On one occasion in the Mediterranean he said to one of his captains who had got into a dispute about the property which the defeated French garrison at Gaieta were to be allowed to take away with them:
“I am sorry that you had any altercation with them. There is no way to deal with a Frenchman but to knock him down. To be civil to him is only to be laughed at when they are enemies.”
The same spirit breathes through nearly all his letters. Thus, for instance, he concluded a letter to the British Minister at Vienna with these words: “Down, down with the French ought to be written in the council-room of every country in the world, and may Almighty God give right thoughts to every sovereign is my constant prayer.”
He seems to have had respect for every other enemy that he met; but for the French he had nothing save contemptuous and unsparing hostility. “Close with a Frenchman, but out-manœuvre a Russian” was another of his favourite sayings. This, it is to be hoped, is all past and gone; but it is instructive as giving us the key, not only to Nelson’s policy, but also to that spirit which made the British man-of-warsmen of the day absolutely prefer to fight the French at long odds than on even terms.
It was this spirit which was embodied in another of Nelson’s pet phrases: “Any Englishman is worth three Frenchmen.” Of course that would be all nonsense now; but in justice to our neighbours it ought to be remembered that the Frenchmen whom Nelson and his sailors met and conquered were the worst and not the best of their nation.
The old navy of France, the navy which had commanded the Eastern Seas in the days of Clive and which had with impunity insulted the English shores and brought an invading force into Ireland in the time of William the Third no longer existed. It had been essentially an aristocratic service like our own, its officers were gentlemen and thorough sailors, and its seamen were brave, disciplined, and obedient.
But in her blood-drunkenness France had either murdered or banished nearly every man who was fit to command a ship or who knew how to point a gun. The fleets of revolutionary France were for the most part commanded by ignoramuses or poltroons, or both, and manned by a rabble who had neither stamina, training, or discipline.
Without the slightest wish to detract from the splendour of the victories of Nelson or his comrades, I still think it is only fair to point out again, as has once or twice been done before, that when we read of French Admirals declining battle even when they had superior force, or of running away before the battle was over, or of a small British squadron crumpling up a whole fleet with very trifling loss to itself, we ought to remember that the French Admirals had little or no confidence in their officers, while the officers had still less either in their admirals or their men.
On the other hand, such a man as Nelson, Collingwood, or Hardy had simply to say that he was going to do a certain thing to convince every one serving under him that it was about as good as already done.
This brings me naturally to one of Nelson’s most striking characteristics. No man who rose to distinction in the Navy was ever guilty of so many barefaced acts of insubordination as he was. Happily for him and for us his disobedience or neglect of orders was always justified by victory. The genius for supreme command, which was far and away the strongest point in his character, manifested itself very early in his career. The event proved that he was the superior of every naval officer then afloat, whether admiral or midshipman, and he seemed instinctively to know it.