The latter meantime was happily unconscious of the wrong done him, so that nothing marred the pleasure with which he congratulated the commander-in-chief, and received the latter's brief but hearty general order of thanks, wherein Nelson's own name stood foremost, as was due both to his seniority and to his exertions. When the despatch reached him, he freely expressed his discontent in letters to friends; but being, at the time of its reception, actively engaged in the siege of Calvi, the exhilaration of that congenial employment for the moment took the edge off the keenness of his resentment. "Lord Hood and myself were never better friends—nor, although his Letter does,[21] did he wish to put me where I never was—in the rear. Captain Hunt, who lost his ship, he wanted to push forward for another,—a young man who never was on a battery, or ever rendered any service during the siege; if any person ever says he did, then I submit to the character of a story-teller. Poor Serocold, who fell here,[22] was determined to publish an advertisement, as he commanded a battery under my orders. The whole operations of the siege were carried on through Lord Hood's letters to me. I was the mover of it—I was the cause of its success. Sir Gilbert Elliot will be my evidence, if any is required. I am not a little vexed, but shall not quarrel." "I am well aware," he had written to Mrs. Nelson a few days before, "my poor services will not be noticed: I have no interest; but, however services may be received, it is not right in an officer to slacken his zeal for his Country."

These noble words only voiced a feeling which in Nelson's heart had all the strength of a principle; and this light of the single eye stood him in good stead in the moments of bitterness which followed a few months later, when a lull in the storm of fighting gave the sense of neglect a chance to rankle. "My heart is full," he writes then to his uncle Suckling, speaking not only of Bastia, but of the entire course of operations in Corsica, "when I think of the treatment I have received: every man who had any considerable share in the reduction has got some place or other—I, only I, am without reward.... Nothing but my anxious endeavour to serve my Country makes me bear up against it; but I sometimes am ready to give all up." "Forgive this letter," he adds towards the end: "I have said a great deal too much of myself; but indeed it is all too true." In similar strain he expressed himself to his wife: "It is very true that I have ever served faithfully, and ever has it been my fate to be neglected; but that shall not make me inattentive to my duty. I have pride in doing my duty well, and a self-approbation, which if it is not so lucrative, yet perhaps affords more pleasing sensations." Thus the consciousness of duty done in the past, and the clear recognition of what duty still demanded in the present and future, stood him in full stead, when he failed to receive at the hands of others the honor he felt to be his due, and which, he never wearied in proclaiming, was in his eyes priceless, above all other reward. "Corsica, in respect of prizes," he wrote to Mrs. Nelson, "produces nothing but honour, far above the consideration of wealth: not that I despise riches, quite the contrary, yet I would not sacrifice a good name to obtain them. Had I attended less than I have done to the service of my Country, I might have made some money too: however, I trust my name will stand on record, when the money-makers will be forgot,"—a hope to be abundantly fulfilled.

At the moment Bastia fell there arrived from England a new commander-in-chief for the land forces, General Stuart, an officer of distinguished ability and enterprise. Cheered by the hope of cordial co-operation, Hood and Nelson resumed without delay their enthusiastic efforts. Within a week, on the 30th of May, the latter wrote that the "Agamemnon" was taking on board ammunition for the siege of Calvi, the last remaining of the hostile strongholds. In the midst of the preparations, at eleven P.M. of June 6, word was received that nine French ships-of-the-line had come out of Toulon, and were believed to be bound for Calvi, with reinforcements for the garrison. At seven the next morning the squadron was under way; the "Agamemnon," which had two hundred tons of ordnance stores to unload, sailing only half an hour after her less encumbered consorts, whom she soon overtook.

Hood shaped his course for Calvi, being constrained thereto, not only by the rumor of the enemy's destination, but also by the military necessity of effecting a junction with the rest of his fleet. Admiral Hotham, who commanded the British division of seven ships in front of Toulon, instead of waiting to verify the report brought to him of the enemy's force,—which was actually the same, numerically, as his own,—bore up hastily for Calvi, intending, so wrote Nelson at the time, to fight them there, rather than that they should throw in succors. Whatever their numbers, thus to surrender touch of them at the beginning was an evident mistake, for which, as for most mistakes, a penalty had in the end to be paid; and in fact, if the relief of Calvi was the object of the sortie, the place to fight was evidently as far from there as possible. Off Toulon, even had Hotham been beaten, his opponents would have been too roughly handled to carry out their mission. As it was, this precipitate retirement lost the British an opportunity for a combat that might have placed their control of the sea beyond peradventure; and a few months later, Nelson, who at first had viewed Hotham's action with the generous sympathy and confident pride which always characterized his attitude towards his brother officers, showed how clearly he was reading in the book of experience the lessons that should afterwards stand himself in good stead. "When 'Victory' is gone," he wrote, "we shall be thirteen sail of the line [to the French fifteen], when the enemy will keep our new Commanding Officer [Hotham] in hot water, who missed, unfortunately, the opportunity of fighting them, last June." Ten years later, in his celebrated chase of Villeneuve's fleet, he said to his captains: "If we meet the enemy we shall find them not less than eighteen, I rather think twenty, sail of the line, and therefore do not be surprised if I should not fall on them immediately [he had but eleven]—we won't part[23] without a battle;" and he expressed with the utmost decision his clear appreciation that even a lost battle, if delivered at the right point or at the right moment, would frustrate the ulterior objects of the enemy, by crippling the force upon which they depended. As will be seen in the sequel, Hotham, throughout his brief command as Hood's successor, suffered the consequences of permitting so important a fraction of the enemy's fleet to escape his grasp, when it was in his power to close with it.

The British divisions met off the threatened port two days after leaving Bastia, and two hours later a lookout frigate brought word that the French fleet had been seen by her the evening before, to the northward and westward, some forty miles off its own coast. Hood at once made sail in pursuit, and in the afternoon of the 10th of June caught sight of the enemy, but so close in with the shore that they succeeded in towing their ships under the protection of the batteries in Golfe Jouan, where, for lack of wind, he was unable to follow them for some days, during which they had time to strengthen their position beyond his powers of offence. Hotham's error was irreparable. The "Agamemnon" was then sent back to Bastia, to resume the work of transportation, which Nelson pushed with the untiring energy that characterized all his movements. Arriving on the 12th, fifteen hundred troops were embarked by eight the next morning, and at four in the afternoon he sailed, having with him two smaller ships of war and twenty-two transports. On the 15th he anchored at San Fiorenzo.

Here he met General Stuart. The latter was anxious to proceed at once with the siege of Calvi, but asked Nelson whether he thought it proper to take the shipping to that exposed position; alluding to the French fleet that had left Toulon, and which Hood was then seeking. Nelson's reply is interesting, as reflecting the judgment of a warrior at once prudent and enterprising, concerning the influence of a hostile "fleet in being" upon a contemplated detached operation. "I certainly thought it right," he said, "placing the firmest reliance that we should be perfectly safe under Lord Hood's protection, who would take care that the French fleet at Gourjean[24] should not molest us." To Hood he wrote a week later: "I believed ourselves safe under your Lordship's wing." At this moment he thought the French to be nine sail-of-the-line to the British thirteen,—no contemptible inferior force. Yet that he recognized the possible danger from such a detachment is also clear; for, writing two days earlier, under the same belief as to the enemy's strength, and speaking of the expected approach of an important convoy, he says: "I hope they will not venture up till Lord Hood can get off Toulon, or wherever the French fleet are got to." When a particular opinion has received the extreme expression now given to that concerning the "fleet in being," and apparently has undergone equally extreme misconception, it is instructive to recur to the actual effect of such a force, upon the practice of a man with whom moral effect was never in excess of the facts of the case, whose imagination produced to him no paralyzing picture of remote contingencies. Is it probable that, with the great issues of 1690 at stake, Nelson, had he been in Tourville's place, would have deemed the crossing of the Channel by French troops impossible, because of Torrington's "fleet in being"?

Sailing again on June 16, the expedition arrived next day off Calvi. Although it was now summer, the difficulties of the new undertaking were, from the maritime point of view, very great. The town of Calvi, which was walled and had a citadel, lies upon a promontory on the west side of an open gulf of the same name, a semicircular recess, three miles wide by two deep, on the northwest coast of Corsica. The western point of its shore line is Cape Revellata; the eastern, Point Espano. The port being fortified and garrisoned, it was not practicable to take the shipping inside, nor to establish on the inner beach a safe base for disembarking. The "Agamemnon" therefore anchored outside, nearly two miles south of Cape Revellata, and a mile from shore, in the excessive depth of fifty-three fathoms; the transports coming-to off the cape, but farther to seaward. The water being so deep, and the bottom rocky, the position was perilous for sailing-ships, for the prevailing summer wind blows directly on the shore, which is steep-to and affords no shelter. Abreast the "Agamemnon" was a small inlet, Porto Agro, about three miles from Calvi by difficult approaches. Here Nelson landed on the 18th with General Stuart; and, after reconnoitring both the beach and the town, the two officers decided that, though a very bad landing, it was the best available. On the 19th, at 7 A.M., the troops disembarked. That afternoon Nelson himself went ashore to stay, taking with him two hundred and fifty seamen. The next day it came on to blow so hard that most of the ships put to sea, and no intercourse was had from the land with those which remained. The "Agamemnon" did not return till the 24th. Lord Hood was by this time in San Fiorenzo Bay, having abandoned the hope of attacking the French fleet in Golfe Jouan. On the 27th he arrived off Calvi, and thenceforth Nelson was in daily communication with him till the place fell.

As the army in moderate, though not wholly adequate, force conducted the siege of Calvi, under a general officer of vigorous character, the part taken by Nelson and his seamen, though extremely important, and indeed essential to the ultimate success, was necessarily subordinate. It is well to notice that his journal, and correspondence with Lord Hood, clearly recognize this, his true relation to the siege of Calvi; for it makes it probable that, in attributing to himself a much more important part at Bastia, and in saying that Hood's report had put him unfairly in the background, he was not exaggerating his actual though ill-defined position there. That Nelson loved to dwell in thought upon his own achievements, that distinction in the eyes of his fellows was dear to him, that he craved recognition, and was at times perhaps too insistent in requiring it, is true enough; but there is no indication that he ever coveted the laurels of others, or materially misconceived his own share in particular events. Glory, sweet as it was to him, lost its value, if unaccompanied by the consciousness of desert which stamps it as honor. It is, therefore, not so much for personal achievement as for revelation of character that this siege has interest in his life.

Besides the defences of the town proper, Calvi was protected by a series of outworks extending across the neck of land upon which it lay. Of these the outermost was on the left, looking from the place. It flanked the approaches to the others, and commanded the communications with the interior. It was, by Nelson's estimate, about twenty-two hundred yards from the town, and had first to be reduced. By the 3d of July thirteen long guns, besides a number of mortars and howitzers, had been dragged from the beach to the spot by the seamen, who also assisted in placing them in position, and for the most part worked them in battle, an artillerist from the army pointing. Nelson, with Captain Hallowell, already an officer of mark and afterwards one of distinction, took alternate day's duty at the batteries, a third captain, Serocold, having fallen early in the siege. Fearing news might reach his wife that a naval captain had been killed, without the name being mentioned, he wrote to her of this sad event, adding expressively: "I am very busy, yet own I am in all my glory; except with you, I would not be anywhere but where I am, for the world." On July 7th the first outwork fell. The attack upon the others was then steadily and systematically prosecuted, until on the 19th all had been captured, and the besiegers stood face to face with the town walls.

During this time Nelson, as always, was continually at the front and among the most exposed. Out of six guns in the battery which he calls "ours," five were disabled in six days. On the 12th at daylight, a heavy fire opened from the town, which, he says, "seldom missed our battery;" and at seven o'clock a shot, which on the ricochet cleared his head by a hair's breadth, drove sand into his face and right eye with such violence as to incapacitate him. He spoke lightly and cheerfully of the incident to Lord Hood, "I got a little hurt this morning: not much, as you may judge by my writing," and remained absent from duty only the regular twenty-four hours; but, after some fluctuations of hope, the sight of the eye was permanently lost to him. Of General Stuart's conduct in the operations he frequently speaks with cordial admiration. "He is not sparing of himself on any occasion, he every night sleeps with us in the advanced battery. If I may be allowed to judge, he is an extraordinary good judge of ground. No officer ever deserved success more." At the same time he expresses dissatisfaction with some of the subordinate army officers, to whose inefficiency he attributes the necessity for undue personal exertion on the general's part: "The General is not well. He fatigues himself too much, but I can't help seeing he is obliged to do it. He has not a person to forward his views,—the engineer sick, the artillery captain not fit for active service; therefore every minute thing must be done by himself, or it is not done at all."

The work was tedious and exhausting, and the malaria of the hot Corsican summer told heavily on men's health and patience. The supply of ammunition, and of material of war generally, for the army seems to have been inadequate; and heavy demands were made upon the fleet, not only for guns, which could be returned, but for powder and shot, the expenditure of which might prove embarrassing before they could be renewed. The troops also were not numerous enough, under the climatic conditions, to do all their own duty. In such circumstances, when two parties are working together to the same end, but under no common control, each is prone to think the other behindhand in his work and exacting in his demands. "Why don't Lord Hood land 500 men to work?" said Colonel Moore, the general's right-hand man. "Our soldiers are tired." Nelson, on the other hand, thought that Moore wanted over-much battering done to the breach of a work, before he led the stormers to it; and Hood, who was receiving frequent reports of the preparations of the French fleet in Toulon, was impatient to have the siege pushed, and thought the army dilatory. "The rapidity with which the French are getting on at Toulon," he wrote confidentially to Nelson, "makes it indispensably necessary for me to put the whole of the fleet under my command in the best possible state for service; and I must soon apply to the general for those parts of the regiments now on shore, ordered by his Majesty to serve in lieu of marines, to be held in readiness to embark at the shortest notice. I shall delay this application as long as possible."

Nelson, being a seaman, sympathized of course with his own service, and with Hood, for whom he had most cordial admiration, both personal and professional. But at the same time he was on the spot, a constant eye-witness to the difficulties of the siege, a clear-headed observer, with sound military instincts, and fair-minded when facts were before him. The army, he wrote to Hood, is harassed to death, and he notices that it suffers from sickness far more than do the seamen. He repeats the request for more seamen, and, although he seems to doubt the reasonableness of the demand, evidently thinks that they should be furnished, if possible. Hood accordingly sent an additional detachment of three hundred, raising the number on shore to the five hundred suggested by Moore. "I had much rather," he wrote, "that a hundred seamen should be landed unnecessarily, than that one should be kept back that was judged necessary." On the other hand, when the general, after a work bearing on the bay had been destroyed, suggests that the navy might help, by laying the ships against the walls, Nelson takes "the liberty of observing that the business of laying wood before walls was much altered of late," and adds the common-sense remark, that "the quantity of powder and shot which would be fired away on such an attack could be much better directed from a battery on shore." This conversation took place immediately after all the outworks had been reduced. It was conducted "with the greatest politeness," he writes, and "the General thanked me for my assistance, but it was necessary to come to the point whether the siege should be persevered in or given up. If the former, he must be supplied with the means, which were more troops, more seamen to work, and more ammunition." Nelson replied that, if the requisite means could not be had on the spot, they could at least hold on where they were till supplied from elsewhere.

It will be noticed that Nelson was practically the intermediary between the two commanders-in-chief. In fact, there appears to have been between them some constraint, and he was at times asked to transmit a message which he thought had better go direct. In this particularly delicate situation, one cannot but be impressed with the tact he for the most part shows, the diplomatic ability, which was freely attributed to him by his superiors in later and more influential commands. This was greatly helped by his cordial good-will towards others, combined with disinterested zeal for the duty before him; the whole illumined by unusual sagacity and good sense. He sees both sides, and conveys his suggestions to either with a self-restraint and deference which avert resentment; and he preserves both his calmness and candor, although he notices in the camp some jealousy of his confidential communication with his immediate superior, the admiral. Though never backward to demand what he thought the rights of himself or his associates, Nelson was always naturally disposed to reconcile differences, to minimize causes of trouble, and this native temperament had not yet undergone the warping which followed his later wounds—especially that on the head received at the Nile—and the mental conflict into which he was plunged by his unhappy passion for Lady Hamilton. At this time, in the flush of earlier enthusiasm, delighting as few men do in the joy of battle, he strove to promote harmony, to smooth over difficulties by every exertion possible, either by doing whatever was asked of him, or by judicious representations to others. Thus, when Hood, impatient at the disturbing news from Toulon, wishes to hasten the conclusion by summoning the garrison, in the hope that it may yield at once, the general objected, apparently on the ground that the statement of their own advantages, upon which such a summons might be based, would be prejudicial, if, as was most probable, the demand was rejected. Whatever his reason, Nelson, though indirectly, intimates to Hood that in this matter he himself agrees, upon the whole, with the general, and Hood yields the point,—the more so that he learns from Nelson that the outposts are to be stormed the next night; and sorely was the captain, in his judicious efforts thus to keep the peace, tried by the postponement of the promised assault for twenty-four hours. "Such things are," he wrote to Hood, using a favorite expression. "I hope to God the general, who seems a good officer and an amiable man, is not led away; but Colonel Moore is his great friend."

The feeling between the land and sea services was emphasized in the relations existing between Lord Hood and Colonel Moore, who afterwards, as Sir John Moore, fell gloriously at Corunna. To these two eminent officers fortune denied the occasion to make full proof of their greatness to the world; but they stand in the first rank of those men of promise whose failure has been due, not to their own shortcomings, but to the lack of opportunity. Sir John Moore has been the happier, in that the enterprise with which his name is chiefly connected, and upon which his title to fame securely rests, was completed, and wrought its full results; fortunate, too, in having received the vindication of that great action at the hands of the most eloquent of military historians. His country and his profession may well mourn a career of such fair opening so soon cut short. But daring and original in the highest degree as was the march from Salamanca to Sahagun, it did not exceed, either in originality or in daring, the purposes nourished by Lord Hood, which he had no opportunity so to execute as to attract attention. Condemned to subordinate positions until he had reached the age of seventy, his genius is known to us only by his letters, and by the frustrated plans at St. Kitts in 1782, and at Golfe Jouan in 1794, in the former of which, less fortunate than Moore, he failed to realize his well-grounded hope of reversing, by a single blow, the issues of a campaign.

It is to be regretted that two such men could not understand each other cordially. Hood, we know from his letters, was "of that frame and texture that I cannot be indifferent,"—"full of anxiety, impatience, and apprehension,"—when service seemed to him slothfully done. Moore, we are told by Napier, "maintained the right with vehemence bordering upon fierceness." Had he had the chief command on shore, it is possible that the two, impetuous and self-asserting though they were, might have reached an understanding. But in the most unfortunate disagreement about Bastia,—wherein it is to a naval officer of to-day scarcely possible to do otherwise than blame the sullen lack of enterprise shown by the army,—and afterwards at Calvi, Moore appeared to Hood, and to Nelson also, as the subordinate, the power behind the throne, who was prompting a line of action they both condemned. No position in military life is more provocative of trouble than to feel you are not dealing with the principal, but with an irresponsible inferior; and the situation is worse, because one in which it is almost impossible to come to an issue. Moore's professional talent and force of character naturally made itself felt, even with a man of Stuart's ability. Hood and Nelson recognized this, and they resented, as inspired by a junior, what they might have combated dispassionately, if attributed to the chief. There was friction also between Moore and Elliot, the viceroy of the island. Doubtless, as in all cases where suspicion, not to say jealousy, has been begot, much more and worse was imagined by both parties than actually occurred. The apportionment of blame, or prolonged discussion of the matter, is out of place in a biography of Nelson. To that it is of moment, only because it is proper to state that Nelson, on the spot and in daily contact,—Nelson, upon whose zeal and entire self-devotion at this period no doubt is cast,—agreed in the main with Hood's opinion as to what the latter called the San Fiorenzo leaven, of which Moore was to them the exponent. It is true that Nelson naturally sympathized with his profession and his admiral, whom he heartily admired; but some corrective, at least, to such partiality, was supplied by his soreness about the latter's omission duly to report his services at Bastia, of which he just now became aware. The estrangement between the two commanders-in-chief was doubtless increased by the apparent reluctance, certainly the lack of effort, to see one another frequently.

The principal work, called by Nelson the Mozelle battery, was carried before daylight of July 19, and before dark all the outposts were in the hands of the British. "I could have wished to have had a little part in the storm," wrote Nelson, characteristically covetous of strenuous action, "if it was only to have placed the ladders and pulled away the palisadoes. However, we did the part allotted to us." That day a summons was sent to the garrison, but rejected, and work upon batteries to breach the town walls was then pushed rapidly forward; for it was becoming more and more evident that the siege must be brought to an end, lest the entire force of besiegers should become disabled by sickness. On the 28th the batteries were ready, and General Stuart sent in word that he would not fire upon the hospital positions, where indicated by black flags. The besieged then asked for a truce of twenty-five days, undertaking to lay down their arms, if not by then relieved. The general and admiral refused, but were willing to allow six days. This the garrison in turn rejected; and on the night of the 30th four small vessels succeeded in eluding the blockading frigates and entering supplies, which encouraged the besieged. On the 31st the batteries opened, and after thirty-six hours' heavy cannonade the town held out a flag of truce. An arrangement was made that it should surrender on the 10th of August, if not relieved; the garrison to be transported to France without becoming prisoners of war.

No relief arriving, the place capitulated on the day named. It was high time for the besiegers. "We have upwards of one thousand sick out of two thousand," wrote Nelson, "and the others not much better than so many phantoms. We have lost many men from the season, very few from the enemy." He himself escaped more easily than most. To use his own quaint expression, "All the prevailing disorders have attacked me, but I have not strength enough for them to fasten upon. I am here the reed amongst the oaks: I bow before the storm, while the sturdy oak is laid low." The congenial moral surroundings, in short,—the atmosphere of exertion, of worthy and engrossing occupation,—the consciousness, to him delightful, of distinguished action, of heroic persistence through toil and danger,—prevailed even in his physical frame over discomfort, over the insidious climate, and even over his distressing wound. "This is my ague day," he writes when the batteries opened; "I hope so active a scene will keep off the fit. It has shaken me a good deal; but I have been used to them, and now don't mind them much." "Amongst the wounded, in a slight manner, is myself, my head being a good deal wounded and my right eye cut down; but the surgeons flatter me I shall not entirely lose the sight. It confined me, thank God, only one day, and at a time when nothing particular happened to be doing." "You must not think my hurts confined me," he tells his wife; "no, nothing but the loss of a limb would have kept me from my duty, and I believe my exertions conduced to preserve me in this general mortality." In his cheery letters, now, no trace is perceptible of the fretful, complaining temper, which impaired, though it did not destroy, the self-devotion of his later career. No other mistress at this time contended with honor for the possession of his heart; no other place than the post of duty before Calvi distracted his desires, or appealed to his imagination through his senses. Not even Lord Hood's report of the siege of Bastia, which here came to his knowledge, and by which he thought himself wronged, had bitterness to overcome the joy of action and of self-contentment.

Not many days were required, after the fall of Calvi, to remove the fleet, and the seamen who had been serving on shore, from the pestilential coast. Nelson seems to have been intrusted with the embarkation of the prisoners in the transports which were to take them to Toulon. He told his wife that he had been four months landed, and felt almost qualified to pass his examination as a besieging general, but that he had no desire to go on with campaigning. On the 11th of August, the day after the delivery of the place, he was again on board the "Agamemnon," from whose crew had been drawn the greatest proportion of the seamen for the batteries. One hundred and fifty of them were now in their beds. "My ship's company are all worn out," he wrote, "as is this whole army, except myself; nothing hurts me,—of two thousand men I am the most healthy. Every other officer is scarcely able to crawl." Among the victims of the deadly climate was Lieutenant Moutray, the son of the lady to whom, ten years before, he had been so warmly attracted in the West Indies. Nelson placed a monument to him in the church at San Fiorenzo.

On the 10th of August the "Agamemnon" sailed from Calvi, and after a stop at San Fiorenzo, where Hood then was, reached Leghorn on the 18th. Now that the immediate danger of the siege was over, Nelson admitted to his wife the serious character of the injury he had received. The right eye was nearly deprived of sight,—only so far recovered as to enable him to distinguish light from darkness. For all purposes of use it was gone; but the blemish was not to be perceived, unless attention was drawn to it.

At Leghorn the ship lay for a month,—the first period of repose since she went into commission, a year and a half before. While there, the physician to the fleet came on board and surveyed the crew, finding them in a very weak state, and unfit to serve. This condition of things gave Nelson hopes that, upon the approaching departure of Lord Hood for England, the "Agamemnon" might go with him; for he was loath to separate from an admiral whose high esteem he had won, and upon whom he looked as the first sea-officer of Great Britain. Hood was inclined to take her, and to transfer the ship's company bodily to a seventy-four. This he considered no more than due to Nelson's distinguished merit and services, and he had indeed offered him each ship of that rate whose command fell vacant in the Mediterranean; but the strong sense of attachment to those who had shared his toils and dangers, of reluctance that they should see him willing to leave them, after their hard work together,—that combination of sympathy and tact which made so much of Nelson's success as a leader of men,—continued to prevent his accepting promotion that would sever his ties to them.

The exigencies of the war in the Mediterranean forbade the departure, even of a sixty-four with a disabled crew. A full month later her sick-list was still seventy-seven, out of a total of less than four hundred. "Though certainly unfit for a long cruise," Nelson said, "we are here making a show,"—a military requirement not to be neglected or despised. He accepted the disappointment, as he did all service rubs at this period, with perfect temper and in the best spirit. "We must not repine," he wrote to his wife on the 12th of October, the day after Hood sailed for England. "Lord Hood is very well inclined towards me, but the service must ever supersede all private consideration. I hope you will spend the winter cheerfully. Do not repine at my absence; before spring I hope we shall have peace, when we must look out for some little cottage." She fretted, however, as some women will; and he, to comfort her, wrote more sanguinely about himself than the facts warranted. "Why you should be uneasy about me, so as to make yourself ill, I know not. I feel a confident protection in whatever service I may be employed upon; and as to my health, I don't know that I was ever so truly well. I fancy myself grown quite stout." To his old captain, Locker, he admitted that he could not get the better of the fever.

Corsica being now wholly in the power of its inhabitants, allied with and supported by Great Britain, his attention and interest were engrossed by the French fleet centring upon Toulon, the dominant factor of concern to the British in the Mediterranean, where Vice-Admiral Hotham had succeeded Hood as commander-in-chief. Nelson realizes more and more the mistake that was made, when a fraction of it was allowed to escape battle in the previous June. The various reasons by which he had at first excused the neglect to bring it to action no longer weigh with him. He does not directly blame, but he speaks of the omission as an "opportunity lost,"—a phrase than which there are few more ominous, in characterizing the closely balanced, yet weighty, decisions, upon which the issues of war depend. Nothing, he thinks, can prevent the junction of the two fragments,—then in Golfe Jouan and Toulon,—one of which, with more resolution and promptitude on Hotham's part, might have been struck singly at sea a few months before; and if they join, there must follow a fleet action, between forces too nearly equal to insure to Great Britain the decisive results that were needed. The thought he afterwards expressed, "Numbers only can annihilate," was clearly floating in his brain,—inarticulate, perhaps, as yet, but sure to come to the birth. "If we are not completely victorious,—I mean, able to remain at sea whilst the enemy must retire into port,—if we only make a Lord Howe's victory, take a part, and retire into port, Italy is lost." Criticism clearly is going on in his mind; and not mere criticism, (there is enough and to spare of that in the world, and not least in navies), but criticism judicious, well considered, and above all fruitful. The error of opportunity lost he had seen; the error of a partial victory—"a Lord Howe's victory," another opportunity lost—he intuitively anticipated for the Mediterranean, and was soon to see. He was already prepared to pass an accurate judgment instantly, when he saw it. May we not almost hear, thundering back from the clouds that yet veiled the distant future of the Nile, the words, of which his thought was already pregnant, "You may be assured I will bring the French fleet to action the moment I can lay my hands upon them."

The year closed with the British fleet watching, as best it could, the French ships, which, according to Nelson's expectation, had given the blockaders the slip, and had made their junction at Toulon. There was now no great disparity in the nominal force of the two opponents, the British having fourteen ships-of-the-line, the French fifteen; and it was quite in the enemy's power to fulfil his other prediction, by keeping Hotham in hot water during the winter. In the middle of November the "Agamemnon" had to go to Leghorn for extensive repairs, and remained there, shifting her main and mizzen masts, until the 21st of December. Nelson, who had endured with unyielding cheerfulness the dangers, exposure, and sickliness of Calvi, found himself unable to bear patiently the comfort of quiet nights in a friendly port, while hot work might chance outside. "Lying in port is misery to me. My heart is almost broke to find the Agamemnon lying here, little better than a wreck. I own my sincere wish that the enemy would rest quiet until we are ready for sea, and a gleam of hope sometimes crosses me that they will." "I am uneasy enough for fear they will fight, and Agamemnon not present,—it will almost break my heart; but I hope the best,—that they are only boasting at present, and will be quiet until I am ready." "It is misery," he repeats, "for me to be laid up dismantled."

It was during this period of comparative inactivity in port, followed by monotonous though arduous winter cruising off Toulon, which was broken only by equally dreary stays at San Fiorenzo, that Nelson found time to brood over the neglect of which he thought himself the victim, in the omission of Lord Hood to notice more markedly his services in Corsica. It is usually disagreeable to the uninterested bystander to see an excessive desire for praise, even under the guise of just recognition of work done. Words of complaint, whether heard or read, strike a discord to one who himself at the moment is satisfied with his surroundings. We all have an instinctive shrinking from the tones of a grumbler. Nelson's insistence upon his grievances has no exemption from this common experience; yet it must be remembered that these assertions of the importance of his own services, and dissatisfaction with the terms in which they had been mentioned, occur chiefly, if not solely, in letters to closest relations,—to his wife and uncle,—and that they would never have become known but for the after fame, which has caused all his most private correspondence to have interest and to be brought to light. As a revelation of character they have a legitimate interest, and they reveal, or rather they confirm, what is abundantly revealed throughout his life,—that intense longing for distinction, for admiration justly earned, for conspicuous exaltation above the level of his kind, which existed in him to so great a degree, and which is perhaps the most potent—certainly the most universal—factor in military achievement. They reveal this ambition for honor, or glory, on its weak side; on its stronger side of noble emulation, of self-devotion, of heroic action, his correspondence teems with its evidence in words, as does his life in acts. To quote the words of Lord Radstock, who at this period, and until after the battle of Cape St. Vincent, was serving as one of the junior admirals in the Mediterranean, and retained his friendship through life, "a perpetual thirst of glory was ever raging within him." "He has ever showed himself as great a despiser of riches as he is a lover of glory; and I am fully convinced in my own mind that he would sooner defeat the French fleet than capture fifty galleons."

After all allowance made, however, it cannot be denied that there is in these complaints a tone which one regrets in such a man. The repeated "It was I" jars, by the very sharpness of its contrast, with the more generous expressions that abound in his correspondence. "When I reflect that I was the cause of re-attacking Bastia, after our wise generals gave it over, from not knowing the force, fancying it 2,000 men; that it was I, who, landing, joined the Corsicans, and with only my ship's party of marines, drove the French under the walls of Bastia; that it was I, who, knowing the force in Bastia to be upwards of 4,000 men, as I have now only ventured to tell Lord Hood, landed with only 1,200 men, and kept the secret till within this week past;—what I must have felt during the whole siege may be easily conceived. Yet I am scarcely mentioned. I freely forgive, but cannot forget. This and much more ought to have been mentioned. It is known that, for two months, I blockaded Bastia with a squadron; only fifty sacks of flour got into the town. At San Fiorenzo and Calvi, for two months before, nothing got in, and four French frigates could not get out, and are now ours. Yet my diligence is not mentioned; and others, for keeping succours out of Calvi for a few summer months, are handsomely mentioned. Such things are. I have got upon a subject near my heart, which is full when I think of the treatment I have received.... The taking of Corsica, like the taking of St. Juan's, has cost me money. St. Juan's cost near L500; Corsica has cost me L300, an eye, and a cut across my back; and my money, I find, cannot be repaid me."

As regards the justice of his complaints, it seems to the author impossible to read carefully Hood's two reports, after the fall of Bastia and that of Calvi, and not admit, either that Nelson played a very unimportant part in the general operations connected with the reduction of Corsica, with which he became associated even before it was effectively undertaken, and so remained throughout; or else that no due recognition was accorded to him in the admiral's despatches. Had he not become otherwise celebrated in his after life, he would from these papers be inferred to stand, in achievement, rather below than above the level of the other captains who from time to time were present. That this was unfair seems certain; and notably at Calvi, where, from the distance of the operations from the anchorage, and the strained relations which kept Hood and Stuart apart, he was practically the one naval man upon whose discretion and zeal success depended. It is probable, however, that the failure to do him justice proceeded as much from awkward literary construction, phrases badly turned, as from reluctance to assign due prominence to one subordinate among several others.

How readily, yet how keenly, he derived satisfaction, even from slight tributes of recognition, is shown by the simplicity and pleasure with which he quoted to Mrs. Nelson the following words of Sir Gilbert Elliot, the Viceroy of Corsica, then and always a warm friend and admirer: "I know that you, who have had such an honourable share in this acquisition, will not be indifferent at the prosperity of the Country which you have so much assisted to place under His Majesty's government." "Whether these are words of course and to be forgotten," wrote Nelson, "I know not; they are pleasant, however, for the time." Certainly his demands for praise, if thus measured, were not extreme.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] The italics are the author's.

[21] The italics are Nelson's.

[22] Written at the siege of Calvi.

[23] Author's italics.

[24] Golfe Jouan; on the coast of France between Toulon and Nice.



CHAPTER V.

NELSON'S SERVICES WITH THE FLEET IN THE MEDITERRANEAN UNDER ADMIRAL HOTHAM.—PARTIAL FLEET ACTIONS OF MARCH 13 AND 14, AND JULY 13.—NELSON ORDERED TO COMMAND A DETACHED SQUADRON CO-OPERATING WITH THE AUSTRIAN ARMY IN THE RIVIERA OF GENOA.

JANUARY-JULY, 1795. AGE, 36.

From the naval point of view, as a strategic measure, the acquisition of Corsica by the British was a matter of great importance. It was, however, only one among several factors, which went to make up the general military and political situation in the Mediterranean at the end of the year 1794. Hitherto the exigencies of the well-nigh universal hostilities in which France had been engaged, and the anarchical internal state of that country, had prevented any decisive operations by her on the side of Italy, although she had, since 1792, been formally at war with the Kingdom of Sardinia, of which Piedmont was a province.

At the close of 1794 the conditions were greatly modified. In the north, the combined forces of Great Britain, Austria, and Holland had been driven out of France and Belgium, and the United Provinces were on the point of submission. On the east, the Austrians and Prussians had retreated to the far bank of the Rhine, and Prussia was about to withdraw from the coalition, which, three years before, she had been so eager to form. On the south, even greater success had attended the French armies, which had crossed the Pyrenees into Spain, driving before them the forces of the enemy, who also was soon to ask for peace. It was therefore probable that operations in Italy would assume greatly increased activity, from the number of French soldiers released elsewhere, as well as from the fact that the Austrians themselves, though they continued the war in Germany, had abandoned other portions of the continent which they had hitherto contested.

The political and military conditions in Italy were, briefly, as follows. The region north of the Maritime Alps and in the valley of the Po was, for the most part, in arms against France,—the western province, Piedmont, as part of the Kingdom of Sardinia, whose capital was at Turin, and, to the eastward of it, the duchies of Milan and Mantua, as belonging to Austria. The governments of the numerous small states into which Northern and Central Italy were then divided—Venice, Genoa, Tuscany, the States of the Church, and others—sympathized generally with the opponents of France, but, as far as possible, sought to maintain a formal though difficult neutrality. The position of Genoa was the most embarrassing, because in direct contact with all the principal parties to the war. To the westward, her territory along the Riviera included Vintimiglia, bordering there on the county of Nice, and contained Vado Bay, the best anchorage between Nice and Genoa. To the eastward, it embraced the Gulf of Spezia, continually mentioned by Nelson as Porto Especia.

The occupation of the Riviera was of particular moment to the French, for it offered a road by which to enter Italy,—bad, indeed, but better far than those through the passes of the upper Alps. Skirting the sea, it afforded a double line of communications, by land and by water; for the various detachments of their army, posted along it, could in great degree be supplied by the small coasting-vessels of the Mediterranean. So long, also, as it was in their possession, and they held passes of the Maritime Alps and Apennines, as they did in 1794, there was the possibility of their penetrating through them, to turn the left flank of the Sardinian army in Piedmont, which was, in fact, what Bonaparte accomplished two years later. These inducements had led the French to advance into the county of Nice, then belonging to Sardinia, which in the existing state of war it was perfectly proper for them to do; but, not stopping there, they had pushed on past the Sardinian boundary into the neutral Riviera of Genoa, as far as Vado Bay, which they occupied, and where they still were at the end of 1794.

Genoa submitted under protest to this breach of her neutrality, as she did both before[25] and after to similar insults from parties to the war. She derived some pecuniary benefit from the condition of affairs,—her ports, as well as those of Tuscany, immediately to the southward, becoming depots of a trade in grain, which supplied both the French army and the southern provinces of France. These food stuffs, absolutely essential to the French, were drawn chiefly from Sicily and the Barbary States, and could not be freely taken into French ports by the larger class of sea-going vessels, in face of the British fleet. They were, therefore, commonly transshipped in Leghorn or Genoa, and carried on by coasters. As so much Genoese sea-coast was occupied by French divisions, it was practically impossible for British cruisers to distinguish between vessels carrying corn for the inhabitants and those laden for the armies, and entirely impossible to know that what was intended for one object would not be diverted to another. If, too, a vessel's papers showed her to be destined for Vintimiglia, near the extreme of the Genoese line, there could be no certainty that, having got so far, she might not quietly slip by into a French port, either Nice or beyond. The tenure of the neutral Riviera of Genoa by the French army was a threat to the allies of Great Britain in Piedmont and Lombardy, as well as to the quasi-neutrals in Genoa, Tuscany, Venice, and the Papal States. Its further advance or successes would imperil the latter, and seriously affect the attitude of Naples, hostile to the Republic, but weak, timid, and unstable of purpose. On the other hand, the retention of its position, and much more any further advance, depended upon continuing to receive supplies by way of the sea. To do so by the shore route alone was not possible. Southern France itself depended upon the sea for grain, and could send nothing, even if the then miserable Corniche road could have sufficed, as the sole line of communications for forty thousand troops.

Thus the transfer of Corsica to Great Britain had a very important bearing upon the military and political conditions. At the moment when Italy was about to become the scene of operations which might, and in the event actually did, exercise a decisive influence upon the course of the general war, the British position was solidified by the acquisition of a naval base, unassailable while the sea remained in their control and the Corsicans attached to their cause, and centrally situated with reference to the probable scenes of hostilities, as well as to the points of political interest, on the mainland of Italy. The fleet resting upon it, no longer dependent upon the reluctant hospitality of Genoese or Tuscan ports, or upon the far distant Kingdom of Naples, was secure to keep in its station, whence it menaced the entire seaboard trade of France and the Riviera, as well as the tenure of the French army in the latter, and exerted a strong influence upon the attitude of both Genoa and Tuscany, who yielded only too easily to the nearest or most urgent pressure. The fleet to which Nelson belonged had spent the greater part of the year 1794 in securing for itself, as a base of operations, this position, by far the most suitable among those that could be considered at all. It remained now to utilize the advantage obtained, to make the situation of the French army in Italy untenable, by establishing an indisputable control of the sea. To this the holding of Corsica also contributed, indirectly; for the loss of the island forced the French fleet to go to sea, in order, if possible, to expedite its re-conquest. In all the operations resulting from these various motives, Nelson bore a part as conspicuous and characteristic as he had done in the reduction of Corsica. Almost always on detached service, in positions approaching independent command, he was continually adding to his reputation, and, what was far more important, maturing the professional character, the seeds of which had been so bountifully bestowed upon him by nature. His reputation, won hard and step by step, obtained for him opportunity; but it was to character, ripened by experience and reflection, that he owed his transcendent successes.

The scheme for the government of the island as a British dependency, stated broadly, was that it should be administered by the Corsicans themselves, under a viceroy appointed by the British crown. Its military security was provided for by the control of the sea, and by British soldiers holding the fortified ports,—a duty for which the Corsicans themselves had not then the necessary training. Nelson, who did not yet feel the impossibility of sustaining a successful over-sea invasion, when control of the sea was not had, was anxious about the expected attempts of the French against the island, and urged the viceroy, by private letter, to see that Ajaccio, which he regarded as the point most favorable to a descent, was garrisoned sufficiently to keep the gates shut for a few days. This caution did not then proceed from a distrust of the Corsicans' fidelity, without which neither France nor England could hold the island, as was shown by the quickness of its transfer two years later, when the inhabitants again revolted to France. "With this defence," he wrote, "I am confident Ajaccio, and I believe I may say the island of Corsica, would be perfectly safe until our fleet could get to the enemy, when I have no doubt the event would be what every Briton might expect."

The repairs of the "Agamemnon" were completed before Nelson's anxious apprehensions of a battle taking place in his absence could be fulfilled. On the 21st of December, 1794, he sailed from Leghorn with the fleet, in company with which he remained from that time until the following July, when he was sent to the Riviera of Genoa on special detached service. He thus shared the severe cruising of that winter, as well as the abortive actions of the spring and early summer, where the admiral again contrived to lose opportunities of settling the sea campaign, and with it, not improbably, that of the land also. There were plain indications in the port of Toulon that a maritime enterprise of some importance was in contemplation. In the outer road lay fifteen sail-of-the-line, the British having then fourteen; but more significant of the enemy's purpose was the presence at Marseilles of fifty large transports, said to be ready. "I have no doubt," wrote Nelson, "but Porto Especia is their object." This was a mistake, interesting as indicating the slight weight that Nelson at that time attributed to the deterrent effect of the British fleet "in being" upon such an enterprise, involving an open-sea passage of over a hundred miles, though he neither expressed nor entertained any uncertainty as to the result of a meeting, if the enemy were encountered. The French Government, not yet appreciating the inefficiency to which its navy had been reduced by many concurrent circumstances, was ready to dispute the control of the Mediterranean, and it contemplated, among other things, a demonstration at Leghorn, similar to that successfully practised at Naples in 1792, which might compel the Court of Tuscany to renounce the formally hostile attitude it had assumed at the bidding of Great Britain; but it does not appear that there was any serious purpose of exposing a large detachment, in the attempt to hold upon the Continent a position, such as Spezia, with which secure communication by land could not be had.

Though none too careful to proportion its projects to the force at its disposal, the Directory sufficiently understood that a detachment at Spezia could not be self-dependent, nor could, with any certainty, combine its operations with those of the army in the Riviera; and also that, to be properly supported at all, there must be reasonably secure and unbroken communication, either by land or water, neither of which was possible until the British fleet was neutralized. The same consideration dictated to it the necessity of a naval victory, before sending out the expedition, of whose assembling the British were now hearing, and which was actually intended for Corsica; although it was known that in the island there had already begun the revulsion against the British rule, which culminated in open revolt the following year. Owing to the dearth of seamen, the crews of the French ships were largely composed of soldiers, and it was thought that, after beating the enemy, four or five thousand of these might be at once thrown on shore at Ajaccio, and that afterwards the main body could be sent across in safety. First of all, however, control of the sea must be established by a battle, more or less decisive.

On the 24th of February, 1795, the British fleet arrived at Leghorn, after a very severe cruise of over a fortnight. On the 2d of March Nelson mentioned, in a letter to his wife, that the French were said then to have a hundred and twenty-four transports full of troops, from which he naturally argued that they must mean to attempt something. On the evening of the 8th, an express from Genoa brought Hotham word that they were actually at sea, fifteen ships-of-the-line, with half a dozen or more smaller vessels. He sailed in pursuit early the next morning, having with him thirteen[26] British ships-of-the-line and one Neapolitan seventy-four. Of the former, four were three-decked ships, carrying ninety-eight to one hundred guns, a class of vessel of which the French had but one, the "Sans Culottes," of one hundred and twenty, which, under the more dignified name of "L'Orient," afterwards, met so tragic a fate at the Battle of the Nile; but they had, in compensation, three powerful ships of eighty guns, much superior to the British seventy-fours. As, however, only partial engagements followed, the aggregate of force on either side is a matter of comparatively little importance in a Life of Nelson.

Standing to the northward and westward, with a fresh easterly wind, the British fleet through its lookouts discovered the enemy on the evening of the day of sailing, and by the same means kept touch with them throughout the 10th and 11th; but the baffling airs, frequent in the Mediterranean, prevented the main body seeing them until the morning of the 12th. At daylight, then, they were visible from the "Agamemnon," in company with which were five British ships and the Neapolitan; the remainder of the fleet being so far to the eastward that their hulls were just rising out of the water. The British lying nearly becalmed, the French, who were to windward, bore down to within three miles; but although, in Nelson's judgment, they had a fair opportunity to separate the advanced British ships, with which he was, from the main body, they failed to improve it. Nothing happened that day, and, a fresh breeze from the west springing up at dusk, both fleets stood to the southward with it, the French being to windward. That night one of the latter, a seventy-four, having lost a topmast, was permitted to return to port.

The next morning the wind was still southwest and squally. Hotham at daylight ordered a general chase, which allowed each ship a certain freedom of movement in endeavoring to close with the French. The "Agamemnon" had been well to the westward, from the start; and being a very handy, quick-working ship, as well as, originally at least, more than commonly fast, was early in the day in a position where she had a fair chance for reaching the enemy. A favorable opportunity soon occurred, one of those which so often show that, if a man only puts himself in the way of good luck, good luck is apt to offer. At 8 A.M. the eighty-gun ship "Ca Ira," third from the rear in the French order, ran on board the vessel next ahead of her, and by the collision lost her fore and main topmasts. These falling overboard on the lee side—in this case the port,[27]—not only deprived her of by far the greater part of her motive power, but acted as a drag on her progress, besides for the time preventing the working of the guns on that side. The "Ca Ira" dropped astern of her fleet. Although this eighty-gun ship was much bigger than his own,—"absolutely large enough to take Agamemnon in her hold," Nelson said,—the latter saw his chance, and instantly seized it with the promptitude characteristic of all his actions. The "Agamemnon," if she was not already on the port tack, opposite to that on which the fleets had been during the night, must have gone about at this time, and probably for this reason. She was able thus to fetch into the wake of the crippled vessel, which a frigate had already gallantly attacked, taking advantage of the uselessness of the Frenchman's lee batteries, encumbered with the wreckage of the masts.

At 10 A.M., the "Ca Ira" and the "Agamemnon" having passed on opposite tacks, the latter again went about and stood in pursuit under all sail, rapidly nearing the enemy, who at this time was taken in tow by a frigate. But although in this position the French ship could not train her broadside guns upon her smaller opponent, she could still work freely the half-dozen stern guns, and did so with much effect. "So true did she fire," noted Nelson, "that not a shot missed some part of the ship, and latterly the masts were struck every shot, which obliged me to open our fire a few minutes sooner than I intended, for it was my intention to have touched his stern before a shot was fired." At quarter before eleven, the "Agamemnon" was within a hundred yards of the "Ca Ira's" stern, and this distance she was able to keep until I P.M. Here, by the use of the helm and of the sails, the ship alternately turned her starboard side to the enemy to fire her batteries, and again resumed her course, to regain the distance necessarily lost at each deviation. This raking fire not only killed and wounded many of the "Ca Ira's" crew, and injured the hull, but, what was tactically of yet greater importance, preventing the replacing of the lost spars. Thus was entailed upon the French that night a crippled ship, which they could not in honor abandon, nor yet could save without fighting for her,—a tactical dilemma which was the direct cause of the next day's battle.

Brief and cursory as is the notice of this action of the "Agamemnon" in Hotham's despatches, he mentions no other ship-of-the-line as engaged at this time, and states that she and the frigate were so far detached from the fleet, that they were finally obliged to retire on account of other enemy's vessels approaching. Nelson's journal says that two French ships, one of one hundred and twenty guns and a seventy-four, were at gunshot distance on the bow of the "Ca Ira" when he began to attack her. These, with several others of their fleet, went about some time before one, at which hour the frigate, towing the disabled ship, tacked herself, and also got the latter around. The "Agamemnon" standing on, she and the "Ca Ira" now crossed within half pistol-range; but, the French guns being too much elevated, the shot passed over their antagonist, who lost in this day's work only seven men wounded. Nelson then again tacked to follow, but by this time the French admiral had apparently decided that his crippled vessel must be rescued, and his fleet no longer defied by a foe so inferior in strength. Several of the enemy were approaching, when Hotham made a signal of recall, which Nelson on this occasion at least had no hesitation in obeying, and promptly. There was no pursuit, the hostile commander-in-chief being apparently satisfied to save the "Ca Ira" for the moment, without bringing on a general engagement.

In this affair, what is mainly to be noted in Nelson is not the personal courage, nor yet even the professional daring, or the skill which justified the daring. It may be conceded that all these were displayed in a high degree, but they can scarcely be claimed to have exceeded that shown by other officers, not a few, when equally tried. What is rather striking, account for it how we will, is that Nelson, here as always, was on hand when opportunity offered; that after three days of chase he, and he only, was so far to the front as to be able to snatch the fleeting moment. "On looking round," he says at ten o'clock, when about to begin the action, "I saw no ship-of-the-line within several miles to support me; the Captain was the nearest on our lee-quarter." With the looseness and lack of particularity which characterize most logs and despatches remaining from those days, and make the comprehension of naval engagements, other than the greatest, a matter of painful and uncertain inference, it is impossible accurately to realize the entire situation; but it seems difficult to imagine that among all the other thirteen captains, "where emulation was common to all and zeal for his Majesty's service the general description of the fleet," to use Hotham's words, none could have been on the spot to support so promising an attempt, had there been "common" that sort of emulation which takes a man ever to the front, not merely in battle but at all times,—the spirit that will not and cannot rest while anything remains to be done, ever pressing onward to the mark. To this unquestionably must be added the rapid comprehension of a situation, and the exceeding promptitude with which Nelson seized his opportunity, as well as the tenacious intrepidity with which he held to his position of advantage, despite the imminent threat to his safety from the uninjured and gigantic "Sans Culottes," barely out of gunshot to windward. It is right also to note the accessibility to advice, a feature of his genial and kindly temperament, to which he admitted much of the success was due. The trait is not rare in mankind in general, but it is exceptional in men of a character so self-reliant and decided as Nelson. "If the conduct of the Agamemnon on the 13th," he generously wrote, "was by any means the cause of our success on the 14th, Lieutenant Andrews has a principal share in the merit, for a more proper opinion was never given by an officer than the one he gave me on the 13th, in a situation of great difficulty."

The same hot spirit, the same unwearying energy, made itself still more manifest the next day, when were to be garnered the results of his own partial, yet, in its degree, decisive action of the 13th. "Sure I am," said he afterwards, "had I commanded our fleet on the 14th, that either the whole French fleet would have graced my triumph, or I should have been in a confounded scrape." A confounded scrape he would have been in on the 13th, and on other days also, great and small, had there been a different issue to the risks he dared, and rightly dared, to take. Of what man eminent in war, indeed, is not the like true? It is the price of fame, which he who dare not pay must forfeit; and not fame only, but repute.

During the following night the "Sans Culottes" quitted the French fleet. The wind continued southerly, both fleets standing to the westward, the crippled "Ca Ira" being taken in tow by the "Censeur," of seventy-four guns. At daylight of March 14, being about twenty miles southwest from Genoa, these two were found to be much astern and to leeward, of their main body,—that is, northeast from it. The British lay in the same direction, and were estimated by Nelson to be three and a half miles from the disabled ship and her consort, five miles from the rest of the French. At 5.30 A.M. a smart breeze sprang up from the northwest, which took the British aback, but enabled them afterwards to head for the two separated French ships. Apparently, from Nelson's log, this wind did not reach the main body of the enemy, a circumstance not uncommon in the Mediterranean. Two British seventy-fours, the "Captain" and the "Bedford," in obedience to signals, stood down to attack the "Censeur" and the "Ca Ira;" and, having in this to undergo for twenty minutes a fire to which they could not reply, were then and afterwards pretty roughly handled. They were eventually left behind, crippled, as their own fleet advanced. The rest of the British were meantime forming in line and moving down to sustain them. The French main body, keeping the southerly wind, wore in succession to support their separated ships, and headed to pass between them and their enemies. The latter, having formed, stood also towards these two, which now lay between the contestants as the prize to the victor.

Apparently, in these manoeuvres, the leading British ships ran again into the belt of southerly wind,—which the French kept throughout,—while part of the centre and rear were left becalmed, and had little or no share in the cannonade that followed. Under these conditions the resolution of the French admiral seems to have faltered, for instead of passing to leeward—north—of his endangered ships, which was quite in his power, and so covering them from the enemy, he allowed the latter to cut them off, thus insuring their surrender. His fleet kept to windward of the British, passing fairly near the two leading ships, the "Illustrious" and the "Courageux," who thus underwent a "concentration by defiling," that took the main and mizzen masts out of both, besides killing and wounding many of their people. The "Princess Royal" and "Agamemnon," which came next, could only engage at long range. "The enemy's fleet kept the southerly wind," wrote Nelson in his journal, "which enabled them to keep their distance, which was very great. At 8 A.M. they began to pass our line to windward, and the Ca Ira and Le Censeur were on our lee side; therefore the Illustrious, Courageux, Princess Royal, and Agamemnon were obliged to fight on both sides of the ship." At five minutes past ten A.M. both the French vessels struck, the "Ca Ira" having lost her three masts, and the "Censeur" her mainmast. It was past one P.M. when firing wholly ceased; and the enemy then crowded all possible sail to the westward, the British fleet lying with their heads to the southeast.

When the British line was forming, between seven and eight in the morning, Nelson was directed by Vice-Admiral Goodall, the second in command, to take his station astern of his flagship, the "Princess Royal," of ninety guns. Immediately behind the "Agamemnon" came the "Britannia," carrying Hotham's flag. This position, and the lightness of the wind, serve to explain how Nelson came to take the step he mentions in several letters; going on board the "Britannia," after the two French vessels struck, and urging the commander-in-chief to leave the prizes in charge of the British frigates and crippled ships-of-the-line, and vigorously to pursue the French, who having lost four ships out of their fleet, by casualty or capture, were now reduced to eleven sail. "I went on board Admiral Hotham as soon as our firing grew slack in the van, and the Ca Ira and the Censeur had struck, to propose to him leaving our two crippled ships, the two prizes, and four frigates, to themselves, and to pursue the enemy; but he, much cooler than myself, said, 'We must be contented, we have done very well.' Now, had we taken ten sail, and had allowed the eleventh to escape, when it had been possible to have got at her, I could never have called it well done. Goodall backed me; I got him to write to the admiral, but it would not do: we should have had such a day as I believe the annals of England never produced."

Nelson here evidently assumes that it was possible to have got at the French fleet. After a man's reputation has been established, there is always the danger of giving undue weight to his opinions, expressed at an earlier time, somewhat casually, and not under the sobering sense of responsibility. Hotham may have questioned the possibility of getting at the French effectively, having regard to the fickle lightness of the wind then prevalent, and to the fact that, besides the two ships partially dismasted and for the moment useless, two others, the "Captain" and the "Bedford," had suffered severely in sails and rigging. He would also doubtless consider that the three-decked ships, of which he had four, were notoriously bad sailers, and sure to drop behind if the chase lasted long, leaving to eight ships, including the "Neapolitan," the burden of arresting the enemy, who had shown very fair offensive powers in the morning. Nelson was not blind to these facts, and not infrequently alludes to them. "Had we only a breeze, I have no doubt we should have given a destructive blow to the enemy's fleet." "Sure I am, that had the breeze continued, so as to have allowed us to close with the enemy, we should have destroyed their whole fleet." Whether these remarks apply to the heat of the engagement, or to the proposed chase, which Hotham declined to permit, is not perfectly clear; but inasmuch as the second part of the action of the 14th consisted, actually, in the French filing by the "Courageux" and the "Illustrious," upon whom their fire was thus concentrated, while the rest of the British were becalmed out of gunshot, it is very possible he was thinking of that incident only, which doubtless would have taken a very different turn had the main body been able to come down. His wish to pursue is unquestionable, both from his assertion and from the whole character of his career before and after; and a casual remark, written ten days after the affair, shows his opinion confirmed by time. "Had our good admiral followed the blow, we should probably have done more, but the risk was thought too great."

The question attracts attention, both impersonally, as of military interest, and also as bearing upon Nelson's correctness of judgment, and professional characteristics, at this time. As regards the amount of wind, it is sufficient to say that the French fleet, having borne away to the westward in the afternoon, was next day out of sight.[28] Most of the British might equally have been out of sight from the position in which they remained. As for the risk—of course there was risk; but the whole idea of a general chase rests upon the fact that, for one reason or another, the extreme speed of the ships in each fleet will vary, and that it is always probable that the fastest of the pursuers can overtake the slowest of the pursued. The resulting combats compel the latter either to abandon his ships, or to incur a general action, which, from the fact of his flight, it is evident he has reason to avoid. In this case many of the retreating French were crippled,—some went off towed by frigates, and some without bowsprits. Unquestionably, the pursuers who thus engage may be overpowered before those following them come up; but the balance of chances is generally in their favor, and in the particular instance would have been markedly so, as was shown by the results of the two days' fighting, which had proved the superior quality of the British ships' companies.

The fact is, neither Hotham nor his opponent, Martin, was willing to hazard a decisive naval action, but wished merely to obtain a temporary advantage,—the moment's safety, no risks. "I have good reason," wrote Hotham in his despatch, "to hope, from the enemy's steering to the westward after having passed our fleet, that whatever might have been their design, their intentions are for the present frustrated." It is scarcely necessary to say that a man who looks no further ahead than this, who fails to realize that the destruction of the enemy's fleet is the one condition of permanent safety to his cause, will not rise to the conception presented to him on his quarter-deck by Nelson. The latter, whether by the sheer intuition of genius, which is most probable, or by the result of well-ordered reasoning, which is less likely, realized fully that to destroy the French fleet was the one thing for which the British fleet was there, and the one thing by doing which it could decisively affect the war. As he wrote four years later to St. Vincent, "Not one moment shall be lost in bringing the enemy to battle; for I consider the best defence for his Sicilian Majesty's dominions is to place myself alongside the French."

Yet Nelson was far from unconscious of the difficulties of Hotham's position, or from failing duly to allow for them. "Admiral Hotham has had much to contend with, a fleet half-manned, and in every respect inferior to the enemy; Italy calling him to her defence, our newly acquired kingdom[29] calling might and main, our reinforcements and convoy hourly expected; and all to be done without a force by any means adequate to it." Add to this the protection of British trade, of whose needs Nelson was always duly sensible. Yet, as one scans this list of troubles, with the query how to meet them running in his mind, it is scarcely possible not to see that each and every difficulty would have been solved by a crushing pursuit of the beaten French, preventing their again taking the sea. The British admiral had in his control no means to force them out of port. Therefore, when out, he should by no means have allowed them to get back. It is only just to Hotham, who had been a capable as well as gallant captain, to say that he had objected to take the chief command, on account of his health.

Nelson was delighted with his own share in these affairs, and with the praise he received from others for his conduct,—especially that on the 13th. He was satisfied, and justly, that his sustained and daring grapple with the "Ca Ira," in the teeth of her fleet, had been the effective cause of the next day's action and consequent success. It was so, in truth, and it presented an epitome of what the 14th and 15th ought to have witnessed,—a persistent clinging to the crippled ships, in order to force their consorts again into battle. "You will participate," he wrote to his uncle, "in the pleasure I must have felt in being the great cause of our success. Could I have been supported, I would have had Ca Ira on the 13th." Elliot, the Viceroy of Corsica, wrote to him: "I certainly consider the business of the 13th of March as a very capital feature in the late successful contest with the French fleet; and the part which the Agamemnon had in it must be felt by every one to be one of the circumstances that gave lustre to this event, and rendered it not only useful, but peculiarly honourable to the British arms." "So far," added Nelson, in quoting this to his wife, "all hands agree in giving me the praises which cannot but be comfortable to me to the last moment of my life." He adds then a reflection, evincing that he was assimilating some of the philosophy of life as well as of fighting. "The time of my being left out here by Lord Hood," which he had so much regretted, "I may call well spent; had I been absent, how mortified should I now be. What has happened may never happen to any one again, that only one ship-of-the-line out of fourteen should get into action with the French fleet for so long a time as two hours and a half, and with such a ship as the Ca Ira." It may be of interest to mention that the French fleet, upon this occasion, was largely composed of the vessels which three years later were destroyed by him at the Battle of the Nile.

In all his interests, ambitions, and gratification with success and praise, he at this period writes fully and intimately to his wife, between whom and himself there evidently still existed, after these two years of absence, a tender and affectionate confidence. "It is with an inexpressible pleasure I have received your letters, with our father's. I rejoice that my conduct gives you pleasure, and I trust I shall never do anything which will bring a blush on your face. Rest assured you are never absent from my thoughts." When looking forward to the action of March 14, he tells her: "Whatever may be my fate, I have no doubt in my own mind but that my conduct will be such as will not bring a blush on the face of my friends: the lives of all are in the hands of Him who knows best whether to preserve mine or not; to His will do I resign myself. My character and good name are in my own keeping. Life with disgrace is dreadful. A glorious death is to be envied;" and he signs himself with unwonted tenderness, "Ever your most faithful and affectionate husband." Save of the solemn hours before Trafalgar, when another image occupied his thoughts, this is the only personal record we have of the feelings with which this man, dauntless above his fellows, went into battle. He refrains thoughtfully from any mention of his health that may cause her anxiety, which she had shown herself over weak and worrying to bear; but he speaks freely of all that passes, confiding that with her he need have no reserves, even in a natural self-praise. "This I can say, that all I have obtained I owe to myself, and to no one else, and to you I may add, that my character stands high with almost all Europe. Even the Austrians knew my name perfectly." While silent on the subject of illness, he admits now that his eye had grown worse, and was in almost total darkness, besides being very painful at times; "but never mind," he adds cheeringly, "I can see very well with the other."

It is instructive to note, in view of some modern debated questions, that, despite the recent success, Nelson was by no means sure that the British fleet could defend Corsica. "I am not even now certain Corsica is safe," he wrote on the 25th of March, "if they undertake the expedition with proper spirit." The threat, never absent while the French fleet remained, was emphasized by the arrival of six ships-of-the-line from Brest, which reached Toulon on the 4th of April, materially altering the complexion of affairs in the Mediterranean, and furnishing an instructive instance of the probable punishment for opportunity imperfectly utilized, as on the 14th of March. Great discontent was felt at the apparent failure of the Admiralty to provide against this chance. "Hotham is very much displeased with them," wrote Nelson, "and certainly with reason;" and doubtless it is satisfactory to believe, rightly or wrongly, that our disadvantages are due to the neglect of others, and not to our own shortcomings.

Although the nominal force of the French was thus raised to twenty of the line, the want of seamen, and the absence of discipline, prevented their seizing the opportunity offered by the temporary inferiority of the British, reduced to thirteen besides two Neapolitans, in whose efficiency, whether justly or not, Nelson placed little confidence. At this critical moment, with a large British military convoy expected, and the fleet, to use his impatient expression, "skulking in port," a Jacobin outbreak occurred in Toulon, and the seamen assumed the opera-bouffe role of going ashore to assist in deliberations upon the measures necessary to save the country. Before they were again ready to go to sea, the convoy had arrived. On the 7th of June, however, the French again sailed from Toulon, seventeen ships-of-the-line; and the following day Nelson, writing to his brother, thus gave vent to the bitterness of his feelings: "We have been cruising off Minorca for a long month, every moment in expectation of reinforcements from England. Great good fortune has hitherto saved us, what none in this fleet could have expected for so long a time. Near two months we have been skulking from them. Had they not got so much cut up on the 14th of March, Corsica, Rome, and Naples would, at this moment, have been in their possession, and may yet, if these people [the Admiralty] do not make haste to help us. I am out of spirits, although never better in health."

His depression was due less to the inadequacy of the British fleet than to the dismissal of Lord Hood from the command, news of which was at this time received. When about to sail from England, to resume his duty as commander-in-chief, he got into a controversy with the Government about the force necessary in the Mediterranean, and, giving offence by the sharpness of his language, was ordered to haul down his flag. He never again went to sea. Nelson deplored his loss in terms unusually vivacious: "Oh, miserable Board of Admiralty! They have forced the first officer in our service away from his command." In more temperate but well-weighed words, he said: "This fleet must regret the loss of Lord Hood, the best officer, take him altogether, that England has to boast of. Lord Howe is certainly a great officer in the management of a fleet, but that is all. Lord Hood is equally great in all situations which an admiral can be placed in." In the judgment of the present writer, this estimate of Hood is as accurate as it is moderate in expression. It was nothing less than providential for the French that he was not in command on the 14th of March, or in the yet more trivial and discreditable affair of July 13th, when, to use again Nelson's words, "To say how much we wanted Lord Hood at that time, is to say, will you have all the French fleet or no action?"

On the 14th of June the expected reinforcement from England, nine ships-of-the-line, joined the fleet off Minorca; and a few days later a large convoy also arrived, with which the whole body of ships of war put into San Fiorenzo Bay on the 29th. This concluded for Nelson a period of three months, counting from the action of March 14th, of pretty monotonous cruising with the fleet, the last in which he was to take part until his admiral's flag was hoisted, two years later. Though unmarked by any event of importance, the time was passed not unprofitably to himself, for his correspondence bears marks of fruitful reflection, not merely upon the evident inadequacy of his commander-in-chief to the position he unwillingly occupied, but upon the character of the operations and the line of conduct that ought to be followed. If he does criticise the former's want of head for enterprise, he formulates for himself a general principle which showed its vital influence in his future career. "After all my complaints, I have no doubt but, if we can get close to the enemy, we shall defeat any plan of theirs; but we ought to have our ideas beyond mere defensive measures."

Among other matters for reflection, he had at this time a curious cause of anxiety, lest he should be promoted to flag rank, or rather that, being promoted, he should be obliged to return to England at once, as there would be too many admirals in the Mediterranean to permit his retention. A rumor was current, which proved to be correct, that there would be a large promotion on the 1st of June, the first anniversary of the victory celebrated by that name. Being then forty-six on the list of captains, Nelson feared that it might include him; in which case, if not permitted to hoist his flag where he was, not only would he lose his ardently desired opportunities for distinction,—"not an hour this war will I, if possible, be out of active service,"—but he would be put to much inconvenience and loss. "If they give me my flag, I shall be half ruined: unless I am immediately employed in this country, I should, by the time I landed in England, be a loser, several hundred pounds out of pocket." To be taken "from actual service would distress me much, more especially as I almost believe these people will be mad enough to come out." He escaped this disappointment, however, for the promotion left him still on the post-captains' list, seven from its head; but he received, what was both complimentary and profitable, the honorary rank of Colonel of Marines,—a sinecure appointment, of which there were then four, given to post-captains of distinguished services, and vacated by them upon promotion. These are now discontinued, and replaced, as a matter of emolument, by Good Service Pensions. Nelson heard later that this reward had been conferred upon him, not merely as a favor, but with a full recognition of all his claims to it. "The Marines have been given to me in the handsomest manner. The answer given to many was, the King knew no officer who had served so much for them as myself."

These promotions came timely to insure for him an employment particularly suited to his active temperament and fearlessness of responsibility, but which, though the fittest man for it, he might, with less seniority, not have received from Hotham, despite the well-known confidence in him shown by Hood. Since the spring opened, the Austrians and their allies, the Sardinians, had been waiting, ostensibly at least, for assistance from the Navy, to begin a forward movement, the first object of which was the possession of Vado Bay as a safe anchorage for the fleet. Until the arrival of Man and the convoy, Hotham had not felt strong enough to spare the required force; but now, after the ships had filled their wants from the transports, he, on the 4th of July, detached Nelson, with the "Agamemnon" and six smaller vessels, to co-operate with the Austrian commander-in-chief. The latter had begun his movement on the 13th of June, passing through Genoese territory despite the remonstrances of the Republic, whose neutrality could claim but slight regard from one belligerent, when she had already permitted the occupation of so much of her shore line by the other. The French had fallen back, when attacked, abandoning Vado Bay to the enemy, whose headquarters were established at that point.

Nelson, having sailed with four of his squadron, fell in with the French fleet of seventeen of the line, off the Riviera, on the 6th of July. He had, of course, to retreat, which he did upon San Fiorenzo, to join the body of the fleet. On the morning of the 7th the "Agamemnon" and her followers, with the French in close pursuit, were sighted from the anchorage, much to the surprise of the admiral, who knew the enemy had come out, but, upon the information of the Austrian general, believed them returned to Toulon. Why he had not more accurate news from lookout frigates is not clear; but, as Nelson said, he took things easy, and he had persuaded himself that they had left harbor only to exercise their men. As it was, the "Agamemnon" was hard pressed, but escaped, chiefly through the enemy's lack of seamanship. The fleet, when she arrived, was in the midst of refitting and watering, but succeeded in getting to sea the following morning in search of the enemy, who meantime had disappeared.

Precise information of the French whereabouts could not be obtained until the evening of the 12th, when two of the British lookout ships reported that they had been seen a few hours before to the southwest, south of the Hyeres Islands. The fleet made sail in that direction. During the night a heavy gale came on from west-northwest, out of the Gulf of Lyons, which split the main-topsails of several British ships. At daybreak the enemy were discovered in the southeast, standing north to close the land. After some elaborate manoeuvring—to reach one of those formal orders, often most useful, but which the irregular Mediterranean winds are prone to disarrange as soon as completed—the admiral at 8 A.M. signalled a general chase. The British being to windward, and the breeze fresh, the half-dozen leading ships had at noon closed the enemy's rear within three-quarters of a mile; but, from their relative positions, as then steering, the guns of neither could be used effectively. At this time a shift of wind to north headed off both fleets, which put their bows to the eastward, throwing the British advanced vessels, to use Nelson's expression, into line abreast, and bringing to bear the broadsides of the ships, of both fleets, that were within range. The action then began, the British fire being directed mainly upon the French rear ship, the "Alcide," which surrendered at about 2 P.M., and soon afterwards blew up. The wind had meanwhile changed again to the eastward, giving the weather-gage to the French, most of whom were considerably nearer the shore than their opponents, and better sailers.