When he was commanding the old Agamemnon in the Mediterranean, at the time when it was in dispute whether Corsica should fall under the rule of France or Britain, he fought two French ships, the Ça Ira and the Sans Culottes, for a whole day and beat them. The next day a sort of general action was fought, Admiral Hotham being in command of the British fleet. Nelson naturally wanted a fight to a finish, but the Admiral was content with the capture of two ships and the flight of the rest, and in reply to Nelson’s remonstrances he said: “We must be contented. We have done very well.”
In a letter home on the subject of this action, Nelson penned a sentence which was at once prophetic in itself and closely characteristic of the writer. It was this: “I wish to be an Admiral and in command of the English fleet. I should very soon either do much or be ruined. My disposition cannot bear tame and slow measures. Sure I am had I commanded on the 14th, that either the whole French fleet would have graced my triumph or I should have been in a confounded scrape.”
That is Nelson’s mental portrait drawn by himself. No half measures would ever do for him, and in most of the letters that he sent home from his various scenes of action, whether they were written to his wife, his private friends, or the Lords of the Admiralty, we find the constant complaint, made with an insistence amounting almost to petulance, that when he saw complete triumph within his grasp his superiors either would not help him to secure it or forced him to be content with a mere temporary advantage.
Under such circumstances it was only natural that such a man should now and then break loose. He saw quite plainly that there were confused councils at home, and timid tactics afloat. He saw also that under Napoleon the power of France was growing every day.
The Board of Admiralty was apparently both corrupt and incompetent. The Mediterranean fleet had been so shamefully neglected that after Nelson had fought an action off Toulon even he was afraid to risk another without the certainty of victory because there was “not so much as a mast to be had east of Gibraltar,” and he could not possibly have re-fitted his ships. It was about this time that he said in one of his letters home:
“I am acting, not only without the orders of my commander-in-chief, but in some measure contrary to him.”
If the authorities at home had only had the same opinion of his abilities as those had who were able to watch his operations on the spot, and particularly in Italy, it is quite possible that the whole history of Europe might have been changed and that Napoleon would never have won that series of brilliant victories which cost such an infinity of blood and treasure, and which bore no fruits but such as resembled all too closely the fabled Dead Sea apples.
Nelson’s patriotism may have been of a somewhat narrow-minded order, and his hatred of the French may have partaken somewhat of the nature of bigotry, but there can be no doubt that he was the one man in Europe who saw what was coming and had the ability, if he had only had the power, to save the world from the horrors of the Napoleonic wars.
Thus, for instance, if his advice had been taken, the splendid victory of Aboukir Bay might have been turned into the decisive battle of the war which only ended with Waterloo. As it was, he to some extent took the law into his own hands. He saw perfectly well that Napoleon’s ultimate point of attack was not Egypt but India. He sent an officer with dispatches to the Governor of Bombay, advising him of the defeat of the French Fleet, and in this dispatch he said:
“I know that Bombay was their first object if they could get there, but I trust that now Almighty God will overthrow in Egypt these pests of the human race. Buonaparte has never yet had to contend with an English officer, and I shall endeavour to make him respect us.”