either hasten its end or send some great man to restore its fortunes.
It certainly was thus with the Britain of Nelson’s early youth. On the
17th of October, 1781, Lord Hawke, the victor of Quiberon Bay, and the
last of the great line of seamen of whom Admiral Blake was the first,
died, leaving, as Horace Walpole said the next day in the House of
Commons, his mantle to nobody.
Apparently, there was no one worthy to wear it. The fortunes of England
were indeed at a low ebb. Both her naval and military prestige had very
seriously declined. The American colonies had been lost by the worst
of statesmanship at home and the worst of bungling incompetence and
cowardice abroad. We had been beaten by the raw colonists on land and
by the French and Dutch at sea.
At home the very highest circles of the realm were polluted by such
corruption and crippled by such imbecility as would be absolutely
incredible to us now, Imagine, for instance, what would be thought
to-day of the post of Secretary of State for War being given to a man
who had been explicitly declared by a court martial to be absolutely
incapable of serving his country in any military capacity!--and yet
this is only one example out of many of the flagrant abuses of this
amazingly disgraceful period.
Happily, however, for the honour of the race and the safety of the
Empire there had been born, twenty-three years before to a country
parson in Norfolk, a boy, the fifth in a family of eleven, who fourteen
years later was destined to die in the moment of victory, happy in the
knowledge that he had not left his country a single enemy to fight
throughout the length and breadth of the High Seas. When Horace Walpole
spoke his panegyric on Lord Hawke he would probably have been very much
surprised if he had been told that it was this then insignificant and
unknown cousin of his own who was not only to take up the mantle of the
hero of Quiberon, but to bequeath it in his turn, not to a rival or a
successor, but to the country which his last triumph left mistress of
the seas.
Although there doesn’t seem to be any direct proof, it may be admitted
that there is sufficiently strong presumption to warrant us in
believing, if we choose to do so, that Horatio Nelson, son of the Rev.
Edmund Nelson, Rector of Burnham Thorpe in Norfolk, could one way or
another have traced a lineage back to the old Sea Kings of the North.
Certainly he must have had some of the blood of those who fought
the Armada in his veins, and it is noteworthy that a Danish poet in
celebrating his valour, wisdom, and clemency during and after the great
battle of Copenhagen, attempted to soothe the wounded pride of his
countrymen by pointing out that Nelson was indubitably a Danish name
and that after all they had only been beaten by the descendant of one
of their old Sea Kings.
But however this may be, the immediate facts all show that the man who
crowned and completed the work which Francis Drake and his brother
pirates began came of a stock that seemed to promise but little in the
way of hereditary battle-winning.
Every one on his father’s side appears either to have been a parson or
to have married one. His mother’s father was a parson too, but happily
she had a brother Maurice who was a captain in the Navy, and had done
some very good work at a time when good work was badly wanted.
This gallant sailor was a great grand-nephew of Sir John Suckling,
the poet, and it may be noticed, in passing, that on the 21st of
October, 1757, the day which we now know as the anniversary of
Trafalgar--Captain Maurice Suckling in the _Dreadnought_, in company
with two other sixty-gun ships, attacked seven large French men-of-war
off Cape François in the West Indies, and gave them such a hammering
that they were very thankful for the wind which enabled them to escape.
But still more noteworthy is the opinion of Captain Maurice Suckling of
his nephew when he first received his father’s request to give him a
place on board his ship.
“What,” he wrote in reply to the application, “has poor Horatio done,
who is so weak, that he above all the rest should be sent to rough it
out at sea? But let him come, and the first time we go into action a
cannon-ball may knock off his head and provide for him at once.”
The weakness here somewhat grimly alluded to was the curse of Nelson’s
existence from the day that he first set foot on the deck of a ship to
the moment when the bullet from the mizen-top of the _Redoubtable_ made
his almost constant bodily suffering a matter of minutes.
His physical infirmities, or at any rate the weakness of his body
as compared with the vast strength and tireless energy of his mind,
bring him into very close relationship with William of Orange. Putting
nationality aside, he was, in fact, on the sea what William was on
land, and the central point in his policy was also the same--tireless
and unsparing hostility to France.
With Nelson, indeed, this appears to have gone very near to the borders
of fanaticism. Some of his sayings with regard to the Frenchmen of his
day are absolutely ferocious. Hatred and contempt are about equally
blended in them. “Hate a Frenchman as you would hate the devil!” was
with him an axiom and was his usual form of advice to midshipmen on
entering the service.
On one occasion in the Mediterranean he said to one of his captains who
had got into a dispute about the property which the defeated French
garrison at Gaieta were to be allowed to take away with them:
“I am sorry that you had any altercation with them. There is no way to
deal with a Frenchman but to knock him down. To be civil to him is only
to be laughed at when they are enemies.”
The same spirit breathes through nearly all his letters. Thus, for
instance, he concluded a letter to the British Minister at Vienna with
these words: “_Down, down with the French_ ought to be written in the
council-room of every country in the world, and may Almighty God give
right thoughts to every sovereign is my constant prayer.”
He seems to have had respect for every other enemy that he met; but for
the French he had nothing save contemptuous and unsparing hostility.
“Close with a Frenchman, but out-manœuvre a Russian” was another of his
favourite sayings. This, it is to be hoped, is all past and gone; but
it is instructive as giving us the key, not only to Nelson’s policy,
but also to that spirit which made the British man-of-warsmen of the
day absolutely prefer to fight the French at long odds than on even
terms.
It was this spirit which was embodied in another of Nelson’s pet
phrases: “Any Englishman is worth three Frenchmen.” Of course that
would be all nonsense now; but in justice to our neighbours it ought to
be remembered that the Frenchmen whom Nelson and his sailors met and
conquered were the worst and not the best of their nation.
The old navy of France, the navy which had commanded the Eastern
Seas in the days of Clive and which had with impunity insulted the
English shores and brought an invading force into Ireland in the time
of William the Third no longer existed. It had been essentially an
aristocratic service like our own, its officers were gentlemen and
thorough sailors, and its seamen were brave, disciplined, and obedient.
But in her blood-drunkenness France had either murdered or banished
nearly every man who was fit to command a ship or who knew how to
point a gun. The fleets of revolutionary France were for the most part
commanded by ignoramuses or poltroons, or both, and manned by a rabble
who had neither stamina, training, or discipline.
Without the slightest wish to detract from the splendour of the
victories of Nelson or his comrades, I still think it is only fair to
point out again, as has once or twice been done before, that when we
read of French Admirals declining battle even when they had superior
force, or of running away before the battle was over, or of a small
British squadron crumpling up a whole fleet with very trifling loss to
itself, we ought to remember that the French Admirals had little or no
confidence in their officers, while the officers had still less either
in their admirals or their men.
On the other hand, such a man as Nelson, Collingwood, or Hardy had
simply to say that he was going to do a certain thing to convince every
one serving under him that it was about as good as already done.
This brings me naturally to one of Nelson’s most striking
characteristics. No man who rose to distinction in the Navy was ever
guilty of so many barefaced acts of insubordination as he was. Happily
for him and for us his disobedience or neglect of orders was always
justified by victory. The genius for supreme command, which was far
and away the strongest point in his character, manifested itself very
early in his career. The event proved that he was the superior of every
naval officer then afloat, whether admiral or midshipman, and he seemed
instinctively to know it.
When he was commanding the old _Agamemnon_ in the Mediterranean, at
the time when it was in dispute whether Corsica should fall under the
rule of France or Britain, he fought two French ships, the _Ça Ira_
and the _Sans Culottes_, for a whole day and beat them. The next day a
sort of general action was fought, Admiral Hotham being in command of
the British fleet. Nelson naturally wanted a fight to a finish, but
the Admiral was content with the capture of two ships and the flight of
the rest, and in reply to Nelson’s remonstrances he said: “We must be
contented. We have done very well.”
In a letter home on the subject of this action, Nelson penned
a sentence which was at once prophetic in itself and closely
characteristic of the writer. It was this: “I wish to be an Admiral and
in command of the English fleet. I should very soon either do much or
be ruined. My disposition cannot bear tame and slow measures. Sure I am
had I commanded on the 14th, that either the whole French fleet would
have graced my triumph or I should have been in a confounded scrape.”
That is Nelson’s mental portrait drawn by himself. No half measures
would ever do for him, and in most of the letters that he sent home
from his various scenes of action, whether they were written to his
wife, his private friends, or the Lords of the Admiralty, we find
the constant complaint, made with an insistence amounting almost to
petulance, that when he saw complete triumph within his grasp his
superiors either would not help him to secure it or forced him to be
content with a mere temporary advantage.
Under such circumstances it was only natural that such a man should now
and then break loose. He saw quite plainly that there were confused
councils at home, and timid tactics afloat. He saw also that under
Napoleon the power of France was growing every day.
The Board of Admiralty was apparently both corrupt and incompetent. The
Mediterranean fleet had been so shamefully neglected that after Nelson
had fought an action off Toulon even he was afraid to risk another
without the certainty of victory because there was “not so much as
a mast to be had east of Gibraltar,” and he could not possibly have
re-fitted his ships. It was about this time that he said in one of his
letters home:
“I am acting, not only without the orders of my commander-in-chief, but
in some measure contrary to him.”
If the authorities at home had only had the same opinion of his
abilities as those had who were able to watch his operations on the
spot, and particularly in Italy, it is quite possible that the whole
history of Europe might have been changed and that Napoleon would never
have won that series of brilliant victories which cost such an infinity
of blood and treasure, and which bore no fruits but such as resembled
all too closely the fabled Dead Sea apples.
Nelson’s patriotism may have been of a somewhat narrow-minded order,
and his hatred of the French may have partaken somewhat of the nature
of bigotry, but there can be no doubt that he was the one man in Europe
who saw what was coming and had the ability, if he had only had the
power, to save the world from the horrors of the Napoleonic wars.
Thus, for instance, if his advice had been taken, the splendid victory
of Aboukir Bay might have been turned into the decisive battle of the
war which only ended with Waterloo. As it was, he to some extent took
the law into his own hands. He saw perfectly well that Napoleon’s
ultimate point of attack was not Egypt but India. He sent an officer
with dispatches to the Governor of Bombay, advising him of the defeat
of the French Fleet, and in this dispatch he said:
“I know that Bombay was their first object if they could get there, but
I trust that now Almighty God will overthrow in Egypt these pests of
the human race. Buonaparte has never yet had to contend with an English
officer, and I shall endeavour to make him respect us.”
In another dispatch to the Admiralty he taught a lesson which we have
only lately begun to learn. In those days of the old wooden-walls the
handy, light-heeled frigate was to the ships of the line what the swift
cruisers of to-day are to the big battleships. They were the eyes
and ears of the fleet, and they could be sent on errands which were
impossible to the huge three-deckers. After the battle of the Nile was
won he said in this dispatch:
“Were I to die this moment _want of frigates_ would be found stamped
on my heart. No words of mine can express what I have suffered, and am
suffering, for want of them.”
The inner meaning of these bitter words was one of vast importance,
not only to Britain, but to all Europe. They meant really that the
most splendid victory that had so far been won at sea had been robbed
of half its results. For want of the lighter craft, even of a few
bomb-vessels and fire-ships which he had implored the authorities to
send him, Napoleon’s store-ships and transports in the harbour of
Alexandria escaped attack and certain destruction.
Their destruction would have enabled Nelson to carry out the policy
which his genius had told him was the only true one to pursue at this
momentous crisis. He would have cut off Napoleon’s communications and
deprived him of his supplies. Then he would have blockaded the Egyptian
Coast and left the future conqueror of Austerlitz to perish amidst the
sands of Egypt. As he said to himself: “To Egypt they went with their
own consent, and there they shall remain while Nelson commands this
squadron--for never, never will he consent to the return of one ship or
Frenchman. I wish them to perish in Egypt and give an awful lesson to
the world of the justice of the Almighty.”
This was a pitiless pronouncement, but no one who has read the history
of the Napoleonic wars can doubt the accuracy of Nelson’s foresight or
the true humanity of his policy, for, if this had happened only a few
thousands out of the five million lives which these wars are computed
to have cost would have been lost. There would have been no Austerlitz,
or Wagram, or Jena for France to boast of; but, on the other hand,
there would have been no Leipsic, no Moscow, and no Waterloo.
As usual, however, Nelson, although he had magnificently restored the
credit of the British arms at sea, was crippled by shortness of means
and baulked by the stupidity and incompetence of his masters at home.
Sir Sidney Smith’s policy was preferred to his, with the result that
Napoleon was permitted to desert his army and live to become the curse
of Europe for the next seventeen years.
But, if he did not do all he wanted to do, when Nelson won the battle
of the Nile he completely established his claim to be considered one
of the Empire-makers of Britain, for if he had not followed the French
with that unerring judgment of his, and if he had not, in defiance of
all accepted naval tactics, attacked them in what was considered to be
an unassailable position--that is to say, moored off shore in two lines
with both ends protected by batteries--all the work that Clive and
Hastings had done in India might have been undone, and, considering the
miserable state of our national defences, we might either have lost
India or had to wage such an exhausting war for it that we could not
possibly have taken the decisive share that we afterwards did in the
overthrow of the French power.
As he said in one of his most famous utterances while the British fleet
was streaming into the bay: “Where there is room for a Frenchman to
swing, there is room for an Englishman to get alongside him.”
That was Nelson. His idea was always to get alongside, to get as close
as possible to the enemy and to hit him as hard as he could. Mere
defeat was not enough for him. He wanted a fight to a finish, the
finish being the absolute destruction or capture of the hostile force.
This was not because there was anything particularly ferocious in his
nature. On the contrary, a more tender-hearted man never lived.
Before that one defeat of his at Teneriffe when he lost his arm, he
wrote to his Commander-in-chief--this letter, by the way, was the last
he ever wrote with his right hand--expressing solicitude for everybody
but himself. None knew better than he the desperate nature of the
venture, for in this very letter he said that on the morrow his head
would probably be crowned either with laurel or cypress, and the last
thing he did before he left his ship was to call his stepson to help
him in burning his wife’s letters, and then ordered him to remain
behind, saying: “Should we both fall, what would become of your poor
mother?”
Happily Lieutenant Nisbet disobeyed the order to his face and went.
When the bullet shattered Nelson’s arm at the elbow, it was his stepson
who had the presence of mind to whip off his silk handkerchief and bind
it round above the wound. But for this, Nelson would never have fought
another battle, for he must have bled to death before he reached his
ship.
It so happened that he could have been put much sooner on board the
_Sea Horse_, but her commander, Captain Freemantle, was still on shore,
and, for all he knew, might be dead or alive. His wife was on board
the _Sea Horse_, and Nelson, wounded and bleeding as he was, insisted
on going on, saying: “I would rather suffer death than alarm Mrs.
Freemantle by letting her see me in this state when I can give her no
tidings of her husband.” Freemantle, as it turned out, had been wounded
in almost exactly the same place only a few minutes before.
When Nelson got back to his own ship, he would not hear of being slung
or carried up on deck.
“I’ve got one arm and two legs left,” he said, “and I’ll get up by
myself.”
And so he did, and up a single rope at that. In a strong man this
would have been wonderful; in a mere weakling as Nelson physically was,
it was little short of a miracle.
This was the man who, in the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, with an
utterly disabled ship, boarded and took two Spanish men-of-war both
bigger than his own. One of them had eighty and the other a hundred and
twelve guns; his own only mounted seventy-four.
It is, of course, entirely out of the question that in such a mere
sketch as this I should attempt to follow Nelson through even a
moderate proportion of the hundred and five engagements in which he
personally fought, nor would it be fitting that I should attempt to
emulate the brilliant and detailed descriptions which have illustrated
the principal of them.
With his doings at Naples and Palermo, and his much-debated and
inexplicable attachment to Lady Hamilton which unhappily began during
this period, we have here no concern. The hero of the Nile, like every
other great man, had his faults. Those who cavil at them are really
blaming their possessors for not being perfect, for if really great
men had no faults they would be perfect, and that is impossible,
and, so much being said, the scene may now shift forthwith from the
Mediterranean to the Baltic.
The Armed Neutrality is now only a phrase in history, but in the year
1801 it was a very serious reality. It was a league between Russia,
Sweden, and Denmark. From the English point of view it meant this--that
France, with whom we had now practically embarked in a struggle to the
death, would be able, under the sanction of this league, to import from
the shores of the Baltic the very articles that we did not wish her to
have, and which she couldn’t get elsewhere. These were naval stores,
pine-trees for masts and spars, hemp for rigging, tar, and so on.
It was very easy to see that this Armed Neutrality meant in plain
English that these three Powers were quite agreeable to the smashing-up
of Great Britain by France provided that they were not called upon to
pay any of the expenses or suffer any of the other losses of the war.
Denmark was therefore politely but firmly requested to detach herself
from this league, the reason being that Denmark in those days kept
the key of the Baltic. Denmark refused, and unhappily for her she did
so just at the time when the Victor of the Nile had come home for a
well-earned holiday.
We are not accustomed now, in the pride of our unequalled naval
strength, to take very much account of the fleets of these three
countries, but just before the Battle of the Baltic was fought it was a
very different matter.
The Danes had twenty-three line-of-battle ships and thirty-one
frigates, not counting bomb-vessels and guard-ships. Sweden had
eighteen ships of the line, fourteen frigates and sloops and
seventy-four galleys, as well as a small swarm of gun-boats, while
Russia could put to sea eighty-two line-of-battle ships and forty-two
frigates.
Such a force within the narrow waters of the Baltic was a very
formidable one, but before we can arrive at a just appreciation of
the magnificence and importance of the service which Nelson did for
his country we must remember that of all European waters those of the
Baltic, and especially of the approaches to it, are the most difficult
and dangerous. Even with the aid of steam it would be no light matter
to take a fleet into the Baltic under the guns of Elsinore and Kronberg
were the lamps of the lighthouses extinguished and all the buoys
removed.
What then must it have been to go in with a fleet of sailing ships
utterly at the mercy of wind and current, to say nothing of the ice?
Indeed, Southey tells us that when Nelson went to Yarmouth to join the
fleet under Admiral Sir Hyde-Parker he found him a little nervous about
dark nights and ice-floes.
His own remarks on the subject are very well worthy of remembrance:
“These are not times for nervous systems,” he said. “I hope we shall
give our northern enemies that hailstorm of bullets which gives our
dear country the dominion of the sea. We have it and all the devils in
the North cannot take it from us if our wooden walls have fair play.”
It was a most egregious mistake not to have made the Victor of the
Nile and the Conqueror of the Mediterranean commander-in-chief of the
Northern Squadron. His fame was already resounding through the world,
and every one except the Lords of the Admiralty seems to have already
recognised the fact that he was by far the finest sailor of the age.
Here again, too, officialism at home sadly crippled the work of valour
and genius abroad. As usual Nelson had his own plans, and as usual
they were the very best possible. His idea was to attack the Russian
Squadron in Reval and the Danish in Copenhagen simultaneously, and by
preventing their coalition make it too risky for the Swedes to join in.
Captain Mahan, who is certainly entitled to be considered one of the
foremost naval authorities of the day, describes Nelson’s plan of
attack as worthy of Napoleon himself, and says that if adopted it
“would have brought down the Baltic Confederacy with a crash that would
have resounded throughout Europe.” As it was, more timid counsels
prevailed, but thanks to Nelson the end was the same, or nearly so.
We may gather some notion of the difficulty of getting on to the scene
of battle when we read that no less than three English line-of-battle
ships went aground before the battle began, and we also get an
interesting glimpse of that old hand-to-hand style of naval warfare
which has now passed away for ever, when we are told that the ships
opened fire at a range of two hundred yards! Nowadays firing would
begin at between three and four thousand. If two modern fleets were to
get to business at that range the said business would probably consist
of one broadside from each, one discharge of the big guns, and after
that general wreck and ruin. It is not likely that either side would
win, and it is certain that both sides would lose.