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CHAPTER XII.
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 military⁸⁰ 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.