Nelson the Commander
Page 19
Although the Admiralty told Nelson as early as 20 September 1799 that he would hold the supreme command only 'till the return of Lord Keith or some other superior officer', he continued to hope that he would be allowed to retain it. But the glory of the Nile had been too much tarnished by his subsequent conduct; the Board could not entrust the Mediterranean to an officer who allowed his judgement to be warped by a single-minded concern for the Neapolitan Court, especially when this went so far as flagrant disobedience of orders. Since Bruix made no further attempt to sortie despite his success in extracting Massaredo's fleet from Cadiz, which brought his strength up to forty-seven ships-of-the-line, Keith was ordered to leave the Brest blockade in the hands of Bridport's Channel fleet and to return to his own station. And his arrival at Gibraltar in the 100-gun Queen Charlotte ended Nelson's freedom to conduct his command from Palermo: he was ordered to meet Keith at Leghorn on 20 January. From there the two Admirals returned together to Palermo, but to stay for only eight days. Keith had no liking for the 'scene of fulsome vanity and absurdity' which he found there. On 15 February the Queen Charlotte, with the Foudroyant in close company, arrived off Malta, with 1,500 Neapolitan troops to hasten the end of the siege.
Nelson's reactions to this abrupt change in his fortunes can be judged from his letters to Emma: 'I feel all, and notwithstanding my desire to be as humble as the lowest midshipman, I am used to having attention paid me.' And: 'To say how much I miss your house and company would be saying little; but in truth you and Sir William have so spoiled me, that I am not happy anywhere else.' Yet to Keith he owed the opportunity to satisfy his hunger for battle which would not otherwise have come his way. The Commander-in-Chief was greeted off Valletta by the frigate Success bearing news of a French squadron to the west of Sicily. The Genereux, flying the flag of Rear-Admiral Perrée, accompanied by three smaller warships, was escorting three transports carrying 3,000 troops to reinforce Vaubois' garrison. Keith promptly ordered three 74s, the Foudroyant, Audacious and Northumberland, to chase to windward (i.e. to the west), whilst his own more powerful flagship guarded the entrance to Valletta's Grand Harbour.
Nelson was delayed by a heavy sea and thick fog so that he had not gone far from Malta when, at dawn on 18 February 1800, the Alexander, on patrol to the south-east of Malta, sighted Perrée's force to leeward of the island. On hearing this British 74's guns, Nelson turned to her support. 'Pray God we may get alongside them [the French]', he wrote in his journal, as his ships ran before the wind with studding sails set. 'The event I leave to Providence.' He had time to say more than this to Emma: 'I feel anxious to get up with these ships and shall be unhappy not to take them myself, for . . . my greatest happiness is to serve . . . my . . . King and Country, and I am envious only of glory; for if it be a sin to covet glory, I am the most offending soul alive.'
At 8 am the Alexander forced the largest transport, the Ville de Marseille, to bring to. At 1.30 pm the French warships parted company and made good their escape. Not for another three hours did the Foudroyant and Northumberland overhaul the Genereux, whose attempted flight was impeded by the 32-gun Success, whose captain skilfully used her greater manoeuvrability to rake the stern of his more powerful opponent again and again. The Foudroyant's first broadside injured Perrée's left eye; the Northumberland's cut off his right leg at the thigh, a wound that was mortal. Deprived of their leader, the French had no further heart for battle against superior odds and struck their colours. 'I have got her - le Genereux - thank God!' wrote Nelson that night. 'Twelve out of thirteen [that were at the Nile], only the Gillaume Tell remaining.'
Keith did not hesitate to give Nelson generous credit for foiling this French attempt to succour Valletta: 'on this occasion, as on all other, [he] conducted himself with skill and great address, in comprehending my signals'. But such was Nelson's anathema for his Commander-in-Chief that he could not forbear to criticize him for ordering a pursuit to windward, nor conceal the depth of his rancour at the Admiralty's reprimand of the previous summer by contending that, in turning to support the Alexander when she discovered the French force to leeward, he had deliberately disobeyed orders. 'By leaving my Admiral without signal, for which I may be broke, I took these French villains', he told Hamilton; whilst to the First Lord he wrote: 'The Genereux was taken by me, and my plan . . . my quitting Lord Keith, was at my own risk. . . . The way he went the Ginereux never could have been taken.'
One week later Keith sailed north to ensure an effective blockade of Genoa which was now besieged by an Austrian army under General Melas. He left Nelson to 'prosecute the necessary measures for . . . the complete reduction of Malta'. But the prospect of achieving this, brought nearer by Perrée's failure to breach the blockade, had no appeal for a man who had already told Keith: 'I . . . made a vow, if I took the Genereux by myself, it was my intention to strike my flag.' Now he veiled the truth, his passionate desire to be reunited with Emma, in a further letter: 'My Lord, my state of health is such that it is impossible I can remain much longer here. . . . I must . . . request your permission to go to my friends at Palermo.'
Keith's unsympathetic response was an order forbidding the Malta squadron to visit Palermo for supplies, and to use instead the nearer port of Syracuse. Since this had been Nelson's own first choice for a base from which to deal with the islands, he could not fail to understand that such an instruction censured him for staying at Palermo for so long, and he rebelled against it. Though Ball and Troubridge argued that he could not leave the blockade without lasting discredit, he wrote to Emma on 4 March 1800: 'My health is in such a state, and to say the truth, an uneasy mind at being taught my lesson like a schoolboy, that MY DETERMINATION is made to leave Malta on the 15th.'
Most fortunately he not only advanced this date by five days but, on arrival at Palermo, transferred his flag to a transport, then ordered the Foudroyant to rejoin the blockade. For Berry returned to Malta only a few hours before Rear-Admiral Decrès decided to relieve the famished garrison of the need to feed the crew of the Guillaume Tell by running out of Valletta on the night of the 29th. 'If the Foudroyant had not arrived, nothing we have could have looked at her', wrote Troubridge: Nelson would have been blamed for her escape. As it was, the Guillaume Tell (although she lost her main- and mizen-topmasts to Captain Henry Blackwood's frigate Penelope, which repeated the tactics of the Success) managed to elude pursuit by the 64-gun Lion during the night. But the Foudroyant was able to come up with her at dawn, for Berry to write:
'At half-past six shot away the [Guillaume Tell's] main and mizenmasts: saw a man nail the French ensign to the stump of the mizenmast. . . . Five minutes past eight, shot away the enemy's foremast. Ten minutes past eight, all the masts being gone by the board, the enemy struck his colours and ceased firing. . . . Performed Divine Service and returned thanks to Almighty God for the victory.'
No ship-of-the-line was fought more gallantly than this, the last survivor from Aboukir Bay: the pity of it is that, although she surrendered to Nelson's ship, she did not do so to Nelson's flag. 'I would have given one thousand guineas your health had permitted your being in the Foudroyant', wrote Troubridge. But for Nelson there were no regrets. 'I am sensible of your kindness,' he told Berry, 'in wishing my presence at the finish of the Egyptian fleet, . . . the thing could not be better done, and I would not . . . rob you of . . . your well-earned laurels.'
Nor was this all: 'My task is done, my health is lost, and the orders of the great Earl St Vincent are completely fulfilled.' The man who had spoken so recently of 'my ambition to serve . . . my . . . King and Country . . envious only of glory', would not remain under Keith's command. 'I have wrote . . .,' he told Spencer, 'for permission to return to England, when you will see a broken-hearted man. My spirit cannot submit patiently.' But already the First Lord had expressed 'my extreme regret that your health should be such as to oblige you to quit your station off Malta, at a time when I should suppose there must be the finest prospect of its reduction. I should be very s
orry that you did not accomplish that business in person, as the Guillaume Tell is your due, and that ship ought not to strike to any other. If . . . [an enemy fleet] should come into the Mediterranean . . . I should be much concerned to hear that you learned of their arrival . . . either on shore or in a transport at Palermo.'
And this rebuke, especially the sting in the last sentence, was followed by action: on 9 May 1800 Keith was told that, if Nelson's health rendered him unfit for duty, he was to be allowed to return to England, a decision which Spencer explained in these blunt words : Nelson's 'further stay in the Mediterranean cannot . . . contribute either to the public advantage or his own', while to Nelson he wrote:
'It is by no means my wish . . . to call you away . . . but having observed that you have been under the necessity of quitting your station off Malta, on account of your health . . . it appeared . . . much more advisable for you to come home at once, than to . . . remain inactive at Palermo, while active service was going on in other parts of the station. . . . You will be more likely to recover your health and strength in England than . . . inactive . . . at a Foreign Court.'
Others were less inhibited in their criticism, Lord Minto for one:
'I have letters from Nelson and Lady Hamilton. It does not seem clear whether he will go home. I hope he will not for his own sake, and he will at least take Malta first. He does not seem at all conscious of the . . . discredit he has fallen into, or the cause of it, for he still writes, not wisely, about Lady H. . . . But it is hard to condemn . . . a hero . . . for being foolish about a woman who has art enough to make fools of many wiser than an admiral' - in Nelson's case one who 'is in many points a really great man, in others a baby'. The Foreign Office settled the matter: Hamilton had long been wanting leave but would not go without Nelson. Now he was superseded: on 22 April Hamilton presented his letters of recall. Free to quit the post he had served with credit for nearly forty years, he and Emma embarked two days later in the Foudroyant, and sailed with Nelson to visit Syracuse and Malta.
From off Valletta on 12 May 1800 a letter went to Keith saying that Nelson intended to withdraw the Foudroyant and the Alexander from the blockade in order to convey the Queen of Naples and her suite to Leghorn, so that she might visit her daughter in Vienna, after which he hoped that the Foudroyant might take him and the Hamiltons to England. Keith replied that no ships could be spared for such diversions - for one reason he had lost his flagship, the Queen Charlotte, with the greater part of her crew, by an accidental fire on 17 March. Before he could receive this Nelson had not only taken both ships to Palermo, but sailed thence to Leghorn where he arrived on 14 June, with the naive explanation: 'I was obliged to bring the Alexander or the [Queen's] party never could have been accommodated.' Keith's comment was: 'Had not Nelson quitted the blockade . . . [Malta] might have fallen about this time.'
His own blockade had already triumphed: on 5 June Massena, his army wasted by famine and disease, surrendered his hold on Genoa. But no success was more short-lived: on the day that Nelson reached Leghorn Bonaparte, once again at the head of an army, scored such a decisive victory over the Austrians at Marengo that Melas was compelled to ask for an armistice. How, then, could Queen Maria Carolina continue her planned journey to Vienna? One thing was certain: Nelson would not abandon her. When Keith ordered him to take his ships to Spezia, he sent only the Alexander: the Foudroyant stayed at Leghorn 'to receive the Queen . . . should such an event be necessary'. Keith replied that no ships-of-the-line were to be so used when the Brest fleet might at any time reappear in the Mediterranean. Nelson answered tartly: 'I do not believe the Brest fleet will return to sea, and if they do the Lord have mercy on them, for our fleet will not.'
Keith sought to resolve the issue between them by proceeding to Leghorn on the 24th, 'to be bored by Lord Nelson for permission to take the Queen to Palermo and princes and princesses to all parts of the globe'. Although, according to Wyndham, British Minister to Tuscany:
'the Queen wept . . . [the Commander-in-Chief] remained unmoved and would grant nothing but a frigate. . . . He told her Lady Hamilton had had command of the fleet long enough. . . . Nelson . . . does not intend going home till he has escorted [the Queen] back to Palermo. His zeal for the public service seems entirely lost in his love and vanity.'
Keith compromised to the extent of authorizing the Alexander to take the royal party round to Trieste, but by now Emma had had enough of the sea. She pressed the Queen to complete her journey by way of Florence and Ancona. And when Keith learned that the Hamiltons were to go with her, he seized his chance to be rid of his refractory subordinate: Nelson was allowed to strike his flag on 13 July 1800 and travel overland to England with them.
This chapter needs three footnotes. First, two ironic twists. To reach Venice from Ancona he and his fellow travellers were obliged to take passage not in a British ship but onboard the flagship of Rear-Admiral N. Voinovitch, who had refused to obey the Tsar's order to withdraw his frigates from the northern Adriatic (for which offence he was, not surprisingly, dismissed from the Imperial Russian Navy). And because Russia had abandoned the Second Coalition, the Treaty of Amiens, signed in 1802, established the Ionian Islands, not as a Russian colony, but as an independent republic to come again under French dominion in 1803, after which, from 1815 until 1864, they were under British rule.
Secondly, Malta. On 24 August 1800 the two surviving frigates from the Nile made their bid to escape from Valletta. The Diane was taken by the Success; the Justice outsailed the Genereux (now flying the British ensign) and Northumberland, eventually to reach Toulon. A fortnight later, Vaubois conceded defeat: on 5 September his garrison surrendered to Major-General Pigot who had arrived in April with a further 2,500 British and Neapolitan troops. The Treaty of Amiens restored the island to the Knights of St John, against the wishes of the islanders. Before this dispute could be resolved, the war against Napoleon was renewed, when Britain again took Malta under her protection whereby, eleven years later, the Treaty of Paris settled that 'the Islands . . . belong in full property and sovereignty to His Britannic Majesty', from one of whose successors they later, alone among his dominions, gained the George Cross for indomitable courage during World War Two.
Thirdly, Egypt. After Keith had annulled the Convention of El Arish, Kleber inflicted such a severe defeat on the Turks that the Armée d'Orient was able to remain in undisputed control of Egypt for more than a year in which they were helped by several frigates piercing the British blockade with supplies and reinforcements. But Keith's fleet and a squadron under Warren (now Rear-Admiral Sir John), foiled three attempts to reach Alexandria during the spring of 1801 by a sizeable fleet under Ganteaume, which managed to slip out of Brest. Characteristically Keith failed to bring the enemy to action. However, on 2 March he entered Aboukir Bay with a fleet of seventy sail to land an army of 16,000 troops under General Sir Ralph Abercromby, who decisively defeated the French near Alexandria on the 21st, at the cost of his own life. Six days later an Anglo-Turkish army occupied Cairo. General Menou continued to hold Alexandria with some 10,000 men until a bombardment compelled the final surrender of the Armée d'Orient on 2 September 1801, shortly before the end of hostilities in Europe, and the Treaty of Amiens which restored Egypt to its lawful sovereign, the Sultan of Turkey. How Egypt was later dominated, first by France and then by Britain, before achieving independence is another story.
To what extent did these two years during which Nelson, though only a rear-admiral, was entrusted with the conduct of the naval war in the eastern Mediterranean - for six months of which he was Commander-in-Chief Mediterranean Station in all but title - enhance his reputation as a naval commander? The answer must dismay all those to whom his is a peerless name. The true Nelson only brightened these sombre years as briefly as a flash of lightning splits the darkness of a summer night, as when he encountered the Genereux. For the most part all his actions and judgements were guided, not by his brain but by a heart gripped by merciless passion for a
scheming woman who had no concern for her country's interests and, latterly, by a mind poisoned by intolerance of the Commander-in-Chief who succeeded his beloved St Vincent.
The ambition, which was his driving force, was largely quenched. His only action, with the Genereux, made no demands on his tactical genius. His diplomacy was marked by intolerance and a naive failure to understand the complex political situation in Naples. His whole approach was conditioned and circumscribed by his own and, through Emma, Queen Maria Carolina's, consuming hatred for the French, and a belief that King Ferdinand's rebellious subjects could be handled with the same crisp quarterdeck ease as mutinous seamen.
A vital component of leadership is example, not least in obedience and respect for a senior officer. Inspired disregard of an order by the man on the spot who is in a better position to judge the action required to further his superior's aim, may be instrumental in gaining success. Repeated disobedience of orders is a very different matter, Nelson's firm handling of Sydney Smith's intransigence being wholly offset by his arrogant contempt for Keith, but for whose forbearance he must have been tried by court martial.
His understanding of strategy, so clearly evinced immediately after the Nile, was undermined. But for Emma he would not have pressed King Ferdinand to make his disastrous march on Rome, nor believed that its debacle required him to devote his energies to ensuring the safety of the Neapolitan Court and regaining their lost capital. But for her he would have done more to secure Ushakov's active help, more to shorten the siege of Valletta, and more to end the Armée d'Orient's grip on Egypt.