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 probably equivalent to saying that it was usually elicited by a sobering sense of responsibility. In his letters and despatches may be found many wild 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 those 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 information, 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 his mental illumination gradually 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 Rose Nelson went to the Comptroller of the Navy, Sir Charles Middleton, who afterwards, as Lord Barham, sent him forth to Trafalgar. Middleton had replied promptly to the first report of the fraudulent transactions, giving assurance of his readiness to act, and urging that all the information possible should be secured, as he 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 followed, they must prevent the unlawful practices; but that he believed they were habitually violated, and that he himself, 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 ultimately have rested, practically neutralized the otherwise laudable methods prescribed by the Board. It was simply another instance of the jealousy between the civil and military 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 strenuously 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 insignificant to effect anything, except by moving the home officials, whose administration was compromised and embarrassed by the malpractices of their representatives. Though uphill work, it was far from fruitless. "His representations," 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 punishment 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 would otherwise have been. As the various public Boards whose money had been stolen realized the amount of the thefts, and the extent of the conspiracy to rob the Government, they felt their obligations to him, and expressed them in formal, but warm, letters of thanks. On the other hand, the principal culprits had command of both money and influence; 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 Nelson 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, however, work in the dark and by indirection; it is not often easy to trace their course. The independence and single-mindedness with which Nelson followed 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 prepossessions 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 which 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 friendship they had invariably preserved for each other." It was a difficult 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 position as a captain in the Navy. It was, indeed, this self-assertive temperament that afterwards frustrated his natural ambition to be the active head of the service. Having such an ally, there is something ominous for Nelson's own prospects to find 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 Admiralty 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 written, 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 Newfoundland 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. Immediately 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 corruption was less odious than insubordination. If, in conversation, 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 Regency took place. The prince had meantime 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, will 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 what the latter called "a difference 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 armament 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 unfavourable opinion of me." Knowing Nelson's value as an officer as 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 misrepresented. 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 rapturous, expressions with which he greeted the daughter afterwards born to him out of wedlock, shows 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 spent in the West of England, chiefly at Bath, for the recovery of Mrs. Nelson's health as well as his own; but toward the latter part of 1788 the young couple 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 removed from the busy scenes in which he had borne so distinguished 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, from 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 notwithstanding 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 emptiness 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 engrossing emotions, but it did not therefore bring him happiness.

Of his frames of mind during this 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 mortified and dejected spirit, he looked forward to a continuance of inactivity and neglect.... During this interval of disappointment 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 of his wife and venerable father alone could calm the tempest of his passions." That Nelson keenly felt the cold indifference he now underwent, is thoroughly in keeping with the sensitiveness to censure, expressed or implied, which his correspondence frequently betrays, while his frail organization and uncertain health would naturally entail periods of depression 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 culminate 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 tumultuous 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 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. Rose. Strenuous and even bigoted royalist as he always was, satisfied of the excellence of the British Constitution, and condemning utterly the proceedings of the more or less seditious societies then forming throughout the kingdom, he yet recognized the substantial grievances of the working-men, as evident in the district immediately under his eye. The sympathetic qualities which 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 Nelson's, received only a formal acknowledgment without encouragement. Roused, 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 confirmed by the reception, on the 28th of November, of deputations 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 government and the British nation. On the 1st of December the militia was called out by proclamation, and Parliament summoned 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 governments in countries where the Republican armies could penetrate. Pitt now changed his front with an instantaneousness and absoluteness which gave the highest proof of his capacity as a leader of men. It was not so much that war 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 aggression. 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 upon 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 February 1, 1793, two days after Nelson's orders were issued, the Republic declared war against Great Britain and Holland.

FOOTNOTES:

[8] Nicolas, vol. v. p. 356.

[9] Thus Collingwood, rarely other than sober and 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 induced to make this representation to you." Nicolas, vol. i. p. 172.

[10] Nelson's letters are contradictory on this point. In a letter to Locker of March 3, 1786, he says, "Before the first vessel was tried I had seized four others;" whereas in the formal and detailed narrative drawn up—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.

[11] This word is used by Nelson, apparently, as equivalent to "season,"—the cruising period in the West Indies. "The admiral wishes to remain another station," he writes elsewhere.

[12] Lady Nelson's tombstone in Littleham Churchyard, Exmouth, reads that she died May 6, 1831, "aged 73." She would then have been born before May 6, 1758. Nicolas (vol. i. p. 217) says that she died May 4, 1831, aged 68, but does not mention his authority.

[13] Prior to May, 1785, the only stops of the "Boreas" at Nevis were January 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.)

[14] 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 resolve to leave no room for doubt, in the mind of Lady Hamilton or of the world, that he was entirely faithful to her.

[15] The author has italicized these words because they accurately express the just penalty that military law would have required of Nelson, had he not shown adequate grounds for his disobedience. They measure, therefore, the responsibility he shouldered, and the reward he deserved.

[16] Sir Harris Nicolas (Nelson's Despatches and Letters, vol. i. p. 217) gives March 12 as the day 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.

[17] The same symptom will be noted in the anxious pursuit of Villeneuve to the West Indies in 1805, where he grew better, although for some months he had had in his hands the Admiralty's permission to return home on account of his health.



CHAPTER III.

NELSON'S DEPARTURE FROM ENGLAND IN THE "AGAMEMNON."—SERVICES IN THE MEDITERRANEAN UNTIL THE RECOVERY OF TOULON BY THE FRENCH.—LORD HOOD IN COMMAND.

FEBRUARY-DECEMBER, 1793. AGE, 34.

Nelson's page in history covers a little more than twelve years, from February, 1793, to October, 1805. Its opening coincides with the moment when the wild passions of the French Revolution, still at fiercest heat, and which had hitherto raged like flame uncontrolled, operative only for destruction, were being rapidly mastered, guided, and regulated for efficient work, by the terrors of the Revolutionary Tribunal and the Committee of Public Safety. In the object to which these tremendous forces were now about to be applied lay the threat to the peace of Europe, which aroused Great Britain to action, and sent into the field her yet unknown champion from the Norfolk parsonage. The representatives of the French people had imparted to the original movement of their nation,—which aimed only at internal reforms, however radical,—a new direction, of avowed purposeful aggression upon all political institutions exterior to, and differing from, their own. This became the one characteristic common to the successive forms of government, which culminated in the pure military despotism of Napoleon.

To beat back that spirit of aggression was the mission of Nelson. Therein is found the true significance of his career, which mounts higher and higher in strenuous effort and gigantic achievement, as the blast of the Revolution swells fiercer and stronger under the mighty impulse of the great Corsican. At each of the momentous crises, so far removed in time and place,—at the Nile, at Copenhagen, at Trafalgar,—as the unfolding drama of the age reveals to the onlooker the schemes of the arch-planner about to touch success, over against Napoleon rises ever Nelson; and as the latter in the hour of victory drops upon the stage where he has played so chief a part, his task is seen to be accomplished, his triumph secured. In the very act of dying he has dealt the foe a blow from which recovery is impossible. Moscow and Waterloo are the inevitable consequences of Trafalgar; as the glories of that day were but the fit and assured ending of the illustrious course which was begun upon the quarter-deck of the "Agamemnon."

With the exception of the "Victory," under whose flag he fell after two years of arduous, heart-breaking uncertainties, no ship has such intimate association with the career and name of Nelson as has the "Agamemnon." And this is but natural, for to her he was the captain, solely, simply, and entirely; identified with her alone, glorying in her excellences and in her achievements, one in purpose and in spirit with her officers and seamen; sharing their hopes, their dangers, and their triumphs; quickening them with his own ardor, moulding them into his own image, until vessel and crew, as one living organism, reflected in act the heroic and unyielding energy that inspired his feeble frame. Although, for a brief and teeming period, he while in command of her controlled also a number of smaller vessels on detached service, it was not until after he had removed to another ship that he became the squadron-commander, whose relations to the vessel on which he himself dwelt were no longer immediate, nor differed, save in his bodily presence, from those he bore to others of the same division. A personality such as Nelson's makes itself indeed felt throughout its entire sphere of action, be that large or small; but, withal, diffusion contends in vain with the inevitable law that forever couples it with slackening power, nor was it possible even for him to lavish on the various units of a fleet, and on the diverse conflicting claims of a great theatre of war, the same degree of interest and influence that he concentrated upon the "Agamemnon," and upon the brilliant though contracted services through which he carried her. Bonds such as these are not lightly broken, and to the "Agamemnon" Nelson clave for three long years and more, persistently refusing larger ships, until the exhausted hulk could no longer respond to the demands of her masters, and separation became inevitable. When he quitted her, at the moment of her departure for England, it was simply a question whether he would abandon the Mediterranean, and the prospect of a great future there opening before him, or sever a few weeks earlier a companionship which must in any event end upon her arrival home.

There is yet another point of view from which his command of the "Agamemnon" is seen to hold a peculiar relation to Nelson's story. This was the period in which expectation passed into fulfilment, when development, long arrested by unpropitious circumstances, resumed its outward progress under the benign influence of a favoring environment, and the bud, whose rare promise had long been noted by a few discerning eyes, unfolded into the brilliant flower, destined in the magnificence of its maturity to draw the attention of a world. To the fulness of his glorious course these three years were what the days of early manhood are to ripened age; and they are marked by the same elasticity, hopefulness, and sanguine looking to the future that characterize youth, before illusions vanish and even success is found to disappoint. Happiness was his then, as at no other time before or after; for the surrounding conditions of enterprise, of difficulties to be overcome, and dangers to be met, were in complete correspondence with those native powers that had so long struggled painfully for room to exert themselves. His health revived, and his very being seemed to expand in this congenial atmosphere, which to him was as life from the dead. As with untiring steps he sped onward and upward,—counting naught done while aught remained to do, forgetting what was behind as he pressed on to what was before,—the ardor of pursuit, the delight of achievement, the joy of the giant running his course, sustained in him that glow of animation, that gladness in the mere fact of existence, physical or moral, in which, if anywhere, this earth's content is found. Lack of recognition, even, wrung from him only the undaunted words: "Never mind! some day I will have a gazette of my own." Not till his dreams were realized, till aspiration had issued in the completest and most brilliant triumph ever wrought upon the seas, and he had for his gazette the loud homage of every mouth in Europe,—not till six months after the battle of the Nile,—did Nelson write: "There is no true happiness in this life, and in my present state I could quit it with a smile. My only wish is to sink with honour into the grave."

The preparation of the Mediterranean fleet, to which the "Agamemnon" was assigned, was singularly protracted, and in the face of a well-ordered enemy the delay must have led to disastrous results. Nelson himself joined his ship at Chatham on the 7th of February, a week after his orders were issued; but not until the 16th of March did she leave the dockyard, and then only for Sheerness, where she remained four weeks longer. By that time it seems probable, from remarks in his letters, that the material equipment of the vessel was complete; but until the 14th of April she remained over a hundred men short of her complement. "Yet, I think," wrote Nelson, "that we shall be far from ill-manned, even if the rest be not so good as they ought to be." Mobilization in those days had not been perfected into a science, even in theory, and the difficulty of raising crews on the outbreak of war was experienced by all nations, but by none more than by Great Britain. Her wants were greatest, and for supply depended upon a merchant service scattered in all quarters of the globe. "Men are very hard to be got," Nelson said to his brother, "and without a press I have no idea that our fleet can be manned." It does not appear that this crude and violent, yet unavoidable, method was employed for the "Agamemnon," except so far as her crew was completed from the guard-ship. Dependence was placed upon the ordinary wiles of the recruiting-sergeant, and upon Nelson's own popularity in the adjacent counties of Suffolk and Norfolk, from which the bulk of his ship's company was actually drawn. "I have sent out a lieutenant and four midshipmen," he writes to Locker, "to get men at every seaport in Norfolk, and to forward them to Lynn and Yarmouth; my friends in Yorkshire and the North tell me they will send what men they can lay hands on;" but at the same time he hopes that Locker, then Commander-in-chief at the Nore, will not turn away any who from other districts may present themselves for the "Agamemnon." Coming mainly from the same neighborhood gave to the crew a certain homogeneousness of character, affording ground for appeal to local pride, a most powerful incentive in moments of difficulty and emulation; and this feeling was enhanced by the thought that their captain too was a Norfolk man. To one possessing the sympathetic qualities of Nelson, who so readily shared the emotions and gained the affections of his associates, it was easy to bind into a living whole the units animated by this common sentiment.

His stepson, Josiah Nisbet, at this time about thirteen years old, now entered the service as a midshipman, and accompanied him on board the "Agamemnon." The oncoming of a great war naturally roused to a yet higher pitch the impulse towards the sea, which in all generations has stirred the blood of English boys. Of these, Nelson, using his captain's privilege, received a number as midshipmen upon his quarter-deck, among them several from the sons of neighbors and friends, and therefore, like the crew, Norfolk lads. It is told that to one, whose father he knew to be a strong Whig, of the party which in the past few years had sympathized with the general current of the French Revolution, he gave the following pithy counsels for his guidance in professional life: "First, you must always implicitly obey orders, without attempting to form any opinion of your own respecting their propriety; secondly, you must consider every man as your enemy who speaks ill of your king; and thirdly, you must hate a Frenchman as you do the devil." On the last two items Nelson's practice was in full accord with his precept; but to the first, his statement of which, sound enough in the general, is open to criticism as being too absolute, he was certainly not obedient. Not to form an opinion is pushing the principle of subordination to an indefensible extreme, even for a junior officer, though the caution not to express it is wise, as well as becoming to the modesty of youth. Lord Howe's advice to Codrington, to watch carefully all that passed and to form his own conclusions, but to keep them to himself, was in every respect more reasonable and profitable. But in fact this dictum of Nelson's was simply another instance of hating the French as he did the devil. The French were pushing independence and private judgment to one extreme, and he instinctively adopted the other.

It was not till near the end of April that the "Agamemnon" finally left the Thames, anchoring at Spithead on the 28th of that month. Still the fleet which Lord Hood was to command was not ready. While awaiting her consorts, the ship made a short cruise in the Channel, and a few days later sailed as one of a division of five ships-of-the-line under Admiral Hotham, to occupy a station fifty to a hundred miles west of the Channel Islands. Nelson's disposition not to form any opinion of his own respecting the propriety of orders was thus evidenced: "What we have been sent out for is best known to the great folks in London: to us, it appears, only to hum the nation and make tools of us, for where we have been stationed no enemy was likely to be met with, or where we could protect our own trade." There can be no doubt that not only was the practical management of the Navy at this time exceedingly bad, but that no sound ideas even prevailed upon the subject. Hotham's squadron gained from neutral vessels two important pieces of information,—that Nantes, Bordeaux, and L'Orient were filled with English vessels, prizes to French cruisers; and that the enemy kept eight sail-of-the-line, with frigates in proportion, constantly moving in detachments about the Bay of Biscay. Under the dispositions adopted by the British Admiralty, these hostile divisions gave, to the commerce destroying of the smaller depredators, a support that sufficiently accounts for the notorious sufferings of British trade during the opening years of the war. Nelson had no mastery of the terminology of warfare,—he never talked about strategy and little about tactics,—but, though without those valuable aids to precision of thought, he had pondered, studied, and reasoned, and he had, besides, what is given to few,—real genius and insight. Accordingly he at once pierced to the root of the trouble,—the enemy's squadrons, rather than the petty cruisers dependent upon them, to which the damage was commonly attributed. "They are always at sea, and England not willing to send a squadron to interrupt them." But, while instancing this intuitive perception of a man gifted with rare penetration, it is necessary to guard against rash conclusions that might be drawn from it, and to remark that it by no means follows that education is unnecessary to the common run of men, because a genius is in advance of his times. It is well also to note that even in him this flash of insight, though unerring in its indications, lacked the definiteness of conviction which results from ordered thought. However accurate, it is but a glimmer,—not yet a fixed light.

Hotham's division joined the main body under Lord Hood, off the Scilly Islands, on the 23d of May, the total force then consisting of eleven sail-of-the-line, with the usual smaller vessels. It remained cruising in that neighborhood until the 6th of June, keeping the approaches of the Channel open for a homeward-bound convoy of merchantmen, which passed on that day. The fleet then bore up for the Straits, and on the 14th six ships, the "Agamemnon" among them, parted company for Cadiz, there to fill up with water, in order to avoid the delays which would arise if the scanty resources of Gibraltar had to supply all the vessels. On the 23d this division left Cadiz, reaching Gibraltar the same evening; and on the 27th Hood, having now with him fifteen of the line, sailed for Toulon.

Nelson's mind was already busy with the prospects of the campaign, and the various naval factors that went to make up the military situation. "Time must discover what we are going after," he writes to his brother; while to Locker he propounds the problem which always has perplexed the British mind, and still does,—how to make the French fight, if they are unwilling. So long as that question remains unsolved, the British government has to bear the uncertainties, exposure, and expense of a difficult and protracted defensive. "We have done nothing," he says, "and the same prospect appears before us: the French cannot come out, and we have no means of getting at them in Toulon." In "cannot come out," he alludes to the presence of a Spanish fleet of twenty-four ships-of-the-line. This, in conjunction with Hood's force, would far exceed the French in Toulon, which the highest estimate then placed at twenty-one of the line. He had, however, already measured the capabilities of the Spanish Navy. They have very fine ships, he admits, but they are shockingly manned,—so much so that if only the barges' crews of the six British vessels that entered Cadiz, numbering at the most seventy-five to a hundred men, but all picked, could have got on board one of their first-rates, he was certain they could have captured her, although her ship's company numbered nearly a thousand. "If those we are to meet in the Mediterranean are no better manned," he continues, "much service cannot be expected of them." The prediction proved true, for no sooner did Hood find the Spanish admiral than the latter informed him he must go to Cartagena, having nineteen hundred sick in his fleet. The officer who brought this message said it was no wonder they were sickly, for they had been sixty days at sea. This excited Nelson's derision—not unjustly. "From the circumstance of having been longer than that time at sea, do we attribute our getting healthy. It has stamped with me the extent of their nautical abilities: long may they remain in their present state." The last sentence reveals his intuitive appreciation of the fact that the Spain of that day could in no true sense be the ally of Great Britain; for, at the moment he penned the wish, the impotence or defection of their allies would leave the British fleet actually inferior to the enemy in those waters. He never forgot these impressions, nor the bungling efforts of the Spaniards to form a line of battle. Up to the end of his life the prospect of a Spanish war involved no military anxieties, but only the prospect of more prize money.

Among the various rumors of that troubled time, there came one that the French were fitting their ships with forges to bring their shot to a red heat, and so set fire to the enemy's vessel in which they might lodge. Nelson was promptly ready with a counter and quite adequate tactical move. "This, if true," he wrote, "I humbly conceive would have been as well kept secret; but as it is known, we must take care to get so close that their red shots may go through both sides, when it will not matter whether they are hot or cold." It is somewhat odd that the extremely diligent and painstaking Sir Harris Nicolas, in his version of this letter, should have dropped the concluding sentence, one of the most important and characteristic occurring in Nelson's correspondence at this time.

On the 14th of July Nelson notes that the fleet had received orders to consider Marseilles and Toulon as invested, and to take all vessels of whatever nation bound into those ports. He at once recognized the importance of this step, and the accurate judgment that dictated it. The British could not, as he said, get at the enemy in his fortified harbor; but they might by this means exercise the pressure that would force him to come out. Undoubtedly, whether on a large or on a small scale, whether it concern the whole plan of a war or of a campaign, or merely the question of a single military position, the best way to compel an unwilling foe to action, and to spoil his waiting game which is so onerous to the would-be assailant, is to attack him elsewhere, to cut short his resources, and make his position untenable by exhaustion. "This has pleased us," Nelson wrote; "if we make these red-hot gentlemen hungry, they may be induced to come out."

The investment by sea of these two harbors, but especially of Toulon, as being an important dockyard, was accordingly the opening move made by the British admiral. On the 16th of July he approached the latter port, and from that time until August 25 a close blockade was maintained, with the exception of a very few days, during which Hood took the fleet off Nice, and thence to Genoa, to remonstrate with that republic upon its supplying the south of France with grain, and bringing back French property under neutral papers. "Our being here is a farce if this trade is allowed," said Nelson, and rightly; for so far as appearances then went, the only influence the British squadrons could exert was by curtailing the supplies of southern France. That district raised only grain enough for three months' consumption; for the remainder of the year's food it depended almost wholly upon Sicily and Barbary, its communications with the interior being so bad that the more abundant fields of distant French provinces could not send their surplus.

In the chaotic state in which France was then plunged, the utmost uncertainty prevailed as to the course events might take, and rumors of all descriptions were current, the wildest scarcely exceeding in improbability the fantastic horrors that actually prevailed throughout the land during these opening days of the Reign of Terror. The expectation that found most favor in the fleet was that Provence would separate from the rest of France, and proclaim itself an independent republic under the protection of Great Britain; but few looked for the amazing result which shortly followed, in the delivery of Toulon by its citizens into the hands of Lord Hood. This Nelson attributed purely to the suffering caused by the strictness of the blockade. "At Marseilles and Toulon," wrote he on the 20th of August, "they are almost starving, yet nothing brings them to their senses. Although the Convention has denounced them as traitors, yet even these people will not declare for anything but Liberty and Equality." Three days later, Commissioners from both cities went on board Hood's flagship to treat for peace, upon the basis of re-establishing the monarchy, and recognizing as king the son of Louis XVI. The admiral accepted the proposal, on condition that the port and arsenal of Toulon should be delivered to him for safe keeping, until the restoration of the young prince was effected. On the 27th of August the city ran up the white flag of the Bourbons, and the British fleet, together with the Spanish, which at this moment arrived on the scene, anchored in the outer port. The allied troops took possession of the forts commanding the harbor, while the dockyards and thirty ships-of-the-line were delivered to the navies.

"The perseverance of our fleet has been great," wrote Nelson, "and to that only can be attributed our unexampled success. Not even a boat could get into Marseilles or Toulon, or on the coast, with provisions; and the old saying, 'that hunger will tame a lion,' was never more strongly exemplified." In this he deceived himself, however natural the illusion. The opposition of Toulon to the Paris Government was part of a general movement of revolt, which spread throughout the provinces in May and June, 1793, upon the violent overthrow of the Girondists in the National Convention. The latter then proclaimed several cities outlawed, Toulon among them; and the bloody severities it exercised were the chief determining cause of the sudden treason, the offspring of fear more than of hunger,—though the latter doubtless contributed,—which precipitated the great southern arsenal into the arms of the Republic's most dangerous foe. Marseilles fell before the Conventional troops, and the resultant panic in the sister city occasioned the hasty step, which in less troubled moments would have been regarded with just horror. But in truth Nelson, despite his acute military perceptions, had not yet developed that keen political sagacity, the fruit of riper judgment grounded on wider information, which he afterwards showed. His ambition was yet limited to the sphere of the "Agamemnon," his horizon bounded by the petty round of the day's events. He rose, as yet, to no apprehension of the mighty crisis hanging over Europe, to no appreciation of the profound meanings of the opening strife. "I hardly think the War can last," he writes to his wife, "for what are we at war about?" and again, "I think we shall be in England in the winter or spring." Even some months later, in December, before Toulon had reverted to the French, he is completely blind to the importance of the Mediterranean in the great struggle, and expresses a wish to exchange to the West Indies, "for I think our Sea War is over in these seas."

It is probable, indeed, that in his zeal, thoroughness, and fidelity to the least of the duties then falling to him, is to be seen a surer indication of his great future than in any wider speculations about matters as yet too high for his position. The recent coolness between him and Lord Hood had been rapidly disappearing under the admiral's reviving appreciation and his own aptitude to conciliation. "Lord Hood is very civil," he writes on more than one occasion, "I think we may be good friends again;" and the offer of a seventy-four-gun ship in place of his smaller vessel was further proof of his superior's confidence. Nelson refused the proposal. "I cannot give up my officers," he said, in the spirit that so endeared him to his followers; but the compliment was felt, and was enhanced by the admiral's approval of his motives. The prospective occupation of Toulon gave occasion for a yet more nattering evidence of the esteem in which he was held. As soon as the agreement with the city was completed, but the day before taking possession, Hood despatched him in haste to Oneglia, a small port on the Riviera of Genoa, and thence to Naples, to seek from the latter court and that of Turin[18] a reinforcement of ten thousand troops to hold the new acquisition. The "Agamemnon" being a fast sailer undoubtedly contributed much to this selection; but the character of the commanding officer could not but be considered on so important, and in some ways delicate, a mission. "I should have liked to have stayed one day longer with the fleet, when they entered the harbour," he wrote to Mrs. Nelson, "but service could not be neglected for any private gratification,"—a sentiment she had to hear pretty often, as betrothed and as wife, but which was no platitude on the lips of one who gave it constant demonstration in his acts. "Duty is the great business of a sea officer," he told his intended bride in early manhood, to comfort her and himself under a prolonged separation. "Thank God! I have done my duty," was the spoken thought that most solaced his death hour, as his heart yearned towards those at home whom he should see no more.

About this time he must have felt some touch of sympathy for the effeminate Spaniards, who were made ill by a sixty days' cruise. "All we get here," he writes, "is honour and salt beef. My poor fellows have not had a morsel of fresh meat or vegetables for near nineteen weeks; and in that time I have only had my foot twice on shore at Cadiz. We are absolutely getting sick from fatigue." "I am here [Naples] with news of our most glorious and great success, but, alas! the fatigue of getting it has been so great that the fleet generally, and I am sorry to say, my ship most so, are knocked up. Day after day, week after week, month after month, we have not been two gun shots from Toulon." The evident looseness of this statement, for the ship had only been a little over a month off Toulon, shows the impression the service had made upon his mind, for he was not prone to such exaggerations. "It is hardly possible," he says again, "to conceive the state of my ship; I have little less than one hundred sick." This condition of things is an eloquent testimony to the hardships endured; for Nelson was singularly successful, both before and after these days, in maintaining the health of a ship's company. His biographers say that during the term of three years that he commanded the "Boreas" in the West Indies, not a single officer or man died out of her whole complement,—an achievement almost incredible in that sickly climate;[19] and he himself records that in his two months' chase of Villeneuve, in 1805, no death from sickness occurred among the seven or eight thousand persons in the fleet. He attributed these remarkable results to his attention, not merely to the physical surroundings of the crews, but also to the constant mental stimulus and interest, which he aroused by providing the seamen with occupation, frequent amusements, and change of scene, thus keeping the various faculties in continual play, and avoiding the monotony which most saps health, through its deadening influence on the mind and spirits.

The "Agamemnon" reached Naples on the 12th of September, and remained there four days. Nelson pressed the matter of reinforcements with such diligence, and was so heartily sustained by the British minister, Sir William Hamilton, that he obtained the promise of six thousand troops to sail at once under the convoy of the "Agamemnon." "I have acted for Lord Hood," he wrote, "with a zeal which no one could exceed;" and a few weeks later he says: "The Lord is very much pleased with my conduct about the troops at Naples, which I undertook without any authority whatever from him; and they arrived at Toulon before his requisition reached Naples." It appears, therefore, that his orders were rather those of a despatch-bearer than of a negotiator; but that he, with the quick initiative he always displayed, took upon himself diplomatic action, to further the known wishes of his superior and the common cause of England and Naples. It was upon this occasion that Nelson first met Lady Hamilton, who exercised so marked an influence over his later life; but, though she was still in the prime of her singular loveliness, being yet under thirty, not a ripple stirred the surface of his soul, afterward so powerfully perturbed by this fascinating woman. "Lady Hamilton," he writes to his wife, "has been wonderfully kind and good to Josiah [his stepson]. She is a young woman of amiable manners, and who does honour to the station to which she is raised." His mind was then too full of what was to be done; not as after the Nile, when, unstrung by reaction from the exhausting emotions of the past months, it was for the moment empty of aspiration and cloyed with flattery only.

The prospect of sailing with the convoy of troops, as well as of a few days' repose for the wearied ship's company, was cut short by the news that a French ship of war, with some merchant vessels in convoy, had anchored on the Sardinian coast. Although there were at Naples several Neapolitan naval vessels, and one Spaniard, none of them moved; and as the Prime Minister sent the information to Nelson, he felt bound to go, though but four days in port. "Unfit as my ship was, I had nothing left for the honour of our country but to sail, which I did in two hours afterwards. It was necessary to show them what an English man-of-war would do." The expected enemy was not found, and, after stretching along the coast in a vain search, the "Agamemnon" put into Leghorn on the 25th of September, nine days after leaving Naples,—to "absolutely save my poor fellows," wrote her captain to his brother. But even so, he purposed staying at his new anchorage but three days, "for I cannot bear the thought of being absent from the scene of action" at Toulon. In the same letter he mentions that since the 23d of April—five months—the ship had been at anchor only twenty days.

The unwavering resolution and prompt decision of his character thus crop out at every step. In Leghorn he found a large French frigate, which had been on the point of sailing when his ship came in sight. "I am obliged to keep close watch to take care he does not give me the slip, which he is inclined to do. I shall pursue him, and leave the two Courts [Great Britain and Tuscany] to settle the propriety of the measure, which I think will not be strictly regular. Have been up all night watching him—ready to cut the moment he did." The enemy, however, made no movement, and Nelson was not prepared to violate flagrantly the neutrality of the port. On the 30th of September he sailed, and on the 5th of October rejoined Lord Hood off Toulon, where four thousand of the Neapolitan troops, for which he had negotiated, had already arrived.

The high favor in which the admiral had held him ten years before in the West Indies, though slightly overcast by the coolness which arose during the intervening peace, had been rapidly regained in the course of the present campaign; and the customary report of his proceedings during the six weeks' absence could not but confirm Hood in the assurance that he had now to deal with a very exceptional character, especially fitted for separate and responsible service. Accordingly, from this time forward, such is the distinguishing feature of Nelson's career as a subordinate. He is selected from among many competitors, frequently his seniors, for the performance of duty outside the reach of the commander-in-chief, but requiring the attention of one upon whose activity, intelligence, and readiness, the fullest dependence could be placed. Up to the battle of the Nile,—in which, it must always be remembered, he commanded a squadron detached from the main fleet, and was assigned to it in deliberate preference to two older flag-officers,—Nelson's life presents a series of detached commands, independent as regarded the local scene of operations, and his method of attaining the prescribed end with the force allotted to him, but dependent, technically, upon the distant commanders-in-chief, each of whom in succession, with one accord, recognized his singular fitness. The pithy but characteristic expression said to have been used by Earl St. Vincent, when asked for instructions about the Copenhagen expedition,—"D—n it, Nelson, send them to the devil your own way,"—sums up accurately enough the confidence shown him by his superiors. He could not indeed lift them all to the height of his own conceptions, fearlessness, and enterprise; but when they had made up their minds to any particular course, they were, each and all, perfectly willing to intrust the execution to him. Even at Copenhagen he was but second in command, though conspicuously first in achievement. It was not till the opening of the second war of the French Revolution, in May, 1803, that he himself had supreme charge of a station,—his old familiar Mediterranean.

Being held in such esteem, it was but a short time before Nelson was again sent off from Toulon, to which he did not return during the British occupation. He was now ordered to report to Commodore Linzee, then lying with a detachment of three ships-of-the-line in the harbor of Cagliari, at the south end of Sardinia. On her passage the "Agamemnon" met and engaged a French squadron, of four large frigates and a brig. Though without decisive results, Nelson was satisfied with his own conduct in this affair, as was also Lord Hood when it came to his knowledge; for, one of the frigates being badly crippled, the whole force, which was on its way to Nice, was compelled to take refuge in Corsica, where it was far from secure. Two days later, on the 24th of October, Cagliari was reached, and the "Agamemnon" accompanied the division to Tunis, arriving there on the 1st of November.

Linzee's mission was to try and detach the Bey from the French interest, and it was hoped he could be induced to allow the seizure of a number of French vessels which had entered the port, under the convoy of a ship-of-the-line and four frigates. When the British entered, the frigates had disappeared, being in fact the same that Nelson had fought ten days before. In accordance with his instructions, Linzee strove to persuade the Bey that the Republican government, because of its revolutionary and bloodthirsty character, should receive no recognition or support from more regular states, not even the protection usually extended by a neutral port, and that in consequence he should be permitted to seize for Great Britain the vessels in Tunis. The Turk may possibly have overlooked the fallacy in this argument, which assumed that the protection extended by neutral governments was rather for the benefit of the belligerent than for the quiet and safety of its own waters; but he was perfectly clear-sighted as to his personal advantage in the situation, for the French owners, in despair of getting to France, were selling their cargoes to him at one third their value. To the argument that the French had beheaded their king, he drily replied that the English had once done the same; and he decisively refused to allow the ships to be molested. Nelson was disgusted that his consent should have been awaited. "The English seldom get much by negotiation except the being laughed at, which we have been; and I don't like it. Had we taken, which in my opinion we ought to have done, the men-of-war and convoy, worth at least L300,000, how much better we could have negotiated:—given the Bey L50,000, he would have been glad to have put up with the insult offered to his dignity;" and he plainly intimates his dissatisfaction with Linzee. This irresponsible and irreflective outburst was, however, only an instance of the impatience his enterprising, energetic spirit always felt when debarred from prompt action, whether by good or bad reasons; for almost on the same day he expresses the sounder judgment: "Had we latterly attempted to take them I am sure the Bey would have declared against us, and done our trade some damage." No advantage could have accrued from the seizure of the French vessels, at all proportioned to the inconvenience of having the hostility of Tunis, flanking as it did the trade routes to the Levant. The British had then quite enough on their hands, without detaching an additional force from the north coast of the Mediterranean, to support a gratuitous quarrel on the south. As a matter of mere policy it would have been ill-judged.

Nelson, however, did not as yet at all realize the wideness of the impending struggle, for it was in these very letters that he expressed a wish to exchange to the West Indies. "You know," he writes to his old friend Locker, "that Pole is gone to the West Indies. I have not seen him since his order, but I know it was a thing he dreaded. Had I been at Toulon I should have been a candidate for that service, for I think our sea war is over in these seas." Perhaps his intrinsic merit would have retrieved even such a mistake as we can now see this would have been, and he would there have come sooner into contact with Sir John Jervis—to whom, if to any one, the name of patron to Nelson may be applied—for Jervis then had the West India command; but it is difficult to imagine Nelson's career apart from the incidents of his Mediterranean service. The Mediterranean seems inseparable from his name, and he in the end felt himself identified with it beyond all other waters.

His longing for action, which prompted the desire for the West Indies, was quickly gratified, for orders were received from Hood, by Linzee, to detach him from the latter's command. The admiral sent him a very handsome letter upon his single-handed combat with the French frigates, and directed him to go to the north end of Corsica, to take charge of a division of vessels he would there find cruising, and to search for his late enemies along that coast and through the neighboring waters, between the island and the shores of Italy. He was also to warn off neutral vessels bound to Genoa, that port being declared blockaded, and to seize them if they persisted in their voyage thither. "I consider this command as a very high compliment," wrote Nelson to his uncle Suckling, "there being five older captains in the fleet." This it certainly was,—a compliment and a prophecy as well.

In pursuance of these orders Nelson left Tunis on the 30th of November, and on the 8th of December discovered the French squadron, protected by shore batteries, in San Fiorenzo Bay, in Corsica. This island, which during the middle ages, and until some twenty years before the beginning of the French Revolution, was a dependency of Genoa, had then by the latter been ceded to France, against the express wishes of the inhabitants, whose resistance was crushed only after a prolonged struggle. Although it was now in open revolt against the Revolutionary government, the troops of the latter still held three or four of the principal seaports, among them the northern one in which the frigates then lay, as well as Bastia upon the east coast of the island, and Calvi on the west. His force being insufficient to engage the works of any of these places, there was nothing for Nelson to do but to blockade them, in hopes of exhausting their resources and at least preventing the escape of the ships of war. In this he was successful, for the latter either were destroyed or fell into the hands of Great Britain, when the ports were reduced.

Meanwhile affairs at Toulon were approaching the crisis which ended its tenure by the British and their allies. The garrison had never been sufficient to man properly the very extensive lines, which the peculiar configuration of the surrounding country made it necessary to occupy for the security of the town; and the troops themselves were not only of different nations, but of very varying degrees of efficiency. Under these conditions the key of the position, accurately indicated by Napoleon Bonaparte, then a major and in command of the artillery, was held in insufficient force, and was successfully stormed on the night of December 16, 1793. It was immediately recognized that the ships could no longer remain in the harbor, and that with them the land forces also must depart. After two days of hurried preparations, and an attempt, only partially successful, to destroy the dockyard and French ships of war, the fleets sailed out on the 19th of December, carrying with them, besides the soldiery, as many as possible of the wretched citizens, who were forced to fly in confusion and misery from their homes, in order to escape the sure and fearful vengeance of the Republican government. The "Agamemnon" was in Leghorn, getting provisions, when the fugitives arrived there, and Nelson speaks in vivid terms of the impression made upon him by the tales he heard and the sights he saw. "Fathers are here without families, and families without fathers, the pictures of horror and despair." "In short, all is horror. I cannot write all: my mind is deeply impressed with grief. Each teller makes the scene more horrible." He expressed the opinion that the evacuation was a benefit to England, and it unquestionably was. He had not always thought so; but it must be allowed that the hopes and exultation with which he greeted the acquisition of the place had sufficient foundation, in the reported attitude of the people of Southern France, to justify the first opinion as well as the last. The attempt was worth making, though it proved unsuccessful. As it was, the occupation had resulted in a degree of destruction to the French ships and arsenal in Toulon, which, though then over-estimated, was a real gain to the allies.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] Turin was capital of the Kingdom of Sardinia, which embraced the island of that name and the Province of Piedmont.

[19] This statement, which apparently depends upon a memoir supplied many years later by the first lieutenant of the "Boreas," is not strictly accurate, for Nelson himself, in a letter written shortly after her arrival in the West Indies, mentions that several of her ship's company had been carried off by fever (Nicolas, vol. i. p. 111); but it can doubtless be accepted as evidence of an unusually healthy condition.



CHAPTER IV.

REDUCTION OF CORSICA BY THE BRITISH.—DEPARTURE OF LORD HOOD FOR ENGLAND.—THE "AGAMEMNON" REFITTED AT LEGHORN.

JANUARY-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 unsuitable 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 evident that Hood was more and more reposing in him a peculiar trust, a feeling which beyond most others tends to increase by its own action. Nelson 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 misunderstand 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 Nelson 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 government in the island, was at its head, and with him were associated 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, terminating in the evacuation of the place by the French, who upon the 19th of February retreated by land to Bastia. Nelson 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 actively 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 characteristics which led him on, step by step, to his great renown.

When Hood himself took command at San Fiorenzo, he 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 intercepting of supplies the issue of the siege largely turned. Three weeks later, on the 1st of March, Nelson 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 hundred fights 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 inhabitants, 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 presumptuous 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 troops could carry the place by assault. "That the works on the hills would annoy 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 25th 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 "Agamemnon" 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 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 impossibility 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 Nelson 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. "Not 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 determined 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 accuracy 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-civilized race of unstable temperament, to risk everything. But besides, for the mere purpose of the blockade, it was imperative 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 Bastia." 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 uncovering 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 frequently 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 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 undoubtedly, under a grossly distorted form, portrays the temperament which 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 undertaken 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 certainty of success, the ignis 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 inspiration 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 indications, guides his steps. Whether it leads him to success or to failure, he may not know; but that it is the path of wisdom, of duty, and of honor, he knows full well by the persuasion 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, 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 depends on the opinion I have given; but I feel an honest consciousness 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, refreshing 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 attempt." Again, a fortnight later: "We are in high health and spirits besieging Bastia; the final event, I feel assured, will be conquest." When 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 England can hardly boast an equal." Further on in the same letter he makes a prediction, so singularly accurate as to excite curiosity 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 speculate 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 compare this high-strung steadfastness of purpose 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 striking events. Having reasoned in vain with the two successive 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 expected 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 failure, 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 harassing 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 accomplish 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 believe, sooner forgive an officer for attacking his enemy than for letting it alone." On the 12th a large boat was captured 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 Corsican 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 coincidence, or by skilful contrivance, the San Fiorenzo troops appeared on the heights upon the evening, May 19, following this conversation. 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 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 exultation 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 anomalous 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 fortnight later he writes to Hood: "Your Lordship knows exactly the situation I am in here. With Colonel Villettes I have 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 commanding 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 Lordship 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 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 provided 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." Unfortunately, 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 seamen in landing the guns, mortars and stores,[20] and Captain Hunt who commanded at the batteries,[20] ... 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 unnecessary to the interests of Hunt. The latter, being second in command ashore, and afterwards sent home with the despatches, 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 sentiment, usually settles at last not far from the truth. Despite this curious inversion of the facts by Lord Hood, there probably 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 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.