The Admiral: A Romance of Nelson in the Year of the Nile

by Douglas Brooke Wheelton Sladen

Now, the Admiral was strongly of the opinion that with Buonaparte locked up in Egypt the time had come for the resisters of French aggression to act, and therefore he listened to a plot the Queen had for forcing the hand of the Emperor, which was forwarded and frustrated by the indecision of the Emperor and his minister—Thugut. The Admiral’s part of the work was to volunteer, as coming from himself, the advice carefully concocted by the Queen, to the effect that her forces must drive out the French forces in the Papal States. Fortified with her advice to herself, she overcame the timidity of her Prime Minister, General Acton; though her War Minister, the Marquis de Gallo, proved either too timid, too full of moral courage, too treacherous, or too honest. Thus further fortified, she wrote to her nephew the Emperor, telling him just so much of her plans as might induce him to move, and asking for a general to command her forces. The Empire had enjoyed a great name as a school for strategy, but the sending her a general was intended to commit him. He sent her the evil star of his reign, General Mack, who brought with him certain highly sensible advice which he had not the courage to deliver, either because he quailed before the eagerness of the Queen, or because he sought the opportunity for distinguishing himself. The advice he brought in reality was that, until the Allies were ready to strike together, the Two Sicilies should only wage war upon the French in Malta and Gozo, of which the King was suzerain, but which had been seized by the French. Here there was clearly no aggression: he was only attempting to repossess his own. It suited Mack better, however, to march on Rome with a flourish of trumpets, and to play at preserving the peace only where it concerned the withholding of facilities from our fleet.

Well, to cut a long story short, Mack and the King marched on Rome with thirty thousand of what he flattered Neapolitan susceptibilities by declaring the finest troops in the world, and forty thousand recruits; while we, for our part, transported another five thousand of these “veterans” to Leghorn to cut off the French base.

Everything, as the Admiral said, was as bad as possible from the first. Half the troops had to be carried in the Marquis de Niza’s Portuguese squadron. The Portuguese ships, which were incapable of fighting, were all commanded by flag-officers who could only accept orders from the Admiral himself. And the legion was commanded by the pretentious General Naselli, who persisted in regarding the Admiral as merely an agent for transporting his troops; and sent his Summons as he pleased, without even consulting the British officers; and neglected to act until Captain Troubridge saw that a catastrophe threatened, and gave him to understand that the mole would be destroyed by a fire, and probably the town—of course by nobody’s fault.

General Naselli was apparently only arrogant and incapable. The King and Mack were not so fortunate as we; for half their officers were traitors, one general going over to the enemy in action and being shot by one of his own men in so doing. The French were not in force in Rome, though five hundred of them contrived to throw themselves into the strong castle of St. Angelo, which the Neapolitan army was quite incapable of taking. So there was more blowing of trumpets while the King made his triumphal entry, and Mack, flushed with his bloodless victory, went off after the main body of the French, thirteen thousand strong, who were in the fortress of Castellana. Whatever morale his army had he ruined by his ignorance of the first principles of war. He made them march double the distance over heavy roads in wet weather which, good marchers as they were, they should have been asked to do in fine weather; and, thus demoralised, he brought them face to face with an army who were veteran soldiers, while they were mere citizens in uniform. They hardly made any show of fighting. The Admiral has placed it on record in one of his letters that the Neapolitan soldier never contemplates fighting, and begins to think of severing his connection with the army whenever the guns are loaded. Still Mack’s force did all the fighting there was in the campaign. Out of twenty thousand, a thousand were killed, and nine hundred wounded, not to mention ten thousand prisoners. The Admiral wrote to Captain Troubridge: “It is reported that the Neapolitan officers and many of their men are run away even at sight of the enemy.” Another body of nineteen thousand were put to flight by a French corps of three thousand after they had lost but forty men; and the French, proclaiming them beneath pursuit, contented themselves with taking possession of their camp and cannon and treasure chest. The fugitives poured back to Naples, and the Royal Family prepared for the worst.

Now, with its army and artillery intact, Naples might have defied the French, for it had vast numbers of fierce lazzaroni—the rough people of the street—passionately attached to their King, capable in their steep narrow alleys, and in the extremely rugged districts round Naples, of maintaining a most formidable guerilla warfare. It should have been the Queen’s policy to tempt the French to invade, and to have kept her regular army in reserve while the enemy were harassed by irregulars. But without a regular army to keep the French at bay while the guerillas were doing their work, even a fearless commander like the Admiral saw that nothing could prevent the capital falling, in spite of the English ships in the harbour.

The King behaved better than usual. That he had a certain manliness in him was proved by his fondness for hunting; and he now declared that, if his kingdom and his capital were to fall, he would fall fighting at the head of his faithful lazzaroni. And I think he meant it: life in exile without means for debauchery had no attraction for him, though his great-souled wife would have gone through anything for ultimate triumph.

But some one—possibly Sir William, who was of a philosophical turn of mind—put it before him that there was no necessity for his kingdom to fall. There were two Sicilies; and though one of them must instantly be conquered by the French, the other, now that their fleet had been destroyed by the English, was as safe from the French as England itself.

Ferdinand still demurred; he did not pay a great deal of attention to business, but he knew how small an income he derived from the island. The same voice reminded him that he had a vast amount of treasure readily transportable, and that there was plenty of hunting in Sicily if there was nothing else.

Ferdinand would go, if his money went. He was as willing to have his last of eating, drinking, and merriment, before he died, at Palermo as at Naples. Only he suggested that the lazzaroni must be kept in the dark, or they might turn and rend, and the guillotine remove royal heads in Naples as it had in Paris. Having taken this unusual amount of interest in his kingdom, the King fell back into his wonted habits, and the business passed into more capable hands.

Of what followed, Will and I, even more than our other officers, had pretty close personal cognisance. It was of course of the first importance that suspicions should not be aroused; and when, about December 13th, it became known that the armies of the Queen were irretrievably beaten, and that General Championnet must be at the gates in a week or ten days, any increased intercourse between the Queen and the Ambassador and the Admiral must have excited the gravest suspicion.