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On the 20th Nelson received formal leave to return to England in the "Seahorse," and on the 3d of September his flag was hauled down at Spithead. On the way home he suffered much. After amputation the ligature had been awkwardly applied to the humeral artery. As he would not allow the surgeon to examine the stump during the passage, this was not then discovered, but the intense spasms of pain kept him irritable and depressed. It is likely, too, that his discouragement was increased by brooding over the failure of his enterprise; believing, as he did, that had he been with the landing-party, the first attempt would have succeeded. He could scarcely fail now to see that, although it was strictly in accordance with service methods for the senior to remain with the ships, the decisive point in the plan, as first formed, was the seizure of the heights, and that there, consequently, was the true place for the one in chief command. Any captain, Troubridge especially, could have placed the ships as well as Nelson. It is self-accusation, and not fault-finding merely, that breathes in the words: "Had I been with the first party, I have reason to believe complete success would have crowned our efforts. My pride suffered."

Lady Nelson

Whatever his mental distress, however, he always, from the time of receiving the wound, wrote to his wife with careful cheerfulness. "As to my health, it never was better; and now I hope soon to return to you; and my Country, I trust, will not allow me any longer to linger in want of that pecuniary assistance which I have been fighting the whole war to preserve to her. But I shall not be surprised to be neglected and forgot, as probably I shall no longer be considered as useful. However, I shall feel rich if I continue to enjoy your affection. I am fortunate in having a good surgeon on board; in short, I am much more recovered than I could have expected. I beg neither you or my father will think much of this mishap: my mind has long been made up to such an event."

Immediately after quitting the "Seahorse" he joined his wife and father at Bath. For a time the wound seemed to be progressing favorably, but the unlucky complication of the ligature threw him back. "Much pain and some fever," he wrote to a friend soon after his arrival; and while he kept up fairly before his wife, who spoke of his spirits as very good, he confessed to St. Vincent, on the 18th of September, that he was then not the least better than when he left the fleet. "I have suffered great misery." This letter was dated in London, whither he had gone a few days before to be invested with the Order of the Bath, which was formally done by George III. in person on the 27th of September. He was graciously received by the King, who conversed with him after the ceremony, and by his manner throughout made a lasting impression upon the mind of Nelson, whose loyalty was intense. The Order of the Bath remained the most highly prized among his many decorations. At the same time was awarded him a pension of £1,000 a year.

He remained in London till near Christmas. Sir Gilbert Elliot, the late Viceroy of Corsica, who about this time became Lord Minto, saw him not long after his arrival there, as did also Colonel Drinkwater. Elliot found him looking better and fresher than he ever remembered him, although the continued pain prevented sleep, except by use of opium. He was already impatient to go to sea again, and chafed under the delay of healing, concerning the duration of which the surgeons could give him no assurance. The ligature must be left to slough away, for it was two inches up the wound, and if, in attempting to cut it, the artery should be cut, another amputation would be necessary higher up, which would not be easy, for the stump was already very short. There was consequently nothing for it but endurance. To his suffering at this time an accomplished surgeon, who sailed with him shortly before Trafalgar, attributed a neuralgic predisposition under which he then labored, and which produced serious effects upon his general health.

A singular exhibition of his characteristic animation and temperament was elicited by Drinkwater's visit. The colonel saw him shortly before the naval battle of Camperdown, fought on the 11th of October. "One of the first questions which Nelson put to me was whether I had been at the Admiralty. I told him there was a rumour that the British fleet had been seen engaged with that of Holland. He started up in his peculiar energetic manner, notwithstanding Lady Nelson's attempts to quiet him, and stretching out his unwounded arm,—'Drinkwater, said he, 'I would give this other arm to be with Duncan⁵⁹ at this moment;' so unconquerable was the spirit of the man, and so intense his eagerness to give every instant of his life to the service."

Until the 4th of December his agony continued. On that day the ligature came away, giving instant and entire relief. In a letter to a friend, apologizing for delay in replying, he said: "Truly, till last Monday, I have suffered so much, I hope for your forgiveness. I am now perfectly recovered, and on the eve of being employed." On Friday, the 8th, he wrote to Captain Berry, who had led the boarders to the "San Nicolas" at Cape St. Vincent, and was designated to command the ship in which the admiral's flag should next be hoisted, saying that he was well; and the same day, with that profound recognition of a personal Providence which was with him as instinctive as his courage, he sent to a London clergyman the following request: "An officer desires to return thanks to Almighty God for his perfect recovery from a severe wound, and also for the many mercies bestowed upon him. (For next Sunday.)"

As the close attention of the skilled surgeons in whose hands he had been was now no longer needed, he returned to Bath to await the time when his flagship should be completely equipped. St. Vincent had asked that the "Foudroyant," of eighty guns, should be prepared for him; but, after his sudden recovery, as she was not yet ready, there was substituted for her the "Vanguard," seventy-four, which was commissioned by Berry at Chatham on the 19th of December. In March she had reached Portsmouth, and Nelson then went up to London, where he attended a levee on the 14th of the month and took leave of the King. On the 29th his flag was hoisted, and on the 10th of April, after a week's detention at St. Helen's by head winds, he sailed for Lisbon. There he remained for four days, and on the 30th of the month, off Cadiz, rejoined St. Vincent, by whom he was received with open arms. The veteran seaman, stern and resolved as was his bearing in the face of danger, was unhopeful about the results of the war, which from the first he had not favored, and for whose ending he was eager. Now, at sixty-four, his health was failing, and the difficulties and dangers of the British cause in the Mediterranean weighed upon him, with a discouragement very alien from the sanguine joy with which his ardent junior looked forward to coming battles. His request to be relieved from command, on the score of ill health, was already on file at the Admiralty. "I do assure your Lordship," he wrote to Earl Spencer, "that the arrival of Admiral Nelson has given me new life; you could not have gratified me more than in sending him; his presence in the Mediterranean is so very essential, that I mean to put the "Orion" and "Alexander" under his command, with the addition of three or four frigates, and send him away, to endeavour to ascertain the real object of the preparations making by the French." These preparations for a maritime expedition were being made at Toulon and the neighboring ports, on a scale which justly aroused the anxiety of the British Cabinet, as no certain information about their object had been obtained.

Nelson's departure from England on this occasion closes the first of the two periods into which his career naturally divides. From his youth until now, wherever situated, the development has been consecutive and homogeneous, external influences and internal characteristics have worked harmoniously together, nature and ambition have responded gladly to opportunity, and the course upon which they have combined to urge him has conformed to his inherited and acquired standards of right and wrong. Doubt, uncertainty, inward friction, double motives, have been unknown to him; he has moved freely in accordance with the laws of his being, and, despite the anxieties of his profession and the frailty of his health, there is no mistaking the tone of happiness and contentment which sounds without a jarring note throughout his correspondence. A change was now at hand. As the sails of the "Vanguard" dip below the horizon of England, a brief interlude begins, and when the curtain rises again, the scene is shifted,—surroundings have changed. We see again the same man, but standing at the opening of a new career, whose greatness exceeds by far even the high anticipations that had been formed for him. Before leaving England he is a man of distinction only; prominent, possibly, among the many distinguished men of his own profession, but the steady upward course has as yet been gradual, the shining of the light, if it has latterly shot forth flashes suggestive of hidden fires, is still characterized by sustained growth in intensity rather than by rapid increase. No present sign so far foretells the sudden ascent to fame, the burst of meridian splendor with which the sun of his renown was soon to rise upon men's eyes, and in which it ran its course to the cloudless finish of his day.

Not that there is in that course—in its achievements—any disproportion with the previous promise. The magnitude of the development we are about to witness is due, not to a change in him, but to the increased greatness of the opportunities. A man of like record in the past, but less gifted, might, it is true, have failed to fill the new sphere which the future was to present. Nelson proved fully equal to it, because he possessed genius for war, intellectual faculties, which, though not unsuspected, had not hitherto been allowed scope for their full exercise. Before him was now about to open a field of possibilities hitherto unexampled in naval warfare; and for the appreciation of them was needed just those perceptions, intuitive in origin, yet resting firmly on well-ordered rational processes, which, on the intellectual side, distinguished him above all other British seamen. He had already, in casual comment upon the military conditions surrounding the former Mediterranean campaigns, given indications of these perceptions, which it has been the aim of previous chapters to elicit from his correspondence, and to marshal in such order as may illustrate his mental characteristics. But, for success in war, the indispensable complement of intellectual grasp and insight is a moral power, which enables a man to trust the inner light,—to have faith,—a power which dominates hesitation, and sustains action, in the most tremendous emergencies, and which, from the formidable character of the difficulties it is called to confront, is in no men so conspicuously prominent as in those who are entitled to rank among great captains. The two elements—mental and moral power—are often found separately, rarely in due combination. In Nelson they met, and their coincidence with the exceptional opportunities afforded him constituted his good fortune and his greatness.

The intellectual endowment of genius was Nelson's from the first; but from the circumstances of his life it was denied the privilege of early manifestation, such as was permitted to Napoleon. It is, consequently, not so much this as the constant exhibition of moral power, force of character, which gives continuity to his professional career, and brings the successive stages of his advance, in achievement and reputation, from first to last, into the close relation of steady development, subject to no variation save that of healthy and vigorous growth, till he stood unique—above all competition. This it was—not, doubtless, to the exclusion of that reputation for having a head, upon which he justly prided himself—which had already fixed the eyes of his superiors upon him as the one officer, not yet indeed fully tested, most likely to cope with the difficulties of any emergency. In the display of this, in its many self-revelations,—in concentration of purpose, untiring energy, fearlessness of responsibility, judgment sound and instant, boundless audacity, promptness, intrepidity, and endurance beyond all proof,—the restricted field of Corsica and the Riviera, the subordinate position at Cape St. Vincent, the failure of Teneriffe, had in their measure been as fruitful as the Nile was soon to be, and fell naught behind the bloody harvests of Copenhagen and Trafalgar. Men have been disposed, therefore, to reckon this moral energy—call it courage, dash, resolution, what you will—as Nelson's one and only great quality. It was the greatest, as it is in all successful men of action; but to ignore that this mighty motive force was guided by singularly clear and accurate perceptions, upon which also it consciously rested with a firmness of faith that constituted much of its power, is to rob him of a great part of his due renown.

But it was not only in the greatness of the opportunities offered to Nelson that external conditions now changed. The glory of the hero brought a temptation which wrecked the happiness of the man. The loss of serenity, the dark evidences of inward conflict, of yielding against conviction, of consequent dissatisfaction with self and gradual deterioration, make between his past and future a break as clear, and far sharper than, the startling increase of radiancy that attends the Battle of the Nile, and thenceforth shines with undiminished intensity to the end. The lustre of his well-deserved and world-wide renown, the consistency and ever-rising merit of his professional conduct, contrast painfully with the shadows of reprobation, the swerving, and the declension, which begin to attend a life heretofore conformed, in the general, to healthy normal standards of right and wrong, but now allowed to violate, not merely ideal Christian rectitude, but the simple, natural dictates of upright dealing between man and man. It had been the proud boast of early years: "There is no action in my whole life but what is honourable." The attainment of glory exceeding even his own great aspirations coincides with dereliction from the plain rules of honor between friends, and with public humiliation to his wife, which he allowed himself to inflict, notwithstanding that he admitted her claims to his deferential consideration to be unbroken. In this contrast, of the exaltation of the hero and the patriot with the degradation of the man, lie the tragedy and the misery of Nelson's story. And this, too, was incurred on behalf of a woman whose reputation and conduct were such that no shred of dignity could attach to an infatuation as doting as it was blamable. The pitiful inadequacy of the temptation to the ruin it caused invests with a kind of prophecy the words he had written to his betrothed in the heyday of courtship: "These I trust will ever be my sentiments; if they are not, I do verily believe it will be my folly that occasions it."

The inward struggle, though severe, was short and decisive. Once determined on his course, he choked down scruples and hesitations, and cast them from him with the same single-minded resolution that distinguished his public acts. "Fixed as fate," were the remorseless words with which he characterized his firm purpose to trample conscience under foot, and to reject his wife in favor of his mistress. But although ease may be obtained by silencing self-reproach, safety scarcely can. One cannot get the salt out of his life, and not be the worse for it. Much that made Nelson so lovable remained to the end; but into his heart, as betrayed by his correspondence, and into his life, from the occasional glimpses afforded by letters or journals of associates, there thenceforth entered much that is unlovely, and which to no appreciable extent was seen before. The simple bonhomie, the absence of conventional reticence, the superficial lack of polish, noted by his early biographers, and which he had had no opportunity to acquire, the childlike vanity that transpires so innocently in his confidential home letters, and was only the weak side of his noble longing for heroic action, degenerated rapidly into loss of dignity of life, into an unseemly susceptibility to extravagant adulation, as he succumbed to surroundings, the corruptness of which none at first realized more clearly, and where one woman was the sole detaining fascination. And withal, as the poison worked, discontent with self bred discontent with others, and with his own conditions. Petulance and querulousness too often supplanted the mental elasticity, which had counted for naught the roughnesses on the road to fame. The mind not worthily occupied, and therefore ill at ease, became embittered, prone to censure and to resent, suspicious at times and harsh in judgment, gradually tending towards alienation, not from his wife only, but from his best and earliest friends.

During the short stay of seven months in England, which ended with the sailing of the "Vanguard," the record of his correspondence is necessarily very imperfect, both from the loss of his arm, and from the fact of his being with his family. Such indications as there are point to unbroken relations of tenderness with his wife. "I found my domestic happiness perfect," he wrote to Lord St. Vincent, shortly after his arrival home; and some months later, in a letter from Bath to a friend, he says jestingly: "Tell—that I possess his place in Mr. Palmer's box; but he did not tell me all its charms, that generally some of the handsomest ladies in Bath are partakers in the box, and was I a bachelor I would not answer for being tempted; but as I am possessed of everything which is valuable in a wife, I have no occasion to think beyond a pretty face." Lady Nelson attended personally to the dressing of his arm; she accompanied him in his journeys between Bath and London, and they separated only when he left town to hoist his flag at Portsmouth. The letters of Lady Saumarez, the wife of one of his brother captains then serving with Lord St. Vincent, mention frequent meetings with the two together in the streets of Bath; and upon the 1st of May, the day before leaving the fleet off Cadiz for the Mediterranean, on the expedition which was to result in the Nile, and all the consequences so fatal to the happiness of both, he concludes his letter, "with every kind wish that a fond heart can frame, believe me, as ever, your most affectionate husband."

On the 2d of May the "Vanguard" quitted the fleet for Gibraltar, where she arrived on the 4th. On the 7th Nelson issued orders to Sir James Saumarez, commanding the "Orion," and to Captain Alexander Ball, commanding the "Alexander," both seventy-fours, to place themselves under his command; and the following day the "Vanguard" sailed, in company with these ships and five smaller vessels, to begin the memorable campaign, of which the Battle of the Nile was the most conspicuous incident.

CHAPTER X.
THE CAMPAIGN AND BATTLE OF THE NILE

MAY-SEPTEMBER, 1798. AGE, 39

Between the time that Nelson was wounded at Teneriffe, July 24, 1797, and his return to active service in April, 1798, important and ominous changes had been occurring in the political conditions of Europe. These must be taken briefly into account, because the greatness of the issues thence arising, as understood by the British Government, measures the importance in its eyes of the enterprise which it was about to intrust, by deliberate selection, to one of the youngest flag-officers upon the list. The fact of the choice shows the estimation to which Nelson had already attained in the eyes of the Admiralty.

Rear Admiral, Sir Horatio Nelson in 1798

In July, 1797, Great Britain alone was at war with France, and so continued for over a year longer. Portugal, though nominally an ally, contributed to the common cause nothing but the use of the Tagus by the British Navy. Austria, it is true, had not yet finally made peace with France, but preliminaries had been signed in April, and the definitive treaty of Campo Formio was concluded in October. By it Belgium became incorporated in the territory of France, to which was conceded also the frontier of the Rhine. The base of her power was thus advanced to the river, over which the possession of the fortified city of Mayence gave her an easy passage, constituting a permanent threat of invasion to Germany. Venice, as a separate power, disappeared. Part of her former domains upon the mainland, with the city itself, went to Austria, but part was taken to constitute the Cisalpine Republic,—a new state in Northern Italy, nominally independent, but really under the control of France, to whom it owed its existence. Corfu, and the neighboring islands at the mouth of the Adriatic, till then belonging to Venice, were transferred to France. The choice of these distant and isolated maritime positions, coupled with the retention of a large army in the valley of the Po, showed, if any evidence were needed, a determination to assure control over the Italian peninsula and the Mediterranean Sea.

The formal acquisitions by treaty, even, did not measure the full menace of the conditions. The Revolutionary ferment, which had partially subsided, received fresh impetus from the victories of Bonaparte and the cessation of Continental war; and the diplomacy of France continued as active and as aggressive as the movement of her armies had previously been. By constant interference, overt and secret, not always stopping short of violence, French influence and French ideas were propagated among the weaker adjoining states. Holland, Switzerland, and the Italian Republics became outposts of France, occupied by French troops, and upon them were forced governments conformed to the existing French pattern. In short, the aggrandizement of France, not merely in moral influence but in physical control, was being pushed forward as decisively in peace as in war, and by means which threatened the political equilibrium of Europe. But, while all states were threatened, Great Britain remained the one chief enemy against which ultimately the efforts of France must be, and were, concentrated. "Either our government must destroy the English monarchy," wrote Bonaparte at this time, "or must expect itself to be destroyed by the corruption and intrigue of those active islanders." The British ministry on its part also realized that the sea-power of their country was the one force from which, because so manifold in its activities, and so readily exerted in many quarters by reason of its mobility, France had most reason to fear the arrest of its revolutionary advance and the renewal of the Continental war. It was, therefore, the one opponent against which the efforts of the French must necessarily be directed. For the same reason it was the one centre around whose action, wisely guided, the elements of discontent, already stirring, might gather, upon the occurrence of a favorable moment, and constitute a body of resistance capable of stopping aggressions which threatened the general well-being.

When the British Government found that the overtures for peace which it had made in the summer of 1797 could have no result, except on terms too humiliating to be considered, it at once turned its attention to the question of waging a distinctively offensive war, for effect in which co-operation was needed. The North of Europe was hopeless. Prussia persisted in the policy of isolation, adopted in 1795 by herself and a number of the northern German states. Russia was quietly hostile to France, but the interference contemplated by the Empress Catherine had been averted by her death in 1796, and her successor, Paul, had shown no intention of undertaking it. There remained, therefore, the Mediterranean. In Italy, France stood face to face with Austria and Naples, and both these were dissatisfied with the action taken by her in the Peninsula itself and in Switzerland, besides sharing the apprehension of most other governments from the disquiet attending her political course. An advance into the Mediterranean was therefore resolved by the British Cabinet.

This purpose disconcerted St. Vincent, who, besides his aversion from the war in general, was distinguished rather by tenacity and resolution in meeting difficulties and dangers, when forced upon him, than by the sanguine and enterprising initiative in offensive measures which characterized Nelson. Writing to the latter on the 8th of January, 1798, he says: "I am much at a loss to reconcile the plans in contemplation to augment this fleet and extend its operations, with the peace which Portugal seems determined to make with France, upon any terms the latter may please to impose; because Gibraltar is an unsafe depot for either stores or provisions, which the Spaniards have always in their power to destroy, and the French keep such an army in Italy, that Tuscany and Naples would fall a sacrifice to any the smallest assistance rendered to our fleet." In other words, the old question of supplies still dominated the situation, in the apprehension of this experienced officer. Yet, in view of the serious condition of things, and the probable defection of Portugal under the threats of France and Spain, to which he alludes, it seems probable that the ministry were better advised, in their determination to abandon a passive defence against an enemy unrelentingly bent upon their destruction. As Nelson said of a contingency not more serious: "Desperate affairs require desperate remedies."

However determined the British Government might be to act in the Mediterranean, some temporary perplexity must at first have been felt as to where to strike, until a movement of the enemy solved the doubt. In the early months of 1798 the Directory decided upon the Egyptian expedition under General Bonaparte, and, although its destination was guarded with admirable secrecy until long after the armament sailed, the fact necessarily transpired that preparations were being made on a most extensive scale for a maritime enterprise. The news soon reached England, as it did also Jervis at his station off Cadiz. Troops and transports were assembling in large numbers at the southern ports of France, in Genoa, Civita Vecchia, and Corsica, while a fleet of at least a dozen ships-of-the-line was fitting out at Toulon. Various surmises were afloat as to the object, but all at this time were wide of the mark.

On the 29th of April, less than three weeks after Nelson left England, but before he joined the fleet, the Cabinet issued orders to St. Vincent to take such measures as he deemed necessary to thwart the projects of the Toulon squadron. It was left to his judgment whether to go in person with his whole fleet, or to send a detachment of not less than nine or ten ships-of-the-line under a competent flag-officer. If possible, the government wished him to maintain the blockade of Cadiz as it had been established since the Battle of St. Vincent; but everything was to yield to the necessity of checking the sailing of the Toulon expedition, or of defeating it, if it had already started. A speedy reinforcement was promised, to supply the places of the ships that might be detached.

Accompanying the public letter was a private one from the First Lord of the Admiralty, reflecting the views and anxieties of the Government. "The circumstances in which we now find ourselves oblige us to take a measure of a more decided and hazardous complexion than we should otherwise have thought ourselves justified in taking; but when you are apprized that the appearance of a British squadron in the Mediterranean is a condition on which the fate of Europe may at this moment be stated to depend, you will not be surprised that we are disposed to strain every nerve, and incur considerable hazard in effecting it." This impressive, almost solemn, statement, of the weighty and anxious character of the intended step, emphasizes the significance of the choice, which the First Lord indicates as that of the Government, of the officer upon whom such a charge is to devolve. "If you determine to send a detachment into the Mediterranean [instead of going in person with the fleet], I think it almost unnecessary to suggest to you the propriety of putting it under the command of Sir H. Nelson, whose acquaintance with that part of the world, as well as his activity and disposition, seem to qualify him in a peculiar manner for that service."

In concluding his letter, Earl Spencer summed up the reasons of the Government, and his own sense of the great risk attending the undertaking, for the conduct of which he designated Nelson. "I am as strongly impressed, as I have no doubt your Lordship will be, with the hazardous nature of the measure which we now have in contemplation; but I cannot at the same time help feeling how much depends upon its success, and how absolutely necessary it is at this time to run some risk, in order, if possible, to bring about a new system of affairs in Europe, which shall save us all from being overrun by the exorbitant power of France. In this view of the subject, it is impossible not to perceive how much depends on the exertions of the great Continental powers; and, without entering further into what relates more particularly to them, I can venture to assure you that no good will be obtained from them if some such measure as that now in contemplation is not immediately adopted. On the other hand, if, by our appearance in the Mediterranean, we can encourage Austria to come forward again, it is in the highest degree probable that the other powers will seize the opportunity of acting at the same time, and such a general concert be established as shall soon bring this great contest to a termination, on grounds less unfavorable by many degrees to the parties concerned than appeared likely a short time since." It may be added here, by way of comment, that the ups and downs of Nelson's pursuit, the brilliant victory at the Nile, and the important consequences flowing from it, not only fully justified this forecast, but illustrated aptly that in war, when a line of action has been rightly chosen, the following it up despite great risks, and with resolute perseverance through many disappointments, will more often than not give great success,—a result which may probably be attributed to the moral force which necessarily underlies determined daring and sustained energy.