After the return of Napoleon to Paris, there took place one of those delusive negotiations in which he not uncommonly sought a military advantage. He tried to turn the armistice with Austria into a naval armistice with England. But as usual with him, the terms he offered were excessively favourable to himself. He wished to retain the right to send six frigates armed en flûte to Malta and Egypt, and to obtain security that they would not be examined or stopped. His intention was to fill them with soldiers and stores to reinforce the garrison and the army of occupation. The English Government would have been guilty of incredible folly if it had accepted such a proposal. It refused, and Napoleon resumed hostilities in October. On sea there had been no suspension. We had taken Malta, and had defended Elba, and we were at last preparing to intervene with vigour in Egypt. It was a consideration of the first importance that the French should not be in actual possession of the country when serious negotiations for peace were begun.
Egypt would have been evacuated in January 1800 but for want of good management on our part. On the 24th of that month Kléber signed a convention with the Grand Vizier by which he undertook to evacuate the country if his army was allowed to return home. Sidney Smith, who commanded on the coast, did not sign the convention, but he agreed to allow the Frenchmen to pass. When, however, he referred to Keith, who had just returned from England, the admiral who had general orders not to allow the French to go except as prisoners, refused his consent. His refusal was notified to Kléber, who considered himself cheated, and took his revenge not on us, whom he could not reach, but on the unhappy Turks, who were perfectly innocent of any breach of faith. He fell upon them, and defeated them with enormous slaughter at Heliopolis. When the English Government heard the facts, it gave its consent to the free return of the French army. But it was now too late. Kléber had been murdered by a Mahometan fanatic. His successor, Menou, would not confirm the convention, and nothing remained to be done but to send an army and turn him out. It is customary to speak of the convention of El Arish as a foolish business. Yet the Turks had a fair right to recover their province when they could, and some ground to complain of us for spoiling their chance. The British army would have lost one of the most honourable passages in its history if the convention had been carried out. But politically we had everything to gain by the evacuation of the country. Kléber’s twenty thousand men were a chip in the porridge of the half-million soldiers of France. Marengo and Hohenlinden were won without them. Napoleon’s position would have been notably weaker after Marengo if Egypt had been already lost. This was an advantage which was ill replaced by the honour of the thing, and the feather in our cap. Moreover, we could not know that Kléber would be murdered, and that Menou would show military ineptitude.
The autumn of 1800 was rich in examples of the two ways of making war, the right and the wrong. Napoleon left the command in the field to his generals. On the 3rd December the defeat of the Archduke John by Moreau at Hohenlinden brought Austria to the ground. She made peace for herself, though bound by treaty and subsidies not to act apart from us. Brune and Murat completed the subjugation of Italy. Naples became a mere appendage of France by the treaty of Foligno, and the treaty of Lunéville, signed by France and Austria on the 9th February 1801, left England without an ally on the Continent. When he was rid of Austria and dominator of Italy, Napoleon was free to concentrate his attention on the war with England. As England had no sufficient army with which to attack him at home, she was everywhere on the defensive—on the superior defensive, no doubt, but on the defensive—except where it was possible to assail an isolated body of French troops—to wit in Egypt. Our utter inability to attack the bulk of Napoleon’s power was well shown in June 1800. St. Vincent, who had hoisted his flag as commander-in-chief of the Channel fleet on the 26th April, detached Sir Edward Pellew with seven sail of the line on the 1st June to escort 5000 troops under General Maitland. They were to seize Quiberon, and to revive the Royalists of Brittany and La Vendée to activity. St. Vincent acted, of course, by orders of the Government, which was much inclined to such expeditions, and had hopes of success in an attack on Brest, which came to nothing. The expedition of Pellew and Maitland came to as good as nothing. A small fort was taken, a number of small vessels were captured or destroyed, a brilliant piece of cutting-out work was done by Jeremiah Coghlan, a favourite and follower of Pellew. But as the west of France was occupied by a strong army under Bernadotte, General Maitland could make no impression, and could only re-embark in haste. Pellew was eager to attack Belleisle, but as the island was held by 7000 men and was powerfully fortified, a landing would have been a costly folly. General Maitland very rightly refused to lead his men to destruction. They were landed on the island of Houat, where they remained till they were picked up at the end of July by Sir J. B. Warren, who brought other troops with him under General Pulteney. The whole force went south at the beginning of August to join Keith and Abercromby, and to make up an army which was to be employed in Egypt, the only field in which such a military force as we could then muster could be used with effect. It was hoped that a stroke might be delivered at the Spaniards on the way. The squadron of Admiral Malgarejo, which had returned from the coast of France in the previous September, was at Ferrol, the great Spanish arsenal in Galicia. Ferrol, which lies on the north side of a land-locked harbour, is approached by a fortified channel a mile and a half long. The navy did not force the passage. It landed Pulteney’s soldiers and a naval brigade under Pellew on Doniños beach to the north of the passage between Gabeiras and Serantes or Golfin Points. Doniños is directly to the west of Ferrol, and is separated from it by some miles of hilly country. The soldiers drove back a small force of Spanish militia and advanced to heights from which they had a clear view of Ferrol. Pulteney had a walled town before him, and he knew that it was occupied by a garrison. He appears to have exaggerated the numbers of the Spaniards. But there was a garrison, and there were walls. As the navy had not forced the passage, it could give him no help in attacking the town. He had no battering-train, but only a few light field pieces which the sailors had landed and dragged up for him. He came to the conclusion that time and men must be spent to take Ferrol—and he had neither to spare. He therefore re-embarked, and it is hard to say that he was wrong. His failure has been much derided, and it has been usual to say that the navy did its part. But the navy did not do its part, which would have been to force an entrance to the harbour of Ferrol, and bring the water front of the town under its guns. It asked the army to storm unbreached fortifications.
After this futility, and another at Vigo, the combined expedition went on to Gibraltar, and there joined Keith and Abercromby. Before it went on its proper work, it made another such demonstration as that at Ferrol. On the 4th of October the whole force was brought round to Cadiz. The customary version of the story is that the Spanish governor, Morla, appealed to the English commanders to spare the town, which was suffering from a great epidemic of yellow fever, and that the gallant Englishmen, ever generous to a suppliant foe, sailed away. This is poetry. The prose of the story is well told by Keith’s captain of the fleet, Philip Beaver. “Independent of the objection which a dreadful malady, called by some the plague and by others the yellow fever, opposed to our disembarking, the late season of the year, the danger of the coast, and the difficulty of communication between the soldiers and sailors were deemed sufficient by the two commanders-in-chief to relinquish the attempt.” Abercromby had orders not to land unless he was sure of being able to embark immediately in case of need. The naval officers would not promise to be able to re-embark his men at all times. Moreover, confusion had arisen when an attempt was made to get the soldiers into the boats, and they were suffering severely from scurvy after months of detention in wet and overcrowded transports, on a diet of salt meat, and sleeping on dripping decks in their clothes and blankets. But now at least the time of fumbling and pottering was over. On the 5th November, Keith and Abercromby sailed for Malta, leaving Warren with six sail of the line to watch the Straits. They collected their command at Malta, and on the 20th December they sailed to the Levant with resources sanely adapted to an attainable end.
Napoleon was well aware of the value of Egypt as an asset when the time came for making peace. He strove hard to relieve the army of occupation. He drew up elaborate schemes for reinforcing it by squadrons of French and Spanish which were to combine by complicated movements. What was more to the purpose was that he sent out frigate after frigate crowded with men and stores from Toulon and the western ports. When he heard of the concentration of Abercromby’s force at Malta, he redoubled his efforts. Some of the vessels he sent reached their destination. The Egyptienne and Justice frigates anchored at Alexandria on the 3rd February 1801—four days after Abercromby, who sailed from Malta on the 20th December 1800, had anchored in Marmorice Bay, in Caramania, on the 31st January. The fleet of seven sail of the line, frigates, and from 60 to 70 transports turned with relief from a stormy sea to the land-locked harbour. Keith owed his knowledge of its existence to Sidney Smith, so ill was the Levant known at the time. As the leading vessel turned into the entrance between towering headlands she seemed to the ships behind to be steered against a precipice. Here the fleet lay recruiting the health of the soldiers, practising them in landing, collecting stores, listening to the fluent and unfulfilled promises of the Turk, till the 22nd February, when it sailed for Egypt. It sighted the coast on the 1st March. On that day the last relief from France reached Egypt. The Régénérée frigate and Lodi brig ran into Alexandria parallel with Keith’s convoy. The Régénérée had sailed on the 13th February with the Africaine from Rochefort. The history of the Africaine shows at what a cost this work of reinforcing an isolated force oversea in face of a superior enemy had to be done. She separated from the Régénérée, and on the 18th February, being then near Ceuta, was sighted, chased, and overtaken by the Phœbe, Captain Barlow. The Africaine had in her 400 soldiers and officials in addition to her crew of 350. Her captain, Saulnier, who had commanded the Guillaume Tell under Decrès, made a gallant attempt to resist capture, and fell in the action. She could make no effectual resistance, and when Saulnier’s successor, Magendie, struck his flag, there were 343 dead and wounded out of 715 men packed into her. The loss of the Phœbe was—1 man killed, 2 officers and 10 men wounded.
The history of the expedition to Egypt belongs to the army from the 8th March when it was landed by three detachments and in beautiful order. The bad generalship of Menou aiding, our soldiers showed that they could look the best soldiers of France (who yet fought valiantly) in the face, and in the back too. In June Sir Home Popham, coming from India, landed an Indian contingent at Kosseir on the Red Sea, which crossed the desert to Cairo in June. The ships in the Mediterranean rendered help and stood on guard. Their last service was to drive off the belated squadron of Honoré Ganteaume which arrived on the coast on the 7th June.
The doings of that squadron touch our own naval history closely. Ganteaume was ordered to sail from Brest with three 80-gun ships and four 74’s. Five thousand soldiers and officials were crowded into his vessels. It was given out that they were bound for San Domingo. This was done to spread a false impression, and not without effect. Ganteaume went through the Raz du Sein on the 8th January, but, finding his way barred by an English squadron, came back. St. Vincent had now established his close blockade in the face of some sulky opposition from officers accustomed to the easier ways of Bridport. He applied his rule “always close up to Brest in the easterly winds.” It is therefore a useful corrective to much we are told of the merits of that blockade, to note that while a heavy gale was blowing from the N.E. on the 23rd January, Ganteaume made a dash through the Iroise and got away clear to the south. When St. Vincent heard of the escape of the French squadron he was deceived as to its destination. Our numerous and capable spies had no doubt reported the rumour that San Domingo was the aim, and St. Vincent sent seven ships of the line to the West Indies. Ganteaume bore on for the Mediterranean, much tried by the gale, and for a time separated in his flagship, the Indivisible, from the rest of his squadron. But he reunited them on the 1st February, and on the 9th he ran through the Straits. On the 13th he captured the Success, and learnt from her that Keith must by this time be close to Egypt. He considered his mission hopeless, and steered for Toulon, very full of complaints as to the damage done to his ships and other obstructions. Warren, who could not stop him in the Straits, hurried to Minorca to protect that perpetual clog and nuisance to the fleet. At Minorca he heard that our late ally of Naples was being bullied into joining the French against us, and sailed to Sicily to protect our interests. He reduced his squadron, leaving one of his six liners to protect Minorca. Such is the value of a basis of operations which the forces based upon it dare not leave to its own resources. Ganteaume reached Toulon on the 18th February, two days before Warren reached Minorca, and on the 19th March sailed again. On the 25th he sighted Warren coming back from Sicily by the east side of Sardinia, and turned back to Toulon. He had seven sail to five, and a fine chance to win honour. But he had his mission to fulfil, and though he believed it to be incapable of fulfilment, he was prepared to make it an excuse for avoiding action. Warren, having lost sight of him, went hunting for him to south and east. On the 5th April Ganteaume was back in Toulon. On the 25th he was hounded out by Napoleon. He went down the coast of Italy, gave some help to the French forces then endeavouring to drive out the Anglo-Tuscan garrison which held Elba, left the three slowest ships of his squadron at Leghorn, pushed, driven by the anger of the First Consul to unwonted daring, through the Straits of Messina, and actually sighted the coast of Egypt 210 miles west of Alexandria on the 7th June. He detached the Heliopolis brig to Alexandria, where the French troops were still holding out, and waited for news. As none came as soon as he expected, he concluded that the Heliopolis was taken, and so went next to Bengasi in Tripoli intending to land troops there on a hopeful mission to march by the desert to Egypt. As a matter of fact the Heliopolis found the coast clear and got safely into Alexandria. Keith, who had warning by the Pique frigate that Ganteaume was not far off, had gone in pursuit of him. The Frenchman was actually sighted, but cut his cables, and went off to Toulon. It is a tell-tale comment on his incessant complaints of the state of his squadron that he not only out-sailed Keith, but on the 24th sighted the Swiftsure, Captain Keats, on his way from Egypt to Gibraltar near Cape Dernah, overtook her, captured her, and carried her with him to Toulon, where he dropped anchor on the 22nd July. The French ships were indifferently fitted, the crews unpaid for a year, ill-rationed, and in rags. Yet here we see one of their squadrons, timidly commanded, elude the vaunted St. Vincent blockade, pass an English squadron unhindered in the Straits of Gibraltar, range the whole length of the Mediterranean, and end without disaster after capturing a line-of-battle ship and a frigate, to say nothing of small craft destroyed. How would it have been if the equipment had been better, and the chief had been Suffren or Duguay Trouin?
The frigates and the cruise of Ganteaume’s squadron, were not the only nor the most formidable efforts Napoleon made to preserve his hold on Egypt. The formation of the Northern Coalition was in fact a part of his policy, which aimed at securing her conquests for France. In theory the coalition was an alliance signed on the 15th December 1800, by Russia, Prussia, Denmark, and Sweden, to restrict England’s exercise of her belligerent rights at sea. The immediate pretext was the capture of the Danish frigate Freya, whose captain refused to allow merchant ships under his protection to be searched, on the 25th July 1800. There was much hypocrisy in the outcry over the alleged wrongs of neutrals. No doubt they were annoyed, and to some extent injured, by England’s assertion of her claim to capture her enemy’s goods in their ships. But Sweden, in a recent war with Russia, had gone as far as England in the exercise of belligerent rights. Russia had urged England to go to all lengths against the shipping of revolutionary France, and Denmark had profited largely by her position as a neutral. The real author of the coalition was Napoleon, who worked on the admiration felt for him by the erratic (perhaps the mad) Czar, Paul. Paul put pressure on the northern powers, who dared not offend him. He was annoyed by the occupation of Malta by England, for he had taken the island under his own protection. As the coalition depended on him it was weak, for Paul had made himself an object of hate and fear to all about him. His war with England inflicted heavy loss on the wealthier classes in Russia. A plot, of which the English Government was certainly not entirely ignorant, was being laid against him. The English Government could not, however, afford to wait till the Russians had rid themselves of their mischievous ruler by the use of the so-called “Asiatic Remedy,” which was in vulgar English, murder.
Therefore on the 12th March, Sir Hyde Parker, who had with him Nelson as second in command, sailed from Yarmouth with fifteen sail of the line, afterwards raised to eighteen. His mission was to coerce Denmark and Sweden into leaving the coalition, if they could not be persuaded to retire by Mr. Vansittart, afterwards Lord Bexley, who was sent to Copenhagen on a diplomatic mission. The naval forces of the allies may have amounted to forty-one sail of the line, but the Russians, who had the most numerous fleet, were still shut up in the ice in Revel.
The English fleet was off the Naze of Norway by the 18th March. On the 23rd Mr. Vansittart, who had gone to Copenhagen, returned with the news that the Danes would not surrender. On the 30th the fleet passed the Sound, giving the Danish coast a wide berth, and not encountering any opposition from the forts on the Swedish side. It anchored at Hveen, an island in the Sound, about fifteen miles above Copenhagen. Parker, Nelson, Rear-Admiral Graves, Domett the captain of the Fleet, and Stewart, who commanded a contingent of soldiers carried by the warships, reconnoitred the enemy’s position on the same day in the lugger Lark. They soon saw that the Danes had not been negligent in preparing to resist attack. The position to be assailed was a strong one by nature. Copenhagen stands at the east end of the island of Zeeland, on both sides of a narrow inlet running from N.E. to S.W. The entrance to this inlet was (and is) covered by the Trekroner forts, then mounting 68 guns. From the south side of the inlet the coast runs to the south. The Danes had drawn up their floating defences, line-of-battle ships without masts, frames and other vessels to the number of thirty-seven, carrying 628 guns, along this bit of coast. They were supported by batteries on shore, but as the sea is shallow near the land the support was not very close. In front of the line was the water of the King’s Deep (Konge-dyb) and beyond that the shoal called the Middle Ground. On the eastern side of the Middle Ground is the Hollander’s Deep (Hollaender-dyb). In the King’s Deep the water is shallower on the eastern than on the western side. The admirals were ignorant of this fact, for their pilots served them ill. These so-called pilots were in fact mostly mates of merchant ships who had traded to the Baltic. They knew just as much as was needed for their trade, and proved both timid and untrustworthy. To fall on from Hveen at the north end of the Danish line would have been to take the bull by the horns, for the fleet must have begun by meeting the fire of the Trekroner and of the heavy ships the Danes had placed close by the forts. If the southern end was to be attacked then the fleet must first go down the Hollander’s Deep, turn the end of the Middle Ground, and work up the King’s Deep, where the navigable passage is barely three-quarters of a mile wide. The waters were so little known that our officers had no security that the thing could be done, and in any case it was absolutely necessary to have the aid of a south-easterly wind. The obstacles were so serious that when a council of war held in Parker’s flagship, the London, on the night of the 30th, some voices were for abstaining from attack. But Nelson was strong for energetic action. He offered to give battle to the Danes, attacking by the south end himself with ten ships. Sir Hyde Parker was persuaded by his energy, gave his consent, and added two ships to the ten sail asked for by Nelson. He did well to give them, but the naval position of England would not be what it is if many of her admirals had been so poor of spirit as to be ready to leave the peril and glory of battle to subordinates.