FOOTNOTES:
[32] Correspondance de Napoléon, August 30, 1795. The letter was from Bonaparte's hand, though signed by the Committee of Public Safety.
[33] The fleet passed once, August 14, in sight of Vado Bay. Nelson went on board, and tried to induce Hotham to go in and meet De Vins. He refused, saying he must go to Leghorn, but would return, and water the fleet in Vado; but he never came.
[34] A year later, when all his transactions with Genoa as an independent republic were concluded, Nelson received from the British Minister of Foreign Affairs, through the Admiralty, the following strong and comprehensive endorsement of his political conduct:—
"I esteem it an act of justice due to that officer, to inform your lordships that His Majesty has been graciously pleased entirely to approve of the conduct of Commodore Nelson in all his transactions with the Republic of Genoa. I have the honour to be, &c, &c. GRENVILLE."
The First Lord of the Admiralty about the same time expressed "the great satisfaction derived here from the very spirited, and at the same time dignified and temperate manner, in which your conduct has been marked both at Leghorn and Genoa."
CHAPTER VII.
NELSON'S SERVICES IN THE MEDITERRANEAN DURING THE YEAR 1796.—BONAPARTE'S ITALIAN CAMPAIGN.—THE BRITISH ABANDON CORSICA, AND THE FLEET LEAVES THE MEDITERRANEAN.
JANUARY-DECEMBER, 1796. AGE, 38.
While the "Agamemnon" was refitting in Leghorn, the sensitive mind of her captain, no longer preoccupied with the cares of campaigning and negotiations, dwelt with restless anxiety upon the reflections to which the British Navy was liable, for its alleged failure to support the Austrians throughout the operations, and especially at the critical moment of the Battle of Loano, when the left flank of their army was harassed with impunity by the French gunboats. Nelson felt rightly that, with the British superiority at sea, this should have been impossible; and he feared that his own name might be unpleasantly involved, from the fact that the "Agamemnon" had remained throughout at Genoa, instead of being where the fighting was. He was by nature, and at all times, over-forward to self-vindication,—an infirmity springing from the innate nobility of his temperament, which was impatient of the faintest suspicion of backwardness or negligence, and at the same time resolved that for any shortcoming or blunder, occurring by his order or sanction, no other than himself should bear blame, directly or indirectly.
After the first unsuccessful pursuit of Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt, in 1798, in the keenness of his emotions over a failure that might by some be charged to a precipitate error of judgment, he drew up for Lord St. Vincent a clear and able statement of all the reasons which had determined his action, arraigning himself, as it were, at the bar of his lordship's opinion and that of the nation, and assuming entire responsibility for the apparent mistake, while at the same time justifying the step by a review of the various considerations which at the time had occasioned it. His judicious friend and subordinate, Captain Ball, whom he consulted, strongly advised him not to send the paper. "I was particularly struck," he wrote, "with the clear and accurate style, as well as with the candour of the statement in your letter, but I should recommend a friend never to begin a defence of his conduct before he is accused of error." Nevertheless, in February, 1805, when he once more went to Alexandria in search of Villeneuve, this time really misled by the elaborate mystifications of Napoleon, he again brought himself before the Admiralty. "I am entirely responsible to my King and Country for the whole of my conduct ... I have consulted no man, therefore the whole blame of ignorance in forming my judgment must rest with me. I would allow no man to take from me an atom of my glory, had I fallen in with the French fleet, nor do I desire any man to partake any of the responsibility—all is mine, right or wrong."
In 1795, being a much younger man, of less experience of the world, and with a reputation, already brilliant indeed, but still awaiting the stamp of solidity which the lapse of time alone can give, Nelson felt strongly, and not improperly, that it was necessary to be vigilant against any possible imputations upon his action. This was the more true, because blame certainly did attach to the service of which he was the representative on the spot, and the course he had been obliged to follow kept him to the rear instead of at the front. There would have been no greater personal danger to a man on board the "Agamemnon" in one place than in the other; but current rumor, seeking a victim, does not pause to analyze conditions. Not only, therefore, did he draw up for Sir John Jervis a succinct synopsis of occurrences subsequent to his taking command of the operations along the Riviera, in which he combined a justification of his own conduct with the general information necessary for a new commander-in-chief, but to all his principal correspondents he carefully imparted the facts necessary to clear him from blame, and to show just what the Navy had effected, and where it had fallen short through inadequate force.
To the British minister to Genoa, who was constantly at the Austrian headquarters, he wrote with clear emphasis, as to one cognizant of all the truth, and so a witness most important to himself. Having first asked certain certificates, essential to be presented in the Admiralty Courts when Genoese prizes came to be adjudicated, he continued characteristically: "The next request much more concerns my honour, than the other does my interest—it is to prove to the world, to my own admiral, or to whoever may have a right to ask the question, why I remained at Genoa. I have therefore to desire that you will have the goodness to express, in writing, what you told me, that the Imperial minister and yourself were assured, if I left the port of Genoa unguarded, not only the Imperial troops at St. Pierre d'Arena and Voltri would be lost, but that the French plan for taking post between Voltri and Savona would certainly succeed; and also, that if the Austrians should be worsted in the advanced posts, the retreat by the Bocchetta would be cut off: to which you added, that if this happened, the loss of the Army would be laid to my leaving Genoa, and recommended me most strongly not to think of it. I am anxious, as you will believe, to have proofs in my possession, that I employed to the last the Agamemnon as was judged most beneficial to the common cause."
A week later he wrote again, having heard that the Austrian commander-in-chief, General Wallis, had declared that the defeat was due to the failure of the British to co-operate. Nelson thought that they had a strong hold on Wallis, and he therefore enclosed a letter to him, which he asked might be forwarded by the minister. The experience and training of the latter, however, here interposed to prevent his sensitive uneasiness leading to a false step, and one that might involve him farther than he foresaw. While bearing the clearest and strongest witness to the facts which Nelson had asked him to establish, he hinted to him, tactfully and with deference, that, it was scarcely becoming a public servant to justify his conduct to a foreign official, he being accountable only to his own government. Nelson accepted the suggestion, and in so doing characterized aptly enough the temperament which then and at other times carried him farther than discretion warranted. "My feelings ever alive, perhaps, to too nice a sense of honour, are a little cooled."
Along with this care for the stainless record of the past, there went on in his mind a continual reasoning upon the probable course of the next year's operations. In his forecasts it is singular to notice how, starting from the accurate premise that it is necessary for the French to get into the plains of Italy,—"the gold mine,"—he is continually misled by his old prepossession in favor of landing in rear of the enemy a body of troops, supported neither by sure communication with their main army, nor by a position in itself of great strength. The mistake, if mistake it was, illustrates aptly the errors into which a man of great genius for war, of quick insight, such as Nelson indisputably had, can fall, from want of antecedent study, of familiarity with those leading principles, deduced from the experience of the past, which are perhaps even more serviceable in warning against error than in prompting to right. Everything assures him that the French will carry some twenty thousand men to Italy by sea. "If they mean to carry on the war, they must penetrate into Italy. I am convinced in my own mind, that I know their very landing-place." This, it appears afterwards, he believed would be between Spezia and Leghorn, in the districts of Massa and Carrara, whence also they would doubtless turn upon Leghorn, though neutral, as a valuable and fortified seaport. "The prevention," he continues, "requires great foresight; for, if once landed, our fleet is of no use."
The importance of Vado Bay, so discreditably lost the year before, strikes him from this point of view, as it did also Bonaparte from his more closely coherent plan of operations. Nelson reasoned that, if Vado were possessed by the allies, the French, in their attempt to reach the Tuscan coast, would be compelled to put to sea, where they would be exposed to the British fleet, while such an anchorage would enable the latter, when necessary, to keep the coast close aboard, or would provide a refuge to a small squadron, if threatened by the sudden appearance of a superior force. Bonaparte thought Vado important, because, on the one hand, essential to uninterrupted coasting-trade with Genoa, and on the other as advancing his water line of communications—that by land being impassable for heavy articles, such as siege-guns and carriages—to Savona, from which point the mountains could be crossed at their lowest elevation, and by their most practicable passes.
Nelson's analysis of the conditions, in other respects than the one mentioned, was not unworthy of his great natural aptitudes. There are three things to be guarded against, he says. One is that pet scheme of his imagination, the transport of a corps by sea to Tuscany; the other two are an invasion of Piedmont, and the entrance into Italy by the pass of the Bocchetta, behind Genoa. "If three are to be attended to, depend upon it one will fall, and the Emperor, very possibly, may be more attentive to the Milanese than to Piedmont." Upon this divergence of interests in a coalition Bonaparte also explicitly counted; and his plan, in its first inception, as laid before the Directory in the summer of 1795, looked primarily to the subjugation of Piedmont, by separating it from the support of the Austrian Army. The bearing of Vado Bay upon this project is not definitely recognized by Nelson. He sees in the possession of it only the frustration of both the enemy's supposed alternatives,—invasion of Italy by the Bocchetta, and of Tuscany by sea.
With these views Nelson arrived, at San Fiorenzo, on the 19th of January, and had his first interview with Jervis. His reception by the latter, whom he never before had met, was not only cordial but flattering. He was at once offered the choice of two larger ships, which were declined, "but with that respect and sense of obligation on my part which such handsome conduct demanded of me." The admiral then asked him if he would have any objection to remain on the station, when promoted, as he soon must be. Nelson's longing to go home had worn off with his disgust, occasioned by the impotent conclusions of last year's work. Then he was experiencing the feeling voiced by the great Frenchman, Suffren, some dozen years before: "It was clear that, though we had the means to impose the law, all would be lost. I heartily pray you may permit me to leave. War alone can make bearable the weariness of certain things." Now his keen enjoyment of active service revived as the hour of opening hostilities drew near. With these dispositions, the graciousness of his reception easily turned the scale, and before long he was not only willing to remain, but fearful lest he should be disappointed, despite the application for his retention which the admiral hastened to make.
Admiral, Sir John Jervis, Earl of St. Vincent
"The credit I derive from all these compliments," he wrote to his wife, "must be satisfactory to you; and, should I remain until peace, which cannot be very long, you will, I sincerely hope, make your mind easy." But more grateful than open flattery, to one so interested in, and proud of, his military activities, was the respect paid by Jervis to his views and suggestions relative to the approaching operations. "He was so well satisfied with my opinion of what is likely to happen, and the means of prevention to be taken, that he had no reserve with me respecting his information and ideas of what is likely to be done;" or, as he wrote a month later, "he seems at present to consider me more as an associate than a subordinate officer; for I am acting without any orders. This may have its difficulties at a future day; but I make none, knowing the uprightness of my intentions. 'You must have a larger ship,' continued the admiral, 'for we cannot spare you, either as captain or admiral.'" Such were the opening relations between these two distinguished officers, who were in the future to exert great influence upon each other's career.
It is far from improbable that the ready coincidence of Jervis's views with those of Nelson, as to future possibilities, arose, partly indeed from professional bias and prepossession as to the potency of navies, but still more from the false reports, of which Bonaparte was an apt promoter, and which a commission of the allies in Genoa greedily swallowed and transmitted. The deterrent effect of their own fleet, "in being," seems not to have prevented either of them from believing that the attempt upon Tuscany by sea was seriously intended. True, Nelson does at times speak of the French as being so unreasonable that one may expect anything from them; but this scheme, which probably had not even a paper existence in France, was accepted by him as imminent, because he thought it suitable. As he cogently remarked to Beaulieu, it is likely that your enemy will not do the thing which you wish him to do; and conversely, in this case, what to him appeared most threatening to his own cause was just what he expected to occur. Jervis, sharing his views, and already knowing his man, despatched him again to the Gulf of Genoa, within forty-eight hours of his arrival in San Fiorenzo, somewhat to the disgust of the other captains, weary of being ever under the eye of an observant and exacting admiral. "You did as you pleased in Lord Hood's time," said one grumbler, "the same in Admiral Hotham's, and now again with Sir John Jervis; it makes no difference to you who is commander-in-chief." The tone of these words, which in the reading are almost flattering, is evident from Nelson's comment: "I returned a pretty strong answer to this speech."
The object of his present mission was to ascertain what preparations for the expected descent were being made along the Riviera, and to frustrate them as far as lay in the power of his squadron. He soon reported to Jervis that there was as yet no collection of vessels between Nice and Genoa. He then went on to reconnoitre Toulon, where he saw thirteen sail-of-the-line and five frigates lying in the outer roads, ready for sea, while five more of the line he learned were fitting at the arsenal. During the six days he remained off the port he noted that continual progress was being made in the enemy's preparations. At the end of this time, on the 23d of February, 1796, the admiral joined with the fleet, and the same afternoon the "Agamemnon" again parted company for Genoa, where she anchored on the 2d of March.
The bustle on board the French ships confirmed Nelson's belief in the descent upon Tuscany; and it is interesting here to quote his words upon the possibilities of the operation, regarded from the naval point of view by one of the ablest of sea-generals. His opinion throws light upon the vexed question of the chances for and against Napoleon's projected invasion of England in 1805,—so far, that is, as the purely naval part of the latter project is concerned. He imagines as perfectly feasible ("I firmly believe," are his words) a combination at Toulon, of the fleet already there with divisions arriving from Cadiz and Brest, giving a total much superior to that actually with Jervis. This anticipates Napoleon's projected concentration under Villeneuve in the Channel. Nelson then continues: "One week's very superior fleet will effect a landing between Port Especia and Leghorn, I mean on that coast of Italy.... We may fight their fleet, but unless we can destroy them [i.e. the transports], their transports will push on and effect their landing. What will the French care for the loss of a few men-of-war? It is nothing if they can get into Italy." "Make us masters of the channel for three days, and we are masters of the world," wrote Napoleon to his admirals, with preparations far more complete than those Nelson was considering in 1796, and the distance across the Channel is less than from Vado to Spezia.[35]
With these convictions, Nelson immediately began to urge the necessity of again occupying Vado upon the Austrian commander-in-chief, through the medium of the British ministers to Genoa and Turin, with whom he was in frequent correspondence. If this were not done, he assured them, the enemy's fleet could with ease convoy a body of troops in transports to Italy, which they could not do with their present force unless they held Vado. It was also the only means, he added, by which the French could be prevented from receiving plenty of provisions from Genoa. "Unless the Austrians get possession of a point of land, we cannot stop the coasting-trade." The latter argument, at any rate, was incontestable; and it was also true that only by an advance to Vado could communication between the army and the British fleet be restored and maintained. Beaulieu, who had lately acquired a high reputation on the battle-fields of Belgium, had now succeeded De Vins in the command. He was averse to opening the campaign by an advance to the sea, a feeling shared by the Austrians generally. He wished rather to await the enemy in the plains of Lombardy, and to follow up by a decisive blow the victory which he confidently expected there. It was in this connection that Nelson warned him, that he must not reckon upon the French following the line of action which he himself would prefer.
The time for hostilities had now arrived; from February to August being the period that Bonaparte, who knew the wars of Italy historically, considered the most proper for operations in the field, because the least sickly. But for the backwardness of the spring,—for snow that year lay upon the mountains late into March,—the campaign doubtless would have been begun before. At the same time came fresh reports, probably set afloat by the French, of large reinforcements of seamen for the fleet and transports, in Toulon and Marseilles; and Nelson furthermore received precise information that the enemy's movement would be in three columns,—one upon Ceva, which was Bonaparte's original scheme, one by the Bocchetta, and the third either to march through Genoese territory to Spezia, or to be carried thither by sea. Nelson felt no doubt that the last was the real plan, aiming at the occupation of Leghorn and entrance into the plains of Italy. The others he considered to be feints. There will in this opinion be recognized the persistency of his old ideas. In fact, he a month later revived his proposal of the previous year, to occupy San Remo,—this time with British troops.
The urgency of the British, aided, perhaps, by the reports of the French designs, prevailed at last upon Beaulieu to advance as requested; nor can it be denied that the taking of Vado was in itself a most proper and desirable accessory object of the campaign. Unfortunately, the Austrian general, as is well known, fastening his eyes too exclusively upon the ulterior object of his movement, neglected to provide for the immediate close combination and mutual support of the organized forces,—his own and the Piedmontese,—upon which final success would turn. Manoeuvring chiefly by his own left, towards the Riviera, and drawing in that direction the efforts of the centre and right, he weakened the allied line at the point where the Austrian right touched the Sardinian left. Through this thin curtain Bonaparte broke, dividing the one from the other, and, after a series of combats which extended over several days, rendering final that division, both political and military, for the remainder of the war.
To one who has accustomed himself to see in Nelson the exponent of the chief obstacle Napoleon had to meet,—who has recognized in the Nile, in Copenhagen, and in Trafalgar, the most significant and characteristic incident attending the failure of each of three great and widely separated schemes,—there is something impressive in noting the fact, generally disregarded, that Nelson was also present and assisting at the very opening scene of the famous campaign in Italy. This was not, certainly, the beginning of Napoleon's career any more than it was of Nelson's, who at the same moment hoisted for the first time his broad pendant as commodore; but it was now that, upon the horizon of the future, toward which the world was fast turning, began to shoot upward the rays of the great captain's coming glory, and the sky to redden with the glare from the watchfires of the unseen armies which, at his command, were to revolutionize the face of Europe, causing old things to pass away, never to be restored.
The Austrians had asked for a clear assurance that their movement to the seashore should receive the support of the fleet, whether on the Riviera or at Spezia, upon the possession of which also Nelson had laid stress, as a precaution against the invasion of Tuscany. These engagements he readily made. He would support any movement, and provide for the safety of any convoys by water. He told the aid-de-camp whom Beaulieu sent to him that, whenever the general came down to the sea-coast, he would be sure to find the ships; and to the question whether his squadron would not be risked thereby, he replied that it would be risked at all times to assist their allies, and, if lost, the admiral would find another. "If I find the French convoy in any place where there is a probability of attacking them," he wrote about this time, "you may depend they shall either be taken or destroyed at the risk of my squadron, ... which is built to be risked on proper occasions." Here was indeed a spirit from which much might be expected. The fleet, doubtless, must be husbanded in coastwise work so long as the French fleet remained, the legacy of past errors,—this Nelson clearly maintained; but such vessels as it could spare for co-operation were not to be deterred from doing their work by fear of harm befalling them. Warned by the recriminations of the last campaign, he had minutes taken of his interview with the Austrian officer, of the questions he himself put, as well as of the undertakings to which he pledged himself; and these he caused to be witnessed by the British consul at Genoa, who was present.
On the 8th of April the "Agamemnon," having shortly before left the fleet in San Fiorenzo Bay, anchored at Genoa; and the following morning the port saluted the broad pendant of the new commodore. The next day, April 10, Beaulieu attacked the French at Voltri. The "Agamemnon," with another sixty-four-gun ship, the "Diadem," and two frigates, sailed in the evening, and stood along the shore, by preconcerted arrangement, to cover the advance and harass the enemy. At 11 P.M. the ships anchored abreast the positions of the Austrians, whose lights were visible from their decks—the sails hanging in the clewlines, ready for instant movement. They again got under way the following day, and continued to the westward, seeing the French troops in retreat upon Savona. The attack, Nelson said, anticipated the hour fixed for it, which was daylight; so that, although the ships had again started at 4 A.M. of the 11th, and reached betimes a point from which they commanded every foot of the road, the enemy had already passed. "Yesterday afternoon I received, at five o'clock, a note from the Baron de Malcamp [an aid-de-camp], to tell me that the general had resolved to attack the French at daylight this morning, and on the right of Voltri. Yet by the Austrians getting too forward in the afternoon, a slight action took place; and, in the night, the French retreated. They were aware of their perilous situation, and passed our ships in the night. Had the Austrians kept back, very few of the French could have escaped." Whether this opinion was wholly accurate may be doubted; certain it is, however, that the corps which then passed reinforced betimes the positions in the mountains, which steadfastly, yet barely, checked the Austrian attack there the following day. Beaulieu wrote that the well-timed co-operation of the squadron had saved a number of fine troops, which must have been lost in the attack. This was so far satisfactory; but the economizing of one's own force was not in Nelson's eyes any consolation for the escape of the enemy, whose number he estimated at four thousand. "I beg you will endeavour to impress on those about the general," he wrote to the British minister, "the necessity of punctuality in a joint operation, for its success to be complete."
There was, however, to be no more co-operation that year on the Riviera. For a few days Nelson remained in suspense, hoping for good news, and still very far from imagining the hail-storm of ruinous blows which a master hand, as yet unrecognized, was even then dealing to the allied cause. On the 15th only he heard from Beaulieu, through the minister, that the Austrians had been repulsed at Montenotte; and on the 16th he wrote to Collingwood that this reverse had been inflicted by the aid of those who slipped by his ships. On the 18th news had reached him of the affairs at Millesimo and Dego, as well as of further disasters; for on that day he wrote to the Duke of Clarence that the Austrians had taken position between Novi and Alessandria, with headquarters at Acqui. Their loss he gave as ten thousand. "Had the general's concerted time and plan been attended to," he repeats, "I again assert, none of the enemy could have escaped on the night of the 10th. By what has followed, the disasters commenced from the retreat of those troops."
There now remained, not the stirring employment of accompanying and supporting a victorious advance, but only the subordinate, though most essential, duty of impeding the communications of the enemy, upon which to a great extent must depend the issues on unseen and distant fields of war. To this Nelson's attention had already been turned, as one of the most important functions intrusted to him, even were the allies successful, and its difficulties had been impressed upon him by the experience of the previous year. But since then the conditions had become far more onerous. The defeat of the Austrians not only left Vado Bay definitively in the power of the French, but enabled the latter to push their control up to the very walls of Genoa, where they shortly established a battery and depot on the shore, at St. Pierre d' Arena, within three hundred yards of the mole. Thus the whole western Riviera, from the French border, was in possession of the enemy, who had also throughout the previous year so multiplied and strengthened the local defences, that, to use Nelson's own words, "they have batteries from one end of the coast to the other, within shot of each other." Such were the means, also, by which Napoleon, the true originator of this scheme for securing these communications, insured the concentration of the flotilla at Boulogne, eight or ten years later, without serious molestation from the British Navy.
It may not unnaturally cause some surprise that, with the urgent need Nelson had felt the year before for small armed vessels, to control the coastwise movements of the enemy, upon which so much then depended, no serious effort had been made to attach a flotilla of that kind to the fleet. The reply, however, to this very obvious criticism is, that the British could not supply the crews for them without crippling the efficiency of the cruising fleet; and it was justly felt then, as it was some years later at the time of the Boulogne flotilla, that the prime duty of Great Britain was to secure the sea against the heavy fleets of the enemy. If, indeed, the Italian States, whose immediate interests were at stake, had supplied seamen, as they might have done, these could quickly have been formed to the comparatively easy standard of discipline and training needed for such guerilla warfare, and, supported by the cruising fleet, might have rendered invaluable service, so long as the system of coast defence was defective. How far the rulers of those States, trained heretofore to the narrowest considerations of personal policy, could have been induced to extend this assistance, is doubtful. They did nothing, or little.
Nelson measured the odds against him accurately, and saw that the situation was well-nigh hopeless. Nevertheless, there was a chance that by vigorous and sustained action the enemy might be not only impeded, but intimidated. He sought earnestly to obtain the co-operation of the Sardinians and Neapolitans in manning a flotilla, with which to grapple the convoys as they passed in shore. By this means, and the close scouring of the coast by the vessels of his squadron, something might be effected. He contemplated also using the crews of the British vessels themselves in gunboats and light-armed feluccas; but he said frankly that, important as was the duty of intercepting communications, the efficiency of the fleet was more important still, and that to divert their crews over-much to such objects would hazard the vessels themselves, and neutralize their proper work. The resort, therefore, could only be occasional. The general political complexion of affairs in the Mediterranean depended greatly upon the presence and readiness of the British fleet, and its efficiency therefore could not be risked, to any serious extent, except for the object of destroying the enemy's naval forces, to which it was then the counterpoise.
Acting, however, on his determination to co-operate effectively, at whatever risk to his own squadron,—to the detachment, that is, which the commander-in-chief thought could safely be spared from his main force for the secondary object,—Nelson applied all his intelligence and all his resolution to the task before him. In words of admirable force and clearness, he manifests that exclusiveness of purpose, which Napoleon justly characterized as the secret of great operations and of great successes. "I have not a thought," he writes to the minister at Genoa, "on any subject separated from the immediate object of my command, nor a wish to be employed on any other service. So far the allies," he continues, with no unbecoming self-assertion, "are fortunate, if I may be allowed the expression, in having an officer of this character." He felt this singleness of mind, which is so rare a gift, to be the more important, from his very consciousness that the difficulty of his task approached the border of impossibility. "I cannot command winds and weather. A sea-officer cannot, like a land-officer, form plans; his object is to embrace the happy moment which now and then offers,—it may be this day, not for a month, and perhaps never." Nothing can be more suggestive of his greatest characteristics than this remark, which is perhaps less applicable to naval officers to-day than it was then. In it we may fairly see one of those clearly held principles which serve a man so well in moments of doubt and perplexity. At the Nile and at Trafalgar, and scarcely less at St. Vincent and Copenhagen, the seizure of opportunity, the unfaltering resolve "to embrace the happy moment," is perhaps even more notable and decisive than the sagacity which so accurately chose the proper method of action.
Nelson's deeds did not belie his words. Immediately after definite news of Beaulieu's retreat to the Po was received, Sir John Jervis appeared off Genoa with the fleet. The "Agamemnon" joined him, and remained in company until the 23d of April, when by Nelson's request she sailed on a cruise to the westward. From that time until the 4th of June she was actively employed between Nice and Genoa, engaging the batteries, and from time to time cutting out vessels from the anchorages. His attempts were more or less successful; on one occasion he captured a considerable portion of the French siege-train going forward for the siege of Mantua; but upon the whole, the futility of the attempt became apparent. "Although I will do my utmost, I do not believe it is in my power to prevent troops or stores from passing along shore. Heavy swells, light breezes, and the near approach to the shore which these vessels go are our obstacles.... You may perceive I am distressed. Do you really think we are of any use here? If not, we may serve our country much more by being in other places. The Levant and coast of Spain call aloud for ships, and they are, I fancy, employed to no purpose here." The position was almost hopelessly complicated by the Genoese coasters, which plied their trade close to the beach, between the mother city and the little towns occupied by the French, and which Nelson felt unable to touch. "There are no vessels of any consequence in any bay from Monaco to Vado," he wrote to Jervis; "but not less than a hundred Genoese are every day passing, which may or may not have stores for the French." "The French have no occasion to send provisions from France. The coasts are covered with Genoese vessels with corn, wine, hay, &c., for places on the coast; and they know I have no power to stop the trade with the towns. I saw this day not less than forty-five Genoese vessels, all laden, passing along the coast. What can I do?"
Although not definitely so stated, it is shown, by an allusion, that Nelson at this time entertained, among other ideas, the project of keeping afloat in transports a body of three thousand troops, which should hover upon the coast, and by frequent descents impose a constant insecurity upon the long line of communications from Nice to Genoa. The same plan was advocated by him against the Spanish peninsula in later years.[36] Of this conception it may be said that it is sound in principle, but in practice depends largely upon the distance from the centre of the enemy's power at which its execution is attempted. Upon the Spanish coast, in 1808, in the hands of Lord Cochrane, it was undoubtedly a most effective secondary operation; but when that distinguished officer proposed to apply a like method, even though on a much greater scale, to the western coast of France, against the high-road south of Bordeaux, it can scarcely be doubted that he would have met a severe disappointment, such as attended similar actions upon the Channel in the Seven Years' War. On the Riviera, in 1795, this means might have been decisive; in 1796, in the face of Bonaparte's fortified coast, it could scarcely have been more than an annoyance. At all events, the advocacy of it testifies to the acuteness and energy with which Nelson threw himself into the operations especially intrusted to him.
His letters during this period reflect the varying phases of hope and of discouragement; but, upon the whole, the latter prevails. There is no longer the feeling of neglect by his superior, of opportunity slipping away through the inadequate force which timid counsels and apathetic indolence allowed him. He sees that the chance which was permitted to pass unimproved has now gone forever. "As the French cannot want supplies to be brought into the Gulf of Genoa, for their grand army," he writes to the admiral, "I am still of opinion that if our frigates are wanted for other services, they may very well be spared from the Gulf." And again, "As the service for which my distinguishing pendant was intended to be useful, is nearly if not quite at an end, I assure you I shall have no regret in striking it." Sir John Jervis, he asserts with pride, has cruised with the fleet in the Gulf of Genoa, close to shore, "where I will venture to say no fleet ever cruised before—no officer can be more zealous or able to render any service in our profession to England;" yet from the decks of the flagship he and Nelson had helplessly watched a convoy passing close in shore, and directly to windward, but wholly out of reach of their powers of offence. At times, indeed, somewhat can be accomplished. For several days the "Agamemnon" "has kept close to shore, and harassed the enemy's troops very much. Field pieces are drawn out on our standing in shore. You must defend me if any Genoese towns are knocked down by firing at enemy's batteries. I will not fire first." Six weeks later he writes again: "Our conduct has so completely alarmed the French that all their coasting trade is at an end; even the corvette, gunboats, &c., which were moored under the fortress of Vado, have not thought themselves in security, but are all gone into Savona Mole, and unbent their sails."
This movement, however, which he notes under the date of June 23, proceeded probably less from fear than from the growing indifference of the French concerning their communications by water, now that their occupation of the line of the Adige River had solidified their control over the ample resources of Piedmont and Lombardy. At the very hour when Nelson was thus writing, he learned also the critical condition of Leghorn through the approach of a French division, the mere sending of which showed Bonaparte's sense of his present security of tenure.
Nelson had severed by this time his long and affectionate connection with the battered "Agamemnon." On the 4th of June the old ship anchored at San Fiorenzo, having a few days before, with the assistance of the squadron, cut out from under the French batteries the vessels carrying Bonaparte's siege-train, as well as the gunboats which convoyed them. There was then in the bay the "Egmont," seventy-four, whose commander had expressed to the admiral his wish to return to England. Jervis, therefore, had ordered Nelson to the spot, to make the exchange, and the latter thought the matter settled; but to his surprise he found the captain did not wish to leave the station unless the ship went also. This did away with the vacancy he looked to fill; and, as the "Agamemnon," from her condition, must be the first of the fleet to go home, it seemed for the moment likely that he would have to go in her with a convoy then expected in the bay. "I remained in a state of uncertainty for a week," he wrote to his wife; "and had the corn ships, which were momentarily expected from Naples, arrived, I should have sailed for England." The dilemma caused him great anxiety; for the longing for home, which he had felt in the early part of the winter, had given away entirely before the pride and confidence he felt in the new admiral, and the keen delight in active service he was now enjoying. "I feel full of gratitude for your good wishes towards me," he wrote to Jervis in the first moment of disappointment, "and highly flattered by your desire to have me continue to serve under your command, which I own would afford me infinite satisfaction." The following day he is still more restless. "I am not less anxious than yesterday for having slept since my last letter. Indeed, Sir, I cannot bear the thoughts of leaving your command." He then proposed several ways out of the difficulty, which reduced themselves, in short, to a readiness to hoist his pendant in anything, if only he could remain.
No violent solution was needed, as several applicants came forward when Nelson's wish was known. On the 11th of June, 1796, he shifted his broad pendant to the "Captain," of seventy-four guns, taking with him most of his officers. Soon afterwards the "Agamemnon" sailed for England. Up to the last day of his stay on board, Nelson, although a commodore, was also her captain; it was not until two months after joining his new ship that another captain was appointed to her, leaving to himself the duties of commodore only. In later years the "Agamemnon" more than once bore a share in his career. She was present at Copenhagen and at Trafalgar, being in this final scene under the command of an officer who had served in her as his first lieutenant, and was afterwards his flag-captain at the Nile. In 1809 she was totally lost in the river La Plata, having run aground, and then settled on one of her anchors, which, upon the sudden shoaling of the water, had been let go to bring her up.[37] It is said that there were then on board several seamen who had been with her during Nelson's command.
On the 13th of June the "Captain" sailed from San Fiorenzo Bay, and on the 17th joined the fleet off Cape Sicie, near Toulon, where Jervis, six weeks before, had established the first of those continuous close blockades which afterwards, off Brest, became associated with his name, and proved so potent a factor in the embarrassments that drove Napoleon to his ruin. There were then twelve British ships off the port, while inside the enemy had eleven ready for sea, and four or five more fitting. The following day Nelson again left the fleet, and on the 21st of June arrived at Genoa, where very serious news was to be received.
The triumphant and hitherto unchecked advance of Bonaparte had greatly encouraged the French party in Corsica, which had been increased by a number of malcontents, dissatisfied with their foreign rulers. Owing to the disturbed condition of the interior, the British troops had been drawn down to the sea-coast. Bonaparte, from the beginning of his successes, had kept in view the deliverance of his native island, which he expected to effect by the exertions of her own people, stimulated and supported by the arrival upon the spot of Corsican officers and soldiers from the French armies. These refugees, proceeding in parties of from ten to twenty each, in small boats, movable by sail or oars, and under cover of night, could seldom be stopped, or even detected, by the British cruisers, while making the short trip, of little more than a hundred miles, from Genoa, Nice, and Leghorn. The latter port, from its nearness, was particularly favorable to these enterprises; but, although neutral, and freely permitting the ingress and egress of vessels belonging to both belligerents, its facilities for supporting a Corsican uprising were not so great as they would be if the place were held for the French. For this reason, partly, Bonaparte had decided to seize it; and he was still more moved to do so by the fact that it was a centre of British trade, that it contributed much to the supply and repair of the British fleet, and that the presence of vessels from the latter enabled an eye to be kept upon the movements of the Corsicans, and measures to be taken for impeding them.
"The enemy possessing themselves of Leghorn," Nelson had written in the middle of March, when expecting them to do so by a coastwise expedition, "cuts off all our supplies, such as fresh meat, fuel, and various other most essential necessaries; and, of course, our fleet cannot always [in that case] be looked for on the northern coast of Italy." Bonaparte had not, indeed, at that time, contemplated any such ex-centric movement, which, as things then were, would have risked so large a part of his army out of his own control and his own support; but in the middle of June, having driven the Austrians for the moment into the Tyrol, consolidated his position upon the Adige, established the siege of Mantua, and enforced order and submission throughout the fertile valley of the Po, which lay in rear of his army and amply supplied it with the necessaries of subsistence, he felt not only able to spare the force required, but that for the security of the right flank and rear of his army it had become essential to do so. The Papacy and Naples, although they had contributed little to the active campaigning of the allies, were still nominally at war with France, and might possibly display more energy now that operations were approaching their own frontiers. Should the British take possession of Leghorn with a body of troops,—their own or Neapolitan,—the port would remain a constant menace to the operations and communications of the French, and especially at the critical moments when the Austrians advanced to the relief of Mantua, as they must be expected to do, and actually did on four several occasions during the succeeding six months.
Bonaparte, as he was ever wont, diligently improved the opportunity permitted to him by the need of the Austrians to reorganize and reinforce Beaulieu's beaten army before again taking the field. Threatened, as often again in later years, by enemies in divergent directions, he with the utmost promptitude and by the most summary measures struck down the foe on one side, before the other could stir. Occupying Verona in the first days of June, he immediately afterwards detached to the southward a corps under Augereau to enter the Papal States; and at the same time another small division, commanded by General Vaubois, started from the upper valley of the Po, ostensibly destined to proceed against Rome by passing through Tuscany. The effect of Augereau's movement, which was closely followed by the commander-in-chief in person, was to bring both Naples and the Pope speedily to terms. An armistice was signed by the former on the 5th, and by the latter on the 24th of June. Vaubois, on the other hand, after passing the Arno below Florence, instead of continuing on to Siena, as the Grand Duke had been assured that he would, turned sharp to the westward, and on the 28th of June entered Leghorn, which was thenceforth held by the French. Thus within a brief month were the British deprived of two allies, lethargic, it is true, in actual performance, but possessed of a degree of potential strength that could not but enter largely into Bonaparte's anxieties; while at the same time they lost the use of a seaport that had heretofore been considered essential to their support.
Rumors of Vaubois' movement reached Nelson in Genoa at noon of June 23, but somewhat vaguely. "Reports are all we have here," he wrote to Jervis the same day, "nothing official from the armies;" but he thought the situation critical, and started without delay for Leghorn. Arriving there on the morning of June 27, after a passage rendered tedious by light airs and calms, he found the British merchant vessels that had been in the harbor, to the number of nearly forty sail, already under way, laden with British merchants and their property, and standing out under convoy of several ships of war; while in pursuit of them—a singular indication of the neutrality possible to small States like Tuscany and Genoa at that time—were a dozen French privateers, which had been lying beside them within the mole. One or two of the departing vessels were thus taken.
The first impression upon Nelson's mind was that the occupation of Leghorn was only the prelude to an invasion of Corsica in force. "I have no doubt," he wrote to the Viceroy, "but the destination of the French army was Corsica, and it is natural to suppose their fleet was to amuse ours whilst they cross from Leghorn." Thus reasoning, he announced his purpose of rejoining the admiral as soon as possible, so as not to lose his share in the expected battle. "My heart would break," he says to Jervis, "to be absent at such a glorious time;" but it is difficult to understand why he imagined that the French would transfer their army into the destitution of the Corsican mountains from the fertile plains of Lombardy, abandoning the latter to their enemy, and exchanging their assured communications with France for the uncertainties and irregularities of a water transit over seas commanded by the British fleet. The tenure of the island, as he well knew, depended upon the willing support of the Corsicans themselves; in the equal balance of the existing war, neither belligerent could maintain its control against the opposition of the natives.
This anticipation, in its disregard of the perfectly obvious conditions, was scarcely worthy of Nelson's real native sagacity, and shows clearly how much a man, even of genius, is hampered in the conclusions of actual life by the lack of that systematic ordering and training of the ideas which it is the part of education to supply. Genius is one thing, the acquirements of an accomplished—instructed—officer are another, yet there is between the two nothing incompatible, rather the reverse; and when to the former, which nature alone can give,—and to Nelson did give,—is added the conscious recognition of principles, the practised habit of viewing, under their clear light, all the circumstances of a situation, assigning to each its due weight and relative importance, then, and then only, is the highest plane of military greatness attained. Whether in natural insight Nelson fell short of Napoleon's measure need not here be considered; that he was at this time far inferior, in the powers of a trained intellect, to his younger competitor in the race for fame, is manifest by the readiness with which he accepted such widely ex-centric conjectures as that of an attempt by sea upon Leghorn at the opening of the campaign, and now upon Corsica by a great part, if not the whole, of the army of Italy.
"On the side of the French," says Jomini, speaking of Bonaparte at this very period, "was to be seen a young warrior, trained in the best schools, endowed with an ardent imagination, brought up upon the examples of antiquity, greedy of glory and of power, knowing thoroughly the Apennines, in which he had distinguished himself in 1794, and already measuring with a practised eye the distances he must overpass before becoming master of Italy. To these advantages for a war of invasion, Bonaparte united an inborn genius, and clearly established principles, the fruits of an enlightened theory."
Jomini doubtless may be considered somewhat too absolute and pedantic in his insistence upon definite formulation of principles; but in these words is nevertheless to be recognized the fundamental difference between these two great warriors, a difference by which the seaman was heavily handicapped in the opening of his career. As time passed on, responsibility, the best of educators, took under her firm and steady guidance the training of his yet undeveloped genius, gleams of which from time to time, but fitfully and erratically, illumine his earlier correspondence. The material was there from the first, but inchoate, ill-ordered, confused, and therefore not readily available to correct passing impressions, wild rumors, or even to prevent the radically false conceptions of an enemy's possible movements, such as we have had before us. Bonaparte, furthermore, whose career began amid the troubled scenes of a revolution which had shattered all the fetters of established custom,—so strong in England to impede a man's natural progress,—had enjoyed already for some time the singular advantage of being military adviser to the Directory, a duty which compelled him to take a broad view of all current conditions, to consider them in their mutual relations, and not narrowly to look to one sphere of operations, without due reference to its effects upon others.
As to the invasion of Corsica after the manner he had imagined, Nelson was soon undeceived. Bonaparte himself, after a hurried visit to Leghorn, again departed to press the siege of Mantua, having assured himself that for a measurable time he had nothing to apprehend from movements on his flank and rear. Orders were received from Jervis on the 2d of July to institute a commercial blockade of Leghorn, permitting no vessels to enter or depart. The conduct of this business, as well as the protection of British trade in that district, and the support of the Viceroy in securing Corsica against the attempts of French partisans, were especially intrusted to Nelson, whose movements during the following months, until the first of October, were consequently confined to the waters between Corsica and Tuscany, while the Riviera west of Genoa saw him no more. Leghorn became the chief centre of his activities. These redoubled with the demands made upon him; his energy rose equal to every call. A few weeks before, he had made a conditional application to the admiral, though with evident reluctance, for a short leave of absence on account of his health. "I don't much like what I have written," he confessed at the end of his diffident request, and some days later he again alludes to the subject. "My complaint is as if a girth was buckled taut over my breast, and my endeavours, in the night, is to get it loose. To say the truth, when I am actively employed, I am not so bad. If the Service will admit of it, perhaps I shall at a future day take your leave." The service now scarcely admitted it, and the active duty apparently restored his health; at all events we now hear no more of it. Everything yielded to the requirements of the war. "The Captain has wants, but I intend she shall last till the autumn: for I know, when once we begin, our wants are innumerable."
In his still limited sphere, and on all matters directly connected with it and his professional duties, his judgment was sound and acute, as his activity, energy, and zeal were untiring. The menace to Corsica from the fall of Leghorn was accurately weighed and considered. Midway between the two lay the since famous island of Elba, a dependence of Tuscany, so small as to be held readily by a few good troops, and having a port large enough, in Nelson's judgment, to harbor the British fleet with a little management. "The way to Corsica," he wrote to the Viceroy, "if our fleet is at hand, is through Elba; for if they once set foot on that island, it is not all our fleet can stop their passage to Corsica." The Viceroy took upon himself to direct that the island be occupied by the British. Nelson complied without waiting for Jervis's orders, and on the 10th of July a detachment of troops, convoyed by his squadron, were landed in the island, and took charge, without serious opposition, of the town of Porto Ferrajo and the works for the defence of the harbor. The measure was justified upon the ground that the seizure of Leghorn by the French showed that Tuscany was unable to assure Elba against a similar step, prejudicial to the British tenure in Corsica. The administration remained in the hands of the Tuscan officials, the British occupation being purely military, and confined to the places necessary for that purpose.
The blockade of Leghorn was enforced with the utmost rigor and great effectiveness. For a long time no vessels were allowed to go either out or in. Afterwards the rule was gradually relaxed, so far as to permit neutrals to leave the port in ballast; but none entered. The trade of the place was destroyed. Nelson hoped, and for a time expected, that the populace, accustomed to a thriving commerce, and drawing their livelihood from its employments, would rise against the feeble garrison, whose presence entailed upon them such calamities; but herein, of course, he underestimated the coercive power of a few resolute men, organized for mutual support, over a mob of individuals, incapable of combined action and each uncertain of the constancy of his fellows.
The Austrian preparations in the Tyrol gradually matured as the month of July wore on. Towards its end Marshal Wurmser, the successor of Beaulieu, advanced for the relief of Mantua and the discomfiture of Bonaparte, whose numbers were much inferior to his opponents. The projected movement was of course known to the British, and its first results in raising the siege of Mantua, and throwing reinforcements into the place, gave them great hopes. Amid the conflicting rumors of the succeeding days, the wonderful skill and success of Bonaparte, who overthrew in detail forces greatly superior in the aggregate to his own, escaped notice for the time; the superficial incidents of his abandoning his previous positions alone received attention, and nothing less than his retreat in confusion was confidently expected. Nelson, justly estimating the importance of Leghorn, and over-sanguine of the support he might hope from the inhabitants, projected a sudden assault upon the town, by troops to be drawn from the garrisons in Corsica, supported by seamen of the squadron. Speaking of the steady intercourse between, that island and the mainland by way of Leghorn, he says: "The only way is to cut at the root, for whilst Leghorn is open, this communication must constantly be going on. This moment brings to my eyes a body of about 200 men, with the Corsican flag carrying before them; they are partly from Nice, and joined by Genoese, &c., on the road. The time approaches," he rightly forecasts, "when we shall either have to fight them in Corsica or Leghorn." The imminence of the danger was evident. "Our affairs in Corsica are gloomy," he had already written to the Duke of Clarence. "There is a very strong republican party in that island, and they are well supported from France; the first favourable moment, they will certainly act against us."
The details of the intended assault upon Leghorn do not appear, and it is probable that they never passed beyond the stage of discussion to that of acceptance, although he alludes to the plans as "laid." Clear-sighted for the key of a situation, and ardent to strike "at the root," as five years later in the Baltic he was eager to cut away the Russian root of the Armed Neutrality, instead of hewing off the Danish branch, Nelson urged the speedy adoption of the measure, and pressed his own fitness to harmonize the land and sea forces under one command, in virtue of his rank as Colonel of Marines. "Leghorn is in such a state," he writes to Elliot on the 5th of August, "that a respectable force landed, would, I have every reason to suppose, insure the immediate possession of the town. Not less than a thousand troops should be sent, to which I will add every soldier in my squadron, and a party of seamen to make a show. In every way, pray consider this as private, and excuse my opinions. I well know the difficulty of getting a proper person to command this party. Firmness, and that the people of Leghorn should know the person commanding, will most assuredly have a great effect. A cordial co-operation with me (for vanity apart, no one is so much feared or respected in Leghorn as myself) is absolutely necessary. I am going further: we know the jealousy of the army against the navy, but I am by the King's commission a Colonel in the army from June 1st, 1795." After discussing this difficult question of professional susceptibilities, he concludes: "You will consider, Sir, all these points, and form a much better judgment than I can, only give me credit that the nearest wish of my heart is to serve my King and my Country, at every personal risk and consideration. It has ever pleased God to prosper all my undertakings, and I feel confident of His blessing on this occasion. I ever consider my motto, Fides et Opera."[38]
Having, with true strategic insight, chosen the place where the blow ought to be struck for the preservation of Corsica, he pressed, with characteristic fervor, the necessity of taking risks. He discusses details indeed; he proposes no mere adventure, real as was his personal enjoyment of danger and action. What man can do, shall be done; but being done, still "something must be left to chance. Our only consideration, is the honour and benefit to our Country worth the risk? If it is (and I think so), in God's name let us get to work, and hope for His blessing on our endeavours to liberate a people who have been our sincere friends." Hearing at the same time that an army officer of general rank will have the command instead of himself, he adds: "Pray assure him there is nothing I feel greater pleasure in than hearing he is to command. Assure him of my most sincere wishes for his speedy success, and that he shall have every support and assistance from me." Truly, in generosity as in ardor, Nelson was, to use the fine old phrase, "all for the service."
The project upon Leghorn had the approval of the Viceroy and of Jervis; but the latter, while expressing perfect reliance upon "the promptitude of Commodore Nelson," was clear that the attempt must depend upon the contimied advance of the Austrians. This was also Nelson's own view. "All will be well, I am satisfied, provided Wurmser is victorious; upon this ground only have I adopted the measure." This qualification redeems the plan from the reproach of rashness, which otherwise might have been applied to the somewhat desperate undertaking of carrying a fortified town by such a feat of hardihood. It loses thus the color of recklessness, and falls into place as one part of a great common action, to harass the retreat of a beaten enemy, and to insure the security of one's own positions.
On the 15th of August, when the above words were written, Nelson was still ignorant of the Austrian defeats at Lonato and Castiglione, nearly two weeks before, and of their subsequent retreat to the Tyrol. A rumor of the reverse had reached him through Florence, but he gave it little attention, as the French in Leghorn were not claiming a victory. On the 19th he knew it definitely, and had to abandon the expectation, confided to his brother, that the next letter seen from him would be in the "Public Gazette." "An expedition is thought of, and of course I shall be there, for most of these services fall to my lot." "One day or other," he had written to his wife, apparently with this very enterprise in mind, "I will have a long Gazette to myself; I feel that such an opportunity will be given me. I cannot," he continued with prophetic self-reliance, "if I am in the field of glory, be kept out of sight."
During the remainder of the month he continued to be amused with those unfounded reports of victories, which are among the invariable concomitants of all wars, and which his sanguine temperament and peculiar readiness to trust others made him especially ready to accept. He was not wholly unaware of this tendency in himself, though he continued to repeat with apparent belief reports of the most startling and erroneous character, and never seems to have appreciated, up to the time of his leaving the Mediterranean, the astonishing quickness and sagacity with which Bonaparte frustrated the overwhelming combinations against him. "We hear what we wish," he says on one occasion. "The Toulon information is, as I always thought it, pleasant to know but never to be depended upon; all is guess. I have long had reason to suspect great part is fabricated in Genoa;" but he was continually deceived by it.
Throughout the discomfitures of the Austrians on shore, the purely naval part of the war continued to be successfully maintained. Jervis, with unrelaxing grip, kept his position before Toulon, effectually checking every attempt of the French fleet to escape unobserved into the open, while Nelson shut up Leghorn so rigorously that the enemy lost even the partial advantage, as a port of supply, which they had before drawn from its neutrality. But, during this pregnant summer, grave causes for anxiety were rolling up in the western basin of the Mediterranean. The attitude of Spain had long been doubtful, so much so that before Sir John Jervis left England, in the previous autumn, the ministry had deliberated upon the contingency of her declaring war, and a conditional decision had been reached to evacuate Corsica, if that event occurred. During the spring of 1796 reports of coming hostilities were current in the fleet. Nelson's first opinion was that, if they ensued, there was no object in remaining in the Mediterranean, except to preserve Corsica from the French. This, he thought, was not a sufficient motive, nor had the conduct of the natives entitled them to protection. With all the powers making peace with France, he hoped Great Britain would leave the Mediterranean. This, however, was but a passing expression of discouragement, whence he soon rallied, and, with a spirit worthy of his race, which was soon to face all Europe undismayed, his courage mounted continually as the storm drew nearer.
The summer of 1796 was in truth the period of transition, when the victories of Bonaparte, by bringing near a cessation of warfare upon the land, were sweeping from the scene the accessories that confused the view of the future, removing conditions and details which perplexed men's attention, and bringing into clear relief the one field upon which the contest was finally to be fought out, and the one foe, the British sea-power, upon whose strength and constancy would hinge the issues of the struggle. The British Navy, in the slight person of its indomitable champion, was gradually rising to the appreciation of its own might, and gathering together its energies to endure single-handed the gigantic strife, with a spirit unequalled in its past history, glorious as that had often been. From 1796 began the rapid ascent to that short noontide of unparalleled brilliancy, in which Nelson's fame outshone all others, and which may be said to have begun with the Spanish declaration of war, succeeded though that was by the retreat in apparent discomfiture from the Mediterranean, now at hand.
The approach of this extraordinary outburst of maritime vigor is aptly foretokened in the complete change, gradual yet rapid, that passed over Nelson's opinions, from the time when rumors of a Spanish war first assumed probability, up to the moment when the fact became tangible by the appearance of the Spanish fleet in the waters of Corsica. Accentuated thus in a man of singular perceptions and heroic instincts, it further affords an interesting illustration of the manner in which a combative race—for Nelson was through and through a child of his people—however at first averse to war, from motives of well-understood interest, gradually warms to the idea, and finally grows even to welcome the fierce joy which warriors feel, as the clash of arms draws near. "If all the states of Italy make peace," he writes on the 20th of May, "we have nothing to look to but Corsica; which in the present state of the inhabitants, is not, in my opinion, an object to keep us in the Mediterranean: we shall, I hope, quit it, and employ our fleet more to our advantage." "Reports here," on the 20th of June, "are full of a Spanish war. If that should be the case, we shall probably draw towards Gibraltar and receive large reinforcements."
On the 15th of August, however, he writes to Jervis, betraying the incipient revulsion, as yet not realized, against abandoning the Mediterranean, which was already affecting the current of his thoughts. "I hope we shall have settled Leghorn before the Dons, if they intend it, arrive. I have still my doubts as to a Spanish war; and if there should be one, with your management I have no fears. Should the Dons come, I shall then hope I may be spared,[39] in my own person, to help to make you at least a Viscount." A few days later, having meantime heard of Wurmser's disasters at Castiglione: "Austria, I suppose, must make peace, and we shall, as usual, be left to fight it out: however, at the worst, we only give up Corsica, an acquisition which I believe we cannot keep, and our fleet will draw down the Mediterranean;" but at the same time, August 19, he writes to the Duke of Clarence with glowing hopes and rising pride: "I hope Government will not be alarmed for our safety—I mean more than is proper. Under such a commander-in-chief as Sir John Jervis nobody has any fears. We are now twenty-two sail of the line; the combined fleet will not be above thirty-five sail of the line. I will venture my life Sir John Jervis defeats them. This country is the most favourable possible for skill with an inferior fleet; for the winds are so variable, that some one time in twenty-four hours you must be able to attack a part of a large fleet, and the other will be becalmed, or have a contrary wind." That the Duke trembled and demurred to such odds is not wonderful; but the words have singular interest, both as showing the clear tactical apprehensions that held sway in Nelson's mind, and still more, at the moment then present, as marking unmistakably his gradual conversion to the policy of remaining in the Mediterranean, and pursuing the most vigorous aggressive measures.
A fortnight after this letter was written, Genoa, under pressure from Bonaparte, closed her ports against British ships, interdicting even the embarkation of a drove of cattle, already purchased, and ready for shipment to the fleet off Toulon. Nelson immediately went there to make inquiries, and induce a revocation of the orders. While the "Captain" lay at anchor in the roads, three of the crew deserted, and when her boats were sent to search for them they were fired upon by a French battery, established near the town. Nelson, in retaliation, seized a French supply ship from under the guns of the battery, whereupon the Genoese forts opened against the "Captain," which had meantime got under way and was lying-to off the city. Nelson did not return the fire of the latter, which was kept up for two hours, but threw three shot into the French battery, "to mark," as he said, the power of the English to bombard the town, and their humanity in not destroying the houses and innocent Genoese inhabitants. In the communications which followed under a flag of truce, Nelson was informed, verbally, that all the ports of the Republic were closed against Great Britain. This stand, and the firing on the ship, being considered acts of hostility, the little island of Capraia, between Corsica and Genoa, and belonging to the latter, was seized by Nelson, acting under the counsel of the Viceroy of Corsica. This was done both as a retaliatory measure, and to put a stop to the use which French privateers and parties of Corsicans had hitherto made of it, under cover of Genoese neutrality.
As Jervis was already under apprehension of an outbreak of scurvy in the fleet, consequent upon the failure of supplies of live cattle following the French occupation of Leghorn, the closure of the Genoese ports was a severe blow. It was, however, but one among several incidents, occurring nearly simultaneously, which increased his embarrassments, and indicated the close approach of the long-muttering storm. To use his own words, "The lowering aspect of Spain, with the advanced state of the equipment of the French fleet in Toulon," impelled him to concentrate his force. Rear-Admiral Man, who had been blockading Cadiz since his detachment there by Hotham, in October, 1795, was ordered up to the main fleet. Swayed by fears very unlike to Nelson's proud confidence in his admiral and his service, he acted with such precipitation as to leave Gibraltar without filling with provisions, and arrived so destitute that Jervis had to send him back at once, with orders to replenish with stores and then to rejoin without delay. Under the influence of the panic which prevailed at Gibraltar, Man had also sent such advices to the coast of Portugal as caused the commander-in-chief to fear that expected supplies might be arrested. "Oh, our convoy!" cried Nelson; "Admiral Man, how could you quit Gibraltar?" Yet, as he wrote to Jervis, he had expected some such step, from what he had already seen "under his hand to you."
Thus, for the time at least, there were lost to the British seven of the ships-of-the-line upon which Nelson had reckoned in his letter to the Duke of Clarence. It was possibly on this account that Jervis wrote him to shift his commodore's pendant to a frigate, and send the "Captain" to the fleet. Nelson obeyed, of course, and at once; but taking advantage of the fact that no captain had yet joined his ship, he thought it "advisable to go in her myself." In this he doubtless was influenced chiefly by his unwillingness to miss a battle, especially against such great numerical odds. "I take for granted," he admitted to the Viceroy, "that the admiral will send me back in a cutter, but I shall give him a good ordered seventy-four, and take my chance of helping to thrash Don Langara, than which few things, I assure you, would give me more real pleasure." The particular emergency seems, however, soon to have passed; for after two days with the fleet he returned off Leghorn in the "Captain," somewhat comforted as to the apprehensions of the British Cabinet. "Whatever fears we may have for Corsica, it is certain Government at home have none, by taking so very respectable a part of your force away." A regiment had been transferred to Gibraltar with Man's squadron, when the latter returned there.
These rising hopes and stirring expectations of brilliant service were speedily dashed. On the 25th of September Jervis received orders from the Admiralty to abandon Corsica, to retreat from the Mediterranean, and to proceed with the fleet to England. In pursuance of these instructions Nelson was directed to superintend the evacuation of Bastia, the "most secret" letter to that effect reaching him at that port on the 29th of September,—his birthday. The purpose of the ministry filled him with shame and indignation. Confronted abruptly with the course which four months before had seemed to him natural and proper, the shock brought out the fulness of the change through which he had passed meantime. He has no illusions about Corsica. The inhabitants had disappointed all the expectations of the British,—"At a peace I should rejoice at having given up the island." But the days passing over his head had brought wider and maturer views of the general policy of Great Britain, as well as increasing faith in the powers of the fleet, vigorously used in aggressive warfare. "Whilst we can keep the combined fleet in the Mediterranean [by our own presence], so much the more advantageous to us; and the moment we retire, the whole of Italy is given to the French. If the Dons detach their fleet out of the Mediterranean, we can do the same—however, that is distant. Be the successes of the Austrians on the other hand what they may, their whole supply of stores and provisions comes from Trieste, across the Adriatic to the Po, and when this is cut off [as by our uncovering the sea it must be], they must retire." Above all he grieves for Naples. If a weak and vacillating ally, there was no doubt her heart was with them. "I feel more than all for Naples. The King of Naples is a greater sacrifice than Corsica. If he has been induced to keep off the peace, and perhaps engaged in the war again by the expectation of the continuance of the fleet in the Mediterranean, hard indeed is his fate; his kingdom must inevitably be ruined." In the impression now made upon him, may perhaps be seen one cause of Nelson's somewhat extravagant affection in after days for the royal family of Naples, independent of any influence exerted upon him by Lady Hamilton.
With these broad views of the general strategic situation, which are unquestionably far in advance of the comparatively narrow and vague conceptions of a year, or even six months before, and doubtless indicate the results of independent command and responsibility, acting upon powers of a high order, he at the same time shows his keen appreciation of the value of the organized force, whose movements, properly handled, should dominate the other conditions. "When Man arrives, who is ordered to come up, we shall be twenty-two sail of such ships as England hardly ever produced, and commanded by an admiral who will not fail to look the enemy in the face, be their force what it may: I suppose it will not be more than thirty-four of the line. There is not a seaman in the fleet who does not feel confident of success." "The fleets of England," he says again, "are equal to meet the world in arms; and of all fleets I ever saw, I never beheld one in point of officers and men equal to Sir John Jervis's, who is a commander-in-chief able to lead them to glory."
Reasoning so clearly and accurately upon the importance to Great Britain's interests and honor, at that time, of maintaining her position in the Mediterranean, and upon the power of her fleet in battle, it is not strange that Nelson, writing in intimate confidence to his wife, summed up in bitter words his feelings upon the occasion; unconscious, apparently, of the great change they indicated, not merely in his opinions, but in his power of grasping, in well-ordered and rational sequence, the great outlines of the conditions amid which he, as an officer, was acting. "We are all preparing to leave the Mediterranean, a measure which I cannot approve. They at home do not know what this fleet is capable of performing; anything, and everything. Much as I shall rejoice to see England, I lament our present orders in sackcloth and ashes, so dishonourable to the dignity of England." To the British minister at Naples his words were even stronger: "Till this time it has been usual for the allies of England to fall from her, but till now she never was known to desert her friends whilst she had the power of supporting them. I yet hope the Cabinet may, on more information, change their opinion; it is not all we gain elsewhere which can compensate for our loss of honour. The whole face of affairs is totally different to what it was when the Cabinet formed their opinion."
Nevertheless, although Nelson's perceptions and reasoning were accurate as far as they went, they erred in leaving out of the calculation a most important consideration,—the maintenance of the communications with England, which had assumed vital importance since the general defection of the Italian States, caused by Bonaparte's successes and his imperious demands. It would be more true to say that he underestimated this factor than that he overlooked it; for he had himself observed, six weeks earlier, when the approach of a Spanish war first became certain: "I really think they would do us more damage by getting off Cape Finisterre;[40] it is there I fear them," and the reason for that fear is shown by his reproach against Man, already quoted, for his neglect of the convoy. The position of the Spanish Navy in its home ports was in fact intermediate—interior—as regarded the British fleet and the source of its most essential supplies. So long as its future direction remained uncertain, it lay upon the flank of the principal British line of communications. Nelson did not use, perhaps did not know, the now familiar terms of the military art; and, with all his insight and comprehensive sagacity, he suffered from the want of proper tools with which to transmute his acute intuitions into precise thought, as well as of clearly enunciated principles, which serve to guide a man's conclusions, and would assuredly have qualified his in the present instance. Upon the supposition that the Spanish Navy, practically in its entirety, entered the Mediterranean and appeared off Corsica,—as it did,—Nelson's reasoning was correct, and his chagrin at a retreat justified; but, as he himself had wisely remarked to Beaulieu, it is not safe to count upon your enemy pursuing the course you wish. Had the Spanish Government chosen the other alternative open to it, and struck at the communications, such a blow, or even such a threat, must have compelled the withdrawal of the fleet, unless some other base of supplies could be found. The straitness of the situation is shown by the fact that Jervis, after he had held on to the last moment in San Fiorenzo Bay, sailed for Gibraltar with such scanty provisions that the crews' daily rations were reduced to one-third the ordinary amount; in fact, as early as the first of October they had been cut down to two-thirds. Whether, therefore, the Government was right in ordering the withdrawal, or Nelson in his condemnation of it, may be left to the decision of those fortunate persons who can be cocksure of the true solution of other people's perplexities.
In evacuating the Mediterranean, Jervis determined, upon his own responsibility, to retain Elba, if the troops, which were not under his command, would remain there. This was accordingly done; a strong garrison, adequately provisioned, thus keeping for Great Britain a foothold within the sea, at a time when she had lost Minorca and did not yet possess Malta. Nelson hoped that this step would encourage the Two Sicilies to stand firm against the French; but, however valuable Elba would be to the fleet as a base, if held until its return, it was useless to protect Naples in the absence of the fleet, and upon the news of the latter's proposed retirement that Kingdom at once made peace.
After the receipt of his orders for the evacuation of Bastia, and pending the assembling of the transports, Nelson was despatched by the admiral to Genoa, to present reclamations for injuries alleged to have been done to Great Britain, and to propose terms of accommodation. The little Republic, however, under the coercive influence of Bonaparte's continued success, was no longer in doubt as to the side which policy dictated her to take, between the two belligerents who vexed her borders. During this visit of Nelson's, on the 9th of October, she signed a treaty with France, stipulating, besides the closure of the ports against Great Britain, the payment of a sum of money, and free passage to troops and supplies for the army of Italy. Thus was Genoa converted formally, as she for some time had been actually, into a French base of operations. Returning from this fruitless mission, Nelson rejoined the commander-in-chief on the 13th of October, at San Fiorenzo, and the same afternoon left again for Bastia, where he arrived the following day.
During the fortnight intervening since he left the place, the fact that the Spanish fleet was on its way to Corsica had become known, and the French partisans in the island were proportionately active. It was impossible for the British to go into the interior; their friends, if not in a minority, were effectually awed by the preponderance of their enemies, on land and sea. Nelson, wishing to cross overland to San Fiorenzo to visit Jervis, was assured he could not do so with safety. In Bastia itself the municipality had wrested the authority from the Viceroy, and consigned the administration to a Committee of Thirty. The ships of war and transports being blown to sea, the inhabitants became still more aggressive; for, foreseeing the return of the French, they were naturally eager to propitiate their future masters by a display of zeal. British property was sequestered, and shipping not permitted to leave the mole.
Nelson was persuaded that only the arrival of the ships accompanying him saved the place. Except a guard at the Viceroy's house, the British troops had been withdrawn to the citadel. Even there, at the gates of the citadel, and within it, Corsican guards were present in numbers equal to the British, while the posts in the towns were all held by them. Arriving at early dawn of the 14th, Nelson at once visited the general and the Viceroy. The former saw no hope, under the conditions, of saving either stores, cannon, or provisions. "The Army," said Nelson in a private letter to Jervis, with something of the prejudiced chaff of a seaman of that day, "is, as usual, well dressed and powdered. I hope the general will join me cordially, but, as you well know, great exertions belong exclusively to the Navy." After the evacuation, however, he admitted handsomely that it was impossible to "do justice to the good dispositions of the general."
Between the heads of the two services such arrangements were perfected as enabled almost everything in the way of British property—public and private—to be brought away. By midday the ships, of which three were of the line, were anchored close to the mole-head, abreast the town, and the municipality was notified that any opposition to the removal of the vessels and stores would be followed by instant bombardment. Everything yielded to the threat, made by a man whose determined character left no doubt that it would be carried into execution. "Nothing shall be left undone that ought to be done," he wrote to Jervis, "even should it be necessary to knock down Bastia." From time to time interference was attempted, but the demand for immediate desistence, made, watch in hand, by the naval officer on the spot, enforced submission. "The firm tone held by Commodore Nelson," wrote Jervis to the Admiralty, "soon reduced these gentlemen to order, and quiet submission to the embarkation." Owing to the anarchy prevailing, the Viceroy was persuaded to go on board before nightfall, he being too valuable as a hostage to be exposed to possible kidnappers.
On the 18th of October a large number of armed French landed at Cape Corso, and approached the town. On the 19th they sent to the municipality a demand that the British should not be permitted to embark. Under these circumstances even Nelson felt that nothing more could be saved. The work of removal was continued actively until sunset, by which time two hundred thousand pounds worth of cannon, stores, and provisions had been taken on board. At midnight the troops evacuated the citadel, and marched to the north end of the town, where they embarked—twenty-four hours ahead of the time upon which Nelson had reckoned four days before. It was then blowing a strong gale of wind. Last of all, about six o'clock on the morning of the 20th, Nelson and the general entered a barge, every other man being by that time afloat, and were pulled off to the ships, taking with them two field-guns, until then kept ashore to repel a possible attack at the last moment. The French, who "were in one end of Bastia before we quitted the other," had occupied the citadel since one in the morning, and the Spanish fleet, of over twenty sail-of-the-line, which had already arrived, was even then off Cape Corso, about sixty miles distant; but the little British squadron, sailing promptly with a fair wind, in a few hours reached Elba, where every vessel was safely at anchor before night. On the 24th Nelson joined the commander-in-chief in Martello Bay, the outer anchorage of San Fiorenzo. Everything was then afloat, and ready for a start as soon as the transports, still at Elba, should arrive. The evacuation of Corsica was complete, though the ships remained another week in its waters.
The Spanish fleet continued cruising to the northward of the island, and was every day sighted by the British lookout frigates. Jervis held grimly on, expecting the appearance of the seven ships of Admiral Man, who had been ordered to rejoin him. That officer, however, acting on his own responsibility, weakly buttressed by the opinion of a council of his captains, had returned to England contrary to his instructions. The commander-in-chief, ignorant of this step, was left in the sorely perplexing situation of having his fleet divided into two parts, each distinctly inferior to the Spanish force alone, of twenty-six ships, not to speak of the French in Toulon. Under the conditions, the only thing that could be done was to await his subordinate, in the appointed spot, until the last moment. By the 2d of November further delay had become impossible, from the approaching failure of provisions. On that day, therefore, the fleet weighed, and after a tedious passage anchored on the first of December at Gibraltar. There Nelson remained until the 10th of the month, when he temporarily quitted the "Captain," hoisted his broad pendant on board the frigate "Minerve," and, taking with him one frigate besides, returned into the Mediterranean upon a detached mission of importance.
Nelson's last services in Corsica were associated with the momentary general collapse of the British operations and influence in the Mediterranean; and his final duty, by a curious coincidence, was to abandon the position which he more than any other man had been instrumental in securing. Yet, amid these discouraging circumstances, his renown had been steadily growing throughout the year 1796, which may justly be looked upon as closing the first stage in the history of British Sea Power during the wars of the French Revolution, and as clearing the way for his own great career, which in the repossession of the Mediterranean reached its highest plane, and there continued in unabated glory till the hour of his death. It was not merely the exceptional brilliancy of his deeds at Cape St. Vincent, now soon to follow, great and distinguished as those were, which designated him to men in power as beyond dispute the coming chief of the British Navy; it was the long antecedent period of unswerving continuance in strenuous action, allowing no flagging of earnestness for a moment to appear, no chance for service, however small or distant, to pass unimproved. It was the same unremitting pressing forward, which had brought him so vividly to the front in the abortive fleet actions of the previous year,—an impulse born, partly, of native eagerness for fame, partly of zeal for the interests of his country and his profession. "Mine is all honour; so much for the Navy!" as he wrote, somewhat incoherently, to his brother, alluding to a disappointment about prize money.
Nelson himself had an abundant, but not an exaggerated, consciousness of this increase of reputation; and he knew, too, that he was but reaping as he had diligently sowed. "If credit and honour in the service are desirable," he tells his brother, "I have my full share. I have never lost an opportunity of distinguishing myself, not only as a gallant man, but as having a head; for, of the numerous plans I have laid, not one has failed." "You will be informed from my late letters," he writes to his wife, "that Sir John Jervis has such an opinion of my conduct, that he is using every influence, both public and private, with Lord Spencer, for my continuance on this station; and I am certain you must feel the superior pleasure of knowing, that my integrity and plainness of conduct are the cause of my being kept from you, to the receiving me as a person whom no commander-in-chief would wish to keep under his flag. Sir John was a perfect stranger to me, therefore I feel the more flattered; and when I reflect that I have had the unbounded confidence of three commanders-in-chief, I cannot but feel a conscious pride, and that I possess abilities." "If my character is known," he writes to the Genoese Government, which knew it well, "it will be credited that this blockade [of Leghorn] will be attended to with a degree of rigour unexampled in the present war." "It has pleased God this war," he tells the Duke of Clarence, "not only to give me frequent opportunities of showing myself an officer worthy of trust, but also to prosper all my undertakings in the highest degree. I have had the extreme good fortune, not only to be noticed in my immediate line of duty, but also to obtain the repeated approbation of His Majesty's Ministers at Turin, Genoa, and Naples, as well as of the Viceroy of Corsica, for my conduct in the various opinions I have been called upon to give; and my judgment being formed from common sense, I have never yet been mistaken."
Already at times his consciousness of distinction among men betrays something of that childlike, delighted vanity, half unwitting, which was afterward forced into exuberant growth and distasteful prominence, by the tawdry flatteries of Lady Hamilton and the Court of Naples. Now, expressed to one who had a right to all his confidence and to share all his honors, it challenges rather the sympathy than the criticism of the reader. "I will relate another anecdote, all vanity to myself, but you will partake of it: A person sent me a letter, and directed as follows, 'Horatio Nelson, Genoa.' On being asked how he could direct in such a manner, his answer, in a large party, was, 'Sir, there is but one Horatio Nelson in the world.' I am known throughout Italy," he continues; "not a Kingdom, or State, where my name will be forgotten. This is my Gazette. Probably my services may be forgotten by the great, by the time I get home; but my mind will not forget, nor cease to feel, a degree of consolation and of applause superior to undeserved rewards. Wherever there is anything to be done, there Providence is sure to direct my steps. Credit must be given me in spite of envy. Had all my actions been gazetted, not one fortnight would have passed during the whole war without a letter from me. Even the French respect me." After the conclusion of the campaign, when on the way to Gibraltar, he tells her again: "Do not flatter yourself that I shall be rewarded; I expect nothing, and therefore shall not be disappointed: the pleasure of my own mind will be my reward. I am more interested, and feel a greater satisfaction, in obtaining yours and my father's applause than that of all the world besides." The wholesome balance between self-respect and a laudable desire for the esteem of men was plainly unimpaired.
Though devoid of conspicuous events, the year 1796, from the opening of the campaign, early in April, up to the evacuation of the Mediterranean, had been to Nelson one of constant and engrossing occupation. There is therefore little mention by him of his private affairs and feelings. In the home correspondence there is no diminution in the calm tenderness of affection always shown by him towards his wife and father, who continued to live together; rather, perhaps, the expressions to Mrs. Nelson are more demonstrative than before, possibly because letters were less frequent. But there is nothing thrilling in the "assurance of my unabated and steady affection, which, if possible, is increasing by that propriety of conduct which you pursue." He is clearly satisfied to remain away; the path of honor has no rival in his heart; there is no suggestion of an inward struggle between two masters, no feeling of aloneness, no petulant discontent with uneasy surroundings, or longing for the presence of an absent mistress. The quiet English home, the "little but neat cottage," attracts, indeed, with its sense of repose,—"I shall not be very sorry to see England again. I am grown old and battered to pieces, and require some repairs "—but the magnet fails to deflect the needle; not even a perceptible vibration of the will is produced.
Yet, while thus engrossed in the war, eager for personal distinction and for the military honor of his country, he apparently sees in it little object beyond a mere struggle for superiority, and has no conception of the broader and deeper issues at stake, the recognition of which intensified and sustained the resolution of the peace-loving minister, who then directed the policy of Great Britain. Of this he himself gives the proof in a curious anecdote. An Algerine official visiting the "Captain" off Leghorn, Nelson asked him why the Dey would not make peace with the Genoese and Neapolitans, for they would pay well for immunity, as the Americans at that period always did. His answer was: "If we make peace with every one, what is the Dey to do with his ships?" "What a reason for carrying on a naval war!" said Nelson, when writing the story to Jervis; "but has our minister a better one for the present?" Jervis, a traditional Whig, and opposed in Parliament to the war, probably sympathized with this view, and in any case the incident shows the close confidence existing between the two officers; but it also indicates how narrowly Nelson's genius and unquestionable acuteness c£ intellect confined themselves, at that time, to the sphere in which he was visibly acting. In this he presents a marked contrast to Bonaparte, whose restless intelligence and impetuous imagination reached out in many directions, and surveyed from a lofty height the bearing of all things, far and near, upon the destinies of France.