This is a form of cant to which those whom we regard as great men are
a prey. But this pride of race is not confined to the mighty men of
valour. The humble soldier and sailor, and poorest and richest of
civilians, have the same inherent belief in British superiority. They
talk to the Great Giver of all power in the most patronizing way, and
while they profess to believe in His ordinances they treat them as
though He were their vassal and not their Lawgiver. They call upon Him
to break His own laws and help them to smite those whom they regard as
enemies, never doubting the righteousness of their cause. The enemy,
on the other hand, believe that _they_ have a monopoly of God, and
avow that _their_ cause is His, and _being_ His, they grimly ask Him
to settle the dispute by coming down on their side; but should they
win the fight, the glory of it is seldom given to the Power whose
assistance is implored, but ascribed to their own genius.
Cromwell is a singular and distinguished exception. He always gave all
the glory to God. Take as an example the battle of Dunbar (though
there are many instances of a similar character that could be quoted
during the Civil War). The battle-cry of the Parliament forces was
"The Lord of Hosts," and at the opportune moment the commander of the
Parliament army shouted, "Now let God arise, and His enemies shall be
scattered." The Ironsides made a fearless and irresistible rush at
their foes, and almost immediately Cromwell saw the Covenanters in
confusion; again he shouted, "They run! I profess they run!" The
quotation from the 68th Psalm was always an inspiration to these
religious warriors. Old Leslie, the Scotch Covenanting general, with
the patience of stupidity, had been mumbling petitions for hours to
the God of the Anointed to form an alliance with him to crush the
unholy rebellion against King and Covenant. "Thou knowest, O God, how
just our cause is, and how unjust is that of those who are not Thy
people." This moth-eaten crowd of canting hypocrites were no match for
the forces who believed that they were backed by the Lord of Hosts,
and they were completely routed.
Sir Jacob Astley, another Royalist, on one occasion during the Civil
War breathed a simple prayer with uplifted eyes. "O Lord," said he,
"Thou knowest how busy I must be this day. If I forget Thee, do not
Thou forget me." Then he gave the word of command to "March." He was
nevertheless defeated at Stow, and seems to have been offended at the
Deity for His forgetfulness, as he bitterly reproached his conquerors
by telling them that they might go to play unless they fell out
amongst themselves.
Napoleon carried on warfare under a sterner and more self-reliant
code. He had confidence in and depended on his own genius and on
nature's laws. There are shoals of instances in his short and terrific
career that indicate this belief in himself. He said to a regiment of
horse chasseurs at Lobenstein two days before the battle of Jena, "My
lads! you must not fear death; when soldiers brave death, they drive
him into the enemy's ranks." On another occasion he said: "You must
not fight too often with one enemy, or you teach him all your art of
war." This is a thrilling truth which always tells in war, and yet
behind all the apparent indifference to the great mysterious force
that holds sway over human affairs there was a hidden belief in the
power of the Deity to guide aright and give aid in the hour of need,
even to men of unequalled talents like Napoleon himself. His
spontaneous exclamations indicate that he did not doubt who created
and ruled the universe, but how much he relied on this power he never
really disclosed, and it can only be a supposition gathered from
utterances recorded by some of his contemporaries that he had a devout
belief in the great power of Christianity. "Ah!" said he one day,
"there is but one means of getting good manners, and that is by
establishing religion." At that time the spiritual life of France was
at a low ebb, and the subject of religion was one of the most
unpopular and risky topics to raise, but Napoleon knew that it would
have to be tackled in the open sooner or later, and it is a matter of
authentic history that he struggled to bring and ultimately succeeded
in bringing back religious ordinances to France. He declared that no
good government could exist for long without it. His traducers
proclaimed him an atheist, and we hear the same claptrap from people
now who have not made themselves acquainted with the real history of
the man and his times. We do not say he was a saint, but he was a
better Christian, both in profession and action, than most of the
kings that ruled prior to and during his period. In every way he
excels the Louis of France, the Georges of Great Britain and Hanover,
the Fredericks of Prussia, and the Alexanders of Russia. The latter
two he puts far in the shade, both as a statesman, a warrior, and a
wise, humane ruler who saw far into futurity, and fought against the
reactionary forces of Europe, which combined to put an end to what was
called his ambition to dominate the whole of creation. He foretold
with amazing accuracy that from his ashes there would spring up
sectional wars for a time, and ultimately the selfsame elements of
vicious mediocrity that destroyed him would bring about a
world-conflict which would destroy itself.
The laws of life are simple, but at the same time very terrible in
their consequences if ignored or disobeyed. What folly to imagine that
any great figure or great tragedy comes into existence by chance!
Napoleon was just as necessary to the world as was Cromwell. Both had
the righting of wrongs and the clearing away of the accumulation of
centuries of chaos and misgovernment, and it was not to be expected
that they could carry out the necessary reforms without making the
authors of such an intolerable state of things angry and resentful at
their iron methods of discipline. Napoleon and Cromwell possessed the
combined arts of war and statesmanship to a higher degree than any of
their contemporaries. Cromwell excelled Napoleon in professional
Christianity. The latter never paraded his ideas of religion, though
he acted on them silently and gave occasional expression to the
thoughts of his soul. Indeed, he was too much given to publicly
disavowing the very principles he believed in privately. This plan or
habit was said to be for the purpose of creating controversy. Be that
as it may, when the natural spirit moved him he would declare his
views in the most robust way. On one of many occasions he startled the
Council of State by reminding them that a man did not risk being
killed for a few pence a day or for a paltry distinction. "You must
speak to the soul," he declared, "to electrify the man." Another very
notable expression is here worth referring to, as it instances how
practical and human were his views. "The heart," said he, "warms the
genius, but in Pitt the genius withers the heart, which is a very
different thing"; and so it is that Cromwell and he were not
dissimilar in many of their attributes. Indeed, it is said that
Napoleon never tired of quoting or having quoted to him some striking
characteristic of Cromwell. We could hardly, with any degree of good
judgment, put Leslie the Covenanter or Sir Jacob Astley the Royalist,
or Nelson the matchless naval strategist and national hero, on a par
with either Cromwell or Napoleon. They are only here referred to in
connection with the two unequalled constructive statesmen and military
generals as representing a type of peculiarly religious men who have
occupied high military and naval positions in the service of the
State.
Hawkins, Drake, Frobisher, Blake in Cromwell's time, Nelson in
Napoleon's, were all fire-eating religious men, always asking favours
and guidance in their perilous undertakings from the great mystic
Power in whom they believed. Collingwood was a great admiral and a
Christian gentleman, who never mixed religion with hysterical or
dramatic flashes of quarterdeck language. He was ostentatious in
nothing, and seemed to observe a strictly decorous attitude. Nelson,
on the other hand, resembled a restless squirrel, always swift in his
instincts, with an enthusiasm which was contagious. In many ways he
did not adhere to what is called cricket in sporting phrase. He was
accustomed to say, "Never mind the justice or the impudence of this or
that, only let me succeed." Then he would proceed to ask the Almighty
in feverish zeal to aid him in the object he had in view.
He would scatter a profusion of curses about in relation to the
treatment of the Admiralty towards himself, or at his disappointment
in not getting to grips with the French fleet, and then proceed to ask
Lady Hamilton if they had a nice church at Merton, so that they may
set an example of goodness to the under-parishioners, and "admire the
pigs and poultry," etc. He finds on several occasions that a picture
of Emma is much admired by the French Consul at Barcelona, and feels
sure it would be admired by Bonaparte, and then he continues, "I love
you most dearly, and hate the French most damnably." Sometimes he said
he hated the French as the devil hated holy water, which at that time
was considered to be the orthodoxy of a true Briton. It was quite a
pro-British attitude to patronize the maker of kings who had kept the
world in awe for nearly a quarter of a century, by expecting him to
admire a portrait of a loose woman to whom he referred in the most
scathing manner while at St. Helena. Her reputation and Nelson's
connection with her seems to have been known to him, as was also her
connection with the Neapolitan Court. His indictment was terrible.
Nelson had a weary, anxious time on the Toulon station. He called it
his home, and said they were in fine fighting trim and wished to God
the ships were the same, but they were in a very dilapidated
condition, not fit to stand the bad weather they were sure to
encounter. The British Minister at Naples wished to send a Frenchman
who could be relied on with information as to the whereabouts of the
French fleet. Nelson replied that he would not on any account have a
Frenchman in the British fleet except as a prisoner. He would be
grateful to him for any information he could give, but not a Frenchman
would be allowed to come to him, and adds that "his mother hated the
French." He was enraged at the report spread by a fussy French Admiral
named M. la Touche-Treville, who was in command at Toulon. It was said
that he was sent to beat Nelson as he had done at Boulogne. But he was
shy about coming out and trying a tussle. Nelson said he was a
miscreant, a poltroon, and a liar. The Frenchman had boasted in a
publication that he had put the British fleet to flight. The British
Admiral took the charge so seriously to heart that he sent a copy of
the _Victory's_ log to the Admiralty to disprove the statement of the
lying Admiral la Touche, and in a letter to his brother Nelson says,
"You will have seen La Touche's letter of how he chased me, and how I
ran. I keep it; and by God if I take him, he shall eat it." La Touche
cheated Nelson of a sweet revenge by dying like a good Christian
before the outraged British Admiral could get hold of him. The
newspapers of France said he died of fatigue caused by walking so
often to the signal post at Sepet, to watch the British fleet; and
Nelson stated "that he was always sure that would be the death of him,
and that if he had come out to fight him it would have added ten years
on to his life." Poor Nelson was very sensitive when his professional
qualities were assailed. He thought, and thought rightly, that the
blockade at Toulon was an unparalleled feat of human patience and
physical endurance. He had only been out of his ship three times from
May 1803 to August 1805. We may write and speak about this wonderful
devotion to duty, but it is only if we take time to think of the
terrific things which the central figure who commanded, and the crews
of the fleet of rickety, worn-out, leaky baskets--proudly spoken of as
the "wooden walls of Old England"--had to contend with and actually
did, that we comprehend the vast strain and task of it all. It was
because Nelson was ever being reminded by some clumsy act of the
Admiralty or thoughtless, ignorant criticism on the part of the
politicians and civilian public generally that the work he and the men
under him were doing was not appreciated as it should be, that he gave
way to outbursts of violent resentment. But so far as the present
writer has been able to discover, his love of approbation was so
strong that an encouraging word of praise soon put him in love for the
time being with those whom he had lately cursed.
He never shrank from disobeying the instructions of whatever authority
was over him if his judgment led him to the conclusion that he would
serve his country better by disobedience and by following his own
judgment; whenever he was driven to do this he was right and those
above him were wrong, and in each case he was so conclusively right
that no authoritative power dare court-martial him, or even censure
his conduct, since the public believed more in him than in them. When
the spirit of well-balanced defiance was upon him, he seemed to say to
the public, to himself, and to those who were responsible for his
instructions, "Do you imagine yourselves more capable of judging the
circumstances, and the immeasurable difficulties surrounding them,
than I am, whose business it has been to watch minutely every changing
phase? Or do you think my love of country or glory so incomparably
inferior to yours that I would risk any harm coming to it, or to
myself and the men under me, if I was not sure of my ground? For what
other reason do you think I disobeyed orders? Do you suppose I did it
in order that some disaster should be the result? Or do you still
think that your plan, right or wrong, should have been carried out,
even though it would be accompanied with appalling consequences to
life and property? If these are your views, I wish to remind you that
I am the Indomitable Nelson, who will stand no damned nonsense from
you or from the enemy when I see that my country, or the interests
that I represent, are going to be jeopardized by your self-assertive
instructions, and I wish to intimate to you that there is only one way
of dealing with a Frenchman, and that is to knock him down when he is
an enemy. You have obviously got to learn that to be civil to a
Frenchman is to be laughed at, and this I shall never submit to." The
Admiralty censured Nelson for disobeying Lord Keith's orders and, as
they claimed, endangering Minorca, and also for landing seamen for the
siege of Capua, and told him "not to employ the seamen in any such way
in future." The Admiralty were too hasty in chastising him. He claimed
that his success in freeing the whole kingdom of Naples from the
French was almost wholly due to the employment of British sailors,
whose valour carried the day.
Nelson sent the First Lord a slap between the eyes in his best
sarcastic form. He said briefly, "I cannot enter into all the detail
in explanation of my motives which led me to take the action I did, as
I have only a left hand, but I may inform you that my object is to
drive the French to the devil, and restore peace and happiness to
mankind"; and he continues, "I feel I am fitter to do the action than
to describe it." And then he curtly and in so many words says to his
Chief, "Don't you be troubled about Minorca. I have secured the main
thing against your wish and that of Lord Keith, and you may be assured
that I shall see that no harm comes to the Islands, which seems to be
a cause of unnecessary anxiety to you." Incidentally, the expulsion of
the French from Naples and seating Ferdinand on the throne was, as I
have previously stated, not an unqualified success, nor was he
accurate in his statement that he had restored happiness to millions.
The success was a mere shadow. He had emancipated a set of villains.
Troubridge says they were all thieves and vagabonds, robbing their
unfortunate countrymen, selling confiscated property for nothing,
cheating the King and Treasury by pocketing everything that their
sticky fingers touched, and that their villainies were so deeply
rooted that if some steps were not taken to dig them out, the
Government could not hold together. Out of twenty millions of ducats
collected as revenue, only thirteen millions reached the Treasury, and
the King had to pay four ducats instead of one. Troubridge again
intimates to his superior that Ferdinand is surrounded with a nest of
the most unscrupulous thieves that could be found in all Europe. "Such
damned cowards and villains," he declared, "he had never seen or heard
of before."