The double failure in Egypt and on the coast of Ireland suspended all schemes of invasion for a time. France and England alike had their eyes fixed on Napoleon’s army in Egypt. The news of the disaster in Aboukir Bay produced a profound effect throughout Europe. A storm broke out in France against the Directory, who were accused of having “deported” the best general and the best army of the Republic. Public men who had been loud in promoting the expedition began to throw the blame for it on one another. Public excitement and anger were aggravated by the speedy discovery that a new coalition was forming, and that France would again be called upon to fight for her very existence, at least for all she had gained by the Revolution. To recover Napoleon and his army became a leading object with the French. To keep them in Egypt was no less the object of England. The best that could have happened would have been that Napoleon should have made a serious attempt to carry out his grand scheme of marching on the footsteps of Alexander the Great, through Persia and Afghanistan to India. He would have perished on his march, and Europe would have escaped years of misery. But to keep him away from the battlefields of Europe was a real gain. The most effectual of all ways of doing this would have been to retain a large force on the coast of Egypt, and send out troops. It was not the course taken. Nelson sent the Leander home with his despatches carried by Captain Berry. She fell in with the Généreux on the 18th August, and was captured. On the 14th August Sir James Saumarez sailed with the Orion, Bellerophon, Minotaur, Defence, Audacious, Theseus, and Majestic, to escort the French prizes the Franklin, Tonnant, Aquilon, Conquérant, and Peuple Souverain. Three of the prizes were destroyed, and it would have been better that all should have been burnt. But the just reward of the toils and dangers of officers and men, and more especially of commanders-in-chief, junior admirals, and captains, was not to be thrown away. So Saumarez made a slow, painful voyage westward with his convoy of battered hulks. He summoned Malta, was defied by the French general, and gave arms to the islanders who had risen against the French, driven to desperation by pillage and the violation of their women. Malta was blockaded by the Portuguese ships which had served with Jervis, and the Lion, 64. On the 19th Nelson sailed with the Vanguard, Culloden, and Alexander for Naples. He left the Zealous, Goliath, and Swiftsure, the Seahorse, Emerald, and Alcmene frigates, and the Bonne Citoyene sloop to watch the coast of Egypt. He himself, in an evil hour, sailed for Naples. It is not superfluous to point out that though Nelson was ardently desirous to weaken the French in Egypt he landed his prisoners, for whom he could with difficulty provide, and they afforded Napoleon a welcome reinforcement for his army. If the prizes had all been burnt after whatever stores were of use had been taken out of them, if Nelson had sought a basis of operations in some Turkish port in Crete or Cyprus, the prisoners could have been kept in one of those islands and Egypt better watched.
Our ships would at least have been better employed than many of them were destined to be on the coast of Naples. The operations in which he was engaged till he left the Mediterranean occupy a justly promoted place in the biography of Nelson. They need few words here, and those few only to show that they were a pure waste of force. The kingdom of Naples on the mainland was indefensible against a French army in central Italy by naval force. The Government was rotten and the troops were worthless. The obvious deduction from these facts was that we ought to have confined ourselves to blockading Malta, and ought to have warned the king of Naples that he was not to expect any help from us if he plunged into adventures. What happened was that Nelson, acting under influences which must be looked for in his biographies, egged on the king of Naples to make an attack on the French force occupying Rome, which brought on him an ignominious thrashing, and drove him to abject flight to Sicily in November and December of 1798. Henceforth a British squadron reinforced to eight sail of the line and four Portuguese were employed looking on idly at the occupation of Naples, till the advance of the Austrian and Russian armies in Northern Italy compelled the French to retreat. Then they rendered superfluous assistance to the Neapolitan Government to recover what could not be defended against it. While they were so employed their separation from other English forces in the Mediterranean helped to create a position of very serious danger. Meanwhile, an English squadron, under Rear-Admiral Duckworth, carrying troops under General Stuart, took possession of Minorca. The Turks took up arms against the French, and Russia intervened. The Ionian Isles, except Corfu, were regained from the French. The Government at Paris was driven to see that an effort must be made in the Mediterranean.
Lord Palmerston is credited with the shrewd saying that whenever a man is heard to say that “something must be done,” it is safe to calculate on his doing something foolish. To strike out with no definite aim is rarely the way to deliver an effective stroke, though it may at times, and with help from fortune, be a more hopeful course than lying still. Whether the French Government matured any coherent scheme during the last months of 1798 and the first of 1799 is highly doubtful. We can only be sure as to what was actually done by them and for them. It was in substance this, that their fleet at Brest was sent into the Mediterranean, if not to do some definite thing, at least to see what could be done. The Minister of Marine, Eustache Bruix, came down from Paris to take command himself. He was well supplied with money, and it was in his power to pay the sailors and dockyard hands. Great and ardent exertions were made. The ships were better appointed and far better manned than any French fleet had been during the war. The admiral was popular with the men, and he had cause to look with confidence on the force which he had equipped by the middle of April. It consisted of the following ships of the line. The Ocean, Invincible, Républicain, Terrible of 110 guns; the Formidable and Indomptable of 84; the Jemmapes, Montblanc, Tyrannicide, Batave, Constitution, Révolution, Fongueux, Censeur, Zélé, Redoutable, Wattignies, Tourville, Cisalpin, Jean Bart, Gaulois, Convention, Duquesne, J. J. Rousseau, Dix Août of 74, together with ten frigates, sloops, and ships armed en flûte as store ships.
Bridport had joined the small squadron which was watching Brest in April, and had with him sixteen sail of the line. He had looked into the Iroise, and knew that the French were preparing for sea, but according to his usual practice he cruised at some distance to the W.S.W. of Ushant. On the very day on which he took up his position—the 25th April—Bruix sailed through the Raz du Sein. He was sighted by the Nymphe frigate, Captain Fraser, who at once reported to Bridport. The English admiral, punctual as ever in his own fashion, looked into Brest once more on the 26th, and then went off to Cape Clear. He was convinced that the enemy were bound for Ireland, and they confirmed his belief by putting a small vessel carrying an officer entrusted with a misleading dispatch in his way, an old but well-preserved stratagem. Bridport sent warnings to Cadiz and to England, and Bruix was left at liberty to go south.
The situation in front of him was nearly all he could wish. There was indeed no French force he could join. The Généreux was at Corfu, and the Guillaume Tell at Malta. Nine vessels taken from the Venetians were scattered between Alexandria, Ancona, and Toulon, but they were of no value. On the other hand, the Spaniards had a squadron of uncertain number and certain inefficiency at Cadiz, which had to be watched by the English, and was therefore of indirect help to Bruix. Nothing need be said of the Russians and Turks, save that they were moving in the Mediterranean. Bruix’ real opponents were the English, and they were scattered. Fifteen sail of the line under Lord Keith were blockading Cadiz. One was at Tetuan. Four were with Duckworth at Minorca. Nelson had eight English sail of the line and four Portuguese, divided between the blockade of Malta, the harbour of Palermo, where he himself lay at the urgent prayer of King Ferdinand to calm the nerves of the old women of both sexes in the runaway Neapolitan Court, and the coast of Southern Italy, where the Royalists were gaining ground against the Republic set up by the French. As the French troops had been called off to meet the allies in Northern Italy, the Republic was collapsing from internal weakness. Minorca was of real value as a basis for a strong fleet blockading Toulon. As an isolated post hastily occupied by a handful of soldiers, it was a mere burden. The whole disposition of our forces was as unintelligent and as vicious as it well could have been. Our naval forces in the Levant engaged in watching the coasts of Egypt and Syria may be left aside as not being immediately affected, and as being too far off to render prompt help.
On the 3rd May, Keith was told by the Success frigate that she had sighted the French off Oporto coming south. With a big fleet coming against him from the Ocean, and nineteen, or so, Spaniards more or less ready for sea in Cadiz, his position looked hazardous. He had need for steady nerve, but the admiral though not a brilliant nor quick-witted man possessed that solid virtue in a useful degree. He waited, ready for fight or retreat, till he saw what was going to happen. On the 4th, in the morning, the French were sighted, thirty-three sail of them, in the W.N.W. The wind was blowing hard from the west, rising to a storm, and it drove curtains of confusing sea fog before it. As it blew right into Cadiz Bay, the Spaniards could not move. Keith kept between them and the French. His expert ships maintained their formation and lost no spars in the stormy weather, which threw the French into confusion and caused them much minor damage. The fleets lost sight of one another in the fog, and on the 5th Bruix ran through the Straits before the gale. Two or three of his liners had suffered damage by collision and loss of spars, but he might have sent all three into Carthagena and still have had twenty-two for a bold stroke. It was not till the 12th that Nelson at Palermo heard of the inroad of the Brest fleet into the Mediterranean. If Bruix had employed those seven days in steering for Southern Italy, he had ninety-nine chances out of a hundred to souse down on the vessels blockading Malta before they knew of his approach, to capture them, to cut off Nelson at Palermo, leaving him to rage single-handed with the Vanguard among the old women of both sexes of the Neapolitan Court, to fall on the ships on the coast of Naples, capturing, driving ashore, or driving off every one of them. Then he might have gone on to the Riviera and Toulon by the east of Sardinia and Corsica, after doing his cause a substantial service. He knew the divided state of the English forces. He had laid some such plan as this. But like his brother French admirals in this war, he was chilled by the first check. The damage suffered by his ships on the 4th and 5th froze his ardour, and he steered piteously for Toulon, where he anchored on the 14th May with his two crippled ships, the Batàve and the Fougueux. And now for two months these numerous fleets, French and English, were engaged in missing one another in a game of blind man’s buff.
St. Vincent saw the French pass the Straits on the 5th, and at once summoned the Edgar from Tetuan, and Keith from his cruising ground between Cadiz and Cape Spartel. On the 12th he followed Bruix—or rather, he steered for Minorca to join Duckworth, who was in danger of being cut off, and to cover the island, which in the absence of a covering naval force might have been retaken by the Spaniards. He joined Duckworth on the 20th, and had twenty sail of the line on hand. On that day Nelson had concentrated his ships at Maritimo. On that day, too, the Spaniards, who on finding the blockade of Cadiz raised by the withdrawal of Keith, had come to sea hoping to be able to retake Minorca, staggered into Carthagena half dismasted by the gale. On the 22nd, St. Vincent left Minorca for Toulon, but hearing that the Spaniards were coming round, put himself on their road to Toulon at Cape San Sebastian on the 26th. On that day Bruix left Toulon for the Riviera with twenty-two sail to co-operate with the French armies now fighting in retreat before the allies. On the 30th May, St. Vincent was joined by Rear-Admiral Whitshed with five sail of the line sent out from home to reinforce him. On the same day he sent Duckworth with four ships to join Nelson. He now moved up the coast towards Toulon, but on the 2nd June he found his health unequal to the strain of service at sea, and left the fleet for Minorca in his flagship the Ville de Paris, 100—for he would not go, so he said, in a frigate “like a convict,” and his regard for his dignity was strong enough to make him weaken his successor by the loss of a very powerful ship. Keith, to whom the command now fell, went towards Toulon, while Bruix after convoying a fleet of transports with provisions to the French garrison of Genoa, went to Vado, and anchored there on the 4th. His movement to the east was revealed to Keith by the crew of a prize, and he went in pursuit on the 5th. When off Cape Delle Melle, he received orders from St. Vincent to detach two more ships to Nelson, and to cruise off Rosas to intercept Bruix, who was, rightly enough, supposed to be bound for Carthagena. If the commander-in-chief had abstained from meddling, Keith would probably have met Bruix with twenty ships against the Frenchman’s twenty-two. On the 8th June, Bruix left Vado for Carthagena, which was what St. Vincent calculated he would do. If he were bound in that direction, what need was there to reinforce the distant squadron of Nelson at the expense of the immediately threatened fleet of Keith, which was reduced by the detachment to eighteen sail of the line? If to divide your forces in the presence of an enemy is a blunder, and what Napoleon when criticising Cornwallis called an “insigne bêtise” then St. Vincent committed that blunder, that insigne bêtise. If Keith had obeyed his orders precisely, he would in all probability have met Bruix with eighteen ships to twenty-two. But Keith was aware of his inferiority in numbers, and he came to Minorca to pick up the Ville de Paris. The Frenchman slipped through the gap he left, and reached Carthagena on the 22nd June. While he was going on his way, and the Batàve and Fougueux, repaired at Toulon, followed and joined him, Keith first picked up the Ville de Paris on the 15th June, and went back to watch Toulon. On the 19th he secured more reward for toils and dangers by capturing a small French squadron of three frigates and two brigs under Rear-Admiral Perrée, who had escaped from Syria and was on his way home. He cruised off Toulon from the 20th to the 23rd, while Bruix was anchoring at Carthagena, while Nelson was still watching for him, and while the Royalist forces were completing the ruin of the Republicans at Naples. On the 24th he went to Vado, just as Nelson, relieved from anxiety about Bruix, came into the Bay of Naples in time to secure his dear King and Queen of Naples a fine feast of hangings and torturings to console them for their spasms of terror during the last few months. The Republicans had been beaten without need of our help, but if Nelson had not been at hand to see that due vengeance was taken on Jacobins, they would have saved their lives by capitulation. On the 25th, Bruix sailed from Carthagena with the refitted Spanish ships. Next day Keith went to Vado, and from thence to the east end of Minorca. On the 27th June he wrote to Nelson asking him to send such ships as he could spare to assist in defending Minorca, and Nelson refused on the ground that the safety of His Sicilian Majesty’s dominions must be secured. Bruix, the only enemy who could have assailed either, was then on his way from Carthagena to Cadiz, which he reached on the 11th July. On the 8th, Keith had been joined near Minorca by Sir Charles Cotton, who brought twelve sail of the line from home. On the 10th he left in pursuit of the French, of whose presence at Carthagena he had been informed. On the 21st July, Bruix sailed from Cadiz, dragging with him a reluctant Spanish squadron which was forced to accompany him by its intimidated Government. When Keith sailed from Gibraltar on the 30th July the Frenchman had a long start, and it was lucky for him that he had. The French sailed ill, and the Spaniards still more badly, so that when Bruix and his Spanish colleague, Mazaredo, anchored in the roadstead of Brest they were just ahead of Keith, who sailed a greater distance and started nine days behind them.
Such was the famous cruise of Bruix—one of the passages of the great Revolutionary war which best deserves study. The French gained a material advantage, for they carried off a Spanish squadron, and so secured a hostage for the obedience of the Spanish Government and people, who were becoming restive under the disasters brought on them by the Alliance. But what is to be said of the English officers who allowed them to gain this advantage, such as it was? Bridport, who was negligent, and was befooled, is defended by nobody. Can anything be said for St. Vincent? for Nelson? even for Keith, the least responsible of the three? St. Vincent made it inevitable that he would be weak in the Straits of Gibraltar when he allowed so large a proportion of his fleet to be detached to Naples. Nelson intensified the bad consequences of the initial mistake when he egged the Neapolitan Government on to make its silly attack on the French, thereby bringing down a torrent of disasters. Two English liners and the Portuguese could have blockaded Malta in the then prostrate state of the French. If six of the eight ships of the line with Nelson had been in the Straits on the 5th May, they with the sixteen already there would have been in a position to give battle to Bruix at once, and thereby to give the best possible protection both to Minorca and to Naples. When the French did appear, St. Vincent divided his fleet by sending Duckworth to Naples, and then weakened Keith by forcing him to detach two other vessels. And that he did just when he was doing all that lay in his power to bring about a battle with forces which he knew to be superior. The conduct of Nelson can be explained, but is a commander to be held excused when we say that he was but a fallible man, liable to be besotted by erotic delusion and megalomania? We suffered no disaster. We only failed, and for that escape from the natural consequences of our acts we have to thank the Providence which had served us already by blowing Hoche and Morard de Galle away from the coast of Ireland.
The escape of Bruix was followed within a month and a few days by the escape of Napoleon from Egypt. As war, according to his own maxim, is an affair not of men but of a man, this was a disaster of the first magnitude for the enemies of France. Hood, who had been left to watch the coast of Egypt in August, was superseded on the 2nd of February 1799 by Troubridge with the Culloden and Theseus. A month later—on the 3rd March—Troubridge was in turn superseded by Sir Sidney Smith, who brought with him the Tigre, 74, and some small craft. By a piece of most eccentric management, Smith had been appointed Envoy Plenipotentiary to the Porte in combination with his brother, Spencer Smith, who already held the post. Being what our ancestors called a “bold undertaking fellow” and we call a “very pushing man,” Smith gave himself the airs of a commander-in-chief, to the extreme exasperation of Nelson, who snubbed him with emphasis. All these officers successively, or in combination, contrived almost, but not quite, to cut off Napoleon from communication with France. They bombarded the ships in Alexandria repeatedly with no great effect. From March to the 21st of June, Smith was busily engaged in helping the Pasha of Acre, Djezzar (the Butcher), to repel the attack of Napoleon, who had marched out of Egypt to follow on the footsteps of Alexander the Great. After his return to Egypt, Smith helped a Turkish army to land at Aboukir—an adventure comparable with the Neapolitan advance on Rome, and similar in its results. The Turks were cut to pieces on the 25th July. Napoleon, who was informed of the renewal of the war on land in Europe, was preparing to escape before the Turks landed at Aboukir. As the vital work of confining him to Egypt had been subordinated to the security of His Sicilian Majesty’s dominions, the blockading squadron was small. The two liners, the Tigre and Theseus, Sidney Smith had with him, were taken by him to Cyprus for stores on the 9th August. On the 23rd Napoleon sailed from Alexandria, the coast being clear, and got away. On the 1st October he touched at Ajaccio, and on the 9th he landed at Fréjus. His return marks an epoch in the history of the war, of Europe, and of mankind. It was followed by the overthrow of the Directory and his assumption of despotic power as First Consul. From that day all the power of France was directed by his great and maleficent genius. He might have escaped in any case, but he was helped to escape by the British Government and its admirals. They were loud in proclaiming the necessity of imprisoning him in Egypt, but they kept an insufficient force to blockade him, because they preferred to employ their ships to peddle in the Bay of Naples, or to patrol round the island of Minorca.