The same tendency was shown upon the appearance of a Portuguese squadron of four ships-of-the-line, which entered the Mediterranean in July with orders to place themselves under his command. He first learned the fact upon this passage, and at once sent a frigate to Alexandria to beg the Portuguese admiral, the Marquis de Niza, to assume the blockade, as the most important service to be rendered the common cause. When the frigate reached its destination, Niza had come and gone, and Nelson then headed him off at the Strait of Messina, on his way to Naples, and sent him to blockade Malta. It may be added that this squadron remained under his command until December, 1799, and was of substantial utility in the various operations. Nelson professed no great confidence in its efficiency, which was not subjected to the severest tests; but he made a handsome acknowledgment to its commander when it was recalled to Lisbon.

On the 22d of September the flagship anchored at Naples. On the 15th her foremast had been carried away in a squall, and the "poor wretched Vanguard," as Nelson called her, having to be towed by a frigate, her two crippled consorts preceded her arrival by six days. The news of the victory had been brought three weeks before by the "Mutine," on the 1st of September. The Court party had gone wild with joy, in which the populace, naturally hostile to the French, had joined with southern vivacity of expression. Captain Capel, who commanded the brig, with Lieutenant Hoste, who was to succeed him when he departed with the despatches for England, had been at once taken to Court and presented. When they left the palace they were met by Lady Hamilton, who made them get into her carriage, and with characteristic bad taste and love of notoriety paraded them until dark through the streets of this neutral capital, she wearing a bandeau round her forehead with the words, "Nelson and Victory." "The populace saw and understood what it meant," wrote Hoste, "and 'Viva Nelson!' resounded through the streets. You can have no idea of the rejoicings that were made throughout Naples. Bonfires and illuminations all over the town; indeed, it would require an abler pen than I am master of to give you any account but what will fall infinitely short of what was the case."

By Nelson's orders the "Mutine" sailed in a few days to meet him with despatches, and on the 14th of September joined the division off Stromboli. With more important information, and letters from persons of greater consequence, she had brought also one from Lady Hamilton, giving a vivid picture of the general joy, and in particular an account of the Queen's state of mind, so highly colored and detailed that Nelson could only hope he might not be witness to a renewal of it, but which so impressed him that he quoted it at length to Lady Nelson. When the "Vanguard" approached the town, crowds of boats went out to meet her, and His Sicilian Majesty himself came on board when she was still a league from the anchorage. He had been preceded by the British ambassador with Lady Hamilton. The latter, having had only three weeks to recover from the first shock of the news, was greatly overcome, and dropped her lovely face and by no means slender figure into the arms of the admiral, who, on his part, could scarcely fail to be struck with the pose of one whose attitudes compelled the admiration of the most exacting critics. "The scene in the boat was terribly affecting," he wrote to his wife. "Up flew her ladyship, and exclaiming, 'O God, is it possible?' she fell into my arm more dead than alive. Tears, however, soon set matters to rights."

This was the beginning of an intimacy destined, in the end, to affect profoundly and unhappily the future of Nelson. Although Sir William Hamilton, in his own congratulatory letter by the "Mutine," called him "our bosom friend," they do not seem to have met since the summer of 1793, when the young captain carried Hood's despatches from Toulon to Naples; and Nelson, while acknowledging on the present occasion the kindness of an invitation to take up his quarters at the embassy, had expressed a preference for rooms at a hotel, on account of the business to be transacted. This reluctance, however, was easily and properly overruled, and immediately after anchoring he went to live at the ambassador's house, which, under the management of the celebrated woman who presided there, became the social centre of the welcomes lavished not only upon himself, but upon all the officers of the ships.

Emma, Lady Hamilton, the second wife of Sir William, was at this time thirty-three years old, her husband being sixty-eight. Her name, when first entering the world, was Amy Lyon. Born in Cheshire of extremely poor parents, in the humblest walk of life, she had found her way up to London, while yet little more than a child, and there, having a beautiful face, much natural charm of manner and disposition, utterly inexperienced, and with scarcely any moral standards,—of which her life throughout shows but little trace,—she was speedily ruined, fell so far, in fact, that even with all her attractions it seemed doubtful whether any man would own himself responsible for her condition, or befriend her. In these circumstances, when not yet seventeen, she was taken up by a nephew of Sir William Hamilton, Mr. Charles Greville, who recognized not merely her superficial loveliness, but something of the mental and moral traits underlying it, which promised a capacity for development into an interesting and affectionate household companion. Upon her promises of amendment, in the matter of future relations with men, and of submission to his guidance and wishes in the general conduct of her life, he took her in charge, and the two lived together for nearly four years.

Greville bestowed a good deal of pains upon her training, and was rewarded, not only by gratitude and careful compliance with his directions, but by her sincere and devoted affection. The girl became heartily and fondly in love with him, finding both contentment and happiness in the simply ordered home provided for her. Her education, which hitherto was of the smallest, received attention,—her letters showing a very great improvement both in spelling and mode of expression by the end of their association. On the moral side, of course, there was not much development to be expected from one whose standards, with less excuse, were in no way better than her own. On this side Greville's teaching was purely utilitarian. Her position was considered as a calling,—success in which demanded certain proprieties and accomplishments, only to be attained by the practice of habitual self-control, alike in doing and in not doing.

The future Lady Hamilton was affectionate and impulsive, good-humored, with generous instincts and a quick temper; but she was also ambitious and exceptionally clever. She loved Greville warmly; but she took to heart the hard truths of his teachings, and they sank deep in a congenial soil. Under the influence of the two motives, she applied herself to gain, and did gain, a certain degree of external niceness and self-control. Her affection for Greville made her willing, for his sake, because he was not rich, to live quietly, to accept modest surroundings, and to discard whatever was coarse in associates, or unbecoming in her own person or conduct. He, while relaxing none of his requirements, repaid her with courtesy and increasing admiration, than which nothing was dearer to her; for, if not appreciative of the satisfaction of self-respect, she was keenly alive to the delights of homage from others, though extorted by purely adventitious qualities. Glory was to her more than honor. This love of admiration, fostered, yet pruned, by Greville's shrewd precepts, was her dominant trait. To its gratification her singular personal advantages contributed, and they were powerfully supported by an unusual faculty for assuming a part, for entering into a character and representing its external traits. Thus gifted by nature, and swayed by vanity, her development was for the time regulated and chastened by the disinterestedness of her passion for her lover. Her worse qualities were momentarily kept in abeyance. Naturally lovable, not only in exterior but in temperament, she became more and more attractive. "Consider," wrote Greville, referring to her surroundings before she passed into his hands, "what a charming creature she would have been, if she had been blessed with the advantages of an early education, and had not been spoilt by the indulgence of every caprice."

Unfortunately the restraining influence, probably ephemeral in any event, was about to be rudely removed, permitting to flourish in unrestrained vigor the natural tendency to compel admiration and secure advantage by the spell of physical beauty, and by the exertion of natural aptitudes for pleasing in the only path to success open to her. In 1782 Hamilton's first wife died, and in 1784 he came to England on leave. There he met Amy Lyon, now known as Emma Hart, in the house provided for her by Greville. His admiration of her was extreme, and its tendency was not misunderstood by her. He returned to his post at Naples at the end of the year. In the course of 1785 Greville, who was now in his thirty-sixth year, decided that the condition of his fortune made it imperative for him to marry, and that as a first step thereto he must break with Emma Hart. Hamilton's inclination for her provided a ready means for so doing, so far as the two men were concerned; but her concurrence was not sure. After some correspondence, it was arranged that she should go to Naples in the spring of 1786, to live there under Hamilton's care, with the expectation on her part that Greville would join her a few months later. Placed as she then would be, it was probable that she would eventually accept the offers made her; though it would be less than just to either Greville or Hamilton, to allow the impression that they did not intend to provide sufficiently for her needs, whatever her decision.

In this way she left England in the spring of 1786, reaching Naples on the 26th of April. When the poor girl, after many of her letters to her lover remained unanswered, fully realized, that the separation was final, her grief was extreme, and found utterance in words of tenderness and desolation, which, however undisciplined in expression, are marked by genuine pathos. But anger struggled with sorrow for the mastery in her soul. She was too keen-witted not to have had an inkling of the possible outcome of her departure from England, and of the doubtful position she was occupying at Naples; but her wishes had made her willingly deaf to any false ring in the assurances given her by Greville, and she resented not only the abandonment, but the deceit which she, justly or unjustly, conceived to have been practised, while her womanliness revolted from the cold-blooded advice given by him to accept the situation. The conflict was so sharp that for a time both he and Hamilton expected she would return to England; but Greville had not labored in vain at what he was pleased to consider her education. By the end of the year she was addressing Hamilton in words of very fairly assumed affection, but not until she had written to Greville, with a certain haughty desperation, "If you affront me, I will make him marry me." The threat was two-edged, for Hamilton intended Greville to be his heir; but the latter probably gave little heed to a contingency he must have thought very unlikely for a man of fifty-six, who had passed his life in the world, and held Hamilton's public position.

To effect this, however, Emma Hart now bent her personal charms, strong purpose, and the worldly wisdom with which Greville had taught her to assure her hold upon a man. Love, in its unselfishness, passed out of her life with Greville. Other men might find her pliant, pleasing, seductive; he alone knew her as disinterested. She followed out her design with a patience, astuteness, and consistency which attest the strength of her resolution, and her acute intellectual perception of the advantages at her disposal. Ambition, a natural trait with her, had been trained to self-control, in order to compass a lowly, colorless success. Unlooked-for opportunity now held before her eyes, distant and difficult of attainment, but not impossible, a position of assured safety, luxury, and prominence, which appealed powerfully to the love of pleasure, still dormant, and to the love of conspicuousness, which became the two most noticeable features of her character.

With all her natural advantages, however, the way was hard and long. She had to become indispensable to Hamilton, and at the same time, and by the same methods, an object the more desirable to him because of her evident attractiveness to others. Above all, she had to contend with her own temper, naturally lively and prone to bursts of anger, which the prolonged suspense of the struggle, acting upon a woman's nerves, tended peculiarly to exasperate. Hamilton was of an age when he might be enslaved by fondness, but not constrained by strength of passion to endure indefinitely household tempests, much less to perpetuate them upon himself by lasting bonds. In all this Emma Hart showed herself fully equal to the task. Tenderly affectionate to him, except when carried away by the fits of irritability which both he and Greville had occasion to observe, she complied readily with all his wishes, and followed out with extraordinary assiduity his plans for her improvement in education and in accomplishments. The society which gathered round them was, of course, almost wholly of men, who one and all prostrated themselves before her beauty and cleverness, with the same unanimity of submission as did the officers of Nelson's division after the Battle of the Nile. But, while giving free rein to coquetry, and revelling in admiration, she afforded no ground for scandal to the world, or dissatisfaction to Hamilton. In the attitude of outsiders towards her, he had reason to see only the general testimony to her charms and to his own good fortune. At the end of 1787 he wrote to Greville: "I can assure you her behaviour is such as has acquired her many sensible admirers, and we have a good man society, and all the female nobility, with the queen at their head, show her every distant civility."

Thus she persisted, keeping her beauty, and growing in mental acquirements and accomplishments, but making little apparent headway towards the great object of her ambition. "I fear," wrote Hamilton towards the middle of 1789, when she had been three years with him, "her views are beyond what I can bring myself to execute; and that when her hopes on that point are over, she will make herself and me unhappy. Hitherto her behaviour is irreproachable, but her temper, as you must know, unequal." He underrated her perseverance, and exaggerated his own strength of reluctance, innate and acquired. Impossible as it would seem, with his antecedents and with hers, his friends and acquaintances became alarmed for the result, and not without cause. "Her influence over him exceeds all belief," wrote a mutual friend to Greville in March, 1791. "His attachment exceeds admiration, it is perfect dotage." Shortly after this letter was written the two went to England, and there they were married on the 6th of September, 1791. By the end of the year they were back in Naples, and did not again leave Italy up to the time of Nelson's arrival in 1798.

Lady Hamilton did not abuse the security of the place she had won with so much pains, nor on the other hand did her ambition and love of prominence permit her to settle down to inert enjoyment of it. The careful self-restraint with which she had observed the proprieties of her former false position facilitated the disappearance of prejudices naturally arising from it. Many English ladies of rank, passing through Naples, visited her, and those who refused to ignore the past of the woman, in the position of the British minister's wife, were by some sharply criticised. "She has had a difficult part to act," wrote Hamilton, six months after their return, "and has succeeded wonderfully, having gained, by having no pretensions, the thorough approbation of all the English ladies. The Queen of Naples was very kind to her on our return, and treats her like any other travelling lady of distinction; in short, we are very comfortably situated here." "We dined yesterday with Sir William and Lady Hamilton," wrote Lady Malmesbury, whose husband was among the most distinguished diplomatists of the day. "She really behaves as well as possible, and quite wonderfully, considering her origin and education."

This last phrase, used at the culmination of Lady Hamilton's good fortune and personal advance, was wholly good-natured; but it sums up the best of the not very good that can be said of her during the height of her prosperity, and in later years. Although, as has been remarked, she did not at this time abuse the security which as a wife she had attained,—for policy too clearly dictated the continuance of her previous circumspection,—the necessity for strenuous watchfulness, exertion, and self-restraint, in order to reach a distant goal, no longer existed; and, although a woman of many amiable and generous impulses, she had not a shred of principle to take the place of the motive of self-interest, which hitherto had been so peremptory in its exactions. What she was in delicacy in 1791, that she remained in 1796,—five years after the disappearance of her social disabilities; a pretty fair proof that what she possessed of it was but skin deep, the result of a diligent observance of Greville's proprieties, for her personal advantage, not the token of a noble inner spirit struggling from excusable defilement to the light. "She does the honours of the house with great attention and desire to please," wrote Greville's correspondent of 1791, before quoted, "but wants a little refinement of manners, in which, in the course of six years, I wonder she has not made greater progress." "She is all Nature and yet all Art," said Sir Gilbert Elliot, in 1796; "that is to say, her manners are perfectly unpolished, of course very easy, though not with the ease of good breeding, but of a barmaid; excessively good humoured, and wishing to please and be admired by all ages and sorts of persons that come in her way; but besides considerable natural understanding, she has acquired, since her marriage, some knowledge of history and of the arts, and one wonders at the application and pains she has taken to make herself what she is. With men her language and conversation are exaggerations of anything I ever heard anywhere; and I was wonderfully struck with these inveterate remains of her origin, though the impression was very much weakened by seeing the other ladies of Naples." "I thought her a very handsome, vulgar woman," curtly commented the lieutenant of a frigate which visited Naples in the summer of 1798, while hunting for Nelson in the game of cross-purposes that preceded the Nile.[70] Allowing for difference of observers, it is plain that the Lady Hamilton whom Nelson now met, had not improved in essentials over the Emma Hart of a half-dozen years before.

Two years afterwards, the verdict of these men was confirmed by Mrs. St. George,[71] a lady in London society, who viewed her possibly with something of the repugnant prejudice of a refined and cultivated woman, yet evidently measured her words calmly, even in her private journal. "I think her bold, daring, vain even to folly, and stamped with the manners of her first situation much more strongly than one would suppose, after having represented Majesty, and lived in good company fifteen years. Her dress is frightful. Her waist is absolutely between her shoulders." Nelson measured her by a different standard. "In every point of view," he tells herself, "from Ambassatrice to the duties of domestic life, I never saw your equal. That elegance of manners, accomplishments, and, above all, your goodness of heart, is unparalleled." The same lady describes her personal appearance, at the time when his devotion had reached the height from which it never declined. "Her figure is colossal, but, excepting her feet, which are hideous, well shaped. Her bones are large, and she is exceedingly embonpoint. The shape of all her features is fine, as is the form of her head, and particularly her ears; her teeth are a little irregular, but tolerably white; her eyes light blue, with a brown spot in one, which, though a defect, takes nothing away from her beauty or expression. Her eyebrows and hair (which, by the bye, is never clean) are dark, and her complexion coarse. Her expression is strongly marked, variable, and interesting; her movements in common life ungraceful; her voice loud, yet not disagreeable." Elliot's briefer mention of her appearance is at once confirmatory and complementary of that of Mrs. St. George: "Her person is nothing short of monstrous for its enormity, and is growing every day. Her face is beautiful."

To these opinions it may be not uninteresting to add the critical estimate of William Beckford, uttered many years later. Beckford was not an admirable character, far from it; but he had known good society, and he had cultivated tastes. Nelson accepted his hospitality, and, with the Hamiltons, spent several days under his roof, about Christmas time, 1800. In reply to the question, "Was the second Lady Hamilton a fascinating woman?" he said, "I never thought her so. She was somewhat masculine, but symmetrical in figure, so that Sir William called her his Grecian. She was full in person, not fat, but embonpoint. Her carriage often majestic, rather than feminine. Not at all delicate, ill-bred, often very affected, a devil in temper when set on edge. She had beautiful hair and displayed it. Her countenance was agreeable,—fine, hardly beautiful, but the outline excellent. She affected sensibility, but felt none—was artful; and no wonder, she had been trained in the Court of Naples—a fine school for an English woman of any stamp. Nelson was infatuated. She could make him believe anything, that the profligate queen was a Madonna. He was her dupe. She never had a child in her life."[72] As to this last assertion, Beckford was not in a position to have personal knowledge.

But along with this native coarseness, which, if not ineradicable, was never eradicated, she possessed an intuitive and perfect sense, amounting to genius, for what propriety and good taste demanded in the presentation of an ideal part,—the gift of the born actress. Of her powers in this way the celebrated "Attitudes" were the chief example, and there is no disagreement among the witnesses, either as to their charm or as to the entire disappearance of the every-day woman in the assumed character. "We had the attitudes a night or two ago by candle light," wrote Sir Gilbert Elliot in 1796. "They come up to my expectations fully, which is saying everything. They set Lady Hamilton in a very different light from any I had seen her in before; nothing about her, neither her conversation, her manners, nor figure, announce the very refined taste which she discovers in this performance, besides the extraordinary talent which is needed for the execution." "You never saw anything so charming as Lady Hamilton's attitudes," wrote Lady Malmesbury in 1791. "The most graceful statues or pictures do not give you an idea of them." "It is a beautiful performance," wrote Mrs. St. George, who saw her in 1800, when the Hamiltons and Nelson were travelling on the Continent, "amusing to the most ignorant, and highly interesting to the lovers of art. It is remarkable that although coarse and ungraceful in common life, she becomes highly graceful, and even beautiful, during this performance. It is also singular that, in spite of the accuracy of her imitation of the finest ancient draperies, her usual dress is tasteless, vulgar, loaded and unbecoming."

The stormy period of the French Revolution, which was about to burst into universal war at the time she was married, gave Lady Hamilton another opportunity to come yet more conspicuously before men's eyes than she had hitherto done. It is not easy to say what degree of influence she really attained, or what particular results she may have effected; but she certainly managed to give herself so much the air of a person of importance, in the political intrigues of the day in Naples, as at the least to impose successfully upon a great many, and to be accepted very much at her own valuation. The French ambassador, writing to Bonaparte in 1798, says: "If the preponderance which the French Republic ought to take here, removed hence Acton and the wife of Hamilton, this country, without other changes, would be extremely useful for the execution of all your projects in the Mediterranean;" and Sir William himself, who should have known, speaks of her activity and utility,—"for several years the real and only confidential friend of the Queen of Naples." Nelson, writing to the Queen of Naples in 1804, after Hamilton's death, said: "Your Majesty well knows that it was her capacity and conduct which sustained his diplomatic character during the last years in which he was at Naples."[73] Certainly, Nelson believed, with all the blindness of love, whatever his mistress chose to tell him, but he was not without close personal knowledge of the inside history of at least two of those last years; for, in 1801, addressing Mr. Addington, then Prime Minister, he used these words: "Having for a length of time seen the correspondence both public and private, from all the Neapolitan ministers to their Government and to the Queen of Naples, I am perfectly acquainted with the views of the several Powers." For her success Lady Hamilton was indebted, partly to her personal advantages, and partly to her position as wife of the British minister and chosen friend to the Queen. Great Britain played a leading part everywhere in the gigantic struggle throughout the Continent, but to a remote peninsular kingdom like Naples, protected by its distance from the centres of strife, yet not wholly inaccessible by land, the chief maritime state was the one and only sufficient ally. A rude reminder of his exposure to naval attack had been given to the King of the Two Sicilies, in 1792, by the appearance of a French fleet, which extorted satisfaction for an alleged insult, by threatening instant bombardment of his capital.

Sir William Hamilton, who had been minister since 1765, thus found himself suddenly converted from a dilettante and sportsman, lounging through life, into a busy diplomat, at the centre of affairs of critical moment. At sixty-two the change could scarcely have been welcome to him, but to his beautiful and ambitious wife the access of importance was sweet, for it led to a close friendship with the Queen, already disposed to affect her, even in the notorious position she had held before her marriage; and the Queen, a daughter of Maria Theresa and sister to Marie Antoinette, was much more of a man than the King. The intimacy became the talk of Naples, and the report spread, easily believed, because in the nature of things very likely, that the personal relations between the two women cloaked a great deal of underhand work, such as often accompanies diplomatic difficulties. Nor did Lady Hamilton lack natural qualifications for the position into which she undoubtedly wished to thrust herself. She was a brave, capable, full-blooded, efficient woman, not to be daunted by fears or scruples; a woman who, if only nerve and intelligence were required, and if distinction for herself was at stake, could be fairly depended upon. There was in her make-up a good deal of pagan virtue. She could appreciate and admire heroism, and, under the stimulus of excitement, of self-conscious magnanimity, for the glitter of effective performance and the applause of onlookers, she was quite capable of heroic action. It was this daring spirit, coarsely akin to much that was best in himself, and of which she made proof under his own eyes, that Nelson recognized; and this, in the thought of the writer, was the body of truth, from which his enthusiasm, enkindled by her charms and by her tenderness towards himself, projected such a singular phantasm of romantic perfections.

Such was the woman, and such the position in the public eye that she had gained for herself, when to Naples, first in the European continent, came the news which made Nelson for the moment the most conspicuous man of the day. He had achieved a triumph the most startlingly dazzling that had yet been gained, and over one who up to that time had excelled all other warriors in the brilliancy and extent of his victories. Bonaparte was not yet the Napoleon whom history knows, but thus far he had been the most distinguished child of the Revolution. That Lady Hamilton then and there formed the purpose of attaching Nelson to her, by the bonds which have sullied his memory, is most improbable; but it is in entire keeping with the career and the self-revelations of the woman that she should, instinctively, if not with deliberation, have resolved to parade herself in the glare of his renown, and appear in the foreground upon the stage of his triumph, the chief dispenser of his praises, the patroness and proprietor of the hero. The great occasion should shed a glamour round her, together with him. "Emma's passion is admiration," Greville had written soon after they parted, "and it is capable of aspiring to any line which would be celebrated, and it would be indifferent, when on that key, whether she was Lucretia or Sappho, or Scaevola or Regulus; anything grand, masculine or feminine, she could take up."

Unhappily, Nelson was not able to stand the heady dose of flattery administered by a woman of such conspicuous beauty and consummate art; nor was his taste discriminating enough to experience any wholesome revolt against the rankness of the draught she offered him. The quick appreciation of the born actress, which enabled her when on the stage to clothe herself with a grace and refinement that dropped away when she left it, conspired with his simplicity of confidence in others, and his strong tendency to idealize, to invest her with a character very different from the true. Not that the Lady Hamilton of reality was utterly different from the Lady Hamilton of his imagination. That she ever loved him is doubtful; but there were in her spirit impulses capable of sympathetic response to his own in his bravest acts, though not in his noblest motives. It is inconceivable that duty ever appealed, to her as it did to him, nor could a woman of innate nobility of character have dragged a man of Nelson's masculine renown about England and the Continent, till he was the mock of all beholders; but on the other hand it never could have occurred to the energetic, courageous, brilliant Lady Hamilton, after the lofty deeds and stirring dramatic scenes of St. Vincent, to beg him, as Lady Nelson did, "to leave boarding to captains." Sympathy, not good taste, would have withheld her. In Lady Nelson's letters there is evidence enough of a somewhat colorless womanly affection, but not a thrill of response to the greatness of her husband's daring, even when surrounded herself by the acclamations it called forth.

What Nelson had never yet found in woman Lady Hamilton gave him,—admiration and appreciation, undisguised and unmeasured, yet bestowed by one who had the power, by the admission of even unfriendly critics, of giving a reality and grace to the part she was performing. He was soon at her feet. The playful gallantry with which Ball, Elliot, and even old St. Vincent[74] himself, paid court to a handsome woman, greedy of homage, became in Nelson a serious matter. Romantic in temperament, he was all day in flattering contact with her. Worn out and ill from that "fever of anxiety," to use his own words, which he had endured since the middle of June, she attended and nursed him. "Lady Hamilton," he exclaimed to Lady Nelson, with enthusiasm undiscriminating in more ways than one, "is one of the very best women in this world; she is an honour to her sex." A week later he tells her, with an odd collocation of persons: "My pride is being your husband, the son of my dear father, and in having Sir William and Lady Hamilton for my friends. While these approve my conduct, I shall not feel or regard the envy of thousands." The matter was passing rapidly into the platonic stage, in which Sir William was also erelong assigned an appropriate, if not wholly flattering, position. "What can I say of hers and Sir William's attention to me? They are in fact, with the exception of you and my good father, the dearest friends I have in this world. I live as Sir William's son in the house, and my glory is as dear to them as their own; in short, I am under such obligations as I can never repay but with my eternal gratitude." "Naples is a dangerous place," he sagely tells Lord St. Vincent, "and we must keep clear of it. I am writing opposite Lady Hamilton, therefore you will not be surprised at the glorious jumble of this letter. Were your Lordship in my place, I much doubt if you could write so well; our hearts and our hands must be all in a flutter." Matters progressed; within ten days the veteran seaman learned, among other concerns of more or less official importance, that "Lady Hamilton is an Angel. She has honoured me by being my ambassadress to the queen: therefore she has my implicit confidence and is worthy of it."

That such intimacy and such relations resulted in no influence upon the admiral's public action is not to be believed. That he consciously perverted his views is improbable, but that he saw duty under other than normal lights is not only probable, but evident. His whole emotional nature was stirred as it never had been. Incipient love and universal admiration had created in him a tone of mind, and brought to birth feelings, which he had, seemingly, scarcely known. "I cannot write a stiff formal public letter," he tells St. Vincent effusively. "You must make one or both so. I feel you are my friend, and my heart yearns to you." Such extravagance of expression and relaxation of official tone has no pertinent cause, and is at least noteworthy. The Court, or rather the Queen through Lady Hamilton, took possession of him. He became immediately one of the little coterie centring round Her Majesty, and he reflected its tone and partisanship, which, fostered probably in the intimate conversations of the two women, were readily transmitted to the minister by the wife whom he adored. The Queen, impetuous, enterprising, and headstrong, like her mother and sister, moved more by feminine feelings of hatred and revenge against the French than by well-balanced considerations of policy, not only favored war, but wished to precipitate the action of the Emperor by immediately attacking the French in the Roman territory. The decision and daring of such a course was so consonant to Nelson's own temperament that he readily sympathized; but it is impossible to admit its wisdom, from either a political or military standpoint. It was an excessively bad combination, substituting isolated attacks for co-operation, and risking results upon the chance of prompt support, by a state which would be offended and embarrassed by the step taken.

Under ordinary conditions Nelson might have seen this, but he was well handled. Within three days he had been persuaded that upon his personal presence depended the salvation of Italy. "My head is quite healed, and, if it were necessary, I could not at present leave Italy, who looks up to me as, under God, its Protector." He continually, by devout recollection of his indebtedness to God, seeks to keep himself in hand. "I am placed by Providence in that situation, that all my caution will be necessary to prevent vanity from showing itself superior to my gratitude and thankfulness,"—but the current was too strong for him, and was swollen to a torrent by the streams of adulation, which from all quarters flowed in upon a temperament only too disposed to accept them. "Could I, my dearest Fanny," he writes to Lady Nelson, "tell you half the honours which are shown me here, not a ream of paper would hold it." A grand ball was given on his birthday, September 29; and a rostral column was "erected under a magnificent canopy, never, Lady Hamilton says, to come down while they remain at Naples." Within a week the conviction of his own importance led him to write to Lady Hamilton, evidently for transmission to the Queen, an opinion, or rather an urgent expression of advice, that Naples should at once begin war. It is only conjectural to say that this opinion, which rested on no adequate knowledge of the strength of the Neapolitan Kingdom, was elicited by the Queen through Lady Hamilton; but the inference derives support from the words, "I have read with admiration the queen's dignified and incomparable letter of September, 1796,"—two years before. That his views were not the simple outcome of his own unbiassed study of the situation is evident enough. "This country, by its system of procrastination, will ruin itself," he writes to St. Vincent, the very day after drawing up the letter in question; "the queen sees it and thinks"—not as I do, but—"as we do." That Lady Hamilton was one of the "we" is plain, for in the postscript to the letter he says: "Your Ladyship will, I beg, receive this letter as a preparative for Sir William Hamilton, to whom I am writing, with all respect, the firm and unalterable opinion of a British admiral," etc. Certainly these words—taken with those already quoted, and written just a week afterwards, "Lady Hamilton has been my ambassadress to the queen"—indicate that she was the intermediary between Nelson and the Court, as well as between him and her husband.

There is no record of any official request for this unofficial and irregular communication of the opinion of a British admiral; and, of course, when a man has allowed himself, unasked, though not unprompted, to press such a line of action, he has bound himself personally, and embarrassed himself officially, in case it turns out badly. Nelson very soon, within a fortnight, had to realize this, in the urgent entreaties of the Court not to forsake them; and to see reason for thinking "that a strong wish for our squadron's being on the Coast of Naples is, that in case of any mishap, that their Majesties think their persons much safer under the protection of the British flag than under any other;" that is—than under their own. They could not trust their own people; they could not, as the event proved, trust their army in the field; and the veteran Neapolitan naval officer, Caracciolo, whether he deserved confidence or not, was stung to the quick when, in the event, they sought refuge with a foreign admiral instead of with himself. That Nelson should not have known all this, ten days after reaching Naples, was pardonable enough, and, if formally asked for advice without such facts being placed before him, he could not be responsible for an error thus arising; but the case is very different when advice is volunteered. He is more peremptory than the minister himself. "You will not believe I have said or done anything, without the approbation of Sir William Hamilton. His Excellency is too good to them, and the strong language of an English Admiral telling them plain truths of their miserable system may do good."

The particular position of Naples relatively to France was this. French troops had for a year past occupied the Roman Republic, which had been established by them upon the overthrow of the Papal Government. Their presence there was regarded by Nelson as a constant threat to the Two Sicilies, and this to an extent was true; but rather because of the contagion of revolutionary ideas than from the military point of view. From the latter, it should have been obvious to a man like Nelson that the French must be deterred, under existing conditions, from entering Naples unprovoked; because the farther they advanced the more exposed was their army, in case war, which was darkly threatening, should be renewed in Upper Italy. They dared not, unless by folly, or because first attacked, prolong their already too extended ex-centric movement into Lower Italy. This was true, taking account of Austria only; but now that the British fleet was released by the entire destruction of the French at the Nile, and could operate anywhere on the coast, it would be doubly imprudent; and when the news that it had been done reached Egypt, Bonaparte, who had himself felt the weight of Naples as a possible enemy, remote and feeble as she was, exclaimed, "Italy is lost!" That Naples should co-operate in the general movement against France was right, although, as Nelson well knew, she had never dared do so under much more favorable conditions,—a fact which by itself should have suggested to him caution; but that she should act alone, with the idea of precipitating war, refusing to await the moment fixed by the principal states, was folly. This, however, was the course determined, under the combined impulse of the Queen, Lady Hamilton, and Nelson; and it was arranged that, after visiting the blockade off Malta, he should return to Naples to co-operate in the intended movement.

On the 15th of October Nelson sailed from Naples for Malta in the "Vanguard," with three ships-of-the-line which had lately joined him. He still felt, with accurate instinct, that Egypt and the Ionian Islands, with Malta, constituted the more purely maritime interests, in dealing with which the fleet would most further the general cause, and he alludes frequently to his wish to attend to them; but he promised the King that he would be back in Naples in the first week of November, to support the projected movement against the French. He remained off Malta, therefore, only one week, during which adequate arrangements were made for the blockade of the island, which had been formally proclaimed on the 12th of October, and was conducted for most of the following year by the Portuguese squadron; the senior British officer, Captain Ball, acting ashore with the insurgent Maltese. These had risen against the French during the summer, and now held them shut up in La Valetta. The adjacent island of Gozo surrendered to the British on the 28th. Hood continued in charge off Alexandria with three ships-of-the-line; while the Ionian Islands were left to themselves, until a combined Russian and Turkish squadron entered the Mediterranean a few weeks later.

On the 5th of November Nelson returned to Naples. "I am, I fear, drawn into a promise that Naples Bay shall never be left without an English man-of-war. I never intended leaving the coast of Naples without one; but if I had, who could resist the request of such a queen?" He could ground much upon the Admiralty's orders, given when he was first sent into the Mediterranean, to protect the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and he had understood that the Emperor also would give his aid, if Naples attacked. This impression received strength from an Austrian general, Mack,—then of high reputation, but afterwards better known by his surrender to Napoleon at Ulm, in 1805,—being sent to command the Neapolitan army. Sir William Hamilton, however, writing on the 26th of October, was more accurate in saying that the Emperor only advised the King "to act openly against the French at Malta, as he would certainly support him;" for, Naples having a feudal claim upon the island, action there could be represented as merely resistance to aggression. In consequence of this misunderstanding, great confusion ensued in the royal councils when a courier from Vienna brought word, on the 13th of November, that that Court wished it left to the French to begin hostilities; otherwise, it would give no assurance of help. Nelson was now formally one of the Council which deliberated upon military operations. In virtue of this position he spoke out, roughly enough. "I ventured to tell their Majesties that one of the following things must happen to the King, and he had his choice,—'Either to advance, trusting to God for his blessing on a just cause, to die with l'epee a la main, or remain quiet and be kicked out of your Kingdoms.'" Thus rudely adjured, the King decided to be a hero after the pattern of Nelson.

On the 22d of November a summons was sent to the French to evacuate the Papal States and Malta, and a Neapolitan army marched upon Rome, commanded by Mack in person. At the same time Nelson took on board his squadron a corps of five thousand, to seize Leghorn, the possession of which, with control of the sea, was not unjustly considered threatening to the communications between the centre of French power, in Northern Italy, and the exposed corps at the foot of the peninsula. After landing this body, Nelson again went to Naples, leaving Troubridge in charge at Leghorn, with several ships; directing him also to keep vessels cruising along the Riviera, and before Genoa, to break up the coastwise traffic, which had resumed great proportions since the absence of the British from the Mediterranean, and upon which the French army in Piedmont and Lombardy now greatly depended.

On the 5th of December the "Vanguard" once more anchored at Naples. Nelson's estimate of affairs as he now found them, is best told in his own words. "The state of this Country is briefly this: The army is at Rome, Civita Vecchia taken, but in the Castle of St. Angelo are five hundred French troops. The French have thirteen thousand troops at a strong post in the Roman State, called Castellana. General Mack is gone against them with twenty thousand: the event in my opinion is doubtful, and on it hangs the immediate fate of Naples. If Mack is defeated, this country, in fourteen days, is lost; for the Emperor has not yet moved his army, and if the Emperor will not march, this country has not the power of resisting the French. But it was not a case of choice, but necessity, which forced the King of Naples to march out of his country, and not to wait till the French had collected a force sufficient to drive him, in a week, out of his kingdom." It is by no means so sure that no other course of action had been open, though Nelson naturally clung to his first opinion. By advancing, the King gave the French occasion, if they were seeking one; and the Neapolitan army, which might well have deterred them, as it had embarrassed even Bonaparte in his time, had its rottenness revealed as only trial can reveal. When reviewed, it had appeared to Mack and Nelson a well-equipped force of thirty thousand of the "finest troops in Europe." Brought face to face with fifteen thousand French, in a month it ceased to exist.

Upon Mack's advance, the French general Championnet had evacuated Rome, into which the King made a vainglorious triumphal entry. The French retired to Castellana, followed by the Neapolitans; but in the campaign that ensued the latter behaved with disgraceful cowardice. Flying in every direction, with scarcely any loss in killed, and preceded in their flight by the King, the whole force retreated in confusion upon the capital. There revolutionary ideas had spread widely among the upper classes; and, although the populace both in city and country remained fanatically loyal, and hostile to the French, the King and Queen feared to trust their persons to the issue of events. Powerless through suspicions of those around them, apparently well founded, and through lack of any instrument with which to act, now that their army was destroyed, their one wish was to escape to Palermo.

To do this involved some difficulty, as the mob, like that of Paris, was bitterly opposed to their sovereign leaving the capital; but by the management and determination of Nelson, who was greatly helped by the courage and presence of mind of Lady Hamilton, the royal family was embarked on board the "Vanguard" on the evening of December 21st. During several previous days treasure to the amount of two and a half millions sterling was being conveyed secretly to the ship. "The whole correspondence relative to this important business," wrote Nelson to St. Vincent, "was carried on with the greatest address by Lady Hamilton and the Queen, who being constantly in the habits of correspondence, no one could suspect." On the evening of the 23d the "Vanguard" sailed, and after a most tempestuous passage reached Palermo on the 26th. The youngest of the princes, six years old, taken suddenly with convulsions, died on the way in the arms of Lady Hamilton, whose womanly helpfulness, as well as her courage, came out strongly in this trying time. Nelson wrote to St. Vincent: "It is my duty to tell your Lordship the obligations which the whole royal family as well as myself are under on this trying occasion to her Ladyship." These scenes inevitably deepened the impression she had already made upon him, which was not to be lessened by her lapse into feminine weakness when the strain was over. To use her own words, in a letter to her old lover, Greville, "My dear, adorable queen and I weep together, and now that is our onely comfort." "Our dear Lady Hamilton," Nelson wrote again a few days later, "whom to see is to admire, but, to know, are to be added honour and respect; her head and heart surpass her beauty, which cannot be equalled by anything I have seen." Upon himself the brief emergency and its sharp call to action had had the usual reviving effect. "Thank God," he wrote to Spencer, "my health is better, my mind never firmer, and my heart in the right trim to comfort, relieve, and protect those who it is my duty to afford assistance to."

In Palermo Nelson again lived in the minister's house, bearing a large, if not a disproportionate, share of the expenses. When they returned to England in 1800, Hamilton was L2,000 in his debt. The intimacy and the manner of life, in the midst of the Neapolitan court, whose corruptness of manners both Nelson and Troubridge openly condemned, was already causing scandal, rumors of which were not long in reaching home. "I am quite concerned," wrote Captain Ball to Saumarez, when Nelson was about to quit the station, "at the many severe paragraphs which have been put in the newspapers respecting him and Lady Hamilton. I am convinced that there has not been anything improper between them—his Lordship could not fail being delighted with her accomplishments and manners, which are very fascinating." Lady Nelson, uneasy as a wife could not fail to be at reports affecting her husband's honor, and threatening her own happiness, quickly formed, and for a time entertained, the thought of joining him on the station; but, if she broached the idea to Nelson, he certainly discouraged it. Writing to her on the 10th of April, 1799, he said: "You would by February have seen how unpleasant it would have been had you followed any advice, which carried you from England to a wandering sailor. I could, if you had come, only have struck my flag, and carried you back again, for it would have been impossible to have set up an establishment at either Naples or Palermo."[75]

The scandal increased apace after his headquarters were fixed at Palermo. Lady Minto, writing from Vienna to her sister, in July, 1800, says: "Mr. Rushout and Colonel Rooke,[76] whom I knew in Italy, are here. Mr. Rushout is at last going home. He escaped from Naples at the same time as the King did in Nelson's ship, and remained six months at Palermo; so I had a great deal of intelligence concerning the Hero and his Lady ... Nelson and the Hamiltons all lived together in a house of which he bore the expense, which was enormous, and every sort of gaming went on half the night. Nelson used to sit with large parcels of gold before him, and generally go to sleep, Lady Hamilton taking from the heap without counting, and playing with his money to the amount of L500 a night. Her rage is play, and Sir William says when he is dead she will be a beggar. However, she has about L30,000 worth of diamonds from the royal family in presents. She sits at the Councils, and rules everything and everybody." Some of these statements are probably beyond the personal knowledge of the narrator, and can only be accepted as current talk; but others are within the observation of an eye-witness, evidently thought credible by Lady Minto, who was a friend to Nelson. Mr. Paget, who succeeded Hamilton as British minister, mentions the same reports, in his private letter to Lord Grenville, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs. Hamilton had asked to see his instructions. "I decided at once not to do so, for he would certainly have been obliged to show them to Lady Hamilton, who would have conveyed them next moment to the queen ... Lord Nelson's health is, I fear, sadly impaired, and I am assured that his fortune is fallen into the same state, in consequence of great losses which both his Lordship and Lady Hamilton have sustained at Faro and other games of hazard."[77]

The impressions made upon Lord Elgin, who touched at Palermo on his way to the embassy at Constantinople, are worth quoting; for there has been much assertion and denial as to what did go on in that out-of-the-way corner of the world, Lady Hamilton ascribing the falsehoods, as she claimed they were, to the Jacobinical tendencies of those who spread them. "During a week's stay at Palermo, on my passage here," wrote Elgin, "the necessity of a change in our representative, and in our conduct there, appeared to me most urgent. You may perhaps know from Lord Grenville how strong my impression on that subject was."[78] Troubridge, a pattern of that most faithful friendship which dares to risk alienation, if it may but save, wrote urgently to his chief: "Pardon me, my Lord, it is my sincere esteem for you that makes me mention it. I know you can have no pleasure sitting up all night at cards; why, then, sacrifice your health, comfort, purse, ease, everything, to the customs of a country, where your stay cannot be long? I would not, my Lord, reside in this country for all Sicily. I trust the war will soon be over, and deliver us from a nest of everything that is infamous, and that we may enjoy the smiles of our countrywomen. Your Lordship is a stranger to half that happens, or the talk it occasions; if you knew what your friends feel for you, I am sure you would cut all the nocturnal parties. The gambling of the people at Palermo is publicly talked of everywhere. I beseech your Lordship leave off. I wish my pen could tell you my feelings, I am sure you would oblige me. I trust your Lordship will pardon me; it is the sincere esteem I have for you that makes me risk your displeasure."[79] To this manly appeal Nelson seems to have made no reply; none at least is quoted.

FOOTNOTES:

[70] Colburn's United Service Magazine, 1847, part ii. p. 52.

[71] Afterwards Mrs. Trench, the mother of Archbishop Trench.

[72] Beckford's Memoirs, London, 1859, vol. ii. p. 326.

[73] Compare an equally strong assertion, Nicolas's Despatches, vol. vi. p. 99.

[74] St. Vincent at this time had not met her, at least as Lady Hamilton, but they exchanged occasional letters.

[75] Pettigrew, vol. i. p. 220.

[76] Lord Minto was at this time ambassador to Vienna. Rushout and Rooke were men well known on the Continent. Both are mentioned with some particularity in the Memoirs of Pryse Lockhart Gordon, another continental rambler.

[77] The Paget Papers, London, 1896, p. 185.

[78] The Paget Papers, London, 1896, p. 219.

[79] Clarke and M'Arthur, vol. ii. p. 355.



CHAPTER XII.

NELSON'S CAREER, AND GENERAL EVENTS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN AND ITALY, FROM THE OVERTHROW OF THE ROYAL GOVERNMENT IN NAPLES TO THE INCURSION OF THE FRENCH FLEET UNDER ADMIRAL BRUIX.

JANUARY-MAY, 1799. AGE, 40.

The four and a half months of unbroken residence in Palermo, which followed the flight of the Court from Naples, were full of annoyance and distress to Nelson, independent of, and additional to, the disquieting struggle between his passion and his conscience, which had not yet been silenced. The disasters in Naples continued. The Neapolitan Navy had been left in charge of one of the Portuguese officers, who soon found himself compelled to burn the ships-of-the-line, to prevent their falling into the hands of the revolutionists,—a step for which he was severely, but apparently unjustly, censured by Nelson. The peasantry and the lower orders of the city took up arms, under the guidance of their priests, and for some time sought, with rude but undisciplined fury, to oppose the advance of the enemy; but such untrained resistance was futile before the veterans of France, and on the 23d of January, 1799, Championnet's troops entered the city. This was followed by the establishment of the Parthenopeian Republic, a name which reflected the prevailing French affectation of antiquity. For all this Nelson blamed the Emperor, and formed gloomy forebodings. "Had the war commenced in September or October," he had written amid the December disasters, "all Italy would at this moment have been liberated. Six months hence, when the Neapolitan Republic will be organized, armed, and with its numerous resources called forth, I will suffer to have my head cut off, if the Emperor is not only defeated in Italy, but that he totters on his throne in Vienna." To this text he stuck. Three months later, when the preparations of Austria and Russia were complete, he wrote: "The French have made war upon the Emperor, and have surprised some of his troops. Serve him right! why did he not go to war before?" But the rapid, continuous, and overwhelming successes of the Coalition, between April and August, showed how untimely had been the step he had urged upon the King of the Sicilies, disregardful of the needed preparations and of the most favorable season—February to August—for operations in Italy. Naples never recovered such political equilibrium as she had possessed before that ill-advised advance. In Nelson's career it, and its reverses, were to the Battle of the Nile what Teneriffe was to St. Vincent; and it illustrates the inadequacy to success of merely "going ahead," unless both time and method are dictated by that martial intelligence which Nelson so abundantly possessed, but in this case failed to use.

Not in Naples only did fortune now administer to him rebuffs, which seemed singularly to rebuke the change of direction and of base which he had been persuaded to give to his personal efforts. Immediately upon his arrival in Palermo, he heard from St. Vincent that a comparatively junior captain, Sir Sidney Smith, had been sent out by the Cabinet, bearing, besides his naval commission from the Admiralty, one from the Foreign Office as envoy to Turkey, conjointly with his brother, Spencer Smith. This unusual and somewhat cumbrous arrangement was adopted with the design that Smith should be senior naval officer in the Levant, where it was thought his hands would be strengthened by the diplomatic functions; but the Government's explanation of its intentions was so obscure, that St. Vincent understood the new-comer was to be independent of both himself and Nelson. This impression was confirmed by a letter from Smith to Hamilton, in which occurred the words, "Hood naturally falls under my orders when we meet, as being my junior," while the general tone was that of one who had a right, by virtue of his commission alone, to take charge of such vessels, and to direct such operations, as he found in the Levant. This impression was fairly deducible from a letter of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, that Smith forwarded to Nelson; after which, without seeking an interview, he at once went on for Constantinople.

Nelson immediately asked to be relieved. "I do feel, for I am a man," he wrote to St. Vincent, "that it is impossible for me to serve in these seas, with the squadron under a junior officer. Never, never was I so astonished." With this private letter he sent an official application for leave. "The great anxiety I have undergone during the whole time I have been honoured with this important command, has much impaired a weak constitution. And now, finding that much abler officers are arrived within the district which I had thought under my command, ... and, I flatter myself, having made the British nation and our gracious Sovereign more beloved and respected than heretofore; under these circumstances I entreat, that if my health and uneasiness of mind should not be mended, that I may have your Lordship's permission to leave this command to my gallant and most excellent second in command, Captain Troubridge." In similar terms, though more guarded, he wrote to Earl Spencer. At the same time he took proper steps to prevent the official impropriety, not to say rudeness, which Smith was about to commit by taking from Hood his charge, without either the latter or Nelson receiving personal instructions to surrender it. He sent Troubridge hastily to Alexandria to take command there, with orders that, upon Smith's arrival, he should deliver up the blockade to him, and return to the westward. "I should hope," he wrote to Spencer, "that Sir Sidney Smith will not take any ship from under my command, without my orders;" but he evidently expected that he would, and was determined to forestall the possibility of such an affront.

Nelson's services had been so eminent, and were at this time so indispensable, and his exceptions to the manner in which Smith had been intruded into his command were so well founded, that the matter was rectified as rapidly as the slow round of communications in that day would permit. The Admiralty disclaimed any intention of circumscribing his control in the Mediterranean, and Smith received peremptory orders from St. Vincent to report himself to Nelson by letter for orders. The latter of course carried out the Admiralty's wishes, by intrusting to Smith the immediate direction of operations in the Levant, while retaining in his own hands the general outlines of naval policy. He kept a very tight rein on Smith, however, and introduced into the situation some dry humor, unusual with him. The two brothers, envoys, he addressed jointly, in his official letters, by the collective term "Your Excellency." "I beg of your Excellency," he says in such a letter, "to forward my letter to Sir Sidney Smith, Captain of the Tigre. I have this day received letters from Sir Sidney Smith, in his Ministerial capacity, I believe. I wish that all Ministerial letters should be written in your joint names; for it may be difficult for me to distinguish the Captain of the man-of-war from the Joint Minister, and the propriety of language in one might be very proper to what it is in the other." To the naval captain he writes: "I must direct you, whenever you have Ministerial affairs to communicate, that it is done jointly with your respectable brother, and not mix naval business with the other. I have sent you my orders, which your abilities as a sea-officer will lead you to punctually execute."

Nelson resented to the end this giving to a junior naval officer, by a side-wind, an authoritative position in diplomatic affairs, which, on the naval side, properly belonged to him. "Sir Sidney should recollect," he told Earl Spencer, meaning doubtless that the latter also should recollect, "how I must feel in seeing him placed in the situation which I thought naturally would fall to me." It was a singular step on the part of the Government, justified neither by general practice, nor by particular ability on the part of the person chosen; and all Nelson's care and decision were insufficient to prevent the consequent evil, although he was perfectly clear in his intimation to "Your Excellency," the joint ministers, that they should "upon all occasions, arrange plans of operations with me," and not with Captain Sir Sidney Smith. Smith was active and fought well; but, as far as he dared, he did as he pleased in virtue of his diplomatic commission, looked only to the interests of his own small part of the field, and, as will appear later, flatly disobeyed both the spirit and the letter of Nelson's orders, as well as the Government's purpose, concerning the French army in Egypt. The general sound judgment and diplomatic ability of Nelson, who was thus superseded, had on the other hand been fully recognized—formally by the Government, explicitly by St. Vincent and Minto, both of whom had personal experience of his conduct in such matters. "What relates to co-operation with the armies of the allied powers cannot be in better hands than yours," wrote the former. "You are as great in the cabinet as on the ocean, and your whole conduct fills me with admiration and confidence." "There is one other point of excellence," said Minto in the House of Peers, "to which I must say a single word, because I am, perhaps, the man in the world who has had the best opportunity of being acquainted with it. The world knows that Lord Nelson can fight the battles of his country: but a constant and confidential correspondence with this great man, for a considerable portion of time, has taught me, that he is not less capable of providing for its political interests and honour, on occasions of great delicacy and embarrassment. In that new capacity I have witnessed a degree of ability, judgment, temper, and conciliation, not always allied to the sort of spirit which without an instant's hesitation can attack the whole Spanish line with his single ship." Of Nelson's superior fitness in this respect, the unfortunate choice of Sidney Smith for his anomalous position was to furnish the Government an additional proof.

It was not in this matter only that maritime affairs in the East took a turn contrary to Nelson's wishes. Since he had persuaded himself that to bolster up the corrupt and tottering throne of Naples was the most important of his functions, he had become desirous that the isolation and blockade of the French army in Egypt,—a factor so decisive by its numbers, its brilliant efficiency, and the singular genius and renown of its general and his lieutenants,—should be assumed by some of the allies of Great Britain, although he was never slow to express his want of confidence in their navies. He was urgent, both with the joint ministers and with the representatives of Russia and Turkey, that the fleets of these two powers should relieve Hood off Alexandria, in order to strengthen his own hands on the coast of Italy and off Malta. Neither Russia nor Turkey was easily to be convinced. Egypt was no affair of the former's, except as it concerned the general cause; and from that point of view it was as much the business of Great Britain, already on the spot, as it was hers. With twenty thousand troops about to enter into a campaign in Northern Italy, as allies of Austria, Russia had undeniable interests there, as well as in the Ionian Islands, which commanded the entrance to the Adriatic, a sea important to communications between Austria and Lombardy. The islands also were, in the hands of France, a threat to the Turkish mainland. It was against these, therefore, that the Russo-Turkish forces directed their efforts, greatly to Nelson's disgust, and there they remained, chained by the obstinate resistance of Corfu, until the 1st of March, 1799, when it surrendered. The fifty-gun ship "Leander," which had been taken by the French seventy-four "Genereux," when carrying Nelson's despatches after the Nile, was here recaptured and restored to Great Britain.

Nelson viewed the progress and policy of Russia with a mind fully imbued with the distrust, which, for the last quarter of a century, had been supplanting gradually the previous friendly feeling of Great Britain toward that country. As soon as he heard of the intention to attack the islands, in November, 1798, he hurried off Troubridge to anticipate a seizure which he expected to be more easy than it proved. "You will proceed to sea without a moment's loss of time," his instructions ran, "and make the best of your way to the Island of Zante; and if the Russians have not taken possession of that island and Cephalonia, you will send on shore by the Priest I shall desire to accompany you, my Declaration. If you can get possession of the islands before named, you will send my Declaration into the Island of Corfu, and use your utmost endeavours to get possession of it.... Should the Russians have taken possession of these Islands and be cruizing near with the Turkish fleet, you will pay a visit to the Turkish admiral, and by saluting him (if he consents to return gun for gun) and every other mark of respect and attention, gain his confidence. You will judge whether he is of a sufficient rank to hold a confidential conversation with." It is evident that Nelson's action was precipitated by the news of the Russian movement, and its tenor dictated by a wish to sow distrust between Turkey and Russia. The omission of any mention of a Russian admiral is most significant. "Captain Troubridge was absolutely under sail," he wrote to Spencer Smith, "when I heard with sorrow that the Russians were there." His eagerness in the matter is the more evident, in that he thus detached Troubridge at the moment when he was about to start for Leghorn, where his trusted subordinate and his ship would be greatly needed.

"I was in hopes that a part of the united Turkish and Russian squadron would have gone to Egypt—the first object of the Ottoman arms," he tells the Turkish admiral. "Corfu is a secondary consideration." To Spencer Smith he writes: "I have had a long and friendly conference with Kelim Effendi on the conduct likely to be pursued by the Russian Court towards the unsuspicious (I fear) and upright Turk. The Porte ought to be aware of the very great danger at a future day of allowing the Russians to get footing at Corfu, and I hope they will keep them in the East. Our ideas have exactly been the same about Russia.... Surely I had a right to expect that the united fleets would have taken care of the things east of Candia. I never wished to have them west of it." "The Russians seem to me to be more intent on taking ports in the Mediterranean than destroying Bonaparte in Egypt."

It was well known at this time that the Czar was looking towards Malta and the restoration of the Order of the Knights, of which he had been elected Grand Master the previous October, immediately after Bonaparte's seizure of the island became known. Nelson held that the King of Naples was the legitimate sovereign, and he directed Captain Ball, his own representative there, to have all the Maltese posts and forces fly the Neapolitan flag; but he, with Hamilton, got a note from the King, promising that Malta should never be transferred to any other Power without the consent of England. "Should any Russian ships, or admiral, arrive off Malta," he instructed Ball, "you will convince him of the very unhandsome manner of treating the legitimate sovereign of Malta, by wishing to see the Russian flag fly in Malta, and also of me, who command the forces of a Power in such close alliance with the Russian Emperor, which have been blockading and attacking Malta for near six months. The Russians shall never take the lead."

Three weeks later he authorized Ball, with the consent of the King, to preside over the meetings of the Maltese chiefs, and, by the desire of his Sicilian Majesty, the British flag was to be hoisted alongside the Sicilian in every place where the latter was flown, "side by side, that of England being on the right hand," to show that the island was under the special protection of Great Britain during the war. On the 23d of March he cordially congratulates the Russian admiral upon the fall of Corfu, news of which he has just received, and he mentions, meaningly, "The flag of his Sicilian Majesty, with that of Great Britain, is flying on all parts of Malta, except the town of Valetta, the inhabitants of which have, with his Sicilian Majesty's consent, put themselves under the protection of Great Britain." "I attach no value to it for us," he said explicitly to the First Lord, meaning, no doubt, for the purposes of the existing war. This opinion was perfectly consonant to the secondary importance he had latterly attributed to the presence of the British in the Levant, as compared to their duties towards Naples, but though he reiterated it in the later war, it was with the express qualification that, for the security of communication with India, not then in question, the value of the island was indisputable.

But if, positively, Malta was of little use to England,—"a useless and enormous expense," to use his own words,—yet, negatively, the consequences of its passing into the hands of a powerful rival were too serious to be permitted. "Any expense should be incurred rather than let it remain in the hands of the French." The same distrust of the Russians was suggested by his keen political insight. "You will observe what is said in the despatches of the Consul at Corfu," he writes to St. Vincent, "respecting the Russians being ordered to Malta. I know this is a favourite object of the Emperor's, and is a prelude to a future war with the good Turk, when Constantinople will change masters. This is so clear, that a man must be blind not to see it." "I have just received the Emperor of Russia's picture in a box magnificently set with diamonds; it has done him honour and me a pleasure to have my conduct approved;" "but," he tells Ball, significantly, "this shall not prevent my keeping a sharp lookout on his movements against the good Turk." As regards Paul I., ferocious and half crazy as he was, this imputation of merely interested foresight scarcely did justice to the quixotic passions which often impelled him to the most unselfish acts, but the general tendency was undeniable; and Nelson's watchful attitude exemplifies the numerous diplomatic, as well as military, responsibilities that weighed upon him. He was, practically, commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean, even if Government refused to recognize the fact by reward, or by proper staff appointments; for St. Vincent, autocratic as he was towards others, could roll off upon Nelson all his responsibilities there,—"the uncontrolled direction of the naval part," were his own words,—and sleep quietly. Despite his objections to the island itself, and his enthusiastic fidelity to the Neapolitan royal house, Nelson had evidently the presentiment that Malta must come to Great Britain, a solution which Ball and the Maltese themselves were urging upon him. "A Neapolitan garrison would betray it to the first man who would bribe him," he wrote; which, if true, left to Great Britain no other alternative than to take it herself. Neither he, Troubridge, nor the sovereigns, had confidence in the fidelity of Neapolitan officers.

The blockade of Malta was maintained with great tenacity, and, coupled with the maritime prostration of France in the Mediterranean, resulted in a complete isolation of the French garrison in La Valetta by sea, the Maltese people hemming it in by land. By the 1st of May Ball had erected a battery at the head of the harbor, sweeping it to the entrance, so that the French ships, one of which was the "Guillaume Tell," eighty, that had escaped from Aboukir, had to be kept in the coves. These affairs of Malta brought Nelson into difficult diplomatic relations with the Barbary States, Tunis and Tripoli. The island not affording sufficient food, strenuous efforts had to be made by him and Ball to get grain from Sicily and elsewhere, a matter very difficult of accomplishment even were the transit unmolested; but these petty Mussulman states, for the purposes of piracy, kept themselves in formal war with Naples and Portugal, and frequently captured vessels under the Sicilian flag carrying corn to Malta. The British had too much on hand now to spare readily the force necessary to put down these depredators, at whose misdeeds they had winked in quieter days; and it required all Nelson's tact, combining threats with compliments, and with appeals to the prejudices of believers in God against those who denied Him, to keep the marauding within bounds. The irrepressible activity of Bonaparte's emissaries also stirred the Beys up to measures friendly to France. "The infamous conduct of the French during the whole war, has at last called down the vengeance of all true Mussulmen," he writes to the Bey of Tunis; "and your Highness, I am sure, will agree with me that Divine Providence will never permit these infidels to God to go unpunished. The conduct of your Highness reflects upon you the very highest honour. Although I have a squadron of Portuguese ships under my orders, I have prevented their cruizing against the vessels of war of your Highness. For at this moment all wars should cease, and all the world should join in endeavouring to extirpate from off the face of the earth this race of murderers, oppressors, and unbelievers."

After these preliminary compliments, Nelson presents his grievances. He has given the passports of a British admiral to Sicilian vessels bona fide employed in carrying grain to the besiegers of the French, and to such only; and he must insist upon those passports being respected, as the vessels bearing them are serving the great common cause. He demands, also, that aid be not given to the common enemy. "I was rejoiced," he writes the Bashaw of Tripoli, "to find that you had renounced the treaty you had so imprudently entered into with some emissaries of General Bonaparte—that man of blood, that despoiler of the weak, that enemy of all true Musselmen; for, like Satan, he only flatters that he may the more easily destroy; and it is true, that since the year 1789, all Frenchmen are exactly of the same disposition." His Highness, however, has relapsed into his former errors. "It is now my duty to speak out, and not to be misunderstood. That Nelson who has hitherto kept your powerful enemies from destroying you, can, and will, let them loose upon you, unless the following terms are, in two hours, complied with.... If these proper terms are not complied with, I can no longer prevent the Portuguese ships from acting with vigour against your Highness. Your Highness will, without difficulty, write me a letter, the substance of which will be dictated by the British consul."

The vehemence with which the French are here denounced, though pitched in a key deemed harmonious to the ears for which it was immediately intended, was entirely consonant to the feelings which had lately taken possession of Nelson. They were the result, probably, in part, of the anxious rancor bred by the uncertainties and worry of the pursuit of Bonaparte; in part, also, of more direct contact than before with the unbridled license which the French Government and its generals, impelled by dire necessity and by an unquestionable lack of principle, had given to the system of making war support war. The feebleness and corruption of the Directory had relaxed the reins of discipline from top to bottom, and a practice which finds its justification only when executed with the strictest method and accountability, had degenerated into little better than disorganized pillage. "'Down, down with the French!' is my constant prayer." "'Down, down with the French!' ought to be placed in the council-room of every country in the world." "To serve my King, and to destroy the French, I consider as the great order of all, from which little ones spring; and if one of these little ones militate against it, I go back to obey the great order and object, to down, down with the damned French villains. Excuse my warmth; but my blood boils at the name of a Frenchman. I hate them all—Royalists and Republicans." Infidels, robbers, and murderers are the characteristic terms. This detestation of the legitimate enemy spread, intensified, to those who supported them in Naples,—the Jacobins, as they were called. "Send me word some proper heads are taken off," he wrote to Troubridge, "this alone will comfort me." "Our friend Troubridge had a present made him the other day, of the head of a Jacobin," he tells St. Vincent, "and makes an apology to me, the weather being very hot, for not sending it here!" Upon the copy of the letter accompanying this ghastly gift to him, Troubridge had written, "A jolly fellow. T. Troubridge." The exasperation to which political animosities had given rise may be gauged by the brutal levity shown in this incident, by men of the masculine and generous characters of Troubridge and Nelson, and should not be forgotten in estimating the actions that in due consequence followed.

The duties as well as the anxieties of his situation bore heavily upon Nelson, and may help to account, in combination with the tide of adverse fortune now running strongly, for the depression that weighed upon him. "My public correspondence, besides the business of sixteen sail-of-the-line, and all our commerce, is with Petersburg, Constantinople, the Consul at Smyrna, Egypt, the Turkish and Russian admirals, Trieste, Vienna, Tuscany, Minorca, Earl St. Vincent, and Lord Spencer. This over, what time can I have for any private correspondence?" Yet, admitting freely that there is a limit beyond which activity may cease to please, what has become of the joyous spirit, which wrote, not four years before: "This I like, active service or none!" Occupying one of the most distinguished posts open to the Navy; practically, and almost formally, independent; at the very head and centre of the greatest interests,—his zeal, while preserving all its intensity, has lost all its buoyancy. "My dear Lord," he tells St. Vincent, alluding at the moment to his stepson Nisbet, "there is no true happiness in this life, and in my present state I could quit it with a smile." "My spirits have received such a shock," he writes some days after, to the wife of his early patron, Sir Peter Parker, "that I think they cannot recover it. You who remember me always laughing and gay, would hardly believe the change; but who can see what I have and be well in health? Kingdoms lost and a royal family in distress." "Believe me," he confides to his intimate friend Davison a month later, "my only wish is to sink with honour into the grave, and when that shall please God, I shall meet death with a smile. Not that I am insensible to the honours and riches my King and Country have heaped upon me, so much more than any officer could deserve; yet I am ready to quit this world of trouble, and envy none but those of the estate six feet by two." "I am at times ill at ease, but it is my duty to submit, and you may be sure I will not quit my post without absolute necessity." "What a state I am in!" he writes of one of those perplexities inevitable to an officer in his position. "If I go, I risk Sicily; as I stay, my heart is breaking." This is not the natural temper of a man to whom difficulties and perplexities had been, and were yet again to be, a trumpet call that stirred to animation, a stimulant that steadied the nerves, and sent the blood coursing with new life through heart and brain. Mingled as these expressions were with despondent broodings over his health, even if the latter were well founded, they are the voice of a mind which has lost the spring of self-content. The sense of duty abides, but dogged, cheerless; respondent rather to the force of habit than to the generous ardor of former days.

For over two months after the flight to Palermo, the condition of affairs for the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was seemingly critical to the verge of desperation; for neither the preparations of the Coalition, nor the hollowness of the French successes, were understood, and news was slow to reach the remote city where the Court now dwelt. The republican movement extended, though superficially, to the toe of Italy, many of the towns in Calabria planting the tree of liberty, and the new flag flying on the islands along the coast. Sicily, though hostile to the French, was discontented with the existing government, and disaffection there was feared. In that, Nelson truly observed, lay the danger. "Respecting an invasion of the French, I have no alarms; if this island is true to itself no harm can happen." Nevertheless, "it is proper to be prepared for defence, and," if Calabria is occupied by the French, "the first object is the preservation of Messina."