Nelson the Commander

by Bennett, Geoffrey

  Such was the position when Nelson entered the bay with his fleet on 24 June 1799. Because he had left King Ferdinand and, even more so, Queen Carolina, seething with fury against those of their subjects who had allowed their loyalty to be traduced by Jacobinism - the Queen enjoined him to 'treat Naples as if it were an Irish town in a similar state of rebellion' - he signalled Foote that he intended to annul an 'infamous' truce, and attack the forts. Ruffo and Foote hurried onboard the Foudroyant to find Nelson supported by Hamilton and Emma. Foote expressed regret for having signed the treaty; Ruffo argued vigorously that, since some of its terms had been put into effect already - for example, the rebels had released their British prisoners - it must be scrupulously observed; but Nelson insisted that it had no validity because it had not been approved by the King. He was, however, eventually persuaded to abandon his attack, and to allow the garrisons to embark in fourteen transports on the 26th, provided that these stayed in the bay until the king could decide the rebels' future.

  Having supposed that they were on their way to safety, these half-starved, disease-ravaged emigrants were kept prisoner under the guns of the British fleet until 10 July, when the King arrived and at his Queen's behest ordered many to be barbarously executed. But if their deaths stain Nelson's honour, how much more does that of Caracciolo, the Neapolitan Commodore who had fought with him at the battle of Genoa in 1795. This forty-seven-year-old rebel managed to escape from Castel Nuovo shortly before it surrendered. When Ruffo subsequently learned where he was in hiding, Nelson asked that he should be handed over to him, but the Cardinal not only demurred but issued orders that no rebel was to be arrested except on his personal authority.

  Thinking only of the King's and Queen's wishes, Nelson then arranged for the Commodore to be privately seized and brought onboard the Foudroyant. Within an hour of his arrival in the flagship on the night of 28 June, Caracciolo was charged before a court martial, notably for firing upon a vessel which, though Sicilian, was acting under Foote's orders. Despite his request that the court should, therefore, be composed of British officers, Nelson insisted that they should be Neapolitan. The accused pleaded that he had served the rebels unwillingly and under a threat of death, but was not allowed to produce evidence to support this. When he was condemned by a majority of his judges who were headed by an old enemy, the Count Thurn, he asked for a second trial. Nelson refused this. He also rejected Hamilton's expressed wish, which even Thurn supported, that twenty-four hours should elapse before execution; and ignored Caracciolo's last request, that he be accorded the right of death by shooting. At 5 pm on 29 June, little more than twelve hours after his abduction, and before Ruffo could have a chance to intervene, Caracciolo was transferred to Thurn's ship, and hanged at the Minerva's yardarm.

  Nelson had no clear mandate to override Ruffo's authority ashore by arranging the arrest of any Neapolitan rebel. He had, however, this small justification for abducting Caracciolo: he had already written to the King to the effect that Ruffo had, by his negotiations with the rebel forts, shown himself to be disloyal, to which the King replied authorizing the Admiral, if necessary, to arrest the Cardinal - though Nelson did not receive this until 30 June. No such excuse can, however, be offered (even by those who believe Caracciolo to have been guilty) for his decision to order the Commodore's immediate execution after such a travesty of a trial, since he agreed to defer the fate of the other rebels for decision by the King - except that the stress of war has trapped other great leaders into committing a comparable injustice.

  These two incidents were followed by another which, though of a very different kind, not only shows how Nelson's passion for Emma warped his judgment (to quote Lord Elgin: 'There never was a man turned so vainglorious. . . . He is completely managed by Lady Hamilton'), but the evil consequences which sometimes ensued from having no speedier means of communication between two senior officers than letters. On 13 July 1799, three days after the return of the King to Naples, two days after the last Jacobin-held stronghold in the city, the Castel St Elmo, surrendered, Nelson received this instruction from Keith:

  'Events [the arrival of Bruix's fleet in the Mediterranean] . . . render it necessary that as great a force as can be collected should be assembled near . . . Minorca. . . . If your Lordship has no detachment of the French [fleet near] Sicily, nor information of their having sent any force towards Egypt or Syria, you are hereby . . . directed to send such ships as you can possibly spare . . . [to] Minorca to await my orders.'

  This was clearly an order to be complied with at once, Nelson's discretion being limited to the number of ships to be sent. But he answered in these uncompromising terms: 'As soon as the safety of His Sicilian Majesty's Kingdom is secured, I shall not lose one moment in making the detachment. . . . At present . . . the safety of His Sicilian Majesty, and his speedy restoration to his kingdom, depends on [my] fleet.' And instead of sending any of his ships to join his new Commander-in-Chief's flag, he sailed them, under Troubridge, to lay siege to Capua, fifteen miles to the north of Naples.

  Six days later, on 19 July, Nelson received an even clearer and more pressing order from Keith:

  'I judge it necessary that all, or the greater part of [your] force ... should quit . . . Sicily and repair to Minorca . . . [to protect] that island during the necessary absence of . . . [the] squadron under my command [searching for Bruix], or for . . . cooperating with me against the combined [Franco-Spanish] force of the enemy.'

  Nelson responded with an even blunter refusal:

  'Your Lordship . . . was not informed of the change of affairs in the Kingdom of Naples, and that all our marines and a body of seamen are landed in order to drive the French . . . out of the Kingdom. . . . Unless the French are at least drove from Capua, I think it right not to obey your Lordship's order . . . I am perfectly aware of the consequence of disobeying the orders of my Commander-in-Chief.'

  To these offensive words he added this singular explanation, although he now knew that Bruix had reached Cartagena so that Keith had only thirty-one ships-of-the-line to oppose a Franco-Spanish fleet of forty: 'I have no scruple in deciding that it is better to save the Kingdom of Naples and risk Minorca, than to risk the Kingdom of Naples to save Minorca.' Finally, only three days later, Nelson received this third categorical order from Keith:

  'Your Lordship is . . . directed to repair to Minorca, with the whole, or the greater part of the force under your command, for the protection of that island, as I shall, in all probability have left the Mediterranean.'

  This time Nelson complied, but only to the extent of sending Duckworth to Minorca with four ships-of-the-line: he neither went himself, nor sent 'the whole, or the greater part' of his force. This cannot be excused as the action of the man on the spot who believed he was in a better position to know what to do 'in the public interest' than his superior, such as achieved such spectacular results at Cape St Vincent and, later, at Copenhagen. It was irresponsible and in defiance of a Commander-in-Chief for whom he had little respect, for which he cannot be exonerated either by the fact that, in the event, Bruix made no attack on Minorca, nor by the help which his fleet continued to give to the allied armies in Italy.

  Capua capitulated to Troubridge's marines on 29 July 1799, Gaeta on the 31st. Civitavecchia surrendered on 29 September: next day Captain Louis of the Minotaur was rowed up the Tiber in his barge to hoist the British flag over the Capitol in Rome. Nelson was, therefore, fortunate to incur no more than this mild rebuke from an Admiralty who believed one of Britain's dominions to be of greater importance than those of the Kingdom of Naples:

  'Their Lordships do not . . . see sufficient reason to justify your having disobeyed the orders you had received from your Commanding Officer, or having left Minorca exposed to the risk of being attacked without having any naval force to protect it. . . . Their Lordships by no means approve of the seamen being landed [in Italy] to form a part of the army . . . in operations at a distance from the coast where . . . they might be prevented
from returning to the ships, and the squadron be thereby . . . no longer capable of performing the services required of it. . . . Your Lordship [is] not to employ the seamen in like manner in future.'

  But Nelson never admitted to being in the wrong:

  'My conduct is measured by the Admiralty by the narrow rule of law when I think it should have been done by common sense. I restored a faithful ally by breach of orders; Lord Keith lost a fleet by obedience against his own sense. Yet, as one is censured the other must be approved.'

  To this travesty of the facts - as already mentioned Keith missed Bruix's fleet through ignoring St Vincent's instructions - Nelson subsequently added this explanation: 'I paid more attention to another Sovereign than my own. . . . I repine not. . . . I did my duty to the Sicilifying my own conscience, and I am easy.' And against the Admiralty's displeasure he could set King Ferdinand's reward; he was created Duke of Brontë, with estates in Sicily estimated to be worth £3,000 ($7,200) per annum.

  Keith's absence in the Atlantic left Nelson as acting Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean for the remainder of the year - of six sail-of-the-line under Duckworth covering Gibraltar and Cadiz; of four protecting Minorca; of three supporting the Portuguese squadron's blockade of Valletta; of Sydney Smith's division in the Levant; of Troubridge's force operating against Civitavecchia; and of a smaller one disrupting French communications in the Gulf of Genoa. All these he controlled, initially from the Foudroyant in Naples Bay, subsequently from the Palazzo Palagonia to which the Nelson-Hamilton ménage returned on 8 August 1799 because they could not persuade a frightened King Ferdinand to remain in his turbulent capital. And in Palermo Nelson now, for the first and only time, met Ushakov.

  When Bruix's fleet was nearing Toulon, the Russian Admiral recalled his squadrons from the Adriatic: 'I make haste to unite with Nelson', he wrote on 24 May but, on 6 June, 'I do not know how.' He sailed eventually on 24 July, to reach Palermo at the end of August. There is no evidence to support the Soviet historians who contend that Ushakov seized this opportunity to rebuke Nelson for his preoccupation with Emma, but plenty to prove that their meeting was the reverse of fruitful. As Ushakov told the Russian envoy at the Neapolitan Court:

  'I did Nelson a signal honour by arriving with my combined squadrons in Palermo for discussions. . . . I first made suggestions about Malta but he had made his mind up in advance and immediately sent his ships . . . to Gibraltar and Mahon, and did not designate any common action with me. . . . It is very necessary to have frank cooperation, not what is taking place now . . . ministerial tricks and turns . . . under the cover of politeness.' (4)

  The abortive consequences were that while Nelson stayed anchored by Emma to Palermo, Ushakov took his ships to Naples where they remained largely inactive for the next three months, while his Turkish colleague, whose crews were near to mutiny, returned to Constantinople.

  August 1799 also witnessed an event of supreme importance in another part of the Mediterranean; the reaction of the man of whom Nelson had rashly written, on 1 September 1798, 'Bonaparte's career is finished', to the news of the serious defeats inflicted on the French armies in Europe contained in the newspapers given to him by Sydney Smith. La Patrie en danger! This was far more urgent than invading India, especially when Syria and Upper Egypt eluded his grasp. Accepting that his army had been cut off at its roots by the destruction of Brueys' fleet, Bonaparte turned over his command to General Kleber and left Cairo secretly for Alexandria, sailing thence on 23 August onboard the frigate Muiron, with a small escort under Ganteaume's command. The need to beat back against the prevailing westerly winds by a route that would avoid patrolling British frigates so lengthened his voyage that forty-seven days elapsed before he landed at St Raphael on 9 October. His escape is not to be counted against Smith: his squadron was too small to maintain a continuous blockade: on the crucial date he had withdrawn to Cyprus for provisions and water. To suggest that it was a consequence of Nelson and Ushakov giving such high priority to supporting the allied armies in their task of clearing the French out of Italy, not to mention Turkey's failure to use the greater part of her Fleet to any purpose, is nearer the mark. Be this as it may, the consequences were momentous.

  After being defeated by Suvorov at battles on the Trebbia on 17-19 June, and at Novi on 15 August, the French were compelled to evacuate all of Italy except for a few small enclaves, notably around the ports of Genoa and Ancona, the fall of the latter being needlessly prolonged until 13 November by the failure of the local Austrian and Russian naval commanders to agree on how to prosecute an effective siege. The French retreat was, however, halted at Zurich where, at the end of September, Massena was enabled to inflict a crushing defeat on the Allies because the Emperor Francis had withdrawn the larger part of his army from Suvorov's command in order to make a new and unimportant drive across the middle Rhine. Since this was followed in mid-October by the capitulation of the Duke of York's Anglo-Russian expedition to the Netherlands, a humiliated Tsar ordered his armies home on the 23rd. Thus, by the time Bonaparte reached Europe, the immediate threat to French territory had been lifted, leaving him free to rectify the political confusion and administrative chaos which he found in Paris. The Directory was overthrown on 9-10 November 1799 by the coup d'etat of 18 Brumaire, its place being taken by three co-equal Consuls of whom Bonaparte was one. One month later the thirty-year-old Bonaparte established his pre-eminence as First Consul. Now was France's destiny in his hands alone.

  During these eventful months none of the manifold problems with which Nelson had to deal troubled him more than Malta. Valletta's extensive underground granaries allowed Vaubois' garrison to keep their grip on the island's fortress despite a vigorous sea blockade, whilst for lack of grain 60,000 Maltese came near to starvation, the Sicilians being unwilling to meet more than a tithe of their needs when Nelson had too few warships to protect their supply ships from seizure by Barbary pirates. He had to use all his tact to persuade de Niza to delay his departure, when Lisbon recalled the Portuguese squadron that had been the backbone of his blockading force for more than a year, the while he paid a brief visit to Minorca (where Berry, recovered from his wounds, resumed his post as flag captain in the Foudroyant) to press General Sir James Erskine to release British troops from Mahon or Messina to augment the 5,000 which Ushakov hoped to bring from Naples for an assault on Valletta.

  As de Niza left for home early in December, Troubridge landed the Messina garrison in Malta. But these 1,500 troops under Brigadier-General Graham were only enough to stiffen the resistance of the gallant islanders who owed so much to Ball's inspired leadership. Ushakov's men never arrived. The Russian Admiral was about to leave Naples with seven ships-of-the-line and six transports carrying 2,000 troops to take a belated share in the siege and blockade when he received fresh instructions from St Petersburg. Having ordered Suvorov's army home, the Tsar also recalled his fleet from the Mediterranean. On 25 December 1799 a dejected Ushakov wrote: 'I had hoped to take Malta, acting with . . . Rear-Admiral Nelson and Captain Ball . . . but all our actions depend on the will of the all-Highest.' In the hope that a capricious Tsar would reverse his decision, Ushakov put into Corfu for 'the repair of ships damaged by a great storm'. He was still there on 23 April 1800, when Nelson wrote:

  'The orders for the British squadron . . . are to seize the French army from Egypt under whatever protection they may be, and in consequence several have been taken under flags of truce granted by Sir Sydney Smith. I do not think that the French will send off any more . . . now they are informed of the determination of the Allies to prevent their return to Europe. I am this moment going to Malta where it would give me infinite pleasure to meet Your Excellency and . . . for us together to finish the famous expedition of Bonaparte and to tear from him his only remaining conquest.'

  But, when the Tsar remained adamant that Russia must withdraw from an alliance that included Austria, Ushakov was left with no choice but to sail for Sevastopol on 17 July 1800.

 
The polite phrases of Nelson's letter veils a serious dispute with his subordinate commander in the Levant. A presumptuous Smith had no sooner arrived there in the spring of 1799 than he conceived a most unusual, perhaps unique, solution to the Egyptian problem. He offered to individual Frenchmen passports allowing them to return safely to Europe by sea, in the hopes of rapidly weakening the Armée d'Orient to the point which would enable the Turks to reconquer their dominion. Nelson's reaction was swift and certain: 'This is in direct opposition to my opinion . . . I must . . . strictly charge and command you . . . not on any pretence to permit a single Frenchman to leave Egypt.' 'Not on any pretence' included opposing 'by every means in your power, any permission which may be attempted to be given by any foreigner, admiral, general, or other persons'.

  For a time Smith obeyed this order; but when the Earl of Elgin, newly arrived as British Ambassador in Constantinople, encouraged the Sultan to negotiate with Kleber a treaty that would free the Armée d'Orient to return to Europe unmolested, Smith not only allowed it to be signed on 24 January 1800 onboard his ship, but in his presence. The fact that he refrained from adding his own signature to the Convention of El Arish did not save him from an angry rebuke: 'I did not give credit that it was possible for you to give any passport for a single Frenchman, much less the Army, after my positive order of 18 March 1799.' Nelson had, however, now lost the mandate which would have allowed him the irony of requiring implicit obedience when he himself had flagrantly disobeyed Keith's orders to protect Minorca. For Keith had returned to the Mediterranean early in 1800, bringing clear directions from London: 'I have positive orders,' he wrote to Kleber on 8 March, 'not to consent to any capitulation with the French troops . . . unless they lay down their arms, surrender themselves prisoners of war, and deliver up all the ships and stores of . . . Alexandria to the Allied Powers.' And this rendered the well-intentioned but ill-judged work of Elgin and Smith sterile.