by John Sugden
Reflecting on the crisis on the Captain, Commodore Nelson developed his own and more vigorous scheme to repair the damage. The blow had undoubtedly been a severe one, costing the navy yet another major source of succour and supply. It was fortunate for Nelson that the Captain herself had escaped unscathed, and taken aboard necessary supplies of water, beef, onions and lemons before the fight in St Pierre d’Arena. When the British ship Sardine approached the harbour on 20 September she was fired upon and driven away. But Nelson was not yet convinced that the matter was irreversible. Underestimating the impact of more than two years of French successes in that quarter, he was sure that Genoa would restore its relations with Britain if it could. If the cost of angering Britain was brought home, the Genoese might yet atone for their behaviour.55
He knew what he would do. Now the British held Elba, the small Genoese island of Capraia had become the most threatening bridge between Leghorn and Corsica. Elliot had long worried about the French privateers and traders that packed its neutral havens, and suspected the islanders of anti-British sentiment. Until the previous November it had refused to admit a British consul or agent, although the French Directory had their man there. Nelson had declined to move against Capraia, especially as Britain’s relations with Genoa had been so tense, but now . . .56
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There was no time to refer to the admiral. In a conference in Bastia on 15 September, Elliot authorised the seizure of Capraia and issued orders to his armed forces. Nelson embarked detachments of the 51st Regiment and Corsican volunteers under Major Logan on the Captain, La Minerve, the Gorgon store ship, Vanneau brig and Rose cutter, and after a slow voyage brought them to their destination on the evening of 17 September.57
Capraia’s defences were known to be ‘very strong’, but Elliot and Nelson believed that the Genoese had grown complacent and reduced the number of guns and men in the garrison. However, a plan to disembark on the southwestern part of the island was abandoned after heavy musketry revealed regular defenders strongly posted on the top of a high hill above the landing place. Logan withdrew his boats, and after consulting Nelson probed for an alternative. He eventually ordered his soldiers to land and storm the hill and a tower from the north. The boats pulled inshore. Ahead went rowing boats, manned mainly by sturdy seamen; behind, on towropes, the rest of the boats with the soldiers sitting with their arms. Even here they were greeted by musket fire, and several of the Corsican volunteers panicked as their boats came within enemy range. Some jumped into the sea, and others cut their towropes and rowed furiously out of range, from which safe distance they ‘boldly put about’ to return an entirely ineffective musketry of their own. Nevertheless, the landings continued and at seven in the evening Nelson himself went ashore in his barge. As a commodore, his business was to command from the ships, but he believed in showing men that he was willing to share their dangers and to set an example in moments of difficulty.58
The commodore was back on the Captain at eleven for a few hours’ rest, but at four-thirty the following morning he accompanied the last of the assault force and several pieces of heavy artillery ashore. The scenes that followed were redolent of old days in Corsica, as Nelson and Spicer directed a party of sailors hauling protesting cannons up a steep gradient to threaten the Genoese garrison. Another key figure in the attack was Lieutenant Peirson, who Nelson had assigned to Logan with a detachment of troops from the ships and the local rank of foot major. ‘I cannot say . . . how much I am obliged to Lt Pearson . . . who is now with me, and has been of the greatest service to me from the commencement of this expedition,’ Logan acknowledged.59
During the night a French privateer sheltering in the harbour of Capraia made its escape, but four others were trapped, two of them being set on fire by their own crews. Twenty-eight of their men became prisoners of war, although five later managed to escape, steal a boat and reach Leghorn. Some forty-nine merchant ships, including Genoese neutrals and prizes of the French, were also appropriated by the British, and at about six o’clock in the morning Nelson sent a summons to the garrison under a flag of truce. Following the pattern of his success at Porto Ferraio, Nelson linked moderate terms to the threat of overwhelming force. If they surrendered their fortress the garrison would receive every military honour, and a passage to Genoa with their arms and colours. Civil officials would be allowed to govern as before, the safety of private property ensured, and no financial penalties would be imposed. However, the public property of Genoa and the shipping would be inventoried and held pending a satisfactory settlement of outstanding difficulties, and everything French was to be seized as prize.60
Resistance was useless. The Genoese commandant, Agostino Aynolo, had only 133 regulars, and when he pleaded for time to consult his government, Nelson said he would withdraw his terms and launch an overwhelming attack. After a flurry of notes, and some going back and forth on the part of Lieutenant Peirson, the colours above the citadel came down at four o’clock and a British flag was raised. Nelson took charge of twenty-two serviceable Genoese guns, 204 muskets, and a quantity of military stores, and installed a small garrison. The task force returned to Bastia on 19 September, and the same day Nelson wrote a dispatch praising both services for their conduct during the operation.
Back off Leghorn, Nelson issued new orders to the captains of the Diadem, Blanche, Lively and L’Eclair. All Genoese vessels were to be detained. They were not to be regarded as permanent prizes, but bargaining counters in the dispute with Genoa, and their masters were to remain in charge of, and responsible for, their cargoes. Gradually the seizures came in, beginning it seems with the Concepción brig taken on 24 September and a polacre seized by the Lively. The unfortunate vessels were taken to Porto Ferraio, where Udny was instructed to act as agent, ensuring ‘the good and humane treatment of the crews, who are in no way to be pillaged or evil treated’. The next move was to couple such detainees with the island of Capraia in a bid to release the British property in Genoa and normalise relations with the Italian republic.61
The capture of Capraia was a mixed blessing. It severely damaged French plans to infiltrate Corsica from Leghorn because the island was seen as a midway refuge for their boats. The elimination of that base made the French voyages to Corsica more perilous, and enthusiasm for the venture weakened. As far as Genoa was concerned, however, Nelson’s latest victory gained him no great advantage. Any impulse the republic felt to conciliate was overridden by fear of the French. On 4 October a note sent to Brame for delivery to London offered to release the British ships in Genoa only after compensation had been paid for the tartan seized in St Pierre d’Arena, and the issue of Capraia and the impounded Genoese vessels had been addressed. Unfortunately, Nelson’s stroke did not weaken the Gallic influence in Genoa, but strengthened it. Faypoult, the French minister in Genoa, was furious at the loss of Capraia. He had alerted the Genoese to its vulnerability after the fall of Porto Ferraio, and now fulminated about Genoa’s inability to defend her ports, threatening that French soldiers would take over the Italian forts and do the job themselves. Like some monstrous kraken, encircling an unfortunate victim ever more deeply in powerful and sinuous tentacles, revolutionary France bullied Genoa into fortifying her harbours and islands in the Gulf of Spezia to prevent the British from seizing them and thus securing another safe haven for their fleet.62
Nor could Nelson’s boldness prevail against the wider and relentless political countercurrent. His every effort seemed destined to be overthrown. While he was on the turquoise seas of the Mediterranean, striving to protect Corsica and endeavouring to disable the French juggernaut, in Whitehall the politicians gave up the game.
On 25 September, Sir John Jervis received an ominous packet from the Admiralty. It contained orders to evacuate Corsica and to withdraw from the Mediterranean. The Franco-Spanish alliance had done the key damage. Confronted with what on paper at least was a formidable naval combination, as well as the possibility of the Spaniards using their port of Cadiz to drive a
wedge between the British Mediterranean and Channel fleets, the government decided to concentrate its forces nearer home. It made sense, particularly as Britain now had few allies east of Gibraltar and no efficient ones, but after three years of travail it was a bitter draught to swallow.
Jervis wrote to Nelson the same day. For a while Cockburn should continue to blockade Leghorn, but Nelson was to help Elliot evacuate the British from Corsica. Nelson was still at Bastia when he got the news on the 29th. Deep within he was not sorry to relinquish Corsica, for like Drake he had grown thoroughly disillusioned with islanders who seemed to him ungrateful and ‘rotten at heart’. But he shuddered for his remaining friends and allies in Italy, and felt personally for Elliot who was left ‘very low and distressed’ at the destruction of his work.63
These new orders put an entirely different complexion upon Nelson’s plans for Genoa. It was obvious that Capraia, which he had wanted for leverage, would now have to be surrendered anyway. With the British gone, Elba and Capraia would revert to their original owners. Nelson acted with his usual decision. He embarked upon a final, almost forlorn, effort to bluff Genoa into a compromise before news of the British retreat could spread.
Elliot’s terms for the restitution of Capraia were in his pocket, but he was unable to dignify them with his new seventy-four. The Captain was due to receive a new foremast at Ajaccio, and Commodore Nelson had switched his broad pendant to the Diadem sixty-four on 26 September. He had made satisfactory progress with the crew of the Captain, strengthened as it was with old Agamemnons. The punishment rate had been moderate: thirty-four floggings, of which eight consisted of more than twelve strokes of the cat. Aboard the Diadem he worked with new material, though he took with him a personal servant, James Lenstock, the invaluable Charles Peirson, Lieutenant Noble as a signalling lieutenant, and Midshipman Withers. The Diadem also had the distinction of providing Nelson with his first flag captain. He had been entitled to one since becoming an official commodore, and Berry had acted in that capacity on the Captain. As commander of the Diadem, George Henry Towry served Nelson as flag captain during the mission to Genoa.64
Nelson sailed from Bastia on 5 October and made Genoa in three days. There were few chances of success, and even the patient Drake had warned his foreign secretary that French influence had destroyed the prospects of reconciliation. Against Gallic bayonets, Nelson had little to offer. He was authorised to restore Capraia and any detained ships, but only if the republic fulfilled impracticable conditions. British property must be released, Genoa’s ports opened to His Majesty’s subjects and reparations made for the insult to the British colours. Capraia must remain under British control for as long as any part of Italy remained occupied by the French, and accept a permanent vice consul or agent to protect British interests. They were not terms that could have extricated Genoa from her difficulties, and Admiral Jervis had grown increasingly bellicose and indisposed to compromise. On 7 October, while Nelson struggled to achieve the impossible in Genoa, the admiral was urging Brame to tell the republic that he would ‘batter down the mole-head and deface the beautiful city’ with his fleet if Britain’s terms were refused.65
With a distinct sense of déjà vu Peirson was rowed into Genoa on 8 October under a flag of truce, bearing news that Nelson was empowered to negotiate and needed permission to land. After an hour in which the lieutenant was kept waiting in his boat an answer arrived in the negative. The Genoese secretary of state said the matter would be pursued in London rather than the Mediterranean. The following day Nelson tried again, but his messenger, Captain Towry, was turned away and had to leave a packet containing the British terms with Brame. On 10 October the Diadem sailed away.66
It had been a futile exercise from the beginning. Genoa had already drafted an official complaint for their minister, the Marquis of Spinola, to present to the king in London, and published their anti-British interpretation of the dispute in Genoa. The republic was sinking deeper and deeper into French pockets, and even as Nelson waited impatiently off the harbour, her leaders were concluding a humiliating pact with France, granting Bonaparte’s army the right to pass through Genoese territory, submitting to a financial levy, and undertaking to keep their ports closed to the British. On the 15th Castiglione dismissed the Elliot–Jervis terms in writing, and a day or two later the wisdom of Genoa’s decision was confirmed when news reached the city that Britain was evacuating the Mediterranean. The Genoese had taken their only viable course.67
Nelson was incensed beyond words when he learned how his conduct was being represented by the Genoese in London, especially a barb that, as he had seized the French ship after giving his word of honour not to fire in anger within gunshot of Genoa, he had been shown to be faithless. But all his colleagues held him blameless, including Drake and Trevor, who preferred to handle the dispute with tact rather than indignation. Jervis almost boiled over, demanding that Brame use every organ of publicity to refute the Genoese allegations. In London the commodore also received the unanimous backing of superiors, and Spinola was curtly informed that the king ‘entirely’ approved of Nelson’s conduct ‘in all his transactions with the republic of Genoa’. The British government stoutly refused to discuss the affair while British property remained sequestrated, and retaliated with an embargo of their own, seizing all Genoese ships and goods in Britain. The break with the once neutral republic was complete, and southern Europe from Gibraltar to Naples had become a coast of unrelieved hostility.68
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Jervis was stationed with the fleet in Mortella Bay at St Fiorenzo with the awesome job of evacuating Corsica and protecting its retreating soldiers and civilians from French and Spanish interference. The flash-point, if there was going to be one, was Bastia, the largest of the Corsican strongholds. Jervis ordered the acting commander of the Captain, Charles Stuart, to take Sutton’s Egmont and a few frigates and sloops under his command and begin loading the powder at Bastia. The rumours of unrest were disturbing, and Jervis breathed a sigh of relief when he learned that Commodore Nelson himself had returned from Genoa, and was at Bastia with the Diadem. No officer in the navy was as famous in Corsica or more respected. If anyone could evacuate the place without loss it was Nelson.69
Bastia was certainly simmering when Nelson arrived before daylight on Friday 14 October. The Egmont followed him in before noon, but as yet there was no sign of the Captain. A boat dropped the commodore at a wharf in front of Elliot’s house, in the north of the town, and he was soon listening to a disturbing tale. News of the British retreat had been spreading like wildfire throughout Corsica, and control was passing to municipal committees. Some of the committees were dominated by Francophiles, but even moderate Corsicans understood the importance of squaring themselves with the incoming regime. Britain’s writ melted like frost in sunlight. The road between Bastia and St Fiorenzo was no longer safe, and in Bastia a Committee of Thirty prepared to send deputies to the generals in Leghorn, seeking re-admission to the French republic. Elliot understood their difficulty, and still felt obligations towards them. He agreed to parole any French prisoners being held in Bastia to help the deputies buy influence with their new masters, and generously promised to leave the forts and Corsican artillery in a serviceable condition – provided, of course, that the British were allowed to withdraw without trouble.70
Elliot was an idealist who romanticised the Corsicans and he had not reconciled himself to evacuating the Mediterranean. Reporting these events, he would minimise the extent of Corsican disaffection, and claim that stories of threats to the departing British had been ‘false and exaggerated’. Despite ‘short interludes of uneasiness’ he had never heard a ‘murmur of resentment’ against the British, and the actions of the Committee of Thirty had been ‘prudent and honourable’ throughout. At the time, though, he seemed less certain. Lady Elliot, whose elegant balls had enlivened the social life of Bastia in their day, had left with her children for Gibraltar, and the viceroy had asked Jervis to cover the evacuation of
Bastia with a warship. According to Nelson, Sir Gilbert was in a state of some alarm when he saw him that morning of the 14th. Elliot had a house guard, but it was rumoured that an attempt would be made on his life, and he immediately asked the commodore to store important papers aboard the Diadem. 71
Hurrying on to the quarters of Lieutenant General De Burgh, who commanded the British garrison in the citadel, Nelson sensed the growing unease. It is doubtful if the army was as ‘panic-struck’ and ‘helpless’ as the commodore claimed, but the Corsicans had successfully insisted on sharing guard duties, and De Burgh admitted that as many of them as Britons now manned the citadel, batteries, gates and storehouses. Before long – perhaps that day – he expected to lose control of the citadel, and the prospect of saving guns or provisions seemed negligible. Nevertheless, De Burgh had already made up his mind to take a strong line. He intended to inform the committee that he would use all provisions rightly belonging to his troops, and that any attempt to obstruct his duties would meet with a severe response. Nelson suggested the gates of the citadel be closed against further infiltration, talked up their chances, and told the general to prepare for a secret evacuation.72
Back at Elliot’s residence the commodore was mobbed by terrified British merchants and privateer owners, some in tears. Their goods, down to their very wardrobes, had been seized and their ships shut in by a Corsican privateer moored across the mole head. They would be ruined. Nelson called for calm, and promised action, but after dark he played safe by embarking Elliot and his secretary of state, an Anglo-Corsican named Charles-André Pozzo di Borgo.73
