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.