:^m m (k)iyrigW".jVV COPYRIGHT DEPOSm VICE-ADMIRAL, LORD NELSON. From the portrait in the possession of Sir W, Biddulph Parker, Bart., Blackbrook House, Fareham, Hants. On the back of the pidtire is written, " This head was sketched from the Hero during his short stay at Merton, the beginning of September, 1805, by me, fohn WhicheloP ^. / THE LIFE OF NELSON THE EMBODIMENT Sea Power or Great Britain CAPTAIN A. T. MAHAN, D.C.L., LL.D. Winitta States Wabg AUTHOR OF "the INFLUENCE OF SEA POWER tIPON HISTORY, 1660-1783" "THE INFLUENCE OF SEA POWER UPON THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND EMPIRE," AND OF A "LIFE OF ADMIRAL FARRAGUT " SStcanb lEtition, lEleijisctJ BOSTON LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 1899 'VM^2 Copyright, 1897, 1899, By Captain A. T. Mahan. All rights reserved SEntbcrsttg JSrcss : John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U.S.A. -boUT-^ PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. SINCE the first publication of this book, there have appeared two principal criticisms upon the accuracy of its presentation of Nelson. The first, in order of time, revived the often debated question of his action towards the Neapolitan republicans, in 1799, challenging the author's verdict with much parade of evidence. The second disputed the estimate of Nelson's affection for his wife, basing the argument chiefly upon some recently found letters from him to her, the hiding-place of which had escaped even the diligent search of Sir Harris Nicolas. Concerning the former of these, the author, after due consideration, has seen no cause to change the opinion first expressed ; but he has recognized a necessity to pro- tect the fair fame of the admiral, as well as to fortify his own position, by recasting and amplifying the discussion of the subject. He has therefore embodied in the text such demonstration of Nelson's integrity as may in the future enable a studious reader to rebut the accusations, if renewed. As regards Nelson's affection for his wife, it is enough to say that the author never thought or said that he did not love her tenderly at marriage, and for years after- PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION wards. But there is love and love. What was noted, and emphasized, was the absence of any tendency to idealize her, as he did other women to whom he became attached from time to time, and as lovei"s commonly do. The newly found letters, as far as published, — the author has not been permitted to see the others, — afford no reason to modify this remark, and consequently no change of treatment has been made. These letters contain also some small details which have novelty and interest, con- nected with the separation between Nelson and his wife. These have been incorporated in the text ; but, beyond accentuating slightly his hardness to her in the particular instance, they throw no new light upon his character. As far as they go, these new letters confirm the remark made more than once by the author during his first study of the life of Nelson : that more letters might yet be found ; that a trivial detail of fact might here and there receive correction, altering a little the background, or the framing, of the portrait; but that the mass of cor- respondence published by Nicolas was so extensive, so continuous, and addressed to so many different persons, as to make it highly improbable that any further light, not to be found in those volumes, would be shed upon the ad- miral's character. So much being known, biographies of Nelson will contrast one with another, not in point of abundance of material, but, as portraits do, according to the ability of the workman to reproduce, from the original before him, an impression of the man which shall be at once true, full, and living. The work of revision has embraced also the correction or amplification of certain minor details, noted by the author himself or by others. Of these, the most impor- PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION tant concerns the reason for withholding the medals for Copenhagen. In the author's judgment, his previous pre- sentment of Nelson's character and conduct is not affected in the slightest degree hy these changes. They are part of the frame, not of the pictme. A. T. M. April, 1899. PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION THE Life of Nelson has been written so often, that an explanation — almost an apology — seems cine for any renewal of the attempt ; but, not to mention the attractive- ness of the theme in itself, it is essential to the complete- ness and rounding off of the author's discussion of the Influence of Sea Power, that he present a study, from his own point of view, of the one man who in himself summed up and embodied the greatness of the possibilities which Sea Power comprehends, — the man for whom genius and opportunity worked together, to make him the personifica- tion of the Navy of Great Britain, the dominant factor in the periods hitherto treated. In the century and a half embraced in those periods, the tide of influence and of power has swelled higher and higher, floating upward before the eyes of mankind many a distinguished name; but it is not until their close that one arises in whom all the promises of the past find their finished realization, their perfect fulfilment. Thenceforward the name of Nel- son is enrolled among those few presented to us by His- tory, the simple mention of which suggests, not merely a personality or a career, but a great force or a great era concrete in a single man, who is its standard-bearer before the nations. Yet, in this process of exaltation, the man himself, even when so very human and so very near our own time as Nelson is, suffers from an association which merges his individuality in the splendor of his surroundings; and it PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION is perhaps pardonable to hope that the subject is not so far exhausted but that a new worker, gleaning after the reapers, may contribute something further towards disen- gaging the figure of the hero from the glory that cloaks it. The aim of the present writer, while not neglecting other sources of knowledge, has been to make Nelson describe himself, — • tell the story of his own inner life as well as of his external actions. To realize this object, it has not seemed the best way to insert numerous letters, because, in the career of a man of action, each one commonly deals with a variety of subjects, which bear to one another little relation, except that, at the moment of writing, they all formed part of the multifold life the writer was then lead- ing. It is true, life in general is passed in that way ; but it is not by such distraction of interest among minute de- tails that a particular life is best understood. Few let- ters, therefore, have been inserted entire ; and those which have, have been chosen because of their unity of subject, and of their value as characteristic. 4 The author's method has been to make a careful study of Nelson's voluminous correspondence, analyzing it, in order to detect the leading features of temperament, traits of thought, and motives of action ; and thence to conceive within himself, by gradual familiarity even more than by formal effort, the character therein revealed. The impres- sion thus produced he has sought to convey to others, partly in the form of ordinary narrative, — daily living with his hero, — and partly by such grouping of incidents and utterances, not always, nor even nearly, simultaneous, as shall serve by their joint evidence to emphasize particu- lar traits, or particular opinions, more forcibly than when such testimonies are scattered far apart ; as they would be, if recounted in a strict order of time. A like method of treatment has been pursued in regard to that purely external part of Nelson's career in which are embraced his military actions, as well as his public and PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION private life. The same aim is kept in view of showing clearly, not only what he did, but the principles which dominated his military thought, and guided his military actions, throughout his life; or, it may be, such changes as must inevitably occur in the development of a man who truly lives. This cannot be done satisfactorily without concentrating the evidence from time to time; and it is therefore a duty a writer owes to his readers, if they wish such acquaintance with his subject as he thinks he has succeeded in acquiring for himself. The author has received individual assistance from sev- eral persons. To a general expression of thanks he wishes to add his special acknowledgments to the present Earl Nelson, through whose aid he has obtained information of interest which otherwise probably would have escaped him; and to Lords Radstock and De Saumarez, both of whom have been good enough to place in his hands letters contemporary with Nelson, and touching incidentally mat- ters that throw light on his career. Material of the same kind has also been furnished him by Professor John Knox Laughton, whose knowledge of Nelson and of the Navy of that period is second to none; it is not the least of the writer's advantages that he has had before him, to check possible errors in either fact or conclusions, the admiralile, though brief. Life of Nelson published by Mr. Laughton two years since. Illustrative anecdotes have also been supplied by Ad- miral Sir William R. Mends, G. C. B., who has shown his continued interest in tlie work by the trouble he has taken for it; by Mr. Stuart J. Reid, of Blackwell Cliff, East Grinstead; and by Mr. Edgar Goble, of Fareham, Hants, Mr. B. F. Stevens, of 4 Trafalgar Square, has also kindly exerted himself on several occasions to obtain needed information. To Mrs. F. H. B. Eccles, of Sher- well House, Plymouth, granddaughter of Josiah Nisbet, Nelson's stepson, the author is indebted for reminiscences PREFACE to THE FIRST EDITION of Lady Nelson, and for her portrait here published ; and his thanks are also due to Lieutenant-Colonel "W. Clement D. Esdaile, of Burley ISIanor, Ringwood, Hants, through whom he was brought into communication with ]\Irs. Eccles, and who has in other ways helped him. Throughout the writing of the book constant assistance has been received from Mr. Robert B. Marston, to whom cordial acknowledgment is made for the untiring pains taken in prosecuting necessary inquiries, which could not have been done without great delay by one not living in England. Suggestions valuable to the completeness of the work have been given also by INIr. ]\Iarston. For the portrait of Mrs. Philip Ward, the "Horatia'' whom Nelson called generally his adopted daughter, but at times spoke of as his daughter simply, and whom, on the last morning of his life, he commended to the care of his Country, the author has to thank Mr. and Mrs. Nelson Ward, of 15 Lancaster Road, Belsize Park, London. Mr. Nelson Ward is her son. To the more usual sources of information already in print, it is not necessary to refer in detail ; but it is right to mention especially the collection of Hamilton and Nel- son letters, published by Mr. Alfred Morrison, a copy of Avhich by his polite attention was sent the writer, and upon which must necessarily be based such account of Nelson's relations with Lady Hamilton as, unfortunately, cannot be omitted wholly from a life so profoundly affected by them. A. T. MAHAN. March, 1897. CONTENTS CHAPTER I. 1758-1783. Page The First Tweutj-Five Years ... 1 CHAPTER II. 1784-1793. Age, 26-34. The Cruise of the "Boreas." — Controversy over the Enforcement of the Navigation Act. — Keturn to England. — Retirement until the Outbrealv of the French Revolution. — Appointed to c(jramand the " Agamemnon," 64 38 CHAPTER III. Febkdarv-Decembek, 1793. Age, 34. Nelson's Departure from England in the "Agamemnon." — Services in the Mediterranean until the Recovery of Toulon by the French. — Lord Hood in Command 82 CHAPTER IV. January-December, 1794. Age, 35. Reduction of Corsica by the British. — Departure of Lord Hood for England. — The " Agamemnon" Refitted at Leghorn 101 CHAPTER Y. January-Jult, 1795. Age, 36. Nelson's Services with the Fleet in the Mediterranean under Admiral Hotham. — Partial Fleet Actions of March 13 and 14, and July 13. — Nelson ordered to command a Detached Squadron co-operating with the Austrian Army in the Riviera of Genoa 13^ CONTENTS CHAPTER VI. JuLT-DjiCEMBEK, 1795. Age, 37. Page Nelson's Coniinaud of a Detached Squadron on the Riviera of Genoa, until the Defeat of the Austriaus at the Battle of Loano. — Sir Joiin Jervis appointed Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean . . . 157 CHAPTER VII. January-December, 1796. Age, 38. Nelson's Services in the Mediterranean during the Year 1796. — Bona- parte's Italian Campaign. — The Britisii abandon Corsica, and the Fleet leaves the Mediterranean 179 CHAPTER Ylll. December, 1796-JuNE, 1797. Age, 38. The Evacuation of Elba. — Niglit Combat with Two Spanish Frigates. — Battle of Cape St. Vincent. — Nelson Promoted to Kear-Admiral. — Services before Cadiz 221 CHAPTER IX. July, 1797-Apkil, 1798. Age, 39. The Unsuccessful Attempt against Teneriffe. — Nelson loses his Right Arm. — Return to England. — Rejoins St. Vincent's Fleet, and sent into the Mediterranean to watch the Toulon Armament .... 253 CHAPTER X. May-September, 1798. Age, 39. The Campaign and Battle of the Nile 271 CHAPTER XI. September-December, 1798. Age, 40. Nelson's Return from Egypt to Naples. — Meeting with Lady Hamilton. — Association with the Court of Naples. — War between Naples and France. — Defeat of the Neapolitans. — Flight of the Court to I'alermo 314 CONTENTS CHAPTER XII. January-May, 1799. Age, 40. Page Nelson's Career, and General Events in the Mediterranean and Ital}-, from tlie Overthrow of the Royal Government in Naples to the In- cursion of the French Fleet under Admiral Bruix 342 CHAPTER XHI. May-July, 1799. Age, 40. From the Incursion of tlie French Fleet under Bruix to the Restoration of the Royal Authority at Naples. — The Caracciolo Execution. — Nelson's Disohedience to Admiral Lord Keith 358 CHAPTER XIV. August, 1799-June, 1800. Age, 41. Nelson temporarily Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean. — Re- lieved by Lord Keith. — Applies to return to England on account of 111 Health 405 CHAPTER XV. June, 1800-Januaky, 1801. Age, 42. Nelson leaves the Mediterranean. — The Journey Overland through Germany. — Arrival in England. — Separation from Lady Nelson. — Hoists his Flag in the Channel Fleet, under Lord St. Vincent . . . 435 CHAPTER XVI. February-June, 1801. Age, 42. The Expedition to the Baltic and Battle of Copenhagen. — Nelson re- turns to England - 456 CHAPTER XVIL July-October, 1801. Age, 43. Nelson commands the " Squadron on a Particular Service," for the Defence of the Coast of England against Invasion. — Signature of Preliminaries of Peace with France 505 CONTENTS CHAPTER XVIII. OcTOBEi!, 1801-May, 1803. Age, 43-44. Page Release from Active Service iluriiig the Peace of Amiens. — Home Life at jNlerton. — Public Incidents 529 CHAPTER XIX. May, 1803-Januarv, 1805. Age, 45-46. Commander-in-Chief in tlie Mediterranean. — The Long Watch off Toulon. — Occupations of a Commander-in-Chief 557 CHAPTER XX. January-Adgust, 1805. Age, 46. The Escape and Pursuit of the Toulon Fleet. — Nelson's Return to England 632 CHAPTER XXI. August 19-September 15, 1805. Age, 46. Nelson's Last Stay in England . 677 CHAPTER XXIL September 15-October 19, 1805. Age, 47. The Antecedents of Trafalgar 691 CHAPTER XXIII. October 19-21, 1805. Age, 47. Trafalgar. — The Death of Nelson 713 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. Vice-Admiral, Lord Nelson Frontispiece From the portrait in the possession of ISir W. Biddulph Parker, Bart, of Blackbrooli House, Fareham, Hants. On the back of the picture is written, " This head was sketched from the Hero during his short stay at Merton, the beginning of September, 1 805, by me, John Whichelo." Admiral, Lord Hood 122 From the painting by L. F. Abbott, in the National Portrait Gallery. Admiral, Sir John Jervis, Earl of St. Vincent . . . 184 From an engraving by H. Robinson, after the painting by John Hoppner, in St James's Palace. Sir Thomas Troubridge 260 From the painting by Sir William Beechey. Lady Nelson 262 From a photograpli by Mr. E. Kelly, of Plymouth, of a minia- ture in the possession of Mrs. F. H. B. Eccles, of Sherwell House, Plymouth, a great-granddaughter of Lady Nelson. Believed to have been painted about the time of the Battle of the Nile. Rear-Admiral, Sir Horatio Nelson in 1798 272 From the painting by L. F. Abbott, in the National Portrait Gallery. Emma, Lady Hamilton 318 After a painting by G. Romney. Vice-Admiral, Sir Hyde Parker 481 After the painting by George Romney. H. M. Ships "Agamemnon," "Captain," "Vanguard," "Elephant," and "Victory." 558 From an engraving by J. Fittler, after the painting by N. Pocock. Admiral Collingwood 670 From the painting by Henry Howard, at Greenwich Hospital. Captain Thomas Masterman Hardy 736 From the painting by Robert Evans, at Greenwich Hospital. Horatia, at twenty-two years of age 738 From a miniature by Sir William Charles Ross, in the possession of Mr Nelson Ward. MAPS AND BATTLE PLANS. Page Map of Northern Italy, and Corsica 102 The "Agamemnon" and the " (^a Ira" 140 Partial Fleet Action, March 14, 1795 143 Battle of Cape St. Vincent, Figures 1 and 2 . . . . 230 Battle of Cape St. Vincent, Figure 3 ...... . 233 Map of the Mediterranean 276 Map of Coast-line, Alexandria to Rosetta 293 Map of Aboukir Bay 296 Battle of the Nile, First Stage 298 Battle of the Nile, Second Stage 301 Map of the Baltic and its Approaches 468 Battle of Copenhagen, Plan Number 1 473 Battle of Copenhagen, Plan Number 2 476 Map of the English Channel and North Sea .... 508 Map of Sardinia 576 Map of the North Atlantic 675 Plans of Attack, issued May, 1805, Figures 1, 2, and 3 695 Plan of Attack for Trafalgar, Figure 1 698 Plan of Attack for Trafalgar, Figure 2 702 The Attack at Trafalgar 720 Track Chart, giving the General Lines of Nelson's Cruisings, from Lieutenant in the Lowestoffe 1777 TO 1805 742 THE LIFE OF NELSON CHAPTER I. The First Twenty-Five Years. 1758-1783. IT is the appointed lot of some of History's chosen few to come upon the scene at tlie moment when a great tendency is nearing its crisis and culmination. Specially gifted with qualities needed to realize the fulness of its possibilities, they so identify themselves with it by their deeds that they thence- forth personify to the world the movement which brought them forth, and of which their own achievements are at once the climax and the most dazzling illustration. Fewer still, but happiest of all, viewed from the standpoint of fame, are those whose departure is as well timed as their appearance, who do not survive the instant of perfected success, to linger on sub- jected to the searching tests of common life, but pass from our ken in a blaze of glory which thenceforth forever encircles their names. In that evening light break away and vanish the ominous clouds wherewith human frailties or tyrant passions had threatened to darken their renown ; and their sun goes down with a lustre which the lapse of time is powerless to dim. Such was the privilege of the stainless Wolfe ; such, beyond all others, that of Nelson. Earely has a man been more favored in the hour of his appearing ; never one so fortunate in the moment of his death. Yet, however accidental, or providential, this rarely allotted portion, this crowning incident of an heroic career, it is after all but an incident. It the man has not contrived; but to it he has contributed much, withou.t which his passing hour would have faded to memory, undistinguished among those of the myriads, great and small, who have died as nobly and are 1 THE LIFE OF NELSON forever forgotten. A sun has set; but before its setting it has run a course, be it long or short, and has gathered a radiance which iixes upon its parting beams the rapt attention of be- holders. The man's self and the man's works, what he was and what he did, the nature which brought forth such fruits, the thoughts which issued in such acts, hopes, fears, desires, quick intuitions, painful struggles, lofty ambitions, happy- opportunities, have blended to form that luminous whole, known and seen of all, but not to be understood excej)t by a patient effort to resolve the great result into its several rays, to separate the strands whose twisting has made so strong a cord. Concerning the man's external acts, it will often happen that their true value and significance can best be learned, not from his own personal recital, but from an analytic study of the deeds themselves. Yet into them, too, often enters, not only the subtile working of their author's natural qualities, but also a certain previous history of well-defined opinions, of settled principles firmly held, of trains of thought and reasoning, of intuitions wrought into rational convictions, all of which betray both temjierament and character. Of these intellectual ante- cedents, the existence and development may be gleaned from his writings, confirming the inference reached somewhat mechanically by the scrutiny of his actions. They play to the latter the part of the soul to the body, and thus contribute to the rather anatomical result of the dissecting process a spiritual element it would otherwise lack. But if this is so even of the outward career, it is far more deeply true of the inner history, of that underlying native character, which masterfully moulds and colors every life, yet evades the last analysis except when the obscure workings of heart and mind have been laid bare by their owner's words, recording the feelings of the fleeting hour with no view to future inspection. In these revelations of self, made Avithout thought of the world outside, is to be found, if anywhere, the clue to that complex and often contra- dictory mingling of qualities which go to form the oneness of the man's personality. This discordance between essential unity and superficial diversities must be harmonized, if a true conception of his being is to be formed. We know the faces of our friends, but we see each as one. The features can, if THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS we will, be separately considered, catalogued, and valued ; but who ever thus thinks habitually of one he knows well ? Yet to know well must be the aim of biography, — so to present the traits in their totality, without suppression of any, and in their true relative proportions, as to produce, not the blurred or distorted outlines seen through an imperfect lens, but the vivid apprehension which follows long intimacy with its con- tinual, though unconscious, process of correction. For such a treatment of Nelson's character, copious, if im- perfect, material is afforded in his extensive and varied corre- spondence. From it the author aims, first, to draw forth a distinct and living image of the man himself, as sketched there- in at random and loosely by his own hand. It is sought to reach the result by keeping the reader in constant contact, as by daily acquaintance, with a personality of mingled weakness and strength, of grave faults as well as of great virtues, but one whose charm was felt in life by all who knew it. The second object, far less ambitious, is to present a clear narrative of the military career, of the mighty deeds of arms, of this first of British seamen, whoiii the gifts of Nature and the course of History have united to make, in his victories and in their results, the representative figure of the greatest sea-power that the world has known. It will not be thought surprising that we have, of the first thirty years of Nelson's life, no such daily informal record as that which illustrates the comparatively brief but teeming period of his active fighting career, from 1793 to 1805, when he at once, with inevitable directness and singular rapidity, rose to prominence, and established intimate relations with numbers of his contemporaries. A few anecdotes, more or less characteristic, have been preserved concerning his boyhood and youth. In his early manhood we have his own account, both explicit and implied in many casual unpremeditated phrases, of the motives which governed his public conduct in an episode occurring when, scarcely yet more than a youth, he commanded a frigate in the West Indies, — the whole singularly confirma- tory, it might better be said prophetic, of the distinguishing qualities afterwards so brilliantly manifested in his maturity. But beyond these, it is only by the closest attention and careful gleaning that can be found, in the defective and discontinuous THE LIFE OF NELSON collection of letters which remains from his first thirty years, the indisputable tokens, in most important particulars, of the man that was to be. The external details of this generally uneventful jieriod can be rapidly summarized. He was born on the 29th of Septem- ber, 1758, the fifth son and sixth child of Edmund Nelson, then rector of the parish of Burnham Thorpe, in Norfolk, a county which lies along the eastern coast of England, bordering the North Sea. His mother, whose name before marriage was Catherine Suckling, was grandniece to Sir Eobert WaljDole, the famous prime minister of Great Britain during twenty years of the reigns of the first two Georges. Sir Robert's second brother was called Horatio ; and it was from the latter, or from his son, that the future hero took his baptismal name, which, in a more common form, was also that of Sir Robert's younger son, the celebrated letter and memoir writer, Horace Walpole. Of the eleven children borne by Nelson's mother in her eighteen wedded years, only two lived to grow old. She her- self died at forty-two ; and her brother. Captain Maurice Suckling, of the Royal Navy, was also cut off in the prime of his age. As the earlier Nelsons were unusually long-lived, it seems probable that a certain delicacy of constitution was transmitted through the Sucklings to the generation to which the admiral belonged. He was himself, at various periods through life, a great sufferer, and frequently an invalid ; allu- sions to illness, often of a most prostrating type, and to his susceptibility to the influences of climate or weather, occur repeatedly and at brief intervals throughout his correspond- ence. This is a factor in his career which should not be lost to mind; for on the one hand it explains in part the fretful- ness which at times appears, and on the other brings out with increased force the general kindly sweetness of his temper, which breathed with slight abatement through such depressing conditions. It enhances, too, the strength of purpose that trod bodily weakness under foot, almost unconsciously, at the call of duty or of honor. It is notable, in his letters, that the necessity for exertion, even when involving severe exposure, is apt to be followed, though without apparent recognition of a connection between the two, by the remark that he has not for a long time been so well. He probably experienced, as THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS have others, that it is not the greater hardships of the profes- sion, much less the clangers, but its uncertainties and petty vexations, which tell most severely on a high-strung organiza- tion like his own. The immediate occasion of his going to sea was as follows. In 1770 the Falkland Islands, a desolate and then unimportant group, lying in the South Atlantic, to the eastward of Pata- gonia, were claimed as a possession by both Spain and Great Britain. The latter had upon them a settlement called Fort Egmont, before which, in the year named, an overwhelming Spanish squadron suddenly appeared, and compelled the British occupants to lower their flag. The insult aroused public indignation in England to the highest pitch ; and, while peremptory demands for reparation were despatched to Spain, a number of ships of war were ordered at once into commis- sion. Among these was the " Eaisonnable," of sixty- four guns, to the command of which was appointed Nelson's uncle. Captain Maurice Suckling. The latter had some time before promised to provide for one of his sister's children, the family being very poor ; and, the custom of the day permitting naval captains, as a kind of patronage, to take into the King's service on board their own ships a certain number of lads, as midshipmen or otherwise, the opportunity of giving a nephew a start in life was now in his hands. The story is that Horatio, though then but twelve years old, realized the burden of pecuniary care that his father was carrying, and himself volunteered the wish that his uncle would take him to sea. However it happened, the suggestion staggered Suckling, who well knew the lad's puny frame and fragile constitution. ''What has poor little Horatio done," cried he, "that he, being so weak, should be sent to rough it at sea ? But let him come, and if a cannon-ball takes off his head, he will at least be provided for." Under such gloomy foreboding began the most dazzling career that the sea, the mother of so many heroes, has ever seen.^ 1 The precise date of Xelson's entering the Navy, which would be that of his being rated upon the books of the " Raisonnable," is not stated. Accepting the times during which he was borne upon the books of different ships, as given by Sir Harris Nicolas (Letters and Despatches of Lord Nelson, vol. i. p. 4, note), and with them calculating back from October 15, 1773, the day THE LIFE OF NELSON Spain, after a short hesitation, yielded the British demands, so that war did not come, and the " Eaisonnable," with other ships, was again put out of commission. The incident of the Falkland Islands, however, had served the purpose of introducing Nelson to his profession, for which otherwise the opportunity might not have offered. Being so young when thus embarked, he, in common with many of the most success- ful seamen of that day, got scanty schooling ; nor did he, as some others did, by after application remedy the eccentricities of style, and even of grammar, which are apt to result from such early neglect. His letters, vigorous and direct as they are, present neither the polished diction of Collingwood, nor the usual even correctness of St. Vincent and Saumarez, but are, on the contrary, constantly disfigured by awkward expres- sions and bad English. There was rarely, however, danger of mistaking his meaning, as was sometimes charged against Lord Howe. Here, before fairly parting with the humble home life, of which the motherless boy had seen, and was throughout his career to see so little, is a fit place to introduce two anecdotes associated with those early days which his biographers have transmitted to us. We of these critical times have learned to look with incredulity, not always unmixed with derision, upon stories relating to the childhood of distinguished men ; but it can safely be said that the two now to be given are in entire keeping, not merely with particular traits, but with the great ruling tenor of Nelson's whole life. He and his elder brother were going to school one winter day upon their ponies. Find- ing the snow so deep as to delay them seriously, they went back, and the elder reported that they could not get on. The mentioned by Nelson himself as that on which he was paid off from the "Carcass" (Nicolas, p. 5), the date of entry upon the books of the " Raisoiinable " would be November 27, 1770; unless, which is unlikely, there were any lost days. The news of the Port Egmont business reached England in October, 1770. Clarke and M'Arthur (Life of Nelson, vol. i. p. 14, note) infer January 1, 1771, for his entry u])on the " Raisonnable's " books ; but this would not allow the times which Nicolas gives with minute exactness. For his actually joining the " Raisonnable " they give, loosely, the spring of 1771, — March or April. This is very possible, as rating back, for the sake of gaining constructive time needed to qualify for promotion, was tolerated by the practice of the day. THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS father very judiciously replied: "If that be so, I have of course nothing to say ; but I wish you to try again, and I leave it to your honour not to turn back, unless necessary." On the second attempt, the elder was more than once for returning; but Horatio stuck it out, repeating continually, "Eemember it was left to our honour," and the difficult journey was accomplished. The children in this instance seem to have felt that there was danger in going on. The other recorded occurrence shows in the lad that indifference to personal benefit, as distinguished from the sense of conspicuous achievement, which was ever a prominent characteristic of the man. The master of his school had a very fine pear-tree, whose fruit the boys coveted, but upon which none dared hazard an attempt. At last Nelson, who did not share their desires, undertook the risk, climbed the tree by night, and carried off the pears, but refused to eat any of them, — sajang that he had taken them only because the others were afraid. Trivial though these incidents may seem, they are so merely because they belong to the day of small things. To those accustomed to watch children, they will not appear unworthy of note. Taken together, they illustrate, as really as do his greatest deeds, the two forms assumed at different times by the one incentive which always most powerfully determined Nelson's action through life, — the motive to which an appeal was never made in vain. No material considerations, neither danger on the one hand, nor gain on the other, ever affected him as did that idealized conception which presented itself, now as duty, now as honor, according as it bore for the mo- ment upon his relations to the state or to his own personality. '' In my mind's eye," said he to his friend Captain Hardy, who afterwards bent over him as his spirit was parting amid the tumult of his last victory, "I ever saw a radiant orb suspended which beckoned me onward to renown." Nelson did not often verge upon the poetical in words, but to the poetry of lofty aspiration his inmost being always answered true. To the young naval officer of a century ago, especially if without political or social influence, it was a weighty advan- tage to be attached to some one commanding officer in active employment,, who by favorable opportunity or through pro- THE LIFE OF NELSON fessional friendships could push the fortunes of those in whom he was interested. Much of the promotion was then in the hands of the admirals on foreign stations ; and this local power to reward distinguished service, though liable to abuse in many ways, conduced greatly to stimulate the zeal and efforts of officers who felt themselves immediately under the eye of one who could make or mar their future. Each naval captain, also, could in his degree affect more or less the prospects of those dependent upon him. Thus Suckling, though not going to sea himself, continued with intelligent solicitude his promised care of the young Nelson. When the " Raisonnable " was paid off, he was transferred to the com- mand of the " Triumph," of seventy-four guns, stationed as guard-ship in the river Med way ; and to her also he took with him his ne^^hew, who was borne upon her books for the two following years, which were, however, far from being a period of inactive harbor life. Having considerable professional interest, he saw to the lad's being kept afloat, and obtained for him from time to time such service as seemed most desirable to his enterjDrising spirit. The distinction between the merchant seaman and the man- of-war's man, or even the naval officer, in those days of sail- ing ships and simple weapons was much less sharply marked than it has since become. Skill in seamanship, from the use of the marlinespike and the sail-needle up to the full equipping of a ship and the handling of her under canvas, was in either service the prime essential. In both alike, cannon and small arms were carried ; and the ship's company, in the peaceful trader as well as in the ship of war, expected to repel force with force, when meeting upon equal terms. With a reduced number of naval vessels in commission, and their quarter- decks consequently over-crowded with young officers, a youth was more likely to find on board them a life of untasked idle- ness than a call to professional occupation and improvement. Nelson therefore was sent by his careful guardian to a mer- chant-ship trading to the West Indies, to learn iipon her, as a foremast hand, the elements of his profession, under condi- tions which, from the comparative fewness of the crew and the activity of the life, would tend to develop his powers most rapidly. In this vessel he imbibed, along with nautical knowl- THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS edge, the prejudice which has usually existed, more or less, in the merchant marine against the naval service, due probably to the more rigorous exactions and longer terms of enlistment in the latter, although the life in other respects is one of less hardship; but in Nelson's day the feeling had been intensified by the practice of impressment, and by the severe, almost brutal discipline that obtained on board some ships of war, through the arbitrary use of their powers by captains, then insufficiently controlled by law. In this cruise he seems to have spent a little over a year ; a time, however, that was not lost to him for the accomplishment of the period of service technically required to qualify as a lieutenant, his name con- tinuing throughout on the books of the " Triumph," to which he returned in July, 1772. Suckling's care next insured for him a continuance of active, semi-detached duty, in the boats of the " Triumph," — an employment very different from, and more responsible than, that in which he had recently been occupied, and particularly calculated to develop in so apt a nature the fearlessness of responsibility, both professional and personal, that was among the most' prominent features of Nelson's character. *' The test of a man's courage is responsibility," said that great admiral and shrewd judge of men, the Earl of St. Vincent, after a long and varied experience of naval officers ; and none ever shone more brightly under this supreme proof than the lad whose career is now opening before us. It may be inter- esting, too, to note that this condition of more or less detached service, so early begun, in which, though not in chief com- mand, he held an authority temporarily independent, and was immediately answerable for all that happened on the spot, was the singular characteristic of most of his brilliant course, during which, until 1803, two years before Trafalgar, he was only for brief periods commander-in-chief, yet almost always acted apart from his superior. Many a man, gallant, fearless, and capable, within signal distance of his admiral, has, when out of sight of the flag, succumbed" with feeble knees to the burden of independent responsible action, though not beyond his professional powers. This strength, like all Nature's best gifts, is inborn ; yet, both for the happy possessor and for the merely average man, it is susceptible of high development 10 THE LIFE OF NELSOX only by being early exercised, which was the good fortune of Nelson. Of these two years of somewhat irregular service, while nominally attached to the " Triumph," it will be well to give the account in his own words ; for, having been written a full quarter of a century later, they record the deepest and most lasting impressions made upon him during that susceptible period when first becoming familiar Avith the calling he was to adorn : — " The business with Spain being accommodated, I was sent in a West India ship belonging to tlie house of Hibbert, Furrier, and Horton, with Mr. John Rathbone, who had formerly been in the Navy, in the Dreadnought with Captain Suckling. From this voyage I returned to the triumph at Chatham in July, 1772 ; and, if I did not improve in my education, I returned a practical Seaman, with a horror of the Royal Xavy, and with a saying, then constant with the Sea- men, ' Afl tlie most honour, forward the Letter inati ! ' It was many weeks before I got the least reconciled to a Mau-of-War, so deep was the prejudice rooted ; and what pains were taken to instil tliis erro- neous principle in a young mind ! However, as my ambition was to be a Seaman, it was always held out as a reward, that if I attended well to my navigation, I should go in the cutter and decked long-boat, which was attached to the Commanding officer's ship at Chatham. Thus by degrees I became a good pilot, for vessels of that description, from Chatham to the Tower of London, down the Swin, and the North Foreland; and confident of myself amongst rocks and sands, which has many times since been of great comfort to me. In this way I was trained, till the expedition towards the North Pole was fitted out; when, although no boys were allowed to go in the Ships, (as of no use,) yet nothing could prevent my using every interest to go with Captain Lutwidge in the Carcass ; and, as I fancied I was to fill a man's place, I begged I might be his cockswain ; which, finding my ardent desire for going with him, Captain Lutwidge complied with, and lias continued the strictest friendship to this moment. Lord Mulgrave, whom I then first knew, maintained his kindest friendship and regard to the last moment of his life. Wlien the boats were fit- ting out to quit the two Ships blocked up in the ice, I exerted myself to have the command of a four-oared cutter raised upon, which was given me, with twelve men; and I prided myself in fancying I could navigate her better than any other boat in the Ship." It will be recognized from this brief yet suggestive and characteristic narrative, that, however valuable and even THE riKST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 11 indispensable may have been his uncle's assistance in forward- ing his wishes, it was his own ambition and his own impulse that even at this early day gave direction to his course, and obtained opportunities which would scarcely have been offered spontaneously to one of his physical frailty. In this Arctic expedition he underwent the experiences common to all who tempt those icebound seas. During it occurred an incident illustrative of iSTelson's recklessness of personal danger, — a very different thing from official recklessness, which he never showed even in his moments of greatest daring and highest inspiration. The story is so hackneyed by frequent repetition as to make its relation a weariness to the biographer, the more so that the trait of extreme rashness iu youth is one by no means so rare as to be specially significant of Nel- son's character. It will be given in the words of his first biographers : — "There is also an anecdote recollected by Admiral Lutwidge, which marked the fiUal attention of his gallant cockswain. Among the gentlemen on the quarter-deck of the Carcass, who were not rated midsldpmen, there was, besides young Nelson, a daring ship- mate of his, to whom he had become attached. One night, during the mid-watch, it was concerted between them that tliey should steal together from the ship and endeavour to obtain a bear's skin. The clearness of the niglits iu those high latitudes rendered the accom- plishment of this object extremely difficult : they, however, seem to have taken advantage of the haze of an approaching fog, and thus to have escaped unnoticed. Nelson in high spirits led the way over the frightful chasms in the ice, armed with a rusty musket. It was not, however, long before the adventurers were missed by those on board ; and, as the fog had come on very thick, the anxiety of Captain Lut- widge and his officers was very great. Between three and four in the morning the mist somewhat dispersed, and the hunters were dis- covered at a considerable distance, attacking a large bear. The signal was instantly made for their return ; but it was in vain that Nelson's companion urged him to obey it. He was at this time divided by a chasm in the ice from his shaggy antagonist, which probably saved his life ; for the musket had flashed in the pan, and their ammunition was expended. ' Never mind,' exclaimed Horatio, ' do but let me get a blow at this devil with the butt-end of my musket, and we shall have him.' His companion, finding that entreaty was in vain, regained the ship. The captain, seeing the young man's danger, ordered a gun to be fired to terrify the enraged 12 THE LIFE OF NELSON animal. This had the desired eifect ; but Nelson was obliged to return without his bear, somewhat agitated with the apprehension of the consec^ueuce of this adventure. Captain Lutwidge, though he could not but admire so daring a disposition, reprimanded him rather sternly for such rashness, and for conduct so unworthy of the situation he occupied ; and desired to know what motive he could have for hunting a bear? Being thought by his captain to have acted in a manner unworthy of his situation, made a deep impression on the high-minded cockswain ; who, pouting his lip, as he was wont to do when agitated, replied, ' Sir, I wished to kill the bear, that I might carry its skin to my father.' " Upon his return to England from the Arctic Seas, Nelson again by his own choice determined his immediate future. Within a fortnight of leaving the " Carcass," he was, through his uncle's influence, received on board by the captain of the " Seahorse," of twenty guns, one of the ships composing a squadron that was just then fitting out for the East Indies. To quote himself, " Nothing less than such a distant voyage could in the least satisfy my desire of maritime knowledge." During an absence of three years he for much of the time, as formerly in his West India cruise, did the duty of a seaman aloft, from which he was afterwards rated midshipman, and placed, this time finally, upon the quarter-deck as an officer. In the ordinary course of cruising in peace times, he visited every part of the station from Bengal to Bussorah ; but the climate, trying even to vigorous Europeans, proved too much for his frail health. After a couple of years he broke down and was invalided home, reaching England in September, 1776. His escape from death was attributed by himself to the kind care of Captain Pigot of the " Dolphin," in which ship he came back. At this period we are told that, when well, he was of florid countenance, rather stout and athletic ; but, as the result of his illness, he was reduced to a mere skeleton, and for some time entirely lost the use of his limbs, — a distressing symp- tom, that returned iipon him a few years later after his Cen- tral American expedition in 17S0, and confirms the impression of extreme fragility of constitution, which is frequently indi- cated in other ways. During this absence in the East Indies Captain Suckling, in April, 1775, had been named Comptroller of the Navy, — a THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 13 civil position, but one that carried with it power and conse- quent influence. This probably told for much in obtaining for Nelson, who was but just eighteen, and liad not yet passed the examinations for his first promotion, an acting appointment as lieutenant. With this he joined a small ship-of-the-line, the " Worcester," of sixty-four guns, on board which he remained for six months, engaged in convoy duty between the Channel and Gibraltar, seeing from her decks for the first time the waters of the Mediterranean and its approaches, since then indissolubly associated with his name and his glory. He took with him a letter from his uncle to the captain of his new ship ; but while such introduction, coming from so influential a quarter, doubtless contributed powerfully to clear from his path the obstacles commonly encountered by young men, 'Nel- son had gained for himself a reputation for professional capacity, which, here as throughout his life, quickly won him the full confidence of his superiors. In later years, when his admiral's flag was flying, he recorded, with evident pride in the recollection, that while on board the " Worcester," not- withstanding his youth, his captain used to say, " He felt as easy when I was u.pon deck as any officer of the ship." It is doubtful, indeed, whether Nelson ever possessed in a high degree the delicate knack of handling a ship with the utmost dexterity and precision. He certainly had not the reputation for so doing. Codrington — a thorough Nelsonian, to use his own somewhat factious expression — used to say in later years, " Lord Nelson was no seaman ; even in the earlier stages of the profession his genius had soared higher, and all his ener- gies were turned to becoming a great commander." His apprenticeship, before reaching command, was probably too short ; and, as captain, his generous disposition to trust others to do work for which he knew them fitted, would naturally lead him to throw the manipulation of the vessel upon his subordinates. But although, absorbed by broader and deeper thoughts of the responsibilities and opportunities of a naval commander, to which he was naturally attracted by both his genius and his temperament, he was excelled in technical skill by many who had no touch of his own inspiration, he never- theless possessed a thoroughly competent knowledge of his profession as a simple seaman ; which, joined to his zeal, 14 THE LIFE OF NELSON energy, and intelligence, would more than justify the confi- dence expressed by his early commander. Of this knowledge he gave full proof a year later, when, before a board of cap- tains, strangers to him, he successfully passed his examina- tions for a lieutenancy. His uncle Suckling, as Comptroller of the Navy, was indeed on the board ; but he concealed the fact of relationship until the other members had expressed themselves satisfied. His examination was held within a week of his leaving the "Worcester," on the 8th of April, 1777; and Suckling once more, but for the last time in his life, was able to exert his influence in behalf of his relative by promptly securing for him, not only his promotion to lieutenant, which many waited for long, but with it his commission, dated April 10, to the " Lowestoffe," a frigate of thirty-two guns. This class of vessel was in the old days considered particularly desirable for young officers, being more active than ships-of-the-line, while at the same time more comfortable, and a better school for the forming of an officer, than were the smaller cruisers ; and his uncle probably felt that JSTelson, whose service hitherto had been mainly upon the latter, needed yet to perfect the habits and methods distinctive of a ship of war, for he now wrote him a letter upon the proprieties of naval conduct, excellently conceived, yet embracing particulars that should scarcely have been necessary to one who had served his time on board well-ordered ships. The appointment to the "Lowe- stoffe " was further fortunate, both for him and for us, as in the commander of the vessel, Captain William Locker, he found, not only an admirable officer and gentleman, but a friend for whom he formed a lasting attachment, ending only with Locker's death in 1800, two years after the Battle of the Nile. To this friendship we owe the fullest record, at his own hands, of his early career ; for Locker kept the numer- ous letters written him by Nelson while still an unknown young man. Of seventy odd which now remain, covering the years from 1777 to 1783, thirty-seven were to this one correspondent. In another respect the appointment to the " Lowestoffe " was fortunate for Nelson. The ship was destined to the West Indies — or, to speak more precisely, to Jamaica, THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 15 which was a command distinct from that of the eastern Caribbean, or Lesser Antilles, officially styled the Leeward Islands Station. Great Britain was then fully embarked in the war with her ISTorth American colonies, which ended in their independence ; and the course of events was has- tening her to the rupture with France and Spain that fol- lowed within a year. In this protracted contest the chief scene of naval hostilities was to be the West Indies ; but beyond even the casualties of war, the baneful climate of that region insured numerous vacancies by prostration and death, with consequent chances of promotion for those who escaped the fevers, and found favor in the eyes of their commander-in-chief. The brutal levity of the old toast, "A bloody war and a sickly season," nowhere found surer fulfilment than on those pestilence-stricken coasts. Captain Locker's health soon gave way. Arriving at Jamaica on the 19th of July, 1777, we find Nelson in the following month writing to him from the ship during an absence produced by a serious illness, from which fatal results were feared. The letter, like all those to Locker, was marked hy that tone of quick, eager sympathy, of genial inclination always to say the kindest thing, that characterized his correspondence, and, generally, his intercourse with others, — traits that through life made him, beyond most men, acceptable and beloved. He was, from first to last, not merely one of those whose services are forced upon others by sheer weight of ability, because indispensable, — though this, too, he was, — but men wanted him because, although at times irritable, especially after the wounds received in later years, he was an easy yoke- fellow, pleasant to deal with, cordial and ready to support those above him, a tolerant and appreciative master to sub- ordinates. It may even be said that, in matters indiffer- ent to him, he too readily reflected the feelings, views, and wishes of those about him ; but when they clashed with his own fixed convictions, he was immovable. As he himself said in such a case, "I feel I am perfectly right, and you know upon those occasions I am not famous for giving up a point." Of his connection with the " Lowestoffe " he himself, in the short autobiographical sketch before quoted, mentions 16 THE LIFE OF NELSON two circumstances, which, from the very fact of their re- maining so long in his memory, illustrate temperament. " Even a frigate," he says, " was not sufficiently active for my mind, and I got into a schooner, tender to the Lowestoffe. In this vessel I made myself a complete pilot for all the passages through the [Keys] Islands situated on the north side Hispaniola." This kind of service, it will be noted, was in direct sequence, as to training, to his handling of the " Triumph's " long-boat in the lower waters of the Thames, and would naturally contribute to increase that " confidence in himself among rocks and sands," which was afterwards to be so " great a comfort " to him. In his later career he had frequent and pressing need of that particular form of profes- sional judgment and self-reliance for which these early expe- riences stood him in good stead. As he afterwards wrote to the First Lord of the Admiralty, when pleading the cause of a daring and skilful officer who had run his ship ashore : " If I had been censured every time I have run my ship, or fleets under my command, into great danger, I should long ago have been out of the service, and never in the House of Peers." At the critical instants of the Nile and Copenhagen, as well as in the less conspicuous but more prolonged anxieties of the operations off Corsica and along the Riviera of Genoa, this early habit, grafted upon the singularly steady nerve wherewith he was endowed by nature, sustained him at a height of daring and achievement to which very few have been able to rise. The other incident recorded by him as happening while on board the " Lowestoffe," he himself cites as illustrative of temperament. " Whilst in this frigate, an event happened which presaged my character ; and, as it conveys no dishonour to the officer alluded to, I shall insert it. Blowing a gale of wind, and a very heavy sea, the frigate captured an American letter-of-marque. The first Lieutenant was ordered to board her, which he did not do, owing to the very heavy sea. On his return, the Captain said, ' Have I no officer in the ship who can board the prize ? ' On which the Master ran to the gangway, to get into the boat : when I stopped him, saying, * It is my turn now ; and if I come back, it is yours.' This little incident," he continues, "has often occurred to my THE riEST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 17 mind; and I know it is my disposition, that difficulties and dangers do but increase my desire of attempting them." An action of this sort, in its results unimportant, gives keener satisfaction in the remembrance than do greater deeds, because more purely individual, — entirely one's own. It is upon such as this, rather than upon his victories, that Nelson in his narrative dwells caressingly. His personal daring at St. Vincent, and against the gunboats off Cadiz, ministered more directly to his self-esteem, to that consciousness of high desert which was dear to him, than did the Battle of the Nile, whose honors he, though ungrudgingly, shared with his " band, of brothers." When the " Lowestoffe " had been a year upon the station, it became very doubtful whether Locker could continue in her, and finally he did go home ill. It was probably due to this uncertainty that he obtained the transfer of Nelson, in whom he had become most affectionately interested, to the "Bristol," flagship of Sir Peter Parker, the commander-in- chief. Here, under the admiral's own eye, warmly recom- mended by his last captain, and with a singular faculty for enlisting the love and esteem of all with whom he was brouglit into contact, the young officer's prospects were of the fairest; nor did the event belie them. Joining the " Bristol " as her third lieutenant, not earlier than July, 1778, he had by the end of September risen " by succession " — ■ to use his own phrase — to be first; a promotion by seniority whose rapidity attests the' rate at which vacancies occurred. Both Parker and his wife became very fond of him, cared for him in illness, and in later years she wrote to him upon each of the occasions on which he most brilliantly distinguished himself — after St. Vincent, the Nile, and. Copenhagen. "Your mother," said she after the first, " could not have heard of your deeds with more affection ; nor could she be more rejoiced at your per- sonal escape from all the dangers of that glorious day; " and again, after the Nile, " Sir Peter and I have ever regarded you as a son." The letter following the victory at Copen- hagen has not been published ; but Nelson, whose heart was never reluctant to gratitude nor to own obligation, wrote in reply : "Believe me when I say that I am as sensible as ever that I owe my present position in life to your and good Sir 2 18 THE LIFE OF NELSON Peter's partiality for me, and friendly remembrance of Maurice Suckling." This last allusion indicates some disinterestedness in Par- ker's patronage, and its vital importance to Nelson at that time. Captain Suckling had died in July, 1778, and with him departed the only powerful support upon which the young lieutenant could then count, apart from his own merits and the friends obtained by them. There was in those days an immense difference in prospects between the nephew of the Comptroller of the Navy and a man unknown at headquar- ters. By what leading principles, if any, Sir Peter Parker was guided in the distribution of his favors, can scarcely now be ascertained ; but that he brought rapidly forward two men of such great yet widely different merit as Nelson and Colling- wood, is a proof that his judgment was sound and the station one where vacancies were frequent. Colliugwood, who was then a lieutenant on board a sloop-of-war, went to the " Lowestott'e" in Nelson's place. When the latter, in Decem- ber, 1778, was made commander into the brig "Badger," the other was transferred to the vacant room in the '' Bristol ; " and when Nelson, on the 11th of June, 1779, became post-captain in the " Hinchinbrook " frigate, Colliugwood again followed him as commander of the " Badger." Finally, when through a death vacancy a better frigate offered for Nelson, Colliug- wood also was posted into the " Hinchinbrook ; " this ship thus having the singular distinction of conferring the highest rank obtainable by selection, and so fixing the final position of the two life-long friends who led the columns at Trafalgar, the crowning achievement of the British Navy as well as of their own illustrious careers. The coincidence at the earlier date may have been partly factitious, due to a fad of the com- mander-in-chief ; but it assiimes a different and very impres- sive aspect viewed in the light of their later close association, especially when it is recalled that Colliugwood also succeeded, upon Nelson's death, to the Mediterranean command, and Avas there worn out, as his predecessor fell, in the discharge of his duty upon that important station, which thus proved fatal to them both. Few historic parallels are so complete. Sir Peter Parker, living until 1811, survived both his illustrious juniors, and at the age of eighty-two followed Nelson's coffin, as chief THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 19 mourner at the imposing obsequies, where the nation, from the highest to the lowest, mingled the exultation of triumph with weeping for the loss of its best-beloved. Of Nelson's exterior at this time, his early biographers have secured an account which, besides its value as a portrait, pos- sesses the further interest of mentioning explicitly that charm of manner which was one of his best birth-gifts, reflecting, as it did, the generous aud kindly temper of his heart. "■ The personal appearance of Captain Nelson at this period of his life, owing to his delicate health and diminutive figure, was far from ex- pressing the greatness of his intellectual powers. From his earliest years, like Cleomenes, the hero of Sparta, he had been enamoured of glory, and had possessed a greatness of mind. Nelson preserved, also, a similar temperance and simplicity of manners. Nature, as Plutarch adds of the noble Spartan, had given a spur to his mind which rendered him impetuous in the pursuit of whatever he deemed honourable. The demeanour of this extraordinary young man was entirely the demeanour of a British seaman ; when the energies of his mind were not called forth by some object of duty, or professional interest, he seemed to retire within himself, and to care but little for the refined courtesies of polished life." No saving sense of humor seems to have suggested that the profane might here ask, '' Is this the British seaman ? " " In his dress he had all the cleanliness of an Englishman, though his manner of wear- ing it gave him an air of negligence ; and yet his general ad- dress and conversation, when he wished to please, possessed a charm that was irresistible." ^ In June, 1779, when posted into the " Hinchinbrook," Nel- son wanted still three months of being twenty-one. By the custom of the British Navy, then and now, promotions from the grade of Captain to that of Admiral are made by seniority only. Once a captain, therefore, a man's future was assured, so far as concerned the possibility of juniors passing over his head, — neither favor nor merit could procure that ; his rank relatively to others was finally fixed. The practical difficulty of getting at a captain of conspicuous ability, to make of him a fiag-officer, was met by one of those clumsy yet adequate expedients by which the practical English mind contrives to 1 Clarke aud M'Arthur, vol. i. p. 31. 20 THE LIFE OF NELSON reconcile respect for precedent with the demands of emer- gency. There being then no legal limit to the number of admii-als, a promotion was in such case made of all captains down to and including the one wanted ; and Lord St. Vincent, one of the most thorough-going of naval statesmen, is credited with the declara,tion that he would promote a hundred down the list of captains, if necessary, to reach the one .demanded by the needs of the country. Even with this rough-riding over obstacles, — for the other officers promoted, however useful in their former grade, not being wanted as admirals, remained perforce unemployed, — the advantage of reaching post-rank betimes is evident enough ; and to this chiefly Nel- son referred in acknowledging his permanent indebtedness to Sir Peter Parker. With this early start, every artificial im- pediment was cleared from his path ; his extraordinary ability was able to assert itself, and could be given due opportunity, without a too violent straining of service methods. He had, indeed, to wait eighteen years for his flag-rank ; but even so, he obtained it while still in the very prime of his energies, before he was thirty-nine, — a good fortune equalled by none of his most distinguished contemporaries.^ A somewhat singular feature of this early promotion of Nelson is that it was accorded without the claim of service in actual battle, — a circumstance that seems yet more remark- able when contrasted with the stormy and incessant warfare of his later career. While he was thus striding ahead, his equals in years, Saumarez and Pellew, were fighting their way up step by step, gaining each as the reward of a distinct meritorious action, only to find themselves outstripped by one who had scarcely seen a gun fired in anger. The result was mainly due to the nature of the station, where sickness made vacancies more rapidly than the deadliest engagement. But while this is true, and must be taken into the account, it was character- istic of Nelson that his value transpired through the simplest intercourse, and amid the commonplace incidents of service. Locker and Parker each in turn felt this. A little later, while he and Collingwood were still unknown captains, the latter, usually measured and formal in his language, wrote to him in 1 Collingwood was nearly fifty when he got his flag. Howe was forty-five, St. Vincent fifty-three, Saumarez forty-four, JExmonth (Pellew) forty-eight. THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 21 these singularly strong words : " My regard for you, my dear Nelson, my respect and veneration for your character, I hope and believe, will never lessen." So, some years afterwards, but before lie became renowned or had wrought his more bril- liant achievements, an envious brother captain said to him, " You did just as you pleased in Lord Hood's time, the same in Admiral Hotham's, and now again with Sir John Jervis ; it makes no difference to you who is Commander-in-chief." This power of winning confidence and inspiring attachment was one of the strongest elements in Nelson's success, alike as a sub- ordinate and when himself in chief command. With his mind ever fixed upon glory, or rather upon honor, — the word he himself most often used, and which more accu- rately expresses his desire for fame ; honor, which is to glory what character is to reputation, — the same hard fortune per- sisted in denying to him, during the War of the American Revolution, the opportunities for distinction which he so ardently coveted. In the " Badger " and in the " Hinchiu' brook," during the year 1779, his service was confined to routine cruising about Jamaica and along the Mosquito coast of Central America. A gleam of better things for a moment shone upon him in August of that year, when the French fleet, under Count D'Estaing, appeared in Haiti, numbering twenty- two ships-of-the-line, with transports reported to be carrying twenty thousand troops. All Jamaica was in an uproar of ap- prehension, believing an attack upon the island to be immi- nent ; for its conquest was known to be one of the great objects of the enemy. Nelson was at the time living on shore, the " Hinchinbrook " seemingly ^ not having returned to the port since his appointment to her, and he eagerly accepted the duty of commanding the land batteries. The odds were great, — " You must not be surprised to hear of my learning to speak French," he wrote, laughingly, to Locker in England, — but if so, the greater the honor attendant, whether upon success or defeat. D'Estaing, however, passed on to America to encoun- ter disaster at Savannah, and Nelson's hopes were again disappointed. In January, 1780, an opportunity for service offered, which 1 This appears certain from his letters of July 28 and August 12, which explicitly mention that ship's absence. 22 THE LIFE OF NELSON ended in no conspicuous or permanent result, but nevertheless conferred distinction uj)on one who, to use his own expression, was determined to climb to the top of the tree, and to neglect no chance, however slight, that could help him on. War with Spain had then been about seven months declared, and the British governor of Jamaica had sagaciously determined to master Lake Nicaragua, and the course of the river San Juan, its outlet to the Caribbean Sea. The object of the attempt was twofold, both military and commercial. The route was recognized then, as it is now, as one of the most important, if not the most important, of those affording easy transit from the Pacific to the Atlantic by way of the Isthmus. To a nation of the mercantile aptitudes of Great Britain, such a natural highway was necessarily an object of desire. In her hands it would not only draw to itself the wealth, of the sur- rounding regions, but would likewise promote the develop- ment of her trade, both north and south, along the eastern and western coasts of the two Americas. But the pecuniary gain was not all. The military tenure of this short and nar- row strip, supported at either end, upon the Pacific and the Atlantic, by naval detachments, all the more easily to be main- tained there by the use of the belt itself, would effectually sever the northern and southern colonies of Spain, both by actual in- terposition, and by depriving them of one of their most vital lines of intercommunication. To seek control of so valuable and central a link in a great network of maritime interests was as natural and inevitable to Great Britain a century ago, as it now is to try to dominate the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal, which fulfil a like function to her Eastern possessions and Eastern commerce. Preoccupied, however, with numerous and more pressing cares in many quarters of the world, and overweighted in a universal struggle with outnumbering foes. Great Britain could spare but scanty forces to her West India Islands, and from them Governor Dalling could muster but five hundred men for his Nicaraguan undertaking. Nelson was directed to convoy these with the " Hinchinbrook " to the mouth of the San Juan del Norte, where was the port now commonly called Greytown, in those days a fine and spacious harbor. There his charge ended ; but his mental constitution never allowed THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 23 him to look upon a military task as well done- while anything remained to do. In the spirit of his famous saying, fifteen years later, "Were ten ships out of eleven taken, I would never call it well done if the eleventh escaped, if able to get at her," he determined to go with the troops. With his temperament it was impossible to turn his back upon the little body of soldiers, whose toilsome advance up the tropical stream might be aided and hastened by his ready seamen. The first objective of the expedition was Fort San Juan, a powerful work controlling the river of the same name, and thereby the only natural water transit between the sea and Lake Nicaragua. Upon the possession of this, as a position of vantage and a safe depot for supplies aud reinforcements, Calling based his hopes of future advance, both west and south. Nelson took with him forty-seven seamen and ma- rines from his ship's company; the former, aided by some Indians, doing most of the labor of forcing the boats against the current, through shoal and tortuous channels, under his own constant supervision and encouragement. A small out- post that withstood their progress was by him intrepidly stormed, sword in hand, by sudden assault ; and upon reach- ing Fort San Juan he urgently recommended the same sum- mary method to the officer commanding the troops. The latter, however, was not one of the men who recognize the necessity for exceptional action. Eegular approaches, though the slower, were the surer way of reducing a fortified place, and entailed less bloodshed. Professional rule commonly demanded them, and to professional rule he submitted. Nelson argued that through delays, which, however incurred, were now past discussion, the expedition had reached its destination in April, at the end of the healthy, dry season, instead of shortly'' after its beginning, in January. Conse- quently, owing to the fall of the water, much additional trouble had been experienced in the advance, the men were proportionately weakened by toil and exposure, and the wet months, with their dire train of tropical diseases, were at hand. Therefore, though more might fall by the enemy's weapons in a direct attack, the ultimate loss would be less than by the protracted and sickly labors of the spade ; while with San Juan subdued, the force could receive all the care 24 THE LIFE OF NELSON possible in such a climate, and under the best conditions await the return of good weather for further progress. In military enterprises there will frequently arise the ques- tion, Is time or life in this case of the greater value ? Those regularly ordered and careful procedures which most econo- mize the blood of the soldier may, by their inevitable delays, seriously imperil the objects of the campaign as a whole ; or they may even, while less sanguinary, entail indirectly a greater loss of men than do prompter measures. In such doubtful matters Nelson's judgment was usually sound ; and his instinct, which ever inclined to instant and vigorous action, was commonly by itself alone an accurate guide, in a profession whose prizes are bestowed upon quick resolve more often than upon deliberate consultation. The same in- tuition that in his prime dictated his instant, unhesitating onslaught at the Nile, depriving the French of all opportunity for further preparation, — that caused him in the maturity of his renown, before Copenhagen, to write, " every hour's delay makes the enemy stronger ; we shall never be so good a match for them as at this moment," — that induced him at Trafalgar to modify his deliberately prepared plan in favor of one vastly more hazardous, but which seized and held the otherwise fleet- ing chance, — led him here also at San Juan, unknown, and scarcely more than a boy, to press the policy of immediate attack. The decision was not in his hands, and he was overruled ; whereupon, with his usual readiness to do his utmost, he accepted the course he disapproved, and, without nursing a grievance, became at once active in erecting batteries and serving the guns. " When unfortunate contentions," says one dispassionate narrator, '-had slackened the ardour for public service. Captain Nelson did not suffer any narrow spirit to influence his conduct. He did more than his duty : where anything was to be done, he saw no difficulties." Great as his merits were, he was never insensible to them ; and, in the sketch of his career, furnished by him to his chief biographers, he records his exploits with naive self-satisfaction, resembling the sententious tablets of Eastern conquerors : " I boarded, if I may be allowed the expression, an outpost of the enemy, situated on an island in the river; I made batteries, and THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 25 afterwards fought them, and was a principal cause of our success." But this simple, almost childlike, delight in his own performances, which continually crops out in his corre- spondence, did not exaggerate their deserts. Major Poison, commanding the land forces, wrote to Governor Dalling : "I want words to express the obligations I owe to Captain Nelson. He was the first on every service, whether by day or night. There was not a gun fired but was pointed by him, or by Captain Despard, Chief Engineer." Calling, after some delay, wrote in the same sense to the Minister of War in Lon- don, warmly recommending Nelson to the notice of the home Government. While the siege was in progress, Nelson received word of his appointment to a better ship, the " Janus," of forty-four guns, and it became necessary for him to join her. He left Fort San Juan only the day before it surrendered, and re- turned to Jamaica ; but his health now gave way wholly, and his command of the " Janus," for the most part merely nomi- nal, soon came to an end altogether. Dalling had truly said, *' Captain Nelson's constitution is rather too delicate for ser- vice in this northern ocean." ^ Before starting on ihe expe- dition, he had himself written to his friend Locker : " If my health is not much better than it is at present, I shall cer- tainly come home after this trip, as all the doctors are against my staying so long in this country. You know my old com- plaint in my breast : it is turned out to be the gout got there. I have twice been given over since you left this country with that cursed disorder, the gout." In such weakness he lived and worked through a month of a short campaign, in which, of the " Hinchinbrook's " crew of two hundred, one hundred and forty-five were buried in his time or that of his successor, Collingwood, — a mortality which he justly cites as a further proof of the necessity for expedition in such climates. But, though he survived, he escaped by the skin of his teeth. Worn out by dysentery and fatigue, he was carried ashore in his cot, and soon after taken to Sir Peter Parker's house, where Lady Parker herself nursed him through. Her kind- 1 Tlie Caiibbean was formerly thus styled in contradistinction to tlie South Sea, the Pacific, which was so called because its first discoverers saw it to the south from the Isthmus, 26 THE LIFE OF NELSON ness to him and his own debility are touchingly shown by a note written from the mountains, where he was carried in his convalescence: "Oh, Mr. Ross, what would I give to be at Port Royal! Lady Parker not here, and the servants let- ting me lay as if a log, and take no notice." By September, 1780, it was apparent that perfect restoration, without change of climate, was impossible, and in the autumn, having been somewhat over three years on the station, he sailed for home in the " Lion," of sixty-four guns. Captain Cornwallis,^ to whose careful attention, as formerly to that of Captain Pigot, he gratefully attributed his life. The expedition with which he had been associated ended in failure, for although a part of the force pushed on to Lake Nicaragua, sickness compelled the abandonment of the conquests, which were repossessed by the Spaniards. Arriving in England, Nelson went to Bath, and there passed through a period of extreme suffering and tedious recovery. " I have been so ill since I have been here," says one of his letters, " that I was obliged to be carried to and from bed, with the most excruciating tortures." Exact dates are want- ing; butjie seems to have been under treatment near three months, when, on the 28th of January, 1781, he wrote to Locker, in his often uncouth style : " Although I have not quite recovered the use of my limbs, yet my inside is a new man ; " and again, three weeks later, " I have now the perfect use of all my limbs, except my left arm, which I can hardly tell what is the matter with it. From the shoulder to my fingers' ends are as if half dead." He remained in Bath until the middle of March, latterly more for the mild climate than be- cause feeling the necessity of prosecuting his cure; yet that his health was far from securely re-established is evident, for a severe relapse followed his return to London. On the 7th of May, 1781, he writes to his brother : " You will say, why does not he come into Norfolk ? I will tell you : I have en- tirely lost the use of my left arm, and very near of my left leg and thigh." In estimating Nelson's heroism, the sickly 1 Comwallis was an officer of marked gallantry and conduct, who distin- guished himself on several occasions, as captain, during the War of 1778, and as admiral during the wars of the French Revolution. He was brother to Jjord Comwallis, who surrendered at Yorktown, in 1781, THE FIRST TWENTY-nVE YEARS 27 fragility of his bodily frame must be kept in memory ; not to excuse shortcomings of nerve or enterprise, for there were none, but to exalt duly the extraordinary mental energy which rather mocked at difficulties than triumphed over them. While yet an invalid he had again applied for employment, and, as the war was still raging, was appointed in August, 1781, to the " Albemarle," a small frigate of twenty-eight guns. He was pleased with the ship, the first commissioned l3y himself at home, Avith a long cruise in prospect; and, to- gether with his expressions of content with her, there appears that manifestation of complete satisfaction with his officers and crew, with those surrounding him as subordinates, that so singularly characterized his habit of mind. "I have an exceeding good ship's company. Not a man or officer in her I would wish to change. ... I am perfectly satisfied with both officers and ship's company." Down to the month before Trafalgar, when, to the bidding of the First Lord of the Admiralty to choose his own officers, he replied, "Choose yourself, my lord ; the same spirit actuates the whole pro- fession, you cannot choose wrong," there is rarely, it might almost be said never, anything but praise for those beneath him. With the "Agamemnon," "We are all well; indeed, nobody can be ill with my ship's company, they are so fine a set." At the Nile, "I had the happiness to command a band of brothers ; therefore night was to my advantage. Each knew his duty, and I was sure each would feel for a French ship. My friends readily conceived my plan." His ships in the Mediterranean, in 1803, " are the best commanded and the very best manned " in the navy. So his frequent praise of others in his despatches and letters has none of the formal, perfunctory ring of an official paper ; it springs evidently from the warmest appreciation and admiration, is heartfelt, showing no deceptive exterior, but the true native fibre of the man, full of the charity which is kind and thinketh no evil. It was not always so toward those above him. Under the timid and dilatory action of Hotham and Hyde Parker, under the somewhat commonplace although exact and ener- getic movements of Lord Keith, he was restive^ and freely showed what he felt. On the other hand, around Hood and Jervis, who commanded his professional respect and esteem, 28 THE LIFE OF NELSON he quickly threw the same halo of excellence, arising from his tendency to idealize, that colored the medium through which he invariably saw the men whom he himself com- manded. The disposition to invest those near to him with merits, which must in part at least have been imaginary, is a most noteworthy feature of his character, and goes far to explain the attraction he exerted over others, the enthusiasm which ever followed him, the greatness of his success, and also, unhappily, the otherwise almost inexplicable but en- during infatuation which enslaved his later years, and has left the most serious blot upon his memory. Though thus pleased with his surroundings, his own health continued indifferent. He excuses himself for delay in corre- spondence, because " so ill as to be scarce kept out of bed." In such a state, and for one whose frame had been racked and weakened by three years spent in the damp heat of the trop- ics, a winter's trip to the Baltic was hardly the best prescrip- tion; but thither the " Albemarle " was sent, — "it would almost be supposed," he wrote, " to try my constitution." He was away on this cruise from October to December, 1781, reaching Yarmouth on the 17th of the latter month, with a large convoy of a hundred and ten sail of merchant-ships, all that then remained of two hundred and sixty that had started from Elsinore on the 8th, " They behaved, as all convoys that ever I saw did, shamefully ill ; parting company every day." After being several days wind-bound in Yarmouth Roads, he arrived in the Downs on the first day of 1782. The bitter cold of the North had pierced him almost as keenly as it did twenty years later in the Copenhagen expedition. "I believe the Doctor has saved my life since I saw you," he wrote to his brother. The ship was then ordered to Ports- mouth to take in eight months' pi-ovisions, — a sure indication that she was intended for a distant voyage. Kelson himself surmised that she would join the squadron of Sir Eichard Bickerton, then fitting out to reinforce the fleet in the East Indies. Had this happened, he would have been on hand to hear much and perchance see something of one of his own professional forerunners, the great French Admiral Suffren, as well as of the latter's doughty antagonist. Sir Edward Hughes ; for Bickerton arrived in time to take part in the last of the THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 29 five pitched battles between those two hard fighters. Un- luckily, a severe accident had befallen the "Albemarle," — a large East Indiaman having dragged down upon her during a heavy gale in the Downs. The injuries received by this collision were so extensive that the ship was under repairs at Portsmouth for six weeks, during which time Bickerton sailed. While thus detained in one of the principal dockyards and naval stations of the kingdom, another large detachment, be- longing to the Channel fleet, assembled before Nelson's eyes. It comprised twelve sail-of-the-line, under Admiral Barring- ton ; and among these was the " Foudroyaut," the most famous ship of her time, then commanded by Captain John Jervis, with whom, as the Earl of St. Vincent, Nelson was afterwards closely associated ; but the young frigate captain did not now come in contact with his stately superior, who in later years so highly valued and loved him. It was for him still the day of small things. Though thus thrown in the midst of tlie din and bustle of extensive naval preparations, he had not the fortune to be directly connected with them ; and consequently no occasion arose for becoming known to admirals who could recognize his worth, and give him the opportunities without which distinction cannot be achieved. It is, however, a sig- nificant and instructive fact that, while thus persistently dis- sociated from the great operations then in progress, and employed wholly in detached service. Nelson's natural genius for war asserted itself, controlling the direction of his thoughts and interests, and fixing them to that broad field of his profes- sion from which he was as yet debarred. " The height of his ambition," an acquaintance of this period tells us, " was to command a line-of-battle ship ; as for prize money," for which frigates offered the best chances, " it never entered his thoughts." A few months later, while still in the " Albe- marle," it was said of him by Lord Hood, the most original tactician of the day, that he knew as much about naval tactics as any officer in the fleet. When this high encomium was be- stowed, Nelson had barely passed his twenty-fourth birthday. Meanwhile the " Albemarle " was again ordered upon con- voy duty, this time to Quebec. This destination also was distasteful on account of the climate. " I want much to get 80 THE LIFE OF NELSON off from this d cl voyage," he wrote. " Mr. Adair," an eminent London surgeon, who the year before had treated him for the paralysis of his limbs, " has told me that if I was sent to a cold damp climate it would make me worse than ever." He himself had scruples about applying for an exchange, and the efforts of some f rieuds who interfered proved useless. The " Albemarle " started with a convoy of thirty-odd vessels on the 10th of April, 1782 ; and after a short stop at Cork, an- chored at St. John's, Newfoundland, on May 27, whence she reached Quebec July 1. Three days later she again sailed on a cruise that lasted over two months, spent chiefly about Boston Bay and Cape Cod. During this time several enemy's vessels were taken or destroyed ; but, with the bad luck that so often followed Nelson in the matter of prize-money, none of the captures reached port, and the cruise was pecuniarily unprofitable. It afforded him, however, an opportunity for displaying conduct and gaining deserved reputation, which he valued more highly. On the 14th of August the sudden lifting of a fog showed the "Albemarle" within gunshot of a French squadron, of four ships-of-the-line and a frigate, that had just come out of Boston. A close chase followed, lasting nine or ten hours ; but ISTelson threw off the heavy ships by running among the shoals of George's Bank, which he ventured to do, trusting to the cool head and aptitude for pilotage acquired in earlier life. The frigate followed warily, watching for a chance to strike at advantage ; but when the ships-of-the-line had been dropped far enough to be unable to help their con- sort, the British vessel hove-to ^ in defiance, and the enemy fell back upon his supports. Shortly after this escape, so many of the ship's company fell ill with scurvy that Nelson decided to go back to Quebec, where he arrived on the 17th of September. " For eight weeks," he wrote, " myself and all the officers lived upon salt beef ; nor had the ship's company had a fresh meal since the 7th of April." The fears for his health that he had expressed before sailing from England had happily proved groundless, and a month's stay in port which now followed, at the most delightful and invigorating of the American seasons, wrought wonders for him. His letters to Locker state that the voyage 1 That is, stopped. THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 31 agreed with liim better than he had expected ; while from the St. Lawrence he wrote to his father, " Health, that greatest of blessings, is what I never truly enjoyed until I saw Fair Canada. The change it has wrought, I am convinced, is truly wonderful." This happy result had been due, in part at least, to surroundings that told favorably upon his sensitive nervous system, and not to the bracing climate alone. He had been actively occupied afloat, and had fallen desperately in love with a fair Canadian, around whom his ardent imagination threw that glamour of exaggerated charm in which he saw all who were dear to him, except his wife. Her he seems from the first to have looked upon with affection indeed, but with- out rapture or illusion. The Canadian affair came near ending in an imprudent offer, from which he was with difficulty de- terred by a cool-headed friend. The story runs that, the ship being ordered to ISTew York and ready for sea, he had bidden her good-bye and gone on board, expecting to sail next day ; but that, unable to bear the approaching separation, he re- turned to the city, and was on his way to the lady's home when his friend met him. Tearing himself away from his mistress by a violent effort. Nelson, on the 20th of October, sailed for New York. Arriv- ing on the 13th of November, he found there a large part of the West India fleet, under Lord Hood, who had been second in command to Rodney on the occasion of the latter's cele- brated victory over De Grasse in the previous April. Eodney had since then been recalled to England, while Hood had gone to Boston to look after a division of the beaten French fleet, Avhich was there refitting. He was now on his return to the islands, where the enemy was expected to make a vigorous aggressive campaign the following spring. Extensive prepa- rations were in fact on foot for the reduction of Jamaica, fi-us- trated six months before by De Grasse's mishap. Nelson thus found himself again in tantalizing contact Avith the stir- ring circumstance that preludes hostilities, in which he him- self had little hope to share; for the "Albemarle" belonged to the North American station, where all active naval opera- tions had ceased with the surrender of Cornwallis the year before. He went, therefore, to Hood, and begged to be trans- ferred to his squadron. In vain did Admiral Digby, his own 32 THE LIFE OF NELSON comraancler-in-ehief, tell him that he was on a good station for prize-money. " Yes," he replied, " but the West Indies is the station for honour." Digby was reluctant to part with a frigate, as all admirals were ; but Hood, either from an intuitive faculty for judging men, or from his conversations with Nelson eliciting the latter's singular knowledge of the higher part of his profes- sion, wished to push an officer of so much promise, and suc- ceeded in obtaining the transfer of the "Albemarle" to his squadron. " I am a candidate with Lord Hood for a line-of- battle ship," wrote Nelson to Locker ; " he has honoured me highly, by a letter, for wishing to go off this station to a station of service, and has promised me his friendship." A few months later he wrote again: "My situation in Lord Hood's fleet must be in the highest degree flattering to any young man. He treats me as if I were his son, and will, I am convinced, give me anything I can ask of him." This was really the beginning, the outstart, of Nelson's great career; for Hood's interest in him, then aroused, and deep- ened by experience to the utmost confidence and appreciation, made itself felt the instant the French Revolutionary War began. Nelson then came at once under his orders, went with him to the Mediterranean, and there speedily made his mark, being transferred from admiral to admiral with ever- growing tokens of reliance. Despite the lapse of time, and the long interval of peace, it is no exaggeration to say that there is a direct connection of cause and effect between his transfer to Hood's fleet, in the harbor of New York, and the battle of Cape St. Vincent, in 1797, when he emerged from merely professional distinction to national renown, standing head and shoulders above all competitors. In the four days that followed his arrival in New York, Nelson took the tide at the flood, and was borne on to fortune. Yet in this, as in many other instant and happy decisions, we may not see the mere casting of a die, the chance result of an irreflective im- pulse. The determination to change into Hood's squadron, with its powerful, far-reaching effect upon his future, was in necessary logical sequence to Nelson's whole habit of thought, and wish, and previous preparation. He was swept into the current that carried him on to fame by the irresistible THE FIRST TWENTY-FIV^E YEARS 83 tendency of his own conscious will and cherished purpose. Opportunity flitted by ; he was ready, and grasped it. At this turning-point the commendable diligence of his principal biographers has again secured for us a striking de- scription of the young captain's personal appearance, and of the impression produced by his manner upon an interested acquaintance, who afterwards became a warm friend and ad- mirer as well as a frequent correspondent. The narrator — then Prince "William Henr}^, afterwards King William IV. — gave the following account, apparently at some period between 1805, when Nelson -fell, and 1809, when the first edition of Clarke and M'Arthur's Life appeared. "I was then a midshipman on board the Barfleur," Lord Hood's flag- ship, "lying in the Narrows off Staten Island, and had the watch on deck, when Captain Nelson, of the Albemarle, came in his barge alongside, who apjjeared to be the merest boy of a captain I ever beheld ; and his dress was worthy of atten- tion. He had on a full-laced uniform ; his lank unpowdered hair was tied in a stiff Hessian tail, of an extraordinary length; the old-fashioned flaps of his waistcoat added to the general quaintness of his figure, and produced an appearance which particularly attracted my notice ; for I had never seen anything like it before, nor could I imagine who he was, nor what he came about. My doubts were, however, removed when Lord Hood introduced me to him. There was some- thing irresistibly pleasing in his address and conversation; and an enthusiasm, when speaking on professional subjects, that showed he was no common being." The Countess of Minto, in her Life of Lord Minto, speaks of Nelson's "shock head " at the time (1794) when he was a frequent visitor at the house of Minto, then Sir Gilbert Elliott, and Viceroy of Corsica; a trivial detail, but confirmatory, so far, of the picture drawn by the prince. The latter continued : " Nelson, after this, went with us to the AVest Indies, and served under Lord Hood's flag during his indefatigable cruise off Cape Francois. ... I found him warmly attached to my father [King George III.], and singularly humane. He had the honour of the King's service and the independence of the British navy particularly at heart; and his mind glowed with this idea as much when he was simply captain of the Albe- 3 34 THE LIFE OF NELSON mavle, and had obtained none of the honours of his Country, as when he was afterwards decorated with so much well- earned distinction." The war of 1778 was now fast drawing to its close; the preliminaries of peace being signed in January, 1783, though not ratified till the following September. Hood cruised oft' Cap FrauQois, a naval station of the French at the west end of Haiti, to intercept the fleet from Boston, which was under- stood to be on its way to the Caribbean; but the enemy, learning his whereabouts, went through the Mona Passage, east of the island, thus avoiding a meeting, and was next heard of by the British as being off Cura9ao, far to the south- ward. Nelson, therefore, had no opportunity to show his prowess in battle ; and as only three letters remain covering this uneventful period, little is known of his movements, except that he made an abortive attempt to recapture Turk's Island from the French with a small force of ships he was able to gather at short notice. An interesting indication of the spirit which animated him transpires in the first of the three letters mentioned. He had received unexpected orders to wait in New York after Hood's leaving. " I was to have sailed with the fleet this day, but for some private reasons, when my ship was under sail from New York to join Lord Hood, at Sandy Hook, I was sent for on shore, and told I was to be kept forty-eight hours after the sailing of the fleet. It is much to my private advantage," allowing more latitude for picking up prizes, without having to share with the other ships, "but I had much rather have sailed with the fleet." "Money," he continues, "is the great object here," on the North American Station, "nothing else is attended to," — a motive of action which he always rejected with disdain, although by no means insensible to the value of money, nor ever thoroughly at his ease in the matter of income, owing largely to the lavish liberality with which he responded to the calls upon his generosity or benevolence. A year later he wrote in the same strain : " I have closed the war without a fortune ; but I trust, and, from the attention that has been paid to me, believe, that there is not a speck in my character. True honour, I hope, predominates in my mind far above riches." THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS So Wht'u news of the peace reached the West Indies, Hood was ordered to return with his fleet to England. Nelson went home at the same time, being directed tirst to accom- pany Prince William Henry iii a visit to Havana, The "Albemarle" reached Spithead on the 25th of June, 1783, and was paid otf a week later, her captain going on half-pay until the following April. The cruise of nearly two years' duration closed with this characteristic comment: "Not au officer has been changed, except the second lieutenant, since the Albemarle was commissioned ; therefore, it is needless to say, I am happy in my ship's company." And again he writes: "My ship was paid off last week, and in such a manner that must flatter any officer, in particular in these turbulent times. Tlie whole ship's com])any offered, if I could get a ship, to enter for her immediately." Nelson was keenly alive to the impolicy and injury to the service in- volved in the frequent changes of officers and men from ship to ship. " The disgust of the seamen to the Navy," he wrote immediately after leaving the " Albemarle," " is all owing to the infernal plan of turning them over from ship to ship, so that men cannot be attached to their officers, or the officers care twopence about them." This element of personal attach- ment is never left out of calculation safely. Nelson was now nearly twenty-five. In direct achievement he had accomplished little, and to most he was unknown ; but he did not deceive himself in believing that his reputation was established, and his promise, as a capable man of action, understood by those who knew him, and especially by the brilliant admiral under whom he had last served. Within a Aveek of his release from the ship Hood carried him to Court, and presented him to the King, — an evident proof of his approbation ; and Nelson notes that the sovereign was exceed- ingly attentive. The next few months were spent in Lon- don, or at his old home in Norfolk, to which and to his family he Avas always fondly attached. Toward the end of October he obtained a leave of absence, in order to visit France and acquire the French language. His impressions of that country, as far as he Avent, — from Calais to St. Omer, — are given in lively enough style in a feAv letters ; but they differ little from Avhat might be expected from any very 36 THE LIFE OF NELSON young man deeply tinged with insular prejudice. "I hate their country and their manners," he wrote, soon after his return ; and his biographers were quite right in saying that he had been brought up in the old anti-Gallican school, with prejudices not to be eradicated by a flying visit. He duly records his disgust with two British naval captains, one of whom was afterwards among his most valued and valuable friends, for wearing epaulettes, at that time confined to the French service. ''I hold them a little clieap,^' he said, "for putting on any part of a Frenchman's uniform." It is more interesting to notice that his impressionable fancy was again taken by an attractive young Englishwoman, the daughter of a clergyman named Andrews, living at St. Omer. "Two very beautiful young ladies," he Avrites to Locker and to his brother; "I must take care of my heart, I assure you." " My heart is quite secured against the French beauties; I almost wish I could saj'' as much for an English young lady, the daughter of a clergyman, with whom I am just going to dine, and spend the day. She has such accom- plishments that, had I a million of money, I am sure I should at this moment make her an offer of them." "The most accomplished woman my eyes ever beheld," he repeats, a month later. The sentimental raptures of a .young man about a handsome girl have in themselves too much of the common- place to justify mention. What is remarkable, and suggests an explanation of the deplorable vagary of his later years, is that his attachment to his wife, even in the days of court- ship, elicited no such extravagance of admiration as that into which he freely lapses in his earlier fancies, and yet more in his last absorbing passion. Eespect and tenderness for her he certainly felt and expressed; but there is no indication that she ever enkindled his ardent imagination, or filled for him the place of an ideal, which his mental constitution imperatively demanded as an object of worship. The present attachment went so far with him that he wrote to his uncle William Suckling, asking for an allowance to enable him to marry. " If nothing can be done for me," said he, gloomily, "I know what I have to trust to. Life is not worth preserv- ing without happiness; and I care not where I may linger out a miseral)le existence. I am prepared to hear your refusal, THE FIRST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS 37 and have fixed my resolution if tliat should happen. ... I pray you may never know the pangs which at this instant tear my heart." If, as is said by the gentleman into whose hands this letter passed, Suckling consented to help him, as he certainly did at the time of his actual marriage, it seems probable that the lady refused him. CPIAPTER II. The Cruise of the "Boreas." — Controversy over the Enforce- ment OF THE Navigation Act. — Return to liNOLAND. — IIetiki;- MENT until the OUTBREAK OF THE FkENCH REVOLUTION. — Al'- POINTED TO COMMAND THE "AgAMEMNON," 6i. 1784-1793. Age, 26-34. WHATEVER the cause, Nelson's visit to France ended prematurely and abruptly. Early in Januaiy, 1784, after an absence of two mouths, he went back to England, announcing to his friends that his coming was only tem- porary, partly on business, partly for ti-eatment; for his delicate health again occasioned him anxiety. " The frost, thank God, is broke," he wrote ; " cold weather is death to me." But even while speaking confidently of his speedy return to the Continent, he dropped a hint that he was dis- posed to resume the active pursuit of his profession, although on leaving the " Albemarle," six months before, he had said that lie could not afford to live afloat, in peace times, in the style then prevalent. " My stay in England will be but very short, without the First Lord in the Admiralty thinks proper to employ me. I shall offer my services." He did see Lord Howe, at that time First Lord, asking him for a ship; and he renewed his cordial relations with Hood, then living in London. On the 18th of March Howe appointed him to the command of the frigate " Boreas." Occupation in peace, with a reduced establishment, was not easy to get, and his brother, an inveterate wirepuller, must needs know to whose favor Nelson owed it. ''You ask," replied the hero, "by what interest did I get a ship ? I answer, having served with credit was my recommendation to Lord Howe. Any- thing in reason that I can ask, I am sure of obtaining from his justice." The statement was no more than fair to Howe ; but in his knowledge of the merits of Nelson, whose claim THE CRUISE OF THE "BOREAS" 39 lay rather iu evident promise than in conspicuous perform- ance, we can probably trace the friendly intervention of Lord Hood. Nelson's wish was that the " Boreas " should go to the East Indies. To this he inclined, apparently, because the station was to be under the command of Commodore Cornwallis, in whose ship he had returned from Jamaica as an invalid in 1780, and to whom on that occasion he was indebted for the most friendly care. He was not long allowed to indulge this hope, for five days after receiving his appointment he wrote that the ship was bound to the Leeward Islands, and that he had been asked to take as passengers the wife and familj'' of the commander-in-chief. Sir Richard Hughes, who had already gone out. In a small vessel, for such the "Boreas" was, the request, which he could not well refuse, gave Nelson cause of reasonable discontent, entailing crowding and a large outlay of money. "I shall be pretty well filled with lumher," he wrote ; and later, on the voyage out, " I shall not be sorry to part with them, although they are very pleasant, good people; but they are an incredible expense." The incident, annoying though it was, was not without compensations. After arriving on the station, he soon became involved in a serious difference with Sir Richard Hughes ; and the latter, though a weak man and in the Avrong, might have acted more peremptorily, had he not laid himself under such obligations. On the other hand, Lady Hughes, many years later, shortly after Nelson's death, committed to writing some recollections of his personal traits and actions daring the passage, so characteristic, even though trivial, that we could ill have spared them. " I was too much affected when we met at Bath," wrote she to Mr. Matcham, Nelson's brother-in-law, " to say every par- ticular in which was always displayed the infinite cleverness and goodness of heart of our dearly beloved Hero. As a woman, I can only be a judge of those things that I could comprehend — such as his attention to the young gentlemen who had the happiness of being on his quarter-deck. It may reasonably be supposed that among the number of thirty, there must be timid as well as bold; the timid he never rebuked, but always wished to show them he desired nothing of them that he would not instantly do himself : and I have known him 40 THE LIFE OF NELSON say, ' Well, Sir, I am going a race to the masthead, and beg I may meet you there.' No denial could be given to such a wish, and the poor fellow instantly began his march. His Lordship never took the least notice with what alacrity it was done, but when he met in the top, instantly began speaking in the most cheerful manner, and saying how much a person was to be pitied that could fancy there was any danger, or even anything disagreeable, in the attempt. After this excellent example, I have seen the timid youth lead another, and rehearse his cap- tain's words. In like manner, he every day went into the school-room, and saw them do their nautical business, and at twelve o'clock he was the first upon deck with his quadrant. No one there could be behindhand in their business when their captain set them so good an example. One other circumstance I must mention which will close the subject, which was the day we landed at Barbadoes. We were to dine at the Gover- nor's. Our dear captain said, ' You must permit me. Lady Hughes, to carry one of my aid-de-camps with me ; ' and when he presented him to the Governor, he said, ' Your Excellency must excuse me for bringing one of my midshipmen, as I make it a rule to introduce them to all the good company I can, as they have few to look up to besides myself during the time they are at sea.' This kindness and attention made the young people adore him ; and even his wishes, could they have been known, would have been instantly complied with." The charm and wisdom of such a bearing is patent ; but it was the natural character of the man that thus shone out, and no mere result of conscientious care. To the last, through all his ill-health, anxiety, and sufferings, the same genial sweet- ness of manner, the outcome of an unaffected, cordial good-will to all, was shown to those who came in contact with him. Captain Duff, who met him for the first time three weeks before Trafalgar, and who fell in the battle, wrote to his wife in almost the same words as Lady Hughes : " You ask me about Lord Nelson, and how I like him. I have already answered that question as every person must do that ever served under him. He is so good and pleasant a man, that we all wish to do what he likes, without any kind of orders. I have been myself very lucky with most of my admirals, but I really think the present the pleasantest I have met with." There do, it is true, occur THE CBUISE OF THE "BOREAS" 41 in Nelson's letters occasional, though very rare, expressions of that passing annoyance with individuals which is inseparable from the close and long-continued contact of ship life. Thus, shortly before leaving the '' Boreas," he writes : " I begin to be very strict in my Ship. Whenever I may set off in another, I shall be indifferent whether I ever speak to an Officer in her, but upon duty." One wonders what passing and soon forgotten breeze was responsible for this most un-Nelson-like outburst. But to the end it remained true that between the officers and crews under Nelson's command and their chief, there was always that cordial regard which can only spring from the hearty sympathy of the commander with those beneath him. While thoughtful and considerate, even to gentleness, for the weak and dependent, the singular energy that quickened Nelson's frail and puny frame showed itself on occasion in instant resentment of any official slight to himself or his ship, or injury to the interests of the country. During the " Bo- reas's " stay at Madeira, the British Consul neglected to return his visit, on the plea that the Government allowed him no boat. Nelson declined any further intercourse with him. While lying in the Downs, he learns that sixteen British seamen are detained by force on board a Dutch Indiaman. He requires their delivery to him ; and when their effects were withheld, on the alleged ground of their being in debt to the ship, he stops all intercourse between it and the shore, sending an armed cutter to enforce his order. " The Admiralty," he wrote, "have fortunately approved my conduct in the business/' and added grimly, " a thing they are not very guilty of where there is a likelihood of a scrape." When entering the harbor of Fort Royal, Martinique, the principal French island in the Lesser Antilles, the officer at the citadel neglected to hoist the colors, a ceremonial observance customary when a ship of war ap- proached. Nelson at once demanded an explanation and received ample amends ; the offending party being placed under arrest. To the governor of some of the British West India islands, he wrote making suggestions for the better discharge of certain duties, in which both of them were interested. He received, it is said, a testy message that " old generals were not in the habit of taking advice from j^oung gentlemen." "I have the honour, Sir," replied Nelson, " of being as old as the 42 THE LIFE OF NELSON prime nnnister of England, and think myself as capable of commanding one of his majesty's ships as that minister is of governing the state ; " and throughout he held to the stand he had taken. The most remarkable instance, however, of this promptness to assert the dignity and rights of his official position, allow- ing no man to despise his youth, occurred very soon after his arrival upon the station, and brought him to a direct issue with his commander-in-chief, — if not, indeed, with an authoritative precedent set by so great a man as Lord Eodney. Young though he still was in years, — only twenty-six, — Nelson was by date of commission the senior captain in the small squadron, of some half-dozen vessels, to which the economies of the ad- ministration had reduced the Leeward Islands station. Being thus next in rank to the admiral, the latter, who made his headquarters at Barbadoes in the southern part of the station, sent him to the northern division, centring about the island of Antigua. Having remained in harbor, as was usual, during the hurricane months, Nelson cruised during the winter and until February, 1785, when some damage received compelled the "Boreas " to put into Antigua for repairs. Here he found a vessel of the squadron, whose own captain was of course junior to him, flying a Commodore's broad pendant, which asserted the official presence of a captain siqoerior to himself in rank and command, and. duly qualified to give him orders. He at once asked the meaning of this from the ship's proper com- mander, and was informed by him that Captain Moutray, an old officer, twenty years his senior on the post list, and then acting as Commissioner of the Navy, a civil office connected with the dockyard at Antigua, had directed it to be hoisted, and claimed to exercise control over all men-of-war in the harbor, during the admiral's absence. Nelson was not ^vholly unprepared for this, for Hughes had notified him and the other captains that Moutray was author- ized by himself to take this step. Being then away from the island, he had replied guardedly that if Commissioner Moutray ivas put into commission, he would have great pleasure in serving under him, — thus reserving his decision to the moment for action. He now took the ground that an officer not commissioned afloat, but holding only a civil appointment, THE CRUISE OF THE "BOREAS" 43 could not exercise naval command, — that an order authorizing him to do so was invalid, — that to entitle him to such com- mand he must be put into military commission by being attached to a ship in commission. He therefore flatly declined to obey Moutray's orders, refusing to admit his claim to be considered a commodore, or entitled to military obedience, unless he produced a commission. This he held to when Moutray gave him a written order to put himself under his command. On technical points of this kind Nelson was a clear and accurate thinker, and in the admiral he had to do with a muddle-headed, irresolute superior. Hughes had already been badly worried and prodded, on matters concerning his own neglected duties, by his unquiet young subordinate, who was never satisfied to leave bad enough alone, but kept raising knotty points to harass an easy-going old gentleman, who wanted only to be allowed to shut his eyes to what went ou under his nose. He was now exasperated by Nelson's con- tumacy, but he was also a little afraid of him, and supported his own order by no more decisive action than laying the case before the Admiralty, who informed Nelson that he should have referred his doubts to the admiral, instead of deciding for himself in a matter that concerned "the exercise of the functions of his [the admiral's] appointment." This was rather begging the question,' for Nelson expressed no doubts, either to Hughes or in his explanatory letter to the Admiralty. The latter in turn shirked thus the decision of the question, — for, if Nelson was right, Hughes's order was illegal and not entitled to obedience ; if he was wrong, he had been guilty of flagrant insubordination, and should have been sharply dealt with. The Government probably thought that the admiral had blundered in undertaking to give military authority to a civil official, — a step so generally disastrous in experience that it is now explicitly forbidden by the regulations of most navies. It is worthy of note that twenty years later, when commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean, Nelson directed the captains of ships cruising in the Straits of Gibraltar to consult on all occasions with the Commissioner of the Navy resident in Gibraltar, as well as to receive his advice, if proffered, — adding that the commissioner's opinion of their conduct would 44 THE LIFE OF NELSON have great weight with himself ; but he did not put them under his orders.^ Reasoning from Nelson's position, as the pendant was flying without proper authority on board a ship under his immediate command, he should, as senior captain afloat, have gone further and hauled it down. Of his authority to do so he felt no doubt, as is evident from his letter to the Admiralty ; but his motive for refraining was characteristic. He was unwilling to wound Moutray; just as, before Trafalgar, in direct disregard of the Admiralty's orders, he allowed an admiral going home under charges to take with him his flag- ship, a vessel of the first force and likely to be sorely needed in the approaching battle, because he was reluctant to add to the distress the officer was undergoing already. ''I did not choose to order the Commissioner's pendant to be struck, as Mr. Moutray is an old officer of high military character ; and it might hurt his feelings to be supposed wrong by so young an officer." The question solved itself shortly by the Com- missioner's returning to England ; but the controversy seems to have made no change in the friendly and even affectionate relations existing between him and his wife and Nelson. For Mrs. Moutray the latter had formed one of those strong ideal- izing attachments which sprang up from time to time along his path. "You may be'certain," he writes to his brother at the very period the discussion was pending, " I never passed English Harbour without a call, but alas ! I am not to have much comfort. My dear, sweet friend is going home. I am really an April day ; happy on her account, but truly grieved were I only to consider myself. Her equal I never saw in any country or in any situation. If my dear Kate [his sister] goes to Bath next winter she will be known to her, for my dear friend promised to make herself known. What an acquisition to any female to be acquainted with, what an example to take pattern from." " My sweet, amiable friend sails the 20th for England. I took my leave of her three days ago with a heavy heart. What a treasure of a woman." Eeturning to Antigua a few weeks later, he writes again in a sentimental vein very rare in him : " This country appears now intolerable, my dear friend being absent. It is barren indeed. English Harbour I 1 Nicolas, vol. v. p. 356. THE CRUISE OF THE "BOREAS" 45 hate the sight of, and Windsor I detest. I went once up the hill to look at the spot where I spent more happy days than in any one spot in the world. E'en the trees drooped their heads, and the tamarind tree died : — all Avas melancholy : the road is covered with thistles ; let them grow. I shall never pull one of them up." His regard for this attractive woman seems to have lasted through his life ; for she survived him, and to her Collingwood addressed a letter after Trafalgar, giving some particulars of Nelson's death. Her only son also died under the latter's immediate command, ten years later, when serving in Corsica. The chief interest of the dispute over Moutray's position lies not in the somewhat obscure point involved, but in the illustration it affords of Nelson's singular independence and tenacity in a matter of principle. Under a conviction of right he throughout life feared no responsibility and shrank from no consequences. It is difficult for the non-military mind to realize how great is the moral effort of disobeying a superior, whose order on the one hand covers all responsibility, and on the other entails the most serious personal and professional injury, if violated without due cause ; the burden of proving which rests upon the junior. For the latter it is, justly and necessarily, not enough that his own intentions or convictions were honest : he has to show, not that he meant to do right, but that he actually did right, in disobeying in the particular instance. Under no less rigorous exactions can due military subordination be maintained. The whole bent of advantage and lifelong training, therefore, draws in one direction, and is withstood by nothing, unless either strong personal character supplies a motive, or established. professional standing permits a man to presume upon it, and to exercise a certain right to independence of action. At this time Nelson was practically unknown, and in refusing compliance with an order he took a risk that no other captain on the station would have assumed, as was shown by their failure a few months later to support their convictions in an analogous controversy, upon which Nelson had entered even before the Moutray business. In both cases he staked all upon legal points, considered by him vital to the welfare of the navy and the country. The spirit was identically the same that led him to swing his ship out of 46 THE LIFE OF NELSON the line at Cape St. Vincent without waiting for signals. After that day and the Nile he could afford to take liberties, and sometimes took them with less justification than in his early career. When the Moutray question arose, Nelson was already engaged in a more far-reaching dispute, not only with his commander-in-chief, but with the colonial authorities and the popular sentiment of the West India Islands. Like most men, great and small, he shared the prepossessions of his day and generation; differing, however, from others, in that he held his opinions as principles, from asserting which he was not to be deterred by the ill-will or dislike of those immediately about him. Upon arriving in the West Indies he found flourishing a system of trade ex- tremely beneficial to the islands, but which his education condemned as hurtful to Great Britain, as it certainly was contrary to then existing laws that had for a century pre- vious regulated the commerce of the kingdom. In 1784, a year only had elapsed since tlie United States had been formally recognized as independent, thereby becoming, in British estimation as well as in their own, a nation foreign to the British flag. By the Navigation Laws, first estab- lished by Cromwell, but continued under the restored mon- archy without serious modification until 1794, trade with the Colonies was reserved to vessels built in Great Britain or her dependencies, and manned in three-fourths part by British subjects. The chief object and advantage of the law were conceived to be, not merely a monopoly of the trade, — con- cerning the economical wisdom of which serious doubts began to be felt, — but the fostering of the British merchant service as a nursery of seamen, upon whom, in time of war, the navy could draw. The military strength of the Empire was thought to be involved in the enforcement of the Navigation Act.^ Before the United States declared their independence, the}^ as British colonies, enjoyed the privilege of trading with their ^ Thus Colliiigwood, rarely other than sober ami restrained in his language, wrote to Hughes : " It is from the idea that the greatness and superiority of the British navy very much depends upon preserving inviolate the Act of Navigation, excluding foreigners from access to the colonies, that I am in- duced to make this representation to you." Nicolas, vol. i. p. 172. THE CRUISE OF THE "BOREAS" 47 fellow-colouists under what was then the common flag; and the nearness of the two regions contributed to the advantage of both in this traffic, in which tlie continental communities were the chief suppliers of many articles essential to the islands, notably provisions and lumber. This mutual inter- course and dependence promoted a sympathy which was scarcely disguised in the West Indies during the War of Independence ; indeed, Nelson wrote that many of the in- habitants were as arrant rebels as those who had renounced their allegiance. Under these conditions, when peace was restored, the old relations were readily resumed ; and as there had really been considerable inconvenience and loss to the islanders from the deprivation of American products, the renewal was eagerly promoted by popular sentiment. The local authorities, as usual and natural, yielded to the pressure around them, and in entire disregard of the known policy of the home government permitted American vessels to trade openly under their own colors. In Jamaica the governor had even gone so far as to authorize formally a free trade, during pleasure, with the United States, contrary to the explicit orders of his superiors in Great Britain. Where scruples were felt or hesitation was shown, advantage was taken of the exceptions of the law, which allowed vessels in distress to sell so much of their cargoes as Avould pay for necessary repairs. With the tendency of commerce to evade restrictions by liberal sti-etching of the conscience, the mer- chant-captain and the colonial officer found little difficulty in arranging that the damage should be great enough to cover the sale of the whole lading. After laying up in Antigua during the hurricane season of 1784, Nelson was summoned to Barbadoes in November, with the other captains, to receive orders for the winter's cruising. These, when issued, were found to direct only the examina- tion of anchorages, and the gathering of information about supplies of wood and water. Nelson's attention had been drawn already to the American traffic ; and he, with his friend Collingwood, who was again on the station, went to the admiral, and urged that it was the duty of ships of war to enforce the Navigation Laws. The admiral professed igno- rance of these; and Nelson himself remarks that British 48 THE LIFE OF NELSON vessels up to that time had been so much cheaper built than others, that they had, without artificial protection, naturally absorbed their own colonial trade, — the question, therefore, had dropped out of sight till it was revived by American competition. A copy of the Act being then produced, Hughes gave an order requiring his vessels to enforce it ; making special mention of the changed relations of the United States to Great Britain, whereby they were "to be considered as foreigners, and excluded from all commerce with the islands in these seas." With these instructions Nelson sailed again for the north, where the Virgin Islands, with those of Montserrat, Nevis, and St. Christopher, were put under his especial charge, — the sloop " Eattler," Captain Wilfred Collingwood, a brother of the well-known admiral, being associated with the "Boreas." At first the two officers confined their action to waniing off American vessels, and at times forcing them to leave ports where they had anchored ; but they found that either the vessels returned during the absence of the ships of war, or that permissions to land, upon what they thought trivial grounds, were given by the Customs' officials, in virtue of the exceptions to the law above mentioned. There matters stood until the 11th of January, 1785, Nelson acting by the authority of the commander-in-chief, but exer- cising his own discretion, and with forbearance, in carrying out his instructions. On the day named he received another order from the admiral, modifying the first upon the grounds of a more mature consideration, and of "the opinion of the King's Attorney-General " in the islands. Nelson was now directed, in case of a foreign merchant-ship coming within the limits of his station, to cause her to anchor near his own vessel and to report her arrival, and situation in all respects, to the governor of the colony where he then was ; " and if, after such report shall have been made and received, the gov- ernor or his representative shall think proper to admit the said foreigner into the port or harbour of the island where you may be, yoti are on no account to hinder or prevent such foreign vessel from going 171 accordingly, or to interfere any further in her subsequent proceedings." Here the admiral not only raised, but also decided, the THE CRUISE OF THE "BOREAS" 49 point as to whether the enforcement of the ISTavigatiou Act rested with naval officers, or was vested only in the civil authorities of the islands. Nelson was convinced that an essential part of the duty of ships of war, and especially wlien peace took from them so much of their military function, was to afford to the commerce of the nation proper protection, of which a necessary feature, according to the ideas of the age, was the interdiction of foreign traders. A seaman, he plau- sibly argued, could decide better than an unprofessional man the questions of injuries and distress upon which the un- lawful traffic largely hinged. "In judging of their distress, no person can know better than the sea officers," he wrote to Hughes. " The governors may be imposed upon by false declarations ; we, who are on the spot, cannot." He was aware, also, that a petition for relaxing the Act in favor of the American trade with the West Indies had been referred to the home government, by which it had been explicitly rejected. Strengthened by this knowledge, but actuated, after all, chiefly by his invariable resoluteness to assume responsi- bility where he felt he was right, he replied to the admiral's letter with a clear statement of the facts, concluding with the words : " Whilst I have the honour to command an English man-of-war, I never shall allow myself to be subservient to tlie Avill of any Governor, nor co-operate with him in doing illegal acts. ... If I rightly understand your order of the 29th of December, it is founded upon an Opinion of the King's Attorney-General, viz. : ' That it is legal for Governors or their representatives to admit foreigners into the ports of their government, if they think fit.' How the King's Attorney-General conceives he has a right to give an illegal opinion, which I assert the above is, he must answer for. I know the ISTavigatiou Laws." As he summed up the matter in a letter to his friend Locker: "Sir Eichard Hughes was a delicate business. I must either disobey my orders, or dis- obey Acts of Parliament, which the admiral was disobeying. I determined upon the former, trusting to the uprightness of my intention. In short, I wrote the Admiral that I should decline obeying his orders, till I had an opportunity of seeing and talking to him, at the same time making him an apology." Hughes's first impulse was to supersede his recalcitrant 4 50 THE LIFE OE jS'ELSON subordinate, and bring Lim to trial. He learned, however, that many of the other captains, of wliom the court must be formed, shared his junior's views, although they shrank, with the submissiveness of military men, from the decisive act of disobedience. The result of a trial must therefore be doubt- ful. He was, moreover, a fiddler, as Nelson continually styled him, shifting back and forth, from opinion to opinion, and to be relied upon for only one thing, — to dodge respon- sibility, if possible. Consequently, no official action was taken ; the commander-in-chief contented himself with wash- ing his hands of all accountability. He had given orders which would clear himself, in case Kelson's conduct was censured in England. If, on the contrary, it was approved, it would redound to the credit of the station. The matter was soon brought to a test. The governors and all the officials, particularly of the Custom House, resented the action of the naval officers ; but the vigilauce of the latter so seriously interrupted the forbidden traffic under American colors, that recourse was had to giving British r'egisters to the vessels concerned, allowing them to trade under British flags. This, however, was equally contrary to the ISTavigation Act, which forbade British registry to foreign-built ships, except when prizes taken in war ; and the disguise was too thin to baffle men like Collingwood and Nelson. The latter reported the practice to the home Government, in order that any measures deemed necessary might be taken. Meanwhile he patiently persisted in turning away all vessels, not British built, which he encountered, confining himself for the time to this merely passive prevention ; but finding at last that this was not a sufficient deterrent, he gave notice that after the 1st of IVIay, 1785, he would seize all American vessels trading to the islands, "let them be registered by whom they might." Accordingly, on the 2d of May he arrested an American- built schooner, owned in Philadelphia and manned entirely by Americans, biit having a British register issued at the island of St. Christopher. The Crown lawyer was now called upon to prosecute the suit. He expressed grave doubts as to a naval captain's power to act by virtue simply of his commission, the sole authority alleged by the captor ; and, although he proceeded THE CRUISE OF THE "BOREAS" 51 with the case, his manner so betrayed his uncertainty that Nelson felt it necessary to plead for himself. To the con- fusion of all opponents the judge decided in his favor, sayino- lie had an undoubted right to seize vessels transgressino' the Navigation Laws. The principle thus established, Nelson on the 23d of the same month, at the island of Nevis, upon the same grounds, seized four vessels, — one of which had been registered at Dominica by Governor Orde, a naval captain senior in rank to himself, and with whom he came into unpleasant contact upon several occasions in his later life. There was no serious question as to the condemnation of the four last seizures, the facts being clear and the principle settled;^ but the rage of the inhabitants of Nevis led them to seek revenge upon Nelson for the injury they could no longer prevent. He had summoned the masters of the ships on board the " Boreas," and, after satisfying himself that the vessels were not entitled to British registers, had sent marines to hold them, and to prevent essential witnesses from leaving them, until the cases were tried. Upon these circumstances was based an accusation of assault and imprisonment, the masters swearing that they had made their statements under bodily fear. Writs were issued against Nelson, damages being laid at four thousand pounds, a sura which to him meant ruin. Although he asserted that there was absolutely no truth in the charges, which are certainly in entire contradiction to the general, if not invariable, tenor of liis life and conduct, he was advised by the Crown lawyers not to subject himself to trial, as in the state of public feeling he could not expect a fair verdict. To avoid arrest, he was forced to confine him- self to the ship for seven weeks, during which the marshal made several attempts to serve the writ, but without success. On the day that the case of the seized ships came up, he was able to be present in court only by the safe conduct of the judge. 1 Nelson's letters are contradictory on this point. In a letter to Locker of March 3, 1786, lie says, "Before the first vessel was trii;d I liael seized four others ; " whereas in the formal and detailed narrative drawn nj) — without date, but later than the letter to Locker — he says the first vessel was tried and condemned May 17, the other four seized May 23. (Nicolas, vol. i. pp. 177, 178.) The author has followed the latter, because from the particularity of dates it seems to have been compiled from memoranda, that of Locker written from memory, — both nearly a year after the events. 52 THE LIFE OF NELSON Two days after the seizure of the four vessels, Sir Kiehard Hughes, who was making a tour of the station under his command, arrived at Nevis ; but he had no support to give his zealous lieutenant. " He did not appear to be pleased with my conduct," wrote Nelson to Locker. " At least he did not approve it, but told me I shovxld get into a scrape. Seven weeks I was kept a close prisoner to my ship ; nor did I ever learn that the admiral took any steps for my release. He did not even acquaint the Admiralty Board how cruelly I had been treated ; nor of the attempts which had been made to take me out of ray ship by force, and that indignity offered under the fly of his flag." " I had the governor, the Customs, all the planters upon me ; subscriptions were soon tilled to prosecute ; and my admiral stood neuter, although his flag was then in the roads." To this lack of countenance on the part of his superior, and direct persecution by those injuri- ously affected by his action, there was added a general social ostracism, to which he frequently alludes, and which was particularly emphasized by its contrast with the habits of hospitality prevalent among the small and wealthy planter community. One friend, however, stood by him, and offered to become his bail in the sum of ten thousand pounds, — Mr. Herbert, the President of Nevis, and one of the wealthiest men in the island. He had, Nelson said, suffered more than any one else from the interruption of the trade, but he con- sidered that the young captain had done only his duty. Possibly there may have been a warmer feeling underlying this esteem, for he was the uncle of the lady whom Nelson afterwards married, and to whom he seems to have been pay- ing attention already. Despite his indomitable pluck and resolve, the confinement, uncertainty, and contention told heavily on Nelson's health and spirits. His temper was too kindly and social not to feel the general alienation. It could not affect his purpose; but the sense of right-doing, which sustained him in that, did not make his road otherwise easier. It is, indeed, especially to be noticed that there was not in him that hard, unyielding fibre, upon which care, or neglect, or anxiety makes little impression. He was, on the contrary, extremely sympathetic, even emotional ; and although insensible to bodily fear, he THE CRUISE OF THE "BOREAS" 53 was by no means so to censure, or to risk of other misfortune. To this susceptibility to worry, strong witness is borne by an expression of his, used at the veiy time of which we are now writing. One of his friends — Captain Pole of the Kavy — had detained and sent in a neutral vessel for breach of bel- ligerent rights. After long legal j^roceediugs, extending over five years, she was condemned, and proved to be a very valu- able prize to the captors. " Our friend Charles Pole," he writes, " has been fortunate in his trial ; but the lottery is so very much against an officer, that never will I knowingly involve myself in a doubtful cause. Prize-money is doubtless very acceptable ; but my mind would have suffered so much, that no pecuniary compensation, at so late a period, would have made me amends." Contrasting this utterance with the resolution shown by him at this time, in fighting what he considered the cause of his country in the West Indies, it can be seen how much stronger with him was the influence of duty than that exercised by any considerations of merely material advantage. In the one he could find support; in the other not. But in neither case was he insensible to care, nor could he escape the physical consequences of anxiety upon a delicate frame and nervous organization. Of this, his harassment in the pursuit of the French fleet in 1798, during Bonaparte's Egyptian expedition, gave a very conspicuous illustration. With such a temperament, being now very much in the position of an individual fighting a corporation, he appealed to the home Government; addressing, on the 29th of June, 1785, a memorial to the King, setting forth the facts of the case, as already given, adding that his health was much impaired, and asking for assistance. He received a reply to this in the following September, informing him that the King had directed that he should be defended by the Crown law- yers. This implied approval of his course was s\icceeded, in November, by a letter from the Secretary of the Treasury, through the usual official channels of the Admiralty, acquaint- ing him that the Government was " of opinion that the commander-in-chief of the Leeward Islands, and officers under him, have shown a very commendable zeal, in endeavouring to put a stop to the very illicit practices which were carrying 54 Till-: LIL-'E OF KELSON on ill the islands, in open violation of the law, and to the great detriment of tlie navigation and trade of his Majesty's dominions." Verily, Hughes had his reward. Here he was commended in express terms for doing that which he had been too prndent to do, for zeal which he had never shown, for maintaining a law which he had given orders not to main- tain. "I own I was surprised,'' wrote Nelson, "that the commander-in-chief should be thanked for an act which he did not order, but which, if I understand the meaning of words, by his order of the 29th December, 1784, he ordered not to be." " To the end of the station,^ his order of the 29th of December was never repealed, so that I always acted with a rod over me." How heavily the responsibility he assumed was felt b}'' others, is clearly shown in another statement made by him. *' The Captains Collingwood were the only officers, with myself, who ever attempted to hinder the illicit trade with America ; and I stood' si nglij with respect to seizing, for the other officers were fearful of being brought into scrapes." Backed by the royal approval, and with his legal expenses guaranteed. Nelson's course was now smooth. He continued in all parts of the station to suppress the contraband trade, and his unpopularity, of course, also continued ; but excite- ment necessarily subsided as it became clear that submission was unavoidable, and as men adapted themselves to the new conditions. The whole procedure now looks somewhat bar- barous and blundering, but in no essential principle differs from the methods of protection to which the world at present seems again tending. It is not for us to throw stones at it. The results, then, were completely successful, judged by the standards of the time. "At this moment," wrote Nelson some few months later, " there are nearly fifty sail employed in the trade between the Islands of St. Kitts, Nevis, and America, which are truly British built, owned, and navigated. Had I been an idle spectator, my firm belief is that not a single vessel would have belonged to those islands in the foreign trade." His own action was further endorsed by the ministry, which now gave captains of ships-of-war much more 1 This word is used by Nelson, apparently, as equivalent to "season," — the cruising period in the "West Indies. " The admiral wishes to remain an- Other statjpw," he writes elsewhere. THE cruisp: of the "boreas" extensive powers, thereby justifying his contention that it was within their office to enforce the Navigation Act. Xor was this increjised activity of the executive branch of the government the only result of Xelson's persistence. His sagacious study of the whole question, under the local con- ditions of the West Indies, led to his making several sug- gestions for more surely carrying out the spirit of the Law; and these were embodied the next year in a formal Act of the Legislature. With so vivid a career as tliat of Nelson ahead, the delay imposed by this wrangling episode is somewhat dreary ; but it undeniably shows his characteristics in the strongest light. Duty, not ease; honor, not gain; the ideal, not the material, — such, not indeed without frailty and blemish, were ever his motives. And, while he craved his reward in the ap- proval and recognition of those around and above him, he could find consolation for the lack of them in his own sense of right-doing. " That thing called Honour," he writes to a friend soon after the " r>oreas " cruise, "is now, alas! thought of no more. My integrity cannot be mended, I hope ; but my fortune, God knows, has grown worse for the service ; so much for serving my country. But I have invariably laid down, and followed close, a jjlan of what ought to be upper- most in the breast of an officer : that it is much better to serve an ungrateful Country than to give up his own fame. Posterity will do him justice; a uniform conduct of honour and integrity seldom fails of bringing a man to the goal of fame at last." This struggle with Sir Ricliard Hughes, in wliich Nelson took the undesiraljle, and to a naval officer invidious, step of disobeying orders, showed clearly, not only the loftiness of his motives, but the distinguishing features which constituted the strength of his character, both personal and military. There was an acute perception of the right thing to do, an entire readiness to assume all the responsibility of doing it, and above all an accurate judgment of the best way to do it, — to act with impunity to himself and with most chances of success to his cause. Its analogy to a military situation is striking. There was a wrong condition of things to be righted — a victory to be won. To achieve this a great risk 56 THE LIFE OF NELSON must be taken, and he was willing to take it ; but in so doing he made such choice of his ground as to be practically unas- sailable — to attain his end without lasting harm to himself. That Nelson would have managed better had he been ten years older is very probable. Likely enough he betrayed some of the carelessness of sensibilities which the inexperi- ence of youth is too apt to show towards age ; but, upon a careful review of the whole, it appears to the writer that his general course of action was distinctly right, judged by the standards of the time and the well-settled principles of military obedience, and that he pursued an extremely diffi- cult line of conduct with singular resolution, with sound judgment, and, in the main, with an unusual amount of tact, without which he could scarcely have failed, however well purposing, to lay himself open to serious consequences. Cer- tainly he achieved success. It was in the midst of this legal warfare, and of the pre- occupations arising from it, that JSTelson first met the lady who became his wife. She was by birth a Miss Frances Woolward, her mother being a sister of the Mr. Herbert already mentioned as President of the Council in Nevis. She was born in the first half of 1758,^ and was therefore a few months older than Nelson. In 1779 she had married Dr. Josiah Msbet, of Nevis, and the next year was left a widow with one son, who bore his father's full name. After her husband's death, being apparently portionless, she came to live with Herbert, who looked upon and treated her as his own child, although he also had an only daughter. When Nelson first arrived at Nevis, in January, 1785,^ she was absent, visiting friends in a neighboring island, so that they did not then meet, — a circumstance somewhat fortunate for us, because it led to a description of him being sent to her in a letter from a lady of Herbert's family, not improbably her ^ Lady Nelson's tombstone in Littleham Chiirclij'ard, Exmouth, reads that she died Maj' 6, 1831, "aged 73." She would then have been born before May 6, 1758. The Annual Register for 1831 gives May 4, as tlie date of her death, and her age 68. 2 Prior to May, 1785, the only stops of the "Boreas" at Nevis were Jan- nary 6-8, February 1-4, and March 11-15. (Boreas's Log in Nicolas's Letters and Despatches of Lord Nelson, vol. vii. Addenda, pp. viii, ix.) COURTSHIP 57 cousin, Miss Herbert. Nelson had then become a somewhat conspicuous factor in the contracted interests of the island society, owing to the stand he had already publicly assumed Avith reference to the contraband trade. People were talking about him, although he had not as yet enforced the extreme measures which made him so unpopular. " We have at last," so ran the letter, " seen the little captain of the Boreas of whom so much has been said. He came up just before din- ner, much heated, and was very silent; but seemed, according to the old adage, to think the more. He declined drinking any wine ; but after dinner, when the president, as usual, gave the three following toasts, 'the King,' 'the Queen and Royal Family,' and 'Lord Hood,' this strange man regularly filled his glass, and observed that those were always bumper toasts with him ; which, having drank, he uniformly passed the bottle, and relapsed into his former taciturnity. It was impossible, during this visit, for any of us to make out his real character ; there was such a reserve and sternness in his behaviour, with occasional sallies, though very transient, of a superior mind. Being placed by him, I endeavoured to rouse his attention by showing him all the civilities in my power; but I drew out little more than 'Yes,' and 'No.' If you, Fanny, had been there, we think you would have made something of him, for you have been in the habit of attending to these odd sort of people." Mrs. Nisbet very quickly made something of him. Little direct description has been transmitted to us concerning the looks or characteristics of the woman who now, at the time when marriage was possible to him, had the misfortune to appear in the line of succession of Nelson's early fancies, and to attract the too easily aroused admiration and affection of a man whose attachment she had not the inborn power to bind. That Nelson was naturally inconstant, beyond the volatility inherent in youth, is sufficiently disproved by the strength and endurance of his devotion to the one woman, in whom he either found or imagined the qualities that appealed to the heroic side of his character. How completely she mastered all the approaches to his heart, and retained her supremacy, once established, to the end, is evidenced by the whole tenor of his correspondence with her, by his mention of her in letters to 58 THE LIFE OF NELSON others, by the recorded expressions he used in speaking to or about her. Despite all that he certainly knew of her, and much more that it is uu reasonable to doubt he must have known of her history, there is no mistaking the profound emotions she stirred in his spirit, which show themselves con- tinually in spontaneous outbreaks of passionate fondness and extravagant admiration, whose ring is too true and strong for doubt concerning their reality to find a place. Many men are swayed by strong and wayward impulses; but to most the fetters imposed by social conventions, by in- herited or implanted standards of seemliness and decorum, suffice to steady them in the path of outward propriety. Of how great and absorbing a passion Lord Nelson was capable is sliown by the immensity of the sacrifice that he made to it. Principle apart, — and principle wholly failed him, — all else that most appeals to man's self-respect and regard for the esteem of others was powerless to exert control. Loyalty to friendship, the sanctity which man is naturally fain to see in the woman he loves, and, in Nelson's own case, a peculiar re- luctance to wound another, — all these were trampled under foot, and ruthlessly piled on the holocaust which he offered to her whom he worshipped. He could fling to the winds, as others cannot, considerations of interest or expediency, as he flung them over and over in his professional career. My motto, he said once and again, is " All or nothing." The same disregard of consequences that hazarded all for all, in battle or for duty, broke through the barriers within which prudence, reputation, decency, or even weakness and cowardice, confine the actions of lesser men. And it must be remembered that the admitted great stain upon Nelson's fame, Avhicli it would be wicked to deny, lies not in a general looseness of life, but in the notoriety of one relation, — a notoriety due chiefly to the reckless singleness of heart which was not ashamed to own its love, but rather gloried in the public exhibition of a faith in the worthiness of its object, and a constancy, which never wavered to the hour of his death. ^ The pitifulness of 1 The author is satisfied, from casual expressions in Nelson's letters to Lady Hamilton, that his famous two years' confinement to the ship, 1803- 1805, and, to a less extent, the similar seclusion practised in the Baltic and the Downs, proceeded, in large part at least, from a romantic and chivalrous COURTSHIP 59 it is to see the incongruity between such faith, such devotion, and the distasteful inadequacy of their object. To answer the demands of a nature capable of such energetic manifestation — to fulfil the imagination of one who could so cast himself at the feet of an ideal — was beyond the gentle, well-ordered, and somewhat prosaic charms with which alone Mrs. Nisbet was invested by Nelson, even when most loverlike in tone. ''My greatest wish," he writes in the first of his letters to her that has been preserved, " is to be united to you ; and the foundation of all conjugal happiness, real love and esteem, is, I trust, what you believe I possess' in the strongest degree toward you." Fifteen months later, and but a short time before their wedding, he says again : " His Eoyal High- ness often tells me, he believes I am married ; for he never saw a lover so easy, or say so little of the object he has a regard for. When I tell him I certainly am not, he says, ' Then he is sure I must have a great esteem for you, and that it is not what is (vulgarly), I do not much like the use of that word, called love.' He is right : my love is founded on esteem, the only foundation that can make the passion last." But general maxims, even when less disputable than this, do not admit of luiiversal application ; and if an affection was to hold its own in a nature enthusiastic and imaginative as that of Nelson, it had need to strike root deeper than that surface soil indicated by mere esteem, at least when the latter rests simply upon an assemblage of upright and amiable qualities, and not upon that force of character which compels dependence as well as appre- ciation. At their last parting he solemnly avowed that his esteem was not lessened; while he was destined also to afford a conspicuous illustration of how enduring a passion may flourish where no just title to esteem exists. The progress of his wooing was rapid enough. On the 12th of May he first mentions their meeting ; on the 28th of June he writes to his brother : '•'■ Entrenoxis. — Do not be surprised to hear I am a Benedict, for if at all, it will be before a month. Do not tell." On the lltli of September is dated his first letter to her, already quoted, in which he addresses her as " My dear Fanny," and alludes to the understanding existing resolve to leave no room for donbt, in the mind of Lady Hamilton or of the world, that he was entire!}' faithful to her. 60 THE LIFE OF NELSON between tliem. At the expiration of six months he wrote, for- mally announcing his engagement, to Mr. William Suckling, his mother's brother. He anticipates the latter's doubts as to the permanence of this fancy: "This Horatio, you will say, is for ever in love ; " but he considers that six months without change settles that question. " My present attachment is of pretty long standing ; but I was determined to be fixed before I broke this matter to any person." He then explains the sit- uation,—that the lady herself has little or nothing; that Mr. Herbert, though rich, is not likely to help the young couple much, and he asks his uncle's assistance. This Suckling con- sented to give, and for several years continued liberally to extend. But still, impatient though Nelson always was to complete whatever he had on hand, various causes delayed the wedding for another year. Even with Suckling's help the question of means was pressing; and while, with pardonable self -justification, he gloried to his betrothed that "the world is convinced that I am superior to pecuniary considerations in my public and private life, as in both instances I might have been rich," he nevertheless owned to regretting that he " had not given greater attention to making money." Besides, as he wrote to his brother, " What should I do carrying a wife in a ship, and when I marry I do not mean to part with my wife." The cruising duty of the " Boreas " took her from port to port of the limited area embraced in the Leeward Islands Station, and Nevis was among the least important of the points demanding his attention. He was, therefore, fre- quently away from his betrothed during this period, and absence rather fanned than cooled the impetuous ardor which he carried into all his undertakings. Whether it were the pursuit of a love affair, or the chase of an enemy's fleet, de- lays served only to increase the vehemence with which Nelson chafed against difficulties. " Duty," he tells Mrs. Nisbet, " is the great business of a sea officer, — all private considerations must give way to it, however painful it is ; " but he owns he wishes " the American vessels at the Devil, and the whole continent of America to boot," because they detain him from her side. There is no singularity in the experience that obstacles tend rather to inflame than to check a lover's eagerness. What is COURTSHIP 61 noteworthy in Nelson's letters at this time is the utter absence of any illusions, of any tendency to exaggerate and glorify the qualities of the woman who for the nonce possessed his heart. There is not a sign of the perturbation of feeling, of the stir- ring of the soul, that was afterwards so painfully elicited by another influence. " The dear object," he writes to his brother, "you must like. Her sense, polite manners, and, to you I may say, beauty, you will much admire. She possesses sense far superior to half the people of our acquaintance, and her manners are Mrs. Moutray's." The same calm, measured tone pervades all his mention of her to others. His letters to herself, on the other hand, are often pleasing in the quiet, simple, and generally unaffected tenderness which inspires them. In a more ordinary man, destined to more common- place fortunes, they might well be regarded as promising that enduring wedded love which strikes root downward and bears fruit upward, steadily growing in depth and devotion as the years roll by. But Nelson was not an ordinary man, and from that more humble happiness a childless marriage further debarred him. He could rise far higher, and, alas! descend far lower as he followed the radiant vision, — the image of his own mind rather than an external reality, — the ideal, which, whether in fame or in love, beckoned him onward. The calm, even, and wholly matter-of-fact appreciation of his wife's esti- mable traits can now be seen in the light of his after career, and its doubtful augury descried ; for to idealize was an es- sential attribute of his temperament. Her failure, even in the heyday of courtship, to arouse in him any extravagance of emotion, any illusive exaltation of her merits, left vacant that throne in his mind which could be permanently occupied only by a highly wrought excellence, — even though that were the purely subjective creation of his own enthusiasm. This hold Lady Nelson never gained ; and the long absence from 1793 to 1797, during the opening period of the war of the French Revolution, probably did to death an affection which owed what languid life it retained cliiefly to propinquity and cus- tom. Both Saumarez and Codrington, who served under him, speak passingly of the lightness with which his family ties sat upon Nelson in the years following his short stay at home in 1797. The house was empty, swept, and garnished, when 62 THE LIFE OF NELSON the simple-minded, if lion-hearted, seaman came under the spell of one whose fascinations had overpowered the resistance of a cool-headed man of the world, leading him in his old age, with open eyes, to do what every prepossession and every reasonable conviction of his life condemned as folly. In the summer of 1786 Sir Richard Hughes was recalled to England. During the later part of his association with Nelson, the strain which had characterized their earlier rela- tions had not only disappeared, but had been succeeded by feelings approaching cordiality. The Government's approval of his subordinate's action, and of himself as credited with supporting it, had removed that element of apprehension which in timid men induces irritation ; and Hughes, who, though irresolute, was naturally kindly, had been still farther placated by the prize-money falling to him from the vessels condemned through the zeal of" Nelson. The latter, who never harbored malice, easily forgave the past, and responded to this change of tone. " I have been upon the best terms with the Admiral," he wrote from Barbadoes to his intended wife in April, 1786, "and I declare I think I could ever remain so. He is always remarkably kind and civil to every one ; " and again, a few days earlier, " The admiral is highly pleased with my conduct here, as you will believe, by sending me such fine lines with a white hat. I well know I am not of abilities to deserve what he has said of me : but I take ib as they are meant, to show his regard for me ; and his politeness and attention to me are great : nor shall I forget it. I like the man, although not all his acts." He then directs that the lines shall not be shown to any one, " as the compliment is paid to me at the expense of the officers of the squadron," an injunction thoroughly characteristic of the man's kindly con- sideration for others. It was creditable to Hughes that, after being so braved, and his instructions set at naught by his junior, he had candor enough to see and acknowledge his merit ; but the fact still remained that in the hour of trial he had failed Nelson, nor did the latter, though he forgave, for- get it. As he wrote to Locker in September, 1786, after the admiral's departure, " Instead of being supported by my admiral, I was obliged to keep him up, for he was frightened at this business ; " of which business he truly said, emphasiz- LEFT SENIOR OFFICER IN THE WEST INDIES G?j ing, but not at all exaggerating, the gravity of the responsi- bility he had taken in defiance of his superior : " After loss of health and risk of fortune, another is thanked for what I did against his orders. Either I deserved to he sent out of the service,'^ or at least to have had some little notice taken of me." Nelson indeed, in the West Indies, as an unknown captain, had done that which as a junior admiral he did later at Copen- hagen, at a moment far more critical to Great Britain. By his own unusual powers of impulse and resolve he had en- forced, as far as was possible against the passive, inert lethargy — not to say timidity — of his superior, the course of action which at the moment was essential to the interests of his country. Truly great in his strength to endure, he knew not the perturbations nor the vacillations that fret the temper, and cripple the action, of smaller men ; and, however harassed and distressed externally, the calmness of a clear insight and an unshaken purpose guided his footsteps, unwavering, in the path of duty, through all opposition, to the goal of success. It is reported that an officer of the " Boreas," speaking to him of the vexations and odium he had undergone, used the word " pity." Nelson's reply showed the profound confidence which throughout had animated him, keenly as he had undoubtedly felt the temporary anxieties. "Pity, did you say? I shall live. Sir, to be envied ; and to that point I shall always direct my course." By the departure of Sir Eichard Hughes Nelson was left senior officer upon the station until his own return home, a twelvemonth later. In November he renewed his acquaint- ance with Prince William Henry, whom he had known as a midshipman in 1782, and who now came to the Leeward Islands a post-captain, in command of the frigate " Pegasus." The two young men Avere not far apart in age, and an intimacy between them soon arose, which ended only with the death of Nelson. The latter had a profound reverence for royalty, both as an institution and as represented in its raem- 1 The author has italicized these words because they accurately express the just peualty that military law would have required of Nelson, had he not shown adequate grounds for his disobedience. They measure, tlierefore, the responsibility he shouldered, and the reward he deserved. 64 THE LIFE OF NELSON bers; and to this, in the present case, was added a strong personal esteem, based upon the zeal and efficiency in the dis- charge of official duties, which he recognized in one whose rank would assure him impunity for any mere indifference. The prince, on the other hand, quickly yielded to the charm of Nelson's intercourse, so vividly felt by most who knew him, and to the contagious enthusiasm which animated his conversation when talking of his profession. This, also, his ardent imagination endowed with possibilities and aspirations, not greater, indeed, than its deserts, but which only the intui- tions of a genius like his could realize and vivify, imparting to slower temperaments something of his own fire. To this association the prince afterwards attributed the awakening of that strong interest in maritime affairs which he retained to the day of his death. The two friends dined alternately one with the other, and, in their association of some six months at this time, they together fought over all the naval battles that during the recent war had illustrated the waters through which they were then cruising. The incessant energy displayed by Nelson, and the agitations through which he passed during the three years of this stay upon the West Indian station, again produced distressing symp- toms in his general health. To use his own words, the activity of the mind was " too much for my puny constitution." '' I am worn to a skeleton," he writes to Mr. Suckling in July, 1786 ; and three months later to Locker, " I have been since June so very ill that I have only a faint recollection of anything which I did. My complaint was in my breast, such a one as I had going out to Jamaica [in 1777]. The Doctor thought I was in a consumption, and quite gave me up." This fear, how- ever, proved unfounded ; nor does there appear at any time to have been any serious trouble with his lungs. On the 11th ^ of March, 1787, the marriage of Captain Nelson to Mrs. Nisbet took place at Nevis. Prince William Henry, whose rule it was never to visit in any private house, made an exception on this occasion, having exacted from 1 Sir Harris Nicolas (Nelson's Despatches and Letters, vol. 1. p. 217) gives March 12 as the daj' of the wedding, upon the ground of a letter of Lady- Nelson's. Her mention of the date is, however, rather casual ; and March 11 is given in the parish register of the church in Nevis. THREATENING ASPECT OF AFFAIRS IN HOLLAND 60 Nelson a promise that the wedding should wait until he could be present ; and he gave away the bride. Three months later, on the 7th of June, the " Boreas " sailed for England, and on the 4th of July anchored at Spithead. Whether Mrs. Nelson accompanied him in the ship does not appear certainly ; but from several expressions in his letters it seems most probable that she did. Five days after his ar- rival he sent a message from her to Locker, in terms which indicate that she was with him. A newly married man, who had just concluded a full cruise of such arduous and unremitting exertions, might reasonably have wished and expected a period of relaxation ; but the return of the " Boreas " coincided with a very disturbed state of European politics. In the neighboring republic of Holland two parties were striving for the mastery ; one of which was closely attached to France, the other, that of the Stadtholder, to Great Britain. In 1785 the former had gained the upper hand ; and, by a treaty signed on Christmas Day of that year, a decided preponderance in the councils of the United Prov- inces had been given to France. The enfeebled condition of the latter country, however, had allowed little prospect of permanence to this arrangement ; and in the summer of 1787, an insult offered by the French party to the wife of the Stadt- holder led to a forcible intervention by the King of Prussia, whose sister she was. Louis XVI. prepared to support his partisans, and notified his purpose to Great Britain ; where- upon the latter, whose traditional policy for over a century had been to resist the progress of French influence in the Low Countries, replied that she could not remain a quiet spectator, and at once began to arm. " The Dutch business," wrote Nelson, " is becoming every day more serious ; and I hardly think we can keep from a war, without giving forever the weight of the Dutch to the French, and allowing the Stadt- holdership to be abolished, — things which I should suppose hardly possible." Already his eager spirit was panting for the fray. " If we are to have a bustle, I do not want to come on shore ; I begin to think I am fonder of the sea than ever." Only five months married ! The threatening aspect of affairs necessitated the " Boreas " being kept in commission, — the more so because the economies 5 THE LIFE OP NELSON introduced by Mr. Pitt into the administration of the two military services had reduced the available naval force below that which France could at once send out. " The Boreas is kept in readiness to go to sea with the squadron at Spithead," wrote Nelson ; " but in my poor opinion we shall go no further at present. The French have eight sail in Brest water ready for sea: therefore I think we shall not court the French out of port," — a singular illustration of the unreadiness of Great Britain in the years immediately preceding the French Revolu- tion. He looks for war, however, the following summer. As not only ships, but men also, were urgently needed, the impress service was hastily organized. His friend Locker was sum- moned from his long retirement to superintend that work in Exeter, and the " Boreas " was ordered to the Thames on the same business, arriving on the 20th of August at the Nore. There her duty was to board passing vessels, and take from them as many of their crew as were above the number barely necessary for the safety of the ship. She herself, besides act- ing as receiving ship for the men thus pressed, was to be kept in readiness to sail at a moment's warning. Mrs. Nelson had therefore to leave her and go to London. " Here we are," wrote Nelson on the 23d of September, " laying seven miles from the land on the Impress service, and I am as much sep- arated from my wife as if I were in the East Indies ; " and he closes the letter with the words, " I am this moment getting under sail after some ships." His early biographers say that Nelson keenly felt and re- sented the kind of service in which he was then engaged ; so much so that, moved also by other causes of irritation, he decided at one time to quit the Navy. No indication of such feeling, however, appears in his letters. On the contrary, one of the surest signs with him of pleasurable, or at least of in- terested, excitement was now manifested in his improving health. As he himself said, many years later, " To say the truth, when I am actively employed I am not so bad." ^ A month after reaching England, though then midsummer, he 1 The same symptom will be noted in the anxious pursuit of Villcneuve to the West Indies in 1805, where he grew better, although for some months he liad had in his hands the Admiralty's permission to return home on account of his health. LACK OF APPRECIATION 6*7 Avrote : " It is not kind in one's native air to treat a poor wanderer as it has me since my arrival. The rain and cold, at first gave me a sore throat and its accompaniments; the hot weather has given me a slow fever, not absolutely bad enough to keep my bed, yet enough to hinder me from doing anything;" and again, "I have scarcely been able to hold, up my head." In blustering October, on the other hand, while in the midst of the detested Impress work, he says : " My health, thank God, was never better, and I am fit for any quarter of the globe ; " although " it rains hard, and we have had very bad weather of late." Whatever momentary vexa- tion he may have vented in a hasty expression, it was entirely inconsistent with his general tone to take amiss an employ- ment whose vital importance he would have been the first to admit. Lack of zeal, or haggling about the duty assigned him, was entirely foreign to his character ; that the country needed the men who were to be pressed was reason sufficient for one of his temper. If, indeed, there had been an apparent inten- tion to keep him in such inglorious occupation, and out of the expected war, he might have chafed ; but his orders to be constantly ready indicated the intention to send him at once to the front, if hostilities began. Doubtless he was dis- appointed that the application he made for a ship-of-the-line was not granted ; but he knew that, being still a very young captain, what he asked was a favor and its refusal not a griev- ance, nor does he seem to have looked upon it otherwise. There were, however, some annoyances, which, joined to tlie lack of appreciation for his eminent services to the inter- ests of the nation in tlie West Indies, must have keenly stung him. Without the slightest necessity, except that laid upon him by his own public spirit, he had fought and struggled, and endured three years of hot water to serve the Government. He might have gone easy, as did the admiral and the other captains ; but instead of so doing he had destroyed the con- traband trade, and re-established the working of laws upon which the prosperity and security of the kingdom were thought to depend. For this he had received a perfunctory, formal acknowledgment, though none apparently from the Admiralty, the head of his own service. But he soon found that, if slow to thank, they were prompt to blame, and that 68 THE LIFE OF NELSON Avith no light hand nor disposition to make allowances. He had run his head against various regulations of the bureau- cracy ; and this let him know, Avith all the amenities of offi- cial censure, that if they could not recognize what he had done well, they were perfectly clear-sighted as to where he had gone wrong. So far from appreciation, there seems even to have been a prejudice against Nelson in high quarters, due not only to the discomposure felt by the routine official, at the rude irregulari- ties of the man who is more concerned to do his work than nice about the formalities surrounding it, but also to misrep- resentation by the powerful interests he had offended through his independent course in the West Indies. After Hughes had gone home, Nelson, as senior officer on the station, began to examine the modes of conducting government business, and especially of making purchases. Conceiving that there were serious irregularities in these, he suggested to the Civil De- partment of the Navy, under whose cognizance the transac- tions fell, some alterations in the procedure, by which the senior naval officer would have more control over the pur- chases than simply to certify that so much money was wanted. The Comptroller of the Navy replied that the old forms were sufficient, — "a, circumstance which hurt me," wrote Nelson ; while all the civil functionaries resented his interference with their methods, and seem to have received the tacit support, if not the direct sympathy, of the Navy Board, as the Civil De- partment was then called. His disposition to look into matters, however, had become known, and the long struggle over the contraband trade had given him in the islands a reputation for tenacity and success. It was probably in dependence upon these that two merchants came to him, two months before he left the station, and told him of the existence of very exten- sive frauds, dating back several years, in which were impli- cated both civil officials of the Navy and private parties on shore. It is possible that the informants themselves had shared in some of these transactions, and they certainly de- manded in payment a part of the sums recovered ; but, as Nelson truly said, the question was not as to their character, but how to stop the continuance of embezzlements which had then amounted to over two millions sterling. DISCONTENT WITH SERVICE, 1787 69 The reports made by him upon this subject reached London about a month before the return of the " Boreas ; " but the war scare, and the urgent call upon all departments of the Navy to mobilize the available force, prevented any immediate steps being taken. His letters were acknowledged, and the inten- tion expressed to investigate the matter, but nothing more was then done. In October, however, the Prussian troops occupied Amsterdam, reinstating the Stadtholder in all his privileges, and restoring to power the partisans of Great Britain ; while France remained passive, her power for external action para- lyzed by the dying convulsions of the monarchy. The curtain had just risen upon the opening scene in the great drama of the Eevolution, — the first Assembly of Notables. Warlike preparations consequently ceased, and on the 30th of Novem- ber, 1787, the cruise of the " Boreas " came to an end. It was during this last month of servitude, and immediately before quitting the ship, that Nelson is said to have used the vehement expressions of discontent with " an ungrateful ser- vice," recorded by his biographers, concluding with his resolve to go at once to London and resign his commission. In the absence of the faintest trace, in his letters, of dissatisfaction with the duty to which the ship was assigned, it is rea- sonable to attribute this exasperation to his soreness under the numerous reprimands he had received, — a feeling which plainly transpires in some of his replies, despite the forms of official respect that he scrupulously observed. Even in much later days, when his distinguished reputation might have enabled him to sustain with indifference this supercilious rudeness, he winced under it with over-sensitiveness. "Do not, my dear lord," he wrote to Earl Spencer a year after the battle of the Nile, "let the Admiralty write harshly to me — my generous soul cannot bear it, being conscious it is entirely unmerited." This freedom of censure, often felt by him to be undeserved, or at least excessive, and its sharp contrast with the scanty recognition of his unwearied efforts, — of whose value he himself was by no means forgetful, — though not unusual in the experience of officers, are quite sufficient to account for the sense of neglect and unjust treat- ment by which he was then outraged. This feeling was prob- ably accentuated, also, by a renewal of the legal persecution 70 THE LIFE OF NELSON which had been begun in the West Indies; for towards the end of the year he received formal notice of suits being insti- tuted ao-ainst him for the seizure of the American vessels, and it is likely enough that some intimation of what was coming reached him before leaving the "Boreas." Scanty thanks, liberal blame, and the prospect of an expensive lawsuit based upon his ofl&cial action, constituted, for a poor man lately married, causes of disturbance which might well have upset his equanimity. Lord Howe, who was then at the head of the Admiralt}', though formal and unbending in outward bearing, was a just and kind man, and one fully appreciative of professional worth. A mutual friend acquainted him with Nelson's irri- tation, and Howe wrote a private letter asking that he would call upon him as soon as he came to town. Though quick to resent, Nelson was easily soothed by attention and pleased by compliment, even when it rose to flattery, — which Howe's was not likely to do. A short interview gave the First Lord a clearer idea than he before had of the extent, value, and wholly voluntary character of the services rendered by the young captain in the West Indies; and he indicated the com- pleteness of his satisfaction by offering to present him to the King, which was accordingly done at the next levee. George III. received him graciously; and the resentment of Nelson, whose loyalty was of the most extreme type, melted away in the sunshine of royal favor. Thus reconciled to the service, and convinced, as in his less morbid moods he often said, that gratitude and honor, though long deferred, were sure to follow upon steadfast performance of duty, he speedily renewed his efforts to bring to light the fraiids practised in the colonies. His letters on the subject to Mr. Pitt, the Prime Minister, had been turned over to the Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. George Eose, and upon the latter Nelson now called. Eose received him at first with that courteous nonchalance which is the defensive armor of the beset official, — the name of his visitor, and the business with which it was connected, had for the moment slipped his mind. Nelson's mastery of his subject, however, and his warmth in it, soon roused the attention of his hearer, who, being then pressed for time, asked to see him again the next MENTAL CHARACTERISTICS 71 day, stipulating only that the interview should be early, before office hours. "It cannot be too early for me," re- plied Nelson, whose habit, in Ids career as admiral, was to get through his correspondence before eight o'clock, — "six o'clock, if you please." The arrangement was so made, and the consequent meeting lasted from six to nine the next morning. Of its general nature and results we have an authentic outline, given in later years to Nelson's biographers by Rose, who became, and to the last remained, his warm personal friend. The conver- sation ranged, apparently, over all the chief occurrences in the West Indies during the cruise of the "Boreas," including both the naval frauds and the contraband trade. The breadth and acuteness of Nelson's intellect have been too- much over- looked, in the admiration excited by his unusually grand moral endowments of resolution, dash, and fearlessness of responsibility. Though scarcely what could be called an educated man, he was one of close and constant observation, thereby gaining a great deal of information ; and to the use of this he brought a practical sagacity, which coped with the civil or political questions placed before it, for action^ much as it did with military questions — for, after all, good gen- eralship, on its intellectual side, is simply the application, to the solution of a military problem, of a mind naturally gifted therefor, and stored with experience, either personal or of others. As a strategist and tactician. Nelson made full proof of high native endowments, of wisdom garnered through fruitful study and meditation, and of clear insight into the determining conditions of the various military situations with which he had to deal. To Mr. Rose, the young captain of barely thirty years displayed a precise knowledge of several political subjects, connected with the commerce of the coun- try, that would not naturally come under his notice as an officer, and which therefore the mere seaman would probably not have imbibed. Not only so, but his suggestions for deal- ing practically with the interests at stake were so judicious, that Rose, a valued associate of Pitt and intimately ac- quainted with the financial measures of that brilliant admin- istrator, complimented him warmly upon the justice and correctness of his views, the result, as they were, of reflection 72 THE LIFE OF NELSON based upon a mastery of the data involved. With Nelson's consent, he undertook to lay them before the prime minister, as the direct testimony of a singularly competent first-hand observer. It is to be noted, however, of Nelson, that this accuracy of mental perception, this power of penetrating to the root of a matter, disregarding unessential details and fastening solely on decisive features, was largely dependent upon the necessity laid upon him for action; which is j^robably equiva- lent to saying that it was usually elicited by a sobering sense of responsibility. In his letters and despatches may be found many Avild guesses, inconsistent from week to week, colored by changing moods and humors, — the mere passing comments of a mind off guard, — the records of evanescent impressions as numerous, fickle, and unfounded as tliose of the most ordinary mortal. It is when urgency presses and danger threatens, when the need for action comes, that his mental energies are aroused, and he begins to speak, as it were, ex cathedra. Then the unsubstantial haze rolls away, and the solid features of the scene one by one appear, until, amid all the unavoidable uncertainties of imperfect infor- mation, it becomes plain that the man has a firm grasp upon the great landmarks by which he must guide his course. Like the blind, who at first saw men as trees walking, and then saw everything clearly, so Eis mental illumination gradu- ally reduces confusion to order, and from perplexity evolves correct decision. But what shall be said of those flashes of insight, as at Cape St. Vincent, elicited in a moment, as by the stroke of iron on rock, where all the previous processes of ordered thought and labored reasoning are condensed into one vivid inspiration, and transmuted without a pause into instant heroic action ? Is that we call " genius " purely a mystery, of which our only account is to give it a name ? Or is it true, as Napoleon said, that '' on the field of battle the happiest inspiration is often but a recollection" ? From Eose Nelson went to the Comptroller of the Navy, Sir Charles Middleton, who afterwards, as Lord Barbara, sent him forth to Trafalgar. Middleton had replied promptly to the first report of the fraudulent transactions, giving as- surance of his readiness to act, and urging that all the CONTEST WITH FRAUDS 73 iiiformatiou possible should be secured, as lie feared that the allegations, were substantially true. He now showed the instructions of the Navy Board, under which its colonial employees acted, to Nelson, who said that, if honestly fol- lowed, they must prevent the unlawful practices ; but that he believed they were habitually violated, and that he him- self, though senior officer on the station, had never before seen the instructions. This failure to intrust supervision to the one person upon whom all responsibility should ulti- mately have rested, practically neutralized the otherwise laudable methods prescribed by the Board. It was simply another instance of the jealousy between the civil and mili- tary branches of the naval organization, which, as is well known, resulted in constant strained relations between the Admiralty and the Naval Commissioners, until the latter Board was at last abolished. It is, fortunately, unnecessary to follow farther this dreary record of old-time dishonesty. Nelson continued to interest himself stremiously in the matter for two years after his return to England, both by letter and interview with persons in authority. His own position and influence were too in- significant to effect anything, except by moving the home officials, whose administration was compromised and embar- rassed by the malpractices of their representatives. Though up-hill work, it was far from fruitless. "His representa- tions," said Mr. Rose, in a memorandum furnished to his biographers, "were all attended to, and every step which he recommended was adopted. He thus put the investigation into a proper course ; which ended in the detection and pun- ishment of some of the parties whose conduct was complained of." The broad result appears to have been that the guilty for the most part escaped punishment, unless, indeed, some of them lost their positions, of which no certain information exists ; but the corrupt combination was broken up, and measures were adopted to prevent the recurrence of the same iniquities. Upon Nelson himself the effect was twofold. His energy and intelligence could not fail to impress the powerful men with whom he was in this way brought into contact. The affair increased his reputation, and made him more widely known than as a simple captain in the Navy he 74 THE LIFE OF NELSON would otherwise have been. As the various public Boards whose money had been stolen realized the amovuit of the thefts, and the extent of the conspiracy to rob the Govern- ment, they felt their obligations to him, and expressed them in formal, but warm, letters of thanks. On tlie other hand, the principal culprits had command of both money and in- fluence; and by means of these, as so often happens, they not only impeded inquiry, but, according to Southey, who wrote not very long after the events, " succeeded in raising prejudices against ISTelson at the Board of Admiralty which it was many years before he could subdue." Clarke and M'Arthur make the same assertion. That these prejudices did at one time exist is beyond doubt, and that they should have been fostered by this means is perfectly in keeping with common experience. Such intrigues, liowever, work in the dark and by in- direction ; it is not often easy to trace their course. The independence and single-mindedness with which Nelson fol- lowed his convictions, and the outspoken frankness with which he expressed his views and feelings, not improbably gave a handle to malicious misrepresentation. His known intimacy with Prince William Henry, upon whose favor he to some extent relied, was also more likely to do him harm than good ; and he entertained for the royal captain pre- possessions not far removed from partisanship, at a time when the prince avowed himself not a friend to the present minister. " Amidst that variety of business Avhich demanded his attention on his return to England," say his biographers, "he failed not, by every means in his power, to fulfil the promise which he had made to his Royal Highness Prince William of counteracting whatever had been opposed to the merited reputation of his illustrious pupil, and to the friend- ship they had invariably preserved for each other." It was a clifficult task. Opinionated and headstrong as the King, his father, the young man was an uneasy subordinate to the Admiralty, and made those above him realize that he was full as conscious of his personal rank as of his official posi- tion as a captain in the Navy. It was, indeed, this self- assertive temperament that afterwards frustrated liis natural ambition to be the active head of the service. Having such OUT OF FAVOR AT ADMIRALTY 75 an ally, there is something ominous for Nelson's own pros- pects to tind him writing in evident sympathy: "The great folks above now see he will not be a cypher, therefore many of the rising people must submit to act subordinate to him, which is not so palatable; and I think a Lord of the Ad- miralty is hurt to see him so able, after what he has said about him. He has certainly not taken a leaf out of his book, for he is steady in his command and not violent." Upon this follows, " He has wrote Lord Hood what I cannot but approve," — a sentence unquestionably vague, but which sounds combative. Nelson had already felt it necessary to caution the prince to be careful in the choice of those to whom he told his mind. In fact, at the time when the letter just quoted was Avritten, the conduct of the prince had been such as necessarily, and not wholly unjustly, to prejudice an officer who displayed marked partisanship for him, such as certainly was indicated by Nelson's expressions. He had brought his ship from New- foundland to Ireland in flat disobedience of orders, issued by the commander of the station, to go to Quebec. When this action became known to the Admiralty by his arrival at Cork, in December, 1787, it was at once reported to the King, who himself directed that the prince should proceed to Plymouth with his ship, should remain within the limits of the port for as many months as he had been absent from his station, and should then be sent back to Halifax. The Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV., who was already at variance with the King, took advantage of this flagrant breach of discipline to flaunt his opposition before the world. In company with his second brother, the Duke of York, he went down to Plymouth, and paid a ceremonious visit to Prince William on board his ship. The round of festivities necessitated by their presence emphasized the disagreement between the sovereign and the heir to the throne, and drew to it public attention. Immedi- ately after this, in January, 1788, Nelson also visited the prince, having been summoned by him from London. He could, indeed, scarcely decline, nor was he at all the man to turn his back on a friend in difficulty, but, in his fight against corruption, the matter could scarcely fail to be represented by his opponents under the worst light to the King, to whom 70 THE LIFE OF NELSON corruption was less odious than insubordination. If, in con- versation, Nelson uttered such expressions as he wrote to his friend Locker, he had only himself to blame for the disfavor which followed ; for, to a naval officer, the prince's conduct should have appeared absolutely indefensible. In the course of the same year the King became insane, and the famous struggle about the Kegency took place. The prince had mean- time returned to America, in accordance with his orders, and by the time he again reached England the King had recovered. He could, therefore, have refrained from any indication of his own sympathies ; but instead of this he openly associated himself with the party of the Prince of Wales, whose course throughout, when it became known to his father, had bitterly displeased the latter, and accentuated the breach between them. At a banquet given by the Spanish ambassador in celebration of the King's recovery, the three princes sat at a table separate from the rest of the royal family. A formal reconciliation took place in September, 1789; but the Duke of Clarence, as he had then become, continued attached to the Prince of Wales's clique. Those who know how party considerations influenced naval appointments at that time, wall in these facts find at least a partial explanation of the cloud which then hung over Nelson. Lord Chatham, brother of the minister to whom Prince William was not a friend, became head of the Admiralty in July, 1788, and so remained until after the war with France began in 1793. With him was associated Lord Hood, between whom and Nelson there arose Avhat the latter called "a dif- ference of opinion," which led to a cessation of "familiar correspondence. " The exact date at which this occurred does not appear, but it was probably before May, 1790 ; for Hood refused to use his influence to get Nelson a ship, in the arma- ment which was then ordered on account of a difficulty with Spain, whereas eighteen months before he had assured him that in case of hostilities he need not fear not having a good ship. This refusal was the more marked, because ''almost the whole service was then called out." On the same occasion, Nelson wrote, " he made a speech never to be effaced from my memory, viz. : that the King was impressed with an unfavour- able opinion of me." Knowing Nelson's value as an officer as UNPLEASANT CIRCUMSTANCES 77 well as Hood did, there can scarcely remain a doubt that some serious indiscretion, real or imagined, must have caused this alienation ; but of what it was there is no trace, unless in his evident siding with the prince, who was then out of favor with both the King and the administration. The five years — from 1788 to 1792 inclusive — intervening between the cruise of the "Boreas " and the outbreak of war with the French Republic, were thus marked by a variety of unpleasant circumstances, of which the most disagreeable, to a man of Nelson's active temperament, was the apparently fixed resolve of the authorities to deny him employment. He was harassed, indeed, by the recurring threats of prosecution for the West India seizures ; but both the Admiralty and the Treasury agreed that he should be defended at the expense of the Crown, — a fact which tends to show that his subsequent disfavor arose from some other cause than disapproval of his official action, however some incidents may have been misrep- resented. On its private side, his life during this period seems to have been happy, though uneventful ; but in the failure of children he was deprived, both then and afterwards, of that sweetest of interests, continuous yet ever new in its gradual unfolding, which brings to the most monotonous existence its daily tribute of novelty and incident. The fond, almost rap- turous, expressions with which he greeted the daughter after- wards born to him out of wedlock, show the blank in his home, — none the less real because not consciously realized. The lack of stimulus to his mind from his surroundings at this time is also manifested by the fewness of his letters. But thirty remain to show his occupation during the five years, and seventeen of these are purely official in character. From the year 1791 no record survives. His wife being with him, one line of correspondence was thereby closed ; but even to his brother, and to his friend Locker, he finds nothing to write. For the ordinary country amusements and pursuits of the English gentry he had scant liking ; and, barring the occasional worry over his neglect by the Admiralty, there was little else to engage his attention. The first few months after his release from the "Boreas" were spentin the West of England, chiefly at Bath, for the recovery of Mrs. iSTelson's health as well as his own ; but toward the latter part of 1788 the young couple 78 THE LIFE OF NELSON went to live with his father at the parsonage of Burnham Thorpe, and there made their home until he was again called into active service. "It is extremely interesting," say his biographers, " to contemplate this great man, when thus re- moved from the busy scenes in which he had borne so distin- guished a part to the remote village of Burnham Thorpe;" but the interest seems by their account to be limited to the energy with which he dug in the garden, or, frdm sheer want of something to do, reverted to the bird-nesting of his boyhood. His favorite amusement, we are told, was coursing, and he once shot a partridge ; but his habit of carrying his gun at full cock, and firing as soon as a bird rose, without bringing the piece to his shoulder, made him a dangerous companion in a shooting- party. His own account is somewhat different : " Shoot I cannot, therefore I have not taken out a license ; but notwith- standing the neglect I have met with I am happy ;"and again, to his brother, he says: "It was not my intention to have gone to the coursing meeting, for, to say the truth, I have rarely escaped a wet jacket and a violent cold; besides, to me, even the ride to the Smee is longer than any pleasure I find in the sport will compensate for." The fact is that Nelson cared for none of these things, and the only deduction of real interest from his letters at this time is the absolute failure of his home life and affections to content his aspirations, — the emj^tiness both of mind and heart, which caused his passionate eagerness for external employment to fill the void. Earnestness appears only when he is brooding over the slight with which he was treated, and the resultant thwarting of his career. For both mind and heart the future held in store for him the most en- grossing emotions, but it did not therefore bring him happiness. Of his frames of mind during tliis period of neglect and disfavor, his biographers give a very strongly colored picture, for which, it is to be presumed, they drew upon contemporary witnesses that were to them still accessible. " With a morti- fied and dejected spirit, he looked forward to a continuance of inactivity and neglect. . . . During this interval of dis- appointment and mortification, his latent ambition would at times burst forth, and despise all restraint. At others, a sudden melancholy seemed to overshadow his noble faculties, and to affect his temper ; at those moments the remonstrances A STORMY AND ANXIOUS PERIOD 79 of his wife and venerable father alone could calm the tempest of his passions." That Nelson keenly felt the cold indiffer- ence he now underwent, is thoroughly in keeping with the sensitiveness to censure, expressed or implied, which his cor- respondence frequently betrays, while his frail organization and uncertain health would naturally entail periods oP depres- sion or nervous exasperation ; but the general tenor of his letters, few as they at this time were, shows rather dignified acceptance of a treatment he had not merited, and a steady resolve not to waver in his readiness to serve his country, nor to cease asking an opportunity to do so. Many years later, at a time of still more sickening suspense, he wrote: ''I am in truth half dead, but what man can do shall be done, — I am not made to despair ; " and now, according to a not improbable story, he closed an application for employment with the words, " If your Lordships should be pleased to appoint me to a cockle boat, I shall feel grateful." Hood, whose pupil he in a sense was, and who shared his genius, said of himself, when under a condition of enforced inactivity : " This proves very strongly the different frames of men's minds ; some are full of anxiety, impatience, and apprehension, while others, under similar circumstances, are perfectly cool, tranquil, and indifferent." The latter half of the year 1792 was marked by the rapid progress in France of the political distemper, which was so soon to cuhuinate in the worst excesses of the Revolution. The quick succession of symptoms, each more alarming than the other, — the suspension of the royal power at the tumult- uous bidding of a mob, the September massacres, the abolition of royalty, the aggressive character of the National Convention shown by the decrees of November 19 and December 15, — roused the apprehensions of most thoughtful men throughout Europe ; and their concern was increased by the growing popular effervescence in other countries than France. The British cabinet, as was natural, shifted more slowly than did the irresponsible members of the community ; nor could Pitt lightly surrender his strong instinctive prepossessions in favor of peace, with the continuance of which was identified the exercise of his own best powers. During this stormy and anxious period, Nelson shared the 80 THE LIFE OF NELSON feelings of his day and class. It is noteworthy, however, that, in regarding the perils of the time, he was no mere panic- monger, but showed the same discriminating carefulness of observation that had distinguished him as captain of the "Boreas," and had elicited the admiration of Mr. Eose. Strenuous and even bigoted royalist as he always was, sat- isfied of the excellence of the British Constitution, and con- demning utterly the proceedings of the more or less seditious societies then forming throughout the kingdom, he yet rec- ognized the substantial grievances of the working-men, as evident in the district immediately under his eye. The sym- pathetic qualities wliich made him, fortune's own favorite in his profession, keenly alive to the hardships, neglect, and injustice undergone by the common seaman, now engaged him to set forth the sad lot of the ill-paid rural peasantry. In his letters to the Duke of Clarence, he on the one hand strongly blames the weakness and timidity of the justices and country gentlemen, in their attitude towards the abettors of lawlessness^ but, on the other, he dwells upon the sufferings of the poor, prepares a careful statement of their earnings and unavoidable expenses, and insists upon the necessity of the living wage. The field laborers, he said, " do not want loyalty, many of their superiors, in many instances, might have imitated their conduct to advantage ; but hunger is a sharp thorn, and they are not only in want of food sufficient, but of clothes and firing." Under the threatening outlook, he considers that every individual will soon " be called forth to show himself ; " and for his own part, he writes on the 3d of November, he sees no way so proper as asking for a ship. But, even at that late moment, neither Pitt nor his associates had abandoned the hope of peace, and this, as well as other applications of I>I"el- son's, received only a formal acknowledgment without encour- agement. Eoused, however, by the Convention's decree of November 19, which extended the succor of France to all people who should wish to recover their liberty, and charged the generals of the republic to make good the offer with the forces under their command, the ministry decided to abandon their guarded attitude ; and their new resolution was con- firmed by the reception, on the 28th of November, of deputa- APPOINTED TO THE "AGAMEMNON" 81 tions from British revolutionary societies at the bar of the Convention, on which occasion the president of the latter affected to draw a dividing line between the British govern- ment and the British nation. On the 1st of December the militia was called out by proclamation, and Parliament sum- moned to meet on the 15th of the month. On the latter day the Convention put forth another decree, announcing in the most explicit terms its purpose to overthrow all existing gov- ernments in countries where the Republican armies could penetrate. Pitt now changed his front with an instantaneous- ness and absoluteness which gave the highest proof of his capacity as a leader of men. It was not so much that Avar was then determined, as that the purpose was formed, once for all, to accept the challenge contained in the French decree, unless France would discontinue her avowed course of aggres- sion. Orders were immediately given to increase largely the number of ships of war in commission. When danger looms close at hand, the best men, if known, are not left in the cold shade of official disfavor. " Post nubila Phoebus," was the expression of Nelson, astonished for a rarity into Latin by the suddenness with which the sun now burst uj)on him through the clouds. '* The Admiralty so smile upon me, that really I am as much surprised as when they frowned." On the 6th of January, 1793, the First Lord, with many apologies for previous neglect, promised to give him a seventy-four-gun ship as soon as it was in his power to do so, and that meanwhile, if he chose to take a sixty-four, he could have one as soon as she was ready. On the 30th he was appointed to the "Agamemnon,'' of the latter rate. Within the preceding fortnight Louis XVI. had been beheaded, and the French ambassador ordered to leave England. On Feb- ruary 1, 1793, two days after Nelson's orders were issued, the Republic declared war against Great Britain and Holland. CHAPTER III. Kelson's Departure from England in the "Agamemnon." — Ser- vices IN THE Mediterranean until the Recovery of Toulon by THE French. — Lord Hood in Command. Eebruaey-Decembek, 1793. Age, 34. "VTELSON'S j)age in history covers a little more than AAI twelve years, from February, 1793, to October, 1805. Its opening coincides with the moment when the wild passions of the French Revolution, still at fiercest heat, and which had hitherto raged like flame uncontrolled, operative only for destruction, were being rapidly mastered, guided, and regu- lated for efficient work, by the terrors of the Revolutionary Tribunal and the Committee of Public Safety. In the object to which these tremendous forces were now about to be applied lay the threat to the peace of Europe, which aroused Great Britain to action, and sent into the field her yet un- known champion from the Korfolk parsonage. The represen- tatives of the French jjeople had imparted to the original movement of their nation, — which aimed only at internal reforms, however radical, — a new direction, of avowed pur- poseful aggression upon all political institutions exterior to, and differing from, their own. This became the one charac- teristic common to the successive forms of government, which culminated in the pure military despotism of Napoleon. To beat back that spirit of aggression was the mission of Nelson. Therein is found the true significance of his career, which mounts higher and higher in strenuous effort and gigantic achievement, as the blast of the Revolution swells fiercer and stronger under the mighty impulse of the great Corsican. At each of the momentous crises, so far removed in time and place, — at the Nile, at Copenhagen,- at Trafalgar, — as the unfolding drama of the age reveals to the onlooker the schemes of the arch-planner about to touch success, ove^^ SIGNIFICANCE OF NELSON'S CAREEK 83 against Napoleon rises ever Kelson ; and as the latter in the hour of victory drops upon the stage where he has played so chief a part, his task is seen to be accomplished, his triumph secured. In the very act of dying he has dealt the foe a blow from which recovery is impossible. Moscow and Waterloo are the inevitable consequences of Trafalgar ; as the glories of that day were but the lit and assured ending of the illus- trious course which was begun upon the quarter-deck of the "•■ Agamemnon." With the exception of the " Victory," under whose flag he fell after two years of arduous, heartbreaking uncertainties, no ship has such intimate association with the career and name of Nelson as has the "Agamemnon." And this is but natural, for to her he was the captain, solely, simply, and entirely; identified with her alone, glorying in her excellences and in her achievements, one in purpose and in spirit with her ofiicers and seamen ; sharing their hopes, their dangers, and their triumphs ; quickening them with his own ardor, moulding them into his own image, until vessel and crew, as one living organism, reflected in act the heroic and unyielding energy that inspired his feeble frame. Although, for a brief and teeming period, he while in command of her controlled also a number of smaller vessels on detached service, it was not until after he had removed to another ship that he became the squadron-commander, whose relations to the vessel on which he himself dwelt were no longer immediate, nor differed, save in his bodily presence, from those he bore to others of the same division. A personality such as Nelson's makes itself indeed felt throughout its entire sphere of action, be that large or small ; but, withal, diffusion contends in vain with the inevitable law that forever couples it with slackening power, nor was it possible even for him to lavish on the various units of a fleet, and on the diverse conflicting claims of a great theatre of war, the same degree of interest and influence that he concentrated upon the "Agamemnon," and upon the brilliant though contracted services through which he carried her. Bonds such as these are not lightly broken, and to the " Agamemnon " Nelson clave for three long years and more, persistently refusing larger ships, until the ex- hausted hulk could no longer respond to the demands of her 84 THE LIFE OF NELSON masters, and separation became inevitable. When he quitted her, at the moment of her departure for England, it was simply a question whether he would abandon the Mediterranean, and the prospect of a great future there opening before him, or sever a few weeks earlier a companionship which must in any event end upon her arrival home. There is yet another point of view from which his command of the " Agamemnon " is seen to hold a peculiar relation to Nelson's story. This was the period in which expectation passed into fulfilment, when development, long arrested by unpropitious circumstances, resumed its outward progress under the benign influence of a favoring environment, and the bud, whose rare promise had long been noted by a few dis- cerning eyes, unfolded into the brilliant flower, destined in the magnificence of its maturity to draw the attention of a world. To the fulness of his glorious course these three years were what the days of early manhood are to ripened age ; and they are marked by the same elasticity, hopefulness, and sanguine looking to the future that characterize youth, before illusions vanish and even success is found to disappoint. Happiness was his then, as at no other time before or after ; for the sur- rounding conditions of enterprise, of difiiculties to be over- come, and dangers to be met, were in complete correspondence with those native powers that had so long struggled painfully for room to exert themselves. His health revived, and his very being seemed to expand in this congenial atmosphere, which to him was as life from the dead. As with untiring steps he sped onward and upward, — counting naught done while aught remained to do, forgetting what was behind as he pressed on to what was before, — the ardor of pursuit, the delight of achievement, the joy of the giant running his course, sustained in him that glow of animation, that gladness in the mere fact of existence, physical or moral, in which, if any- where, this earth's content is found. Lack of recognition, even, wrung from him only the undaunted words : " Never mind ! some day I will have a gazette of my own." Not till his dreams were realized, till aspiration had issued in the completest and most brilliant triumph ever wrought upon the seas, and he had for his gazette the loud homage of every mouth in Europe, — not till six months after the battle of the COMMAND OF THE "AGAMEMNON" 85 Nile, — did Nelson write : " There is no true happiness in this life, and in my present state I could quit it with a smile. My only wish is to sink with honour into the grave." The preparation of the Mediterranean fleet, to which the "Agamemnon" was assigned, was singularly protracted, and in the face of a well-ordered enemy the delay must have led to disastrous results. Nelson himself joined his ship at Chatham on the 7th of February, a week after his orders were issued ; but not until the 16th of March did she leave the dockyard, and then only for Sheerness, where she remained four weeks longer. By that time it seems probable, from remarks in his letters, that the material equipment of the vessel was complete ; but until the 14th of April she remained over a hundred men short of her complement. " Yet, I think," wrote Nelson, " that we shall be far from ill-manned, even if the rest be not so good as they ought to be." Mobilization in those days had not been perfected into a science, even in theory, and the difficulty of raising crews on the outbreak of war was experienced by all nations, but by none more than by Great Britain. Her wants were greatest, and for supply de- pended upon a merchant service scattered in all quarters of the globe. " Men are very hard to be got," Nelson said to his brother, " and without a press I have no idea that our fleet can be manned." It does not appear that this crude and violent, yet unavoidable, method was employed for the " Aga- memnon," except so far as her crew was completed from the guard-ship. Dependence was placed upon the ordinary wiles of the recruiting-sergeant, and upon Nelson's own popularity in the adjacent counties of Suffolk and Norfolk, from which the bulk of his ship's company was actually drawn. " I have sent out a lieutenant and four midshipmen," he writes to Locker, "to get men at every seaport in Norfolk, and to forward them to Lynn and Yarmouth ; my friends in York- shire and the North tell me they will send what men they can lay hands on ; " but at the saine time he hopes that Locker, then Commander-in-chief at the Nore, will not turn away any who from other districts may present themselves for the "Agamemnon." Coming mainly from the same neighborhood gave to the crew a certain homogeneousness of character, affording ground for appeal to local pride, a most powerful THE LIFE OF NELSON incentive in moments of difficulty and emulation; and this feeling was enhanced by the thought that their captain too was a Norfolk man. To one possessing the sympathetic qualities of Nelson, who so readily shared the emotions and gained the affections of his associates, it was easy to bind into a living whole the units animated by this common sentiment. His step-son, Josiah Nisbet, at this time about thirteen years old, now entered the service as a midshipman, and accompanied him on board the "Agamemnon." The oncoming of a great war naturally roused to a yet higher pitch the im- pulse towards the sea, which in all generations has stirred the blood of English boys. Of these, Nelson, using his captain's privilege, received a number as midshipmen upon his quarter- deck, among them several from the sons of neighbors and friends, and therefore, like the crew, Norfolk lads. It is told that to one, whose father he knew to be a strong Whig, of the party which in the past few years had sympathized with the general current of the French Revolution, he gave the fol- lowing pithy counsels for his guidance in professional life : "First, you must always implicitly obey orders, without attempting to form any opinion of your own respecting their propriety; secondly, you must consider every man as your enemy who speaks ill of your king ; and thirdly, you must hate a Frenchman as you do the devil." On the last two items Nelson's practice was in full accord with his precept ; but to the first, his statement of which, sound enough in the general, is open to criticism as being too absolute, he was certainly not obedient. Not to form an opinion is pushing the principle of subordination to an indefensible extreme, even for a junior officer, though the caution not to express it is wise, as well as becoming to the modesty of youth. Lord Howe's advice to Codrington, to watch carefully all that passed and to form his own conclusions, but to keep them to himself, was in every respect more reasonable and profitable. But in fact this dictum of Nelson's was simply another instance of hating the French as he did the devil. The French were pushing independence and private judgment to one extreme, and he instinctively adopted the other. It was not till near the end of April that the " Agamem- non " finally left the Thames, anchoring at Spithead on the COMMAND OF THE "AGAMEMNON" 87 28th of that month. Still the fleet which Lord Hood was to command was not ready. While awaiting her consorts, the ship made a short cruise in the Channel, and a few days later sailed as one of a division of five ships-of-the-line under Admiral Hothani, to occupy a station fifty to a hundred miles west of the Channel Islands. Nelson's disposition not to form any opinion of his own respecting the propriety of orders was thus evidenced : " What we have been sent out for is best known to the great folks in London : to us, it appears, only to hum the nation and make tools of us, for where we have been stationed no enemy was likely to be met with, or where we could protect our own trade." There can be no doubt that not only was the practical management of the Navy at this time exceedingly bad, but that no sound ideas even prevailed upon the subject. Hotham's squadron gained from neutral vessels two important pieces of informa- tion,— that Nantes, Bordeaux, and L'Orient were filled with English vessels, prizes to French cruisers ; and that the enemy kept eight sail-of-the-line, Avith frigates in proportion, constantly moving in detachments about the Bay of Biscay. Under the dispositions adopted by the British Admiralty, these hostile divisions gave, to the commerce destroying of the smaller depredators, a support that sufficiently accounts for the notorious sufferings of British trade during the open- ing years of the war. Nelson had no mastery of the termi- nology of warfare, — he never talked about strategy and little about tactics, — but, though without those valuable aids to precision of thought, he had pondered, studied, and reasoned, and he had, besides, what is given to few, — real genius and insight. Accordingly he at once pierced to the root of the trouble, — the enemy's squadrons, rather than the petty cruisers dependent upon them, to which the damage was com- monly attributed. " They are always at sea, and England not willing to send a squadron to interrupt them." But, while instancing this intuitive perception of a man gifted with rare penetration, it is necessary to guard against rash conclusions that might be drawn from it, and to remark that it by no means follows that education is unnecessary to the common run of men, because a genius is in advance of his times. It is well also to note that even in him this flash of 88 THE LIFE OF NELSON insight, though unerring in its indications, lacked the defi- niteness of conviction which results from ordered thought. However accurate, it is but a glimmer, — not yet a fixed light. Hotham's division joined the main body under Lord Hood, off the Scilly Islands, on the 23d of May, the total force then consisting of eleven sail-of-the-line, with the usual smaller vessels. It remained cruising in that neighborhood until the 6th of June, keeping the approaches of the Channel open for a homeward-bound convoy of merchantmen, which passed on that day. The fleet then bore up for the Straits, and on the 14th six ships, the " Agamemnon " among them, parted com- pany for. Cadiz, there to till up with water, in order to avoid the delays which would arise if the scanty resources of Gib- raltar had to supply all the vessels. On the 23d this division left Cadiz, reaching Gibraltar the same evening ; and on the 27th Hood, having now with him fifteen of the line, sailed for Toulon. Nelson's mind was already busy with the prospects of the campaign, and the various naval factors that went to make up the military situation. " Time must discover what we are going after," he writes to his brother; while to Locker he propounds the problem which always has perplexed the British mind, and still does, — how to make the French fight, if they are unwilling. So long as that question re- mains unsolved, the British government has to bear the uncertainties, exposure, and expense of a difiicult and pro- tracted defensive. "We have done nothing," he says, "and the same prospect appears before us : the French cannot come out, and we have no means of getting at them in Tou- lon." In "cannot come out," he alludes to the presence of a Spanish fleet of twenty-four ships-of-the-line. This, in conjunction with Hood's force, would far exceed the French in Toulon, which the highest estimate then placed at twenty-one of the line. He had, however, already measured the capabilities of the Spanish Navy. They have very fine ships, he admits, but they are shockingly manned, — so much so that if only the barges' crews of the six British vessels that entered Cadiz, numbering at the most seventy-five to a hundred men, but all picked, could have got on board one of COMMAND OF THE "AGAMEMNON" 89 their first-rates, he was certain they could have captured her, although her ship's company numbered nearly a thousand. " If those we are to meet in the Mediterranean are no better manned," he continues, " much service cannot be expected of them." The prediction proved true, for no sooner did Hood find the Spanish admiral than the latter informed him he must go to Cartagena, having nineteen hundred sick in his fleet. The officer who brought this message said it was no wonder they were sickly, for they had been sixty days at sea. This excited Nelson's derision — not unjustly. "From the circumstance of having been longer than that time at sea, do we attribute our getting healthy. It has stamped with me the extent of their nautical abilities : long may they remain in their present state." The last sentence reveals his intui- tive appreciation of the fact that the Spain of that day could in no true sense be the ally of Great Britain ; for, at the moment he penned the wish, the impotence or defection of their allies would leave the British fleet actually inferior to the enemy in those waters. He never forgot these impres- sions, nor the bungling efforts of the Spaniards to form a line of battle. Up to the end of his life the prospect of a Spanish war involved no military anxieties, but only the prospect of more prize money. Among the various rumors of that troubled time, there came one that the French were fitting their ships with forges to bring their shot to a red heat, and so set fire to the enemy's vessel in which they might lodge. Nelson was promptly ready with a counter and quite adequate tactical move. " This, if true," he wrote, " I humbly conceive would have been as well kept secret ; but as it is known, we must take care to get so close that their red shots may go through both sides, when it will not matter whether they are hot or cold." This sentence is among the most characteristic oc- curring at this period in Nelson's correspondence ; indicative of the continuous mental activity which, throughout his career, sought to anticipate difficulties, and to devise means of meeting them. On the 14th of July Nelson notes that the fleet had re- ceived orders to consider Marseilles and Toulon as invested, and to take all vessels of whatever nation bound into those 90 THE LIFE OF NELSON ports. He at once recognized the importance of this step, and the accurate judgment that dictated it. The British could not, as he said, get at the enemy in his fortified harbor; but they might by this means exercise the pressure that would force him to come out. Undoubtedly, whether on a large or on a small scale, whether it concern the whole plan of a war or of a campaign, or merely the question of a single military position, the best way to compel an unwilling foe to action, and to spoil his waiting game which is so onerous to the would-be assailant, is to attack him elsewhere, to cut short his resources, and make his position untenable by exhaustion. " This has pleased us," Nelson wrote ; " if we make these red- hot gentlemen hungry, they may be induced to come out." The investment by sea of these two harbors, but especially of Toulon, as being an im^^ortant dockyard, was accordingly the opening move made by the British admiral. On the 16th of July he approached the 'latter port, and from that time until August 25 a close blockade was maintained, with the exception of a very few days, during which Hood took the fleet off Nice, and thence to Genoa, to remonstrate with that republic upon its supplying the south of France with grain, and bringing back French property under neutral papers. " Our being here is a farce if this trade is allowed," said Nelson, and rightly ; for so far as appearances then went, the only influence the British squadrons could exert was by cur- tailing the supplies of southern France. That district raised only grain enough for three months' consumption ; for the remainder of the year's food it depended almost wholly upon Sicily and Barbary, its communications with the interior being so bad that the more abundant fields of distant French prov- inces could not send their surplus. In the chaotic state in which France was then plunged, the utmost uncertainty prevailed as to the course events might take, and rumors of all descriptions were current, the wildest scarcely exceeding in improbability the fantastic horrors that actually prevailed throughout the land during these opening days of the Reign of Terror. The expectation that found most favor in the fleet was that Provence would separate from the rest of France, and proclaim itself an independent republic under the protection of Great Britain ; but few looked I COMMAND OF THE "AGAMEMNON" 91 for the amazing result which shortly followed, in the delivery of Toulon by its citizens into the hands of Lord Hood. This Nelson attributed purely to the suffering caused by the strict- ness of the blockade. "At Marseilles and Toulon," wrote he on the 20th of August, " they are almost starving, yet noth- ing brings them to their senses. Although the Convention has denounced them as traitors, yet even these people will not declare for anything but Liberty and Equality." Three days later. Commissioners from both cities went on board Hood's flagship to treat for peace, upon the basis of re-estab- lishing the monarchy, and recognizing as king the son of Louis XVI. The admiral accepted the proposal, on condition that the port and arsenal of Toulon should be delivered to him for safe keeping, until the restoration of the young prince was effected. On the 27th of August the city ran up the white flag of the Bourbons, and the British fleet, together with the Spanish, which at this moment arrived on the scene, anchored in the outer port. The allied troops took possession of the forts commanding the harbor, while the dockyards and thirty ships-of-the-line were delivered to the navies. "The perseverance of our fleet has been great," wrote Nelson, " and to that only can be attributed our unexampled success. Not even a boat could get into Marseilles or Toulon, or on the coast, with provisions ; and the old saying, ' that hunger will tame a lion,' was never more strongly exem- plified." In this he deceived himself, however natural the illusion. The opposition of Toulon to the Paris Government was part of a general movement of revolt, which spread throughout the provinces in May and June, 1793, upon the violent overthrow of the Girondists in the National Conven- tion. The latter then proclaimed several cities outlawed, Toulon among them ; and the bloody severities it exercised were the chief determining cause of the sudden treason, the offspring of fear more than of hunger, — though the latter doubtless contributed, — which precipitated the great southern arsenal into the arms of the Republic's most dangerous foe. Marseilles fell before the Conventional troops, and the result- ant panic in the sister city occasioned the hasty step, which in less troubled moments would have been regarded with just horror. But in truth Nelson, despite his acute military per- 92 THE LIFE OF NELSON ceptions, bad not vet developed that keen political sagacity, the fruit of riper judgment grounded on wider information, which he afterwards showed. His ambition was yet limited to the sphere of the " Agamemnon," his horizon bounded by the petty round of the day's events. He rose, as yet, to no apprehension of the mighty crisis hanging over Europe, to no appreciation of the profound meanings of the opening strife. " I hardly think the War can last," he writes to his wife, "for what are we at war about ?" and again, " I think we shall be in England in the winter or spring." Even some months later, in December, before Toulon had reverted to the French, he is completely blind to the importance of the Mediterranean in the great struggle, and expresses a wish to exchange to the AYest Indies, " for I think our Sea War is over in these seas." It is probable, indeed, that in his zeal, thoroughness, and fidelity to the least of the duties then falling to him, is to be seen a surer indication of his great future than in any wider speculations about matters as yet too high for his position. The recent coolness between him and Lord Hood had been rapidly disappearing under the admiral's reviving apprecia- tion and his own aptitude to conciliation. " Lord Hood is very civil," he writes on more than one occasion, "I think we may be good friends again ; " and the offer of a seventy-four- gun ship in place of his smaller vessel was further proof of his superior's confidence. ISTelson refused the proposal. ''I cannot give up my ofiicers," he said, in the spirit that so en- deared him to his followers ; but the compliment was felt, and was enhanced by the admiral's approval of his motives. The prospective occupation of Toulon gave occasion for a yet more flattering evidence of the esteem in which he was held. As soon as the agreement with the city was completed, but the day before taking possession. Hood despatched him in haste to Oneglia, a small port on the Riviera of Genoa, and thence to JNaples, to seek from the latter court and that of Turin ^ a reinforcement of ten thousand troops to hold the new acquisition. The " Agamemnon " being a fast sailer undoubtedly contributed much to this selection ; but the char- acter of the commanding ofiicer could not but be considered on 1 Turin was capital of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which embraced the island of that name and the Province of Piedmont, I COMMAND OF THE "AGAMEMNON" 93 SO important, and in some ways delicate, a mission. " I should have liked to have stayed one day longer with the fleet, when they entered the harbour," he wrote to Mrs. Nelson, "but service could not be neglected for any private gratification," — a sentiment she had to hear pretty often, as betrothed and as wife, but which was no platitude on the lips of one who gave it constant demonstration in his acts. " Duty is the great business of a sea officer," he told his intended bride in early manhood, to comfort her and himself under a prolonged separation. " Thank God ! I have done my duty," was the spoken thought that most solaced his death hour, as his heart yearned towards those at home whom he should see no more. About this time he must have felt some touch of sympathy for the effeminate Spaniards, who were made ill by a sixty days' cruise. "All we get here," he writes, "is honour and salt beef. My poor fellows have not had a morsel of fresh meat or vegetables for near nineteen weeks ; and in that time I have only had my foot twice on shore at Cadiz. We are absolutely getting sick from fatigue." "I am here [Naples] with news of our most glorious and great success, but, alas! the fatigue of getting it has been so great that the fleet gen- erally, and I am sorry to say, my ship most so, are knocked up. Day after day, week after week, month after month, we have not been two gun shots from Toulon." The evident looseness of this statement, for the ship had only been a little over a month off Toulon, shows the impression the service had made upon his mind, for he was not prone to such exaggerations. "It is hardly possible," he says again, "to conceive the state of my ship ; I have little less than one hundred sick." This condition of things is an eloquent testi- mony to the hardships endured ; for Nelson was singularly successfiil, both before and after these days, in maintaining the health of a ship's company. His biographers say that during the term of three years that he commanded the " Boreas " in the West Indies, not a single officer or man died out of her whole complement, — an achievement almost incredible in that sickly climate ; ^ and he himself records 1 This statement, which apparently depends upon a memoir supplied many years later by the first lieutenant of the "Boreas," is not strictly accurate, for Nelson himself, i)i a letter written shortly after her arrival in the "West Indies, 94 THE LIFE OF NELSON tliat in his two naonths' chase of Villeneuve, in 1805, no death from sickness occurred among the seven or eight thousand persons in the fleet. He attributed these remarkable results to his attention, not merely to the physical surroundings of the crews, but also to the constant mental stimulus and interest, which he aroused bj^ providing the seamen with oc- cupation, frequent amusements, and change of scene, thus keeping the various faculties in continual play, and avoiding the monotony which most saps health, through its deadening influence on the mind and spirits. The "Agamemnon" reached Naples on the 12th of Septem- ber, and remained there four days. Nelson pressed the mat- ter of reinforcements with such diligence, and was so heartily sustained by the British minister, Sir William Hamilton, that he obtained the promise of six thousand troops to sail at once under the convoy of the "Agamemnon." "I have acted for Lord Hood," he wrote, "with a zeal which no one could exceed;" and a few weeks later he says: "The Lord is very much pleased with my conduct about the troops at Naples, which I undertook without any authority whatever from him ; and they arrived at Toulon before his requisition reached Naples." It appears, therefore, that his orders were rather those of a despatch-bearer than of a negotiator; but that he, with the quick initiative he always displayed, took upon him- self diplomatic action, to further the known wishes of his superior and the common cause of England and Naples. It was upon this occasion that Nelson first met Lady Hamilton, who exercised so marked an influence over his later life ; but, though she was still in the prime of her singular loveliness, being yet under thirty, not a ripple stirred the surface of his soul, afterward so powerfully perturbed by this fascinating woman. "Lady Hamilton," he writes to his wife, "has been wonderfully kind and good to Josiah [his step-son]. She is a young woman of amiable manners, and who does honour to the station to which she is raised." His mind was then too full of what was to be done ; not as after the Nile, when, un- strung by reaction from the exhausting emotions of the past mentions that sevei-al of her sliip's coni]iany had been caiTied off by fever (Nicolas, voh i. p. Ill); but it can doubtless be accepted as evidence of an unusually healthy condition. MISSION TO NAPLES, 1193 95 months, it was for the moment empty of aspiration and cloyed with flattery only. The prospect of sailing with the convoy of troops, as Avell as of a few days' repose for the wearied ship's company, was cut short by the news that a French ship of war, with some merchant vessels in convoy, had anchored on the Sardinian coast. Although there were at Naples several Neapolitan naval vess'els, and one Spaniard, none of them moved ; and as the Prime Minister sent the information to Nelson, he felt bound to go, though but four days in port. "Unfit as my ship was, 1 had nothing left for the honour of our country but to sail, which I did in two hours afterwards. It was necessary to show them what an English man-of-war would do." The expected enemy was not found, and, after stretching along the coast in a vain search, the "Agamemnon" put into Leghorn on the 25th of September, nine days after leaving Naples, — " absolutely to save my poor fellows," wrote her captain to his brother. But even so, he purposed staying at his new anchorage but three days, " for I cannot bear the thought of being absent from the scene of action " at Toulon. In the same, letter he mentions that since the 23d of April — five months — the ship had been at anchor only twenty days. The unwavering resolution and prompt decision of his char- acter thus crop out at every step. In Leghorn he found a large French frigate, which had been on the point of sailing when his ship came in sight. " I am obliged to keep close watch to take care he does not give me the slip, which he is inclined to do. I shall pursue him, and leave the two Courts [Great Britain and Tuscany] to settle the propriety of the measure, which I think will not be strictly regular. Have been up all night watching him — ready to cut the moment he did." The enemy, however, made no movement, and Nelson was not prepared to violate flagrantly the neutrality of the port. On the 30th of September he sailed, and on the 5th of October rejoined Lord Hood off Toulon, where four thousand of the Neapolitan troops, for which he had nego- tiated, had already arrived. The high favor in which the admiral had held him ten years before in the West Indies, though slightly overcast by the coolness which arose during the intervening peace, had 96 THE LIFE OF NELSOIif been rapidly regained in the course of the present campaign ; and the customary report of his proceedings during the six weeks' absence could not but confirm Hood in the assurance that he had now to deal with a very exceptional character, especially fitted for separate and responsible service. Ac- cordingly, from this time forward, such is the distinguishing feature of Nelson's career as a subordinate. He _is selected from among many competitors, frequently his seniors, for the performance of duty outside the reach of the commander-in- chief, but requiring the attention of one upon whose activity, intelligence, and readiness, the fullest dependence could be Xjlaced. Up -to the battle of the Nile, — in which, it must always be remembered, he commanded a squadron detached from the main fleet, and was assigned to it in deliberate pref- erence to two older flag-officers, — Nelson's life presents a series of detached commands, independent as regarded the local scene of operations, and his method of attaining the prescribed end with the force allotted to him, but dependent, technically, upon the distant commanders-in-chief, each of whom in succession, with one accord, recognized his singular fltness. The pithy but characteristic expression said to have been used by Earl St. Vincent, when asked for instructions about the Copenhagen expedition, — " D — n it, Nelson, send them to the devil your own way," — sums up accurately enough the confldence shown him by his superiors. He could not indeed lift them all to the height of his own conceptions, fearlessness, and enterprise ; but when they had made up their minds to any particular course, they were, each and all, per- fectly willing to intrust the execution to him. Even at Co- penhagen he was but second in command, though conspicuously first in achievement. It was not till the opening of the second war of the French Revolution, in May, 1803, that he himself had supreme charge of a station, — his old familiar Mediterranean. Being held in such esteem, it was but a short time before Nelson was again sent off from Toulon, to which he did not return during the British occupation. He was now ordered to report to Commodore Linzee, then lying with a detachment of three ships-of-the-line in the harbor of Cagliari, at the south end of Sardinia. On her passage the " Agamemnon " met and MISSION TO TUNIS, 1793 97 engaged a French squadron, of four large frigates and a brig. Though without decisive results, Nelson was satisfied with his own conduct in this affair, as was also Lord Hood when it came to his knowledge ; for, one of the frigates being badly crippled, the whole force, which was on its way to Nice, was compelled to take refuge in Corsica, where it was far from secure. Two days later, on the 24th of October, Cagliari was reached, and the "Agamemnon" accompanied the division to Tunis, arriving there on the 1st of November. Linzee's mission was to try and detach the Bey from the French interest, and it was hoped he could be induced to allow the seizure of a number of French vessels which had entered the port, under the convoy of a ship-of-the-line and four frigates. When the British entered, the frigates had disappeared, being in fact the same that Nelson had fought ten days before. In accordance with his instructions, Linzee strove to persuade the Bey that the Eepublican government, because of its revolutionary and bloodthirsty character, should receive no recognition or support from more regular states, not even the protection usually extended by a neutral port, and that in consequence he should be permitted to seize for Great Britain the vessels in Tunis. The Turk may possibly have overlooked the fallacy in this argument, which assumed that the protection extended by neutral governments was rather for the benefit of the belligerent than for the quiet and safety of its own waters ; but he was perfectly clear-sighted as to his personal advantage in the situation, for the French owners, in despair of getting to France, Avere selling their cargoes to him at one third their value. To the argument that the French had beheaded their king, he drily replied that the English had once done the same; and he decisively refused to allow the ships to be molested. Nelson was disgusted that his consent should have been awaited. '' The English seldom get much by negotiation except the being laughed at, which we have been ; and I don't like it. Had we taken, which in my opinion we ought to have done, the men-of-war and con- voy, worth at least £300,000, how much better we could have negotiated : — given the Bey £50,000, he would have been glad to have put up with the insult offered to his dignity ; " and he jjlainly intimates his dissatisfaction with Linzee. This 7 THE LIFE OF NELSON irresponsible and irreflective outburst was, liowever, only an instance of the impatience liis enterprising, energetic spirit always felt when debarred from prompt action, whether by good or bad reasons ; for almost on the same day he expresses the sounder judgment : ''' Had we latterly attempted to take them I am sure the Bey would have declared against us, and done our trade some damage." No advantage could have accrued from the seizure of the French vessels, at all pro- portioned to the inconvenience of having the hostility of Tunis, flanking as it did the trade routes to the Levant. The British had then quite enough on their hands, without detaching an additional force from the north coast of the Mediterranean, to support a gratuitous quarrel on the south. As a matter of mere policy it would have been ill-judged. Nelson, however, did not as yet at all realize the wideness of the impending struggle, for it was in these very letters that he expressed a wish to exchange to the West Indies. " You know," he writes to his old friend Locker, " that Pole is gone to the West Indies. I have not seen him since his order, but I know it was a thing he dreaded. Had I been at Toulon I should have been a candidate for that service, for I think our sea war is over in these seas." Perhaps his intrinsic merit would have retrieved even such a mistake as we can now see this would have been, and he would there have come sooner into contact with Sir John Jervis — to whom, if to any one, the name of patron to Nelson may be applied — for Jervis then had the W^est India command ; but it is difficult to imagine Nelson's career apart from the incidents of his Mediterranean service. The Mediterranean seems inseparable from his name, and he in the end felt himself identified with it beyond all other waters. His longing for action, wdiich prompted the desire for the West Indies, was quickly gratified, for orders were received from Hood, by Linzee, to detach him from the latter's com- mand. The admiral sent him a very handsome letter upon his single-handed combat with the French frigates, and directed him to go to the north end of Corsica, to take charge of a division of vessels he would there find cruising, and to search for his late enemies along that coast and through the neighbor- ing waters, between the island and the shores of Italy. He COMMAND OFF CORSICA 99 was also to warn off neutral vessels bound to Genoa, that port being declared blockaded, and to seize them if they persisted in their voyage thither. " I consider this command as a very high compliment," wrote iSTelsou to his uncle Suckling, "there being five older captains in the fleet." This it certainly was, — a compliment and a prophecy as well. In pursuance of these orders Nelson left Tunis on the 30th of November, and on the 8th of December discovered the French squadron, protected by shore batteries, in San Fiorenzo Bay, in Corsica. This island, which during the middle ages, and until some twenty years before the beginning of the French Eevolution, was a dependency of Genoa, had then by the latter been ceded to France, against the express wishes of the inhabitants, whose resistance was crushed only after a prolonged struggle. Although it was now in open revolt against the Revolutionary government, the troops of the latter still held three or four of the principal seaports, among them the nortliern one in which the frigates then lay, as well as Bastia upon the east coast of the island, and Calvi on the west. His force being insufficient to engage the works of any of these places, there was nothing for Nelson to do but to blockade them, in hopes of exhausting their resources and at least pre- venting the escape of the ships of war. In this he was successful, for the latter either were destroyed or fell into tlie hands of Great Britain, when the ports were reduced. Meanwhile affairs at Toulon were approaching the crisis which ended its tenure by the British and their allies. The garrison had never been sufficient to man properly the very extensive lines, which the peculiar configuration of the sur- rounding country made it necessary to occupy for the security of the town ; and the troops themselves were not only of different nations, but of very varying degrees of efficiency. Under these conditions the key of the position, accurately in- dicated by Napoleon Bonaparte, then a major and in command of the artillery, was held in insufficient force, and was success- fully stormed on the night of December 16, 1793. It was immediately recognized that the ships could no longer remain in the harbor, and that with them the land forces also must depart. After two days of hurried preparations, and an attempt, only partially successful, to destroy the dockyard and 100 THE LIFE OF NELSON French ships of war, the fleets sailed out on the 19th of December, carrying with them, besides the soldiery, as many as possible of the wretched citizens, who were forced to fly in confusion and misery from their homes, in order to escape the sure and fearful vengeance of the Republican government. The " Agamemnon " was in Leghorn, getting provisions, when the fugitives arrived there, and Nelson speaks in vivid terms of the impression made upon him by the tales he heard and the sights he saw. "Fathers are here without families, and families without fathers, the pictures of horror and despair." " In short, all is horror. I cannot write all : my mind is deeply impressed with grief. Each teller makes the scene more horrible." He expressed the opinion that the evacuation was a benefit to England, and it unquestionably was. He had not always thought so ; but it must be allowed that the hopes and exultation with which he greeted the acquisition of the place had sufficient foundation, in the reported attitude of the people of Southern France, to justify the first opinion as well as the last. The attempt was worth making, though it proved unsuc- cessful. As it was, the occupation had resulted in a degree of destruction to the French ships and arsenal in Toulon, which, though then over-estimated, was a real gain to the allies. 1 CHAPTER IV. Reduction of Corsica by the British. ^Departure of Lord Hood FOR England. — The "Agamemnon" Refitted at Leghorn. jA:sruARY-DECEMBER, 1794. Age, 35. BY the loss of Toulon the British fleet in the Mediterranean was left adrift, without any secure harbor to serve as a depot for supplies and a base for extended operations. Hood took his ships to Hyeres Bay, a few miles east of Toulon, a spot where they could lie safely at anchor, but which was un- suitable for a permanent establishment, — the shores not being tenable against French attack. He now turned his eyes upon Corsica, whence the celebrated native chieftain, Paoli, who had led the natives in their former struggle against France, had made overtures to him, looking to the union of the island to the British crown. Nelson in person, or, during his brief absence in Leghorn, his division, had so closely invested the shores, that neither troops nor supplies of any kind had been able to enter since the early part of December, nor had the blockaded vessels been able to get out. The thoroughness with which this work was done brought him, on the 6th of January, 1794, yet further compliments from Hood, who wrote him that '"'he looked upon these frigates as certain, trusting to my zeal and activity, and knows, if it is in the power of man to have them, I will secure them." At the same time he was instructed to enter into communication with Paoli, and settle plans for the landing of the troops. In attending to this commission his intermediary was Lieutenant George Andrews, brother to the lady to whom he had become attached at St. Omer, and who had afterwards been a midshipman with him on board the "Boreas." ''This business going through my hands," he wrote with just pride, "is a proof of Lord Hood's confidence in me, and that I shall pledge myself for nothing but what will be acceptable to him." It was indeed 102 THE LIFE OF NELSON evident that Hood Avas more aud more reposing in him a peculiar trust, a feeling which beyond most others tends to increase by its own action. Kelson repaid him with the most unbounded admiration. " The Lord is very good friends with me," he writes ; " he is certainly the best officer I ever saw. Everything from him is so clear it is impossible to misunder- stand him." "His zeal, his activity for the honour and benefit of his country," he says at another time, "are not abated. Upwards of seventy, he possesses the mind of forty years of age. He has not a thought separated from honour and glory." The flattering proofs of his superior's esteem, and the demand made upon his natural powers to exert themselves freely, had a very beneficial effect upon his health and spirits. It was not effort, however protracted and severe, but the denial of opportunity to act, whether by being left unemployed or through want of information, that wore Kelson down. " I have not been one hour at anchor for pleasure in eight months ; but I can assure you I never was better in health." Meanwhile a commission from the fleet arrived in Corsica. Sir Gilbert Elliot, the representative of the British govern- ment in the island, was at its head, and with him were associ- ated two army officers, one of whom afterwards became widely celebrated as Sir John Moore. A satisfactory agreement being concluded. Hood sailed from Hyeres Bay with the ships and troops, and operations began against San Fiorenzo, termi- nating in the evacuation of the place by the French, who upon the 19th of February retreated by land to Bastia. Kelson was not immediately connected with this undertaking; but he had the satisfaction of knowing that two of the four frigates, of whose detention in the island he was the immediate cause, were here lost to the enemy. He was during these weeks ac- tively employed harrying the coast — destroying depots of stores on shore, and small vessels laden with supplies. These services were mainly, though not entirely, rendered in the neighborhood of Bastia, a strongly fortified town, which was to become the next object of the British efforts, and the scene of his own exertions. There, also, though on a comparatively small scale, he was to give striking evidence of the character- istics which led him on, step by step, to his great renown. When Hood himself took command at San Fiorenzo, he SIEGE OF BASTIA 103 relieved Nelson from that part of his charge, and sent him on the 7th of February to blockade Bastia, — a strictly detached service, and one of the utmost importance, as upon the inter- cepting of supplies the issue of the siege largely turned. Three weeks later, on the 1st of March, Xelson wrote : " We are still in the busy scene of war, a situation in which I own I feel pleasure, more especially as my actions have given great satisfaction to my commander-in-chief. The blocking up of Corsica he left to me : it has been accomplished in the most complete manner, not a boat got in, nor a soldier landed, although eight thousand men were embarked at Nice ;" and, he might have added, although a vessel was said to sail from Nice every thirty-six hours. Nor was his activity confined to blockading. He continually reconnoitered the town and the works, in doing which on the 23d of February he engaged the batteries at short range, with the "Agamemnon" and two frigates, — the action lasting for nearly two hours. While it was at its height, the heads of the British columns, coming from San Fiorenzo, only twelve miles distant by land, were seen upon the heights overlooking Bastia from the rear. " What a noble sight it must have been " to them ! wrote Nelson enthusiastically, in the ardor of his now opening career, — for it must be remembered that this hero of a hun- dred tights was even then but beginning to taste that rapture of the strife, in which he always breathed most freely, as though in his native element. Bastia, as he saw it and reported to Lord Hood, was a walled town with central citadel, of some ten thousand inhabi- tants, on the east coast of Corsica, and twenty miles south of Cape Corso, the northern extremity of the island. The main fortifications were along the sea-front ; but there was, besides, a series of detached works on either flank and to the rear. The latter not only guarded the approaches from the interior, but also, being situated on the hills, much above the town, were capable of commanding it, in case of an enemy gaining possession. Nelson, while modestly disclaiming any pre- sumptuous dependence upon his own judgment, expressed a decided opinion, based upon the engagement of the 23d, that the " Agamemnon " and the frigates could silence the fire of the sea-front, batter down the walls, and that then five hundred 104 THE LIFE OF NELSON troops could carry the place by assault. " That the works on the hills would aunoy the town afterwards is certain, but the enemy being cut off from all supplies — the provisions in the town being of course in our possession — would think of nothing but making the best terms they could for themselves." To his dismay, however, and to the extreme annoyance of the admiral, General Dundas, commanding the army, refused to move against Bastia, condemning the attempt as visionary and rash. Meantime the French, unmolested except by the desultory efforts of the insurgent Corsicans, were each, day strengthening their works, and converting the possibilities Nelson saw into the impossibilities of the cautious general. Hood on the 25tli of February came round from San Fiorenzo to Bastia; but he purposely brought with him no captain senior to Nelson, in order that the latter might remain in charge of the operations he had begun so well. When Dundas retreated again to San Fiorenzo, Hood on the 3d of March followed him there with the flagship, to urge his co- operation ; leaving Nelson with six frigates to conduct the blockade and take such other steps as the opportunities might justify. By the middle of March, nearly three months having elapsed since her last hasty visit to Leghorn, the "Agamem- non " was wholly destitute of supplies. " We are really," wrote Nelson to Hood, " without firing, wine, beef, pork, flour, and almost without water : not a rope, canvas, twine, or nail in the ship. The ship is so light she cannot hold her side to the wind. . . . We are certainly in a bad plight at present, not a man has slept dry for many months. Yet," he continues, with that indomitable energy which made light of mere difficulties of material, and conveys so impressive a lesson to our modern days, when slight physical defects appear insurmountable, and ships not wholly up to date are counted obsolete, — ''yet, if your Lordship wishes me to remain off Bastia, I can, by going to Porto Ferrajo, get water and stores, and twenty-four hours in Leghorn will give us provisions ; and our refitting, which will take some time, can be put off a little. My wish is to be present at the attack of Bastia." On the 18th of March Hood summoned him to San Fiorenzo. The difference between him and Dundas had become a quarrel, and the latter had quitted his command. Hood wished to SIEGE OF BASTIA 105 strengthen the argument with his successor, by a report of the observations made by Nelson ; but the latter records that, after expressing his opinion that eight hundred troops with four hundred seamen could reduce the place, it was found that all the army was united against an attack, declaring the im- possibility of taking Bastia, even if all the force were united, — and this, notwithstanding that an engineer and an artillery officer had visited the scene, and agreed with Xelson that there was a probability of success. On the north side both they and he considered the place weak, and at the same time found the ground favorable for establishing the siege guns. Moreover, even during the winter gales, he had succeeded in so closing the sea approaches, while the revolted Corsicans intercepted those by land, that a pound of coarse bread was selling for three francs. The spring equinox was now near at hand, and with better weather the blockade would be yet more efficient. Between actual attack and famine, he argued, the place must fall. "ISTot attacking it I could not but consider as a national disgrace. If the Army will not take it, we must, by some way or other." If every particular operation of war is to be considered by itself alone, and as a purely professional question, to be deter- mined by striking a balance between the arguments pro and con, it is probable that the army officers were right in their present contention. In nothing military was scientific accu- racy of prediction so possible as in forecasting the result and duration of a regular siege, where the force brought to bear on either side could be approximately known. But, even in this most methodical and least inspired of processes, the elements of chance, of the unforeseen, or even the improbable, will enter, disturbing the most careful calculations. For this reason, no case must be decided purely on its individual merits, without taking into account the other conditions of the campaign at large. For good and sufficient reasons, the British had undertaken, not to conquer a hostile island, but to effect the deliverance of a people who were already in arms, and had themselves redeemed their country with the exception of two or three fortified seaports, for the reduction of which they possessed neither the materials nor the technical skill. To pause in the movement of advance was, with a half- 106 THE LIFE OF NELSON civilized race of unstable temperament, to risk everything. But besides, for the mere purpose of the blockade, it was im- perative to force the enemy as far as possible to contract his lines. Speaking of a new work thrown up north of the town, Nelson said with accurate judgment: "It must be destroyed, or the Corsicans will be obliged to give up a post which the enemy would immediately possess ; and of course throw us on that side at a greater distance from Eastia." The result would be, not merely so much more time and labor to be expended, nor yet only the moral effect on either party, but also the un- covering of a greater length of seaboard, by which supplies might be run into the town. The strength of the place, in which, when it fell, were found " seventy-seven pieces of ordnance, with an incredible amount of stores," was far superior to that estimated by the eye of Nelson, untrained as an engineer. Not only so, but the force within the walls was very much larger than he thought, when he spoke with such confidence. " I never yet told Lord Hood," he wrote nearly a year later, "that after everything was fixed for the attack of Bastia, I had information given me of the enormous number of troops we had to oppose us ; but my own honour. Lord Hood's honour, and the honour of our Country must have all been sacrificed, had I mentioned what I knew ; therefore you will believe what must have been my feelings during the whole siege, when I had often proposals made to me by men, now rewarded, to write to Lord Hood to raise the siege." " Had this been an English town," he said immediately after the surrender, " I am sure it would not have been taken by them. The more we see of this place, the more we are astonished at their giving it up, but the truth is, the different parties were afraid to trust each other." The last assertion, if correct, conveys just one of those incidents which so fre- quently concur to insure the success of a step rightly taken, as that of Nelson and Hood in this instance certainly was. "Forty-five hundred men," he continues, "have laid down their arms to under twelve hundred troops and seamen. If proofs were wanting to show that perseverance, unanimity, and gallantry, can accomplish almost incredible things, we are an additional instance." " I always was of opinion," he wrote in the exultation of SIEGE OF BASTIA 107 reaction from the weight of responsibility he had assumed by his secrecy, — "I always was of opinion, have ever acted up to it, and never have had any reason to repent it, that one Englishman was equal to three Frenchmen." This curious bit of the gasconade into which Nelson from time to time lapsed, can scarcely be accepted as a sound working theory, or as of itself justifying the risk taken; and yet it undoubt- edly, under a grossly distorted form, portrays the tempera- ment Avhich enabled him to capture Bastia, and which made him what he was, — a man strong enough to take great chances for adequate ends. " All naval operations under- taken since I have been at the head of the government," said Napoleon, " have always failed, because the admirals see double, and have learned — where I do not know — that war can be made without running risks." It is not material cer- tainty of success, the iijnis fatuus which is the great snare of the mere engineer, or of the merely accomplished soldier, that points the way to heroic achievements. It is the vivid in- spiration that enables its happy possessor, at critical moments, to see and follow the bright clear line, which, like a ray of light at midnight, shining among manifold doubtful indica- tions, guides his steps. Whether it leads him to success or to failure, he may not know ; but that it is the path of wis- dom, of duty, and of honor, he knows full well by the per- suasion within, — by conviction, the fortifier of the reason, though not by sight, the assurance of demonstration. Only a man capable of incurring a disaster like that at Teneriffe could rise to the level of daring, which, through hidden perils, sought and wrought the superb triumph of Aboukir Bay. Such is genius, that rare but hazardous gift, which separates a man from his fellows by a chasm not to be bridged by human will. Thus endowed, Nelson before the walls of Bastia showed, though in a smaller sphere, and therefore with a lighter hazard, the same keen perception, the same instant decision, the same unfaltering resolve, the same tenacity of purpose, that, far over and beyond the glamour of mere success, have rendered eternally illustrious the days of St. Vincent, of the Nile, and of Copenhagen. Of the spirit which really actuated him, in his unwavering support of Lord Hood's inclination to try the doubtful issue, 108 THE LIFE OF NELSON many interesting instances are afforded by his correspondence. " I feel for the honour of my Country, and had rather be beat than not make the attack. If we do not try we can never be successful. I own I have no fears for the final issue : it will be conquest, certain we will deserve it. My reputation de- pends on the opinion I have given ; but I feel an honest con- sciousness that I have done right. We must, we will have it, or some of our heads will be laid low. I glory in the attempt." " What would the immortal Wolfe have done ? " he says again, refresliing his own constancy in the recollection of an equal heroism, crowned with success against even greater odds. " As he did, beat the enemy, if he perished in the at- tempt." Again, a fortnight later : " W'e are in high health and spirits besieging Bastia; the final event, I feel assured, will be conquest." W^hen the siege had already endured for a month, and with such slight actual progress as to compel him to admit to Hood that the town battery had been " put in such a state, that firing away many shot at it is almost useless till we have a force sufficient to get nearer," his confidence remains unabated. "I have no fears about the final issue," he writes to his wife ; " it will be victory, Bastia will be ours ; and if so, it must prove an event to which the history of Eng- land can hardly boast an equal." Further on in the same letter he makes a prediction, so singularly accurate as to excite curi- osity about its source: " I will tell you as a secret, Bastia will be ours between the 20th and 24th of this month " — three weeks after the date of writing — "if succours do not get in." It surrendered actually on the 22d. One is tempted to specu- late if there had been any such understanding with the garrison as was afterwards reached with Calvi ; but there is no other token of such an arrangement. It is instructive also to com- pare this high-strung steadfastness of 2)urpose to dare every risk, if success perchance might be won thereby, with his comment upon his own impulses at a somewhat later date. "My disposition cannot bear tame and slow measures. Sure I am, had I commanded our fleet on the 14th, that either the whole French fleet would have graced my triumph, or I should have been in a confounded scrape." Surely the secret of great successes is in these words. The siege of Bastia was not in its course productive of I BASTIA TAKEN 109 striking events. Having reasoned in vain with the two suc- cessive generals, Hood demanded that there should be sent back to him a contingent of troops, which had originally been detailed to serve as marines in the fleet, but which he had loaned to the army for the operations against San Fiorenzo. Having received these, he returned to Bastia, and on the 4th of April, 1794, the besieging force, twelve hundred troops and two hundred and fifty seamen, landed to the northward of the town. They at once began to throw up batteries, while the Corsicans harassed the landward approaches to the place. Nelson being with the troops, the " Agamemnon " with some frigates was anchored north of the city, Hood with his ships south of it. During the nights, boats from the fleet rowed guard near to the sea-front, with such diligence that few of the craft that attempted to run in or out succeeded in so doing. When darkness covered the waters, British gunboats crept close to the walls, and by an intermitting but frequent fire added much to the distress of the enemy. On the 11th of April the garrison was formally summoned, and, the ex- pected refusal having been received, the British batteries opened. There was not force enough, however, to bring the place to terms as a consequence of direct attack, and after three weeks Nelson, while betraying no apprehension of fail- ure, practically admitted the fact. " Although I have no doubt but even remaining in our present situation, and by strict guard rowing close to the town, and the Corsicans har- assing them on the hills, and the gunboats by night, but that the enemy must surrender before any great length of time, yet, if force can be spared, a successful attack on the heights must much facilitate a speedy capture. I own it will give me the highest pleasure to assist in the attack." It was by such an attack, or rather by the fear of it, coming upon the long and exhausting endurance of cannonade and hunger, that Bastia finally fell. "We shall in time accom- plish the taking of Bastia," wrote Nelson on the 3d of May. " I have no doubt in the way we proposed to attempt it, by bombardment and cannonading, joined to a close blockade of the harbour." " If not," he adds, " our Country will, I be- lieve, sooner forgive an officer for attacking his enemy than for letting it alone." On the 12th a large boat was captured ]10 THE LIFE OF NELSON coming out from the port; and on her were found letters from the governor, Gentili, confessing the annoyance caused by the British fire, and saying that if relief did not arrive by the 29th, the place must be looked upon as lost. Three nights later another boat was caught attempting to enter. On board her was a brother of the Mayor of Bastia. This man, while talking with Hood's secretary, expressed his fears for the result to his relatives, if the town were carried by assault. The secretary replied that Hood could not prevent those evils, if the garrison awaited the attack, and gave the Cqrsican to understand that it was imminent, troops being expected from San Fiorenzo. At the urgent request of the prisoner, one of the seamen taken with him was permitted to land with a letter, stating the impending danger. By a singular concidence, or by skilful contrivance, the San Fiorenzo troops appeared on the heights upon the evening. May 19, following this conver- sation. Flags of truce had already been hoisted, negotiations were opened, and on the 22d the French colors were struck and the British took possession. " When I reflect what we have achieved," confessed the hitherto outwardly unmoved Nelson, " I am all astonishment. The most glorious sight that an Englishman can experience, and which, I believe, none but an Englishman could bring about, was exhibited, — 4,500 men laying down their arms to less than 1,000 British soldiers, who were serving as marines.'' As towards the French this account is perhaps somewhat less than fair ; but it does no more than justice to the admirable firmness and enterprise shown by Hood and Nelson. As a question of Bastia only, their attempt might be charged with rashness; but having regard to the political and military conditions, to the instability of the Corsican character, and to the value of the island as a naval station, it was amply justified, for the risks run were out of all proportion less than the advantage to be gained. Thus the siege of Bastia ended in triumph, despite the prior pronouncement of the general commanding the troops, that the attempt was "most visionary and rash." These epithets, being used to Hood after his own expressions in favor of the undertaking, had not unnaturally provoked from him a resentful retort ; and, as men are rarely conciliated by BASTIA TAKEN m the success of measures which they have ridiculed, there arose a degree of strained relations between army and navy, that continued even after the arrival of a new commander of the land forces, and indeed throughout Hood's association with the operations in Corsica. During this busy and laborious period, despite his burden of secret anxiety, Nelson's naturally delicate health showed the favorable reaction, which, as has before been noted, was with him the usual result of the call to exertion. His letters steadily reflect, and occasionally mention, the glow of exulta- tion produced by constant action of a worthy and. congenial nature. " We are in high health and spirits besieging Bastia," he writes to his wife soon after landing ; and shortly before the fall of the place he says again : " As to my health, it was never better, seldom so well." Yet, although from beginning to end the essential stay of the enterprise, the animating soul, without whose positive convictions and ardent support Lord Hood could scarcely have dared so great a hazard, he was throughout the siege left, apparently purposely, in an anoma- lous position, and was at the end granted a recognition which, though probably not grudging, was certainly scanty. No definition of his duties was ever given by the commander-in- chief. He appears as it were the latter's unacknowledged representative ashore, a plenipotentiary without credentials. " What my situation is," he writes to a relative, " is not to be described. I am everything, yet nothing ostensible ; enjoying the confidence of Lord Hood and Colonel Villettes, and the captains landed with the seamen obeying my orders." A fort- night later he writes to Hood : " Your Lordship knows exactly the situation I am in here. With Colonel Villettes I liave no reason but to suppose I am respected in the highest degree ; nor have I occasion to complain of want of attention to my wishes from any parties ; but yet I am considered as not com- manding the seamen landed. My wishes may be, and are, complied with ; my orders would possibly be disregarded. Therefore, if we move from hence, I would wish your Lord- ship to settle that point. Your Lordship will not, I trust, take this request amiss : I have been struggling with it since the first day I landed." Hood apparently gave him full satisfaction as regards .his 112 THE LIFE OF NELSON own view of the situation. " I am happy," Nelson wrote, when acknowledging his reply, " that my ideas of the situation I am in here so perfectly agree with your Lordship's ; " but he did not settle the matter by a decisive order. His object, as he seems to have explained, was to bestow a certain amount of prominence upon a young captain, Hunt, who had recently lost his ship, and who, Hood thought, would be sooner pro- vided with another, if he appeared as in command at the guns. Nelson acceded to this arrangement with his usual generosity. " Your kind intention to Captain Hunt," he wrote, " I had the honour of telling your Lordship, should be furthered by every means in my power; and my regard for him, I assure you, is undiminished. He is a most exceeding good young man, nor is any one more zealous for the service. I don't complain of any one, but an idea has entered into the heads of some under him, that his command was absolutely distinct from me ; and that I had no authority over him, except as a request." Un- fortunately, Hood, in his desire to serve Hunt, not only unduly but absurdly minimized Nelson's relations to the whole affair. His despatch ran: "Captain Nelson, of his Majesty's ship Agamemnon, who had the command and directions of the sea- men in landing the guns, mortars and stores,^ and Captain Hunt who commanded at the batteries,^ . . . have an equal claim to my gratitude." To limit Nelson's share in the capture of Bastia to the purely subsidiary though important function of landing the guns, was as unjust as it was unneces- sary to the interests of Hunt. The latter, being second in command ashore, and afterwards sent home with the de- spatches, was sure to receive the reward customarily bestowed upon such services. The incident singularly and aptly illustrates the difference, which in a military service cannot be too carefully kept in mind, between individual expressions of opinion, which may be biassed, and professional reputation, which, like public senti- ment, usually settles at last not far from the truth. Despite this curious inversion of the facts by Lord Hood, there prob- ably was no one among the naval forces, nor among the soldiery, who did not thoroughly, if perchance somewhat vaguely, appreciate that Nelson was the moving spirit of the 1 The italics are the autiior's. SERVICES BEFORE BASTIA 113 whole operation, even beyond Hood himself. As the Greek commanders after Salamis were said to have voted the award of merit each to himself first, but all to Themistocles second, so at Bastia, whatever value individuals might place on their own services, all probably would have agreed that Nelson came next. The latter meantime was happily unconscious of the wrong done him, so that nothing marred the pleasure with which he congratulated the commander-in-chief, and received the latter's brief but hearty general order of thanks, wherein Kelson's own name stood foremost, as was due both to his seniority and to his exertions. When the despatch reached him, he freely expressed his discontent in letters to friends ; but being, at the time of its reception, actively engaged in the siege of Calvi, the exhilaration of that congenial employment for the moment took the edge off the keenness of his resentment. " Lord Hood and myself were never better friends — nor, although /lis Letter does,^ did he wish to put me where I never Avas — in the rear. Captain Hunt, who lost his ship, he Avanted to push forward for another, — a young man who never was on a battery, or ever rendered any service during the siege ; if any person ever says he did, then I submit to the character of a story-teller. Poor Serocold, Avho fell here,^ was determined to publish an advertisement, as he commanded a battery under my orders. The whole operations of the siege were carried on through Lord Hood's letters to me. I was the mover of it — I was the cause of its success. Sir Gilbert Elliot will be my evidence, if any is required. I am not a little vexed, bat shall not quarrel." "I am well aware," he had written to Mrs. Kelson a few days before, " my poor ser- vices will not be noticed : I have no interest ; but, however services may be received, it is not right in an officer to slacken his zeal for his Country." These noble words only voiced a feeling which in Kelson's heart had all the strength of a principle ; and this light of the single eye stood him in good stead in the moments of bitterness which followed a few months later, when a lull in the storm of fighting gave the sense of neglect a chance to rankle. 1 The italics are Nelson's. 2 Written at the siege of Calvi. 114 THE LIFE OF NELSON "My heart is full," he writes then to his uncle Suckling, speaking not only of Bastia, but of the entire course of opera- tions in Corsica, " when I think of the treatment I have re- ceived : every man who had any considerable share in the reduction has got some place or other — I, only I, am without reward. . . . Nothing but my anxious endeavour to serve my Country makes me bear up against it ; but I sometimes am ready to give all up." " Forgive this letter," he adds towards the end : " I have said a great deal too much of myself ; but indeed it is all too true." In similar strain he expressed him- self to his wife : " It is very true that I have ever served faith- fully, and ever has it been my fate to be neglected ; but that shall not make me inattentive to my duty. I have pride in doing my duty well, and a self-approbation, which if it is not so lucrative, yet perhaps affords more pleasing sensations." Thus the consciousness of duty done in the past, and the clear recognition of what duty still demanded in the present and future, stood him in full stead, when he failed to receive at the hands of others the honor he felt to be his due, and which, he never wearied in proclaiming, was in his eyes priceless, above all other reward. " Corsica, in respect of prizes," he wrote to Mrs. Nelson, " produces nothing but honour, far above the consideration of wealth : not that I despise riches, quite the contrary, yet I would not sacrifice a good name to obtain them. Had I attended less than I have done to the service of my Country, I might have made some money too : however, I trust my name will stand on record when the money-makers will be forgot," — a hope to be abundantly fulfilled. At the moment Bastia fell there arrived from England a new commander-in-chief for the land forces, General Stuart, an officer of distinguished ability and enterprise. Cheered by the hope of cordial co-operation. Hood and Nelson resumed without delay their enthusiastic efforts. "Within a week, on the 30th of May, the latter wrote that the " Agamemnon" was taking on board ammunition for the siege of Calvi, the last remaining of the hostile strongholds. In the midst of the preparations, at eleven p. m. of June 6, word was received that nine French ships-of-the-line had come out of Toulon, and were believed to be bound for Calvi, with reinforcements for HIS MILITARY PRINCIPLES 115 the garrison. At seven the next morning the squadron was under way ; the " Agamemnon," which had two hundred tons of ordnance stores to unload, sailing only half an hour after her less encumbered consorts, whom she soon overtook. Hood shaped his course for Calvi, being constrained thereto, not only by the rumor of the enemy's destination, but also by the military necessity of effecting a junction with the rest of his fleet. Admiral Hotham, who commanded the British division of seven ships in front of Toulon, instead of waiting to verify the report brought to him of the enemy's force, — which was actually the same, numerically, as his own, — bore up hastily for Calvi, intending, so wrote Nelson at the time, to fight them there, rather than that they should throw in succors. "Whatever their numbers, thus to surrender touch of them at the beginning was an evident mistake, for which, as for most mistakes, a penalty had in the end to be paid; and in fact, if the relief of Calvi was the object of the sortie, the place to fight was evidently as far from there as possible. Off Toulon, even had Hotham been beaten, his opponents would have been too roughly handled to carry out their mis- sion. As it was, this precipitate retirement lost the British an opportunity for a combat that might have placed their control of the sea be3^ond peradventure ; and a few months later, Nelson, who at first had viewed Hotham's action with the generous sympathy and confident pride which always characterized his attitude towards his brother officers, showed how clearly he was reading in the book of experience the lessons that should afterwards stand himself in good stead. "When 'Victory' is gone," he wrote, "we shall be thirteen sail of the line [to the French fifteen], when the enemy will keep our new Commanding Officer [Hotham] in hot water, who missed, unfortunately, the opportunity of fighting them, last June." Ten years later, in his celebrated chase of Ville- neuve's fleet, he said to his captains : " If we meet the enemy we shall find them not less than eighteen, I rather think twenty, sail of the line, and therefore do not be surprised if I should not fall on them immediately [he had but eleven] — ive wonH part ^ without a battle ; " and he expressed with the utmost decision his clear appreciation that even a lost battle, if 1 Author's italics. 116 THE LIFE UF NELSON delivered at the right point oi* at the right moment, would frustrate the ulterior objects of the enemy, by crippling the force upon which they depended. As will be seen in the sequel, Hotham, throughout his brief command as Hood's successor, suffered the consequences of permitting so impor- tant a fraction of the enemy's fleet to escape his grasp, when it was in his power to close with it. The British divisions met off the threatened port two days after leaving Bastia, and two hours later a lookout frigate brought word that the French fleet had been seen by her the evening before, to the northward and westward, some forty miles off its own coast. Hood at once made sail in pursuit, and in the afternoon of the 10th of June caught sight of the enemy, but so close in with the shore that they succeeded in towing their ships under the protection of the batteries in Golfe Jouan, where, for lack of wind, he was unable to follow them for some days, during Avliich they had time to strengthen their position beyond his powers of offence. Hotham's error was irreparable. The " Agamemnon " was then sent back to Bastia, to resume the work of transportation, which Nelson pushed with the untiring energy that characterized all his movements. Arriving on the 12th, fifteen hundred troops were embarked by eight the next morning, and at four in the afternoon he sailed, having with him two smaller ships of w^ar and twenty-two transports. On the 15th he anchored at San Fiorenzo. Here he met General Stuart. The latter was anxious to proceed at once with the siege of Calvi, but asked Nelson whether he thought it proper to take the shipping to that exposed position ; alluding to the French fleet that had left Toulon, and which Hood was then seeking. Nelson's reply is interesting, as reflecting the judgment of a warrior at once prudent and enterprising, concerning the influence of a hostile " fleet in being " upon a contemplated detached operation. " I certainly thought it right," he said, " placing the firmest reliance that we should be perfectly safe under Lord Hood's protection, who would take care that the French fleet at Gour- jean ^ should not molest us." To Hood he wrote a week later : "I believed ourselves safe under your Lordship's wing." At 1 Golfe Jouan ; on the coast of France between Toulon and Nice. OPEEATIONS AGAINST CALVI 117 tliis moment he thought the French to be nine sail-of-the-line to the, British thirteen, — no contemptible inferior force. Yet that he recognized the possible danger from such a detach- ment is also clear ; for, writing two days earlier, under the same belief as to the enemy's strength, and speaking of the expected approach of an important convoy, he says : " I hope they will not venture up till Lord Hood can get off Toulon, or wherever the French fleet are got to." When a particular opinion has received the extreme expression now given to that concerning the '^ fleet in being," and apparently has under- gone equally extreme misconception, it is instructive to recur to the actual effect of such a force, upon the practice of a man with whom moral effect was never in excess of the facts of the case, whose imagination produced to him no paralyzing picture of remote contingencies. Is it probable that, with the great issues of 1690 at stake. Nelson, had he been in Tour- ville's place, would have deemed the crossing of the Channel by French troops impossible, because of Torrington's '' fleet iu being " ? Sailing again on June 16, the expedition arrived next day off Calvi. Although it was now summer, the difliculties of the new undertaking were, from the maritime point of view, very great. The town of Calvi, which was walled and had a citadel, lies upon a promontory on the west side of an open gulf of the same name, a semicircular recess, three miles wide by two deep, on the northwest coast of Corsica. The western point of its shore line is Cape Eevellata ; the eastern. Point Espano. The port being fortified and garrisoned, it was not practicable to take the shipping inside, nor to establish on the inner beach a safe base for disembarking. The " Agamemnon " therefore anchored outside, nearly two miles south of Cape Eevellata, and a mile from shore, in the excessive depth of fifty-three fathoms ; the transports coming-to off the cape, but farther to seaward. The water being so deep, and the bottom rocky, the position was perilous for sailing-ships, for the pre- vailing summer wind blows directly on the shore, which is steep-to and affords no shelter. Abreast the " Agamemnon " was a small inlet, Porto Agro, about three miles from Calvi by difficult approaches. Here Nelson landed on the 18th with General Stuart; and, after reconnoitring both the beach and the 118 THE LIFE OF NELSON town, the two officers decided that, though a very bad landing, it was the best available. On the 19th, at 7 a. m., the troops disembarked. That afternoon Nelson himself went ashore to stay, taking with him two hundred and fifty seamen. The next day it came on to blow so hard that most of the ships put to sea, and no intercourse was had from the land with those which remained. The "Agamemnon " did not return till the 24th. Lord Hood was by this time in San Fiorenzo Bay, having abandoned the hope of attacking the French fleet in Golfe Jouan. On the 27th he arrived off Calvi, and thenceforth Nelson was in daily communication with him till the place fell. As the army in moderate, though not wholly adequate, force conducted the siege of Calvi, under a general officer of vigor- ous character, the part taken by Nelson and his seamen, though extremely important, and indeed essential to the ulti- mate success, was necessarily subordinate. It is well to notice that his journal, and correspondence with Lord Hood, clearly recognize this, his true relation to the siege of Calvi ; for it makes it probable that, in attributing to himself a much more important part at Bastia, and in saying that Hood's report had put him unfairly in the background, he was not exag- gerating his actual though ill-defined position there. That Nelson loved to dwell in thought upon his own achievements, that distinction in the eyes of his fellows was dear to him, that he craved recognition, and was at times perhaps too in- sistent in requiring it, is true enough ; but there is no indi- cation that he ever coveted the laurels of others, or materially misconceived his own share in particular events. Glory, sweet as it was to him, lost its value, if unaccompanied by the con- sciousness of desert which stamps it as honor. It is, there- fore, not so much for personal achievement as for revelation of character that this siege has interest in his life. Besides the defences of the town proper, Calvi was pro- tected by a series of outworks extending across the neck of land upon which it lay. Of these the outermost was on the left, looking from the place. It flanked the approaches to the others, and commanded the communications with the interior. It was, by Nelson's estimate, about twenty-two hundred yards from the town, and had first to be reduced. By the 3d of July tliirteen long guns, besides a number of mortars SIEGE OF CALVI 119 and howitzers, had been dragged from the beach to the spot by the seamen, who also assisted in placing them in position, and for the most part worked them in battle, an artillerist from the army pointing. Nelson, with Captain Hallowell, already an officer of mark and afterwards one of distinction, took alternate day's duty at the batteries, a third captain, Serocold, having fallen early in the siege. Fearing news might reach his wife that a naval captain had. been killed, without the name being mentioned, he wrote to her of this sad event, adding expressively : " I am very busy, yet own I am in all my glory ; except with you, I would not be anywhere but where I am, for the world." On July 7th the first out- work fell. The attack upon the others was then steadily and systematically prosecuted, until on the 19th all had been captured, and the besiegers stood face to face with the town walls. During this time Nelson, as always, was continually at the front and among the most exposed. Out of six guns in the battery which he calls " ours," five were disabled in six da,js. On the 12th at daylight, a heavy fire opened from the town, which, he says, " seldom missed our battery ; " and at seven o'clock a shot, which on the ricochet cleared his head by a hair's breadth, drove sand into his face and right eye with such violence as to incapacitate him. He spoke lightly and cheerfully of the incident to Lord Hood, " I got a little hurt this morning : not much, as you may judge by my writing," and remained absent from duty only the regular twenty-four hours ; but, after some fluctuations of hope, the sight of the eye was permanently lost to him. Of General Stuart's con- duct in the operations he frequently speaks with cordial admiration, "He is not sparing of himself on any occasion, he every night sleeps with us in the advanced battery. If I may be allowed to judge, he is an extraordinary good judge of ground. No officer ever deserved success more." At the same time he expresses dissatisfaction with some of the subordinate army officers, to whose inefficiency he attributes the necessity for undue personal exertion on the general's part : " The General is not well. He fatigues himself too much, but I can't help seeing he is obliged to do it. He has not a person to forward his views, — the engineer sick, the artillery 120 THE LIFE OF NELSON captain not fit for active service ; therefore every minute thing must be done by himself, or it is not done at all." The Avork was tedious and exhausting, and the malaria of the hot Corsican summer told heavily on men's health and patience. The supply of ammunition, and of material of war generally, for the army seems to have been inadequate ; and heavy demands were made upon the fleet, not only for guns, which could be returned, but for powder and shot, the ex- penditure of which might prove embarrassing before they could be renewed. The troops also were not numerous enough, under the climatic conditions, to do all their own duty. In such circumstances, when two parties are working together to the same end, but under no common control, each is prone to think the other behindhand i:i his work and exacting in his demands. "Why don't Lord Hood land 500 men to work ? " said Colonel Moore, the general's right-hand man. " Our soldiers are tired." Nelson, on the other hand, thought that Moore wanted over-much battering done to the breach of a work, before he led the stormers to it ; and Hood, who was receiving frequent reports of the preparations of the French fleet in Toulon, was impatient to have the siege pushed, and thovight the army dilatory. "The rapidity with which the French are getting on at Toulon," he wrote confidentially to Nelson, " makes it indispensably necessary for me to put the whole of the fleet under my command in the best possible state for service ; and I must soon apply to the general for those parts of the regiments now on shore, ordered by his Majesty to serve in lieu of marines, to be held in readiness to embark at the shortest notice. I shall delay this application as long as possible." Nelson, being a seaman, sympathized of course with his own service, and with Hood, for whom he had most cordial admiration, both personal and professional. But at the same time he was on the spot, a constant eye-witness to the difficul- ties of the siege, a clear-headed observer, with sound military instincts, and fair-minded when facts were before him. The army, he wrote to Hood, is harassed to death, and he notices that it suffers from sickness far more than do the seamen. He repeats the request for more seamen, and, although he seems to doubt the reasonableness of the demand, evidently FRICTION BETWEEN ARMY AND NAVY 121 thinks that they should be furnished, if possible. Hood accordingly sent an additional detachment of three hundred, raising the number on shore to the five hundred suggested by Moore. " I had much rather," he wrote, " that a hundred sea- men should be landed unnecessarily, than that one should be kept back that was judged necessary." On the other hand, when the general, after a work bearing on the bay had been destroyed, suggests that the navy might help, by laying the ships against the walls, Nelson takes " the liberty of observ- ing that the business of laying wood before walls was much altered of late," and adds the common-sense remark, that " the quantity of powder and shot which would be fired away on such an attack could be much better directed from a, battery on shore." This conversation took place immediately after all the outworks had been reduced. It was conducted " with the greatest politeness," he writes, and " the General thanked me for my assistance, but it was necessary to come to the point whether the siege should be persevered in or given up. If the former, he must be supplied with the means, which were more troops, more seamen to work, and more ammuni- tion." Nelson replied that, if the requisite means could not be had on the spot, they could at least hold on where they were till supplied from elsewhere. It will be noticed that Nelson was practically the inter- mediary between the two commanders-in-chief. In fact, there appears to have been between them some constraint, and he was at times asked to transmit a message which he thought had better go direct. In this particularly delicate situation, one cannot but be impressed with the tact he for the most part shows, the diplomatic ability, which was freely attributed to him by his superiors in later and more influential commands. This was greatly helped by his cordial good-will towards others, combined with disinterested zeal for the duty before him; the whole illumined by unusual sagacity and good sense. He sees both sides, and conveys his suggestions to either with a self-restraint and deference which avert resentment ; and he preserves both his calmness and candor, although he notices in the camp some jealousy of his confidential communication with his immediate superior, the admiral. _ Though never backward to demand what he thought the rights of himself or 122 THE LITE OF NELSON i his associates, Nelson was always naturally disposed to recon- cile differences, to minimize causes of trouble, and this native temperament had not yet undergone the warping which fol- lowed his later wounds — especially that on the head received at the Nile — and the mental conflict into which he was plunged by his unhappy passion for Lady Hamilton. At this time, in the flush of earlier enthusiasm, delighting as few men do in the joy of battle, he strove to promote harmony, to smooth over difficulties by every exertion possible, either by doing whatever was asked of him, or by judicious representa- tions to others. Thus, when Hood, impatient at the disturb- ing news from Toulon, wishes to hasten the conclusion by summo.ning the garrison, in the hope that it may yield at once, the general objected, apparently on the ground that the statement of their own advantages, upon which such a sum- mons might be based, would be prejudicial, if, as was most probable, the demand was rejected. Whatever his reason. Nelson, though indirectly, intimates to Hood that in this matter he himself agrees, upon the whole, with the general, and Hood yields the point, — the more so that he learns from Nelson that the outposts are to be stormed the next night ; and sorely was the captain, in his judicious efforts thus to keep the peace, tried by the postponement of the promised assault for twenty-four hours. " Such th Ings are,^' he wrote to Hood, using a favorite expression. " I hope to God the general, who seems a good officer and an amiable man, is not led away ; but Colonel Moore is his great friend." The feeling between the land and sea services was empha- sized in the relations existing between Lord Hood and Colonel Moore, who afterwards, as Sir John Moore, fell gloriously at Corunna. To these two eminent officers fortune denied the occasion to make full proof of their greatness to the world ; but they stand in the first rank of those men of promise whose failure has been due, not to their own shortcomings, but to the lack of opportunity. Sir John Moore has been the happier, in that the enterprise with which his name is chiefly connected, and upon which his title to fame securely rests, was completed, and wrought its full results ; fortunate, too, in having received the vindication of that great action at the hands of the most eloquent of military historians. His coun- ADMIRAL, LORD HOOD. From the painting by L. F. Abbott, in the National Portrait Gallery. ^^^Hr. ^»m^.. -■■ :■■ 1 HOOD AND MOORE 123 try and his profession may well mourn a career of such, fair opening so soon cut short. But daring and original in the highest degree as was the march from Salamanca to Sahagun, it did not exceed, either in originality or in daring, the pur- poses nourished by Lord Hood, which he had no opportunity so to execute as to attract attention. Condemned to subordi- nate positions until he had reached the age of seventy, his genius is known to us only by his letters, and by the frustrated plans at St. Kitts in 1782, and at Golfe Jouau in 1794, in the former of which, less fortunate than Moore, he failed to realize his well-grounded hope of reversing, by a single blow, the issues of a campaign. It is to be regretted that two such men could not under- stand each other cordially. Hood, we know from his letters, was " of that frame and texture that I cannot be indifferent," — "full of anxiety, impatience, and apprehension," — when service seemed to him slothfully done. Moore, we are told by Napier, " maintained the right with vehemence bordering upon fierceness." Had he had the chief command on shore, it is possible that the two, impetuous and self-asserting though they were, might have reached an understanding. But in the most unfortunate disagreement about Bastia, — wherein it is to a naval officer of to-day scarcely possible to do otherwise than blame the sullen lack of enterprise shown by the army, — and afterwards at Calvi, Moore appeared to Hood, and to Nelson also, as the subordinate, the power behind the throne, who was prompting a line of action they both condemned. No position in military life is more provocative of trouble than to feel you are not dealing with the principal, but with an irresponsible inferior ; and the situation is worse, because one in which it is almost impossible to come to an issue. Moore's professional talent and force of character naturally made itself felt, even with a man of Stuart's ability. Hood and Nelson recognized this, and they resented, as inspired by a junior, what they might have combated dispassionately, if attributed to the chief. There was friction also between Moore and Elliot, the viceroy of the island. Doubtless, as in all cases where suspicion, not to say jealousy, has been begot, much more and worse was imagined by both parties than actually occurred. The apportionment of blame, or prolonged 124 THE LIFE OF NELSON discussion of the matter, is out of place in a biography of Nelson. To that it is of moment, only because it is proper to state that Nelson, on the spot and in daily contact, — Nelson, upon whose zeal and entire self-devotion at this period no doubt is cast, — agreed in the main with Hood's opinion as to what the latter called the San Fiorenzo leaven, of which Moore was to them the exponent. It is true that Nelson naturally sympathized with his profession and his admiral, whom he heartily admired ; but some corrective, at least, to such par- tiality, was supplied by his soreness about the latter's omission duly to report his services at Bastia, of which he just now became aware. The estrangement between the two com- manders-in-chief was doubtless increased by the apparent reluctance, certainly the lack of effort, to see one another frequently. The principal work, called by Nelson the Mozelle battery, was carried before daylight of July 19, and before dark all the outposts were in the hands of the British. "I could have wished to have had a little part in the storm," wrote Nelson, characteristically covetous of strenuous action, " if it was only to have placed the ladders and pulled away the palisadoes. However, we did the part allotted to us." That day a sum- mons was sent to the garrison, but rejected, and work upon batteries to breach the town.walls was then pushed rapidly forward ; for it was becoming more and more evident that the siege must be brought to an end, lest the entire force of besiegers should become disabled by sickness. On the 28th the batteries were ready, and General Stuart sent in word that he would not fire upon the hospital positions, where indi cated by black flags. The besieged then asked for a truce of twenty-five days, undertaking to lay down their arms, if not by then relieved. The general and admiral refused, but were willing to allow six days. This the garrison in turn rejected ; and on the night of the 30th four small vessels succeeded in eluding the blockading frigates and entering supplies, which encouraged the besieged. On the 31st the batteries opened, and after thirty-six hours' heavy cannonade the town held out a flag of truce. An arrangement was made that it should sur- render on the 10th of August, if not relieved ; the garrison to be transported to France without becoming prisoners of war. CALVI CAPITULATES 125 No relief arriving, the place capitulated on the day named. It was high time for the besiegers. "We have upwards of one thousand sick out of two thousand," wrote Nelson, " and tlie others not much better than so many phantoms. We have lost many men from the season, very few from the enemy." He himself escaped more easily than most. To use his own quaint expression, " All the prevailing disorders have attacked me, but I have not strength enough for them to fasten upon. I am here the reed amongst the oaks : I bow before the storm, while the sturdy oak is laid low." The congenial moral sur- roundings, in short, — the atmosphere of exertion, of worthy and engrossing occupation, — the consciousness, to him de- lightful, of distinguished action, of heroic persistence through toil and danger, — prevailed even in his physical frame over discomfort, over the insidious climate, and even over his dis- tressing wound. " This is my ague day," he writes when the batteries opened; "I hope so active a scene will keep off the fit. It has shaken me a good deal ; but I have been used to them, and now don't mind them much." " Amongst the wounded, in a slight manner, is myself, my head being a good deal wounded and my right eye cut down ; but the surgeons flatter me I shall not entirely lose the sight. It con- fined me, thank God, only one day, and at a time when nothing particular happened to be doing." " You must not think my hurts confined me," he tells his wife ; " no, nothing but the loss of a limb would have kept me from my duty, and I believe my exertions conduced to preserve me in this general mor- tality." In his cheery letters, now, no trace is perceptible of the fretful, complaining temper, which impaired, though it did not destroy, the self-devotion of his later career. No other mistress at this time contended with honor for the pos- session of his heart; no other place than the post of duty before Calvi distracted his desires, or appealed to his imagina- tion through his senses. Not even Lord Hood's report of the siege of Bastia, which here came to, his knowledge, and by which he thought himself wronged, had bitterness to over- come the joy of action and of self-contentment. Not many days were required, after the fall of Calvi, to remove the fleet, and the seamen who had been serving on shore, from the pestilential coast. Nelson seems to have been 126 THE LIFE OF NELSON intrusted, with the embarkation of the prisoners in the trans- ports which were to take them to Toulon. He told his wife that he had been four months landed, and felt almost qualified to pass his examination as a besieging general, but that he had no desire to go on with campaigning. On the 11th of August, the day after the delivery of the place, he was again on board the " Agamemnon," from whose crew had been drawn the greatest proportion of the seamen for the batteries. One hundred and fifty of them were now in their beds. "My ship's company are all worn out," he wrote, " as is this whole army, except myself; nothing hurts me, — of two thousand men I am the most healthy. Every other officer is scarcely able to crawl." Among the victims of the deadly climate was Lieutenant Moutray, the son of the lady to w^hom, ten years before, he had been so warmly attracted in the West Indies. Nelson placed a monument to him in the church at San Fiorenzo. On the 15th of August the "Agamemnon" sailed from Calvi, and after a stop at San Fiorenzo, where Hood then was, reached Leghorn on the 18th, Now that the immediate danger of the siege was over. Kelson admitted to his wife the serious character of the injury he had received. The right eye was nearly deprived of sight, — only so far recovered as to enable him to distinguish light from darkness. For all purposes of use it was gone ; but the blemish was not to be perceived, unless attention was drawn to it. At Leghorn the ship lay for a month, — the first period of repose since she went into commission, a year and a half before. While there, the physician to the fleet came on board and surveyed the crew, finding them in a very weak state, and unfit to serve. This condition of things gave Nelson hopes that, upon the approaching departure of Lord Hood for Eng- land, the " Agamemnon " might go with him ; for he was loath to separate from an admiral whose high esteem he liad won, and upon whom he looked as the first sea-officer of Great Britain. Hood was inclined to take her, and to transfer the ship's company bodily to a seventy-four. This he considered no more than due to Nelson's distinguished merit and services, and he had indeed offered him each ship of that rate whose command fell vacant in the Mediterranean; but the strong REFITTING AT LEGHORN 127 sense of attachment to those Avho had shared his toils and dangers, of reluctance that they should see him willing to leave them, after their hard work together, — that combination of sympathy and tact which made so much of Xelson's success as a leader of men, — continu.ed to prevent his accepting pro- motion that would sever his ties to them. The exigencies of the war in the Mediterranean forbade the departure, even of a sixty-four with a disabled crew. A full month later her sick-list was still seventy-seven, out of a total of less than four hundred. "Though certainly unfit for a long cruise," Nelson said, "we are here making a show," — a military requirement not to be neglected or despised. He accepted the disappointment, as he did all service rubs at this period, with perfect temper and in the best spirit. " We must not repine," he wrote to his wife on the 12th of October, the day after Hood sailed for England. "Lord Hood is very well inclined towards me, but the service must ever supersede all private consideration, I hope you will spend the winter cheer- fully. Do not repine at my absence; before spring I hope we shall have peace, when we must look out for some little cottage." She fretted, however, as some women will; and he, to comfort her, wrote more sanguinely about himself than the facts warranted. " Why you should be uneasy about me, so as to make yourself ill, I know not. I feel a confident protec- tion in whatever service I may be employed upon; and as to my health, I don't know that I was ever so truly well. I fancy myself grown quite stout." To his old captain. Locker, he admitted that he could not get the better of the fever. Corsica being now wholly in the power of its inhabitants, allied with and supported by Great Britain, his attention and interest were engrossed by the French fleet centring upon Toulon, the dominant factor of concern to the British in the Mediterranean, where Vice-Admiral Hotham had succeeded Hood as commander-in-chief. Nelson realizes more and more the mistake that was made, when a fraction of it was allowed to escape battle in the previous June. The various reasons by which he had at first excused the neglect to bring it to action no longer weigh with him. He does not directly blame, but he speaks of the omission as an " opportunity lost," — a phrase than which there are few more ominous, iu char- 128 THE LIFE OF NELSOX acterizing the closely balanced, yet weighty, decisions upon which the issues of war depend. Nothing, he thinks, can prevent the junction of the two fragments, — then in Golfe Jouan and Toulon, — one of which, with more resolution and promptitude on Hotham's part, might have been struck singly at sea a few months before ; and if they join, there must fol- low a fleet action, between forces too nearly equal to insure to Great Britain the decisive results that were needed. The thought he afterwards expressed, "Numbers only can an- nihilate," was clearly floating in his brain, — inarticulate, perhaps, as j'et, but sure to come to the birth. "If we are not completely victorious, — I mean, able to remain at sea whilst the enemy must retire into port, — if we only make a Lord Howe's victory, take a part, and retire into port, Italy is lost." Criticism clearly is going on in his mind ; and not mere criticism (there is enough and to spare of that in the world, and not least in navies), but criticism judicious, well considered, and above all fruitful. The error of opportunity lost he had seen; the error of a partial victory — "a Lord Howe's victory," another opportunity lost — he intuitively anticipated for the Mediterranean, and was soon to see. He was already prepared to pass an accurate judgment instantl}', when he saw it. May we not almost hear, thundering back from the clouds that yet veiled the distant future of the Nile, the words, of which his thought was already pregnant, " You may be assured I will bring the French fleet to action the moment I can lay my hands upon them." The year closed with the British fleet watching, as best it could, the French ships, which, according to Nelson's expecta- tion, had given the blockaders the slip, and had made their junction at Toulon. There was now no great disparity in the nominal force of the two opponents, the British having four- teen ships-of-the-line, the French fifteen ; and it was quite in the enemy's power to fulfil his other prediction, by keeping Hotham in hot water during the winter. In the middle of November the " Agamemnon " had to go to Leghorn for ex- tensive repairs, and remained there, shifting her main and mizzen masts, until the 21st of December. Nelson, who had endured with unyielding cheerfulness the dangers, exposure, and sickliness of Calvi, found himself unable to bear patiently HIS MILITARY OPINIONS 129 the comfort of quiet nights in a friendly port, while hot work might chance outside. " Lying in port is misery to me. My heart is almost broke to find the Agamemnon lying here, little better than a wreck. I own my sincere wish that the enemy Avould rest -quiet until we are ready for sea, and a gleam of hope sometimes crosses me that they will." " I am uneasy enough for fear they will fight, and Agamemnon not present, — it will almost break my heart ; but I hope the best, — that they are only boasting at present, and will be quiet until I am ready." "It is misery," he repeats, "for me to be laid up dismantled." It was during this period of comparative inactivity in port, followed by monotonous though arduous winter cruising of£ Toulon, which was broken only by equally dreary stays at San Fiorenzo, that Iselsoa found time to brood over the neglect of which he thought himself the victim, in the omis- sion of Lord Hood to notice more markedly his services in Corsica. It is usually disagreeable to the uninterested by- stander to see an excessive desire for praise, even under the guise of just recognition of work done. Words of complaint, whether heard or read, strike a discord to one who himself at the moment is satisfied with his surroundings. We all have an instinctive shrinking from the tones of a grumbler. Nel- son's insistence upon his grievances has no exemption from this common experience ; yet it must be remembered that these assertions of the importance of his own services, and dissatisfaction with the terms in which they had been men- tioned, occur chiefly, if not solely, in letters to closest rela- tions, — to his wife and uncle, — and that they would never have become known but for the after fame, which has caused all his most private correspondence to have interest and to be brought to light. As a revelation of character they have a^ legitimate interest, and they reveal, or rather they confirm, what is abundantly revealed throughout his life, — that in- tense longing for distinction, for admiration justly earned, for conspicuous exaltation above the level of his kind, which ex- isted in him to so great a degree, and which is perhaps the most potent — certainly the most universal — factor in mili- tary achievement. They reveal this ambition for honor, or glory, on its weak side ; on its stronger side of noble emula- 9 130 THE LIFE OF NELSON tion, of self-devotion, of heroic action, his correspondence teems with its evidence in words, as does his life in acts. To quote the words of Lord Kad stock, who at this period, and until after the battle of Cape St. Vincent, was serving as one of the junior admirals in the Mediterranean, and retained his friendship through life, " a perpetual thirst of glory was ever raging within him." " He has ever showed himself as great a despiser of riches as he is a lover of glory ; and I am fully convinced in my own mind that he would sooner defeat the French fleet than capture fifty galleons." After all allowance made, however, it cannot be denied that there is in these complaints a tone which one regrets in such a man. The repeated "It was I " jars, by the very sharpness of its contrast, with the more generous expressions that abound in his correspondence. " When I reflect that I was the cause of re-attacking Bastia, after our wise generals gave it over, from not knowing the force, fancying it 2,000 men ; that it was I, who landing, joined the Corsicans, and with only my ship's party of marines, drove the French under the walls of Bastia ; that it was I, who, knowing the force in Bastia to be upwards of 4,000 men, as I have now only ventured to tell Lord Hood, lauded with only 1,200 men, and kept the secret till within this week past ; — what I must have felt during the whole siege may be easily conceived. Yet I am scarcely mentioned. I freely forgive, but cannot forget. This and much more ought to have been mentioned. It is known that, for two months, I blockaded Bastia with a squadron ; only fifty sacks of flour got into the town. At San Fiorenzo and Calvi, for two months before, nothing got in, and four French frigates could not get out, and are now ours. Yet my dili- gence is not mentioned ; and others, for keeping succours out of Calvi for a few summer months, are handsomely mentioned. JSicch things are. I have got upon a subject near my heart, which is full when I think of the treatment I have received. . . , The taking of Corsica, like the taking of St. Juan's, has cost me money. St. Juan's cost near £500 ; Corsica has cost me £300, an eye, and a cut across my back ; and my money, I find, cannot be repaid me." As regards the justice of his complaints, it seems to the author impossible to read carefully Hood's two reports, after I HIS LOVE OF DISTINCTION 131 the fall of Bastia and that of Calvi, and not admit, either that Nelson played a very unimportant part in the general opera- tions connected with the reduction of Corsica, with which he became associated even before it was effectively under- taken, and so remained throughout ; or else that no due recognition was accorded to him in the admiral's despatches. Had he not become otherwise celebrated in his after life, he would from these papers be inferred to stand, in achievement, rather below than above the level of the other captains who from time to time were present. That this was unfair seems certain ; and notably at Calvi, where, from the distance of the operations from the anchorage, and the strained relations which kept Hood and Stuart apart, he was practically the one naval man upon whose discretion and zeal success de- pended. It is probable, however, that tlie failure to do him justice proceeded as much from awkward literary construc- tion, phrases badly turned, as from reluctance to assign due prominence to one subordinate among several others. How readily, yet how keenly, he derived satisfaction, even from slight tributes of recognition, is shown by the simplicity and pleasure with which he quoted to Mrs. Nelson the follow- ing words of Sir Gilbert Elliot, the Viceroy of Corsica, then and always a warm friend and admirer : " I know that you, who have had such an honourable share in this acquisition, will not be indifferent at the prosperity of the Country which, you have so much assisted to place under His Majesty's gov- ernment." " Whether these are words of course and to be forgotten," Avrote Nelson, " I know not ; they are pleasant, however, for the time." Certainly his demands for praise, if thus measured, were not extreme. CHAPTER V. Nelson's Services with the Fleet in the Mediterranean under Admiral Hotham. — Partial Fleet Actions of March 13 and 14, AND July 13. — Nelson ordered to command a Detached Squad- ron co-operating with the Austrian Army in the Eiviera of Genoa. January-July, 1795. Age, 36. FROM the naval point of view, as a strategic measure, the acquisition of Corsica by the British was a matter of great importance. It was, however, only one among several factors, which went to make up the general military and po- litical situation in the Mediterranean at the end of the year 1794. Hitherto the exigencies of the well-nigh universal hostilities in which Erance had been engaged, and the anarch- ical internal state of that country, had prevented any decisive operations by her on the side of Italy, although she had, since 1792, been formally at war with the Kingdom of Sardinia, of which Piedmont was a province. At the close of 1794 the conditions were greatly modified. In the north, the combined forces of Great Britain, Austria, and Holland had been driven out of France and Belgium, and the United Provinces were on the point of submission. On the east, the Austrians and Prussians had retreated to the far bank of the Rhine, and Prussia was about to withdraw from the coalition, which, three years before, she had been so eager to form. On the south, even greater success had attended the French armies, which had crossed the Pyrenees into Spain, driving before them the forces of the enemy, who also was soon to ask for peace. It was therefore probable that operations in Italy would assume greatly increased activity, from the number of French soldiers released else- where, as well as from the fact that the Austrians themselves, though they continued the war in Germany, had abandoned MILITARY CONDITIONS IN MEDITERRANEAN 133 other portions of the continent which they had hitherto contested. The political and military conditions in Italy were, briefly, as follows. The region north of the Maritime Alps and in the valley of the Po was, for the most part, in arms against France, — the western province. Piedmont, as part of the Kingdom of Sardinia, whose capital was at Turin, and, to the eastward of it, the duchies of Milan and Mantua, as be- longing to Austria. The governments of the numerous small states into which Northern and Central Italy were then divided — Venice, Genoa, Tuscan}', the States of the Church, and others — sympathized generally with the opponents of France, but, as far as possible, sought to maintain a formal though difficult neutralit}^. The position of Genoa was the most embarrassing, because in direct contact with all the principal parties to the war. To the westward, her territory along the Piviera included Vintimiglia, bordering there on the county of Nice, and contained Vado Bay, the best anchor- age between Nice and Genoa. To the eastward, it embraced the Gulf of Spezia, continually mentioned by Nelson as Porto Especia. The occupation of the Piviera was of particular moment to the French, for it offered a road by which to enter Italy, — bad, indeed, but better far than those through the passes of the upper Alps. Skirting the sea, it afforded a double line of communications, by land and by water ; for the various detachments of their arm}-, posted along it, could in great degree be supplied by the small coasting-vessels of the Medi- terranean. So long, also, as it was in their possession, and they held passes of the Maritime Alps and Apennines, as they did in 1794, there was the possibility of their penetrating through them, to turn the left flank of the Sardinian army in Piedmont, which was, in fact, what Bonaparte accomplished ' two years later. These inducements had led the French to advance into the county of Nice, then belonging to Sardinia, which in the existing state of war it was perfectly proper for them to do ; but, not stopping there, they had pushed on past the Sardinian boundary into the neutral Riviera of Genoa, as far as Vado Bay, which they occupied, and where they still were at the end of 1794. 134 THE LIFE OF NELSON Genoa submitted under protest to this breach of her neu- trality, as she did botli before^ and after to similar insults from parties to the Avar. She derived some pecuniary benefit from the condition of affairs, — her ports, as well as those of Tuscany, immediately to the southward, becoming depots of a trade in grain, which supplied both the French army and the southern provinces of France. These food stuffs, absolutely essential to the French, were drawn chiefly from Sicily and the Barbary States, and could not be freely taken into French ports by the larger class of sea-going vessels, in face of the British fleet. They were, therefore, commonly transshipped in Leghorn or Genoa, and carried on by coasters. As so much Genoese seacoast was occupied by French divisions, it was practically impossible for British cruisers to distinguish between vessels carrying corn for the inhabitants and those laden for the armies, and entirely impossible to know that what was intended for one object would not be diverted to another. If, too, a vessel's papers showed her to be destined for Vintimiglia, near the extreme of the Genoese line, there could be no certainty that, having got so far, she might not quietly slip by into a French port, either Nice or beyond. The tenure of the neutral Eiviera of Genoa by the French army was a threat to the allies of Great Britain in Piedmont and Lombardy, as well as to the quasi-neutrals in Genoa, Tuscany, Venice, and the Papal States. Its further advance or suc- cesses would imperil the latter, and seriously alTect the attitude of Naples, hostile to the Republic, bat weak, timid, and unstable of purpose. On the other hand, the retention of its position, and much more any further advance, depended upon continuing to receive supplies by way of the sea. To do so by the shore route alone was not possible. Southern France itself depended upon the sea for grain, and could send nothing, even if the then miserable Corniche road could have sufficed, as the sole line of communications for forty thousand troops. Thus the transfer of Corsica to Great Britain had a very important bearing upon the military and political conditions. At the moment when Italy was about to become the scene of ^ In the j'ear 1793 the French frigate " Modeste " had been forcibly taken from the harbor of Genoa by an English squadron. * STRATEGIC IMPORTANCE OF CORSICA 135 operations which might, and in the event actually did, exercise a decisive influence upon the course of the general war, the British position was solidified by the acquisition of a naval base, unassailable while the sea remained in their control and the Corsicans attached to their cause, and centrally situated with reference to the probable scenes of hostilities, as well as to the points of political interest, on the mainland of Italy. The fleet resting upon it, no longer dependent upon the reluc- tant hospitality of Genoese or Tuscan ports, or upon the far distant Kingdom of Naples, was secure to keep in its station, whence it menaced the entire seaboard trade of France and the Riviera, as well as the tenure of the French army in the latter, and exerted a strong influence upon the attitude of both Genoa and Tuscany, who yielded only too easily to the nearest or most urgent pressure. The fleet to which Nelson belonged had spent the greater part of the year 1794 in securing for itself, as a base of operations, this position, by far the most suitable among those that could be considered at all. It remained now to utilize the advantage obtained, to make the situation of the French army in Italy untenable, by establish- ing an indisputable control of the sea. To this the holding of Corsica also contributed, indirectly ; for the loss of the island forced the French fleet to go to sea, in order, if possible, to expedite its re-conquest. In all the operations resulting from these various motives, Nelson bore a part as conspicuous and characteristic as he had done in the reduction of Corsica. Almost always on detached service, in positions approaching independent command, he was continually adding to his reputation, and, what was far more important, maturing the professional character, the seeds of which had been so bounti- fully bestowed upon him by nature. His reputation, won hard and step by step, obtained for him opportunity ; but it was to character, ripened by experience and reflection, that he owed his transcendent successes. The scheme for the government of the island as a British dependency, stated broadly, was that it should be administered by the Corsicans themselves, under a viceroy appointed by the British crown. Its military security was provided for by the control of the sea, and by British soldiers holding the fortified ports, — a duty for which the Corsicans themselves had not 13G THE LIFE OF NELSON then the necessary training. Nelson, who did not yet feel the impossibility of sustaining a successful over-sea invasion, when control of the sea was not had, was anxious about the expected attempts of the French against the island, and urged the viceroy, by private letter, to see that Ajaccio, which he regarded as the point most favoi*able to a descent, was gar- risoned sufficiently to keep the gates shut for a few days. This caution did not then proceed from a distrust of the Corsicans' fidelity, without which neither France nor England could hold the island, as was shown by the quickness of its transfer two years later, when the inhabitants again revolted to France. " With this defence," he wrote, " I am confident Ajaccio, and I believe I may say the island of Corsica, would be perfectly safe until our fleet could get to the enemy, when I have no doubt the event would be what every Briton might expect." The repairs of the " Agamemnon " were completed before Nelson's anxious apprehensions of a battle taking place in his absence could be fulfilled. On the 21st of December, 1794, he sailed from Leghorn with the fleet, in company with which he remained from that time until the following July, when he was sent to the Riviera of Genoa on special detached ser- vice. He thus shared the severe cruising of that winter, as well as the abortive actions of the spring and early summer, where the admiral again contrived to lose opportunities of settling the sea campaign, and with it, not improbably, that of the land also. There were plain indications in the port of Toulon that a maritime enterprise of some importance was in contemplation. In the outer road lay fifteen sail-of-the-line, the British having then fourteen; but more significant of the enemy's purpose was the presence at Marseilles of Mty large transports, said to be ready. " I have no doubt," wrote Nel- son, "but Porto Especia is their object." This was a mistake, interesting as indicating the slight weight that Nelson at that time attributed to the deterrent effect of the British fleet " in being " upon such an enterprise, involving an open-sea passage of over a hundred miles, though he neither expressed nor entertained any uncertainty as to the result of a meeting, if the enemy were encountered. The French Government, not yet appreciating the inefficiency to which its navy had been MISTAKEN CONJECTURES 137 reduced by many concurrent circumstances, was ready to dis- pute the control of the Mediterranean, and it contemplated, among other things, a demonstration at Leghorn, similar to that successfully practised at Naples in 1792, which might compel the Court of Tuscany to renounce the formally hostile attitude it had assumed at the bidding of Great Britain ; but it does not appear that there was any serious purpose of exposing a large detachment, in the attempt to hold upon the Continent a position, such as Spezia, with which secure com- municatiou by land could not be had. Though none too careful to proportion its projects to the force at its disposal, the Directory sufficiently understood that a detachment at Spezia could not be self-dependent, nor could, with any certainty, combine its operations with those of the army in the Eiviera; and also that, to be properly supported at all, there must be reasonably secure and unbroken com- munication, either by land or water, neither of which was possible until the British fleet was neutralized. The same consideration dictated to it the necessity of a naval victory, before sending out the expedition, of whose assembling the British were now hearing, and which was actually intended for Corsica ; although it was known that in the island there had already begun the revulsion against the British rule, which culminated in open revolt the following year. Owing to tlie dearth of seamen, the crews of the French ships were largely composed of soldiers, and it was thought that, after beating the enemy, four or five thousand of these might be at once thrown on shore at Ajaccio, and that afterwards the main body could be sent across in safety. First of all, however, control of the sea must be established by a battle, more or less decisive. On the 24th of February, 1795, the British fleet arrived at Leghorn, after a very severe cruise of over a fortnight. On the 2d of March Nelson mentioned, in a letter to his wife, that the French were said then to have a hundred and twenty-four transports full of troops, from which he naturally argued that they must mean to attempt something. On the evening of the 8th, an express from Genoa brought Hotham word that they were actually at sea, fifteen ships-of-the-line, with half a dozen or more smaller vessels. He sailed in pursuit early 138 THE LIFE OF NELSON the next morning, having with him thirteen ^ British ships-of- the-line. and one Neapolitan seventy-four. Of the former, four were three-decked ships, carrying ninety-eight to one hundred guns, a class of vessel of which the French had but one, the " Sans Culottes," of one hundred and twenty, which, under the more dignified name of " L'Orient," afterwards met so tragic a fate at the Battle of the Nile ; but they had, in compensation, three powerful ships of eighty guns, much superior to the British seventy-fours. As, however, only partial engagements followed, the aggregate of force on either side is a matter of comparatively little importance in a Life of Nelson. Standing to the northward and westward, with a fresh easterly wind, the British fleet through its lookouts discov- ered the enemy on the evening of the day of sailing, and by the same means kept touch with them throughout the 10th and 11th ; but the bafltling airs, frequent in the Mediterranean, prevented the main body seeing them until the morning of the 12th. At daylight, then, they were visible from the "Agamemnon," in company with which were five British ships and the Neapolitan; the remainder of the fleet being so far to the eastward that their hulls were just rising out of the water. The British lying nearly becalmed, the French, Avho were to windward, bore down to within three miles ; but although, in Nelson's judgment, they had a fair opportunity to separate the advanced British shij^s, with which he was, from the main body, they failed to improve it. Nothing happened that day, and, a fresh breeze from the west spring- ing up at dusk, both fleets stood to the southAvard with it, the French being to windward. That night one of the latter, a seventy-four, having lost a topmast, Avas permitted to return to port. The next morning the wind Avas still southwest and squally. Hotham at daylight ordered a general chase, Avhich alloAved each ship a certain freedom of movement in endeavoring to close Avith the French. The " Agamemnon " had been Avell to the westward, from the start; and being a very handy, quick- working ship, as Avell as, originally at least, more than com- 1 The " Berwick," seventy-four, had been left in San Fiorenzo for repairs. Putting to sea at this time, she fell in with the French fleet, and was taken. ACTION OF MARCH 13, 1795 139 monly fast, was early in the day in a position where she had a fair chance for reaching the enemy. A favorable oppor- tunity soon occurred, one of those which so often show that, if a man only puts himself in tlie way of good luck, good luck is apt to offer. At 8 a. m. the eighty-gun ship '' Ca Ira," third from the rear in the French order, ran on board the vessel next ahead of her, and by the collision lost her fore and main topmasts. These falling overboard on the lee side — in this case the port ^ — not only deprived her of by far the greater part of her motive power, but acted as a drag on her progress, besides for the time preventing the working of the guns on that side. The " Ca Ira " dropped astern of her fleet. Al- though this eighty-gun ship was much bigger than his own, — "absolutely large enough to take Agamemnon in her hold," Nelson said, — the latter saw his chance, and instantly seized it with the promptitude characteristic of all his actions. The " Agamemnon," if she was not already on the port tack, oppo- site to that on which the fleets had been during the night, must have gone about at this time, and probably for this reason. She was able thus to fetch into the wake of the crippled vessel, which a frigate had already gallantly at- tacked, taking advantage of the uselessness of the French- man's lee batteries, encumbered with the wreckage of the masts. At 10 A.M., the " Ca Ira" and the ''Agamemnon" having passed on opposite tacks, the latter again went about and stood in pursuit under all sail, rapidly nearing the enemy, who at this time was taken in tow by a frigate. But although in this position the French ship could not train her broadside guns upon her smaller opponent, she could still work freely the half-dozen stern guns, and did so with much effect. " So true did she fire," noted Nelson, " that not a shot missed some part of the ship, and latterly the masts were struck every shot, which obliged me to open our fire a few minutes sooner than I intended, for it was my intention to have touched his stern before a shot was fired." At quarter before eleven, the " Agamemnon " was within a hundred yards of the " Ca Ira's " stern, and this distance she was able to keep until 1 p. m. 1 The port side, or, as it was called in Nelson's day, the larboard side, is the left, looking from the stern to the how of a ship. i40 THE LIFE OF NELSON Here, by the use of the helm and of the sails, the ship alter- nately turned her starboard side to the enemy to fire her bat- teries, and again resumed her course, to regain the distance necessarily lost at each deviation. This raking fire not only killed and wounded many of the " ^a Ira's " crew, and injured the hull, but, what was tactically of yet greater importance, preventing the replacing of the lost spars. Thus was entailed upon the French that night a crippled ship, which they could not in honor abandon, nor yet could save without fighting for her, — a tactical dilemma which was the direct cause of the next day's battle. Brief and cursory as is the notice of this action of the "Agamemnon" in Hotham's despatches, he mentions no other ship-of-the-line as engaged at this time, and states that she and the frigate were so far detached from the fleet, that they were finally obliged to retire on account of other enemy's vessels approaching. Nelson's journal says that two French ships, one of one hundred and twenty guns and a seventy-four, were at gun-shot distance on the bow of the ^' Ca Ira " when he began to attack her. These, with several others of their fleet, went about some time before one, at which hour the frigate, towing the disabled ship, tacked herself, and also got the latter around. The "Agamemnon" standing on, she and the " (^Si Ira " now crossed within half pistol-range ; but, the French guns being too much elevated, the shot passed over their antagonist, who lost in this day's work only seven men wounded. Nelson then again tacked to follow, but by this time the French admiral had apparently decided that his crippled vessel must be rescued, and his fleet no longer defied by a foe so inferior in strength. Several of the enemy were approaching, when Hothara made a signal of recall, which Nelson on this occasion at least had no hesitation in obeying, and promptly. There was no pursuit, the hostile commander- in-chief being apparently satisfied to save the " Ca Ira " for the moment, without bringing on a general engagement. In this affair, what is mainly to be noted in Nelson is not the personal courage, nor yet even the professional daring, or the skill which justified the daring. It may be conceded that all these were displayed in a high degree, but they can scarcely be claimed to have exceeded that shown by other \ Wind <3 F' c' ^ c^ C c ^A Agamemnon b\ Qa Ira March /J, /795. B' A — Agojtieinnon C - (^a I rev F — French, Ships of Line B — Nearest Britishv do- i ACTION OF MARCH 13, 1795 141 officers, not a few, when equally tried. What is rather strik- ing, account for it how we will, is that Nelson, here as always, was on hand when opportunity offered ; that after three days of chase he, and he only, was so far to the front as to be able to snatch the fleeting moment. " On looking round," he says at ten o'clock, when about to begin the action, " I saw no ship- of-the-line within several miles to support me ; the Captain was the nearest on our lee-quarter." With the looseness and lack of particularity which characterize most logs and despatches remaining from those days, and make the compre- hension of naval engagements, other than the greatest, a matter of painful and uncertain inference, it is impossible accurately to realize the entire situation ; but it seems difficult to imagine that among all the other thirteen captains, " where emulation was common to all and zeal for his Majesty's ser- vice the general description of the fleet," to use Hotham's words, none could have been on the spot to support so prom- ising an attempt, had there been "common" that sort of emulation w^hich takes a man ever to the front, not merely in battle but at all times, — the spirit that will not and cannot rest while anything remains to be done, ever pressing onward to the mark. To this unquestionably must be added the rapid comprehension of a situation, and the exceeding promp- titude with which Nelson seized his opportunity, as well as the tenacious intrepidity Avith which he held to his position of advantage, despite the imminent threat to his safety from the uninjured and gigantic " Sans Culottes," barely out of gunshot to windward. It is right also to note the accessi- bility to advice, a feature of his genial and kindly tempera- ment, to which he admitted much of the success was due. The trait is not rare in mankind in general, but it is excep- tional in men of a character so self-reliant and decided as Nelson. " If the conduct of the Agamemnon on the 13th," he generously wrote, " was by any means the cause of our success on the 14th, Lieutenant Andrews has a principal share in the merit, for a more proper opinion was never given by an officer than the one he gave me on the loth, in a situa- tion of great difficulty." The same hot spirit, the same unwearying energy, made itself still more manifest the next day, when were to be 142 THE LIFE OF NELSON garnered the results of his own partial, yet, in its degree, decisive action of the 13th. " Sure I am," said he afterwards, ''had I commanded our fleet on the 14th, that either the whole French fleet would have graced ray triumph, or I should have been in a confounded scrape." A confounded scrape he would have been in on the 13th, and on other days also, great and small, had there been a different issue to the risks he dared, and rightly dared, to take. Of what man eminent in war, indeed, is not the like- true? It is the price of fame, which he who dare not pay must forfeit ; and not fame only, but repute. During the following night the "Sans Culottes" quitted the Prencli fleet. The wind continued southerly, both fleets standing to the westward, the crippled '' (^a Ira " being taken in tow by the " Censeur," of seventy-four guns. At daylight of March 14, being about twenty miles southwest from Genoa, these two were found to be much astern and to leeward of their main body, — that is, northeast from it. The British lay in the same direction, and were estimated by Nelson to be three and a half miles from the disabled ship and her consort, five miles from the rest of the French. At 5.30 a. m. a smart breeze sprang up from the northwest, which took the British aback, but enabled them afterwards to head for the two sepa- rated French ships. Apparently, from Nelson's log, this wind did not reach the main body of the enemy, a circumstance not uncommon in the Mediterranean. Two British seventy- fours, the " Captain " and the " Bedford," in obedience to signals, stood down to attack the "Censeur" and the "Ca Ira ; " and, having in this to undergo for twenty minutes a fire to which they could not repl}'^, were then and afterwards pretty roughly handled. They were eventually left behind, crippled, as their own fleet advanced. The rest of the British were meantime forming in line and moving down to sustain them. The French main body, keej^ing the southerly wind, wore in succession to support their separated ships, and headed to pass between them and their enemies. The latter, having formed, stood also towards these two, which now lay between the contestants as the prize to the victor. Apparently, in these manoeuvres, the leading British ships ran again into the belt of southerly wind, — which the French I PARTIAL FLEET ACTION, MARCH 14, 1795 143 kept throughout, — while part of the centre and rear were left becalmed, aud had little or no share in the cannonade that followed. Under these conditions the resolution of the French admiral seems to have faltered, for instead of passing to leeward — north — of the enemy's line, which was quite in his power, aud so covering his endangered ships, he allowed the latter to be cut off, thus insuring their surrender. His fleet kept to windward of the British, passing fairly near the two leading ships, the " Illustrious " and the " Courageux," who thus underwent a " concentration by defiling," that took the main and mizzen masts out of both, besides killing and wounding many of their people. The '•' Princess Royal " and "Agamemnon," which came next, could only engage at long range. "The enemy's fleet kept the southerly wind," wrote Nelson in his journal, " which enabled them to keep their distance, which was very great. At 8 A. m. they began to pass our line to windward, and the Ca Ira and Le Censeur were on our lee side ; therefore the Illustrious, Courageux, Princess Tioyal, and Agamemnon were obliged to fight on both sides of the ship." At five minutes past ten A. m. both the French vessels struck, the "^a Ira" having lost her three masts, and the " Censeur " her mainmast. It was past one p. M. when firing wholly ceased ; and the enemy then crowded all possible sail to the westward, the British fleet lying with their heads to the southeast. "When the British line was forming, between seven and eight in the morning, Nelson was directed by Vice-Admiral Goodall, the second in command, to take his station astern of his flagship, the "Princess Eoyal," of ninety guns. Immedi- ately behind the "Agamemnon " came the " Britannia," carry- ing Hotham's flag. This position, and the lightness of the wind, serve to explain how Nelson came to take the step he mentions in several letters ; going on board the "Britannia," after the two French vessels struck, and urging the comman- der-in-chief to leave the prizes in charge of the British frigates and crippled ships-of-the-line, and vigorously to pursue the French, who having lost four ships out of their fleet, by casualty or capture, were now reduced to eleven sail. " I went on board Admiral Hotham as soon as our firing grew slack in the van, and the Ca Ira and the Censeur had struck, 144 THE LIFE OF NELSON to propose to him leaving our two crippled ships, the two prizes, and four frigates, to themselves, and to pursue the enemy ; but he, much cooler than myself, said, ' We must be contented, we have done very well.' Now, had we taken ten sail, and had allowed the eleventh to escape, when it had been possible to have got at her, I could never have called it well done. Goodall backed me ; I got him to write to the admiral, but it would not do : we should have had such a day as I be- lieve the annals of England never produced." Nelson here evidently assumes that it was possible to have got at the French fleet. After a man's reputation has been established, there is always the danger of giving undue weight to his ojjinions, expressed at an earlier time, somewhat casually, and not under the sobering sense of responsibility. Hotham may have questioned the possibility of getting at the French effectively, having regard to the fickle lightness of the wind then prevalent, and to the fact that, besides the two ships partially dismasted and for the moment useless, two others, the " Captain " and the " Bedford," had suffered severely in sails and rigging. He would also doubtless con- sider that the three-decked shij)S, of which he had four, were notoriously bad sailers, and sure to drop behind if the chase lasted long, leaving to eight ships, including the "Neapoli- tan," the burden of arresting the enemy, who had shown very fair offensive powers in the morning. Nelson was not blind to these facts, and not infrequently alludes to them. *' Had we only a breeze, I have no doubt we should have given a destructive blow to the enemy's fleet." '' Sure I am, that had the breeze continued, so as to have allowed us to close with the enemy, we should have destroyed their whole fleet." Whether these remarks apply to the heat of the engagement, or to the proposed chase, which Hotham declined to permit, is not perfectly clear ; but inasmuch as the second part of the action of the 14th consisted, actually, in the French filing by the " Courageux " and the *' Illustrious," upon whom their fire was thus concentrated, while the rest of the British were becalmed out of gunshot, it is very possible he was thinking of that incident only, which doubtless would have taken a very different turn had the main body been able to come down. His wish to pursue is unquestionable, both from his MILITAEY OPINIONS 145 assertion and from the whole character of his career hefore and after ; and a casual remark, written ten days after the affair, shows his opinion confirmed by time. " Had our good admiral followed the blow, we should probably have done more, but the risk was thought too great." The question attracts attention, both impersonally, as of military interest, and also as bearing upon Nelson's correct- ness of judgment, and professional characteristics, at this time. As regards the amouut of wind, it is sufficient to say that the French fleet, having borne away to the westward in the afternoon, was next day out of sight.^ Most of the British might equally have been out of sight from the posi- tion in which they remained. As for the risk — of course there was risk ; but the whole idea of a general chase rests upon the fact that, for one reason or another, the extreme speed of the ships in each fleet will vary, and that it is always probable that the fastest of the pursuers can overtake the slowest of the pursued. The resulting combats compel the latter either to abandon his ships, or to incur a general action, which, from the fact of his flight, it is evident he has reason to avoid. In this case many of the retreating French were crippled, — some went off towed by frigates, and some without bowsprits. Unquestionably, the pursuers who thus engage may be overpowered before those following them come up; but the balance of chances is generally in their favor, and in the particular instance would have been mark- edly so, as was shown by the results of the two days' fighting, which had proved the superior quality of the British ships' companies. The fact is, neither Hotham nor his opponent, Martin, was willing to hazard a decisive naval action, but wished merely to obtain a temporary advantage, — the moment's safety, no risks. " I have good reason," wrote Hotharn in his despatch, " to hope, from the enemy's steering to the westward after having passed oiir fleet, that whatever might have been their design, their intentions are for the jpresent frustrated^ It is scarcely necessary to say that a man who looks no further ahead than this, who fails to realize that the destruction of the enemy's fleet is the one condition of permanent safety to 1 Nelson to the Puke of Clarence, March 15, 1795. (Nicolas.) 10 14G THE LIFE OF NELSON his cause, will not rise to the conception presented to him on his quarter-deck by Nelson. The latter, whether by the sheer intuition of genius, which is most probable, or by the result of well-ordered reasoning, which is less likely, realized fully that to destroy the French fleet was the one thing for which the British fleet was there, and the one thing by doing which it could decisively affect the war. As he wrote four years later to St. Vincent, " Not one moment shall be lost in bring- ing the enemy to battle ; for I consider the best defence for his Sicilian Majesty's dominions is to place myself alongside the French." Yet Nelson was far from unconscious of the difficulties of Hotham's position, or from failing duly to allow for them. "Admiral Hotham has had much to contend Avith, a fleet half- manned, and in every respect inferior to the enemy; Italy calling him to her defence, our newly acquired kingdom ^ calling might and main, our reinforcements and convoy hourly expected ; and all to be done without a force by any means adequate to it." Add to this the protection of British trade, of whose needs Nelson was always duly sensible. Yet, as one scans this list of troubles, Avith the query how to meet them running in his mind, it is scarcely possible not to see that each and every difficulty would have been solved by a crushing pursuit of the beaten French, preventing their again taking the sea. The British admiral had in his control no means to force them out of port. Therefore, when out, he should by no means have allowed them to get back. It is only just to Hotham, who had been a capable as well as gallant captain, to say that he had objected to take the chief command, on account of his health. Nelson was delighted with his own share in these affairs, and with the praise he received from others for his conduct, — especially that on the 13th. He was satisfied, and justly, that his sustained and daring grapple with the " Ca Ira," in the teeth of her fleet, had been the effective cause of the next day's action and consequent success. It was so, in truth, and it presented an epitome of what the 14th and 15th ought to have witnessed, — a persistent clinging to the crippled ships, in order to force their consorts again into b^^ttle. ^ Corsica. DOMESTIC AFFECTIONS 147 " You will participate," he wrote to his uncle, " in the pleas- ure I must have felt in being the great cause of our success. Could I have been supported, I would have had Ca Ira on the 13th." Elliot, the Viceroy of Corsica, wrote to him : " I certainly consider the business of the 13th of March as a very capital feature in the late successful contest with the French fleet ; and the part which the Agamemnon had in it must be felt by every one to be one of the circumstances that gave lustre to this event, and rendered it not only useful, but peculiarly honourable to the British arms." " So far," added Nelson, in quoting this to his wife, " all hands agree in giving me the praises which cannot but be comfortable to me to the last moment of my life." He adds then a reflection, evincing that he was assimilating some of the philosophy of life as well as of fighting. " The time of my being left out here by Lord Hood," which he had so much regretted, "I may call well spent ; had I been absent, how mortified should I now be. What has happened may never happen to any one again, that only one ship-of-the-line out of fourteen should get into action with the French fleet for so long a time as two hours and a half, and with such a ship as the Ca Ira." It may be of interest to mention that the French fleet, upon this occa- sion, was largely composed of the vessels which three years later were destroyed by him at the Battle of the Nile. In all his interests, ambitions, and gratification with success and praise, he at this period writes fully and intimately to his wife, between whom and himself there evidently still existed, after these two years of absence, a tender and affectionate con- fidence. " It is with an inexpressible pleasure I have received your letters, with our father's. I rejoice that my conduct gives you pleasure, and I trust I shall never do anything which will bring a blush on your face. Eest assured you are never absent from my thoughts." When looking forward to the action of March 14, he tells her : " Whatever may be my fate, I have no doubt in my own mind but that my condvict will be such as will not bring a blush on the face of my friends ; the lives of all are in the hands of Him who knows best whether to preserve mine or not ; to His will do I resign myself. My character and good name are in my own keeping. Life with disgrace is dreadful. A glorious death is to be envied : " and 148 THE LIFE OF NELSON he signs himself with unwonted tenderness, " Ever your most faithful and affectionate husband." Save of the solemn hours before Trafalgar, when another image occupied his thoughts, this is the only personal record we have of the feelings with which this man, dauntless above his fellows, went into battle. He refrains thoughtfully from any mention of his health that may cause her anxiety, which she had shown herself over weak and worrying to bear; but he speaks freely of all that passes, confiding that with her he need have no reserves, even in a natural self-praise. "This I can say, that all I have obtained I owe to myself, and to no one else, and to you I may add, that my character stands high with almost all Europe. Even the Austrians knew my name perfectly." While silent on the subject of illness, he admits now that his eye had grown worse, and was in almost total darkness, besides being very painful at times ; " but never mind," he adds cheeringly, "I can see very well with the other." It is instructive to note, in view of some modern debated questions, that, despite the recent success, Nelson was by no means sure that the British fleet could defend Corsica. " I am not even now certain Corsica is safe," he wrote on the 2oth of March, "if they undertake the expedition with proper spirit." The threat, never absent while the French fleet re- mained, was emphasized by the arrival of six ships-of-the-line from Brest, which reached Toulon on the 4th of April, materially altering the complexion of affairs in the Mediterra- nean, and furnishing an instructive instance of the probable punishment for opportunity imperfectly utilized, as on the 14th of March. Great discontent was felt at the apparent failure of the Admiralty to provide against this chance. " Hotham is very much displeased with them," wrote Nelson, " and certainly with reason ; " and doubtless it is satisfactory to believe, rightly or wrongly, that our disadvantages are due to the neglect of others, and not to our own shortcomings. Although the nominal force of the French was thus raised to twenty of the line, the want of seamen, and the absence of discipline, prevented their seizing the opportunity offered by the temporary inferiority of the British, reduced to thirteen besides two Neapolitans, in whose efficiency, whether justly or not, Nelson placed little confidence. At this critical moment, HIS OPINION OF LORD HOOD 149 with a large British military convoy expected, and the fleet, to use his impatient expression, " skulking in port," a Jacobin outbreak occurred in Toulon, and the seamen assumed the opera-houffe role of going ashore to assist in deliberations upon the measures necessary to save the country. Before they were again ready to go to sea, the convoy had arrived. On the 7th of June, however, the French again sailed from Toulon, seventeen ships-of-the-line ; and the following day Nelson, writing to his brother, thus gave vent to the bitterness of his feelings : " We have been cruising off Minorca for a long month, every moment in expectation of reinforcements from England. Great good fortune has hitherto saved us, what none in this fleet could have expected for so long a time. Near two months we have been skulking from them. Had they not got so much cut up on the 14th of March, Corsica, Eome, and Naples would, at this moment, have been in their possession, and may yet, if these people [the Admiralty] do not make haste to help us. I am out of spirits, although never better in health." His depression was due less to the inadequacy of the British fleet than to the dismissal of Lord Hood from the command, news of which was at this time received. When about to sail from England, to resume his duty as commander-in-chief, he got into a controversy with the Government about the force necessary in the Mediterranean, and, giving oflieuce by the sharpness of his language, was ordered to haul down his flag. He never again went to sea. Nelson deplored his loss in terms unusually vivacious : " Oh, miserable Board of Admi- ralty ! They have forced the first oflicer in our service away from his command." In more temperate but well-weighed words, he said : " This fleet must regret the loss of Lord Hood, the best officer, take him altogether, that England has to boast of. Lord Howe is certainly a great officer in the management of a fleet, but that is all. Lord Hood is equally great in all situations which an admiral can be placed in." In the judgment of the present writer, this estimate of Hood is as accurate as it is moderate in expression. It was nothing less than providential for the French that he was not in com- mand on the 14th of March, or in the yet more trivial and discreditable affair of July 13th, when, to use again Nelson's 150 THE LIFE OF NELSON words, "To say how much we wanted Lord Hood at that time, is to say, will you have all the French fleet or no action ? " On the 14th of June the expected reinforcement from Eng- land, nine ships-of-the-line, joined the fleet ofE Minorca; and a few days later a large convoy also arrived, with which the whole body of ships of war put into San Fiorenzo Bay on the 29th. This concluded for Nelson a period of three months, counting from the action of March 14th, of pretty monotonous cruising Avith the fleet, the last in which he was to take part until his admiral's flag was hoisted, two years later. Though unmarked by any event of importance, the time was passed not unprofitably to himself, for his correspondence bears marks of fruitful reflection, not merely upon the evident inadequacy of his commander-in-chief to the position he unwillingly occu- pied, but upon the character of the operations and the line of conduct that ought to be followed. If he does criticise the former's want of head for enterprise, he formulates for him- self a general principle which showed its vital influence in his future career. ** After all my complaints, I have no doubt but, if we can get close to the enemy, we shall defeat any plan of theirs ; hut we ought to have our ideas beyond mere defensive rneasurefi.'' Among other matters for reflection, he had at this time a curious cause of anxiety, lest he should be promoted to flag rank, or rather that, being promoted, he should be obliged to return to England at once, as there would be too many admirals in the Mediterranean to permit his retention. A rumor was current, which proved to be correct, that there would be a large promotion on the 1st of June, the first anni- versary of the victory celebrated by that name. Being then forty-six on the list of captains. Nelson feared that it might include him ; in which case, if not permitted to hoist his flag where he was, not only would he lose his ardently desired opportunities for distinction, — "not an hour this war will I, if possible, be out of active service," — but he would be put to much inconvenience and loss. " If they give me my flag, I shall be half ruined: unless I am immediately employed- in this country, I should, by the time I landed in England, be a loser, several hundred pounds out of pocket." To be taken 41 APPOINTED COLONEL OF MARINES 151 " from actual service would distress me much, more especially as I almost believe these people will be mad euougli to come out." He escaped this disappointment, however, for the pro- motion left him still on the post-captains' list, seven from its head; but lie received, what was both complimentary and profitable, the honorary rank of Colonel of Marines, — a sine- cure appointment, of which there were then four, given to post-captains of distinguished services, and vacated by them upon promotion. These are now discontinued, and replaced, as a matter of emolument, by Good Service Pensions. Nelson heard later that this reward had been conferred upon him, not merely as a favor, but with a full recognition of all his claims to it. "The Marines have been given to me in the hand- somest manner. The answer given to many was, the King knew no officer who had served so much for them as myself." These promotions came timely to insure for him an em- ployment particularly suited to his active temperament and fearlessness of responsibility, but which, though the fittest man for it, he might, with less seniority, not have received from Hotham, despite the well-known confidence in him shown by Hood. Since the spring opened, the Austrians and their allies, the Sardinians, had been waiting, ostensibly at least, for assistance from the Navy, to begin a forward move- ment, the first object of which Avas the possession of Vado Bay as a safe anchorage for the fleet. Until the arrival of Man and the convoy, Hotham had not felt strong enough to spare the required force ; but now, after the ships had filled their wants from the transports, he, on the 4th of July, de- tached Nelson, with the " Agamemnon " and six smaller vessels, to co-operate with the Austrian commander-in-chief. The latter had begun his movement on the 13th of June, passing through Genoese territor}^ despite the remonstrances of the Republic, whose neutrality could claim but slight re- gard from one belligerent, when she had already permitted the occupation of so much of her shore line by the other. The Ei-encli had fallen back, Avhen attacked, abandoning Vado Bay to the enemy, whose headquarters were established at that point. Nelson, having sailed with four of his squadron, fell in Avith the French fleet of seventeen of the line, off the Riviera, on 152 THE LIFE OF NELSON the 6tli of July. He liad, of course, to retreat, which he did upon San Fiorenzo, to join the body of the fleet. On the morning of the 7th the " Agamemnon " and her followers, with the French in close pursuit, were sighted from the an- chorage, much to the surprise of the admiral, who knew the enemy had come out, but, upon the information of the Aus- trian general, believed them returned to Toulon. Why he had not more accurate news from lookout frigates is not clear; but, as jSTelson said, he took things easy, and he had persuaded himself that they had left harbor only to exercise their men. As it was, the "Agamemnon" was hard pressed, but escaped, chiefly through the enemy's lack of seamanship. The fleet, when she arrived, was in the midst of refitting and watering, but succeeded in getting to sea the following morning in search of the enemy, who meantime had disappeared. Precise information of the French whereabouts could not be obtained until the evening of the 12th, when two of the Brit- ish lookout ships reported that they had been seen a few hours before to the southwest, south of the Hyeres Islands. The fleet made sail in that direction. During the night a heavy gale came on from west-northwest, out of the Gulf of Lyons, which split the main-topsails of several British ships. At daybreak the enemy were discovered in the southeast, standing north to close the land. After some elaborate manoeuvring — to reach one of those formal orders, often most useful, but which the irregular Mediterranean winds are prone to dis- arrange as soon as completed — the admiral at 8 a. m. signalled a general chase. The British being to windward, and the breeze fresh, the half-dozen leading ships had at noon closed the enemy's rear within three-quarters of a mile ; but, from their relative positions, as then steering, the guns of neither could be used effectively. At this time a shift of wind to north headed off both fleets, which put their bows to the eastward, throwing the British advanced vessels, to use Nelson's expression, into line abreast, and bringing to bear the broadsides of the ships, of both fleets, that were within range. The action then began, the British fire being directed mainly upon the French rear ship, the " Alcide," which sur- rendered at about 2 p. m., and soon afterwards blew up. The wind had meanwhile changed again to the eastward, giving PARTIAL FLEET ACTION, JULY 13, 1795 153 the weather-gage to the French, most of whom were consider- ably nearer the shore than their opponents, and better sailers. Up to this time Nelson, who in the forenoon had thought there was every prospect of taking every ship in the French fleet, still felt almost certain that- six would be secured ; but, to use his own words, it was now "impossible to close." lu the space between the ships engaged, and to leeward, the light air seems to have been killed by the cannonading; whereas the French, who were now to windward, still re- ceived enough to draw slowly away. Hothara, being in one of the very worst sailers in the fleet, if not in the Navy, had fallen eight miles astern, and not seeing clearly how things were going, made at this time a signal of recall, which was certainly premature. It seems a not improper comment that, in light and baffling weather, such as that of the Mediter- ranean, the commander-in-chief should have been in a fast and handy ship, able at the least to keep him within eyeshot of the decisive scene. Remaining in the "Britannia" may have been due to the natural unwillingness of an invalid to quit his well-ordered surroundings, by which even St. Vincent was led to take a first-rate ship away with himself at a criti- cal moment; but, if so, it only emphasizes the absolute necessity of physical vigor to a commander-in-chief. Nelson had again managed to keep the "Agamemnon" well to the front, for the other ships that succeeded in getting into action were almost wholly from among those Avhich had recently arrived from England with Rear-Admiral Man. These, being fresh from home, should naturally outsail a ship now two and a half years in commission, and which, not long after, had to be wrapped with hawsers to hold her together. In his comments on the action he says comparatively little of the signal of recall, which, though ill-timed, he does not seem to have thought affected the result materially ; but he was utterly dissatisfied with the previous management of the business, and into the causes of this dissatisfaction it is de- sirable to look, as bearing at once upon his natural military characteristics, and the development they received from time and thought. "The scrambling distant fire was a farce," he wrote ; " but if one fell by such a fire, what might not have been expected had our whole fleet engaged? Improperly 154 THE LIFE OF NELSON as the part of the fleet which fired got into action, we took one ship ; but the subject is unpleasant, and I shall have done with it." The criticism, though far from explicit, evidently bears upon the manner in which the fleet was handled, from the moment the enem}'- was sighted until the firing began. During the latter, Man was the senior officer on the spot, and Nelson does not blame him ; on the contrary, punning on the name, says, "He is a good man in every sense of the word." The precise working of his thought can only be inferred. " The whole fleet " failed to get into action. Why ? Because the signal for a general chase was delayed from 4 to 8 a. m., pending certain drill-ground manoeuvres, upon whose results, however well intended, no dependence could be placed in Mediterranean weather. During these four hours the wind was fresh, — the heel of a short summer's gale, invaluable to both sides, — and the enemy were using it to close the shore, where wind, the sole dependence for motive power, baffles most. Had the fastest British ships, under a competent flag- officer, utilized that time and that wind, there was, to put the case most mildly, the chance that they could repeat, upon the French rear, the same part the " Agamemnon " alone had played with the " ^a Ira," — and such a chance, were it no more, should not have been dawdled with. "Missed the opportunity," — the fatal words, "it might have been." Is it far-fetched to bee in his reflections upon "this miserable action," as it is styled independently by James and himself, the forecast of the opening sentence of his celebrated order before Trafalgar ? — " Thinking it almost impossible to bring a fleet of forty sail-of-the-line ^ into a line of battle in vari- able winds, thick weather, and other circumstances which must occur, without such a loss of time that the opjportuuity would probably he lost of bringing the enemy to battle in such a manner as to make the business decisive, I have therefore made up my mind — " Or, again, as he saw Man dragged off — with too little remonstrance, it may be — by a superior, who could by no means see what was the state of the action, is there not traceable a source of the feeling, partly inborn, partly reasoned, that found expression in the generous and yet most wise words of the same immortal order? — "The second in ^ There were twenty-three present on July 13, 1795. HIS IMILITARY OPINIONS 155 command will [in fact command his line and]/ after my in- tentions are made known to him, have the entire direction of his line to make the attack upon the enemy, and to follow up the blow until they are captured or destroyed." Whether such words be regarded as the labored result of observation and reflection, or whether as the flashes of intuition, with which genius penetrates at once to the root of a matter, with- out the antecedent processes to which lesser minds are sub- jected, — in either case they are instructive when linked with the events of his career here under discussion, as corrobo- rative indications of natural temperament and insight, which banish altogether the thought of mere fortuitous valor as the one explanation of Nelson's successes. With this unsatisfactory affair, Nelson's direct connection with the main body of the fleet came to an end for the re- mainder of Hotham's command. It is scarcely necessary to add that the prime object of the British fleet at all times, and not least in the Mediterranean in 1795, — the control of the sea, — continued as doubtful as it had been at the beginning of the year. The dead weight of the admiral's having upon his mind the Toulon fleet, undiminished in force despite two occasions for decisive action, was to be clearly seen in the ensuing operations. On this, also, Nelson did much thinking, as passing events threw light upon the consequences of miss- ing opportunities. "The British fleet," he wrote, five years later, and no man better knew the facts, " could have prevented the invasion of Italy ; and, if our friend Hotham had kept his fleet on that coast, I assert, and you will agree with me, no army from France could have been furnished with stores or provisions ; even men could not have marched." But how keep the fleet on the Italian coast, while the French fleet in full vigor remained in Toulon ? What a curb it was appeared again in the next campaign, and even more clearly, because the British were then commanded by Sir John Jervis, a man not to be checked by ordinary obstacles. From the decks of his flagship Nelson, in the following April, watched a convoy passing close in shore. " To get at them was impossible be- 1 The words in brackets were ei'ased in the rough draft, but are here in- serted, because they emphasize the underlying thought, that the second was to have real command, not wait nor look for signals, nor yet fear them. 156 THE LIFE OF NELSON fore they anchored under such batteries as would have crippled our fleet ; and, had such an event happened, in the present state of the enemijs fleet, Tuscany, Naples, Rome, Sicily, &c., would have fallen as fast as their ships could have sailed along the coast. Our fleet is the only saviour at present for those countries.'' CHAPTER VI. Nelson's Command of a Detached Squadron on the Eiviera of Genoa, until the Defeat of the Austrians at the Battle of LoANo. — Sir John Jervis appointed Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean. July-December, 1795. Age, 37. AFTER the action of July 13, Nelson was again clespatcliecl upon his mission to co-operate with the Austrians on the Riviera. His orders, dated July 15, were to confer first with the British minister at Genoa, and thence to proceed with his squadron to the Austrian headquarters at Vado Bay. The seniority he had now attained made his selection for this detached and responsible service less evidently flattering than Hood's preferment of him to such positions when he Avas junior in rank ; but the duty had the distinction of being not only arduous from the purely naval standpoint, but delicate in the diplomatic management and tact required. Although Great Britain at that period was rarely slack in resorting to strong and arbitrary measures in dealing with neutrals, when her interests seemed to demand it, she was always exceedingly desirous to avoid causes of needless offence. The exigencies of Southern France, and of both the opposing armies in the Riviera, had created a busy neutral trade, occupied in supplying all parties to the war, as well as the inhabitants of Genoese towns then in military occupation by the French. Although the latter and the Austrians had both openly disre- garded the neutrality of Genoa, it was the policy of Great Britain now to manifest respect for it as far as possible, and at the same time not to raise causes of diplomatic contention . over the neutral trade, although this was well known to be supporting the enemy's army. When Nelson left the fleet, he had, besides his special orders for his own mission, a circular letter from the admiral 158 THE LIFE OF NELSON to all vessels under his command, framed upon instructions received from England a month before, directing special care "not to give any just cause of offence to the foreign powers in amity with his Majesty, and whenever any ships or vessels belonging to the subjects of those powers shall be detained, or brought by you into port, you are to transmit to the Secretary of the Admiralty a complete specification of their cargoes, and not to institute any legal process against such ships or vessels until their lordships' -further pleasure shall be known." To the naval ofiicers on the spot this order was calculated to increase vastly the perplexities, which necessarily arose from the occupation of the Genoese coast by French troops. But, besides questions of trade, the weaker States, Genoa and Tuscany, — the latter of which had recently made peace with France, — were driven to manifold shifts and compromises, in order to maintain in their ports such semblance of impartial neutrality as would save them from reprisals by either party. These measures, while insuring to some extent the end in view, gave rise also to a good deal of friction and recrimination between the neutral and the belligerents. The vessels of the latter were admitted, under certain limitations as to number, into the neutral port, where they lay nearly side by side, jealously watching each other, and taking note of every swerving, real or presumed, from an exact and even balance. Each sailed from the neutral port