On the 14th of July Nelson notes that the fleet had received orders to consider Marseilles and Toulon as invested, and to take all vessels of whatever nation bound into those ports. He at once recognized the importance of this step, and the accurate judgment that dictated it. The British could not, as he said, get at the enemy in his fortified harbor; but they might by this means exercise the pressure that would force him to come out. Undoubtedly, whether on a large or on a small scale, whether it concern the whole plan of a war or of a campaign, or merely the question of a single military position, the best way to compel an unwilling foe to action, and to spoil his waiting game which is so onerous to the would-be assailant, is to attack him elsewhere, to cut short his resources, and make his position untenable by exhaustion. "This has pleased us," Nelson wrote; "if we make these red-hot gentlemen hungry, they may be induced to come out."
The investment by sea of these two harbors, but especially of Toulon, as being an important dockyard, was accordingly the opening move made by the British admiral. On the 16th of July he approached the latter port, and from that time until August 25 a close blockade was maintained, with the exception of a very few days, during which Hood took the fleet off Nice, and thence to Genoa, to remonstrate with that republic upon its supplying the south of France with grain, and bringing back French property under neutral papers. "Our being here is a farce if this trade is allowed," said Nelson, and rightly; for so far as appearances then went, the only influence the British squadrons could exert was by curtailing the supplies of southern France. That district raised only grain enough for three months' consumption; for the remainder of the year's food it depended almost wholly upon Sicily and Barbary, its communications with the interior being so bad that the more abundant fields of distant French provinces could not send their surplus.
In the chaotic state in which France was then plunged, the utmost uncertainty prevailed as to the course events might take, and rumors of all descriptions were current, the wildest scarcely exceeding in improbability the fantastic horrors that actually prevailed throughout the land during these opening days of the Reign of Terror. The expectation that found most favor in the fleet was that Provence would separate from the rest of France, and proclaim itself an independent republic under the protection of Great Britain; but few looked for the amazing result which shortly followed, in the delivery of Toulon by its citizens into the hands of Lord Hood. This Nelson attributed purely to the suffering caused by the strictness of the blockade. "At Marseilles and Toulon," wrote he on the 20th of August, "they are almost starving, yet nothing brings them to their senses. Although the Convention has denounced them as traitors, yet even these people will not declare for anything but Liberty and Equality." Three days later, Commissioners from both cities went on board Hood's flagship to treat for peace, upon the basis of re-establishing the monarchy, and recognizing as king the son of Louis XVI. The admiral accepted the proposal, on condition that the port and arsenal of Toulon should be delivered to him for safe keeping, until the restoration of the young prince was effected. On the 27th of August the city ran up the white flag of the Bourbons, and the British fleet, together with the Spanish, which at this moment arrived on the scene, anchored in the outer port. The allied troops took possession of the forts commanding the harbor, while the dockyards and thirty ships-of-the-line were delivered to the navies.
"The perseverance of our fleet has been great," wrote Nelson, "and to that only can be attributed our unexampled success. Not even a boat could get into Marseilles or Toulon, or on the coast, with provisions; and the old saying, 'that hunger will tame a lion,' was never more strongly exemplified." In this he deceived himself, however natural the illusion. The opposition of Toulon to the Paris Government was part of a general movement of revolt, which spread throughout the provinces in May and June, 1793, upon the violent overthrow of the Girondists in the National Convention. The latter then proclaimed several cities outlawed, Toulon among them; and the bloody severities it exercised were the chief determining cause of the sudden treason, the offspring of fear more than of hunger,—though the latter doubtless contributed,—which precipitated the great southern arsenal into the arms of the Republic's most dangerous foe. Marseilles fell before the Conventional troops, and the resultant panic in the sister city occasioned the hasty step, which in less troubled moments would have been regarded with just horror. But in truth Nelson, despite his acute military perceptions, had not yet developed that keen political sagacity, the fruit of riper judgment grounded on wider information, which he afterwards showed. His ambition was yet limited to the sphere of the "Agamemnon," his horizon bounded by the petty round of the day's events. He rose, as yet, to no apprehension of the mighty crisis hanging over Europe, to no appreciation of the profound meanings of the opening strife. "I hardly think the War can last," he writes to his wife, "for what are we at war about?" and again, "I think we shall be in England in the winter or spring." Even some months later, in December, before Toulon had reverted to the French, he is completely blind to the importance of the Mediterranean in the great struggle, and expresses a wish to exchange to the West Indies, "for I think our Sea War is over in these seas."
It is probable, indeed, that in his zeal, thoroughness, and fidelity to the least of the duties then falling to him, is to be seen a surer indication of his great future than in any wider speculations about matters as yet too high for his position. The recent coolness between him and Lord Hood had been rapidly disappearing under the admiral's reviving appreciation and his own aptitude to conciliation. "Lord Hood is very civil," he writes on more than one occasion, "I think we may be good friends again;" and the offer of a seventy-four-gun ship in place of his smaller vessel was further proof of his superior's confidence. Nelson refused the proposal. "I cannot give up my officers," he said, in the spirit that so endeared him to his followers; but the compliment was felt, and was enhanced by the admiral's approval of his motives. The prospective occupation of Toulon gave occasion for a yet more nattering evidence of the esteem in which he was held. As soon as the agreement with the city was completed, but the day before taking possession, Hood despatched him in haste to Oneglia, a small port on the Riviera of Genoa, and thence to Naples, to seek from the latter court and that of Turin[18] a reinforcement of ten thousand troops to hold the new acquisition. The "Agamemnon" being a fast sailer undoubtedly contributed much to this selection; but the character of the commanding officer could not but be considered on so important, and in some ways delicate, a mission. "I should have liked to have stayed one day longer with the fleet, when they entered the harbour," he wrote to Mrs. Nelson, "but service could not be neglected for any private gratification,"—a sentiment she had to hear pretty often, as betrothed and as wife, but which was no platitude on the lips of one who gave it constant demonstration in his acts. "Duty is the great business of a sea officer," he told his intended bride in early manhood, to comfort her and himself under a prolonged separation. "Thank God! I have done my duty," was the spoken thought that most solaced his death hour, as his heart yearned towards those at home whom he should see no more.
About this time he must have felt some touch of sympathy for the effeminate Spaniards, who were made ill by a sixty days' cruise. "All we get here," he writes, "is honour and salt beef. My poor fellows have not had a morsel of fresh meat or vegetables for near nineteen weeks; and in that time I have only had my foot twice on shore at Cadiz. We are absolutely getting sick from fatigue." "I am here [Naples] with news of our most glorious and great success, but, alas! the fatigue of getting it has been so great that the fleet generally, and I am sorry to say, my ship most so, are knocked up. Day after day, week after week, month after month, we have not been two gun shots from Toulon." The evident looseness of this statement, for the ship had only been a little over a month off Toulon, shows the impression the service had made upon his mind, for he was not prone to such exaggerations. "It is hardly possible," he says again, "to conceive the state of my ship; I have little less than one hundred sick." This condition of things is an eloquent testimony to the hardships endured; for Nelson was singularly successful, both before and after these days, in maintaining the health of a ship's company. His biographers say that during the term of three years that he commanded the "Boreas" in the West Indies, not a single officer or man died out of her whole complement,—an achievement almost incredible in that sickly climate;[19] and he himself records that in his two months' chase of Villeneuve, in 1805, no death from sickness occurred among the seven or eight thousand persons in the fleet. He attributed these remarkable results to his attention, not merely to the physical surroundings of the crews, but also to the constant mental stimulus and interest, which he aroused by providing the seamen with occupation, frequent amusements, and change of scene, thus keeping the various faculties in continual play, and avoiding the monotony which most saps health, through its deadening influence on the mind and spirits.
The "Agamemnon" reached Naples on the 12th of September, and remained there four days. Nelson pressed the matter of reinforcements with such diligence, and was so heartily sustained by the British minister, Sir William Hamilton, that he obtained the promise of six thousand troops to sail at once under the convoy of the "Agamemnon." "I have acted for Lord Hood," he wrote, "with a zeal which no one could exceed;" and a few weeks later he says: "The Lord is very much pleased with my conduct about the troops at Naples, which I undertook without any authority whatever from him; and they arrived at Toulon before his requisition reached Naples." It appears, therefore, that his orders were rather those of a despatch-bearer than of a negotiator; but that he, with the quick initiative he always displayed, took upon himself diplomatic action, to further the known wishes of his superior and the common cause of England and Naples. It was upon this occasion that Nelson first met Lady Hamilton, who exercised so marked an influence over his later life; but, though she was still in the prime of her singular loveliness, being yet under thirty, not a ripple stirred the surface of his soul, afterward so powerfully perturbed by this fascinating woman. "Lady Hamilton," he writes to his wife, "has been wonderfully kind and good to Josiah [his stepson]. She is a young woman of amiable manners, and who does honour to the station to which she is raised." His mind was then too full of what was to be done; not as after the Nile, when, unstrung by reaction from the exhausting emotions of the past months, it was for the moment empty of aspiration and cloyed with flattery only.
The prospect of sailing with the convoy of troops, as well as of a few days' repose for the wearied ship's company, was cut short by the news that a French ship of war, with some merchant vessels in convoy, had anchored on the Sardinian coast. Although there were at Naples several Neapolitan naval vessels, and one Spaniard, none of them moved; and as the Prime Minister sent the information to Nelson, he felt bound to go, though but four days in port. "Unfit as my ship was, I had nothing left for the honour of our country but to sail, which I did in two hours afterwards. It was necessary to show them what an English man-of-war would do." The expected enemy was not found, and, after stretching along the coast in a vain search, the "Agamemnon" put into Leghorn on the 25th of September, nine days after leaving Naples,—to "absolutely save my poor fellows," wrote her captain to his brother. But even so, he purposed staying at his new anchorage but three days, "for I cannot bear the thought of being absent from the scene of action" at Toulon. In the same letter he mentions that since the 23d of April—five months—the ship had been at anchor only twenty days.
The unwavering resolution and prompt decision of his character thus crop out at every step. In Leghorn he found a large French frigate, which had been on the point of sailing when his ship came in sight. "I am obliged to keep close watch to take care he does not give me the slip, which he is inclined to do. I shall pursue him, and leave the two Courts [Great Britain and Tuscany] to settle the propriety of the measure, which I think will not be strictly regular. Have been up all night watching him—ready to cut the moment he did." The enemy, however, made no movement, and Nelson was not prepared to violate flagrantly the neutrality of the port. On the 30th of September he sailed, and on the 5th of October rejoined Lord Hood off Toulon, where four thousand of the Neapolitan troops, for which he had negotiated, had already arrived.
The high favor in which the admiral had held him ten years before in the West Indies, though slightly overcast by the coolness which arose during the intervening peace, had been rapidly regained in the course of the present campaign; and the customary report of his proceedings during the six weeks' absence could not but confirm Hood in the assurance that he had now to deal with a very exceptional character, especially fitted for separate and responsible service. Accordingly, from this time forward, such is the distinguishing feature of Nelson's career as a subordinate. He is selected from among many competitors, frequently his seniors, for the performance of duty outside the reach of the commander-in-chief, but requiring the attention of one upon whose activity, intelligence, and readiness, the fullest dependence could be placed. Up to the battle of the Nile,—in which, it must always be remembered, he commanded a squadron detached from the main fleet, and was assigned to it in deliberate preference to two older flag-officers,—Nelson's life presents a series of detached commands, independent as regarded the local scene of operations, and his method of attaining the prescribed end with the force allotted to him, but dependent, technically, upon the distant commanders-in-chief, each of whom in succession, with one accord, recognized his singular fitness. The pithy but characteristic expression said to have been used by Earl St. Vincent, when asked for instructions about the Copenhagen expedition,—"D—n it, Nelson, send them to the devil your own way,"—sums up accurately enough the confidence shown him by his superiors. He could not indeed lift them all to the height of his own conceptions, fearlessness, and enterprise; but when they had made up their minds to any particular course, they were, each and all, perfectly willing to intrust the execution to him. Even at Copenhagen he was but second in command, though conspicuously first in achievement. It was not till the opening of the second war of the French Revolution, in May, 1803, that he himself had supreme charge of a station,—his old familiar Mediterranean.