Nelson the Commander
Page 17
Meantime, although Ushakov had a more than sufficient force for a strict blockade of Corfu, he failed to prevent the Genereux escaping to Ancona on the night of 5-6 February. His chagrin at this is one reason why, after the island capitulated on 1 March 1799 and the Leander fell into his hands, he refused to hand her over to Nelson until the Tsar ordered him to do so some six months later. But the mistrust between the two Admirals, which bedevilled effective cooperation between them, went deeper than this. Although he never visited Ireland, Nelson expressed nothing but contempt for its people, describing them as 'vagabonds'. He had the same insular dislike of all foreigners - with the singular exception of the Neapolitan Court. He wanted Ushakov's help, but on his own terms. 'Surely I have a right to expect that the united Russo-Turkish fleets would have taken care of things east of [Crete]. I never wished to have them west of it', and, 'The Russians seem to be more intent on taking ports in the Mediterranean than destroying Bonaparte in Egypt.' 'Should any Russian ship . . . arrive off Malta,' he advised Ball after the Tsar was elected Grand Master of the Knights, 'you will convince [them] of the very unhandsome manner of treating the legitimate Sovereign [the King of the Two Sicilies] by wishing to see the Russian flag fly in Malta. . . . The Russians shall never take the island.' To ensure against this, he granted a petition from the Maltese Council to be allowed to hoist the British flag alongside the Sicilian, 'to show that the island was under the special protection of Great Britain'. Otherwise he thought of Malta as a 'useless and enormous expense' only to be incurred 'rather than let it remain in the hands of the French'.
With that acute suspicion of all foreigners which is so characteristic of the Russian people, Ushakov paralleled Nelson's distrust. He rejected a further request to strengthen Smith's Levant force. 'I would willingly . . . fulfil your plan . . . but various circumstances prevent me.' His ships had `absolutely no provisions': half of them suffered from storm damage; the Tsar had ordered the rest to the Gulf of Venice, etc. When Nelson pressed him 'to send as many ships and men as possible' to prevent Messina falling to the French and threatening Sicily, Ushakov told Tomarov, Russian Ambassador in Constantinople:
'I consider the demands of the English senior naval officers for the vain division of our fleet nothing but paltry friendship . . . to make us catch flies while they enter the places from which they are trying to keep us away. . . . They have always wanted to take Corfu for themselves and wished to send us away under various pretexts or, by splitting us up, reduce us to an incapable condition. . . . I am not going to be a pupil of Sydney Smith: it would not shame him to learn something from me.'
A little later Ushakov was 'extremely saddened' by the Tsar's order to send Rear-Admiral Pustoshkin's squadron to join Nelson: 'More than half my ships would have been taken from me and I would have remained here [Corfu] with the smaller and worse part needing great repairs. . . . My service and labours will be wasted in inactivity.' He hoped that 'our most merciful Sovereign Emperor . . . will magnanimously forgive me' for not obeying the order. One month more and he grumbled that it was impossible to link up with Nelson because 'there will be nowhere to get provisions and we will either die of hunger or possibly lose everything'.
Nelson, who achieved promotion to rear-admiral of the red on 14 February, was rightly concerned over the Levant: a prolonged bombardment of Alexandria by Troubridge and Hood did nothing to stop the French advancing into Syria where they first captured Jaffa, then, on 17 March, occupied Haifa, adding two new ports to be blockaded by the British squadron. Fortunately, when Bonaparte then laid siege to the Crusader fortress of Acre, Sydney Smith not only proved his metal, but showed the real significance of Nelson's triumph at the Nile. While taking HMS Tigre to support this town's Turkish defenders, he fell in with and captured the French convoy carrying the siege artillery which Bonaparte (despite his experience at Oneglia in 1796) had decided to send by sea to avoid the labour of dragging it across the Sinai desert. With this in Turkish hands, and by bombardments by the Tigre and the 74-gun Theseus, Bonaparte was prevented from doing more than breach the town's walls before 7 May, when fresh Turkish troops from Damascus threatened the French rear just as others arrived by sea from Rhodes. These, and marines from the British ships, did more than beat off Bonaparte's final assault; they lifted the French threat to Syria. On the specious excuse that Acre was contaminated by plague, Bonaparte raised the siege on the 19th and withdrew to Egypt, reaching Cairo on 14 June.
Bonaparte's retreat persuaded the Turks to send an expeditionary force to expel him from Egypt. On 15 July 1799 a fleet, headed by thirteen ships-of-the-line, landed 8,000 men at Aboukir. But instead of advancing into the hinterland to give this bridgehead depth, as Smith urged them to do, the Turks entrenched themselves within the town, with disastrous results. On 25 July the French launched a counter-attack and quickly drove them into the sea. But although this lifted the threat to their rear, and the Turkish fleet showed its old reluctance to share the blockade, preferring to withdraw to its own ports as speedily as it had arrived, it was the beginning of the end of Bonaparte's Egyptian venture. During an exchange of prisoners, Smith sent him copies of the latest newspapers which he had received from London. 'This man,' said Bonaparte, 'changed my destiny.' He referred to the capture of his siege train, but the comment could as well apply to Smith's courtesy, because these papers contained news from Europe that decided the future Emperor of France to make a drastic alteration to his plans, with immense consequences for the future.
The Austrian Emperor made up his mind to join the Second Coalition on 12 March 1799. One of his armies was immediately successful, defeating the French at Stockach on 25 March and driving them back into central Switzerland. The other had to retreat after being defeated at Magnano on 5 April, but it was then joined by a Russian army under the invincible Field-Marshal Prince Alexander Suvorov. Although in his seventieth year, Suvorov had lost none of the skill, nor the resolution with which he had campaigned so successfully against the Turks and the Poles. When he turned the tide for the allies on the Adda towards the end of April, the Armée d'Italie faced eviction from the whole of the country which Bonaparte had conquered and occupied.
For Ushakov the need to support Suvorov by bringing pressure to bear against the French from the sea transcended the importance which Nelson attached to the Levant. One Russo-Turkish squadron, under Commodore Sorokin, re-established Neapolitan authority in Brindisi on 4 May and in Bari on the 13th: another, under Rear-Admiral Pustoshkin, blockaded Ancona. For Nelson, Malta continued an intractable problem. Despite Ball's leadership of the insurgent Maltese, Vaubois held on to Valletta, whose blockade demanded as much of Nelson's ships as the piratical rulers of Tunis and Tripoli called for his diplomatic skill to dissuade them from seizing the Sicilian vessels carrying grain to the island. These and other negotiations wearied him. 'My public correspondence . . . is with Petersburg, Constantinople, the Consul at Smyrna, Egypt, the Turkish and Russian Admirals, Trieste, Vienna, Tuscany, Minorca, Earl St Vincent and Lord Spencer.' Believe me, my Dear Friend,' he told Davison in one of those fits of depression which are characteristic of men of creative talent when, as is inevitable from time to time, they are denied an opportunity to exercise it, 'my only wish is to sink with honour into the grave. . . . I am ready to quit this world of trouble, and envy none but those of the estate six feet by two.' Emma's consoling arms were not enough: 'This I like, active service or none.' Yet when opportunity offered, he was slow to grasp it. Although he paralleled Ushakov's activity by instituting a blockade of Naples with four ships-of-the-line including the Vanguard, he could not bring himself to leave the Palazzo Palagonia at Palermo: he transferred his flag to a transport, and charged his second-in-command with rousing the patriots.
Troubridge did this with such effect that Championnet's successor, Macdonald, evacuated the city on 22 April 1799, except for a garrison of 500 in the Castel St Elmo. But in the subsequent interregnum he was unable to unite the Neapolitans; although the countryside w
as held by an undisciplined army of loyal peasants, led by Fabrizio Ruffo, Cardinal of Calabria, and stiffened by a small Russian force from Ushakov's fleet, the lazzaroni of Naples itself were not only infected with Jacobinism but enjoyed the support of a small naval force under Commodore Prince Caracciolo, who nurtured a bitter resentment against the King for his decision, when the capital was threatened in the previous autumn, to place his personal safety in the hands of a foreign admiral instead of his own fleet. Nelson urged Ferdinand to return at once to Naples to rally the dissidents; but his Queen was too frightened and obstinately opposed to risking failure. As Nelson told St Vincent, they would only 'cross the water when . . . Naples is entirely cleansed'; even so they would require 'British troops . . . [in] Naples to guard the person of Their Majesties'.
While thus preoccupied with Naples Nelson received news of grave import from the Atlantic. He had long realized that the French might transfer a sizeable part of their Brest fleet to regain control of the Mediterranean so that the Armée d' Orient could be reinforced and resupplied. The Minister of Marine, Vice-Admiral Eustache Bruix, hoisted his flag in command of some twenty-five ships-of-the-line and led them out of Brest on 25 April 1799. Though sighted by a patrolling British frigate, Bruix avoided further contact with the watching Channel fleet because Bridport mistakenly supposed his destination to be Ireland. St Vincent being away sick at Gibraltar, the blockade of Cadiz was being maintained by fifteen sail-of-the-line under Vice-Admiral Lord Keith, who sighted the French force on 4 May and prepared for battle. But in a gale which prevented the Spanish fleet leaving harbour to join their ally, Keith was unable to get within range before nightfall; nor could he overtake Bruix's ships next day before they slipped safely through the Straits.
St Vincent responded to this emergency by calling off the blockade of Cadiz; but Keith could not reach Gibraltar until 10 May, so that it was two days more before his Commander-in-Chief entered the Mediterranean with sixteen sail-of-the-line. Reinforced by Duckworth's four battleships, St Vincent anchored off Mahon in Minorca on the 20th, only to learn that Bruix had reached Toulon a week before - and that on the 14th the Spanish Admiral Massaredo had seized his chance to slip out of Cadiz with seventeen ships-of-the-line which were now at Cartagena.
As soon as he received news of Bruix's sortie, on 12 May, Nelson ordered Troubridge and Ball to take their ships to join Duckworth, now a rear-admiral, at Minorca. But he could not extricate himself from the tentacles of Palermo. 'Eight, nine, or ten sail-of-the-line shall in a few days be off Mahon . . .', he told St Vincent. 'I am only sorry that I cannot [myself] move to your help. . . . Nothing would console the Queen . . . but my promise not to leave them.' It was a decision that conflicted with his sense of duty and his thirst for action: 'My heart is breaking.'
Fortunately Nelson's dilemma was resolved in twenty-four hours by a report that Bruix had already passed Minorca: he had not only eluded St Vincent but might be steering for the eastern Mediterranean. Faced with this danger, Nelson hurried fresh orders to Troubridge and Ball to rendezvous off Maritimo Island, just to the west of Sicily, for which he himself sailed in the Vanguard on 20 May. There he collected ten ships-of-the-line, which 'if Duckworth reinforce me, will enable me to look the enemy in the face', fourteen ships to nineteen. 'Even if Duckworth . . . leave me to my fate, never mind. If I can get 11 sail together, [the French] shall not hurt me.' This, in sharp contrast to the man who had been 'inactive at a Foreign Court' for so long, was the true Nelson, a commander convinced of his own and his fleet's ability to deal effectively with a superior French force.
St Vincent had, meantime, left Mahon for a position south-west of Toulon to prevent a junction between Massaredo's and Bruix's fleets. On 30th May he learned that the latter had sailed from Toulon three days before. On the same day his own fleet was strengthened by a further five ships-of-the-line, bringing it up to twenty-five. This decided him to do something towards rectifying the weakness of Nelson's force: Duckworth was ordered to take his squadron to Palermo where he arrived on 6 June. He found that Nelson had returned on 25 May: believing Bruix's fleet to be a greater threat to the Two Sicilies than to the Levant, he had sent Ball to resume the blockade of Malta with two ships-of-the-line whilst keeping the rest of his fleet concentrated at Palermo.
Duckworth's squadron included the Foudroyant, which Spencer had first intended to be Nelson's flagship; to this larger, 80-gun vessel Nelson transferred his flag on 8 June, taking Hardy with him from the Vanguard. But any satisfaction which he derived from this accretion to his force was diluted by Duckworth's news of the sixty-five-year-old St Vincent's health. 'This distresses us most exceedingly and myself in particular . . .' Nelson wrote to the man who had so consistently supported him. 'For the sake of our Country, do not quit us at this serious moment. . . . We look up to you . . . as to our Father, under whose fostering care we have been led to fame.' His apprehension for the future was well-founded; although he wrote, 'I wish not to detract from the merit of whoever may be you successor', he knew that this was likely to be the fifty-two-year-old Keith for whom, as with the ineffective Hotham, he had scant regard, not least because he had reached such high rank without taking part in any action at sea. He owed his position to a life-long friendship with St Vincent, his unopposed capture of the Cape of Good Hope in 1795, and a talent for administration.
St Vincent did not immediately give up his command-in-chief: on 2 June 1799 he withdrew his flagship to Minorca, leaving Keith to search for Bruix along the Riviera. But his second-in-command was too late to prevent the French landing troops and stores in Vado Bay for the relief of Savona. He was about to follow them into the Gulf of Genoa when he received fresh orders: St Vincent required him to detach two ships-of-the-line to reinforce Nelson, then to steer for the north-east coast of Spain, to forestall a link-up between the French and Spanish fleets. The Commander-in-Chief's strategic insight was sounder than Keith's. Had the latter complied with these instructions, he might well have intercepted Bruix's twenty-two sail-of-the-line. He chose instead to cruise off Toulon, whereby Bruix reached Cartagena without impediment on 22 June. In the event, Keith's lapse had no significant consequences for the Mediterranean. Daunted by so much opposition - Keith with nineteen sail, Nelson with fifteen, another sixteen on their way from England, not to mention the Portuguese squadron, and the Russo-Turkish concentration at Corfu - Bruix and Massaredo decided that their combined fleets of forty ships-of-the-line would be better employed in the Atlantic after all. Leaving Cartagena on 24 June, while Keith was having another look in Vado Bay, they passed the Straits on 7 July, three weeks before Keith could reach Gibraltar in pursuit.
To his credit Keith pressed this with such energy that he all but over-took an enemy who delayed eleven days at Cadiz: when he arrived off Brest on 14 August 1799, he learned that Bruix and Massaredo had reached this haven only the day before, having again eluded Bridport's Channel fleet. But since this had been reduced to a mere ten sail-of-the-line by the Admiralty's order to detach sixteen to the Mediterranean, prime responsibility for the British failure to prevent the combined Franco-Spanish force reaching Brest must lie with Keith, and justify Nelson's poor opinion of him. It is, however, as fair to comment that it was, perhaps, fortunate that he did not intercept Bruix and Massaredo, since it is very doubtful whether he had the qualities needed to fight a successful action, despite the advantage of a fleet nearly as strong numerically as the enemy, and indubitably more efficient.
Long before this Nelson made an ill-judged move. The Queen and Emma persuaded him to use his ships to reassert King Ferdinand's authority in Naples, despite the paramount need to keep them concentrated ready to intercept Bruix. He had no sooner sailed from Palermo on 12 June with Neapolitan troops embarked, than he was joined by the Bellerophon and Powerful with news that Bruix was on a course for Naples. 'The French force being 22 sail-of-the-line, four of which are first rates, the force with me being only 16 . . . not one of which was of three decks, three being Por
tuguese and one of the English being a 64 very short of men, I had no choice left but to return to Palermo', to disembark the troops before establishing a patrol to the west of Sicily. Having thus reproached Keith, a frustrated Nelson complained to St Vincent: 'I . . . regret that his Lordship [Keith] could not have sent me a force fit to face the enemy.' The Commander-in-Chief was too ill to reply that it was he who had ordered his second-in-command to detach only two ships-of-the-line: he was, indeed, about to sail for home. And his successor thought it best to react to such criticism from a subordinate with a dignified silence - but the first seeds of discord between Keith and Nelson had been sown.
There followed two related incidents which demonstrate more than any other the extent to which Nelson allowed not only his judgment but his humanity to be subordinated to his passion for an ambitious woman who was determined to maintain her favoured position with a vindictive Queen, married to a weak and irresponsible King. The need to concentrate his ships-of-the-line against Bruix obliged the Admiral to leave only small craft in Naples Bay to support the loyal Neapolitans' struggle to regain the three forts occupied by rebels with a hard core of French troops. On 20 June Ruffo persuaded the castles of Uovo and Nuovo to capitulate by offering their garrisons, numbering about 1,500, liberal terms, including the right to march out with military honours and the choice of remaining in Naples or of being evacuated to Toulon. Most were too fearful for their future safety to do other than choose the second alternative. Until the necessary transports could be made available, the rebels were to remain in the forts under flags of truce. The senior British naval officer present, Captain Edward Foote, consented to sign after a vain protest that the terms were too generous.