NELSON'S CAREER, AND GENERAL EVENTS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN AND ITALY,
FROM THE OVERTHROW OF THE ROYAL GOVERNMENT IN NAPLES TO THE INCURSION
OF THE FRENCH FLEET UNDER ADMIRAL BRUIX.
JANUARY-MAY, 1799. AGE, 40.
The four and a half months of unbroken residence in Palermo, which
followed the flight of the Court from Naples, were full of annoyance
and distress to Nelson, independent of, and additional to, the
disquieting struggle between his passion and his conscience, which had
not yet been silenced. 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
revolutionists,--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 enemy; 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 French
affectation 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, when the
Neapolitan Republic will be organized, 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 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 such 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. Vincent; 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 Admiralty,
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, by
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.
Nelson immediately asked to be relieved. "_I do feel, for I am a
man_," he 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 circumstances I entreat, that 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 similar 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, which
Smith was 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
command there, with orders that, upon Smith's arrival, he should
deliver up the blockade to him, and return to the westward. "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 such 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 control 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 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 Excellency,"
he says in such a letter, "to forward my letter to Sir Sidney Smith,
Captain of the Tigre. I have this day received letters from Sir Sidney
Smith, in his Ministerial 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 captain he writes: "I
must _direct_ you, whenever you have Ministerial 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."
Nelson resented to the end this giving to a junior naval officer, by a
side-wind, 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
"upon 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 purpose,
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 by St. Vincent and Minto, both of whom had personal
experience of his conduct in such 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 in the cabinet
as on the ocean, and your whole conduct fills me with admiration and
confidence." "There is one other point of excellence," said Minto in
the House of Peers, "to which I must say a single word, because I am,
perhaps, the man in 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
correspondence 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
ability, judgment, temper, and conciliation, 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. Since he had persuaded himself
that to bolster up the corrupt and tottering throne of Naples was the
most important of his functions, he had become desirous that the
isolation and blockade of the French army in Egypt,--a factor so
decisive by its numbers, its brilliant efficiency, and the singular
genius and renown of its general and his lieutenants,--should be
assumed by some of the allies of Great Britain, although he was never
slow to express his want of confidence in their navies. He was urgent,
both with the joint ministers and with the representatives of Russia
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 off Malta. Neither Russia nor Turkey was easily to be
convinced. Egypt was no affair of the former's, except as it concerned
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 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 surrendered. The
fifty-gun ship "Leander," which had been taken by the French
seventy-four "Généreux," when carrying Nelson's despatches after the
Nile, was here recaptured and restored to Great Britain.
Nelson viewed the progress and policy of Russia with 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 possession of that island
and Cephalonia, you will send on shore by the Priest I shall desire to
accompany you, my 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 significant.
"Captain Troubridge was absolutely under sail," he wrote to Spencer
Smith, "when I heard with sorrow that 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 object 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 wished 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 was 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 England. "Should any Russian ships,
or admiral, arrive off Malta," he instructed Ball, "you will 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, who command the forces of a Power in such close alliance with the
Russian Emperor, which have been blockading and attacking Malta for
near six months. The Russians shall never take the lead."
Three weeks later he authorized Ball, with the consent of the King, to
preside over the meetings of the Maltese chiefs, and, by the desire of
his 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 Russian admiral upon the
fall of Corfu, news of which he has just received, and he mentions,
meaningly, "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 protection of Great Britain." "I attach no
value to it for us," he said explicitly to the First Lord, meaning, no
doubt, for the purposes of the existing war. This opinion was
perfectly consonant to the secondary importance he had latterly
attributed to the presence of the British in the Levant, as compared
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
observe what is said in the despatches of the Consul at Corfu," he
writes to St. Vincent, "respecting the Russians being ordered 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
magnificently 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 lookout 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 to the quixotic passions which often
impelled him to the most unselfish acts, but the general tendency was
undeniable; and Nelson's watchful attitude exemplifies the numerous
diplomatic, as well as military, responsibilities that weighed upon
him. He was, practically, commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean,
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 Maltese 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 herself. Neither he, Troubridge, nor
the sovereigns, had confidence 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 battery 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 accomplishment 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 compliments, and with appeals to the prejudices of
believers in God against those who 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 Mussulmen," 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 your 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
your Highness. For at this moment all wars should cease, and all the
world should join in endeavouring to extirpate 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
_bonâ fide_ employed in carrying grain to the besiegers of the French,
and to such only; 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
renounced 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 Frenchmen 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
destroying 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."
The vehemence with which the French are here denounced, though 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, probably, in part,
of the anxious rancor bred by the uncertainties and worry of the
pursuit of Bonaparte; 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 war support 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."
"'_Down, 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 _down, 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, robbers, and murderers are the characteristic terms. This
detestation 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 will 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 animosities 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.
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 correspondence, 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 Russian
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 intensity, 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 gay, 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 intimate
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 inevitable 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 difficulties and
perplexities had been, and were yet again to be, a trumpet call that
stirred to animation, 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 condition of
affairs for the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was seemingly 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." Nevertheless, "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 Turkish 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
dependence was placed upon the Neapolitan troops. Stuart complied, and
the citadel was occupied by two English regiments about the 10th of
March. The danger, however, was considered sufficiently imminent to
withdraw to Palermo the transports 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 Court
was rather political than military[80] in its utility, dependent upon
the fears of their own subjects felt by the sovereigns. While these
measures were being taken he endeavored, though fruitlessly, to bring
matters to a conclusion 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 Flag 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 foundation of efficiency
in the armies, or skill in the plan of campaign. 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 sent
Troubridge with four ships-of-the-line 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 hundred
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-Russians, 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 Castellamare, on the opposite side
of the Bay from Naples, and distant 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 insurrection [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 consent to." "The King, God bless him! is a philosopher," he had
said, repeating an expression of Lady Hamilton's, referring to the
disasters which caused the headlong flight from Rome, 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 the 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 comprehensible. What is difficult to understand is the
esteem he continued to profess, for those whose unheroic bearing so
belied the words he had written six months before: "His Majesty 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 continued. "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.
FOOTNOTES:
[80] Palermo possessed a strategic advantage over Syracuse, in that, with
westerly winds, it was to windward, especially 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
apprehended. 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.