess," 
 he wrote to Ball, after a year's pondering, "and the world 
 attaches wisdom to him that guesses right." Yet his conclu- 
 sions, however reached, though subject to temporary variations, 
 were in the main correct. Strongly impressed tliough he was 
 with the importance and exposure of Egypt, he inclined Tipon 
 the whole to the belief that the French were bound to the 
 Avestward, out of the Straits and into the Atlantic. This con- 
 firmed him in taking his general summer rendezvous to the 
 westward, where he was to windward of such a movement, as 
 well as interposed between Toulon and any Spanish fleet at- 
 tempting to go there. " My station to the westward of Toulon, 
 an unusual one," he writes to Addington in August, 1803, 
 " has been taken upon an idea that the French fleet is bound 
 out of the Straits and probably to Ireland. I shall follow 
 them to the Antipodes." Two months later he says : " Plau- 
 sible reasons may certainly be given for every one of the 
 plans " suggested by his various correspondents ; but he 
 thinks that either Alexandria or outside the Mediterranean is 
 the most probable. " To those two points my whole attention 
 is turned." " Their destination, is it Ireland or the Levant ? 
 That is what I want to know ; " but in December he still holds 
 to his first impression : " My opinion is, certainly, out of the 
 Mediterranean." 
 
 In this perplexity Elliot suggested to him to receive on 
 board the fleet some good Frenchmen, who could land from 
 time to time and get information in Toulon, — a proposition 
 which drew from Nelson a characteristic and amusing explo- 
 sion. " Mr. Elliot wanted to send me some good Frenchmen, 
 to go ashore and get me information. My answer to all these 
 offers is 'No.' I can be told nothing of any consequence to 
 me; but a copy of the French admiral's orders, when he is to 
 put to sea, and where he is destined to, is the only useful in- 
 formation I can care about. I can see the number and force 
 at Toulon any day I please, and as for the names of the 
 Captains or Admirals I care not what they are called; there- 
 
ANXIETY ABOUT FRENCH PLANS 585 
 
 fore, as you may suppose, I have none of these 'good French- 
 men ' about me." " I put no confidence in them," he tells 
 Elliot. " You think yours good : the Queen thinks hers the 
 same: I believe they are all alike. Whatever information 
 you can get me, I shall be very thankful for ; but not a 
 Frenchman comes here. Forgive me, but my mother hated 
 the French." " I never trust a Corsican or a Frenchman. I 
 would give the devil all the good ones to take the remainder." 
 
 As winter advanced, his perplexities increased, for each 
 correspondent, by long dwelling on his particular concern, 
 saw its danger and importance growing in his own eyes, and 
 dwelt upon them with greater emphasis in his letters. " Ball 
 is sure they are going to Egypt ; the Turks are sure they are 
 going to the Morea; Mr. Elliot at Naples, to Sicily; and the 
 King of Sardinia, to his only spot. Every power thinks they 
 are destined against them ; but whatever the French may in- 
 tend to do," he concludes, Avith a quaint humor occasional 
 with him, " I trust, and with confidence, they are destined for 
 Spithead.'" He recognized, too, that Bonaparte himself was 
 not wholly master of his own projects when contending with 
 such uncertain elements ; and the great master of War, in this 
 instance as in many others, had placed his force so centrally, 
 in the heel of Italy, that he threatened with equal facility in 
 two opposite directions, to his own advantage and his enemies' 
 perplexity. " Circumstances may even make it necessary to 
 alter its destination by Buonaparte ; Egypt or Ireland, and I 
 rather lean to the latter destination," Anything, indeed, is 
 possible ; for, as winter approaches, " we can be sure of nothing 
 in so short a run," — as to Sardinia or Sicily. 
 
 For a little while during February, 1804, he was further 
 stirred up by reports that the French were about to concen- 
 trate their naval forces, from Brest and Ferrol, in the Medi- 
 terranean ; and this he was inclined to believe, unfavorable 
 as the season would be for maritime operations in that stormy 
 sea, with the inexperienced crews of the enemy. In the sum- 
 mer his conviction of the importance of the Mediterranean 
 had fully prepared him for such an attempt. " Naples, the 
 Morea, and ultimately Egypt, are in Buonaparte's view," he 
 had then written. '' With this idea, I fully expect that the 
 French fleet from Brest will assuredly come into the Medi- 
 
586 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 terranean, to protect this army across the water. I shall try 
 and fight one party or the other, before they form a jixnction." 
 " Much may be done before British reinforcements arrive," he 
 reminded St. Vincent. " Your Lordship knows what Admiral 
 Bruix might have done, had he done his duty, and they may 
 buy their experience." Now he says to Ball, " The Admiralty 
 tells me nothing, they know nothing ; but my private letters 
 say, that the Brest squadron, as well as Ferrol,i is bound 
 here — if so, we shall have work enough upon our hands." 
 Thirty thousand troops, also, were ready to embark in IMar- 
 seilles and Nice. The conclusion, in view of so great a force 
 assembling, was natural: "Egypt, I have no doubt, is the 
 favourite and ultimate object of the Corsican tyrant." Nelson's 
 spirit rises with the occasion. " I shall try to intercept them, 
 but I cannot go so far to the westward as is necessary ; for I 
 will not lose sight of the Toulon fleet. What a most zealous 
 man can do to meet all points of difficulty, shall be done. My 
 squadron is the finest for its numbers in the world, and much 
 may be expected of it. Should superior numbers join, we 
 must look it in the face. Nil desi^erandum ! God is good, 
 and our cause is just." 
 
 This alarm passed away like others. Bonaparte had no idea 
 of pushing ships into the Mediterranean, or embarking his 
 naval forces on any doubtful experiments, until he had first 
 tested the possibility of that supreme adventure, the invasion 
 of England. When that mighty imagination passed away like 
 a dream that leaves no trace, he ordered his fleets into the 
 Mediterranean, as Nelson had expected, and the result was 
 Trafalgar. 
 
 As the spring of 1804 opened, the French admiral at Toulon 
 began to exercise his ships outside the harbor, singly or in 
 small groups, like half-fledged birds learning to fly ; or, to use 
 Nelson's expression, " My friend Monsieur La Touche some- 
 times plays bo-peep in and out of Toulon, like a mouse at the 
 edge of her hole." The only drill-ground for fleets, the open 
 sea, being closed to him, he could do no better than these fur- 
 tive excursions, to prepare for the eagle's flight Napoleon had 
 prescribed to him. " Last week, at different times, two sail 
 
 1 Five French sliips-of-tlie-line, returning from the West Indies, Lad taken 
 refuge in Ferrol. 
 
FRENCH OUTINGS OFF TOULON 587 
 
 of the line put their heads out of Toulon, and on Thursday, 
 the 5th [April], in the afternoon, they all came out." "Yes- 
 terday [the 9th] a rear-admiral and seven sail, including 
 frigates, put their nose outside the harbour. If they go on 
 playing this game, some day we shall lay salt upon their tails, 
 and so end tlie campaign." 
 
 These outings — " capers," Nelson called them — naturally 
 became more venturesome by little and little, as the British 
 suffered them to proceed without serious attempt at molesta- 
 tion, or near approach on their part. Nelson veiled the keen- 
 ness of his watch, as he crouched for a spring, with a drowsy 
 appearance of caution and indifference. The French admiral, 
 Latouche Treville, was he who had commanded at Boulogne 
 when Nelson's boats were repelled with slaughter ; and it was 
 also he who in 1792 had sent a grenadier to the King of 
 Naples, with a peremptory summons to diplomatic apology in 
 one hand, and a threat of bombardment in the other. For 
 both these affairs Nelson considered he had a personal score 
 to settle. "I rather believe my antagonist at Toulon begins 
 to be angry with me : at least, I am trying to make him so ; 
 and then, he may come out, and beat me, as he says he did off* 
 Boulogne. He is the Admiral that went to Naples in Decem- 
 ber, 1792, who landed the grenadier. I owe him something 
 for that." 
 
 The French having eight sail-of-the-line certainly ready for 
 sea, and two or three more nearly so — how nearly Nelson 
 was not sure — he now endeavored to lure them out. "I have 
 taken a method of making Mr. La Touche Treville angry. I 
 have left Sir Kichard Bickerton, with part of the fleet, twenty 
 leagues from hence, and, with five of the line, am preventing 
 his cutting capers, which he has done for some time past, 
 off Cape Sicie." "He seems inclined to try his hand with 
 us," he writes a week later, "and by my keeping so great 
 an inferiority close to him, perhaps he may some day be 
 tempted." Nelson had near Toulon at the time nine ships-of- 
 the-line. Had he succeeded in bringing Latouche Treville to 
 attack his five, he would have hoped, even with such odds, 
 for a decisive victory ; but, failing that, he was assured that 
 the Toulon fleet would be out of the game for that summer. 
 It was important to bring matters to an issue, for, as he wrote 
 
588 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 Elliot, his force was diminishing daily through the deteriora- 
 tion of ships never from the first fit for their work. Measured 
 by the standard of the ships in the Channel, " I have but four 
 sail fit to keep the sea. I absolutely keep them out by man- 
 agement." Except the four, all needed docking, and there 
 was not a dock open to the British west of Constantinople. 
 
 But, while thus keenly anxious to force an action, he was 
 wary to obtain tactical conditions that should insure a success, 
 adequate both to the risk he ran, and to the object at which 
 he aimed. " I think their fleet will be ordered out to fight 
 close to Toulon, that 'they may get their crippled ships in 
 again, and that we must then quit the coast to repair our dam- 
 ages, and thus leave the coast clear ; but my mind is fixed not 
 to fight them, unless with a westerly wind, outside the Hieres, 
 and with an easterly wind, to the westward of Sicie." Crip- 
 pled there, to leeward of their port, the other British division 
 coming up fresh, as a reserve, from the southward, where it 
 lay concealed, would both cut them oif, and rescue any of 
 their own fleet that might have been overpowered. Bicker- 
 ton's orders were to remain due south from Port Cros, one of 
 'the Hyeres, at a distance such that, with the upper canvas 
 furled, his ships could not be seen from the islands, but could 
 keep the main division in sight from their mastheads. In all 
 cases of anticipated battle. Nelson not only took his measures 
 thus thoughtfully, but was careful to put his subordinates in 
 possession both of his general plans, and, as far as possible, of 
 the underlying ideas. Thus, in a memorandum issued about 
 this time to the captains, he says: "As it is my determination 
 to attack the French fleet in any place where there is a reason- 
 able prospect of getting fairly alongside of them, I recommend 
 that every captain will make himself, by inquiries, as fully 
 acquainted as possible with the following places, viz., Hieres 
 Bay [with its three entrances], Gourjean Bay, (of which I 
 send a chart from the latest surveys made,) Port Especia, and, 
 in particular the northern Passage into Leghorn Roads, from 
 which side it is only, in my opinion, possible to attack an 
 enemy's fleet to advantage ; and Avith the Gulf of Ajaccio." 
 To these instructions he adds some details of practical prepa- 
 ration for anchoring under fire, and the reasons therefor. In 
 the same spirit, when expecting the Brest fleet in the Mediter- 
 
TACTICAL TRECAUTIONS 589 
 
 ranean, he says : '' I am perfectly prepared how to act with 
 either a superior or an inferior force. My mind is firm as a 
 rock, and my plans for every event fixed in my mind." No 
 man ever was served better than Nelson by the inspiration of 
 the moment ; no man ever connted on it less. 
 
 In communicating his ideas to his subordinates Nelson did 
 not confine himself to official intercourse ; on the contrary, his 
 natural disposition impelled him rather to familar conversation 
 with them on service subjects. " Even for debating the most 
 important naval business," we learn through his confidential 
 secretary at this period, " he preferred a turn on the quarter- 
 deck with his captains, whom he led by his own frankness to 
 express themselves freely, to all the stiffness and formality of a 
 council of war." ^ An interesting instance of these occasional 
 counsels has been transmitted to us by one of his captains, then 
 little more than a youth, but the last to survive of those who 
 commanded ships under him. " Throughout the month of 
 October, 1804, Toulon was frequently reconnoitred, and the 
 Phoebe and Amazon were ordered to cruize together. Previous 
 to their going away Lord Nelson gave to Captains Capel and 
 Parker several injunctions, in case they should get an oppor- 
 tunity of attacking two of the French frigates, which now got 
 under weigh more frequently. The principal one was, that 
 they should not each single out and attack an opponent, but 
 * that both should endeavour together to take one frigate ; if 
 successful, chase the other ; but if you do not take the second, 
 still you have won a victory, and your country will gain a 
 frigate.' Then, half laughing, and half snappishly, said 
 kindly to them as he wished them good-bye, 'I daresay you 
 consider yourselves a couple of fine fellows, and when you get 
 away from me you will do nothing of the sort, but think your- 
 selves wiser than I am !' " 2 
 
 The game of cat and mouse, off Toulon, occasioned one inci- 
 dent which greatly upset Nelson's composure, and led to a 
 somewhat amusing display of ire, excited by a statement of 
 
 1 Life of Rev. A. J. Scott, p. 124. 
 
 2 Plulliinore's Last of Nelson's Captains, p. 122. A portion of this inci- 
 dent has before been quoted, in another connection (page 303, note). It 
 is repeated, because again applicable, to illustrate a different trait of Nelson's 
 character. 
 
590 THE LITE OF NELSON 
 
 the French admiral, published throughout Europe, that his 
 renowned antagonist had run away from him. On the 13th 
 of June, two French frigates and a brig were seen under the 
 Hyeres Islands, where they had been seen by Latouche 
 Treville, upon the report that some enemy's cruisers were in 
 the neighborhood. Nelson despatched two frigates after them, 
 which, owing to light winds, did not get near until the next 
 day. The French vessels being then seen from the "Victory " 
 to be close in with the batteries, the ''Excellent," 74, was 
 sent to support the frigates, and some time afterwards the 
 other four ships also bore up for the main entrance to the 
 islands. Upon this, Latouche Treville got under way, and at 
 about 5 p. M. came out of the harbor with his eight sail-of-the- 
 line. Nelson's division reduced their canvas, hauling to the 
 wind in line of battle, on the starboard tack, which, with the 
 then wind, was with their heads off shore, and the '*' Excel- 
 lent" was recalled, although she could not rejoin till mid- 
 night. In this order they hove-to (stopped), with two reefs 
 in the topsails and the main yards square, at 7.30 p. m., which 
 at that time of the year was broad daylight, and in this 
 general position remained till next morning. 
 
 As the distance between the hostile bodies was apparently 
 from tw^elve to fifteen miles, the French admiral's observa- 
 tions may have failed to recognize that the enemy, by backing 
 his topsails, had offered a fair challenge ; else, in his report of 
 this very commonplace occurrence, he could scarcely have used, 
 concerning the movement of heading south, the expression, 
 2)rit chasse, which, whether rendered " retired," or "retreated," 
 or, as Nelson did, " ran away," was a misrepresentation of the 
 facts, and heightened by the assertion that he pursued till 
 night-fall, and next morning could not see the enemy. Writ- 
 ing to Elliot four days after the affair happened, Nelson men- 
 tioned casually his view of the matter. " Monsieur La Touche 
 came out with eight sail of the line and six frigates, cut a 
 caper off Sepet, and went in again. I brought-to for his 
 attack, although I did not believe anything was meant serious, 
 but merely a gasconade," " On the morning of the loth," he 
 tells Acton on the same day, "I believe I may call it, we 
 chased him into Toulon." His purpose evidently was, as has 
 been shown, to fight, if the enemy meant business, to leeward 
 
THE REPORT OF LATOUCHE TREVILLE 591 
 
 of the port, and far enough off to give Bickerton a chance to 
 come up. Great was his wrath, two months later, when La- 
 touche's statement reached him, and he found that not only no 
 mention was made of the relative numbers, but that the offen- 
 sive expression quoted had been used. " I do assure you," he 
 wrote to the Admiralty, enclosing a copy of the day's log, '•' I 
 know not what to say, except by a flat contradiction ; for if 
 my character is not established by this time for not being apt 
 to run away, it is not worth my time to attempt to put the 
 world right." He might well have rested there, — an impu- 
 tation that might have injured an untried man could provoke 
 only a smile when levelled at his impregnable renown ; but 
 his ruffled mind would not let him keep quiet, and in private 
 correspondence he vented his rage in terms similar to those 
 used of the Danish commodore after Copenhagen. " You will 
 have seen Monsieur La Touche's letter of how he chased me 
 and how I rrm. I keep it ; and, by G — d, if I take him, he 
 shall eat it." He is a " jxiltroon," a " liar," and a " miscreant." 
 It may be added that no admiral, whether a Nelson or not, 
 could have abandoned the "Excellent " under the conditions. 
 
 Immediately after this abortive affair, Nelson, convinced by 
 it that something more than a taunt was needed to bring his 
 enemy under his guns, stationed frigates at the Hyeres, and to 
 cruise thence to the eastward as far as Cape Taillat, to inter- 
 cept the commerce between Italy and Toulon and Marseilles. 
 For this purpose lie had recommended, and the Government 
 had ordered, a blockade of all Genoese ports including Spezia ; 
 Genoa, now the Ligurian Republic, being considered as much 
 France as Toulon. Nothing, he said, could distress France 
 more. This blockade had been but feebly enforced, owing to 
 the lack of small cruisers; but he hoped to attain the same 
 end by the frigates off the Hyeres. " I really am of opinion," 
 he told their commander, " that it will force La Touche out." 
 In the latter, however, he had to do with an opponent of skill 
 as well as of resolution. Firmly imbued with the French 
 tradition, and with Bonaparte's instructions, which subordi- 
 nated his local action entirely to the great scheme in which the 
 Toulon fleet had its appointed part, Latouche Treville was 
 neither to be provoked nor betrayed into an action, by which, 
 however tempting the promise, his fleet might be made unfit 
 
592 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 for their intended service. Nelson did him no more than jus- 
 tice, when he said, " I am confident, when he is ordered for 
 any service, that he will risk falling in with us, and the event 
 of a battle, to try and accomplish his orders ; " but, short of 
 the appointed time, nothing else could entice him. In vain 
 did the British admiral bait his trap by exposing frigates, 
 without visible support, to draw him to leeward, while the 
 hostile fleet hovered out of sight to Avindward. The shrewd 
 Frenchman doubtless felt the temj)tation, but he distrusted 
 the gifts too plausibly tendered. 
 
 Besides the interest of the public service, Nelson had the 
 strongest personal motives for bringing matters to an issue. 
 The prolonged suspense and the anxiety were exhausting him, 
 the steady tension even of the normal conditions fretted him 
 beyond endurance ; but when a crisis became accentuated by 
 an appearance that the enemy had eluded him, his feelings of 
 distress, acting upon an enfeebled organization, and a nervous 
 temperament so sensitive that he started at the mere dropping 
 of a rope beside him, drove him almost to distraction. On 
 such an occasion he wrote : " I am absolutel}' beginning this 
 letter in a fever of the mind. It is thick as butter-milk, and 
 blowing a Levanter ; and the Narcissus has just spoke me to 
 say, ' she boarded a vessel, and they understood that the men 
 had seen, a few days before, twelve sail of ships of war off 
 Minorca. It was in the dusk, and he did not know which way 
 they were steering.' This is the whole story, and a lame 
 one. You will imagine my feelings, although I cannot bring 
 my mind to believe. To miss them, God forbid. ... If I 
 should miss these fellows, my heart will break : I am actually 
 only now recovering the shock of missing them in 1798. God 
 knows I only serve to fight those scoundrels ; and if I cannot 
 do that, I should be better on shore." When the weather 
 cleared, and a reconuoissance showed the news was false, his 
 intense relief found expression in the words : " I believe this 
 is the only time in my life, that I was glad to hear the French 
 were in port." " The French ships," he says at another time, 
 " have either altered their anchorage, or some of them have 
 got to sea in the late gales : the idea has given me half a 
 fever. If that admiral were to cheat me out of my hopes of 
 meeting him, it would kill me much easier than one of his 
 
HIS PERSONAL HEALTH, 1804 593 
 
 balls. Since we sat down to dinner Captain Moubray has 
 made the signal, but I am very far from being easy." 
 
 On the 12th of May, 1804, there was a change of adminis- 
 tration in England. Earl St. Vincent left the Admiralty, as 
 First Lord, and was succeeded by Lord Melville. A few days 
 before this Nelson, by a general promotion, had become Vice- 
 Admiral of the White, the rank in which he died eighteen 
 months later. 
 
 The return of summer had improved his health from the 
 low condition into which it had fallen during the winter, but 
 he did not flatter himself as to the future. The combination 
 of colorless monotony with constant racking anxiety slackened 
 the springs of moral energy, which, and which alone, respond- 
 ing joyously to a call to action, afforded the stimulus capable 
 of triumphing over his bodily weakness, and causing it for the 
 moment to disappear. " This is an odd war," he said, " not a 
 battle ! " Tying himself to the ship, in profound sympathy 
 with the crews, he never went ashore from the time he left 
 Malta in June, 1803, until he reached Gibraltar in July, 
 1805; nor was he ever outside of the "Victory" from July 
 30, 1803, the day he went on board her from the " Amphion." 
 " Always shut up in the Victory's cabin," as he himself wrote, 
 " cannot be very good for the constitution. I think you will 
 find me grown thin, but never mind." Other oflicers, 
 especially of the frigates, got their occasional runs ashore ; 
 but his slight figure was continually in view, walking the 
 front of the poop, to the unconscious contentment of the men, 
 thus reminded ever that their admiral shared their depriva- 
 tions. This profound seclusion to the narrow circle of the 
 flagship, although often broken by the presence of oflicers 
 from the other vessels, who, whether cruising in company 
 with the fleet, or arriving with tidings from different ports, 
 were daily partakers of the admiral's hospitable table, could not 
 but depress him ; and there was with him the constant sense 
 of loss, by absence from those he held most dear. " I have 
 not a thought except on you and the French fleet," he tells 
 Lady Hamilton ; " all my thoughts, plans, and toils tend to 
 those two objects. Don't laugh at my putting you and the 
 French fleet together, but you cannot be separated." 
 
 Yet even towards her his mind is fixed as of old, that she 
 
 38 
 
594 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 must take a place second to duty. She had, it appears, in- 
 sisted upon her wish to come out to the station to be near him. 
 Malta and Italy Avere both, he said, out of the question. His 
 place was off Toulon, as long as the French fleet was there ; 
 therefore he could not go into harbor ; nay, '• I might ab- 
 solutely miss you, by leaving the Mediterranean without 
 warning. The other day we had a report the French were 
 out, and seen steering to the westward. We were as far 
 as Minorca when the alarm proved false." As for coming on 
 board the '* Victory "to live, which she seems to have sug- 
 gested, " Imagine what a cruize off Toulon is ; even in summer 
 time we have a hard gale every Aveek, and two days' heavy 
 swell. It would kill you ; and myself to see you. Much less 
 possible to have Charlotte, Horatia, &c., on board ship ! And 
 I, that have given orders to carry no women to sea in the 
 Victory, to be the first to break them ! I know, my own dear 
 Emma, if she will let her reason have fair play, will say. I am 
 right ; but she is like Horatia, very angry if she cannot have 
 her own way." "Horatia is like her mother; will have her 
 own way, or kick up a devil of a dust," — an observation both 
 Greville and Hamilton had had to make. " Your Nelson," he 
 concludes, " is called upon, in the most honourable manner, to 
 defend his country. Absence to us is equally painful : but, if 
 I had either stayed at home, or neglected my duty abroad, 
 would not my Emma have blushed for me ? She could never 
 have heard my praises, and how the country looks up." "The 
 call of our country," he says again, " makes it indispensable 
 for both our honours — the country looks up to the services 
 of the poorest individual, much more to me, and are you not a 
 sharer of my glory ? " 
 
 Of his daily life on board, and intercourse with others, we 
 have intimations, fragmentary yet sufficient. " Our days," he 
 himself says, " pass so much alike that, having described one, 
 you have them all. We now [October] breakfast by candle 
 light ; and all retire, at eight o'clock, to bed." " We cruise, 
 cruise, and one day so like another that they are hardly 
 distinguishable, but hopes, blessed hopes, keeps us up, that 
 some happy day the French may come out, then I shall 
 consider my duty to my country fulfilled." Of one of these 
 monotonous days we have received a description from an 
 
I 
 
 DAILY LIFE ON BOARD 595 
 
 officer/ a member of the admiral's mess, who had then too 
 lately entered upon them to feel the full weight of their 
 deadly sameness. 
 
 "At 6 o'clock my servant brings a light and informs me 
 of the hour, wind, weather, and course of the ship, when I 
 immediately dress and generally repair to the deck, the dawn 
 of day at this season and latitude being apparent at about 
 half or three-quarters of an hour past six. Breakfast is an- 
 nounced in the Admiral's cabin, where Lord Nelson, Eear 
 Admiral Murray, (the Captain of the Fleet,) Captain Hardy, 
 commander of the Victory, the chaplain, secretary, one or 
 two officers of the ship, and your humble servant assemble 
 and breakfast on tea, hot rolls, toast, cold tongue, &c., which 
 when finished we repair upon deck to enjoy the majestic 
 sight of the rising sun (scarcely ever obscured by clouds in 
 this fine climate) surmounting the smooth and placid waves 
 of the Mediterranean, which supports the lofty and tremen- 
 dous bulwarks of Britain, following in regular train their 
 admiral in the Victory. Between the hours of 7 and 2 there 
 is plenty of time for business, study, writing, and exercise, 
 which different occupations I endeavour to vary in such a 
 manner as to afford me sufficient employment. At 2 o'clock 
 a band of music plays till within a quarter of 3, when the 
 drum beats the tune called, ' The Eoast Beef of Old England ' 
 to announce the Admiral's dinner, which is served up exactly 
 at 3 o'clock, and which generally consists of three courses and 
 a dessert of the choicest fruit [a fact which bespeaks the 
 frequency of communications with the land], together with 
 three or four of the best wines, champagne and claret not 
 excepted. If a person does not feel himself perfectly at his 
 ease it must be his own fault, such is the urbanity and hospi- 
 tality which reign here, notwithstanding the numerous titles, 
 the four orders of Knighthood, worn by Lord Nelson,^ and 
 the well earned laurels which he has acquired. Coffee and 
 liqueurs close the dinner about half-past 4 or 5 o'clock, after 
 which the company generally walk the deck, where the band 
 
 1 The letter of this gentleman, Dr. Gillespie, from which a quotation has 
 already been made, was published in the London " Times " of October 6, 1886. 
 
 2 This incidental remark may be noted, as bearing upon the statement, 
 now rejected, that his orders were put on especially for battle. 
 
596 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 of music plays for nearly an hour.^ A 6 o'clock tea is an- 
 nounced, when the company again assemble in the Admiral's 
 cabin, where tea is served up before 7 o'clock, and, as we are 
 inclined, the party continue to converse with his lordship, 
 who at this time generally unbends himself, though he is at 
 all times as free from stiffness and pomp as a regard to proper 
 dignity will admit, and is very communicative. At 8 o'clock a 
 rummer of punch with cake or biscuit is served up, soon after 
 which we wish the Admiral a good night (who is generally in 
 bed before 9 o'clock). Such is the journal of a day at sea in fine 
 or at least moderate weather, in which this floatiug castle goes 
 through the water with the greatest imaginable steadiness." 
 
 Another medical officer, who served on board the " Victory " 
 soon after the writer of the lines just quoted, has transmitted 
 some other interesting particulars of Nelson's personal habits 
 and health, which relate to the general period now under 
 narration. 
 
 "An opinion has been very generally entertained, that 
 Lord Nelson's state of health, and supposed infirmities aris- 
 ing from his former wounds and hard services, precluded the 
 probability of his long surviving the battle of Trafalgar, had 
 he fortunately escaped the Enemy's shot: but the writer of 
 this can assert that his Lordship's health was uniformly good, 
 with the exception of some slight attacks of indisposition 
 arising from accidental causes; and which never continued 
 above two or three days, nor confined him in any degree with 
 respect to either exercise or regimen: and during the last 
 twelve months of his life, he complained only three times in 
 this way. It is true, that his Lordship, about the meridian 
 of life, had been subject to frequent fits of the gout ; which 
 disease, however, as well as his constitutional tendency to it, 
 he totally overcame by abstaining for the space of nearly two 
 years from animal food, and wine, and all other fermented 
 drink ; confining his diet to vegetables, and commonly milk 
 and water. And it is also a fact, that early in life, when he 
 first went to sea, he left off the use of salt, which he then 
 believed to be the sole cause of scurvy, and never took it 
 afterwards with his food. 
 
 1 There is here no mention of smoking ; nor has any allusion to it, or to 
 tobacco, caught the author's eye in Nelson's letters. 
 
HIS PERSONAL HEALTH 597 
 
 "His Lordship used a great deal of exercise, generally 
 walking on deck six or seven hours in the day. He always 
 rose early, for the most part shortly after daybreak. He 
 breakfasted in summer about six, and at seven in winter : and 
 if not occupied in reading or writing despatches, or examining 
 into the details of the Fleet, he walked on the quarter-deck 
 the greater part of the forenoon ; going down to his cabin 
 occasionally to commit to paper such incidents or reflections 
 as occurred to him during that time, and as might be here- 
 after useful to the service of his country. He dined generally 
 about half-past two o'clock. At his table there were seldom 
 less than eight or nine persons, consisting of the different 
 Officers of the Ship ; and when the weather and the service 
 permitted, he very often had several of the Admirals and 
 Captains in the Fleet to dine with him ; who were mostly 
 invited by signal, the rotation of seniority being commonly 
 observed by his Lordship in these invitations. At dinner he 
 was alike affable and attentive to every one : he ate very 
 sparingly himself ; the liver and wing of a fowl, and a small 
 plate of macaroni, in general composing his meal, during 
 which he occasionally took a glass of champagne. He never 
 exceeded four glasses of wine after dinner, and seldom drank 
 three ; and even those were diluted with either Bristol or 
 common water. 
 
 "Few men subject to the vicissitudes of a Naval life, 
 equalled his Lordship in an habitual systematic mode of 
 living. He possessed such a wonderful activity of mind, as 
 even prevented him from taking ordinary repose, seldom en- 
 joying two hours of uninterrupted sleep; and on several oc- 
 casions he did not quit the deck during the whole night. At 
 these times he took no pains to protect himself from the 
 effects of wet, or the night air; wearing only a thin great 
 coat : and he has frequently, after having his clothes wet 
 through with rain, refused to have them changed, saying that 
 the leather waistcoat Avhich he wore over his flannel one 
 would secure him from complaint. He seldom wore boots, 
 and was consequently very liable to have his feet wet. When 
 this occurred he has often been known to go down to his 
 cabin, tlirow off his shoes, and walk on the carpet in his stock- 
 ings for the purpose of drying the feet of them. He chose 
 
698 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 rather to adopt this uncomfortable expedient, than to give 
 his servants the trouble of assisting him to put on fresh stock- 
 ings ; which, from his having only one hand, he could not 
 himself conveniently effect. 
 
 " From these circumstances it may be inferred, that though 
 Lord Nelson's constitution was not of that kind which is gen- 
 erally denominated strong, yet it was not very susceptible of 
 complaint from the common occasional causes of disease neces- 
 . sarily attending a Naval life. The only bodily pain which his 
 Lordship felt in consequence of his many wounds, was a slight 
 rheumatic affection of the stump of his amputated arm on any 
 sudden variation in the state of the weather ; which is gener- 
 ally experienced by those who have the misfortune to lose a 
 limb after the middle age. His Lordship usually predicted 
 an alteration in the weather with as much certainty from feel- 
 ing transient pains in his stump, as he could by his marine 
 barometer; from the indications of which latter he kept a 
 diary of the atmospheric changes, which was written with his 
 own hand. 
 
 "His Lordship had lost his right eye by a contusion which 
 he received at the siege of Calvi, in the island of Corsica. 
 The vision of the other was likewise considerably impaired: 
 he always therefore wore a green shade over his forehead, to 
 defend this eye from the effect of strong light ; but as he was 
 in the habit of looking much through a glass while on deck, 
 there is little doubt that had he lived a few years longer, and 
 continued at sea, he would have lost his sight totally." ^ 
 
 The business hours of the day from seven to two were spent 
 by Nelson largely with his secretaries. We know from Colonel 
 Stewart that in the Baltic, where his command was more 
 numerous than in the Mediterranean, his habit was to get 
 through the ordinary business of the squadron before eight 
 o'clock ; for the rest, the greater part of the detail work would 
 fall upon the Captain of the Fleet, then Rear-Admiral George 
 Murray, who wo\ild require only general instructions and little 
 interference for carrying on the laborious internal administra- 
 tion of the fleet. The Admiral's energies were sufficiently 
 taxed in considering and meeting, so far as his resources 
 
 ^ Dr. Beatty's Narrative of the Death of Lord Nelson. Nicolas, vol. vii. 
 p. 259. 
 
ADMINISTRATIVE CARES 599 
 
 would permit, the numerous and complicated demands for 
 external services in the different quarters of his wide com- 
 mand — the ingenious effort to induce two and two to make 
 five, in which so much of the puzzle of life consists. His 
 position necessarily involved extensive diplomatic relations. 
 Each British IMinister around the shores of the Mediterranean 
 had his own particular care ; the British admiral was in con- 
 fidential communication with all, and in every movement had 
 to consider the consequences, both of what he did and of what 
 lie left undone. It was a day when force ruled, and all the 
 nations of Europe, whether they wished or not, had to put 
 their chief trust in the sword, and in those who bore it. Not 
 the least of Nelson's qualifications for his post was that he 
 possessed intimate knowledge and experience of jiolitical con- 
 ditions in the Mediterranean, knew the peoples and the rulers 
 well, and to great sagacity and sound judgment added a tem- 
 per at once firm and conciliatory. " He had in a great 
 degree," said a contemporary who knew him well,^ "the valu- 
 able but rare quality of conciliating the most opposite temjiers, 
 and forwarding the public service with unanimity amongst 
 men not of themselves disposed to accord ; " and although the 
 remark referred primarily to his conduct in the naval service, 
 it will readily be seen that this aptitude is nowhere more use- 
 ful than in the tangled maze of conflicting national interests. 
 '' My line of conduct," he wrote to Hobart, a year after taking 
 his command, "in obedience to the spirit of his Majesty's 
 instructions communicated through your Lordship, has been 
 simply this, — to conciliate all, to protect all from French 
 rapacity. I have been honoured with your letter of January 
 7th, and it has given me most sincere pleasure that my whole 
 conduct in my command here has been such as to meet his 
 Majesty's approbation." The new Ministry, upon assuming 
 office, requested him in the most flattering terms to continue 
 his direct correspondence on political subjects with them, as 
 with their predecessors. 
 
 Yet, while conciliatory, he could at times be curt and arbi- 
 trary enough. Eault was found with the blockade of Genoa on 
 the ground that it did not comply witli the requirements of 
 international law; the complaint resting, apparently, on the 
 ^ Sir William Hotliam. 
 
600 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 statement that the blockaders could not be seen from Genoa. 
 Nelson replied that the proof of evident danger to vessels 
 seeking to enter or leave, rested oii the fact that captures were 
 made ; and it is, on the face of it, absurd to say that there can 
 be no danger to a vessel seeking to enter a blockaded port, 
 because the blockading vessels are not visible from the latter. 
 Much more depends npon their number, disposition, and speed. 
 "From my knowledge of Genoa and its Gulf," said Nelson, 
 " I assert without fear of contradiction, that the nearer ships 
 cruise to Genoa, the more certain is the escape of vessels from 
 that port, or their entrance into it insured. I am blockading 
 Genoa, according to the orders of the Admiralty, and in the 
 way I think most proper. Whether modern law or ancient 
 law makes my mode right, I cannot judge ; and surely of the 
 mode of disposing of a fleet, I must, if I am fit for my post, 
 be a better judge than any landsman, however learned he may 
 appear. It would be the act of a fool to tell Europe where I 
 intend to place the ships, for the purpose of effectually obey- 
 ing my orders ; not a captain can know it, and their positions 
 will vary, according to the information I may receive. ... I 
 endeavour, as well as I am able, to obey my orders, without 
 entering into the nice distinctions of lawyers. I will not 
 further take up your time on a subject which, without being a 
 lawyer, merely as a man, could have admitted of no dispute." 
 Along with much truth, there was in this a certain amount of 
 special pleading, as appeared when he took the further jDOsi- 
 tion that, to intercept ships from Genoa, bound to the Atlantic, 
 there was no better place than the Gut of Gibraltar. When a 
 definition of international law is stretched as far as that, it 
 will have little elastic force left. 
 
 A petty, yet harassing, diplomatic difficulty, curiously illus- 
 trative of maritime conditions at that day, ran unsettled 
 through almost the whole of his command. Malta, under the 
 Knights, had been always at war with the Barbary Powers ; 
 and there was trouble in impressing upon the rulers of the 
 latter that, when it passed into British hands, its people and 
 ships were under British protection. Several Maltese vessels 
 had been taken by Algerine cruisers, and their crews enslaved. 
 When Nelson came out in 1803, he found pending these cases, 
 and also the question of compelling, or inducing, the Dey to 
 
 1 
 
DIFFICULTIES WITH ALGIERS 601 
 
 receive back the British consul, whom he had expelled with 
 insult. In the absence of a British representative, the nego- 
 tiations were intrusted wholly to the admiral. 
 
 Nelson's feelings were strongly excited. He was tenacious 
 of everything he conceived to touch his country's honor, and 
 long service in the Mediterranean had made him familiar 
 with the outrages on its defenceless coasts practised by these 
 barbarians, under the pretence of war with the weaker states. 
 Even in the remote and impoverished north of Sardinia, 
 the shepherds near the beaches watched their flocks with 
 arms beside them, day and night, to repel the attacks of 
 marauders from the sea. Not only were trading-vessels 
 seized, but descents were made upon the shore, and the in- 
 habitants swept off into slavery. Speaking of one such case 
 in 1799, he had said : "My blood boils that I cannot chastise 
 these pirates. They could not show themselves in the 
 Mediterranean did not our Country permit. Never let us 
 talk of the cruelty of the African slave trade, Avhile we per- 
 mit such a horrid war." But he knew, both then and after- 
 wards, that Great Britain, with the great contest on her 
 hands, could not spare the ships which might be crippled in 
 knocking the barbarians' strongholds about their ears, and that 
 no British admiral would be sustained in a course that pro- 
 voked these pirates to cast aside the fears that restrained 
 them, and to declare war on British commerce, which, as it 
 was, he had difficulty to protect. He estimated ten ships-of- 
 the-line as the force necessary, in case the batteries at Algiers 
 were to be attacked. Exmouth, twelve years later, with fuller 
 information, thought and found five to be sufficient. 
 
 Nelson's conduct and self-control was sorely tested by the 
 necessity of temporizing with this petty foe, who reckoned 
 securely on the embarrassments of Great Britain. He acted 
 with great judgment, however, holding a high tone, and im- 
 plying much in the way of menace, without at any time 
 involving himself in a definite threat, from which he could 
 not recede without humiliation ; careful and precise in his 
 demands, but never receding from them, or allowing them to 
 be evaded, when once made ; sensible of the difficulties in his 
 way, as well those raised by his own Government as those 
 dependent upon his opponent, but equally aware that he held 
 
602 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 in his hands, if authorized to use it, the power to suppress 
 the career of depredation, upon which the Dey relied to sup- 
 port his revenue, and to content his officers. Personally, he 
 favored a short and summary proceeding, accordant to his 
 own decided character. The Dey proving immovable when 
 jfirst summoned, he proposed to the British Government 
 " that on the 28th of Apiil next, when, if he means to send 
 his cruisers to sea, they will be out, that, on that day, every 
 ship under my command should have strict orders (to open 
 on that day) to take, sink, burn, and destroy every Algerine, 
 and that on that day the port of Algiers should be declared 
 in a state of blockade. Thus the Dey could get neither com- 
 merce, presents, or plunder; and, although the other Powers 
 may rejoice at the Avar with us, yet I am firmly persuaded 
 that it will be most advantageous to us for the next hundred 
 years." At the same time, with his usual circumspection, he 
 issued a general direction to all commanders of convoys to 
 carry their charges well clear of the Algerine coast, until 
 matters were settled. In the end, the British Ministry 
 yielded much more than Nelson approved, but, however 
 sorely against the grain, he carried out all his instructions 
 with scrupulous subordination. It was only three days before 
 the active campaign began with the sortie of the French 
 fleet, that he was rejoined by the ship to whose captain were 
 intrusted the final arrangements with Algiers. 
 
 For his diplomatic and naval correspondence, Nelson had 
 two principal secretaries, public and private, both, awkwardly 
 enough, named Scott ; but the latter, being a clergyman and 
 chaplain of the ship, was colloquially brevetted Doctor, a 
 distinction which, for convenience, will be observed when it is 
 necessary to mention him. He had become known to Nelson 
 while serving in the same capacity with Sir Hyde Parker, 
 and had been found very useful in the negotiations at Copen- 
 hagen. An accomplished linguist and an omnivorous reader, 
 Dr. Scott was doubly useful. Upon him devolved the trans- 
 lating of all despatches and letters, not only from, but to, 
 foreign courts and officials ; for Nelson made a point of send- 
 ing with all such papers a copy in the language of the person 
 addressed, and an apology for failing to do so sometimes 
 appears, on account of his secretary's absence. The latter 
 
HIS STUDY OF CURRENT EVENTS G03 
 
 was also a man of wide information, acqxiired, not as his 
 superior's chiefly was, by mingling among men and dealing 
 with affairs, but from books ; and the admiral, while rightly 
 valuing the teachings of experience above all, was duly sensi- 
 ble that one's own experience is susceptible of further exten- 
 sion through that of others, imparted either by word or pen. 
 Nelson entertained a persuasion, so Scott has told us, that no 
 man ever put his hand to paper without having some informa- 
 tion or theory to deliver, which he fancied was not generally 
 known, and that this was worth looking after through all the 
 encumbering rubbish. For the same reason, besides being 
 naturally sociable, he liked to draw others into conversation, 
 and to start subjects for discussion, from which, when fairly 
 under way, he would withdraw himself into silence and allow 
 the company to do the talking, both in order to gather ideas 
 that might be useful to himself, and also to observe character 
 transpiring in conversation. Bourrienne has told us that 
 Bonaparte took pleasure in provoking similar debates. Scott 
 himself, a man essentially unpractical, afforded Nelson amuse- 
 ment as well as interest, and was the object of a good deal 
 of innocent chafflng. He would, in those after-dinner gather- 
 ings which Gillespie mentions, lead the doctor into arguments 
 on literature, politics, Spanish and even naval affairs, and 
 would occasionally provoke from him a lecture on navigation 
 itself, to the great entertainment of Murray, Hardy, and the 
 other officers present.^ "Ah, my dear Doctor!" he would 
 say chaffingly, " give me knowledge practically acquired — 
 experience ! experience ! experience ! and practical men ! " 
 
 Nelson, however, was too big and too broad a man not to 
 know that, while by doing tlie same thing, or bearing the 
 same thing, many times, — by experience, that is, — one ac- 
 quires a facility not otherwise communicable, in a novel situa- 
 tion a man is abler to act, the more he has availed himself 
 of the knowledge and the suggestions of others. Absorbed 
 with the duties of his station, it was of the first importance 
 that he should possess every information, and ponder every 
 idea, small and great, bearing upon its conditions, as well as 
 upon the general political state of Europe in that period of 
 
 1 Many of these details are taken with little alteration from the " Life of 
 Rev. A. J. Scott." 
 
604 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 ominous waiting, wherein great events were evidently coming 
 to birth. Day after day, Dr. Scott's biographer tells us, was 
 passed by the two together, sitting in two black leathern arm- 
 chairs with roomy pockets, stuffed with papers, written and 
 printed, journals and pamphlets, gathered from every source 
 — from prizes, from passing neutral vessels, from cruisers 
 returning from neutral or friendly ports, or picked up by the 
 doctor himself in the not infrequent trips on which he was 
 sent, ostensibly for pleasure, but witli a keen eye also to the 
 collection of intelligence. Marked externally by the abstrac- 
 tion of a book-worm, entirely unpractical and heedless in the 
 common affairs of life, and subject to an occasional flightiness 
 of action, the result in part of an injury to his head while in 
 the service, Scott gave those who saw him going about an 
 impression of guilelessness, which covered him from the sus- 
 picion of having a mission. He had, says his biographer, 
 *' in union with a capacity for very difficult services, a sim- 
 plicity that often put him at disadvantage in worldly matters, 
 and it became a common joke with the Admiral, that ' the 
 doctor would always want somebody to take care of him.' " 
 Nelson had everything read to him ; first of all, news- 
 papers, which were sent regularly to the fleet by British agents 
 in various quarters. Upon them chiefly, and not upon Eng- 
 land, he depended for knowledge of what was happening ; in 
 Great Britain itself, as well as on the Continent. From ten to 
 twelve weeks was no uncommon length of time for him to be 
 without word from home. " I never hear from England," he 
 wrote to Elliot in the summer of 1804, " but as we manage to 
 get the Paris papers regularly through Spain. Erom ten days 
 to a fortnight we get them from their date at Paris : therefore 
 we know the very great events which are passing in Europe — 
 at least as much as the French people ; " a shrewd limitation. 
 These, therefore, together with Spanish, Italian, and other 
 sheets, it was Scott's daily task to read aloud to his chief, who 
 found therein not only information but amusement. He in- 
 sisted also upon hearing the numerous ephemeral pamphlets, 
 of which the age was prolific, and which found their way to 
 him. His quickness in detecting the drift of an author Avas 
 marvellous. Two or three pages of a pamphlet were generally 
 sufficient to put him in complete possession of the writers 
 
I 
 
 INDICATIONS OF TEMPERAMENT 605 
 
 object, while nothing was too trivial for his attention where 
 there existed a possibility of its contributing a clue to the prob- 
 lems of his command. Not the least onerous of the doctor's 
 duties was the deciphering of private letters found in prizes, 
 a channel by which important public interests are often be- 
 trayed. Nelson's quickness to see the bearing and value of 
 an apparently trifling mention, dropped by the way by a care- 
 less pen, rendered such an exercise of his ingenuity at once a 
 pleasure and a profit. The public secretary, Mr. Scott, was 
 equally struck with the alertness and sagacity of his employ- 
 er's mind. " I have heard much of Lord Nelson's abilities as 
 an officer and statesman, but the account of the latter is in- 
 finitely short. In ray travels through the service I have met 
 with no character in any degree equal to his Lordship ; his 
 penetration is quick, judgment clear, wisdom great, and his 
 decisions correct and decided : nor does he in company appear 
 to bear any weight on his mind." It was with difficulty, after 
 a prolonged session, that tlie doctor could at times beg off, and 
 leave, stuffed in the arm-chair pockets, for another day's work, 
 a dozen or two of such letters, sealed to Nelson by his im- 
 perfect eyesight and inadequate mastery of other tongues. 
 The arm-chairs, lashed together, formed at times a couch upon 
 which the admiral " slept those brief slumbers for which he 
 was remarkable ; " in those moments, doubtless, when anxiety 
 about the enemy's movements did not permit him to go reg- 
 ularly to bed. 
 
 In common with all those closely associated with Nelson, 
 Dr. Scott was particularly struck with the kindliness and cor- 
 diality of his bearing and actions ; which is the more to be 
 noted, because no one, probably, had more occasion to see the 
 movements of irritability, of impatience, which lay very near 
 the surface, than did his secretaries, through whom his most 
 vexatious work must be done. That he was vehement to ex- 
 press annoyance has appeared frequently in these pages. 
 The first Lord Radstock, who was senior to him in the service, 
 and knew him well, writing to his son, then a midshipman in 
 the "Victory," is constant and extreme in his admiration of 
 Nelson ; but he gives the caution to be careful of impressions 
 made upon a chief upon whom advancement depends. Quick 
 in all his ways, a moment's heedlessness, possibly misunder- 
 
606 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 stood or misrepresented, may produce lasting injury. "Lord 
 Nelson is of so hasty a temper, that in spite of all his natural 
 goodness, I should fear that he would too readily give ear to 
 those in whom he had placed his confidence. He is a man of 
 strong passions, and his prejudices are proportionate." "On 
 many occasions," says another writer, " Lord Nelson evinced 
 an impatience that has been considered as irreconcileable with 
 magnanimity; but the secret workings of his soul have not 
 been received into tlie account or analysis of character, for we 
 find the same individual, while employed in watching the 
 French fleet off Toulon, display the most unexampled patience 
 and forbearance, and never betray the smallest symptom of in- 
 quietude or disappointment." ^ Murray, the Captain of the 
 Fleet, when first offered his appointment, had hesitated to 
 accept. Upon Nelson urging him, he gave as his reason that 
 the nature of the duties often led to disagreements between 
 the admiral and his chief of staff, and that he was unwilling to 
 risk any diminution of the regard existing between him and 
 his Lordshij) ; a remark true enough in the general, but 
 clearly of somewhat special application. Nelson assured him 
 that, should anything go contrary to his wishes, he would 
 waive his rank and explain or expostulate with him as his 
 friend, and when, after two years' service, Murray had to 
 leave the ship, he refused to replace him, — he would have 
 Murray or none. In truth, such readiness to flare up must 
 needs be the defect of that quality of promptness, that instant 
 succession of deed to thought, which was a distinguishing 
 feature of Nelson's genius and actions. Captain Hilly ar more 
 than once alludes to this trait as characteristic of the fleet, to 
 which its chief had transmitted his own spirit. " I have had 
 to-day to lament," he says, speaking of some trifling disap- 
 pointment, " the extreme promptitude with which we all move 
 when near his lordship." 
 
 Bvit, while traces of this failing may be detected here and 
 there by the watchful reader, as Nelson himself gleaned use- 
 ful indications amid the rubbishy mass of captured corre- 
 spondence, there survives, among the remains left by those in 
 daily contact with him, only the record of a frank, open bear- 
 
 ^ Memoir of Sir Thomas Hard}', in Clarke and M 'Arthur's Life of Nelson, 
 vol. iii. p. 234. 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS OF TEMPERAMENT 607 
 
 ing, and unfailing active kindness. "Setting aside his hero- 
 ism," wrote Dr. Scott after Trafalgar, '' when I think what 
 an affectionate, fascinating little fellow he was, how dignified 
 and pure his mind, how kind and condescending his manners, 
 I become stupid with grief for what I have lost." " He is so 
 cheerful and pleasant," wrote the public secretary, Mr. Scott, 
 " that it is a happiness to be about his hand." Dr. Gillespie 
 notes " his noble frankness of manners, freedom from vain 
 formality and pomp (so necessary to the decoration of empty 
 little great men), which can only be equalled by the unex- 
 ampled glory of his naval career, and the watchful and 
 persevering diligence with which he commands this fleet." 
 "JSTelson was the man to love," said Captain Pulteney Malcolm, 
 who knew intimately both liim and Wellington. " I received 
 Captain Leake," Nelson himself says, speaking of an army 
 officer on a special mission to the Mediterranean, " with that 
 openness wliich was necessary to make myself as well ac- 
 quainted with him in three days, as others might do in as many 
 years. I have given him all the knowledge of the men, their 
 views, &c. &c., as far as I have been able to form a judg- 
 ment." The remark is valuable, for it shows that frankness 
 and cordiality were recognized by him as the wisest and most 
 politic method of dealing with men. "Our friend. Sir Alex- 
 ander," he says testily, " is a very great diplomatic character, 
 and even an admiral must not know what he is negotiating 
 a,bout. You shall judge, viz., ' The Tunisian envoy is still 
 here, negotiating. He is a moderate man ; and, apparently, 
 the best disposed of any I ever did business with.' Could 
 even the oldest diplomatic character be drier ? I hate such 
 parade and nonsense." 
 
 Captain Hillyar, Avho commanded one of the frigates that 
 were ever coming and going, writes in his journal: ''If ex- 
 treme kindness and attention could render me happy, I have 
 this day experienced both from our revered and good com- 
 mander-in-chief. How can I repay his kindness ? By obey- 
 ing his injunctions 'not to be in a hurry to get married,'^ or 
 by a continued perseverance in discharging those duties with 
 alacrity and honour, which he is more immediately concerned 
 in ? " " Lord Nelson talked a great deal against matrimony 
 ^ Hillyar was then engaged to a lady in Malta. 
 
608 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 yesterday, and I feel will not trust me at Malta, while we are 
 capable of remaining at sea. It was all, however, in a good 
 natui'ed way. He is going to charge me with two of his boys 
 [midshipmen]. I am pleased that an opportunity is offered 
 for showing my gratitude in a small degree for his almost 
 fatherly kindness. I wish you knew him ; if he has failings, 
 reflections on his virtues cause them to be forgotten, and the 
 mind dwells with pleasure on a character where bravery, gen- 
 erosity, and good nature, are joined to a heart that can feel for 
 the woes of others, and delights in endeavouring to alleviate 
 them." Hillyar was experiencing what Eadstock had re- 
 marked : '' Gain his esteem, and there is nothing he will not 
 dash through to put you forward." " Gain his esteem, and 
 you will have nothing to fear, for I know not a more honour- 
 able man existing, or one who would more readily do you 
 justice in all respects." "I am well aware," wrote another 
 young captain to i^elson himself, " of the good construction 
 which your Lordship has ever been in the habit of putting on 
 circumstances, although wearing the most unfavourable ap- 
 pearances. . . . Your Lordship's good opinion constitutes the 
 summit of my ambition, and the most effective spur to my 
 endeavours." 
 
 Nelson loved to bestow promotion, when deserved, on the 
 spot, to give a man his spurs, if it might be, on the field of 
 battle ; but vacancies would not always offer at the happy 
 moment. A brother of Hillyar's was a midshipman in one 
 of two boats, sent to visit a suspicious vessel, A sudden and 
 staggering fire killed the lieutenant in command, besides dis- 
 abling a number of the boats' crews. The men hesitated; 
 but the lad, left in charge, cheered them on and carried the 
 vessel by boarding. Although he was but a couple of months 
 over fifteen, Nelson gave him at once his commission into the 
 vacancy made by the lieutenant. One very dark night, the 
 " Victory " being under way, a midshipman, at the imminent 
 risk of his life, leaped into the sea to save a seaman who had 
 fallen overboard, and otherwise would have been drowned. 
 Nelson gave him, too, his commission the following morning ; 
 but, seeing the jubilation among the young man's messmates, 
 and thinking the act might be a dangerous precedent, he 
 leaned over the poop and said, smiling good-naturedly, " Stop, 
 
PROTECTION OF BRITISH TRADE 609 
 
 young gentlemen! Mr. Flin has done a gallant thing to-day, 
 and he has done many gallant things before, for which he has 
 now got his reward. But mind, I '11 have no more making 
 lieutenants for men falling overboard." 
 
 The power thus to reward at discretion, and speedily, 
 though liable to abuse, was, he claimed, essential to the due 
 influence of a commander-in-chief ; his subordinates must feel 
 that it was in his power to make their future, to distinguish 
 them, and that they were in so far dependent upon him. 
 Nevertheless, with him as with others, personal interest had 
 a weight which qualified his argument. The premature ^ and 
 disastrous promotion of his stepson, at his request, by St. 
 Vincent, was a practical abuse which in most minds would 
 outweigh theoretical advantages. AYriting to Sir Peter Parker 
 about this time, he said, ''You may be assured I will lose no 
 time in making your grandson a post-captain. It is the only 
 opportunity ever offered me, of showing that my feelings of 
 gratitude to you are as warm and alive as when you first took 
 me by the hand : I owe all my honours to you, and I am 
 proud to acknowledge it to all the world." Such enduring 
 gratitude is charming to see, and tends to show that Nelson 
 recognized some other reason for Parker's favor to himself 
 tlian deference to Suckling's position ; but it is scarcely a 
 good working principle for the distribution of official patron- 
 age, although the younger Parker was a good and gallant 
 officer. 
 
 Among the military duties that weighed upon Nelson, not 
 the least was the protection of British trade. The narrow 
 waters of the Mediterranean favored the operations of priva- 
 teers, which did not have to go far from their ports, and found 
 shelter everywhere ; for the littoral states, in their weakness 
 and insecurity, could but feebly enforce neutrality either in 
 their continental or insular territories. In fact, both parties 
 to the war. Great Britain and France, derived from the in- 
 fringement of neutrality advantages which checked their 
 remonstrances, and gave the feebler nations an apt retort, 
 when taken to task in their painful efforts to preserve an atti- 
 tude that was rather double-faced than neutral. If France, on 
 
 1 As Lad}' Nelson's first marriage was in 1779, Josiah Nisbet could not 
 liave been eighteen when made a commander, in 1797. 
 
 39 
 
610 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 tiie one hand, was deriving a considerable revenue from Span- 
 ish subsidies, and subsisting an army corps upon Neapolitan 
 territory, Great Britain, on the other, could scarcely have 
 maintained her fleet in the Gulf of Lyons, if unable to get 
 fresh provisions and water from neutral ports; for, save 
 Gibraltar and Malta, she had none that was her own or allied. 
 Under these conditions, small privateers, often mere row- 
 boats, ^;)ut under the colors of France or the Italian Eepublic, 
 swarmed in every port and inlet ; in the Adriatic, — a deep, 
 secluded pocket, particularly favorable to marauding, — in the 
 Ionian Islands, along the Barbary coast, upon the shores of 
 Spain, and especially in Sicily, whose central position and 
 extensive seaboard commanded every trade-route east of the 
 Balearics. 
 
 Nelson's correspondence is full of remonstrances addressed 
 to the various neutral states — including even Austria, whose 
 shore-line on the Adriatic was extensive — for their toleration 
 of these abuses, which rested ultimately upon the fear of 
 Bonaparte. He has, also, constant explanations to make to his 
 own Government, or to British ministers at the different 
 Courts, of the acts of his cruisers in destroying the depreda- 
 tors within neutral limits, when found red-handed. He makes 
 no apologies, but stands firmly by his officers, who, when right, 
 could always count upon his support in trouble. He never 
 left a man in the lurch, or damned him with faint approval. 
 " The protection afforded the enemy's privateers and rowboats 
 in the different neutral ports of these seas, so contrary to every 
 known law of neutrality, is extremely destructive of our com- 
 merce. , . . Although their conduct is infamous, yet their doing 
 wrong is no rule why we should. There is a general principle 
 which I have laid down for the regulation of the officers' con- 
 duct under my command — which is never to break the neu- 
 trality of any port or place ; but never to consider as neutral 
 any place from whence an attack is allowed to be made. It is 
 certainly justifiable to attack any vessel in a place from 
 whence she makes an attack." " I very fully approve every 
 
 part of Captain 's conduct on the above occasion," he 
 
 writes to the Admiralty in such a case. 
 
 The supplying of convoys, therefore, was ceaseless, for the 
 depredations of the marauders were unending. " I am pulled 
 
EMPLOYMENT OF CRUISERS Cll 
 
 to pieces by tlie demands of merchants for convoys," Nelson 
 said ; and he recognized that it must be so, for he entirely dis- 
 approved of even a fast-sailing vessel attempting to make a 
 passage unprotected. " I wrote to the Admiralty for more 
 cruisers until I was tired," he told Ball, "and they left off 
 answering those parts of my letters. The late Admiralty 
 thought I kept too many to the eastward of Sicily ; the Smyrna 
 folks complain of me, so do the Adriatic, so they do between 
 Cape de Gatte and Gibraltar. If I had the vessels, I do assure 
 you not one of them should go prize-hunting : that I never 
 have done, I am a poorer man than the day I was ordered to 
 the Mediterranean command, by upwards of £1,000; but 
 money I despise except as it is useful, and I expect my prize 
 money is embarked in the Toulon fleet." *' I am distressed for 
 frigates," was his continual cry. "From Cape St. Vincent to 
 the head of the Adriatic I have only eight ; which, v/ith the 
 service of watching Toulon, and the necessary frigates with 
 the fleet, are absolutely not one half enough." For military 
 duties, "frigates are the eyes of a fleet. I want ten more 
 than I have in order to watch that the French should not 
 escape me, and ten sloops besides, to do all duties." For nine 
 stations which ought to be filled, "I have but two frigates; 
 therefore, my dear Ball, have a little mercy, and do not think 
 I have neglected the protection of the trade of Malta." This 
 was written soon after joining the station, and he represents 
 the number as diminishing as time passed. " It is shameful ! " 
 he cries in a moment of intense anxiety. 
 
 In this fewness of cruisers he was forced to keep his vessels 
 constantly on the go, — to the Levant, to the Adriatic, to 
 Sicily, to Italy, — scouring the coasts for privateers, gathering 
 merchant ships by driblets, picking up information, and at the 
 end of the round returning to ]\Ialta with their fractions of 
 the large convoy. When this was assembled, a frigate or a 
 ship-of-the-line, with one or two smaller ships of war, sailed 
 Avith it for Gibraltar at a date fixed, approximately, months 
 before. Meanwhile, at the latter place a similar process of col- 
 lection had been going on from the ports of the western Medi- 
 terranean, and, after the Malta convoy arrived, the whole 
 started together in charge of a division, composed usually of 
 vessels of war that had to return to England for repairs. 
 
612 THE LIFE OE KELSON 
 
 To arrange and maintain this complicated process, and to 
 dovetail it with the other necessary cruising duties, having in 
 consideration Avhich ships should first go home, required care- 
 ful study and long foresight — infinite management, in fact. 
 " The going on in the routine of a station," he tells Ball, who 
 seems to have trod on his toes, " if interrupted, is like stopping 
 a watch — the whole machine gets wrong. If the Maidstone 
 takes the convoy, aud, when Agincourt arrives, there is none 
 for her or Thisbe, it puzzles me to know what orders to give 
 them. If they chace the convoy to Gibraltar, the Maidstone 
 may have gone on with it to England, and in that case, two 
 ships, unless I begin to give a new arrangement, will either go 
 home without convoy, or they must return [to Malta] in con- 
 tradiction to the Admiralty's orders to send them home ; I am 
 sure you see it in its true point of view." "I dare not send a 
 frigate home without a convoy," he says later. "Not an officer 
 in the service bows with more respect to the orders of the 
 Admiralty than myself," he writes St. Vincent ; "but I am sure 
 you will agree with me, that if I form plans for tlie sending 
 home our convoys, and the clearing the different parts of the 
 station from privateers, and the other services, requisite, and 
 that the Admiralty in some respects makes their arrangements, 
 we must clash." Then he points out how the Admiralty 
 diverting a ship, unknown to him, has tumbled over a whole 
 train of services, like a child's row of blocks. 
 
 An extremely critical point in the homeward voyage Avas 
 the first hundred miles west of Gibraltar ; and it was a greater 
 thorn in Nelson's side, because of a French seventy-four, the 
 " Aigle," which had succeeded in entering Cadiz just after he 
 got off Toulon. For the ordinary policing of that locality he 
 assigned a division of three frigates, under a Captain Gore, 
 who possessed his confidence. "The enemy's privateers and 
 cruisers," he tells him, "' are particularly destructive to our 
 trade passing the skirts of the station." Privateering was 
 thus reduced ; but when a convoy sailed, he tried always to 
 have it accompanied through that stage by a ship of size suffi- 
 cient to grapple with the "Aigle." For a while, indeed, he 
 placed there an eighty-gun ship, but the gradual deterioration 
 of his squadron and the increase of Latouche Treville's obliged 
 him to recall her, and at times his anxiety was great ; not the 
 
HIS STATION DIVIDED G13 
 
 less because Gore, like otlier frigate captains, entertained the 
 fancy that his three frigates might contend with a ship-of-the- 
 line, " Your intentions of attacking that ship with the small 
 squadron under your command are certainly very laudable ; 
 but I do not consider your force by any means equal to it." 
 The question of two or three small ships against one large in- 
 volves more considerations than number and weight of guns. 
 Unity of direction and thickness of sides — defensive strength, 
 that is — enter into the problem. As Hawke said, " Big ships 
 take a good deal of drubbing." Howe's opinion was the 
 same as Nelson's ; and Hardy, Nelson's captain, said, *' After 
 what I have seen at Trafalgar, I am satisfied it would be mere 
 folly, and ought never to succeed." ^ What Hardy saw at 
 Trafalgar, however, was not frigates against ships-of-the- 
 line, but vessels of the latter class opposed, smaller against 
 greater. 
 
 It seems singular, with such a weak link in the chain of com- 
 munication from the Mediterranean to England, that the 
 Admiralty, on the outbreak of the war with Spain, in the lat- 
 ter part of 1804, should have divided Nelson's command at 
 this very point, leaving as a somewhat debatable ground, for 
 mutual jealousy, that through which valuable interests must 
 pass, and where they must be transferred. The reason and 
 manner of this division, impolitic and inopportune as it was, 
 and bitterly as Nelson resented it, seem to have been mis- 
 understood. Convinced that he could not endure another win- 
 ter such as the last, he made a formal application, about the 
 middle of August, 1804, for permission to go home for a while. 
 " I consider the state of my health to be such as to make it 
 absolutely necessary that I should return to England to re- 
 establish it. Another winter such as the last, I feel myself 
 unable to stand against. A few months of quiet may enable 
 me to serve again next spring ; and I believe that no officer is 
 more anxious to serve than myself." In accordance with this 
 last intimation, which speaks his whole heart, he wrote pri- 
 vately to the First Loi'd that he would like to come back in the 
 spring, if his health were restored, as he believed it would be, 
 and he assured him that his second, Bickerton, whose rank 
 did not entitle him to the chief command under ordinary con- 
 1 Philliiuore's " The Last of Nelson's Captains," p. 146. 
 
614 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 ditions, was perfectly fitted to hold it during liis absence — in 
 short, to keep the place warm for his return. 
 
 Nelson knew that the Admiralty was besieged with admirals, 
 many senior to himself, seeking for employment, and that it 
 Avould be very difficult for it to resist the pressure for the va- 
 cancy in "my favourite command," to resume which he was 
 impelled by both his sense of duty and his love of glory. He 
 wrote therefore to Elliot, and to the King of the Two Sicilies, 
 in the same sense as he had to Melville, recalling his well- 
 tried devotion to the interests of that Court, which a successor 
 might not equally show, and suggesting that his cause would 
 be strengthened by an application for his return on the part 
 of the King. The latter consequently intimated to the British 
 Government that he hoped Lord Nelson would be sent back. 
 He was, in truth, so much agitated over the prospect of his 
 going, that he offered him a house in either Palermo or Naples, 
 if he wished to remain in the South to recruit ; an offer which 
 Elliot, equally uneasy, urged him to accept. 
 
 The Government did exactly what was asked. Nelson re- 
 ceived permission to go to England, when he felt it necessary, 
 leaving the command in the hands of Bickerton ; but at the 
 same time the Admiralty had to meet the rush of claimants 
 for the vacancy, all the more pressing because rumors were 
 afloat of a Spanish war, which would make the Mediterranean 
 not only the most important, but, in prize-money, the most 
 lucrative command. Among the applicants was Sir John 
 Orde, who had been nursing a technical grievance ever since 
 he had been passed over, in Nelson's favor, for the command 
 of the detachment with which the Battle of the Nile was 
 fought. Nelson's leave was issued on the 6th of October, and 
 on the 26th Orde was given a small squadron — five ships-of- 
 the-line — to blockade Cadiz. Being senior to Nelson, and of 
 course to Bickerton, he could only have this position by re- 
 ducing the latter's station, which had extended to Cape Finis- 
 terre. The line between the two commands was drawn at the 
 Straits' mouth, a rather vague phrase, but Gibraltar was left 
 with Nelson. Orde thus got the station for prize-money, and 
 Nelson that for honor, which from youth until now he most 
 valued. " The arrangement," wrote his friend. Lord Radstock, 
 " will be a death-stroke to his hopes of the galleons : but as 
 
HIS STATION DIVIDED 615 
 
 yoiir chief has ever showed himself to be as great a despiser 
 of riches as he is a lover of glory, I am fully convinced in my 
 own mind that he would sooner defeat the French fleet than 
 capture fifty galleons." 
 
 Nevertheless, Nelson was sorely aggrieved, and complained 
 bitterly to his correspondents. " I have learnt not to be sur- 
 prised at anything ; but the sending an officer to such a point, 
 to take, if it is a Spanish war, the whole harvest, after all my 
 trials (God knows unprofitable enough ! for I am a much 
 poorer man than when we started in the Amphion, ) seems a 
 little hard ; hwt patienzaj' ''He is sent off Cadiz to reap the 
 golden harvest, as Campbell was to reap my sugar harvest. 
 It 's very odd, two Admiralties to treat me so : surely I have 
 dreamt that I have ' done the State some service.' But never 
 mind ; I am superior to those who could treat me so." His 
 contempt for money, however acquired, except as a secondary 
 consideration, remained unchanged. " I believe I attend more 
 to the French fleet than making captures ; but what I have, I 
 can say as old Haddock said, ' it never cost a sailor a tear, 
 nor the nation a farthing.' This thought is far better than 
 prize-money ; — not that I despise money — quite the contrary, 
 I wish I had one hundred thousand pounds this moment." '' I 
 am keeping as many frigates as possible round me," he wrote 
 to his friend Ball, "for I know the value of them on the day 
 of battle : and compared with that day, what signifies any prizes 
 they might take ? " ^ Nor did such utterances stand alone. " I 
 hope war with Spain may be avoided," he wrote. " I want not 
 riches at such a dreadful price. Peace for our Country is all I 
 wish to fight for, — I mean, of course, an honourable one, with- 
 out which it cannot be a secure one." But his outlays were 
 very heavy. Besides the £1, 800 annually paid to Lady Nelson, 
 he gave Lady Hamilton £1,200 a year, exclusive of what was 
 spent on the house and grounds at Merton ; and it may be in- 
 ferred from Dr. Gillespie that the cost of the cabin mess, be- 
 yond the table money allowed by the Government, was assumed 
 by him. He himself said, early in the cruise, " Unless we 
 have a Spanish war, I shall live here at a great expense, 
 although Mr. Chevalier [his steward] takes every care." 
 
 1 Flag-officers had a share in all prizes taken by vessels of their squadrons. 
 
616 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 " God knows, in my own person, I spend as little money as 
 any man ; but you^ know I love to give away." 
 
 That he was thus sore was most natural ; but it was also 
 natural that the Government should expect, in view of his 
 strong representations about his health, that the three weeks 
 between the issuing his leave and Orde's orders would have 
 insured his being on his way home, before the latter reached 
 his station. Had things fallen out so, it would not have been 
 Nelson, the exceptional hero of exceptional services, but 
 Bickerton, a man with no pecviliar claims as yet, who would 
 have lost the prize-money; for Kelson himself had just won a 
 suit against St. Vincent, which established that the moment 'a 
 commander-in-chief left his station, his right lapsed and that 
 of the next flag-officer commenced. Nor was the division of 
 the station an unprecedented measure. It had been extended 
 from the Straits to Cape Finisterre at the time St. Vincent 
 withdrew from the Mediterranean, in 1796 ; and in 1802, when 
 Lord Keith asked for additional aids, on account of the enor- 
 mous administrative work, the Admiralty made of the request 
 a pretext for restricting his field to the Mediterranean, a step 
 which Keith successfully resisted. 
 
 Before Nelson received his leave he had begun to change 
 his mind about going home. This was due, partly, to a 
 slight betterment in his health, which he at this time men- 
 tions ; chiefly, it would seem, to the prospects of a Spanish 
 war. This, by doubling the number of his enemies and the 
 quarters whence they might come, contributed to the pleasur- 
 able excitement that was always a tonic to his physical frame, 
 and roused the eager desire for conspicuous action, which was 
 his most prominent passion. Indications also assured him 
 that the expectation of the French coming out, in which ap- 
 pearances had so often deceived him, was now on the point 
 of being realized ; that Bonaparte's projects, whatever they 
 were, were approaching maturity. His "guess," founded on 
 the reports before him, was wonderfully penetrative. He did 
 not see all the way through the French mill-stone, but he 
 saw very deep into it; his inference, indeed, was one in which 
 intuition and sagacity bore equal shares. "If the Russians 
 continue increasing their naval force in this country [that is, 
 
 1 Davison. 
 
PROSPECTS OF A SPANISH WAR 617 
 
 in the eastern Mediterranean], I do not think the French 
 will venture to the eastward ; therefore, I rather expect they 
 will, as the year advances, try to get out of the straits ; and 
 should they accomplish it with 7,000 troops on board, I ain 
 sure we should lose half our West India Islands, for I think 
 they would go there, and not to Ireland. Whatever may be 
 their destination, I shall certainly follow, be it even to the 
 East Indies." The last allusion is interesting, for it shows 
 the wide flight of his speculations, which had found utterance 
 before in the casual remark that his ships were provisioned 
 for a voyage to Madras ; and, even as a guess, it struck 
 perilously near one of Bonaparte's purposes. The splendid 
 decision, formulated so long before the case arose, to follow 
 wherever they went, held in its womb the germ of the great 
 campaign of Trafalgar ; while in the surmise that the Toulon 
 fleet was bound to the West Indies, the arrow of conjecture 
 had gone straight to the bull's-eye. 
 
 In this same letter, addressed to General Villettes, at 
 Malta, formerly his coadjutor at the siege of Bastia, Nelson, 
 in the intimacy of friendship, reveals what was to him at 
 once the secret of health and the fulfilment of desire ; the 
 congenial atmosphere in which his being throve, and expanded 
 to fulfil the limits of his genius. " Such a pursuit would do 
 more, perhaps, towards restoring me to health than all the 
 doctors ; but I fear " (his application for leave having gone in) 
 "this is reserved for some happier man. Not that I com- 
 plain ; I have had a good race of glory, but we are never 
 satisfied, although I hope I am duly thankful for the past ; 
 but one cannot help, being at sea, longing for a little more." 
 "I hope," he had written a few months earlier to Lord Minto, 
 "some day, very soon, to fulfil the warmest wishes of my 
 Country and expectations of my friends. I hope you may be 
 able, at some debate, to say, as your partiality has said be- 
 fore, ' Nelson has done more than he has done before ; ' I can 
 assure you it shall be a stimulus to my exertion on the day of 
 battle. . . . Whatever happens, I have run a glorious race." 
 
 On the 12th of October Nelson received a piece of news 
 which elicited instantaneously a flash of action, illustrative 
 at once of the promptness of his decisions and of the brisk- 
 ness of temper that has been noted already. A letter arrived 
 
618 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 from Captain Gore, commanding the detachment outside of 
 the Straits, that two frigates, sent from the Brest squadron by 
 Admiral Cornwallis, had arrived, with a captain senior to 
 himself, who had taken him under his orders, and carried 
 two of Nelson's frigates off Cadiz to intercept the Spanish 
 treasure-fleet expected there from America. Cornwallis 's 
 action had been taken by orders from England, but no com- 
 munication to that effect, either from him or from the Ad- 
 miralty, reached Nelson at this moment. Astounded by a 
 measure which could scarcely fail to cause war, and convinced, 
 as he said, that Spain had no wish to go to war with Great 
 Britain, he gave himself a night to pause ; but early next 
 day he wrote to the Admiralty, intimating pretty plainly that, 
 if done by its direction, this was not the way the commander 
 of the Mediterranean fleet should receive word of so mo- 
 mentous a step taken in his district, while to Gore he sent 
 emphatic orders to disobey Cornwallis, although the latter 
 was Nelson's senior. Summing up with admirable lucidity 
 the facts before him, and thereby proving that the impression 
 under which Cornwallis's action probably was taken was 
 erroneous, he said : '' Unless you have much weightier reasons 
 than the order of Admiral Cornwallis, or that you receive 
 orders from the Admiralty, it is my most positive directions 
 that neither you, or any ship under your orders, do molest or 
 interrupt in any manner the lawful commerce of Spain, with 
 whom we are at perfect peace and amity." 
 
 It is permissible, because instructive, to note that in this 
 order, while Nelson amply provides for discretion on the part 
 of his subordinate, he throws the full weight of his authority 
 on the difficult horn of a possible dilemma, the act — so mo- 
 mentous to an oflicer — of disobedience to a present superior-; 
 in this case the captain sent by Cornwallis. Contrast this 
 with the Government's orders to the commander of the troops 
 at Malta, when it wished him to send a garrison to Messina.^ 
 Instead of saying, " You will send so many men, unless you 
 think you cannot spare them,*' its oi'ders ran : " You will 
 send, if you think you can spare them." Of course, as Nel- 
 son invariably experienced, an officer addressed in the latter 
 style found always a lion iii his path. So his orders to Gore 
 
 1 Ante, p. 568. 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS OF TEMPERAMENT G19 
 
 were not " Obey, ty," but "Disobey, unless ;'' and Gore knew, 
 as every man in the Mediterranean knew by long trial, that, 
 if he disobeyed, he would have at his back, through thick 
 and tliin, the first sea-officer in Great Britain. But Nelson's 
 orders were always stamped with the positive, daring, lucid 
 character of his genius and its conceptions ; and so, except in 
 unworthy hands, they were fulfilled in spirit as well as in 
 letter. 
 
 An interesting illustration of this trenchant clearness is to 
 be found in instructions given to the captain of the " Donegal," 
 an eighty-gun ship, sent under very critical circumstances to 
 cruise off Cadiz, in September, 1803. It appears to the author 
 not only characteristic of Nelson, but a perfect example of 
 the kind of directions a junior would wish to have in a diffi- 
 cult case, when desirous to carry out the spirit of his supe- 
 rior's orders. It explains itself. 
 
 26th September, 1803. 
 To Captain Siii Richard John Strachan, Bart., 
 H. M. Ship Donegal. 
 
 The occurrences which pass every day in Spain forbode, I fancy, a 
 speedy War with England ; therefore it becomes proper for me to put 
 you on your guai'd, and advise you how to act under particular cir- 
 cumstances. By looking at the former fine of conduct on the part 
 of Spain, which she followed just befoi'e the commencement of the 
 last War, we may naturally expect the same events to happen. The 
 French Admiral Richery was in Cadiz, blocked up by Admiral Man ; 
 on August the 22nd, they came to sea, attended by the Spanish Jleet, 
 wliich saw the French safe beyond St. Vincent, and returned into 
 Cadiz. Admiral Man very properly did not choose to attack Admiral 
 Richery under such an escort. This is a prelude to what I must re- 
 quest your strict attention to; at the same time, I am fully aware 
 that you must be guided, in some measure, by actual circumstances. 
 
 I think it very probable, even before Si:)ain breaks with us, that 
 they may send a Ship or two of the Line to see L'Aigle round Cape 
 St. Vincent ; and that if you attack her in their presence, they may 
 attack you ; and giving them possession of the Donegal, would be 
 more than either you or I should wish, therefore T am certain it must 
 be very comfortable for you to know my sentiments. From what 
 you hear in Cadiz, you will judge how far you may venture yourself 
 in company with a Spanish Squadron ; but if you are of opinion that 
 you may trust yourself near them, keeping certainly out of gun-shot, 
 send your Boat with a letter to the Spanish Commodore, and desire 
 
620 THE LIFE OE NELSON 
 
 to know whether he means to defend the French Ships ; and get his 
 answer m writing, and have it as plain as possible. If it be ' yes, 
 that he will fire at you if you attack the French under his protection,' 
 then, if you have force enough, make your attack on the whole body, 
 and take them all if you can ; for I should consider such an answer 
 as a perfect Declaration of "War. If you are too weak for such an 
 attack, you must desist; but you certainly are fully authorized to take 
 the Ships of Spain whenever you meet them. Should the answer be 
 ambiguous, you must then act as your judgment may direct you, and 
 I am sure that will be very projier. Only recollect, that it would be 
 much better to let the French Ships escape, than to run too great a 
 risk of losing the Donegal, yourself, and the Ship's company. 
 
 I am, &c. 
 
 Nelson and Bronte. 
 
 This letter fulfils his own request to the Admiralty : '^ AU 
 I wish and submit to their Lordships is, that if the business is 
 left to me, my orders may be decisive." 
 
 Later in the same day that Nelson received Gore's letter, 
 the Admiralty's orders arrived, sent, as despatches too often 
 were, by a vessel so small and slow that it would seem they 
 counted upon her insignificance to elude an enemy's notice. 
 The delay served, as has been said, to give proof of the rapidity 
 of Nelson's action ; the receipt of the orders enabled him also to 
 show how much clearer were his conceptions of adequacy than 
 those of ordinary men. To stop treasure-ships, or to embargo 
 merchant-ships, when difficulty was threatening, was no new 
 idea to the British Government. The latter had been done 
 with Baltic merchantmen at the time of the Armed Neutrality. 
 In the case of Spain, it was a measure particularly efficacious, 
 for the financial solvency and belligerent capacity of that 
 country depended upon the galleons, which brought to her the 
 tribute of her colonies ; and her relations and dealings Avith 
 France at this time were so partial and suspicious as to justify 
 precautions. Evidently, however, such a step, being avowedly 
 preventive and not offensive, should be taken in such a way 
 as to avert all chance of possible disaster. Several Spanish 
 frigates being expected, the British Government charged four 
 vessels of the same rate with the task of arresting them. 
 Nelson, the instant he got his orders, detached to the spot an 
 eighty-gun ship, to which he added four other cruisers, think- 
 
DECIDES NOT TO RETURN HOME 621 
 
 ing, as he said in his orders to the captain selected, that ''this 
 is a service of the highest importance, and that an officer of 
 your rank and experience should be employed therein." With 
 such odds against him, the Spanish commander would need 
 no military justification for submission. As it was, he resisted, 
 necessitating a fight, which under the circumstances was bar- 
 barous and brutal, and ended in one of the Spanish vessels 
 blowing up with several women on board ; a result due wholly 
 to the blundering lack of foresight which sent a corporal's 
 guard to do the work of a sheriff's posse. 
 
 This incident, of the order to arrest the treasure-ships, 
 which was made general for all vessels of that class, was 
 probably the determining occasion of Nelson's decision to 
 remain in the Mediterranean. War with Spain, with con- 
 sequent increased activity on the part of France, though not 
 certain, became probable. There was at that time on board 
 the " Victory " a Dr. Lambton Este, who had gone to the 
 Mediterranean in a civil capacity, and was on his way home. 
 Nelson, hoping to return soon himself, asked Este to remain 
 until he started, and to accompany him in a worn-out seventy- 
 four, the " Superb," which he was holding for that purpose. 
 It seems that, in looking forward to the resumption of his 
 command, lie expected it would be the scene of a more wide- 
 spread political activity, especially in the far East where Este 
 had been employed, and that, for this purpose, he wished to 
 attach the latter to his person. " There may be more occupa- 
 tion there for us all, hereafter, than we just now foresee, or 
 may expect." 
 
 In confirmation of this general forecast, we are told by Dr. 
 Scott that, when the admiral left England before Trafalgar, 
 arrangements had been made with the Foreign Office for Este 
 with six clerks to be attached to the flagshijD, to conduct the 
 diplomatic correspondence. The fact is doubly interesting. 
 It shows, on the one hand, the accuracy of Nelson's foresight 
 as to the vast importance the Mediterranean was about to 
 assume, to meet which he thus was making provision in a 
 general way ; although neither he nor any other man could 
 have anticipated the extraordinary, complicated snarl of the 
 political threads in Napoleon's later years. The cares from 
 these, it may be said in passing, were by Nelson's death 
 
622 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 devolved lapon Collingwood ; who, though a strong man, was 
 killed by them, through general debility resulting from con- 
 finement, and through organic injury produced by bending 
 over his desk. On the other hand, it cannot but be grateful 
 to those who admire the hero, to see that Nelson looked for- 
 ward to no inglorious ease, but to a life of strenuous work, as 
 well as, if it might be so, of military honor. Had he lived, 
 Ave may hope, the days after Trafalgar would not have been 
 the grave of his renown. 
 
 On the first of November his decision was taken. He sent 
 fur Este and said, ' ' Oh, my good fellow ! I have abandoned 
 the idea of going to England, at present. I shall not go yet, 
 and when I may go is quite uncertain — must depend upon 
 events, and upon my own precarious health ; at the same time, 
 1 am doing j^ou an evident injustice, by detaining you here so 
 long in uncertainty." Este of course expressed his willing- 
 ness to remain wliile needed, but Nelson interrupted him, 
 saying, " No, my wish is that you should go, — I am anxious 
 that you should go, and go without further delay. To tell you 
 the truth, I am not entirely disinterested. Go home ; get con- 
 firmed in your appointment, according to my desin^ and re- 
 turn to me as soon afterwards as you can. Should I retain 
 my command in the Mediterranean, with the powers already 
 conceded to me, I shall require your assistance." It seems 
 probable that he was anxious to get some one home as rapidly 
 as possible, to forestall, if time permitted, a final recall, which 
 the appointment of a successor would be. " Long before this 
 time," he had written Lady Hamilton, ''I expect, another 
 admiral is far on his way to supersede me. I should for your 
 sake, and for many of our friends, have liked an odd hundred 
 thousand pounds [by a Spanish war]; but, never inind. If 
 they give me the choice of staying a few months longer, it will 
 be very handsome ; and, for the sake of others, we would give 
 up very much of our own felicity." 
 
 The despatches and routine papers were got ready rapidly, 
 and placed in charge of Este, who sailed for Lisbon, in a 
 sloop-of-war, on the 6th of November, furnished with orders 
 to all officials to expedite him on his way, and particularly to 
 captains not to communicate with tlie ship, because the plague, 
 then raging in Gibraltar, would involve her, if visited, in the 
 
ARRIVAL OF Slli JOHN ORDE 623 
 
 delays of quarantine. On the 18th of November, off Cape St. 
 Vincent, Este met the " Swiftsure," seventy-four, bringing 
 Orde out. It has been charged that the latter discourteously 
 delayed to notify Nelson of his taking over part of the sta- 
 tion.^ It appears, however, from tliis encounter, that his 
 letter to that effect, dated the 17th, ^ thougli headed "off 
 Cadiz," was actually prepared before he reached his position 
 there. It was forwarded to Nelson by the " Anson," whose 
 captain was senior officer of the division till then blockading 
 the port, whom Orde relieved and sent on with his despatch. 
 The "Anson" joined Nelson on the loth of December. The 
 " Swiftsure," which was also destined to his squadron, did not 
 reach him until the 25th. It seems, therefore, fair to acquit 
 Orde of a discourtesy as aimless as it would be reprehensible. 
 
 Just before Este's departure Nelson had reconnoitred 
 Toulon. A new vice-admiral had hoisted his flag in place of 
 Latouche Treville, who had died on the 20th of August. " He 
 has given me the slip," wrote Nelson, who felt himself balked 
 of his vengeance. " The French papers say he died of walking 
 so often up to the signal-post, upon Sepet, to watch us : I 
 always pronounced that would be his death." His successor 
 was Villeneuve, the predestined victim of Trafalgar. "They 
 now amuse themselves with night-signals," Nelson informed 
 the Eirst Lord; "and by the quantity of rockets and blue 
 lights they show Avith every signal, they plainly mark their 
 position. These gentlemen must soon be so perfect in theory, 
 that they will come to sea to put their knowledge into jDractice. 
 Could I see that day, it would make me happy." The time 
 was now not far distant. The weariness of waiting was soon 
 to give Avay to the anxious fever of doubtful and protracted 
 pursuit, of prolonged uncertainty and steadfast endurance, 
 through which he advanced to his final triumph, just as he 
 had to those of the past. 
 
 The seizure of the Spanish treasure-ships, with its lament- 
 able catastrophe, took place on the 5th of October. Nelson 
 had the news on the 8th of November, which, extraordinary as 
 it may appear, was before the fact was known in Madrid. On 
 the 10th of November, when the British minister received his 
 passports upon his own demand, no word had reached there. 
 1 Pettigrevv, vol. ii, p. 444, 2 Jficolas, vol, vi. p. 288. 
 
624 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 On the 15th, Nelson was informed that a British vessel had 
 been fired upon by the batteries of Barcelona, which was an 
 error ; but receiving at the same time a letter from the minis- 
 ter, probably to the effect that he would break off relations on 
 the 10th, he inferred that war existed, and issued orders for 
 a general seizure of Spanish vessels of war aud commerce 
 throughout the station. This was done on his own responsi- 
 bility, but he guarded himself by stringent provisions against 
 any injury beyond detention being inflicted; and he alleged, 
 very reasonably, that a commander-in-chief who never got 
 letters from home less than two months old must act upon his 
 own motion. " I am completely in the dark. It is now more 
 than two months since the John Bull [the last despatch boat] 
 sailed." " I have set the whole Mediterranean to work," he 
 tells Lady Hamilton on the 23d ; " and if I had had the spare 
 troops at Malta at my disposal, Minorca would at this moment 
 have had English colours flying." A Swedish ship, carrying a 
 Spanish regiment from Barcelona to the latter island, was 
 among the first caj)tures. 
 
 " With respect to my making war upon Spain, and Sir John 
 Orde not having- done it," so he wrote to Elliot, "I believe you 
 will think I have acted not precipitately, but consistent with 
 the firmness of John Bull. I can't tell what schemes ministers 
 may have ; but when I am without orders, and unexpected 
 occurrences arise, I shall always act as I think the honour and 
 glory of my King and Country demand. Upon the most 
 mature and serious consideration I can give the subject, the 
 present lays within the compass of a nutshell. Our Ministers 
 demand certain points to be conceded to them ; they, to give a 
 spur, detain the Spanish treasure. Spain, the moment she 
 hears of it, kicks your minister out of Madrid ; a plain proof 
 they had not acceded to our propositions. Indeed, Mr. Frere,^ 
 you will see by his letter, did not believe it would have a fa- 
 vourable termination, even had not the frigates been detained. 
 I send your Excellency his letters. I feel I have done 
 perfectly right. No desire of wealth could influence my 
 conduct ; for I had nothing to take worth two-penco to me. 
 Sir John Orde was sent, if it was a Spanish war, to take the 
 money ; but until he saw my orders, he did not act. I sup- 
 1 Late British minister to Spain, 
 
DECISIVE PROMPTITUDE IN ACT 625 
 
 pose he was fearful of that responsibility which 1 am ever 
 ready to take upon me ; and now he is to wallow iu wealth, 
 whilst I am left a beggar. But such things are. I receive the 
 kindest letters from Lord Melville and the Secretary of State, 
 but they think the French fleet is prize enough for me." No 
 wonder Nelson found that diplomatists were slow, measured 
 by himself as a standard ; but what a wonderful instinct it 
 shows in him, that, Avith action ever prompt to the verge of 
 precipitancy, he made so few blunders in deed. There are 
 several errors of fact in his summary of reasons, but his action 
 was absolutely well-timed — to the very hour. 
 
 Meanwhile, and up to the loth of December, when Orde's 
 letter was received, no reply had come to his application for 
 leave, and no intimation of a successor. A fresh complication 
 here arose by the entire break-down of one of his two junior 
 admirals — Kear-Admiral Campbell — whose health became 
 so affected that it was necessary to send him immediately 
 home. He quitted the fleet on the 4th of December. Nelson 
 rightly felt that he himself could not go, leaving Bickerton 
 without any assistant. He went further ; for, when a rumor 
 came that Orde was to relieve him, he determined that he 
 would offer his services to him, as second, until a successor to 
 Campbell should arrive. As there was friction between him- 
 self and Orde, who had, besides, a not very pleasant ofiicial 
 reputation, this intention, to take a lower place where he had 
 been chief, was not only self-sacrificing, but extremely mag- 
 nanimous; it was, however, disfigured by too much self-con- 
 sciousness. " I have wrote to Lord Melville that I should 
 make such an offer, and that I entreated him to send out a flag- 
 oflficer as soon as possible, but I dare say Sir John Orde is too 
 great a man to want my poor services, and that he will reject 
 them ; be that as it may, you will, I am sure, agree with me, 
 that I shall show my superiority to him by such an offer, and 
 the world will see what a sacrifice I am ready to make for the 
 service of my King and Country, for what greater sacrifice 
 could I make, than serving for a moment under Sir John 
 Orde, and giving up for that moment the society of all I hold 
 most dear in this world ? " 
 
 Orde's letter reached Nelson in Pula Roads, in the Gulf of 
 Cagliari, at the southern extremity of Sardinia ; an out-of-the- 
 
 40 
 
626 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 way position which probably accounts for much of its delay. 
 He remained there, or in the Gulf of Palmas, a little to the 
 westward, for about a week, and on the 19tli of December left 
 for his station off Cape San Sebastian. At the latter place, on 
 Christinas Day, he was joined by the " Swiftsure," which 
 brought him a great batch of official mail that had come out 
 Avith Orde. He thus received at one and the same time his 
 leave to go home and the Admiralty's order reducing his 
 station. Unluckily, the latter step, though taken much later 
 than the issuing of his leave, had become known to him first, 
 through Orde; and the ijnpression upon his mind remained 
 with that firmness of prejudice which Eadstock had noted in 
 him. He does not appear at any time to have made allowance 
 for the fact that his command was cut down under a reason- 
 able impression that he was about to quit it. 
 
 Immediately after the " Swiftsure " joined at Rendezvous 97, 
 he took the fleet off Toulon, The enemy was found to be still 
 in port, but the rumors of an approaching movement, and of 
 the embarkation of troops, were becoming more specific. He 
 remained off the harbor for at least a week, and thence went 
 to Madalena, where he anchored on the 11th of January, 1805. 
 This was, though he knew it not, the end of the long watch 
 off Toulon. 
 
 Short as the time was, Nelson had already experienced the 
 inconvenience of a senior admiral, lying, like an enemy, on 
 the flank of his communications with Great Britain, and deal- 
 ing as he pleased with his vessels. One frigate at least had 
 been sent already to England, without his knowledge and 
 consent. "I have in a former letter," he tells the First Lord, 
 "stated my opinion freely upon the stations of Gibraltar and 
 Cadiz being given to the same officer ; for without that is 
 done, our convoys can never be considered safe. There is 
 also another consideration, why the Officer at Gibraltar should 
 be under the orders of the Admiral commanding the Mediter- 
 ranean fleet — which is, that any admiral independent of that 
 station, takes all the stores he chooses, or fancies he wants, 
 for the service of his fleet ; thereby placing the fleet in the 
 Gulf of Lyons in great distress for many articles." 
 
 Off Toulon, having a large official mail to make up in reply 
 to that brought by the " Swiftsure," he thought it both quicker 
 
ANNOYANCES FROM ORDE 627 
 
 and safer, under all the conditions of the time, to send it to 
 Lisbon. He therefore called on board the " Victory " a smart 
 young frigate-captain, William Parker, a nephew of Lord St. 
 Vincent, gave him orders to take the despatches to Lisbon, 
 and added, " Sir John Orde takes my frigates from me, and 
 sends them away in some other direction from what I wish. 
 I cannot even get my despatches home. You must contrive 
 to get to the westward and go into Lisbon, and avoid his 
 ships. I have not signed your orders," alluding to mem- 
 orandum instructions separate from the formal orders, " be- 
 cause Sir John Orde is my senior officer; but, if it should 
 come to a Court Martial, Hardy can swear to my handwriting, 
 and you shall not be broke. Take your orders, and good bye ; 
 and remember, Parker, if you cannot weather that fellow, I 
 shall think you have not a drop of your old uncle's blood in 
 your veins." The memorandum directed liim to pass Cape 
 Spartel in the night, steering to the southward and westward 
 to avoid Orde, and ended thus : " Bring-to [stop] for nothing, 
 if you can help it. Hoist the signal for quarantine, and that 
 you are charged with dispatches. If you are forced to speak 
 by a superior officer, show him only my order for not interfer- 
 ing with you; and unless he is an admiral, superior to me, 
 you will obey my orders instead of any pretended ones from 
 him, from my superior officer." 
 
 Parker executed his commission successfully, but in doing 
 so met with a curious adventure. Leaving Gibraltar with a 
 north wind, favorable for his purpose, he passed Spartel as 
 directed, and, the night being moonlight, saw in the distance 
 Orde's squadron cruising under easy sail. Unluckily, one of 
 the outlying lookout frigates discovered him, gave chase, and 
 overtook him. Her captain himself came on board, and was 
 about to give Parker orders not to proceed to the westward, 
 Orde jealously objecting to any apparent intrusion upon his 
 domain. Parker stopped him hastily from speaking on the 
 quarter-deck, within earshot of others, and took him into the 
 cabin. The stranger had been one of Nelson's old midship- 
 men and a favorite ; had started with him in the " Againem- 
 non," and by him had been made a commander after the Nile. 
 " Captain Hoste," said Parker, " I believe you owe all your 
 jidvancement iu the service to ray uncle, Lord St. Vincent, 
 
628 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 and to Lord Nelson. I am avoiding Sir John Orde's squadron 
 by desire of Lord Nelson ; you know his handwriting; I must 
 go on." ^ (Parker being senior to Hoste, the latter could not 
 detain him by his own authority; and he understood from 
 this avowal that Orde's orders, if produced, would become 
 a matter of record, would be disobeyed, and a court-martial 
 must follow.) "The question of a court-martial would be 
 very mischievous. Do you not think it would be better if you 
 were not to meet the 'Amazon ' this night? " Captain Hoste, 
 after a little reflection, left the ship without giving his 
 admiral's orders to Parker.^ 
 
 Having determined not to leave Bickerton alone, Nelson 
 decided to keep secret his own leave to return to England. 
 " I am much obliged by their Lordships' kind compliance 
 with my request, wliich is absolutely necessary from the 
 present state of my health," he writes on the 30th of 
 December ; " and I shall avail myself of their Lordships' 
 permission, the moment another admiral, in the room of Ad- 
 miral Campbell, joins the fleet, unless the enemy's fleet 
 should be at sea, when I should not think of quitting my 
 command until after the battle." "I shall never quit my 
 post," he tells a friend, " when the Prench fleet is at sea, as 
 a commander-in-chief of great celebrity once did," — a not 
 very generous fling at St. Vincent. " I would sooner die at 
 my post, than have such a stigma upon my memory." 
 "Nothing has kept me here," he writes Elliot, ''but the fear 
 for the escape of the French fleet, and that they should get 
 to either Naples or Sicily in the short days. Nothing but 
 gratitude to those good Sovereigns could have induced me to 
 stay one moment after Sir John Orde's extraordinary com- 
 mand, for his general conduct towards me is not such as I had 
 a right to expect." 
 
 During this last month of monotonous routine, while off 
 Toulon and at Madalena, he had occasion to express opinions 
 on current general topics, which found little room in his 
 mind after the French fleet began to move. There was then 
 a report of a large expedition for foreign service forming in 
 
 1 Author's italics. 
 
 2 The whole of this account is taken from the Life of Sir AVilliam Parker. 
 Phillimore's Last of Nelson's Captains, pp. 125-129. 
 
OPINIONS ON CURRENT EVENTS 629 
 
 England, and rumor, as usual, had a thousand tongues as to 
 its destination. " A blow struck in Europe," Nelson wrote 
 to Lord ]\Ioira, "would do more towards making us respected, 
 and of course facilitate a peace, than the possession of Mexico 
 or Peru," — a direction towards which the commercial ambi- 
 tions of Great Britain had a traditional inclination, fostered 
 by some military men and statesmen, who foresaw the break-up 
 of the Spanish colonial system. "Above all, I hope we shall 
 have no buccaneering expeditions. Such services fritter away 
 our troops and sliips, when they are so much wanted for more 
 important occasions, and are of no use beyond enriching a few 
 individuals. I know not, if these sentiments coincide with 
 yours; but as glory, and not money, has through life been 
 your pursuit, I should rather think that you will agree with 
 me, that in Europe, and not abroad, is the place for us to 
 strike a blow." "i like the idea of English troops getting 
 into the Kingdom of JSTaples," he tells Elliot at this same 
 time ; whence it may be inferred that that was the quarter he 
 would now, as upon his first arrival, choose for British effort. 
 " If they are well commanded, I am sure they will do well. 
 They will have more wants than us sailors." The expedition, 
 which sailed the following spring, was destined for the 
 Mediterranean, and reinforced the garrisons of Gibraltar and 
 Malta to an extent that made the latter a factor to be con- 
 sidered in the strategy of the inland sea ; but when it arrived, 
 Nelson had left the Mediterranean, not to return. 
 
 As regards general politics, Nelson, writing to the Queen 
 of Naples, took a gloomy view of the future. The Prime 
 Minister of the Two Sicilies, Sir John Acton, had some time 
 before been forced out of office and had retired to Palermo, 
 an event produced by the pressure of French influence, which 
 Nelson regarded now as absolutely dominant in that kingdom, 
 and menacing to Europe at large. "Never, perhaps, was 
 Europe more critically situated than at this moment, and 
 never was the probability of universal Monarchy more nearly 
 being realized, than in the person of the Corsican. I can see 
 but little difference between the name of Emperor, King, or 
 Prefect, if they perfectly obey his despotic orders. Prussia 
 is trying to be destroyed last — Spain is little better than a 
 province of France — Russia does nothing on the grand scale. 
 
630 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 Would to God these great Powers reflected, that the bohlest 
 measures are the safest ! They allow small states to fall, and 
 to serve the enormous power of France, without appearing to 
 reflect that every kingdom which is annexed to France, makes 
 their own existence, as independent states, more precarious." 
 How shrewd a prophecy this was as regards Prussia and 
 Spain, those two countries were to learn by bitter experience ; 
 and remote Russia herself, though she escaped the last 
 humiliation, saw in the gigantic hosts whose onset a few years 
 later shook her to her centre, the armed subjects of the many 
 smaller states, in whose subjugation she had acquiesced dur- 
 ing the period of the Czar's moral subservience to ISTapoleon. 
 
 Nelson's essentially military genius had in political matters 
 a keenly sensitive intuition of the probable action of his fel- 
 low-warrior, Bonaparte. " Russia's going to war in the way 
 I am sure she will, will cause the loss of Naples and Sardinia; 
 for that Court will not send 100,000 men into Italy, and less 
 are useless for any grand purpose." " Your Excellency's 
 summary account of the situation of Naples since the negoti- 
 ations with Russia," he wrote to Elliot in October, " are per- 
 fectly clear ; but the times are such that kingdoms must not 
 be played with. So far from Russia assisting Naples, it may 
 involve her, without the greatest care and circumspection, in 
 total ruin. Naples must not be hastily involved in war with 
 France. Sicily must be saved. The Calabrians must be kept 
 from the entrance of French troops. If we are consulted, we 
 must assist Naples in keeping off the blow as long as pos- 
 sible." That Napoleon's action would have been as here sur- 
 mised, had his purposes then tended towards the Mediterranean 
 instead of the English Channel, we have his own assertion. 
 " At the solicitation of your ambassador at St. Petersburg," 
 wrote he to the Queen of Naples, three months later, referring 
 to the same subject, "ten thousand Russians have been sent 
 to Corfu. . . . If it had entered into my plans to make war 
 upon the King of Naples, I should have done it on the en- 
 trance of the first Russian in Corfu, but I wish for peace with 
 Naples, with Europe entire, with England even." Napoleon's 
 wishes for peace, except on the condition of having his own 
 way, are scarcely to be taken seriously ; but his care to keep 
 things quiet in the South corroborates the other indications of 
 
NELSON LEAVES MADALENA 631 
 
 his firm purpose to invade England. He was too astute to 
 precipitate troubles elsewhere while that was pending. The 
 appearance of the Russians in Corfu, although unwise in 
 Nelson's view, relieved his fears for the islands and the 
 Morea, and enabled him to reduce a little his detachment 
 about the heel of Italy. 
 
 Towards the middle of December Nelson had received in- 
 formation, which was substantially correct, " from various 
 places, and amongst others, from the King of Sardinia [then 
 in Gaeta], that the French were assembling troops near 
 Toulon, and had taken some of the best troops and a corps 
 of cavalry from the Riviera of Genoa. Every seaman was 
 pressed and sent to Toulon. On the 16th the Active spoke 
 a vessel from Marseilles, who reported that seven thousand 
 troops had embarked on board the French fleet." 
 
 It was in Madalena Roads that the long-expected summons 
 came at last. In the afternoon of January 19, 1805, blowing 
 a heavy gale of wind from the northwest, the two lookout 
 frigates from off Toulon came in sight, with the signal flying 
 that the French fleet was at sea. At 3 p. m. they anchored 
 near the " Victory." Three hours later Nelson had left 
 Madalena forever. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 The Escape and Pursuit of the Toulon Fleet. — Nelson's Return 
 TO England. 
 
 January-August, 1805. Age, 46. 
 
 TO uuderst.atid rightly the movements of Nelson during the 
 first months of 1805, up to his return to England in 
 August, and to appreciate fully the influence of this closing 
 period of his career upon the plans and fortunes of Napoleon, 
 it is necessary to state briefly the projects of the latter, as 
 formulated in his correspondence. 
 
 The great object of the Emperor was to invade England, 
 crossing the Channel with the army, 150,000 strong, which 
 for two years past he had been assembling and drilling in 
 the neighborhood of Boulogne. To this end all his plans 
 were subsidiary — to it all movements at this moment were 
 intended to conduce. He had no illusions as to the difficulties 
 of the enterprise ; he recognized fully that the odds were 
 against success, but he had too often achieved the apparently 
 impossible to permit the word to stop him in an attempt, 
 which, if accomplished, would cause all other obstacles to 
 disappear from his path of conquest. There were chances 
 in his favor. Warily and steadfastly he advanced, step by 
 step, determined to take no risk that could by the utmost 
 care be changed into security, but equally resolved to dare 
 the hazard, if by the military movements set in action by 
 his unsurpassed genius, he could for a moment obtain the 
 particular combination which would, to use his own phrase, 
 make him master of the world. What if the soldiers of the 
 Grand Army never returned from England ? There were 
 still in France men enough, as good as they were before his 
 energizing spirit wrought them into the force which in its 
 might trod the Continent under foot. Like Nelson dying at 
 Trafalgar, it too would have laid down its life, leaving its 
 
NAPOLEON'S PLANS, 1805 633 
 
 work finished. Neither man nor army could have a prouder 
 memorial. 
 
 The particular combination upon which Napoleon was will- 
 ing to stake everything was a naval control of the Straits of 
 Dover for a very few days, coincident with the presence there 
 of an army ready and equipped to cross at once. The latter 
 condition was merely a question of preparation — long, tedious, 
 and expensive, but perfectly feasible. In tlie early months 
 of 1805 it was realized. The army, a substantial, absolute 
 fact, was there, awaiting only the throwing of the bridge. 
 The naval part of the problem was far more difficult. In the 
 face of the naval suprenuxcy of Great Britain, the sought-for 
 control could only be casual and transient — a fleeting oppor- 
 tunity to be seized, utilized, and so to disappear. Its realiza- 
 tion must be effected by stratagem, by successful deception 
 and evasion. The coveted superiority would be not actual, 
 but local, — the French fleet in force there, the British fleet, 
 though the greater in force, elsewhere; the weight of the 
 former concentrated at one point by simultaneous movements 
 of its different detachments, which movements had been so 
 calculated and directed that they had misled the British divi- 
 sions, and, of themselves, diverted them from the decisive 
 centre. Subsidiary to this main effort, Napoleon also con- 
 templated a simultaneous landing of some twenty thousand 
 men in Ireland, which, like the naval movements, would dis- 
 tract and tend to divide the unity of the British resistance. 
 The British admirals considered this project to be easier than 
 the invasion of Great Britain, and it engaged their much more 
 serious attention. 
 
 There were three principal French detachments to be 
 united, — in Brest twenty ships, in Toulon ten, in Eochefort 
 five. To these the outbreak of the war between Great Britain 
 and Spain added the forces of the latter kingdom, in Ferrol 
 and Cadiz, aggregating fifteen serviceable ships ; but this was 
 not until March, 1805. Of the three French contingents, the 
 one from Rochefort was small ; and, as a factor, although 
 important, it was not essential. Its failure might weaken or 
 impede the progress of the general movement, without en- 
 tirely destroying it ; but it was of necessity that the Toulon 
 and Brest divisions both should fulfil their missions, accu- 
 
I 
 
 634 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 rately and on time, if the great combination, of which they 
 were parts, was to advance to a triumphant conclusion. This 
 emphasized to the British the importance, which Nelson 
 always so keenly felt, of meeting the enemy immediately after 
 they left port. Once away, and their destination in doubt, 
 the chances in favor of any scheme were multiplied. In their 
 gi-eatest and final effort, Cornwallis, off Brest, was fortunate, 
 in that the plans of the Emperor first, and afterwards unusual 
 weather conditions, retained the French fleet there in harbor ; 
 a result to which the material efficiency of his own ships, and 
 their nearness to their base, much contributed. 
 
 Upon Nelson, with his crazy ships, on the other hand, 
 fell the burden of counteracting a successful evasion of the 
 Toulon fleet, of foiling, by sagacious and untiring pursuit 
 through immense and protracted discouragements, the efforts 
 of the one division which had been committed to his watch. 
 Although it became much superior to his own force, he drove 
 it out of the position in the West Indies first appointed for 
 the meeting, followed it back to Europe, arrived before it, 
 and then, finding it had gone to Ferrol, carried his squadron, 
 without orders, counselled simply by his own genius, to the 
 aid of Cornwallis ; by which act the British navy, to the num- 
 ber of thirty-five ships-of-the-line, was massed in a central 
 position, separating the two enemy's bodies, and able to act 
 decisively against a foe approaching from either direction. 
 Thus a second time he prevented the enemy from forming a 
 junction, unless they fought for it — an alternative Napoleon 
 wished to avoid. To him fell all the straiti of uncertainty, all 
 the doubtful and complicated mental effort, all the active 
 strategic movement, of the campaign, and to him consequently 
 has been attributed justly the greater meed of glory ; though 
 care must be taken not to ignore or undervalue the well-played 
 parts of other admirals, which were essential to the success of 
 the great defensive campaign comprehended u.nder the name 
 Trafalgar. 
 
 The point selected by the Emperor for the meeting of his 
 naval divisions, in both the unsuccessful attempts made in 
 1805, was the West Indies. There was the most powerful 
 foreign arsenal, Martinique, left in the hands of France, and 
 there the greatest single interest of the widespread commerce 
 
HIS PART IN THE NAVAL CAMPAIGN (535 
 
 upon which depended the life of Great Britain. The latter, 
 therefore, was specially sensitive to anything threatening the 
 safety of the West India Islands. "T should think the West 
 Indies the more likely place for the French to succeed in," 
 Avrote Nelson to Ball, on the 6th of September, 1804. " Sup- 
 pose the Toulon fleet escapes, and gets out of the Straits, I 
 rather think I should bend my course to the westward ; for if 
 they carry 7,000 men — with what they have at Martinico 
 and Guadaloupe — St. Lucia, Grenada, St. Vincent, Antigua, 
 and St. Kitts would fall, and, in that case, England would be 
 so clamorous for peace that we should humble ourselves." 
 This is a noteworthy passage, for it shows great sagacity of 
 prediction, and, in announcing beforehand his resolve, — of 
 which this is not the sole previous mention, — it dispels 
 entirely the idea that he was decoyed to the West Indies. It 
 explains, also, the remarkable outburst of gratitude that 
 hailed him on his return -from a chase which had been wholly 
 unsuccessful as regards his own chief object — the annihila- 
 tion of the French fleet. He had failed to find it, but he had 
 driven the enemy out of the West Indies before they could 
 do any serious injury to the vital interests of the country. 
 A man cannot be said to be decoyed, because, in pursuance of 
 a judgment deliberately formed beforehand, he does the thing 
 which the moment demands ; unless it can be shown that he 
 has thereby uncovered greater interests. This Nelson did not 
 do. He saved the West Indies, and returned in time to pro- 
 tect Great Britain and Ireland from invasion. 
 
 It is through the perplexities of this momentous period that 
 we have now to follow him, and we shall do so to most advan- 
 tage by taking as our clue his own avowed primary motive of 
 action, the finding and destroying of the French fleet. A 
 man dealing with Napoleon was bound to meet perplexities 
 innumerable, to thread a winding and devious track, branch- 
 ing out often into false trails that led nowhere, and confused 
 by cross-lights which glittered only to mislead. In such a 
 case, as in the doubtful paths of common life, the only sure 
 guide to a man's feet is principle ; and Nelson's principle 
 was the destruction of the French fleet. No other interest, 
 his own least of all, could divert him from it. For it he was 
 willing not only to sacrifice fortune, but to risk renown ; and 
 
636 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 SO, amid troubles manifold, lie walked steadfastly iu the light 
 of the single eye, 
 
 Wliile Kapoleon's object remained the same throughout, his 
 methods received various modifications, as all plans must do 
 Avlien circumstances cliange.' In his original intention the 
 execution of the main effort was intrusted to Latouche Tre- 
 ville, by far and away the best admiral he had. Upon his 
 death, the Toulon fleet was committed to Villeneuve. Its sail- 
 ing was to take place as nearly as possible at the same time as 
 that of the Rochefort division. They were to go to the West 
 Indies, proceed at once, independently, to offensive operations, 
 then to unite and return together to Rochefort. Napoleon's 
 calculation was that the British, impressed by this simul- 
 taneous departure, and uncertain about the enemy's purpose, 
 must send at once tliirty ships-of-the-line in pursuit, in order to 
 secure all the different quarters they would think endangered. 
 This diversion, if realized, would facilitate the operations of the 
 Brest fleet, which was to land an army corps in Ireland, and 
 then to cover the crossing of the main body at Boulogne into 
 England; the precise character of its movements depending 
 necessarily upon conditions of wind at the moment of 
 execution. 
 
 The Eochefort ships sailed on the 11th of January. For a 
 week before and a week after that date the winds at Toulon 
 hung between northeast and southeast, favorable, therefore, 
 for a voyage to the Straits of Gibraltar ; but Villeneuve 
 argued, judiciously, that a fleet intent on evasion only, and to 
 avoid fighting, should move with great speed until lost to 
 sight — that is, should start with a very fresh breeze, the 
 direction of which was of secondary moment. This view of 
 the matter escaped Nelson's attention, and therefore con- 
 tributed seriously to mislead him in his reasoning as to the 
 enemy's probable object. 
 
 On the 17th of January the wind at Toulon shifted to 
 north-northwest, with signs of an approaching gale, such as 
 the Gulf of Lyons is noted for. The next morning Ville- 
 neuve sent a division to drive away Nelson's lookouts. This 
 duty was imperfectly performed. It should have been done 
 by a frigate squadron strong enough to force them out of 
 sight of the main body, and having orders to rejoin the latter 
 
SAtLlNG 01* THE FREiSTCH FLEET 637 
 
 at a distant rendezvous. As it was, the British frigates did not 
 lose touch of the hostile fleet, which sailed that evening. 
 They dogged it late into the night, going at times thirteen 
 knots before the blast of the storm, in order to keep clear of 
 the enemy ; and at two in the morning of January 19th, being 
 then in the latitude of Ajaccio, satisfied that the French were 
 steering steadily south-southwest, and under a press of sail, 
 which indicated a mission of importance, they parted company 
 and hastened to Nelson, whom they joined twelve hours later, 
 as already stated. 
 
 Nelson needed no time to deliberate. His mind was long 
 before fixed to follow, and there was but one way to do so. 
 The enemy's course, as reported, led to the southern end of 
 Sardinia, after reaching which the wind was fair for Naples, 
 Sicily, and the East. The British ships were moored — two 
 anchors down. At half-past four they were under way, stand- 
 ing in single column for. the narrow passage between Biche 
 and Sardinia, the " Victory " leading, each vessel steering by 
 the stern lights of the one ahead of her. At seven p. m. all 
 were clear, and the fleet hauled up along the east coast of 
 Sardinia, which made a lee for them. "At midnight," Nelson 
 notes in his journal, " moderate breezes and clear." During 
 the same hours the untrained squadron of Villeneuve was 
 losing topmasts in the fury of the gale. 
 
 The following afternoon,^ as the British drew out from un- 
 der the lee of Sardinia, they found the wind blowing a hard 
 gale from south-southwest, which lasted all that night. The 
 fleet could make no way against it, but neither could the 
 French utilize it, unless, which was unlikely, they had got 
 much farther to the southward than Nelson had. When he 
 left Madalena, he had sent a frigate ahead, with orders to 
 round Sardinia by the south and try to get sight or word of 
 the enemy. On the morning of the 22d she rejoined, the 
 fleet having then drifted to fifty miles east of Cape Carbonara, 
 the southeastern point of Sardinia. At 11 A. m. her captain 
 informed Nelson that the afternoon before he had seen a French 
 frigate standing into the Gulf of Cagliari, but, the weather 
 
 1 At noon, January 20, " Mount Santo bore N. AV., distant six leagues." — 
 " Victory'' s" Log. Cape Monte Santo is sixty miles north of the southern 
 extremity of Sardinia. 
 
638 THE LIFE OF KELSON 
 
 being thick, giving an horizon of only three miles, nothing 
 more had been discovered. The admiral had sent word of the 
 French sailing to Acton at Palermo, and through him to 
 Naples and Malta, Ball being requested to seek for informa- 
 tion in every practicable direction. Naples was for the mo- 
 ment safe, as the British squadron stood across any possible 
 road by which the French could approach it. 
 
 The gale, hauling gradually to the westward, lasted in its 
 force until the morning of January 2oth. During these three 
 days Nelson received no news, but he did much thinking and 
 had made up his mind. The French might be intending to 
 land in Cagliari, to windward of which they had been during 
 these four days that he had been to leeward. With Cagliari, 
 therefore, he must communicate; the Viceroy of Sardinia 
 would know if any landing had been attempted or threatened. 
 If Sardinia was safe, he would next go or send to Palermo for 
 news, and thence push for the Faro of Messina, where he 
 would cover both that important fortress and the approaches 
 to Naples from either side of Sicily. "You will believe my 
 anxiety," he Avrote to Acton in Palermo, on the 2oth. "I 
 have neither ate, drank, or slept with any comfort since last 
 Sunday " (the 20th). "I am naturally very anxious," he tells 
 Ball, " therefore you must forgive my short letter. We have 
 a dead foul wind and heavy sea. I cannot, for want of frig- 
 ates, send off this letter." The lack of small cruisers, so often 
 lamented in quieter days, now embarrassed him cruelly. The 
 few he had were dispersed in all directions in search of news, 
 and to communicate with Acton he had to detach one of his 
 fastest ships-of-the-line, the " Leviathan," intending himself 
 to follow her with the fleet to Palermo. At the latter point 
 he could obtain all the intelligence of the common enemy 
 which might have reached any Sicilian port, before he carried 
 out his already formed purpose of chasing to leeward, to the 
 Morea and Egypt. With firm grip, though in agony of mind, 
 he held himself in hand, determined, burning as he was to 
 pursue somewhere, not to yield the advantage of the wind 
 till he had reached a reasonable certainty — as in 1798 — that 
 the circumstances justified it. " I hope," he says to Acton, 
 " that the governor of Augusta ^ will not give up the post to 
 ^ On the east coast of Sicily. 
 
PERPLEXITIES AND ANXIETY 639 
 
 the French fleet ; but if he does, I shall go in and attack them ; 
 for I consider the destruction of the enemy's fleet of so much 
 consequence, that I would gladly have half of mine burnt to 
 effect their destruction. I am in a fever. God send I may 
 find them ! " Throughout the long chase which followed, all, 
 so to say, slept on their arms. On the 11th of March he 
 wrote : " Ever since January 21st we have been prepared for 
 battle : not a bulkhead ^ up in the fleet. Night or day, it is 
 my determination not to lose one moment in attacking them." 
 On the 26th Nelson communicated with Cagliari, and 
 learned that no landing had been attempted in Sardinia. The 
 same day the frigate "Phoebe" rejoined, with information 
 that a French eighty-gun ship had anchored in Ajaccio on the 
 evening of the 19th, dismasted and crippled. Putting these 
 facts together, and in connection with his own movements, he 
 inferred conclusively that either the French had gone back to 
 Toulon in consequence of injuries, or that they had given him 
 the slip, had got round Sicily, and proceeded to the eastward. 
 The latter was improbable, because the westerly gales, as he 
 had noted, could scarcely have allowed them to weather 
 Maritimo ; ^ it was not, however, impossible. A return to 
 Toulon was, antecedently, equally improbable, although it 
 proved to be the alternative adopted by Villeneuve. "Al- 
 though I knew one of the French ships was crippled, yet I 
 considered the character of Bonaparte ; and that the orders 
 given by him, on the banks of the Seine, would not take into 
 consideration winds or weather; nor indeed could the acci- 
 dent of three or four ships alter, in my ojnniori,^ a destination 
 of importance : therefore such an accident did not weigh in 
 my mind and I went first to the Morea and ' then to Egypt." 
 This quotation is especially interesting, as it proves how 
 closely Nelson scanned every known element in a problem, 
 even to the temperament of his opponent ; and it also shows 
 the substantial agreement in judgment between him and 
 Napoleon. The latter, Tliiers writes, " was sensibly displeased 
 
 1 Bulkheads are the light partitions which divide cabins, offices, etc. from 
 the rest of the decks. For battle they are removed to allow freer communi- 
 cation, and to lessen the risk of fire and splinters. 
 
 2 An island twenty miles west of Sicily. 
 8 Author's italics. 
 
640 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 on hearing of this resultless sortie. 'What is to be done,' he 
 said, ' with admirals who allow their spirits to sink, and de- 
 termine to hasten home at the first damage they receive ? All 
 the captains ought to have had sealed orders to meet off the 
 Canary Islands. The damages should have been repaired en 
 route. A few topmasts carried away, some casualties in a gale 
 of wind, were every-day occurrences. But the great evil of our 
 Navy is, that the men who command it are unused to all the 
 risks of command.' " 
 
 Still without definite tidings, compelled to act upon his own 
 inferences — for merely doing nothing was action under such 
 circumstances — Nelson reasoned that, if the French had 
 returned, he could not overtake them, and if they had gone 
 east, he had no time to lose before following. He fell back 
 therefore from his windward position to the Straits of Messina, 
 through Avhich the whole squadron beat on the 31st of Jan- 
 uary — "a thing unprecedented in nautical history," he wrote 
 to the Admiralty, " but although the danger from the rapidity 
 of the current was great, yet so was the object of my pursuit ; 
 and I relied with confidence on the zeal and ability of the fleet 
 under my command." The same day, knowing now that 
 Sicily and Naples were not threatened, he despatched six 
 cruisers for intelligence, "in all directions from Tunis to 
 Toulon ; " three of them being frigates, which were to rendez- 
 vous off the latter port and resume the watch of the Erench, if 
 found there. A seventh vessel was sent ahead of the squadron 
 to Koron, off which he appeared on the 2d of February, and, 
 still getting no news, went on to Alexandria, where he com- 
 municated with the British consul on the 7th. "I beg the 
 boat may not be detained, nor must any communication be 
 had with the officer, so as to put the ship in quarantine. The 
 officer is ordered not to wait more than thirty minutes ; for 
 you will readily believe my anxiety to find out the enemy's 
 fleet." No news was to be had ; but it was ascertained that 
 Egypt was practically defenceless against any renewed 
 attempts of the French. 
 
 Nelson at once started back to the westward. On the 19th 
 of February, twelve days after leaving Alexandria, he was off 
 Malta, and there for the first time received information that 
 the enemy had returned to Toulon in a very crippled state. 
 
DECIDES TO CHASE TO EGYPT 641 
 
 It was now necessary to regain his station as speedily as pos- 
 sible, and also to resume the operation of victualling the 
 squadron, which had been interrupted at Madalena by the 
 news of the enemy's sailing. The captain left there in charge 
 of the transports had taken them for safety to Malta, in pur- 
 suance of the orders left with him, and they would have to be 
 convoyed again to the Gulf of Palmas, which was appointed 
 for their joining. The incident shows at once the forehanded- 
 ness of Nelson, in that he was able immediately to go on so 
 long a chase, and also the difl&culties attendant upon the 
 administration of the fleet. Against the prevailing winds the 
 convoy did not reach Palmas until the 14th of March. The 
 fleet had preceded it there by a week. After a tedious beat, 
 in which eight days were consumed to make the three hundred 
 and fifty miles to windward, Nelson anchored on the 27th of 
 February in Pula Roads, Gulf of Cagliari, just to hold on. 
 " What weather ! " wrote he to Bickerton, when the anchor 
 dropped. " Did you ever see such in almost any country? It 
 has forced me to anchor here, in order to prevent being drove 
 to leeward, but I shall go to sea the moment it moderates." 
 Palmas is only forty miles to windward of Pula, but it was 
 not till the 8th of March, after three or four ineffectual efforts, 
 that the squadron got there. " From the 19th of February to 
 this day," wrote Nelson to Ball, " have we been beating, and 
 only now going to anchor here as it blows a gale of wind at 
 northwest. It has been without exception, the very worst 
 weather I have ever seen." Bad as it was, it was but a 
 sample of that he was to meet a month later, in the most 
 wearing episode of his anxious life. 
 
 Besides the weary struggle with foul winds and weather, 
 other great disappointments and vexations met Nelson at Pal- 
 mas. During his absence to the eastward, one despatch vessel 
 had been wrecked off Cadiz and fallen into the hands of the 
 Spaniards, another had been intercepted by the battered 
 French fleet as it approached Toulon, and a convoy, home- 
 ward-bound fi-om Malta, had been waylaid, the two small 
 ships of war which formed the escort had been taken, and the 
 merchant ships dispersed. This last misfortune he ascribed 
 unhesitatingly to the division of the command. " It would not 
 have happened, could I have ordered the officer off Cadiz to 
 
 41 
 
642 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 send ships to protect them." The incident was not without 
 its compensations to one who valued honor above loss, for his 
 two petty cruisers had honored themselves and him by such a 
 desperate resistance, before surrendering to superior force, that 
 the convoy had time to scatter, and most of it escaped. There 
 was reason to fear that the despatch vessel taken off Toulon 
 had mistaken the French fleet for the British, which it had 
 expected to find outside, and that her commander maght have 
 had to haul down his flag before getting opportunity to throw 
 the mail-bags overboard. In that case, both public and private 
 letters had gone into the enemy's possession. " I do assure 
 you, my dearest Emma," he Avrote Lady Hamilton, "that 
 nothing can be more miserable, or unhappy, than your poor 
 Nelson." Besides the failure to find the French, "You will 
 conceive my disappointment ! It is now ^ from November 2nd 
 that I have had a line from England." 
 
 A characteristic letter was elicited from Nelson by the loss 
 of the despatch- vessel off Cadiz, the brig " Eaven," whose 
 commander. Captain Layman, had gained his cordial profes- 
 sional esteem in the Copenhagen expedition, in connection 
 with which he has already been mentioned. As usual in the 
 case of a wreck, a court-martial was held. This censured the 
 captain, much to Nelson's vexation ; the more so because, at 
 his request, Layman had not produced before the court certain 
 orders for the night given by him, the proved neglect of which 
 would have brought a very heavy punishment upon the officer of 
 the watch. In weighing the admiral's words, therefore, allow- 
 ance may be made for a sense of personal responsibility for the 
 finding of the court; but the letter, which was addressed to 
 the First Lord, contains expressions that are most Avorthy of 
 attention, not only because illustrative of Nelson's temperament 
 and mode of thought, but also for a point of view too rarely 
 taken in the modern practice, which has grown up in peace. 
 
 My dear Lord, — Give me leave to recommend Captain Layman 
 to your kind protection ; for, notwithstanding the Com't Martial has 
 thought him deserving of censure for his running in with the land, 
 yet, my Lord, allow me to say, that Captain Layman's misfortune 
 was, perhaps, conceiving other people's abilities were equal to his 
 own, w^hich, indeed, very few people's are. 
 
 1 March 9th. 
 
VINDICATIONS OF HIS COURSE 643 
 
 I own myself one of those who do not fear the shore, for hardly any 
 great things are done in a small ship by a man that is ; therefore, I 
 make very great allowances for him. Indeed, his station was intended 
 never to be from the shore hi the straits : and if he did not every day 
 risk his sloop, he would be useless upon that station. Captain Lay- 
 man has served with me in three ships, and I am well acquainted with 
 his bravery, zeal, judgment, and activity; nor do I rec/ret the loss of the 
 Raven compared to the value of Captain Layman s sermces, ivhich are 
 a national loss.^ 
 
 You must, my dear Lord, forgive the warmth which I express for 
 Captain Layman ; but he is in adversity, and, therefore, has the more 
 claim to my attention and regard. If I had been censured every time 
 I have run my ship, or fleets under my command, into great danger, 
 I should long ago have been out of the Service, and never in the 
 House of Peers. 
 
 I am, my dear Lord, most faithfully, yom- obedient servant, 
 
 Nelson and Bronte. 
 
 It is something to meet with the clear recognition that a 
 man may be of more value than a ship. As Clarendon said, 
 it is not all of an officer's duty to bring his ship safe home 
 again. 
 
 On the voyage back from Alexandria he had busied himself 
 with vindications of his course in going there, manifesting 
 again that over-sensitiveness to the judgment of others, which 
 contrasts so singularly with his high resolve and self-depen- 
 dence when assuming the greatest responsibilities. To Ball, 
 to the Admiralty, and to the First Lord privately, he sent 
 explanations of his action, accompanied by a summary of his 
 reasons. As the latter have been given, one by one, as each 
 step was taken, it is not necessary here to say more than that, 
 in the author's judgment, each successive movement w^as made 
 upon good grounds, and rightly timed. This is true, although 
 Nelson was entirely misled as to Bonaparte's object. The 
 ruse of the latter, as put into effect by Villeneuve, not only 
 deceived the British admiral, but, in its issue, confounded the 
 French. The critical moment of decision, for the whole fruit- 
 less campaign, was when Nelson determined to go first off 
 Messina, then to the Morea, and finally to Egypt upon the 
 inference that by this time one of three things must have hap- 
 pened. Either (1) he must have met the French fleet, person- 
 1 Author's italics. 
 
644 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 ally or by his lookouts, or (2) it had returned to Toulon, or 
 (3) it had gone on to Egypt. The first being eliminated, the 
 choice he made between the others, wide as was the flight for 
 which it called, was perfectly accurate. It is difficult to know 
 which most to admire, — the sagacity which divined the actual, 
 though not the intended, movements of the enemy, the fiery 
 eagerness which gave assurance of a fierce and decisive battle, 
 or the great self-restraint which, in all his fever of impatience, 
 withheld him from precipitating action before every means of 
 information was exhausted. There will be occasion to note 
 again the same traits in the yet sharper trial he was soon to 
 undergo. 
 
 His conclusion upon the whole matter, therefore, though 
 erroneous as to the fact, may be accepted as entirely justified 
 by all the indications ; and it must be added that, with the 
 dispositions he took, nothing could have saved the French fleet 
 but its prompt retreat to Toulon. " Had they not been crip- 
 pled," he wrote Davison, "nothing could have hindered our 
 meeting them on January 21st, off the south end of Sardinia." 
 "I have not the smallest doubt," he concluded his letter to the 
 Admiralty, ''but that the destination of the French armament 
 which left the coast of France on the 18th of January, was 
 Alexandria ; and, under all the circumstances which I have 
 stated, I trust their Lordships will approve my having gone to 
 Egypt in search of the French fleet." There was, however, 
 no occasion for him to be forward in suggesting the sacrifice 
 of himself, as he did to Melville. "At this moment of sorrow 
 I still feel that I have acted right. The result of my inquiries 
 at Coron and Alexandria confirm me in my former opinion ; 
 and therefore, my Lord, if my obstinacy or ignorance is so 
 gross, T should be the first to recommend your superseding me." 
 It may be noted here that Nelson never realized — he did not 
 live long enough to realize — how thoroughly Bonaparte had 
 learned from Egypt his lesson as to the control of the sea by 
 sea-power, and what it meant to a maritime expedition which 
 left it out of the account. To the end of his reign, and in the 
 height of his sway, he made no serious attempt to occupy Sar- 
 dinia or even Sicily, narrow as was the water separating the 
 latter from Naples, become practically a French state, over 
 which his brother and brother-in-law reigned for six years. 
 
VILLENEUVE STARTS AGAIN 645 
 
 Nelson to the last made light of the difficulties of which 
 Bonaparte had had bitter experience. " France," he wrote to 
 the Secretary for War, " will have both Sardinia and Sicily 
 very soon, if we do not prevent it, and Egypt besides." " We 
 know," he said in a letter to Ball, " there would be no difficulty 
 for single polaccas to sail from the shores of Italy with 300 or 
 400 men in each, (single ships ;) and that, in the northerly 
 winds, they would have a fair chance of not being seen, and 
 even if seen, not to be overtaken by the Russian ships. Thus, 
 20,000 men would be fixed again in Egypt, with the whole 
 people in their favour. Who would turn them out ? " 
 
 Nelson left the Gulf of Palmas as soon as the wind served, 
 which was on the 9th of March. It was necessary to revictual ; 
 but, as the time of the storeships' arrival was uncertain, he 
 thought best to make a round off Toulon and Barcelona, to 
 renew the impression of the French that his fleet was to the 
 westward. This intention he carried out, " showing myself," 
 to use his own words, "off Barcelona and the coast of Spain, 
 and the islands of Majorca and Minorca, until the 21st of 
 March." "I shall, if possible," he wrote to a captain on 
 detached service, '' make my appearance off Barcelona, in order 
 to induce the enemy to believe that I am fixed upon the coast 
 of Spain, when I have every reason to believe they will put to 
 sea, as I am told the troops are still embarked. From Barce- 
 lona I shall proceed direct to Rendezvous 98." ^ Accordingly, 
 on the 26th of March he anchored at Palmas, and began at once 
 to clear the transports. "By the report of the Fleet Captain, 
 I trust [it will be evident that] it could not with propriety be 
 longer deferred." Still satisfied that the French were bound 
 to Egypt, he would here be close to their necessary route, and 
 with a look-out ship thirty miles to the westward felt assured 
 they would not escape him. Four days after he anchored, 
 Villeneuve started on his second venture, and thinking, as 
 Nelson had plotted, that the British fleet was off Cape San 
 Sebastian, he again shaped his course to pass east of the 
 Balearics, between them and Sardinia. The news of his sail- 
 ing reached Nelson five days later, on April 4th, at 10 a. m. 
 He had left Palmas the morning before, and was then twenty 
 miles west of it, beating against a head wind. The weary 
 1 Apparently Gulf of Palmas. 
 
646 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 work of doubt, inference, and speculation was about to begin 
 once more, and to be protracted for over three months. 
 
 In the present gigantic combination of Napoleon, the Brest 
 squadron, as well as those of Rochefort and Toulon, was to go 
 to the West Indies, whence the three should return in mass to 
 the English Channel, to the number of thirty-five French 
 ships-of-the-line. To these it was hoped to add a number of 
 Spanish ships, from Cartagena and Cadiz. If the movements 
 were successful, this great force would overpower, or hold in 
 check, the British Channel Fleet, and secure control of the 
 Straits of Dover long enough for the army to cross. It is with 
 the Toulon squadron that we are immediately concerned, as 
 it alone for the present touches the fortunes of Nelson. 
 Villeneuve's orders were to make the best of his way to the 
 Straits of Gibraltar, evading the British fleet, but calling off 
 Cartagena, to pick up any Spanish ships there that might be 
 perfectly ready to join him. He was not, however, to delay 
 for them on any account, but to push on at once to Cadiz. 
 This port he was not to enter, but to anchor outside, and there 
 be joined by the " Aigle," the ship that had so long worried 
 Nelson, and also by six or eight Spanish ships believed to be 
 ready. As soon as these came out, he was to sail with all 
 speed for Martinique, and there wait forty days for the Brest 
 squadron, if the latter, whose admiral was to be commander- 
 in-chief of the allied fleets, did not appear sooner. Villeneuve 
 had other contingent instructions, which became inoperative 
 through the persistent pursuit of Nelson. 
 
 The French fleet sailed during the night of March 30, with 
 a light northeast wind, and steered a course approaching due 
 south, in accordance with Villeneuve's plan of going east of 
 Minorca. The British lookout frigates, '' Active " and " Phoebe," 
 saw it at eight o'clock the next morning, and kept company 
 with its slow progress till eight i\ m., when, being then sixty 
 miles south by west, true, from Toulon, the '^Phoebe" was 
 sent off to Nelson. During the day the wind shifted for a 
 time to the northwest. The French then hauled up to south- 
 west, and were heading so when darkness concealed them from 
 the British frigates, which were not near enough for night ol> 
 servations. After the ''Phcebe's" departure, the "Active" 
 continued to steer as the enemy had been doing when last 
 
STRATEGIC DECISIONS 647 
 
 seen, but at daybreak they were no longer in sight. Just 
 what Villeneuve did that night does not appear; but no vessel 
 of Nelson's knew anything more about him till April 18th, 
 when information was received from a chance passer that he 
 had been seen on the 7th off Cape de Gata, on the coast of 
 Spain, with a fresh easterly wind steering to the westward. 
 
 Villeneuve doubtless had used the night's breeze, which 
 was fresh, to fetch a long circuit, throw off the " Active," and 
 resume his course to the southward. It was not till next day, 
 April 1st, that he spoke a neutral, which had seen Nelson near 
 Palmas. Undeceived thus as to the British being off Cape 
 San Sebastian, and the wind having then come again easterly, 
 the French admiral kept away at once to the Avestward, passed 
 north of the Balearic Islands, and on the 6th appeared off 
 Cartagena. The Spanish ships there refusing to join him, he 
 pressed on, went by Gibraltar on the 8th, and on the 9th an- 
 chored off Cadiz, whence he drove away Orde's squadron. 
 The " Aigle," with six Spanish ships, joined at once, and that 
 night the combined force, eighteen ships-of-the-line, sailed 
 for Martinique, where it arrived on the ]4th of May. By 
 Villeneuve's instructions it was to remain in the West Indies 
 till the 2od of Juno. 
 
 When the captain of the '' Active " found he had lost sight 
 of the French, he kept away for Nelson's rendezvous, and 
 joined him at 2 p. m of April 4th, five or six hours after the 
 "Phoebe." Prepossessed with the opinion that Naples, Sicily, 
 or Egypt was the enemy's aim, an opinion which the frigate's 
 news tended to confirm. Nelson at once took the fleet midway 
 between Sardinia and the Barbary coast, spreading lookouts 
 on either side. Thus, without yielding ground to leeward, he 
 covered all avenues leading to the eastward. He summed up 
 his purpose in words which showed an entire grasp of the 
 essentials of his perplexing situation. " I shall neither go to 
 the eastward of Sicily, or to the westward of Sardinia, until 
 I know something positive." Amid the diverse objects de- 
 manding his care, this choice of the strategic position was 
 perfectly correct; but as day followed day without tidings, 
 the distress of uncertainty, and the strain of adhering to his 
 resolve not to move without information to guide him, be- 
 came almost unbearable — a condition not hard to be realized 
 
648 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 by those who have known, in suspense, the overpowering im- 
 pulse to do something, little matter what. It is an interest- 
 ing illustration of the administrative difficulties of the fleet, 
 that three supply-ships joined him on the 5th of April, and 
 their stores were transferred at sea while momentarily ex- 
 pecting the enemy's appearance ; one at least being com- 
 pletely discharged by the night of the 6th 
 
 On this date, Nelson, having waited forty-eight hours to 
 windward of Sicily, decided to fall back on Palermo ; reckon- 
 ing that if any attempt had been made upon Naples or Sicily, 
 he should there hear of it. The lookouts which were scattered 
 in all directions were ordered to join him there, and a frigate 
 was sent to Naples. On the 9th and 10th he was off Palerino, 
 and, though he got no word of the French, received two pieces 
 of news from which his quick perceptions jumped to the con- 
 clusion that he had been deceived, and that the enemy had 
 gone west. "April 10, 7 a.m. Hallowell is just arrived 
 from Palermo. He brings accounts that the great Expedition 
 is sailed,^ and that seven Russian sail-of-the-line are expected 
 in the Mediterranean; therefore I may suppose the French 
 fleet are bound to the westward. I must do my best. God 
 bless you. I am very, very miserable, but ever, my dear 
 Ball," etc. 
 
 A week more was to elapse before this dreadfully harassing 
 surmise was converted into a certainty. On the 9th he started 
 back from Palermo, intending to go towards Toulon, to make 
 sure that the French had not returned again. Meeting a con- 
 stant strong head wind, he was nine days getting again to the 
 south of Sardinia, a distance of less than two hundred miles. 
 There, on the 18th, the vessel was spoken which informed 
 him that she had seen the French off Cape de Gata, three 
 hundred miles to the westward, ten days before. "If this ac- 
 count is true," he wrote to Elliot, " much mischief may be 
 apprehended. It kills me, the very thought." Yet, now that 
 the call for decision sounds, he knows no faltering, nor does 
 he, as in hours of reaction, fret himself about the opinions of 
 others. "I am going out of the Mediterranean," he says in 
 farewell. " It may be thought that I have protected too well 
 Sardinia, Naples, Sicily, the Morea, and Egypt ; but I feel I 
 ^ Froni England, 
 
STRATEGIC REASONINGS 649 
 
 have done right, and am, therefore, easy about any fate which 
 may await me for having missed the French fleet." 
 
 The following day a vessel joined from Gibraltar, with 
 certain information that the enemy had passed the Straits. 
 Nelson had no need to ponder the next step. His resolve had 
 been taken long before to follow to the Antipodes. He com- 
 forted himself, mistakenly, that his watchfulness was the 
 cause that the French had abandoned the attempt against 
 Egypt in force. " Under the severe affliction which I feel at 
 the escape of the French fleet out of the Mediterranean," he 
 wrote the Admiralty, "I hope that their Lordships will not 
 impute it to any want of due attention on my part ; but, on 
 the contrary, that by my vigilance the enemy found it was im- 
 possible to undertake any exj)edition in the Mediterranean." 
 Mindful, also, that Bonaparte's great attempt of 1798 had 
 depended upon the absence of the British fleet, he left a 
 squadron of five frigates to cruise together to the windward 
 of Sicily, lest the French even now might tiy to send trans- 
 ports with troops to the eastward, under the protection of 
 small armed vessels. 
 
 The number of letters written on the 18th and 19th of April 
 show how thoroughly his mind was prepared for contingencies. 
 Despatched in all directions, they outline his own intended 
 course, for the information of those who might have to co- 
 operate, as well as that which he wished to be pursued by the 
 officers under his orders. They are issued neat and complete, 
 at one cast, and no other follows for a week. He surmises, 
 from the fact of the Spanish ships accompanying the move- 
 ment, that it is directed, not against the West ludies, but for 
 either Ireland or Brest ; not a bad ''guess," which is all he 
 would have claimed for it, for the West Indies were actually 
 only a rallying-point on the roundabout road to the Channel 
 prescribed by Napoleon. " Therefore," he wrote to the Ad- 
 miralty, " if I receive no intelligence to do away my present 
 belief, I shall proceed from Cape St. A'^ineent, and take my 
 position fifty leagues west from Scillj^, approaching that island 
 slowly, that I may not miss any vessels sent in search of the 
 squadron with orders. My reason for this position is, that it 
 is equally easy to get to either the fleet off Brest, or to go to 
 Ireland, should the fleet be wanted at either station." The 
 
050 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 suitableness of this position to any emergency arising about 
 the British Islands can be realized at a glance, bearing in 
 mind that westerly winds prevail there. A copy of the letter 
 was sent to Ireland, and another to the commander of the 
 Channel fleet off Brest. " I have the pleasure to say," he 
 concludes, " that I shall bring with me eleven as fine ships of 
 war, as ably commanded, and in as perfect order, and in health, 
 as ever went to sea." 
 
 It will be interesting to support even Nelson's opinion of 
 his own squadron by that of an unbiassed and competent wit- 
 ness. Sir Edward Codrington was associated with it, still 
 nearly entire, some three months later, after the return from 
 the West Indies; the "Orion," which he commanded, being 
 one of a detachment of eighteen ships-of-the-line sent off from 
 Brest by Admiral Cornwallis. '-'Lord Nelson's squadron 
 (of which we have now eight with us) seems to be in very 
 high order indeed ; and although their ships do not look so 
 handsome as objects, they look so very warlike and show 
 such high condition, that when once I can think Orion fit to 
 manoeuvre with them, I shall probably paint her in the same 
 manner." There was, it would seem, a Nelson pattern for 
 painting ships, as well as a "Nelson touch" in Orders for 
 Battle. "I have been employed this week past," wrote Cap- 
 tain Duff of the " Mars," "to paint the ship a la Nelson, which 
 most of the fleet are doing." This, according to the admiral's 
 biographers, was with two yellow streaks, but the portholes 
 black, which gave the sides an appearance of being chequered. 
 
 The frigate "Amazon," sent ahead with the letters, was 
 ordered to go on to Lisbon, get all the news she could, and 
 rejoin at Cape St. Vincent. She passed Gibraltar on the 
 29th, and, getting decisive information just outside the Straits, 
 held on there. It was not till the 6th that Nelson reached 
 Gibraltar, where he anchored for only four hours. This gain 
 of a week by a frigate, in traversing ground for which the 
 fleet took seventeen days, may well be borne in mind by those 
 unfamiliar with the delays attending concerted movements, 
 that have to be timed with reference to the slowest units 
 taking part in the combination. 
 
 The days of chase, over which we have hurried in a few 
 lines, passed for Nelson not only wearily, but in agony of 
 
 H 
 
THE UNCERTAINTIES OF PURSUIT 651 
 
 soul. Justified as his action was to his own mind, and as it 
 must be by the dispassionate review of military criticism, he 
 could not but be tormented by the thought of what might 
 have been, and by his temper, which lacked equanimity and 
 fretted uncontrollably to get alongside the enemy — to do the 
 duty and to reap the glory that he rightly conceived to be 
 his own. ''I am entirely adrift," he complained, "by my 
 frigates losing sight of the French fleet so soon after their 
 coming out of port." His purpose never faltered, nor did the 
 light that led him grow dim. His action left nothing to be 
 desired, but the chafing of his spirit approached fury. Lord 
 Eadstock, writing from London to his son, says : " I met a 
 person yesterday, who told me that he had seen a letter from 
 Lord Nelson, concluding in these words : ' French fleet, 
 French fleet, if I can but once get up with you, I '11 make you 
 pay dearly for all that you have made me suffer ! ' Another 
 told me that he had seen a letter from an ofiicer on board the 
 Victory, describing his chief 'as almost raving with anger 
 and vexation.' This," continues Radstock, who knew him 
 very well, " I can readily credit, so much so, indeed, that I 
 much fear that he will either undertake some desperate meas- 
 ure to retrieve his ground, or, should not such an opportunity 
 offer, that he will never suffer us to behold him more." 
 
 Being in London, the writer just quoted was in close touch 
 with the popular feeling of anxiety, a suspicion of which he 
 could well imagine Nelson also had, and which added to his 
 burden. "It is believed here," he says on the 21st of May, 
 "that the combined fleet from Cadiz is bound to the West 
 Indies. This is by no means improbable. . . . The City 
 people are crying out against Sir J. 0.,^ and, as usual, are 
 equally absurd and unjust. Some are so ridiculous as to say 
 that he ought to have captured some of the Toulon squadron, 
 whilst others, more moderate, think that he might at all 
 events, have so crippled the enemy as to have checked the 
 expedition.- You may readily guess that your chief is not 
 
 1 Sir John Orde. 
 
 ^ Oide's squadron never exceeded six sliips-of-tlit?-line, while Villeueuve's 
 numbered eleven without the Sjianiards. It will be seen further on that 
 Nelson blamed Orde for not keei)ing track of the enemy's movements, and 
 sending word to him at Gibraltar, and elsewhere, of the direction taken. As 
 
652 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 out of our thoughts at this critical moment. Should Provi- 
 dence once more favour him, he will be considered our guar- 
 dian angel ; but, on the other hand, should he unfortunately 
 take a wrong scent, and the Toulon fleet attain their object, 
 the hero of the 14th of February and of Aboukir will be — 
 I will not say what, but the ingratitude of the world is but 
 too well known on these occasions." 
 
 A week before, on the 13th of May, the same officer had 
 written : "Where are you all this time ?^ for that is a point 
 justly agitating the whole country more than I can describe. 
 I fear that your gallant and worthy chief will have much 
 injustice done him on this occasion, for the cry is stirring 
 up fast against him, and the loss of Jamaica would at once 
 sink all his past services into oblivion. All I know for certain 
 is that we ought never to judge rashly on these occasions, and 
 never merely by the result. Lord Barham ^ told me this morn- 
 ing that the Board had no tidings of your squadron. This is 
 truly melancholy, for certainly no man's zeal and activity 
 ever surpassed those of your chief. . . . The world is at once 
 anxious for news and dreading its arrival." The Admiralty 
 itself, perplexed and harassed by the hazards of the situation, 
 were dissatisfied because they received no word from him, 
 being ignorant of the weather conditions which had retarded 
 even his frigates so far beyond the time of Villeneuve's arrival 
 at Cadiz. Radstock, whose rank enabled him to see much of 
 the members of the Board, drew shrewd inferences as to their 
 feelings, though mistaken as to Nelson's action. " I fear 
 that he has been so much soured by the appointment of Sir 
 John Orde, that he has had the imprudence to vent his spleen 
 on the Admiralty by a long, and, to the Board, painful silence. 
 I am sure that they are out of humour with him, and I have 
 
 far as the author's information goes, he agrees with this censure. To fight 
 eleven ships with six coidd only be justified by extreme circumstances ; but 
 to lose sight of them in spring weather infers even worse judgment than fight- 
 ing would. It was of the first importance to learn the destination of so large 
 a body, considering that the interests of Great Britain were threatened in 
 directions so diverse as the Channel, the P]ast Indies, and the West Indies. 
 
 ^ Lord Radstoclc's son had been transferred before this from the "Vic- 
 tory" to the " Hydra ;" but his father did not yet know the fact, and sup- 
 posed him with Nelson. 
 
 2 First Lord of the Admiralty, who had very lately succeeded Melville. 
 
DISTRESS AND UNCERTAINTIES 653 
 
 my doubts whether they would risk much for him, were he 
 to meet with any serious misfortune." 
 
 Through such difficulties in front, and such clamor in the 
 rear, Nelson pursued his steadfast way, in anguish of spirit, 
 but constant still in mind. '•' I am not made to despair," he 
 said to Melville, " what man can do shall be done. I have 
 marked out for myself a decided line of conduct, and I shall 
 follow it well up ; although I have now before me a letter 
 from the physician of the fleet, enforcing my return to Eng- 
 land before the hot months." " Broken-hearted as I am, at 
 the escape of the Toulon fleet," he tells the governor of 
 Gibraltar, '^ yet it cannot prevent my thinking of all the 
 points intrusted to my care, amongst which Gibraltar stands 
 prominent." " My good fortune seems flown away," he cries 
 out to Ball. "I cannot get a fair wind, or even a side wind. 
 Dead foul ! — dead foul ! But my mind is fully made up what 
 to do when I leave the Straits, supposing there is no certain 
 information of the enemy's destination. I believe this ill- 
 luck will go near to kill me ; but as these are times for exer- 
 tions, I must not be cast down, whatever I feel." A week 
 later, on the 26th of April, he complains : " From the 9th I 
 have been using every effort to get down the Mediterranean, 
 but to this day we are very little advanced. From March 
 26th, we have had nothing like a Levanter,^ except for the 
 French fleet. I have never been one Aveek without one, 
 until this very important moment. It has half killed me ; 
 but fretting is of no use." On the 1st of May he wrote to 
 the Admiralty, " I have as yet heard nothing of the enemy ; " 
 beyond, of course, the fact of their having passed the Straits. 
 
 On the 4th of May the squadron was off Tetuan, on the 
 African coast, a little east of Gibraltar, and, as the wind was 
 too foul for progress, Nelson, ever watchful over supplies, 
 determined to stop for water and fresh beef, which the place 
 afforded. There he was joined by the frigate " Decade " from 
 Gibraltar, and for the first time, apparently, received a rumor 
 that the allied fleets had gone to the West Indies. He com- 
 plains, certainly not unreasonably, and apparently not un- 
 justly, that Sir John Orde, who had seen the French arrive 
 off Cadiz, had not dogged their track and ascertained their 
 ^ An east wind. 
 
654 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 route ; a feat certainly not beyond British seamanship and 
 daring, under the management of a dozen men that could be 
 named off-hand. " I believe my ill luck is to go on for a 
 longer time, and I now much fear that Sir John Orde has not 
 sent his small ships to watch the enemy's fleet, and ordered 
 them to return to the Straits mouth, to give me information, 
 that I might know how to direct my proceedings : for I can- 
 not very properly run to the West Indies, without something 
 beyond mere surmise ; and if I defer my departure, Jamaica 
 may be lost. Indeed, as they have a month's start of me, I 
 see no prospect of getting out time enough to prevent much 
 mischief from being done. However, I shall take all matters 
 into my most serious consideration, and shall do that which 
 seemeth best under all circumstances." " I am like to have 
 a West India trip," he wrote to Keats, one of his favorite 
 captains ; "but that I don't mind, if I can but get at them." 
 
 The wind hauling somewhat to the southward on the 5th, 
 allowed the fleet to lay a course for Gibraltar. The operation 
 of getting bullocks was stopped at once, and the ships weighed. 
 In this brief stay, the water of the fleet had been completed 
 and another transport cleared. Next day Gibraltar Avas 
 reached. The wind, westerly still, though fair for this stretch, 
 remained foul for beating out of the Straits against a current 
 which ever sets to the eastward ; and many of the oflicers, 
 presuming on a continuance of the weather that had so long 
 baffled them, hurried their washing ashore. Nelson, however, 
 keenly vigilant and with long experience, saw indications of a 
 change. '• Off went a gun from the Victory, and up went the 
 Blue Peter,^ whilst the Admiral paced the deck in a hurry, 
 Avith anxious steps, and impatient of a moment's delay. The 
 officers said, ' Here is one of Nelson's mad pranks.' But he 
 was right." '^ The wind came fair, a condition with which the 
 great admiral never trifled. Five hours after the anchors 
 dropped they were again at the bows, and the fleet at last 
 standing out of the Mediterranean ; the transj^orts in tow of 
 the ships of war. Nelson's resolve Avas fast forming to go to 
 the West Indies. In fact, at Tetuan, acting upon this possi- 
 bility, he had given conditional orders to Bickerton to remain 
 
 1 The signal flag for a vessel about to sail. 
 
 2 Life of the Rev. A. J. Scott, p. 171. 
 
DECIDES TO CHASE TO THE WEST INDIES 655 
 
 in commaiul of the Mediterranean squadron, assigning to that 
 service half a dozen frigates and double that number of smaller 
 cruisers, and had transferred to him all station papers neces- 
 sary for his guidance, — a promptness of decision which suffi- 
 ciently shows one of the chief secrets of his greatness. "If I 
 fail," said he to Dr. Scott, " if they are not gone to the West 
 Indies, I shall be blamed : to be burnt in effigy or West- 
 minster Abbey is my alternative." Evidently he was not 
 unmindful of the fickle breath of popular favor, whose fluc- 
 tuations Radstock was noting. Dr. Scott, who Avitnessed his 
 chief's bearing at this time, always considered that he never 
 exhibited gi-eater magnanimity than in this resolution, which 
 Jurien de la Graviere also has called one of his finest in- 
 spirations. 
 
 Great, indeed, was his promptitude, alike in decision and in 
 act; but he was no less great in his delays, in the curb he 
 placed on his natural impetuosity. " God only knows, my 
 dear friend," he wrote at this moment to Davison, "what I 
 have suffered by not getting at the enemy's fleet ; " but, in all 
 his impatience, he would not start on that long voyage until 
 he had exhausted every possibility of further enlightenment. 
 " Perseverance and patience," he said, " may do much ; " but 
 he did not separate the one from the other, in deed or in word. 
 Circumspection was in him as marked a trait as ardor. " I 
 was in great hopes," he wrote the Admiralty, " that some of 
 Sir John Orde's frigates would have arrived at Gibraltar, from 
 watching the destination of the enemy, from whom I should 
 have derived information of the route the enemy had taken, 
 but none had arrived." Up to April 27th nothing had been 
 heard of them at Lisbon. " I am now pushing off Cape St. 
 Vincent, and hope that is the station to which Sir John Orde 
 may have directed his frigates to return from watching the 
 route of the enemy. If nothing is heard there, I shall prob- 
 ably think the rumours which are spread are true, that their 
 destination is the West Indies, and in that case think it my 
 duty to follow them." " I am as much in the dark as ever," 
 he wrote on the same date. May 7th, to Nepean, one of the 
 puisne lords. " If I hear nothing, I shall proceed to the 
 West Indies," 
 
 The wind continued fair for nearly forty-eight hours, when 
 
656 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 it again became westerly ; but the fleet was now in the 
 Atlantic. On the 9th of May the "Amazon" rejoined, bring- 
 ing a letter from another ship of war, which enclosed a report 
 gathered from an American brig that had left Cadiz on the 
 2d. According to this, while there were in Cadiz diverse 
 rumors as to the destination of the allied fleets, the one most 
 generally accepted Avas that they were bound to the West 
 Indies. That night the fleet anchored in Lagos Bay, to the 
 eastward of Cape St. Viiicent, and the unending work of dis- 
 charging transports Avas again resumed. Nelson, shortly 
 before leaving Gibraltar, had received official notification that 
 a convoy carrying five thousand troops was on its way to the 
 Mediterranean, and would depend upon him for protection. 
 He felt it necessary to await this in his present position, and 
 he utilized the time by preparing for a very long chase. 
 
 At Lagos, Eear-Admiral Campbell of the Portuguese Navy, 
 who had served Avith the British in the Mediterranean six 
 years before, visited the '' Victory," and certain intelligence 
 that A^'illeneuve Avas gone to the West Indies Avas by him 
 given to Nelson. The latter had noAV all the confirmation 
 needed, by such an one as he, to decide upon his line of 
 action. " My lot is cast, my dear Ball, and I am going to the 
 West Indies, where, although I am late, yet chance may have 
 given them a bad passage, and me a good one : I must hope 
 the best." "Disappointment has worn me to a skeleton," 
 he Avrites to his late junior in the Mediterranean, Campbell, 
 "and I am in good truth, very, very far from Avell." "If T 
 had not been in pursuit of the enemy's fleet, I should have 
 been at this moment in England, but my health, or even my 
 life, must not come into consideration at this important crisis ; 
 for, however I may be called unfortunate, it never shall be 
 said that I have been neglectful of my duty, or spared myself." 
 "It Avill not be supposed I am on a party of pleasure," he 
 Avrote to the Secretary of the Admiralty, "running after 
 eighteen sail of the line Avith ten, and that to the West In- 
 dies ; " but, he summed up his feelings to Davison, "Salt 
 beef and the French fleet, is far preferable to roast beef and 
 champagne without them." 
 
 On the 10th of May only Avas his purpose finally and abso- 
 lutely formed, for on that day he sent a sloop to Barbadoes, 
 
PASSAGE TO BARBADOES 657 
 
 his intended point of arrival, to announce his coming ; request- 
 ing that an embargo might be laid at once on all vessels in 
 port, to prevent the news reaching the enemy at Martinique 
 or elsewhere. In the morning of the 11th the fleet weighed, 
 and at 4 p. m. the expedition from England arrived. It was 
 accompanied by two ships-of-the-line, to which Nelson joined 
 a third, the " Royal Sovereign," which sailed so badly, fi'om 
 the state of her bottom, that she would retard a movement 
 already too long delayed. At seven that evening the fleet was 
 under full sail for the West Indies. 
 
 The voyage across was uneventful ; the ships, as customary 
 for this passage, stood to the southward and westward into the 
 trade winds, under whose steady impulse they advanced at a 
 daily average speed of one hundred and thirty-five miles, or 
 between five and six miles an hour. This rate, however, was 
 a mean between considerable extremes, — a rate of nine miles 
 being at times attained. The slackest Avinds, which brought 
 down the average, are found before reaching the trades, and 
 Nelson utilized this period to transmit to the fleet his general 
 plan for action, in case he found the allies at sea. The manner 
 in which this was conveyed to the individual ships is an 
 interesting incident. The speed of the fleet is necessarily that 
 of its slowest member ; the faster ships, therefore, have con- 
 tinually a reserve, which they may at any moment bring into 
 play. The orders being prepared, a frigate captain was 
 called on board the " Victory " and received them. Return- 
 ing to his own vessel, he made all sail until on the bow ^ of 
 one of the ships-of-the-line. Deadening the way of the frigate, 
 a boat was dropped in the water and had only to pull along- 
 side the other vessel as it came up. The frigate remained 
 slowed until passed, and the boat, having delivered its letter, 
 came easily alongside again, — the whole operation being thus 
 conducted with the least expenditure of time and exertion.^ 
 
 There was in the fleet one ship that had been steadily in 
 commission since 1801, and was now in very shaky condition. 
 This was the " Superb," seventy-four. She had only been 
 kept out by the extreme exertions of her commander, Keats, 
 one of the most distinguished captains of the day, and, he had 
 
 ^ Ahead, but a little to one side. 
 2 Phillimore's Last of Nelson's Captains. 
 42 
 
658 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 entreated that he shoukl not be sent away now, when the 
 moment of battle seemed near. By a singular irony of fate, 
 this zealous insistence caused him to miss Trafalgar, at which 
 the "E-oyal Sovereign," that parted at Lagos, Avas present, 
 repaired and recoj^pered, — a new ship. Keats, whose energy 
 and readiness made him a great favorite with Nelson, obtained 
 permission not to stop when other ships did, but always to 
 carry a press of sail ; and he lashed his studdingsail booms to 
 the yards, as the constant direction of the trade-winds allows 
 them to be carried steadily. Notwithstanding all that could 
 be done, the " Superb " seems to have set the pace, and slower 
 than could have been wished ; which drew from Nelson's cus- 
 tomary kindly thoughtfulness a few lines too characteristic to 
 be omitted. 
 
 My dear Keats, — I am fearful that you may think that the 
 Superb does not go so fast as I could wish. However that may be, 
 (for if we all went ten knots, I should not think it fast enough,) yet 
 I would have you be assured that I know and feel that the Superb 
 does all which is possible for a ship to accomplish ; and I desire that 
 you will not fret upon the occasion. . . . Whatever may happen, 
 believe me ever, my dear Keats, your most obliged and sincei-e" friend. 
 
 Nelson and Bronte. 
 
 A week seems to have elapsed before he could get a suitable 
 opportunity for sending this, and he then, on the 27th of May, 
 added : " Our passage, although not very quick, has been far 
 from a bad one ; " and he thought that they would gain four- 
 teen days upon the allies. The actual gain was ten, the latter 
 being thirty-four days from Cadiz to Martinique, the British 
 twenty-four to Barbadoes. The enemy were therefore three 
 weeks in the West Indies before Nelson arrived; but in that 
 time they neither accomplished nor undertook anything but 
 the recapture of Diamond Rock, a precipitous islet off the 
 south end of Martinique, which the British had held for some 
 time, to the great annoyance of the main island. 
 
 Reaching Barbadoes on the afternoon of June 4th, Nelson 
 found that the day before information had been received from 
 General Brereton, commanding the troops at Santa Lucia, that 
 the allied fleets had passed there, going south, during the 
 night of May 28-29. The intelligence was so circumstantial 
 
MISLED BY FALSE INFORMATION 659 
 
 that it compelled respect, coming from the quarter it did. 
 "There is not a doubt in any of the Admirals' or Generals' 
 minds," wrote Nelson to the Admiralty, in the despatch 
 announcing his arrival, " but that Tobago and Trinidada are 
 the enemy's objects." Nelson himself was sceptical, — the 
 improbability seemed great to his sound military perceptions; 
 but, confident as he Avas in his own conclusions in dilemmas, 
 his mind was too sane and well balanced to refuse direct and 
 credible evidence. Summing up the situation with lamenta- 
 tions, six weeks later, he said to Davison : " When I follow 
 my own head, I am, in general, much more correct in my 
 judgment, than following the opinion of others. I re- 
 sisted the opinion of General Brereton's information till it 
 would have been the height of presumption to have carried 
 my disbelief further. I could not, in the face of generals 
 and admirals, go N. W., when it was ajjparently clear that 
 the enemy had gone south." His purpose had been not to 
 anchor, but to pick up such ships-of-the-line as he found 
 there, — two seventy-fours,^ as it turned out, — and to proceed 
 with them to Martinique, which he naturally assumed to be 
 the enemy's headquarters. As it was, receiving a pressing 
 request from the commanding general at Barbadoes to let him 
 accompany the fleet with two thousand troops, he anchored in 
 Carlisle Bay at 5 p. m. At half-past nine the next morning he 
 was again under way for Trinidad, Some curious misunder- 
 standings maintained this mistaken impression as to the 
 enemy's actions, until communication with Trinidad was had 
 on the evening of June 7th. It was found then that no hostile 
 force liad appeared, although the British fleet for a moment 
 had been believed to be such. 
 
 Nelson at once started north again. A report reached him 
 that a second squadron, of fourteen French and Spanish ships 
 from Ferrol, had arrived at Martinique. He said frankly that 
 he thought this very doubtful, but added proudly : " Powerful 
 as their force may be, they shall not with impunity make any 
 great attacks. Mine is compact, theirs must be unwieldy, and 
 although a very pretty fiddle, I don't believe that either 
 Gravina or Villeneuve know how to play upon it." On the 
 9th he for the first time got accurate information. An official 
 
 1 The "Nottliuiiiberland " and the " Spartiate." 
 
660 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 letter from Dominica ^ announced that eighteen ships-of-the- 
 line, Avith smaller vessels, had passed there on the 6th of 
 . June. But for the false tidings which on the 4th had led 
 him, first to pause, and then to take a wrong direction, Nelson 
 argued, and not unjustly, that he would have overtaken them 
 at this point, a bare hundred miles from Barbadoes, ."But 
 for wrong information, I should have fought the battle on 
 June 6th where Rodney fought his." The famous victory of 
 the latter was immediately north of Dominica, by which name 
 it is known in French naval history. "There would have 
 been no occasion for opinions," wrote Nelson wrathf ully, as he 
 thought of his long anxieties, and the narrow margin by which 
 he failed, " had not General Brereton sent his damned intelli- 
 gence from St. Lucia ; nor would I have received it to have 
 acted by it, but that I was assured that his information was 
 very correct. It has almost broke my heart, but I must not 
 despair." It was hard to have borne so much, and then to 
 miss success from such a cause. " Brereton's wrong informa- 
 tion could not be doubted," he told his intimates, " and by 
 following it, I lost the opportunity of fighting the enemy." 
 " What a race I have run after these fellows ; but God is just, 
 and I may be repaid for all my moments of anxiety." 
 
 When Villeneuve, with his ill-trained and sickly ^ fleet, left 
 Martinique on the 4th of June, he had, of course, no knowl- 
 edge of Nelson's approach. Nearly up to that date it was not 
 known, even in London, where the latter had gone. A frigate 
 had reached the French admiral on the 29th of May, with 
 orders from Napoleon to make some attempts against the 
 British islands during the time he was awaiting the Brest 
 squadron. For this reason he sailed, and just outside the 
 harbor was joined by two ships from France, raising his force 
 to twenty of the line. He steered north, intending to gain to 
 windward, and thence return upon Barbadoes, his first pro- 
 posed conquest. On the 8th of June, off Antigua, were cap- 
 tured fourteen British merchant-ships, which had imprudently 
 put to sea from that island. From these Villeneuve got a 
 report that Nelson had arrived with fourteen ships-of-the-line, 
 
 ^ The island immediately north of Martinique. 
 
 2 "The French and Spaniards landed 1,000 sick when they arrived at Mar- 
 tinico, and buried full that number during their stay." Nicolas, vol. vi. p. 480. 
 
DECISION TO RETURN TO EUROPE 661 
 
 to which his imagination added five he believed to be at Bar- 
 badoes. He decided at once to return to Europe, abandoning 
 all his projects against the British possessions. Transferring 
 hastily a number of troops to frigates, as garrisons for the 
 French islands, he sailed the next day for the northward to 
 gain the westerly winds which prevail in the higher latitudes. 
 Of the forty days he was to remain in the West Indies — re- 
 duced to thirty -five by subsequent instructions — only twenty- 
 six had passed. Whatever else might result in the future, 
 Nelson was justified in claiming that his pursuit, effected 
 under such discouragements, had driven the enemy out of the 
 West Indies, saved the islands, and, as he added, two hundred 
 sail of sugar ships. Only extreme imprudence, he fairly 
 maintained, was responsible for the loss of the fourteen from 
 Antigua. 
 
 Nelson himself was off Antigua on the 12th of June, exactly 
 one week after he left Barbadoes. There he received all the 
 information that has just been mentioned as to the enemy's 
 movements. A rapid decision was necessary, if he might hope 
 yet to overtake his fortune, and to baffle finally the objects of 
 the allies, whatever they might be. '' I must be satisfied they 
 have bent their course for Europe before I push after them, 
 which will be to the Straits' mouth ; " but later in the same 
 day he has learned that they were standing to the northward 
 when lasb seen, and had sent back their troops to Guadaloupe, 
 therefore, "I hope to sail in the morning after them for the 
 Straits' mouth." That night the troops were landed, and a 
 brig of war, the " Curieux," was despatched to England with 
 word of his intentions. At the same time, while believing 
 the allies were bound back to the Mediterranean, he recognized 
 that it was possible they might be going farther north, to one 
 of the Biscay ports, and consequently took measures to notify 
 the commanding officer ofE Eerrolto be on his guard. The frigate 
 charged with this communication was kept with the fleet until 
 the 19th, by which time he had obtained at sea additional and 
 more precise knowledge of Villeneuve's direction. This im- 
 portant warning was duly received, and in advance of the 
 enemy's appearance, by the admiral for whom it was intended. 
 
 In taking this second decision, to abandon the West Indies 
 once more to themselves, as a month before he had abandoned 
 
662 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 the Mediterranean, Nelson had to rely only upon his own 
 natural sagacity and practised judgment. "I hear all, and 
 even feel obliged, for all is meant as kindness to me, that I 
 should get at them. In this diversity of opinions I may as 
 well follow my own, which is, that the Spaniards are gone to 
 the Havannah, and that the French will either stand for Cadiz 
 or Toulon — I feel most inclined to the latter place ; and then 
 they may fancy that they will get to Egypt without any inter- 
 ruption." " So far from being infallible, like the Pope, I believe 
 my opinions to be ver}^ fallible, and therefore I may be mis- 
 taken that the enemy's fleet has gone to Europe ; but I cannot 
 bring myself to think otherwise, notwithstanding the variety 
 of opinions which, different people of good judgment form." 
 
 Still, as before, his judgments, if rapid, are not precipitate. 
 Though characterized by even more of insight than of reason- 
 ing, no conditions are left out of sight, nor, as he declared, 
 ■was a deaf ear turned to any suggestion. Upon the whole, 
 one is more struck by the accuracy of the inferences than by 
 the antecedent processes as summarized by himself ; yet the 
 weight of evidence will be found on the side he espouses. 
 Erroneous in particulars, the general conclusions upon which 
 he bases his future course are justified, not only by the results 
 now known to us, but to impartial review of their probability 
 at the moment. Most impressive of all, however, is the 
 strength of conviction, which lifts him from the plane of 
 doubt, where unaided reason alone would leave him, to that of 
 unhesitating action, incapable of looking backward. In the 
 most complete presentation of all his views, the one he wished 
 brought before the Prime Minister, if his conduct on this 
 momentous occasion were called in question, he ends thus : 
 '' My opinion is firm as a rock, that some cause, orders, or 
 inahility to perform any service in these seas, has made them 
 resolve to proceed direct for Europe, sending the Spanish ships 
 to the Havannah." It is such conviction, in which opinion 
 rather possesses a man than is possessed by him, that exalts 
 genius above talent, and imbues faith with a power which 
 reason has not in her gift. 
 
 There were among his conclusions certain ones which placed 
 Nelson's mind, however fretted by disappointment, at ease 
 concerning any futxire harm the enemy might be able to do. 
 
HIS MILITARY RPiASONINGS 663 
 
 Another wreath of hiurel, which seemed almost within his 
 grasp, liad indeed evaded liim, and no man felt more keenly 
 such a loss ; but he was reasonably sure that, if Villeneuve 
 were gone to Europe, he could not outstrip pursuit by long 
 enough to do much harm. The harassing fear, which he had 
 borne through the long beat down the Mediterranean and the 
 retarded voyage to Martinique, had now disappeared. Going 
 out he had gained ten days upon the allies ; they had only five 
 days' start of him in the return. He recognized, moreover, 
 tlie great significance of their inactivity during the three weeks 
 they had the Windward Islands, if not all the West Indies, 
 defenceless before them. " If they were not able to make an 
 attack for three weeks after their arrival, they could not hope 
 for greater success after our means of resistance increased, and 
 their means of offence were diminished." If this considera- 
 tion, on the one hand, showed the improbability of their pro- 
 ceeding against Jamaica, after Nelson's coming, when they 
 had not ventured before, it gave also an inkling of their prob- 
 able efficiency for immediate action in Europe. " They will 
 not give me credit for quitting the W^est Indies for a month to 
 come;" therefore it was unlikely that they would thi«k it 
 necessary to proceed at once upon their next enterprise, after 
 reaching port. "I must not despair of getting up with them 
 before they enter the Straits," he writes Elliot. "At least, 
 they will have no time to carry any of their future plans into 
 execution, and do harm to any of the countries under my 
 charge." If his thirst for glory was unslaked, his fears of 
 disaster had disappeared. 
 
 Villeneuve, guided by instructions recently received from 
 Napoleon, to meet the case of the Brest squadron uot getting 
 away, had gone actually for Ferrol, where he was to join a 
 squadron of five French and nine Spanish ships, which would 
 raise his own force to thirty-four of the line ; but Nelson, 
 unable to know this, argued correctly that, in the uncertainty, 
 he must leave this chance to the Biscay ships, and that for 
 himself the Mediterranean possessed the first claim. At noon 
 of June loth, nine days after reaching Barbadoes, he got 
 away from Antigua. The necessity for gaining the westerly 
 winds made his course for some time the same as that of 
 Villeneuve, and left him not without hopes that he might yet 
 
664 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 fall in with the allies, especially if, as he thoiight, they were 
 destined to the Straits. On the 17th an American schooner 
 was spoken, which had seen the combined squadron two days be- 
 fore, steering also to the northward. This report, wrote Nelson 
 to the Admiralty, " can leave me no room to doubt but that I am 
 hard upon the heels of the enemy's fleet-. I think we cannot 
 be more than eighty leagues from them at this moment, and 
 by carrying every sail, and using my utmost efforts, I shall 
 hope to close with them before they get to either Cadiz or 
 Toulon." The news was sent ahead by two vessels, which 
 parted from the fleet on the 19th of June, — one for Gibraltar, 
 with despatches and letters for the admiral and ministers in 
 the Mediterranean ; one for Lisbon, whence this important 
 intelligence would be forwarded to England and to the com- 
 manding officer off Ferrol. Still believing them bound for 
 the Straits, Nelson expressed in the fleet the opinion that they 
 would keep well to the southward of the Azores, so as not to 
 be seen by British cruisers centred there. In this he was 
 mistaken, as he was in their final destination ; both fleets 
 sighted the islands, — the French on the 30th of June to the 
 northward of the group, while the British passed through it on 
 the 8th of July. He admitted, however, that he was doubt- 
 ful in the matter. " It is very uncertain whether they will go 
 to Ferrol or Cadiz ; " and nothing can indicate more clearly his 
 perplexity, and his sense of the urgency of the case, than his 
 parting on the same day with two of the four small cruisers 
 he had with him, in order to insure that Ferrol as well as 
 Gibraltar should have prompt warning. 
 
 It was at about this time that Nelson expressed, to one or 
 more of his captains, his views as to what he had so far 
 effected, what he had proposed to do if he had met the hostile 
 fleets, and what his future course would be if they were yet 
 found. " I am thankful that the enemy have been driven 
 from the West India Islands with so little loss to our Country. 
 I had made up my mind to great sacrifices; for I had deter- 
 mined, notwithstanding his vast superiority, to stop his career, 
 and to put it out of his power to do any further mischief. Yet 
 do not imagine I am one of those hot brained people, who 
 fight at an immense disadvantage, without an adequate object} 
 1 Author's italics. 
 
HIS MILITARY REASONINGS 665 
 
 My object is partly gained," that is, the allies had been forced 
 out of the West Indies. " If we meet them, we shall find them 
 not less than eighteen, I rather think twenty sail of the line, 
 and therefore do not be surprised if I should not fall on them 
 immediately : ive won't jpart witliout a battle} I think they 
 will be glad to leave me alone, if I will let them alone ; 
 which I will do, either till we approach, the shores of Europe, 
 or they give me an advantage too tempting to be resisted." 
 
 It is rare to find so much sagacious appreciation of con- 
 ditions, combined with so much exalted resolution and sound 
 discretion, as in this compact utterance. Among the external 
 interests of Great Britain, the West Indies were the greatest. 
 They were critically threatened by the force he was pursuing ; 
 therefore at all costs that force should be so disabled, that it 
 could do nothing effective against the defences with which the 
 scattered islands were provided. For this end he was prepared 
 to risk the destruction of his squadron. The West Indies 
 were now delivered ; but the enemy's force remained, and 
 other British interests. Three mouths before, he had said, " I 
 had rather see half my squadron burnt than risk what the 
 French fleet may do in the Mediterranean." In the same 
 spirit he now repeats : " Though we are but eleven to eigh- 
 teen or twenty, we won't part without a battle." Why 
 fight such odds ? He himself has told us a little later. " By 
 the time the enemy has beat our fleet soundly, they will do us 
 no harm this year." Granting this conclusion, — the reason- 
 ableness of which was substantiated at Trafalgar, — it cannot 
 be denied that the sacrifice would be justified, the enemy's 
 combinations being disconcerted. Yet there shall be no head- 
 long, reckless attack. "I will leave them alone till they offer 
 me an opportunity too tempting to be resisted," — that speaks 
 for itself, — or, " until we approach the shores of Europe," 
 when the matter can no longer be deferred, and the twenty 
 ships must be taken out of Napoleon's hosts, even though 
 eleven be destroyed to effect this. The preparedness of mind 
 is to be noted, and yet more the firmness of the conviction, in 
 the strength of which alone such deeds are done. It is the 
 man of faith who is ever the man of works. 
 
 Singularly enough, his plans were quickly to receive the 
 1 Author's italics. 
 
THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 best of illustrations by the failure of contrary methods. 
 Scarcely a month later fifteen British ships, under another 
 admiral, met these twenty, which Nelson, with eleven now 
 sought in vain. They did not part without a battle, but they 
 did part without a decisive battle ; they were not kept in 
 sight afterwards; they joined and were incorporated with 
 Napoleon's great armada ; they had further wide opportuni- 
 ties of mischief ; and there followed for the people of Great 
 Britain a period of bitter suspense and wide-spread panic. 
 " What a game had Villeneuve to play ! " said Napoleon of 
 those moments. " Does not the thought of the possibilities 
 remaining to Villeneuve," wrote Lord Radstock of Calder's 
 fruitless battle, " make your blood boil whe.nyou reflect on the 
 never to be forgotten 22d of July ? Notwithstanding the 
 inferiority of Lord Nelson's numbers," he says at the same 
 time, with keen appreciation of the man he knew so well, 
 " should he be so lucky as to fall in with the enemy, I have no 
 doubt that he ivould never quit them ^ until he should have 
 destroyed or taken some of the French ships ; and that he 
 himself would seek the French admiral's ship, if possible, I 
 would pledge my life on it." " There is such an universal 
 bustle and cry about invasion, that no other subject will be 
 listened to at present by those in power. I found London 
 almost a desert, and no good news stirring to animate it ; on 
 the contrary, the few faces I saw at the Admii-alty at once 
 confirmed the truth of the report of the combined squadron 
 having safely arrived at Ferrol." This was after Calder had 
 met and fought them, and let them get out of his sight. 
 
 Lord Minto, speaking of the same crisis, says : " There has 
 been the greatest alarm ever known in the city of London, 
 since the combined fleet [Villeneuve 's] sailed from Ferrol. 
 If they had captured our homeward-bound convoys, it is said 
 the India Company and half the city must have been bank- 
 rupt." These gleams of the feelings of the times, reflected 
 by two men in close contact with the popular apprehensions, 
 show what Nelson was among British admirals to the men of 
 his day, and why he was so. "Great and important as the 
 victory is," wrote Minto, three months later, after the ncAVS 
 of Trafalgar, " it is bought too dearly, even for our interest, 
 ^ Author's italics. 
 
DEPRESSION AND PERSEVERANCE 667 
 
 by the death of Nelson. We shall want more victories yet, 
 and to whom can we look for them ? The navy is certainly 
 full of the bravest men, but they are mostly below the rank 
 of admiral ; and brave as they almost all are, there was a sort 
 of heroic cast about Nelson that I never saw in any other 
 man, and which seems wanting to the achievement of imjoossi- 
 hle things which became easy to him, and on which the main- 
 tenance of our superiority at sea seems to depend against the 
 growing navy of tlie enemy." " The clamour against poor 
 Sir Kobert Calder is gaining ground daily," wrote Eadstock, 
 condemnatory yet pitiful towards the admiral who had failed 
 duly to utilize the opportunity Nelson then was seeking in 
 vain, ''and there is a general cry against him from all quar- 
 ters. Thus much one may venture to say, that had your old 
 chief commanded our squadron, the enemy would have had but 
 little room for lying or vapouring, as I have not a shadow 
 of a doubt but that he would either have taken or destroyed 
 the French admiral." 
 
 But there was but one Nelson, and he meantime, faint yet 
 pursuing, toiled fruitlessly on, bearing still the sickness of 
 hope deferred and suspense protracted. "Midnight," he 
 notes in his private diary of June 21st. " Nearly calm, saw 
 three planks which I think came from the French fleet. Very 
 miserable, which is very foolish." "We crawled thirty-three 
 miles the last twenty-four hours," he enters on the 8th of 
 July. " My only hope is, that the enemy's fleet are near us, 
 and in the same situation. All night light breezes, standing 
 to the eastward, to go to the northward of St. Michael's.-^ 
 At times squally with rain." Amid these unavoidable delays, 
 he was forecasting and preparing that no time should be lost 
 when he reached the Straits and once more came within tlie 
 range of intelligence. The light winds, when boats could pass 
 without retarding the ships, were utilized in preparing let- 
 ters to the officials at Gibraltar and Tangiers, to have ready 
 the stores necessary for the fleet upon arrival. These papers 
 were already on board the two frigates remaining with him, 
 with the necessary instructions for their captains, so that they 
 might part at any moment judged fitting, irrespective of 
 weather conditions. Again he cautions the authorities to 
 1 One of the easternmost of the Azores, 
 
THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 keep his approach a profound secret. No private letters for 
 Gibraltar were permitted in the mail-bags, lest they should 
 unwittingly betray counsel. The vessels were directed to 
 rejoin him forty miles west of Cape Spartel, giving him thus 
 time to decide upon his course before he reached Gibraltar ; 
 for it was quite on the cards that he might lind it imperative 
 to hurry north without anchoring. On the 13th of July, five 
 hundred miles from Cape St. Vincent, one of these ships left 
 him, probably the last to go. 
 
 On the 18th of July, Cape Spartel was sighted. '' No French 
 fleet," wrote the admiral in his diary, " nor any information 
 about them : how sorrowful this makes me, but I cannot help 
 myself!" "I am, my dear Mr. Marsden," he wrote to the 
 Secretary of the Admiralty, "as completely miserable as my 
 greatest enemy could wish me ; but I blame neither fortune or 
 my own j udgment. Oh, General Brereton ! General Brereton ! " 
 To his friend Davison he revealed yet more frankly the bitter- 
 ness of his spirit, now that the last hope was dashed, and it was 
 even possible that the mis-step of going to Trinidad had caused 
 him to incur a further mistake, by leaving the allies in the 
 West Indies. "■ But for General Brereton's damne'd information, 
 Nelson," he said, half prophetically, "would have been, living 
 or dead, the greatest man in his profession that England ever 
 saw. Now alas ! I am nothing — ■ perhaps shall incur censure 
 for misfortunes which may happen, and have happened." 
 
 But if he himself were disappointed, and foreboded the dis- 
 content of others, the greatness of what he had done Avas 
 quickly apparent, and received due recognition from thought- 
 ful men. "Either the distances between the different quar- 
 ters of the globe are diminished," wrote Mr. Elliot from Naples, 
 " or you have extended the powers of human action. After 
 an unremitting cruise of two long years in the stormy Gulf of 
 Lyons, to have proceeded without going into port to Alexan- 
 dria, from Alexandria to the West Indies, from the West In- 
 dies back again to Gibraltar; to have kept your ships afloat, 
 your rigging standing, and your crews in health and spirits — 
 is an effort such as never was realized in former times, nor, I 
 doubt, will ever again be repeated by any other admiral. You 
 have protected us for two long years, and you saved the West 
 Indies by only a few days." Thus truly summarized, such 
 
I 
 
 REGAINS THE STRAITS 
 
 achievements are seen to "possess claims to admiration, not to 
 be exceeded even by the glory of Trafalgar. 
 
 Although no French fleet was visible, as Nelson approached 
 the Straits, there were a half-dozen British ships-of-the-line, 
 under the command of his old friend Collingwood, blockad- 
 ing Cadiz. When Orde was driven off that station by Ville- 
 neuve on the 9th of April, and retired upon Brest, he had already 
 sent in an application to be relieved from a duty which he 
 himself had sought, and had held for so short a time; alleging 
 a bundle of grievances which show clearly enough the im- 
 practicable touchiness of the man. His request was at once 
 granted. Early in May, Collingwood was sent from England 
 with eight sail-of-the-line for the West Indies ; but learning 
 on the way that Nelson had gone thither, he detached to him 
 two of his swiftest seventy-fours, and, with great good judg- 
 ment, himself took position off Cadiz, where he covered the 
 entrance of the Mediterranean, and effectually prevented any 
 ships from either Cartagena or Ferrol concentrating in the 
 neighborhood of the Straits. 
 
 Nelson received word from some of his lookouts appointed 
 to meet him here, that nothing had been heard of the allied 
 squadrons. The anxiety which had never ceased to attend 
 him was increased by this prolonged silence. He had no 
 certainty that the enemy might not have doubled back, and 
 gone to Jamaica. He would not stop now to exchange with 
 Collingwood speculations about the enemy's course. " My 
 dear Collingwood, I am, as you may suppose, miserable at not 
 having fallen in with the enemy's fleet ; and I am almost 
 increased in sorrow by not finding them [here]. The name 
 of General Brereton will not soon be forgot. I must now 
 only hope that the enemy have not tricked me, and gone to 
 Jamaica ; but if the account,^ of which T send yon a copy, is 
 correct, it is more than probable that they are either gone to 
 the northward, or, if bound to the Mediterranean, not yet 
 arrived." His surmise remains accurate. He then continues, 
 with that delicate and respectful recognition of the position 
 and ability of others, which won him so much love : " The 
 moment the fleet is watered, and got some refreshments, of 
 
 1 The report of the American schooner, which saw the allied fleet, June 
 15th. 
 
670 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 which, we are in great want, I shall come out and make you a 
 visit ; not, my dear friend, to take your command from you, 
 (for I may probably add mine to you,) but to consult how we 
 can best serve our Country, by detaching a part of this large 
 force." Circumstances prevented his neighborly intention 
 from taking effect. A week later Nelson returned north with 
 his squadron, and the friends did not meet until shortly before 
 Trafalgar. 
 
 In reply to Nelson's letter. Colling wood summed up his 
 view of the situation as so far developed. ''I have always 
 had an idea that Ireland alone was the object they had in 
 view, and still believe that to be their ultimate destination — 
 that they will now liberate the Ferrol squadron from Calder, 
 make the round of the Bay,^ and, taking the Rochefort people 
 with them, appear off Ushant — perhaps with thirty -four 
 sail, there to be joined by twent}' more. Admiral Cornwallis 
 collecting his out squadrons may have thirty and upwards. 
 This appears to be a probable plan; for unless it is to 
 bring their great fleets and armies to some point of ser- 
 vice — some rash attempt at conquest — they have been only 
 subjecting them to chance of loss, which I do not believe 
 the Corsican would do, without the hope of an adequate 
 reward." 
 
 It is upon this letter, the sagacious and well-ordered infer- 
 ences of which must be candidly admitted, that a claim for 
 superiority of discernment over Nelson has been made for its 
 writer. It must be remembered, however, not as a matter of 
 invidious detraction from one man, but in simple justice to 
 the other, whose insight and belief had taken form in such 
 wonderful work, that Nelson also had fully believed that the 
 enemy, if they left the Mediterranean, would proceed to 
 Ireland ; and furtlier, and yet more particularly, Collingwood's 
 views had been confirmed to him by the fact, as yet un- 
 known to Nelson, that the Rochefort squadron, which sailed 
 at the time Villeneuve first escaped in Jauuary, had since 
 returned to Europe on the 26th of May. " The flight to the 
 West Indies," Collingwood said, in a letter dated the day after 
 the one just quoted, " was to take off our naval force, which 
 is the great impediment to their undertaking. The Roche- 
 
 1 Of Biscay. 
 
ADMIRAL COLLINGWOOD. 
 
 From the painting by Henry Howard, at Greenwich Hospital. 
 
t 
 
COLLINGWOOD AND NELSON 671 
 
 fort Squadron's return confirmed me." " I well know what 
 your lordship's disappointment is," he wrote, with generous 
 sympathy; "and I share the mortification of it. It would 
 have been a happy day for England, could you have met 
 them ; small as your force was, I trust it would have been 
 found enough. This summer is big with events. Sincerely 
 I wish your Lordship strength of body to go through — and 
 to all others, yotir strength of ')nind.'" Testy even to petulance 
 as these two great seamen were at times in small matters, 
 when overwrought with their manifold anxieties, they no- 
 where betray any egotistic concern as to the value attached by 
 others to their respective speculations, the uncertainties of 
 which none knew better than they, who had to act upon their 
 conclusions. 
 
 Meantime, at the very moment they were exchanging let- 
 ters, pregnant movements were taking place, unknown to 
 either. The brig "' Curieux," despatched to England by 
 Nelson the night before he left Antigua, had fallen in with 
 the allied squadrons, nine hundred miles north-northeast from 
 Antigua, on the 19th of June — just a week after she sailed. 
 Keeping company with them long enough to ascertain their 
 course and approximate numbers, the captain then hastened 
 on, anchoring in Plymouth on the 7th of July. " I am sorry," 
 wrote Nelson when he heard of this meeting, "that Captain 
 Bettesworth did not stand back and try to find us out;" but 
 grateful as the word would have been to him, the captain was 
 better advised to make for a fixed and certain destination. 
 At daylight of the 9th the news was in the hands of the First 
 Lord, who issued instant orders for the blockading squadrons 
 oft" Eochefort and Eerrol to unite, and to take post one hun- 
 dred miles west of Cape Finisterre. On the 19th of July Ad- 
 miral Calder Avas in this position, with fifteen ships-of-the-line, 
 and received through Lisbon the information of the French 
 movements, which Nelson had forwarded thither an exact 
 month before. On the 20th Nelson's fleet anchored at Gib- 
 raltar, and he went ashore, " for the first time since the 16th 
 of June, 1803." On the 22d Calder and Villeneuve met and 
 fought. Two Spanish ships-of-the-line were captured, but the 
 battle was otherwise indecisive. Calder hesitated to attack 
 again, and on the 26th lost sight of the enemy, who, on the 
 
672 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 28tli, put into Vigo Bay ; whence, by a lucky slant of wind, 
 they reached Ferrol on the first of August with fifteen ships, 
 having left three in Vigo. Calder sent five of his fleet to 
 resume the blockade of Rochefort, and himself with nine 
 joined Coruwallis off Brest, raising the force there to twenty- 
 six. This junction was made August 14th. The next day 
 appeared, there the indefatigable ISTelsou, Avith his unwearied 
 and ever ready squadron of eleven ships — veterans in the 
 highest sense of the word, in organization, practice, and en- 
 durance ; alert, and solid as men of iron. 
 
 This important and most opportune arrival came about as 
 follows. Anchoring on the 19th of July at Gibraltar, Nelson 
 found everything ready for the re-equipment of his ships, owing 
 to his foresight in directing it. All set to work at once to 
 prepare for immediate departure. When I have " completed 
 the fleet to four months' provisions, and with stores for Chan- 
 nel service," he wrote to the Admiralty, "I shall get outside 
 the Mediterranean, leaving a sufficient force to watch Cartha- 
 gena, and proceed as upon a due consideration, (on reading 
 Vice-Admiral Collingwood's orders, and those which Rear- 
 Admiral Sir Richard Bickerton may have received during my 
 absence,) may suggest to be most proper. Should I hear that 
 the enemy are gone to some of the ports in the Bay, I shall 
 join the squadron off Ferrol, or off Ushant, as I think the case 
 requires." There will be observed here the same striking 
 combination of rapidity, circumspection, and purpose prepared 
 by reflection for instant action in emergencies, that character- 
 ized him usually, and especially in these four months of chase. 
 "The squadron is in the most perfect health," he continues, 
 " except some symptoms of scurvy, which I hope to eradicate 
 by bullocks and refreshments from Tetuan, to which I will 
 proceed to-morrow." The getting fresh beef at Tetuan, it 
 will be remembered, had been stopped by a fair wind on the 
 5th of May. Since then, and in fact since a month earlier, no 
 opportunity of obtaining fresh provisions had offered during 
 his rapid movements. " The fleet received not the smallest 
 refreshment, not even a cup of water in the West Indies," he 
 told the Queen of Naples. The admiral himself got only a 
 few sheep, in the nine days' round. 
 
 Even now, the intention to go to Tetuan, advisable as the 
 
RAPIDITY OF MOVEMENT 673 
 
 step was, was contingent npon the opportunity offering of 
 reaching a position whence he could move with facility. 
 Nelson did not mean to be back-strapped again within the 
 Mediterranean, with a west wind, and a current setting to 
 leeward, if the enemy turned up in the Atlantic. " If the 
 wind is westerly," he wrote on the early morning of the 22d, 
 "I shall go to Tetuan: if easterly, out of the straits." At 
 half-past nine that day the fleet weighed, and at half-past 
 seven in the evening anchored at Tetuan, whither orders had 
 already gone to prepare bullocks and fresh vegetables for 
 delivery. At noon of the 23d the ships again lifted their 
 anchors, and started. " The fleet is complete," he wrote the 
 First Lord that day, "and the first easterly wind, I shall 
 pass the Straits." Fortune apparently had made up her mind 
 now to balk him no more. Thirty-six hours later, at 3.30 A. m. 
 of July 25th, being then off Tarifa, a little west of Gibraltar, 
 the sloop-of-war " Termagant," one of his own Mediterra- 
 nean cruisers, came alongside, and brought him a newspaper, 
 received from Lisbon, containing an account of the report 
 carried to England by the "Curieux." "I know it's true," 
 he wrote to tlie Admiralty, '' from my Avords being repeated, 
 therefore I shall not lose a moment, after I have communi- 
 cated with Admiral Collingwood, in getting to the northAvard 
 to either Ferrol, Ireland, or Ushant ; as information or cir- 
 cumstances may point out to be proper." In his haste to pro- 
 ceed, and wishing to summon the "Amazon" frigate to 
 rejoin him, he sent the " Termagant " at once to Gibraltar, 
 Avithout understanding that she Avas just from there and had 
 on board his clothes left for Avashing ; in consequence of 
 Avhich precipitancy she "carried all my things, even to my 
 last shirt, back again." "As I fancied he came from Lisbon," 
 he explained, "I Avould not allow him to stop." "My dear 
 Parker," he wrote the frigate-captain, " make haste and join 
 me. If all places fail you will find me at Spithead." Parker, 
 Avho was a favorite of the admiral's, followed out the careful 
 detailed instructions Avhich accompanied this note, but could 
 not overtake the fleet, and from incidents of the service never 
 met Nelson again. 
 
 With a fresh easterly gale the squadron pressed again into 
 the Atlantic. As it Avent on for Cape St. Vincent, Colling- 
 
 43 
 
674 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 wood's division was seen some distance to leeward, but, as 
 not infrequently happens in and near the Mediterranean, the 
 wind with it came from the opposite quarter to that which 
 Nelson had. The latter, therefore, would not stop, nor lose 
 a mile of the ground over which his fair breeze was carrying 
 him. "My dear Collingwood," he wrote, " We are in a fresh 
 Levanter. You have a westerly wind, therefore I must forego 
 the pleasure of taking you by the hand until October next, 
 when, if I am well enough, I shall (if the Admiralty please) 
 resume the command. I am very far from well ; but I am 
 anxious that not a moment of the services of this fleet should 
 be lost." Matters therefore were left standing much as they 
 were when he passed in a week before. He had taken upon 
 himself, however, with a discretion he could now assume 
 freely, to change the Admiralty's orders, issued during his 
 absence, withdrawing most of the small cruisers from about 
 Malta, to reinforce Collingwood's division. When he first 
 learned of this step, he said it was a mistake, for double the 
 number he had left there were needed ; " but the orders of 
 the Admiralty must be obeyed. I only hope officers will not 
 be blamed for the events v.'hich it is not difficult to foresee 
 wiH happen." With the crowd of enemy's privateers in those 
 waters, Malta, he was assured, would be cut off from all com- 
 munication. He soon made up his mind that he would use 
 his own discretion and modify the dispositions taken. " Malta 
 cannot more than exist, and our troops would be placed in a 
 position of great distress," he told the Admiralty. "I trans- 
 mit a statement of the force T think necessary to the eastward 
 of Carthagena for performing the services intrusted to my 
 care, and when I get the lists I shall apportion them as far 
 as their number will allow, and my judgment will admit." 
 " I hope the Board will consider this as not wishing to alter 
 any arrangement of theirs, but as a measure absolutely neces- 
 sary." Within his own field Nelson was now, by proved pro- 
 fessional genius, above the restraint of Boards ; and when he 
 reached England the new First Lord had the wisdom to admit 
 it, in this supreme crisis, by giving him full control, within 
 the resources of the countiy, over the constitution of the 
 fleet with which he fought Trafalgar. 
 
 Letters left for Bickerton and Collingwood placed them in 
 
iFor Lire or.Vrlxon ) 
 
JOINS FLEET OFF BREST 075 
 
 possession of his ideas, including the revocation of the Ad- 
 miralty's order ; and, in an official letter, he earnestly recom- 
 mended the latter officer to adhere to his arrangements. 
 Word was also sent forward to Cornwallis, and to the com- 
 mander-in-chief at Cork, as well as to the Admiralty, to notify 
 them of his approach. To the northward of Cape St. Vincent 
 he met the northerly winds that prevail on the Portuguese 
 coast. Delayed by these, he was three full weeks making the 
 passage from Gibraltar to the Channel Fleet, which he joined 
 at 3 p. M. of August 15th, twenty-five miles west of Ushant. 
 To this point his movements were finally determined by a 
 frigate, which was spoken on the 12th of August, and in- 
 formed him that up to three days before no intelligence had 
 been received of the enemy's arrival in the Bay of Biscay, or 
 on the Irish coast. Cornwallis excused him from the cus- 
 tomary personal visit, and authorized him to proceed at once 
 to Portsmouth with the " Victory," in pursuance of the Ad- 
 miralty's leave which he so long had had in his hands. On 
 the morning of August 18th, the long and fruitless chase of 
 the allied fleet was brought to an end by the dropping of the 
 " Victory's " anchor at Spithead. To Davison Nelson summed 
 up his disappointment in the exasperated expression, " D — n 
 General Brereton." ^ 
 
 From newspapers received off Ushant he first learned of 
 Calder's battle, and the public dissatisfaction with the results. 
 He had undergone too much frustration and anxiety himself 
 not to feel for an officer who had made a mistake, although it 
 may safely be said that Calder's mistake was not only one 
 Nelson could not have made, but was the exact opposite of 
 the course which Nelson by anticipation had said he would 
 
 1 The extent of Brereton's fault (if at fault) depended, probably, upon the 
 character and responsibility of the man he had on lookout at so. critical a 
 moment, and the care with which he tested the report made to him. Brere- 
 ton did not know of Nelson's ai'rival, possibly not of his approach. At the 
 same time men must take the blame of carelessness, when harm comes of it. 
 Ball, connnenting to Nelson upon the incident, said : "I think orders should 
 be given, that when a fleet is discovered, an officer should be sent for to wit- 
 ness it, and that one should be at the signal hill at the rising and setting 
 of the sun. I have often reflected on these circumstances, and on the little 
 attention generally paid them." As it stands, the whole aff"air is a warning 
 to officers, of what results may flow from errors sinall in themselves. 
 
676 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 adopt. He expressed himself in words of generous sympathy. 
 " I was bewildered by the account of Sir Eobert Calder's vic- 
 tory, and the joy of the event ; together with the hearing that 
 John Bull was not content, which I am sorry for. Who can, 
 my dear Fremantle, command all the success which our Country 
 may wish ? We have fought together, and therefore well know 
 what it is. I have had the best disposed fleet of friends, but 
 who can say what will be the ev^ent of a battle ? and it most 
 sincerely grieves me, that in any of the papers it should 
 be insinuated, that Lord Nelson could have done better. I 
 should have fought the enemy, so did my friend Calder; but 
 who can say that he will be more successful than another ? 
 I only wish to stand upon ray own merits, and not by com- 
 parison, one way or the other, upon the conduct of a brother 
 officer. You will forgive this dissertation, but I feel upon 
 the occasion." These words, which spoke the whole of his 
 honest heart, were the more generous, because he believed 
 Calder to be one of the few professional enemies that he 
 had. 
 
 From the place where Villeneuve was met, Nelson reasoned, 
 again, that the primary intention of the allies, returning from 
 the West Indies, had been to enter the Straits. " By all 
 accounts I am satisfied their original destination Avas the 
 Mediterranean, but they heard frequently of our track." This 
 persistence in his first view, was partly due to the confidence 
 with which he held to his own convictions, — the defect of 
 a strong quality, — partly, doubtless, to the fact that Villeneiive 
 had blundered in his homeward course, and fetched unneces- 
 sarily to leeward of his port, with reference to winds per- 
 fectly understood by seamen of that day. In fact he had no 
 business to be where he brought up, except on the supposition 
 that he was makimi for the Straits. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 Nelson's Last Stay in England. 
 August 19-September 15, 1805. Age, 4G. 
 
 THE "Victory" was delayed in quarantine twenty-four 
 hours, when orders from London directed her release. 
 At 9 p. M. of the 19th of August, Nelson's flag was hauled 
 down, and he left the ship for Merton, thus ending an absence 
 of two years and three months. His home being but an hour's 
 drive from the heart of London, the anxieties of the time, and 
 his own eagerness to communicate his views and experience, 
 carried him necessarily and at once to the public offices — to 
 the Admiralty first, but also to the Secretaries for Foreign 
 Affairs and for War, both of whom had occasion for the 
 knowledge and suggestions of so competent and practised an 
 observer. The present head of the Admiralty, Lord Barhani, 
 had succeeded to the office, unexpectedly, upon the sudden 
 retirement of INIelville the previous May. He was a naval 
 officer, eighty years of age, who since middle life had exchanged 
 the active sea-going of the profession, for civil duties connected 
 with it. He had thus been out of touch with it on the military 
 side ; and although Nelson was of course well known to him 
 by reputation and achievement, he had not that intimate per- 
 sonal experience of his character and habit of thought, upon 
 which was based the absolute confidence felt by St. Vincent, 
 and by all others who had seen the great warrior in active 
 service. "Lord Barham is an almost entire stranger to me," 
 wrote Nelson ; but after their interview he left with him the 
 journals in which were embodied the information obtained 
 during his recent command, with his comments upon the affairs 
 of the Mediterranean in particular, and, as incidental thereto, 
 of Europe in general. Barham, who gave proof of great mili- 
 tary capacity during his short term of office, was so much im- 
 
678 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 pressed by the sagacity and power of Nelson's remarks, that 
 lie assured the Cabinet he ought by all means to go back to 
 the JNIediterranean ; and it may be assumed that the latter's 
 wish so to do would have been gratified, at the time of his own 
 choosing, had not otlier events interposed to carry him away 
 earlier, and to end his career. 
 
 It was upon one of these visits to Ministers that Nelson and 
 Wellington met for the only time in their lives. The latter 
 had just returned from a long service in India, reaching Eng- 
 land in September, 1805. His account of the interview, trans- 
 mitted to us by Croker, is as follows : — 
 
 Walmer, October 1st, 1834. 
 We were talking of Lord Nelson, and some instances were mentioned 
 of the egotism and vanity that derogated from his character. " Why," 
 said the Duke, " I am not surprised at such instances, for Lord Nelson 
 was, in different circumstances, two quite different men, as I myself 
 can vouch, though I only saw him once in my life, and for, perhaps, 
 an hour. It was soon after I returned from India. I went to the 
 Colonial Office ^ in Downing Street, and there I was shown into the 
 little waiting-room on the right hand, where 1 found, also waiting to 
 see the Secretary of State, a gentleman, whom, from his likeness to 
 his pictures and the loss of an arm, I immediately recognized as Lord 
 Nelson. He could not know who I was, but he entered at once into 
 conversation with me, if I can call it conversation, for it was almost 
 all on his side and all about himself, and in, really, a style so vain 
 and so silly as to surprise and almost disgust me. I suppose some- 
 thing that I happened to say may have made him guess that I was 
 somebody, and he went out of the room for a moment, I have no doubt 
 to ask the office-keeper who I was, for when he came back he was al- 
 together a different man, both in manner and matter. All that I had 
 thought a charlatan style had vanished, and he talked of the state of 
 this country and of the aspect and probabilities of affaii's on the Con- 
 tinent with a good sense, and a knowledge of subjects both at home 
 and abroad, that surprised me equally and more agreeably than the 
 first part of our interview had done ; in fact, he talked like an officer 
 and a statesman. The Secretary of State kept us long waiting, and 
 certainly, for the last half or three quarters of an hour, I don't know 
 
 1 In a letter to the Earl of Moinington, dated December 21st, 1805, Wel- 
 lington, then Wellesley, said, " I arrived in England about September 10th." 
 Tlie margin of time for meeting Nelson, who left Merton on the 13th, was 
 therefore small, and fixes very closely the date of this interesting interview. 
 Tlie Colonial and War Offices seem then to have been under one head. 
 
Ills MILITARY OPINIONS 679 
 
 that I ever had a conversation that interested me more. Now, if the 
 Secretary of State had been punctual, and admitted Lord Nelson in 
 the first quarter of an hour, I should have had the same impression of 
 a light and trivial character that other people have had; but luckily 
 .1 saw enough to be satisfied that he was really a very superior man ; 
 but certainly a more sudden and complete metamorphosis I never 
 saw."^ 
 
 This is not the only record that remains to us of those 
 interesting interviews with Cabinet Ministers, although the 
 most have passed away unnoted. It was in one of them that 
 he uttered a military opinion, for whose preservation we are 
 indebted to his own mention of it in a private letter ; an opin- 
 ion so characteristic of his habits of thought, his reasoned 
 motives of action, that, although it has before been quoted, it 
 is fitting to repeat it in his own words and in full. 
 
 When he reached England, the naval situation, as far as 
 then known, was that Napoleon had twenty-one French ships- 
 of-the-line in Brest, and twenty-eight or nine, French and 
 Spanish, in Ferrol ; while Cornwallis had thirty-five British 
 of£ Brest. This was the condition on the 15th of August, 
 when Nelson parted from the fleet off Ushant. Very soon 
 after his arrival in town, news was received that Villeneuve 
 had gone to sea from Ferrol, and that Cornwallis, when in- 
 formed of the fact, had divided his fleet, with great lack of 
 judgment, keeping himself seventeen ships to confront the 
 Brest squadron, while eighteen were sent to look for Villeneuve 
 under the command of Admiral Calder. In the public discon- 
 tent with the latter, it was not reassuring to know that, at a 
 moment when every one's nerves were on the rack, he was 
 again intrusted with the always difficult task of coping with a 
 much superior force. While this state of excitement prevailed, 
 Nelson called upon the Secretary of State, Lord Castlereagh, 
 on the 23d of August. " Yesterday," he wrote to Captain 
 Keats, '' the Secretary of State, which is a man who has only 
 sat one solitary day in his office, and of course knows but little 
 of what is passed, and indeed the Minister,^ were all full of 
 the enemy's fleet, and as I am now set up for a Conjuror, 
 and God knows they will very soon find out I am far from 
 
 1 Correspoudence and Diaries of John Wilson Croker, vol. ii. p. 233. 
 
 2 The Prime Minister Pitt. 
 
680 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 being one, I was asked my opinion, against my inclination, 
 for if I make one wrong guess the charm will be broken ; but 
 this I ventured without any fear, that if Calder got close along- 
 side their twenty-seven or twenty-eight sail, that by the time 
 the enemy had beat our fleet soundly, they would do us no 
 harm this year." 
 
 This acute perception of the reason why it was at times 
 desirable and proper to hurl a smaller though more efficient 
 force against superior numbers, content that the latter, as a 
 factor, were for the campaign annihilated, — this realization 
 of the possible fruitfulness of a defeat, or rather, of a battle 
 wisely lost, as contrasted with what Jomini calls the sterile 
 glory of fighting battles merely to win them, — is one of the 
 most marked and decisive features of Nelson's genius as a 
 general officer. It recurs over and over again, and at all 
 periods, in his correspondence, this clear and full appreciation 
 of the relation of the parts to the whole. ^ It underlay his 
 sustained purpose during the long pursuit of tbe preceding 
 months, that, if he found the allied squadron, "they would 
 not part without a battle." Whatever else the result, that 
 particular division would do no harm that year, and with it 
 necessarily fell the great combination, whatever that might 
 be, of which it was an essential factor. '' The event would 
 have been in the hands of Providence," he wrote to Bar- 
 ham ; " but Ave may without, I hojje, vanity, believe that the 
 enemy would have been fit for no active service after such 
 a battle." There is wanting to the completeness of this admir- 
 able impulse only the stead3nng resolve that he would bide 
 his time, so as, to use Napoleon's phrase, to have the most of 
 the chances on his side when he attacked. This also we know 
 he meant to do. " I will wait, till they give me an opportunity 
 too tempting to be resisted, or till they draw near the shores 
 of Europe." In such qualification is to be seen the equipoise 
 of the highest order of ability. This union of desperate 
 energy with calculating wariness was in him not so much a 
 matter of reasoning, though reason fully endorses it, as it 
 was the gift of nature, — genius, in short. Reasoning of a 
 very high order illuminates Nelson's mental processes and 
 justifies his conclusions, but it is not in the power of reason, 
 
 1 Compare, for example, ante, p. 361. 
 
THE POPULAR ENTHUSIASM 681 
 
 when face to face with emergency, to bridge the chasm that 
 separates perception, however clear, from the inward convic- 
 tion which alone sustains the loftiest action. " Responsi- 
 bility," said St. Vincent, " is the test of a man's courage." 
 Emergency, it may be said, is the test of his faith in his 
 beliefs. 
 
 While those at the head of the State thus hung upon his 
 counsels, and drew encouragement from his indomitable con- 
 fidence, the people in the streets looked up to him with that 
 wistful and reverent dependence which does not wholly under- 
 stand, but centres all its trust upon a tried name. They 
 knew what he had done in the now distant past, and they had 
 heard lately that he had been to the West Indies, and had 
 returned, having saved the chief jewel among the colonies of 
 the empire. They knew, also, that their rulers were fearful 
 about invasion, and that in some undefined way Nelson had 
 stood, and would yet stand, between them and harm. The 
 rapidity of his movements left little interval between the 
 news of his being back at Gibraltar and the announcement of 
 his arrival at Portsmouth, which was not generally expected. 
 On the 19th of August, a day after the " Victory " anchored 
 at Spithead, Lord Radstock wrote: '"T is extraordinary no 
 official accounts have been received from Lord Nelson since 
 the 27th of July. He then hinted that he might perhaps go 
 to Ireland ; nevertheless, we liave had no tidings of him on 
 that coast. I confess I begin to be fearful that he has wor- 
 ried his mind up to that pitch, that he cannot bear the idea 
 of showing himself again to the world, until he shall have 
 struck some blow, and that it is this hope that is now making 
 him run about, half-frantic, in quest of adventures. That 
 such unparalleled perseverance and true valor should thus 
 evaporate in air is truly melancholy." 
 
 If any doubt of the approval of his countrymen mingled 
 with the distress Nelson unquestionably felt at having missed 
 the enemy, he was touchingly undeceived. As soon as the 
 " Victory " and his flag were made out, the people flocked to 
 Portsmouth, collecting on the ramparts of the town and other 
 points of view, in inaudible testimony of welcome. As the 
 barge pulled to the shore, and upon lauding, he was greeted 
 with loud and long-continued cheering. In London the same 
 
682 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 demonstrations continued whenever he was recognized in public* 
 " Lord Nelson arrived a few days ago," wrote Eadstock. " He 
 was received in town almost as a conqueror, and was followed 
 round by the people with huzzas. So much for a great and 
 good name most nobly and deservedly acquired." "I met 
 Nelson in a mob in Piccadilly," w^rote JMinto at the same time, 
 "and got hold of his arm, so that I -was mobbed too. It is 
 really quite affecting to see the wonder and admiration, and 
 love and respect of the whole world ; and the genuine expres- 
 sion of all these sentiments at once, from gentle and simple, the 
 moment he is seen. It is beyond anything represented in a 
 play or in a poem of fame." In these few days was concen- 
 trated the outward reward of a life spent in the service of his 
 country. During them, Nelson w^as conspicuously the first 
 man in England, — first alike in the love of the people and 
 in importance to the State. 
 
 On the private side, also, his life for this brief respite was 
 eminently happy, marred only by the prospect of a speedy 
 departure, the signal for which sounded even sooner than was 
 expected. By his own account, he was only four times in 
 London, and all the moments that could be spared from 
 external calls he spent at Merton, where there gathered a 
 large family party, including all his surviving brothers and 
 sisters, with several of their children. "I cannot move at 
 present," he writes on the 31st of August, in declining an 
 invitation, " as all my family are Avith me, and my stay is very 
 uncertain; and, besides, I have refused for the present all 
 invitations." " I went to Merton on Saturday " (August 24th), 
 wrote Minto, '•' and found Nelson just sitting down to dinner, 
 surrounded by a family party, of his brother the Dean, Mrs. 
 Nelson, their children, and the children of a sister. Lady 
 Hamilton at the head of the table, and Mother Cadogan ^ at 
 the bottom. I had a hearty welcome. He looks remarkably 
 well and full of spirits. His conversation is a cordial in these 
 low times. Lady Hamilton has improved and added to the 
 house and the place extremely well, without his knowing 
 she was about it. He found it already done. She is a clever 
 being, after all : the passion is as hot as ever." 
 
 Over all hung, unseen, the sword of Damocles. Nelson 
 1 Lady Hamilton's mother. 
 
 ] 
 
PRESENTIMENTS 683 
 
 himself seems to have been possessed already by vague pre- 
 monitions of the coming end, which deepened and darkened 
 around him as he went forward to his fate. The story told 
 of his saying to the upholsterer, who had in charge the coffin 
 made from the mast of the "Orient," that a certificate of its 
 identity should be engraved on the lid, because he thought it 
 highly probable that he might want it on his return, is, indeed, 
 but a commonplace, light-hearted remark, which derives what 
 significance it has purely from the event ; but it is easy to 
 recognize in his writings the recurrent, though intermittent, 
 strain of unusual foreboding. Life then held much for him ; 
 and it is when richest that the possibility of approaching loss 
 possesses the consciousness with the sense of probability. 
 Upon a soul of his heroic temper, however, such presentiments, 
 though they might solemnize and consecrate the passing 
 moments, had no power to appall, nor to convert cheerfulness 
 into gloom. The light that led him never burned more 
 brightly, nor did he ever follow with more unfaltering step. 
 
 Fixed in his mind to return to his command in October, he 
 soon felt that, in the uncertainties of the French movements, 
 a call might come at any moment. Although he nowhere says 
 so, his mind was doubtless made up that, if Villeneuve's 
 twenty-nine sail went to, or near, the Mediterranean, he would 
 go out at once. " Every ship," he writes on the 31st of 
 August, "even the Victory, is ordered out, for there is an 
 entire ignorance whether the Ferrol fleet is coming to the 
 northward, gone to the Mediterranean, or cruizing for our 
 valuable homeward-bound fleet." " Mr. Pitt," he tells a friend 
 as early as the 29th, " is pleased to think that my services 
 may be wanted. I hope Calder's victory (which I am most 
 anxiously expecting) will render my going forth unnecessary." 
 " I hold myself ready," he writes again on the 3d of Septem- 
 ber, " to go forth whenever I am desired, although God knows 
 I want rest ; but self is entirely out of the question." ^ 
 
 It was not, therefore, to a mind or will unprepared that the 
 sudden intimation came on the 2d of September — just a fort- 
 night after he left the "Victory." That morning there arrived 
 in town Captain Blackwood of the frigate " Euryalus," which 
 
 1 Nelson to Right Hon. George Rose, August 29 and September 3, 1805 : 
 Nicolas, vol. vii. pp. 18, 19, 29. 
 
' 
 
 684 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 had been despatched by Collingwood to notify the Admiralty 
 tlaat the missing Villeneuve had turned up with his squadron 
 at Cadiz, on the 20th of August. Blackwood Avas an old 
 friend and follower. It was he who had commanded the 
 " Penelope " in March, 1800, and more than any one present 
 had insured the capture of the '•' Guillaume Tell," when she 
 ran out from Malta,^ — the greatest service, probably, ren- 
 dered to Nelson's reputation by any man who ever sailed 
 under his orders. He stopped first at Merton at five o'clock 
 in the morning, and found Nelson already up and dressed. 
 The latter said at once, " I am sure you bring me news of the 
 French and Spanish fleets, and I think I shall yet have to 
 beat them." Later in the day he called at the Admiralty, 
 and there saw Blackwood again. In the course of conversa- 
 tion, which turned chiefly upon future operations in the Med- 
 iterranean, he frequently repeated, " Depend on it, Blackwood, 
 I shall yet give Mr. Villeneuve a drubbing," an expression 
 whose wording evinces animation and resolve, — far removed 
 from the troubled indecision from which, by her own account, 
 Lady Hamilton freed him. 
 
 It was speedily determined by the Government that the com- 
 bined fleets in Cadiz should be held there, or forced to fight if 
 they left; the country had passed through a fortnight of too 
 great anxiety, to risk any chance of its repetition by a re- 
 newed evasion. Ignorant of the reasons which dictated Vil- 
 leneuve's course, and that it was not accordant but contrary 
 to his orders, it was natural to suppose that there was some 
 further object indicated by the position now taken, and that 
 that object was the Mediterranean. Moreover, so large a 
 body of commissioned ships — nearly forty — as were now 
 assembled, could not fail to tax severely the resources of a 
 port like Cadiz, and distress would tend to drive them out 
 soon. Thirty thousand able-bodied men are a heavy addi- 
 tional load on the markets of a small city, blockaded by seq., 
 and with primitive communications by land. Upon this rested 
 Nelson's principal hope of obliging them to come forth, if 
 Napoleon himself did not compel them. Their position, he 
 wrote the Secretary for War soon after he joined the fleet, 
 
 1 Ante, p. 43L 
 
THE ALLIED FLEETS AT CADIZ 685 
 
 seemed to favor an attack by rockets ; "but I think we have a 
 better chance of forcing them out by want of provisions : it is 
 said hunger will break through stone walls, — ours is only a 
 wall of wood." "It is said that there is a great scarcity 
 of provisions in Cadiz." He then mentioned that the allies 
 were endeavoring to meet this difficulty by sending neutral 
 vessels, loaded with food-stuffs, from French ports to all 
 the small harbors on either side of Cadiz, whence the stores 
 carried by them could be transferred by coasting-boats, — a 
 process which ships were powerless to stop. Collingwood, 
 therefore, had seized the neutrals, and sent tliera into Gibraltar, 
 a step which Nelson had approved and continued. For it he 
 then demanded the authority of his government. "Should it 
 be thought proper to allow the enemy's fleet to be victualled, 
 I request that I may be informed as soon as possible." 
 
 In connection with this subject Nelson made an allusion to 
 a policy with which Castlereagh, the minister he was address- 
 ing, was afterwards identified, — that of the celebrated Orders 
 in Council of 1807, and the license system connected with it. 
 This is one of the few intimations we have of the wide range 
 of subjects upon which he conversed with members of the 
 Cabinet while in England ; and it is interesting, not only as 
 showing how far back those measures originated, but also as 
 illustrating his own prophetic intuition of the construction 
 which would be placed upon such proceedings. " I can have 
 nothing, as an Admiral, to say upon the propriety of granting 
 licences; but from what your Lordship told me of the inten- 
 tion of Ministers respecting the neutral trade, it strikes me, 
 some day it may be urged that it was not for the sake of block- 
 ade, but for the purpose of taking all the trade into her own 
 hands, that Great Britain excluded the Neutrals. Your Lord- 
 ship's wisdom will readily conceive all that Neutral Courts 
 may urge at this apparent injustice, and of might overcoming 
 right." ^ This shrewdly accurate forecast of a contention 
 which was not to arise till after his death is but one instance 
 
 ^ This is the earliest intimation that has come under the author's ej^e of 
 the formulation (as distinguished from the development) of the groups of Or- 
 ders in Council of 1807, bearing upon the Neutral Trade, which were issued 
 and carried out by a Ministry other than the one which Nelson knew. The 
 measure was clearly under consideration before Trafalgar. 
 
GS6 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 among many of Nelson's clearness of judgment, in political as 
 well as in military matters. 
 
 Nelson's services, upon this, his final departure from Eng- 
 land, were rather requested by the Government than by him 
 volunteered — in the ordinary sense of the word. He went 
 willingly enough, doubtless, but in obedience, proud and glad, 
 to the summons, not only of the popular cry, but of the Cabi- 
 net's wish. " I own I want much more rest," he wrote to 
 Elliot, immediately after joining the fleet off Cadiz ; " but it 
 was thought right to desire me to come forth, and I obeyed." 
 " I expected to lay my weary bones quiet for the winter," he 
 told another friend in Naples, "but I ought, perhaps, to be 
 proud of the general call which has made me to go forth." 
 The popularly received account, therefore, derived from Lady 
 Hamilton, of her controlling influence in the matter, may be 
 dismissed as being — if not apocryphal — merely one side of 
 the dealing by which he had to reconcile the claims of patri- 
 otic duty with the appeals of the affections. As told by 
 Southey, her part in his decision was as follows : " When 
 Blackwood had left him, he wanted resolution to declare his 
 wishes to Lady Hamilton and his sisters, and endeavoured to 
 drive away the thought. He had done enough, he said : '■ Let 
 the man trudge it avIio has lost his budget !' His countenance 
 belied his lips ; and as he Avas pacing one of the walks in the 
 garden, which he used to call the quarter-deck, Lady Hamil- 
 ton came up to him, and said she saw he was uneasy. He 
 smiled, and said : ' No, he was as happy as possible ; he was 
 surrounded by his family, his health was better since he had 
 been on shore, and he would not give sixpence to call the 
 king his uncle.' She replied, that she did not believe him, 
 that she knew he was longing to get at the combined fleets, 
 that he considered them as his own property, that he would 
 be miserable if any man but himself did the business, and 
 that he ought to have them, as the price and reward of his two 
 years' long watching, and his hard chase. ' Nelson,' said she, 
 'however we may lament your absence, offer your services; 
 they will be accepted, and you will gain a quiet heart by it ; 
 you will have a glorious victory, and then you may return 
 here, and be happy.' He looked at her with tears in his 
 eyes: 'Brave Emma! Good Emma! If there were more 
 
PREPARES TO RESUME HIS COMMAND 687 
 
 Emmas, there would be more Nelsons.' His services were 
 as willingly accepted as they were offered." 
 
 The fidelity with which Nelson destroyed Lady Hamilton's 
 letters prevents our knowing just what was her attitude 
 towards his aspirations for glory, and her acquiescence in his 
 perils, in view of the entire dependence of her future upon his 
 life ; a dependence such as an honored wife could by no means 
 feel, for the widow of Nelson could rely safely upon the love 
 of the nation. Certain it is that his letters to her contain 
 enough appeals to the sense she should have of his honor, to 
 show that he stood in need of no strengthening at her hands ; 
 and it seems legible enough, between the lines, that he had 
 rather to resist the pull of her Aveakness, or her interest, than 
 to look for encouragement in the path of hardship and self- 
 denial. It is certain, too, that some days before Blackwood 
 arrived, Nelson understood tliat he might be wanted soon, and 
 avowed his entire willingness to go, while not affecting to con- 
 ceal his hope tliat circumstances might permit him to remain 
 until October, the time he had fixed to Collingwood for his 
 return. Whatever the inside history, the matter was quickly 
 settled. On September 3d, the day after Blackwood's arrival, 
 he writes to Bose : " I shall rejoice to see you on board the 
 Victory, if onl^' for a moment ; but I shall certainly not be an 
 advocate for being at Portsmouth till one of the Victory's 
 anchors are at the bows." ^ The next day, the 4th, Lord 
 Minto writes : " Lord Nelson has been here to-day. He is 
 going to resume the command of the Mediterranean as soon as 
 the Victory is ready, which will be within a week." On the 
 5th he himself tells a friend, " All viy things are this day 
 going off for Portsmouth." 
 
 The ten days that followed were for him, necessarily, very 
 busy ; but mental preoccupation — definiteness of object — 
 was always beneficial to him. Even the harassing run to and 
 from the West Indies had done him good. " I am but so-so," 
 he had written to his brother upon arrival ; " yet, what is very 
 odd, the better for going to the West Indies, even with the 
 anxiety." To this had succeeded the delightful fortnight at 
 home, and now the animation and stir of expected active 
 
 1 That is, the ship ready to sail in half an hour, one of the two anchors 
 which moor a ship being lifted. 
 
688 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 service. Minto had already noted his exhilaration amid the 
 general public gloom, and after his death, speaking of these 
 last days, said, " He was remarkably well and fresh, and full 
 ef hope and spirit." The care of providing him with adequate 
 force he threw off upon the Admiralty. There was, of course, 
 a consultation between him and it as to the numbers and 
 kind of vessels he thought necessary, but his estimate was 
 accepted without question, and the ships were promised, as 
 far as the resources went. When Lord Barham asked him to 
 select his own officers, he is said to have replied, "Choose 
 yourself, my lord, the same spirit actuates the whole pro- 
 fession ; you cannot choose wrong." He did, nevertheless, 
 indicate his wishes in individual cases ; and the expression, 
 though characteristic enough of his proud confidence iu the 
 officers of the navy, must be taken rather as a resolve not to 
 be burdened with invidious distinctions, than as an unqualified 
 assertion of fact. 
 
 Kelson, however, gave one general admonition to the Cab- 
 inet which is worthy to be borne in mind, as a broad principle 
 of unvarying application, more valuable than much labored 
 detail. What is wanted, he said, is the annihilation of the 
 enemy — " Only numbers can annihilate." ^ It is brilliant and 
 inspiring, indeed, to see skill and heroism bearing up against 
 enormous odds, and even wrenching victory therefrom ; but it 
 is the business of governments to insure that such skill and 
 heroism be more profitably employed, in utterly destroying, 
 with superior forces, the power of the foe, and so compelling 
 peace. Xo general has won more striking successes over 
 
 1 The author wishes to guard himself from seeming to share the perversion, 
 as he thinks it, of this saying, into an argument against heavy ships, because 
 the heavier the ships, the smaller the number. Without here expressing any 
 opinion upon this controverted subject, he would simply quote on the other 
 side the view attributed to Nelson during tlie chase to the West Indies. "He 
 knew that the French had no three-decked ships in their fleet, and he 
 reckoned on the great superiority in close action of three batteries of guns 
 over two." (Last of Nelson's Captains, p. 137.) With this may be joined 
 a quotation from himself involving implicitly the same idea : " Two [two- 
 deckers] alongside an enemy are better than three-deckers a great way off." 
 This evidently suggests the idea that one three-decker was better than two 
 seventy-fours, conditions being similar. In truth, numbers should be read 
 " numbers of guns " — • or, better still, " numbers, other things being equal." 
 
I 
 
 MINTO TAKES LEAVE OF HIM C89 
 
 superior numbers than did Napoleon ; no ruler has been more 
 careful to see that adequate superiority for his own forces was 
 provided from the beginning. Nelson believed that he had 
 fully impressed the Prime Minister that what was needed now, 
 after two and a half years of colorless war, was not a brilliant 
 victory for the British Navy, but a crushing defeat for the foe. 
 " I hope my absence will not be long," he wrote to Davison, 
 " and that I shall soon meet the combined fleets with a force 
 sufficient to do the job well : for half a victory would but half 
 content me. But I do not believe the Admiralty can give me 
 a force Avithin fifteen or sixteen sail-of-the-line of the enemy ; 
 and therefore, if every ship took her opponent, we should 
 have to contend with a fresh fleet of fifteen or sixteen sail-of- 
 the-line. But I will do my best ; and I hope God Almighty 
 will go with me. I have much to lose, but little to gain ; 
 and I go because it 's right, and I will serve the Country faith- 
 fully." He doubtless did not know then that Calder, finding 
 Villeneuve had gone to Cadiz, had taken thither the eighteen 
 ships detached Avith him from the Brest blockade, and that 
 Bickerton had also joined from within the Mediterranean, so 
 that CoUingwood, at the moment he was writing, had with 
 him twenty-six of the line. His anticipation, however, was 
 substantially correct. Despite every effort, the Admiralty up 
 to a fortnight before Trafalgar had not given him the number 
 of ships he thought necessary, to insure certain watching, and 
 crushing defeat. He was particularly short of the smaller 
 cruisers wanted. 
 
 On the 12th of September ]\Iinto took his leave of him. " I 
 went yesterday to Merton," he wrote on the 13th, " in a great 
 hurr}", as Lord Nelson said he was to be at home all day, and 
 he dines at half-past three. But I found he had been sent for 
 to Carleton House, and he and Lady Hamilton did not return 
 till half-past five." The Prince of Wales had sent an urgent 
 command that he particularly wished to see him before he left 
 England. " I stayed till ten at night," continues Minto, ''and 
 I took a final leave of him. He goes to Portsmouth to-night. 
 Lady Hamilton was in tears all day yesterday, could not eat, 
 and hardly drink, and near swooning, and all at table. It is a 
 strange picture. She tells me nothing can be more pure and 
 ardent than this flame." Lady Hamilton may have had the 
 
 44 
 
GOO THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 self-control of an actress, but clearly not the reticence of a 
 well-bred woman. 
 
 On the following night Kelson left home finally. His last 
 act before leaving the house, it is said, was to visit the bed 
 where his child, then between four and five, was sleeping, and 
 pray over her. The solemn anticipation of death, which from 
 this time forward deepened more and more over his fearless 
 s];)irit, as the hour of battle approached, is apparent in the 
 record of his departure made in his private diary : — 
 
 Frulay Night, September 13th. 
 At half -past ten drove from dear dear Mertoii, where I left all which 
 I hold dear in this world, to go to serve my King and Country. May 
 the great God whom I adore enable me to fulfil the expectations of 
 my Country ; and if it is His good pleasure that I should return, my 
 thanks will never cease being offered vip to the Throne of His Mercy. 
 If it is His good Providence to cut short my days upon earth, I bow 
 with the greatest submission, relying that He will protect those so 
 dear to me, that 1 may leave behind. His will be done : Amen, Amen, 
 Amen. 
 
 At six o'clock on the morning of the 14th Nelson arrived at 
 Portsmouth. At half-past eleven his flag was again hoisted 
 on board the "■ Victory," and at 2 .p. m. he embarked. His 
 youngest and favorite sister, Mrs. Matcham, with her husband, 
 had gone to Portsmouth to see him off. As they were parf- 
 ing, he said to her : " Oh, Katty ! that gypsy ; " referring to 
 his fortune told by a gypsy in the West Indies many years 
 before, that he should arrive at the head of his profession by 
 the time he was forty. " What then ? " he had asked at the 
 moment ; but she replied, "■ I can tell ^-ou no more ; the book 
 is closed." ^ The Battle of the Nile, preceding closely the 
 completion of his fortieth year, not unnaturally recalled the 
 prediction to mind, where the singularity of the coincidence 
 left it impressed; and now, standing as he did on the brink 
 of great events, with half-acknowledged foreboding weighing 
 on his heart, he well may have yearned to know what lay 
 beyond that silence, within the closed covers of the book of 
 fate. 
 
 1 The author has to thank the present Eaii Nelson for this anecdote. 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 The Antecedents of Trafalgar. 
 September 15-October 19, 1805. Age, 47. 
 
 THE crowds that had assembled to greet Nelson's arrival 
 at Portsmouth, four weeks before, now clustered again 
 around his footsteps to bid him a loving farewell. Although, 
 to avoid such demonstrations, he had chosen for his embarka- 
 tion another than the usual landing-place, the multitude col- 
 lected and followed him to the boat. " They pressed forward 
 to obtain sight of his face," says Southey ; " Many were in 
 tears, and many knelt down before him, and blessed him as he 
 passed. England has had many heroes, but never one," he 
 justly adds, " who so entirely possessed the love of his fellow 
 countrymen as jSTelson." There attached to him not only the 
 memory of many brilliant deeds, nor yet only the knowledge 
 that more than any other he stood between them and harm, — 
 his very name a tower of strength over against their enemies. 
 The deep human sympatliy which won its way to the affections 
 of those under his command, in immediate contact with his 
 person, seamen as well as officers, had spread from them with 
 quick contagion throughout all ranks of men ; and heart 
 answered to heart in profound trust, among those who never 
 had seen his face. " I had their huzzas before," lie said to 
 Captain Hardy, who sat beside him in the boat. '*Now I 
 liave their hearts." 
 
 He was accompanied to the ship by Mr. Canning and Mr. 
 Rose, intimate associates of Mr. Pitt, and they remained on 
 board to dine. Nelson noted that just twenty -five days had 
 been passed ashore, " from dinner to dinner." The next 
 morning, Sunday, September 15th, at 8 a.m., the "Victory" 
 got under way and left St. Helen's, where she had been lying 
 at single anchor, waiting to start. Three other line-of-battle 
 
692 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 ships belonging to his fleet, and which followed him in time 
 for Trafalgar, were then at Spithead, but not yet ready. The 
 " Victory " therefore sailed without them, accompanied only 
 by Blackwood's frigate, the " Euryalus." The wind outside, 
 being west-southwest, was dead foul, and it was not till the 
 17th that the ship was off Plymouth. There it fell nearly 
 calm, and she was joined by two seventy-fours from the 
 harbor. The little squadron continued its course, the wind 
 still ahead, until the 20th of the month, when it had not yet 
 gained a hundred miles southwest from Scilly. Here Nelson 
 met his former long-tried second in the Mediterranean, Sir 
 Eichard Bickerton, going home ill ; having endured the pro- 
 tracted drudgery off Toulon only to lose, by a hair's breadth, 
 his share in the approaching triumph. 
 
 On the 2oth the " Victory " was off Lisbon. " We have 
 had only one day's real fair wind," wrote Nelson to Lady 
 Hamilton, "but by perseverance we have done much." The 
 admiral sent in letters to the British consul and naval officers, 
 urging them to secure as many men as possible for the fleet, 
 but enjoining profound secrecy about his coming, conscious 
 that his presence would be a deterrent to the enemy and 
 might prevent the attempt to leave Cadiz, upon which he 
 based his hopes of a speedy issue, and a speedy return home 
 for needed repose. His departure from England, indeed, could 
 not remain long unknown in Paris; but communications by 
 land were slow in those times, and a few days' ignorance of 
 his arrival, and of the reinforcement he brought, might induce 
 Villeneuve to dare the hazard which he otherwise might fear. 
 " Day by day," he wrote to Davison, " I am expecting the 
 allied fleet to put to sea — every day, hour, and moment." 
 " I am convinced," he tells Blackwood, who took charge of the 
 inshore lookout, " that you estimate, as I do, the importance 
 of not letting these rogues escape us without a fair fight, 
 which I pant for by day, and dream of by night." For the 
 same reasons of secrecy he sent a frigate ahead to Colling- 
 wood, with orders that, when the "Victory" appeared, not 
 only should no salutes be fired, but no colors should be shown, 
 if in sight of the port. The like precautions were continued 
 when any new ship joined. Every care was taken to lull the 
 enemy into confidence, and to lure him out of port. 
 
JOYFUL GREETING OF THE CAPTAINS 693 
 
 A't 6 p. M. of Saturday, September 28th, the '' Victory " 
 reached the fleet, then numbering twenty-nine of the line ; 
 the main body being fifteen to twenty miles west of Cadiz, 
 with six shijis close in with the port. The next day was 
 Nelson's birthday — forty-seven years old. The junior ad- 
 mirals and the captains visited the commander-in-chief, as 
 customary, but with demonstrations of gladness and confidence 
 that few leaders have elicited in equal measure from their 
 followers. " The reception I met with on joining the fleet 
 caused the sweetest sensation of my life. The officers who 
 came on board to welcome my return, forgot my rank as 
 commander-in-chief in the enthusiasm with which they greeted 
 me. As soon as these emotions were past, I laid before them 
 the plan I had previously arranged for attacking the enemy ; 
 and it was not only my pleasure to find it generally approved, 
 but clearly perceived and understood." To Lady Hamilton 
 he gave an account of this scene which differs little from the 
 above, except in its greater vividness. "I believe my arrival 
 was most welcome, not only to the Commander of the fleet, 
 but also to every individual in it ; and, when I came to explain 
 to them the ' Nelson touch,^ it was like an electric shock. 
 Some shed tears, all approved — ' It was new — it was singu- 
 lar — it was simple ! ' and, from admirals downwards, it was 
 repeated — ' It must succeed, if ever they will allow us to get 
 at them ! You are, my Lord, surrounded by friends whom 
 you inspire with confidence.' Some may be Judas's ; but the 
 majority are certainly much pleased with my commanding 
 them." No more joyful birthday levee was ever held than 
 that of this little naval court. Besides the adoration for 
 Nelson personally, which they shared with their countrymen 
 in general, there mingled with the delight of the captains the 
 sentiment of professional appreciation and confidence, and a 
 certain relief, noticed by Codrington, from the dry, unsympa- 
 thetic rule of Collingwood, a man just, conscientious, highly 
 trained, and efficient, but self-centred, rigid, uncommunicative ; 
 one who fostered, if he did not impose, restrictions upon the 
 intercourse between the ships, against which he had inveighed 
 bitterly when himself one of St. Vincent's captains. Nelson, 
 on the contrary, at once invited cordial social relations with 
 the commanding officers. Half of the thirty-odd were sum- 
 
694 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 moned to dine on board the flagship the first day, and half the 
 second. Not till the third did he permit himself the luxury 
 of a quiet dinner chat with his old chum, the second in com- 
 mand, whose sterling merits, under a crusty exterior, he knew 
 and appreciated. Codrington mentions also an incident, trivial 
 in itself, but illustrative of that outward graciousness of 
 manner, which, in a man of Nelson's temperament and posi- 
 tion, is rarely the result of careful cultivation, but bespeaks 
 rather the inner graciousness of the heart that he abundantly 
 possessed. They had never met before, and the admiral, 
 greeting him with his usual easy courtesj', handed him a letter 
 from his wife, saying that being intrusted with it by a lady, 
 he made a point of delivering it himself, ins bead of sending it 
 by another. 
 
 The " Nelson touch," or Plan of Attack, expounded to his 
 captains at the first meeting, was afterwards formulated in an 
 Order, copies of which were issued to the fleet on the 9th of 
 October. In this " Memorandum," which was doubtless suffi- 
 cient for those who had listened to the vivid oral explanation 
 of its framer, the writer finds the simplicity, but not the abso- 
 lute clearness, that they recognized. It embodies, however, 
 the essential ideas, though not the precise method of execution, 
 actually followed at Trafalgar, under conditions considerably 
 different from those which Nelson probably anticipated ; and 
 it is not the least of its merits as a military conception that it 
 could thus, with few signals and without confusion, adapt 
 itself at a moment's notice to diverse circumstances. This 
 great order not only reflects the ripened experience of its 
 author, but contains also the proof of constant mental activity 
 and development in his thought ; for it differs materially in 
 detail from the one issued a few months before to the fleet, 
 when in pursuit of Villeneuve to the West Indies. As the 
 final, and in the main consecutive, illustrations of his military 
 views, the two are presented here together. 
 
 PLAN OF ATTACK.i 
 
 The business of an English Commander-in-Chief being first to 
 bring an Enemy's Fleet to Battle, on tlie most advantageous terms to 
 
 1 May, 1805. 
 

 
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PLANS FOR BATTLE • fiOS 
 
 himself, (I mean that of laying his Ships close on board the Enemy, 
 as expeditiously as possible ;) and secondly, to continue them there, 
 ■without separating, until the business is decided; I am sensible 
 beyond this object it is not necessary that I should say a word, being 
 fully assured that the Admirals and Captains of the Fleet I have 
 the honour to command, will, knowing my j)recise object, that of a 
 close and decisive Battle, supply any deficiency in my not making 
 signals; which may, if extended beyond these objects, either be mis- 
 understood, or, if waited for, very probably, from various causes, be 
 impossible for the Commander-in-Chief to make : therefore, it will 
 only be requisite for me to state, in as few words as possible, the 
 various modes in which it may be necessary for me to obtain my 
 object, on which depends, not only the honour and glory of our 
 Country, but possibly its safety, and with it that of all Europe, from 
 French tyranny and oppression. 
 
 If the two Fleets are both willing to fight, but little manoeuvring 
 is necessary; the less the better; — a day is soon lost in that busi- 
 ness : therefore I will only suppose that the Enemy's Fleet being to 
 leeward, standing close upon a wind on the starboard tack, and that 
 I am nearly ahead of them, standing on the larboard tack, of course 
 I should weather them. The weather must be supposed to be mod- 
 erate ; for if it be a gale of wind, the manreuvring of both Fleets is but 
 of little avail, and probably no decisive Action would take place 
 with the whole Fleet. Two modes present themselves : one to stand 
 on, just out of gunshot, until the Van-Ship of my Line would be 
 about the centre Ship of the Enemy, then make the signal to wear 
 together, then bear up, engage with all our force the six or five Van- 
 Ships of the Enemy, passing, certainly, if opportunity offered, through 
 their Line. This would prevent their bearing up, and the Action, 
 from the known bravery and conduct of the Admirals and Captains, 
 would certainly be decisive : the second or third Rear-Ships of the 
 Enemy would act as they please, and our Ships would give a good 
 account of them, should they persist in mixing with our Ships. 
 The other mode would be, to stand under an easy but commanding 
 sail, directly for their headmost Ship, so as to prevent the Enemy 
 from knowing whether I should pass to leeward or windward of him. 
 In that situation, I would make the signal to engage the Enemy to 
 leeward, and to cut through their Fleet about the sixth Ship from 
 the Van, passing very close; they being on a wind,, and you going 
 large, could cut their Line when you please. The Van-Ships of the 
 Enemy would, by the time our Rear came abreast of the Van-Ship, 
 be severely cut up, and our Van could not expect to escape damage. 
 I would then have our Rear Ship, and every Ship in succession, wear, 
 continue the Action with either the Van-Ship, or second Ship, as it 
 might appear most eligible from her crippled state ; and this mode 
 
THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 pursued, I see nothing to prevent the capture of the five or six 
 Ships of the Enemy's Van. The two or three Ships of the Enemy's 
 Rear ^ must either bear up, or wear ; and, in either case, although they 
 would be in a better plight probably than our two Van-Ships (now 
 in the Rear) yet they would be separated, and at a distance to lee- 
 ward, so as to give our Ships time to refit; and by that time, I 
 believe, the Battle would, from the judgment of the Admiral and 
 Captains, be over with the rest of them. Signals from tliese moments 
 are useless, when every man is disposed to do his duty. The great 
 object is for us to support each other, and to keep close to the 
 Enemy, and to leeward of him. 
 
 If the Enemy are running away, then the only signals necessai*y 
 will be, to engage the Enemy as arriving up with them ; and the 
 other ships to pass on for the second, third, &c., giving, if possible, 
 a close fire into the Enemy in passing, taking care to give our Ships 
 engaged notice of your intention. 
 
 MEMORANDUM. 
 (Secret) 
 
 Victory, off Cadiz, 9th October, 180.5. 
 
 General Con- Thinking it almost impossible to bring a Fleet of forty Sail of the 
 Line into a Line of Battle in variable winds, thick weather, and other 
 circumstances which must occur, without such a loss of time that the 
 opportunity would probably be lost of bringing the Enemy to Battle 
 in such a manner as to make the business decisive, I have therefore 
 made up my mind to keep the Fleet in that position of sailing (with 
 the exception of the First and Second in Command) that the Order 
 of Sailing is to be the Order of Battle, placing the Fleet in two Lines 
 
 ^ The author does not here understand the speaking of " two or three " I'ear 
 ships, when the van is supposed to be five or six — making a total of not 
 over nine or ten enemies. If this order of attack was issued, as expressly 
 stated by Clarke and M 'Arthur, on the chase to the West Indies, Nelson then 
 was fully aware that he with ten ships was in pursuit of eighteen. (See ante, 
 p. 656.) It appears to the author more probable that it was issued to the 
 fleet when off Toulon, in anticipation of a possible meeting with the French 
 squadron there, when the disparity of force was less — say, eight to ten. 
 This impression is confirmed by the "Plan of Attack" speaking of the 
 junior "Admirals" — in the plural. There was but one such in the pur- 
 suit to the West Indies. It is quite possible, however, that the same order 
 was re-issued upon the later occasion, re-copied witliout change of words. 
 In any event, it confirms other statements and actions of Nelson's, that an 
 enemy should not be fought ship to ship, but by a concentration on ^mt 
 of his order. 
 
 siderations. 
 
PLANS FOR BATTLE 697 
 
 of sixteen Ships each, with an Advanced Squadron of eight of the 
 fastest sailing Two-decked Ships, which will always make, if wanted, 
 a Line of twenty-four Sail, on whichever Line the Commander-in- 
 Chief may direct. 
 
 The Second in Command will, after my intentions ai'e made known Powers of 
 to him, have the entire direction of his Line to make the attack command 
 upon the Enemy, and to follow up the blow until they are captured 
 or destroyed. 
 
 If the Enemy's Fleet should be seen to windward in Line of Battle, The Attack 
 and that the two Lines and the Advanced Squadron can fetch them. Leeward, 
 they will probably be so extended that their Van could not succour 
 their Rear. 
 
 I should therefore probably make the Second in Command's signal 
 to lead through, about their twelfth Ship from their Rear, (or wher- 
 ever he could fetch, if not able to get so far advanced) ; my Line 
 would lead through about their Centre, and the Advanced Squadron 
 to cut two or three or four Ships a-liead of their Centre, so as to 
 ensure getting at their Commander-in-Chief, on whom every effort 
 must be made to capture. 
 
 The whole impression of the British Fleet must be to overpower The General 
 from two or three Ships a-head of their Commander-in-Chief, sup- i^eaTindef 
 posed to be in the Centre, to the Rear of their Fleet. I will suppose au Conditions, 
 twenty Sail of the Enemy's Line to be untouched, it must be some 
 time before they could perform a manoeuvre to bring their force com- 
 pact to attack any jiart of the British Fleet engaged, or to succour 
 their own Ships, which indeed would be impossible without mixing 
 "\\ith the Ships engaged. 
 
 Something must be left to chance ; nothing is sure in a Sea Fight 
 beyond all others. Shot will carry away the masts and yards of 
 friends as well as foes ; but I look with confidence to a Victory before 
 the Van of the Enemy could succour their Rear, and then that the 
 British Fleet would most of them be ready to receive their twenty 
 Sail of the Line, or to pursue them, should they endeavour to 
 make off. 
 
 If the Van of the Enemy tacks, the Captured Ships must run to 
 leeward of the British Fleet ; if the Enemy wears, the British must 
 place themselves between the Enemy and the Captured, and disabled 
 British Ships ; and should the Enemy close, I have no fears as to the 
 result. 
 
 The Second in Command will in all possible things direct the I>uties of 
 movements of his Line, by keeping them as compact as the nature of " ""^ mates, 
 the circumstances will admit. Captains are to look to their particular 
 Line as their rallying point. But, in case Signals can neither be seen 
 or perfectly understood, no Captain can do very wrong if he places 
 his Ship alongside that of an Enemy. 
 
THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 i 
 
 Of the intended attack from to windward, the Enemy in Line of 
 Battle ready to receive an attack, 
 
 Wiud.i 
 
 B = British. I 
 E = Enemy. 1 
 
 The Att.ack The divisions of the British Fleet will be brought nearly within 
 
 wTdward. 8"^^^ ^^^°* °^ ^^^^ Enemy's Centre. The signal will most probably then 
 be made for the Lee Line to bear up together, to set all their sails, 
 even steering sails, in order to get as quickly as possible to the Enemy's 
 Line, and to cut through, beginning from the 12 Ship from the 
 Enemy's Rear. Some Ships may not get through their exact place, 
 but they will always be at hand to assist their friends ; and if any 
 are thrown round the Rear of the Enemy, they will effectually com- 
 plete the business of twelve Sail of the Enemy. 
 
 Should the Enemy wear together, or bear up and sail large, still 
 the twelve Ships composing, in the first position, the Enemy's Rear, 
 are to be the object of attack of the Lee Line, unless otherwise di- 
 rected from the Commander-in-Chief, which is scarcely to be expected, 
 as the entire management of the Lee Line, after the intentions of the 
 Commander-in-Chief, is signified, is intended to be left to the judg- 
 ment of the Admiral commanding that Line. 
 Special Charjre The remainder of the Enemy's Fleet, 34 Sail, are to be left to the 
 Commander- management of the Commander-in-Cliief, who will endeavour to take 
 iu-ciiief. care that the movements of the Second in Command are as little 
 
 interrupted as is possible. 
 
 Nelson and Bronte. 
 
 It will be borne in mind that the first of these instructions 
 was issued for the handling of a small body of ships — ten — 
 expecting to meet fifteen to eighteen enemies ; whereas the 
 second contemplated the wielding of a great mass of vessels, 
 as many as forty British, directed against a possible combi- 
 nation of forty-six French and Spanish. In the former case, 
 however, although the aggregate numbers were smaller, the 
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TACTICAL METHODS 699 
 
 disproportiou of force was much greater, eveu after allowance 
 made for the British three-deckers ; and we know, from other 
 contemporary remarks of Nelson, that his object here was not 
 so much a crushing defeat of the enemy — " only numbers can 
 annihilate " — as the disorganization and neutralization of a 
 particular detachment, as the result of which the greater com- 
 bination of the enemy would fall to pieces. " After they have 
 beaten our fleet sou.ndly, they will do us no more harm this 
 summer." ^ Consequently, he relies much upon the confusion 
 introduced into the enemy's movements by an attack, which, 
 though of much inferior force, should be sudden in character, 
 developing only at the last moment, into which the enemy 
 should be precipitated unawares, while the British should 
 encounter it, or rather should enter it, with minds fully pre- 
 pared, — not only for the immediate manoeuvre, but for all 
 probable consequences. 
 
 In accordance with the same general object — confusion — 
 he directs his assault upon the van, instead of, as at Trafalgar, 
 upon the rear ; according to his saying in the Baltic, recorded 
 by Stewart,^ " Close with a Frenchman, but out-manoeuvre a 
 Russian," for which purpose he would throw his own force, 
 preferably, upon the van of the latter. The reason is obvious, 
 upon reflection ; for in attacking and cutting off the head — 
 van and centre — of a column of ships, the rear, coming up 
 under full way, has immediate action forced upon it. There 
 is no time for deliberation. The van is already engaged, and 
 access to it more or less impeded, by the hostile dispositions. 
 The decision must be instant — to the right hand, or to the 
 left, to windward, or to leeward — and there is at least an 
 even chance that the wrong thing will be done, as well as a 
 probability, falling little short of certainty, that all the ships 
 of the rear will 7iot do the same thing ; that is, they will be 
 thrown into confusion with all its dire train of evils, doubt, 
 hesitancy, faltering, and inconsequent action. It is hard work 
 to knit again a shattered line under the unremittent assault 
 of hardened veterans, such as Nelson's Mediterranean ships. 
 
 The method employed in the second of these instructions, 
 the celebrated Memorandum, differs essentially from that of 
 
 1 Ante, pp. 665, 680, ^ j^^te, p. 475. 
 
700 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 the Plan of Attack, though both are simply developments of 
 the one idea of concentration. It is unfortunate for us that 
 Nelson, like most men of action, reveals his reasoning pro- 
 cesses, not in ordered discussion, but by stray gleams of ex- 
 pression, too often unrecorded, from which we can infer only 
 the general tenor of his thought. It is in the chance phrase, 
 transmitted by Stewart, coupled with the change of object, so 
 definitely announced in the second instance, — the crushing, 
 namely, of the enemy's great fleet, and not the mere crippling 
 of a detachment such as Avent to the West Indies, — that the 
 author thinks to find the clew to the diiference of dispositions, 
 in the first case, from those prescribed and followed for Trafal- 
 gar — the "Nelson touch" that thrilled the captains. There 
 is again, indeed, in the latter, the distinct reliance upon con- 
 fusion, for the line of the foe is to be broken in two places ; 
 but now the confusion introduced is in the part of the enemy 
 that is assailed, not, as before, in that which is left out of 
 action. Confusion, in short, is now imposed by external force, 
 rather than induced by internal perplexity, — a condition 
 surer, and therefore more liable to result in a crushing victory, 
 for it depends upon the vigor of the offensive, and not on the 
 weakness of the defensive, which may prove a deceitful reliance. 
 Moreover, effectual crushing requires time, even when, as in 
 the final memorandum, a great concentration of superiority 
 is intended on part of an enera3''s order. Now, when the van 
 and centre are attacked, the rear is pointed fair, and, if it does 
 not lose its head, comes quickly up to the rescue ; but when, 
 in the contrary case, the centre and rear receive the assault, 
 the van, being left out of action, not only has to turn round, 
 but naturally stands awa^', for an interval dependent upon the 
 initiative of its immediate commander, as occurred to an 
 extreme degree at Trafalgar. Thus time, the invaluable five 
 minutes or half hour, is gained for the offensive to bring its 
 first concentration to a successful issue, as well as to prepare 
 to repel the van of the defensive, if it countermarches, as it 
 should. " I look with confidence to a victory before the 
 van of the enemy could succour their rear, and then that 
 the British fleet would most of them be ready to receive their 
 twenty sail of the line, or to pursue them, should they en- 
 deavour to make off." 
 
TACTICAL METHODS TOl 
 
 The organization of a distinct body of eight fast-sailing 
 ships-of-tlie-line, to be carried to such part of the field as might 
 appear necessary to the commander-in-chief in a particular 
 emergency, resulted inevitably, perhaps, from the consider- 
 ations presented by Nelson in the opening sentences of the 
 Memorandum, and from the great number of ships he then 
 hoped to have. There were precedents for such a formation, 
 in the practice of the day ; but, as far as recalled by the 
 author, they were the advanced guards, the skirmish line, of 
 the fleet, not, as in this case, essentially a reserve. In 
 Nelson's present thought, the employment of this force would 
 be, not antecedent to, but consequent upon, the particular 
 indications of the day. Probably they would not be held back 
 as long — for as distinct indications — as in the case of an 
 army's reserve ; but nevertheless, the chief object of their 
 separate organization was to redress, at the moment, the un- 
 foreseen developments of a battle, whether at the instant of 
 engagement or during its subsequent progress. The unfortu- 
 nate Villeneuve, who commanded the allies, an accomplished 
 though irresolute seaman, had adopted a similar arrangement, 
 placing twelve detached ships under his colleague Gravina ; 
 but, with sailing vessels, the effective use of such a force 
 depended largely upon the windward position, which the allies 
 did not have. If placed to leeward of a lee line, it Avas in the 
 power of the assailant to throw them out of action altogether ; 
 if to windward, to attack them separately ; therefore at Tra- 
 falgar Villeneuve ordered them back into the line. . Nelson like- 
 wise then embodied his reserve in the two columns of attack, 
 because he had fewer vessels than he expected, and because 
 the light wind forbade the wasting of time in evolutionary 
 refinements. The incident of the simultaneous adoption of 
 the same provision by the two opposing admirals, however, is 
 interesting as indicative of the progress of naval thought, 
 though still hampered by the uncertainties of the motive 
 power. 
 
 The second of these Orders, that of October 9, is memorable, 
 not only for the sagacity and comprehensiveness of its general 
 dispositions, but even more for the magnanimous confidence 
 with which the details of execution were freely intrusted to 
 those upon whom they had to fall. It was evidently drawn 
 
702 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 up in the first instauce for Collingwood only ; the word 
 " your " in the original draught having been struck out, and 
 "second ill command," substituted. The comparison already 
 made between it and its predecessor of May, may not 
 uninstructively be followed by a study of the ditfereuce in 
 details between itself and the execution it actually received 
 at the Battle of Trafalgar. To aid this purpose the author 
 has traced, in marginal notes, the succession of the leading 
 ideas. 
 
 After a statement of General Considerations, and a frank 
 attribution of full powers to the second in command for 
 carrying out his part, Nelson lays down the manner of Attack 
 from to Leeward. This condition not obtaining at Trafalgar, 
 the plan cannot be contrasted with the performance of that 
 day. Upon this follows a luminous enunciation of the general 
 idea, namely, Collingwood's engaging the twelve rear ships, 
 which underlies the method prescribed for each attack — 
 from to leeward and to windward. Of the latter Kelson 
 fortunately gives an outline diagram, which illustrates the 
 picture before his own mind, facilitating our comprehen- 
 sion of his probable expectations and allowing a comparison 
 between them and the event as it actually occurred. It is 
 not to the discredit, but greatly to the credit, of his concep- 
 tion, that it was susceptible of large modification in practice 
 while retaining its characteristic idea. 
 
 Looking at his diagram,^ and following his words, it will 
 be seen that the British lines are not formed perpendicularly 
 to that of the enemy (as they were at Trafalgar), but parallel 
 to it. Starting from this disposition, near the enemy and 
 abreast his centre, the lee line of sixteen ships was to bear up 
 together, and advance in line, not in column (as happened at 
 Trafalgar) ; their object being the twelve rear ships of the 
 enemy. This first move stands by itself; the action of the 
 weather line, and of the reserve squadron still farther to 
 windward, are held in suspense under the eye of the com- 
 mander-in-chief, to take the direction which the latter shall 
 prescribe as the struggle develops. The mere menace of such 
 a force, just out of gunshot to windward, ^voixld be sufficient 
 
 1 The author has introduced an arrow to show the direction of the wind as 
 viewed by Nelson ; the arrow flying with the wind. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
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TACTICAL METHODS 703 
 
 to prevent any extensive manoeuvre of the unengaged enemies. 
 !Nelson doubtless had in mind tlie dispositions, more than a 
 century old, of Tourville and De Euyter, by which a few ships, 
 spaced to windward of an enemy's van, could check its 
 tacking, because of the raking fire to which they would sub- 
 ject it. Unquestionably, he would not have kept long in idle 
 expectancy twenty-four ships, the number he had in mind ; 
 but clearly also he proposed to hold them until he saw how 
 things went with Collingwood. Thus much time would allow, 
 granting the position he assumed and a reasonable breeze. 
 His twenty-four to windward held an absolute check over 
 the supposed thirty-four unengaged, of the enemy. 
 
 The attack as planned, therefore, differed from that executed 
 (1) in that the lee line was not to advance in column, but in line, 
 thereby dispersing the enemy's fii-e, and avoiding the terrific 
 concentration which crushed the leaders at Trafalgar ; and (2) 
 in that the weather squadrons were not to attack simul- 
 taneously with the lee, but after it had engaged, in order 
 to permit the remedying of any mishap that might arise 
 in delivering the crucial blow. In both these matters of 
 detail the plan was better than the modification; but the 
 latter was forced upon Nelson by conditions beyond his 
 control. 
 
 It will be observed that, when considering attacking from 
 to leeward, he orders a simultaneous movement of the three 
 British divisions, — lee, weather, and reserve ; for the obvious 
 reason that if he held his own divisions in reserve to leeward 
 he could not at all count upon bringing them into action at 
 will ; and, moreover, such an attack would probably have to 
 be in columns, and, if simultaneous, would be less liable to 
 disaster than in succession, mutual support diverting the 
 enemies' fire. In fact, the highest order of offensive combi- 
 nation was only possible when having the advantage of the 
 wind — fair, and enough of it. 
 
 The plan upon which Trafalgar was to be fought, as above 
 described and analyzed, was formed some time before 
 leaving England, and it is not unreasonable to suppose 
 that it was in fact a modification of the earlier idea, laid 
 down during the chase to the West Indies. On the 10th 
 of September, three days only before quitting Mertou, jSTelsou 
 
•704 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 called upou his old friend, Lord Sidmouth,^ who until recently 
 had been Prime Minister. In the course of the interview he 
 explained his intentions as regards the attack. " Rodney," 
 he said, " broke the enemy's line in one place,- I will break it 
 in two;" and with his linger he indicated upon a table the 
 general character of the assault, to be made in two lines, led 
 by himself and Collingwood. He felt confident, according to 
 Sidmouth's narration, that he should capture either their van 
 and centre or their centre and rear. It was of course out of 
 his power to prevent the enemy inverting their order, by the 
 simultaneous turning round of every ship, at the time of 
 engagement, so that the attack intended for the rear should 
 fall upon it become the van. Against this contingency he 
 provided by the words, ''should the enemy wear together, 
 still the twelve ships composing, in the first j^osition, the 
 enemy's rear, are to be the object of attack of the lee line." 
 Sidmouth did not commit his recollection of this incident to 
 writing until many years later, and, not being a seaman, very 
 likely failed to comprehend some of the details — there seems 
 to the author to be in the story a confusion of what Nelson 
 planned with what Nelson did ; but a great conception is 
 largely independent of details, and the essential features of 
 Trafalgar are in Sidmouth's account. The idea was doubtless 
 imj)arted also to the family circle at Mertou, where probably 
 the expression, " Nelson touch," originated. It occurs chiefly, 
 if not wholly, in his letters to Lady Hamilton, to whom, some 
 days before reaching the fleet, he wrote, "I am anxious to 
 join, for it would add to my grief if any other man was to 
 give them the Nelson touch, which we say is warranted never 
 to fail ; " but there may be a quaint allusion to it in the motto 
 he told Rose he had adopted : "Touch and Take." 
 
 When Nelson left England, he was intrusted by the First 
 Lord with the delicate and unpleasant mission of communi- 
 cating to Sir Robert Calder the dissatisfaction of the Govern- 
 ment with his conduct, in the encounter with the allied fleets 
 the previous July ; especially for failing to keep touch with 
 
 1 Formerly Mr. Addington, who was at the head of the Government during 
 tlie Copenhagen expedition. 
 
 2 This was a mistake on Nelson's ])art. Rodney's fleet actually, though 
 accidentally, broke through De Grasse's order in two (if not three) places. 
 
THE C ALDER INCIDENT 705 
 
 them and bring them again to action. The national outcry 
 was too strong to be disregarded, nor is it probable that the 
 Admiralty took a more lenient view of the matter. At all 
 events, an inquiry was inevitable, and the authorities seem to 
 have felt that it was a favor to Calder to permit him to ask 
 for the Court which in any case must be ordered. ''I did not 
 fail," wrote iSTelson to Barham, "immediately on my arrival, 
 to deliver your message to Sir Eobert Calder ; and it will 
 give your Lordship pleasure to find, as it has me, that an in- 
 quiry is what the Vice-Admiral wishes, and that he had written 
 to you by the Nautilus, which I detained, to say so. Sir 
 Robert thinks that he can clearly prove, that it was not in his 
 power to bring the combined squadrons again to battle." 
 
 Nelson felt a profound sympathy for the unfortunate officer, 
 pursued by the undiscriminating and ignorant fury of popular 
 clamor, the extent and intensity of which he had had oppor- 
 tunity to realize when in England. "While he probably did 
 not look for so tragic an issue, the execution of Byng under a 
 similar odium and a similar charge, although expressly cleared 
 of cowardice and disaffection, was still fresh in the naval 
 mind. " Sir Robert has an ordeal to pass through," he wrote 
 Collingwood, " which he little expects." His own opinion 
 upon the case seems to have undergone some modification, 
 since the generous outburst with which he at first deprecated 
 the prejudgment of a disappointed and frightened people ; 
 nor could it well fail, as details became known to him, that 
 he should pass a silent censure upon proceedings, which con- 
 travened alike his inward professional convictions, and his 
 expressed purposes of action for a similar contingency. " I 
 have had, as you will believe, a very distressing scene with 
 poor Sir Robert Calder," he told Lady Hamilton. "He has 
 wrote home to beg an inquiry, feeling confident that he can 
 fully justify himself. I sincerely hope he may, but — I have 
 given him the advice as to my dearest friend. He is in ad- 
 versity, and if he ever has been my enemy, he now feels the 
 pang of it, and finds me one of his best friends." " Sir Robert 
 Calder," he wrote to another correspondent, "has just left us 
 to stand his trial, which I think of a very serious nature." 
 Nelson was obliged to detain him until reinforcements arrived 
 from England, because Calder Avas unwilling to undergo the 
 
 45 
 
706 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 apparent humiliation of leaving his flagship under charges, 
 and she could not yet be spared. It was not the least of this 
 unlucky man's misfortunes that he left the fleet just a week 
 before the battle, where his conduct would undoubtedly have 
 redeemed whatever of errors he may have committed. One 
 of the last remarks Nelson made before the action began, was, 
 " Hardy, what would poor Sir Robert Calder give to be with 
 us now ! " 
 
 Calder's reluctance to quit his flagship, and the keen sen- 
 sitiveness with which he expressed his feelings, drew from 
 Nelson a concession he knew to be wrong, but which is too 
 characteristic, both in the act itself and in his own account of 
 it, to be omitted. "Sir Robert felt so much," he wrote to the 
 First Lord, " even at the idea of being removed from his own 
 ship which he commanded, in the face of the fleet, that I 
 much fear I shall incur the censure of the Board of Admiralty, 
 without your Lordship's influence with the members of it. 
 I may be thought wrong, as an oflicer, to disobey the orders 
 of the Admiralty, by not insisting on Sir Robert Calder's quit- 
 ting the Prince of Wales for the Dreadnought, and for part- 
 ing with a 90-gun ship, before the force arrives which their 
 Lordships have judged necessary; but I trust that I shall be 
 considered to have done right as a man, and to a brother 
 oflicer in afiliction — my heart could not stand it, and so the 
 thing must rest. I shall submit to the wisdom of the Board 
 to censure me or not, as to them may seem best for the Ser- 
 vice; I shall bow with all due respect to their decision." 
 
 From the military point of view this step was indefensible, 
 but it is in singular keeping with Nelson's kindness of heart, 
 his generosity of temper, and with a certain recklessness 
 of consequences, — when supported by inward conviction of 
 right, or swayed by natural impulses, — which formed no 
 small part of his greatness as a warrior. "Numbers only 
 can annihilate ; " yet to spare the feelings of an unhappy man, 
 whom he believed to have been his enemy, he parted with one 
 of the best units from his numbers, although, even with her 
 present, he was inferior to the allies. He felt keenly, how- 
 ever, the responsibility he assumed, not only towards the 
 Admiralty, but towards his own success and reputation. At 
 one time he seems, with unusual vacillation, even to have 
 
DISPOSITION OF THE FLEET 707 
 
 returned upon his decision, and to have notified Calder that 
 the ship could not be spared ; for on the 12th of October the 
 latter wrote him : " The contents of your Lordship's letter 
 have cut me to the soul. If I am to be turned out of my 
 ship, after all that has passed, I have only to request I may 
 be allowed to take my Captain, and such officers as I find 
 necessary for the justification of my conduct as an officer, 
 and that I may be permitted to go without a moment's 
 further loss of time. My heart is broken." This appeal 
 broke down all Nelson's power of resistance. He deprived 
 himself on the eve of battle of a first-rate ship, taking only 
 the precaution of sending his entire correspondence with 
 Calder, public and private, to explain his course, though 
 scarcely to justify it. The significance of this act is enhanced 
 by the known importance which he himself attached to the 
 presence or absence of even a third-rate ship-of-the-line. 
 When the expedition to the Baltic was on the eve of starting, 
 a seventy-four went aground, in leaving the Downs. Lieuten- 
 ant Layman having been conspicuously instrumental in get- 
 ting her off, Nelson told him that he had in consequence 
 Avritten in his favor to the Admiralty ; and upon Layman's 
 remarking that what he had done scarcely deserved so much, 
 the admiral replied, " I think differently, the loss of one liue- 
 of-battle ship might be the loss of a victory." 
 
 When Nelson joined the fleet, he found it stationed some 
 fifteen to twenty miles from Cadiz. He soon moved the main 
 body to fifty miles west of the port. " It is desirable," he 
 admitted, "to be well up in easterly winds, but I must guard 
 against being caught with a westerly wind near Cadiz, as a 
 fleet of ships witli so many three-deckers would inevitably 
 be forced into the Straits, and then Cadiz would be perfectly 
 free for the enemy to come out with a westerly wind, as they 
 served Lord Keith in the late war." The memory of his 
 weary beat out of the Mediterranean the previous April, 
 against wind and current, remained vividly in his mind ; and 
 he feared also that the willingness of the enemy to come out, 
 which was his great object, would be much cooled by the cer- 
 tainty that his fleet could not be avoided, and by seeing such 
 additions as it might receive. " I think we are near enough," 
 he wrote Collingwood, '' for the weather if it is fine, the wind 
 
•708 TfiE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 serves, and we are in sight, they will never move." " I rely 
 on you," he tells Blackwood, "that we can't miss getting 
 hold of them, and I will give them such a shaking as they 
 never yet experienced ; at least I will lay down my life in the 
 attempt." An advanced squadron of fast-sailing seventy- 
 fours was thrown out ten or twelve miles east of the fleet, 
 through which daily signals could be exchanged with Black- 
 wood's squadron of frigates, that cruised day and night close 
 to the harbor's mouth. This disposition received a farther 
 development after the 10th of October, when the combined 
 fleets shifted from the inner harbor to the Bay of Cadiz, and 
 gave other tokens of a speedy start. On the 14th of the 
 month he made the following entry in his diary : *' Enemy at 
 the harbour's mouth. Placed Defence and Agamemnon from 
 seven to ten leagues west of Cadiz, and Mars and Colossus 
 five leagues east of fleet [that is, under way between the 
 fleet and the former group], whose station is from fifteen to 
 twenty leagues west of Cadiz ; and by this chain I hope to 
 have constant communication with the frigates off Cadiz." 
 To the captain of the '' Defence " he wrote that it was possi- 
 ble the enemy might try to drive off the frigate squadron, 
 in order to facilitate their own evasion ; in which case the 
 inner ships-of-the-line would be at hand to resist the attempt. 
 Despite these careful dispositions, his mind was still ill at 
 ease lest the enemy might escape undetected. He never had 
 frigates enough to make the result as sure as it ought to be, 
 where such vast issues were at stake. While eight at least 
 were needed to be always with the fleet before Cadiz, he had 
 but five; and to maintain even so many it was necessary to 
 cut short other services and essential stations. This deficiency 
 he urged upon the Government still more than he did the 
 inadequacy of the line-of-batfcle force ; for his fear of the 
 enemy eluding him was greater than that of a conflict with 
 superior numbers. As regards the latter contingency, he 
 wrote to Lord Barham that, if the enemy came out, he would 
 immediately bring them to battle ; ''but, although I should 
 not doubt of spoiling any voyage they might attempt, yet I 
 hope for the arrival of the ships from England, that as an 
 enemy's fleet they may be annihilated." On the other hand, 
 " the last fleet was lost to me for want of frigates." Besides 
 
COMPOSURE OF MIND 709 
 
 his own direct representations, he pressed. Rose to obtain an 
 intimation to the Admiralty from the Prime Minister, that the 
 latter was personally solicitous that more small cruisers should 
 be supplied. Both Collingwood and Nelson believed the allies 
 bound to the Mediterranean ; but in this they might be mis- 
 taken, and as the real object might be again the West Indies, 
 lookouts should be placed off Cape Bianco on the coast of 
 Africa, and off the Salvages,^ both which he knew had been 
 sighted by Villeneuve, in the outward voyage of the previous 
 spring. 
 
 To his concern about the immediate situation before Cadiz 
 were added the universal cares of the Mediterranean, with all 
 parts of which he renewed his correspondence, occupying his 
 active mind with provisions for forwarding the cause of Great 
 Britain and her allies. Under his many anxieties, however, 
 he preserved his buoyant, resolute temper, not worrying over 
 possible happenings against which he was unable to provide. 
 " The force is at present not so large as might be wished," he 
 writes to Ball, " but I will do my best with it ; they will give 
 me more when they can, and I am not come forth to find 
 difhculties, but to remove them." " Your Lordship may 
 depend upon my exertions," he tells Barham. The possibility 
 that he himself might fall was, as always, present to his 
 thoughts, and never did life mean more to him than it now 
 did ; yet, as the twilight deepened, and the realization of 
 danger passed gradually into a presentiment of death, he 
 faced the prospect without gloom — steadfast still in mind. 
 "Let the battle be when it may, it will never have been sur- 
 passed. My shattered frame, if I survive that day, will 
 require rest, and that is all I shall ask for. If I fall on such 
 a glorious occasion, it shall be my pride to ta,ke care that my 
 friends shall not blush for me. These things are in the 
 hands of a wise and just Providence, and His will be done! 
 I have got some trifle, thank God, to leave those I hold most 
 dear, and I have taken care not to neglect it. Do not think I 
 am low-spirited on this account, or fancy anything is to happen 
 to me ; quite the contrary — my mind is calm, and I have only 
 to think of destroying our inveterate foe." 
 
 Of these days of preoccupation, while in hourly expectation 
 1 A desert group of small islands between Madeira and the Canaries. 
 
710 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 of the issue, overchai'ged with official anxieties, and facing, 
 however fearlessly, a growing impression that he himself 
 would not survive the conflict for which he longed, an anecdote 
 has been transmitted that shows again how to the end, and 
 whatever his personal cares, his quick sympathy went out to 
 men of all classes. Word had been passed through the fleet 
 that a mail was about to start for England, which would not 
 improbably be the last opportunity of writing home before the 
 enemy came forth. The letters had been collected as usual, 
 the bags were all on board the departing vessel, and she her- 
 self, under full sail, had got already some distance away, 
 when Nelson saw a midshipman come up and speak to Lieu- 
 tenant Pasco, the signal officer, who, upon hearing what was 
 said, stamped his foot in evident vexation, and uttered an 
 exclamation. The admiral, of whose nearness Pasco was not 
 aware, called him, and asked what was the matter. " Nothing 
 that need trouble your Lordship," was the reply. ''You are 
 not the man to lose your temper for nothing," rejoined Nelson. 
 "What was it ?" "Well, if you must know, my Lord, I will 
 tell you. You see that cockswain," pointing to one of the 
 most active of the petty officers ; " we have not a better man 
 on board the Victory and the message which put me out was 
 this. I was told that he was so busy receiving and getting off 
 the mail-bags, that he forgot to drop his own letter to his wife 
 into one of them, and he has just discovered it in his pocket." 
 "Hoist a signal to bring her back," was Nelson's instant 
 command ; " who knows that he may not fall in action to-mor- 
 row. His letter shall go with the rest," — and the despatch 
 vessel was brought back for that alone. ^ In telling the story, 
 Pasco used to say it was no wonder that the common sailors 
 idolized Nelson, since he was always thinking about them, 
 and won their hearts by showing his own. 
 
 In addition to the combined fleets in Cadiz, which numbered 
 thirty-six of the line, besides frigates, the enemy had a half- 
 dozen of the line in Cartagena, Avhich showed signs of moving, 
 and whose junction must be prevented, if possible. Partly 
 for this reason, partly because it was necessary to renew the 
 water of the ships, Nelson sent a detachment of six of the 
 
 1 The author is indebted for this reminiscence to Mr. Stuart J. Eeid, who 
 received it from Pasco's son, also an officer in the Navy. 
 
AWAITING THE ENEMY'S SAILING 711 
 
 line to Gibraltar and Tetuan, immediately after he took charge. 
 To the junior admiral who commanded it, and who lamented 
 that they might lose their share in the expected battle, he 
 replied : '' I have no other means of keeping my fleet complete 
 in provisions and water. The enemy will come out, and we 
 shall fight them ; but there will be time for you to get back 
 first." They did not, however, return as thus expected, a 
 misadventure which was chiefly due to their having to guard a 
 convoy past Cartagena, — a potent illustration of the influence 
 exerted by a powerful squadron, judiciously placed on the 
 flank of au important trade route, or line of communication ; 
 but even had they rejoined, six others were told off to leave at 
 once in turn. Nelson did not dare to take the fleet in mass 
 to Tetuan, as he used to Madalena ; for he could never be sure 
 of getting out of the Straits when he wished, or when the 
 enemy moved. Thus his fleet was reduced, by both adminis- 
 trative and strategic exigencies, to twenty -three ships-of-the- 
 line. Fortunately, four more joined before the battle, raising 
 the numbers actually engaged to twenty-seven. It will be 
 recognized that Gaidar's ninety-gun ship was no small loss. 
 
 Such were the general dispositions in which the sailing of 
 the enemy was awaited. A main body of eighteen to twenty, 
 fifty miles west of Cadiz, a frigate squadron close in to the 
 harbor, and two groups of ships-of-the-line extended between 
 these extremes. With a westerly wind, approach to the port 
 would be easy for all ; with an easterly, Nelson wrote to 
 Blackwood, he would habitually beat up for Cadiz, never going 
 north of the port. His whereabouts in case of thick weather 
 was thus always known. He notified Collingwood and his 
 other subordinates, that if the enemy came out, he should 
 stand for Cape Spartel, the African outpost of the Straits, to 
 bar the entrance of the allies to the Mediterranean. Signals 
 were arranged, precise, yet not so elaborate as to tend to con- 
 fusion, by which the departure and general direction of the 
 enemy could be continually transmitted, from the furthest 
 lookouts to the main body, by night as by day. 
 
 On the 13th of October his old ship, the " Agamemnon," 
 joined the fleet. She was commanded by Sir Edward Berry, 
 who had been first lieutenant in her with Nelson, had accom- 
 panied him in boarding the " San Nicolas " and " San Josef " 
 
712 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 at St. Vincent, and was afterwards his flag-captain at the Nile. 
 When her approach was reported to the admiral, he exclaimed 
 gleefully, " Here comes Berry ! Now we shall have a battle j " 
 for Berry, having been in more fleet actions than any captain 
 in the British Navy/ had a proverbial reputation for such 
 luck. The event did not belie the prediction. Five days 
 later, on the 18th of the month, Nelson noted in his diary : 
 " Fine weather, wind easterly ; the combined fleets cannot 
 have finer weather to put to sea; " and the following morning, 
 at half-past nine, the signal, repeated from masthead to mast- 
 head, from the inshore frigates to their commander-in-chief 
 fifty miles at sea, announced that the long-expected battle 
 was at hand — for " The Enemy are coming out of port." 
 
 ^ Besides three of the battles associated with Nelson's name — St. Vincent, 
 the Nile, and Trafalgar — Berry as a midshipman had been in the five fleet 
 actions between Sufiren and Hughes, in the East Indies, in 1782 and 1783. 
 (" The Nelson Memorial," by John Knox Laughton, pp. 83, 284.) 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 Trafalgar. — The Death of Nelson. 
 October 19-21, 1805. Age, 47. 
 
 CONTEARY to the general policy that for many years 
 had governed the naval undertakings of France and 
 Spain, the combined fleets put to sea on the 19th of October, 
 1805, with the fixed purpose of daring the hazard of battle, 
 which they could scarcely expect to avoid. They numbered 
 thirty-three ships-of-the-line, eighteen French and fifteen 
 Spanish, and were accompanied by five frigates and two brigs, 
 all of which were French. This great force in its aggregate 
 was one. There were not two separate entities, a French fleet 
 and a Spanish fleet, acting in concert, as is often the case in 
 alliances. Whatever the administrative arrangements, for 
 cruising and for battle the vessels of the two nations were 
 blended in a single mass, at the head of which was the French 
 admiral, just as the general direction of the naval campaign 
 was in the hands of the French Emperor alone. The com- 
 mander-in-chief was Vice-Admiral Villeneuve, the same that 
 Nelson recently had pursued to the West Indies and back to 
 Europe. The commander of the Spanish contingent, Vice- 
 Admiral Gravina, was less his colleague than his subordinate. 
 There were also flying in the combined fleet the flags of four 
 junior admirals, two French and two Spanish, and the broad 
 pendants of several commodores. 
 
 In the allied force there were four three-decked ships, of 
 from one hundred to one hundred and thirty guns, all Spanish, 
 of which one, the "Santisima Trinidad," was the largest 
 vessel then afloat. Among Nelson's twenty-seven there were 
 seven three-deckers, of ninety-eight to one hundred guns ; but 
 in the lower rates the British were at a disadvantage, having 
 but one eighty-gun ship and three sixty-fours, whereas the 
 allies had six of the former and only one of the latter. All 
 the other vessels of the line-of-battle were seventy-fours, the 
 normal medium type, upon Avhich the experience of most 
 
714 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 navies of that day had fixed, as best fitted for the general pur- 
 poses of fleet warfare. Where more tonnage and heavier bat- 
 teries were put into single ships, it was simply for the purpose 
 of reinforcing the critical points of an order of battle ; an aim 
 that could not be as effectively attained by the combination of 
 tAvo ships, under two captains. 
 
 As Kelson said in his celebrated order, so large a body as 
 thirty -three heavy vessels is not easily handled, even at sea ; 
 and leaving port with them is an operation yet more difficult. 
 Consequently, the movement which began soon after daylight 
 on the 19th was not completed that day. Owing to the fall- 
 ing of the wind, only twelve ships got fairly clear of the bay, 
 outside of which they lay becalmed. The following morning 
 the attempt was resumed, and by two or three o'clock in the 
 afternoon of the 20th the whole combined fleet was united, and 
 standing with a fresh southwest wind to the northward and 
 westward, to gain room to windward for entering the Straits. 
 
 As has been said, the movement that Blackwood recognized 
 at 7 A. M. of the 19th was communicated to the admiral at 
 half-past nine. According to his announced plan, to cut the 
 enemy off from the Mediterranean, he at once made signal for 
 a General Chase to the southeast, — towards Cape Spartel, — 
 and the fleet moved off in that direction with a light southerly 
 wind. At noon Nelson sat down in his cabin to begin his 
 last letter to Lady Hamilton. The words then written he 
 signed, as though conscious that no opportunity to continue 
 might offer ; nor is it difficult to trace that some such thought 
 was then uppermost in his mind, and sought expression in the 
 tenderness of farewell. The following day, however, he added 
 a few lines, in which the dominant note was fear that the 
 enemy might again elude him, by returning into port; an 
 apprehension that expelled the previous haunting sense of 
 finality. There he laid down the pen, never again to address 
 her directly. The letter, thus abruptly closed by death, was 
 found open and unsigned upon his desk after the battle. 
 
 Victory, October 19tli, 1805, Noon. 
 Cadiz, E. S. E., 16 Leagues. 
 
 My dearest beloved Emma, the dear friend of my bosom. The 
 signal has been made that the Enemy's Combined Fleet axe coming 
 
 < 
 
LAST LETTER TO LADY HAMILTON 715 
 
 out of Port. We have very little wind, so that I have no hopes of 
 seeing them before to-morrow. May the God of Battles crown my 
 endeavours with success ; at all events, I will take care that my name 
 shall ever be most dear to you and Horatia, both of whom I love as 
 much as my own life. And as my last writing before the Battle 
 w-ill be to you, so I hope in God that I shall live to finish ray letter 
 after the Battle. May Heaven bless you prays your 
 
 Nelson and Bronte. 
 
 October 20th. 
 In the morning, we were close to the Mouth of the Straits, but the 
 wind had not come far enough to the Westward to allow the Combined 
 Fleets to weather the Shoals off Trafalgar ; but they were counted as 
 far as forty Sail of Ships of 'W^ar, which I suppose to be thirty-four 
 of the Line, and six Frigates. A group of them was seen off the 
 Lighthouse of Cadiz this morning, but it blows so very fresh and 
 thick weather, that I rather believe they will go into the Harbour 
 before night. ]\Iay God Almighty give us success over these fellows, 
 and enable us to get a Peace. 
 
 He w-rote the same day to his daughter, addressing the 
 letter to Miss Horatia Nelson Thompson,^ by which name 
 she had hitherto been known. In the Codicil to his Will, 
 signed on the morning of the 21st, a few hours before the 
 battle, he called her his adopted daughter, and desired that 
 she would in future use the name of Nelson only. 
 
 Victory, October 19th, 1805. 
 My dearest Angel, — I was made happy by the pleasure of 
 receiving your letter of September 19th, and I rejoice to hear that you 
 are so very good a girl, and love my dear Lady Hamilton, wdio most 
 dearly loves you. Give her a kiss for me. The Combined Fleets 
 of the Enemy are now reported to be coming out of Cadiz; and 
 therefore I answer your letter, my dearest Horatia, to mark to you 
 that you are ever uppermost in my thoughts. I shall be sure of 
 your prayers for my safety, conquest, and speedy return to dear 
 Merton, and our dearest good Lady Hamilton. Be a good girl, mind 
 what Miss Connor says to you. Receive, my dearest Horatia, the 
 affectionate parental blessing of your Father, 
 
 Nelson and Bronte. 
 
 ^ The name Thompson was s])elled by Nelson indifferently with or without 
 the " p," which, as Nicolas observes, confirms the belief that it was fictitious. 
 The fact is singular ; foi% from a chance remark of his, it appears that he 
 meant it to be Thomson. (Morrison, Letter No. 569.) 
 
716 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 The 20th of October opened with fresh breezes from south- 
 southwest and heavy rains. At daybreak the British fleet 
 was near the Straits' mouth, between Capes Trafalgar and 
 Spartel, unable to see anything, but certain that, with the 
 existing winds, the enemy could not have anticipated it there. 
 Blackwood's frigates, out of sight to the northward, Avere 
 dogging the path of the allies, of whose general j^osition they 
 were certain, although the thick weather hid them from 
 observation. At 7 a. m. the frigate •' Phoebe " signalled to 
 Nelson that the enemy bore north. With the wind as it was, 
 and considering the position of the land, the}' must be stand- 
 ing to the northwest, so that the British fleet wore and 
 steered the same course, keeping parallel to the enemy and 
 spreading lookouts in their direction. Soon after noon, the 
 weather clearing, Blackwood saw the combined fleets where he 
 believed them to be, under low sail, and so close that the 
 " Euryalus " went about immediately. At 1 p. m. he left the 
 squadron in temporary charge of a junior captain, and with 
 his own ship kept away south to speak the admiral. At two 
 he sighted the main bod}'-, and at 3.20 was near enough to 
 send the telegraphic message, "The enemy appears deter- 
 mined to push to the westward." " That," wrote Nelson in 
 his diary, " they shall not do, if in the power of Nelson and 
 Bronte to prevent them," and he telegraphed back, •' I rely 
 upon your keeping sight of the enemy." The frigates and look- 
 out ships, he noted in his journal, had so far discharged their 
 duties most admirably, informing him promptly of all the 
 hostile movements ; he was justified therefore in the con- 
 fidence that they would do as well in the night now 
 approaching. 
 
 While Blackwood was communicating, Nelson himself was 
 much of the time on the " Victory's " poop. Seeing there a 
 number of midshipmen assembled, he observed to them, 
 "This day or to-morrow will be a fortunate one for you, 
 young gentlemen," alluding to their prospect of promotion 
 after a successful battle. The same day at dinner, he said to 
 some of the company, " To-morrow I will do that which will 
 give you younger gentlemen something to talk and think 
 about for the rest of your lives, but I shall not live to know 
 about it myself ; " and he added that he expected to capture 
 
MOVEMENTS OF THE FLEETS 717 
 
 twenty to twenty-two of the hostile fleet.^ It may be inferred 
 from this remark that by the dinner hour, between three and 
 five, he had become satisfied that the enemy either would not, 
 or could not, return into port, according to the fear he had 
 expressed to Lady Hamilton, and that a battle therefore was 
 certain. The letter to her, from its mention of the weather 
 as thick, must have been written in the forenoon. His 
 expectation that the morrow would prove the decisive day 
 was reinforced by one of those prepossessions for coincidences, 
 half jesting, half serious, which are natural to men, but fall 
 too far short of conviction to be called superstitious. On the 
 21st of October, 1757, his uncle Maurice Suckling had com- 
 manded one of three ships-of-the-line which had beaten ofE a 
 superior force. Nelson had several times said to Captain 
 Hardy and Dr. Scott, ''The 21st will be our day ; " and on the 
 morning of the battle, when the prediction was approaching 
 fulfilment, he again remarked that the 21st of October was 
 the happiest day in the year fpv his family ; but he mentioned 
 no reason other than that just given. 
 
 The main bodies of the contending navies did not come in 
 sight of each other during the 20th ; the British lookout 
 frigates, between the two, and three or four miles from the 
 allied line, could see their own fleet only from the masthead. 
 At about 2 p. M., soon after the weather cleared, the wind 
 shifted to west-northwest, taking the ships aback. After 
 filling their sails again to the new wind, as this was now fair 
 for their approach to the Straits' mouth, the combined fleets 
 wore, and headed to the southward. The British remaining 
 on the same tack as before, — the port, — stood to the north- 
 ward until 8 p. M., when they also wore to the southwest ; 
 but this interval of steering in nearly opposite directions 
 changed the relative bearings. At midnight, by the log of 
 Blackwood's frigates, the enemy stretched along the eastern 
 horizon, while the British bore southwest; the space between 
 the two being ten miles. The " Euryalus," three miles from 
 the allies, saw the loom of the lights of her own fleet. Still 
 fearful lest the view of his ships should shake the enemy's 
 
 ^ The author is indebted for this anecdote to Mr. Edgar Goble, of Farehani, 
 Hants, whose father, Thomas Goble, then secretary to Captain Hardy, was 
 present at the table. 
 
718 THE LIFE OF IsELSON 
 
 purpose, Nelson was careful not to lessen this distance ; the 
 more so because the British, having the wind, could attack 
 when they pleased, provided the enemy by continuing to the 
 southward deprived themselves of the power to regain Cadiz. 
 Two British frigates were directed to keep them in sight 
 during the night, reporting their movements to two others 
 Avho w^ere stationed a little farther from them, whence a chain 
 of line-of-battle ships communicated with the " Victory." 
 Thus, throughout the dark hours, signal lights and guns flashed 
 across the waters to Nelson instantaneous information of every 
 noteworthy occurrence in the hostile order. 
 
 Since the morning of the 19th, the weather, fine for some 
 days previous, had become unsettled, working up for the 
 southwest gale which Avrought so much damage among the 
 victims of the fight. As the night of the 20th advanced, 
 the wind fell, and at midnight there were only light westerly 
 breezes, inclining to calm. The same conditions continued 
 at dawn, and throughout the day of the 21st until after the 
 battle ; but there was also a great swell from the westward, 
 the precursor of a storm. At 4 A. m. the British fleet again 
 wore, and was standing northeast when the day broke. 
 
 After leaving Cadiz, in order to avoid separations during 
 the night, or in thick weather, the combined fleets had been 
 disposed in five columns, a formation whose compactness, 
 though not suited to an engagement, was less liable to strag- 
 gling than a single long .line, and brought all parts more di- 
 rectly under the control of tlie commander-in-chief at the 
 centre. Of the five, the two to windward, of six ships each, 
 constituted a reserve, similar to Nelson's proposed detachment 
 of eight. It was commanded by Admiral Gravina, and Avas 
 intended to reinforce such part of the battle as should appear 
 to require it ; an object for which the windward position was 
 of the utmost moment, as it was for all naval initiative in that 
 day. This advantage the allies did not have on the morning 
 of Trafalgar. When Villeneuve, therefore, formed the line 
 of battle, these twelve ships were at once incorporated with 
 it, taking the lead of their order as it stood to the southward, 
 with the wind at west-northwest, — a long column stretching 
 over five miles of sea from end to end. 
 
 In a general sense, then, it may be said that, when daylight 
 
THE BRITISH ORDER OF ATTACK 719 
 
 showed the enemies to each other, the British fleet was head- 
 ing to the northward, and that of the allies to the southward ; 
 the latter being ten or twelve miles east of their opponents. 
 In the far distance, Cape Trafalgar, from which the battle 
 takes its name, was just visible against the eastern sky. At 
 twenty minutes before seven Nelson made in quick succession 
 the signals, "To form the order of sailing," — which by his 
 previous instructions was to be the order of battle, — and 
 " To prepare for battle." Ten minutes later followed the 
 command to " Bear up," the " Victory " setting the example 
 by at once altering her course for the enemy. Collingwood 
 did the same, and the ships of the two divisions fell into the 
 Avake of their leaders as best they could, for the light wind 
 afforded neither the means nor the time for refinements in 
 manoeuvring. Fourteen ships followed the '' Eoyal Sover- 
 eign," which bore Collingwood's flag, while the remaining 
 twelve gathered in Nelson's division behind the "Victory."^ 
 The two columns steered east, about a mile apart, that of 
 Nelson being to the northward ; from which circumstance, 
 the wind being west-northwest, it has been called commonly 
 the weather line. 
 
 Thus, as Ivanhoe, at the instant of encounter in the lists, 
 shifted his lance from the shield to the casque of the Templar, 
 Nelson, at the moment of engaging, changed the details of 
 his plan, and substituted an attack in two columns, simul- 
 taneously made, for the charge of Collingwood's division, in 
 line and in superior numbers, upon the enemy's flank ; to be 
 followed, more or less quickly, according to indications, by 
 such movement of his own division as might seem advisable. 
 It will be observed, however, that the order of sailing remained 
 the order of battle, — probably, although it is not so stated, 
 the fleet was already thus disposed when the signal was made, 
 needing only rectification after the derangements incident to 
 darkness, — and further, that the general direction of attack 
 continued the same, Collingwood guiding his column upon the 
 enemy's southern flank, while Nelson pointed a few ships 
 
 1 One sixty-four, the "Africa," had separated to the northward during the 
 night, and joined in the buttle by ^lassing alone along the enemy's line, much 
 of the time under fire. She belonged, therefore, to Nelson's column, and 
 co-operated with it during the day. 
 
720 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 north of their centre. In this way was preserved the com- 
 prehensive aim which underlay the particular dispositions of 
 his famous order : '' The whole impression of the British fleet 
 must be to overpower from two or three ships ahead of their 
 commander-in-chief, supposed to be in the Centre, to the Rear 
 of their fleet." The northern flank of the allies — ten or a 
 dozen ships — was consequently left unengaged, unless by 
 their own initiative they came promptly into action ; which, 
 it may be added, they did not do until after the battle was 
 decided. 
 
 When the development of the British movement was recog- 
 nized by Villeneuve, he saw that fighting was inevitable ; and, 
 wishing to keep Cadiz, then twenty miles to the northward 
 and eastward, under his lee, he ordered the combined fleets 
 to wear together.^ The scanty wind which embarrassed the 
 British impeded this manoeuvre also, so that it was not com- 
 pleted till near ten o'clock. Xelson, however, noted its begin- 
 ning at seven, and with grave concern ; for not only would it 
 put the allies nearer their port, as it was intended to do, but 
 it would cause vessels crippled in the action to find to leeward 
 of them, during the gale which he foresaw, the dangerous 
 shoals off Trafalgar instead of the open refuge of the Straits. 
 The appreciation of the peril thus entailed led him to make 
 a signal for all the ships to be prepared to anchor after the 
 battle, for it was not to be hoped that the spars of many of 
 them would be in a condition to bear sail. The result of the 
 allied movement was to invert their order. Their ships, which 
 had been steering south, now all headed north ; the van 
 became the rear ; Gravina, who had been leading the column, 
 was in the rear ship ; and it was upon this rear, but still the 
 southern flank of the hostile array, that the weight of Col- 
 lingwood's attack was to fall. 
 
 Soon after daylight Nelson, who, according to his custom, 
 was already ujd and dressed, had gone on deck. He wore as 
 
 ^ Nelson in his journal wrote: "The enemy wearing in succession." As 
 the allies' order was reversed, however, it is evident that he meant merely 
 that the ships wore one after tlie other, from rear to van, but in their respec- 
 tive stations, each waiting till the one astern had, to use the old phrase, 
 "marked her manoeuvre," — a precaution intended to prevent collisions, 
 though it necessarily extended the line. 
 
•a 
 
 
 CI A 
 
 
 
 +6« 
 
 
 
 6.- 
 
 \ "'6 
 
 A 
 
 
 
 WIND *--^ W.N.W. .j^fl 
 
 .♦6 
 
 THE ATTACK AT TRAFALGAR 
 
 OCTOBER 2.1 I805 
 
 FIVE MINUTES PAST NOON 
 
 iV- BRITISH. 27 5HIP5 
 
 O FRENCH, 18 
 
 , 33 5H1P5 
 SPANISH,I5 ' 
 
 THE FRENCH AND SPANISH SHIPS MARKED+ WERE TAKEN OR DESTROYED IN 
 THE ACTION. 
 
 REFERENCES 
 
 A.SANTA ANA. ALAVA'S FLAG-SHIP |S. ROYAL SOVEREIGN COLLINQWOOD'S FUQ-SHIP 
 
 B.BUCENTAURE VILLENEUVE'5 •• IT.SAMTISIMA TRINIDAD 
 
 P.PRINCIPE OE ASTURIAS.ORAVINA'S" V. VICTORY. NELSONS FLAC-SMIP 
 
 R.REDOUTABLE I 
 
NELSON'S ANTICIPATIONS 721 
 
 usual his admiral's frock coat, on the left breast of which 
 were stitched the stars of four different Orders that he always 
 bore. It was noticed that he did not wear his sword at Tra- 
 falgar, although it lay ready for him on the cabin table ; and 
 it is supposed he forgot to call for it, as this was the only 
 instance in which he was known not to carry it when engaged. 
 At about six o'clock he summoned Captain Blackwood on 
 board the " Victory." This officer had had a hard fag during 
 the past forty-eight hours, dogging the enemy's movements 
 through darkness and mist ; but that task was over, and his 
 ambition now was to get command of one of two seventy-fours, 
 whose captains had gone home with Calder to give evidence 
 at his trial. " My signal just made on board the Victory," he 
 wrote to his wife. "I hope to order me to a vacant line-of- 
 battle ship." Nelson's purpose, however, as far as stated by 
 Blackwood, was simply to thank him for the successful efforts 
 of the past two days, and to have him by his side till the flag- 
 ship came under fire, in order to receive final and precise 
 instructions, as the situation developed, for the conduct of the 
 frigates during and after the battle. To Blackwood's con- 
 gratulations upon the approach of the moment that he had, 
 to use his own word, panted for, he replied : " I mean to-day 
 to bleed the captains of the frigates, as I shall keep you on 
 board to the very last moment." 
 
 Blackwood found him in good but very calm spirits, pre- 
 occupied with the movements of the allies, and the probable 
 results of his own plan of attack. He frequently asked, 
 " What would you consider a victory ? " Blackwood answered : 
 " Considering the handsome way in which the battle is offered 
 by the enemy, their apparent determination for a fair trial of 
 strength, and the proximity of the land, I think if fourteen 
 ships are captured, it will be a glorious result." Nelson's 
 constant reply was that he would not be satisfied with any- 
 thing short of twenty. He admitted, however, that the near- 
 ness of the land might make it difficult to preserve the prizes, 
 and he was emphatic in directing that, if the shattered enemies 
 had any chance of returning to Cadiz, the frigates were to be 
 actively employed in destrojdng them, and were not to be di- 
 verted from that single aim in order to save either ships or 
 men. Annihilation, he repeated, was his aim, and nothing 
 
 46 
 
722 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 short of it ; and he must have regretted the absence of the six 
 of the line in the Mediterranean, imperative as that had been. 
 Word had been sent for them to Gibraltar by Blackwood the 
 moment the enemy moved, but they were still away with the 
 convoy. 
 
 Blackwood, being a great personal friend of the admiral, 
 took the liberty, after exchanging greetings, of submitting to 
 him the expediency of shifting his flag to the "Euryalus," 
 and conducting the battle from her, Nelson made no reply, but 
 immediately ordered more sail to be made upon the " Victory." 
 Finding himself foiled in this, Blackwood then made a direct 
 request for the command of one of the two vacant seventy- 
 fours. This would give him a chance to share in the fight, 
 which in a frigate he probably would not have, but it would 
 also displace the first lieutenant of the ship from the position 
 to which he had succeeded temporarily. jSTelson replied in- 
 stantly, "No, Blackwood, it is those men's birthright, and 
 they shall have it." ^ The incident shows vividly the lively 
 sympathy and sense of justice which ever distinguished 
 Nelson ; for it must have pained him to deny a request so 
 consonant to his own tem])er, coming from one whom he had 
 long known and valued, both as a friend and as an officer, and 
 of whose recent service such orders would have been a graceful 
 and appropriate acknowledgment. It may be desirable to 
 explain to unprofessional readers what was the claim of the 
 lieutenants which Nelson refused to ignore. The efliciency of 
 the ships for the coming day's work was due to them scarcely 
 less than to the absent captains, and if they survived the 
 battle, having been in command through it, they would reap 
 not only the honor but also their confirmation in the rank of 
 post-captain, through having exercised it in actual battle. 
 This succession the admiral aptly called their birthright. 
 
 Nelson availed himself of Blackwood's presence to have 
 him, together with Hardy, witness his signature to a paper, 
 in which he bequeathed Lady Hamilton and the child Horatia 
 to the care of the nation, and which consequently has been 
 styled a Codicil to his Will. Unless Blackwood's memory a 
 
 1 The author is indebted for these incidents to Admiral Sir W. R. Mends, 
 G. C. B., who received them from the second baronet, Sir Henry M. Black- 
 wood, when serving with him as first lieutenant. 
 
FINAL CODICIL TO HIS WILL 723 
 
 few years later was at fault, in stating that his signal was 
 made at six o'clock/ it is likely enough that this early sum- 
 mons was for the special purpose of giving formal complete- 
 ness, by the attestation of two of his closest friends, to a 
 private duty which was the last to engage Nelson's attention 
 and affections; for, in addition to the date, the place and hour 
 of his writing are fixed by the words, " In sight of the Com- 
 bined Fleets of France and Spain, distant about ten miles." 
 This was the common estimate of the relative positions, made 
 by the British fleet at large at daybreak, and coincides fairly 
 well with the inferences to be drawn, from the slow rate of 
 speed at which the wind permitted the British to advance, 
 and from the hour the conflict began. Nor was there time, 
 nor convenient room, for further delay. A freshening breeze 
 might readily have brought the fleet into action in a couple 
 of hours, and it is the custom in preparing for battle — the 
 signal for which was made at 6.40 — to remove most of the 
 conveniences, and arrangements for privacy, from the living 
 spaces of the officers ; partly to provide against their destruc- 
 tion, chiefly to clear away all impediments" to fighting the 
 guns, and to moving about the ship. In the case of the 
 admiral, of course, much might be postponed to the last mo- 
 ment, but in fact his cabin was cleared of fixtures immediately 
 after he went on the poop in the early morning ; for it is 
 distinctly mentioned that while there he gave particular di- 
 rections in the matter, and enjoined great care in handling the 
 portrait of Lady Hamilton, saying, '' Take care of my guardian 
 angel." 
 
 It seems, therefore, probable that this so-called Codicil was 
 written in the quiet minutes of the morning, while the fleet 
 was forming its order of sailing and bearing up for the enemy, 
 but before the admiral's cabin was cleared for battle. In it 
 
 1 The "Euryalus's" log gives eight o'clock as the hour of the captain's 
 going on board the " Victory; " but Blackwood not only says six, but also 
 mentions that his stay on board lasted five and a half hours, which gives 
 about the same time for going on board. The other frigate captains did not 
 go till eight. Blackwood, as the senior, might need a fuller and longer con- 
 tinued interview, because the general direction of the frigate squadron would 
 be in his hands ; or Nelson might particularly desire the presence of a close 
 pi'ofessional friend, the captains of the ships-of-the-line having their hands 
 now full of preparations. 
 
724 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 Nelson first recounted, briefly but specifically, " tbe eminent 
 services of Emma Hamilton " to tlie state, on two occasions, as 
 believed by himself to have been rendered. Into the actuality 
 of these services it is not necessary here to inquire ; ^ it is 
 sufficient to say that Nelson's knowledge of them could not 
 have been at first hand, and that the credence he unquestion- 
 ably gave to them must have depended upon the evidence 
 of others, — probably of Lady Hamilton herself, in whom he 
 felt, and always expressed, the most unbounded confidence. 
 " Could I have rewarded these services," the paper concludes, 
 " I would not now call upon my Country ; but as that has not 
 been in my power, I leave Emma Lady Hamilton, therefore, 
 a legacy to my King and Countr}-, that they will give her an 
 ample provision to maintain her rank in life. I also leave to 
 the beneficence of my Country my adopted daughter, Horatia 
 Nelson Thompson ; and I desire she will use in future the 
 name of Nelson only. These are the only favours I ask of my 
 King and Country at this moment when I am going to fight 
 their battle. May God bless my King and Countr}^, and all 
 those who I hold' dear. My relations it is needless to mention : 
 they will of course be amply provided for." 
 
 At seven o'clock Nelson had returned from the poop to the 
 cabin, for at that hour was made in his private journal the 
 last entry of occurrences, — " At seven the combined fleets 
 wearing in succession." Here it seems likely tliat he laid 
 down the j)en, for, when he was found writing again, some hours 
 later, it was to complete the long record of experiences and of 
 duties, with words that summed up, in fit and most touching 
 expression, the self-devotion of a life already entering the 
 shadow of death. 
 
 Between eight and nine o'clock the other frigate commanders 
 came on board the " Victory ; " aides-de-camp, as it were, 
 waiting to the last moment to receive such orders as might 
 require more extensive wording, or precise explanation, than 
 is supplied by the sententious phrases of the signal-book. 
 Blackwood himself, a captain of long standing and of tried 
 
 1 The question of Lady Hamilton's services on the occasions mentioned by 
 Nelson, vigorously asserted by herself, has been exhaustively discussed by Pro- 
 fessor John Knox Laughton, in the " United Service Magazine " for April and 
 May, 1889. His conclusions are decisively adverse to her claims. 
 
THE FLEETS FORMING FOR BATTLE. 725 
 
 ability, was in fact intrusted contingently with no small share 
 of the power and discretion of the commander-in-chief. " He 
 not only gave me command of all the frigates, but he also 
 gave me a latitmle, seldom or ever given, that of making any 
 use I pleased of his name, in ordering any of the sternmost 
 line-of-battle ships to do what struck me as best." While 
 thus waiting, the captains accompanied the admiral in an 
 inspection which he made of the decks and batteries of the 
 flagship. He addressed the crew at their several quarters, 
 cautioned them against firing a single shot without being sure 
 of their object, and to the officers he expressed himself as 
 highly satisfied with the arrangements made. 
 
 Meanwhile the two fleets were forming, as best they could 
 with the scanty breeze, the order in which each meant to meet 
 the shock of battle. The British could not range themselves 
 in regular columns without loss of time that was not to be 
 thrown away. They advanced rather in two elongated groups, 
 all under full sail, even to studding-sails on both sides, the 
 place of each ship being determined chiefly by her speed, or, 
 perhaps, by some fortuitous advantage of position when the 
 movement began. The great point was to get the heads of 
 the columns into action as soon as possible, to break up the 
 enemy's order. That done, those which followed could be 
 trusted to complete the business on the general lines pre- 
 scribed by Nelson. Colling wood's ship, the " Royal Sovereign," 
 being but a few days out from home, and freshly coppered, 
 easily took the lead in her own division. After her came the 
 "Belleisle," also a recent arrival off Cadiz, but an old Medi- 
 terranean cruiser which had accompanied I^elson in the re- 
 cent chase to the West Indies. Upon these two ships, as 
 upon the heads of all columns, fell the weight of destruction 
 from the enemy's resistance. 
 
 The " Victory," always a fast ship, had likewise little diffi- 
 culty in keeping her place at the front. Blackwood, hav- 
 ing failed to get Nelson on board his own frigate, and realizing 
 the exposure inseparable from the position of leader, ven- 
 tured, at about half-past nine, when still six miles from the 
 enemy, to urge that one or two ships should be permitted to 
 precede the "Victory." Nelson gave a conditional assent — 
 " Let them go," if they can. The " Temeraire," a three-decker, 
 
726 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 being close behind, was hailed to go ahead, and endeavored to 
 do so ; but at the same moment the admiral gave an indica- 
 tion of how little disposed he was to yield either time or posi- 
 tion. The lee lower studding-sail happening to be badly set, 
 the lieutenant of the forecastle had it taken in, meaning to 
 reset it ; which Nelson observing, ran forward and rated him 
 severely for delaying the ship's progress. Anything much less 
 useful than a lee lower studding-sail is hard to imagine, but 
 by this time the admiral was getting very restive. " About 
 ten o'clock," says Blackwood, " Lord ISTelson's anxiety to close 
 with the enemy became very apparent: he frequently re- 
 marked that they put a good face upon it; but always 
 quickly added : ' I '11 give them such a dressing as they never 
 had before.' " 
 
 Seeing that the " Temeraire " could not pass the " Victory " 
 in time to lead into the hostile order, unless the flagship gave 
 way, Blackwood, feeling perhaps that he might wear out his 
 own privilege, told Hardy he ought to say to the admiral that, 
 unless the " Victory " shortened sail, the other ships could not 
 get into place ; but Hardy naturally demurred. In any event, 
 it was not just the sort of proposition that the captain of the 
 ship would wish to make, and it was very doubtful how Nelson 
 might take it. This the latter soon showed, however ; for, as 
 the " Temeraire " painfully crawled up, and her bows doubled 
 on the " Victory's " quarter, he hailed her, and speaking as he 
 always did with a slight nasal intonation, said: "I'll thank 
 you. Captain Harvey, to keep in your proper station, which is 
 astern of the Victory." The same concern for the admiral's 
 personal safety led the assembled officers to comment anxiously 
 upon the conspicuous mark offered by his blaze of decorations, 
 knowing as they did that the enemy's ships swarmed with 
 soldiers, that among them were many sharpshooters, and that 
 the action would be close. None, however, liked to approach 
 him with the suggestion that he should take any precau- 
 tion. At length the surgeon, whose painful duty it was 
 a few hours later to watch over the sad fulfilment of his 
 apprehensions, said that he would run the risk of his Lord- 
 ship's displeasure ; but before he could find a fitting oppor- 
 tunity to speak, a shot flew over the "Victory," and the 
 admiral directed all not stationed on deck to go to their 
 
THE ORDER OF THE COMBINED FLEETS 727 
 
 quarters. No remark therefore was made ; but it is more 
 likely that Nelson would have resented the warning than 
 that he would have heeded it. 
 
 The French and Spanish fleets, being neither a homogeneous 
 nor a well-exercised mass, experienced even greater difficulty 
 than the British in forming their array ; and the matter was 
 to them of more consequence, for, as the defensive has an ad- 
 vantage in the careful preparations he may make, so, if he fail 
 to accomplish them, he has little to compensate for the loss of 
 the initiative, which he has yielded his opponent. The forma- 
 tion at which they aimed, the customary order of battle in that 
 day, was a long, straight, single column, presenting from end 
 to end an unbroken succession of batteries, close to one another 
 and clear towards the foe, so that all the ships should sweep 
 with their guns the sea over which, nearly at right angles, the 
 hostile columns were advancing. Instead of this, embarrassed 
 by both lack of wind and lack of skill, their manoeuvres re- 
 sulted in a curved line, concave to the enemy's approach ; the 
 horns of the crescent thus formed being nearer to the latter. 
 Collingwood noted that this disposition facilitated a conver- 
 gent fire upon the assailants, the heads of whose columns 
 were bearing down on the allied centre; it does not seem to 
 have been remarked that the two horns, or wings, being to 
 windward of the centre, also had it more in their power to sup- 
 port the latter — a consideration of very great importance. 
 Neither of these advantages, however, was due to contrivance. 
 The order of the combined fleets was the result merely of an 
 unsuccessful effort to assume the usual line of battle. The 
 ships distributed along the crescent lay irregularly, sometimes 
 two and three abreast, masking each other's fire. On the other 
 hand, even this irregularity had some compensations, for a 
 British vessel, attempting to pass through at such a place, fell 
 at once into a swarm of enemies. From horn to horn was 
 about five miles. Owing to the lightness of the breeze, the 
 allies carried a good deal of sail, a departure from the usual 
 battle practice. This was necessary in order to enable them 
 to keep their places at all, but it also had the effect of bring- 
 ing them continually, though very gradually, nearer to Cadiz. 
 Seeing this, Nelson signalled to Collingwood, "I intend to 
 pass through the van of the enemy's line, to prevent him from 
 
728 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 getting into Cadiz," and the course of the " Victory," for this 
 purpose, was changed a little to the northward. 
 
 After this, towards eleven o'clock, Nelson went below to 
 the cabin. It was his habit, when an engagement was ex- 
 pected, to have all the bulkheads ^ upon the fighting decks 
 taken down, and those of his own apartments doubtless had 
 been removed at least as soon as the enemy's sailing was sior- 
 nalled; bvit it was possible to obtain some degree of privacy 
 by hanging screens, which could be hurried out of the way at 
 the last moment. The "Victory" did not come under fire till 
 12.30, so that at eleven she would yet be three miles or more 
 distant from the enemy,^ and screens could still remain. 
 Shortly after he entered, the signal-lieutenant, who had been 
 by his side all the morning, followed hiin, partly to make an 
 official report, partly to prefer a personal request. He was the 
 ranking lieutenant on board, but had not been permitted to 
 exercise the duties of first lieutenant, because Nelson some 
 time before, to avoid constant changes in that important sta- 
 tion, had ordered that the person then occupying it should so 
 continue, notwithstanding the seniority of any who might 
 afterwards join. Now that battle was at hand, the oldest 
 in rank wished to claim the position, and to gain the reward 
 that it insured after a victory, — a request natural and not 
 improper, but more siiited for the retirement of the cabin than 
 for the publicity of the deck. 
 
 Whatever the original injustice, — or rather hardship, — 
 it is scarcely likely, remembering the refusal encountered 
 by Blackwood, that Nelson would have consented now to 
 deprive of his " birthright " the man who so far had been 
 doing the work ; but the petition was never preferred. 
 Entering the cabin, the officer paused at the threshold, for 
 Nelson was on his knees writing. The words, the last that 
 he ever penned, were written in the private diary he habitu- 
 ally kept, in Avhich were noted observations and reflections 
 upon passing occurrences, mingled with occasional self-com- 
 munings. They followed now, without break of space, or 
 paragraph, upon the last incident recorded — " At seven the 
 enemy wearing in succession " — and they ran thus : — 
 
 "May the Great God, whom I worship, grant to my 
 
 1 See ante, p. 639. ^ Xhat is, with a one and a half knot breeze. 
 
THE FAMOUS SIGNAL AT TRAFALGAR 729 
 
 Country, and for the benefit of Europe in general, a great 
 and glorious victory ; and may no misconduct in any one 
 tarnish it ; and may humanity after victory be the predomi- 
 nant feature in the British fleet. For myself, individually, 
 I commit my life to Him who made me, and may His bless- 
 ing light upon my endeavours for serving my Country faith- 
 fully. To Him I resign myself and the just cause which is 
 entrusted to me to defend. Amen. Amen. Amen." 
 
 The officer, Lieutenant Pasco, waited quietly till Nelson 
 rose from his knees, and then made his necessary report; 
 but, although his future prospects hung upon the wish he 
 had to express, he refrained with singular delicacy from 
 intruding it upon the preoccupation of mind evidenced by 
 the attitude in which he had found his commander. The 
 latter soon afterwards followed him to the poop, where 
 Blackwood was still awaiting his final instructions. To him 
 Nelson said, " I will now amuse the fleet with a signal ; " 
 and he asked if he did not think there was one yet wanting. 
 Blackwood replied that the whole fleet seemed very clearly 
 to, understand what they Avere about, and were vying with 
 each other to get as near as possible to the leaders of the 
 columns. Upon this succeeded the celebrated signal, the 
 development of which to its final wording is a little uncertain. 
 Comparing the various accounts of witnesses, it seems 
 probably to have been as follows. Nelson mused for a little 
 while, as one who phrases a thought in his own mind before 
 uttering it, and then said, ''Suppose we telegraph 'Nelson 
 confides that every man will do his duty.'" In this form it 
 was the call of the leader to the followers, the personal appeal 
 of one who trusts to those in whom he trusts, a feeling par- 
 ticularly characteristic of the speaker, whose strong hold 
 over others lay above all in the transparent and unswerving 
 faith he showed in their loyal support ; and to arouse it now 
 in full force he used the watchword "duty," sure that the 
 chord it struck in him would find its quick response in every 
 man of the same blood. The oflicer to whom the remark was 
 made, suggested "England" instead of "Nelson." To the 
 fleet it could have made no difference, — to them the two 
 names meant the same thing ; but Nelson accepted the change 
 ■\vith delight. "Mr. Pasco," he called to the signal officer. 
 
730 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 "I wish to say to the fleet, 'England confides that every 
 man will do his duty ; ' " and he added, " You must be quick, 
 for I have one more to make, which is for close action." 
 This remark shows that the columns, and particularly Col- 
 lingwood's ship, were already nearing the enemy. Pasco 
 answered, "If your Lordship will permit me to substitute 
 'expects' for 'confides,' it will be sooner completed, because 
 'expects ' is in the vocabulary,^ and ' confides' must be spelt." 
 Nelson replied hastily, but apparently satisfied, " That will 
 do, Pasco, make it directly ; " but the slightly mandatory 
 "expects" is less representative of the author of this re- 
 nowned sentence than the cordial and sympathetic " confides." 
 It is "Allez," rather than "Allons;" yet even so, become 
 now the voice of the distant motherland, it carries with it the 
 shade of reverence, as well as of affection, which patriotism 
 exacts. 
 
 It is said that Collingwood, frequently testy, and at the 
 moment preoccupied with the approaching collision with the 
 Spanish three-decker he had marked for his opponent, ex- 
 claimed impatiently when the first number went aloft, "I 
 wish Nelson would stop signalling, as we know well enough 
 Avhat we have to do." But the two life-long friends, who 
 were not again to look each other in the face, soon passed to 
 other thoughts, such as men gladly recall when death has 
 parted them. When the whole signal was reported to him, 
 and cheers resounded along the lines, Collingwood cordially 
 expressed his own satisfaction. A few moments later, just 
 at noon, the French ship " Fougueux," the second astern of 
 the "Santa Ana," for which the " Koyal Sovereign" was 
 steering, fired at the latter the first gun of the battle. As 
 by a common impulse the ships of all the nations engaged 
 hoisted their colors, and the admirals their flags, — a cour- 
 teous and chivalrous salute preceding the mortal encounter. 
 For ten minutes the " Royal Sovereign " advanced in silence, 
 the one centre of the hostile fire, upon which were fixed all 
 eyes, as yet without danger of their own to distract. As she 
 
 1 The vocabulary of the telegraphic signal book provides certain words 
 which can be signalled by a single niuuber. Words not in this vocabulary 
 must be sjielled letter by letter, — each letter of the alphabet having its own 
 number. 
 
HIS FAREWELL TO BLACKWOOD ' 731 
 
 drew near the two shij^s between which she intended to pass, 
 Nelson exclaimed admiringly, '' See how that noble fellow 
 Collingwood carries his ship into action." At about the same 
 instant Collingwood was saying to his flag-captain, '' Eother- 
 ham, what would Nelson give to be here ! " 
 
 These things being done, Nelson said to Blackwood, " Now 
 I can do no more. We must trust to the great Disposer of 
 all events, and to the justice of our cause. I thank God for 
 this great opportunity of doing my duty." When his last 
 signal had been acknowledged by a few ships in the van, 
 the admiral directed Pasco to make that for close action, and 
 to keep it up. This was accordingly hoisted on board the 
 flagship, where it was flying still as she disappeared into the 
 smoke of the battle, and so remained till shot away. The 
 "Victory " was about two miles from the *• Royal Sovereign " 
 when the latter, at ten minutes past twelve, broke through 
 the allied order, and she had still a mile and a half to go 
 before she herself could reach it. At twenty minutes past 
 twelve Villeneuve's flagship, the "Bucentaure," of eighty 
 guns, fired a shot at her, to try the range. It fell short. A 
 few minutes later a second was fired, which dropped along- 
 side. The distance then was a mile and a quarter. Two or 
 three followed in rapid succession and passed over the "Vic- 
 tory." Nelson then turned to Blackwood, and directed him 
 and Captain Prowse of the " Sirius " to return to their ships, 
 but in so doing to pass along the column and tell the cap- 
 tains he depended upon their exertions to get into action 
 as quickly as possible. He them bade them again to go 
 away. Blackwood, who was standing by him at the for- 
 ward end of the poop, took his hand, and said, "I trust, 
 my Lord, that on my return to the Victory, which will 
 be as soon as possible, I shall find your Lordship well and 
 in possession of twenty prizes." Nelson replied, " God bless 
 you, Blackwood, I shall never speak to you again." 
 
 The " Victory " was all the time advancing, the feeble 
 breeze urging her progress, Avhich was helped also by her lurch- 
 ing through the heavy following swell that prevailed. Before 
 Blackwood could leave her, a shot passed through the niain- 
 topgallantsail, and the rent proclaimed to the eager eyes of 
 the foes that the ship was fairly under their guns. Thereupon 
 
732 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 everything about the " Bucentaure," some seven or eight ships, 
 at least, opened upon this single enemy, as the allied rear and 
 centre had upon the " Royal Sovereign ; " for it was imperative 
 to stop her way, if possible, or at least to deaden it, and so to 
 delay as long as might be the moment when she could bring 
 her broadside to bear effectively. During the forty minutes 
 that followed, the " Victory " was an unresisting target to her 
 enemies, and her speed, slow enough at the first, decreased 
 continually as the hail of shot riddled the sails, or stripped 
 them from the yards. Every studding-sail boom was shot 
 away close to the yard arms, and this light canvas, invaluable 
 in so faint a wind, fell helplessly into the water. During 
 these trying moments, Mr. Scott, the admiral's public secre- 
 tary, was struck by a round shot while talking with Captain 
 Hardy, and instantly killed. Those standing by sought to 
 remove the body 'without drawing Nelson's attention to the 
 loss of one so closely associated with him ; but the admiral 
 had noticed the fall. " Is that poor Scott," he said, " who is 
 gone ? " The clerk who took the dead man's place was killed 
 a few moments later by the wind of a ball, though his person 
 was untouched. 
 
 The "Victory" continuing to forge slowly ahead, despite 
 her injuries, and pointing evidently for the flagship of the 
 hostile commander-in-chief, the ships round the latter, to use 
 James's striking phrase, now " closed like a forest." The 
 nearer the British vessel drew, the better necessarily became 
 the enemies' aim. Just as she got within about five hundred 
 yards — quarter of a mile — from the " Bucentaure's " beam, 
 the mizzen topmast was shot away. At the same time the 
 wheel was hit and shattered, so that the ship had to be steered 
 from below, a matter that soon became of little importance. 
 A couple of minutes more, eight marines were carried off by a 
 single projectile, while standing drawn up on the poop, where- 
 upon Nelson ordered the survivors to be dispersed about the 
 deck. Presently a shot coming in through the ship's side 
 ranged aft on the quarter-deck towards the admiral and 
 Captain Hardy, between whom it passed. On its way it 
 struck the fore-brace bitts — a heavy block of timber — carry- 
 ing thence a shower of splinters, one of which bruised Hardy's 
 foot. The two officers, who were walking together, stopped, 
 
THE "VICTORY" ENTERS THE BATTLE 733 
 
 and looked inquiringly at each other. Seeing that no harm 
 was done, Nelson smiled, but' said, '-This is too warm work, 
 Hardy, to last long." He then praised the cool resolution of 
 the seamen around him, compelled to endure this murderous 
 fire without present reply. He had never, he said, seen better 
 conduct. Twenty men had so far been killed and thirty 
 wounded, with not a shot fired from their own guns. 
 
 Still the ship closed the " Bucentaure." It had been 
 Nelson's purpose and desire to make her his special antag- 
 onist, because of Villeneuve's flag ; but to do so required room 
 for the " Victory " to turn under the French vessel's stern, 
 and to come up alongside. As she drew near. Hardy, scan- 
 ning the hostile array, saw three ships crowded together behind 
 and beyond the " Bucentaure." He reported to Nelson that 
 he could go close under her stern, but could not round-to along- 
 side, nor pass through the line, without running on board one 
 of these. The admiral replied, '' I cannot help it, it does not 
 signify which we run on board of. Go on board which you 
 please : take your choice." At one o'clock the bows of the 
 " Victory " crossed the wake of the " Bucentaure," by whose 
 stern she passed within thirty feet, the projecting yard arms 
 grazing the enemy's rigging. One after another, as they bore, 
 the double-shotted guns tore through the woodwork of the 
 French ship, the smoke, driven back, filling the lower decks of 
 the " Victory," while persons on the upper deck, including 
 Nelson himself, were covered with the dust which rose in 
 clouds from the wreck. From the relative positions of the 
 two vessels, the shot ranged from end to end of the "Bu- 
 centaure," and the injury was tremendous. Twenty guns 
 were at once dismounted, and the loss by that single discharge 
 was estimated, by the French, at four hundred men. Leaving 
 the further care of the enemy's flagship to her followers, 
 secure that they would give due heed to the admiral's order, 
 that "every effort must be made to capture the hostile com- 
 mander-in-chief," the " Victory " put her helm up, inclining 
 to the right, and ran on board a French seventy-four, the 
 " Redoutable," whose guns, as well as those of the French 
 " Neptune," had been busily playing upon her hitherto. At 
 1.10 she lay along the port side of the "Redoutable," the 
 two ships falling off with their heads to the eastward, and 
 moving slowly before the wind to the east-southeast. 
 
734 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 In the duel which ensued between these two, in which 
 Nelson fell, the disparity, so far as weight of battery was 
 concerned, was all against the French ship; but the latter, 
 while greatly overmatched at the guns, much the greater 
 part of which were below deck, was markedly superior to her 
 antagonist in small-arm fire on the upper deck, and especially 
 aloft, where she had many musketeers stationed. Nelson 
 himself was averse to the employment of men in that position, 
 thinking the danger of fire greater than the gain, but the 
 result on this day was fatal to very many of the " Victory's " 
 men as well as to himself. As the ship's place in the battle 
 was fixed for the moment, nothing now remained to be done, 
 except for the crews to ply their weapons till the end was 
 reached. The admiral and the captain, their parts of direction 
 and guidance being finished, walked back and forth together 
 on the quarter-deck, on the side farthest from the " Redou- 
 table," where there was a clear space of a little over twenty 
 feet in length, fore and aft, from the wheel to the hatch 
 ladder leading down to the cabin. The raizzen top of the 
 "■ Redoutable," garnished with sharpshooters, was about fifty 
 feet above them. Fifteen minutes after the vessels came 
 together, as the two officers were walking forward, and had 
 nearly reached the usual place of turning. Nelson, who was on 
 Hardy's left, suddenly faced left about. Hardy, after taking 
 a step farther, turned also, and saw the admiral in the act of 
 falling — on his knees, with his left hand touching the deck ; 
 then, the arm giving way, he fell on his left side. It was in 
 the exact spot where Scott, the secretary, had been killed an 
 hour before. To Hard3r's natural exclamation that he hoped he 
 was not badly hurt, he replied, " They have done for me at 
 last;" and when the expression of hope was repeated, he 
 said again, *' Yes, my back-bone is shot through." " I felt it 
 break my back," he told the surgeou, a few minutes later. 
 The ball had struck him on the left shoulder, on the forward 
 part of the epaulette, piercing the lung, where it severed a 
 large artery, and then passed through the spine from left to 
 right, lodging finally in the muscles of the back. Although 
 there was more than one mortal injury, the immediate and 
 merciful cause of his speedy death was the internal bleeding 
 from the artery. Within a few moments of his wounding 
 
 1 
 
NELSON MORTALLY WOUNDED 735 
 
 some forty officers and men were cut down by the same 
 murderous fire from the tops of the enemy. Indeed so 
 stripped of men was the upper deck of the " Victory " that 
 the French made a movement to board, which was repulsed, 
 ■though with heavy loss. 
 
 The stricken hero was at once carried below, himself cov- 
 ering his face and the decorations of his coat with his hand- 
 kerchief, that the sight of their loss might not affect the 
 ship's company at this critical instant. The cockpit was 
 already cumbered with the wounded and dying, but the hand- 
 kerchief falling from his face, the surgeon recognized him, 
 and came at once to him. "You can do nothing for me, 
 Beatty," he said; ''I have but a short time to live." The 
 surgeon also uttered the involuntary exclamation of encourage- 
 ment, which rises inevitably to the lips at such a moment ; 
 but a short examination, and the sufferer's statement of his 
 sensations, especially the gushing of blood within the breast, 
 which was vividly felt, convinced him that there was indeed 
 no hope. "Doctor, I am gone," he said to the Kev. Mr. 
 Scott, the chaplain, who knelt beside him ; and then added 
 in a low voice, " I have to leave Lady Hamilton, and my 
 adopted daughter Horatia, as a legacy to my Country." 
 
 After the necessary examination had been made, nothing 
 further could be done, nor was attempted, than to obtain the 
 utmost possible relief from suffering. Dr. Scott and the pur- 
 ser of the " Victory " sustained the bed under his shoulders, 
 raising him into a semi-recumbent posture, the only one that 
 was supportable to him, and fanned him ; while others gave 
 him the cooling drink — lemonade — which he continually 
 demanded. Those about did not speak to him, except when 
 addressed ; but the chaplain, to whom Nelson frequently said, 
 "Pray forme, Doctor," ejaculated with him short prayers 
 from time to time. The agony of mortal pain wrung from 
 him repeated utterance, though no unmanly complaint; and 
 his thoughts dwelt more upon home and the battle than upon 
 his own suffering and approaching death. His mind remained 
 clear until he became speechless, about fifteen minutes before 
 he passed away, and he took frequent notice of what occurred 
 near him, as well as of sounds on deck. 
 
 The hour that succeeded his wounding was the decisive 
 
736 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 one of the fight ; not that the issue admitted of much doubt, 
 after once Nelson's plans had received fulfilment, and the 
 battle joined, — unless the delinquent van of the allies had 
 acted promptly, — but in those moments the work was done 
 which was thenceforth, for the enemy, beyond repair. Over- 
 head, therefore, the strife went on incessantly, the seamen 
 toiling steadily at their guns, and cheering repeatedly. Near 
 the admiral lay Lieutenant Pasco, severely but not fatally 
 wounded. At one burst of hurrahs. Nelson asked eagerly 
 what it was about ; and Pasco replying that another ship had 
 struck, he expressed his satisfaction. Soon he became very 
 anxious for further and more exact information of the course 
 of the battle, and about the safety of Captain Hardy, upon 
 whom now was devolved such guidance as the fleet, until the 
 action was over, must continue to receive from the flagship of 
 tbe commander-in-chief. In accordance with his wishes many 
 messages were sent to Hardy to come to him, but for some 
 time it was not possible for that officer to leave the deck. 
 During this period, up to between half-pasfc two and three, the 
 ships of the two British divisions, that followed the leaders, 
 were breaking successively into the enemy's order, and carry- 
 ing out with intelligent precision the broad outlines of Nelson's 
 instructions. The heads of the columns had dashed them- 
 selves to pieces, like a forlorn hope, against the overpowering 
 number of foes which opposed their passage — an analysis 
 of the returns shows that upon the four ships which led, the 
 "Victory" and "Temeraire," the V Royal Sovereign" and 
 "Belleisle," fell one-third of the entire loss in a fleet of 
 twenty-seven sail. But they had forced their way through, 
 and by the sacrifice of themselves had shattered and pulver- 
 ized the local resistance, destroyed the coherence of the hostile 
 line, and opened the road for the successful action of their 
 followers. With the appearance of the latter upon the scene, 
 succeeded shortly by the approach of the allied van, though 
 too late and in disorder, began what may be called the second 
 and final phase of the battle. 
 
 While such things were happening the deck could not be 
 left by Hardy, who, for the time being, was commander-in- 
 chief as well as captain. Shortly after Nelson fell, the " Teme- 
 raire " had run on board the " Redoutable " on the other side, 
 
CAPTAIN THOMAS MASTERMAN HARDY. 
 
 From the painting by Robert Evans, at Greenwich Hospital. 
 
2 
 
THE HOUR OF DEATH 737 
 
 and the French "Fougueux" upon the "Temeraire," so that 
 for a few minutes the four ships were fast together, in the 
 heat of the fight. About quarter past two, the " Victory " 
 was shoved clear, and lay with her head to the northward, 
 though scarcely with steerage way. The three others re- 
 mained in contact with their heads to the southward. While 
 this melee was in progress, the French flagship "Bucentaure '' 
 surrendered, at five minutes past two ; but, before hauling 
 down the flag, Yilleneuve made a signal to his recreant van, — 
 "The ships that are not engaged, take positions which will 
 bring them most rapidly under fire." Thus summoned, the 
 ten vessels which constituted tlie van began to go about, as 
 they should have done before ; and, although retarded by the 
 slack wind, they had got their heads to the southward by half- 
 past two. Five stood to leeward of the line of battle, but 
 five to windward. The latter would pass not far to the west- 
 ward of the " Victory," and to meet this fresh attack demanded 
 the captain's further care, and postponed his going to the 
 death-bed of his chief. The latter had become very agitated 
 at the delay, thinking that Hardy might be dead and the news 
 kept from him. " Will nobody bring Hardy to me ? " he 
 frequently exclaimed. " He must be killed ; he is surely 
 destroyed." At last a midshipman came down with the mes- 
 sage that " circumstances respecting the fleet required the 
 captain's presence on deck, but that he would take the first 
 favourable moment to visit his Lordship." Nelson, hearing 
 the voice, asked who it was that spoke. The lad, Bulkeley, 
 who later in the day was wounded also, was the son of a 
 former shipmate in the far back days of the San Juan ex- 
 pedition, and the dying admiral charged the lad with a 
 remembrance to his father. 
 
 Two ships of Nelson's column, as yet not engaged, — the 
 " Spartiate " and the ''Minotaur," — were then just reaching 
 the scene. Being in the extreme rear, the lightness of the 
 breeze had so far delayed them. Arriving thus opportunely, 
 they hauled to the wind so as to interpose between the " Vic- 
 tory " and the approaching van of the allies. Covered now 
 by two wholly fresh ships, the captain felt at liberty to quit 
 the deck, in accordance with Nelson's desire. The two tried 
 friends — Hardy had been everywhere with him since the day 
 
 47 
 
738 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 of St. Vincent, and was faithful enough to speak to Lady- 
 Hamilton more freely than she liked — shook hands affec- 
 tionately. "Well, Hardy," said Nelson, "how goes the 
 battle ? How goes the day with us ? " " Very well, my 
 Lord," replied Hardy. "We have got twelve or fourteen of 
 the enemy's ships in our possession, but five of their van have 
 tacked, and show an intention of bearing down upon tlie 
 Victory. I have therefore called two or three of our fresh 
 ships round us, and have no doubt of giving them a drubbing." 
 " I hope none of our ships have struck, Hardy." " ISTo, my 
 Lord," was the answer, " there is no fear of that." Nelson 
 then said, " I am a dead man, Hardy. I am going fast : it 
 will be all over with me soon. Come nearer to me. Pray let 
 my dear Lady Hamilton have my hair, and all other things 
 belonging to me." Hardy observed that he hoped Mr. Beatty 
 could yet hold out some prospect of life. " Oh no ! " replied 
 Nelson ; "it is impossible. My back is shot through. Beatty 
 will tell you so." Hardy then returned to the deck, shaking 
 hands again before parting. 
 
 Nelson now desired the surgeons to leave him to the 
 attendants, as one for whom nothing could be done, and to 
 give their professional care where it would be of some avail. 
 In a few moments he recalled the chief surgeon, and said, " I 
 forgot to tell you that all power of motion and feeling below 
 my breast are gone ; and you very well linow I can live but a 
 short time." From the emphasis he placed on his words, the 
 surgeon saw he was thinking of a case of spinal injury to a 
 seaman some months before, which had proved mortal after 
 many days' suffering; yet it would seem that, despite the con- 
 viction that rested on his mind, the love of life, and of all it 
 meant to him, yet clung to the hope that possibly there might 
 be a reprieve. " One would like to live a little longer," he 
 murmured; and added, "What would become of poor Lady 
 Hamilton if she knew my situation!" "Beatty," he said 
 again, ^^ you hnoio I am gone." "My Lord," replied the sur- 
 geon, with a noble and courteous simplicity, "unhappily for 
 our country, nothing can be done for you ; " and he turned 
 away to conceal the emotion which he could not at once con- 
 trol. " I know it," said Nelson. " I feel something rising in 
 my breast," putting his hand on his left side, " which tells me 
 
HORATIA, AT 22 YEARS OP AGE. 
 
 From a miniature by Sir William Charles Ross^ in the possession 
 of Mr. Nelson Ward. 
 

FINAL PARTING WITH HARDY 739 
 
 I am gone. God be praised, I have done my duty." To this 
 latter thought he continually recurred. 
 
 At about three o'clock, the five ships of the enemy's van, 
 passing within gunshot to windward,^ opened fire upon the 
 British ships and their prizes. The " Victory " with her con- 
 sorts replied. " Oh, Victory ! Victory ! " cried the sufferer, 
 " how you distract my poor brain ! " and after a pause added, 
 *'■ How dear life is to all men ! " This distant exchange of 
 shots was ineffectual, except to kill or wound a few more 
 people, but while it continued Hardy had to be on deck, for 
 the flag of the commander-in-chief still vested his authority 
 in that ship. During this period an officer was sent to Col- 
 lingwood to inform him of the admiral's condition, and to 
 bear a personal message of farewell from the latter ; but Nelson 
 had no idea of transferring any portion of his duty until he 
 parted with his life also. 
 
 A short hour elapsed between Hardy's leaving the cockpit 
 and his returning to it, which brings the time to four o'clock. 
 Strength had ebbed fast meanwhile, and the end was now very 
 near ; but Nelson was still conscious. The friends again shook 
 hands, and the captain, before releasing his grasp, congratu- 
 lated the dying hero upon the brilliancy of the victory. It 
 was complete, he said. How many were captured, it was im- 
 possible to see, but he was certain fourteen or fifteen. The 
 exact number proved to be eighteen. " That is well," said 
 Nelson, but added, faithful to his exhaustive ideas of suffi- 
 ciency, " I bargained for twenty." Then he exclaimed, 
 "Anchor, Hardy, anchor !" Hardy felt the embarrassment of 
 issuing orders now that Collingwood knew that his chief was 
 in the very arms of death; but Nelson was clearly within his 
 rights. " I suppose, ray Lord," said the captain, " Admiral Col- 
 lingwood will now take upon himself the direction of affairs." 
 "Not while I live, I hope. Hardy," cried Nelson, and for a 
 moment endeavored, ineffectually, to raise himself from the bed. 
 "No. Do you anchor, Hardy." Captain Hardy then said, 
 " Shall we make the signal, Sir ? " "Yes," answered the ad- 
 miral, "for if I live, I'll anchor." These words he repeated 
 several times, even after Hardy had left him, and the energy of 
 
 1 That is, to the westward. 
 
740 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 his manner showed that for the moment the sense of duty and 
 of responsibility had triumphed over his increasing weakness. 
 
 Reaction of course followed, and he told Hardy he felt that 
 in a few minutes he should be no more. " Don't throw me over- 
 board," he added; "you know what to do." Hardy having 
 given assurance that these wishes should be attended to, 
 Nelson then said, " Take care of my dear Lady Hamilton, 
 Hardy : take care of poor Lady Hamilton. Kiss me, Hardy." 
 The captain knelt down and kissed his cheek. "Now I am 
 satisfied. Thank God, I have done my duty." Hardy rose 
 and stood looking silently at him for an instant or two, 
 then knelt down again and kissed his forehead. "Who is 
 that ? " asked Nelson. The captain answered, " It is Hardy ; " 
 to which his Lordship replied, " God bless you, Hardy ! " The 
 latter then returned to the quarter-deck, having passed about 
 eight minutes in this final interview. 
 
 Nelson now desired his steward, who was in attendance 
 throughout, to turn him on his right side. "I wish I had 
 not left the deck," he murmured ; "for I shall soon be gone." 
 Thenceforth he sank rapidly ; his breathing became oppressed 
 and his voice faint. To Dr. Scott he said, "Doctor, I have 
 not been a (/reat sinner," and after a short pause, ^'Remember, 
 that I leave Lady Hamilton and my daughter Horatia as a 
 legacy to my country — never forget Horatia." This injunc- 
 tion, with remembrances to Lady Hamilton and the child, he 
 frequently repeated ; and he charged Scott to see Mr. Eose, 
 and tell him — but here pain interrupted his utterance, and 
 after an interval he simply said, " Mr. Eose will remember," 
 alluding to a letter which he had written him, but which as 
 yet could not have been received. His thirst now increased ; 
 and he called for " drink, drink," " fan, fan," and " rub, rub," 
 addressing himself in this last case to Dr. Scott, who had been 
 rubbing his breast with his hand, by which some relief was 
 given. These words he spoke in a very rapid manner, which 
 rendered his articulation difficult ; but he every now and then, 
 with evident increase of pain, made a greater effort, and said dis- 
 tinctly, " Thank God, I have done my duty." This he repeated 
 at intervals as long as the power of speech remained. The 
 last words caught by Dr. Scott, who was bending closely over 
 him, were, " God and my Country." 
 
THE DEATH OF NELSON 741 
 
 Eifteen minutes after Hardy left him for the second time, 
 the admiral became speechless ; and when this had continued 
 five minutes, the surgeon, who was busied among the other 
 wounded, was summoned again. He found him upon the 
 verge of dissolution, the hands cold and the pulse gone ; but 
 upon laying his hand upon his forehead, Nelson opened his 
 eyes, looked up, and then closed them forever. Five minutes 
 later he was dead. The passing was so quiet that Dr. Scott, 
 still rubbing his breast, did not perceive it, until the surgeon 
 announced that all was over. It was half-past four o'clock, 
 just three hours after the fatal wound was received. Not till 
 an hour later did the last of the eighteen prizes strike, and 
 firing cease altogether ; but the substantial results were known 
 to Nelson before consciousness left him. To quote the rugged 
 words of the "Victory's" log, "Partial firing continued until 
 4.30, when a victory having been reported to the Eight Hon- 
 ourable Lord Viscount Nelson, K. B., he died of his wound." 
 
 Of the five ships of the allied van which passed to wind- 
 ward of the "Victory," one was cut off and captured by the 
 " Minotaur " and " Spartiate." The other four continued on 
 the wind to the southwest, and escaped to sea. By the sur- 
 render of Villeneuve the chief command of the combined fleets 
 remained with the Spanish admiral Gravina. The latter, at 
 quarter before five, fifteen minutes after Nelson breathed his 
 last, retreated upon Cadiz, making signal for the vessels which 
 had not struck to rally round his flag. Ten other ships, five 
 French and five Spanish, — in all eleven sail-of-the-line, — 
 made good their escape into the port. 
 
 " Before sunset," wrote an eye-witness on board the " Belle- 
 isle," "all firing had ceased. The view of the fleet at this 
 period was highly interesting, and would have formed a beau- 
 tiful subject for a painter. Just under the setting rays were 
 five or six dismantled prizes ; on one hand lay the Victory 
 with part of our fleet and prizes, and on the left hand the 
 Royal Sovereign and a similar cluster of ships. To the north- 
 ward, the remnant of the combined fleets was making for 
 Cadiz. The Achille, with the tricoloured ensign still dis- 
 played, had burnt to the water's edge about a mile from us, 
 and our tenders and boats were using every effort to save the 
 brave fellows who had so gloriously defended her j but only 
 
742 THE LIFE OF NELSON 
 
 two hundred and fifty were rescued, and she blew up with a 
 tremendous explosion." 
 
 There, surrounded by the companions of his triumph, and 
 by the trophies of his prowess, we leave our hero with his 
 glory. Sharer of our mortal weakness, he has bequeathed to 
 us a type of single-minded self-devotion that can never perish. 
 As his funeral anthem proclaimed, while a nation mourned, 
 " His body is buried in peace, but his Name liveth for ever- 
 more." "Wars may cease, but the need for heroism shall not 
 depart from the earth, while man remains man and evil exists 
 to be redressed. Wherever danger has to be faced or duty 
 to be done, at cost to self, men will draw inspiration from the 
 name and deeds of Nelson, 
 
 Happy he who lives to finish all his task. The words 
 " I have done my duty," sealed tlie closed book of Nelson's 
 story with a truth broader and deeper than he himself could 
 suspect. His duty was done, and its fruit perfected. Other 
 men have died in the hour of victory, but for no other has 
 victory so singular and so signal graced the fulfilment and 
 ending of a great life's work. " Finis coronat opus " has of no 
 man been more true than of Nelson. There were, indeed, 
 consequences momentous and stupendous yet to flow from the 
 decisive supremacy of Great Britain's sea-power, the establish, 
 ment of which, beyond all question or competition, was Nel- 
 son's great achievement ; but his part was done when Trafalgar 
 was fought. The coincidence of his death with the moment 
 of completed success has impressed upon that superb battle 
 a stamp of finality, an immortality of fame, which even its 
 own grandeur scarcely could have insured. He needed, and 
 he left, no successor. To use again St. Vincent's words, 
 "There is but one Nelson." 
 
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INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
 Abodkir, Bay, Island, Promontory, 
 and Castle, 293, 295, 296, 312, 314, 
 418,419,431. 
 
 Aboukir, Battle of, 419. 
 
 Acton, Sir John, Prime Minister of 
 
 . the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, 
 281, 291, 292, 327, 367, 377, 383, 
 411, 566, 567, 569, 570, 590, 629, 
 638. 
 
 Addington (afterwards Lord Sid- 
 mouth), Prime Minister of Great 
 Britain, 1801-1804, Nelson's inter- 
 course with, 328, 491, 493, 506, 520, 
 543-544, 545, 546, 551, 553, 565, 
 569, 579, 584, 704. 
 
 Adriatic, importance to the communi- 
 cations of the Austrians in Italy,21 1 , 
 347; British concern in, 316, 568, 
 571, 611 ; Napoleon's interest in, 564, 
 571, 630; resort of privateers, 610. 
 
 "Agamemnon," British ship-of-the- 
 line, Nelson ordered to command 
 her, 81 ; relation to his career, 
 83-85 ; action with four Frencli 
 frigates, 96, 97 ; engages the 
 batteries at Bastia, 103, 104; 
 action with the " Qa Ira," French 
 80-gun ship, 139-141 ; engagement 
 of March 14, 1795, 143; engage- 
 ment of July 13, 151-153; services 
 at Genoa, 170-173; on the opening 
 of Bonaparte's campaign, 1796, 
 187-190; Nelson leaves her for the 
 "Captain," seventy-four, 195, 196; 
 she sails for England, 196; subse- 
 quent history, 196; misfortune at 
 the Battle of Copenhagen, 479 ; 
 joins the fleet shortly before Tra- 
 falgar, 711. 
 
 "Albemarle," British frigate com- 
 manded by Nelson, 27-35. 
 
 Alexandria, Nelson's first voyage to, 
 284-290 ; second voyage, 293 ; block- 
 aded, 313 ; Nelson's third voyage 
 to, 640, 641. 
 
 Algiers, Bonaparte's designs upon, 
 561 ; Nelson's difficulties with, 600- 
 602. 
 
 "Amazon," British frigate, services 
 at Copenhagen, 475, 478, 480, 482 ; 
 subsequent mention, 589, 626-628, 
 650, 656, 673. 
 
 Amiens, Peace of, signature of, 529 ; 
 Nelson's home life during, 532-556 ; 
 rupture of, 554. 
 
 " Amphion," British frigate, Nelson's 
 passage to Mediterranean in, 565- 
 572 ; leaves her for the " Victory," 
 593. 
 
 Arcliduke Charles, Nelson's meeting 
 with, at Prague, 441. 
 
 Austria and Austrians, result of cam- 
 paign of 1794 in Holland and Ger- 
 many, 132; in Italy, 133; delay in 
 opening campaign of 1795 in Italy, 
 151 ; their advance to Vado Bay, on 
 the Riviera, 151 ; Nelson ordered to 
 co-operate with, 151, 157; their dis- 
 regard of Genoese neutrality, 157; 
 position of, in summer of 1795, 158 ; 
 inability, or unwillingness to ad- 
 vance, 160, 161, 165; their attitude 
 towards the British, 168, 172, 181 ; 
 growing insecurity of their position, 
 167, 170, 171, 181; attacked and 
 defeated by French at Battle of 
 Loano, 172; retreat across the 
 Apennines, 172; urged by Nelson 
 to reoccupy Vado in 1796, 186; 
 their advance under Beaulieu, 187- 
 190; Nelson's assurances to, 188; 
 defeat by Bonaparte, 187, 190; 
 driven into the Tyrol, and behind 
 the Adige, 197 ; besieged in Man- 
 tua, 197 ; advance under Wurmser 
 to relieve Mantua, 203 ; Nelson's 
 hopes therefrom, 203-205 ; hears of 
 their defeat again, 205, 208; the 
 
 ■ peace of Campo Formio betweeti 
 Austria and France, 271. 272 ; dis- 
 
746 
 
 INDEX 
 
 satisfaction of Austria with France, 
 272, 275; effect of their position in 
 upper Italy upon French operations, 
 334 ; attitude towards France and 
 Naples, 1798, 335; Nelson's judg- 
 ment on, 342, 343 ; alliance with 
 Russia, 1799, 342 ; successes in 1799, 
 343, 355, 356, 405, 416, 417; re- 
 verses, 417 ; capture of Genoa, 
 1800, 436; defeat at Marengo, 436 ; 
 abandon Northern Italy, 436 ; Nel- 
 son's visit to, 438-440 ; peace with 
 France, 1801, 458, 506 ; exhaustion 
 of, 1801-1805, 558; Nelson's re- 
 monstrance with, on failure to en- 
 force her neutrality, 610. 
 
 Ball, Sir Alexander J., British cap- 
 tain, letter to Nelson, 180; joins 
 Nelson's division at Gibraltar, 270 ; 
 services in saving the flagship, 
 277 ; advice asked by Nelson, 285 ; 
 at the Battle of the Nile, 297, 
 302-303 ; accompanies Nelson to 
 Naples, 313 ; gallantry towards 
 Lady Hamilton, 330 ; serves ashore 
 at Malta, 335, 348-350, 410, 412, 
 413, 414, 415; mentions with un- 
 belief reports about Nelson and 
 Lady Hamilton, 339 ; summoned to 
 join Nelson upon the incursion of 
 Admiral Bruix, 358-361, 366; 
 ordered to resume duties at Malta, 
 362 ; mention of Nelson in letters 
 to Lady Hamilton, 424, 429 ; visits 
 Nelson at Merton, 539 ; anecdote of 
 Nelson told bv him, 539 ; letters 
 from Nelson "to, 584, 586, 611- 
 612, 635, 638, 641, 645, 648, 653; 
 opinion as to French objects in 1804, 
 585 ; Nelson's test}' vexation with, 
 607 ; opinion as to the manage- 
 ment of coast lookout stations, 675, 
 note. 
 
 Barbary States. See Algiers, Tripoli, 
 Tunis. 
 
 Barham, Lord, Nelson's interview 
 with, as Comptroller of the Navy, 
 72; First Lord of the Admiralty, 
 652 and note, 674, 677, 678 ; Nel- 
 son's interviews with, 677, 688 ; 
 Nelson's letters to, 680, 705, 706, 
 708. 
 
 Bastia, town in Corsica,- in possession 
 of French, 99 ; blockade of, by 
 
 Nelson, 103, 105 ; engagement with 
 batteries of, 103; description of, 
 103; Nelson's opinion as to besieg- 
 ing, 10.5-106, 108; siege of, 108- 
 111; capitulation of, 110; Nelson's 
 estimate as to his own services at, 
 112, 113, 130; Nelson directed to 
 superintend evacuation of, by 
 British, 210; evacuation of, 214- 
 216. 
 
 Battles, land, mentioned: Aboukir, 
 419; Castiglione, 205, 208 ; Hohen- 
 linden, 459; Loano, 172; Marengo, 
 436; Novi, 417. 
 
 Battles, naval, mentioned : Calder's 
 action, 666, 671, 675, 679; Camper- 
 down, 264; Copenhagen, 472-487, 
 488, 541-547; First of June (Lord 
 Howe's), 128, 150; Julv 13, 1795, 
 151-155; March 14, 1795, 141-148; 
 the Nile, 293-306 ; St. Vincent, 229- 
 238 ; Trafalgar, 724-742. 
 
 Beatty, Dr., surgeon of the " Vic- 
 tory," account of Nelson's habits 
 and health, 596-598 and note; 
 present at Nelson's death, 734, 735, 
 738, 741. 
 
 Beaulieu, Austrian general, com- 
 mands the army in Italy, 1796, 
 187; defeated by Bonaparte, and 
 driven into the Tyrol, 187-190, 
 197. 
 
 Beckford, William, opinion of Lady 
 Hamilton, 326; visited by Nelson 
 at Fontliill, 449-450; anecdote of 
 Nelson, 449. 
 
 Berry, Sir Edward, British captain, 
 accompanies Nelson in boarding 
 the " San Nicolas " and " San 
 Josef," 234, 235, 238; commands 
 Nelson's flagship, the " Vanguard," 
 264; account of the campaign of 
 the Nile (quoted), 284, 290, 294, 
 303, 307; at the Battle of the 
 Nile, 300, 303, 310; sent to Eng- 
 land with despatches, 308 ; com- 
 mands the " Foudroyant " at tlie 
 capture of the " Genereux," 425- 
 427 ; at the capture of the " Guil- 
 laume Tell," 430, 431 ; commands 
 the "Agamemon" at Trafalgar, 
 711 ; numerous services of, 712. 
 
 Bickerton, Sir Richanl, British ad- 
 miral, commands in the " Medi- 
 terranean" when war with France 
 begins, 1803, 570; second in com- 
 
INDEX 
 
 747 
 
 mand to Nelson, 1803-1805, 576, 
 588, 591, 613, 616, 625, 628, 641; 
 left in command by Nelson, upon 
 his departure for the West Indies. 
 654, 672, 674; joins Colliugwood 
 before Cadiz, 689 ; returns to Eng- 
 land, ill, just before Trafalgar, 
 692. 
 
 Blackwood, Sir Henry, British captain, 
 distinguished part taken in the cap- 
 ture of the " Guillaunie Tell," 43 1 , 
 684 ; arrives in London with news 
 that the combined fleets are in 
 Cadiz, 684; interviews with Nelson, 
 684 ; commands advanced squadron 
 of frigates off Cadiz, 692, 708, 711, 
 714-718; last dav spent with Nel- 
 son, 721-726, 729-732 ; witnesses 
 the " Codicil "to Nelson's will, 722- 
 723 ; special mark of confidence 
 shown him by Nelson, 724; Nel- 
 son's farewell to him, 731. 
 
 Bolton, Susannah, Nelson's sister, 
 relations of, with Lady Nelson and 
 Lady Hamilton, 452, 556. 
 
 Bonaparte, Napoleon, decisive influ- 
 ence of Nelson upon the career of, 
 82, 83, 187, 458, 459, 506, 507, 632- 
 635, 646, 660, 668, 672 ; indicates the 
 key of the defences of Toulon, 100; 
 opinions upon operations in Italy, 
 159, 160, 164, 166, 168, 177, 183, 
 184, 187, 334, 337; command of 
 Army of Italy, 187; defeats Beau- 
 lieu, advances to the Adige, and 
 establishes the French position in 
 Northern Italy, 187-190, 194, 195, 
 197; fortifies the coast-line of the 
 Kiviera, 190, 194; seizes Leghorn, 
 197-199, 201 ; contrasted with Nel- 
 son, 200, 201, 220, 514, 515, 551 ; 
 overthrows Wurmser, 203, 205 ; 
 effect of his campaign in Italy 
 upon the career of Nelson, 206, 207, 
 272 ; forces Genoa to close her ports 
 to Great Britain, 209 ; sails on the 
 Egyptian Expedition, 276, 278, 281, 
 283-285, 287-290 ; landing in Egypt, 
 290 ; Nelson's appreciation of the ef- 
 fect upon, by the Battle of the Nile, 
 312, 316, 348, 419-422; expedition 
 into Syria, 418 ; e.scape from Egypt 
 to France, 419, after defeating a 
 Turkish army in Aboukir Bay, 419 ; 
 defeats Austrians at Marengo, 436 ; 
 influence upon the formation of the 
 
 Baltic Coalition, 458, 459; threats 
 of invading England, 1801, 506-509 ; 
 his dominant situation on the Conti- 
 nent in 1803, 557-564; firmness of 
 intention to invade England, 1803- 
 1805, 561-564, 567, 578, 586; his 
 policy and Nelson's counter pro- 
 jects, 560-564 ; Nelson's singularly 
 accurate prediction of future of, 
 564, 630 ; Nelson's intuitive recogni- 
 tion of probable action of, 630, 635 ; 
 vast combinations for invasion of 
 England, 632-636, 646, 647; his 
 understanding of the value of sear 
 povver evidenced, 644. 
 
 " Boreas," British frigate, commanded 
 by Nelson, 1784-1787, 38-56, 80. 
 
 Brereton, British general, erroneous 
 information sent to Nelson, 658- 
 660 ; Nelson's expressions of annoy- 
 ance, 660, 667, 669, 675; comment 
 upon his mistake, 675, note. 
 
 Bronte, Duke of, Sicilian title and es- 
 tate conferred upon Nelson, 406 ; his 
 form of signature afterwards, 406 
 and note. 
 
 Brueys, French admiral, commander- 
 in-chief at the Battle of the Nile, 
 295 ; his dispositions for action, 
 295-296. 
 
 Bruix, French admiral, commander- 
 in-chief of a French fleet entering 
 the Mediterranean from Brest, 357, 
 362, 364, 366 ; effect of his approach 
 upon proceedings in Naples, 393 ; 
 his return to Brest, 397, 399; Nel- 
 son's comment upon his conduct, 
 586. 
 
 " Bucentaure," French flagship at 
 Trafalgar, Nelson's encounter with, 
 731-733; surrender of, 737. 
 
 Cadiz, Nelson's visit to, 88 ; his opera- 
 tions before, under Jervis, 244-246, 
 247-250 ; his watch before, prior to 
 Trafalgar, 693, 707-711; effect of 
 position of, upon the Battle of 
 Trafalgar, 718, 720, 721, 727. 
 
 "Qa Ira," French ship-of-the-line, Nel- 
 son's action with, in the " Agamem- 
 non," 139-141 ; his credit for, 147. 
 
 Calder, Sir Robert, British admiral, 
 captain of the fleet at the Battle 
 of St. Vincent, 240, 241 ; his inde- 
 cisive action with the allied fleets. 
 
748 
 
 INDEX 
 
 in 1805, 666, 671 ; popular outcry 
 against, 667, 673, 679, 704 ; Nelson's 
 relations with, 376, 679, 683, 704- 
 707 ; recalled to England for trial, 
 704. 
 Calvi, town in Corsica, Nelson at the 
 siege of, 116-126; loses there his 
 right eye, 119. 
 Canary Islands. See Teneriffe. 
 Capel, Thomas B., British captain, 
 bearer of despatches after the Bat- 
 tle of the Nile, 308, 317; mentioned, 
 303, note, 589. 
 " Captain," British ship-of-the-liue, 
 carries Nelson's broad pendant as 
 commodore, 196; at the Battle of 
 St. Vincent, 231-237 ; injuries re- 
 ceived there, 243 ; Nelson quits her 
 for the " Theseus," 243, 247. 
 Caracciolo, Francesco, commodore in 
 the Neapolitan navy, wounded feel- 
 ings at the distrust of his Court, 
 334 ; appreheusiou, trial, aud execu- 
 tion of, 389-390; comments upon 
 Nelson's part in this transaction, 
 390-393. 
 Castlereagh, Lord, British Minister, 
 Nelson's shrewd prediction to him 
 of the results of the Orders in 
 Council affecting neutral flags, and 
 of the License System, 685. 
 Clarence, Duke of. See William 
 
 Henry. 
 Codrington, Edward, British captain, 
 expressions quoted : about Nelson's 
 seamanship, 13 ; his family ties and 
 love of glory, 61, 553; appearance 
 of Nelson's ships, 650 ; graciousness 
 of Nelson's bearing, 694. 
 Collingwood, Cuthbert, British ad- 
 miral, close connection between his 
 career and that of Nelson, 18; 
 strong expression of regard for 
 Nelson 21; association with Nelson 
 in the West Indies, 45 and note, 46, 
 54 ; at the Battle of Cape St. Vin- 
 cent, 230, 233, 236, 240, 241 ; strong' 
 expression upou the credit due to 
 Nelson, 232 ; his account of Nelson's 
 cold reception at Court, in 1800, 
 447 ; sent from England to West 
 Indies in 1805, 669; hearing that 
 Nelson is gone thither, takes posi- 
 tion off Cadiz instead, 669 ; corre- 
 spondence with Nelson on his return, 
 669-671; left by Nelson in charge 
 
 off Cadiz, 674, 675 ; force collected 
 under, when allies enter Cadiz, 689 ; 
 characteristics, 693 ; part assigned 
 to, by Nelson, for Trafalgar, 702- 
 703 ; his part at Trafalgar, 718-720, 
 725, 727, 730, 731 ; Nelson's praise 
 of, 731 ; his sympathy with Nelson, 
 731 ; notified of Nelson's fatal 
 wound, 739. 
 Convoys, Nelson's comments on the 
 behavior of, 28 ; gives one to Ameri- 
 can merchant ships against French 
 privateers, 247 ; difliculty of provid- 
 ing in the Mediterranean, 610-612. 
 Copenhagen, defences of, in 1801, 466, 
 473, 474, 477, 478; Battle of. Nel- 
 son's plans for, 477-479 ; the battle, 
 479-487 ; importance and difficulty 
 of the achievemeut, 488, 489 ; fail- 
 ure of the British Government to 
 reward, 489, 542 ; silence of the city 
 of London, 542 ; Nelson's action, 
 542-546. 
 Corfu, transferred, with the other 
 loniau Islands, from Venice to 
 France, 271 ; Nelson's concern for, 
 after the Battle of the Nile, 315, 
 347, 348; taken by Kusso-Turkish 
 forces, 347 ; British precautions 
 against re-occupation by French, 
 561 ; concern of Nelson for, while 
 commander-in-chief in the Mediter- 
 ranean, 1803-180.5, 564, 566, 571, 
 631; resort of privateers, 610; 
 Napoleon's estimate of, 631. 
 Cornwallis, William, British admiral, 
 kindness to Nelson in early life, 26 
 and note, 39 ; Nelson directed to 
 communicate with, off Brest in 
 1803, 565 ; orders seizure of Spanish 
 treasure-ships, 618 ; Nelson directs 
 that the order be disobeyed, 618; 
 services of, off Brest, 634" ; Nelson 
 joins, off Brest, on return from 
 West Indies, 672, 675 ; authorizes 
 Nelson to return to England, 675. 
 Correspondence, Nelson's extensive, 
 while in the Mediterranean, 566; 
 his maimer of conducting, 602-605. 
 Corsica, Island of. Nelson ordered to 
 coast of, 98, 99 ; Nelson's connection 
 Avith operations there in 1794, 101- 
 126 ; strategic value of, to British, 
 132-135 ; government as a British 
 de])endency, 135 ; dissatisfaction of 
 natives with British rule, 197; ten- 
 
INDEX 
 
 74d 
 
 uic uf, dependent ou support of the 
 natives, 200 ; abandonment of, bv 
 the British, 210, 214-217; threat- 
 ened invasion of Sardinia from, 
 578. 
 " Curieux," Britisli brig of war, 
 sent by Nelson to England from 
 West Indies with news of his move- 
 ments, 661 ; falls in with combined 
 fleets, 671 ; Nelson's comment on 
 hearing the fact, 671, 673. 
 
 Davison, Alexander, intimate friend 
 of Nelson, Nelson expresses de- 
 spondency to, 353 ; the " Lady of 
 the Admiralty's " coolness, 446 ; 
 account given by, of George III. 
 speaking of Nelson, 447 ; Nelson's 
 mention of Sir Hyde Parker to, 462, 
 463, 465, 544; aids Nelson pecuni- 
 arily, 526 ; charged by Nelson witli 
 a final message to Lady Nelson, 531 ; 
 Nelson's expressions to, about St. 
 Vincent, 543 ; about treatment of 
 himself by the government, 549 ; 
 " Salt beef and the French fleet," 
 656 ; about General Brereton, 675. 
 
 De Vins, Austrian general, commands 
 on the Riviera in 1795, 159; Nel- 
 son's association with, 159, 165-168, 
 and opinion of, 168. • 
 
 Dresden, Nelson's visit to, in 1800, 
 441-443. 
 
 Drinkwater, Colonel, returns from 
 Elba in frigate with Nelson, 1797, 
 223 ; incidents narrated of the voy- 
 .ige, 227-229 ; witnesses the Battle 
 of St. Vincent, 240 ; interview Mith 
 Nelson after the battle, 242 ; char- 
 acteristic anecdote of Nelson, 264. 
 
 Dnckwortli, Sir J. T., British admiral, 
 association with Nelson during 
 operations in the Mediterranean, 
 1799, 358, 360, 362, 394, 409. 
 
 Dundas, British general, command- 
 ing troo])s in Corsica, 104 ; con- 
 troversy with Lord Hood, 104; Nel- 
 son's opinion, 104. 
 
 Egypt, Bonaparte's expedition to, 
 in 1798, 276-290; Nelson's pursuit, 
 280-282, 283-289; Nelson's con- 
 stant attention to, 316, 346, 348, 
 560, 562, 575, 577, 584, 585, 586, 
 
 621, 639, 640, 643-645, 648, 662; 
 his urgency that the French army 
 be not permitted to leave, 420-422. 
 
 El Arish, Convention of, signed, 421. 
 
 Elba, island of, Nelson's opinion of 
 importance of, 202 ; his seizure of, 
 202 ; evacuation of, 221-225, 245. 
 
 "Elephant," British ship-of-the-line. 
 Nelson's flagship at Copenhagen, 
 472, 475, 479-487. 
 
 Elgin, Earl of, British ambassador to 
 'I'urkey, opinion upon the state of 
 things at Palermo during Nelson's 
 residence there, 340 ; Nelson's 
 divergence of opinion from, con- 
 cerning the French quitting Egypt, 
 420-422. 
 
 Elliot, Sir Gilbert, afterwards Lord 
 Minto, British representative in 
 Corsica, 1794, 102; Viceroy of 
 Corsica, 131 ; friendship between 
 him and Nelson, 131, 235, 240, 242, 
 
 535, 617, 682; Nelson's correspond- 
 ence Avith, 147, 173, 202, 204, 235, 
 240, 304, 407, 427, 435, 583, 617; 
 directs the seizure of Elba by Nelson, 
 202 ; present at the evacuation of 
 Corsica, 215, and of Elba, 223; 
 pa.ssage with Nelson to Gibraltar, 
 223-229 ; witnesses the Battle of St. 
 Vincent, 235, 240 ; advocacy of 
 Nelson's claims to distinction, 242, 
 346 ; incidental mention of Nelson 
 by, 263, 433, 442, 483, 536, 551, 
 552, 666, 682, 687, 689; mention of 
 Lady Hamilton by, 325-327, 442, 
 
 536, 682, 689 ; " ambassador to 
 A^ienna, 339, note. 
 
 Elliot, Hugli, British minister at 
 Dresden during Nelson's visit in 
 1800. 441-442 ; minister to the two 
 Sicilies during Nelson's Mediter- 
 ranean command, 1803-1805, 566, 
 668 ; takes passage out with Nelson, 
 566 ; correspondence between Nel- 
 son and, quoted, 567, 568, 570, 
 584, 585, 588, 590, 604, 614, 624, 
 628, 629, 648, 663, 668, 686. 
 
 Este, Lambton, association with Nel- 
 son mentioned, 621-623. 
 
 Fischer, Commodore, commander- 
 in-chief of Danish fleet at the Battle 
 of Copenhagen, 485 ; Nelson's con- 
 troversy with, on account of his 
 
750 
 
 INDEX 
 
 official report of the battle, 497- 
 498. 
 
 Fitzharris, Lord, British attache at 
 Vienna during Nelson's visit, 1800, 
 anecdotes of Nelson and of Lady 
 Hamilton, 439, 440. 
 
 Flag of Truce, incident of the, at 
 Copenhagen, 485-488. 
 
 " Fleet in Being," indications of Nel- 
 son's probable opinion of its deter- 
 rent effect, 11.5-117, 136, 15.5, 156, 
 167, 168, 181, 182, 184, 185, 186, 
 19.3, 661-665. 
 
 Freinautle, British captain, with Nel- 
 son, at Teneriffe, 256-260; at 
 Copenhagen, 475 ; letter from Nel- 
 son to, concerning Calder, 676. 
 
 Frigates, Nelson's sense of the impor- 
 tance of, and of small cruisers 
 generally, 289, 290. 291, 610-613, 
 638, 655, 689, 708, 709. 
 
 " Genereux," French ship-of-the-line, 
 escape of, after the Battle of the 
 Nile, 305, 306; capture of the 
 " Leander " by, 308, 347 ; captured 
 by Nelson's squadron off Malta, 425- 
 428. 
 
 Genoa, importance of, to the South of 
 France, 90, 91; difficult neutrality 
 of, 134, 135, 157-164, 169-171, 186, 
 190, 192-194, 199, 336; closes her 
 ports against Great Britain, 1796, 
 208-209 ; siege of city, in 1800, 428 ; 
 surrender of, by Massena, 436 ; 
 identified with France as the 
 Liguriau Republic, 559, 560 ; ports 
 of, blockaded by Nelson, 591, 599, 
 600. 
 
 George III., King of Great Britain, 
 prejudice of, against Nelson in early 
 life, 75, 76, 243 ; subsequent appro- 
 bation, 151, 243, 263; interest in 
 Nelson manifested by, 447 ; subse- 
 quent coldness of, toward Nelson, 
 apparently in consequence of his 
 relations to Lady Hamilton, 447. 
 
 Gillespie, Dr., account of life on board 
 Nelson's flagship by, 594-596, 607, 
 615. 
 
 Goodall, Admiral, at the partial fleet 
 action of March 14, 1795, 143, 144 ; 
 his support of Nelson when under 
 public censure for failure to find tlie 
 French fleet, 286. 
 
 Gore, British captain, commands 
 scjuadron of frigates under Nelson's 
 orders, outside Straits of Gibraltar, 
 612 ; letter of Nelson to, concerning 
 three frigates attacking a ship-of- 
 the-line, 613 ; ordered by Nelson to 
 disobey orders of Admiral Corn- 
 wallis to seize Spanish treasure- 
 sliips, 618. 
 
 Graves, Bear Admiral, second to Nel- 
 son at tlie Battle of Copenhagen, 
 475, 482 ; made Knight of the Bath 
 in reward for tlie action, 489. 
 
 Gravina, Spanish admiral, commander 
 of the S))auish contingent, and 
 second in command of the com- 
 bined fleet, at Trafalgar, 713, 718, 
 720, 741. 
 
 Grevjlle, Charles, nephew to Sir 
 William Hamilton, relations of, 
 to Emma Hart, afterwards Lady 
 Hamilton, 319-325. 
 
 Hallowet.l, British captain, imder 
 Nelson at the siege of Calvi, 119; 
 commands the " Swiftsure " at tlie 
 Battle of the Nile, 302. . 
 
 Hamilton, Emma, Lady, Nelson's first 
 meeting with, 94 ; letter of Nelson 
 to, 291 ; conduct of, in Naples, upon 
 receipt of jiews of the Battle of the 
 Nile, 317; Nelson's second meeting 
 with, 318; previous history of, 319- 
 325 ; married to Sir William Hamil- 
 ton, 323 ; personal appearance and 
 characteristi(;s, 325-327, 328-330, 
 441-443, 532, 536, 594, 682, 689; 
 influence at Court of Naples, 327, 
 364, 393 ; influence upon Nelson, 
 330-332, 393, 394, 395, 424, 428- 
 
 429, 437, 438, 439, 471, 686-687; 
 intermediary between the Court and 
 Nelson, 333,"364, 366 ; efficiency dur- 
 ing the fliglit of the Court from 
 Naples, 338 ; scandal concerning 
 lier relations to Nelson, 339-341, 
 
 430, 433, 434, 446-448, 536, 555, 
 556 ; love of play, 340, 440 ; Nel- 
 son's infatuation for, 325, 361, 393, 
 428, 4.30, 433, 434, 437, 439, 440, 449, 
 450, 471, 480, 536, 682; with Sir 
 William Hamilton accompanies Nel- 
 son to Naples in flagship, 367 ; 
 usefulness there, 395 ; Nelson asks 
 of the Czar insignia of the Order 
 
INDEX 
 
 751 
 
 of Malta for, 413 ; accompanies 
 Nelson, with her husband, on a 
 trip to Malta, 434, and on tlie re- 
 turn journey to England, 435-443 ; 
 her reception by the London world, 
 446-448, 536 ; Lady Nelson's atti- 
 tude towards, 444-446, 449, 450; 
 attitude of Nelson's father towards, 
 452, 554; of other meml)ers of 
 Nelson's family, 452, 556, G82 ; 
 believed by Nelson to be the motlier 
 of Horatia, 453-455 ; Nelson's letters 
 to, during Copenliagen expedition, 
 463, 464, 466, 472, 480, 494, 495, 499, 
 504, 531 ; letters to, while com- 
 manding preparations against inva- 
 sion, 521, 522, 521-526,' 531, 532; 
 purchases the Merton property for 
 Nelson, 532-535 ; disturbed relations 
 with her husband, 532-533; death 
 of husband, 555 ; Nelson's letters to, 
 during his command in the Medi- 
 terranean, 1803-1805, 570, 593 594, 
 622, 624, 642, 693, 704, 705; Nel- 
 son's anxiety about confinement of, 
 583; birth of a second child, 583; 
 allowance made by Nelson to, 615; 
 Nelson's last letter to, 714; be- 
 queathed by Nelson to his Country, 
 723, 735, 740 ; mentioned by Nel- 
 son, when dying, 738, 740. 
 Hamilton, Sir William, British min- 
 ister to Naples, Nelson's first asso- 
 ciation with, 94 ; Nelson's corre- 
 spondence with, during the Nile 
 campaign, 280, 281, 282, 291-293, 
 315, 318; Nelson's association with, 
 while in command in Neapolitan 
 waters, 1798-1800, 318, 331, 333, 
 334, 336, 338-341, 366, 367, 371, 
 374, 377-379, 387, 395, 421, 423, 
 427-430, 434 ; relations to Amy 
 Lyon, otherwise Emma Hart, prior 
 to their marriage, 321-323; mar- 
 riage to Emma Hart, 323; oner- 
 ous increase of diplomatic duties 
 after the French Revolution began, 
 328 ; influence of Lady Hamilton 
 upon, 328, 333, 340, 442 ; apparent 
 unfitness for his position, 328, 340, 
 341 ; accompanies Nelson to Naples 
 in flagship, 367 ; assertion of Nelson's 
 full powers at this time by , 387 ; share 
 of, in the transactions at Naples, 
 395 ; recalled to England, 434 ; ac- 
 companied by Nelson on return to 
 
 England, 435-443; Nelson takes 
 up his residence with, 529 ; with 
 Lady Hamilton goes to live with 
 Nelson at Merton, 532 ; disturbed 
 relations of, with his wife, 533-535; 
 death of, 555 ; his professed confi- 
 dence in Nelson, 556. 
 
 Hardy, Captain Thomas M , captured 
 in the prize " Sabina," 222 ; ex- 
 changed, 225 ; narrow escape from 
 recapture, 227 ; commander of the 
 brig " Mutine," 276 ; accompanies 
 Nelson in Baltic expedition, 460, 
 476; continuous association with 
 Nelson after St. Vincent, 737 ; 
 presence at Nelson's death-bed, 
 737-740 ; incidentally mentioned, 
 595, 603, 613, 691, 717, 722, 726, 
 732-735, 737. 
 
 Hart, Emma, name assumed by Lady 
 Hamilton, prior to marriage, 321. 
 
 Haslewood, anecdote of final breach 
 between Lord and Ladv Nelson, 
 450. 
 
 Hillyar, Captain James, anecdotes of 
 Nelson, 553, note, 606-608. 
 
 " Hinchinbrook," British frigate, com- 
 manded by Nelson in youth, 18-26 ; 
 singular coincidence that both Nel- 
 son and Collingwood were made 
 post into this ship, 18. 
 
 Hood, Admiral, Lord, opinion of Nel- 
 son in early life, 29 ; Nelson obtains 
 transfer of his ship to the fleet of, 
 31-33 ; relations of Nelson with, 
 prior to French Revolution, 32, 33, 
 35, 39, 59, 7.5, 76, 92 ; appointed to 
 command the Mediterranean fleet, 
 1793, 87; services off Toulon, 88- 
 100; employs Nelson on detached 
 service, at Naples, 92, at Tunis, 97, 
 around Corsica, 97-103; reduction 
 of Corsica, 101-126 ; return to Eng- 
 land, 126, 127; removed from the 
 Mediterranean command, 149 ; Nel- 
 son's opinion of, 102, 149, 150; 
 Nelson's relations with, during his 
 Mediterranean command, 96, 99, 
 102, 104, 106, 126; at siege of Bas- 
 tia, 110-112; at siege of Calvi, 121, 
 123; inadequate mention of Nel- 
 son's services in Corsica by, 112-114, 
 130, 131 ; differences with Colonel 
 Moore, 122-124; opinion of Nel- 
 son's merits at the Battle of the 
 Nile, 308-310; presents Nelson ia 
 
•752 
 
 INDEX 
 
 the House of Peers, when takiug 
 his seat as a viscount, 541. 
 
 Hood, Captain Sir Samuel, pilots 
 Nelson's fleet into Aboukir Bay, 
 297 ; share of, in the Battle of the 
 Nile, 298, 299, 306 ; left to blockade 
 Alexandria, 313, 335; incidentally 
 mentioned, 344, 346, 539. 
 
 Horatia, Nelson's dau<>-liter, birth of, 
 453; mentioned, 454, 594, 690; 
 Nelson's last letter to, 715 ; desired 
 by him to use the name of " Nelson " 
 only, 715; beiineathed by Nelson to 
 his Country, 723, 735 ; mentioned 
 by Nelson in dying, 710. 
 
 Hoste, Captain William, midsliipman 
 with Nelson from 1793 to 1797, 260 ; 
 describes Nelson's return on board 
 wounded, after the affair at Santa 
 Cruz, 260 ; lieutenant, and com- 
 mander of the " Mutine," 317; re- 
 ception at Naples by Lady Hamil- 
 ton, 317; curious anecdote of, 627- 
 628. 
 
 Hotham, Vice-Admiral, second in 
 command to Lord Hood, mistaken 
 action of, 115, 116; Nelson's com- 
 ment on, 115, 128; succeeds Hood 
 as commander-in-chief, 127 ; en- 
 counter with Frencli Toulon fleet, 
 137-145 ; Nelson's urgency with, 143, 
 and criticism of his action in this case, 
 144-146; inadequate military con- 
 ceptions of, 146, 155, 169 ; difficulties 
 of, recognized by Nelson, 146 ; 
 second encounter with the French, 
 151-154; incompetent action, and 
 Nelson's criticism, 153-155; dis- 
 astrous results of inefficiency of, 
 155, 156, 169, 173, 179 ; sends" Nel- 
 son to co-operate with Austrians on 
 the Kiviera, 157 ; Nelson's opinion 
 of his "political courage," 161; 
 personal dislike to co-operation of, 
 163, 168 and note ; inadequate sup- 
 port given to Nelson by, 168, 169, 
 172; Nelson's opinion of the conse- 
 qixent mishaps, 155, 169, 170, 177; 
 relieved b}' Sir Hyde Parker, 170. 
 
 Hotham, Sir William, criticism of 
 Nelson's conduct towards Lady Nel- 
 son, 448 ; mention of Lady Nelson's 
 conduct after the separation, 450; 
 Nelson's aptitude at forwarding 
 public service, 599. 
 
 Howe, Admiral, Lord, appoints Nel- 
 
 son to the command of the " Boreas," 
 38 ; kind reception of Nelson in 
 1787, 70; victory of June 1st, 1794, 
 Nelson's opinion of, 128; Nelson's 
 e.\pression to, about the Battle of 
 the Nile, 304 ; opinion of, concern- 
 ing the Battle of the Nile, 305, 311. 
 
 Hughes, Sir Kichard, commander-in- 
 chief of the Leeward Islands Station, 
 1784-1786, 39; Nelson's difficulties 
 with, 42-45, and 46-50; his attitude 
 towards Nelson in the matter of 
 enforcing the Navigation Act, 50, 
 52, 54 ; Nelson's reconciliation with, • 
 
 62. 
 
 Hughes, Lady, account of Nelson as a 
 very young captain, 39. 
 
 loNiAX Islands, Corfu, etc., objects 
 of Nelson's solicitude, 315, 335, 347, 
 348, 630, 631 ; Eussian occupation 
 of, 347, 416; importance of, to 
 Bonajjarte, 563, 564, 571, 610; tem- 
 porary political name of Eepublic 
 of the Seven Islands, 566. 
 
 Ireland, Nelson's speculations as to 
 Bonaparte's intentions against, 584, 
 585, 649, 673; Collingwood's, 669, 
 670. 
 
 Jervis, Admiral Sir John, afterwards 
 Earl of St. Vincent, 29; com- 
 mander-in-chief in the West Indies, 
 98 ; commander-in-chief in the 
 Mediterranean, 174, 180; Nelson's 
 first meeting with, 183 ; desire of, to 
 have Nelson remaiu under his com- 
 mand, 184, 195, 218; his close 
 blockade of Toulon, 196, 206; Nel- 
 son's lofty opinion of, 208, 212; 
 forced to concentrate his fleet owing 
 to the attitude of Spain, 209, 210; 
 embarrassment caused to, by conduct 
 of Admiral Man, 209, 216; ordered 
 to evacuate the Mediterranean, 210 ; 
 retires to Gibraltar, 216 ; sends Nel- 
 son back to superintend the evacuar 
 tion of Elba, 221 ; his opinions of 
 Nelson, as expressed, 223, 240, 241, 
 251, 255, 261, 276, 311, 345, 462, 
 494, 504, 505, 506, 572, 573; re- 
 joined bv Nelson, off Cape St. Vin- 
 cent, 229; Battle of Cape St 
 
INDEX 
 
 753 
 
 Vincent, 229-238 ; operations after 
 the battle, 244-246; blockade and 
 bombardment of Cadiz, 247-251 ; 
 sends Nelson to 'J'eneriffe, 255, 256; 
 sympathy with Nelson in bis defeat 
 and wound, 261 ; created Earl of 
 St. Vincent, 261 ; rejoined by Nel- 
 son after convalescence, 265 ; ex- 
 pressions of satisfaction thereat, 
 265 ; aversion of, to extending the 
 operations of the fleet, 273; sends 
 Nelson to watch the Toulon arma- 
 ment, 265, 276 ; denounced for 
 choosing so young a flag-oificer, 
 288 ; opinion of the Battle of tlie 
 Nile, 311 ; orders Nelson to return 
 to the western Mediterranean, 313 ; 
 tlie affair of Sir Sidney Smith, 343, 
 344 ; absolute confidence of, in Nel- 
 son, 350; action upon tlie incursion 
 of Bruix's fleet, 360-362 ; gives up 
 the command of the Mediterranean, 
 363 ; Nelson's distress and vexation, 
 363, 628 ; succeeded in command by 
 Lord Keith, 363, 366; takes com- 
 mand of Channel Fleet, 1800,453; 
 Nelson joins him as subordinate, 
 453 ; stern resolution in face of the 
 Baltic Coalition, 460; becomes First 
 Lord of the Admiralty, 462; Nel- 
 son's gradual alienation from, 464, 
 523, 524, 543, 544, 546, 549, 551 ; 
 full approval of Nelson's course in 
 the Baltic by, 467, 494 ; indisposi- 
 tion to grant rewards for services at 
 Copenhagen, 489, 543, 544, 546 ; 
 reluctance to relieve Nelson, 504 ; 
 insists with Nelson that he must ac- 
 cept and retain command of prepara- 
 tions against invasion, 506, 523, 528 ; 
 correspondence with Nelson on this 
 subject, 506-511, 518, 519, 520, 522, 
 526 ; divergence of views from Nel- 
 son's on the subject of a flotilla, 
 516, 517; misunderstanding be- 
 tween Nelson and, on the subject of 
 medals for Copenhagen, 543, 544, 
 546 ; sends Nelson to the INIediterra- 
 nean as commander-in-chief, 553 ; 
 injury to Navy from excessive 
 economy of, 550, 571 ; correspond- 
 ence of Nelson with, while com- 
 mander-in-chief in the Mediterra- 
 nean, quoted, 565, 572, 573, 586 ; 
 retires from the Admiralty, and 
 succeeded by Lord Melville, 593 
 
 48 
 
 Keats, Captain Richard G., favorite 
 with Nelson, 654 ; letters from Nel- 
 son to, 654, 657, 658, 679. 
 
 Keith, Admiral, Lord, second in com- 
 mand to St. Vincent in the Mediter- 
 ranean, 362 ; St. Vincent relin- 
 quishes command to, 364, 366 ; 
 characteristics of, 364 ; friction be- 
 tween Nelson and, 364-366 ; advice 
 of, to Nelson, concerning executions 
 in Naples, 394 ; Nelson's disobe- 
 dience to orders of, 396-404 ; pur- 
 sues coml)ined fleets to Englisli 
 Channel, 398, 416; inferiority of, 
 to Nelson, in military sagacity, 400, 
 437; absence from Mediterranean 
 prolonged, 408 ; resumes command 
 in the Mediterranean, 423 ; Nelson's 
 resentment at his return, 407, 423 ; 
 relations between the two, 423, 427- 
 430, 431, 43.5-437 ; orders Nelson to 
 assume personal charge of blockade 
 of Malta, 428 ; dissatisfaction of, 
 with Nelson's course, 435-437 ; dis- 
 pleasure of Queen of Naples with, 
 437 ; measures of, to prevent French 
 encroachments during Peace of 
 Amiens, 561 ; successful resistance 
 of, to the Admiralty's attempt to 
 reduce his station, 616. 
 
 Kleber, French general, succeeds 
 Bonaparte in the command in 
 Egypt, 419 ; convinced of the hope- 
 lessness of retaining Egypt, 419; 
 makes the Convention of El Arish 
 witli the Turks, 421-422. 
 
 Knight, Miss, friend and companion 
 of the Hamiltons, 438 ; accompanies 
 them and Nelson on journey to 
 England in 1800, 438-446 ; incidents 
 mentioned by, relative to this period, 
 438,439,446'; testimony to Nelson's 
 love for his wife, prior to meeting 
 with Lady Hamilton, 452. 
 
 Latouche-Treville, French ad- 
 miral, in command off Boulogne, 
 and successful repulse of British 
 boats, 519-522, 587 ; in command of 
 Toulon fleet, 587 ; Nelson's attempts 
 to lure out of port, 587-589, 590, 
 591 ; reports that Nelson retreated 
 before him, and Nelson's wrath, 
 590-591 ; death of, 623. 
 
 Layman, Lieutenant, and Commander, 
 
754 
 
 INDEX 
 
 serving with Nelson on board the 
 "St. George," 1801, 464; anecdotes 
 of Nelson by, 464, 466, 539, 707 ; loses 
 the brig " Raven " when carrying 
 despatches, 642 ; characteristic let- 
 ter of Nelson in behalf of, 642-643. 
 
 "Leander," British fifty-guu ship, 
 Campaign and Battle of the Nile, 
 279,301,302; sent with despatches 
 to Gibraltar, 308 ; captured by the 
 " Ge'ncreux," 308 ; recaptured by 
 Russians, and restored to Great 
 Britain, 347. 
 
 Leghorn, Nelson's visits to, 126, 128, 
 137, 178; importance of, to the 
 French, 134, 136, and to the Brit- 
 ish fleet, 137, 197, 198; occupation 
 of, by Bonaparte, in 1796, 198; 
 blockade of, by Nelson, 201-202 ; 
 Nelson's project for an assault of, 
 203-205 ; occupation of, by Neapoli- 
 tans, in 1798,336, 348;" blockade 
 of, recommended by Nelson in 1803, 
 559. 
 
 Lindholm, Danish officer, aide-de- 
 camp to Crown Prince at the 
 B.attle of Copenhagen, sent to Nel- 
 son with reply to the message under 
 flag of truce, 487 ; association with 
 the negotiations, 488, 491, 493; 
 testimony of, to Nelson's motives in 
 sending flag of truce, 488 ; corre- 
 spondence of, with Nelson, relative 
 to the conduct of Commodore 
 Fischer, 497, 498. 
 
 Linzee, Commodore, Nelson serves 
 under, on mission to Tunis, 96 ; Nel- 
 son's causeless dissatisfaction with 
 conduct of, 97. 
 
 Lisbon, headquarters of Briti.sh fleet 
 after evacuation of the Mediter- 
 ranean, 222, 244, 265 ; forbidden to 
 British in 1803,559. 
 
 Locker, Captain William, Nelson's 
 early commander and life-long 
 friend, 14-17, 18. 
 
 Louis, Captain Thomas, Nelson's ex- 
 pressions of obligation to, at the 
 Battle of the Nile, 300. 
 
 " Lowestoffe," British frigate. Nelson 
 commissioned lieutenant into, and 
 incidents on board of, 14-17; his 
 place on board of, filled by Colling- 
 wood, 18. 
 
 Lyon, Amy, maiden name of Lady 
 Hamilton, 319. 
 
 Mack, Austrian general, association 
 with Nelson before and after the 
 disastrous Neapolitan campaign of 
 1798, 336-337. 
 
 ]\Ladalena Islands, situation of, and 
 importance to Nelson's fleet, 576- 
 578, 580; Nelson there receives 
 news of Villeneuve's first sailincr, 
 631. ^ 
 
 Malmesbury, Lady, mention of Lady 
 Hamilton by, 324, 327 ; of Nelson 
 and Hyde Parker, 462. 
 
 Malta, seizure of, by Bonaparte, 281, 
 283 ; Nelson's estimate of the 
 importance of, 282, 349, 415, 570, 
 573 ; his concern for, 315, 316, 355, 
 409, 411, 416, 611, 674; directs 
 blockade of, 316, by Portuguese 
 squadron, 317; blockade of, 335, 
 .336, 350, 360, 362, 405, 410-416, 
 423, 424, 435, 436 ; Nelson's jealousy 
 of Russian designs upon, 348-350 ; 
 capture near, of the " Genereux," 
 424-428, and of the " Guillaume 
 Tell," 430 ; Nelson ordered by Keith 
 to take personal charge of Itlockade 
 of, 428 ; Nelson quits blockade of, 
 430, 431 ; takes ships off blockade, 
 contrary to Keith's wishes, 435- 
 437 ; surrender of, to the Briti.sli, 
 459 ; effect of surrender of, upon 
 the Czar, 459 ; Nelson's views as 
 to the ultimate disposition of, 547 ; 
 Nelson's visit to, in 1803, 566, 570; 
 strategic importance of, 560, 571, 
 629. 
 
 Man, Admiral Robert, in command 
 under Hotham, at the fleet action 
 of July 13, 1795, 153 ; Nelson's com- 
 mendation of, 153; subsequent mis- 
 takes of, iu 1796, 209, 211, 213, 216 ; 
 Nelson's expressions concerning, 
 210, 211 ; allusion to, 421. 
 
 Marengo, Battle of. Nelson in Leg- 
 horn at the time of, 436, 557. 
 
 Maritimo, Island of, strategic centre 
 for a rendezvous, SCO, 36.5, 366. 
 
 Massena, French general, defeats the 
 combined Austrians and Russians 
 near Zurich, 417 ; Nelson likened to, 
 450. 
 
 Matcham, Mrs., Nelson's sister, atti- 
 tude towards Lady Hamilton, 452, 
 556, towards Lady Nelson, 556 ; 
 anecdote of Nelson transmitted bv, 
 690. 
 
INDEX 
 
 755 
 
 Matcham, George, Nelson's uephew, 
 letter of, dated 1861, giving recol- 
 lections of Nelson, 536-538. 
 
 Melville, Lord, Tirst Lord of the 
 Admiralty, in succession to St. 
 Vincent, reply to Nelson's appeal to 
 reverse previous refusal of medals 
 for Copenhagen, 546 ; Nelson's let- 
 ter to, about his missing the French 
 fleet, 642-643. 
 
 Merton, Nelson's home in England, 
 purchase of, by him, 526, 532, 533 ; 
 life at, during Peace of Amiens, 
 529-559 ; final stay at, 677-690. 
 
 Messina, importance of, to the secur- 
 itv of Sicily, Nelson's opinions, 354, 
 357, 563, 567-569. 
 
 Middleton, Sir Charles, afterwards 
 Lord Barham, 72. See Barham. 
 
 Miles, Commander Jeaffreson, able 
 defence of Lord Nelson's action at 
 Naples, in 1799, 392. 
 
 Miller, Captain Ralph W., commands 
 Nelson's flagship at the Battle of 
 St. Vincent, 233, 239 ; at Teneriffe, 
 258 ; at the Battle of tlie Nile, 303 ; 
 Nelson's expressions of affection for 
 and anxiety for a monument to, 
 526. 
 
 Minorca, Nelson ordered from Egypt 
 for an expedition against, 313 ; 
 Nelson directs his squadron upon, 
 on receiving news of Bruix's incur- 
 sion, , 358-360 ; Nelson's difference 
 with Keith, as to the value and 
 danger of, 396, 401, 407, 409 ; Nel- 
 son's visit to, in 1799, 409,412, 414; 
 restored to Spain at Peace of 
 Amiens, 559. 
 
 Minto, Lord. See Elliot, Sir Gilbert. 
 
 Minto, Lady, mention of Nelson at 
 Palermo, in letters of, 339, 340 ; at 
 Leghorn, 337; at Vienna 338-340. 
 
 Moore, Colonel, afterwards Sir John, 
 102; friction between Lord Hood 
 and, in Corsica, 120-124; Nelson's 
 agreement, in the main, with Hood's 
 views, 122, 123, 124. 
 
 Morea, Nelson's anxieties about, 562. 
 563, 571, 577, 578, 585, 631, 639, 
 643, 648. 
 
 Moutray, Captain, Nelson's refusal to 
 recognize pendant of, as commodore, 
 42-45 ; nndi.'ftnrbed friendship be- 
 tween Nelson and, 44. 
 
 Moutray, Mrs., Nelson's affection nnd 
 
 admiration for, 44, 45 ; CoUingwood 
 writes to, after Nelson's death, 45. 
 
 Moutray, Lieutenant James, son of 
 the above, dies before Calvi, while 
 serving under Nelson, 45 ; Nelson 
 erects a monument to, 126. 
 
 Murray, Rear-Admiral George, Nel- 
 son's pleasure at a visit from, 549 ; 
 captain of the fleet to Nelson, 
 1803-1805, 595, 598, 603, 606. 
 
 Naples, city of, Nelson's first visit 
 to,92-95 ; second visit, 31 7, 31 8,329- 
 338 ; flight of the Court from, 338 ; 
 the French enter, 342 ; the French 
 evacuate, after their disasters in 
 Upper Italy, 355 ; the royal power 
 re-established in, 368, 369, 395; Nel- 
 son's action in the Bay of, 367-395 ; 
 Nelson leaves finally, for Palermo, 
 405 ; Nelson's emotions upon distant 
 view of, in 1803, 570. 
 
 Naples, Kingdom of. See Two 
 Sicilies. 
 
 Naples, King of, Nelson's regrets for, 
 upon tlie evacuation of the Medi- 
 terranean, 1796, 211 ; gives orders 
 that supplies be furnished Nelson's 
 s(|uadr<)n before the Battle of the 
 Nile, 281 ; Nelson's appeal to, to 
 take a decided stand, 282; Nelson's 
 indignation against, when difficulties 
 about supplies are raised in Syra- 
 cuse, 291 ; congratulates Nelson on 
 the issue of the Battle of the Nile, 
 310; visits Nelson's flag-ship, 318; 
 distrust of his own officers, 334, 
 356 ; under Nelson's influence, 
 decides upon war with France, 334 ; 
 Nelson promises support to, 334, 
 335 ; decides to advance against 
 French in Rome, 337 ; defeat and 
 precipitate flight of, 337 ; takes 
 refuge at I'alermo, 338 ; promises 
 Nelson that Malta, being legiti- 
 mately his territory, should not be 
 transferred to any power withdut 
 consent of England, 348 ; authorizes 
 British flag to be hoisted in Malta 
 alongside the Sicilian, 397 ; Nelson's 
 devotion to, 350, 394, 401 ; personal 
 timidity and apathy of, 357, 408, 
 409 ; requests Nelson to go to 
 Naples and support the royalists, 
 364 ; gives Nelson full powers to act 
 
756 
 
 INDEX 
 
 as his representative in Naples, 386, 
 387 ; goes himself to Bay of Naples, 
 but remains on board Nelson's Hag- 
 ship, 395 ; alienation of, from the 
 queen, 395, 409 ; returns to Palermo, 
 405 ; confers upon Nelson the duke- 
 dom of Bronte, 405 ; Nelson renews 
 correspondence with, in 1803,566; 
 Nelson's apprehensions for, 567, 
 571 ; Nelson keeps a ship-of-the-line 
 always in the Ba}- of Naples to re- 
 ceive ro)'al family, 568 ; application 
 of, to the British government, to 
 send Nelson back to the Mediterra- 
 nean, after sick-leave, 614 ; agitation 
 of, at the prospect of Nelson's depar- 
 ture, 614; offers him a house at 
 Naples or at Palermo, 614. 
 
 Naples, Queen of, agitation at hear- 
 ing of the Battle of the Nile, 318 ; 
 friendship with Lady Hamilton, 
 324, 328, 364, 395 ; characteristics 
 of, 332, 409; association with Nel- 
 son, 332-333 ; Nelson's devotion to, 
 335; distrust of her subjects, 337, 
 357, 409 ; flight to Palermo, 338 ; 
 apprehensions of, 359 ; alienation 
 of the King from, 395, 409 ; wisiies 
 to visit Vienna, and is carried to 
 Leghorn by Nelson, with two ships- 
 of-theline, 435 ; refused further 
 assistance of the same kind by Lord 
 Keith, 437 ; her distress of mind, 
 and anger with Keith, 437 ; proceeds 
 to Vieima by way of Ancona, 438; 
 Nelson renews correspondence with, 
 in 1803-1805, 560, 566, 629. 
 
 Nelson, Rev. Edmund, father of Lord 
 Nelson, 4 ; Nelson and his wife live 
 with, 1788-1793, 78; Mrs. Nelson 
 continues to live with, after Nelson 
 goes to the Mediterranean, 177, 
 219, 263, 444-446, 452; his testi- 
 mony to Lady Nelson's character, 
 452 ; attitude towards Lady Hamil- 
 ton, 452, 554 ; persuadeil of the 
 absence of criminality in her rela- 
 tions with Nelson, 452, 554 ; refuses 
 to be separated from Lady Nelson, 
 452, 554, 555 ; death of, 554 ; charac- 
 ter of, 554, 555. 
 
 Nel.sox, Horatio, Lord. 
 
 Historical Sequence of Career : 
 
 Parentage and birth, 4 ; first going to 
 sea, 5 ; .service in merchantman, 8; 
 cruise to the Arctic Seas, 10 ; to the 
 
 East Indies, 12; acting lieutenant, 
 13 ; lieutenant, 14 ; cruise to West 
 Indies, 14; commander and post- 
 captain, 18; Nicaraguan expedition, 
 22 ; invalided home, 26 ; command 
 of " Albemarle," 1781, 27 ; paid off 
 and visits France, 35 ; cruise of the 
 " Boreas," 1784, 38 ; refuses to obey 
 orders of commander-in-chief, first, 
 to recognize broad pendant of a cap- 
 tain "not in commission," 42, and, 
 second, when directed not to enforce 
 the Navigation Act, 46-54 ; engage- 
 ment to Mrs. Nisbet, 59 ; marriage, 
 64 ; return toEuglaud.and "Boreas" 
 paid off, 1787, 65-69 ; exposure of 
 frauds in the West Indies, 68,70-74; 
 half-pay, 1788-1792, 77-80; com- 
 missions the " Agamemnon," Feb- 
 ruary, 1793, 84; joins the Mediter- 
 ranean fleet under Lord Hood, 88 ; 
 constant detached service, 92-96 ; 
 blockade of Corsica, 99 ; siege of 
 Bastia. 103-113; siege of Calvi, 
 11.6-125; loss of right eye, 119; 
 refitting in Leghorn, 128-136 ; 
 action of " Agememnon" with "(^a 
 Ira," 139 ; partial fleet action of 
 March 14, 1795, 141 ; partial fleet 
 action of July 13, 1795, 152; com- 
 mand of a detached squadron on the 
 Riviera of GenoJi, imder Hotham, 
 
 1795, 157-174, and under Jervis, 
 
 1796, 183-195 ; hoists broad pendant 
 as commodore, 188; leaves "Aga- 
 memnon " for " Captain," 196 ; the 
 blockade of Leghorn, 199; seizure 
 of Elba, 202, and of Capraia, 209 ; 
 evacuation of Corsica, 210-216; 
 Britishfleet retires toGibraltar, 216 ; 
 mission to evacuate Elba, 221; action 
 with Spanish frigates, 221 ; rejoins 
 Jervis off Cape St. Vincent, 229 ; 
 Battle of Cape St. Vincent, 1797, 
 229; made aKniglitof the Bath, 243; 
 promoted rear-admiral, 244 ; mission 
 into the Mediterranean, 246 ; 
 blockade and bombardment of 
 Cadiz, 247-250; the Teneriffe ex- 
 pedition, 253 ; loses his right arm, 
 259 ; invalided home, 262 ; rejoins 
 Mediterranean fleet in the " Van- 
 guard," 1798, 265 ; sent to watch 
 tlie Toulon armament, 270; Cam- 
 paign of the Nile, 276-313; Battle 
 of the Nile, 294-306; severely 
 
INDEX 
 
 757 
 
 wounded in the head, 300 ; advanced 
 to the peerage as Barou Nelson of 
 the Nile, 309 ; arrives at Naples, 
 317 ; meeting witli Lady Hamilton, 
 318; urges Naples to <J^clare war 
 against France, 333 ; war between 
 Naples and France, 336 ; Neapolitan 
 court carried to Palermo by, 338; 
 residence at Palermo and contem- 
 porary events, IT'Jil, — Sidney Smith 
 and the Levant, 343; Ionian Islands, 
 347 ; Malta, 348 ; Barbary States, 
 350 ; about Najdes, 354 ; incursion of 
 French fleet under Admiral Brnix, 
 357-3G6 ; serious imputations against 
 character of, 367-368 ; proceeds to 
 Naples, 367 ; incident of the sur- 
 render of the Neapolitan insurgents, 
 368 ; the Caracciolo incident, 389 ; 
 refuses to obey an order of Lord 
 Keith, 396 : reiterated refusal, 398 ; 
 left temporarily commander-in-chief 
 by Keitli's departure, 405-423 ; 
 created Duke of Bronte by King of 
 Naples, 405; dissatisfaction at not 
 being continued as commander-in- 
 chief, 407 ; Keith's return, 1800, 423 ; 
 superseded by Keith's return, 423 ; 
 capture of " Le Genereux," 424 ; 
 capture of " Le Guillaume Tell," in 
 Nelson's absence, 430 ; returns to 
 England through (jermauy, 1800, 
 438-443 ; breach with Lady Nelson, 
 443-453 ; promoted vice-admiral, 
 453 ; hoists flag on board " San 
 Josef," in the Channel Fleet, 
 under Lord St. Vincent, 1801, 453 ; 
 birth of the child Horatia, 453 ; the 
 Baltic expedition, 456-504 ; Battle 
 of Copenhagen, 473-487 ; incident 
 of disobeying tlie signal to leave off 
 action, 481 ; incident of the flag of 
 truce, 485 ; created a viscount, 489 ; 
 negotiations, 490; return to Englaiul, 
 504; charged with defence of the 
 coast of England against invasion, 
 505-528 ; retirement from active 
 service during the Peace of Amiens, 
 529-554 ; interest in public questions, 
 547-553 ; commissioned commander- 
 in-chief in the Mediterranean, 
 1803, 554 ; death of his father, 554 ; 
 arrival in the Mediterranean, 565 ; 
 the long watch off Toulon, 571-625 ; 
 last promotion, Vice- Admiral of the 
 White, 1804, 593; escape and pur- 
 
 suit of the French Toulon fleet, 1805, 
 636-656 ; follows it and its Spanish 
 auxiliaries to the West Indies, 657 ; 
 returns to Gibraltar, 668 ; carries 
 his squadron to Cornwallis off Brest, 
 653-675; returns himself to England, 
 August, 1805, 675; last stay in 
 England, 677-690 ; resumes com- 
 mand in the Mediterranean, 693 ; 
 the Battle of Trafalgar, 713 ; 
 mortally wounded, 734 ; death of, 741 . 
 
 Personal Characteristics : 
 
 Appearance, in boyhood, 12; at twen- 
 ty-one, 19; at twenty-four, 33; at 
 twentv-seven, 57; at "thirty-six, 33; 
 at forty-two, 439, 442 ; at forty -three, 
 501 ; Liter years, 536-538, 598, 607, 
 678, 688 ; expressiou, 539. 
 
 Health, inherited delicacy of constitu- 
 tion, 4; invalided from East Indies, 
 12; from West Indies, 25, 26, 27; 
 in Baltic, 28 ; in Canada, 31 ; men- 
 tioned, 38, 64, 67, 79, 102, 125, 126, 
 127, 176, 201, 251, 264, 315, 344, 354, 
 403, 404, 428-432, 434, 453, 495, 500, 
 503, 506, 522, 525 (sea-sickness), 582, 
 583, 593, 596-598, 613, 6.53, 682, 
 688 ; influence of active emplovment 
 upon, 66, 67, 102, HI, 176, 20'l, 248, 
 251, 688. 
 
 Charm of manner and considerateness 
 of action, 15, 21, 28, 40, 41, 44, 64, 
 80, 92, 141, 248, 307, 408, 412, 413, 
 439, 464, 465, 493, 503, 539, 544, 
 597, 599, 605-607, 658, 669, 676, 
 691, 693, 694, 704-707, 710, 722. 
 
 Vanitv, aiul occasional petulance, 118, 
 130,' 131,218-219,237-240,252,269, 
 330, 332-333, 402-403, 407, 424, 427- 
 428, 429, 432, 433, 437, 442, 448, 463, 
 471, 494, 500-501, .522-525, 527, 605, 
 606, 660, 679. 
 
 Courage, illustrated, 7, 11, 16, 125, 
 233, 249, 258-260, 262, 481, 486, 
 491, 683, 709, 726. 
 
 Love of glory and honor, 7, 17, 19, 21, 
 25, 32, 34, 55, 65, 102, 106, 108, 114, 
 118, 129, 130, 147, 148, 184, 205, 
 212, 218, 239, 242, 244, 250, 258, 
 264, 307, 359, 424, 450, 460, 481, 
 494, 495, 500, 518, 553, 617, 693. 
 
 Strength and tenacity of convictions, 
 15,32,45,49, 53, .54, 63, 107, 108, 
 116, 117, 192, 205, 208, 267, 268, 
 286, 291, 294, 360, 365, 401, 420, 
 422, 465, 467, 468, 471, 475, 484, 521, 
 
758 
 
 INDEX 
 
 560, 635, 637, 644, 647, 649, 651, 655, 
 662, 663, 665, 672, 673, 676, 680. 
 
 Sensitiveness to anxiety, perplexity, 
 and censure, 53, 64, &8, 69, 79, 114, 
 174, 179-181, 258, 261, 263, 291, 344, 
 353, 359, 402, 403, 407, 413, 414, 415, 
 429, 433, 447, 448, 463, 494, 501, 504, 
 505, 524, 542-546, 549, 565, 582, 
 591-593, 615, 638, 643, 648, 649, 
 651, 653, 656, 660, 667, 668, 726. 
 
 Daily life, examples of, and occupa- 
 tio'ns, 119-120, 125, 177, 246-251, 
 284-285, 314-316, 339-341, 503-504, 
 532-540, 594-598, 602-605, 639, 682, 
 684, 686-690, 694. 
 
 Religious feelings, indications of, 147, 
 224, 277, 278, 301 , 306-308, 540, 541, 
 690, 728, 729, 731, 735, 740. 
 
 Professional Characteristics : 
 
 Duty, sense of, 7, 60, 93, 113, 192, 219, 
 258, 359, 460, 491, 495, 506-507, 
 593-594, 628, 653, 656, 729, 731, 
 739-740. 
 
 Exclusiveness and constancy of pur- 
 pose, 13, 23, 29, 32, 33, 34, 53, 55, 
 58, 64, 74, 84, 93, 95, 104, 108, 113, 
 125, 129, 144, 188, 189, 191, 201, 
 215, 218, 219, 224, 264, 269, 277, 
 278, 279, 286, 289, 290, 294, 351, 
 355, 412, 440, 460, 468, 469, 480, 
 484, 496, 565, 594, 603-605, 635- 
 649, 653, 673, 680, 739. 
 
 Professional courage, 30, 63, 107, 108, 
 139-141, 142, 188, 204, 211, 224, 
 226, 227, 231-233, 249, 257, 280, 
 285, 294, 361, 366, 427, 466-470, 
 472, 479-484, 492, 496, 500, 517, 
 520, 581, 634, 643, 644, 655, 664- 
 666, 679, 680, 689, 706. 
 
 Fearlessness of responsibility, 9, 16, 
 42-44,45-51,54, 55, 106-108, 161- 
 163, 188, 228, 231, 241, 285-287, 
 396-403, 411, 467, 481-484, 569, 570, 
 579, 611, 617-620, 624, 625, 626- 
 628, 634, 654-656, 661, 665, 673. 
 
 Diplomacy, natural aptitude for, and 
 tact in dealing \vith men, 27-28, 
 41, 56, 94, 120-122, 161-163, 176 
 and note, 345-346, 407-409, 411- 
 413, 415-416, 464-465, 466-467, 469, 
 485-487,490-494. 502,517-518,569, 
 574, 588-589, 599, 601-602, 606- 
 608, 621, 624, 629-631, 669, 691, 
 693-694 ; extensive cares in, 328, 
 348-349, 3.5.3-354, 412, 413, 558- 
 564, 566, 574, 598-599, 602-605. 
 
 Fleet, when commander-in-chief, Ad- 
 ministration of, 407, 413, 414, 418, 
 503, 504, 518-520, 548-549, 572, 
 573-575, 582, 598, 599, 603-605, 
 606, 609-613, 640, 641, 646, 648, 
 653, 654, 655, 667, 672, 673. 
 Condition of, in tlie Mediterranean, 
 1803-1805, 551, 571, 579, 634, 6.50. 
 657, 668. 
 
 Preservation and management of, 
 571, 573, 575-578, 579-581, 583, 584, 
 587-589, 591-592, 599, 600, 609- 
 613, 620-621, 645, 646, 647, 649, 
 657-658, 669, 673, 674, 684, 707- 
 709, 711. 
 Health of, 93, 94, 581-583, 668, 672. 
 
 Strategic ideas, indications of, 23, 24, 
 87, 90, 91, 97, 105, 115, 116, 128, 
 135, 137, 146, 149, 150, 155, 156, 
 163, 164-167, 170, 182-184, 185-186, 
 196-197, 200, 204, 207-210, 210- 
 213, 282, 284-288, 292, 312, 313, 
 334, 349, 359-361, 365, 419-422, 
 440, 465-467, 468-471, 496, 500,508, 
 509-516, 520, 560-561, 562-564, 
 573, 575-577, 578, 581, 584-586, 
 616, 617, 634-636, 640, 644, 645, 
 647-650, 654, 662, 664, 665, 672- 
 674, 680, 681, 714. 
 
 Tactical ideas, indications of, 29, 90, 
 104, 108, 115, 139, 140, 142, 153- 
 155, 185-186, 189, 192, 204, 208, 
 230-232, 257, 279, 294-295, 299,303- 
 305, 306, 360, 469, 471', 472-475, 
 476-479, 483, 490, 510-511, 521, 
 587-589, 591, 592, 600, 665, 688, 
 694-704, 707, 708, 710, 711, 716- 
 718, 719, 720, 721, 727. 
 
 Kelson, Frances, Lady, wife of Lord 
 Nelson, birth, parentage, and first 
 marriage to Dr. Josiah Nisbet, 56 ; 
 one son, Josiah Nisbet, 56 , widow- 
 hood, 56; lives with her uncle, at Kevis, 
 56; characteristics, 57-59, 61, 127, 
 147, 330, 444, 450, 451; wooing of, by 
 Nelson, 59-61 ; marriage to Nelson, 
 and departure to England, 64 ; no 
 children by Nelson, 77 ; resides 
 with Nelson, in his father's house, 
 78; lives with father of Nelson, 
 during the latter's absences, 1793- 
 1800, 177, 219, 263, 444-446, 452; 
 letters of Nelson to, quoted, 94, 113, 
 119, 125, 127, 147, 148, 177, 212, 
 218-219, 251, 262, 278, 331, 445, 
 529, 530 ; continued attachment of 
 
INDEX 
 
 759 
 
 I 
 
 Nelsou to, on returuiiig borne in 
 
 1797, 263, 270; Nelson's message 
 to, when thinking himself mortally 
 wounded at the Nile, 300 ; uneasi- 
 ness of, at the reports of Nelson's 
 intimacy witli Lady Hamilton, 339 ; 
 apparent purpose of, to go to the 
 Mediterranean, discouraged by Nel- 
 son, 339 ; growing alienation of Nel- 
 son from,' 361, 443-445, 446, 449, 
 450 ; attitude of, towards Nelson, 
 444, 445, 448, 450, 451 ; letters of, 
 to Nelson, quoted, 445 ; Nelson's 
 bearing towards, 446, 448 ; attitude 
 of, towards Lady Hamilton, 449; 
 final breach between Nelson and, 
 
 450, 452, 529-531 ; later years of, 
 
 451, 452 ; testimony to, of Nelsou 
 and of his father, 452 ; Nelson's 
 " letter of dismissal " to, and her 
 endorsement thereon, 529, 530; date 
 of death, 56 note. 
 
 Nelson, Maurice, Nelson's eldest 
 brother, quoted by Lady Nelson, 
 529 and note. 
 
 Niebuhr, the historian, accounts of the 
 Battle of Copenhagen, quoted, 474, 
 488, 501. 
 
 Nile, Battle of the, 293-306. 
 
 Nisbet, Captain Josiah, Nelson's step- 
 son, birth and parentage, 56 ; goes 
 to sea with Nelson in the " Agamem- 
 non," 85 ; Lady Hamilton's kind- 
 ness to, 94 ; good conduct of, at 
 Teuerirt'e, 258 ; Nelson attributes the 
 saving of his life to, 262, 530 ; St. 
 Vincent promotes to commander 
 at Nelson's request, 262 ; Nelson's 
 disappointment in, 353 ; estrange- 
 ment between Nelson and, 529-530 ; 
 St. Vincent's assertion of Nelson's 
 high opinion of, in early life, 530 
 note. 
 
 Nisbet, Dr. Josiah, first husband of 
 Lady Nelsou, 56. 
 
 Nisbet, Mrs. Josiah, Lady Nelson's 
 name by first marriage. See Nel- 
 son, Lady. 
 
 Niza, INIarquis de, Portuguese admiral, 
 commanding squadron under Nel- 
 son's orders in the Mediterranean, 
 
 1798, 1799, 316; conducts sea 
 blockade of Malta, 316, 335, 405, 
 •ill, 412, 41 5; ordered temporarily 
 to defence ^i Me-ssina, 354 ; co- 
 operates at .sea with Nelson, when 
 
 expecting Bruix's fleet, 360, 364 ; 
 limitations to Nelson's authority 
 over, 391 ; recalled by Portuguese 
 government, 411; Nelson forbids 
 him to obey, 411, 412; Nelson's 
 expressions of esteem for, 412 ; final 
 recall allowed by Nelsou, 416. 
 
 Okde, Admiral Sir John, governor 
 of Dominica, 51 ; difficulty with 
 Lord St. Vincent concerning Nel- 
 son's appointment to command a 
 squadron, 288, 289 ; assigned in 1804 
 to command part of Nelson's 
 station, from the Straits of Gibral- 
 tar to Cape Piuisterre, 614; rela- 
 tions between Nelsou and, 614, 615, 
 623-628, 652; driven from before 
 Cadiz by combined fleets, 647 ; 
 popular outcry against, 651 ; Nel- 
 son's complaint against, for not 
 watching course of combined fleets, 
 651 uote, 653-655; relieved from 
 duty at his own request, 669. 
 
 "Orient," I'rench flagship at the 
 Battle of the Nile, present as the 
 " Sans Culottes," in Hotham's 
 action of March 13, 1795, 138, 139, 
 141 ; at the Battle of the Nile, 296, 
 299, 302, 303 ; blows up, 302 ; Nel- 
 son's coffiu made from mainmast 
 of, 683. 
 
 Otway, Captain, commands Sir Hyde 
 Parker's flagship at the Battle of 
 Copenhagen, 471 ; advises against 
 the passage of the Great Belt, 471 ; 
 opposes the making signal to Nel- 
 son to leave off action, 481 ; message 
 from Parker to Nelson by, 481, 482. 
 
 Paget, Sir Arthur, succeeds Hamil- 
 ton, as British minister to Naples, 
 340 ; quotations from the " Paget 
 Papers," 340, 341, 423, 436. 
 
 Pahlen, Russian minister of state 
 during Nelson's command in the 
 Baltic, 496; Nelson's correspondence 
 with, 501-502. 
 
 Palermo, Nelson's residence in, 338- 
 360, 405-434. 
 
 Palmas, Gulf of, in Sardinia, rendez- 
 vous of Nelson's fleet, 580, 641, 645, 
 646 ; Nelson learns there of Ville- 
 neuve's second sailing, 645. 
 
760 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Parker, Commander Edward, aide 
 to Nelson, 519 ; description of 
 Nelson's celerity by, 519; takes 
 part in boat-attack on the French 
 A'essels off Boulogne, 521 ; mortally 
 wounded, 521 ; death of, and Nel- 
 son's distress, 526. 
 
 Parker, Admiral Sir Hyde, succeeds 
 Hotham in command in the Mediter- 
 ranean, 170; Nelson's dissatisfaction 
 with, 172 ; selected to command the 
 Baltic expedition, 453 ; Nelson joins, 
 as second in command, 460 ; cool 
 reception of Nelson by, 461-403 ; 
 growing iutiuence of Nelsou with, 
 464—467 ; sluggish movements of, 
 464, 492, 495, 496 ; Nelson's compre- 
 hensive letter to, 469-470 ; autlior- 
 izes Nelson's plan of attack, 472 ; 
 the signal to leave off action, 480- 
 484 ; intrusts negotiations to Nel- 
 son, 490-494 ; relieved from com- 
 mand, 498 ; Nelson's opinion of his 
 conduct in the Baltic, 49'J, 544. 
 
 Parker, Admiral Sir Peter, early 
 patron of Nelson, and chief mourner 
 at his funeral, 17-18 ; ])ersonaT kind- 
 ness to Nelson of, 17, 25; Nelson's 
 gratitude expressed to, 494, 609. 
 
 Parker, Vice-Admiral Sir William, 
 controversy with Nelson about the 
 latter's account of the Battle of 
 Cape St. Vincent, 237-241 ; remon- 
 strates Avitii Lord St. Vincent for 
 Nelson's appointment to command 
 a detached squadron, 288, 289. 
 
 Parker, Captain William, comman<ler 
 of the frigate "Amazon," anecdote 
 of Nelson, 288 note, 589 ; anecdote 
 of Captain Hardy, 613 ; special mis- 
 sion and singular orders given by 
 Nelson to, 627-628 ; accorajjauies 
 Nelson to the West Indies, 650, 656, 
 657 ; final letter from Nelson to, 
 673. 
 
 Pasco, Lieutenant, Nelson's signal 
 officer at Trafalgar, 710; anecdotes 
 of Nelson by, 7io, 728, 729; makes 
 the signals " England expects," etc., 
 730, and for "close action," 731; 
 wounded, 736 ; replies to a query 
 made by Nelson while dying, 736. 
 
 I'aul I., Emperor of Russia, congratu- 
 lations to Nelson on the Battle of 
 the Nile, 310; coalition of, with 
 Austria and Naples, 343, 346-348; 
 
 becomes Grand ISIaster of Knights 
 of Malta, and seeks the restoration 
 of tiie Order, 348-349; Nelson's 
 compliments to, 413, 428; successes 
 of his general, Suwarrow, 417 ; sub- 
 sequent reverses, and anger of, 
 again.st Austria and Great Britain, 
 417, 458; indignation at the refusal 
 of Great Britain to surrender Malta 
 to himself, 458; renews the Armed 
 Neutrality of 1780, with Sweden, 
 Denmark, and Prussia, 458 ; Bona- 
 parte's management of, 459; mur- 
 der of, 490. 
 
 "Penelope," British frigate, effica- 
 cious action of, in compelling the 
 surrender of the " Guillaunie Tell," 
 French ship-of-the-liue, 431, 684. 
 
 Pitt, William, Prime Minister of Great 
 Britain, marked courtesy shown to 
 Nelsou wiien last in England by, 
 537 ; intercourse of Nelson with, 
 just before Trafalgar, 678, 683. 
 
 Porto Ferrajo, Island of Elba, seized 
 by Nelson in 1796, 202; British 
 forces retire from Bastia to, 216; 
 naval evacuation of, superintended 
 by Nelson, 221-224. 
 
 Radstock, Admiral, Lord, quotations 
 from letters of, relating to Nelson, 
 130, 576 and note, 605, 608, 614, 651, 
 652, 666, 667, 681. 
 
 " Redoutable," French ship-of-the-line. 
 Nelson mortally wounded by a shot 
 from, 733-735. 
 
 Registration of seamen. Nelson's plans 
 for. 548. 
 
 Revel, Nelson's desire to attack the 
 Russian detachment of ships in, 468, 
 470, 490, 492, 496, 500; Nelson's 
 visit to, .501-503; results of Nel- 
 son's visit, 503. 
 
 Riou, Captain, commands the frigate 
 " Amazon," and a light squadron 
 in the Battle of Copenhagen, 475, 
 478, 480, 482 ; obevs signal to retire, 
 and is killed, 482.' 
 
 Riviera of Genoa, operations of Nel- 
 son upon the, 1795. 1796, 157-201; 
 importance of, to the French, 157- 
 162. 
 
 Rochefort, the part of the French 
 squadron at, in Napoleon's combina- 
 tions, 633, 636, 670. 
 
INDEX 
 
 761 
 
 Rodney, Admiral, Lord, effect of his 
 victory upou Nelsou's plans for Tra- 
 falgar, 704. 
 
 Rogers, Samuel, anecdote of Nelson, 
 447. 
 
 Rose, George, Nelson's interview with, 
 in 1788, 70-72 ; accompanies Nelson 
 on board ship bef(jre Trafalgar, 
 691 ; Nelson's message to, when 
 dying, 740. 
 
 Ruffo, Cardinal, leader of the Neapoli- 
 tan "Christian Army" at Naples, 
 1799, 356; concludes with the in- 
 surgents in the castles a capitula- 
 tion which Nelsou annuls, 367-374 ; 
 stormy interview of, with Nelson, 
 375 ; evidence concerning relations 
 between Nelson and, 375-390. 
 
 '■ Sabina," Spanish frigate, captured 
 by the " Miuerve " carrying Nelson's 
 broad peudaut, 221 ; recaptured, 222. 
 
 " San Josef," Spanish three-decked 
 ship, taken possession of by Nelson 
 at Battle of St. Vincent, 233-236; 
 flagsliip to Nelsou in the Channel 
 Fleet, 453, 460. 
 
 " San Nicolas," Spanish eighty-gun 
 ship, boarded bv Nelsou at Battle 
 of St. Vincent, 233-236. 
 
 Santa Cruz, Canary Islands. See 
 Teneriffe. 
 
 Sardinia, Island of, importance of, in 
 Nelson's opinion, 575-579. 
 
 Saumarez, Sir James, commands the 
 " Orion," at the Battle of St. Vin- 
 cent, 236 ; relieves Nelson in the 
 blockade of Cadiz, 246 ; accom- 
 panies Nelson as second in com- 
 mand in the Nile campaign, 270, 
 278, 284, 285 and note, 287, 295; 
 at Battle of the Nile, 298, 302; 
 sent to Gibraltar with the prizes, 
 313, 315 ; Nelson's eulogy of, in the 
 House of Lords, 541. 
 
 Scott, Rev. A. J., private secretary to 
 Sir Hyde Parker, aud afterwards to 
 Nelson in the Mediterranean, 472, 
 483 ; testimony of, to Nelson's 
 religious feelings, 541 ; Nelson's 
 method of transacting business 
 with, 602-604; mention of Nelson's 
 kindliness bv, 605-607 ; anecdote 
 of Nelson, 654, 655 ; remark of Nel- 
 son to, 717; at Nelson's death-bed, 
 735, 740, 741. 
 
 Scott, John, public secretary to Nel- 
 sou, 602 ; remarks on the quickness 
 of Nelson's intelligeuce, 605, and on 
 his kindliness, 607 ; killed at Tra- 
 falgar, 732. 
 
 Sicily, importance of Malta to, 282 ; 
 Nelson's auxiety for, in 1799, 354, 
 359, 362, 365-367, 396, 398, 408 ; in 
 1803-5, 562, 567-569, 571, 585, 644, 
 647-648 ; Nelsou's estate of Bronte 
 in, 405, 499. 
 
 Sidniouth, Lord. See Addington. 
 
 Smith, Sir Sidney, Nelson's indigna- 
 tion at the mission of, to the Levant, 
 343-345; Nelson's relations with, 
 346-347 ; successful defence of Acre 
 by, 418 ; Nelson's peremptory orders 
 to, not to permit any Frenchman to 
 quit Egypt, 420 ; nevertheless. Con- 
 vention of El Arish couutenanced 
 by, 421-422; Nelsou's distrust of, 
 413, 569. 
 
 Smith, Spencer, brother to Sir Sidney, 
 minister aud joint minister of Great 
 Britain to Constantinople, 343-346 ; 
 letter of Nelson to, quoted, 348 ; 
 becomes secretary of embassy, 414. 
 
 Spaiu, Nelsou sees that Spain cannot 
 be a true ally to Great Britain, 89 ; 
 effect upon Nelson of declaration of 
 war by, 207-213 ; political condition 
 of, in 1803, 559; Nelson's views 
 coucerning, 562, 574, 615, 618, 620, 
 624, 625, 630; Nelson's letter of 
 instructions to a captain contingent 
 upon action of, 619. 
 
 Spencer, Earl, first Lord of the Ad- 
 miralty, 251 ; letters to Nelson 
 from, quoted, 243, 309, 402, 432- 
 433 ; lettei-s of Nelson to, quoted, 
 251, 280, 309, 344, 395, 396, 397, 
 408,409, 413, 414,418, 427,432,4.33, 
 460 ; indicates to Jervis the Govern- 
 ment's wish that Nelson command 
 the s(|uadron in the JNIediterranean, 
 274; Nelson tells him circumstances 
 of surrender of castles at Naples, 
 381 ; selects Sir Hyde Parker for 
 Baltic command, 462. 
 
 St. George, Mrs., description of Lady 
 Hamilton, 325, 327 ; account of meet- 
 ing with Nelson and the Hamiltous 
 at"^ Dresden in 1800. 441-443; 
 remarks likeness of Nelsou to the 
 Russian Marshal Suwarrow, 442. 
 
 " St. George," British ship-of-the-line, 
 
762 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Nelson's flagship in the Baltic ex- 
 pedition, 460 ; Nelson quits, for the 
 " Elephant," for the Battle of 
 Copenhagen, 472. 
 
 St. Vincent, Battle of Cape, 229-237. 
 
 St. Vincent, Earl. See Jervis. 
 
 Stewart, Lieutenant-Colonel, accom- 
 panies the Baltic expedition on 
 board Nelson's flagship, 460 ; narra- 
 tive of the expedition, and anecdotes 
 of Nelson bv, quoted, 460, 472, 474- 
 476, 481-483, 485-486, 491, 501, 
 503. 
 
 Stuart, General, in command of the 
 British troops at the siege of Calvi, 
 114, 116-124; apparent friction 
 between Lord Hood and, 121-124; 
 Nelson's high opinion of, 119, 122. 
 
 Suckling, Catherine, maiden name of 
 Nelson's mother, 4. 
 
 Suckling, Captain Maurice, Nelson's 
 maternal uncle, 5 ; receives Nelson 
 on board liis ship, the " Raisou- 
 nable," on entering the navy, 5 ; care 
 for Nelson during his early years, 
 8-14 ; made Comptroller of the 
 Navy, 14 ; procures Nelson's pro- 
 motion to lieutenant, 14 ; death of, 
 18 ; Nelson's care, when wounded 
 at Teueriffe, to save the sword of, 
 259 ; successful naval engagement 
 of, on the date of Trafalgar, and 
 expectation formed therefrom by 
 Nelson, 717. 
 
 Suckling, William, Nelson's maternal 
 uncle. Nelson appeals to, for aid to 
 marry, 36, 60 ; makes an allowance 
 to Nelson, 60 ; letters of Nelson to, 
 36, 60, 114. 
 
 Suwarrow, Russian marshal, com- 
 mands the combined Russian and 
 Austrian troops in Italian campaign 
 of 1799,356, 405, 409,417 ; personal 
 resemblance of Nelson to, 442, 
 501. 
 
 Sweden, joins Russia, Denmark, and 
 Prussia in the Armed Neutrality of 
 1800, 456-459. 
 
 Syracuse, Nelson refreshes his squad- 
 ron in, before the Battle of the Nile, 
 291-293 ; Nelson's opinion of, as a 
 base for his operations after the 
 battle, 315, 316; insecurity of, with 
 headquarters at Palermo, 354 ; Nel- 
 son ordered by Keith to make his 
 headquarters at, 430. 
 
 ' Temekaike," British ship-of-the-line. 
 Nelson's supporter at Trafalgar, 
 725, 736. 
 
 Teueriffe, Nelson's expedition against, 
 253-261. 
 
 Tetuan, Nelson's visits to, for water 
 and fresh provisions, 653-655, 672 ; 
 sends a detachment to, before Tra- 
 falgar, 711. 
 
 " Theseus," British ship-of-the-line, 
 Nelson's flagship before Cadiz and 
 at Teueriffe, 247-248, 256, 259. 
 
 Thomson, name under which Nelson 
 speaks of himself in his corre- 
 spondence with Lady Hamilton, 531 ; 
 and borne by his daughter prior to 
 his own death, 715. 
 
 Toulon, delivered by its inhabitants to 
 Lord Hood, 91, 92 ; retaken by the 
 French, 100; Nelson reconnoitres, 
 169, 185 ; Jervis's efficient blockade 
 of, 196, 206; Nelson's method of 
 watching, 572-574, 576, 584, 589. 
 
 Trafalgar, Battle of, general plan of 
 action, as originally conceived, 696- 
 698 ; discussed, 698-701 ; contrasted 
 with tiie tactics of the battle as 
 fought, 702-704 ; anecdote concern- 
 ing its conception, 704 ; narrative of, 
 713-742. 
 
 Trench, Mrs. See St. George. 
 
 Tripoli, maintains formal war with 
 Naples and Portugal, for the pur- 
 poses of piracy, 350, 410; Nelson's 
 diplomatic difficulties with, 350, 351. 
 
 Troubridge, Sir Thomas, nobly sup- 
 ports Nelson in his initiative at the 
 Battle of St. Vincent, 231-2-33, 237- 
 241 ; advises andaccompaniesNelson 
 in the Teueriffe expedition, 253-261 ; 
 limitations of, 256, 257, and admir- 
 able qualities, 2G0-261, 524 ; sent 
 with a detachment of ten ships-of- 
 the-line to join Nelson in the Nile 
 campaign, 276, 278, 279 ; mentioned, 
 281, 285, 291, 293; his ship, the 
 " CuUoden," unfortunately grounds 
 before getting into action at the Nile, 
 301 ; Nelson's praise of, 311, 413 ; 
 incidental services in the waters of 
 Italy and Malta, 336, 347, 355-356, 
 358,^359, 389, 396, 408, 415, 429; 
 remonstrates witli Nelson on his 
 life at Palermo, 340 ; sent bv Nelson 
 on a special mission to Alexandria, 
 344 ; singular anecdote of, 352 ; 
 
INDEX 
 
 763 
 
 letters of, to Nelson, 403, 429 ; Nel- 
 son's petulant reproacli to, 428 ; 
 strong remonstrances of, to Nelson, 
 against quitting the blockade of 
 Malta, 429 ; return of, to England, 
 440; impression of, that Nelson will 
 not serve again, 440 ; advice to Miss 
 Knight concerning the Hamiltons, 
 446 ; letter of Nelson to, concerning 
 the sailing of the Baltic fleet, 461 ; 
 beginning alienation of Nelson from, 
 499, 523,524, 525, 549 ; St. Vincent's 
 opinion of, 504, 523. 
 
 Tunis, Nelson's mission to, in 1793, 
 97-99 ; maintains formal war with 
 Naples and Portugal, for the pur- 
 poses of piracy, 350 ; Nelson's 
 diplomatic difficulties with, 350, 351. 
 
 Turkey, co-operates with Russia and 
 Great Britain in the Mediterranean, 
 1798, 335, 346, 348, 359, 360, 368, 
 418-420; Nelson's sympathy with, 
 against Russia, 348, 350 ; makes 
 separate convention of El Arish 
 with French, regardless of her 
 allies, 421, 422; interests of, 
 threatened in the Morea and in 
 Egypt by the French in 1803-5, 562- 
 564, 571, 584-586. 
 
 Tuscany, attitude of, towards France, 
 in 1794, 133, 137 ; importance of 
 ports of, to France, 134; difficult 
 neutrality of, 158, 198 ; Nelson ima- 
 gines a French enterprise against, 
 by sea, 183, 185, 186, 187 ; control of, 
 obtained by the French, 198 ; Nel- 
 son's operations on the coast of, 
 201 ; blockade of Leghorn and 
 seizure of Elba, 202 ; political con- 
 dition of, in 1803-5, during Nelson's 
 Mediterranean command, 559. 
 
 Two Sicilies, tlie Kingdom of the, 
 (Naples and Sicily,) Nelson's suc- 
 cessful mission to, to obtain troops 
 for the occupation of Toulon, 93 ; 
 attitude towards France, 1795, 135; 
 sends flotilla to aid Nelson, but too 
 late in the season, 164; makes an 
 armistice with France, 1796, 198; 
 Nelson's interest keenly excited 
 for, 210, 211; makes peace with 
 P"' ranee, 1796, 214; di.ssatisfactiou 
 with course of France, in 1798, 273 ; 
 attitude of, towards France, dur- 
 ing the campaign of the Nile, 281- 
 283, 290, 291 ; Nelson's an.xieties 
 
 for, 290; Nelson's extreme interest 
 in, throughout his life, after his 
 return from the Nile, 316, 332, 3,53, 
 357, 366, 393-396, 398, 400-402, 408, 
 409, 410, 437, 562, 566-570, 629- 
 631, 645, 648-649 ; joy of, upon 
 receipt of the news of Battle of 
 the Nile, 317, 318 ; strategic weight 
 of, in the counsels of Bonaparte, 
 334 ; Nelson persuades, to declare 
 war against France, 333-336 ; over- 
 whelming defeat of, and flight of 
 Court to Palermo, 337, 338; res- 
 toration of the royal authority in 
 Naples, 409 ; refusal of the king 
 to reside in Naples, 408, 409 ; occu- 
 pation of Adriatic coast of, by 
 Bonaparte, 1803-5, 557. 
 
 Vado, Bay of, occupied by Austriaus 
 in 1795, 151; best anchorage be- 
 tween Nice and Genoa, 159 ; im- 
 portance of, to France, 159, 182, 
 183; evacuated by Austriaus after 
 tiie Battle of Loano, 171, 177 ; held 
 definitively by French, 190. 
 
 Valetta, French in Malta shut in, 335, 
 349, 350, 410; Nelson's difficulties 
 in maintaining the blockade, 410- 
 412, 414-416; urgency of Spencer 
 and Troubridge upon Nelson to 
 await the capitulation of, 428, 429, 
 431-434. 
 
 " Vanguard," British ship-of-the-line. 
 Nelson's flagship at the Battle of 
 the Nile, commissioned, 265 ; dis- 
 masted off Corsica, 277 ; at the 
 Battle of the Nile, 298, 300 ; arrives 
 at Naples, 317 ; Nelson's flag shifted 
 from, to the " Foudroyant," 363. 
 
 Vansittart, British envoy to Copen- 
 hagen in 1801, 465-467; report of 
 Danish defences, 467 ; explanations 
 conveyed from Nelson to the Ad- 
 miralty by, 467. 
 
 " Victory," British hundred-gun ship, 
 Nelson's flagship at Trafalgar, 
 Jervis's flagship at Battle of St. 
 Vincent, 235 ; Nelson sails in, for 
 the Mediterranean, 554 ; his long 
 stay on board of, 593 ; returns to 
 England, 675 ; again sails with 
 Nelson, 692 ; at Battle of Trafalgar, 
 719, 725-727, 731-735,736-739, 741. 
 
 Villeneuve, French admiral, coni- 
 
•764 
 
 INDEX 
 
 mands the rear at the Battle of the 
 Nile, 305 ; escapes with two ships- 
 of-the-line and two frigates, . 305 ; 
 indecision of, 306, 701 ; commands 
 the Toulon squadron, after the 
 death of Latouche-Treville, 623, 
 636 ; Napoleon's orders to, 636 ; 
 first sailing of, and disasters en- 
 countered by, 637, 639, 640 ; second 
 sailing of, from Toulon. 647 ; ar- 
 rival at Cadiz and in the "West 
 Indies, 647 ; Nelson learns of his 
 passing the Straits, 648, and of liis 
 destination to the West Indies, 654- 
 657 ; leaves West Indies for Europe, 
 on learning Nelson's arrival, 661 ; 
 followed by Nelson, 662 ; engage- 
 ment of, with Calder's fleet, 671 ; 
 arrives at Ferrol, 672 ; sails from 
 Ferrol, 679 ; arrival in Cadiz, 684 ; 
 dispositions for battle, before Tra- 
 falgar, 701. 718, 727, 728; com- 
 mander-in-chief of the entire com- 
 bined fleet, 713; encounter of his 
 flagship and Nelson's, 731-733 ; sur- 
 render of, 737. 
 Villettes, British general, at the siege 
 of Bastia, ill; Nelson's criticism 
 on, when commander of the troops 
 at Malta, 1803, 569; characteristic 
 letters of Nelson to, 575, 617. 
 
 Wellington, Nelson's one meeting 
 with, 678. 
 
 West Indies, Nelson's early service 
 in, 14-17; called by Nelson "the 
 station for honour," 32 ; Nelson en- 
 forces Navigation Act in, 46-55 ; 
 wishes to return to, in search of 
 more active service, 92, 98 ; con- 
 jectures destination of French Tou- 
 lon fleet to, in 1804, 617, 635; 
 importance of, to Great Britain, 
 
 635; rendezvous fixed by Napoleon, 
 for the concentration of his fleets, 
 in 1805, 636, 646 ; Toulon squadron 
 goes to, 647 ; Nelson ])ursues to, 
 655, 656 ; Nelson's week in, in June, 
 1805, 658-663; his estimate of his 
 services rendered by going there, 
 662, 665 ; Nelson returns to Europe 
 from, 662-669. 
 
 William Henr^', Prince, son of George 
 III., and captain in the British navy, 
 first meeting of Nelson with, 33, 34 ; 
 description of Nelson at twenty-four, 
 by, 33 ; accompanied by Nelson in 
 visit to Havana,, 35 ; Nelson's asso- 
 ciation with, in 1786-87, 63, 64; 
 gives away the bride at Nelson's 
 wedding, 64 ; intimacy of Nelson 
 with, 74-75 ; returns with his ship 
 from America, contrary to orders, 
 75 ; at variance with the King, 75, 
 76 ; made Duke of Clarence, 76 ; 
 effect of intimacy with, upon Nel- 
 son, 76 ; subsequent correspondence 
 between Nelson and, 204, 208, 218, 
 243, 401 ; continues his friendship 
 to Lady Nelson, after her husband's 
 alienation, 452. 
 
 Woolward, Frances Herbert, maiden 
 name of Lady Nelson, 56. 
 
 Wurmser, Austrian marshal, suc- 
 ceeds Beaulieu, after the latter's 
 defeat by Bonaparte, in 1796, 
 203 ; raises the siege of Mantua, 
 203 ; Nelson's enterprise against 
 Leghorn dependent on the suc- 
 cess of, 205 ; defeated by Bona- 
 parte, at Castiglione and Lonato, 
 205. 
 
 Wyndham, British minister to Tus- 
 cany, mention of Nelson and the 
 Hamiltons by, 437 ; strained rela- 
 tions of, towards Nelson and the 
 Hamiltons, 437. 
 
Captain Mahan's Naval Histories 
 
 I 
 
 THE INFLUENCE OF SEA POWER UPON 
 
 HISTORY, I660-I783. By Capt. A. T. Mahan. With 25 charts 
 illustrative of great naval battles. 
 
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 No book of recent publication has been received with such enthusiasm of grateful 
 admiration as that written by an officer of the American navy. Captain Mahan, 
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 the subject, and takes its place in our libraries as the standard work. — Dean Hole, 
 in '■'■ More Memoi-ies.^'' 
 
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 Cai't. a. T. Mahan With 13 maps and battle plans. 
 
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 Captain Mahan has done more than to write a new book upon naval history. 
 He has even done more than to write the best book that has ever been written upon 
 naval history, though he has done this likewise ; for he has written a book which 
 may be regarded as founding a new school of naval liistorical writing. Captain 
 Mahan's volumes are already accepted as the standard authorities of their kind, 
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 books. — Theodore Roosevelt, in " Political Science Qnarterli/.''^ 
 
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 with profit by any man for whom foreign politics, the history of the rise and fall 
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 these pages in a manner at once novel and engrossing. — The Spectator. 
 
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THE LIFE OF NELSON: THE EMBODIMENT OF 
 THE SEA POWER OF GREAT BRITAIN. By Capt. A. 
 T. Mahan. With 19 portraits and plates in photogravure and 21 
 maps and battle plans. 
 
 2 vols. 8vo. Cloth, gilt top. $8.00. 
 
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 The greatest literary achievement of the author of "The Influence of Sea Power 
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 the insight and balanced judgment of a great historian, and deep admiration for the 
 hero been blended in any biography of Nelson. — Lomlon Standard. 
 
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 THE INTEREST OF AMERICA IN SEA POWER, 
 
 PRESENT AND FUTURE. By Capt. A. T. Mahan. With 
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 Croivn 8vo. Cloth, gilt top. $3.00. 
 
 CONTENTS: I. The United States Looking Outward ; II. Hawaii and our 
 Sea Power ; III. The Isthmus and our Sea Power ; IV. Anglo-American 
 Alliance ; V. The Future in Relation to American Naval Power ; VI. 
 Preparedness for Naval War ; VII. A Twentieth Century Outlook ; VIII. 
 Strategic Features of the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea. 
 
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 His present position on the Board of Strategy, directing the American fleets, has 
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 for the present and the future. It is well within the bounds of truth to say that an 
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 the present volume. — PhUadelphia Enquirer. 
 
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 the Sandwich Islands from the point of view which our statesmen might well take, 
 rather than from the professional view which a naval officer might be expected to 
 hold. — Philadelphia Telegraph. 
 
 The substance of all these essays concerns every intelligent voter in this country. 
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FRANCIS PARK MAN'S WORKS. 
 
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 American Continent and the wars for its possession, — and he lived through 
 fifty years of toil to complete the great historical series which he designed 
 when but a youth at college. 
 
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