NELSON'S DEPARTURE FROM ENGLAND IN THE "AGAMEMNON."--SERVICES IN THE
MEDITERRANEAN UNTIL THE RECOVERY OF TOULON BY THE FRENCH.--LORD HOOD
IN COMMAND.
FEBRUARY-DECEMBER, 1793. AGE, 34.
Nelson's page in history covers a little more than 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 regulated 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 unknown champion from the Norfolk parsonage.
The representatives of the French people had imparted to the original
movement of their nation,--which aimed only at internal reforms,
however radical,--a new direction, of avowed purposeful aggression
upon all political institutions exterior to, and differing from, their
own. This became the one characteristic 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, over against
Napoleon rises ever Nelson; 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 fit and assured ending of the
illustrious 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, heart-breaking 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 officers 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 exhausted hulk could no longer respond to the
demands of her 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
discerning 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 surrounding conditions of enterprise, of difficulties
to be overcome, 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 anywhere, 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 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 depended
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 "Agamemnon," 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
Yorkshire and the North tell me they will send what men they can lay
hands on;" but at the same 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 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 stepson, 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 impulse 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 following 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 "Agamemnon" finally
left the Thames, anchoring at Spithead on the 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 Hotham, 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 information,--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, with 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 opening years of the war. Nelson had no mastery of
the terminology 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 commonly 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 insight, though unerring in its indications, lacked the
definiteness 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 company for Cadiz,
there to fill up with water, in order to avoid the delays which would
arise if the scanty resources of Gibraltar 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 remains
unsolved, the British government has to bear the uncertainties,
exposure, and expense of a difficult and protracted 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
Toulon." 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 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
intuitive 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 impressions, 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." It is somewhat odd
that the extremely diligent and painstaking Sir Harris Nicolas, in his
version of this letter, should have dropped the concluding sentence,
one of the most important and characteristic occurring in Nelson's
correspondence at this time.
On the 14th of July Nelson notes that the fleet had received orders to
consider Marseilles and Toulon as invested, and to take all vessels of
whatever nation bound into those 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 important 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 curtailing 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 provinces 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 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 strictness of the blockade. "At
Marseilles and Toulon," wrote he on the 20th of August, "they are
almost starving, yet nothing 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-establishing 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 exemplified." 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 Convention. 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 resultant 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 perceptions, had not yet 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 West 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 appreciation 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. Nelson refused the proposal. "I cannot give up my
officers," he said, in the spirit that so endeared 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 nattering 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 Naples, to seek from the latter court and that of Turin[18] 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 character of the commanding officer could not but
be considered on 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 generally,
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 testimony to the hardships endured;
for Nelson was singularly successful, 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;[19] and he himself records that in his two months' 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 by providing the seamen with occupation, 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 September, and remained
there four days. Nelson pressed the matter 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 himself
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 stepson]. 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, unstrung by reaction from the exhausting
emotions of the past months, it was for the moment empty of aspiration
and cloyed with flattery only.
The prospect of sailing with the convoy of troops, as well 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 vessels, 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, I 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,--to
"absolutely 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 character 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 negotiated,
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 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. Accordingly,
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 placed. 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 preference 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 fitness.
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 confidence 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,
perfectly willing to intrust the execution to him. Even at Copenhagen
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 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 Republican
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, were 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 convoy, 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 plainly intimates his dissatisfaction
with Linzee. This irresponsible and irreflective outburst was,
however, only an instance of the impatience his 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 proportioned 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 West 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, which 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 command. 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
neighboring waters, between the island and the shores of Italy. He 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 Nelson 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 Revolution, 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 northern 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 preventing the escape of the ships of war. In this he was
successful, for the latter either were destroyed or fell into the
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 surrounding 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 indicated by Napoleon Bonaparte, then a major and in
command of the artillery, was held in insufficient force, and was
successfully 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 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 unsuccessful. 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[18] Turin was capital of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which embraced the
island of that name and the Province of Piedmont.
[19] 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, in a letter written shortly after her arrival
in the West Indies, mentions that several of her ship's company had been
carried off by fever (Nicolas, vol. i. p. 111); but it can doubtless be
accepted as evidence of an unusually healthy condition.