The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean

by David Abulafia

  III

  The Revolutionary War, and the Napoleonic Wars that followed, affected the entire Mediterranean. In 1793, not long after the revolutionary government declared war on Britain, it seemed for a moment that the British fleet would be able to prevent the French navy from making any use of Mediterranean waters. As the war between France and its neighbours intensified, to the accompaniment of the ruthless suppression of those who opposed the Jacobin radicals, rebellions broke out in the French provinces. The citizens of Toulon ejected the Jacobins from office, and appealed to the British to save their city from the revolutionary armies that were advancing southwards. Refugees flooded in and supplies were short. Fortunately, British ships, commanded by Lord Hood, had already placed Toulon under a blockade; this had only accentuated the shortages within Toulon. On 23 August Hood agreed to take charge of Toulon if the inhabitants recognized the heir to the throne as King Louis XVII. The citizens swallowed hard and agreed to this, for their fear of the Jacobins compensated for their lack of enthusiasm for the monarchy. The occupation brought about half the French fleet under British control. But Hood was poorly supplied with ground troops, and once the revolutionary army, commanded by Napoleon Bonaparte, captured the fort at the mouth of the harbour entrance known as ‘Petit Gibraltar’ (17 December 1793), Hood realized that the British position was untenable. As they withdrew, the British destroyed nine French ships of the line as well as three frigates, and blew up stocks of timber on which the future of the French fleet depended. They also towed away twelve more ships, which were taken into the British and Spanish navies.23

  This was one of the severest blows against the French navy during the entire war with France, at least as serious as the destruction unleashed at Trafalgar. And yet the loss of Toulon created a mountain of problems for the British. Every British commander in the Mediterranean obsessively watched Toulon as long as Napoleon was active.24 British commanders had to devise new ways of confronting the French fleet there. One solution was the recovery of Minorca, which was reoccupied in 1798 as a forward position close to southern France. Before that, though, another tempting possibility offered itself. In 1768 the French Crown had taken Corsica off the hands of the Genoese, who had in any case lost control of the island to the nationalist forces led by the eloquent and inspiring Pasquale Paoli. And then, before France declared war on Britain, reports circulated in Livorno that the revolutionary government had no interest in Corsica and that the island was up for sale. The Russians were said to be keen to fund a bid by the Genoese government to buy back Corsica, seeing it as a potential naval base in the western Mediterranean.25 These rumours stimulated British interest in Corsica, which grew once Great Britain found itself at war with France.

  While Toulon was in British hands, Pasquale Paoli became more and more enthusiastic about a Corsican alliance with Britain. He understood the significance of the loss of Toulon by the British, noting: ‘the capture of Toulon is fortunate; it obliges the English to liberate us.’ What Paoli overestimated was the usefulness of Corsica. The island has not featured in this book as often as Sardinia, Majorca, Crete or Cyprus simply because it offered fewer facilities for trans-Mediterranean shipping, and fewer products of its own than the other islands. There was some grain available in the Balagne, an area in the north that had been exploited ever since it had fallen under Pisan rule in the twelfth century, but this was a society that looked inwards, isolated, conservative, whose interior was of difficult access. It was therefore not surprising that the Genoese eventually gave up their attempts to hold the island.26 The British, however, began to imagine that Corsica possessed untapped potential as a naval base. Maybe, it was wildly suggested, Ajaccio could eventually become a port to rival Livorno, and Corsica could become ‘an emporium which may command all the markets of the Mediterranean and Levant’. In 1794 Saint-Florent in the Balagne was stormed by the British, and within a few weeks a Corsican parliament voted for union with Great Britain; the island was to be a self-governing community under the sovereign authority of King George III. The Corsicans were granted their own flag, carrying a Moor’s head alongside the royal arms, as well as a motto: Amici e non di ventura, ‘friends and not by chance’.27

  The relationship between the British and the Corsicans turned sour, however: Paoli became disillusioned, and revolutionary committees became increasingly active, as Napoleon infiltrated activists into his native island. During 1796 William Pitt’s government decided that the British position in Corsica was untenable; the Corsican union with Britain was dissolved, and British troops were withdrawn. The hopes that had been raised about the value of the island had been rapidly disappointed. Pitt wondered whether Catherine the Great might be willing to take on Corsica, in return for a promise of special access for British shipping; he wanted her to believe that she could hold the island with no more than 6,000 troops and the goodwill of the Corsican parliament. Catherine died before the proposal ever reached her. The British view of a Russian presence in the Mediterranean was, then, that the Russians might serve as useful idiots who could perform secondary tasks for Britain, while Britain’s major effort and expense were dedicated to the war against revolutionary France and, subsequently, Napoleon.

  It became the task of Nelson and his very capable colleagues – Hood, Collingwood, Troubridge and others – to prise control of the Mediterranean from the French. One important purpose was to block Napoleon’s attempts to establish a French base in Egypt, from which he could interfere with British imperial projects still further to the east, in India, for the British had been building their power out there since the mid-eighteenth century. A French letter intercepted by the British set out the arguments behind an Egyptian campaign:

  The Government have turned their eyes towards Egypt and Syria: countries which by their climate, goodness and fertility of soil may become the Granaries of the French Commerce, her magazine of abundance, and by the course of time the depository of the riches of India: it is almost indubitable that when possessed of & regularly organized in these countries we may throw our views still farther, & in the end destroy the English Commerce in the Indies, turn it to our own profit, & render our selves the Sovereigns also of that, of Africa, & Asia. All these considerations united, have induced our Government to attempt the expedition to Egypt.28

  Nelson was a commander of exceptional brilliance, but it was his opponent, Napoleon, who drew the conflict between Britain and France deep into the Mediterranean and, once again, a good, though unorthodox, way of viewing the course of events is from the Russian and Maltese perspective.

  Bonaparte could see from the start that Malta was a prize worth winning. While still an employee of the revolutionary Directory, in 1797, he wrote to his masters that ‘the island of Malta is of major interest for us’, arguing that France needed a sympathetic Grand Master. This could be arranged, in his view, for at least half a million francs: the current Grand Master had never recovered from a stroke, and his successor was expected to be the German von Hompesch:

  Valletta has 37,000 inhabitants who are very well disposed towards the French; there are no longer any English in the Mediterranean; why should not our fleet or the Spanish, before going into the Atlantic, sail to Valletta and occupy it? There are only 500 Knights and the regiment of the Order is only 600 strong. If we do not, Malta will fall into the power of the king of Naples. This little island is worth any price to us.29

  These were very acute comments, even if he overestimated the value of Malta as a supply base, given its shortage of wood and water. The magnificent fortifications of Valletta were a mask behind which sat an inadequate army of defenders, men who were, in any case, often seduced by fine living – the passionate, even fanatical, ideals of the earlier Hospitallers had become greatly diluted, even if the war against the infidel Turk remained the set purpose of the Maltese corsairs.30 Moreover, the danger of a Neapolitan takeover of Malta had more than local significance. The ‘king of the Two Sicilies’ enjoyed close ties to Nelson and to Bri
tain, and his historic claim to be the ultimate suzerain of the Maltese archipelago was recognized in the tribute of a falcon paid each year by the Grand Master.

  Von Hompesch was duly elected Grand Master in July 1797. He saw in the Russian tsar an ally who could restore the Order’s fortunes through the Polish-Russian priory, while also hoping for support from the Austrian emperor, in whose lands he had been born, and from the French Knights, who were appalled by what had been happening in France, where the Order held many lands.31 Von Hompesch rightly assumed that Napoleon’s real concerns lay elsewhere; but Napoleon was convinced that in order to achieve his objectives in the eastern Mediterranean he must control Malta. When a massive French fleet left Toulon in May 1798, bound for Egypt by way of Malta, von Hompesch continued to place his trust in the Russians and the Austrians, as if they were really in a position to offer him any help. Doublet, who had served as secretary to the previous Grand Master, observed that ‘never had Malta seen such a numberless fleet in her waters’, and the leaders of the native Maltese community reflected on the irony that it was a western European and not a Turkish navy that was now poised to take the island from the Order.32 Once the French fleet reached Malta, von Hompesch cautiously insisted that ships could enter the harbour only four at a time, and Napoleon’s emissary complained: ‘what length of time, indeed, would it not take for 500 to 600 sail to procure in this way the water and other things they urgently need?’ The emissary went on to complain that much better favours had been shown in the recent past to the British.33 Still, this was the answer Bonaparte had wanted. He now had ample excuse to unload 15,000 men and take charge of the island. Von Hompesch realized that he had no chance of holding out against massively superior forces. He surrendered the island, and on 13 June Napoleon expelled the Knights; he melted down great quantities of silver plate and appropriated their archives, not in order to read the documents, but because ammunition shells were usually packed with paper. Thus the Knights were stripped of their identity and thrown on the mercy of the Christian powers, as they had been after the fall of Acre and after the fall of Rhodes. Once again the survival of the Order was much in doubt.

  The capture of Malta only strengthened the determination of Tsar Paul to bring Russian navies back into the Mediterranean. That he overestimated its usefulness as a source of wood and water is undeniable. But he fully expected to move on from Malta to more substantial conquests.34 His first move was to persuade the Russian priory of the Order to declare von Hompesch deposed, and to elect the tsar as their new Grand Master, in November 1797.35 He proceeded to appoint a number of Russian Orthodox nobles as Knights of Malta, and he wore his magisterial robes every day, giving the impression that he was as proud of his (contested) position as Grand Master as he was of his position as Russian emperor. He saw himself as a paragon of chivalry. ‘Just now,’ an Austrian minister observed, ‘the Tsar’s sole preoccupation is with Malta.’36

  One of the many surprises Paul gave his contemporaries was his alliance with the Ottomans. This followed Admiral Nelson’s great victory over Napoleon’s fleet at Aboukir Bay, close to Alexandria, in summer 1798 (the Battle of the Nile); after this, the British were able to expel French armies from Egypt, though not before Napoleon had despoiled the country of vast numbers of its antiquities.37 The Sublime Porte had remained broadly content with its French alliance since the sixteenth century. A French landing in Ottoman Egypt could not, however, be tolerated. Besides, there were troublemakers in the Balkans who seemed dangerously sympathetic to France, notably the great Albanian warlord Ali Pasha, lord of Ioannina. Now, clearly, it was time for the sultan to turn against a France which had shown itself more ambitious in the Levant than the Ottomans could allow, and at the same time had shown itself more vulnerable than observers of Napoleon’s fleets and armies might have expected. The most important feature of the Russo-Turkish alliance was the preliminary agreement, signed only a few weeks after Aboukir, which permitted the Russian navy to sail through the Bosphorus into the Mediterranean.38 Fortunately, the Turks and the Russians could agree on a common objective: the Ionian isles, which Napoleon had seized shortly before, while he was sweeping up the remnants of the Venetian empire following his capture of Venice in May 1797. The Turks suspected that Ancona was to be used as a base for a French invasion of the Balkans, and saw control of Corfu and its neighbours as a necessary step towards a blockade of the Adriatic. Each side managed to put aside deep distrust for its new ally. Indeed, the Russian naval commander, the boorish, monolingual Ushakov, reserved his jealousy for Nelson, since he did not want the British to win all the glory, and Nelson, for his part, was determined to keep these unlikely allies within the eastern Mediterranean, while winning Malta and Corfu for Britain. ‘I hate the Russians’, he wrote, describing Ushakov as ‘a blackguard’.39 The Turks possessed a finely constructed fleet of modern French ships, but their sailors, many of whom were in fact Greek, were not well disciplined, while the Russian shipyards in the Black Sea were incapable of producing ships that would have the stamina for a long war far from home.40 Still, the combined forces of Turkey and Russia had taken control of the Ionian islands by early March 1799. Typically, the tsar remembered the Order of St John when he rewarded Ushakov, who now became a Knight of Malta. The provision made for the government of the Ionian isles was distinctive. The seven islands would constitute an aristocratic ‘Septinsular Republic’, under the sovereignty of Turkey; however, Russia would exercise special influence as the protecting power.41

  Setting aside his real doubts about the seaworthiness of the Russian fleet and about its commander, Nelson wrote to Ushakov proposing a joint attack on Malta, a prospect that seemed more real now that a Russian army was advancing southwards from Turin. Nelson was worried that this would turn into a Russian invasion achieved with British support. He insisted: ‘although one Power may have a few more men in the Island than the other, yet they are not to have a preponderance. The moment the French flag is struck, the colours of the Order must be hoisted and no other.’42 According to one historian, ‘Russian prospects in the Mediterranean never looked more promising than in October 1799’. Ushakov knew this too, and in December he was shocked to receive an imperial ukaz telling him that the tsar had changed his mind: he was to leave the Mediterranean forthwith, and retreat with the entire Russian fleet to the Black Sea; Russian positions in Corfu were to be handed over directly to the Turks, in the expectation that this would lead the sultan to favour the passage of a Russian fleet from the Aegean into the Black Sea. Withdrawal came none too soon. Russian intervention in the Ionian isles threatened to interfere with Habsburg control of the Adriatic, and the Austrians were just growing comfortable in the possession of Venice, which Napoleon had handed over to them as a piece of candy. Paul’s calculations were out of touch with reality, and he grandly offered the Holy Roman Emperor a choice between Venice and the Low Countries, as he imaginatively carved up post-revolutionary Europe among the reluctant allies who faced Napoleon.43

  How far Paul’s ambitions were from reality was further revealed when Ushakov found it impossible to sail his decaying fleet into the eastern Mediterranean, and was obliged to winter in Corfu. The Russians impotently sat out the siege of Malta by the British, only leaving Corfu for the Black Sea in July 1800. Napoleon had no hope of holding on to Malta, and, so as ‘to cast an apple of discord among my enemies’, he offered it as a gift to Paul; the tsar fell into the trap by accepting the offer, only to learn in November 1800 that it had been seized by the British a couple of months earlier.44 The British decided to forget that their avowed intention had been the restoration of the Knights, nor did they bother to raise the flags of any of their allies when they captured Valletta: neither that of the tsar-cum-Grand Master, nor that of the Order of St John, nor that of the king of Naples, ancient overlord of Malta. The Foreign Office in London murmured, in best Foreign Office style, about the irregularity, and expressed timid fears about the offence caused to the tsar as ‘acknowledged Grand Master
’ (something of an exaggeration). But the British army and navy, in situ in Malta, would have none of this.45 It was the British flag that would fly over Malta for more than a century and a half. Napoleon could only have dreamed of what happened next: the tsar created an ‘Armed Neutrality of the North’ with the help of Denmark, Sweden and Prussia, and placed an embargo on British ships. Then Napoleon’s dream developed into a nightmare. Conflict erupted in the Baltic and North Sea; Nelson, though technically only second-in-command, once again emerged as the brilliant victor at the battle of Copenhagen in April 1801, when the Danish fleet was smashed to pieces.46 About a week earlier disgruntled Russian officers forced their way into the tsar’s bedchamber and throttled him. The British were relieved to learn of the fate of this unpredictable ally; Napoleon, recognizing another megalomaniac, was deeply moved, and decided that a British conspiracy lay behind the assassination. But Paul was his own worst enemy.

  IV

  Paul’s successor, Alexander I, began his reign more cautiously. When Russia was proposed as guarantor of Malta’s autonomy under a restored government of the Knights, following pan-European peace negotiations with France in 1801, the tsar politely demurred: who else but the king of the Two Sicilies should guarantee Malta, in his capacity as suzerain of the island?47 On the other hand, Alexander was keen to reactivate Russian interest in the Ionian isles, especially since the Ottoman Empire seemed to be tottering (it would be a long totter). The imperial counsellor Czartoryski called Turkey ‘rotten and gangrenous in its principal and vital parts’.48 Were the Ottoman Empire to dissolve, Czartoryski envisaged a division of Turkey-in-Europe between the Romanovs and the Habsburgs, with shares for Britain and France in the Aegean, Asia Minor and North Africa, as well as independence for the Greeks. The Habsburg emperor would gain the Dalmatian coast, including Dubrovnik, while Russia would hold on to Kotor and Corfu, as well, of course, as Constantinople itself. Practical actions were taken: the defence of the Ionian isles was strengthened, in the face of a French threat from southern Italy, and consuls were sent to towns such as Kotor, in the hope of winning them over to Russian sympathies.49 But the Peace of Amiens arranged with France fell apart in 1803 (partly over Britain’s refusal to surrender Malta), and Napoleon, soon to become self-crowned emperor of France, began to flex his muscles again on the mainland.50 These events persuaded Alexander to return his ships to the Mediterranean. The task was rendered easier with the ‘glorious victory’ obtained by Lord Nelson at Trafalgar, just outside the Mediterranean, on 21 October 1805.51 The Mediterranean was made safer for anti-French shipping, but the dead hero Nelson was no longer there to warn against the unreliable Russians, who had, in fact, been working hard to improve the seaworthiness of their fleet.