The Pageant of British History

by Edward Parrott

Horatio Nelson was born in the year before Wolfe captured Quebec. He was the son of a plain country parson with a quiver full of children and a modest income. The future hero first saw the light in the pleasant rectory of Burnham Thorpe, Norfolk. At nine years of age his mother died, and the weak, sickly lad grew up under the care of his grandmother. There was nothing remarkable about the boy’s school days, though many stories are told of his mischievous exploits, his fearlessness, and his high sense of honour. The best-known story relates that as a little boy he strayed from the house on a birds’-nesting excursion, and was absent so long that his grandmother grew alarmed and sent out servants to look for him. At length young Horatio was discovered sitting placidly by the side of a stream which he could not cross. When brought back his grandmother said, “I wonder that you were not driven home by hunger and fear.” “Fear! grandma,” said the boy. “Fear! what is that? I never saw it!” Truly the boy was father to the man. To the end of his life he never saw fear or knew what it meant.

You already know that at twelve years of age Nelson began his naval career as a midshipman on board his uncle’s ship, the Raisonnable. At twenty-one he was a captain in the Royal Navy—“the merest boy of a captain,” as Prince William, afterwards William the Fourth, described him. Nevertheless, there was no better seaman or more gallant officer in the service.

Now let us pass on to the year 1789, when Nelson was thirty-one years of age, and was regarded by those who knew him best as one of the finest commanders in the service. In this year that huge upheaval known as the French Revolution took place. For centuries the kings and nobles of France had grossly mismanaged the country and had bitterly oppressed the people. The State was well-nigh bankrupt, and the land was full of starving and despairing men. In July of this fateful year Paris rose, the Bastille, or State prison, was stormed, the prisoners were released, and the garrison slain. All over the country the peasants revolted, murdered the nobles, and burned their castles. The king was powerless to interfere, and the National Assembly, which had now seized the reins of power, passed laws sweeping away the privileges of the nobles and the rights of the Church. Before long the king and his family tried to escape from the country, but they were brought back and treated as prisoners. Meanwhile large numbers of the nobles had sought refuge abroad, and were urging foreign governments to declare war on France. When the German sovereigns threatened invasion, the French declared war against Austria and Prussia.

Now we must introduce the most dominant figure of the modern world—Napoleon Bonaparte. He was born in Corsica in the year which saw the American colonists beginning to rise against the British Government. In the first year of American independence he was a “gentleman cadet” in the military school at Paris. Here he was chiefly noteworthy as a silent, haughty lad, full of self-love and of great ambition. He was studious and very fond of mathematics and geography, but his abilities were not striking. None of his teachers prophesied for him the astonishing genius which he afterwards displayed. When Nelson was twenty-seven years of age, Napoleon became a lieutenant of artillery. He was a zealous republican, and was placed in command of the artillery which was to besiege the naval port of Toulon, then in possession of the British, who had been called in by the royalist inhabitants of the town. Napoleon conducted the siege with such skill that the British were forced to evacuate the place, not, however, without burning the French fleet which lay in the harbour and destroying the arsenal.

At this juncture Nelson was detailed to besiege certain coast towns of the island of Corsica. He captured Bastia and Calvi, but at the latter place he lost the sight of an eye. A period of dangerous and exhausting service followed. Napoleon was now in command of the army of Italy, and was at the beginning of his extraordinary career. He was marching along the narrow coast-road of the Riviera, and Nelson’s task was to harass his shoreward march. Scarcely a day passed without a skirmish of some kind with a battery, a gunboat, or an armed cruiser. Nelson’s force, however, was inadequate, and Napoleon accomplished his purpose. His victories in Italy were extraordinary, and speedily he was acclaimed on all hands as the greatest general of the republic. As he rose in fame and influence new vistas opened before him, and he soon perceived that the highest office in the State was his to grasp. Next he advanced into Austria itself, and carried all before him. When he was within eighty miles of Vienna the emperor begged for peace, and obtained it at the price of Belgium and Lombardy. Prussia now deserted the allies, and Holland and Spain had already purchased peace by promising the republic the use of their navies. Great Britain was in a state of “splendid isolation,” and all eyes turned to the fleet as the only hope of succour. The banks stopped cash payments, alarm was at its height, and Consols fell to fifty-one. Great Britain had her back to the wall.

Before long, however, the British fleet had its first great success. On February 14, 1797—that glorious St. Valentine’s Day—Admiral Jervis won a splendid victory over the Spanish fleet off Cape St. Vincent. In that confused scene of roaring cannon, rolling clouds of smoke, crash of falling spars, shrieks of the wounded, and stormy huzzas of the half-naked sailors wrestling at the guns, Nelson stands out as the conspicuous figure of the day. At one time he was engaging nine Spanish ships. A little later he was abreast of the San Josef, pouring in such a murderous fire that speedily she was unmanageable. The San Nicolas drifted on to the San Josef, and Nelson manœuvred to foul the San Nicolas. He hooked his sprit-sail yard into her rigging, and then boarded. The ship yielded, but at this moment a fierce fire of musketry was opened from the San Josef—only a jump away. Instantly Nelson and his men sprang aboard the San Josef, and as they did so a Spanish officer called out that the ship had surrendered. Thus on the deck of a Spanish man-of-war, which he had boarded across the deck of another then in his possession, Nelson received the swords of the vanquished Spaniards. Already he was the darling of his sailors and a source of pride to the nation.

In a daring but unsuccessful attack on Cadiz he lost an arm, and sank into a state of deep depression, thinking that he had become a burden on his friends and useless to his country. For a time our little one-armed, one-eyed hero retired to a quiet country home; but on April 1, 1798, he was afloat in command of a fleet scouring the Mediterranean with orders to seek the French fleet, and use his best endeavours to take, sink, burn, and destroy it. After a long and anxious quest he at last discovered it anchored in Aboukir Bay. “We are moored in such a manner,” wrote the French admiral, “as to bid defiance to a force more than double our own.” How vain the boast was will shortly appear. The French ships were anchored in single file along the shore, with three miles of shoal water between them and the land, and the admiral believed that no man-of-war could possibly get to the shoreward of him. He had actually piled up his mess gear on the shoreward side of his ships, thus rendering the guns on that side unworkable. As the British fleet drew near, under a press of sail, during the afternoon of August 1, Nelson observed that the enemy’s ships were moored five hundred yards apart, so as to permit them to swing at anchor. Instantly he perceived that where the enemy’s ship could swing there was room enough for one of his squadron to anchor. The French were trapped, and Nelson cried, “Before this time to-morrow I shall have gained a peerage or Westminster Abbey!”

Five ships with men in the chains, heaving the leads, now bore down, rounded the bows of the leading vessel, and got inshore of the French fleet. The rest of Nelson’s ships took up their stations on the seaward side, and at half-past six, just as the sun was setting, the action began. In twelve minutes the leading ship of the enemy was dismasted, and almost at the same instant the third ship of the line suffered the same fate. Black night came on at seven, and only the flash of guns, crimsoning the heavens, lit up the darkness. At half-past eight the fourth and fifth ships of the enemy’s line surrendered. At ten minutes past nine the flagship, the Orient, caught fire. She lay between two British ships, and was almost cut in halves by shot. Her gallant admiral lay dying on the deck, and every moment the flames raged higher.

The burning of the Orient was the most terribly grand spectacle ever seen in naval warfare. Her magazine was full of powder, and an explosion was inevitable. Such, however, was the heroism of her crew that while the lower decks were in flames, her men continued to work the guns on the upper deck. Huge forked flames and living sheets of fire leapt up as though from the heart of a volcano. She had ceased to fire now, and the remnants of her crew crawled out on the spars like flies. The flames lit up the scene so vividly that even the Arabs could be seen on the shore. At a quarter past eleven she blew up with a thunderous roar, and the battle of the Nile was over. All that remained was to render the victory complete. By three in the morning two ships alone of that proud French fleet had escaped. Next morning Nelson, with a deep wound on his forehead, called the fleet to return public thanksgiving to Almighty God for the most decisive victory that has ever blessed British arms at sea. The number of the enemy taken, drowned, burnt, and missing was 5,225. On the English side 218 were killed and 677 wounded.

Napoleon was at this time in Egypt, which he proceeded to conquer as the first step towards striking at India. The disaster at Aboukir Bay cooped him up in the East. He crossed the desert into Syria, and drove the Turks out of the southern part of the land. Before the walls of Acre, however, his victorious march was checked. The Turks within, and a British fleet under Sir Sidney Smith outside, completely baffled him. In later years Napoleon said, “That man made me miss my destiny.” But for Sir Sidney Smith, Napoleon would have been Emperor of the East. As it was, he was forced to raise the siege of Acre and retire into Egypt, where news reached him that the French armies had suffered some reverses. He left his army in Egypt to get home as best it might, and returned to France, where his friends arranged a revolution. On December 24, 1797, a new French constitution was proclaimed, and shortly afterwards Napoleon became First Consul. He took up his abode in the Tuileries, and was now on the direct highroad to the lofty position which he meant to attain.