Nelson: Britannia's God of War
Page 27
Nelson left London on 13 January, with brother William, and never saw his wife again. He was on the road for Plymouth, where his new flagship lay. By early 1801 rumours about Nelson’s attachment to Emma were in wide circulation, with the clear understanding that Fanny had been set aside.83 Fanny was the only person who did not understand what was going on, and her obtuse refusal to play the part Nelson had assigned her, to retire to the country and keep out of his way, made his situation difficult.84 Fortunately for him, by the time Fanny realised what was happening, and started to make strenuous efforts to recover him, he was back at sea. He left the business of ending his marriage to Davison, and to a lesser extent his brother William, and went off to do what he did best. He would return to public notice on his own terms. The international situation was changing rapidly: the Austrians had finally made their peace with Bonaparte, and Naples would soon follow. But there were more pressing problems for Britain, and it was to them that Nelson was drawn.
Notes – CHAPTER X
1 Admiralty to Nelson 20.8.1799; Spencer IV p. 30
2 Nelson to Admiralty 20–21.9.1799; Nicolas IV pp. 23–7
3 Nelson to Spencer 5.9.1799; Nicolas IV p. 3
4 Nelson to Davison 23.9.1799; Nicolas VII pp. cxci–ii
5 Nelson to Oushakoff 25.9.1799; to Spencer 26.9.1799; to Ball 27.9.1799; Nicolas III pp. 29–31
6 Nelson to Admiralty and Troubridge 1.10.1799; Nicolas IV pp. 34–5
7 Nelson to Troubridge and Admiralty 1.10.1799; to Acton, and Troubridge 2.10.1799; to Ball and Graham 3.10.1799; Nicolas IV pp. 34–42. Quotes from letters to Troubridge.
8 Nelson Standing Orders 10.11.1799; to Erskine 11.10.1799; to Duckworth 14.10.1799; Nicolas IV pp. 46–52. Nelson to Hamilton 11 and 13.10.1799; Morrison II pp. 71–2. Nelson to Admiralty 15.10.1799; Nicolas IV pp. 53–5
9 Nelson to Admiralty 3.11.1799; to Spencer 6.11.1799; Nicolas IV pp. 85–91
10 Nelson to Wife 7.11.1799; Naish pp. 491–2
11 Nelson to Admiralty 9.11.1799; Nicolas IV p. 94
12 Nelson to Victualling Board 14.11.1799; – Lock 15.11.1799; Nicolas IV pp. 100–1. Sermonetta has Lock’s correspondence.
13 Nelson to Admiralty and Lock 4.12.1799; – Victualling Board 5.12.1799; Nicolas IV pp. 128–9
14 Nelson to Admiralty 11.11.1799; to Erskine 12.11.1799; to Wyndham 26.11.1799; Nicolas IV pp. 96–9, and 111. Testa. C. The French in Malta for these developments.
15 Nelson to Troubridge 25 and 28.11.1799; to Graham 25.11.1799; to Niza 15, 17 and 24.11.1799; Nicolas IV pp. 102–3, 107, 109–10, 119
16 Nelson to Niza 18.12.1799; Nicolas IV p. 144
17 Nelson to Admiralty 26.11.1799; Nicolas IV p. 110
18 Nelson to Duckworth 27.11.1799; Nicolas IV pp. 113–14
19 Nelson to Lord William Bentinck 22.11.1799; to Wyndham 2 and 13.12.1799; Nicolas IV pp. 106, 125–6, 135–6
20 Nelson to Troubridge and Blackwood 16.12.1799; Nicolas IV pp. 142–4
21 Nelson to Udney (Consul at Leghorn) 26.9.1799: Nicolas IV p.30
22 Nelson to dockyard officers, Port Mahon 14.12.1799: Nicolas IV pp. 138–9
23 Nelson to Troubridge 16.12.1799: Nicolas IV 142–3
24 Nelson to Lord Elgin (Minister to the Sublime Porte) 21.12.1799: Nicolas IV pp. 158–60
25 Nelson to Davison 19.12.1799: Nicolas VII p. cxciii
26 Nelson to Troubridge 22.12.1799; Nicolas IV pp. 155–6
27 Nelson to Graham 22.12.1799; to Admiralty and Spencer 23.12.1799;
Nicolas IV pp. 15 8–60
28 Keith to Spencer 23.12.1799; Spencer IV p. 105
29 Troubridge to Nelson 1, 5, 7 and 8.1.1800; Nelson to Troubridge 29.12.1799, 1, 5 and 8.1.1800; Nelson to Graham 7.1.1800; Nicolas IV pp. 166–73
30 Nelson to Troubridge 14.1.1800; Nicolas IV pp. 176–7
31 Troubridge to Emma 14.1.1800; Morrison II pp. 79–80
32 Nelson to Keith 7.1.1800; Nicolas IV pp. 170–2; Nelson to Wife 9.1.1800; Naish pp. 493–4
33 Hamilton to Charles Greville 25.1.1800; Morrison II pp. 82–3
34 Nelson to Emma and Hamilton 3.2.1800; Nicolas IV pp. 185–6, Morrison II p. 84
35 Nelson to St Vincent 1 and 6.2.1800; Nicolas IV pp. 184–5
36 Keith to Spencer 9.2.1800; Spencer IV pp. 108–9
37 Le Genereux was rated by ther British as an 80-gun ship with 24-pounders on her main deck.
38 The battle ensign of Le Genereux has recently been re-discovered in the Norwich Museum. A vast tricolour, 60 feet long and 20 feet deep, it hung in St Andrew’s Hall, close by Sir William Beechey’s portrait and a Spanish admiral’s sword, taken at Cape St Vincent.
39 Nelson to Keith 18.2.1800; to Maurice 20.2.1800; Nicolas IV pp. 188–90. Nelson to Hamilton 18 and 20.2.1800; Morrison pp. 86–7
40 Nelson to Maurice 27.2.1800; Nicolas VII pp. cxciii–iv
41 Keith to Nelson 24.2.1800; Nicolas III p. 191
42 Nelson to Keith 24.2.1800 [public and private letters]; Nicolas IV pp. 191–2
43 Nelson to Hamilton 25.2.1800; Morrison II p. 88
44 Hamilton to Minto 3.3.1800; Naish pp. 521–2. Ball to Emma 10.3.1800; Morrison II p. 90
45 Nelson to Admiral Goodall 11.3.1800; Nicolas IV pp. 204–6
46 Nelson to Spencer 10.3.1800; Phillips Collection, NMM 15
47 Pugh, Nelson and his Surgeons, p. 5
48 Nelson to Troubridge and Keith 20.3.1800; Nicolas IV pp. 206–8
49 Guillaume Tell was taken into the Royal Navy as HMS Malta, serving for the next fifteen years.
50 Berry to Nelson 30.3.1800; Nicolas IV p. 218
51 Ball to Emma 31.3.1800; Morrison II p. 97. Nelson to Berry 5.4.1800; Nicolas III pp. 219–20
52 Nelson to Spencer 8.4.1800; Nicolas IV pp. 224–5
53 Nelson –Blackwood 5.4.1800; Nicolas VII p. lxcv
54 Nelson to Admiralty 4.4.1800; Nicolas IV pp. 218–19
55 Nelson to Davison 9.5.1800; Nicolas IV p. 232
56 Nelson to Wife 20.6.1800; Naish p. 493
57 Ball to Emma 19 and 26.5.1800; Morrison II pp. 99–100
58 Spencer to Keith 25.4.1800, 9.5.1800; Naish p. 525
59 Spencer to Nelson 9.5.1800; Nicolas IV p. 242
60 Nelson to Spencer 20.6.1800; Nicolas VII p. cxcviii. The target of this Shakespearian flourish was, once again, Sidney Smith.
61 Nelson to Keith 12.5.1800; Nicolas IV p. 236
62 Ehrman, Pitt III pp. 360–5. Rodger, Second Coalition pp. 209–11.
63 Nelson to Berry 21.6.1800; to Commodore Saraiva, Portuguese Navy 25–6.6.1800; Nicolas IV 258–6–62.
64 Robbins-Landon, H., Haydn; The Years of The Creation’, 1796–1800, pp. 327–85 433, 557–65. Indeed Haydn later supplied her with piano accompaniments for the Nelson songs that she sang with the noted soprano Brigida Banti.
65 For example; Bougard, The Little Sea Torch; or, True Guide for Coasting Pilots. London 1801. Nelson was a subscriber to this English edition of a richly illustrated French volume with over a hundred views of key locations from England to the Barbary coast and through the Mediterranean.
66 Many years later the Duke of Wellington would be more discreet in setting aside his wife, and less constant in his subsequent amours.
67 Nelson to Admiralty 6.11.1800; Nicolas IV p. 267
68 Young to Keith 10.11.1800; Keith II p. 146
69 St Vincent to Spencer 30.11.1800; Spencer IV p. 21
70 Spencer to St Vincent 28.11.1800; Spencer IV pp. 273–4
71 Navy Board to Nelson 1.12.1800; Add. 34,934 f15
72 Baring, Windham Diary p. 434
73 The Times 11.11.1800
74 Walker, R. The Nelson Portraits. Portsmouth 1998 pp. 30–55
75 Wife to Nelson 6.5.1798; Naish p. 429
76 Czisnik, ‘Nelson and the Nile: The Creation of Admiral Nelson’s Public Image’, 2002, contains a full overview of this process.
77 Colley, L., Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707–1837, 1992, is the key text on
this period.
78 Robert Smirke’s 1803 engraving of Nelson and his Nile captains.
79 Admiralty to Nelson 1.1.1801; BL Add. 34,934 fl8
80 Czisnik, pp. 50–2.
81 Hilliard, G. S. ed. Life, Letters and Journals of George Ticknor, Boston, 1876, vol. I p. 63, cited in McNairn, A, Behold the Hero: General Wolfe and the Arts in the Eighteenth Century, Liverpool, 1997, p. 182
82 Walker, pp. 120–1.
83 Greig, J. ed. The Farington Diary I. London 1923 entry for 13.2.1801 at p.300.
84 White ‘The Wife’s Tale’ makes the break-up altogether more businesslike than previous accounts, and suggests a great deal more forethought on Nelson’s part. This would be more like the man.
PART THREE
The Years of Command
Bombs in air: the attack on Copenhagen
CHAPTER XI
Command in the Baltic Sea 1800–1
After eight weeks of domestic chaos and mental anguish ashore, Nelson wanted to get back to sea, and both Lord Spencer and St Vincent, now Commander on Chief of the Channel fleet, were anxious to oblige him. Over the next twelve months he would prove himself an inspirational symbol of British resistance, ensuring that he was the inevitable choice for the Mediterranean command when war broke out again.
With the failure of the Second Coalition British strategy changed. As Russia switched from ally to armed neutral it was clear that without a Continental ally, maritime power would be the key resource for Britain.1 This suited Nelson and his approach to war. His contemporaries were reluctant to engage in coastal offensive operations, and showed little interest in grand strategy. Sir Hyde Parker’s command of the Baltic fleet and Lord Keith’s blundering and fractious direction of the Mediterranean naval offensive in 1800 and 1801 were significant examples of a wider problem. The Royal Navy needed to be reprogrammed for the new circumstances of total war for national survival. Statesmen, soldiers and sailors of the ordinary sort were bogged down by precedent and rules, but Nelson soared above them. Although his status as a national icon was clear, his role as the intellectual force behind national strategy was but dimly perceived in Whitehall. Most still saw the Nile as a fortunate event, and the later campaigns around Naples as inglorious embarrassments. The Baltic campaign would be a salutary reminder that Nelson was irreplaceable.
The shift in strategy followed the failure of the Continentalist foreign policy that based British security on temporary coalitions with great powers. The inability of Austria and Russia to make any headway against the French on land left that policy in ruins. Now the British had to rely on sea power to counter French military prowess, limiting their successes to Europe, while hamstringing their economy.This new strategy had several requirements: to cripple or destroy the enemy’s naval resources, to secure British assets, trade and interests, and to deny the enemy any opportunity to strike at Britain. The core of this strategy was an economic blockade, imposed by the fleet, based on the legal right asserted by Britain to stop and search any neutral vessel, to establish the ownership and destination of the cargo. This was the principal weapon in the national armoury, and so important that Britain would fight the whole world to uphold it.
The impact of the change in strategy would be particularly apparent to those standing on the sidelines, and exploiting the conflict for economic gain. The destruction of French sea-borne commerce, and the occupation of the Dutch Republic, left a large gap in the provision of shipping between the East and West Indies and the blockaded ports of French-controlled western Europe. This opportunity was being exploited by neutral shippers, notably Denmark, which had expanded its own small Asiatic trade to cover the carriage of Dutch goods from their far larger Eastern empire. This was an abuse of neutrality, but the British had largely ignored the subject until 1800 when the nature of the war began to change.2 The new strategy required the imposition of truly effective blockades, and the application of the severe code of maritime belligerent rights developed in the mid-eighteenth century to deal with neutral carriers.
In 1798 Denmark had adopted an offensive neutral policy, using warships to convoy merchant ships her ministers knew were carrying Dutch goods past the British blockade. This revival of ideas from the1780 Armed Neutrality was highly dangerous, and required far more adept direction than the Crown Prince could provide. After a few incidents the ‘sovereignty of the seas’ was asserted by the dispatch of British warships to Copenhagen in August 1800, and the two sides compromised, but wider events imposed a different outcome.
The unstable Tsar Paul of Russia, who had joined the Second Coalition full of enthusiasm, was now disenchanted with his allies. The Austrians had been more interested in securing territory in northern Italy than defeating France, while the failure of a Russo-Britishcombined operation in Holland prompted severe recriminations on both sides. The final straw came in September 1800 when the British accepted the surrender of Malta, the most enduring fruit of Nelson’s victory at the Nile. Initially the British had agreed to include their allies in the process, but Dundas’s growing alarm about Paul’s aims, and indeed his sanity, prompted a reconsideration, just as his new strategy of standing alone took shape. This transformed the role of Malta from a bargaining chip, which could be used to keep the Tsar sweet, into a front-line position of the utmost importance. A small island with a first-class harbour, already massively fortified, occupying the strategic choke-point between the two basins of the Mediterranean, astride key trade routes, Malta was an almost ideal possession for a maritime power in a global war. Unfortunately Orthodox Tsar Paul believed he was now the Grand Master of the Roman Catholic Knights of St John, and entitled to assume control of the island in their name. Both Nelson and Dundas had warned against this, while the final decision to exclude the Russians was greeted with relief by local commanders and the Maltese population. For Paul this was the last straw. He quickly manufactured an excuse to dismiss the British Ambassador, impound British merchant ships and sailors, and annex the smouldering Anglo-Danish trade dispute to revive the old Russian aim of excluding the British from the Baltic.
The Armed Neutrality convention, signed on 16 December 1800, made the minor powers cat’s paws for Russian Great Power policies. Russia did not share the maritime commercial interests of her Scandinavian clients: she sought control of the theatre, and a rapprochement, or worse, with France. The British had long recognised this strain in Russian policy. Consequently Denmark, Prussia and Sweden were coerced into following a Russian programme, which had at its heart the assertion of dominance over their countries, and the establishment of the Baltic as a Russian mare clausum – a consistent aim of Russian policy since the days of Peter the Great.3
The combination of challenges now posed by the Tsar made a rapid and resolute British response inevitable. He threatened Britain’s belligerent rights, the cornerstone of her strategy against France. Nelson had long understood this connection. If the blockade could be flouted by neutral shipping the French could rebuild their fleet with Baltic naval supplies, and resume their economic rivalry with Britain, securing funds for further fleet-construction programmes. If Britain accepted the argument, she would abandon her great-power status, and accept French hegemony over Europe. It would also give the Tsar control over the naval stores that Britain required: a diplomatic lever of such power simply could not be left in his hands. These issues were fundamental to Britain’s very survival.
The powerful professional presence of St Vincent as First Lord of the Admiralty in Henry Addington’s new government was highly significant. His knowledge and determination ensured the Baltic fleet left on time, and was adequately supported.
Pitt made a powerful speech in the House of Commons on 2 February 1801, responding to the temporary Whig leader Charles Grey, in which he warned that if Britain resorted to force, she would have to ‘totally annihilate the foreign commerce and consequently the domestic industry of all those Countries who shall engage in such a Confederacy’. The British position would ‘never b
e relinquished … till Her Naval Power be annihilated.’4 He also used the occasion to pour scorn on the unpatriotic and misguided views of the rump opposition, who had expressed doubts about the justice of the British claims against neutral vessels, and the importance of the issue.5 Stressing this was an point ‘upon which not only our character, but our very existence as a maritime Power depends’, Pitt demonstrated the legal basis of the claim, and pointed up the bad faith of the Danes in abrogating the agreement of August 1800. He condemned the call to wait for more details of the new Treaty, in case the powers should ‘produce something like a substitute for the fallen navy of France’, or the carriage of stores to the French so that they could rebuild their own fleet. This was not the time to let slip the means by which the naval power of France had been destroyed – and the House agreed.6
Having established the line of policy he thought appropriate, Pitt told the King that he would resign the following day. The time was ripe for change: with the failure of the Coalition the country was alone, and anxious for peace. An unprecedented rise in the price of bread sparked widespread disaffection, and there had been little glory to distract attention from the threat of French invasion, domestic unrest and high taxes. Fortunately for the country, the policy left in place by Pitt would bear fruit before the time came for peace with France.7