In the Hour of Victory

by Sam Willis

  Four days later Nelson finally received confirmation from a captured French brig that Napoleon’s destination was, indeed, Egypt. He raced for Alexandria, arriving on 28 June and, to his utter mortification, found the harbour empty save for a handful of Egyptian xebecs and Arab dhows plying their trade. Napoleon, who knew how close the fleets had come to colliding in the fog on 22 June, had altered course to the north and skirted the southern shore of Crete with his heavy, slow ships, while Nelson had taken a more direct route to Alexandria in his fast warships. He had not gone to the wrong place, but he had arrived there too soon. Having searched elsewhere along the coast, he headed back towards Sicily.

  Three days later, Napoleon landed his troops near Alexandria uncontested, albeit in a desperate, mortal rush for fear of being caught at this most vulnerable moment. Soldiers were packed into landing craft and sailors rowed them ashore, arms burning, while their officers peered anxiously through telescopes at the horizon. The empty transports were then crammed into the safety of Alexandria harbour. Alexandria, however, is not Valetta, Toulon or Gibraltar, where the waters are deep and calm and the entrance wide. It was no place for a fleet of warships. To pass the narrow entrance, they would have had to be guided in, one at a time, and only at the very height of the flood, an operation that would have taken far too long and, even if achieved, would have left the French ships trapped. Napoleon’s army may have been safe, and within three weeks of landing was rampaging past the Pyramids with the Mamelukes in utter disarray, but his fleet was not. Its choice was twofold: either to return to the safety of French-held Corfu or to anchor in the great sweep of Aboukir Bay, a 16-mile-wide indentation in the coast at the Rosetta entrance to the Nile, just to the east of Alexandria. The ensuing correspondence between Napoleon and Brueys is littered with confusion and unresolved proposals. However, Brueys eventually took the fleet to Aboukir, perhaps to keep it as near as possible to Napoleon and his army, an entirely sensible decision that we know was favoured by Napoleon himself.

  Aboukir was by no means a poor location if the fleet could assume a strong defensive posture, which was certainly possible. An island, which was quickly fortified, jutted deep into the bay which, at the southern end, was defended naturally by shoals. The bay itself was shallow in places but provided good holding ground. A line of powerful battleships anchored close together near to the shore and perhaps even chained together would pose a significant challenge to any fleet.

  The French never took the appropriate precautions, however. Their ships were anchored too far from the shore and too far from the fortified island and they were not prepared for defence. They were also now dangerously undermanned because all of the soldiers had disembarked to fight the land war and the crews were further weakened because parties had been sent ashore to secure water and food since almost all of the fleet’s provisions had been landed with the army. The ships were nevertheless still encumbered with cargo destined for the new French colony that the army had yet to win. Moreover the frigates were anchored inshore of the main battleships rather than protecting them from the west by a screen of surveillance. So there the French fleet lay upon the topaz water in the stillness of an Egyptian summer afternoon, the gentle waves lapping against their hulls above sunken ancient ruins.

  Meanwhile Nelson, after a brief stay in Sicily and with more accurate information of the French movements, had left for Egypt once more on 25 July. He headed first for Alexandria which he again found empty of warships but this time jammed with the telltale hulks of troopships. He then sent two scouts north towards Aboukir and there he finally fell on his prey. By the time that he was done, 11 of Brueys’s 13 ships of the line had been captured or destroyed and the French flagship lay at the bottom of the sea in ten thousand pieces. Her cannon and treasure rested among the sunken ruins of the Greek cities of Heracleion and Canopus while her lightning conductor, torn from the top of its mast by the explosion and bobbing past a British ship, was plucked from the water and given to Nelson.

  The Dispatches

  Admiral Earl St Vincent to E. Nepean, 23 October 1798

  The first of the Nile dispatches is not written by Nelson. The letter comes from St Vincent, the former Admiral John Jervis, still commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean fleet and based in Gibraltar. It is addressed to Evan Nepean, Secretary of the Admiralty, and it is dated 23 October, that is 84 days or 12 weeks after the battle. St Vincent hints at the reason. The Leander, the ship which Nelson had sent back to Britain with the dispatches, was captured en route by the Généreux, one of only two French ships of the line to have escaped the carnage at Aboukir. Just before the Leander surrendered, the dispatches, which included not only the official letters but also many wonderful personal descriptions of the battle, were stuffed into three canvas sacks, loaded with shot and thrown overboard. The man charged with delivering them to the Admiralty, Nelson’s flag captain Sir Edward Berry, was taken to French-controlled Corfu and did not manage to return to Britain for another two months. St Vincent, therefore, had no idea that one of the most decisive naval battles in history had been won by the British and in his own theatre of war.

  St Vincent’s description of Nelson as ‘an extraordinary man’ says a great deal about his utter professional faith, as well as his professional investment, in him. Remember that Nelson had fought with distinction under his command at the Battle of Cape St Vincent and that St Vincent had personally been involved in the selection of Nelson to lead the hunt for Napoleon’s fleet. By nominating a man so far down the admirals’ list, St Vincent had upset a great number of men.6 He was personally relieved, therefore, that Nelson had won this great victory because his own professional judgement had been at stake.

  L’AURORE GIBRALTAR 23RD OCTOBER 1798

  Sir

  The Capture of the Leander has prevented my receiving the Account of the glorious Action of the Nile, until this moment; The Rear Admiral’s modest relation, which I enclose, is a true Type of the Character of this extraordinary Man:

  The Arrival of General Mack at Naples, to take upon him the Command of the Neapolitan Army, and the Events which have taken place at Constantinople, in consequence of this decisive Victory, must be known to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty long before this can reach you, and there not being time to translate, or transcribe, the several papers in time for the Orion, it is impossible to send them by this Conveyance.

  I am

  Sir

  Your most Obedient

  Humble Servant

  St Vincent

  EVAN NEPEAN ESQR

  The letter ends with some important news. So much time has passed since the battle that the main strategic players in the war have already begun to make their next move.

  General Karl Mack von Leiberich was an Austrian general who had been given command of the Neapolitan army. Nelson, meanwhile, was in Naples, acting rather strangely and conducting a wild and open affair with Emma Hamilton, the wife of Sir William Hamilton, British envoy to Naples. Just under a month before St Vincent sat down to write this letter, Emma had organised a wonderful 40th birthday party for Nelson. Together, they became a formidable couple and Emma enjoyed particularly close links with the Queen of Naples, Maria Carolina. Through this network of relationships the Neapolitan army, under Mack’s command, was incited to wage war against France by invading Italy and attacking Rome.

  With the British fleet in support, Rome was easily taken but the French response was too fast and too professional for the amateur Neapolitan soldiers, their corrupt officers and Mack, whom Nelson later described as a ‘rascal, a scoundrel, and a coward’.7 He was certainly incompetent: in 1805 he surrendered his entire army to Napoleon after a feeble campaign that ended in disaster at Ulm. With Mack at the helm of the Neapolitan rabble, everything turned to dust and ended, two months after St Vincent wrote this letter, with Naples itself being lost to the French and Nelson’s fleet rescuing the Neapolitan royal family. This letter from St Vincent, therefore, is both news of a great victory
and the harbinger of an epic fiasco.

  The ‘Events which have taken place at Constantinople’ to which St Vincent refers were also momentous. Constantinople, modern day Istanbul, was the seat of the Ottoman Empire, of which Egypt was a part. Politics in the heart of Constantinople were not as anti-French as one might suspect. Indeed, there was a growing cabal of pro-French politicians. Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt, therefore, although a direct act of war, might not necessarily have caused the Ottomans to declare war on France. Indeed, to encourage those with pro-French leanings, Napoleon styled himself throughout his Egyptian campaign as an ally of the Ottomans and a friend to the Egyptians, on the basis that he had freed them from Mameluke oppression.

  Nelson’s victory at Aboukir was so absolute, however, that it decided the issue politically in Constantinople. Powerful pro-French voices succeeded in postponing the declaration of war against France but were unable to prevent it. A fetva, a legal opinion according to Muslim religious law, was issued on 3 August, when it was clear that Egypt was under attack, but war was not officially declared by Sultan Selim III until 14 August when news of Nelson’s victory arrived. Still no action was taken, however, until 2 September when the Russian fleet arrived at Constantinople after a brief voyage across the Black Sea from their base at Sevastapol. The Russians, no friends of the Turks, had been inspired to join a new anti-French coalition by Napoleon’s plunder of Malta because the Russian Tsar had been created an official ‘protector’ of the Maltese after the Russo-Maltese Treaty of 1797. The arrival of the Russian squadron off Constantinople forced the anti-French Ottomans to take the lead. Orders were issued to imprison French merchants and advisers, and to confiscate all French property in the Ottoman Empire. The entire French position in the Middle East, carefully nurtured over centuries and a crucial foundation of the future security of Napoleon’s campaign in Egypt, was shattered at a stroke. Taken together, Nelson’s victory, the arrival of the Russian squadron and the subsequent Turkish decision to declare war, ruined the prospects of Napeoleon’s army in Egypt.

  In purely naval terms, however, the most shocking aspect of this entire episode was the presence of the Russian fleet off Istanbul. The Russians and the Ottomans both had powerful navies and shared a mutual antipathy, having fought protracted wars between 1787 and 1792 and 1768 and 1774 that had been predated by decades of hostility and sporadic battles. To see them in alliance was quite extraordinary. The Ottomans grudgingly gave the Russians permission to pass through the Bosphorus and thence into the Mediterranean so that they could, together, drive the French out of the Adriatic.

  The magnificent spectacle of the combined Russian and Turkish navies sailing through the Hellespont was a powerful symbol of the extraordinary European alliance that Napoleon’s ambition had produced. A Second Coalition now stood against France, far more formidable, determined and focused than the one which had faced down the Jacobins. Russia, Austria, the Ottoman Empire, Portugal and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies now joined Britain in a combined bid to stop Napoleon. A little over a year before, the First Coalition had collapsed and Britain had faced Revolutionary France alone. Now the tables had turned.

  Rear-Admiral H. Nelson to St Vincent, 3 August 17988

  The next letter is Nelson’s official dispatch, the ‘modest relation’ to which St Vincent referred (p. 170). The letter, though authored by Nelson, has actually been written by a secretary and hence is in the clearest of hands. Nelson, naturally right-handed, had taught himself to write left-handed after losing his arm the year before. By 1798 he was not struggling with the quill as he once had but his handwriting was still a distinctive scrawl. This letter, however, could not have been composed by anyone other than Nelson. Eloquent and generous, it simply overflows with the honest zeal for which he was so loved.

  This is one of several copies that were sent far and wide after the battle. One went overland to India, a mighty trek indeed from the Eastern Mediterranean. The lucky man charged with that task was Lieutenant Thomas Duval of the Zealous. He sailed to Alexandretta in the Gulf of Scandaroon, where he was given Arab clothing. From there he went inland to Aleppo, where he was given a horse, 19 camels and 24 Arabs to guide him across the desert. Twelve days later he arrived in Baghdad, whence he sailed down the Tigris to Basra, through the Gulf of Oman, across the Arabian Sea and thence to Bombay, modern day Mumbai. He arrived on 21 October, two days before St Vincent in Gibraltar received his first official news of the battle.

  We also know that this, St Vincent’s copy, was old news when it eventually arrived in London. Nelson had sent another copy of his report to Naples by sea in the capable hands of Captain Thomas Capel. From there Capel travelled to Vienna. News of the battle had preceded him like a raging flood. In a town not far from Vienna, an expectant audience was waiting to hear the first public performance of a rather solemn new Mass, the Missa in Angustiis or ‘Mass for Troubled Times’ by Joseph Hadyn, when the news arrived. The majestic work swiftly acquired the nickname ‘The Nelson Mass’. From Vienna, Capel travelled via several German States and eventually arrived in London at 11.15 on the morning of 2 October. Even then, the British already knew that there had been a battle, though not the result, having already received word from the British ambassador in Constantinople.

  Capel made quite an entrance. The First Lord, Earl Spencer, who had been suffering nervous anxiety for months over the fate of Napoleon’s enterprise and his own affirmation of St Vincent’s recommendation to give Nelson command, fainted when he heard the news. His wife erupted in a letter to Nelson. ‘Captain Capel just arrived!’ she wrote, ‘Joy, joy, joy to you, brave, gallant, immortalised Nelson … My heart is absolutely bursting with different sensations of joy, of gratitude, pride, of every emotion that ever warmed the bosom of a British woman on hearing of her country’s glory … I am half mad and I have written a strange letter, but you will excuse it.’9

  A third copy, this copy, was sent with William Hoste to St Vincent at Gibraltar. Hoste was a very young officer who had joined the navy only five years previously, directly under Nelson’s patronage. Nelson declared him ‘without exception one of the finest boys I ever met with’.10 By 1794 he was a Midshipman and, by July 1797, an acting lieutenant; after the Battle of the Nile Nelson gave him command of the brig Mutine. He was only 18 and went on to enjoy a distinguished career.

  This, then, is the letter that Hoste handed to St Vincent on 23 October; moments after its receipt St Vincent began to compose his own covering letter to the Admiralty (p. 170).

  VANGUARD OFF THE MOUTH OF THE NILE,

  3RD AUGUST 1798

  My Lord

  Almighty God has blessed His Majesty’s Arms, in the late Battle by a great Victory over the Fleet of the Enemy, whom I attacked at Sun Set on the 1st August off the mouth of the Nile, The Enemy were moored in a strong Line of Battle, for defending the Entrance of this Bay (of shoals), flanked by numerous Gun Boats, 4 Frigates and a Battery of Guns and Mortars, on an island in their Van, but nothing could withstand the Squadron your Lordship did me the honor to place under my Command; their high state of discipline is well known to you, and with the judgment of the Captains, together with their Valour, and that of the Officers and Men of every description, it was absolutely irresistible. Could any thing from my Pen add to the character of the Captains, I would write it with pleasure but that is impossible; I have to regret the loss of Captain Westcott, who was killed early in the Action, but the Ship was continued to be so well fought by her first Lieutenant Mr. Cuthbert, that I have given him an Order to command her till your Lordships pleasure is known The Ships of the Enemy all but their two Rear Ships are nearly dismasted and those two with two Frigates I am sorry to say made their Escape nor was it I assure you in my Power to prevent them Captain Hood most handsomely endeavoured to do it but I had no Ship in a Condition to support the Zealous and I was obliged to call her in The Support and Assistance I have received from Captain Berry cannot be sufficiently expressed I was wounded in the Head and obli
ged to be carried off the Deck but the Service suffered no loss by that Event Captain Berry was fully equal to the important Service then going on and to him I must beg leave to refer you for every information relative to this Victory he will present you with the Flag of the second in Command that of the Commander in Chief being burnt in L’Orient herewith I transmit you Lists of the killed and wounded and the Line of Battle of ourselves and the French

  I have the honor to be

  Your Lordships most

  Obedient Servant

  Horatio Nelson

  EARL ST. VINCENT

  This copy of the Nile dispatch has been made by a secretary and is not in Nelson’s distinctive left-handed scrawl.

  The first striking aspect of this dispatch, apart from Nelson’s total lack of punctuation, is his thanks given to God. The extent of Nelson’s faith remains an unsettled question. We know that Victorian historians, keen to make their hero a devout Christian, over-emphasised his devotion to prayer and religious ceremony. A man of faith, maybe, but Nelson was no zealot like some of his contemporary flag-officers such as ‘Dismal Jimmy’ Gambier, then one of the Lords of the Admiralty. Nevertheless, the leading statement here, in a letter that he knew would become famous, reflects Nelson’s more general inclination to thank God for his intervention in the engagement. Indeed, he wrote to Lord Spencer claiming that the hand of God was visible from first to last; to his brother, William, that the hand of God had been pressed on the French; and, in a letter to William Hamilton, that ‘Almighty God has made me the happy instrument in destroying the enemy’s fleet.’11 The contrast with his enemy is important here. The French revolutionaries were famous atheists who had turned Notre Dame into a Temple for the Cult of Reason. Against such an enemy, Nelson saw himself as Heaven’s warrior, drawing strength from a perception that he had God’s blessing. A service of thanksgiving was held on the quarterdeck of Vanguard soon after the battle, with Nelson in attendance, head bandaged.